Clearly and engagingly written, this volume is vital reading for students of philosophy and sociology, and anyone interested in Wittgenstein's later thought. David Bloor provides a challenging and informative evaluation of Wittgenstein's account of rules and rule-following. Arguing for a collectivist reading, Bloor offers the first consistent sociological interpretation of Wittgenstein's work for many years.

Clearly and engagingly written, this volume is vital reading for students of philosophy and sociology, and anyone interested in Wittgenstein's later thought. David Bloor provides a challenging and informative evaluation of Wittgenstein's account of rules and rule-following. Arguing for a collectivist reading, Bloor offers the first consistent sociological interpretation of Wittgenstein's work for many years.

Table of Contents " Preface " Introductory " The Wittgensteinian Paradox " The Solution and the 'Private Language' Argument " Postscript Wittgenstein and Other Minds " Index.

This book – which is the result of several years of research, discussion, writing and re-writing – consists of three parts and eight chapters. The rst part is given by the two rst chapters introducing the issue of validity and facticity in law. The second part (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) is the core of this study and tries to present a theory based on a speci c view about language and social practice. The third part deal with the issue of value judgments and views about morality and consists of Chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 8 should nally serve as epilogue. In the rst chapter a discussion is started about the relationship between law and power, seen as a presupposition for an assessment of the nature of law. As a matter of fact, as has been remarked, “general theories of law struggle to do justice to the 1 multiple dualities of the law”. Indeed, law has a “dual nature”: it is a fact, but it also a norm, a sort of ideal entity. Law is sanction, but it is also discourse. It is effectivity, or facticity, but it is also a vehicle of principles among which the central one is justice. But this duality is not only a phenomenological, or a matter of justi cation and implementation as two separate moments.

The Second Edition of Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (the second volume of the landmark analytical commentary on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations) now includes extensively revised and supplemented coverage of the Wittgenstein's complex and controversial remarks on following rules. Includes thoroughly rewritten essays and the addition of one new essay on communitarian and individualist conceptions of rule-following Includes a greatly expanded essay on Wittgenstein’s conception of logical, mathematical and metaphysical necessity Features updates to the textual exegesis as the result of taking advantage of the search engine for the Bergen edition of the Nachlass Reflects the results of scholarly debates on rule-following that have raged over the past 20 years

There is considerable debate amongst philosophers as to the basic philosophical problem Wittgenstein is attempting to solve in Philosophical Investigations. In this bold and original work, Meredith Williams argues that it is the problem of "normative similarity". In Blind Obedience Williams demonstrates how Wittgenstein criticizes traditional, representationalist theories of language by employing the ‘master/novice’ distinction of the learner, arguing that this distinction is often overlooked but fundamental to understanding philosophical problems about mind and language. The book not only provides revealing discussions of Wittgenstein’s corpus but also intricate analyses of the work of Brandom, Dummett, Frege, Sellars, Davidson, Cavell and others. These are usefully compared in a bid to better situate Wittgenstein’s non-intellectualist, non-theoretical approach and to highlight is unique features.

In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject. Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels. Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.