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List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations of Works by Wittgenstein
Introduction: Discovering Wittgenstein
Part 1: Language
1. Through Thick and Thin: Wittgenstein's Grammar
2. Universal Grammar: Wittgenstein versus Chomsky
3. 'Words as Deeds': Wittgenstein's 'Spontaneous Utterances' and the Dissolution of the Explanatory Gap
4. Literature as the Measure of our Lives
Part 2: Mind
5. From Deed to Word: Wittgenstein's Kink-Free Enactivism
6. Wittgenstein and the Memory Debate
7. Wittgenstein on Psychological Certainty
Part 3: Epistemology
8. Wittgenstein on Knowledge and Certainty
9. Too Cavellian a Wittgenstein: Wittgenstein's Certainty, Cavell's Scepticism
10. Fighting Relativism: Wittgenstein and Kuhn
11. Beyond Hacker's Wittgenstein
Notes
References
Index
About the author
Danièle Moyal-Sharrock is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire, UK.
Summary
In Certainty in Action, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock describes how her encounter with Wittgenstein overturned her previous assumptions that the mind is a product of brain activity and that thought, consciousness, the will, feelings, memories, knowledge and language are stored and processed in the brain, by the brain. She shows how Wittgenstein enables us to veer away from this brain-centred view of intelligence and behaviour to a person-centred view focusing on ways of acting that are both diversely embedded across forms of human life and universally embedded in a single human form of life. The book traces the radical importance of action as the cohesive thread weaving through Wittgenstein's philosophy, and shows how certainty intertwines with it to produce new ways of engaging in epistemology, the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language.
This selection of Moyal-Sharrock's essays vividly illustrates some of the ways in which Wittgenstein's pioneering enactivism has impacted – and can further impact – not only philosophy, but also neighbouring disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, primatology, evolutionary psychology and anthropology. Certainty in Action is essential reading for students and researchers of these disciplines, and for anyone interested in getting a grasp of Wittgenstein's lasting genius and influence.
Foreword
A reading of Wittgenstein's work that argues for the centrality of embodied action in his philosophy.
Additional text
Moyal-Sharrock is one of the world’s foremost philosophers working on Wittgenstein’s later writings, especially On Certainty. This volume, which brings together many of the key themes in her work, will be indispensable reading for all those interested in the later Wittgenstein’s contribution to contemporary philosophy.
