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God, Wittgenstein and John Cook
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2009
Abstract
This essay is a meditation on Wittgenstein's injunction to ‘look and see’, especially when it is applied to the debate over theological realism. John Cook thinks that the injunction should be followed in metaphysics and epistemology, something he believes that Wittgenstein himself did not do. I am inclined to think that Cook is right about this, even though I am not persuaded by him that Wittgenstein goes wrong because he was committed to Neutral Monism. Interestingly, Cook thinks that there is no need to adopt the look-and-see approach when it comes to the philosophy of religion, and this paper tries to show why he is wrong to think so.
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- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2009
References
1 Cook, J., The Undiscovered Wittgenstein (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2005)Google Scholar. All page references in the body of this text are to this book.
2 See, for example, ‘Human Beings’, in Winch, P. (ed.) Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein (London: Rutledge & Kegan Paul, 1969Google Scholar, and ‘Solipsism and Language’, in A. Ambrose and M. Lazerowitz (eds.) London: George Allen & Unwin), 37-72.
3 See Cook, J., ‘Did Wittgenstein practise what he preached?’ Philosophy 81 (2006), pp. 445-62CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cook thinks Wittgenstein's practice reflected his commitment to Neutral Monism, whereas I think that he did not systematically apply the look-and-see approach.
4 According to Neutral Monism, reality consists exclusively of atoms of experience, which may be characterized, indifferently, as mental or physical. Cook's, argument for Wittgenstein being a neutral monist is, Wittgenstein's Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar.
5 Cook uses a similar approach to argue that a metaphysics not unlike Neutral Monism is behind Hume's epistemology in his excellent paper, ‘Hume's Scepticism with Regard to the Senses’, American Philosophical Quarterly 5 (1968), 1-17.
6 Wittgenstein, L., Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 54Google Scholar.
7 Cook, J., Wittgenstein, Empiricism and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 140-158Google Scholar.
8 Orr, D., ‘Did Wittgenstein Have a Theory of Hinge Propositions?’ Philosophical Investigations 12, 1989, 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Orr is criticizing Cook, J., ‘Notes on Wittgenstein's On Certainty’, Philosophical Investigations 4 1980, 15-37CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ‘Metaphysics of Wittgenstein's On Certainty’, Philosophical Investigations 2 (1985), 81-119.
9 Cook, J., ‘Wittgenstein on Privacy’, Philosophical Review 74 (1965), 289CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Ebersole, F., ‘Feeling Eggs and Pains’, in Things We Know (Xlibris 2001), 127Google Scholar. Ebersole does not indicate that it is Cook whom he is criticizing.
11 Davies, B., ‘D. Z. Phillips on Belief in God’, Philosophical Investigations 30 (2007), 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 J. Cook, Wittgenstein, Empiricism, and Language, op. cit. 157.
13 Magee, B., ‘Wittgenstein: Dialogue with John Searle,’ in Magee, B., The Great Philosophers (London: BBC Books, 1997), 345Google Scholar. Searle is criticized in Phillips, D.Z., Wittgenstein and Religion (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), 22-32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and it is Phillips' criticism that Cook is attacking.
14 For a critical examination of Wittgenstein and Winch's ideas about the beliefs of ‘primitive’ peoples, see Cook's ‘Wittgenstein on Primitive Practices,’ in The Undiscovered Wittgenstein, op. cit. 273-301.