Clear and Queer Thinking: Wittgenstein's Development and His Relevance to Modern Thought

Wittgenstein is generally regarded as a difficult philosopher. People reading him sometimes see the glint of a precious stone and are aware that there are diamonds to be found if only they knew how to look. His prose can seem obscure, yet Wittgenstein himself enjoins us to stay silent where we cannot speak clearly, and he criticizes other philosophers for finding “queer” what would seem wholly unmysterious if only they would curb their compulsion to be misled. A main source of failure to understand, in Wittgenstein's view, is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.

Laurence Goldstein gives a straightforward and lively account of some of the central themes of Wittgenstein's writings on meaning, mind, and mathematics. He does this both by drawing on Wittgenstein's work to show how his thinking developed over time and by helping the reader gain some impression of what a strange character Wittgenstein was-for how he was is intimately related to how and what he wrote.

Clear and Queer Thinking also brings Wittgenstein's ideas to bear on a wide range of topics in linguistics, cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience and will therefore be of interest not only to philosophers but also to linguists, psychologists, and those working in the brain sciences.