Herbert Paul Grice and Peter Michael Stephan Hacker

Speranza

From
http://info.sjc.ox.ac.uk/scr/hacker/BiographicalNotes.html

Hacker "became a Tutorial Fellow at St John's College in 1966..."

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Herbert Paul Grice became a Tutorial Fellow at St. John's in the 1930s.

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Peter Michael Stephan Hacker was born in London on July 15th 1939.

Herbert Paul Grice was born in 1913 in the Heart of England.

Hacker is, like Grice, an English philosopher.

Hacker's principal expertise is in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language.

So was Grice's. Only Grice would go on to say, "Philosophy, like virtue is entire". He dismissed descriptions of philosophical expertise as implicating the contrary ("Mr. Poodle, our man in eighteenth-century German aesthetics" +> "and bad at it").

Hacker  is known for his detailed exegesis of the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein -- cfr. Grice as overhearing Austin, "Some like Witters, but Moore's MY man" --and his outspoken conceptual critique of cognitive neuroscience.

This he shares with Grice.

Hacker studied philosophy, politics and economics (or PPE for short -- vs. Grice who held an old-fashioned Lit. Hum. degree -- at The Queen's College, Oxford from 1960-63.

In 1963-65 Hacker was senior Scholar at St Antony's College, Oxford, where he began graduate work under the supervision of Professor H. L. A. Hart.

His D.Phil thesis "Rules and Duties" was completed in 1966 during a Junior Research Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford.

Since 1966 Hacker has been a Tutorial Fellow at St John's, Oxford (as was Grice for years) and of the Oxford University philosophy department.

Hacker's visiting positions at other universities include:

Makerere College, Uganda (1968)
Swarthmore College, USA (1973 and 1986)
University of Michigan, USA (1974)
Milton C. Scott visiting professor at Queen's University, Kingston, Canada (1985)
Visiting Fellow in Humanities at University of Bologna, Italy (2009).

From 1985 to 1987 Hacker was a British Academy Research Reader in the Humanities.

In 1991-94 Hacker was a Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow.

Hacker retired in 2006, but he has been appointed an Emeritus Research Fellow of St John's College, Oxford.

When Grice retired from UC/Berkeley, he joined the University of Seattle.

Hacker is one of the most powerful contemporary exponents of the linguistic-therapeutic approach to philosophy pioneered by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In this approach, the words and concepts used by the language community are taken as given, and the role of philosophy is to resolve or dissolve philosophical problems by giving an overview of the uses of these words and the structural relationships between these concepts.

Grice criticised Witters for not being clear about key notions like 'meaning' and most notably, 'implication' (or 'implicature', as Grice preferred).

Philosophical inquiry is therefore very different from scientific inquiry, and Hacker maintains accordingly that there is a sharp dividing line between the two.

Philosophy is not a contribution to human knowledge, but to human understanding."

"An Orrery of Intentionality"

The Irish placename Orrery came from Gaelic Orbhraighe, which was at first the name of a tribe (Orbh-raighe = "Orb's people"), and then of a territory and a barony.

This has led Hacker into direct disagreement with "neuro-philosophers": neuroscientists or philosophers such as Antonio Damasio and Oxford-educated D. C. Dennett who think that neuro-science can shed light on philosophical questions such as the nature of consciousness or the mind-body problem.

Hacker maintains that these, like all philosophical problems, are not real problems at all, but mirages arising from conceptual confusion.

It follows that scientific inquiry (learning more facts about humans or the world) does not help to resolve them.

His 2003 book "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience", co-authored with neuro-scientist M. Bennett, contains an exposition of these views, and critiques of the ideas of many contemporary neuroscientists and philosophers, including Francis Crick, Antonio Damasio, and Oxford-educated D. C. Dennett, J. R. Searle, and others.

Hacker in general finds many received components of current philosophy of mind to be incoherent.

He rejects mind-brain identity theories, as well as Grice's Functionalism (Grice, "Method in philosophical psychology: from the banal to the bizarre", repr. in Conception of Value, Clarendon, 1991), eliminativism and other forms of reductionism.

Hacker advocates methodological pluralism, denying that standard explanations of human conduct are causal, and insisting on the irreducibility of explanation in terms of reasons and goals.

Hacker denies that psychological attributes can be intelligibly ascribed to the brain, insisting that they are ascribable only to the human being as a whole.

He has endeavoured to show that the puzzles and 'mysteries' of consciousness dissolve under careful analysis of the various forms of intransitive and transitive consciousness, and that so-called qualia are no more than a philosopher's fiction.

Hacker frequently collaborated with fellow Oxford philosopher and Tutorial Fellow of St. Johns, Gordon P. Baker.

Bibliography

Insight and Illusion: Wittgenstein on Philosophy and the Metaphysics of Experience (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1972)
Insight and Illusion - themes in the philosophy of Wittgenstein (extensively revised edition) (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1986) (ISBN 0-19-824783-4)
Wittgenstein : Understanding and Meaning, Volume 1 of an analytical commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, Oxford, and Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1980)(ISBN 0-631-12111-0)(ISBN 1-4051-0176-8)(ISBN 1-4051-1987-X), co-authored with G.P. Baker.
Frege : Logical Excavations, (Blackwell, Oxford, O.U.P., N.Y., 1984) (ISBN 0-19-503261-6) co-authored with G.P. Baker.
Language, Sense and Nonsense, a critical investigation into modern theories of language (Blackwell, 1984) (ISBN 0-631-13519-7) co-authored with G.P. Baker.
Scepticism, Rules and Language (Blackwell, 1984) (ISBN 0-631-13614-2) co-authored with G.P. Baker.
Wittgenstein : Rules, Grammar, and Necessity - Volume 2 of an analytical commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass. USA, 1985) (ISBN 0-631-13024-1)(ISBN 0-631-16188-0) co-authored with G.P. Baker.
Appearance and Reality - a philosophical investigation into perception and perceptual qualities (Blackwell, 1987) (ISBN 0-631-15704-2)
Wittgenstein : Meaning and Mind, Volume 3 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., 1990) (ISBN 0-631-18739-1)
Wittgenstein: Mind and Will, Volume 4 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (Blackwell, 1996) (ISBN 0-631-18739-1)
Wittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell,Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass., USA, 1996) (ISBN 0-631-20098-3)
Wittgenstein on Human Nature (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1997) (ISBN 0-7538-0193-0)
Wittgenstein: Connections and Controversies (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2001) (ISBN 0-19-924569-X)
Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, Oxford, and Malden, Mass., 2003) (ISBN 1-4051-0855-X), co-authored with M.R. Bennett
Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind, and Language (Columbia University Press, New York, 2007) (ISBN 978-0-231-14044-7), co-authored with M. Bennett, D. Dennett, and J. Searle
Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007) (ISBN 1405147288)
History of Cognitive Neuroscience (Wiley, Blackwell, 2008) (ISBN 978-1-4051-8182-2), co-authored with M.R. Bennett
Papers available on the web[edit]
Analytic Philosophy: Beyond the linguistic turn and back again, in M. Beaney ed. The Analytic Turn: Analysis in Early Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (Routledge, London, 2006)
Passing by the Naturalistic Turn: on Quine's cul-de-sac, Philosophy 2006
Scott Soames's Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century, critical notice, Philosophical Quarterly 2006
Of knowledge and of knowing that someone is in pain, in A. Pichler and S. Säätelä eds., Wittgenstein: The Philosopher and his Works ((The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, Bergen, 2005)), pp. 203–235.
Substance: Things and Stuffs, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 2004, pp. 41–63.
Of the ontology of belief, in Mark Siebel and Mark Textor ed. Semantik und Ontologie (Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt, 2004), pp. 185–222.
The conceptual framework for the investigation of the emotions, International Review of Psychiatry, Vol.16, No. 3 (August 2004), pp. 199–208
Is there anything it is like to be a bat?, Philosophy 77, 2002, pp. 157–74.
Wittgenstein and the Autonomy of Humanistic Understanding, in R. Allen and M. Turvey eds., Wittgenstein: Theory and the Arts (Routledge. London, 2001), pp. 39–74.
An Orrery of Intentionality, in Language and Communication, 21(2001), pp. 119–141.
When the Whistling had to Stop, in D.O.M. Charles and T.W. Child eds. Wittgensteinian Themes: Essays in Honour of David Pears (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2001).
Was he Trying to Whistle it? in A. Crary and R. Read eds. The New Wittgenstein (Routledge, London, 2000), pp. 353–88.
Wittgenstein, Carnap and the New American Wittgensteinians, Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003), pp. 1 –23.
References[edit]
Jump up ^ Cf. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003); Neuroscience and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2007)


Analytic philosophy

PhilosophersRobert Merrihew Adams
William P. Alston
J. L. Austin
A. J. Ayer
G. E. M. Anscombe
David Malet Armstrong
Robert Audi
C. D. Broad
Tyler Burge
John P. Burgess
Rudolf Carnap
Roderick Chisholm
Patricia Churchland
Paul M. Churchland
David Chalmers
Noam Chomsky
Donald Davidson
Daniel Dennett
Michael Dummett
Gottlob Frege
Jerry Fodor
Peter Geach
A. C. Grayling
Herbert Paul Grice
Alvin Goldman
Peter van Inwagen
Saul Kripke
Peter Hacker
Ian Hacking
Carl Hempel
Jaakko Hintikka
David Lewis
J. L. Mackie
Norman Malcolm
G. E. Moore
Thomas Nagel
Derek Parfit
D. Z. Phillips
Alvin Plantinga
Hilary Putnam
W. V. O. Quine
Hans Reichenbach
Bertrand Russell
Gilbert Ryle
John Searle
Wilfred Sellars
Peter Singer
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Bas van Fraassen
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Concept
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Meaning (also Proposition)
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Paradox of analysis
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Supervenience
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Truth function, maker, and bearer
Type–token distinction


Related articlesAustralian Realism
Ordinary language philosophy
Philosophical logic
Philosophy of language
Philosophy of science
Postanalytic philosophy
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Ludwig Wittgenstein

FamilyMargaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein
Karl Wittgenstein
Paul Wittgenstein
Works associated with Paul Wittgenstein


Early workPicture theory of language
Truth tables


Later workLanguage-game
Private language argument
Family resemblance
Rule following
Form of life
Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics


PublicationsTractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Some Remarks on Logical Form
Blue and Brown Books
Philosophical Remarks
Philosophical Investigations
On Certainty
Culture and Value
Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
Zettel
Remarks on Colour
Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief


MovementsAnalytic philosophy
Linguistic turn
Ideal language philosophy
Logical atomism
Logical positivism
Ordinary language philosophy
Wittgensteinian fideism
Quietism


FriendsG. E. M. Anscombe
R. B. Braithwaite
Rudolf Carnap
Paul Engelmann
John Maynard Keynes
Peter Geach
Norman Malcolm
G. E. Moore
David Pinsent
Frank P. Ramsey
Rush Rhees
Bertrand Russell
Moritz Schlick
Francis Skinner
Piero Sraffa
Vienna Circle
Friedrich Waismann
Peter Winch
G. H. von Wright


BiographersDavid Edmonds
Ray Monk
William Warren Bartley


Secondary sourcesA. J. Ayer
Gordon Baker
James F. Conant
Cora Diamond
Terry Eagleton
Peter Hacker
Saul Kripke
Anthony Kenny
Warren Goldfarb
Stanley Cavell
D. Z. Phillips
Peter Hacker
Colin McGinn
Jaakko Hintikka
Oswald Hanfling
A. C. Grayling
Rupert Read
Barry Stroud
Stephen Toulmin
Crispin Wright
Fergus Kerr


MiscellaneousCambridge Apostles
Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club
Haidbauer incident
Haus Wittgenstein
Fritz Mauthner


FilmWittgenstein (film)


Authority controlWorldCat
VIAF: 2482807
LCCN: n79055522
ISNI: 0000 0001 1558 182X
GND: 109051084


Persondata
Name: Hacker, Peter
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Date of birthJuly 15, 1939
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Categories:
1939 births
Living people
Philosophers of language
British philosophers
Analytic philosophers
Philosophers of mind
Wittgensteinian philosophers
Fellows of St John's College, Oxford
20th-century philosophers
21st-century philosophers