1. Introduction. Dejan Makovec.- Part I: Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle.- 2. Waismann in the Vienna Circle. Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau.- 3. Producing a Justification: Waismann on the Relation Between Ethics and Science. Constantine Sandis.- 4. Friedrich Waismann's Philosophy of Mathematics. Severin Shroeder and Harry Tomany.- 5. Waismann on Belief and Knowledge. Annalisa Coliva.- 6. "How I See Philosophy": An Apple of Discord Among Wittgenstein Scholars. Katherine Morris.- Part II: Philosophy and Language.- 7. Waismann: From Wittgenstein's Tafelrunde to his Writings on Analycity. Gregory Lavers.- 8. Breaking the Spell: Waismann's Papers on the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction. Gillian Russell.- 9. Open Texture and Analyticity. Stewart Shapiro and Craige Roberts.- 10. Linguistic Legislation and Psycholinguistic Experiments: Redeveloping Waismann's Approach. Eugene Fischer.- Part III: Law, Action, Fiction.- 11. Waismann, Wittgenstein, Hart, and Beyond: The Developing Idea of "Open Texture" of Language and Law. Brian H. Bix.- 12. Friedrich Waismann and the Distinctive Logic of Legal Language. Frederick Schauer.- 13. Motives and Interpretations. Ulrike Heuer.- 14. Waismann on Fiction and its Objects. Graham Priest.- 15. "I wanted to hear your judgement":Waismann, Kafka and Wittgenstein on the Power and Powerlessness of Language. Géza Kállay and Katalin G. Kállay.
Dejan Makovec is a doctoral student in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He has taught philosophy at the University of Klagenfurt and the University of Vienna, Austria, and is one of the founders of the Vienna Forum for Analytic Philosophy.
Stewart Shapiro is the O’Donnell Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University, USA. He is also a Professorial Fellow at the University of Oslo, Norway, a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut, USA, and a Presidential Fellow at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
This edited collection covers Friedrich Waismann's most influential contributions to twentieth-century philosophy of language: his concepts of open texture and language strata, his early criticism of verificationism and the analytic-synthetic distinction, as well as their significance for experimental and legal philosophy.
In addition, Waismann's original papers in ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of mathematics are here evaluated. They introduce Waismann's theory of action along with his groundbreaking work on fiction, proper names and Kafka's Trial.
Waismann is known as the voice of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Vienna Circle. At the same time we find in his works a determined critic of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy, who anticipated much later developments in the analytic tradition and devised his very own vision for its future.