Cheryl Misak

Wittgenstein, Ramsey, and the Vienna Circle

This paper will explore the engagement of Wittgenstein, Ramsey and the Vienna Circle (mostly Schlick and Carnap) in the 1920s. This is before Wittgenstein became what we know as the later Wittgenstein and one upshot of the paper will be that it was Ramsey who turned Wittgenstein away from the quest for a pure and objective language (a quest he shared with the Vienna Circle) and turned him towards the pragmatist idea that meaning is bound up with use.

Cheryl Misak is University Professor and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She works on American pragmatism, the history of analytic philosophy, ethics and political philosophy, and the philosophy of medicine.

Her books include Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers, Cambridge Pragmatism, The American Pragmatists, Truth and the End of Inquiry, and Truth, Politics, Morality.

She has had visiting fellowships or temporary posts at the Goethe University in Frankfurt; the Free University in Berlin; Trinity College, Cambridge; St. John’s College, Cambridge; and New York University. She is an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford and a has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of a Humboldt Research Prize.

In 2013 she completed a long run in academic administration at the University of Toronto, culminating as Vice-President and Provost.