Human Nature

P. M. S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He is author of the four-volume Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, the first two volumes co-authored with G. P. Baker (Blackwell, 1980–96) and of Wittgenstein’s Place in Twentieth-century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996). He has also written extensively on philosophy of language and philosophy of mind, most recently Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003) and History of Cognitive Neuroscience (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), both co-authored with M. R. Bennett. He is also co-editor (with Joachim Schulte) and co-translator of the 4th edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

• Preface xiChapter 1 The Project 11. Human nature 12. Philosophical anthropology 43. Grammatical investigation 74. Philosophical investigation 115. Philosophy and ‘mere words’ 146. A challenge to the autonomy of the philosophical enterprise: Quine 177. The Platonic and Aristotelian traditions in philosophical anthropology 21Chapter 2 Substance 291. Substances: things 292. Substances: stuffs 343. Substance-referring expressions 374. Conceptual connections between things and stuffs 425. Substances and their substantial parts 446. Substances conceived as natural kinds 457. Substances conceived as a common logico-linguistic category 498. A historical digression: misconceptions of the category of substance 51Chapter 3 Causation 571. Causation: Humean, neo-Humean and anti-Humean 572. On causal necessity 623. Event causation is not a prototype 654. The inadequacy of Hume’s analysis: observability, spatio-temporal relations and regularity 695. The flaw in the early modern debate 736. Agent causation as prototype 757. Agent causation is only a prototype 808. Event causation and other centres of variation 829. Overview 88Chapter 4 Powers 901. Possibility 902. Powers of the inanimate 933. Active and passive powers of the inanimate 964. Power and its actualization 985. Power and its vehicle 1036. First- and second-order powers; loss of power 1057. Human powers: basic distinctions 1068. Human powers: further distinctions 1149. Dispositions 118Chapter 5 Agency 1221. Inanimate agents 1222. Inanimate needs 1283. Animate agents: needs and wants 1304. Volitional agency: preliminaries 1375. Doings, acts and actions 1406. Human agency and action 1447. A historical overview 1468. Human action as agential causation of movement 153Chapter 6 Teleology and Teleological Explanation 1611. Teleology and purpose 1612. What things have a purpose? 1693. Purpose and axiology 1754. The beneficial 1805. A historical digression: teleology and causality 181Chapter 7 Reasons and Explanation of Human Action 1991. Rationality and reasonableness 1992. Reason, reasoning and reasons 2033. Explaining human behaviour 2104. Explanation in terms of agential reasons 2205. Causal mythologies 226Chapter 8 The Mind 2331. Homo loquens 2332. The Cartesian mind 2403. The nature of the mind 248Chapter 9 The Self and the Body 2571. The emergence of the philosophers’ self 2572. The illusion of the philosophers’ self 2613. The body 2684. The relationship between human beings and their bodies 276Chapter 10 The Person 2851. The emergence of the concept 2852. An unholy trinity: Descartes, Locke and Hume 2893. Changing bodies and switching brains: puzzle cases and red herrings 3014. The concept of a person 310Index 317

"Full of helpful distinctions and arguments which show in different ways how carefully we must proceed … and how sensitive we must be to contexts." (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews) "an outstanding contribution to contemporary metaphysics and philosophical anthropology"' (Stephen Mulhall, Philosophical Quarterly)"an amazing achievement when writing about such potentially confusing and hotly contested issues" (Duncan Richter, Metapsychology)