Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind is the third volume of a four-volume analytical commentary on Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations, consisting of two parts. Part 1 is a sequence of fifteen essays that examine in detail all the major topics discussed inPhilosophical Investigations §§243-427. These include the private language arguments, privacy, private ostensive definition, the nature of the mind, the inner and the outer, behaviour and behaviourism, thought, imagination, the self, consciousness, and criteria. Published in 1990 to widespread acclaim as a scholarlytour de force, the first edition of this volume of essays provides a comprehensive survey of these themes, the history of their treatment in early modern and modern philosophy, the development of Wittgenstein's ideas on these subjects from 1929 onwards, and an elaborate analysis of his definitive arguments in theInvestigations.

The new second edition has been thoroughly revised by the author and features four new essays. These include a survey of the evolution of the private language arguments in Wittgenstein'soeuvre and their role within the developing argument of theInvestigations, a comprehensive essay on private ownership of experience and its pitfalls, a detailed examination and defence of Wittgenstein's repudiation of subjective knowledge of one's experience, and an overview of the achievement and importance of the private language arguments. Revised essays examine new objections to Wittgenstein's arguments which are found wanting and incorporate new materials from theNachlass that were not known to exist in 1990. All references have been adjusted to the revised fourth edition of theInvestigations, but previous pagination in the first and second editions has been retained in parentheses.

These revisions bring the book up to the high standard of the extensively revised editions ofWittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning (Blackwell, 2005) andWittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity (Wiley Blackwell, 2009). They ensure that this survey of Wittgenstein's private language arguments and of his accounts of thought, imagination, consciousness, the self, and criteria will remain the essential reference work on theInvestigations for the foreseeable future.

P. M. S. Hacker is the leading authority on the philosophy of Wittgenstein. He is author of the four-volumeAnalytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations (1980-96), the first two volumes co-authored with G.P. Baker, and of the epilogueWittgenstein's Place in Twentieth Century Analytic Philosophy (Blackwell, 1996). He has written extensively on philosophy and neurosciencePhilosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Blackwell, 2003) andHistory of Cognitive Neuroscience (Wiley Blackwell, 2008), both co-authored with M.R. Bennett. He has published three volumes of a tetralogy on human nature:Human Nature: The Categorial Framework (Blackwell, 2007),The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature (Wiley Blackwell, 2013), andThe Passions: A Study of Human Nature (Wiley Blackwell, 2018). He is currently completing the final volume The Moral Powers: A Study of Human Nature (forthcoming). Together with Joachim Schulte, he has produced the fourth edition and extensively revised translation of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations (Wiley Blackwell, 2009). They are currently working on a new edition and translation of Wittgenstein'sOn Certainty.