Norman Malcolm

Norman Malcolm (1911 – 1990) was an American philosopher. He was born in Selden, Kansas. After serving in the United States Navy from 1942 to 1945, and earning a Harvard doctorate, he joined the Princeton faculty in 1940. During his first term of post-graduate study at Cambridge in 1938, he met Ludwig Wittgenstein and attended Wittgenstein's lectures on the philosophical foundations of mathematics throughout 1939. Malcolm remained one of Wittgenstein's closest friends, and his memoir of his time with Wittgenstein, published in 1958, is widely acclaimed as one of the most captivating and most accurate portraits of Wittgenstein's remarkable personality. After returning to the U.S. Malcolm moved to Cornell University, where he taught until his retirement. Malcolm, with his wife, resided in Cambridge again in 1946-47. He saw a good deal of Wittgenstein during that visit. and they continued to correspond frequently thereafter. In 1949, Wittgenstein was a guest of the Malcolms in Ithaca, New York. In that year Malcolm introduced O.K. Bouwsma to Wittgenstein. Bouwsma was close with Wittgenstein until Wittgenstein died in 1951.

In 1959, his book Dreaming was published, in which he elaborated on Wittgenstein's question as to whether it really mattered if people who tell dreams "really had these images while they slept, or whether it merely seems so to them on waking". This work was also a response to Descartes' Meditations.[1] Other than that he is known for propagating the view that common sense philosophy and ordinary language philosophy are the same. He was a staunch opponent of Moore's concept of knowledge and certitude. His critique of Moore's articles on skepticism (and also on Moore's 'Here is a hand' argument) lay the foundation for the renewed interest in common sense philosophy and ordinary language philosophy. Malcolm wasn't a defender of skepticism but found Moore's rebuttal of it to be sorely lacking in clarity and ineffective as a whole. Malcolm's seminars at Cornell were legendary. Seated at the head of the table, he would contemplate a small or crucial issue raised by a student or colleague, holding his head and bobbing slightly for several silent minutes. (Wittgenstein was said to have acted similarly.) Malcolm would finally raise his head then make a comment that was usually clear, simple, correct, and often trenchant. His works include:

• Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir
• Wittgenstein: A Religious Point Of View?
• Nothing Is Hidden: Wittgenstein's criticism of his early thought
• Problems of Mind: Descartes to Wittgenstein
• Knowledge and Certainty
• Consciousness and Causality (with D. M. Armstrong)
• Memory and Mind
• Dreaming and Skepticism
• Wittgenstein: The Relation of Language to Instinctive Behaviour (J.R.Jones Memorial Lecture) Publisher: University of Wales, Swansea (Dec 1981) ISBN-10: 0860760243
• Thought and knowledge
• Wittgensteinian themes (edited by Georg Henrik von Wright) and Dreaming.