Malcolm, Norman

(1911-90)

   An American philosopher that studied under O. K. Bouwsma and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Malcolm was particularly influenced by the latter, and himself became a leading Wittgensteinian. Malcolm painted an enigmatic portrait of Wittgenstein in Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (1958). He also did important work on the private-language argument and, in keeping with a Wittgensteinian sense of the autonomy of different language games, he was an astute critic of scientific reductionism, and a defender of the rationality of religious belief. Malcolm also published an important work of philosophical psychology on dreaming and defended a version of the ontological argument.

   See language game; Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann

   Further reading: Malcolm 1959 and 1963