ABSTRACT
As a narrative about philosophical disputation, David Edmonds, John Eidinow and Wittgenstein's Poker, published in 2001, brings to light the alternatives posed to advancing intellectual inquiry in and across disciplines as a matter of either puzzle-solving or problem-addressing. While cast as a philosophical wrangle, this division between puzzle and problem can serve to shine a spotlight on an essential feature of the methodology of economics, the often-resorted-to adoption of a metanarrative of puzzle-solving in order to secure a claim to scientific rigor, a feature manifested most plainly in economic game theory. Wittgenstein's critique of language introduces additional complexities to the place accorded puzzles and problems. Edmonds and Eidinow characterized Wittgenstein's outlook on philosophical questions as puzzles rather than problems. Here the Wittgensteinian critique, sometimes referred to as the necessity of interpreting all language through community standards provides an entry into an examination of the role, meaning and implications of context in shaping and defining either puzzles or problems.
