ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a framework for psychologists to understand what Wittgenstein is aiming at in his investigations into the workings of psychological concepts. It aims to inform psychologists how his method of conceptual investigation is relevant to empirical research and theorizing in psychology. The chapter discusses conceptual versus empirical problems, the mind-body problem, conceptual confusion in psychology, regions of language, and features of philosophical problems, philosophical therapy, faulty linguistic analogies, and surface and depth grammar. It also includes memory 'stores', reification, seeing conceptual connections and defining versus perspicuous representation. Physicists have found their own way of identifying the phenomena that constitute the material world. One possibility is that psychologists hang on to certain aspects of the positivistic account of science when, unbeknownst to them, it has largely been abandoned by other scientific disciplines. The chapter describes four characteristics of philosophical problems and their implications for psychology. They are 'intractability,' 'resistance,' 'faulty linguistic analogies' and 'connecting what should be disconnected'.
