Malcolm Norman (1911–90), American philosopher who was a prominent figure in post– World War II analytic philosophy and perhaps the foremost American interpreter and advocate of Wittgenstein. His association with Wittgenstein (vividly described in his Ludwig Wittgenstein, A Memoir, 1958) began when he was a student at Cambridge (1938–40). Other influences were Bouwsma, Malcolm’s undergraduate teacher at the University of Nebraska, and Moore, whom he knew at Cambridge. Malcolm taught for over thirty years at Cornell, and after his retirement in 1978 was associated with King’s College, London. Malcolm’s earliest papers (e.g., ‘The Verification Argument,’ 1950, and ‘Knowledge and Belief,’ 1952) dealt with issues of knowledge and skepticism, and two dealt with Moore. ‘Moore and Ordinary Language’ (1942) interpreted Moore’s defense of common sense as a defense of ordinary language, but ‘Defending Common Sense’ (1949) argued that Moore’s ‘two hands’ proof of the external world involved a misuse of ‘know’. Moore’s proof was the topic of extended discussions between Malcolm and Wittgenstein during the latter’s 1949 visit in Ithaca, New York, and these provided the stimulus for Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Malcolm’s ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations’ (1954) was a highly influential discussion of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and especially of his ‘private language argument.’ Two other works of that period were Malcolm’s Dreaming (1958), which argued that dreams do not have genuine duration or temporal location, and do not entail having genuine experiences, and ‘Anselm’s Ontological Arguments’ (1960), which defended a version of the ontological argument. Malcolm wrote extensively on memory, first in his ‘Three Lectures on Memory,’ published in his Knowledge and Certainty (1963), and then in his Memory and Mind (1976). In the latter he criticized both philosophical and psychological theories of memory, and argued that the notion of a memory trace ‘is not a scientific discover. . . [but] a product of philosophical thinking, of a sort that is natural and enormously tempting, yet thoroughly muddled.’ A recurrent theme in Malcolm’s thought was that philosophical understanding requires getting to the root of the temptations to advance some philosophical doctrine, and that once we do so we will see the philosophical doctrines as confused or nonsensical. Although he was convinced that dualism and other Cartesian views about the mind were thoroughly confused, he thought no better of contemporary materialist and functionalist views, and of current theorizing in psychology and linguistics (one paper is entitled ‘The Myth of Cognitive Processes and Structures’). He shared with Wittgenstein both an antipathy to scientism and a respect for religion. He shared with Moore an antipathy to obscurantism and a respect for common sense.
Malcolm’s last published book, Nothing Is Hidden (1986), examines the relations between Wittgenstein’s earlier and later philosophies. His other books include Problems of Mind (1971), Thought and Knowledge (1977), and Consciousness and Causality (1984), the latter coauthored with Armstrong. His writings are marked by an exceptionally lucid, direct, and vivid style.
See also BOUWSMA, MOORE, ORDINARY LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY , WITTGENSTEI. S.Sho.