Monk’s ‘The Temptations of Phenomenology’ examines what the term ‘Phänomenologie’ meant for Wittgenstein. Contesting various other scholars, Monk claims that Wittgenstein’s relation to ‘Phänomenologie’ began and ended during 1929. Monk only partially touches on the question of Wittgenstein’s relation to the phenomenological movement during this time. Though Monk does not mention this, 1929 was also the year in which Ryle and Carnap turned their critical attention toward Heidegger. Wittgenstein also expressed his sympathy for Heidegger in 1929. Furthermore, though in 1929 (...) Wittgenstein agrees with the early Husserl on relating logic and science to phenomenology, it is not clear that they mean the same thing by either logic or phenomenology, or that they agree on what the relation between the two should be. (shrink)

The global turn in media ethics has presented a tough challenge for traditional models of moral theory: How do we assert common moral standards while also showing respect for the values of those from outside the Western tradition? The danger lies in advocating for either extreme: reason-dependent absolutism or cultural relativism. In this paper, I reject Cliff Christian’s attempts to solve the problem and propose instead a moral theory of universal standards that are discovered via a mix of rationally grounded (...) methods. Such universality refutes relativism but, because it is grounded in evolutionary naturalism and life-world philosophy—as opposed to a Kantian or theological transcendentalism—it also avoids absolutism. (shrink)

This article argues that there is ultimately a very close convergence between prominent conceptions of being in mainstream Anglo‐American philosophy and mainstream postmodern Continental philosophy. One characteristic idea in Anglo‐American or analytic philosophy is that we establish what is meaningful and so what we can say about what is, by making evident the limits of sense or what simply cannot be meant. A characteristic idea in Continental philosophy of being is that being emerges through contrast and interplay with what it (...) is not, with what has no being at all and so is beyond sense. The two traditions consequently conceive being in significantly related ways. As a result, what the Continental tradition gets at with “the meaning of being as such and in general,” and how it gets at it, has much in common with what the Anglo‐American tradition gets at, and how it gets at it, by establishing “what can be meaningfully said.”. (shrink)

In "The History of Sexuality", Foucault maintains that "Western man has become a confessing animal" (1990, 59), thus implying that "man" was not always such a creature. On a related point, Wittgenstein suggests that "man is a ceremonial animal" (1996, 67); here the suggestion is that human beings are, by their very nature, ritualistically inclined. In this paper I examine this crucial difference in emphasis, first by reconstructing Foucault's "genealogy" of confession, and subsequently by exploring relevant facets of Wittgenstein's later (...) thinking. While there are significant correlations between Foucault and Wittgenstein, an important disparity emerges in relation to the question of the "natural." By critically analyzing this, I show how Wittgenstein's minimal naturalism provides an important corrective to Foucault's more extravagant claims. By implication, we see why any radical relativist, historicist, and/or constructivist position becomes untenable on Wittgensteinian grounds, even though Wittgenstein himself is often read as promoting such views. (shrink)

The most constructive response to the crisis in moral theory has been the revival of virtue ethics, an ethics that has the advantages of being personal, contextual, and, as this paper will argue, normative as well. The first section offers a general comparative analysis of Confucian and Whiteheadian philosophies, showing their common process orientation and their views of a somatic self united in reason and passion. The second section contrasts rational with aesthetic order, demonstrating a parallel with analytic and synthetic (...) reason, and showing that rule-based ethics comes under the former and virtue ethics under the latter. The third and final section discusses a Confucian-Whiteheadian aesthetics of virtue, focusing on love as the comprehensive virtue. The principal goal of the paper is to propose that an appropriation of Confucian virtue ethics will enhance the otherwise slow development of a Euro-American process ethics. (shrink)

Existe una aparente incongruencia entre, por una parte, la gran distancia que Ludwig Wittgenstein detectaba entre sus objetivos filosóficos y los de los pragmatistas y, por otra, el acercamiento que posteriormente se ha producido en la historia de la recepción de la filosofía wittgensteiniana entre esta y el (neo)pragmatismo. Con afán de tratar de arrojar algo de luz sobre tal discordancia, nos ocuparemos aquí de modo privilegiado en las reflexiones de Wittgenstein en torno al cumplimiento de reglas (es decir, sobre (...) el fenómeno de la normatividad), y la solución que a este respecto dan diversos autores pragmatistas, para comprobar si efectivamente es similitud o más bien radical disparidad (o tal vez, si se nos permite la manida referencia, simplemente un «parecido de familia») la que se da entre el proyecto filosófico wittgensteiniano y el pragmatista. Pero el objetivo fundamental de este escrito no es, con todo, una simple determinación exegética de cuáles son las verdaderas intenciones de unos y otros (esfuerzo intencionalista que combinaría bastante mal, por lo demás, con las nociones tanto wittgensteinianas como pragmatistas acerca de la normatividad); sino que de lo que se tratará será principalmente de ver qué tesis resultan, a la postre, más plausibles si queremos hacernos con una idea filosóficamente coherente del fenómeno de lo normativo: si las de un pragmatismo estereotipado (que Wittgenstein repudia ferviente), o bien las de un pensamiento que se quiere no filosófico (como el del propio vienés), o bien las mucho más matizadas consideraciones procedentes del neopragmatismo. (shrink)

This paper combines views of Wittgenstein and Heidegger into an account of mind/ action. It does this by suggesting that these two philosophers be viewed in part as descendants of Life?philosophy (Lebensphilosophie). Part I describes the conception of life that informs and emerges from these thinkers. Parts Two and Three detail particular aspects of this conception: Wittgenstein on the constitution of states of life and Heidegger on the flow?structure of the stream of life. The Conclusion offers reasons for believing their (...) combined viewpoint. (shrink)

Abstract There have been increasingly popular claims that hermeneutics provides an epistemology that is appropriate and sufficient for psychotherapy. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and explain those claims. Hermeneutics proves to provide terms that legitimize aspects of clinical expertise that have been most ignored within the traditional empiricist epistemology; namely, hermeneutics articulates and provides standards for therapeutic interpretations about clients? idiosyncratic intentions and also for using clinical theories that defy empirical test. Nonetheless, hermeneutics also proves to be (...) limited in its account of clinical knowledge. That is, clinicians who advocate hermeneutics have ruled out any legitimate basis on which clinical expertise can be influenced by knowledge about non?intentional constraints on psychological life. Yet, therapists must use such knowledge, especially that which concerns the non?intentional constraints imposed by human development. Thus, to realize its potential, hermeneutics should be embedded within a more comprehensive epistemology that includes compatible standards for knowledge about development. Finally, this paper concludes by proposing an outline for such an inclusive approach to clinical knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on the notion of worldview as a conceptual scheme and the role of language in shaping our view of reality. In particular, I engage with Wittgenstein’s notion of World-picture in order to suggest an alternative account to the deceptive dogmatic conception of worldview, which is exemplified by C.I. Lewis’s account of cognitive experience. I argue that worldviews constitute the way in which the world is given in a particular socio-linguistic context and they presuppose the mastery (...) of a World-picture, that is, the inherited background of our acting and thinking. First, I will distinguish between two different uses of the term “worldview”. Then I will show the way in which a metaphysical-dogmatic conception of worldview leads to the Myth of the Semantic Given. Finally, I will present Wittgenstein’s notion of World-picture and its connection to the notion of worldview. (shrink)

La tesis de la privacidad linguitica nace con el gesto fundador de la filosofía moderna que apoya toda legitimidad en la subjetividad y la conciencia. Ello da origen a dos problemas filos�ficos fundamentales, concernientes al mundo y al solipsismo. El siglo XX creyó encontrar en el lenguaje una salida a estos problemas. Wittgenstein es allí una pieza clave. Sin embargo las interpretaciones más influyentes de Wittgenstein enfocaron la crítica del lenguaje privado de tal modo que la salida debía permanecer en (...) el terreno epistemológico de las garantías o criterio de corrección (Malcolm, Fogelin, Kenny, Canfield, Tugendhat). Sostenemos que la interpretación propuesta por Kripke se apoya un un agudo diagnóstico de la fuente de estas dificultades, dándose cuenta que la refutación del lenguaje privado requería abandonar toda una concepción, la del realismo, que afectaban por igual al lenguaje privado y al público. Su argumentación, centrada en la semántica, irradia consecuencias más allá de la misma. Su "solución escéptica" al establecer que los juicios de corrección, entendidos como básicos y primitivos, sólo poseen sentido en el marco de una comunidad uniforme en sus juicios, coloca al discurso filosófico en un nuevo terreno. (shrink)

: The distinction between science and philosophy plays a central role in methodological, programmatic and institutional debates. Discussions of disciplinary identities typically focus on boundaries or else on genealogies, yielding models of demarcation and models of dynamics. Considerations of a discipline's self-image, often based on history, often plays an important role in the values, projects and practices of its members. Recent focus on the dynamics of scientific change supplements Kuhnian neat model with a role for philosophy and yields a model (...) of the evolution of philosophy of science. This view illuminates important aspects of science and itself contributes to philosophy of science. This interactive model is general yet based on exclusive attention to physics. In this paper and two sequels, I focus on the human sciences and argue that their role in the history of philosophy of science is just as important and it also involves a close involvement of the history of philosophy. The focus is on Gestalt psychology and it points to some lessons for philosophy of science. But, unlike the discussion of natural sciences, the discussion here brings out more complication than explication, and skews certain kinds of generalizations. (shrink)

"Certainty" occupies an important place in Wittgenstein’s epistemology: it does not belong to the category of knowledge but constitutes its foundation. In his view, knowledge boils down to language games, and language games are based on indubitable certainties. According to Wittgenstein, scepticism is meaningless, and if there is no certainty, then even doubt would be meaningless. Wittgesntein maintains that [relative] doubt and knowledge are epistemic categories, whereas absolute doubt and certainty are non-epistemic categories. Epistemic categories are meaningful and when expressed (...) by means of statements could be either true or false. In contrast, non-epistemic categories are meaningless and when expressed by means of statements the properties of truth and falsehood do not apply to them. The aim of the present paper is two fold: 1- Providing an explanation of the status of certainty in comparison to categories such as doubt and knowledge in Wittgenstein’s thought; 2- Providing a critical assessment of Wittgenstein's approach to certainty through the prism of critical rationalism. The main arguments of the paper are as follows: 1. Although Wittgenstein considers certainty to be meaningless and therefore not on a par with epistemological categories, he regards it as an objective concept that functions as the foundation upon which all human knowledge is based; 2. Wittgenstein's efforts to show the objectivity of certainty have not been entirely successful, partly due to his reliance on a defective notion of ‘objectivity’ and partly as a result of the prominence he assigns to the category of ‘meaning’ at the expense of the category of ‘truth’. (shrink)

Postmodern aestheticism is defined as a way of thinking that privileges the art of continual reversal. The dynamics of reversal operate according to a theoretical model that, historically speaking, has been the vehicle for blatantly masculinist ideologies. This creates problems for feminist thinking that would appropriate the postmodern conception of the subjectivity of the artist or the aestheticist dissolution of the distinction between life and art.