This chapter investigates how a reading of Wittgenstein along the lines laid out by Cora Diamond makes room for a novel approach to ethical truth. Following Diamond, I develop the connection between the kinds of elucidatory propositions by means of which we spell out and maintain the shape of our theoretical thinking, such as “‘someone’ is not the name of someone” and “five plus seven equals twelve,” and the kind of propositions by means of which we spell out and maintain (...) the shape of ethical thinking, such as “slavery is unjust.” As Diamond points out in connection with the last example, this is a proposition that we take to be an undeniable truth; for anyone who would attempt to negate it would become unintelligible to us. In this sense this ethical truth spells out the limits of ethical thinking. And yet what counts as coherent thought about such matters tends to shift over time. Indeed the great difficulty of overcoming ethical disagreements has to do with the fact that what is at stake in them is not just the content, but the form and limits of thought. Nonetheless, Diamond proposes that ethical propositions may count as genuine truths. For this to make sense, a middle path between realism and relativism must be found. In order to show how this is possible, and in order to defend Diamond’s view, I propose to approach ethical truth by means of a disjunctivist strategy. On this approach, while we, just as much as our interlocutor, may at times be misled in our ethical thinking, and while we may at times fail to shape our ethical thought in ways that prevent us from gaining clarity on ethical matters, this does not detract from the fact that we may at times be right, and that we may then genuinely possess ethical truth. (shrink)

Wittgenstein gives voice to an aspiration that is central to his later philosophy, well before he becomes later Wittgenstein, when he writes in §4.112 of the Tractatus that philosophy is not a matter of putting forward a doctrine or a theory, but consists rather in the practice of an activity – an activity he goes on to characterize as one of elucidation or clarification – an activity which he says does not result in philosophische Sätze, in propositions of philosophy, but (...) rather in das Klarwerden von Sätzen, in our attaining clarity in our relation to the sentences of our language that we call upon to express our thoughts.1 To say that early Wittgenstein already aspired to such a conception of philosophy is not to gainsay that to aspire to practice philosophy in such a manner and to succeed in doing so are not the same thing. It is therefore not to deny that, by Wittgenstein’s later lights, the Tractatus is to be judged a work that is marked by forms of failure tied to its having failed fully to live up to such an aspiration. But if it is thus to be judged, then it is to some degree a failure even by Wittgenstein’s own earlier lights. This means that if one wants to understand the fundamental turn in Wittgenstein’s thinking as he moves from his earlier to his later philosophy, and why it is that he wanted the Tractatus to be published and read together with Philosophical Investigations, one needs to understand what sort of failure this is – and that requires coming to terms with the Tractatus’s own understanding of what sort of work it was trying to be. We think that readers of the Tractatus – be they admirers or detractors of Wittgenstein – have, on the whole, failed to do this. (shrink)

Much has been written on the relative merits of different readings of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The recent renewal of the debate has almost exclusively been concerned with variants of the ineffabilist (metaphysical) reading of TL-P - notable such readings have been advanced by Elizabeth Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and H. O. Mounce - and the recently advanced variants of therapeutic (resolute) readings - notable advocates of which are James Conant, Cora Diamond, Juliet Floyd and Michael Kremer. During this debate, (...) there have been a number of writers who have tried to develop a third way, incorporating what they see as insights and avoiding what they see as flaws in both the ineffabilist and resolute readings. The most prominent advocates of these elucidatory readings of TL-P are Dan Hutto (2003) and Marie McGinn (1999). In this paper we subject Hutto's and McGinn's readings of TL-P to critical scrutiny. We find that in seeking to occupy the middle ground they ultimately find themselves committed to (and in the process commit Wittgenstein to) the very ineffabilism they (and Wittgenstein) are seeking to overcome. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to describe and evaluate different conceptions of holism in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. I distinguish three readings of holistic elements in this work: i) Minimal Holism (E. Anscombe, M. Black, D. Pears); ii) Moderate Holism (J. Conant, C. Diamond, G. Ryle); and iii) Radical Holism (G. Bar-Elli, M. Kremer, P. Livingston). The conclusion is that the most viable option is Moderate Holism since it embraces the logico-syntactical notion of use, rejects an anachronistic interpretation of (...) Tractatarian ontology and allows us to see that the holistic elements are complementary to the initial atomism of the work. Moreover, I point to the consequences of the topic for the overall reading of Wittgenstein’s early and late work. (shrink)

This book attempts to explicate and expand upon Frank Ramsey's notion of the realistic spirit. In so doing, it provides a systematic reading of his work, and demonstrates the extent of Ramsey's genius as evinced by both his responses to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , and the impact he had on Wittgenstein's later philosophical insights.

Si une pensée a autant de coordonnées intrinsèques qu'a de dimensions catégoriales le système de variantes qu'elle « instantie », alors l'exemplarité de chacune de ses coordonnées est totalement fixée par les dimensions de ce système et cette pensée se laisse adéquatement exprimer selon l'axe longitudinal unique d'une pro-position posant ses coordonnées comme autant de substitutions effectuées sur les variables de catégories. Mais, inversement, si aucune pensée ne se laisse adéquatement caractériser par des coordonnées qui lui seraient intrinsèques, et si (...) une pensée n'ade coordonnées que relativement aux systèmes auxquels elle peut être corrélée selon le contexte à la faveur de sa juxtaposition avec d'autres pensées, alors ce dont ses coordonnées sont exemplaires paraîtra indéterminé aussi longtemps qu'on exprimera cette pensée dans une proposition, c'est-à-dire abstraction faite des dimensions selon lesquelles elle est coordonnée. Nous voudrions montrer ici, sur le cas des preuves mathématiques, que la comparaison par Wittgenstein des preuves mathématiques à des paradigmes fait précisément pièce à cette seconde possibilité. (shrink)

In her Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus , Elizabeth Anscombe took it to be a fault of the Tractatus that it excluded the statement “‘Someone’ is not the name of someone”, which she took to be obviously true. It is not a bipolar proposition, and its negation, she said, peters out into nothingness. I examine the question whether she is right that the Tractatus excludes such propositions, and I consider her example in relation to other propositions which, arguably at least, have (...) no intelligible negation. In considering the particular case of Frege’s response to Benno Kerry about the concept ‘horse’, I try to develop an account of the place in Wittgenstein’s philosophy for certain sorts of proposition which do not have an intelligible negation. (shrink)

Dans son Introduction au Tractatus de Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Anscombe considérait que le livre avait le défaut d’exclure la proposition « “Quelqu’un” n’est pas le nom de quelqu’un » qu’elle considérait comme évidemment vraie. Ce n’est pas une proposition bipolaire et sa négation n’est pas intelligible. J’examine la question de savoir si elle a raison de dire que le Tractatu s exclut de telles propositions, et je considère son exemple en relation avec d’autres propositions qui, du moins en théorie, n’ont pas (...) de négation intelligible. En considérant le cas particulier de la réponse de Frege à Benno Kerry sur le concept de ‘cheval’, j’essaie de développer une approche de la place que donne la philosophie de Wittgenstein à certains types de proposition qui n’ont pas de négation intelligible. (shrink)

My essay explains and examines Anscombe's disagreement with Wittgenstein about what the Tractatus supposedly excludes. I also discuss her apparent disagreement with Geach about propositions that lack an intelligible negation. My discussion of these disagreements leads to the topic of Anscombe on the relation between the “business of thinking” and truth. I suggest that she takes the business of thinking to include thinking that helps to keep thinking on track. Since there is a tie between thinking truly and the business (...) of thinking being done well and since helping to keep thinking on track belongs to the business of thinking, helpings-of-thinking can be described as true. (shrink)

The main question addressed by this article is this: How should one understand the role of the sentences of the Tractatus, given Wittgenstein’s statement that they are nonsensical? I begin with a presentation of three general principles of interpretation in order to avoid answering the question in an inappropriate way. I then move on to a short presentation and commentary on a selection of readings – namely, the ineffabilist, resolute and elucidatory ones – and elaborate the answers given by advocates (...) of these to the question explored here. I agree on many points with resolute and elucidatory readings: the Tractatus presents an austere conception of nonsense, and is not a book that seeks to present ontological or semantic theories. I point out, however, that these readings cannot fully explain the nature of Tractarian elucidations. Then I discuss those parts of the Tractatus which refer to the sentences of the book itself. The main proposal of my own approach is this: Tractarian elucidations should be construed as rules of translation, in that they show how to substitute certain expressions for others. They enable us to construct a notation in which everything that is expressible in ordinary language can be said perspicuously. (shrink)