While according to the inferentialists, meaning is always a kind of inferential role, proponents of other approaches to semantics often doubt that actual meanings, as they see them, can be generally reduced to inferential roles. In this paper we propose a formal framework for considering the hypothesis of the.

The paper presents an argument against a "metaphysical" conception of logic according to which logic spells out a specific kind of mathematical structure that is somehow inherently related to our factual reasoning. In contrast, it is argued that it is always an empirical question as to whether a given mathematical structure really does captures a principle of reasoning. (More generally, it is argued that it is not meaningful to replace an empirical investigation of a thing by an investigation of its (...) a priori analyzable structure without paying due attention to the question of whether it really is the structure of the thing in question.) It is proposed to elucidate the situation by distinguishing two essentially different realms with which our reason must deal: "the realm of the natural", constituted by the things of our empirical world, and "the realm of the formal", constituted by the structures that we use as "prisms" to view, to make sense of, and to reconstruct the world. It is suggested that this vantage point may throw light on many foundational problems of logic. (shrink)

Logical psychologism is the position that logic is a special branch of psychology, that logical laws are descriptíons of experience to be arrived at through observation, and are a posteriori.The accepted arguments against logical psychologism are effective only when directed against this extreme version. However, the clauses in the above characterization are independent and ambiguous, and may be considered separately. This separation permits a reconsideration of less extreme attempts to tie logic to psychology, such as those defended by Mill and (...) Boole. It also provides the basis for a reexamination of the relationship between logic and psychology, and raises the possibility of a deeper investigation into the nature of logic itself. (shrink)

The problem I address is: how are cogent inferences possible? In § 1 I distinguish three senses in which we say that one is “compelled” by an inference: automatic, seductive-rhetorical and epistemic compulsion. Cogency is epistemic compulsion: a cogent inference compels us to accept its conclusion, if we accept its premises and we aim at truth. In §§ 2–3 I argue that cogency is intelligible if we consider an inference as a compound linguistic act in which several component acts are (...) related to one another by a commitment that the premises support the conclusion. Non-automatic inferences are primarily public acts in an intersubjective context. But cogency arises in special contexts described in § 4, epistemic contexts, where the participants care for truth, i.e. are intellectually virtuous. An inference is cogent in an epistemic context if it stands up to all the objections raised in the context. In § 5 I consider three different kinds of cogent inferences. In § 6 I argue that in all three cases cogency is fallible and propose a fallibilist variety of inferentialism. In § 7 I distinguish context of utterance and contexts of evaluation. Cogency is relative to epistemic contexts of evaluation. However, validity, i.e. stable cogency, is transcontextual. (shrink)

The presence of intelligence and rationality in Artificial Intelligence and the Internet requires a new context of analysis in which Herbert Simon’s approach to the sciences of the artificial is surpassed in order to grasp the role of information in our contemporary setting. This new framework requires taking into account some relevant aspects. In the historical endeavor of building up AI and the Internet, minds and machines have interacted over the years and in many ways through the interrelation between scientific (...) creativity and technological innovation. Philosophically, minds and machines can have epistemological, methodological and ontological differences, which are based on the distinct configuration of human intelligence and artificial intelligence. Their comparison with rationality and its various forms is particularly relevant. Scientifically, AI and the Internet belong to the sciences of the artificial, because they work on designs that search for specific aims, following selected processes in order to achieve expected results. Technologically, AI and the Internet require the support of information and communication technologies. These have an instrumental role regarding the existence of AI and the Internet. Also ICT shape their diverse forms of configuration over the years.Within this framework, this paper offers a new context of analysis that goes beyond Simon’s and follows four main steps: the interaction between scientific creativity and technological innovation as the philosophico-methodological setting for Artificial Intelligence and the Internet; artificial intelligence and human intelligence as epistemological basis for machines and minds, where the differences between artificial intelligence and human intelligence are made explicit and the analysis of minds and machines is made from the perspective of rationality ; intention and its difference with design of machine learning are considered to distinguish human intelligence from artificial intelligence; and the internal and external aspects of artificial designs in contemporary society are considered through the perspective of rationality, which leads to the transition from intelligence to rationality in the Internet as well as to the historicity of information. (shrink)

I provide an interpretation of Wittgenstein's much criticized remarks on Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem in the light of paraconsistent arithmetics: in taking Gödel's proof as a paradoxical derivation, Wittgenstein was right, given his deliberate rejection of the standard distinction between theory and metatheory. The reasoning behind the proof of the truth of the Gödel sentence is then performed within the formal system itself, which turns out to be inconsistent. I show that the models of paraconsistent arithmetics (obtained via the Meyer-Mortensen (...) collapsing filter on the standard model) match with many intuitions underlying Wittgensteins philosophy of mathematics, such as its strict finitism and the insistence on the decidability of any meaningful mathematical question. (shrink)

Alberto Coffa used the phrase "the Copernican turn in semantics" to denote a revolutionary transformation of philosophical views about the connection between the meanings of words and the acceptability of sentences and arguments containing those words. According to the new conception resulting from the Copernican turn, here called "the Copernican view", rules of use are constitutive of the meanings of words. This view has been linked with two doctrines: (A) the instances of meaning-constitutive rules are analytically and a priori true (...) or valid; (B) to grasp a meaning is to accept its rules. The pros and cons of different versions of the Copernican view, ascribable to Wittgenstein, Carnap, Gentzen, Dummett, Prawitz, Boghossian and other authors, will be weighed. A new version will be proposed, which implies neither (A) nor (B). (shrink)

The concept ofsemantic interpretation is a source of chronic confusion: the introduction of a notion ofinterpretation can be the result of several quite different kinds of considerations.Interpretation can be understood in at least three ways: as a process of dis-abstraction of formulas, as technical tool for the sake of characterizing truth, or as a reconstruction of meaning-assignment. However essentially different these motifs are and however properly they must be kept apart, these can all be brought to one and the same (...) notion of interpretation: to the notion of a compositional evaluation of expressions inducing a possible distribution of truth values among statements. (shrink)

Formal semantics is an enterprise which accounts for meaning in formal, mathematical terms, in the expectation of providing a helpful explication1 of the concept of the meaning of specific word kinds (such as logical ones), or of words and expressions generally. Its roots go back to Frege, who proposed exempting concepts, meanings of predicative expressions, from the legislation of psychology and relocating them under that of mathematics. This started a spectacular enterprise, fostered at first within formal logic and later moving (...) into the realm of natural languages, and featuring a series of eminent scholars, from Tarski and Carnap to Montague and David Lewis. Partly independently of this, Frege set the agenda for a long-term discussion of the question of what a natural language is, his own contribution being that language should be seen not as a matter of subjective psychology, but rather as a reality objective in the sense in which mathematics is objective. His formal semantics, then, was just an expression of this conception of language. And many theoreticians now take it for granted that formal semantics is inseparably connected with a Platonist conception of language. Moreover, the more recent champions of formal semantics, Montague and David Lewis, took for granted that natural language is nothing else than a structure of the very kind envisaged by the theories of formal logicians. While Montague claims quite plainly that there is no substantial difference between formal and natural languages ("I reject the contention," he says, 1974, p. 188, "that an important theoretical difference exists between formal and natural languages"), Lewis states that it is fully correct to say that a linguistic community entertains a language in the form of a mathematical structure ("we can say", states Lewis, 1975, p.. (shrink)

Der Aufsatz schildert den platonisierenden Antipsychologismus welchen Bolzano, der junge Brentano, Twardowski, Meinong, der Husserl der Logischen Untersuchungen, Frege, der Russell der Jahrhundertwende und der junge Wittgenstein philosophisch vertraten, und versucht eine soziologische und ideologiekritische Interpretation sowohl dieser Einstellung als auch derjenigen des traditionellen Psychologismus des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts. Der Platonismus des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts wird als ein Ausdruck fiir ? oder vielmehr als eine Reaktion gegen ? den Verfall der klassischen burgerlichen Werte aufgefaBt. In Wittgensteins Tractatus spielen Elemente sowohl (...) eines platonisierenden Antipsychologismus wie auch eines relativistischen, verhaltensphanomenologisch orientierten Antipsychologismus eine Rolle: dieses Werk wird also als eine grelle Manifestation des Uberganges von der klassischen zur spatbiirgerlichen Weltanschauung, als ein Obergang vom Glauben an ewige Wahrheiten zur Hinnahme einer Gebrauchs?Theorie der Bedeutung und deren Konsequenzen interpretiert. (shrink)

Is logic, feasibly, a product of natural selection? In this paper we treat this question as dependent upon the prior question of where logic is founded. After excluding other possibilities, we conclude that logic resides in our language, in the shape of inferential rules governing the logical vocabulary of the language. This means that knowledge of (the laws of) logic is inseparable from the possession of the logical constants they govern. In this sense, logic may be seen as a product (...) of natural selection: the emergence of logic requires the development of creatures who can wield structured languages of a specific complexity, and who are capable of putting the languages to use within specific discursive practices. (shrink)

How many notions of cause are there? The causality literature is witnessing a flourishing of pluralist positions. Here I focus on a recent debate on whether interpreting causality in terms of inferential relations commits one to semantic pluralism (Reiss 2011) or not (Williamson 2006). I argue that inferentialism is compatible with a ‘weak’ form of monism, where causality is envisaged as one, vague cluster concept. I offer two arguments for this, one for vagueness, one for uniqueness. Finally, I qualify in (...) what sense the resulting form of monism is ‘weak’.¿Cuántas nociones de causa hay? Hay un resurgir de posiciones pluralistas en la bibliografía sobre causalidad. Me ocuparé aquí de un debate reciente sobre si la interpretación de la causalidad en términos de relaciones inferenciales nos compromete con el pluralismo semántico (Reiss 2011) o no (Williamson 2006). Defiendo que el inferencialismo es compatible con una forma ’debil’ de monismo, donde la causalidad se presenta como un único concepto vago y de agrupación (cluster). Ofrezco para ello dos argumentos, uno sobre vaguedad y otro sobre unicidad. Finalmente, matizaré en qué sentido esta forma demonismo es ’débil’. (shrink)

The relation between Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics and mathematical Intuitionism has raised a considerable debate. My attempt is to analyse if there is a commitment in Wittgenstein to themes characteristic of the intuitionist movement in Mathematics and if that commitment is one important strain that runs through his Remarks on the foundations of mathematics. The intuitionistic themes to analyse in his philosophy of mathematics are: firstly, his attacks on the unrestricted use of the Law of Excluded Middle; secondly, his distrust (...) of non-constructive proofs; and thirdly, his impatience with the idea that mathematics stands in need of a foundation. These elements are Fogelin's starting point for the systematic reconstruction of Wittgenstein's conception of mathematics. (shrink)

Metaphysics is usually understood as the investigation of being qua being and of its ultimate categories. Given this characterization, it may be hard to grasp why anyone might wish to oppose metaphysics, why anyone might claim that metaphysics ”leads the philosopher into complete darkness” (Wittgenstein, 1958, p.18)? What could be so misleading about the investigation of the most abstract vestiges of being? One source of disparagement towards metaphysics, of course, stems from the relativist conviction that there is no absolute being, (...) and hence nor are there any ultimate categories of being. Another ‘reason’ for some philosophers of this century (notably Carnap) to reject metaphysics appeared to consist in their reinterpretation of the word ”metaphysics”, in effect, simply as ”nonsensical philosophy”. However neither of these reasons seems to be the Wittgensteinian one. The way I propose to envisage this reason takes us back to Plato with his distinction between Being and Becoming (echoed, in one or another form, within the conceptions of so many subsequent philosophers). It is the distinction between the ‘higher’ realm of ideas with its crisp, eternal truths, and the ‘lower’ realm of appearances in which anything appears only as a fuzzy and transient reflection of something from the higher realm. The original message harbored in this Platonistic picture is clearly that the vast and hardly graspable flux of appearances shelters something firm and invariable, something potentially fully capturable by human reason which can then use it as a prism to comprehend and understand the everchanging phenomena. However, as I will claim, the picture of a ‘higher’ reality behind phenomena is dangerous in that it can delude a philosopher into feeling that he can solve empirical questions by a quasiempirical investigation of a non-empirical realm: a ‘metaphysical reality’. (shrink)

Abstrakt. Když se řekne Ludwig Wittgenstein, vybaví se člověku, který to jméno už někdy slyšel, nejspíše termín jazyková hra. Tento termín si Wittgenstein vybral, aby se v rámci své pozdní filosofie distancoval od určitého druhu názorů na jazyk (druhu, kterého byly i jeho vlastní ranější filosofické názory). Chtěl jeho pomocí zdůraznit různorodost lidských aktivit, které se opírají o jazyk. Avšak ač to Wittgenstein úplně explicitně neříká, zdá se mi že je tu něco podstatného, co je podle něj pro jazykové hry (...) charakteristické, a to je role pravidel v rámci jejich konstituce. Tomu napovídá rozsah pozornosti, kterou Wittgenstein věnuje fenoménu pravidla ve Filosofických zkoumáních. Podle mne tedy můžeme říci, že jazyková hra je v typickém případě hrou - více či méně - 'řízenou' pravidly. Způsob, jakým se jazyková hra 'řídí' pravidly, se však v některých zásadních ohledech liší od způsobu, jakým se pravidly řídí hry, ke kterým občas naše jazykové hry přirovnáváme (šachy, fotbal ap.) Pravidla jazykových her jsou implicitní, vágní a do jisté míry otevřená. Přitom pravidla hry nám obvykle otevírají nějaký nový prostor - a v případě jazykových her je to prostor, kterému se dá říkat prostor smysluplnosti. Myslím ovšem, že skutečnou roli pravidel v rámci jazykových her Wittgenstein v rámci Filosofických zkoumání trochu zamlžuje; a cílem tohoto textu bude ji vyjasnit. (shrink)

Esta enciclopédia abrange, de uma forma introdutória mas desejavelmente rigorosa, uma diversidade de conceitos, temas, problemas, argumentos e teorias localizados numa área relativamente recente de estudos, os quais tem sido habitual qualificar como «estudos lógico-filosóficos». De uma forma apropriadamente genérica, e apesar de o território teórico abrangido ser extenso e de contornos por vezes difusos, podemos dizer que na área se investiga um conjunto de questões fundamentais acerca da natureza da linguagem, da mente, da cognição e do raciocínio humanos, bem (...) como questões acerca das conexões destes com a realidade não mental e extralinguística. A razão daquela qualificação é a seguinte: por um lado, a investigação em questão é qualificada como filosófica em virtude do elevado grau de generalidade e abstracção das questões examinadas (entre outras coisas); por outro, a investigação é qualificada como lógica em virtude de ser uma investigação logicamente disciplinada, no sentido de nela se fazer um uso intenso de conceitos, técnicas e métodos provenientes da disciplina de lógica. O agregado de tópicos que constitui a área de estudos lógico-filosóficos é já visível, pelo menos em parte, no Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus de Ludwig Wittgenstein, uma obra publicada em 1921. E uma boa maneira de ter uma ideia sinóptica do território disciplinar abrangido por esta enciclopédia, ou pelo menos de uma porção substancial dele, é extrair do Tractatus uma lista dos tópicos mais salientes aí discutidos; a lista incluirá certamente tópicos do seguinte género, muitos dos quais se podem encontrar ao longo desta enciclopédia: factos e estados de coisas; objectos; representação; crenças e estados mentais; pensamentos; a proposição; nomes próprios; valores de verdade e bivalência; quantificação; funções de verdade; verdade lógica; identidade; tautologia; o raciocínio matemático; a natureza da inferência; o cepticismo e o solipsismo; a indução; as constantes lógicas; a negação; a forma lógica; as leis da ciência; o número. (shrink)

El artículo analiza hasta que punto puede equipararse la labor del traductor con la de realizar una interpretación de los textos sobre los que trabaja. Utilizaremos para ello instrumental tanto de la tradición de la filosofía hermenéutica (especialmente Hans-Georg Gadamer) como de la inspirada en la obra de Ludwig Wittgenstein. La conclusión intenta mostrar las fuertes diferencias que existen entre traducir e interpretar, y con ello entender mejor qué quiere decir realmente la idea de "universalidad hermenéutica" que funda la citada (...) tradición de filosofía ídem. (shrink)

Charles Parsons’ book “Mathematical Thought and Its Objects” of 2008 (Cambridge University Press, New York) is critically discussed by concentrating on one of Parsons’ main themes: the role of intuition in our understanding of arithmetic (“intuition” in the specific sense of Kant and Hilbert). Parsons argues for a version of structuralism which is restricted by the condition that some paradigmatic structure should be presented that makes clear the actual existence of structures of the necessary sort. Parsons’ paradigmatic structure is the (...) so-called ‘intuitive model’ of arithmetic realized by Hilbert’s strings of strokes. This paper argues that Hilbert’s strings, considered as given in intuition, cannot play the role Parsons assigns to them: the criteria of identity of these strings do not have the sharpness that Parsons wants to see in them, and Parsons inadvertently projects abstract structures into his ‘intuitive model’. This diagnosis is exemplified with respect to (a) Parsons’ distinction between addition and multiplication on the one hand and exponentiation on the other and (b) his analysis of arithmetical knowledge in simple cases like “7 + 5 = 12”. All in all, it is claimed that Parsons book contains many important insights with respect to, for example, different versions structuralism, the notion of “natural number” and its uniqueness, induction, predicativity and other things, for which he is rightly famous, but that his way of drawing on the notion of intuition leaves too many questions unanswered. (shrink)

A ground-motive for this study of some historical and metaphysical implications of the diagonal lemmas of Cantor and Gödel is Cantor's insightful remark to Dedekind in 1899 that the Inbegriff alles Denkbaren (aggregate of everything thinkable) might, like some class-theoretic entities, be inkonsistent. In the essay's opening sections, I trace some recent antecedents of Cantor's observation in logical writings of Bolzano and Dedekind (more remote counterparts of his language appear in the First Critique), then attempt to relativize the notion of (...) Inkonsistenz to self-sufficient theories T which interpret themselves. In effect, I argue that Gödel's diagonal lemma suggests a sense in which metatheoretic notions of proof, well-foundeness and satisfaction are object-theoretically inkonsistent. With respect to Cantor's Inbegriff, for example, the lemma yields that any object-theoretic reconstruction of thinkability generates an antidiagonal sentence , which one can paraphrase asSelf-referential application of the assertion that. (shrink)

Legitimacy challenges are part of human societies. Whenever we recognise a person, law, ideal or institution as authoritative, questions can be raised about their legitimacy. Why follow this law? Why strive to honour this moral ideal? If such questions are repeatedly raised, they pose an undermining threat to the authorities in question. This is good if the challenged law or ideal is harmful, but problematic, if it is beneficial. Where the first kind of legitimacy challenges are raised by ethical pioneers (...) and moral critics, the last kind are posed by cynics, who disregard the demands of law and morality when they conflict with their interests. The threat to human society caused by cynicism is part of the reason why philosophers since Plato have sought to address and rid society of it.This article discusses how philosophy can deal with cynicism. It does so by firstly looking at how Anthony Holiday defends a moral realist theory and disproves ‘the theory of cynicism’ as well as tries to subvert real life cynics. Secondly, the work of the later Wittgenstein is used to discuss Holiday’s approach, finding it to some extent wanting in both its theoretical and practical aims.Lastly, inspired by Stanley Cavell’s thinking it is suggested that cynicism calls for not only problem solving and problem dissolving, but also something we might call reconciliation. (shrink)

Ce texte discute certaines conclusions d’un article récent de F. Mülhölzer et vise à montrer que le logicisme russellien a les moyens de résister à la critique que Wittgenstein lui adresse dans la partie III des Remarques sur les fondements desmathématiques.This paper discusses some conclusions of a recent article from F.Mülhölzer. It aims at showing that Russell’s logicism has the means to overcome the criticisms Wittgenstein expounded in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, part III.

In the methodology of scientific research programs (MSRP) there are important features on the problem of prediction, especially regarding novel facts. In his approach, Imre Lakatos proposed three different levels on prediction: aim, process, and assessment. Chapter 5 pays attention to the characterization of prediction in the methodology of research programs. Thus, it takes into account several features: (1) its pragmatic characterization, (2) the logical perspective as a proposition, (3) the epistemological component, (4) its role in the appraisal of research (...) programs, and (5) its place as a value for scientific research. -/- The notion of “novel facts” is highly relevant in his conception, where several aspects are involved: the directions of novel facts, the different kinds of novelty, and the transition from six possible options of “novel facts” to four choices. Thereafter, the prediction of novel facts as the criterion of appraisal is considered. On the one hand, this requires analyzing the theoretical, empirical, and heuristic possibilities of appraisal; and, on the other, whether there is an overemphasis on the role of prediction in methodology of scientific research programs. As a consequence, there is an analysis of Lakatos’ criterion of appraisal in MSRP and economics. (shrink)

The article deals with Cantor's argument for the non-denumerability of reals somewhat in the spirit of Lakatos' logic of mathematical discovery. At the outset Cantor's proof is compared with some other famous proofs such as Dedekind's recursion theorem, showing that rather than usual proofs they are resolutions to do things differently. Based on this I argue that there are "ontologically" safer ways of developing the diagonal argument into a full-fledged theory of continuum, concluding eventually that famous semantic paradoxes based on (...) diagonal construction are caused by superficial understanding of what a name is. (shrink)

Since the appearance of Dummett’s monumental monograph in the early seventies of the last century there have been two interpretative traditions of reading Frege, one contradicting the other: the platonistic (or realistic) interpretation and the holistic (rationalistic) one. In this article, as a kind of intermediation, I firstly point out some pragmatic aspects of Frege’s work. Secondly, and more ambitiously, I outline the controversy between the most influential theories of truth (the correspondence, coherence, redundancy and pragmatic theory) in the light (...) of Frege’s philosophy. After all it was the concept of truth that Frege himself identified as the main objective of logic. (shrink)

Filosofové odedávna snili o jazyce, který by byl z hlediska řešení těch problémů, se kterými se potýkají (případně všech lidských problémů vůbec), vhodnější než jazyk, jímž nás obdařila příroda. Mnozí z nich si představovali, že filosofické problémy vznikají zčásti nebo zcela v důsledku toho, že přirozený jazyk není dostatečně přesným prostředkem vyjádření našich idejí a myšlenek - a že by se tedy vše spravilo, kdyby byl k dispozici jazyk, jehož výrazivo by bylo s našim myšlením - případně s naším světem (...) - v dokonalém souladu. Podle tohoto názoru je tím, co filosof (ale i vědec) potřebuje, jakási „abeceda lidských myšlenek“, která by nám umožnila „pomocí spojení jejích písmen a analýzy slov, která se z nich skládají, objevit a posoudit všechno ostatní“ (Leibniz) K tomu, aby se taková „abeceda“ dala vytvořit, ovšem zbývala jedna ‘maličkost’: bylo třeba posbírat a zinventarizovat všechny naše myšlenky a ideje, zjistit, pro které vyjádření nemáme, případně které vyjadřujeme nějak ‘nevhodně’, a tyto nedostatky a nesrovnalosti odstranit. Problém byl ovšem v tom, že nikdo neměl nejmenší ponětí, jak tohle udělat: a Leibnizův projekt calculu philosophicu, stejně tak jako jiné podobné nápady, zůstal navždy pouhou utopií. (shrink)

The paper presents an argument against a "metaphysical'* conception of logic according to which logic spells out a specific kind of mathematical structure that is somehow inherently related to our factual reasoning. In contrast, it is argued that it is always an empirical question as to whether a given mathematical structure really does captures a principle of reasoning. lMore generally, it is argued that it is not meaningful to replace an empirical investigation of a thing by an investigation of its (...) a priori analyzable structure without paying due attention to the question of whether it really is the structure of the thing in question.) It is proposed to elucidate the situation by distinguishing two essentially different realms with which our reason must deal: "the realm of the natural'*, constituted by the things of our empirical world, and "the realm of the formal'*, constituted by the structures that we use as "prisms'* to view, to make sense of, and to reconstruct the world. It is suggested that this vantage point may throw light on many foundational problems of logic. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus et Charles Taylor défendent la thèse voulant qu’il y ait des formes de «compréhension» ou de «savoir» qui, contrairement aux formes courantes, ne sont pas de nature représentationnelle ou conceptuelle mais sont plutôt du type des «savoir-faire». Cet article examine l’argument avancé en faveur de cette thèse ainsi que l’affirmation de ces auteurs suivant laquelle les Recherches philosophiques de Wittgenstein démontrent que celui-ci, au moins implicitement, l’acceptait. Les conclusions qui découlent de cet examen sont, (...) d’une part, que l’argument n’est pas concluant et, de l’autre, qu’il aurait été récusé par l’auteur des Recherches. ABSTRACT : A thesis held by John Searle, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor is that there is a kind of “understanding” or “knowledge” that differs from ordinary knowledge in being by nature non-representational or non-conceptual and rather a kind of “know-how.” The aim of this article is to examine the argument in support of their common thesis and their claim that it was endorsed, at least implicitly, by Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations. This examination shows that the argument is not convincing and that Wittgenstein would have rejected it. (shrink)

The state of recent as well as older research on social ontology suggests a paradigmatic approach, according to which it is our consciousness that must provide the framework for conceptualising the social. I, however, argue that Wittgenstein’s treatment of rule-following opens up a new horizon for the ontology of the social. The fact that the rules of our language are social in nature and that we need not be aware of them in order to follow them shifts the problem to (...) what lies behind consciousness. The ontological conceptualisation of the social must focus on our implicit knowledge instead, which is always an enabling condition for our consciousness: for we share some of this implicit knowledge with others, as can be seen from Wittgenstein and the case of language. (shrink)

In this article, we consider Wittgenstein’s approach to non-inferential knowledge, its relation to special propositions, and the nature of the justification of these propositions. According to Wittgenstein, there is a kind of non-inferential knowledge whose rational status is not the result of basic beliefs (in a foundational sense) that justify it. In Wittgenstein’s rule-following analysis, Frege’s theory is criticized. This theory is based on the idea that having a conceptual repertoire prior to the understanding of any rule, requires having grasped (...) the conditions of verification of a rule, which is a source of problems. Following Wright’s construing of Wittgenstein’s ideas, we maintain that understanding concepts cannot be prior to the linguistic ability. RIFL (2018) Vol. 12, n. 2: 70-82. DOI: 10.4396/20180204. (shrink)