O objetivo geral da pesquisa da qual esse artigo faz parte é investigar o sistema metafísico que emerge dos trabalhos de David Lewis. Esse sistema pode ser decomposto em pelo menos duas teorias. A primeira nomeada como realismo modal genuíno (RMG) e a segunda como mosaico neo-humeano. O RMG é, sem dúvida, mais popular e defende a hipótese metafísica da existência de uma pluralidade de mundos possíveis. A principal razão em favor dessa hipótese é a sua aplicabilidade na discussão de (...) problemas losó cos, esse motivo não será diretamente abordado neste artigo. Pois, o foco está em compreender o mosaico neo-humea- no e como ele relaciona-se com a metafísica de mundos possíveis. Em outras palavras, o meu objetivo é entender as bases losó cas que sus- tentam o realismo modal genuíno. (shrink)

Unlike human beings, landscapes, cities and buildings cannot feel anything in the literal sense. They do not have nervous systems. Nevertheless, we attribute “Stimmungen” such as peacefulness and melancholy to them. On what basis? With what right? And why does it matter anyway? This paper attempts an answer to this bunch of questions. The first section clarifies the concept of “Stimmung,” by distinguishing its three major meanings, namely harmony, mood and atmosphere. Section two discusses various models of how “Stimmung” is (...) infused into our natural and artificial environment. Section three lists several ways of how we experience atmosphere, preparing the ground for the specifically aesthetic claim in section four: how, when we experience atmosphere aesthetically, we respond to it by resonating or feeling at home. (shrink)

Of the theologians and philosophers now writing on biblical narrative, Hans Frei and Paul Ricoeur are probably the most prominent. It is significant that their views converge on important issues. Both are uncomfortable with hermeneutic theories that convert the text into an abstract philosophical system, an ideal typological structure, or a mere occasion for existential decision. Frei and Ricoeur seem knit together in a common enterprise; they appear to be building a single narrative theology. I argue that the appearance of (...) symmetry is an illusion. There is a fundamental conflict between the ‘pure narrativism’ of Frei and the ‘impure narrativism’ of Ricoeur. I give reasons for thinking that Ricoeur’s is the stronger position. (shrink)

En este artículo me propongo revisar en qué medida cabría atribuir a Wittgenstein la responsabilidad de haber propiciado un «giro retórico» con sus inquisiciones filosóficas, correlativo al giro más general, en el mismo sentido, que, según recientemente se ha venido reconociendo, habría sufrido nuestra cultura en los últimos tiempos. Dado que cabe leer la obra de Wittgenstein como si una de sus más pujantes preocupaciones consistiese en dilucidar qué debemos entender hoy por racionalidad, el mentado «giro retórico», de haberse cumplido (...) en él, podría leerse como algo que atañe cardinalmente a tal cuestión. Explicaremos primeramente, pues, en qué consiste efectuar un giro retórico en la filosofía acerca de la racionalidad; para trasladarnos posteriormente a sopesar la presencia de tal giro en Wittgenstein (y de Wittgenstein en tal giro). (shrink)

Offering a cautionary tale about the abuses of paradigm‐shift rhetoric in secondary school reforms, the paper shows potential misuses and ethical effects of the relativistic language‐game in post‐compulsory education. Those initiating the shift often shelter their reform from the criticism of non‐adepts, marginalizing expert teachers that adhere to ‘antiquated’ or ‘folk’ pedagogies. The rhetoric herds educators uncritically into the citadel of new discourses and policies that often lack practical foundations; consequently, teachers often dissimulate compliance to the reform in order to (...) evade surveillance within such disciplinary apparatuses as teacher training and regimes of inspection. Turning to Foucault, the author views education reforms in terms of power relations within a form of governance: ‘games of truth’, or political and veridical discourses in which dividing practices for sorting out ‘sound’ and ‘unsound’ teaching practices become institutionalised. Wittgenstein's attention to initiate training in practices points to an alternative to naïve forms of relativism; educators must incorporate the new techniques they gradually master and adapt within a viable, shared form of life. Instead of teachers’ normalization and subjugation in what Foucault refers to as education ‘blocks’, new pedagogic practices are better adopted ‘freely’ as arts of self‐transformation. With Hacking, Foucault and Wittgenstein's accounts of the true‐and‐false are blended into an ‘historical ontology’ of present and emergent paradigms: a critique of the limits set down within education reforms that sanction or legitimize certain conduct. Sympathetic to the journal call, this kind of philosophical investigation and genealogical critique of teaching practices gives us a perspicuous view of the local, contingent and at times arbitrary nature of change initiatives. Critical awareness of how our pictures (models) of education can captivate us heightens respect for professional eclecticism. Without ignoring the mandates and official scripts of public education reforms, experienced educators need to be able to conserve their tried and warranted ‘best practices’, while negotiating ranges of tolerance for alternative means. (shrink)

This paper examines the possibility of setting a boundary between religion and “pseudo-religion” (or superstition). Philosophers of religion inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas, in particular, insist that religious language-use can be neither legitimated nor criticized from the perspective of non-religious language-games. Thus, for example, the “theodicist” requirement that the existence of evil should be theoretically reconciled with theism can be argued to be pseudo-religious (superstitious). Another example discussed in the paper is the relation between religion and morality. The paper concludes (...) by reflecting on the issue of relativism arising from the Wittgensteinian contention that the religion vs. pseudo-religion division can only be drawn within a religious framework, and on Wittgenstein’s own suggestion that the religious person “uses a picture”. (shrink)

The goal I pursue is to redefine the study of religious epistemology on the basis of an ethnomethodological extension of Wittgenstein. This approach shows that the nature of religious belief and its relation to facts, proofs, and empirical reality are matters that are dealt with by ordinary members of society. The examination of this lay epistemology reveals that -- far from being a settled and established entity -- religious belief is a polymorphous phenomenon. Religious belief is a pragmatic resource whose (...) configuration is shaped to allow the accomplishment of interactional moves within specific contexts. I defend this thesis by analyzing accounts pertaining to a contemporary religious apparition claim. (shrink)

This article explains Wittgenstein's distinction between good, bad, and vacuous modern music which he introduced in a diary entry from January 27, 1931. I situate Wittgenstein's discussion in the context of Oswald Spengler's ideas concerning the decline of Western culture, which informed Wittgenstein's philosophical progress during his middle period, and I argue that the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, and Wittgenstein's critique thereof, served as an immediate link between Spengler's cultural pessimism and Wittgenstein's threefold distinction. I conclude that Wittgenstein's distinction (...) between bad and vacuous modern music is analogous to Schenker's distinction between the compositional fallacies of the progressive and the reactionary composers of his time. Concomitantly, Wittgenstein's philosophically problematic notion of good modern music transcended the conceptual framework of both Schenker and Spengler. In this context, I examine Wittgenstein's remarks on Gustav Mahler as well as his remark on the music of the future as monophony, which, I conclude, should be understood ultimately as an ellipsis of his much later view of musical meaning and intelligibility. (shrink)

Although the expression “form of life” and its plural “forms of life” occur only five times in Philosophical Investigations, and generally few times in his works, it is commonly agreed that this is one of the most relevant issues in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Starting from the analysis of the contexts in which Wittgenstein makes use of this concept, the paper focuses on the different interpretations that have been given in secondary literature, and proposes a classification based on two axes of (...) debate: the monistic versus pluralistic interpretation, and the empirical versus transcendental interpretation. After placing some well-known readings in the resulting scheme, an attempt will be made to offer an evolutionary reading of Wittgenstein’s own ideas about forms of life. It will be argued that the empirical and plural view that seems characteristic of his writings in the Thirties, slowly appears to turn towards a monistic view, sometimes with transcendental tones, although within a pragmatic perspective. This turn remains nevertheless rooted in Wittgenstein’s general attitude towards philosophy intended as a conceptual inquiry with clarifying and therapeutic aims. (shrink)

I reject both (a) inevitabilism about the historical development of the sciences and (b) what Ian Hacking calls the "put up or shut up" argument against those who make contingentist claims. Each position is guilty of a lack of humility about our epistemic capacities.

Though largely neglected by philosophers, the concept of ineffability is integral to the Christian mystical tradition, and has been part of almost every philosophical discussion of religious experience since the early twentieth century. After a brief introduction, this article surveys the most important discussions of divine ineffability, observing that the literature presents two mutually reinforcing obstacles to a coherent account of the concept, creating the impression that philosophical reflection on the subject had reached an impasse. The article goes on to (...) survey some more recent work, which draws on the conceptual resources of existential phenomenology, pragmatism, and the later Wittgenstein. It shows that this work has made possible a new philosophical account of divine ineffability that surmounts the obstacles, overcomes the impasse and makes divine ineffability, once again, a live option in philosophy of religion. The article concludes with some brief remarks on how this alternative approach reflects recent trends in the discipline as a whole and has the potential to make a valuable contribution to live research questions in epistemology of religion. (shrink)

Between 1937 and 1951 Wittgenstein had numerous philosophical conversations with his student and close friend, Rush Rhees. This article is composed of Rhees’s notes of twenty such conversations — namely, all those which have not yet been published — as well as some supplements from Rhees’s correspondence and miscellaneous notes. The principal value of the notes collected here is that they fill some interesting and important gaps in Wittgenstein ’s corpus. Thus, firstly, the notes touch on a wide range of (...) subjects, a number of which are only briefly addressed by Wittgenstein elsewhere, if at all. The subjects discussed include: explanation, ethics, anarchism, contradiction, psychoanalysis, colour, religion, concepts, classification, seeing-as, evolution, the relation between science and philosophy, and free will, amongst others. Secondly, the notes contain references to, and brief remarks about, philosophers of whom Wittgenstein otherwise says very little, if anything — such as Brentano, Heidegger, Aquinas, and Marx, amongst others. And thirdly, the notes provide us with valuable examples of Wittgenstein ’s use of some key ‘Wittgensteinian’ terms of art which are surprisingly rare in his written works, such as ‘surface-’ and ‘depth-grammar’, and ‘centres of variation’. (shrink)

This dissertation provides a theory of the nature of aesthetic experiences on the basis of a theory of aesthetic values. It results in the formulation of the following necessary conditions for an experience to be aesthetic: it must consist of a representation of an object and an accompanying feeling; the representation must instantiate an intrinsic value; and the feeling must be the recognition of that value and bestow it on the object. Since representations are of intrinsic value for different reasons, (...) there are different kinds of aesthetic experiences . By means of certain conceptual links, it is possible to extend this account to other aesthetic entities thus enabling the formulation of a general theory of the aesthetic in non-aesthetic terms. In particular, aesthetic values are identical with subjective dispositions to elicit aesthetic experiences under normal conditions. Accordingly, I endorse anti-realism about aesthetic values: their existence, nature and exemplification are mind-dependent, while their ascriptions to objects have genuine truth-values. I back up this account by arguing against the alternative positions that either take aesthetic values to be objective or deny the truth-aptness of their attributions. Furthermore, I put forward a relativist variant of anti-realism according to which ascriptions of different aesthetic values to a particular object are all correct, given that the aesthetic experiences involved are made under normal conditions and concern the same aesthetically nonevaluative features of that object. For there is no specifically aesthetic norm by means of which one of the faultless aesthetic experiences can be picked out as the only appropriate one. That aesthetic values nevertheless show a normative dimension is ensured by their conformity to a general account of values as capacities to satisfy, or dissatisfy, rational desires. (shrink)

To claim that the divine is a person or personal is, according to Swinburne, ‘the most elementary claim of theism’. I argue that, whether the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal is construed as an analogy or a metaphor, or a combination of the two, analysis necessitates qualification of that concept such that any differences between the classical theist’s concept of the divine as a person or personal and revisionary interpretations of that concept are merely (...) superficial. Thus, either the classical theist has more in common with revisionary theism than he/she might care to admit, or classical theism is a multi-faceted position which encompasses interpretations which some might regard as revisionist. This article also explores and employs the use of a gender-neutral pronoun in talk about God. (shrink)

It is often assumed that moral questions ask for answers in the way other questions do. In this article, moral and non-moral versions of the question ‘Should I do x or y?’ are compared. While non-moral questions of that form typically ask for answers of the form ‘You should do x/y’, so-called ‘narrow answers’, moral questions often do not ask for such narrow answers. Rather, they ask for answers recognizing their delicacy, the need for a deeper understanding of the meaning (...) of the alternatives and the fact that moral decisions are, as Gaita formulates it, ‘non-accidentally and inescapably’ the agent’s to make. In short, moral questions often ask for a kind of answer that is highly different from the kind of answer non-moral questions ask for. In presupposing the ideal answer to a moral question to be a narrow answer, moral philosophers have tended to overlook this. (shrink)

I argue that it is possible and useful for moral philosophy to provide surveyable representations of moral vocabulary. I proceed in four steps. First, I present two dominant interpretations of the concept “surveyable representation”. Second, I use these interpretations as a background against which I present my own interpretation. Third, I use my interpretation to support the claim that Wittgenstein’s “Lecture on Ethics” counts as an example of a surveyable representation. I conclude that, since the lecture qualifies as a surveyable (...) representation, it is possible to provide surveyable representations of moral vocabulary. Fourth, I argue that it is useful for contemporary moral philosophy to provide surveyable representations, because it may help to dissolve problems in current debates. I provide an example of such a debate, namely, the debate between cognitivists and non-cognivitists. (shrink)

Drawing on experience teaching secondary philosophy students, I investigate meaningful engagement with Wittgenstein in a Grade 12 epistemology unit. The premise is that without some introduction to landmark philosophers of the early twentieth century, students are left out of many contemporary philosophical conversations: linguistic idealism or relativism, and nominalism versus realism. Wanting to share with students Foucault, Rorty, and Hacking, I need expedient avenues of approach. Using Wittgenstein's methods I offer practical, ‘shallow grounds’ for an eclectic syllabus conveying post-foundational epistemology, (...) justifying Wittgenstein's inclusion in a textbook written for diverse teenagers. Acknowledging teens’ marginality, I draw on Hekman and Scheman's appropriation of Wittgenstein to advance feminist critiques of enthralling traps in [masculinist] language: exploring nature/nurture boundaries (ferals, cyborgs, and ‘gender performativity’) toward combating discrimination in schools. Heeding Cavell, I.. (shrink)

This thesis considers the role of aesthetic meaning-making in elementary school science learning. Children’s aesthetic experiences are traced through their use of aesthetic judgements, spontaneous metaphors and art activities. The thesis is based on four empirical studies: the first two examining children’s language use, i.e. the role of aesthetic judgements and the significance of spontaneous metaphors while learning science and the latter two dealing with how art activities mediate what elementary school children learn in science and what a variety of (...) art activities with different purposes afford elementary school children to learn in science. The theoretical stance emanates from pragmatist theories and includes Dewey’s definition of an aesthetic experience, Wittgenstein’s later work on language-games, and socio-cultural perspectives. The analytic approach used is a practical epistemology analysis developed by Wickman and Östman. The empirical data consists of audio- and video recordings of elementary school children’s (aged 6–10 years) discussions in pairs or small groups during science lessons and photographs of children’s pictures, sculptures and poems from a total of 14 different elementary school classes. The main findings of the empirical studies show how aesthetic meaning-making is continuous with elementary school children’s scientific learning. The thesis shows how elementary school children’s aesthetic experiences are related to whole activities and are crucial for the direction that learning takes. Aesthetic experience is important in terms of how and what elementary school children learn aesthetically and normatively in science class, which has consequences for cognitive learning, the possibility of participating in science class and learning the genre of science. Moreover, it can be seen how children’s prior experiences are recurrently reconstructed and transformed through imaginative processes. (shrink)

Dombrowski and Murdoch offer versions of the ontological argument which aim to avoid two types of objection – those concerned with the nature of the divine, and those concerned with the move from an abstract concept to a mind-independent reality. For both, the nature of the concept of God/Good entails its instantiation, and both supply a supporting argument from experience. It is only Murdoch who successfully negotiates the transition from an abstract concept to the instantiation of that concept, however, and (...) this is achieved by means of an ontological argument from moral experience which, in a reversal of the Kantian doctrine, depends ultimately on a form of the cosmological argument. (shrink)

Wittgenstein constantly invokes teaching, training and learning in his later work. It is therefore interesting to consider what role these notions play for him there. I argue that their use is central to Wittgenstein’s attempt to refute cognitivist assumptions, and to show how normative practices can be understood without the threat of circularity, grounded not in a kind of seeing, but in doing, and the natural reactions of an organism. This can generate a worry that Wittgenstein’s position is quietist and (...) anti-critical: critique, as a challenge to the taken-for-granted grammar of our language game, is technically meaningless. I argue that Wittgenstein does not rule out critique. His own practice demonstrates that critique is possible, but takes place within a language game, and its status as critique is always subject to challenge in the agora of a discourse. (shrink)

In this paper the concept of knowledge in seen as embodying dialogue and learning in a shared practice. Sharing a practice involved sharing representations of practice. This necessitates the sharing of experiential knowledge at various levels and in various forms. It is proposed that participatory design can therefore be seen as consisting in dialogue and learning for the development of future practices and representations. The discussion in this paper is situated within the domain of landscape architecture. A study is made (...) of their co-operative practices, which are evolved, in order to show the need for participatory embodied activity (whether expressed verbally or physically) in sharing practical knowledge (e.g. of aesthetic judgement). (shrink)

A defining feature of retributive conceptions of karma is their regarding of suffering or misfortune as consequent upon sins committed in previous lives. Some critical non-believers in karma take offence at this view, considering it to involve unjustly blaming the victim. Defenders of the view demur, and argue that a belief in retributive karma in fact provides a motivation for benevolent action. This article elucidates the debate, showing that its depth is such that it is best characterized as a disagreement (...) in form of life (in Wittgenstein’s sense) rather than as a disagreement in opinions. Also briefly discussed is an example of a non-retributive form that belief in karma and reincarnation can take. (shrink)

Many contributors of the debate about knowledge by testimony concentrate on the problem of justification. In my paper I will stress a different point – the concept of testimony itself. As a starting point I will use the definitional proposal of Jennifer Lackey. She holds that the concept of testimony should be regarded as entailing two aspects – one corresponding to the speaker, the other one to the hearer. I will adopt the assumption that we need to deal with both (...) aspects. Nevertheless, I will show that her concept – which suggests regarding testimony as an act of communication conveying information – is too broad and, therefore, I will end up with a different twofold definition. (shrink)

At one place in his collection of essays The Crane Bag and Other Disputed Subjects, the novelist and mythographer Robert Graves makes the following claim that might sound rather shocking to the ears of an analytic philosopher:I find myself far more at home with mildly superstitious people – sailors and miners, for instance – than with stark rationalists. They have more humanity.

The predominant interpretation of Wittgenstein's later remarks on religion takes him to hold that all religious utterances are non-scientific, and to hold that the way to show that religious utterances are non-scientific is to identify and characterise the grammatical rules governing their use. This paper claims that though this does capture one strand of Wittgenstein's later thought on religion, there is an alternative strand of that thought which is quite different and more nuanced. In this alternative strand Wittgenstein stresses that (...) religious utterances and beliefs can come in both scientific and non-scientific varieties. More than that, he claims that the grammar of religious utterances, and the logic of religious beliefs, is often complex – in that individual utterances and beliefs will often be mixed between, indeterminate between, or fluid between being scientific and being non-scientific. This complexity means that it will often be unhelpful to try to pin down one particular grammar or logic for a given utterance or belief. Wittgenstein therefore suggests a new method of grammatical and logical investigation, which is less likely to distort complex grammars or logics by being overly simplistic or rigid. This method is to use simple examples of utterances and beliefs as objects of comparison, so as to illuminate the different aspects of the more complex actual utterances and beliefs under examination. This alternative strand in Wittgenstein's later remarks on religion is a manifestation of a broader strand of Wittgenstein's later thought as a whole, which was first described by Friedrich Waismann, and later developed by Gordon Baker and Oskari Kuusela. The paper concludes by providing examples of religious beliefs which are logically mixed, indeterminate, and fluid, and showing how simple objects of comparison can be used to illuminate them. (shrink)

O presente manual tem como intenção constituir um guia para uma disciplina introdutória de filosofia da linguagem. Foi elaborado a partir da leccionação da disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto desde 2001. A disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I ocupa um semestre lectivo e proporciona aos estudantes o primeiro contacto sistemático com a área da filosofia da linguagem. Pretende-se que este manual ofereça aos estudantes os instrumentos necessários não apenas para acompanhar uma (...) iniciação ao campo da filosofia da linguagem mas também para o estudo e a investigação autónomos posteriores. Para isso é percorrido um trajecto que conduz das intuições pré-teóricas acerca de linguagem, de que todos dispomos, até um conhecimento disciplinar específico, histórico e temático, da filosofia da linguagem. Em termos práticos, são considerados como precedentes da disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I – mesmo se, pelo existem actualmente precedências em sentido estrito – as disciplinas de Lógica I e II e de Filosofia do Conhecimento I e II. Os programas dessas disciplinas nos últimos anos estiveram presentes por trás da elaboração do manual. (shrink)

The word “picture” occurs pervasively in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Not only does Wittgenstein often use literal pictures or the notion of mental pictures in his investigations, but he also frequently uses “picture” to speak about a way of conceiving of a matter (e.g. “A picture held us captive” at Philosophical Investigations§115). I argue that “picture” used in this conceptual sense is not a shorthand for an assumption or a set of propositions but is rather an expression of conceptual bedrock on (...) the model of an organising myth. This reading builds primarily on work by Gordon Baker and Stanley Cavell. (shrink)

Creativity has a special role in enabling humans to develop beyond the fulfilment of simple primary functions. This factor is significant for Artificial Intelligence (AI) developers who take replication to be the primary goal, since moves toward creating autonomous artificial-beings beg questions about their potential for creativity. Using Wittgenstein’s remarks on rule-following and language-games, I argue that although some AI programs appear creative, to call these programmed acts creative in our terms is to misunderstand the use of this word in (...) language. I conclude that replication is not the best way forward for AI development in matters of creativity. (shrink)

This study reviews some of the principal themes in contemporary work on religious language. Unlike other recent surveys, the most pressing issues about religious language are addressed from the perspective of the philosophy of language; different positions taken on these issues by philosophers of religion and theologians are considered. Topics that are covered include: the subject matter of religious discourse, reductionism and subjectivism, expressivism, the nature of religious metaphor, religious fictionalism and truth in religious discourse. The study also looks at (...) the relationship between questions about religious language and cognate areas of philosophy of religion such as epistemology and metaphysics, and potential future directions of research. (shrink)

Wittgenstein in his later years thought about experiences of meaning and aspect change. Do such experiences matter? Or would a meaning- or aspect-blind person not lose much? Moreover, is this a matter of aesthetics or epistemology? To get a better perspective on these matters, I will introduce distinctions between certain subjective and objective aspects, namely feelings of our inner psychological states versus fine-tuned objective experiences of the outer world. It seems to me that in his discussion of meaning-blindness, Wittgenstein unhappily (...) floats between these two extremes, the subjective and the objective. I will also introduce some notions from Kant's aesthetics, to get a better understanding of the interplay between feeling and meaning. This will shed some new light on Wittgenstein's enquiry into meaning- and aspect-blindness. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

The goal I pursue is to redefine the study of religious epistemology on the basis of an ethnomethodological extension of Wittgenstein. This approach shows that the nature of religious belief and its relation to facts, proofs, and empirical reality are matters that are dealt with by ordinary members of society. The examination of this lay epistemology reveals that – far from being a settled and established entity – religious belief is a polymorphous phenomenon. Religious belief is a pragmatic resource whose (...) configuration is shaped to allow the accomplishment of interactional moves within specific contexts. I defend this thesis by analyzing accounts pertaining to a contemporary religious apparition claim. (shrink)

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special kind: (...) reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

In my 1993 IJPS paper it was suggested that postmodernist verdicts on ‘the death of philosophy’ relied on a rejection of any ‘substantive’ or ‘metaphysical’ notion of truth. The present paper relates these verdicts to Wittgenstein’s alleged ‘philosophical quietism’. In both cases, for example, there is a rejection of ‘depth’. Various characterisations of Wittgenstein’s position are questioned, including the idea that his quietism consists in showing the impossibility of sceptical challenges to our ‘hinge’ propositions and beliefs. It is then argued, (...) however, that recognition of the groundlessness of beliefs (and practices), far from curing ‘vertigo’ or ‘Angst’, is apt to inspire it. In a final section, I propose that the ‘metaphysical horror’ at the impossibility of articulating grounds for our beliefs can be allayed only by the thought that these answer to a reality that cannot be articulated and must therefore remain a mystery. One role for philosophy might be to cultivate a sense of this mystery and trace its implications for how we should live. (shrink)

Wittgenstein composed five original musical fragments during his transitional middle period, in which he employs musical notation as a means by which to convey his philosophical thoughts. This is an overlooked aspect of the importance of aesthetics, and musical thinking in particular, in the development of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. We explain and evaluate the way the music interlinks with Wittgenstein’s philosophical thoughts. We show the direct relation of these musical examples as precursors to some of Wittgenstein’s most celebrated ideas (the push (...) beyond the inner/outer picture, the problem of rule-following, and aspect perception). We also show how important broad aesthetic notions such as style and composition concerning the very possibility of philosophizing were to Wittgenstein. (shrink)

En este escrito se analiza la significación y el uso filosófico que Wittgenstein dio en su pensamiento maduro al concepto de forma de vida. Así, aunque se señala que Wittgenstein sólo hizo uso de dicho concepto en el contexto de la justificación de la praxis lingüística como límite epistemológico, se enfatiza no obstante que en ese uso ya es posible vislumbrar una cierta concepción antropológica sobre los seres humanos como animales de conducta expresiva, intencional, simbólica, lingüística generadora de reglas y (...) amante de regularidades. El artículo acaba con un análisis del problema de la forma de vida de los animales y su relación con la forma de vida humana: en concreto se destaca el carácter lingüístico y cultural de la forma de vida humana, y se muestran los límites en la atribución a los animales no-humanos de los predicados mentales humanos. (shrink)

In this thesis, I address the metaphysical question `What is humour?' and the ethical question `When is humour immoral?' Consulting a dictionary reveals a circle of definitions between `amusement', `funniness', and `humour'. So I split the metaphysical question `What is humour?' into three questions: `What is amusement?', `What is funniness?' and `What is humour?' By critically analysing then synthesising recent research in philosophy, psychology and linguistics, I give the following answers: x amuses y if and only if: y is in (...) a non-serious, non-threatened, non-goal-directed state. y simultaneously activates two incompatible interpretations of x via unsound logic. sufficiently increases the psychological arousal of y. x is funny if and only if x merits amusement. x is humour if and only if the function of x is to merit or elicit amusement. Similarly, I split the ethical question `When is humour immoral?' into three questions: `When is amusement immoral?', `How does immorality affect funniness?' and `When is humour immoral?' By using, and, I give the following answers: Amusement is immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines, or to be immoral. Immorality negatively affects funniness. Humour-types are not subject to moral evaluation. Humour-tokens are immoral when the correct theory of normative ethics defines them to be immoral. This thesis contributes to the knowledge of the subject in two ways. First, by critically analysing and synthesising recent inter-disciplinary research, provides a more precisely specified definition of amusement than that in the philosophical literature. Second, research on humour, across all disciplines, conflates the three closely related but distinct concepts of humour, amusement and funniness. By providing a linear sequence of definitions,, and avoid the conceptual confusions that commonly occur. (shrink)

If ethical reflection on which concepts to use has an avatar, it must be Nietzsche, who took more seriously than most the question of what concepts one should live by, and regarded many of our inherited concepts as deeply problematic. Moreover, his eschewal of traditional attempts to derive the one right set of concepts from timeless rational foundations renders his conceptual ethics strikingly modern, raising the prospect of a Nietzschean alternative to Wittgensteinian non-foundationalism. Yet Nietzsche appears to engage in two (...) seemingly contrary modes of concept evaluation: one looks to concepts’ effects, the other to what concepts express. I offer an account of the expressive character of concepts which unifies these two modes and accounts for Nietzsche’s seemingly bifurcating interests. His fundamental concern is with the effects concepts are likely to have going forward, and it is precisely this concern that motivates his preoccupation with what concepts express. He evaluates concepts by asking for whom they have a point, working back from a concept via the need it fills to the conditions that engender that need and thereby render the concept pointful. For a concept to be pointful is for it to serve the concerns of its users through its effects. But even when it is not pointful, a concept expresses the presuppositions of its pointfulness, which we can work back to by asking who would have need of such a concept. What emerges is a powerful approach to conceptual ethics that looks beyond the formal virtues and vices of concepts at the presuppositions we buy into by using them. (shrink)

The essay begins by briefly reviewing the complex history of the collaborative long-distance editing work that led to the publication of Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933 (Cambridge UP, 2016). It then turns to a discussion of the rationale for the innovative editorial policies we ultimately developed and implemented, and some of the broader methodological issues that they raise.

In this article, a novel Wittgensteinian approach to philosophy of religion is presented which uses autobiographical exposition as a way of clarifying religious concepts. After analyzing what Wittgenstein is trying to accomplish in his philosophical approach, Wittgenstein’s type of grammatical inquiry into concept formation is applied to religion in this very straightforward manner. How a child learns to use religious concepts and how people check whether the child is using these concepts correctly, reminds us of the actual role these concepts (...) play in our discourses. In the third and fourth sections, the Wittgensteinian investigation of concept formation into religion conducted in this article is used to establish that the two common criticisms, namely that a Wittgensteinian approach fails to acknowledge that for believers God is real and that religious conflicts exist, are misplaced. It is shown that a Wittgensteinian approach in philosophy of religion merits renewed attention. (shrink)

The development of a re-understanding or re-investigation of body pedagogy is currently prominent in the field of physical education and sport pedagogy. This goes for the learning of movement capability and health but also in relation to outdoor education. The latter a criticized area for having a one-size-fits-all approach to curriculum, with less attention to what to learn in OE, including aspects of everyday practices of being outdoors. The aim of this study was to explore students aged 15 years, and (...) their meaning making of being outdoors expressed in written stories about a favorite place. Two school year eight classes in a Swedish compulsory school situated in an area with high diversity participated. Through this theory-generated empirical study, written stories were explored as one way of evaluating students' meaning making of outdoor places. By using practical epistemology analysis to examine experience operationalized through aesthetic judgements attention is paid to the relation between the student and the situation. The analysis make it possible to discern a sense and meaning making of “being” outdoors as an embodied experience, as a relational whole of the self, others and the environment. Descriptions of aesthetic experiences were analyzed leading to dimensions of environing described as “calm and privacy,” “community and togetherness” and “feelings and senses.” A favorite place was by all students described as a very local and nearby place accessible in everyday life. The analysis generated understandings of feelings of “fulfillment” and different embodied experiences of what an encounter with an outdoor place or being outdoors could mean. Furthermore, how personal and diverse the meaning making place tends to be and how experience and habits contribute to the students' creation of microenvironments. Dimensions of environing become part of an embodied process. The analysis of the written stories calls for an alternative understanding of what OE can or should consist of. The findings encourage teachers and researchers to consider alternative understandings and practices of OE that highlight and educate students' overall embodied experiences and learning in OE and PE. (shrink)

This paper discusses the meta-ethical implications of Wittgenstein’s later moral philosophy. According to Lovibond and Brandhorst, Wittgenstein provided a novel conception of moral facts, properties and objects by adopting deflationism. Lovibond argues that Wittgenstein’s seamless conception of language together with his non-foundational epistemology and non-transcendent understanding of rationality involves a change of perspective towards a plausible and non-mystificatory moral realism. Meanwhile, Brandhorst argues that Wittgenstein’s provides a deflationist conception of moral truths from which we obtain a deflationist conception of moral (...) facts. This paper argues, on the contrary, that the attribution of deflationism does not do justice to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is concluded, therefore, that the appeal to deflationism does not afford or substantiate the exegetical claims made by Lovibond and Brandhorst. (shrink)

I argue that emojis are essentially little pictures, rather than words, gestures, expressives, or diagrams. ???? means that the world looks like that, from some viewpoint. I flesh out a pictorial semantics in terms of geometric projection with abstraction and stylization. Since such a semantics delivers only very minimal contents I add an account of pragmatic enrichment, driven by coherence and nonliteral interpretation. The apparent semantic distinction between emojis depicting entities (like ????) and those depicting facial expressions (like ????) I (...) analyze as a difference between truth-conditional and use-conditional pictorial content: ???? depicts what the world of evaluation looks like, while ???? depicts what the utterance context looks like. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Despite all fundamental divergences, the similarities formed between some interpretations of the later-Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and the tradition of Islamic Mysticism, can yet be philosophically recognized. These basic analogies are as follows: 1) The inextricability of belief and practice and the priority of practice over knowledge 2) The characterization of the core religious beliefs as the primal ground of man’s perception and understanding, in contrast to the view that considers fundamental religious beliefs as theoretical conclusions derived from purely (...) rational courses of reflection 3) A new practice-laden narrative of religious realism. Given that, one can even shed a new Wittgensteinian light on even the most abstract and metaphysical elements of the mystical worldview. If fundamental religious beliefs are interpreted not as metaphysical doctrines but as a set of descriptions arising from a specific form of practical life, then the ability to see a sort of transcendent and sacred unity in the whole universe will be based on a way of purposive engagement and wayfaring in the natural and social world. (shrink)

In this paper I address some ways of making sense of, and so of understanding, recipes. I first make clear the plausibility of a recipe having aesthetic significance, thus situating recipes as continuous with other aspects of our lives and experiences, both artistic and non-artistic. My notion of “aesthetic” here derives from Ludwig Wittgenstein. Second, I also highlight how some recipes and cookbooks may actually serve another aesthetic goal: they facilitate attunement to aesthetic features of cooking and food, and to (...) things more generally. I show how this kind of preparation is consistent with Wittgenstein’s aims in his “Lectures on Aesthetics”, where he encourages a particular aesthetic attitude or predisposition. (shrink)

In cognitive science, long-term anticipation, such as when planning to do something next year, is typically seen as a form of ‘higher’ cognition, requiring a different account than the more basic activities that can be understood in terms of responsiveness to ‘affordances,’ i.e. to possibilities for action. Starting from architects that anticipate the possibility to make an architectural installation over the course of many months, in this paper we develop a process-based account of affordances that includes long-term anticipation within its (...) scope. We present a framework in which situations and their affordances unfold, and can be thought of as continuing a history of practices into a current situational activity. In this activity affordances invite skilled participants to act further. Via these invitations one situation develops into the other; an unfolding process that sets up the conditions for its own continuation. Central to our process account of affordances is the idea that engaged individuals can be responsive to the direction of the process to which their actions contribute. Anticipation, at any temporal scale, is then part and parcel of keeping attuned to the movement of the unfolding situations to which an individual contributes. We concretize our account by returning to the example of anticipation observed in architectural practice. This account of anticipation opens the door to considering a wide array of human activities traditionally characterized as ‘higher’ cognition in terms of engaging with affordances. (shrink)

Pilate asked an important and pertinent question of Jesus regarding truth. A simple answer to his question would be ‘a statement is true only if it says what is the case.’ What that means, however, is another matter. By exploring options, I hope to elucidate some common disagreements among believers and non-believers, as well as squabbles between different religious positions. While most attention will be given to examples within Christianity, similar sorts of disagreements also occur in other religions. It is (...) hoped that exploring such options will also help contribute to improved dialogue among the various contenders. (shrink)

Enactivist approaches claim that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. An ongoing challenge for these approaches is the problem of accounting for normativity while avoiding overly reductionist outcomes. This article examines a few proposed solutions, including agent-environment dynamics, participatory sense-making, radical enactivism, the skillful intentionality framework, and enactivist cultural psychology. It argues that good examples of enacted normativity are gestures of appreciation/disapproval performed in the aesthetic domain. Both Wittgenstein and Dewey explore this issue (...) and their ideas could be productively worked upon in an enactive account. (shrink)