This essay argues that nonlinguistic animals qualify not just for externalist notions of rationality (maximizing biological fitness or utility), but also for internal ones. They can act for reasons in several senses: their behaviour is subject to intentional explanations, they can act in the light of reasonsprovided that the latter are conceived as objective facts rather than subjective mental statesand they can deliberate. Finally, even if they could not, it would still be misguided to maintain that animals are capable only (...) of (mechanical) behaviour, not of (intentional) action. (shrink)

La discussion sur le langage privé que l’on trouve dans les Recherchesphilosophiques a été écrite entre 1937 et 1945, après que les 190 premières remarques de la partie I du livre eurent presque atteint leur forme finale. Les textes post-1936 sur le langage privé constituent un nouveau départ, dans sa lettre et son esprit, par rapport au matériau d’avant 1936.Néanmoins, entre 1929 et 1936, Wittgenstein s’est penché à plusieurs reprises sur l’idée d’un langage « que moi seul peux comprendre ». (...) Un volet de cette question qui, lui, est abordé directement dans les Recherches, c’est l’idée que « si j’appliquais le mot “douleur” uniquement à ce que j’ai nommé jusqu’ici “ma douleur”, et les autres “la douleur de L.W.”, je ne ferais ainsi aucun tort aux autres, si toutefois l’on avait prévu une notation qui d’une façon ou d’une autre, permettrait de pallier l’absence du mot “douleur” dans d’autres combinaisons ». Cependant, la discussion de cette question dans les Recherches est beaucoup plus brève que dans les textes d’avant 1936. J’examine le rapport entre ce § 403 des Recherches d’un côté, et de l’autre côté les textes des cahiers de 1929 et les Remarques philosophiques , en retraçant le développement initial de cette argumentation et en explorant les principales lignes de continuité et de discontinuité dans le traitement que Wittgenstein réserve à la question du langage privé.The discussion of private language in the Investigations was written between 1937 and 1945, after the first 190 remarks of Part I of the book had almost reached their final form. The post-1936 writing on private language represents a fresh start, both in wording and in conception, on the pre-1936 material.Nevertheless, Wittgenstein did repeatedly discuss the idea of a language which “only I myself can understand” during 1929-36. One strand in this discussion that is directly taken up in the Investigations is the idea that “If I were to reserve the word ‘pain’ solely for what I had hitherto called ‘my pain”, and others “L.W.’s pain,” I should do other people no injustice, so long as a notation were provided in which the loss of the word ‘pain’ in other connexions were somehow supplied.” However, the discussion of this topic in the Investigations is much briefer than in the pre-1936 writing. I look at the relationship between §403 and texts from the 1929 notebooks and the Philosophical Remarks, assembled in the spring of 1930, mapping out the earlier development of this line of argument and exploring the principal continuities and discontinuities in Wittgenstein’s treatment of private language. (shrink)

In his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language , Saul Kripke presents his influential reading of Wittgenstein’s later writings on language. One of the largely unexplored features of that reading is that Kripke makes a small number of suggestive remarks concerning the possible threat that Wittgenstein’s arguments pose for Chomsky’s linguistic project. In this paper, we attempt to characterise the relevance of Wittgenstein’s later work on meaning and rule-following for transformational linguistics, and in particular to identify the potentially negative impact (...) it has on that project. Although we use Kripke’s remarks to articulate some of the pertinent issues, we return to Wittgenstein’s later writings to address them. We argue that Wittgenstein’s main target in the relevant sections of the Philosophical Investigations is the notion of ‘logical compulsion’, which involves assuming that there is more to applying a word or rule than how we are naturally or “psychologically” compelled to apply. We characterise two of the main lines of argument in the Investigations in terms of the rejection of logical compulsion. We thus propose to address the relevance of Wittgenstein’s writings for Chomsky by considering whether Chomsky’s linguistics presupposes the targeted notion of logical compulsion. We argue that Chomsky’s conception of linguistic competence in terms of successive states of the “language faculty” (containing the principles of universal grammar) does presuppose this problematic notion. Chomsky responded to Kripke by devoting a chapter of his Knowledge of Language to defending this conception of linguistic competence against the Wittgensteinian arguments. We evaluate his response and argue that he has misidentified the threat to his linguistic project as consisting in the attack on its ‘individual psychology’ standpoint, rather than its commitment to logical compulsion. We conclude by arguing that Chomsky’s attempts at defending his individualist or non-communitarian standpoint are undermined by his inability to give a decisive response to Wittgenstein’s attack on logical compulsion. (shrink)

The article develops the thesis that spiritual objectivity constitutes an independent class of phenomena besides the physical and the mental. The concept of spiritual objectivity presents a solution for the mediation between the bodily and the conscious by further developing the insight of critical monism that individual action can neither be subsumed under the phenomena of the bodily outer world nor under the phenomena of the mental inner world. Referring to Gottlob Frege's thesis that what distinguishes a thought from other (...) phenomena is its capability of being true, the article develops the argument that the thought in its spiritual objectivity should be distinguished from the psychic inner world of ideas as well as from the physical exterior world of material objects. The possibility of rational recognition is dependent upon this genuinely spiritual mediation of inner and outer world, and its objective truth must be distinguished from the constitutive subjectivity of psychic phenomena. This specified concept of the spiritual is not intended to enlarge the substance dualism between the bodily and the mental once again but makes it possible to determine the in itself differentiated unity of the bodily and the mental, namely as spiritual unity of body and mind. (shrink)

Jaspers’s binary distinction between understanding and explanation has given way first to a proliferation of explanatory levels and now, in John Campbell’s recent work, to a conception of explanation with no distinct levels of explanation and no inbuilt rationality requirement. I argue that there is still a role for understanding in psychiatry and that is to demystify the assumption that the states it concerns are mental. This role can be fulfilled by placing rationality at the heart of understanding without a (...) commitment to the attempt to use rationality to shed light on interpretation and mindedness as though from outside those notions. Delusions still present a significant challenge to philosophical attempts at understanding, but this merely reflects the genuine clinical difficulties such states present. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of empathy as the form of experience directed at embodied unities of expressive movement. After outlining the key differences between simulation theory and the phenomenological approach to empathy, the paper argues that while the phenomenological approach is closer to respecting a necessary constitutional asymmetry between first-personal and second-personal senses of embodiment, it still presupposes a general concept of embodiment that ends up being problematic. A different account is proposed that is neutral on the explanatory role (...) of the first-person sense of embodiment, which leads to an emphasis on the transformative nature of empathy and a broadening of the scope of possible targets of empathic awareness. (shrink)

This article presents critical psychology in some new light. First, it presents the history of US critical psychology in terms of the overall foundation of its critique (identity-based, ideologically-based, and epistemologically-based). Second, it broadens the population that can be called critical psychologists. The argument is made to include: (1) philosophers of language, science, and mind critical of psychology’s foundational assumptions, conceptions, and methods of inquiry; and (2) non-professional, ordinary people who live their lives critical of psychology by eschewing mainstream approaches (...) and taking alternative routes to getting help with their emotional and physical pain, or the education of their children. Third, the article discusses ontology-based critique through the example of the practical-critical theory/practice of social therapy. (shrink)

In this article, I want to do two things. The first is to conduct a sympathetic yet critical review of some of the salient features of the ideas in the notes that have come to us from Wittgenstein's Lectures on Religious Belief. This requires close reading, analysis and critique. The second, which comes out of the first, is to give some indication of Wittgenstein's failure to apply to his thinking about religious and moral matters some of the insights that he (...) had already achieved as his philosophical thinking progressed. (shrink)

Modality presents notorious philosophical problems, including the epistemic problem of how we could come to know modal facts and metaphysical problems about how to place modal facts in the natural world. These problems arise from thinking of modal claims as attempts to describe modal features of this world that explain what makes them true. Here I propose a different view of modal discourse in which talk about what is “metaphysically necessary” does not aim to describe modal features of the world, (...) but, rather, provides a particularly useful way of expressing constitutive semantic and conceptual rules in the object language. The result is a “modal normativist” view that enables us to avoid the epistemic problems of modality and mitigate the metaphysical worries, while also leaving open the possibility of a unified account of the function of modal language. Finally, I address a serious challenge: we have the norms we do in order to track the modal facts of the world, so that the order of explanation must go in the opposite direction. I close by showing how the normativist may answer that challenge. (shrink)

This paper explains why Clark’s Extended Mind thesis is not capable of sufficiently grasping how and in what sense external objects and technical artifacts can become part of our human cognition. According to the author, this is because a pivotal distinction between inside and outside is preserved in the Extended Mind theorist’s account of the relation between the human organism and the world of external objects and artifacts, a distinction which they proclaim to have overcome. Inspired by Charles S. Peirce’s (...) philosophy of mind, in particular, the author tries to find a way out of this ‘inside–outside’ fallacy. External objects, artifacts or processes should, according to him, not be conceived as inanimate and unintelligent matter utilised by a separately living, inner mental sphere that has set certain pre-established goals for itself. Mind has rather an artifactual character. It is not extended by an inner biological cognitive core but rather unfolds itself through objects and artifacts. Mind as such is, especially in our modern technological culture, shaped by virtue of and through technical artifacts. Recognizing this artifactual dimension of mind will, the author concludes, enable a more critical analysis of contemporary claims that ascribe certain original and irreducible features to thinking. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s writings and lectures during the first half of the 1930s play a crucial role in any interpretation of the relationship between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations . G. E. Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s Cambridge lectures, 1930-1933, offer us a remarkably careful and conscientious record of what Wittgenstein said at the time, and are much more detailed and reliable than previously published notes from those lectures. The co-authors are currently editing these notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures for a book to (...) be published by Cambridge University Press. We describe the materials that make up Moore’s notes, explain their unique value, review the principal editorial challenges that these materials present, and provide a brief outline of our editorial project. (shrink)

The assumed difference and continuing estrangement between political philosophy and political science is a relatively recent development. Both fields sprang from closely entwined concerns about democracy and matters of social and political justice, and today both must still confront their practical as well as cognitive relationship to their subject matter. This issue, however, has receded into the background of these discourses. Ludwig Wittgenstein's vision of philosophy is in effect a vision of social inquiry. His work, when viewed from this perspective, (...) prompts us to reconsider the logical status of various modes of political inquiry: how can these practices, descriptively and normatively, do justice to their subject matter? How can they deal with such foundational issues as the nature of social phenomena, the concepts of representation and interpretation, the problem of knowledge of other minds and what is involved in making explanatory and evaluative judgments about the objects of inquiry? (shrink)

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of the field and (...) the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

In the preface of the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein says that his “most fruitful ideas” are due to the stimulus of Sraffa's criticism, but Sraffa is not mentioned anywhere else in the book. It remains a puzzle in the literature how and why Sraffa influenced Wittgenstein. This paper presents a solution to this puzzle. Sraffa's criticism led Wittgenstein away from the calculus conception of language of the Big Typescript (arguably, an adaptation of the calculus of the Tractatus), and towards the “anthropological (...) view,” which structures both the opening sections of the Philosophical Investigations and Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

Sartre's conception of bad faith suggests that every desire to be someone in love is self-deceptive in the attempt to define my factual being. Departing from İlham Dilman's discussion of personal identity, I argue that this view on selfhood is inattentive to the kind of personal and moral reflection inherent in asking who I am. There is a temptation in love to deceive myself and you by renouncing responsibility. Yet the concept also embodies demands that allow me to continuously shape (...) myself into a loving subject by scrutinising my responses and by asking whether they are expressive of love or not. (shrink)

This book is both an introduction to and a research work on Meinongianism. “Meinongianism” is taken here, in accordance with the common philosophical jargon, as a general label for a set of theories of existence – probably the most basic notion of ontology. As an introduction, the book provides the first comprehensive survey and guide to Meinongianism and non-standard theories of existence in all their main forms. As a research work, the book exposes and develops the most up-to-date Meinongian theory (...) (called modal Meinongianism), applies it to specific fields, and discusses its open problems. Part I of the book provides a historical introduction to, and critical discussion of, the dominant philosophical view of existence: the “Kantian-Fregean-Quinean” perspective. Part II is the full-fledged introduction to the Meinongian theories of existence as a real property of individuals: after starting with the so-called naïve Meinongian conception and its problems, it provides a self-contained presentation of the main neo-Meinongian proposals, and a detailed discussion of their strengths and weaknesses. Part III develops a specific neo-Meinongian theory of existence employing a model-theoretic semantic framework. It discusses its application to the ontology and semantics of fictional objects, and its open problems. The methodology of the book follows the most recent trends in analytic ontology. In particular, the meta-ontological point of view is largely privileged. (shrink)

Self-consciousness can be defined as the ability to think 'I'-thoughts. Recently, it has been suggested that self-consciousness in this sense can (and should) be accounted for in terms of nonconceptual forms of self-representation. Here, I will argue that while theories of nonconceptual self-consciousness do provide us with important insights regarding the essential genetic and epistemic features of self-conscious thought, they can only deliver part of the full story that is required to understand the phenomenon of self-consciousness. I will provide two (...) arguments to this effect, drawing on insights from the philosophy of language and on structural differences between conceptual and nonconceptual forms of representation. Both arguments rest on the intuition that while self-consciousness requires explicit self-representation, nonconceptual content can at best provide implicit self-related information. I will conclude that in order to explain the emergence of self-conscious thought out of more basic forms of representations one has to explain the transition between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation. (shrink)

I argue that Stroud's nonreductionism about meaning is insufficiently motivated. First, given that he rejects the assumption that grasp of an expression's meaning guides or instructs us in its use, he has no reason to accept Kripke's arguments against dispositionalism or related reductive views. Second, his argument that reductive views are impossible because they attempt to explain language “from outside” rests on an equivocation between two senses in which an explanation of language can be from outside language. I offer a (...) partially reductive account of meaning which appeals both to speakers’ dispositions to produce and respond to utterances in naturalistically specifiable ways, and to the normative attitudes they adopt, in so doing, to their own behavior. This account is supported, I argue, by Stroud's early treatment of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations and in particular of the agreement in primitive judgments or reactions which Wittgenstein takes to be required for linguistic communication. (shrink)

?Are the reasons for acting also the causes of action?? When this question was asked in the early 1960s it received by and large a negative reply: ?No, reasons are not causes?. Yet, when the same question ?Are the reasons for acting the causes of action?? is posed some twenty years later, the predominant answer is ?Yes, reasons are causes?. How could one and the same question receive such diverging answers in the space of only a couple of decades? This (...) paper argues that the shift from an anti-causalist to a causalist consensus is not fully accounted for by the results of first-order debates in the philosophy of action and is owing instead to a change in second-order meta-philosophical assumptions concerning the role and character of philosophical analysis. (shrink)

Abstract: What grounds the experience of our body as our own? Can we rationally doubt that this is our own body when we feel sensations in it? This article shows how recent empirical evidence can shed light on issues on the body and the self, such as the grounds of the sense of body ownership and the immunity to error through misidentification of bodily self-ascriptions. In particular, it discusses how bodily illusions (e.g., the Rubber Hand Illusion), bodily disruptions (e.g., somatoparaphrenia), (...) and the multimodal nature of bodily self-knowledge challenge a classic view of ownership and immunity that puts bodily sensations at its core. (shrink)

Genes are often described by biologists using metaphors derived from computa- tional science: they are thought of as carriers of information, as being the equivalent of ‘‘blueprints’’ for the construction of organisms. Likewise, cells are often characterized as ‘‘factories’’ and organisms themselves become analogous to machines. Accordingly, when the human genome project was initially announced, the promise was that we would soon know how a human being is made, just as we know how to make airplanes and buildings. Impor- tantly, (...) modern proponents of Intelligent Design, the latest version of creationism, have exploited biologists’ use of the language of information and blueprints to make their spurious case, based on pseudoscientific concepts such as ‘‘irreducible complexity’’ and on flawed analogies between living cells and mechanical factories. However, the living organ- ism = machine analogy was criticized already by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In line with Hume’s criticism, over the past several years a more nuanced and accurate understanding of what genes are and how they operate has emerged, ironically in part from the work of computational scientists who take biology, and in particular developmental biology, more seriously than some biologists seem to do. In this article we connect Hume’s original criticism of the living organism = machine analogy with the modern ID movement, and illustrate how the use of misleading and outdated metaphors in science can play into the hands of pseudoscientists. Thus, we argue that dropping the blueprint and similar metaphors will improve both the science of biology and its understanding by the general public. (shrink)

Shaun Gallagher has actively looked into the possibility that psychopathologies involving “thought insertion” might supply a counterexample to the Cartesian principle according to which one can always recognize one’s own thoughts as one’s own. Animated by a general distrust of a priori demonstrations, Gallagher is convinced that pitting clinical cases against philosophical arguments is a worthwhile endeavor. There is no doubt that, if true, a falsification of the immunity to error through misidentification would entail drastic revisions in how we conceive (...) the boundary between self and other. However, I argue that (1) the idea of unearthing an exception to the Cartesian thesis is, on further reflection, not a realistic prospect and that (2) this casts doubt on the attempt to conjoin first-person phenomenology and third-person cognitive science in the service of philosophical debates. (shrink)

According to John McDowell, in its central uses, ‘I’ is immune to error through misidentification and thus to be accounted strongly identification‐free (I–II). Neither doctrine is obviously well founded (III); indeed, given that deixis is a proper part of ‘I’ (IV–VIII), it appears that uses of ‘I’ are identification‐dependent (IX–X).

This paper addresses the issue of how lifelonglearning, globalisation and capitalism arerelated within late modernity. It is criticalof the argument that there is now anincreasingly homogenous global economy that isknowledge based and that unambiguously requiresa high level of cognitive skills in itsworkers. The idea that globalisation producessuch rapid changes in the world of work thatlearning must be ongoing to cope with it ischallenged.

This paper offers a critique of a central psychopathological concept, the notion of "poor reality-testing. "Using ideas from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, I consider the nature of delusions in schizophrenia, largely through examining Daniel Paul Schreber's famous Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Many schizophrenic individuals do not in fact mistake their fantasies for reality, as is traditionally assumed. Rather, I argue, they engage in a solipsistic mode of experience, a felt subjectivization of the lived world that is associated with a (...) stance of passivity and hyperconsciousness. I discuss the existential conditions and consequences of this stance and show that certain anomalous or paradoxical features of schizophrenic delusion are explicable on this phenomenological account. (shrink)

In "Culture and Value" Wittgenstein remarks that the truly "religious man" thinks himself to be, not merely "imperfect" or "ill," but wholly "wretched." While such sentiments are of obvious biographical interest, in this paper I show why they are also worthy of serious philosophical attention. Although the influence of Wittgenstein's thinking on the philosophy of religion is often judged negatively (as, for example, leading to quietist and/or fideist-relativist conclusions) I argue that the distinctly ethical conception of religion (specifically Christianity) that (...) Wittgenstein presents should lead us to a quite different assessment. In particular, his preoccupation with the categorical nature of religion suggests a conception of "genuine" religious belief which disrupts both the economics of eschatological-salvationist hope, and the traditional ethical precept that "ought implies can." In short, what Wittgenstein presents is a sketch of a religion without recompense. (shrink)

Sociological approaches to the understanding of learning disabilities are perhaps not as fully developed as they might be. Wittgenstein's notion of the language game is elucidated, and its relevance to the analysis of learning disabilities as a social phenomenon is explained. This gives some insight into an alternative conception of what learning disabilities might be, and why people who are classified as having learning disabilities continue, to some extent, to be excluded from full participation in society.

Drawing Wittgenstein's and Irigaray's philosophies into conversation might help resolve certain misunderstandings that have so far hampered both the reception of Irigaray's work and the development of feminist praxis in general. A Wittgensteinian reading of Irigaray can furnish an anti-essentialist conception of "woman" that retains the theoretical and political specificity feminism requires while dispelling charges that Irigaray's attempt to delineate a "feminine" language is either groundlessly utopian or entails a biological essentialism.

In this dissertation I critically engage and draw insights from classical Indian, Anglo-American, phenomenological, and cognitive scientific approaches to the topic of self-awareness. In particular, I argue that in both the Western and the Indian tradition a common and influential view of self-awareness---that self-awareness is the product of an act of introspection in which consciousness takes itself as an object---distorts our understanding of both self-awareness and consciousness as such. In contrast, I argue for the existence and primacy of pre-reflective self-awareness (...) ---a form of self-awareness that is an effect of both our embodiment and the basic structure of consciousness. In arguing for this account of self-awareness, I take up, among other things, the following: the semantics of the first-person and of indexicals in general, qualia and phenomenal consciousness; the possibility of non-conceptual self-awareness, the nature of introspection; the importance of embodiment and agency for our understanding of self-awareness, and the consequences of my account for the metaphysics of personal identity. (shrink)

While most theoreticians of meaning in the first half of the twentieth century subscribed to a representational theory (viewing meanings as entities stood for by the expressions), the second half of the century was marked by the rise of various versions of use-theories of meaning. The roots of this ‘pragmatist turn’ are detectable in the writings of the later Wittgenstein, the Oxford speech act theorists (Austin, Grice) and the American neopragmatists (Quine, Sellars). Though it is now rather popular (and sometimes (...) even fashionable) to invoke the use-theory of meaning, it is by far not so popular to inquire what such a theory really is. In this paper we try to give at least a part of the answer, whereby we find out that the usual conception of such a theory is unsatisfactory. We propose that for an improvement we must, together with Wittgenstein and Sellars, conceive language as a (tool of a) rule-based activity, which enables us to replace the concept of disposition, usually constituting the backbone of the use-theory, by the concept of propriety. The resulting normative version of the use-theory then becomes the investigation of the rules which expressions acquire vis-`a-vis the rules of the relevant language games – especially of the rules of inference. (shrink)

A fallibilist theory of knowledge is employed to make sense of the idea that agents know what they are doing 'without observation' (as on Anscombe's theory of practical knowledge).

Abstract: Wittgenstein, throughout his career, was deeply Fregean. Frege thought of thought as essentially social, in this sense: whatever I can think is what others could think, deny, debate, investigate. Such, for him, was one central part of judgement's objectivity. Another was that truths are discovered, not invented: what is true is so, whether recognised as such or not. (Later) Wittgenstein developed Frege's idea of thought as social compatibly with that second part. In this he exploits some further Fregean ideas: (...) of a certain generality intrinsic to a thought; of lack of that generality in that which a thought represents as instancing some such generality. (I refer to this below as the ‘conceptual-nonconceptual’ distinction.) Seeing Wittgenstein as thus building on Frege helps clarify (inter alia) his worries, in the Blue Book, and the Investigations, about meaning, intending, and understanding, and the point of the rule following discussion. (shrink)

Abstract: Some first person statements, such as ‘I am in pain’, are thought to be immune to error through misidentification (IEM): I cannot be wrong that I am in pain because—while I know that someone is in pain—I have mistaken that person for myself. While IEM is typically associated with the self-ascription of psychological properties, some philosophers attempt to draw anti-Cartesian conclusions from the claim that certain physical self-ascriptions are also IEM. In this paper, I will examine whether some physical (...) self-ascriptions are in fact IEM, and—if they are—what role that fact is supposed to play in arguments for the anti-Cartesian claim that self-consciousness is consciousness of oneself as a material object. I will argue that if we accept the assumptions required to show that physical self-ascriptions are IEM, then IEM cannot play the role it needs to play in these anti-Cartesian arguments. (shrink)

Each of us is uniquely subject to certain kinds of stimulation from a small part of the universe within our skins. Mentalistic psychologies insist that other kinds of events, lacking the physical dimensions of stimuli, are accessible to the owner of the skin within which they occur. One solution often regarded as behavioristic, granting the distinction between public and private events and ruling the latter out of consideration, has not been successful. A science of behavior must face the problem of (...) privacy by dealing with events within the skin in their relation to behavior, without assuming they have a special nature or must be known in a special way. (shrink)

A significant discrepancy in Wittgenstein's studies is whether Philosophical Investigations contains any trace of positive philosophy, notwithstanding the author's apparent anti-theoretic position. This study argues that the so-called ‘Chapter on philosophy’ in the Investigations §§89–133 contains negative and positive vocabulary and the use of various voices through which Wittgenstein employs his primary method of language-games, thus providing a surveyable understanding of several philosophical concepts, such as knowledge and time. His positive philosophy aims to reorient our attention from understanding the theories (...) on these concepts to understanding the concepts themselves, regardless of any theorisation. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: (1) to clarify Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thesis that colours possess logical structures, focusing on his ‘puzzle proposition’ that “there can be a bluish green but not a reddish green”, (2) to compare modeltheoretical and gametheoretical approaches to the colour exclusion problem. What is gained, then, is a new gametheoretical framework for the logic of ‘forbidden’ (e.g., reddish green and bluish yellow) colours. My larger aim is to discuss phenomenological principles of the demarcation of the (...) bounds of logic as formal ontology of abstract objects. (shrink)

The paper defends the argument that the Resemblance Paradox (RP), or the problem of the ‘under-determination of meaning’, and the Rule-Following Paradox (RFP) are two sides of the same paradox threatening meaning from opposite extremes. After presenting the case, the paradox is reconsidered anew and the supposition that the threat is a pervasive one is challenged.

Quantum Information Theory and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics is a conceptual analysis of one of the most prominent and exciting new areas of physics, providing the first full-length philosophical treatment of quantum information theory and the questions it raises for our understanding of the quantum world. -/- Beginning from a careful, revisionary, analysis of the concepts of information in the everyday and classical information-theory settings, Christopher G. Timpson argues for an ontologically deflationary account of the nature of quantum information. (...) Against what many have supposed, quantum information can be clearly defined (it is not a primitive or vague notion) but it is not part of the material contents of the world. Timpson's account sheds light on the nature of nonlocality and information flow in the presence of entanglement and, in particular, dissolves puzzles surrounding the remarkable process of quantum teleportation. In addition it permits a clear view of what the ontological and methodological lessons provided by quantum information theory are; lessons which bear on the gripping question of what role a concept like information has to play in fundamental physics. Topics discussed include the slogan 'Information is Physical', the prospects for an informational immaterialism (the view that information rather than matter might fundamentally constitute the world), and the status of the Church-Turing hypothesis in light of quantum computation. -/- With a clear grasp of the concept of information in hand, Timpson turns his attention to the pressing question of whether advances in quantum information theory pave the way for the resolution of the traditional conceptual problems of quantum mechanics: the deep problems which loom over measurement, nonlocality and the general nature of quantum ontology. He marks out a number of common pitfalls to be avoided before analysing in detail some concrete proposals, including the radical quantum Bayesian programme of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. One central moral which is drawn is that, for all the interest that the quantum information-inspired approaches hold, no cheap resolutions to the traditional problems of quantum mechanics are to be had. (shrink)

In this article I critique Kathleen Slaney and Michael Maraun’s (2005) addition to the ongoing philosophical charge that neuroscientific writing often transgresses the bounds of sense. While they sometimes suggest a minimal, cautious thesis–that certain usage can generate confusion and in some cases has–they also bandy about charges of meaninglessness, conceptual confusion, and nonsense freely. These charges rest on the premise that terms have specific correct usages that correspond with Slaney and Maraun’s sense of everyday linguistic practice. I challenge this (...) premise. I argue that they have not shown that there are such specific correct usages; and, further, that even if they had, they fail to justify that their definitions are the correct ones. (shrink)

Recently there has been interest in examining how language is involved in the phenomenon of ‘manipulation’. This paper suggests that investigators, rather than treating ‘manipulation’ as an entity, should examine how communicators might engage in discursive acts of manipulating. To this end a distinction is made between manipulating information and manipulating people. Examples of both types, taken from the Portuguese Parliamentary Celebration of the April Revolution of 2004, are examined in depth to show how acts of manipulating can be performed (...) in different ways. By focussing on acts, we show that supposed ‘cognitive control’ over the audience's minds is not necessarily involved in manipulating; it is shown how investigators can provide evidence that manipulators act ‘knowingly’ when they mislead. We argue that the study of manipulating, and the distinction between manipulating information and people, provides a critical approach to the topic of political oratory. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question of agency in spontaneous action via a phenomenology of musical improvisation, drawing on fieldwork conducted with large con- temporary improvising ensembles. I argue that musical improvisation is a form of ‘participatory sense-making’ in which musical decisions unfold via a feedback pro- cess with the evolving musical situation itself. I describe how musicians’ technical expertise is developed alongside a responsive expertise, and how these capacities complicate the sense in which habitual action can be viewed (...) as pre-conscious or ‘automatic.’ Nevertheless, I shall argue that the self-awareness required for expert improvisation does not amount to highly reflective deliberation, arguing instead that the practice of musical improvisation involves an exercise of practical rationality, akin to what Aristotle called phronēsis. Musical decisions – as an expressive form of sense-making – are guided by feelings of ‘rightness’ that are experienced directly and intuitively, responding to the norms and reasons that are embedded in the instruments, sounds, and practices of a particular (sub)culture. (shrink)

I propose to sketch my views on several aspects of the philosophy of mathematics that I take to be especially relevant to philosophy as a whole. The relevance of my discussion would, I think, become more evident, if the reader keeps in mind the function of (the philosophy of) mathematics in philosophy in providing us with more transparent aspects of general issues. I shall consider: (1) three familiar examples; (2) logic and our conceptual frame; (3) communal agreement and objective certainty; (...) (4) the transcommunal universality of mathematics; (5) the big jump to the potential infinite; (6) the reconciliation of local creation with the hypothesis of discovery; (7) Platonism as realism plus conceptualism; (8) foundational studies and mathematical practice; and (9) the decomposition of philosophical disagreements. The views of Gödel and Wittgenstein are emphasized in order to add specificity to the discussions. (shrink)

Whilst a straightforward consequence of the formalism of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, the phenomenon of quantum teleportation has given rise to considerable puzzlement. In this paper, the teleportation protocol is reviewed and these puzzles dispelled. It is suggested that they arise from two primary sources: (1) the familiar error of hypostatizing an abstract noun (in this case, ‘information’) and (2) failure to differentiate interpretation dependent from interpretation independent features of quantum mechanics. A subsidiary source of error, the simulation fallacy, is also (...) identified. The resolution presented of the puzzles of teleportation illustrates the benefits of paying due attention to the logical status of ‘information’ as an abstract noun. Introduction The quantum teleportation protocol 2.1 Some information-theoretic aspects of teleportation 2.1.1 Preamble 2.1.2Application to teleportation The puzzles of teleportation Resolving (dissolving) the problem 4.1 The simulation fallacy The teleportation process under different interpretations 5.1 Collapse interpretations:Dirac/von Neumann, GRW 5.2 No collapse and no extra values: Everett 5.3 No collapse, but extra values: Bohm 5.3.1 A note on active information 5.4 Ensemble and statistical viewpoints Concluding remarks. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to evaluate the postmodern belief that selves are narrative constructions. Four theories, varying in degree of anti-realism, are presented and discussed. It is concluded that an attractive feature of the narrative approach is that it explains how we achieve a sense of unity. But the main idea, that selves are constituted or created by stories is problematic, like identifying footprints on the beach with the feet that made them.