This paper focuses on the importance of wonder in human flourishing and is orientated towards the dynamics between the two, but with an emphasis on how the former is important for illuminating the latter. It begins with a preliminary sketch of both wonder and human flourishing and subsequently moves on to highlight three aspects of human flourishing: 1) ‘Individuality’, 2) ‘Relations’ and 3) ‘The political’, and why these play to wonderment.

This research explores the critical study of language and thought. It is a response to Wittgenstein and Fodor who believe in priority, superiority, and individuality of language and thought. In this paper, we can resolve this language and thought dichotomy to discuss the concept of priority issue. We shall argue that language and thought are modular concepts inside mind and here are also other modules present in our mind. This paper determines the role of language and thought and their priority (...) in mind. Furthermore, this article shows inconsistency in priority, superiority and individuality. It also explores the role of quantification theory which discusses about the structure of thought and language, as well as about the model logic theory which discusses about the semantic part of language an. (shrink)

In a seminal essay, Hidé Ishiguro argued that names in the Tractatus are ‘like dummy names’ and that a simple object is to be conceived of as ‘an instantiation of an irreducible predicate’. In this paper, I argue that Ishiguro’s view is incompatible with other claims made in the Tractatus and should be abandoned for this reason. To this end, I adopt a two-step strategy. First, I show that Ishiguro’s view implies the adoption of an anti-haecceitistic position. Then I show (...) that the Tractatus allows for the possibility of there being haecceitistic differences between two complete descriptions of the world. Since anti-haecceitism will be characterized as the doctrine that haecceitistic differences are meaningless, this provides a refutation of Ishiguro’s view. In the final section, I make a few remarks on the relation between anti-haecceitism and the context principle. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

An overview of hyperintensionality is provided. Hyperintensional languages have expressions with meanings that are more fine-grained than necessary equivalence. That is, the expressions may necessarily co-apply and yet be distinct in meaning. Adequately accounting for theories cast in hyperintensional languages is important in the philosophy of language; the philosophy of mind; metaphysics; and elsewhere. This entry presents a number of areas in which hyperintensionality is important; a range of approaches to theorising about hyperintensional matters; and a range of debates that (...) attention to hyperintensional constructions has generated. (shrink)

In his new book, Logical Form, Andrea Iacona distinguishes between two different roles that have been ascribed to the notion of logical form: the logical role and the semantic role. These two roles entail a bifurcation of the notion of logical form. Both notions of logical form, according to Iacona, are descriptive, having to do with different features of natural language sentences. I agree that the notion of logical form bifurcates, but not that the logical role is merely descriptive. In (...) this paper, I focus on formalization, a process by which logical form, on its logical role, is attributed to natural language sentences. According to some, formalization is a form of explication, and it involves normative, pragmatic, as well as creative aspects. I present a view by which formalization involves explicit commitments on behalf of a reasoner or an interpreter, which serve the normative grounds for the evaluation of a given text. In previous work, I proposed the framework of semantic constraints for the explication of logical consequence. Here, I extend the framework to include formalization constraints. The various constraints then serve the role of commitments. I discuss specific issues raised by Iacona concerning univocality, co-reference and equivocation, and I show how our views on these matters diverge as a result of our different starting assumptions. (shrink)

Finding the demarcation criterion for the identification of scientific knowledge is the most important task of normative epistemology. Pseudoscience is not a harmless leisure activity, it can pose a danger to the functioning of liberal democratic societies and the well-being of their citizens. First, there is an outline of how to define science instrumentally without slipping into the detrimental heritage of conceptual essentialism. The second part is dedicated to Popper’s falsification criterion and the objections of its opponents, which eventually led (...) to the abandonment of “naïve” falsificationism. Then I present two promising solutions to the problem, namely the ostensive definition of pseudoscience and the cognitive research of pseudoscientific thinking. In conclusion, I suggest to further extend the typology of alternatives to science to include parascience. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show the real nature of Universal Grammar. Universal grammar is separate part of human mind which makes language learning possible and generative. Universal grammar is the symbolic and systematic rules inside our mind. These rules help us to classify, analyze, differentiate, assimilate, understand and recognize human language. This paper determines the real nature of philosophical grammar and discusses the modular and non-modular approach of it. I shall examine the critical approaches of Wittgenstein and Chomsky and their (...) comparison to investigate the philosophical grammar. (shrink)

This review essay of Wolfson’s recent Heidegger and Kabbalah both praises Wolfson for departing from the historicism of his earliest writings on the kabbalistic tradition, and also critiques him for being unable to ground adequately his critique of the kabbalistic tradition’s ethnocentrism. Resolving the tension in this authorial position, stretched between commitment to a particular tradition and the liberalism of much of contemporary academia, entails acknowledging the limitations of scholarship in religious ethics.

Summary In the methodology of science, intersubjectivity is usually associated with replicability of experimental results. A related, judicial conception of objectivity as impartiality has it that a theory or judgment is objective if it covers all the relevant angles of the object or phenomenon in question, ensuring that the latter is not ephemeral and the concepts referring to them are valid. Based on the assumption that in the social sciences, the researcher is also a participant, an alternative view was conceived, (...) according to the notion that intersubjectivity rests on either sharing of a lifeworld and its associated practices or on empathy, or on some form of direct social cognition. My aim in this paper is to bring some elements of the Gestalt theory – and more specifically, Rudolf Arnheim’s (1988) adapted model of field dynamics – to bear on the problematic of intersubjectivity. The proposed model suggests that intersubjectivity is a dynamic phenomenon, best described as a product of two vectors: a vector describing a movement across the circumference combined with a vector describing the movement from the center to the circumference. While the first vector corresponds to impartiality, the second represents the tension between cognitive distancing and direct experience. Overall, it is argued that intersubjectivity cannot be divorced from either subjectivity or objectivity and it amounts to skillful navigation within different frames of reference. (shrink)

I argue that given a plausible reading of John Williams’s Stoner (2012 [1965]) the novel throws light on the demands and costs of pursuing a strategy for self-realisation along Platonic lines which seeks unification through the adoption of a single exclusive end in a manner that emulates the Socratic maieutic teacher. The novel does not explicitly argue either for or against such a strategy but rather vividly depicts its difficulties, appeal, and limitations, thus leaving the ultimate evaluation up to the (...) reader. (shrink)

Résumé Dans cette communication, qui reprend en partie les idées exposées il y a trente ans dans un article de Critique, François Recanati entreprend de caractériser la philosophie analytique en discutant une demi-douzaine de traits supposés distinctifs de la discipline : l’usage de la logique, l’importance de la philosophie du langage considérée comme philosophie première, le refus de réduire la philosophie à l’histoire de la philosophie, l’idée que la philosophie est une discipline de second niveau, l’idée qu’un progrès est possible (...) en philosophie, ou encore – trait fondamental selon l’auteur – le caractère intersubjectif de la pratique analytique, qui rappelle la pratique scientifique et constitue ce que François Recanati appelle « l’esprit scientifique » de la philosophie analytique. A chaque étape du parcours, l’auteur s’interroge sur les aspects de cette philosophie qui pouvaient susciter des réserves de la part de Jules Vuillemin, malgré son admiration globale pour ce courant. (shrink)

In Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus (TLP), Wittgenstein gave ethics the same semantic status as logic. This paper first investigates this claim from the perspective of Wittgenstein’s lifelong semantic framework. This reveals that ethical sentences are meaningless expressions, which can only be used to ostensively point out conditions of meaningfulness. Secondly, the paper assesses the implications of this conclusion for understanding the seven cryptic remarks on value and ethics in TLP. Using the connection between will and value in TLP and will and sentence (...) interpretation in Philosophical Investigations, it is suggested that Wittgenstein held lifelong views on value and ethics. (shrink)

The notion of the riddle plays a pivotal role in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus . By examining the comparisons he draws between philosophical problems and riddles, this paper offers a reassessment of the aims and methods of the book. Solving an ordinary riddle does not consist in learning a new fact; what it requires is that we transform the way we use words. Similarly, Wittgenstein proposes to transform the way philosophers understand the nature of their problems. But since he holds that these (...) problems are ultimately unsolvable, rather than attempting to solve the riddles of philosophy, he aims to dissolve them. (shrink)

In this article I explore some implications of the correspondence that went on between Ludwig Wittgenstein and the logician and mathematician Gottlob Frege. Part of this exchange was focused on the envisaged publication of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and on the philosophical or literary character of that work. The problem discussed concerned the question of whether the Tractatus should be seen not as a scientific but as an artistic achievement. My first goal is to present what, given Frege’s writings, his phrase (...) “an artistic rather than a scientific achievement” could be understood to mean in terms of the Tractatus itself. Secondly, I seek to determine the extent to which traces of Frege’s understanding of such terms as “mock thoughts,” “fiction,” “elucidation,” “paintings” and “colouring” are to be found in the language of the Tractatus. This should then make it possible to show how Wittgenstein’s work, viewed from a Fregean perspective, can be seen as furnishing a logic and semantics not only for the languages of logic and natural science, but also for something that is “an artistic rather than a scientific achievement”, while also indicating that the content of the Tractatus as a whole could not have been captured independently of the unified form Wittgenstein himself gave it. (shrink)

Pain, pain talk and pain ascriptions seem to be universal features of human experience and to have little to do with politics. It is often assumed that pain is always bad, a sign of a malfunctioning machine, that pain talk describes this malfunction and that the humane thing to do is to seek to ameliorate or excise pain. I argue that this viewpoint is one-sided at best and imperialistic at worst. In section I, I outline what I term the ‘prima (...) facie model of pain’ and adumbrate later Wittgenstein’s criticism of it. In section II, I marshal ethnographic evidence that deepens Wittgenstein’s reimagining of pain and acknowledgment. In section III, I link this to ‘progressive’ politics and its normative understanding of the self. Finally, in section IV, I turn to Martin Luther King’s writing and discuss a use of pain that undermines this normative conception of the self and aligns with Wittgenstein’s account. (shrink)

The study aims to investigate how prior experience of interlocutors interacts with actual situational context in intercultural interactions when the latter is represented by a well-known frame: getting acquainted with others. It attempts to demonstrate how the cultural frame of the target language is broken up and substituted with an emergent frame that is co-constructed from elements from prior experience with the target language, the first language and the actual situational experience. Getting acquainted with others is a closed social situation, (...) a cultural frame in which interlocutors usually have to follow a behavior pattern dictated by the requirements of the socio-cultural background in a given speech community. There is a ‘skeleton’ of these ‘getting to know you’ procedures that can be considered universal but is substantiated differently in every language. In each conversation in any language, ‘flesh’ is added to the ‘skeleton’ in a dynamic and co-constructed manner. However, there is a difference between how this happens in L1 and in intercultural interactions. While in L1 the ‘flesh’ on the skeleton is predetermined to a significant extent by requirements of core common ground in the given language, in intercultural encounters this ‘flesh building’ process in the target language is not set but is co-constructed by the interlocutors as emergent common ground relying on their prior experience with their own L1 culture, limited experience with the target culture and the assessment of the actual situational context. In this study the co-construction process, i.e. emergent common ground will be analyzed by examining the use of formulaic language and freely generated language in several discourse segments. (shrink)

This paper sketches a new and somewhat heterodox metaphysical theory of consciousness: the “many-worlds theory”. It drops the assumption that all conscious subjects’ experiences are features of one and the same world and instead associates different subjects with different “first-personally centred worlds”. We can think of these as distinct “first-personal realizers” of a shared “third-personal world”, where the latter is supervenient, in a sense to be explained. This is combined with a form of modal realism, according to which different subjects’ (...) first-personally centred worlds are all real, though only one of them is present for each subject. The theory offers a novel way of capturing the irreducibly subjective nature of conscious experience without lapsing into solipsism. The paper also looks at some scientific theories of consciousness, such as integrated information theory, through the proposed lens and reconsiders the hard problem of consciousness. (shrink)

This paper argues that Wittgenstein, both early and late, rejects the idea that the logically simpler and more fundamental case is that of "the mere sign" and that what a meaningful symbol is can be explained through the elaboration of an appropriately supplemented conception of the sign: the sign plus something. Rather the sign, in the logically fundamental case of its mode of occurrence, is an internal aspect of the symbol. The Tractatus puts this point as follows: “The sign is (...) that in the symbol which is perceptible by the senses.” Conversely, this means that it is essential to a symbol – to what a symbol is – that it have an essentially perceptible aspect. For Wittgenstein there is no privileged direction of explanatory priority between symbol and sign here: without signs there are no symbols and without some sort of relation to symbols there are no signs. (shrink)

In this paper, I analyze the concept of ineffability: what does it mean to say that something cannot be said? I begin by distinguishing ineffability from paradox: if something cannot be said truly or without contradiction, this is not an instance of ineffability. Next, I distinguish two different meanings of ‘saying something’ which result from a fundamental ambiguity in the term ‘language’, viz. language as a system of symbols and language as a medium of communication. Accordingly, ‘ineffability’ is ambiguous, too, (...) and we should make a distinction between weak and strong ineffability. Weak ineffability is rooted in the deficiencies of a particular language while strong ineffability stems from the structure of a particular cognitive system and its capacities for conceptual mental representation. Mental contents are only sayable if we are able to conceptualize them and then create signs to represent them in communication. (shrink)

In the article, I try to emphasize that our way of using language affects moral decisions and attitudes. As we think as we speak and simultaneously, we act. By using chauvinistic language, first of all, we simplify our reality; secondly, we push those beings that we define in the language to the margins. I think that our language is homocentric and therefore leads us to speciesism.

At a time in which religion is breaking away from the normative power of its traditions and new forms of spiritual experience are emerging, religious philosophy must find criteria for what a religious experience is and how to judge its truth. In their empirical critique of religion L. Wittgenstein and R. Carnap accepted two forms of religious experience, which they described with an optical and acoustic metaphor. They denied their cognitive truth value, but not their value for life. However, an (...) extended concept of truth, which encompasses every correspondence between experience and reality, can also find truth in religious experiences of “transparency” and “resonance”. They differ from aesthetic experience not only by the depth of transparency and resonance, but also by their cognitive interpretation. What is experienced is cognitively referred to a final reality: either to a “summum ens” in this world, or to the whole of this world or something unknown beyond of this world. This final point of reference is a unity of “being” and “value”. Religion makes experiences of the everyday transparent for both aspects of an ultimate reality und motivates to a life full of resonance with this reality. (shrink)

Work on the nature and scope of formal logic has focused unduly on the distinction between logical and extra-logical vocabulary; which argument forms a logical theory countenances depends not only on its stock of logical terms, but also on its range of grammatical categories and modes of composition. Furthermore, there is a sense in which logical terms are unnecessary. Alexandra Zinke has recently pointed out that propositional logic can be done without logical terms. By defining a logical-term-free language with the (...) full expressive power of first-order logic with identity, I show that this is true of logic more generally. Furthermore, having, in a logical theory, non-trivial valid forms that do not involve logical terms is not merely a technical possibility. As the case of adverbs shows, issues about the range of argument forms logic should countenance can quite naturally arise in such a way that they do not turn on whether we countenance certain terms as logical. (shrink)

Categories play a major role in contemporary metaphysics. They have not only been invoked in a number of philosophical theories but are themselves objects of epistemological and metaphysical scrutiny. In this article, we will discuss the following questions: How do we know when something belongs to a certain category? Is there a fundamental category of the world? Can we give a satisfactory account of the number of categories and the completeness of systems of categories? Are categories the genuine subjects of (...) ontology? (shrink)

Drawing mainly from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his middle period writings, strategic issues and problems arising from Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics are discussed. Topics have been so chosen as to assist mediation between the perspective of philosophers and that of mathematicians on their developing discipline. There is consideration of rules within arithmetic and geometry and Wittgenstein’s distinctive approach to number systems whether elementary or transfinite. Examples are presented to illuminate the relation between the meaning of an arithmetical generalisation or theorem (...) and its proof. An attempt is made to meet directly some of Wittgenstein’s critical comments on the mathematical treatment of infinity and irrational numbers. (shrink)

If there is something (P) that every possible agent is committed to value, and certain actions or attitudes either enhance or diminish P, then normative claims about a range of intentional actions can be objectively and non-trivially evaluated. I argue that the degree of existence as an agent depends on the consistency of reflexive-relating with other individuals of the agent-kind: the ontological thesis. I then show that in intending to act on a reason, every agent is rationally committed to value (...) ‘above all else’ being an agent, what consists in exercising the capacity to act and having the freedom to discriminate between more or less valuable actions: the transcendental thesis. Since the degree of possession of this personal but non-contingent good depends on relating to other agents in a special way, certain actions and attitudes may be objectively right or wrong for all agents. (shrink)

Wittgenstein explores learning through practice in the Philosophical Investigations by means of an extended analogy with games. However, does this concern with learning also necessarily extend to education, in our institutional understanding of the word? While Wittgenstein's examples of language learning and use are always shared or social, he does not discuss formal educational institutions as such. He does not wish to found a ‘school of thought’, and is suspicious of philosophy acting as a theory that can be applied to (...) other areas of life. While Wittgenstein's focus on developing independent thinking was neither individualistic nor anti-institutional, it did, however, focus on developing the thinking of his students rather than theorising about how this could be applied on a large scale. An analysis of Hermann Hesse's novel, The Glass Bead Game will help us to pick up where Wittgenstein deliberately left off—thinking about how (or if) one can institutionalise learning methods that encourage thinking for oneself. These differences in the writers’ treatment of education will become evident in the differences between their game analogies. While language-games combat our ‘craving for generality’ in Philosophical Investigations, the Glass Bead Game represents this craving, and how it manifests itself throughout history in disciplines other than logic and philosophy of language. It also represents the potential for institutions to become insular, exclusive communities. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 5, August 2020, Page 595-599.

Priority Theory is an increasingly popular view in metaphysics. By seeing metaphysical questions as primarily concerned with what explains what, instead of merely what exists, it promises not only an interesting approach to traditional metaphysical issues but also the resolution of some outstanding disputes. In a recent paper, Louis deRosset argues that Priority Theory isn’t up to the task: Priority Theory is committed to there being explanations that violate a formal constraint on any adequate explanation. This paper critically examines deRosset’s (...) challenge to Priority Theory. We argue that deRosset’s challenge ultimately fails: his proposed constraint on explanation is neither well-motivated nor a general constraint. Nonetheless, lurking behind his criticism is a deep problem for prominent ways of developing Priority Theory, a problem which we develop. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue that some of the central doctrines of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus can be seen as addressing the twin problems of semantic unity and...

A framework is developed for understanding what is “taken for granted” both in philosophy and in life generally, which may serve to orient philosophical inquiry and make it more effective. The framework takes in language and its development, as well as mathematics, logic, and the empirical sphere with particular reference to the exigencies of life. It is evaluated through consideration of seven philosophical issues concerned with such topics as solipsism, sense data as the route to knowledge, the possible reduction of (...) geometry to logic, and the existence and status of human rights. Various dichotomies and the notion of continuity are evidently highly strategic. (shrink)

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

In explaining the notion of a fundamental property or relation, metaphysicians will often draw an analogy with languages. The fundamental properties and relations stand to reality as the primitive predicates and relations stand to a language: the smallest set of vocabulary God would need in order to write the “book of the world.” This paper attempts to make good on this metaphor. To that end, a modality is introduced that, put informally, stands to propositions as logical truth stands to sentences. (...) The resulting theory, formulated in higher-order logic, also vindicates the Humean idea that fundamental properties and relations are freely recombinable and a variant of the structural idea that propositions can be decomposed into their fundamental constituents via logical operations. Indeed, it is seen that, although these ideas are seemingly distinct, they are not independent, and fall out of a natural and general theory about the granularity of reality. (shrink)

The problem of negative truth is the problem of how, if everything in the world is positive, we can speak truly about the world using negative propositions. A prominent solution is to explain negation in terms of a primitive notion of metaphysical incompatibility. I argue that if this account is correct, then minimal logic is the correct logic. The negation of a proposition A is characterised as the minimal incompatible of A composed of it and the logical constant ¬. A (...) rule based account of the meanings of logical constants that appeals to the notion of incompatibility in the introduction rule for negation ensures the existence and uniqueness of the negation of every proposition. But it endows the negation operator with no more formal properties than those it has in minimal logic. (shrink)

Verificationism has had a bad press for many years. The view that the meaning of our words is bound up with the discernible difference it would make if what we say, think or write were true or false, nowadays is scorned as “positivist” though it was shared by eminent empiricists and pragmatists. This paper seeks to sort through some of the complexities of what is often portrayed as an unduly simplistic conception. I begin with an overview of its main logical (...) empiricist varieties before considering which aspects of it fall victim to which of the three major types of objection that have been raised against it. I will conclude that what is left standing is a modest proposal that seems worth further investigation. (shrink)

Can we perceive others' mental states? Wittgenstein is often claimed to hold, like some phenomenologists, that we can. The view thus attributed to Wittgenstein is a view about the correct explanation of mindreading: He is taken to be answering a question about the kind of process mindreading involves. But although Wittgenstein claims we see others' emotions, he denies that he is thereby making any claim about that underlying process and, moreover, denies that any underlying process could have the significance it (...) is claimed to have for this debate. For Wittgenstein, the question is not “Is this perception?” but “What do we mean by ‘perception' here?” and that question is answered by investigating the grammar of the relevant concepts. That investigation, however, reveals similarities and differences between what we call “perception” here and elsewhere. Hence, Wittgenstein's answer to the question “Can we perceive others' mental states?” is yes and no: Both responses can be justified by appeal to different concepts of perception. Wittgenstein, then, has much to contribute to our understanding of mindreading, but what he has to contribute is nothing like the view typically attributed to him here. (shrink)

This paper explores the prospects of combining two views. The first view is metaphysical rationalism : all things have an explanation. The second view is metaphysical essentialism: there are real essences. The exploration is motivated by a conflict between the views. Metaphysical essentialism posits facts about essences. Metaphysical rationalism demands explanations for all facts. But facts about essences appear to resist explanation. I consider two solutions to the conflict. Exemption solutions attempt to exempt facts about essences from the demand for (...) explanation. Explanation solutions attempt to explain facts about essences. I argue that exemption solutions are less promising than explanation solutions. I then consider how explanation solutions might be developed. I suggest that a “generative” approach is most promising. I tentatively conclude that the prospects for combining metaphysical rationalism and metaphysical essentialism turn on the viability of a generative approach. This sets the agenda for defending the combination as well as the more general project of explaining essences. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIt has become standard to treat Kant’s characterization of pure apperception as involving the claim that questions about what I think are transparent to questions about the world. By contra...

The article develops Marshall McLuhan’s approach to the interplay between media, the sensorium, and reality. McLuhan’s concepts of “acoustic space” and “visual space” are unfolded with regard to the consequences that digital media will have on the human ability to perceive reality. Reality–sensorium interaction is systematized in the article. This systematization includes the environments of the given, the represented, and the induced. These environments are shaped by sequential stages of media evolution, which relate to preliterate media, alphabet-based media, and digital (...) media. Existing and upcoming media technologies are presumed to alter human biology and transcend it. Within the set of media technologies that alter human biology, artificial flavours, electrically induced senses, immersive media, augmented reality, and virtual reality are treated. Within the set of media impacts that will change the human sensorium, the dismissal of gravity, the switch in navigation from biological networking to social networking, the sense of others, and the thirst for response are treated. Plato, Lenin, Wittgenstein, Benveniste, Logan, Carr, Shirky, and other thinkers are employed in the article to support these McLuhanian speculations, and sketch out prospective trends in the evolution of media and the sensorium. (shrink)

The cornerstone of contemporary nursing practice is the provision of individualised nursing care. Sustaining and nourishing the stream of research frameworks that inform individualised care are the findings from qualitative research. At the centre of much qualitative research practice, however, is an assumption that experiential understanding can be delivered through a thematisation of meaning which, it will be argued, can lead the researcher to make unsustainable assumptions about the relations of language and meaning‐making to experience. We will show that an (...) uncritical subscription to such assumptions can undermine the researcher's capacity to represent experience at the high level of abstraction consistent with experience itself and to thus inform genuinely individualised care. Instead, using qualia as a touchstone for the possibilities of understanding and representing experience, we trace the ‘designative’ and ‘expressive’ distinction to language in order to raise critical questions concerning both these assumptions and common practices within qualitative research. Following the ‘expressive’ account of language, we foreground in particular the hermeneutic work of Gadamer through which we explore the possibilities for a qualitative research approach that would better seek the mot juste of individual experience and illuminate qualia in order to better inform genuinely individualised care. (shrink)

The author disagrees with reductionist attitude to Wittgenstein’s philosophy as philosophy of language. Basing on researches in contemporary French philosophy, the author reveals anthropological dimension of Wittgenstein’s reflections both in the main themes of his philosophizing and in his philosophical method as such. Wittgenstein strives to clarify what we already know, trying to avoid explanation, generalization and uniformity. The research shows that clarification, übersichtliche Darstellung acquires in anthropology special meaning of description and helps to overcome explicative anthropological approach and description (...) of human action in terms of binary oppositions of nature/culture and instrumentality/rituality. The article shows practical results of “grammatical analysis” applied to the concepts of humanity, speech and thinking: this analysis discovers circularity of theoretical definitions of human being and opens the way of “immediate understanding” of humanity prior to any theoretical thinking. The article shows the role of Wittgenstein’s concepts of “ritual instinct” and “ceremonial animal”, which help to understand human activity as manifestations of “ritual instinct”, and ritual action as inseparable unity of natural reactions and conscious intentionality despite the debates between intellectualism and expressivism. (shrink)

New nursing researchers are faced with a smorgasbord of competing methodologies. Sometimes, they are encouraged to adopt the research paradigms beloved of their senior colleagues. This is a problem if those paradigms are no longer of contemporary methodological relevance. The aim of this paper was to provide clarity about current research paradigms. It seeks to interrogate the continuing viability of positivism as a guiding paradigm for nursing research. It does this by critically analysing the methodological literature. Five major paradigms are (...) addressed: the positivist; the interpretivist/constructivist; the transformative; the realist; and the postpositivist. Acceptance of interpretivist, transformative or realist approaches necessarily entails wholesale rejection of positivism, while acceptance of postpositivism involves its partial rejection. Postpositivism has superseded positivism as the guiding paradigm of the scientific method. The incorporation in randomized controlled trials of postpositivist assumptions indicates that even on the methodological territory that it once claimed as its own, positivism has been rendered redundant as an appropriate paradigm for contemporary nursing research. (shrink)

Recently we proposed "quantum language" (or, the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics"), which was not only characterized as the metaphysical and linguistic turn of quantum mechanics but also the linguistic turn of Descartes=Kant epistemology. We believe that quantum language is the language to describe science, which is the final goal of dualistic idealism. Hence there is a reason to want to clarify, from the quantum linguistic point of view, the following problems: "brain in a vat argument", "the Cogito proposition", (...) "five-minute hypothesis", "only the present exists", "Copernican revolution", "McTaggart's paradox", and so on. In this paper, these will be discussed and clarified in quantum language. That is, these are not in quantum language. Also we emphasize that Leibniz's relationalism in Leibniz-Clarke correspondence is regarded as one of the most important parts of the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. This paper is the revised version of the paper: Open Journal of Philosophy, 2018 Vol.8, No.5, 466-480). (shrink)

Do numbers exist? Carnap (1956 [1950]) famously argues that this question can be understood in an “internal” and in an “external” sense, and calls “external” questions “non-cognitive”. Carnap also says that external questions are raised “only by philosophers” (p. 207), which means that, in his view, philosophers raise ”non-cognitive” questions. However, it is not clear how the internal/external distinction and Carnap’s related views about philosophy should be understood. This paper provides a new interpretation. I draw attention to Carnap’s distinction between (...) purely external statements, which are independent from all frameworks, and pragmatic external statements, which concern which framework one should adopt, and argue that the latter express noncognitive mental states. Specifically, I argue that “frameworks” are systems of rules for the assessment of statements, which are utterances of ordinary language sentences. Pragmatic external statements express noncognitive dispositions to follow only certain rules of assessment. For instance, “numbers exist” understood as a pragmatic external statement expresses a noncognitive disposition to use only rules of assessment according to which numbers do exist. Carnap can thereby be understood as proposing a distinctive form of noncognitivism about ontology that is in some respects analogous to norm-expressivism in metaethics. (shrink)