Wittgenstein's Nachlass: The Bergen Electronic Edition is the only CD-ROM to give you instant facsimile and text access to the 20,000 pages of the philosopher's Nachlass as catalogued by Professor von Wright in his 1982 publication The Wittgenstein Papers. -/- The result of 10 years of academic research and editorial work by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen this electronic edition is the first scholarly resource to apply a uniform, well-documented, consistent set of editorial principles (...) to the writings. The CD-ROM is a joint publication between Oxford University Press and the Wittgenstein Archives and is published in Text & Facsimile and Text Only formats. (shrink)

The National Library of Finland and the Von Wright and Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Helsinki keep the collected correspondence of Georg Henrik von Wright, Wittgenstein’s friend and successor at Cambridge and one of the three literary executors of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. Among von Wright’s correspondence partners, Elizabeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees are of special interest to Wittgenstein scholars as the two other trustees of the Wittgenstein papers. Thus, von Wright’s collections held in Finland promise to shed light on (...) the context of decades of editorial work that made Wittgenstein’s later philosophy available to all interested readers. In this text, we present the letters which von Wright received from Anscombe and Rhees during the first nine months after Wittgenstein’s death. This correspondence provides a vivid picture of the literary executors as persons and of their developing relationships. The presented letters are beautiful examples of what the correspondence as a whole has to offer; it depicts – besides facts of editing – the story of three philosophers, whose conversing voices unfold the human aspects of inheriting Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. Their story does not only deal with editing the papers of an eminent philosopher, but with the attempt to do justice to the man they knew, to his philosophy and to his wishes for publication. (shrink)

“Our later and more critical philosophies are mere fads and fancies compared with this natural mother-tongue of thought”, says William James in his lecture on common sense. The deep bond connecting language, common sense and nature is also one of the main concerns of the later Wittgenstein. The aim of this paper is to compare the two philosophers in this respect, particularly focusing on James’ Pragmatism and on Wittgenstein’s On Certainty. Similarities, but also differences, will be highlighted. A further element (...) will be offered by the analysis of a fragment of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, which anticipates his image of the river-bed of thought through the critique of James’ stream of thought. By means of this comparison, I will question Wittgenstein’s explicit refusal of pragmatism. I will argue that his late philosophy can be said to be even more pragmatist than James’, in that it delineates a conception of the common sense certainties which shape our Weltbild (world-picture) as practically, and not merely epistemically, connected to our life. (shrink)

The aim of the 17 original papers here is to summarize and analyze Wittgenstein's thought. At the time these were being written, the Oxford/Intelex CDROM ($2040 on Amazon but available thru interlibrary loan and steeply discounted on the net) with 20,000 some pages of W's nachlass, as well as the various online versions of the nachlass, were not yet available, and only those fluent in German and willing to find and slog thru the incomplete Cornell microfilm were (...) able to examine it. To this day, much of it remains untranslated from the German typescripts and handwritten manuscripts. I note this at the outset as W's untranslated or unpublished writings often shed crucial light on his thought and few to this day have made substantial use of them. In addition, there are huge problems with translation of his early 20th century Viennese German into modern English. One must be a master of English, German, and Wittgenstein in order to do this and very few are up to it. Several of the current authors note unfortunate translation errors in the only available English editions and I have seen similar comments countless times. -/- As is well known, W's thought changed dramatically between the publication of the Tractatus (TLP) in 1922 and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). The continuity or lack thereof between his early and late work is the subject of a vast literature and is taken up here by several authors. Ishiguro on the picture theory and Mounce on the logical system in TLP are good, but for me the endless discussions of exactly how he was mistaken in his early work is of as little interest as the mistakes in most previous philosophy. Ammereller on Intentionality is a good, if prosaic, summary of (mostly) the early and middle W on belief and interpretation which, like virtually everyone, totally fails to give an adequate overview of W's pioneering work. In giving the general outline of our innate evolutionary psychology (i.e., roughly our personality) and showing how this describes behavior, W represents a major milestone in human thought. There are unmistakeable indications of this even in his early writings (e.g., see p 40, 49-58 here) and it has been documented by Hacker (e.g., see his paper in The New Wittgenstein) and others but without any comprehensive account in book form to date (but see the many recent writings of Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Coliva etc.). Overall a good book for introducing W to a general philosophical audience but now very dated by the recent work of Hacker, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock, Coliva, Hutto, Read and others. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

The aim of the 17 original papers here is to summarize and analyze Wittgenstein's thought. At the time these were being written, the Oxford/Intelex CDROM ($2040 on Amazon but available thru interlibrary loan and steeply discounted on the net) with 20,000 some pages of W's nachlass was not yet available, and only those fluent in German and willing to find and slog thru the incomplete Cornell microfilm were able to examine it. To this day it much of it (...) remains untranslated from the German typescripts and handwritten manuscripts. I note this at the outset as W's untranslated or unpublished writings often shed crucial light on his thought and few to this day have made substantial use of them. In addition there are huge problems with translation of his early 20 th century Viennese German into modern English. One must be a master of English, German, and Wittgenstein in order to do this and very few are up to it. Several of the current authors note unfortunate translation errors in the only available English editions and I have seen similar comments countless times. As is well known, W's thought changed dramatically between the publication of the Tractatus (TLP) in 1922 and the Philosophical Investigations(1953). The continuity or lack thereof between his early and late work is the subject of a vast literature and is taken up here by several authors. Ishiguro on the picture theory and Mounce on the logical system in TLP are good, but for me the endless discussions of exactly how he was mistaken in his early work is of as little interest as the mistakes in most previous philosophy. Ammereller on Intentionality is a good, if prosaic, summary of (mostly) the early and middle W on belief and interpretation which, like virtually everyone, totally fails to give an adequate overview of W's pioneering work. In giving the general outline of our innate evolutionary psychology (ie, roughly our personality) and showing how this describes behavior, W represents a major milestone in human thought. There are unmistakeable indications of this even in his early writings (eg, see p 40, 49-58 here) and it has been documented by Hacker (eg, see his paper in The New Wittgenstein) and others but without any comprehensive account to date.Overall an exceptional book for introducing W to a general philosophical audience. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019). (shrink)

This review offers an overview of Sandis's book and raises a few questions about it.

We’ll approach the notion of object in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus (1921), initially from the so-called “substance argument”. The discourse about necessary conditions for the propositional sense cannot be treated in terms of truth or falsity in the Tractatus without resulting in a infinite regress. Such a situation is avoided by postulating a substance made up of simple objects, thus ensuring the assumed total determination of sense. Passages from the Notebooks (1914-1916) suggest that the idea of simples is given in the (...) ideia of logical analysis and is reached without the necessity of examples for objects. Another early Wittgenstein’s remarks provide examples for objects based on itens of phenomenical nature, such as a point in the visual field. An important analogy for the phenomenical approach for the object, which is found in the aphorisms 2.013-2.0131 of Tractatus, presents a problem for the absolute simplicity. This problem concerns the notion of form, a concept that attributes an ontological dependence to the object given by its essencial capacity of occurrence in atomic facts. The form of the objects results from an appropriation of the Context Principle used by Frege in his Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884) and differs from the notions of pictorial form and logical form. The dependence assigned to the object through its form contradicts the independent subsistence established by its simplicity. The Tractarian object results from necessary demands for determination of propositional sense, reached by means of an clarificatory analysis which prioritizes the transformative and regressive modes of analysis. Simplicity and Context Principle are, under this perspective, rules of a syntax for a logical or significative use of language, which are reflected in the Tractarian ontology through the ideia that the logico-philosophical investigation of language reveals essencial aspects of the intimate structure of the world. (shrink)

Our online interaction with information-systems may well provide the largest arena of formal logical reasoning in the world today. Presented here is a critique of the foundations of Logic, in which the metaphysical assumptions of such 'closed world' reasoning are contrasted with those of traditional logic. Closed worlds mostly employ a syntactic alternative to formal language namely, recording data in files. Whilst this may be unfamiliar as logical syntax, it is argued here that propositions are expressed by data stored in (...) files which are essentially non-linguistic and so cannot be expressed by simple formulae F(a), with the inference-rules normally used in Logic. Hence, the syntax of data may be said to define a fundamentally new kind of logical form for simple propositions. In this way, the logic of closed systems is shown to be non-classical, differing from traditional logic in its truth-conditions, inferences and metaphysics. This paper will be concerned mainly with how the reference and certain inferences in such a closed system differ metaphysically from classical logic. (shrink)

This chapter outlines ways in which Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism is manifest in his later conception of philosophy and the negative attitude he held toward his times. The chapter tries to make clear how these two areas of Wittgenstein’s thought are connected and reflect an anti-scientistic worldview he held, one intimated in Philosophical Investigations §122. -/- It is argued that the later Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy is marked out against two scientistic claims in particular. First, the view that the scientific method is (...) superior to all other means of learning or gaining knowledge. Second, the view that scientific knowledge is superior to all other kinds of knowledge and understanding. Wittgenstein’s opposition to these claims is brought out through examining a fundamental aim of his later philosophy, producing the ‘kind of understanding which consists in “seeing connections”’ (PI §122), and his attempts to expose certain philosophical confusions. It is argued that these reflect his antiscientistic worldview. -/- Through discussion of Oswald Spengler’s influence on Wittgenstein, the chapter outlines how Wittgenstein’s opposition to scientism underwrites his negative cultural outlook and how this is connected with the anti-scientistic elements of his later philosophy discussed. The work of Ray Monk (1999; 1990) and Hans-Johann Glock (1996) is instrumental in what follows. (shrink)

In this paper, we present one of the main starting points of naturalism in ethics: Geach’s challenge against non-cognitivism. We try to find an answer to Geach’s challenge in the notion of family resemblance applied to ethics. In doing so we recover a not much-discussed influence of Moore on Wittgenstein’s conception of family resemblance, which leads us to define Wittgenstein as non-non-cognitivist in ethics. -/- Pre print (some changes in the published edition).

I demonstrate that analogies, both explicit and implicit, between Wittgenstein’s discussion of rituals, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis (and, indeed, his own philosophical methodology) suggest that he entertained the idea that Freud’s psychoanalytic project, when understood correctly—that is, as a descriptive project rather than an explanatory-hypothetical one—provides a “surveyable representation” (übersichtliche Darstellung) of certain psychological facts (as opposed to psychological concepts). The consequences of this account are that it offers an explanation of Wittgenstein’s admiration for and self-perceived affinity to Freud, as well (...) as of his apparent “know-nothing approach” to empirical psychology. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s comparison of philosophical methods to therapies has been interpreted in highly different ways. I identify the illness, the patient, the therapist and the ideal of health in Wittgenstein’s philosophical methods and answer four closely related questions concerning them that have often been wrongly answered by commentators. The results of this paper are, first, some answers to crucial questions: philosophers are not literally ill, patients of philosophical therapies are not always philosophers, not all philosophers qualify as therapists, the therapies are (...) not necessarily to be thought of as psychological therapies and the ideal of health does not consist in the end of philosophy. Second, the paper shows that the comparison has had a misleading effect, because properties of therapies have been illegitimately projected onto the philosophical methods advanced by Wittgenstein. (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)

In this book, Rupert Read offers the first outline of a resolute reading, following the highly influential New Wittgenstein 'school', of the Philosophical Investigations. He argues that the key to understanding Wittgenstein's later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport. Read contends that a resolute reading coincides in its fundaments with what, building on ideas in the later Gordon Baker, he calls a liberatory reading. Liberatory philosophy is philosophy that can liberate the user from compulsive patterns of thought, freeing (...) one for possibilities that were previously obscured. Such liberation is our prime goal in philosophy. This book consists in a sequential reading, along these lines, of what Read considers the most important and controversial passages in the Philosophical Investigations 1, 16, 43, 95 & 116 & 122, 130-3, 149-151, 186, 198-201, 217, and 284-6. Read claims that this liberatory conception is simultaneously an ethical conception. The PI should be considered a work of ethics in that its central concern becomes our relation with others. Wittgensteinian liberations challenge widespread assumptions about how we allegedly are independent of and separate from others. Wittgenstein's Liberatory Philosophy will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working on Wittgenstein, and to scholars of the political philosophy of liberation and the ethics of relation. (shrink)

I demonstrate that analogies, both explicit and implicit, between Wittgenstein’s discussions of rituals, aesthetics, and aspect-perception, have important payoffs in terms of understanding his notion of a “surveyable representation” (übersichtliche Darstellung) as it applies to phenomena that are not exclusively grammatical in nature. In particular, I argue that a surveyable representation of certain anthropological and aesthetic facts allows us to see, qua form of aspect-perception, internal relations and formal connections, so that the inner nature of a ritual or the solution (...) of an aesthetic puzzle is exhibited. This particular form of seeing both explains why Wittgenstein thought that hypothetical explanations about the origins of a ritual are irrelevant to appreciating its meaning and elucidates his understanding of rituals, which involves seeing “internal relations” and “formal connections.” The upshots of the account for work in anthropology are discussed. (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)

An interpretation of Wittgenstein’s much criticized remarks on Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem is provided in the light of paraconsistent arithmetic: in taking Gödel’s proof as a paradoxical derivation, Wittgenstein was drawing the consequences of his deliberate rejection of the standard distinction between theory and metatheory. The reasoning behind the proof of the truth of the Gödel sentence is then performed within the formal system itself, which turns out to be inconsistent. It is shown that the features of paraconsistent arithmetics match (...) with some intuitions underlying Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, such as its strict finitism and the insistence on the decidability of any mathematical question. (shrink)

What is essential to language? Two thinkers active in Vienna in the 1930's, Karl Bühler and Ludwig Wittgenstein, gave apparently incompatible answers to this question. I compare what Wittgenstein says about language and reference at the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations with some aspects of the descriptive analysis of language worked out by Bühler between 1907 and 1934, a systematic development of the philosophies of mind and language of such heirs of Brentano as Martinak, Marty, Meinong, Landgrebe and Husserl. Y (...) a-Uil quelque chose qui est essentiel au langage? Deux penseurs actifs à Vienne dans les années trente, Karl Bühler et Ludwig Wittgenstein, donnent à cette question des réponses qui sont apparemment incompatibles. Je compare ce que Wittgenstein dit du langage et de la référence au début de ses Investigations Philosophiques avec quelques aspects de l'analyse descriptive élaborée par Bühler entre 1907 et 1934, un développement systématique des philosophies de l'esprit et du langage des héritiers de Brentano tels que Martinak, Marty, Meinong, Landgrebe et Husserl. (shrink)

Хорвич дает прекрасный анализ Витгенштейна (W) и является ведущим ученым W, но, на мойвзгляд, все они не дотягивают до полной оценки, как я подробно объяснить в этом обзоре и многие другие. Если одно не понимает W (и предпочтительно Searle также) после этого я не вижу как одно смогло иметь больше чем поверхностное вникание общего соображения и мысли более высокого заказа и таким образом всего сложного поведения (психология, социология, антропология, история, словесность, общество). В двух словах, W продемонстрировал, что, когда вы показали, (...) как предложение используется в контексте интересов, нет ничего более сказать. Я начну с нескольких заметных цитат, а затем дать то, что я думаю, являются минимальными соображениями, необходимыми для понимания Витгенштейна, философии и человеческого поведения. Во-первых, можно отметить, что положить "мета" перед любым словом должно быть подозреваемым. W заметил, например, что метаматематика математика, как и любой другой. Представление о том, что мы можем выйти за рамки философии (т.е. описательной психологии мысли высшего порядка), само по себе является глубокой путаницей. Еще одно раздражение здесь (и на протяжении академических письменной форме в течение последних 4 десятилетий) является постоянным обратным лингвистического сексизма "ее" и "ее" и "она" или "он / она" и т.д., где "они" и "свои" и "их" будет делать красиво. Аналогичнымобразом, использование французского слова "репертуар", где английский "репертуар" будет делать довольно хорошо. Основным недостатком является полный отказ (хотя и очень часто), чтобы использовать то, что я вижу, как чрезвычайно мощный и интуитивно понятный вид двух систем HOT и Карл рамки, которые я изложил выше. Это особенно остро в главе о значении p111 et seq. (особенно в сносках 2-7), где мы плаваем в очень мутной воде без рамки автоматизированной истинной только S1, пропозиционный диспозиционный S2, COS и т.д. Можно также получить лучшее представление о внутреннем и внешнем, читая, например, Джонстон или Бадд (см. мои отзывы). Хорвич однако делает много резких комментариев. Мне особенно понравилось его резюме импорта W анти-теоретической позиции на p65. Он должен уделять больше внимания "На определенности", в последнее время предметом много усилий Даниэле Мойал-Шаррок, Coliva и другие и кратко в моих последних статьях. Хорвич является первым курсом, и его работа стоит усилий. Хочется надеяться, что он (и все) изучат Сирла и некоторые современные психологии, а также Хатто, Рид, Хатчинсон, Стерн, Мойал-Шаррок, Прогулка, Хакер и Бейкер и т.д., чтобы достичь широкого современного взгляда на поведение. Большинство их работ на academia dot edu и philpapers dot org, но для PMS Хакер см. http colon //info dot sjc dot ox dot ac dot uk/scr/hacker/DownloadPapers dot html dot Он дает один из самых красивых резюме, где понимание Витгенштейна оставляет нам, что я когда-либо видел. "Не должно быть никаких попыток объяснить нашу лингвистическую/концептуальную деятельность (PI 126), как в уменьшении арифметики Фрейда к логике; не попытка дать ему эпистемологические основы (PI 124), как в смысле основанных счетов априори знаний; не попытка охарактеризовать идеализированные формы его (PI 130) как в логике чувства; никаких попыток реформировать его (PI 124, 132), как в теории ошибок Маки или интуиции Дамметт; никаких попыток упорядочить его (PI 133), как в рассказе Квина о существовании; не попытка сделать его более последовательным (PI 132), как в ответ Тарски на парадоксы лжецов; и не попытка сделать его более полным (PI 133), как в урегулировании вопросов личной идентичности для странных гипотетических сценариев "телепортации". Наконец, позвольте мне предположить, что с точки зрения я призвал здесь, W находится в центре современной философии и психологии и не является неясным, трудным или неуместным, но мерцающий, глубокий и кристально чистый и что пропустить его, чтобы пропустить один из величайших интеллектуальных приключений возможно. Те, кто желает всеобъемлющего до современных рамок для человеческого поведения из современных двух systEms зрения могут проконсультироваться с моей книгой"Логическая структура философии, психологии, Минd иязык в Людвиг Витгенштейн и Джон Сирл" второй ред (2019). Те, кто заинтересован в более моих сочинений могут увидеть "Говоря обезьян - Философия, психология, наука, религия и политика на обреченной планете - Статьи и обзоры 2006-2019 3-й ed (2019) и suicidal утопических заблуждений в 21-мst веке 4-й ed (2019) th и другие. (shrink)

The author- following his own research on the subject- argues that Wittgenstein ignores argumentation theory and in general, the problems of rhetoric and argumentation. From this point of view, he frames Stephen Toulmin’s reading of Wittgenstein, arguing that the British philosopher- who was a student of the Austrian- advocates precisely the same thesis. He explains that this happens in a very peculiar (rhetorical) context on Toulmin’s part; a context in which, in essence, Wittgenstein’s philosophy is being rehabilitated.

The supposition that Wittgenstein's Tractatus advances a certain metaphysics has given rise to a controversy over the ontological status of his Tractarian objects. It has been debated, for instance, whether these objects consist only of particulars or of both particulars and universals; whether they are physical, phenomenal, or phenomenological entities; and whether they correspond to Russell's objects of acquaintance or Kant's phenomena and substance. In this essay, I endorse Ishiguro's view that these objects, being formal concepts, are ontologically neutral (...) and thus are not identifiable with any ontological kind of entities. I elaborate on the coherence of this view with the propositional dependence of the meaning of Tractarian names. After showing why some arguments for ascribing a Russellian theory of meaning to these names do not work, I demonstrate why Ishiguro's account of Tractarian objects and names provides a better explanation of the unalterability of these objects. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s interpreters are undivided that the method plays a central role in his philosophy. This would be no surprise if we have in mind the Tractarian dictum: “philosophy is not a body of doctrine but an activity” (4.112). After 1929, Wittgenstein’s method evolved further. In its final form, articulated in Philosophical Investigations, it was formulated as different kinds of therapies of specific philosophical problems that torment our life (§§ 133, 255, 593). In this paper we follow the changes in Wittgenstein’s (...) thinking in four subsequent phases and in three dimensions: (i) in logic and ontology; (ii) in method proper; (iii) in style. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss the similarity between Wittgenstein’s use of thought experiments and Relativity Theory. I begin with introducing Wittgenstein’s idea of “thought experiments” and a tentative classification of different kinds of thought experiments in Wittgenstein’s work. Then, after presenting a short recap of some remarks on the analogy between Wittgenstein’s point of view and Einstein’s, I suggest three analogies between the status of Wittgenstein’s mental experiments and Relativity theory: the topics of time dilation, the search for invariants, and (...) the role of measuring tools in Special Relativity. This last point will help to better define Wittgenstein’s idea of description as the core of his philosophical enterprise. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus -Irfan Ajvazi.

This article provides a survey of Wittgenstein’s remarks in which he discusses various kinds of technology. I argue that throughout his career, his use of technological examples displays a thematic unity: technologies are invoked in order to illustrate a certain mechanical conception of the mind. I trace how his use of such examples evolved as his views on the mind and on meaning changed. I also discuss an important and somewhat radical anti-mechanistic strain in his later thought and suggest that (...) Wittgenstein’s attitude to mechanistic explanations in psychology was ultimately quite ambivalent. (shrink)

A mysterious remark to Friedrich Waismann on 30 December 1929 marks the only occasion where Wittgenstein refers to both Heidegger and Kierkegaard. Yet although this has generated much controversy, little attention has been paid to the charge of nonsense that Wittgenstein here appears to bring against Heidegger; thus, the supporting argument that may be latent has not been unearthed. Through analysis of this remark, Wittgenstein's arguments in the Tractatus and 'A Lecture on Ethics', and Heidegger's account of anxiety (Angst) (...) in Being and Time, I argue that we can extract an argument against the central question of Heidegger's philosophy: the question of being. To understand this, I examine the Kierkegaardian ideas employed by Wittgenstein and Heidegger and attempt to show that this argument can be partly understood in Kierkegaardian terms. I further argue that examining what Heidegger means by 'being' (Sein) shows that Wittgenstein's argument does not meet its target. (shrink)

What happens when we are uncertain about what we want, feel or whish for? How should we understand uncertainty in introspection? This paper reconstructs and critically assess two answers to this question frequently found in the secondary literature on Wittgenstein: indecision and self-deception (Hacker 1990, 2012; Glock 1995, 1996). Such approaches seek to explain uncertainty in introspection in a way which is completely distinct from uncertainty about the ‘outer world’. I argue that in doing so these readings fail to account (...) for the substantial role the intellect seems to play in the process of resolving such uncertainties. I then attempt to show that Wittgenstein’s remarks connecting psychological vocabulary, behaviour and public criteria (e. g. PI 2009: 580) provide alternative ways for thinking about uncertainty in introspection which allow for a substantial role of the intellect. (shrink)

Study of Wittgenstein's claim in the Preface of the Tractatus that his thoughts are unassailably true and his declaration at the end of the work that his propositions are nonsensical.

Many philosophers have assumed, without argument, that Wittgenstein influenced Austin. More often, however, this is vehemently denied, especially by those who knew Austin personally. We compile and assess the currently available evidence for Wittgenstein’s influence on Austin’s philosophy of language. Surprisingly, this has not been done before in any detail. On the basis of both textual and circumstantial evidence we show that Austin’s work demonstrates substantial engagement with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. In particular, Austin’s 1940 paper, ‘The Meaning of a Word’, (...) should be construed as a direct response to and development of ideas he encountered in Wittgenstein’s Blue Book. Moreover, we argue that Austin’s mature speech-act theory in How to Do Things with Words was also significantly influenced by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Recently, we have proposed quantum language ( or the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics). Quantum languages describe both classical and quantum systems and therefore have great power to solve almost all philosophical problems. Thus, we believe that quantum language can be regarded as the language of science. Therefore, it makes sense to study Wittgenstein's picture theory within the framework of quantum language, since Wittgenstein's language (i.e., the language that he supposed, but didn't define in his book "Tractatus (...) Logico-Philosophicus") may be a particular subclass of quantum language. In this paper, we show that a class of binary projective measurements in classical quantum language has a logical structure. And thus, the proposition that Wittgenstein studied in his book can be regarded as a binary projective measurement in classical quantum language. Therefore, we conclude that Wittgenstein's language is realized as the central part of classical quantum language. If so, we think that his picture theory should be praised not only from a philosophical point of view but also from a scientific point of view. (shrink)

The subject of this paper is not Wittgensteinian ethics but Wittgenstein’s own ethical beliefs, specifically as these are revealed in the so-called Koder diaries. While the Koder Diaries, also known as Manuscript 183, do contain the kind of thing that one would expect to find in a diary (e.g. accounts of travel and personal relationships), they also contain more obviously philosophical remarks, sometimes as reflections on these personal remarks. Wittgenstein’s diaries illustrate well a point that Iris Murdoch has emphasized, that (...) a person’s inner life can have an ethical dimension not necessarily directly related to overt action or to other people. The kind of ethical concern that we see in these diaries is one with what we might call global implications. Not in the sense that they might affect the whole planet but in the sense that, for Wittgenstein (or anyone else involved in such struggles or deliberations), they might affect every aspect of his life in the way that a religious conversion might change one’s whole life. This ethical ubiquity is another idea that Murdoch has brought to attention. (shrink)

Remodel[l]ing Reality is an inquiry into Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung and the phenomenon of installation in visual art. In a sense, both provide a perspicuous overview of a particular part of our complex world, but the nature of the overview differs. Although both generate knowledge, philosophy via the übersichtliche Darstellung gives us a view of how things stand for us, while the installation shows an unexpected, exiting point of view. The obvious we tend to forget and the ambiguity (...) of reality are related to each other in a dynamic way. It is in this reflexive dynamics that we constantly remodel our reality. Tools we use are our creative abilities and our powers of imagination. In our choices and solutions we show which aspects of reality we find important and how we communicate these values. The outcome of this investigation is a new perspective on the art of installation and a new insight in Wittgenstein's notion of übersichtliche Darstellung. Because of this combination, the book is itself an artwork: an InstallationPackage. The book is distributed by Ideabooks Amsterdam, Isbn 978 90 804240 3 6. Remodel[l]ing Reality is included in Special Collections, Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam. (shrink)

In Zettel, Wittgenstein considered a modified version of Cantor’s diagonal argument. According to Wittgenstein, Cantor’s number, different with other numbers, is defined based on a countable set. If Cantor’s number belongs to the countable set, the definition of Cantor’s number become incomplete. Therefore, Cantor’s number is not a number at all in this context. We can see some examples in the form of recursive functions. The definition "f(a)=f(a)" can not decide anything about the value of f(a). The definiton is incomplete. (...) The definition of "f(a)=1+f(a)" can not decide anything about the value of f(a) too. The definiton is incomplete.<br><br>According to Wittgenstein, the contradiction, in Cantor's proof, originates from the hidden presumption that the definition of Cantor’s number is complete. The contradiction shows that the definition of Cantor’s number is incomplete. <br><br>According to Wittgenstein’s analysis, Cantor’s diagonal argument is invalid. But different with Intuitionistic analysis, Wittgenstein did not reject other parts of classical mathematics. Wittgenstein did not reject definitions using self-reference, but showed that this kind of definitions is incomplete.<br><br>Based on Thomson’s diagonal lemma, there is a close relation between a majority of paradoxes and Cantor’s diagonal argument. Therefore, Wittgenstein’s analysis on Cantor’s diagonal argument can be applied to provide a unified solution to paradoxes. (shrink)

Wittgenstein comes up with his model simply through starting with the assumption that language can be an accurate picture of the world, and realizing the failings of that idea. This makes him a rather odd outsider in the sociology and politics of modern philosophy. He’s a trained engineer. A soldier. An architect. A logician (including being the guy who invented Truth tables for logic). In other words, a total geek. He’s still part of the analytic tradition, dismissed and rejected by (...) many in the continental tradition. But he ends up saying the kind of things that drive your average conservative culture warrior harrumphing about \"post-modernism\" and \"relativism\" up the wall. Simply because he’s thought about it a lot. -/- The other thing that’s striking is how much he is an \"anti-philosopher\". Always running away from philosophy to do other things in his life. And his work is often intended as \"therapeutic\" not trying to \"solve\" philosophical problems so much as \"cure\" us of worrying about them. He emphasizes that philosophical \"problems\" are often just misuses and misunderstandings of words rather than deeper issues. In his first philosophy, many problems come from us not understanding the meaning of the words well enough. If only we could pin them down better, the problems would disappear. In his second, the fact that we have a word for something doesn’t mean that the world really has that thing. And many philosophical problems, he asserts, are nothing but trying to take words that have a \"function\" in a particular context and abstract them out and using them in a different context where they have no useful function. (shrink)

The following contribution aims at presenting a reading of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as a kind of idealism within the Kantian and post-Kantian traditions. The goal is to argue that Wittgenstein’s position shares substantial theoretical and methodological grounds with Hegel’s idealism. The main concepts pertaining to the later Wittgenstein’s position are analyzed and understood as a form of idealism. After defending the reading against anti-idealist interpretations we argue that the kind of idealism presented clashes with central tenets of the Kantian position. (...) These points of departure are then shown to cover in a substantial manner the same kind of criticism Hegel raised against Kant. In the last section, an interpretation of central concepts of the Hegelian position is offered in order to dissolve any fundamental incompatibility with Wittgenstein’s idealism. (shrink)

In this essay I argue the extent to which meaning and judgment in aesthetics figures in Wittgenstein’s later conception of language, particularly in his conception of how philosophy might go about explaining the ordinary functioning of language. Following a review of some biographical and textual matters concerning Wittgenstein’s life with music, I outline the connection among (1) Wittgenstein’s discussions of philosophical clarity or perspicuity, (2) our attempts to give clarity to our aesthetic experiences by wording them, and (3) the clarifying (...) experience of the dawning of an aspect, which Wittgenstein pictures as the perception of an internal relation. By examining Wittgenstein’s use of “internal relation” from the Tractatus to his later writings, I come to challenge the still prevalent understanding of Wittgenstein’s appeals to grammar as an appeal to something given (e.g., to a set of grammatical rules). Instead, as I argue, Wittgensteinian appeals to grammatical criteria should be understood as modeled by the form of justification found in our conversations about art. (shrink)

In §8 of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (RFM), Appendix 3 Wittgenstein imagines what conclusions would have to be drawn if the Gödel formula P or ¬P would be derivable in PM. In this case, he says, one has to conclude that the interpretation of P as “P is unprovable” must be given up. This “notorious paragraph” has heated up a debate on whether the point Wittgenstein has to make is one of “great philosophical interest” revealing “remarkable insight” in (...) Gödel’s proof, as Floyd and Putnam suggest (Floyd (2000), Floyd (2001)), or whether this remark reveals Wittgenstein’s misunderstanding of Gödel’s proof as Rodych and Steiner argued for recently (Rodych (1999, 2002, 2003), Steiner (2001)). In the following the arguments of both interpretations will be sketched and some deficiencies will be identified. Afterwards a detailed reconstruction of Wittgenstein’s argument will be offered. It will be seen that Wittgenstein’s argumentation is meant to be a rejection of Gödel’s proof but that it cannot satisfy this pretension. (shrink)

By means of a reductio argument, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus calls into question the very idea that we can represent logical form. My paper addresses three interrelated questions: first, what conception of logical form is at issue in this argument? Second, whose conception of logic is this argument intended to undermine? And third, what could count as an adequate response to it? I show that the argument construes logical form as the universal, underlying correlation of any representation and the reality it represents. (...) I further show that the argument seeks to undermine core commitments of Frege’s and Russell’s. But the reductio, as I read it, is not intended to establish the falsity of any of their specific assumptions. Rather, its aim is to make manifest the indeterminacies that underlie the language in which these assumptions are framed, and establish the need for a transformation of that language. So understood, Wittgenstein’s argument exemplifies his idea that philosophy is not a theory, but an activity of elucidation. The interpretation I propose bears on one of the central debates in the literature, namely how we should understand Wittgenstein’s contention that his elucidations succeed despite being nonsensical. (shrink)

What's wrong with modalities in (Wittgenstein 1922)? In (Suszko 1968), the writer argued that "Wittgenstein was somewhat confused and wrong in certain points. For example, he did not see the clear-cut distinction between language (theory) and metalanguage (metatheory): a confusion between use and mention of expressions". Furthermore, a modal logic was proposed in (von Wright 1986) as depicting Wittgenstein's bipolarity thesis in a S5 frame. -/- The aim of the present paper is to deal with the specific case of (...) epistemic modal logic: such a logic of propositional attitudes assumes a philosophy of language that would violate Wittgenstein's two main assumptions. (shrink)

Wittgenstein asks: “Now what do the words of this language signify?—What is supposed to shew what they signify, if not the kind of use they have?” Might one answer that rhetorical question by giving a compositional semantics for Wittgenstein’s builder language?

In this essay, I argue that Wittgenstein attempted to clarify ethics through a procedure that, by analogy with “transcendental arguments”, I call “transcendental thought experiment”. Specifically, after offering a brief perspectival account of both transcendental arguments and transcendental thought experiments, I focus on a thought experiment proposed by Wittgenstein in his 1929 'Lecture on Ethics', arguing that it deserves the title of “transcendental”.

Editor's Intro to the journal issue. Wittgenstein's methods are more important than his solutions or views on particular problems. He also attacks processes which give rise to philosophical problems, such as Cartesian dualism and Platonism and other more narrow pictures or assumptions. His recommendations that progress be based on what we get from juxtaposing examples with philosophical temptations are still being absorbed by the discipline. This is more the case now, fifteen years aftr I wrote this introduction.

Aristotle first investigated different modes, or ways of being. Unfortunately, in the modern literature the discussion of this concept has been largely neglected. Only recently, the interest towards the concept of ways increased. Usually, it is explored in connection with the existence of universals and particulars. The approach we are going to follow in this chapter is different. It discusses Wittgenstein’s conception of higher ontological levels as ways of arranging elements of lower ontological levels. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein developed his (...) ontology of ways (Art und Weise) in six steps: (i) Constructing states of affairs out of objects; (ii) Constructing propositions out of states of affairs; (iii) Constructing propositional signs; (iv) Constructing thoughts with the help of propositional signs; (v) Constructing truth / falsity; (vi) Constructing works of art. In Philosophical Investigations he added further five ways of producing new ontological levels: (vii) the meaning of a proposition is the way in which it is verified; (viii) the child gets command on language/calculus in the way it replicates demonstrations of the teacher; (ix) the products of mind are ways of doing something; (x) an action is a way of carrying out the instructions for acting. (shrink)

This article analyses in detail Wittgenstein’s ‘Cambridge period’ from his return to Cambridge in 1929 until his decease in 1951. Within the ‘Cambridge period’, scholars usually distinguish the ‘middle’ (1929–1936) and the ‘late’ (1936–1951) periods. The trigger point of Wittgenstein’s return to Cambridge and philosophy was his visit to Brouwer’s lecture on ‘Mathematics, Science, and Language’ in Vienna in March 1928. Dutch mathematician Brouwer influenced not only Wittgenstein’s ability to do philosophy again but also the development of some of his (...) ideas. Namely, for Brouwer, language was a natural development of the social history of human beings. With the help of his friends, F. P. Ramsey, J. M. Keynes, G. E. Moore, and B. Russell, in 1929 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge. The author argues that this was the crucial turning point in his philosophy that led to the revision of some of his ideas. Wittgenstein returned from self-isolation in remote villages of Lower Austria to the intellectual academic environment, where he could discuss his ideas with intellectual interlocutors and receive their valuable remarks and comments. This article is organised in chronological order: it describes the very ‘early’ middle period of 1929–1935 involving the development of Wittgenstein’s ‘phenomenology’ and the origin of the ‘language-games’ concept in the Blue and Brown Books; 1935–1936 period of ‘romantic’ enthusiasm for Soviet Russia and a trip there; Wittgenstein’s life and work during the WWII-time; resign from teaching in Cambridge in 1947 to finally finish his Philosophical Investigations. The author suggests that the ‘romantic areal’ about the USSR was formed by Wittgenstein’s predilection for Russian poetry and literature of the nineteenth century, i.e., Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Pushkin. Analysing the development of Wittgenstein’s ideas on language in his Cambridge period, the author mentions the influence of N. Bakhtin and P. Sraffa. Also, the author touches upon the topic of the possibility of Marxism’s influence on Wittgenstein’s life and thought. (shrink)

According to an influential reading of his later philosophy, Wittgenstein thinks that nonsense can result from combining expressions in ways prohibited by the rules to which their use is subject. According to another influential reading, the later Wittgenstein thinks that nonsense only ever results from privation—that is, from a failure to assign a meaning to one or more of the relevant expressions. This chapter challenges Glock’s defence of the view that the later Wittgenstein allows for combinatorial nonsense. In doing so, (...) it defends a version of the privation view. According to it, Wittgenstein thinks that nonsense results, not so much from a failure to assign a meaning to an expression, as a failure to use an expression in a way that has a point or purpose. As the chapter shows, this interpretation is consistent with prominent themes in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, such as that meaning and explanation are coordinate notions, that for a word to have a meaning is for there to be a rule-governed practice of using it, that the rules of the practice are arbitrary, and that they determine the bounds of sense. (shrink)