InThe Education of the Human Race, G. E. Lessing helps his readers understand why the propositions of the Old Testament are pseudo-propositions, or why they do not resemble the significant propositions of natural science but thetautologicalpropositions of mathematics and of logic. That is, the so-called propositions of the Old Testament do not teach readers whether what actually happens is this or that; rather what they teach us is to imagine expressions by substitution in such a way as to throw their (...) structure into relief. One of Lessing's most attentive readers was Wittgenstein. Or perhaps only Wittgenstein would have been able to grasp so immediately Lessing's insight that the tautological or pseudo-propositions of the Old Testament invite thinkingonlywhen readers use them to understand ‘what is the case’ in the pictures the propositions have – logically – constructed. Thus in this essay I use Wittgenstein's reading of Lessing to throw light on his work in theTractatus. Rather than take up the new logician's interest in completely analyzing expressions, Wittgenstein insists in theTractatusthat the expressions we use, even those that seem to be propositions or that contain assertions, are in fact designed to be elucidatorywithoutsaying anything about the nature of the subjects that figure in them. Wittgenstein's great insight was to see that the propositional signs of our language are able to bring something to mindwithoutsaying what is a representation of what. (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)

This exegesis questions and explores the types of identities that are emerging as a result of human engagement with contemporary communications and media technology. These identities are communicated, shaped and defined by the way we appropriate and engage with a smorgasbord of communications and media consumption technologies which merge in our imaginations to form a technosocial mediascape. As artist and teacher, consumer and prosumer, I participate in the technosocial mediascape, along with colleagues, students, artists, friends and family members. As we (...) produce, communicate and ultimately co-create that technosocial environment, how are we changed by this experience? We contribute to a diverse and globally circulating, but paradoxically transient parade of data and media that apparatuses and humans together bring into existence. How does this mediascape impact on human ontology and sociology? What are the different ‘positions’—relationships with the mediascape—that emerge? My method derives from analysis of my own experience as an engaged and flexible ‘position-taker’ within the technosocial mediascape. I analyse my own creative practice with reference to a range of modernist, postmodernist and media theories. The technosocial enshrines the idea that technology and human behaviour are not separable, and draws on many theoretical sources, including phenomenology, the philosophy of language, design theory and digital media theory. All media, and mediums, are technosocial, because they impact on the praxis of identity. However, a range of contemporary media and mediums are more explicitly technosocial, and that is where my focus lies. I will suggest that the role of language in technosocial contexts is peculiar, important and under-theorised. Our ‘linguistic apparatuses’ offer an alternate concept of technology to the ‘heavy modernism’ of Martin Heidegger. I will explore ways in which technosocial engagement privileges fluid identities which drift in and out of different but co-existing realities. Various types of ‘immersion’—some neo-baroque and some neo-romantic—contribute to technosocially-engaged identity construction. Thus, our engagement with the technosocial mediascape challenges received ideas about personal identity, and indeed, the nature of the real. (shrink)