Online research in philosophy

In Rudolph Camap (,) established himself as a professor in Vienna. The philosophical atmosphere awaiting him there was not new to him: the year before he ...

Gottlob Frege and Ludwig Wittgenstein (the later Wittgenstein) are often seen as polar opposites with respect to their fundamental philosophical outlooks: Frege as a paradigmatic "realist", Wittgenstein as a paradigmatic "anti-realist". This opposition is supposed to find its clearest expression with respect to mathematics: Frege is seen as the "arch-platonist", Wittgenstein as some sort of "radical anti-platonist". Furthermore, seeing them as such fits nicely with a widely shared view about their relation: the later Wittgenstein is supposed to have developed his ideas in direct opposition to Frege. The purpose of this paper is to challenge these standard assumptions. I will argue that Frege's and Wittgenstein's basic outlooks have something crucial in common; and I will argue that this is the result of the positive influence Frege had on Wittgenstein.

Susan Stebbing’s paper “Logical Positivism and Analysis” (March 1933) was unusually critical of Wittgenstein. It put up a sharp opposition between Cambridge analytic philosophy of Moore and Russell and the positivist philosophy of the Vienna Circle to which she included Wittgenstein from 1929–32. Above all, positivists were interested in analyzing language, analytic philosophers in analyzing facts. Moreover, whereas analytic philosophers were engaged in directional analysis which seeks to illuminate the multiplicity of the analyzed facts, positivists aimed at final analysis which “proves” that there are simples. Stebbing’s paper urged Wittgenstein to recast his philosophy and 1933 abandon those components of it that linked him to the Vienna Circle.

The Institute Vienna Circle held a conference in Vienna in 2003, Cambridge and Vienna a?

I argue that Wittgenstein’s short-lived verificationism (c.1929-30) differed from that of his contacts in the Vienna Circle in not being a reductionist view. It lay the groundwork for his later views that the meaning of a word is determined by its use and that certain "propositions of the form of empirical propositions" (On Certainty, §§96, 401, 402) act as "norm[s] of description" (On Certainty,§§167, 321). He gave it up once he realized that it contradicted his rejection of logical atomism, and that he ever held such a view at all says something about his respect for the leader of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick.

Book Information The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle. The Voices of Wittgenstein: The Vienna Circle Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Waismann , ed. Gordon Baker , London : Routledge , 2003 , 528 , US$100 ( cloth ) Edited by Gordon Baker . By Ludwig Wittgenstein. and Friedrich Waismann. Routledge. London. Pp. 528. US$100 (cloth:).