Online research in philosophy

This paper discusses Wittgenstein's ideas about the relation between thought, neurophysiology and language, and about the mental capacities of non-linguistic animals. It deals with his initial espousal and later rejection of a 'language of thought', his arguments against the idea that thought requires a medium of images or words, his reasons for resisting the encephalocentric conception of the mind which dominates contemporary philosophy of mind, his mature views about the connection between thought and language, and his remarks about animals. The aim is not just to get a clear picture of Wittgenstein's position, but also to contrast it with contemporary approaches such as those of Fodor and Searle. While rejecting some of Wittgenstein's claims about the role of the brain, I defend his basic idea, namely that the capacity for entertaining a thought is conceptually tied to the capacity for displaying that thought in behaviour, rather than to the possession of language as such or to the occurrence of specific neurophysiological phenomena.

A commonplace in contemporary philosophy is that mental content has normative properties. A number of writers associate this view to the idea that the normativity of content is essentially connected to its social character. I agree with the first thesis, but disagree with the second. The paper examines three kinds of views according to which the norms of thought and content are social: Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations, Davidson’s triangulation argument, and Brandom’s inferential pragmatics, and criticises each. It is argued that there are objective conceptual norms constitutive of mental content, but that these are not essentially social.

General statements have been the chief subject matter of logic since Aristotle’s syllogistic. They have also been a fundamental concern of metaphysics, though only since Frege invented modern quantification theory. Indeed, logicians and even metaphysicians seldom ask what, if anything, general statements correspond to in the world. But Frege and Russell did, and the question became a major theme in Wittgenstein’s early (pre-1929) and Gustav Bergmann’s later (post- 1959) works. All four were aware that, as Bergmann put it in his posthumously published New Foundations of Ontology, there could not be any laws of nature if generality were not in the world.[i] Generality must be in the world if the world is at all how science, indeed any cognition beyond that of babes, takes it to be. This is why all four were also aware of the tie of the topic to what became known as the realism/antirealism issue.[ii].

For Frege’s general views about truth the standard reference is the first couple of pages of ‘The Thought’. Less attention has been paid to a short passage in ‘On Sense and Reference’ – in, fact, only one paragraph long – where Frege argues indirectly for the view that the relation between the thought and the True is an instance of the relation between sense and reference. He argues for this by discrediting the alternative view that it is an instance of the relation between “subject and predicate”. Here is the paragraph: One might be tempted to regard the relation of the thought to the True not as that of sense to reference, but rather as that of subject to predicate. One can, indeed, say: ‘The thought, that 5 is a prime number, is true’. But closer examination shows that nothing more has been said than in the simple sentence ‘5 is a prime number’. The truth claim arises in each case from the form of the declarative sentence, and when the latter lacks its usual force, e.g. in the mouth of an actor upon stage, even the sentence ‘The thought that 5 is a prime number is true’ contains only a thought, and indeed the same thought as the simple ‘5 is a prime number’. It follows that the relation of the thought to the True may not be compared with that of subject and predicate. Subject and predicate (understood in the logical sense) are indeed elements of thoughts; they stand on the same level for knowledge. By combining subject and predicate, one reaches only a thought, never passes from sense to reference, never from thought to its truth value. One moves at the same level but never advances from one level to the next. A truth value cannot be part of a thought, any more than, say, the Sun can, for it is not a sense but an object. (Frege 1892, pp 34-35). Two subordinate, but still major, positive ideas are expressed in this passage.

Structure and content of the philosophical investigations -- Wittgenstein's metaphilosophy -- The method of description -- Wittgenstein's distinctive arguments : from mistake to paradox -- Two domains : linguistic mastery vs. initiate learning -- The structure of the book -- Playing the game -- The Fregean picture of language -- Wittgenstein's rejection of Frege's idea -- Builders game : language or signaling? -- Dummett's challenge : sense vs. force -- The domestication of reference -- The problem of normative similarity 1 : ostension -- Rejection of Quine's picture of language -- Objects and paradigms -- Ostensive teaching and social practices -- Logical form and the paradox of thought -- The subliming of logic -- Frege's idea and the paradox of thought -- Davidson's challenge : meaning and logical form -- The limits of systematicity -- Meaning and the paradox of interpretation -- The problem of normative similarity 2 : rules -- Two pleas for interpretation -- The community view and reductionism -- The individualist view and mystification normativity and the threat of regularism -- Rules and regularities -- The public basis of normativity -- The social basis of normativity : the negative argument -- The social basis of normativity : the positive argument -- Necessity and the threat of psychologism -- Two forms of holism -- Stage-setting : conventions without decisions -- Background technique : necessity without metaphysics -- Normativity and "psychologized" necessity -- Learning, trust, and certainty -- The paradoxes of consciousness -- The problem of normative similarity 3 : consciousness -- The epistemology of subjectivity : paradox of self-knowledge -- The ontology of subjectivity : paradox of sensation -- Cartesian thought experiments and the expressivist view -- Criteria, deception, and the new problem of other minds.

One particular topic in the literature on Frege’s conception of sense relates to two apparently contradictory theses held by Frege: the isomorphism of thought and language on one hand and the expressibility of a thought by different sentences on the other. I will divide the paper into five sections. In (1) I introduce the problem of the tension in Frege’s thought. In (2) I discuss the main attempts to resolve the conflict between Frege’s two contradictory claims, showing what is wrong with some of them. In (3), I analyze where, in Frege’s writings and discussions on sense identity, one can find grounds for two different conceptions of sense. In (4) I show how the two contradictory theses held by Frege are connected with different concerns, compelling Frege to a constant oscillation in terminology. In (5) I summarize two further reasons that prevented Frege from making the distinction between two conceptions of sense clear: (i) the antipsychologism problem and (ii) the overlap of traditions in German literature contemporary to Frege about the concept of value. I conclude with a hint for a reconstruction of the Fregean notion of ‘thought’ which resolves the contradiction between his two theses.

Thought's Footing is an enquiry into the relationship between the ways things are and the way we think and talk about them. It is also a study of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: Charles Travis develops his account of certain key themes into a unified view of the work as a whole. The central question is: how does thought get its footing? How can the thought that things are a certain way be connected to things being that way?

Throughout Wittgenstein had Frege in mind. We should too, to understand him. This is as true for Philosophical Investigations as for the Tractatus. In fact, the later work is, in an important way, closer to Frege than the first—even though the Investigations makes a target of what seems a central Fregean idea. It directs Frege’s own ideas at that target, using something deeply right in Frege to undo a misreading of what, rightly read, are mere truisms.

What laws of logic say -- Frege's target -- The twilight of empiricism -- Psychologism -- Morally alien thought -- To represent as so -- The proposition's progress -- Truth and merit -- The shape of the conceptual -- Thought's social nature -- Faust's way.