Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 This article will present an interpretation of Wittgenstein ’ s understanding of the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. In extension, it will inform recent discussions regarding a special kind of nonsensicality , which forms a central part of ethical and aesthetical expressions. Instead of identity between ethics and aesthetics, we should understand the relationship in terms of interdependence . Both attitudes provide a view sub specie aeternitatis and thus permit a view of the (...) world as a whole. Employing the vocabulary of Charles Taylor and Harry Frankfurt, it must be remembered that rather than a neutral view from nowhere, such wholeness arises out of strong evaluations that are made against the backdrop of a constitutive framework of intelligibility. At this point, the epistemic gain of actualizing Wittgenstein will reveal itself: it will put us in a position where it is possible to differentiate between ethical and aesthetical forms of identification that Taylor and Frankfurt neglect. However, in order to actualize Wittgenstein ’ s ideas, it is necessary to argue that Tractatus should not be understood in a Kantian fashion as suggested by Tilghman for instance. (shrink)

Today I want to talk about an element in the milieu in which Ludwig Wittgenstein conceived the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus that has not been recognized to date: the generalization of the methodology of experimental scale models that occurred just about the time he was writing it. I find it very helpful to keep in mind how this kind of model portrays when reading the Tractatus — in particular, when reading the statements about pictures and models, such as:That a picture is a (...) fact ,That a picture is a model of reality ,That the “pictorial relationship” that makes a picture a picture is part of that picture , andThat a picture must have its pictorial form in common with reality in order to able to depict it. (shrink)

The paper investigates the role played by ethical deliberation and ethical judgment in Wittgenstein's early thought in the light of twentieth?century German legal philosophy. In particular the theories of the phenomenologists Adolf Reinach, Wilhelm Schapp, and Gerhart Husserl are singled out, as resting on ontologies which are structurally similar to that of the Tractatus: in each case it is actual and possible Sachverhalte which constitute the prime ontological category. The study of the relationship between the states of affairs depicted, e.g., (...) in the sentences of a legal trial and prior fact?complexes to which these may correspond suggests one possible connecting link between the logical and ontological sections of the Tractatus and the ethical reflections appearing at the end. It is argued that the latter can best be understood in terms of the idea of a ?last judgment? (with its associated ethical rewards and punishments) which would relate to the world as a whole as a penal trial relates to individual complexes of facts. (shrink)

Contrary to a widespread interpretation, Wittgenstein did not regard credal statements as merely metaphorical expressions of an attitude towards life. He accepted that Christian faith involves belief in God's existence. At the same time he held that although as a hypothesis, God's existence is extremely implausible, Christian faith is not unreasonable. Is that a consistent view? According to Wittgenstein, religious faith should not be seen as a hypothesis, based on evidence, but as grounded in a proto‐religious attitude, a way of (...) experiencing the world or certain aspects of it. A belief in religious metaphysics is not the basis of one's faith, but a mere epiphenomenon. Given further that religious doctrine is both falsification‐transcendent and that religious faith is likely to have beneficial psychological effects, religious doctrine can be exempt from ordinary standards of epistemic support. An unsupported religious belief need not be unreasonable. However, it is hard to see how one could knowingly have such an unsupported belief, as Wittgenstein seems to envisage. How can one believe what, at the same time, one believes is not likely to be true? This, I argue, is the unresolved tension in Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In his article “It's a Wonderful Life,” Ronald Hall connects Wittgenstein's last words with Frank Capra's 1946 film. His analysis focuses on the concept of wonder, but he misses one of the most important aspects of both the film and Wittgenstein's last words: the significance of friendship. This is philosophically (and biographically) important because it raises questions about aspect-seeing, friendship and everyday life. Wittgenstein's final words provide a striking example of the philosophical complexity of his life and work.

Bimal Krishna Matilal was interested in the paradoxes of the ineffability of mystical experiences throughout his career. He was all eager to prove that the concept of mysticism in Indian tradition had its own strong logic, which had helped its proponents overcome the charges of being ‘self-refuting’. In various articles, Matilal had analysed various formulations of the logic of ineffability in various systems of Indian philosophy and examined various ways to get out of the logical paradoxes. While discussing the paradox (...) of ineffability, he often refers to the ineffability of the mystical in the Tractatus and maintains that the Tractatus paragraphs T4.003 and 6.522 and Wittgenstein’s letter to Russell, quoted in Anscombe, ‘strike a very familiar note in the heart of the mystics’. His own view in this regard was that ‘ineffability in the sense that something is beyond the reach of all words, is impossible. For in the last analysis it is possible to speak of that which is ineffable, by the word “ineffable” itself’. He discusses also the ways how one can finally avoid the paradoxes of ultimate ineffability. His position is that ‘the so-called ineffable is not really or ultimately ineffable.’ In this paper, there will be an attempt to apply Matilal’s viewpoint on the paradox of ineffability in the Tractatus. This exploration unfolds in three main sections. Matilal’s perspective on the concept of ineffability along with the paradoxes and its solutions in various systems of Indian tradition will be highlighted in the first section and the paradox of ineffability in the Tractatus along with the controversy regarding its interpretation in the second, and finally, in the concluding section, attempts will be made to find a way out of this impasse by applying Matilal’s stance on this matter and see how it allows us to give ‘fresh answers to the questions raised in Western Philosophy’. (shrink)

This essay introduces a tension between the public Wittgenstein’s optimism about knowledge of other minds and the private Wittgenstein’s pessimism about understanding others. There are three related reasons which render the tension unproblematic. First, the barriers he sought to destroy were metaphysical ones, whereas those he struggled to overcome were psychological. Second, Wittgenstein’s official view is chiefly about knowledge while the unofficial one is about understanding. Last, Wittgenstein’s official remarks on understanding themselves fall into two distinct categories that don’t match (...) the focus of his unofficial ones. One is comprised of those remarks in the Investigations that challenge the thought that understanding is an inner mental process. The other consists primarily of those passages in PPF and On Certainty concerned with the difficulty of understanding others without immersing oneself into their form of life. In its unofficial counterpart, Wittgenstein focuses on individuals, rather than collectives. The official and the unofficial sets of remarks are united in assuming a distinction between understanding a person and understanding the meaning of their words. If to understand a language is to understand a form of life, then to understand a person is to understand a whole life. (shrink)

Notwithstanding his own spiritual inadequacies, Wittgenstein has a profound respect for those capable of living a genuinely religious life; namely, those whose “passionate,” “loving” faith demands unconditional existential commitment. In contrast, he disapproves of those who see religious belief as hypothetical, reasonable, or dependent on empirical evidence. Drawing primarily on Culture and Value, “Lectures on Religious Belief,” and On Certainty, in this essay I defend two claims: (1) that there is an unresolved tension between Wittgenstein's later descriptive-therapeutic approach and the (...) implicit normativity of his conception of genuine/passionate religious belief; and (2) that the demarcation between the latter and its pseudo-religious counterpart is itself problematic. To illustrate these claims I argue that apocalyptic Christian fundamentalism presents a significant challenge to Wittgenstein's taxonomy. Despite these shortcomings, however, I conclude by suggesting that his characterization of religious belief as a “passion” or “love” remains valuable. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s remarks on religious and magical practices are often thought to harbour troubling fideistic and relativistic views. Unsurprisingly, commentators are generally resistant to the idea that religious belief constitutes a ‘language‐game’ governed by its own peculiar ‘rules’, and is thereby insulated from the critical assessment of non‐participants. Indeed, on this fideist‐relativist reading, it is unclear how mutual understanding between believers and non‐believers (even between different sorts of believers) would be possible. In this paper I do three things: (i) show why (...) the fideist‐relativist reading of Wittgenstein is not wildly implausible (Sections 1–2); (ii) argue that, despite its initial plausibility, this reading fails to take into account Wittgenstein’s naturalism (Sections 3–4); and (iii) explain what sort of naturalism this is, and how it sheds light on Wittgenstein’s remarks on religious belief (Sections 5–6). (shrink)

Volume 51, Issue 10, September 2019, Page 981-990.

Different philosophers tried ways to restore the role of reason in ethics. This shift in the philosophical climate was influenced by--or was at least in accordance with--the thought of the later Wittgenstein. In particular, this article will consider the relevance of Wittgenstein for cognitivist views, such as that of S. Toulmin, relativist like G. Harman, and British moral realists like S. Lovibond and J. McDowell. In fact, Wittgenstein is one of the founding fathers of antifoundationalism. He gives us the hopeful (...) insight that the end of foundationalism does not necessarily imply the end of moral philosophy but must be considered a new start of it. (edited). (shrink)

The essential task of the philosophy of style is to uncover the irreducibility of the singular to any kind of universal, static structure or metalinguistic code. Style is not only a surplus element that exceeds propositional meaning, but also a clue of the ineradicable contingency of “intersubjective”‐communicational relationships. The receiver must respect the unique individuality of the sender's style as what demonstrates the cognitive inexhaustibility of the world. Consequently, philosophy can no longer regard literature as foreign and incorrigible by asserting (...) a radical difference of genre and thereby reserving truth exclusively for itself. Rather, I go on to argue, the difference is merely one of quantity. The picture of the world drawn by literature is simply fuller and richer than any comparatively monochromatic system of philosophical propositions. However, within the history of philosophy, there have been instances when the philosophical import of literature has been accorded its due. One example is the dialogical approach of early German Romanticism. The other example is a writer most frequently considered the purest thinker of philosophical sense and meaning – namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude by reading Wittgenstein as a philosopher concerned, above all, with the ineffable that style reveals. (shrink)

This article discusses the relation between the early Wittgenstein’s and Carnap’s philosophies of logic, arguing that Carnap’s position in The Logical Syntax of Language is in certain respects much closer to the Tractatus than has been recognized. In Carnapian terms, the Tractatus’ goal is to introduce, by means of quasi-syntactical sentences, syntactical principles and concepts to be used in philosophical clarification in the formal mode. A distinction between the material and formal mode is therefore already part of the Tractatus’ view, (...) and its method for introducing syntactical concepts and principles should be entirely acceptable for Carnap by his own criteria. Moreover, despite the Tractatus’ rejection of syntactical statements, there is an important correspondence between Wittgenstein’s saying-showing distinction and Carnap’s object-language-syntax-language distinction: both constitute a distinction between logico-syntactical determinations concerning language and language as determined or described by those determinations. Wittgenstein’s distinction therefore constitutes a precursor of the object-language syntax-language distinction which the latter in a certain sense affirms, rather than simply contradicting it. The saying-showing distinction agrees with Carnap’s position also in marking logic as something that isn’t true/false about either language or reality, which is a conception that underlies Carnap’s principle of tolerance. (shrink)

This research examines the ethical dimensions of ethical thought aimed at reflecting fundamentals or leading principles of the production and reproduction of knowledge in science and tertiary education. To achieve research goals, the author of this article evaluates the key assumption that statements in the ethics of science and education are transcendental but do not require a reference to a transcendental or metaphysical subject. The author adheres to the stances by Wittgenstein and Moore and defines ethics in terms of the (...) general inquiry into what is good. The ways of forming ethical statements are compared with the main provisions of Merton’s theory of scientific ethos and its effects on the understanding patterns of the production and reproduction of knowledge. A comparison of general types of ethical inquiry and the theory of scientific ethos helps to present the theory of scientific ethos in terms of middle-range ethical theory. The comparison of transcendental statements in ethics and the points of the theory of scientific ethos is related to the issues of the philosophy of education. The relation is due to the exploring the forms and bases of reproduction of scientific society through tertiary education. The production of knowledge in science generates forms of judgments while education reproduces their ethically acceptable patterns of obtaining and applying. As a result, ethical transcendentalism without reference to a transcendental subject inevitably emphasizes the dialogical design of teaching. This design includes diversification of norms and values in science. Diversity as such ensures collective methods of decision-making and opposes any authoritarianism in education. (shrink)

The paper undertakes an in-depth analysis of the early phase of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s writings in Notebooks, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus and “A Lecture on Ethics” in order to present an exposition of some of the central themes, and to extrapolate his views on ethics. To this end, the paper analyses Wittgenstein’s understanding of the nature of philosophical inquiry, significance and centrality of ethics, the model of language, saying/showing distinction, notions of will, happiness, good and evil, use of relative and absolute values (...) and several others. Early Wittgenstein’s views on ethics are peculiar in so far as they are implied by his views on language with the study of which he was centrally concerned. He claims that language, thought and reality are isomorphic; therefore, language is the basis of all speculation about morality. In TLP, Ethics is transcendental and transgresses the limits of language. The paper begins with a discussion of the importance of ethics, as explicated in his early writings. (shrink)

Careful readers of Wittgenstein tend to overlook the significance his engineering education had for his philosophy; this despite Georg von Wright’s stern admonition that “the two most important facts to remember about Wittgenstein were, firstly, that he was Viennese, and, secondly, that he was an engineer.” Such oversight is particularly tempting for those of us who come to philosophy late, having first been schooled in math and science, because our education tricks us into thinking we understand engineering by extension. But (...) we do not. I will illustrate this common tendency to misread Wittgenstein by examining three engineering concepts that have little significance for science but played important roles in Wittgenstein’s philosophical thinking. These are: method of projection, dynamical similarity, and satisfactoriness. The upshot of this analysis will be a strong challenge to the myth of his putative fideism because neither fideism nor its contrary simply would have occurred to Wittgensteinthe-engineer. (shrink)

The later Wittgenstein famously holds that an understanding which tries to run up against the limits of language bumps itself and results in nothing but plain nonsense. Therefore, the task of philosophy cannot be to create an ‘ideal’ language so as to produce a ‘real’ understanding in the first place; its aim must be to remove particular misunderstandings by clarifying the use of our ordinary language. Accordingly, Wittgenstein opposes both the sublime terms of traditional philosophy and the formal frameworks of (...) modern logics---and adheres to a pointedly casual, colloquial style in his own philosophizing. However, there seems to lurk a certain inconsistency in Wittgenstein’s ordinary language approach: his philosophical remarks frequently remain enigmatic, and many of the terms Wittgenstein coins appear to be highly technical. Thus, one might wonder whether his verdicts on the limits of language and on philosophical jargons might not be turned against his own practice. The present essay probes the extent to which the contravening tendencies in Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy might be reconciled. Section 2 sketches Wittgenstein’s general approach to philosophy and tracks the special role that the language of everyday life occupies therein. Section 3 reconstructs Wittgenstein’s preferred method for philosophy, which he calls perspicuous representation, and argues that this method implements an aesthetic conception of philosophy and a poetic approach to philosophical language, in which philosophical insights are not explicitly stated, but mediated through well-worded and creatively composed descriptions. Section 4 discusses how Wittgenstein’s philosophical poetics relates to artificial terminologies and grammars in philosophy and science. (shrink)

This paper offers a novel interpretation of Wittgenstein’s early conception of ethics and the good ethical life. Initially, it critically examines the widespread view according to which Wittgenstein’s early conception of ethics and the good ethical life involves having a certain ethical attitude to the world. It points out that this reading incurs in some mistakes and shortcomings, thereby suggesting the need for an alternative reading that avoids and amends these inadequacies. Subsequently, it sets out to offer said reading. Specifically, (...) it is argued that the good ethical life is predicated on a good exercise of the ethical will and solving the riddle of life, both of which demand a certain view of, and not an attitude to, the world. This view is the view of the world sub specie aeterni. (shrink)

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)

RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é mostrar que as interpretações "tradicional" e "resoluta" não livraram o "Tractatus" da aparente autoderrota paradoxal. Argumento que essas leituras apresentam apenas uma nova roupagem ao paradoxo. A leitura "tradicional" de Hacker acaba atribuindo uma conspiração metafísica ao "Tractatus", o que é incompatível com os objetivos do livro. A leitura "resoluta" de Diamond e Conant atribui a Wittgenstein uma conspiração autoral, o que contradiz suas opiniões sobre autoria e método. Com base nas dificuldades encontradas em (...) ambos os lados do debate atual, concluo este artigo propondo vários requisitos que a correta interpretação do "Tractatus" deve preencher. (shrink)

In "Culture and Value" Wittgenstein remarks that the truly "religious man" thinks himself to be, not merely "imperfect" or "ill," but wholly "wretched." While such sentiments are of obvious biographical interest, in this paper I show why they are also worthy of serious philosophical attention. Although the influence of Wittgenstein's thinking on the philosophy of religion is often judged negatively (as, for example, leading to quietist and/or fideist-relativist conclusions) I argue that the distinctly ethical conception of religion (specifically Christianity) that (...) Wittgenstein presents should lead us to a quite different assessment. In particular, his preoccupation with the categorical nature of religion suggests a conception of "genuine" religious belief which disrupts both the economics of eschatological-salvationist hope, and the traditional ethical precept that "ought implies can." In short, what Wittgenstein presents is a sketch of a religion without recompense. (shrink)

RésuméQue voulait dire Wittgenstein lorsqu'ilaremarqué: «Je ne suispas un homme religieux, maisje nepuis m'empecher de voir tout problème d'un point de me religieux»? La thèse de Malcom, c'est que cette remarque pointe du doigt les analogies entre la perspective philosophique de Wittgenstein et une vision religieuse de la vie. En revanche, Winch fait valoir que la remarque de Wittgenstein peut être interprétée comme ne faisant pas référence aux problèmes exclusivement philosophiques; Wittgenstein exprimait plutôt sa propre perspective quasi religieuse sur la (...) vie et soulignait l 'importance spirituelle de la clarté philosophique. Contrairement à Malcom et Winch, jefais valoir qu'il faut plutôt considérer que cette remarque signifie en gros: «Je ne suispas religieux moi-même, mais quand je réfléchis philosophiquement à ce que cela signifie pour quelqu'un de faire face à un certain type de problemes, par exemple les dilemmes moraux et autres décisions difficiles dans la vie, il importe de reconnoître la diversité des perspectives possibles d'oú ces problèmes peuvent être vus. Ce faisant, je nepuis m'empêcher d'imaginer comment de tels problèmes apparaîtraient depuis la perspective de quelqu'un de religieux.». (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein has often been called a quietist. His work has inspired a rich and varied array of theories in moral philosophy. Some prominent meta-ethicists have also been called quietists, or ‘relaxed’ as opposed to ‘robust’ realists, sometimes with explicit reference to Wittgenstein in attempts to clarify their views. In this chapter, I compare and contrast these groups of theories and draw out their importance for contemporary meta-ethical debate. They represent countercultures to contemporary meta-ethics. That is, they reject in different (...) ways one or more of the common assumptions that, whilst not universally shared, shape how to understand and engage in contemporary meta-ethical debate. Despite striking similarities, I argue that the ‘quietist’ label has obscured the views it is used to describe, the crucial differences between them, and the challenge that they offer to the predominant culture of meta-ethical enquiry. That challenge is this: there are plausible different ways of understanding and doing meta-ethics to those of the meta-ethical orthodoxy. We ignore such heterodoxy at our own peril. (shrink)

It is often claimed that certain remarks by Wittgenstein reveal him to have been an unsympathetic reader of Shakespeare and an unappreciative judge of the latter’s achievements. In the present paper, I attempt to show that this sort of observation is not only wrong but due to an inadequate perspective. An examination of the relevant remarks may bring to light a number of more or less interesting principles of evaluation, or aesthetic maxims and appraisals, but these do not say much (...) about Shakespeare’s works, nor are the meant to be instructive in this way. What Wittgenstein’s remarks are really about is his own intellectual physiognomy: it is by way of contrast, by comparing certain features of Shakespeare with what he supposes to be characteristic of himself, that he hopes to learn about the limits and potentialities of his own personality. (shrink)

G. F. Stout is famous as an early twentieth century proselyte for abstract particulars, or tropes as they are now often called. He advanced his version of trope theory to avoid the excesses of nominalism on the one hand and realism on the other. But his arguments for tropes have been widely misconceived as metaphysical, e.g. by Armstrong. In this paper, I argue that Stout’s fundamental arguments for tropes were ideological and epistemological rather than metaphysical. He moulded his scheme to (...) fit what is actually given to us in perception, arguing that our epistemic practices would break down in an environment where only universals were given to us. (shrink)

Many theorists have focused on Wittgenstein’s use of examples, but I argue that examples form only half of his method. Rather than continuing the disjointed style of his Cambridge lectures, Wittgenstein returns to the techniques he employed while teaching elementary school. Philosophical Investigations trains the reader as a math class trains a student—‘by means of examples and by exercises’ (§208). Its numbered passages, carefully arranged, provide a series of demonstrations and practice problems. I guide the reader through one such series, (...) demonstrating how the exercises build upon one another and give us ample opportunity to hone our problem-solving skills. Through careful practice, we learn to pass the test Wittgenstein poses when he claims that something is ‘easy to imagine’ (§19). Whereas other critics have viewed the Investigations as merely a diagnosis of our philosophical delusions, I claim that Wittgenstein also writes a prescription for our disease: Do your exercises. (shrink)