Abstract

Most commentators see Wittgenstein’s Zettel 608 as suggesting that language and thought might arise out of chaos at the neural center—but this contradicts Wittgenstein’s signature view that philosophers must not advance theories. Following Wittgenstein’s remark to Drury that he cannot help looking at problems from a religious point of view, the paper argues that Zettel 608 employs religious creation language of the sort found in Augustine to suggest a new paradigm in the philosophies of language and mind—that language and thought arise, not out of neural processes, but out of the “chaos” of actions at the center of human forms of life.

pdf

Share