Wittgenstein on the Chain of Reasons

Wittgenstein-Studien 7 (1):105-130 (2016)
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Abstract

In this paper, I examine Wittgenstein’s conception of reason and rationality through the lens of his conception of reasons. Central in this context, I argue, is the image of the chain, which informs not only his methodology in the form of the chain-method, but also his conception of reasons as linking up immediately, like the links of a chain. I first provide a general sketch of what reasons are on Wittgenstein’s view, arguing that giving reasons consists in making thought and action intelligible by delineating reasoning routes; that something is a reason not in virtue of some intrinsic property, but in virtue of its role; and that citing something as a reason characterises it in terms of the rational relations it stands in according to context-dependent norms. I then argue that on Wittgenstein’s view, we misconceive chains of reasons if we think of them on the model of chains of causes. Chains of reasons are necessarily finite, because they are anchored in and held in place by our reason-giving practices, and it is in virtue of their finitude that chains of reasons can guide, justify and explain. I argue that this liberates us from the expectation that one should be able to give reasons for everything, but that it limits the reach of reasons by tying them to particular reasoning-practices that they cannot themselves justify. I end by comparing and reconciling Wittgenstein’s dichotomy between chains of reasons and chains of causes with seemingly competing construals of the dichotomy, and I clarify its relation to the dichotomy between explanation and justification.

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Matthieu Queloz
University of Bern

Citations of this work

The Ethics of Conceptualization: A Needs-Based Approach.Matthieu Queloz - forthcoming - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams’s Debt to Wittgenstein.Matthieu Queloz & Nikhil Krishnan - forthcoming - In Marcel van Ackeren & Matthieu Queloz (eds.), Bernard Williams on Philosophy and History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Left Wittgensteinianism.Matthieu Queloz & Damian Cueni - 2021 - European Journal of Philosophy 29 (4):758-777.
Nietzsche’s Pragmatic Genealogy of Justice.Matthieu Queloz - 2017 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (4):727-749.

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References found in this work

Critique of Pure Reason.Immanuel Kant - 1998 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Edited by J. M. D. Meiklejohn. Translated by Paul Guyer & Allen W. Wood.
Making it Explicit.Isaac Levi & Robert B. Brandom - 1996 - Journal of Philosophy 93 (3):145.
Kinds of Reasons: An Essay in the Philosophy of Action.Maria Alvarez - 2010 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.

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