Abstract

To be asked to provide a short paper on Wittgenstein's views on mathematical proof is to be given a tall order . Close to one half of Wittgenstein's writings after 1929 concerned mathematics, and the roots of his discussions, which contain a bewildering variety of underdeveloped and sometimes conflicting suggestions, go deep to some of the most basic and difficult ideas in his later philosophy. So my aims in what follows are forced to be modest. I shall sketch an intuitively attractive philosophy of mathematics and illustrate Wittgenstein's opposition to it. I shall explain why, contrary to what is often supposed, that opposition cannot be fully satisfactorily explained by tracing it back to the discussions of following a rule in the Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics . Finally, I shall try to indicate very briefly something of the real motivation for Wittgenstein's more strikingly deflationary suggestions about mathematical proof, and canvass a reason why it may not in the end be possible to uphold them.