In this important study, Michael Luntley offers a compelling reading of Wittgenstein’s account of meaning and intentionality, based upon a unifying theme in the early and later philosophies. A compelling reading of Wittgenstein’s account of meaning and intentionality. Offers an important and original reading of Wittgenstein’s key texts. Based upon a unifying theme in Wittgenstein’s early and later philosophies.

This text gives voice to the idea that the study of the philosophy of thought and language is more than a specialism, but rather lies at the very heart of the ...

We argue that the debate about the normativity of belief thesis has been hampered by the slogan, ‘belief aims at truth’. We show that the slogan provides no content to the normativity of belief. The slogan encourages formulations of the norm as a prescriptive norm. There are well-known problems with such formulations. We provide a new formulation of the thesis as a prohibitive norm. This captures the key intuition most normativists about belief want to endorse.

Some philosophers of education think that there is a pedagogically informative concept of training that can be gleaned from Wittgenstein's later writings: training as initiation into a form of life. Stickney, in 'Training and Mastery of Techniques in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: A response to Michael Luntley'takes me to task for ignoring this concept. In this essay I argue that there is no such concept to be ignored. I start by noting recent developments in Wittgenstein scholarship that raise serious issues about (...) how we should handle the translation of Arbrichtung and arbrichten. I then concentrate on the substantive philosophical issues about the very idea that training can have a pedagogically productive role in education. I show that what work training does is a function of the prior skill set of the trainee. This means that we have to endorse some form of rationalism and acknowledge that the learner can only respond to training if they already possess sufficient mental equipment to generate the appropriate responses. (shrink)

It is sometimes said that experts know and decide 'in the moment', not by theoretical or propositionally articulated reflection. What differentiates expert from novice is not that the former know a lot more than the latter, but that their knowledge and the way they use it is qualitatively different. Although this idea is common in the education literature, especially the literature on professional education, it has received little sustained philosophical treatment. I shall argue that the idea of a distinct expert (...) epistemology is not warranted. I argue that what differentiates the epistemic standpoint of experts is not what or how they know, let alone how they deploy knowledge in decision-making, but their capacity for learning. This capacity for learning is plausibly a function of their epistemic station broadly conceived, in particular the nature of their capacities for attention. (shrink)

This paper defends an epistemic conservatism - propositional knowing-that suffices for capturing all the fine details of the knowledge of experienced nurses that depends on the complex ways in which they are embedded in shared fields of activity. I argue against the proliferation of different ways of knowing associated with the work of Dreyfus and Benner. I show how propositional knowledge can capture the detail of the phenomenology that motivates the Dreyfus/Benner proliferation.

: I present an argument for the existence of nonconceptual representational content. The argument is compatible with McDowell's defence of conceptualism against those arguments for nonconceptual content that draw upon claims about the fine‐grainedness of experience. I present a case for nonconceptual content that concentrates on the idea that experience can possess representational content that cannot perform the function of conceptual content, namely figure in the subject's reasons for belief and action. This sort of argument for nonconceptual content is best (...) achieved with examples from auditory perception, especially our perception of music. (shrink)

In this paper I take up Peters' invitation to think of education in terms of initiation. I argue that the concept of initiation demands much closer scrutiny and analysis in order to provide a substantive thesis about education. A key challenge concerns how we conceive of the initiate. The very idea of initiation suggests that, in some interesting sense, the pupil qua initiate joins in learning activities; their role is more than that of passive recipient of values and belief. But (...) it is a substantive challenge to give a principled account of the trajectory from initiate to full member of a learning community. It requires that we take seriously the question: ‘How can a pupil be engaged in something that they do not yet understand?’. This can be taken as an abstract philosophical question—a ‘How possible’ question closely connected to the paradox of learning—and also as an empirical question about the preferred specifics of a pedagogy for engaging learners. I sketch options for answering the first and review how my preferred option segues into the details of an answer to the latter. (shrink)

In this paper I show how the way experience presents things to us can be treated without attributing a representational content to experience. The basic claim that experience can present us with more things than the range of things available to us in thought is neutral with respect to the choice between a content account of experience and a naïve content-free account. I show how Meyer's theory of expectations in accounting for our experience of music supports the naïve account. Expectations (...) provide an account of the conditions that enable things to be salient in experience as targets for attention. Expectations do not provide a content to experience. (shrink)

: I present an argument for the existence of nonconceptual representational content. The argument is compatible with McDowell's defence of conceptualism against those arguments for nonconceptual content that draw upon claims about the fine‐grainedness of experience. I present a case for nonconceptual content that concentrates on the idea that experience can possess representational content that cannot perform the function of conceptual content, namely figure in the subject's reasons for belief and action. This sort of argument for nonconceptual content is best (...) achieved with examples from auditory perception, especially our perception of music. (shrink)

Conceptual development requires learning. It requires learning to make discriminations that were previously unavailable to the subject. Notwithstanding the descriptions of learning available in the psychological and educational literature, there is no account available that shows that it is so much as possible. There can be no such account unless there is an answer to Jerry Fodor's paradox of learning. On our current understanding of concept acquisition, there is no such thing as learning. In this paper I explore a way (...) of avoiding this conclusion. The enquiry is foundational, an enquiry into the very possibility of learning and development. The account of learning that I sketch has, however, clear consequences for our basic ideas about education. (shrink)

Conceptual development requires learning. It requires learning to make discriminations that were previously unavailable to the subject. Notwithstanding the descriptions of learning available in the psychological and educational literature, there is no account available that shows that it is so much as possible. There can be no such account unless there is an answer to Jerry Fodor's paradox of learning. On our current understanding of concept acquisition, there is no such thing as learning. In this paper I explore a way (...) of avoiding this conclusion. The enquiry is foundational, an enquiry into the very possibility of learning and development. The account of learning that I sketch has, however, clear consequences for our basic ideas about education. (shrink)

Some philosophers of education think that there is a pedagogically informative concept of training that can be gleaned from Wittgenstein's later writings: training as initiation into a form of life. Stickney, in ‘Training and Mastery of Techniques in Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy: A response to Michael Luntley’takes me to task for ignoring this concept. In this essay I argue that there is no such concept to be ignored. I start by noting recent developments in Wittgenstein scholarship that raise serious issues about (...) how we should handle the translation of Arbrichtung and arbrichten. I then concentrate on the substantive philosophical issues about the very idea that training can have a pedagogically productive role in education. I show that what work training does is a function of the prior skill set of the trainee. This means that we have to endorse some form of rationalism and acknowledge that the learner can only respond to training if they already possess sufficient mental equipment to generate the appropriate responses. (shrink)

In this paper I outline an answer to the following question: What are the abilities that make you the sort of subject who can learn, who can acquire new concepts, new skills? There are many traits that matter in providing an answer. But I want to suggest that the ability for creative and imaginative engagement with and sustenance of the playful patterns of our aesthetic experience is core. I identify a core sense of play that fills this role. Play's the (...) thing that makes learning possible. The ability to imaginatively explore non concept-involving patterns to experience—the aesthetics of experience—is foundational for learning and should be at the heart of any serious pedagogy. (shrink)

Abstract I argue for a form of particularism from a reading of Wittgenstein's critique of the idea that word use is governed by rules. In place of the idea that word use is driven by rules, I show how the patterns of word use, in virtue of which we express our reasons, emerge from our ongoing practice, including our practice of seeing things as similar. I argue that the notion of seeing the similarities is primitive for Wittgenstein. The remark, ?this (...) and similar things are called ?games?? does not signal a form of ignorance. It signals the constitutive role that speakers, as judges, have to play in the metaphysics of the patterns of word use. (shrink)

This paper argues that sociocultural accounts of learning fail to answer the key question about learning—how is it possible? Accordingly, we should adopt an individualist bootstrapping methodology in providing a theory of learning. Such a methodology takes seriously the idea that learning is staged and distinguishes between a non-comprehending engagement with things and a comprehending engagement. It suggests that, in the light of recent work in psychology with insights from Wittgenstein, there is rich scope for a bootstrapping account of learning. (...) The paper also argues that sociocultural approaches when pushed, either require some such bootstrapping account, or they collapse into an obscure Ficthean metaphysics in which individual abilities are ‘summoned into being’ by the attitudes of others. (shrink)

Here is a distinction that appears very simple, looks compelling and seems to be deeply rooted in our reflections on learning. 1 The distinction is between activities of learning that involve training and those that involve reasoning. In the former, the pupil is a passive recipient of habits of mind and action. The mechanism by which they acquire these habits is mimesis, not reasoning. In contrast, learning by reasoning involves considerable mental activity by the pupil who has to work out (...) what to think and do. The very mechanism by which the pupil learns is her own capacity to reason, to things work out for herself. In this paper I argue that there is no basis for this distinction. I argue that, contrary to the dominant empiricist thinking about such things, learning by reasoning is the only credible form of learning. I start with a brief characterisation of the distinction and an account of why it seems so compelling. In §2 I review the empirical evidence from developmental psychology for a rationalist account of language learning as learning by reasoning. In §§3 and 4 I provide a philosophical argument against the place of training and in favour of a rationalist model of learning by reasoning. (shrink)

Both Wittgenstein and Dewey have a role for the concept of skills and tech-niques in their understanding of practices and thereby the possession of concepts. Skills are typically acquired through training. It can seem, however, that their respective appeals to practice are dissimilar: Dewey’s appeal is, like Peirce’s, programmatic. It is meant to do philosophical work. In contrast, for Wittgenstein, the appeal to practice can seem a primitive, something that is meant to put an end to philosophical work. I argue (...) that Witt-genstein’s appeal to practice is much closer to Dewey’s. The argument arises out of diffi-culties with Wittgenstein’s concept of training. Wittgenstein’s concept of training is inad-equate for bridging the trajectory from initial training to the acquisition of skills that are second nature. The latter seems required for his appeal to practice and the way that grasp of concepts is embedded our practices of going on. The inadequacy of Wittgenstein’s concept of training renders the idea of such a trajectory incoherent, for it manifests a real dilemma about how to understand the transition from rote repetitive training to mastery of skillful activity. I show how we can make sense of the role that training plays in develop-ing skillful activity and how by repetitive training we acquire new skills. The solution to the dilemma comes from acknowledging a point that Wittgenstein shares with Dewey concerning the role of selective attention. By acknowledging the role that attention plays in extending the operation of skills, we can make sense of the acquisition of new skills and provide a granularity to the concept of practice that makes Wittgenstein’s appeal to practice more akin to Dewey’s: a programmatic concept rather than a primitive. Practice is, for Wittgenstein, something to be studied and described in a detail that does explanato-ry work. Furthermore, the account has a number of points of contact with Dewey. (shrink)

Postmodernism has had a significant and divisive impact on late-Twentieth Century thought. Proponents of the postmodernist critique of absolute knowledge have felt it necessary to jettison the Enlightenment concepts of truth, reason and the self. Opponents of postmodernism have seized on this abandonment of rational standards only to ignore the very real problems raised by the postmodernists. Michael Luntley provides a lively introduction to debate and offers a clear and careful exposition of how rational debate can survive even if the (...) main postmodernist critique of the Enlightenment is accepted. Reason, Truth and Self covers many of the key questions of our age: the rationality of science; the availability of rational but non-scientific ways of understanding ourselves and our world; the nature of mind and of knowledge; the nature of moral judgement and the scope for accounts of the self that do justice to our situatedness in real historical circumstances. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a contrast between learning as the acquisition of theories and learning as the development of insight. I then suggest that, in a great many cases, the cognitive achievement by which we come to organise behaviour rationally is the development of insight, where this is independent of the acquisition of knowledge regimented in theories. The distinction is between a model in which a subject rationalises behaviour by appeal to knowledge of particulars rather than general theoretical knowledge. (...) By ‘insight’ I mean a capacity for cognitive states with a singular content by which the subject fits, or couples with, the environment. This is achieved by attention. The contrast is between two answers to the question, ‘What is it to act rationally in the light of learning?’. One answer is to see the learning that shapes rational behaviour as grasp of the theories that articulate the conceptual patterns of word use and the patterns of that word use that figure in the giving and taking of reasons for what we do. My preferred answer is that the character of learning is the subject with capacities for attention that shape the patterns of concepts and of the things we trade as reasons. The subject with attentional capacities that couple them to the world is a subject who is a responsible author of the patterns of concept use and thereby what counts as acceptable reasons for acting. (shrink)

Here is a distinction that appears very simple, looks compelling and seems to be deeply rooted in our reflections on learning. 1 The distinction is between activities of learning that involve training and those that involve reasoning. In the former, the pupil is a passive recipient of habits of mind and action. The mechanism by which they acquire these habits is mimesis, not reasoning. In contrast, learning by reasoning involves considerable mental activity by the pupil who has to work out (...) what to think and do. The very mechanism by which the pupil learns is her own capacity to reason, to things work out for herself. In this paper I argue that there is no basis for this distinction. I argue that, contrary to the dominant empiricist thinking about such things, learning by reasoning is the only credible form of learning. I start with a brief characterisation of the distinction and an account of why it seems so compelling. In §2 I review the empirical evidence from developmental psychology for a rationalist account of language learning as learning by reasoning. In §§3 and 4 I provide a philosophical argument against the place of training and in favour of a rationalist model of learning by reasoning. (shrink)

In this paper I propose a contrast between learning as the acquisition of theories and learning as the development of insight. I then suggest that, in a great many cases, the cognitive achievement by which we come to organise behaviour rationally is the development of insight, where this is independent of the acquisition of knowledge regimented in theories. The distinction is between a model in which a subject rationalises behaviour by appeal to knowledge of particulars rather than general theoretical knowledge. (...) By ‘insight’ I mean a capacity for cognitive states with a singular content by which the subject fits, or couples with, the environment. This is achieved by attention. The contrast is between two answers to the question, ‘What is it to act rationally in the light of learning?’. One answer is to see the learning that shapes rational behaviour as grasp of the theories that articulate the conceptual patterns of word use and the patterns of that word use that figure in the giving and taking of reasons for what we do. My preferred answer is that the character of learning is the subject with capacities for attention that shape the patterns of concepts and of the things we trade as reasons. The subject with attentional capacities that couple them to the world is a subject who is a responsible author of the patterns of concept use and thereby what counts as acceptable reasons for acting. (shrink)

The expertise of managers, as with other professionals, consists in what they know and their particular knowledge base is knowledge that is embedded in practice. In spite of what some practice assumes, management expertise is situated, experiential and cannot be codified. We lack, however, a clear philosophical model of what it means to say of knowledge that it is embedded in practice. This paper seeks to address this need, presents a theory of expertise and explores a key element of the (...) theory concerning the role of judgement in perception. The theory articulates a number of key concepts and gives explanatory power to talk of situated knowledge. It also provides sufficient theoretical structure to bear upon practical policy issues such as how to teach, develop and assess expertise and how to deploy knowledge in setting management goals. (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that the structure of intentionality is fundamentally the structure of a practice, not the structure of a language, or some quasi-linguistic system of representational entities. I show how and why neo-Fregean theory of content is committed to this practical turn. Mis-representation is often thought to be problematic for the neo-Fregean, but I show not only that it accommodates the phenomena better than the representationalist position, but also that the idea of error that the representationalist wants (...) with empty singular terms is redundant, for it has no role to play in explaining the systematicity of thought. (shrink)

In this paper I show how to treat problems in the philosophy of the social sciences, in particular anthropology, without the need to settle questions in the theory of meaning about realism and anti?realism. In doing this, I show how it is possible, contrary to received opinion, to ward off conceptual relativism without adoption of realist semantics. The argument involves sketching the feasibility of a viable non?realist concept of objectivity. Having distinguished the required notion of objectivity, I then bring this (...) to bear on issues that have dominated the philosophy of anthropology in recent years: the translatability of ritual beliefs; the adequacy of symbolist anthropology; the concept of rationality. I offer a new way of handling these issues which supports an anti?realist, but intellectualist, account of ritual belief. (shrink)

Action explanations that cite dynamic beliefs and desires cannot be modelled as causal explanations. The contents of dynamic psychological states cannot be treated as the causal antecendents to behaviour. Behavioural patterns cannot be explained in virtue of the patterns of operations performed upon the intentional antecedents to behaviour. Dynamic intentional states are persisting regulatory devices for behaviour that provide couplings with the environment. Behavioural patterns emerge from choice couplings rather than being produced by patterns for operating upon intentional antecendents to (...) behaviour in cognition. (shrink)