Wittgenstein's Conception Research Articles

Frege and Wittgenstein’s Later Philosophy

Interpreters have tended to focus on the relation between Frege and the early Wittgenstein, but Frege also posed problems for the later Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's concept of a language-game was inspired byHilbert's alleged formalism, as criticised by Frege, and it points to an important dialogue that Wittgenstein engages in with Frege. Wittgenstein expresses formalist views and invokes Frege's critique of formalism at the beginning of the Big Typescript and The Blue Book. He engages more deeply with the problems posed by Frege and formalism in the remarks collected in Philosophical Grammar,where the issues raised set the agenda for the first §§242 of the Philosophical Investigations. The radical transformation in our understanding of meaning and understanding that takes place enables Wittgenstein to escape the problems which P.T. Geach believes were posed for him by Frege's paper "Thought", concerning first-person thoughts about sensations.

Against a global conception of mathematical hinges

Abstract Epistemologists have developed a diverse group of theories, known as hinge epistemology, about our epistemic practices that resort to and expand on Wittgenstein's concept of ‘hinges’ in On Certainty. Within hinge epistemology there is a debate over the epistemic status of hinges. Some hold that hinges are non-epistemic (neither known, justified, nor warranted), while others contend that they are epistemic. Philosophers on both sides of the debate have often connected this discussion to Wittgenstein's later views on mathematics. Others have directly questioned whether there are mathematical hinges, and if so, these would be axioms. Here, we give a hinge epistemology account for mathematical practices based on their contextual dynamics. We argue that 1) there are indeed mathematical hinges (and they are not axioms necessarily), and 2) a given mathematical entity can be used contextually as an epistemic hinge, a non-epistemic hinge, or a non-hinge. We sustain our arguments exegetically and empirically.

GRAMMATISCHER REALISMUS: EINE ANALYSE ZUM WITTGENSTEIN´SCHEN BEGRIFF DER „GRAMMATIK“

This text deals with Wittgenstein's concept of “grammar”, which is one of the “key concepts” of his “Philosophical Investigations”. This term is interpreted here as a type of transcendental argument, i.e. as a regressive argument of the form: "In order to to explain why such and such (the observed - e.g. language as an institution) exists, one must presuppose that such and such (the unobserved – grammar) exists." The main thesis of the analysis proposed here is that Wittgenstein had to introduce in his philosophical investigations the concept of “grammar” as something predetermined in the perspective of “grammatical realism” to provide a theory of language with the aim of explaining the possibility of intersubjective language use, without having to fall back on any universal properties of language (in the sense of classical metaphysics).

A STUDY ON THE PROBLEM OF MEANING IN THE ART OF SCULPTURE

This study explores the complex relationship between the meaning of sculpture and its making process in the context of the philosophy of language. Sculpture is a unique art form that involves the creation of three-dimensional objects that occupy physical space. However, the meaning of a sculpture is not limited to its spatial characteristics alone. This study identifies two distinct levels of meaning in sculpture: its relation to space and its making process. While the former has received considerable attention in the literature, the latter has been largely overlooked. Therefore, this study focuses on the semantic relationship between Richard Serra's sculptures and his sculpture-making processes, particularly in his early works.
 
 Richard Serra is widely regarded as one of the most important artists of the Process Art movement, which emerged in the 1960s and emphasizes the importance of the making process in art. The study questions the reduction of the meaning of sculpture to a mere action and seeks to establish a deeper relationship between the philosophy of language and the process of sculpture. To achieve this, the study draws on the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and John R. Searle, who are some of the most important philosophers of language of the 20th century.
 
 Wittgenstein's concept of language games and his emphasis on the social context of language use is particularly relevant to this study. The study explores how Serra's sculpture-making processes can be seen as a form of language game, with its own rules and conventions. Similarly, Austin's concept of performative language provides a framework for understanding how the making process of a sculpture can be seen as a form of performative action. The study also draws on Searle's theory of speech acts, which suggests that language use is not just a matter of describing the world, but also of performing actions and creating new realities.
 
 Overall, this study represents an important contribution to the field of art and philosophy. By exploring the relationship between the meaning of sculpture and its making process, the study challenges traditional notions of art and raises important questions about the nature of meaning and representation in art. The study also demonstrates the relevance of the philosophy of language to the study of art and provides a framework for future research in this area.

Elucidating the Role of Truth-Expressions

The aim of this text is to elucidate certain aspects of the use of expressions such as “is true” and “it is true that” (henceforth “truth-expressions”) and, through this, some features of the concept of truth. It focuses on addressing the question of whether truth-expressions play the role of a predicate or an operator. The investigations pursued are intended to be grammatical—in Wittgenstein’s sense of the term. I begin with a short presentation of a widely held view about the role played by truth-expressions. I then contrast the Wittgensteinian conception of grammar with that of linguistics. I sketch Frege’s, Wittgenstein’s, Prior’s and Brandom’s central ideas regarding the issue under consideration. As a further step, I investigate the role of truth-expressions by examining several sentences in which they occur, and discuss objections to the proposed analysis. On my approach, truth expressions play the role of a predicate only when applied to sentences, and in all other cases function as operators. One advantage of such a position is that it enables a dissolution of the problem of truth-bearers: where truth-expressions are operators, the issue simply does not arise, and where they are predicates, it is sentences that are the truth-bearers.

Сознание и понимание: Деннет, Гуссерль, Витгенштейн

The article deals with the problem of understanding in the mentalist and naturalist traditions. For comparison, two extreme approaches are considered: Husserl and Dennett. Husserl's mentalistic philosophy interprets understanding as a special experience that can only be described from the first person's point of view. Husserl distinguishes two levels of understanding: more superficial linguistic and deeper mental ones. Dennett, as a prominent representative of naturalism, considers understanding to be the highest degree of competence, i.e., from a third person's point of view. In his evolutionist interpretation of consciousness, the appearance of understanding can be inherent in any organism or inanimate being, and human understanding differs from other stages only quantitatively. In the literature devoted to Wittgenstein, there is an opinion that his philosophy of understanding is anti-mentalist, and this is confirmed by some of his statements. However, Wittgenstein did not argue that understanding cannot be an inner experience. His indications of the criterion of understanding, which is the right action, are connected with the philosophical grammar of the word "understanding" itself. He points out that the nature of mathematical normativity, truth and falsity lies in the joint, intersubjective understanding of mathematicians, which is always mediated by language and activity. In connection with the theme of understanding, attention is drawn to Wittgenstein's concept of "seeing aspect". One can see in it something in common with Husserl's notion of the constitution of sense. To see something in an aspect (spots as an image of an object, a grimace as an expression of a certain emotion) means to place it in a certain environment, in a network of new connections. This is not only a way of seeing but also of understanding. Wittgenstein is interested in the language games associated with such experiences. These language games are not descriptions of inner experience but an integral part of it. At the same time, the philosophical grammar of such games leads us to the intersubjective and normative and forces us to comprehend consciousness from this perspective.

The Tractatus on Truth

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to discuss Wittgenstein's conception of truth in the Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus. Section 1 sets the scene by exploring how the notion of truth is in the Tractatus intertwined with notions such as sense and picture. In section 2 I discuss a traditional interpretation that sees the Tractatus as committed to truth as correspondence. In sections 3 and 4 I discuss two more recent alternative lines of interpretation; according to one, we should interpret truth in the Tractatus as a relation of identity. According to the other, the Tractatus endorses a deflationary account of truth. I conclude in section 5 by adjudicating the interpretative debate.

Ends of Life: Forms of Life as the “Ruins of an Enduring Fable”?

This paper addresses the possibility of using the Wittgensteinian conception of “forms of life” (“Lebensformen”) as a potentially transformative philosophical framework that responds to contemporary challenges. These challenges can be understood as resulting from parallel discourses of “ends”: that of “nature” and that of the “human”. These challenges are relevant, especially, for a Cavellian interpretation of Wittgensteinian Lebensformen as an expression of cultural and natural factors. My purpose is to show how Cavell’s elaboration of Wittgensteinian Lebensformen can be maintained against the critical pressures exerted by prevailing discourses of ends.

생태⋅환경교육강사들 ‘생태교육’과 ‘환경교육’에 대한 관계인식 유형

Objectives The purpose of this study is to explore how ecology-environment education instructors perceive the relationship between ‘ecological education’ and ‘environmental education’ based on Wittgenstein's concept of the language game and whether there are differences in relationship perception types depending on their background variables.
 Methods 57 ecology-environment education instructors participated in the study, and a questionnaire was organized to select a Van diagram that matches one's thoughts among the types of relationships between ecological education and environmental education and explain why.
 Results As for the types of perception, “ecological=environmental”, “ecological⊃environmental”, “ecological⊂environmental”, and “ecological∩environmental” appeared in the order of frequency. However, even with the same type of response, there were various reasons for choosing. Through this, it was confirmed that while recognizing a common area in values and content knowledge between ecological education and environmental education, it has various perceptions in everyday language according to individual experiences and backgrounds. There was no difference in perception of relationship types according to gender, career period, age group, and final academic level.
 Conclusions It was confirmed that there is a family resemblance between ecological education and environmental education by exploring various types recognized by ecology-environment education instructors as language game concepts. In addition, it suggested the need to continuously pursue diversity and expand education.

A Loosely Wittgensteinian Conception of the Linguistic Understanding of Large Language Models like BERT, GPT-3, and ChatGPT

Abstract In this article, I develop a loosely Wittgensteinian conception of what it takes for a being, including an AI system, to understand language, and I suggest that current state of the art systems are closer to fulfilling these requirements than one might think. Developing and defending this claim has both empirical and conceptual aspects. The conceptual aspects concern the criteria that are reasonably applied when judging whether some being understands language; the empirical aspects concern the question whether a given being fulfills these criteria. On the conceptual side, the article builds on Glock’s concept of intelligence, Taylor’s conception of intrinsic rightness as well as Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. On the empirical side, it is argued that current transformer-based NNLP models, such as BERT and GPT-3 come close to fulfilling these criteria.

Tractatus 6 Reconsidered: An Algorithmic Alternative to Wittgenstein's Trade-Off

Wittgenstein's conception of the general form of a truth function given in thesis 6 can be presented as a sort of a trade-off: the author of the Tractatus is unable to reconcile the simplicity of his original idea of a series of forms with the simplicity of his generalisation of Sheffer's stroke; therefore, he is forced to sacrifice one of them. As we argue in this paper, the choice he makes – to weaken the logical constraints put on the concept of a series of forms, thus effectively metaphorising that concept for the sake of upholding the N-operation's role of generating the series – is unfortunate. An actual expansion of a series of truth functions as defined in 6 would require either making decisions at each step (Anscombe) or outwardly rejecting the concept of a series (Sundholm). However, neither is faithful to Wittgenstein's own fundamental intuitions regarding the nature of logic. For this reason, a different trade-off that prioritises upholding the basic features of a series of forms over the simplicity of the operation that generates that series seems to be much more reasonable. We offer such a trade-off by developing the schema already present in the Tractatus (5.101). The key element of our alternative solution is the construction of an operation that can perform the task of producing all consecutive truth functions of a given collection of atomic propositions as an invariant difference between any base and its successor throughout the series. We define it as a composition of three functions (in an algebraic sense): the first turns a symbol of a given truth function into a binary number, the second increments that number, the third turns the result back into a symbol of another truth function. We also show how the operation can be defined by means of a different notation without invoking binary arithmetic.

Romanian Cinema: Thinking Outside the Screen by Doru Pop (review)

Reviewed by: Romanian Cinema: Thinking Outside the Screen by Doru Pop Andrei Gorzo Pop, Doru. Romanian Cinema: Thinking Outside the Screen. Bloomsbury Academic, London, New York and Dublin, 2021. xii + 268 pp. Illustrations. Figures. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £90.00; £28.99; £26.09 (e-book). Doru Pop's Romanian Cinema: Thinking Outside the Screen has a somewhat misleading title. The author himself (a Romanian professor of film studies) acknowledges as much when he writes that his focus here is not on Romanian cinema: what he aspires to provide is a clarifying intervention in film-philosophy debates, proposing a new model of how films 'think'; and the reason he is using particular Romanian films to illustrate such larger conceptual issues is simply that he is more familiar with them — that aside, many non-Romanian productions could have served his purpose just as well (p. 21). The fact that, notwithstanding Pop's disclaimers, his decidedly odd book is haunted by unresolved issues of national specificity, often couched in alarmingly essentalist-sounding terminology — 'Romanian cinema-thinking' (p. 136), 'the Romanian cinematic mind' (p. 175) — counts among its lesser problems. The larger conceptual issues that the book sets out to clarify have to do with questions like: in what ways and to what extent can a film be said to be philosophical? Does the fact that films can contain ideas mean that they can actually contribute to philosophical knowledge? Can films (by films, Pop usually means fictional narrative features) generate philosophical concepts? Is the 'cinematic machine' philosophical by its very nature? Has cinema reinvented or rejuvenated philosophy? Should we talk about 'film and philosophy' or about 'film as philosophy'? To a reader primarily interested in criticism and scholarship of Romanian cinema, Pop's recapitulation of these debates can give off a whiff of patience-testing scholasticism. And, when Romanian cinema makes its late entrance, in the form of some contemporary films directed by [End Page 167] internationally prominent directors (Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu and Cristi Puiu), it is disappointing. In one of his many grand-sounding statements, Pop announces that he will use the last sequence of Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) as 'material illustration for how film thoughts are created' (p. 83). The creation of those 'film thoughts' apparently has something to do with the directors' deployment of 'non-cinematic cinema' — a concept on which Pop relies heavily throughout the book without ever building a convincing case for its utility. What is it, exactly? It has to do with things happening offscreen, with decentred visual compositions (that remove 'the main character from the center of the visual field', p. 221), with temporal ellipsis (things happening in 'the intervals between the sequences', p. 85), with storytelling that leaves gaps in the viewer's knowledge. More obscurely, it has to do with the camera's refusal 'to act like a "proper" moving image apparatus' (p. 85), while negating 'all the conventions and practices of moviemaking as a form of entertainment' (p. 184). Most of this boils down to little more than a notion that meanings conveyed through allusiveness or indirection are superior to meanings made 'manifest in the explicit or the viewable' (p. 86). Leaving aside the somewhat hyperbolic praise lavished by Pop on Mungiu for his orchestration of ironies which are not really that subtle, this is very traditional hermeneutical criticism. What is being gained (except obfuscation) by dressing it up in talk of the 'non- cinematic'? The two protagonists' final agreement to 'never talk about this' in the future (this being the harrowing experience they have just been through) is an occasion for Pop to drag in Wittgenstein's concept of the 'unspeakable' (p. 85). Is that necessary or even apposite? Is it necessary — or even remotely precise — to describe the locations of Romanian films as 'non-places' in Marc Augé's sense (p. 196)? Pop only backs it up minimally before moving on to something else. His conceptual table-setting and heavy lifting are excessive in relation to the pedestrian interpretational work which he performs on his chosen films. And sometimes it is not even pedestrian. Here is his example of 'decinematization' through 'the use...

Language Game of Language Education: Instructional Talk, Pedagogical Aids, and Communication

This research aimed to determine the professional codes in language education using Wittgenstein's concept of a language game. It is a qualitative inquiry by nature as it uses content and textual analysis as its main research methodologies. Specifically, it analyzed the manifestations of professional codes in the teaching and learning process, pedagogical aids or instructional materials, and the communications used in this field of specialization. Furthermore, textual evidence or extraction of manifestations of a certain code of communication was systematically done vis-à-vis the presuppositions of the actions and behavior of the speakers to reveal sets of words, phrases, and elementary propositions or codes of communication. The study found out that the language game of language education is, indeed, distinct from other disciplines in terms of lexicon and locution, syntactical constructions, semantic associations, and pragmatic implication. Essentially, the professional codes in language education in terms of lexicon and locution are described as communication-oriented, education-related, and language-focused. With regard to syntactical constructions, the identified codes of communication were described to have a complex structure and multidimensional functions. In terms of the pragmatic domain, it was found that there was a hegemony of directives and expressives in the field of language education. Nevertheless, to gain a more comprehensive analysis of the language game of this field, documents other than what is utilized in this research and more aspects of analysis should also be considered to fully reveal the language game used in language education.

Language games with ‘Manifesto’

ABSTRACT What happens when ‘manifesto’, as the emblem of a committed artistic or political action, is used as the title of consumer products such as perfume? What do critics mean when they say that a certain work is ‘a manifesto’ rather than literature? When does this label appear as a superlative, and when, in contrast, is it a form of denunciation? What does J. L. Austin mean when he wishes, in the conclusion of ‘How to Do Things with Words’, that his work is not seen as ‘an individual manifesto’? The variations of the word ‘manifesto’ in popular discourse are one of the things that makes the manifesto, as Luca Somigli asserts, ‘notoriously so difficult to define’. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of ‘language game’ and the rich scholarly literature on the manifesto genre, this essay offers a reflection on ‘manifesto’ as a multilayered, performative concept which enables multiple cultural agents to perform various discursive actions. Examining its contemporary pragmatic and rhetorical meaning in light of its history helps in understanding how the term ‘manifesto’ is actually manifested.

A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein

A Different Order of Difficulty: Literature after Wittgenstein

Rules, understanding and language games in mathematics

The article is devoted to the applicability of Wittgenstein’s following the rule in the context of his philosophy of mathematics to real mathematical practice. It is noted that in «Philosophical Investigations» and «Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics» Wittgenstein resorted to the analysis of rather elementary mathematical concepts, accompanied also by the inherent ambiguity and ambiguity of his presentation. In particular, against this background, his radical conventionalism, the substitution of logical necessity with the «form of life» of the community, as well as the inadequacy of the representation of arithmetic rules by a language game are criticized. It is shown that the reconstruction of the Wittgenstein concept of understanding based on the Fregian division of meaning and referent goes beyond the conceptual framework of Wittgenstein language games.

Fashion as an Aesthetic Form of Life

Fashion is an aesthetic practice that concerns the ordinary sphere of our life: it is associated with everydayness and it is a source of endless aesthetic experiences. The purpose of this paper is to validate a new perspective on fashion based on Wittgenstein’s later aesthetic conception. In Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion (2017), Matteucci introduces the idea of combining the Wittgensteinian concept of “form of life” with fashion. In accordance with this thesis, the paper aims at showing how fashion is constituted as a “form of life”. Specifically, I shall argue that fashion is an “aesthetics form of life” which structurally employs a language of an aesthetic type ––one with a specific grammar (or set of rules) of its own. I claim that there is in fashion a contact point between the grammar of language and socially encoded aesthetic responses: fashion follows slavishly its own grammar, through its cyclical seasonality, while at the same time tending to creatively reinvent itself. Thus, anyone who daily commits to the practices of fashion acquires sensitivity to its rules, contributing to a social dialectic of identification/diversification typically belonging to fashion itself. Finally, on the basis of the claim that fashion is a “form of life”, and indeed since fashion is primarily an aesthetic practice, I claim that Wittgenstein’s aesthetic notions can coherently be related to fashion as well: concepts such as ‘aesthetic reaction’, ‘gesture’, and ‘correctness’ will be shown to be crucial to an analysis of the aesthetic phenomenon of fashion.

Going on as one ought: Kripke and Wittgenstein on the normativity of meaning

Kripke's thesis that meaning is normative is typically interpreted, following Boghossian, as the thesis that meaningful expressions allow of true or warranted use. I argue for an alternative interpretation centered on Wittgenstein's conception of the normativity involved in “knowing how to go on” in one's use of an expression. Meaning is normative for Kripke because it justifies claims, not to be saying something true, but to be going on as one ought from previous uses of the expression. I argue that this represents a distortion of Wittgenstein's conception of the normativity of meaning, and that Wittgenstein's conception is preferable.

A importação descontextualizada de conceitos e o ensino de Administração no Brasil: outro capítulo na “simplicização” dos nossos livros didáticos

O objetivo deste artigo é analisar as Teorias Organizacionais (TO) como uma construção discursiva, histórica e política de ressignificações de saberes, caracterizada pela importação de conceitos de outras áreas de conhecimento recorrendo a analogias e metáforas. Para a análise dos manuais de ensino da Administração, de cursos de graduação de Administração no Brasil, usamos o conceito wittgensteiniano de jogos de linguagem e a concepção austiniana de performatividade. Os resultados demonstram que as TO são frequentemente constituídas em apropriações conceituais externas, num processo epistemologicamente frágil e ideologicamente enviesado. A apresentação de um padrão conceitual que trata os principais conceitos da área – “organização” e “administração” – como meras agrupamentos de interesse coletivo. Do ponto de vista pragmático, o significado sempre se consagra no uso, não existindo proprietários etimológicos de conceitos, palavras ou expressões. Contudo, é preciso refletir de maneira contínua e autocrítica sobre como desenvolvemos definições, uma vez que nada se ganha com leituras simplistas de fenômenos complexos, pois está extrema “simplicização” dos fenômenos organizacionais fragiliza o sentido do ensino de Administração e a qualidade analítica dos futuros profissionais. Para futuras pesquisas, sugere-se a inclusão de novos títulos ao corpus para confirmação do padrão.

Between Realism and Relativism: Moral Certainty as a Third Option

This paper is an attempt to lay out a meta‐ethical position that is inspired by the framework of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. To achieve this goal, this paper is divided into two parts. First, I explore recent attempts to tie Wittgenstein's epistemology in On Certainty to moral epistemology. I argue that there can be a meaningful parallel drawn between the epistemic certainties discussed in On Certainty and what I consider to be moral certainties. These moral certainties are unjustified fundamental moral attitudes that underlie our moral practices. Then, I show how the debate over moral certainty has branched into two directions. One direction presents the concept of moral certainty as a naturalistic concept. On this reading, moral certainties transcend time and place since they are rooted in our natural tendencies to act or not act in certain ways. The other direction presents moral certainty as a distinctly relativistic concept. On this reading, we have our moral certainties because we belong to communities that agree on these certainties. In the second section, I argue that we have both natural, universal certainties and localized, relative certainties. I also argue that our localized certainties are constrained by non‐moral facts about ourselves and about the world. To make this argument, I rely on Wittgenstein's concept of “general facts of nature.” The result of the paper is a meta‐ethical position that can be located in between moral relativism and moral realism.