Abstract Wittgenstein's naturalism illuminates our ordinary normative practices of giving and asking for reasons and also related ‘philosophical’ conceptions of knowledge inspired by, for example, Sellars's image of the ‘space of reasons’. Some propose that the relevant naturalism motivates scepticism about the ‘space of reasons’ insofar as it allegedly renders inexplicable how the space of reasons, intentionality and normativity quite generally, can be reconciled with the space of causation or the ‘space of nature’. Sellars insists that the normativity of knowledge is constitutively tied to our capacities of providing justifications. Arguably, Wittgenstein's insights into the limits of our capacity to give reasons and provide justifications show how normativity is both pervasive and more extensive than the practices of justification as actions or occurrences in the ‘space of reasons’. I situate those insights with respect to competing accounts of Wittgenstein's naturalism and recommend a more ‘liberal’ interpretation.

meanings, its decompositional analysis of underlying sense structure, and its promise of scientific discoveries about the nature of language contradict his purely descriptive approach to meaning. 3.5. Horwich puts forth the surprising view that Wittgenstein does not deny Platonism. If there is one uncontroversial thesis about twentieth century philosophy, it is that Wittgenstein rejects abstract objects in mathematics, logic, and language. Wittgenstein's naturalism is unequivocally opposed to objects which have no spatial or temporal location, are causally inert, and incorporeal. His approach to language is unequivocally against meanings which are perceptually hidden, exist independently of us, and hence stand apart from our form of life and its social practices. His conception of philosophy is unequivocally against essences or universals which are the subject of discoveries of significance in science and philosophy. In Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (Basil Blackwell, 1956), Wittgenstein frequently and consistently rejects mathematical Platonism. He has a diatribe against "mathematical alchemy" (RFM, iv. 16). He says, "The mathematician is an inventor, not a discoverer" (RFM, I, p. 167). Similarly, "I am trying to say something like this: Even if the mathematical proposition seems to point to a reality outside itself, still it only expresses acceptance of a new measure (of reality)" (RFM, II, p. 30). Further,

Naturalism has many differing senses, some positive and some negative. While it is used in positive senses by tradition of analytical philosophy, with Ludwig Wittgenstein its best example, and by me tradition of phenomenology, with Maurice Merleau-Ponty its best exemplar, it also has an extremely negative sense on both of these fronts. In fact, botii Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein in their basic thrusts adamantly reject reductionistic Although Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology rejects that Husserl rejects, early on found a place for truth of naturalism. In a parallel way, Wittgenstein accepts a certain positive sense of naturalism, while rejecting Quine's kind of naturalism, which has great affinities with that rejected by phenomenology. It is aim of this essay to investigate common ground in views of Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty regarding that they each espouse and that which they each adamantly reject. We will first consider view of Wittgenstein before turning to that of MerleauPonty in an attempt to bring out common ground between them. Wittgenstein's Naturalism Despite their protestations to contrary, skeptics consistently act as though external world, other minds, etc., exist. They simply cannot help believing, regardless of doubts they may air. believed where skepticism and instinct clash, instinct wins out: To bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more serviceable, than to be once thoroughly convinced of force of Pyrrhonian doubt, and of impossibility, that anything, but strong power of natural instinct, could free us from it.1 David Pears has noted that as soon as Hume traces idea of causal necessity back to its origin .. . halts his inquiry.2 But if [Hume] had known how brain works, Pears confidently adds, he would have taken his investigation . . . into neurology.3 Equating with some kind of scientific reductionism is not uncommon. In a survey of philosophy of language and mind from 1950-1990, Tyler Burge simply assumed that naturalism was, in fact, interchangeable with physicalism.4 Indeed, for several decades this view has been widely accepted mostly due to overwhelming influence of W. V. O. Quine. In Epistemology Naturalized, Quine suggests that epistemology should rely on techniques and assumptions of natural sciences. Epistemology, or something like it, simply falls into place as a chapter of . . . natural science. It studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input . . . and in fullness of time subject delivers as a description of three dimensional external world and its history. The relation between meager input and torrential is a relation that we are prompted to study.3 Accordingly, a naturalized epistemology is supposed to offer a scientific explanation of how the meager input and torrential output are related. It will also provide a scientific explanation of how it is that some of our beliefs come to be knowledge and others do not. Wittgenstein advocates something quite different in kind. Wittgenstein would probably place Quine's reductive, scientific in a language-game, where reasons and explanations can be offered. Wittgenstein's own suggestion, however, occurs at a lower level, a non-ratiocinated animal or primitive level.6 At this level, we do not depend on explication or justification. Rather, at this level, our convictions about world, other minds, etc., are borne out in what we unreflectively do, not in what we say, nor in reasons why we say what we say. Although Wittgenstein's is quite different from Quine's, philosophers, like Pears, nonetheless believe it should have ranged more freely across border between philosophy . …

_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\REVIEWS.252 : 2006-02-27 11:52 eviews WITTGENSTEIN APPROACHED G L Philosophy / U. of Iowa Iowa City,  ,  -@. Brian McGuinness. Approaches to Wittgenstein: Collected Papers. London and New York: Routledge, . Pp. xv, . .. his book is a joy to read. Brian McGuinness is among the foremost Tscholars of Wittgenstein’s life and work. For better than  years, his papers have given perhaps the most clear and authoritative account of the complex intellectual and personal journey of Wittgenstein. The collection of these important papers in one book is an outstanding gift to all who are interested in early analytic philosophy. The papers are not presented diachronically, but topically, starting with McGuinness’s discussions of the interplay between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and his conception of himself, as Austrian patriot, as teacher, as Jew, as architect , as penitent. There is much controversy in all of this. It is upsetting to learn that Wittgenstein remarked (likely sometime shortly after the events of Pearl Harbor in ) that “Things will be terrible when the war is over, whoever wins. Of course very terrible if the Nazis won, but terribly slimy if the Allies win” (p. ). In spite of McGuinness’s attempts at charitable explanation, it is hard to excuse this remark. Wittgenstein should have recognized that it was imperative that the Allies win, for surely he could not, by then, have been blind to the pogroms of Nazism (if not the implementation of their Final Solution to the Jewish question). It is just disappointing to discover Wittgenstein’s dalliance with anti-Semitism or with Weininger’s deplorable Sex and Gender. Nonetheless , McGuinness offers a wonderful and balanced portrait of Wittgenstein with a welcome minimum of hyperbole either concerning his genius, achievements and influences, or his eccentricities and failings.  As also in McGuinness’s Wittgenstein, a Life: Young Ludwig (London: Duckworth, and Berkeley : U. of California P., ; reprinted as Young Ludwig: Wittgenstein’s Life, – with a new Preface [Oxford: Clarendon P., ]) russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2502\REVIEWS.252 : 2006-02-27 11:52  Reviews In a second part, the book delves into the origins and nature of Wittgenstein ’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Since the papers in this part do not come diachronically, it would be nice for each to have a date by its title, so that if there is an historical development of McGuinness’s ideas it could be more easily tracked. But evolving or not, the interpretations in McGuinness’s papers are of the very highest quality. I know of no one else who has come closer to unravelling the often cryptic entries in the Tractatus. Though some of McGuinness’s assumptions about Russell’s philosophy are now challenged by new interpretations —in particular, it seems that Russell never held a theory of types of entities —there remain a great many gems in these papers. Among them are the following: Wittgenstein’s conception of solipsism is not Cartesian and epistemic , but concerns the limits of logical form and the proper ethical attitude towards life (p. ); the Notes on Logic were offered as satisfying the dissertation requirement for Wittgenstein’s .. degree (p. ); Wittgenstein included among the “logical constants” such notions as that of a “predicate” and a “dual complex”, not just logical particles such as “not”, “or”, “all” and “some” (p. ); Wittgenstein’s Grundgedanke was independent of his “picture theory” (p. ); Wittgenstein’s “logical atomism” was to be a purified form of Russell’s so that it forms “true logical atomism” with no differences of type and with the unification provided by neutral monism of mental and physical particulars (p. ); Wittgenstein and Russell had similar attractions to Spinozistic ethics, the conception of the world sub specie aeternitatis and the “mystical” as what inspires the scientific attitude (pp. , ); Hertz’s elimination of the concept of “force” in physics was an inspiration for Wittgenstein’s elimination of “classes”, “probability”, and the logical constants (p. ); structured variables were central to Wittgenstein’s Tractarian programme (p. ); Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical analysis has important ties to Kuhn’s concept of a paradigm (pp. , , ). These...

BOOK REVIEWS 3~3 reaction to them into account. The actual historical dialectic involving Moore, Malcolm , and Wittgenstein is a good deal more complicated, and more interesting, than the story told here by Stroll. Moving on to Stroll's discussion of Wittgenstein, I should now acknowledge that, so far as I can judge, Stroll offers a largely reliable account of On Certainty. In particular, in the best chapter of the book, on "Wittgenstein's Foundationalism," he makes a convincing case for the view that Wittgenstein, unlike Moore, separates propositional knowledge from the kind of "non-propositional" certainty concerning what "stands fast" for us and which is primarily evinced in our ways of acting. What is less clear to me is just what kind of response to sceptical arguments this amounts to: Stroll says that although at some points Wittgenstein is prepared to countenance, in a relativist spirit which closely adjoins scepticism, radical changes in what is thus certain , by and large towards the end of On Certainty Wittgenstein advances an "absolutist " position which rules out such changes. But if this is so (and I myself find Wittgenstein enigmatic on this issue), we surely need some arguments why it has to be so. But much here depends on the broader context within which Wittgenstein's position is developed and discussed. Despite noting Wittgenstein's invocation of the conception of man as a "primitive being with instincts" (OC 82 Stroll does not seek to connect Wittgenstein's position with Hume's naturalism or with the naturalism of much contemporary philosophy of mind; instead he ends his book with a diatribe against his neighbouring Californian neurophilosophers. In my view it would have been better to stick to the Cambridge context of Moore and Wittgenstein, and to look at the third tradition of Cambridge epistemology--the reliabilist approach of Russell's Analysis of Mind and Ramsey's papers. I myself think that the result of combining this kind of reliabilism with Wittgenstein's naturalism helps to provide for the latter a more secure antirelativist argument than is otherwise available. THOMAS BALDWIN Cambridge University John Ryder, editor. American Philosophic Naturalism in the Twentieth Century. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1994. Pp. 556. Cloth, $34-95. This anthology is primarily a textbook. All of the selections have been published previously, except Ryder's introduction and headers at the beginning of each section. The book's value is that it brings together under a single cover some of the best and most representative work of American philosophic naturalists in the twentieth century. Those professors who have for years photocopied articles for their courses in American naturalism should greet the publication of this anthology with enthusiasm. The volume is organized so as to exhibit numerous different approaches. The one major view which is underrepresented is the reductionist approach to naturalism. Reductionists (e.g., physicalists, eliminative materialists, positivists, Darwinian materialists and sociobiologists) will find little to either defend or gratify their viewpoint. This omission reveals something of the editor's perspective on what American naturalism is, 314 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 34:2 APRIL 1996 at bottom. Naturalism in this anthology is treated as a viewpoint largely at odds with reductionism of all sorts. Ryder attempts to set out in the introduction not so much a "definition" of American naturalism, as a field within which it is most recognizable, most characteristic, and most philosophically influential. One cannot fault Ryder's even-handed treatment, nor his decision to allow nonreductionist versions of naturalism to take center stage, for it creates a distinctive thread of thinking which can be traced through the entire volume--a thread which lends the needed unity to the book, and which will assist teachers in keeping their focus. It is clear that Ryder's chosen thread of thought takes its example from the landmark mid-century volume Naturalism and the Human Spirit, edited by Yervant Krikorian, a volume which is still in print.' As excellent as the Krikorian volume is, however, it can no longer effectively serve the needs of those who wish to teach American naturalism. Ryder's book is more than two-hundred pages longer, and seeks to organize the material more topically...

Journal Article Wittgenstein's Naturalism Get access David Pears David Pears University of California, xLos Angeles Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar The Monist, Volume 78, Issue 4, 1 October 1995, Pages 411–424, https://doi.org/10.5840/monist199578427 Published: 16 December 2014

meanings, its decompositional analysis of underlying sense structure, and its promise of scientific discoveries about the nature of language contradict his purely descriptive approach to meaning. 3.5. Horwich puts forth the surprising view that Wittgenstein does not deny Platonism. If there is one uncontroversial thesis about twentieth century philosophy, it is that Wittgenstein rejects abstract objects in mathematics, logic, and language. Wittgenstein's naturalism is unequivocally opposed to objects which have no spatial or temporal location, are causally inert, and incorporeal. His approach to language is unequivocally against meanings which are perceptually hidden, exist independently of us, and hence stand apart from our form of life and its social practices. His conception of philosophy is unequivocally against essences or universals which are the subject of discoveries of significance in science and philosophy. In Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (Basil Blackwell, 1956), Wittgenstein frequently and consistently rejects Platonism. He has a diatribe against mathematical alchemy (RFM, iv. 16). He says, The mathematician is an inventor, not a discoverer (RFM, I, p. 167). Similarly, I am trying to say something like this: Even if the proposition seems to point to a reality outside itself, still it only expresses acceptance of a new measure (of reality) (RFM, II, p. 30). Further,

The Religious Nature of Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy