Wittgenstein's Views Research Articles

Wittgenstein on Expectation, Action, and Internal Relations, 1930–1932

According to Wittgenstein, internal relations are such that, once their terms are given, it is unthinkable that they do not hold. In his early philosophy, the concept of internal relation plays a central role in his views on meaning. The present paper addresses the question of how Wittgenstein's views about internal relations develop during his years of transition (1930–32). In particular, it investigates the connections between the concepts of internal relation, logical multiplicity, and aspect seeing in two thematic fields: (1) Wittgenstein's discussion of the relation between an expectation and what fulfils it, and (2) his discussion of the relation between a sign and an action guided by it.

DREAMING, CALCULATING, THINKING: WITTGENSTEIN AND ANTI-REALISM ABOUT THE PAST

For the anti‐realist, the truth about a subject's past thoughts and attitudes is determined by what he is subsequently disposed to judge about them. The argument for an anti‐realist interpretation of Wittgenstein's view of past‐tense statements seems plausible in three cases: dreams, calculating in the head, and thinking. Wittgenstein is indeed an anti‐realist about dreaming. His account of calculating in the head suggests anti‐realism about the past, but turns out to be essentially realistic. He does not endorse general anti‐realism about past thoughts; but his treatment does in some cases involve elements of anti‐realism, unacceptable in some instances but possibly correct in others.

Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument and Self Consciousness

The private language argument in Wittgenstein has important implications for how self consciousness should be characterised. Some recent cognitivist theories claim that the self is really the sense of being a mental presence whilst the body is merely a container for these vital mental attributes. The cognitivist perspective emphasizes that mental states are internal to the mind thereby promoting the notion that the self is separate from the body. The private language argument is used to critique cognitivism through an examination of the notion of privacy which this conception of mental states depends upon. The assumption that the mental is essentially private leads to the supposition that it is intelligible to attribute self consciousness to either minds or bodies. On Wittgenstein's view new theories of the self are not required but a grammatical investigation into the employment of ‘self consciousness’ and its cognates (including their psychological and neuroscientific uses) is.

The Good Sense of Nonsense: a reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus as nonself-repudiating

This paper aims to return Wittgenstein's Tractatus to its original stature by showing that it is not the self-repudiating work commentators take it to be, but the consistent masterpiece its author believed it was at the time he wrote it. The Tractatus has been considered self-repudiating for two reasons: it refers to its own propositions as ‘nonsensical’, and it makes what Peter Hacker calls ‘paradoxical ineffability claims’ – that is, its remarks are themselves instances of what it says cannot be said. I address the first problem by showing that, on Wittgenstein's view, nonsense is primarily a technically descriptive, not a defamatory, qualification, and is not indicative of Wittgenstein rejecting or disavowing his own Tractarian ‘propositions’. I then dissolve the paradoxical ineffability claim by making a technical distinction, based on Wittgenstein's own theory and practice, between saying and speaking.

Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide (review)

Reviewed by: Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide Dale Jacquette Rom Harré and Michael Tissaw . Wittgenstein and Psychology: A Practical Guide. Aldershot-Burlington: Ashgate, 2005. Pp. xi + 310. Paper, $34.95. Wittgenstein in his later writings comments perceptively on what he describes as the philosophical grammar of psychological terminologies in ordinary language and metaphysical theorizing about psychological phenomena. If we agree with his methodology and certain of his conclusions, then we may find it fruitful to consider how a later Wittgensteinian cognitive psychology might be developed. That seems to be the motivation behind this new study of Wittgenstein and Psychology by Rom Harré and Michael Tissaw. The book is subtitled by the authors as 'A Practical Guide,' and is divided into three main parts: Origins, Insights, Applications. Part 1 discusses contemporary psychology and its theoretical needs and offers essential historical background to Wittgenstein's later writings, including a refreshingly in-depth consideration of Wittgenstein's intellectual background in Vienna and a necessarily superficial sketch of major themes in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Part 2 offers an account of Wittgenstein's later concepts and methodology, including language games, family resemblance, the praxeological point and purpose of language games as essential to understanding meaning in rule-following for language game playing, and therapeutic aspects of Wittgenstein's later view of the proper role and limitations of philosophy. Part 3 examines implications of [End Page 169] Wittgenstein's ideas in their own right and in relation to modern scientific psychology in such areas as cognition, thinking and understanding, subjectivity and expression in light of Wittgenstein's private language argument, thinking about the past and future, intending, willing and acting, emotions and perception. Historians of philosophy turning to this work are likely to be surprised by some of Harré and Tissaw's interpretations. I cannot offer more than a handful of examples here, but I was struck on page 146 by the characterization of Wittgenstein's Tractatus as "positivistic." This is an attribution that runs counter to much of the commentary on Wittgenstein's early treatise, to Wittgenstein's own disavowals, to anecdotal evidence concerning his attitude toward positivism, and to many of his explicit pronouncements that the authors elsewhere rightly insist upon in understanding his disaffection for this originally Austrian scientific movement in the history of philosophy. More importantly, I found the discussion of Wittgenstein's private language argument lacking in context. The authors do not seem to regard the argument as essential to Wittgenstein's ongoing attempt in the Investigations to criticize "internal definition" by means of private naming as an alternative to the Augustinian behavioral model of ostensive language teaching that Wittgenstein attacks from the beginning of the book. This, I have always thought, is made most clear in §36, having rejected the bodily approach to meaning in Augustine's Confessions as underdetermining intended reference, and turning immediately thereafter to the potential for spirit (Geist) as a way of understanding how a name refers. When the private ostensive definition of sensations has been disposed of by the private language argument, Wittgenstein is free to develop as a third possibility a generically pragmatic theory of meaning in terms of rule-following in language games defined with respect to an implicit point and purpose, exemplified (among other places) in §567. More worrying is the impression I received that there is something missing in the authors' sense of just how the later Wittgenstein could assist practicing experimental and theoretical psychologists in their research. There are numerous examples scattered throughout the book of reputed conceptual confusions in contemporary psychology, though there is no documentation of the psychologists themselves recognizing that they are at any sort of disadvantage in this regard. Clarifying concepts used in psychology is undoubtedly a worthwhile task. Why, however, should researchers in psychology look to Wittgenstein's Investigations in particular for guidance here, especially when some historians have argued that, near the end of his life, Wittgenstein was preparing to undertake yet another philosophical revolution that would have brought him closer to some form of Platonic realism? Why not seek greater clarity for scientific psychological concepts and reasoning in the work of other philosophers interested in the problem of meaning relevant to...

Aniara, mimicry and aspect-seeing*

The Swedish Nobel prize winner Harry Martinsson is introduced in this paper, and his epic science fiction poem Aniara is presented. Mima, a miraculous accessor and transmitter of information from all over the universe, is juxtaposed to Sandor Ferenczi's concept of mimicry and Wittgenstein's views on aspect-seeing. It is proposed that the Mima can be seen as a metaphor for the infant mind, having creative mimetic faculties. The single most important realm of mimicry and auto-plastic adaptation is basic trust and empathy. Mimicry is thus suggested to be our deepest and most extensive way of knowing the other as well as ourself, although without cognitive structure. It is basic to Wittgenstein's ‘aspect-seeing’, that is immediately seeing another person's behaviour as expressive of a human mind.

Memory, Expression, and Past‐Tense Self‐Knowledge

How should we understand our capacity to remember our past intentional states? And what can we leam from Wittgenstein's treatment of this topic? Three questions are considered. First, what is the relation between our past attitudes and our present beliefs about them? Realism about past attitudes is defended. Second, how should we understand Wittgenstein's view that self‐ascriptions of past attitudes are a kind of “response” and that the “language‐game” of reporting past attitudes is “the primary thing”? The epistemology and metaphysics of past‐tense self‐ascription are examined in the light of those comments, and our acquisition of the concept of past attitudes is discussed. Third, does Wittgenstein give us reason to think that the identity of a past attitude may be constituted, not by anything that was true of the subject at the time, but by her retrospective tendency to self‐ascribe it? It is argued that, contrary to some interpretations, he does not.

"A Mathematical Proof Must Be Surveyable" What Wittgenstein Meant by This and What It Implies

In Part III of his Wittgenstein deals with what he calls the of proofs. By this he means that mathematical proofs can be reproduced with certainty and in the manner in which we reproduce pictures. There are remarkable similarities between Wittgenstein's view of proofs and Hilbert's, but Wittgenstein, unlike Hilbert, uses his view mainly in critical intent. He tries to undermine foundational systems in mathematics, like logicist or set theoretic ones, by stressing the unsurveyability of the proof-patterns occurring in them. Wittgenstein presents two main arguments against foundational endeavours of this sort. First, he shows that there are problems with the criteria of identity for the unsurveyable proof-patterns, and second, he points out that by making these patterns surveyable, we rely on concepts and procedures which go beyond the foundational frameworks. When we take these concepts and procedures seriously, mathematics does not appear as a uniform system, but as a mixture of different techniques.

Wittgenstein on Understanding and Interpretation (Comments on the work of Thomas Morawetz)

Wittgenstein's distinction between understanding and interpretation is fundamental to the account of meaning in Philosophical Investigations. In his discussion of rule-following, Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the idea that understanding or grasping a rule is a matter of interpretation. Wittgenstein explains meaning and rule-following in terms of action, rejecting both realist and Cartesian accounts of the mental. I argue that in his effort to employ Wittgenstein's views on meaning and rule-following, Professor Morawetz embraces the position Wittgenstein rejects. In the course of making his case for law as a “deliberative practice,” Professor Morawetz embraces interpretation as a fundamental element of human practices, thereby taking up precisely the view Wittgenstein rejects

The Problem of Other Minds: Wittgenstein's Phenomenological Perspective

This paper discusses Wittgenstein's take on the problem of other minds. In opposition to certain widespread views that I collect under the heading of the “No Problem Interpretation,” I argue that Wittgenstein does address some problem of other minds. However, Wittgenstein's problem is not the traditional epistemological problem of other minds; rather, it is more reminiscent of the issue of intersubjectivity as it emerges in the writings of phenomenologists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. This is one sense in which Wittgenstein's perspective on other minds might be called “phenomenological.” Yet there is another sense as well, in that Wittgenstein's positive views on this issue resemble the views defended by phenomenologists. The key to a proper philosophical grasp of intersubjectivity, on both views, lies in rethinking the mind. If we conceive of minds as essentially embodied we can understand how intersubjectivity is possible.

Verbal Activism: "Anymal"

AbstractThis paper is an exploration of verbal activism and animal liberation, starting with a brief explanation of Wittgenstein's (1953) views on the nature and role of language. A discussion of lexical gaps, linguistic change, and verbal activism follows: The paper introduces the word, "anymal," to fill a lexical gap and to provide a form of verbal activism.

Using Wittgenstein to Respecify Constructivism

Taking its orientation from Peter Winch, this article critiques from a Wittgensteinian point of view some “theoreticist” tendencies within constructivism. At the heart of constructivism is the deeply Wittgensteinian idea that the world as we know and understand it is the product of human intelligence and interests. The usefulness of this idea can be vitiated by a failure to distinguish conceptual from empirical questions. I argue that such a failure characterises two influential constructivist theories, those of Ernst von Glasersfeld and David Bloor. These are considered in turn. Both theories seek to give a general, causal account of knowledge: von Glasersfeld's in term of cognitive subjectivity, Bloor's in terms of social agreement. Ironically, given that both writers cite Wittgenstein as a source of theoretical inspiration, assumptions of both theories run counter to key Wittgensteinian arguments. To show that Wittgenstein's views offer no solace to the realist, the article closes with a brief consideration of John Searle's theory of knowledge.

A Solipsist in a Real World

It is trivially true that solipsism, the view that “the world is my world” and that whatever there is is ontologically dependent on my thought or language, cannot be conclusively refuted. The issue of solipsism is, however, an important one. The paper considers this issue mainly from the point of view of Wittgenstein's remarks on solipsism in the Tractatus and in his early Notebooks. It is argued that we should not accept the Wittgensteinian idea that solipsism eventually coincides with “pure realism”. A position labeled “pragmatic realism” is briefly sketched in order to avoid both solipsism and what I call “credo realism”. Thus, I try to show that the issue of solipsism vs. realism should not simply be dismissed and that it should be approached from a pragmatist perspective.

Wittgenstein on Understanding Other Cultures

In this article I discuss Wittgenstein's view of what is involved in understanding other cultures. I show that he is not committed to cultural relativism, as some of his critics argue. As he sees it, the real differences between cultures do not involve any fundamental conceptual, epistemic or other barriers that would make it impossible for us to understand and criticise other cultures. Shared forms of life and man's natural history provide a foothold for us when we attempt to understand other cultures.

Aristoteles Und Wittgenstein: Ihre Gemeinsame Kritik an Platons Auffassung Praktischer Vernunft

Book VII describes a point at which Plato's future rulers have completed their philosophical education. At that point they have a complete grasp of evaluative concepts (esp. of), in that they can articulate and defend defi nitions of them against all objections. Immediately, without further training, they are charged with applying these concepts in their city. By contrast, Aristotle's ethical and political writings do not envisage any such point. This difference between Plato and Aristotle is no expository accident, but refl ects a fundamental disagreement between their respective views of the relationship between grasping and applying concepts, especially evaluative concepts. Aristotle's view is importantly similar to Wittgenstein's later view of 'how to go on' using a word 'in the same way'. This paper explores some aspects of this similarity between Aristotle's and Wittgenstein's opposition to platonism.

LOGICAL SYNTAX IN WITTGENSTEIN'S TRACTATUS

P.M.S. Hacker has argued that there are numerous misconceptions in James Conant's account of Wittgenstein's views and of those of Carnap. I discuss only Hacker's treatment of Conant on logical syntax in the ‘Tractatus’. I try to show that passages in the ‘Tractatus’ which Hacker takes to count strongly against Conant's view do no such thing, and that he himself has not explained how he can account for a significant passage which certainly appears to support Conant's reading.

The Rule of Law and Its Predicament

Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to assess the validity of the Razian conception of the rule of law by subjecting it to the acid test of Michel Troper's “realist theory of interpretation.” The author argues that, in light of the Wittgensteinian view of rule‐following, a serious indeterminacy can be seen as inherent in both this conception of the rule of law and Troper's theory of interpretation.

Ambiguity, logic, simplicity, and dynamics: Wittgensteinian evaluative criteria in peer review of quantitative research on categorization.

Research on categorization has changed over time, and some of these changes resemble how Wittgenstein's views changed from his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to his Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein initially focused on unambiguous, abstract, parsimonious, logical propositions and rules, and on independent, static, "atomic facts." This approach subsequently influenced the development of logical positivism and thereby may have indirectly influenced method and theory in research on categorization: much animal research on categorization has focused on learning simple, static, logical rules unambiguously interrelating small numbers of independent features. He later rejected logical simplicity and rigor and focused instead on Gestalt ideas about figure-ground reversals and context, the ambiguity of family resemblance, and the function of details of everyday language. Contemporary contextualism has been influenced by this latter position, some features of which appear in contemporary empirical research on categorization. These developmental changes are illustrated by research on avian local and global levels of visual perceptual analysis, categorization of rectangles and moving objects, and artificial grammar learning. Implications are described for peer review of quantitative theory in which ambiguity, logical rigor, simplicity, or dynamics are designed to play important roles.

On Floyd and Putnam on Wittgenstein on Gödel

In recent discussion piece, 1 Juliet Floyd and Hilary Putnam present new analysis of Wittgenstein's notorious paragraph on Godel's first incompleteness theorem. Textually, they claim that Wittgenstein's remarks have been widely misunderstood, and they argue that Wittgenstein had better understanding of Godel's theorem than he has often been credited with. Substantively, they find in Wittgenstein's remarks a philosophical claim of great interest, and they argue that, when this claim is properly assessed, it helps to vindicate some of Wittgenstein's broader views on Godel's theorem. Here, I address the second of these two arguments (while disclaiming the scholarly credentials required to assess the first, the purely textual, one). 2 I begin by examining the central claim which Floyd and Putnam attribute to Wittgenstein, showing that their argument for this claim is inadequate and that the claim itself is almost certainly false. I then argue that, even if Wittgenstein's central claim were true, it would not lead to the conclusions Floyd and Putnam think it does. At the end of the day, I conclude that Floyd and Putnam provide no new insights into Godel's theorem by way of their reading of Wittgenstein.

Identity Trouble

This paper uses the conceptual apparatus of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to tackle a foundational issue in the philosophical literature on group identity, namely, the problem of difference. This problem suggests that any appeal to a collective identity is oppressive because it imposes a shared identity on the members of a group and suppresses the internal differences of the group. I develop a Wittgensteinian view of identity that dissolves this problem by showing the conceptual confusions on which it rests. My Wittgensteinian view of identity tries to establish two main theses: first, that identity is bound up with difference and presupposes heterogeneity; and second, that the solidarity of identity groups, far from being obstructed by differences, actually requires diversity. Drawing from gender and sexuality studies, I use the mechanism of disidentification to show how there can be shared identities and identity-based solidarity without the erasure of differences.