Editor's Intro to the journal issue. Wittgenstein's methods are more important than his solutions or views on particular problems. He also attacks processes which give rise to philosophical problems, such as Cartesian dualism and Platonism and other more narrow pictures or assumptions. His recommendations that progress be based on what we get from juxtaposing examples with philosophical temptations are still being absorbed by the discipline. This is more the case now, fifteen years aftr I wrote this introduction.

This article first surveys the established views on Wittgenstein's relation to analytic philosophy. Next it distinguishes among different ways of defining analytic philosophy—topical, doctrinal, methodological, stylistic, historical, and the idea that it is a family‐resemblance concept. It argues that while certain stylistic features are important, the historical and the family‐resemblance conceptions are the most auspicious, especially in combination. The answer to the title question is given in section 3. Contrary to currently popular “irrationalist” interpretations, Wittgenstein was an analytic philosopher in (...) all phases of his career, albeit an exceedingly exotic one whose style transcends the limits of academic philosophy in general. On the historical understanding he qualifies because he was influenced by and in turn influenced mainly analytic philosophers. On the family‐resemblance conception he qualifies both because he developed and employed logico‐linguistic analysis and because he initiated the linguistic turn and the distinction between philosophy and science that characterizes one important strand in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This article argues, first, that there is plenty of agreement among philosophers on philosophically substantive claims, which fall into three categories: reasons for or against certain views, elementary truths regarding fundamental notions, and highly conditionalized claims. This agreement suggests that there is important philosophical progress. It then argues that although it's easy to list several potential kinds of philosophical progress, it is much harder to determine whether the potential is actual. Then the article attempts to articulate the truth (...) that the deniers of philosophical progress are latching on to. Finally, it comments on the significance of the agreement and progress. (shrink)

The so-called "Big Typescript" is Wittgenstein's first attempt to publish in a book his collected thoughts since his return to Cambridge and to philosophical writing, thus correcting the "serious errors" (Wittgenstein) of his early work. Among the texts in Wittgenstein's estate, the "Big Typescript" is the one that, next to the "Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung" (the "Tractatus") of 1918, appears to be the most "finished", with a table of contents structured in chapters and sections. It is, however, a fragment, without either (...) title, motto or conclusion. To Wittgenstein, it was important "that the thoughts in [the book] should progress from one subject to another in well-ordered consecutiveness." It is precisely this structure of the "Big Typescript", though ultimately rejected by Wittgenstein, which constitutes the immeasurable value of the text for the study of and as an introduction to Wittgenstein's thinking. (shrink)

Is there progress in philosophy? If so, how much? Philosophers have recently argued for a wide range of answers to these questions, from the view that there is no progress whatsoever to the view that philosophy has provided answers to all the big philosophical questions. However, these views are difficult to compare and evaluate, because they rest on very different assumptions about the conditions under which philosophy would make progress. This paper looks to the comparatively mature debate about scientific (...) progress for inspiration on how to formulate four distinct accounts of philosophical progress, in terms of truthlikeness, problem-solving, knowledge, and understanding. Equally importantly, the paper outlines a common framework for how to understand and evaluate these accounts. We distill a series of lessons from this exercise, to help pave the way for a more fruitful discussion about philosophical progress in the future. (shrink)

This volume of new essays presents groundbreaking interpretations of some of the most central themes of Wittgenstein's philosophy. A distinguished group of contributors demonstrates how Wittgenstein's thought can fruitfully be applied to contemporary debates in epistemology, metaphilosophy and philosophy of language. The volume combines historical and systematic approaches to Wittgensteinian methods and perspectives, with essays providing detailed analysis that will be accessible to students as well as specialists. The result is a rich and illuminating picture of a key figure in (...) twentieth-century philosophy and his continuing importance to philosophical study. (shrink)

Georg Henrik von Wright was not only the first interpreter of Wittgenstein, who argued that Spengler’s work had reinforced and helped Wittgenstein to articulate his view of life, but also the first to consider seriously that Wittgenstein’s attitude to his times makes him unique among the great philosophers, that the philosophical problems which Wittgenstein was struggling, indeed his view of the nature of philosophy, were somehow connected with features of our culture or civilization. -/- In this paper I draw (...) inspiration and courage from Von Wright’s insistence that trying to understand Wittgenstein in relation to his times is a philosophic task in its own right in order to probe into a relatively obscure region in Wittgenstein’s thought: his relation to the music of his times. It is a topic, on which Von Wright, and most other prominent Wittgenstein scholars, have said very little, but it is also one, which Wittgenstein himself attested was so important to him that he felt without it he was sure to be misunderstood. -/- I offer textual and historical evidence in support of my claim that, parallel to Wittgenstein’s exposure to Spengler’s Decline of the West in 1930, he was also introduced to the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, which helped him to articulate, partly by way of critique, a complex and unique position concerning the modern music of his times, which exhibits his rejection of what Von Wright later dubbed ‘the myth of progress’. As Von Wright observed in other regions of Wittgenstein’s work, he believed also with regards to the arts and to music in particular, neither in a brilliant future nor in the good old days. -/- I argue that Wittgenstein actually made a distinction between three kinds of modern music: (a) bad modern music, which is clearly a case of confusing means for ends, the hallmark of the myth of progress, as Von Wright observed; (b) vacuous modern music, which embodies some sort of diffidence, a difficulty to see through the omnipresence of what Von Wright called (following Habermas) a ‘colonialization’ of reified measures of progress; (c) good modern music, a paradoxical notion for Wittgenstein, which betokens the unlikely yet possible striving to penetrate through what appears as dissolution of the resemblances which unite this culture’s ways of life by rendering this condition as expressible and intransitively understandable. In the context of this third category, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s complex remarks on the music of Gustav Mahler, which palpably show that the problem of good modern music and the problem of philosophizing in the time of civilization were one and the same in Wittgenstein’s mind. -/- I conclude that, with regards to Von Wright’s own critical view of the modern myth of progress, we can learn from Wittgenstein that progress in the realm of art is closely aligned with the ideal of the perfection of man, yet transcending a social or political context. It is the ideal of cultural cohesion: affinity that the arts show to other human practices and cultural artifacts of its period. Wittgenstein’s tentative notion of good modern music (and its circumscription by his notion of the music of the future) may show its true colors when viewed in the context of Von Wright’s plea not to abandon work for progress as a critical task. (shrink)

Paul Horwich presents a bold new interpretation of Wittgenstein's later work. He argues that it is Wittgenstein's radically anti-theoretical metaphilosophy - and not his identification of the meaning of a word with its use - that underpins his discussions of specific issues concerning language, the mind, mathematics, knowledge, art, and religion.

This paper forges links between early analytic philosophy and the posits of semiotics. I show that there are some striking and potentially quite important, but perhaps unrecognized, connections between three key concepts in Wittgenstein’s middle and later philosophy, namely, complex, rule-following, and language games. This reveals the existence of a conceptual continuity between Wittgenstein’s “early” and “later” philosophy that can be applied to the analysis of the iterability of representation in computer-generated images. Methodologically, this paper clarifies to at least some (...) degree, the nature, progress and promise of an approach to doing philosophy and semiotics from a modally modest perspective that sees in the intellectual products of humanities, and not in unreflective empiricism, the future of scientific development. This hybrid, non-reductionist approach shows, among other things, that semiotic processes are encoded by specific types of complexes in computer-generated images that display iterability in time and space. (shrink)

Does conceptual engineering as a philosophical method deserve all the attention that it has been getting recently? The important philosophical questions, one might say, are about the world, not about what our concepts are or should be like. This paper fleshes out one way in which conceptual engineering can contribute to philosophical progress. The suspicion that conceptual engineering is getting too much attention presupposes that it is important to distribute our philosophical attention well (for example, conceptual (...) engineering should not get more than its fair share). The paper’s defense of conceptual engineering builds on that assumption. Conceptual engineering, it argues, is a way of configuring philosophers’ patterns of attention for the better: it serves attentional progress in philosophy. (shrink)

In this Element, the author set out to answer a twofold question concerning the importance of music to Wittgenstein's philosophical progression and the otherness of this sort of philosophical importance vis-à-vis philosophy of music as practiced today in the analytic tradition. The author starts with the idea of making music together and with Wittgenstein's master simile of language-as-music. The author traces these themes as they play out in Wittgenstein early, middle, and later periods. The author argues that Wittgenstein's (...) overarching reorientation of the concept of depth pertaining to music in the aftermath of his anthropological turn, and against the backdrop of the outlook of German Romanticism, culminates in his unique view of musical profundity 'knowledge of people'. This sets Wittgenstein's view in sharp contrast with certain convictions and debates that typify current analytically bent philosophy of music. (shrink)

There are two aspects to Wittgenstein’s method of deconstructing pseudo-philosophical problems that need to be distinguished: (1) describing actual linguistic practice, and (2) constructing hypothetical ‘language-games’. Both methods were, for Wittgenstein, indispensable means of clarifying the ‘grammar’ of expressions of our language -- i.e., the appropriate contexts for using those expressions – and thereby dissolving pseudo-philosophical problems. Though (2) is often conflated with (1), it is important to recognize that it differs from it in important respects. (1) can (...) be seen as functioning as a direct method of ‘proof’ (i.e., attempt to convince the reader of some thesis), and (2) as an indirect method of ‘proof’ -- proof by reductio ad absurdum. This essay will be devoted to clarifying (2) by forging an analogy with surrealism in art. (shrink)

An important strand of current experimental philosophy promotes a new kind of methodological naturalism. This chapter argues that this new ‘metaphilosophical naturalism’ is fundamentally consistent with key tenets of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy, and can provide empirical foundations for therapeutic conceptions of philosophy. Metaphilosophical naturalism invites us to contribute to the resolution of philosophical problems about X by turning to scientific findings about the way we think about X – in general or when doing philosophy. This new naturalism encourages us to (...) use resources from psychology that can empirically vindicate precisely some of the most controversial aspects of Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy: They can establish the need, and provide key tools, for something worth calling ‘therapy’, in philosophy. As ‘pudding proof’ this chapter shows how methods and findings from psycholinguistics motivate and facilitate a therapeutic approach to a characteristically philosophical problem: ‘the problem of perception’. (shrink)

The article attempts to articulate Wittgensteinian and hermeneutic views of knowledge, language and understanding. Wittgenstein is not a member of the so-called hermeneutic tradition, but his late work has important affinities with the work of hermeneutic thinkers like Heidegger and Gadamer. Firstly, Wittgenstein and hermeneutics share a basic philosophical altitude that can be termed as “phenomenology of everydayness”. An important result of such an approach is the acknowledgement of the pragmatic and social dimension of knowledge. Secondly, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and (...) Gadamer reject formal or systematic theories of meaning and claim that language is the universal medium of human experience. Thirdly, they conceive of understanding as a practical ability. Wittgenstein helps us to clarify some hermeneutic themes and develops them from an antimetaphysical standpoint. On the other hand, hermeneutics can refine some aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought; a case in point is the Gadamerian doctrine of the fusion of horizons, which avoids the danger of relativism that lurks in Wittgenstein’s late work. A comparative study of Wittgenstein and hermeneutics contributes therefore to effective philosophical progress. (shrink)

Many people believe that philosophy makes no progress. Members of the general public often find it amazing that philosophers exist in universities at all, at least in research positions. Academics who are not philosophers often think of philosophy either as a scholarly or interpretative enterprise, or else as a sort of pre-scientific speculation. And many well-known philosophers argue that there is little genuine progress in philosophy. Daniel Stoljar argues that this is all a big mistake. When you think through exactly (...) what philosophical problems are, and what it takes to solve them, the pattern of success and failure in philosophy is similar to that in other fields. In philosophy, as elsewhere, there is a series of overlapping topics that determine what the subject is about. In philosophy, as elsewhere, different people in different historical epochs and different cultures ask different big questions about these topics. And in philosophy, as elsewhere, big questions asked in the past have often been solved: Stoljar provides examples. Philosophical Progress presents a strikingly optimistic picture of philosophy - not a radical optimism that says that there is some key that unlocks all philosophical problems, and not the kind of pessimism that dominates both professional and non-professional thinking about philosophy, but a reasonable optimism that views philosophy as akin to other fields. (shrink)

One of the most distinctive features of philosophy is self-reflection and by exploring novel philosophical methods, this book examines some of the most important metaphilosophical issues. Shows that philosophers are not only concerned with metaphysical, epistemological, conceptual, ethical, and aesthetic issues of things around us, but how they also pay serious attention to the nature, value, methods, and development of philosophy itself Explores some of the most important metaphilosophical issues: Is philosophy progressive? Are metaphysical claims meaningful? What is the (...) aim of philosophy? Should analytic metaphysics be replaced by naturalised metaphysics? What is the prospect of a digital approach to philosophy of science? Can poetry play a substantial role in philosophy? Revisits the value and significance of philosophy and examines new directions in metaphilosophy Features 12 essays with contributions by leading philosophers across the globe. (shrink)

Today’s critical state of philosophy is examined by considering two of its aspects: the way in which philosophy presently is ever more typically practised and the new challenges it has to face to keep up with the changed scientific, and more generally cultural and social context. The essay outlines some prospects of progress in the light of those which still now can be considered the proper tasks of philosophical inquiry. Such tasks are singled out through an historical survey of (...) the original characters of philosophy and an appraisal of its theoretical motivations. The importance of the history of philosophy and the necessity of achieving a virtuous relation among the various philosophical disciplines are stressed to contrast the dangers of excess specialisation and professionalism. (shrink)

Between 1937 and 1951 Wittgenstein had numerous philosophical conversations with his student and close friend, Rush Rhees. This article is composed of Rhees’s notes of twenty such conversations — namely, all those which have not yet been published — as well as some supplements from Rhees’s correspondence and miscellaneous notes. The principal value of the notes collected here is that they fill some interesting and important gaps in Wittgenstein ’s corpus. Thus, firstly, the notes touch on a wide range (...) of subjects, a number of which are only briefly addressed by Wittgenstein elsewhere, if at all. The subjects discussed include: explanation, ethics, anarchism, contradiction, psychoanalysis, colour, religion, concepts, classification, seeing-as, evolution, the relation between science and philosophy, and free will, amongst others. Secondly, the notes contain references to, and brief remarks about, philosophers of whom Wittgenstein otherwise says very little, if anything — such as Brentano, Heidegger, Aquinas, and Marx, amongst others. And thirdly, the notes provide us with valuable examples of Wittgenstein ’s use of some key ‘Wittgensteinian’ terms of art which are surprisingly rare in his written works, such as ‘surface-’ and ‘depth-grammar’, and ‘centres of variation’. (shrink)

What is it for philosophy to make progress? While various putative forms of philosophical progress have been explored in some depth, this overarching question is rarely addressed explicitly, perhaps because it has been assumed to be intractable or unlikely to have a single, unified answer. In this paper, we aim to show that the question is tractable, that it does admit of a single, unified answer, and that one such answer is plausible. This answer is, roughly, that philosophical (...) progress consists in putting people in a position to increase their understanding, where ‘increased understanding’ is a matter of better representing the network of dependence relations between phenomena. After identifying four desiderata for an account of philosophical progress, we argue that our account meets the desiderata in a particularly satisfying way. Among other things, the account explains how various other achievements, such as philosophical arguments, counterexamples, and distinctions, may contribute to progress. Finally, we consider the implications of our account for the pressing and contentious question of how much progress has been made in philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract: The notion that philosophy can be practised as a kind of therapy has become a focus of debate. This article explores how philosophy can be practised literally as a kind of therapy, in two very different ways: as philosophical therapy that addresses “real-life problems” (e.g., Sextus Empiricus) and as therapeutic philosophy that meets a need for therapy which arises in and from philosophical reflection (e.g., Wittgenstein). With the help of concepts adapted from cognitive and clinical psychology, and (...) from cognitive linguistics, the article shows that both philosophical projects address important and literally therapeutic tasks and explains how they can do so with genuinely philosophical argument and analysis. This brings into view new applications for philosophy, a need for therapy in core areas of the subject, and the outline of a new approach to meet what will be shown to be a central need. (shrink)

This paper develops two theses and one suggestion. The first thesis concerns how to reason about the problem of philosophical progress. Chalmers (2015) and Dellsén et al. (2022) proposed frameworks to reason about this problem. I argue that these frameworks have limits and develop an alternative. Having done this, I put my proposed framework to the test. That is, I use it to analyse the views held by Kant in the first critique and Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. The second (...) thesis concerns the relations between these works. My proposed framework makes evident that, for all their differences, Kant and Wittgenstein gave similar answers to the problem of philosophical progress. They both claimed that philosophy has been very unproductive for much of its history and proposed methods to fix this. My suggestion is that this might be a recurring pattern in the history of philosophy, which perhaps could help explain why, to this day, there is so much pessimism concerning philosophical progress. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have used expressions of Wittgenstein’s (e.g. “language-games,” “form of life,” and “family resemblance”) in attempts to conceive of the discipline of philosophy in a broad, open, and perhaps global way. These Wittgenstein-inspired approaches indicate an awareness of the importance of cultural and historical diversity for approaching philosophical questions. While some philosophers have taken inspiration from Wittgenstein in embracing contextualism in philosophical hermeneutics, Wittgenstein himself was more instrumental than contextual in his treatment of other philosophers; (...) his focus in his writings was on his own philosophical problems. Does this mean that Wittgensteinian philosophy is a poor resource after all for comparative, cross-cultural, or globally-engaged philosophy (i.e. if it is properly Wittgensteinian)? In this article, I examine the relevance of Wittgenstein to contextually-sensitive philosophy through studies of his conceptions of history and culture, his interest in Spengler’s philosophy of history, and recent scholarship by Hans-Johann Glock and Hans Sluga on the place of contextualism in Wittgenstein’s analysis of philosophical problems. Ultimately, this article advances the view that there are strong resources in Wittgenstein’s philosophy for those seeking a more globally-engaged approach to the field. (shrink)

I argue that philosophy has achieved no appreciable progress in making people better and wiser or solving its own central problems. This lack of progress matters, but I find hope in experimental philosophy. Although philosophical worldviews from Plato's to the present have aided comprehension of how things hang together, their only steady progress has come from adjusting to advances in science. If the power of philosophy were like the power of poetry, this would not matter. Each worldview could be (...) appreciated in its own right. Yet most authors of philosophical worldviews have sought solutions to philosophical problems that would be persuasive to anyone who was willing and able to follow their arguments. Without progress of this kind, philosophy runs the risk of being marginalized. I conclude by arguing that experimental philosophy offers the best hope for philosophy's progress as a problem‐solving discipline and defend the use of intuitions as evidence. (shrink)

This article begins by reflecting on the Cartesian project of beginning with a skeptically unassailable first truth and from there progressively building up a system of philosophical truths. It then presents a less problematic but similar project associated with contemporary analytic philosophy, noting, however, that it too fails to yield progress in answering the fundamental questions of philosophy. Next, the author examines the idea that philosophy might nonetheless progress in the manner of empirical science, never answering its fundamental questions (...) but generating important intermediary results. Then, giving up the assumption that we need philosophy to ground our pre-philosophical convictions, the author proposes an alternative view of philosophy as providing rigorous theoretical formulations of general pictures, and on this basis, discusses philosophical disagreement, the role of intuitions in philosophy, philosophical knowledge, and the interaction of science and philosophy. Finally, the author presents his conclusions about philosophical progress. (shrink)

I argue that the best explanation of the multiplicity of available frameworks for treating any given philosophical topic is that philosophy currently (though not insuperably) lacks fixed standards; I then go on to identify three barriers to philosophical progress associated with our present epistemic situation. First is that the lack of fixed standards encourages what I call “intra‐disciplinary siloing,” and associated dialectical and argumentative failings; second is that the lack of fixed standards makes room for sociological factors (including (...) elite influence and disciplinary inertia) to be determinative of which philosophical frameworks are embraced; third is that the lack of fixed standards encourages (implicit and/or explicit) bias. I close by offering some suggestions about how to move beyond these barriers, even in the absence of fixed standards. (shrink)

From his return to Cambridge in 1929 to his death in 1951, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who published only one work in his lifetime, influenced philosophy almost exclusively through teaching and discussion. These lecture notes, therefore, are an important record of the development of Wittgenstein's thought; they indicate the interests he maintained in his later years and signal what he considered the salient features of his thinking. Further, the notes from an enlightening addition to his posthumously published writings. P. T. Geach, A. (...) C. Jackson, and K. J. Shah kept meticulous notes from the last formal course that Wittgenstein taught at Cambridge. In order to reconstruct as accurately as possible the words of Wittgenstein, this volume compiles all three sets of notes with no attempt to conflate or edit them beyond rendering them into lucid English. Topics covered by the notes in this volume include the private language argument, the grammar of sensation statements, certainty and experimentation in psychology, and, in general, the same set of concerns as are to be found in his Last Writings and Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology . The source material provided in these lecture notes is vital to Wittgenstein scholarship. (shrink)

When in May 1930, the Council of Trinity College, Cambridge, had to decide whether to renew Wittgenstein's research grant, it turned to Bertrand Russell for an assessment of the work Wittgenstein had been doing over the past year. His verdict: "The theories contained in this new work . . . are novel, very original and indubitably important. Whether they are true, I do not know. As a logician who likes simplicity, I should like to think that they are not, but (...) from what I have read of them I am quite sure that he ought to have an opportunity to work them out, since, when completed, they may easily prove to constitute a whole new philosophy." "[ Philosophical Remarks ] contains the seeds of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind and of mathematics. Principally, he here discusses the role of indispensable in language, criticizing Russell's The Analysis of Mind . He modifies the Tractatus 's picture theory of meaning by stressing that the connection between the proposition and reality is not found in the picture itself. He analyzes generality in and out of mathematics, and the notions of proof and experiment. He formulates a pain/private-language argument and discusses both behaviorism and the verifiability principle. The work is difficult but important, and it belongs in every philosophy collection."--Robert Hoffman, Philosophy "Any serious student of Wittgenstein's work will want to study his Philosophical Remarks as a transitional book between his two great masterpieces. The Remarks is thus indispensible for anyone who seeks a complete understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy."--Leonard Linsky, American Philosophical Association. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 27.1 (2003) 188-195 [Access article in PDF] Wittgenstein and Poetic Language B. R. Tilghman ACCORDING TO RICHARD KUHNS there are certain important parallels between symbolist poetic theory, especially that of Paul Valéry, and Wittgenstein's picture of language developed in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. 1 It strikes me that these parallels are strained and certainly unhelpful in illuminating either what Valéry says about poetry or his poetic practice. (...) In fact, I find certain things in Valéry that are closer in spirit to Wittgenstein's view of language in the Philosophical Investigations. 2 My concern here is not to criticize Kuhns's thesis nor to provide a systematic exposition of Valéry's thoughts about poetry so much as it is to use some of what they say as stepping stones to show the relevance of Wittgenstein's work for understanding at least some of what goes on in poetry.Kuhn says that "Linguistic forms fascinated both Valéry and Wittgenstein, and the possibility that language might achieve necessity in that it produced sentences held together by bonds of absolute security and irrevocability operates in the logical forms of the Tractatus as it does in Valéry's art. A poem, Valéry believed, must be wrought with such necessity of part to part, such fastness of interior design, that the reader be compelled by his reading to recognize all the implications of the sentences." 3 I set aside trying to make sense of the idea of language achieving necessity and assume that the analogue of the "bonds of absolute security and irrevocability" in the Tractatus is that a perspicuous [End Page 188] symbolism should immediately make clear all the logical implications of any proposition. The analogy between whatever it is that counts as poetic implications and logical implication, however, seems impossibly lame. The word "implication" applied to the sentences of poetry is not a technical term as is the word when used in logic and its meaning may not be altogether clear. Nevertheless, some of what it may mean can be brought out, I believe, in terms of examples. Consider T. S. Eliot's line that "April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land...," the full sense—implications—of the words are not realized until they are seen in the context of the rest of the poem where we can understand them as making a point about the constrained and empty lives of the dwellers in the waste land. The description of the spring as cruel will help to serve as the poem develops to reveal to us the resistance of people to open themselves to human emotion and reaction. There are too many differences between this kind of thing and logical implication to make the analogy helpful.At one point Valéry says that "A poem is really a kind of machine for producing the poetic state of mind by means of words." 4 To that statement Kuhns comments that "Valéry's idea that a poem is a machine for producing poetic states is analogous to Wittgenstein's idea that logic is a machine for making sense, that there exists a structure which is the structure of possible meanings." 5 Valéry apparently wanted a poetry in which there is something akin to a necessary connection between the images and tropes within a poem so that there is only one way to read it. Although it is by no means clear what success in such an enterprise would be, some sense can be made of the idea of a poem as a structure of meanings held together by a kind of necessity. I shall try to make this clear. A poem invites us to move in various directions as the force of some figure of speech comes home to us or various associations dawn on us. In music a certain chord progression seems to demand a resolution into the tonic as its completion. This could be described as a kind of necessity, but, of course, not a logical one. Given our... (shrink)

An essential resource for students of Wittgenstein, this collection contains faithful, in some cases expanded and corrected, versions of many important pieces never before available in a single volume, including Notes for the 'Philosophical Lecture', published here for the first time. Fifteen selections, with bi-lingual versions of those originally written in German, span the development of Wittgenstein's thought, his range of interests, and his methods of philosophical investigation. Short introductions, an index, and an updated version of Georg Henrik (...) von Wright's The Wittgenstein Papers situate the selections within the broader context of the Wittgenstein corpus and the history of its publication. (shrink)

For those open to the possibility that philosophical thought can improve life, David Hume's Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary have something to say. In the first comprehensive study of the Essays, Margaret Watkins engages closely with these neglected texts and shows how they provide important insights into Hume's perspective on the breadth and depth of human life, arguing that the Essays reveal his continued commitment to philosophy as a discipline that can promote both social and individual progress. Addressing topics (...) such as politics, war, slavery, the priesthood, the development of industry, aesthetics, emotional disorders, egoism, friendship, sexuality, gender relations, and the nature of philosophy itself, the volume examines Hume's purposes and aims against the backdrop of the eighteenth century society in which he lived. It will be of interest to scholars of modern thought in philosophy, politics, history, and economics. (shrink)

These works, as the sub-title makes clear, are unfinished sketches for Philosophical Investigations, possibly the most important and influential philosophical work of modern times. The 'Blue Book' is a set of notes dictated to Witgenstein's Cambridge students in 1933-1934: the 'Brown Book' was a draft for what eventually became the growth of the first part of Philosophical Investigations. This book reveals the germination and growth of the ideas which found their final expression in Witgenstein's later work. It (...) is indispensable therefore to students of Witgenstein's thought and to all those who wish to study at first-hand the mental processes of a thinker who fundamentally changed the course of modern philosophy. (shrink)

This paper deals with the study of the nature of mind, its processes and its relations with the other filed known as logic, especially the contribution of most notable contemporary analytical philosophy Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein showed a critical relation between the mind and logic. He assumed that every mental process is logical. Mental field is field of space and time and logical field is a field of reasoning (inductive and deductive). It is only with the advancement in logic, we are (...) today in the era of scientific progress and technology. Logic played an important role in the cognitive part or we can say in the ‗philosophy of mind‘ that this branch is developed only because of three crucial theories i.e. rationalism, empiricism, and criticism. In this paper, it is argued that innate ideas or truth are equated with deduction and acquired truths are related with induction. This article also enhance the role of language in the makeup of the world of mind, although mind and the thought are the terms that are used by the philosophers synonymously but in this paper they are taken and interpreted differently. It shows the development in the analytical tradition subjected to the areas of mind and logic and their critical relation. (shrink)

The essential task of the philosophy of style is to uncover the irreducibility of the singular to any kind of universal, static structure or metalinguistic code. Style is not only a surplus element that exceeds propositional meaning, but also a clue of the ineradicable contingency of “intersubjective”‐communicational relationships. The receiver must respect the unique individuality of the sender's style as what demonstrates the cognitive inexhaustibility of the world. Consequently, philosophy can no longer regard literature as foreign and incorrigible by asserting (...) a radical difference of genre and thereby reserving truth exclusively for itself. Rather, I go on to argue, the difference is merely one of quantity. The picture of the world drawn by literature is simply fuller and richer than any comparatively monochromatic system of philosophical propositions. However, within the history of philosophy, there have been instances when the philosophical import of literature has been accorded its due. One example is the dialogical approach of early German Romanticism. The other example is a writer most frequently considered the purest thinker of philosophical sense and meaning – namely, Ludwig Wittgenstein. I conclude by reading Wittgenstein as a philosopher concerned, above all, with the ineffable that style reveals. (shrink)

These works, as the sub-title makes clear, are unfinished sketches for Philosophical Investigations, possibly the most important and influential philosophical ...

‘The Unity of the Proposition’ is a label for a problem which has intermittently intrigued philosophers but which for much of the last century lay neglected in the sad, lightless room under the stairs of philosophical progress, along with other casualties and bugaboos of early analytic philosophy such as the doctrine of internal relations, the identity theory of truth, and Harold Joachim. Yet it was while struggling with this problem (among others), that Bertrand Russell built one of the first (...) steps on the staircase by creating what came later to be called the theory of descriptions.1 According to that theory, statements containing definite descriptions are true only if there exists a unique thing satisfying the description. So nothing one says about ‘The Problem of the Unity of the Proposition’, for example, can be true unless there is one and only one such problem. Yet, as we shall explain below (§1), on the one hand it is unclear that there is any such problem at all, while, on the other, if there is a problem, there seem to be several. One might conclude, then, that everything we say in this paper is likely to be false. But perhaps the paper could be, in the context, appropriately treated as a ladder, to be kicked away after climbing. For Wittgenstein, too, was concerned with the problem: ‘At the centre of Wittgenstein’s project was the task of explaining the unity of the proposition’, says Michael Potter, for example.2 Wittgenstein had inherited the task from two of his philosophical mentors, Russell and Frege. Yet while Russell’s series of failed accounts of propositions, and then judgments, each of which was meant to resolve the problem, seemed ultimately to serve only as a sort of negative inspiration for him,3 Frege’s response to the problem proved a deep influence. We will outline Frege’s position as a backdrop to Wittgenstein’s below (§§2 and 3). As we will argue, one of the most important ways in which Wittgenstein’s position resembles Frege’s is precisely that his (Wittgenstein’s) solution to the problem of unity required treating his own book as an attempt to say the unsayable.. (shrink)

In the Preface to his fine book, Paul Horwich deplores the “polar split” that he sees in academic philosophy today between most philosophers, who don’t care about Wittgenstein, and the Wittgensteinian minority, who don’t care about much else, and are “engaged in feuds with one other that no one else cares about”. Whether or not this picture is entirely fair either to Wittgensteinians or to non-Wittgensteinians, it is certainly true, and unfortunate, that Wittgenstein has been normalised by the academic system. (...) His work has been turned into just another specialisation within the philosophy curriculum that no one who is not “taking the course”, or researching in the area, need pay any attention to. The irony, Horwich suggests, is that Wittgenstein, especially in Part One of _The Philosophical Investigations_, offers a revolutionary perspective on the whole question of how to do philosophy, which any philosopher, Wittgensteinian or not, can benefit from at least considering. (shrink)

Philosophy has been characterized (e.g., by Benson Mates) as a field whose problems are unsolvable. This has often been taken to mean that there can be no progress in philosophy as there is in mathematics or science. The nature of problems and solutions is considered, and it is argued that solutions are always parts of theories, hence that acceptance of a solution requires commitment to a theory (as suggested by William Perry's scheme of cognitive development). Progress can be had in (...) philosophy in the same way as in mathematics and science by knowing what commitments are needed for solutions. Similar views of Rescher and Castañeda are discussed. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Horwich's metaphilosophical interpretation of Wittgenstein. Specifically, it focuses on Horwich's charge that all philosophy is irrational. First, I coordinate the various aspects of Horwich's metaphilosophical program to make sense of his charge of irrationality against philosophy. Second, I argue that this metaphilosophical program misfires in two distinct ways. However, third, I close by calling attention to what I posit to be a critical insight of Horwich's account.

Wittgenstein is the most influential twentieth century philosopher in the English-speaking world. In the _Philosophical Investigations_, his most important work, he introduces the famous 'private language argument' which changed the whole philosophical view of language. _Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations_ introduces and assesses: * Wittgenstein's life, and its connection with his thought * the text of the _Philosophical Investigations_ * the importance of Wittgenstein's work to contemporary philosophy.

Perhaps the most important work of philosophy written in the twentieth century, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus first appeared in 1921 and was the only philosophical work that Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) published during his lifetime. Written in short, carefully numbered paragraphs of extreme compression and brilliance, it immediately convinced many of its readers and captivated the imagination of all. Its chief influence, at first, was on the Logical Positivists of the 1920s and 30s, but many other philosophers were stimulated by its (...) philosophy of language, finding attractive, if ultimately unsatisfactory, its view that propositions were pictures of reality. Perhaps most of all, Wittgenstein himself, after his return to philosophy in the late 1920s, was fascinated by its vision of an inexpressible, crystalline world of logical relationships. The posthumous publication of other writings has, therefore, only served to reawaken interest in the Tractatus and to illuminate its more neglected aspects. David Pears and Brian McGuinness revised their translation in the light of Wittgenstein's own suggestions and comments in his correspondence with C.K. Ogden about the first translation. In addition, this edition contains the introduction by Bertrand Russell which appeared in the original English translation. (shrink)

This essay is a critical analysis of some themes in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. It is not primarily Wittgenstein-exegesis. Much more modestly, my purpose is to express my own thoughts about some questions which Wittgenstein has treated in his writings. It is the second in a series of two articles. The first article, “Remarks on Wittgenstein’s Philosophy: Private Language and Meaning", was published in Volume 42, 2007, of the present YEARBOOK. Section 1, “Philosophical Method”. Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as language (...) therapy is criticised. Instead philosophy is construed as foundational research. Wittgenstein’s statement that mathematical logic cannot contribute to progress in philosophy is repudiated. Several examples of ideas and results in mathematical logic which have led to the solution of philosophical problems are given. Section 2, “Contradictions: The Wittgenstein- Turing Debate”. In lectures on the foundations of mathematics given in 1939, Wittgenstein claimed that contradictions in mathematical theories are harmless. A debate ensued on this question between him and Alan Turing. In support of Turing's standpoint, I use the theorem on Taylor series, Church's Theorem, and Gentzen’s Cut-Elimination Theorem to show that Wittgenstein’s standpoint is untenable. For orientation, I also include here the abstract for the first article in the series, “Remarks on Wittgenstein’s Philosophy: Private Language and Meaning”. Section 1, “The Private Language Argument”. An independent argument is given for Wittgenstein’s thesis that there is no private language. I show that psychological terms in ordinary language, in contrast to an implication of Wittgenstein’s own private language argument, in their meanings do contain references to inner states, processes, and events. Section 2, “Meaning”. Wittgenstein’s definition of meaning as use in the language is criticised. Meaning is instead identified with something in the content of a conscious mind. Applications are given to some suggestions in the philosophy of language by Chomsky, Harman and Fodor, Grice, and Kripke. (shrink)

This article first surveys the established views on Wittgenstein's relation to analytic philosophy. Next it distinguishes among different ways of defining analytic philosophy—topical, doctrinal, methodological, stylistic, historical, and the idea that it is a family-resemblance concept. It argues that while certain stylistic features are important, the historical and the family-resemblance conceptions are the most auspicious, especially in combination. The answer to the title question is given in section 3. Contrary to currently popular “irrationalist” interpretations, Wittgenstein was an analytic philosopher in (...) all phases of his career, albeit an exceedingly exotic one whose style transcends the limits of academic philosophy in general. On the historical understanding he qualifies because he was influenced by and in turn influenced mainly analytic philosophers. On the family-resemblance conception he qualifies both because he developed and employed logico-linguistic analysis and because he initiated the linguistic turn and the distinction between philosophy and science that characterizes one important strand in analytic philosophy. (shrink)

This article suggests that scientific philosophy, especially mathematical philosophy, might be one important way of doing philosophy in the future. Along the way, the article distinguishes between different types of scientific philosophy; it mentions some of the scientific methods that can serve philosophers; it aims to undermine some worries about mathematical philosophy; and it tries to make clear why in certain cases the application of mathematical methods is necessary for philosophical progress.

Wittgenstein’s analogy between psychoanalysis and his later philosophical methods is explored and developed. Historical evidence supports the claim that Wittgenstein characterized an early version of his general remarks on philosophy (§§89-133 in the Philosophical Investigations) as a sustained comparison with psychoanalysis. A non-adversarial, therapeutic interpretation is adopted towards Wittgenstein which emphasizes his focus on dissolving the metaphysical puzzlement of particular troubled individuals. A “picture” of Freudian psychoanalysis is sketched which highlights several features of Freud’s therapeutic techniques and his (...) conception of a neurosis. This portrait of Freud’s methods is used as an “object of comparison” for drawing attention to important aspects of Wittgenstein’s later practice of philosophy. Wittgenstein’s therapeutic conception of philosophy, though concerned with ordinary linguistic practices, is held to focus primarily on rooting out the prejudices and dogmas which lie at the heart of the puzzled philosopher’s inclinations to make metaphysical assertions. (shrink)

Wittgenstein finished part 1 of the Philosophical Investigations in the spring of 1945. From 1946 to 1949 he worked on the philosophy of psychology almost without interruption. The present two-volume work comprises many of his writings over this period. Some of the remarks contained here were culled for part 2 of the Investigations; others were set aside and appear in the collection known as Zettel. The great majority, however, although of excellent quality, have hitherto remained unpublished. This bilingual edition (...) of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology presents the first English translation of an essential body of Wittgenstein's work. It elaborates Wittgenstein's views on psychological concepts such as expectation, sensation, knowing how to follow a rule, and knowledge of the sensations of other persons. It also shows strong emphasis on the "anthropological" aspect of Wittgenstein's thought. Philosophers, as well as anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists will welcome this important publication. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s On Certainty has been a source of inspiration for philosophers concerned with the notion of deep disagreement (see Fogelin in Informal Logic 25(1):3–11, 2005; Pritchard in Topoi 40:1117–1125, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9612-y ). While Wittgenstein’s examples of certainties do not include moral certainties, some philosophers have argued that an analogy can be drawn between certainty regarding the empirical world and moral certainty (Goodman in Metaphilosophy 13:138–148,1982; Hermann in On moral certainty, justification, and practice: A Wittgensteinian perspective, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2015; Pleasants (...) in Inquiry 51(3):241–267, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1080/00201740802120673 ). Moral certainty manifests itself in our fundamental ways of feeling, thinking, and acting morally. It is closely related to an “agreement in form of life” (Wittgenstein in Philosophical investigations, Translated by G.E.M. Anscombe. Third ed., Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1968, § 241.), which makes moral disagreements possible in the first place. In this paper, I aim to shed light on the phenomenon of moral deep disagreement by relating it not only to the notion of moral certainty but also to the concept of deep disruption as it is currently developed and discussed in the philosophy of technology. I argue that certainty, deep disagreement, and deep disruption are all located at the level of “bedrock practices” (Williams in Wittgenstein, mind and meaning, Routledge, Milton Park, 1999, p. 198), and that the fundamentality of their objects should be understood in terms of relationality and interconnectedness. Deep disagreements can occur through deep technology-induced disruption and can take the form of a disruption of deep conceptual agreement. Conceptual common ground can be re-established by continuous interaction and a collective process of moral articulation. Deep disruption and moral deep disagreement can lead to moral progress, for instance in the form of recognising and correcting an epistemic injustice. (shrink)

The differences in the styles of these books are only tokens of more important differences in their methods and results. To see this it might be useful to look at the theses about representation which are central to the Tractatus, but which Wittgenstein leaves altogether aside in his Investigations.