Feeling at home in language

What do we learn about language from reading Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations? This question gains urgency from Wittgenstein's alleged animus against philosophical theorizing and his indirectness. Section 1 argues that Wittgenstein's goal is to prevent philosophical questioning about the foundations of language from the beginning. This conception of his aim is not in tension with Wittgenstein's use of the notion of community; “community interpretations” of his views betray a misguided commitment to the coherence of the idea that language might need grounding. Wittgenstein's goal is not to enjoin us not to step “outside of language-games”, but to show that we have insufficiently clear grasp of the terms we try to use to express the limits of intelligibility. Section 2 suggests that appreciating Wittgenstein's moral concerning the relation between language and philosophizing about it involves allowing him to teach us how to read his book. What makes readingPhilosophical Investigations possible is openness to learning how not to forget our lives in language.     

The Limits of Learning: Habermas' Social Theory and Religion

Habermas' view that contemporary philosophy and social theory can learn from religious traditions calls for closer consideration. He is correct to hold that religious traditions constitute a reservoir of potentially important meanings that can be critically appropriated without emptying them of their motivating and inspirational power. However, contrary to what he implies, his theory allows for learning from religion only to a very limited degree. This is due to two core elements of his conceptual framework, both of which are key features of his account of postmetaphysical thinking. The first is the requirement of ethical agnosticism; this requires philosophy and social theory to refrain from offering guidance on questions of the good life. The second is his language‐immanent conception of truth in the domain of practical reason; this follows from his rejection of any source of validity beyond human communication in this domain. I make the case for a more robust account of learning from religious traditions and metaphysical worldviews, arguing that for this purpose Habermas must modify his requirement of ethical agnosticism and relinquish his language‐immanent conception of truth.     

From Metaphysics and Philosophical Theses to Grammar: Wittgenstein's Turn

The paper discusses the question ‘what does Wittgenstein mean by not having theses in philosophy?’ His conception of philosophy without theses, as this is articulated in his later work, is understood as a response to the problem of dogmatism in philosophy and a non‐metaphysical form of philosophy. I argue that although already the Tractatus aims at a philosophy devoid of theses, it involves a relapse back to such theses. Its conception of philosophical clarification involves a particular conception of the essence of propositions. This way the form of the activity of clarification is determined by a philosophical/metaphysical thesis. In his later philosophy Wittgenstein, however, manages to solve this problem. His solution, explained with the help of the metaphor of ‘turning our whole investigation around’, consists of a change in the comprehension of the status of philosophical statements. For instance rules (e.g. definitions) and examples are understood as what he calls ‘objects of comparison’. Such objects of comparison are something that cases of language use (to be investigated with the purpose of clarification) are to be compared with, but the philosopher is not to make the claim that such objects of comparison show what the cases of language use under examination must be. The modality (expressed by ‘must’) is a characteristic of the philosopher's mode of presentation. It should not be claimed to be a feature of his object of investigation (the uses of language to be clarified).     

Ricoeur versus Taylor on Language and Narrative

Abstract: Although Ricoeur and Taylor are often grouped together, their conceptions of language, literature, and practical reason are very different. The first half of this essay focuses on Ricoeur's theory of triple mimesis and narrative, showing how his attempt to synthesize Kant, Husserl, and structuralism results in a formalism that blocks out the ontological, hermeneutical, and historical dimensions of literature and practical reason. The second half of the essay develops Taylor's ontological conception of public imagination and illustrates the dynamics of this conception of language and interpretation by showing how literary works debate with each other over language, subjectivity, and reference. Narrative does not just order; it argues.     

What Can Causal Claims Mean?

How can Hume account for the meaning of causal claims? The causal realist, I argue, is, on Hume's view, saying something nonsensical. I argue that both realist and agnostic interpretations of Hume are inconsistent with his view of language and intentionality. But what then accounts for this illusion of meaning? And even when we use causal terms in accordance with Hume’s definitions, we seem merely to be making disguised self-reports. I argue that Hume’s view is not as implausible as it sounds by exploring his conception of language.     

The lost cause of mourning

This paper examines the evolution of Jacques Lacan’s concept of mourning from his treatment of Hamlet in Seminar 6, “Desire and Its Interpretation,” to its transformation in the tenth Seminar on “Anxiety.” It is a transformation that occurs in tandem with Lacan’s reconception of anxiety as lack of the lack and his reshaped conception of the objet a as object/cause of desire. The key point is the way that Lacan’s renovated conception upends the common sense notion of mourning, that which assumes that suffering the death of a loved one means accommodating oneself to an absence where there was previously a presence. On the contrary, says Lacan, part of what is most deeply to be mourned is the lack in the Other around which the love relation was constructed. The paper concludes by asking to what extent Lacan’s account of mourning should be distinguished from those of both Hegel and Freud.     

Distributive Justice and Enviromental Sustainability

Andrew Dobson has outlined three conceptions of environmental sustainability: the 'critical natural capital' conception; the 'irreversibility' conception; and the 'natural value' conception. He has also attempted to map out the various 'dimensions of social justice'– his purpose in so doing being to analyze the 'encounter' of each conception of environmental sustainability with the points on his map. Not surprisingly, Dobson concludes that as one moves from the 'critical natural capital' conception through the 'irreversibility' conception to the 'natural value' conception of 'sustainability', the 'points of contact' with his map of 'the dimensions of social justice' are found to 'become fewer and further apart'. In this article I argue that Dobson is fundamentally confused in his reason for thinking why this is so. I also argue that a core argument he deploys concerning future generations cannot do the work he requires of it.     

The Significance of Fallibilism Within Gettier’s Challenge: A Case Study

Taking his conceptual cue from Ernest Sosa, John Turri has offered a putative conceptual solution to the Gettier problem: Knowledge is cognitively adept belief, and no Gettiered belief is cognitively adept. At the core of such adeptness is a relation of manifestation. Yet to require that relation within knowing is to reach for what amounts to an infallibilist conception of knowledge. And this clashes with the spirit behind the fallibilism articulated by Gettier when stating his challenge. So, Turri??s form of response is irrelevant to that challenge, which was intended to pose a conceptual problem within fallibilist conceptions of knowledge. (And that failure on Turri??s part needs to be highlighted to remind epistemologists of the need to assess Gettier cases by a fallibilist standard. Although that need was described earlier by Robert Almeder, apparently his advice is being overlooked. This paper develops it anew, in a more general form.)     

Wittgenstein and the Dualism of the Inner and the Outer

A dualism characteristic of modern philosophy is the conception of the inner and the outer as two independently intelligible domains. Wittgenstein’s attack on this dualism contains deep insights. The main insight (excavated from §304 and §293 of the Philosophical Investigations) is this: our sensory consciousness is deeply shaped by language and this shaping plays a fundamental role in the etiology of the dualism. I locate this role in the learning of a sensation-language (as described in §244), by showing that this learning is, under another aspect, the incision of language, namely the infliction of cuts upon certain natural-primitive unities between the inner and the outer. These cuts, driven by powerful forces, eventually harden into an entrenched division between the inner and the outer, thereby providing a constant soil for the dualism. That this dualism is rooted in the very learning of a language is cause for ambivalence about language.     

Quine's Argument from Despair

Quine's argument for a naturalized epistemology is routinely perceived as an argument from despair: traditional epistemology must be abandoned because all attempts to deduce our scientific theories from sense experience have failed. In this paper, I will show that this picture is historically inaccurate and that Quine's argument against first philosophy is considerably stronger and subtler than the standard conception suggests. For Quine, the first philosopher's quest for foundations is inherently incoherent; the very idea of a self-sufficient sense datum language is a mistake, there is no science-independent perspective from which to validate science. I will argue that a great deal of the confusion surrounding Quine's argument is prompted by certain phrases in his seminal ‘Epistemology Naturalized’. Scrutinizing Quine's work both before and after the latter paper provides a better key to understanding his remarkable views about the epistemological relation between theory and evidence.     

Poetry as anti-discourse: formalism,hermeneutics, and the poetics of Paul Celan

I argue from a hermeneutic point of view that formal elements of poetry can only be identified because poetry is based on both the phenomenon and the conception of poetry, both of which precede the attempt to identify formal elements as the defining moment of poetry. Furthermore, I argue with Gadamer that poetry is based on a rupture with and an epoche of our non-poetic use of language in such a way that it liberates “fixed” universal aspects of everyday language, and that through establishing itself in a new, self-referential and monologue unity, it individualizes speech. From the hermeneutic position, poetry is a form of speaking rather than a “fixed” object. As such, I will try to make sense of what Paul Celan said in his famous “Meridian” speech: namely, that the poem is “actualized language, set free under the sign of a radical individuation, which at the same time stays mindful of the limits drawn by language, the possibilities opened by language.”     

Thinking emergence as interaffecting: approaching and contextualizing Eugene Gendlin’s Process Model

Prior to A Process Model, Gendlin’s theoretical and practical work focused on the interfacing of bodily-felt meaningfulness and symbolization. In A Process Model, Gendlin does something much wider and more philosophically primary. The hermeneutic and pragmatist distinction between the concept of experience, on the one hand, and actual experiential process, on the other, becomes for Gendlin the methodological basis for a radical reconceptualization of the body. Wittgenstein’s formulation of “meaning” as “language-use in situations” is spelled out by Gendlin in embodied terms, yielding a profound new grasp of language, meaning, situation, language-use and culture as interactional body-process. Gendlin, in building his text, answers the pragmatist critique of a wrong progression of thinking where the results of an inquiry are read back to be its premises. With his central concept “eveving” (“everything interaffected by everything”) Gendlin shows how the seeming determinacy of preceding structure is opened in the actual occurring. He thereby elaborates a new conception of continuity where the possibility for responsive novelty is emergent in the event itself. The conceptual development of the text itself instances this kind of emergent novelty. We will somewhat follow Gendlin’s own path in using language-in-situations as entry-point into his more fundamental process-thinking, thereby asking ourselves how to engage his new kind of model. In the last part, we introduce some of the philosophical roots of Gendlin’s A Process Model.     

Wittgenstein on Metaphysical/Everyday Use

Wittgenstein remarked 'What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use' ( PI §116). On this basis, his 'later philosophy' is generally regarded as a version of 'ordinary language philosophy'. He is taken to criticize philosophers for making ('metaphysical') statements which deviate in different ways from the everyday use of some of their component expressions. I marshal textual evidence for another reading of this remark, and show that he used 'metaphysical' in a traditional way, namely, to describe philosophical attempts to delineate the essence of things by establishing necessities and impossibilities. On his conception, 'everyday' simply means 'non-metaphysical' (in this precise sense). Comparisons of philosophical utterances with non-philosophical uses of words are meant to call attention to this crucial distinction.     

ACTIONS AS THE TIES THAT BIND Love, Praxis, and Community in the Thought of Gustavo Gutiérrez

Gustavo Gutiérrez develops an account of human action or praxis that I—borrowing the language of Charles Taylor—label expressivist. Human action must be understood as expressing an underlying potential or impulse that only becomes real through expression in action. Gutiérrez's expressivism is fundamental to his view of the relationship between faith and love, his notion of three dimensions of liberation/salvation, and his understanding of the fundamental option as a yes or no in response to grace. Moreover, it supports a valuable approach to community as defined more by shared actions than a shared tradition or narrative. The final section briefly indicates two limitations to Gutiérrez's vision—especially with regard to the conception of community—and suggests the direction that a constructive appropriation of his thought might take.     

D. Z. Phillips on the grammar of “God”

In this essay dedicated to the memory of D. Z. Phillips, I propose to do two things. In the first part I present his position on the grammar of God and the language game in some detail, discussing the confusion of “subliming” the logic of our language, the contextual genesis of sense and meaning, the idea of a world view, language game, logic, and grammar internal to each context, the constitution of the religious context, and the grammar of God proper to that context. In the second part I present my appreciative critical reflection by arguing that the conception of context and language game must be made more dialectical, that the grammar of God needs more systematic metaphysical analysis, and that a greater sense of the radical transcendence of God over a language game is necessary in order to avoid reductionism always inherent in any contextual approach.     

What is Original in Merleau-Ponty’s View of the Phenomenological Reduction?

Despite the recent increase of interest in the work of Merleau-Ponty there is still a persistent tendency to overlook the uniqueness of the philosophical position he advances in Phenomenology of Perception. In this article I present a reading of Merleau-Ponty’s account of the phenomenological reduction that explains how it is original. I do this by contrasting his presentation of the reduction with that of the early Husserl, highlighting how his emphasis on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’ leads him to reject Husserl’s conception of phenomenology as a ‘philosophical science,’ and the Kantian language in which the this account is framed. I go on to critically discuss the interpretations of the reduction advanced by Stephen Priest and Joel Smith as examples of readings that fail to fully grasp Merleau-Ponty’s account of the ‘natural attitude’ as resting on the inherent objectivizing structure that is built into perception itself. The way that these authors misinterpret Merleau-Ponty helps to make maximally clear the profound philosophical significance that he places on the phenomenology of the ‘perceived world’.     

The Implicit Definition of the Set-Concept

Once Hilbert asserted that the axioms of a theory `define` theprimitive concepts of its language `implicitly'. Thus whensomeone inquires about the meaning of the set-concept, thestandard response reads that axiomatic set-theory defines itimplicitly and that is the end of it. But can we explainthis assertion in a manner that meets minimum standards ofphilosophical scrutiny? Is Jané (2001) wrong when hesays that implicit definability is ``an obscure notion''? Doesan explanation of it presuppose any particular view on meaning?Is it not a scandal of the philosophy of mathematics that no answersto these questions are around? We submit affirmative answers to allquestions. We argue that a Wittgensteinian conception of meaninglooms large beneath Hilbert's conception of implicit definability.Within the specific framework of Horwich's recent Wittgensteiniantheory of meaning called semantic deflationism, we explain anexplicit conception of implicit definability, and then go on toargue that, indeed, set-theory, defines the set-conceptimplicitly according to this conception. We also defend Horwich'sconception against a recent objection from the Neo-Fregeans Hale and Wright (2001). Further, we employ the philosophicalresources gathered to dissolve all traditional worries about thecoherence of the set-concept, raisedby Frege, Russell and Max Black, and whichrecently have been defended vigorously by Hallett (1984) in hismagisterial monograph Cantorian set-theory and limitationof size. Until this day, scandalously, these worries havebeen ignored too by philosophers of mathematics.     

Does Conversation Need Shared Language? Davidson and Gadamer on Communicative Understanding

In a rare discussion of Gadamer's work, Davidson takes issue with Gadamer's claim that successful communication requires that interlocutors share a common language. While he is right to see a difference between his own views and Gadamer's on this point, Davidson appears to have misunderstood what motivates Gadamer's position, conflating it with that of his more familiar conventionalist interlocutors. This paper articulates Gadamer's view of the role of language in communicative understanding as an alternative to both Davidson's and that of the conventionalist writers Davidson critiques. It is argued, first, that Gadamer employs a conception of what individuates a language, and thus of what it means for two speakers to “share” a language, that Davidson never considers. By emphasizing the role of “application” in the historical development of languages, Gadamer develops a view in which languages are distinguished not by their particular semantic or syntactic rules, but by subtle differences between the concepts they express. Second, it is argued that the instances of “asymmetrical” communication—communication between interlocutors who have different sets of concepts at their disposal—that motivate Gadamer's position pose a challenge to Davidson's account of interpretative charity.     

Wittgenstein's Private Language Investigation

In this paper, I first review previous interpretations of Wittgenstein's remarks on private language, revealing their inadequacies, and then present my own interpretation. Basing mainly on Wittgenstein's notes for lectures on private sensations, I establish the following points: (i) ‘remembering the connection right’ means ‘reidentifying sensation‐types’; (ii) the reason for ‘no criterion of correctness’ is that nothing, especially no inner mechanisms nor external devices, can be utilised by the private speaker to tell whether some sensations are of one type or different types; and (iii) private names are not really names, private language is not really a language, therefore, private language is a grammatical illusion. My interpretation has the advantage of being able to reconcile Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy, which is to dissolve philosophical problems by rearranging grammatical facts, with his actual philosophical practice, at least in the case of private language.