Logic and Philosophy of Logic in Wittgenstein

This essay discusses Wittgenstein's conception of logic, early and late, and some of the types of logical system that he constructed. The essay shows that the common view according to which Wittgenstein had stopped engaging in logic as a philosophical discipline by the time of writing Philosophical Investigations is mistaken. It is argued that, on the contrary, logic continued to figure at the very heart of later Wittgenstein's philosophy; and that Wittgenstein's mature philosophy of logic contains many interesting thoughts that have gone widely unnoticed.     

Wittgenstein,education and religion

Conclusion Wittgenstein's approach to religion is an important part of any assessment of the significance of his thought as a whole for educational thinking and practice. As we have seen, although his view of religion is elusive and stands in need of definitive evaluation, it offers a number of insights and challenges.Whilst Wittgenstein's approach conflicts in important respects with the LR view of education in religion, because that view is based on important social and cultural realities which are significant for Wittgensteinian principles, it is not supplanted. The Wittgensteinian approach both supplies important perspectives which will enrich the LR view, whilst giving support to a greater pluralism in the way in which education in religion is conceived, including forms of substantial religious upbringing and schooling.     

Wittgenstein,mindreading and perception

Can we perceive others' mental states? Wittgenstein is often claimed to hold, like some phenomenologists, that we can. The view thus attributed to Wittgenstein is a view about the correct explanation of mindreading: He is taken to be answering a question about the kind of process mindreading involves. But although Wittgenstein claims we see others' emotions, he denies that he is thereby making any claim about that underlying process and, moreover, denies that any underlying process could have the significance it is claimed to have for this debate. For Wittgenstein, the question is not “Is this perception?” but “What do we mean by ‘perception' here?” and that question is answered by investigating the grammar of the relevant concepts. That investigation, however, reveals similarities and differences between what we call “perception” here and elsewhere. Hence, Wittgenstein's answer to the question “Can we perceive others' mental states?” is yes and no: Both responses can be justified by appeal to different concepts of perception. Wittgenstein, then, has much to contribute to our understanding of mindreading, but what he has to contribute is nothing like the view typically attributed to him here.     

Wittgenstein,Quasi-fideism,and Scepticism

In the discussion of certainties, or ‘hinges’, in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty some of the examples that Wittgenstein uses are religious ones. He remarks on how a child might be raised so that they ‘swallow down’ belief in God (§107) and in discussing the role of persuasion in disagreements he asks us to think of the case of missionaries converting natives (§612). In the past decade Duncan Pritchard has made a case for an account of the rationality of religious belief inspired by On Certainty which he calls ‘quasi-fideism’. Pritchard argues that religious beliefs are just like ordinary non-religious beliefs in presupposing fundamental arational commitments. However, Modesto Gómez-Alonso has recently argued that there are significant differences between the kinds of ‘hinges’ discussed in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and religious beliefs such that we should expect an account of rationality in religion to be quite different to the account of rational practices and their foundations that we find in Wittgenstein’s work. Fundamental religious commitments are, as Wittgenstein said, in the foreground of the religious believer’s life whereas hinge commitments are said to be in the background. People are passionately committed to their religious beliefs but it is not at all clear that people are passionately committed to hinges such as that ‘I have two hands’. I argue here that although there are differences between religious beliefs and many of the hinge-commitments discussed in On Certainty religious beliefs are nonetheless hinge-like. Gómez-Alonso’s criticisms of Pritchard mischaracterise his views and something like Pritchard’s quasi-fideism is the correct account of the rationality of religious belief.

     

Wittgenstein,Aesthetics and Philosophy

Books reviewed: Peter B. Lewis (ed.), Wittgenstein, Aesthetics and Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). 255 pp., price £49.50.
Reviewed by Ole Martin Skilleås, University of Bergen, Norway
Department of Philosophy
University of Bergen
Sydnesplassen 7
NO‐5007 Bergen
Ole.skilleas@fil.uib.no     

Logic,Logic, and Logic

In his recent paper in History and Philosophy of Logic, John Kearns argues for a solution of the Liar paradox using an illocutionary logic (Kearns 2007 Kearns, J. 2007. ‘An illocutionary logical explanation of the Liar Paradox’. History and Philosophy of Logic, 28: 31–66. [Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Paraconsistent approaches, especially dialetheism, which accepts the Liar as being both true and false, are rejected by Kearns as making no ‘clear sense’ (p. 51). In this critical note, I want to highlight some shortcomings of Kearns' approach that concern a general difficulty for supposed solutions to (semantic) antinomies like the Liar. It is not controversial that there are languages which avoid the Liar. For example, the language which consists of the single sentence ‘Benedict XVI was born in Germany’ lacks the resources to talk about semantics at all and thus avoids the Liar. Similarly, more interesting languages such as the propositional calculus avoid the Liar by lacking the power to express semantic concepts or to quantify over propositions. Kearns also agrees with the dialetheist claim that natural languages are semantically closed (i.e. are able to talk about their sentences and the semantic concepts and distinctions they employ). Without semantic closure, the Liar would be no real problem for us (speakers of natural languages). But given the claim, the expressive power of natural languages may lead to the semantic antinomies. The dialetheist argues for his position by proposing a general hypothesis (cf. Bremer 2005 Bremer, M. 2005. An Introduction to Paraconsistent Logics, Bern: Lang.  [Google Scholar], pp. 27–28): ‘(Dilemma) A linguistic framework that solves some antinomies and is able to express its linguistic resources is confronted with strengthened versions of the antinomies’. Thus, the dialetheist claims that either some semantic concepts used in a supposed solution to a semantic antinomy are inexpressible in the framework used (and so, in view of the claim, violate the aim of being a model of natural language), or else old antinomies are exchanged for new ones. One horn of the dilemma is having inexpressible semantic properties. The other is having strengthened versions of the antinomies, once all semantic properties used are expressible. This dilemma applies, I claim, to Kearns' approach as well.     

Horwich, Meaning and Kripke's Wittgenstein

Paul Horwich has argued that Kripke's Wittgenstein's 'sceptical challenge' to the notion of meaning and rule-following only gets going if an 'inflationary' conception of truth is presupposed, and he develops a 'use-theoretic' conception of meaning which he claims is immune to Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical attack. I argue that even if we grant Horwich his 'deflationary' conception of truth, that is not enough to undermine Kripke's Wittgenstein's sceptical argument. Moreover, Horwich's own 'use-theoretic' account of meaning actually falls prey to that sceptical challenge.     

Kant, Wittgenstein, and Transcendental Chaos

Wittgenstein sought to uphold ‘realism without empiricism’. This paper identifies in Wittgestein's and in Kant's philosophies a common line of argument that provides a genuinely transcendental argument for (not from) mental content externalism. This line of argument has not been previously recognized in either thinker's work. The common thesis defended by both Wittgenstein and Kant alike is that, if we human beings did not inhabit a natural world structured by a recognizable degree of similarity and variety among the objects or events we perceive, we could not so much as think, so we could not so much as be self‐conscious. (This line of argument is independent of Kant's idealism, and ultimately shows that Kant's transcendental idealism is false and unsupportable.)     

Wittgenstein,Ethics and Basic Moral Certainty

Alice Crary claims that “the standard view of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics” is dominated by “inviolability interpretations”, which often underlie conservative readings of Wittgenstein. Crary says that such interpretations are “especially marked in connection with On Certainty”, where Wittgenstein is represented as holding that “our linguistic practices are immune to rational criticism, or inviolable”. Crary's own conception of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics, which I call the “intrinsically‐ethical reading”, derives from the influential New Wittgenstein school of exegesis, and is also espoused by James Edwards, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall. To my eyes, intrinsically‐ethical readings present a peculiar picture of ethics, which I endeavour to expose in Part I of the paper. In Part II I present a reading of On Certainty that Crary would call an “inviolability interpretation”, defend it against New Wittgensteinian critiques, and show that this kind of reading has nothing to do with ethical or political conservatism. I go on to show how Wittgenstein's observations on the manner in which we can neither question nor affirm certain states of affairs that are fundamental to our epistemic practices can be fruitfully extended to ethics. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon that I call “basic moral certainty”, which constitutes the foundation of our ethical practices, and the scaffolding or framework of moral perception, inquiry, and judgement. The nature and significance of basic moral certainty will be illustrated through consideration of the strangeness of philosophers' attempts at explaining the wrongness of killing.