"Ultimate" facts? Zalabardo on the metaphysics of truth

A Comment on a Forthcoming article by José Zalabardo on the Tractatus Picture Theory's origins in Wittgenstein's reactions to Russell's Multiple Relation theory of Judgment and Truth. For a special issue of the Australasian Philosophical Review

A Note on the Late Wittgenstein"s Use of the Picture Concept

In the following I wish to draw your attention to two related\ud ideas that occur in Wittgenstein"s later writings. In making\ud this emphasis I am at the same time claiming a certain\ud continuity in Wittgenstein"s thought – a continuity of a quite\ud particular kind. The argument that I shall present in the\ud following can be summarised under three points: 1. in both\ud his early and his late writings, Wittgenstein makes a\ud natural-historical claim that, as humans, we are picturecreating\ud and picture-using creatures; 2. the crucial analogy\ud between the picture and the sentence that appears in the\ud Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus is retained in Wittgenstein"s\ud later descriptions of language; and 3. the use of this\ud analogy serves two diametrically opposed purposes when\ud considered in relation to religious language, whereby the\ud earlier use determines the propositions of natural science\ud and delimits these from religious propositions, and the later\ud use of the analogy provides the impetus for a grammatical\ud investigation of religious language and religious beliefs

The Composition of Wittgenstein's "Tractatus": An Interpretative Study

When Wittgenstein started writing the Tractatus in June 1915, he was convinced that he was producing a theory. Accordingly, he chose a theoretical style of expressing his thought. Wittgenstein abandoned this stance only at the end of his work of composing the book. He realized that what he is producing in not a theory but a manual for improving our language and thinking. Unfortunately, it was too late to change the architecture and the style of the book: Wittgenstein simply had no time to do that. This drawback makes the Tractatus notoriously difficult to understand and is apparently the major factor that caused the so called “Tractarian Wars”

On the Very Idea of a Language of Art: Aesthetics and Common Sense

In a number of writings that were only narrowly circulated, Richard Wollheim took a stand against two pivotal theses at the centre of aesthetic reflection and, above all, of critical and historical-artistic practices: i) that art is a language (and thus artistic meaning is produced and understood in the same way as linguistic meaning); ii) that art inherently is a form of communication. In Wollheim\u2019s view, such theses are the mainstream conceptions shared by disciplines and approaches as diverse as semiotics, hermeneutics, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism, and a significant portion of cognitive science. In this paper, I mainly concentrate on (i) and I reconstruct, discuss and defend Wollheim\u2019s arguments against a recent interpretive misunderstanding that deems them inadequate vis \ue0 vis Donald Davidson\u2019s philosophy. My contention is instead that, at a closer analysis, the latter works in fact as a pivot to Wollheim\u2019s aesthetics, especially against the arguments put forth by Nelson Goodman, the most rigorous defendant of (i) and (ii)

The Phenomenology of Language and the Metaphysicalizing of the Real

This essay joins Wilhelm Dilthey’s conception of the metaphysical impulse as a flight from the tragedy of human finitude with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s understanding of how language bewitches intelligence. We contend that there are features of the phenomenology of language that play a constitutive and pervasive role in the formation of metaphysical illusion

The Aesthetic Dimension of Wittgenstein's Later Writings

In this essay I argue the extent to which meaning and judgment in aesthetics figures in Wittgenstein’s later conception of language, particularly in his conception of how philosophy might go about explaining the ordinary functioning of language. Following a review of some biographical and textual matters concerning Wittgenstein’s life with music, I outline the connection among (1) Wittgenstein’s discussions of philosophical clarity or perspicuity, (2) our attempts to give clarity to our aesthetic experiences by wording them, and (3) the clarifying experience of the dawning of an aspect, which Wittgenstein pictures as the perception of an internal relation. By examining Wittgenstein’s use of “internal relation” from the Tractatus to his later writings, I come to challenge the still prevalent understanding of Wittgenstein’s appeals to grammar as an appeal to something given (e.g., to a set of grammatical rules). Instead, as I argue, Wittgensteinian appeals to grammatical criteria should be understood as modeled by the form of justification found in our conversations about art

the primacy of use over naming

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein proposed the notion of meaning that accounts for the large variety of contexts in which we apply the term “meaning”. This paper agreement with the manner in which Wittgenstein enhance his conception of meaning emphasizing his methodology of observation and description of particular cases. By applying a descriptive approach, Wittgenstein demonstrated that meaning of the term does not reside in physical or mental objects as well as in its correlations. As a result of contrasting denotative theory as well as the correspondence theory of meaning and recognizing the inadequacy of the accounts of meaning, he has proposed earlier in his Tractatus. But in later work, he has suggested that only one conception of meaning which could not be invalidated, at least for a large class of cases. This is none other than the notion of meaning which is regarded as public in nature. Consequently, the meaning of a term is not its denotation but its “use” in the language. Hence, by upholding the slogan i.e., “meaning is use” here I want to illustrate the supremacy of use over “naming” concerning to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein and the memory debate

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0732118X Copyright Elsevier Ltd. DOI: 10.1016/j.newideapsych.2008.04.015In this paper, I survey the impact on neuropsychology of Wittgenstein’s elucidations of memory. Wittgenstein discredited the storage and imprint models of memory, dissolved the conceptual link between memory and mental images or representations and, upholding the context-sensitivity of memory, made room for a family resemblance concept of memory, where remembering can also amount to doing or saying something. While neuropsychology is still generally under the spell of archival and physiological notions of memory, Wittgenstein's reconceptions can be seen at work in its leading-edge practitioners. However, neuroscientists, generally, are finding memory difficult to demarcate from other cognitive and noncognitive processes, and I suggest this is largely due to their considering automatic responses as part of memory, termed nondeclarative or implicit memory. Taking my lead from Wittgenstein's On Certainty, I argue that there is only remembering where there is also some kind of mnemonic effort or attention, and therefore that so-called implicit memory is not memory at all, but a basic, noncognitive certainty.Peer reviewe

Ethics and the activity of philosophy in early Wittgenstein

Wittgenstein’s early work is well known for its seminal importance to the philosophy of language and logic during the second half of the 20th century and beyond. This thesis will explore some of the literature around aspects of his work that are less referenced, though equally important: ethics and the nature of the philosophical enterprise. This review of a portion of the surrounding literature, along with exegesis of the early texts with these particular aspects in mind, will contribute to a broader understanding of Wittgenstein as an ethical thinker