Showing papers in "Philosophical Investigations in 1997"

Can We Understand Ourselves

Abstract: When it is asked if it is ‘possible’ for us to understand alien cultures, a contrast is implied with a certain conception of the understanding we have of our own culture. This contrast has certain parallels with the philosophical ‘problem of other minds’, in which a contrast is also drawn between understanding myself and others. Though these are different questions, they are related — in that somewhat parallel confusion about the notion of ‘understanding’ are involved in both. Our own culture is not in principle transparent to our understanding; neither are other cultures in principle opaque.

How to read Wittgenstein

Abstract: Anticipant la reaction d'O. Hanfling qui s'etonne chez Wittgenstein de l'absence de toute identification explicite au phenomenalisme, l'A. defend la these qu'il a developpe dans son ouvrage intitule «Wittgenstein's metaphysics», selon laquelle une lecture pertinente de Wittgenstein consiste a replacer sa pensee dans le contexte historique de la dispute entre les realistes et les idealistes concernant la grammaire ordinaire, d'une part, et dans le cadre de sa theorie de la signification et d'un certain scepticisme humeen, d'autre part

Wittgenstein, Tolstoy and the Meaning of Life

Abstract: Tolstoy’s writings were clearly important to Wittgenstein. He carried Tolstoy’s The Gospel in Brief with him during the war, and he said that it ‘virtually kept [him] alive’. But commentators have hesitated to extend Tolstoy’s influence to Wittgenstein’s philosophy. This essay argues that there are important parallels in structure and content between Tolstoy’s A Confession and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus which suggest Tolstoy’s influence and which help us to see how we should understand the Tractatus. By comparing these two works we can see more clearly in the Tractatus the idea that the solution to philosophical problems lies in their disappearance and that the structure and content of the Tractatus are expressions of that conception.

‘Dissolving’ the ‘Problem of Linguistic Creativity’

Abstract: In this article, I develop the so-called ‘problem of linguistic creativity’ for two object-languages, one finite, the other infinite. I then employ an approach first outlined by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s collaborator Friedrich Waismann, to ‘dissolve’ that problem, in a sense made precise by working through the example. This is to unsettle the computational picture of linguistic understanding as turning on the generation of semantic information about sentences on the basis of semantic information about their constituent parts, and to provide a reasonably clear conception of to what such ‘philosophical dissolution’ of a problem amounts.

Making sense of moral realism

Abstract: The article begins by surveying defences of moral realism and noting the revival of an ontology of ‘moral properties’. Such a position tends either to invite accusations of espousing metaphysically ‘queer’ properties, or to fall back on a weak (e.g. externalist) version of moral realism. Norman attempts to find a way through these difficulties by exploring the idea of ‘moral vision’, suggesting that this is best understood not as the intuiting of special moral properties but as a matter of ‘seeing patterns’ in our lives and experiences. Such an account of moral vision can explain how it can be both cognitive and action-guiding.

Language as Emerging from Instinctive Behaviour

Abstract: Critique of Norman Malcolm’s ‘Wittgenstein: The Relation of Language to Instinctive Behaviour’. Rhees points out the danger of thinking of instinctive reactions as the foundations of language. The reactions are primitive, Rhees argues, in relation to primitive means of communication, ie, in relation to people who already speak a language. What we need to emphasise is the way in which primitive reactions are taken up in our ways of thinking and forms of life. That cannot be reduced to something ‘instinctive’.

On Showing in Argumentation

Abstract: There is a relation between the way we analyse arguments and the consideration we give to the role of showing in argumentation. the concept of showing covers different ideas. Different kinds of showing are present in argumentative practice. This can be exemplified by reference to sensory evidence, logical inference, and analogical arguments. If showing plays an essential role in the argumentative use of language, and analysis which completely replaces that which is shown by that which is said, distorts what it is trying to understand. Analysing argument is interpreting and continuing argumentative practice; it does not operate on a separate level.

The concept of dreaming : On three theses by Malcolm

Abstract: In his monograph Dreaming (1959), Normal Malcolm puts forward the following three theses: (1) The temporal location of dreams as taking place in one’s sleep is not an empirical fact, but determined by grammar. (2) This grammatical determination does not allow dreams a precise date in physical time. (3) Dreams do not consist of mental occurrences. I argue that (1) is indeed perfectly true, whereas (2) is false; (3) is not borne out by Malcolm’s verificationist main argument, although it can be shown to be largely true for other considerations.

Unconfigured Tractarian Objects

Abstract: According to the Tractatus, the world consists of atomic objects arranged in various configurations, and the ways the world might be are determined by the ways these objects can be configured. The question I address is whether these very objects can be unconfigured as well as configured. Much depends on a positive answer to this question, including, as I show, the internal coherence of the Tractatus itself. I argue that these objects can be unconfigured, and am critical of certain interpretive claims made by Fogelin which lead to the conclusion that they cannot be.

Intention, Rule Following and the Strategic Role of Wright’s Order of Determination Test

Abstract: I argue that Wright’s constructivist action of intention is fundamentally flawed and that the source of its error can be diagnosed by locating it within its strategic context; Wright’s response to Wittgenstein on rules. Wright deploys intentions as an analogy to disarm Kripkean scepticism. Since we can have direct knowledge of the content of our intentions, Kripke’s claim that knowledge of the content of rules cannot be direct and must be inferential is question begging. But Wright goes on to concede that a substantial explanation should be given of how first person grasp of content is possible for which he deploys constructivism. I raise a number of criticisms to show that constructivism fails to explain our knowledge of intentions. Finally I show that Wright’s failure fits into a pattern anticipated by Wittgenstein. The ongoing judgments that are supposed to determine the content of intentions are like the interpretations of rules which fail because they stand in need of further interpretation. Contra Wright I claim that the moral of the rule following considerations is precisely that no substantial answer can be given to the question of how the content of mental states can be grasped. The phenomenon of mental content must simply be presupposed and not reductively explained.