Book contents
- Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
- Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Anatomy of a Muddle: Wittgenstein and Philosophy
- Chapter 2 Explaining What We Mean
- Chapter 3 Objectivity
- Chapter 4 The Methodological Significance of Intuitions in Philosophy
- Chapter 5 Wittgenstein on ‘Seeing Meanings’
- Chapter 6 Bringing the Phenomenal World into View
- Chapter 7 First Steps and Conceptual Creativity
- Chapter 8 Wittgenstein and Analytic Revisionism
- Chapter 9 Demystifying Meaning in Horwich and Wittgenstein
- Chapter 10 What Is Meaning? A Wittgensteinian Answer to an Un-Wittgensteinian Question
- Chapter 11 Meaning, Use, and Supervenience
- Chapter 12 Some Socratic Aspects of Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy
- References
- Index
Chapter 7 - First Steps and Conceptual Creativity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 August 2019
- Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
- Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Anatomy of a Muddle: Wittgenstein and Philosophy
- Chapter 2 Explaining What We Mean
- Chapter 3 Objectivity
- Chapter 4 The Methodological Significance of Intuitions in Philosophy
- Chapter 5 Wittgenstein on ‘Seeing Meanings’
- Chapter 6 Bringing the Phenomenal World into View
- Chapter 7 First Steps and Conceptual Creativity
- Chapter 8 Wittgenstein and Analytic Revisionism
- Chapter 9 Demystifying Meaning in Horwich and Wittgenstein
- Chapter 10 What Is Meaning? A Wittgensteinian Answer to an Un-Wittgensteinian Question
- Chapter 11 Meaning, Use, and Supervenience
- Chapter 12 Some Socratic Aspects of Wittgenstein’s Conception of Philosophy
- References
- Index
Summary
In section 308 of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein talks of the first step in philosophizing being ‘the one that altogether escapes notice ... that’s just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter’. In this essay, Michael Beaney explores some of the connections between conceptual creativity and the kind of first steps of which Wittgenstein spoke. Beaney argues that a good example of such a first step is Frege’s use of function–argument analysis and the associated conception of concepts as functions, which led to almost all his characteristic doctrines. And Beaney shows that, while it is tempting to see the conceptual creativity involved in this case—that is, in Frege’s reconceiving concepts as functions—as originating in some ‘Eureka!’ moment and as catching on when others can exclaim ‘Now I can go on!’, all this needs careful description to avoid mythologization.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning , pp. 119 - 142Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
- 58
- Cited by