Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

11 results

Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning
  • Edited by James Conant, Sebastian Sunday
  • Published online:
    15 August 2019
    Print publication:
    15 August 2019
  • This volume of new essays presents groundbreaking interpretations of some of the most central themes of Wittgenstein's philosophy. A distinguished group of contributors demonstrates how Wittgenstein's thought can fruitfully be applied to contemporary debates in epistemology, metaphilosophy and philosophy of language. The volume combines historical and systematic approaches to Wittgensteinian methods and perspectives, with essays providing detailed analysis that will be accessible to students as well as specialists. The result is a rich and illuminating picture of a key figure in twentieth-century philosophy and his continuing importance to philosophical study.

  • 9 - Are meaning, understanding, etc. definite states?

  • Edited by Arif Ahmed, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein's <I>Philosophical Investigations</I>
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    13 May 2010, pp 162-177

  • Summary

    This chapter presents a review of the Warren Goldfarb's remarks in his paper 'Wittgenstein on understanding'. However, according to the author, we can learn something from Wittgenstein about how to picture understanding and so forth as definite or particular states without having the picture reflect confusion. The chapter discusses the strand in Wittgenstein that Goldfarb focuses on, the strand which deals with a way of being confused by such a picture. There are certainly passages in Philosophical Investigations that point in the direction Goldfarb indicates. Goldfarb's main focus is on what he calls 'the scientific objection'. The chapter considers parts of Wittgenstein's text in which he shows, in effect, how the picture of meaning, understanding, and so forth as definite states of mind can after all be innocuous. There is nothing wrong with saying the connection with the person one means exists.

  • 12 - Remembering intentions

  • Edited by Arif Ahmed, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein's <I>Philosophical Investigations</I>
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    13 May 2010, pp 218-234

  • Summary

    Philosophical Investigations 633-93 contains a striking discussion of our capacity to remember our earlier intentions, wishes and emotions, and to remember how we meant an earlier word or remark. But there are elements in Wittgenstein discussion that might seem to suggest an anti-realist treatment of at least some of the cases he considers towards the end of part I of Philosophical Investigations. This chapter discusses two of these elements: his attitude towards counterfactuals of the form, 'Had you asked me at the time, I would have said so-and-so'; and his suggestion that the comment, 'I meant the piano-tuning', may make the connection between the author's earlier remark and its object rather than reporting a connection that already existed. The remarks in PI 682-4 recall comments about intentional connections that appear in the Blue Book and Philosophical Grammar and continue into the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology.

  • 4 - Wittgenstein on family resemblance concepts

  • Edited by Arif Ahmed, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein's <I>Philosophical Investigations</I>
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    13 May 2010, pp 66-87

  • Summary

    One of Wittgenstein's best-known and most important philosophical contributions in the Philosophical Investigations is his account of the 'family resemblance' character of general concepts. The chapter provides a brief description of Wittgenstein's conception of 'family resemblance' as a characteristic of concepts. It distinguishes that characteristic from various others with which it has commonly been confused. The chapter discusses Wittgenstein's views concerning the philosophical significance of the existence of such concepts, in particular, its refutation of a certain sort of Platonism; its bearing on his own position that concepts are constituted by rules which govern the use of words; and its role in diagnosing and dispelling a broad range of philosophical illusions. The chapter defuses some residual problems which may seem to afflict Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblance concepts. Finally, it discusses one important issue concerning reductionism.

  • 10 - Another strand in the private language argument

  • Edited by Arif Ahmed, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein's <I>Philosophical Investigations</I>
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    13 May 2010, pp 178-196

  • Summary

    The title of this chapter is borrowed from John McDowell's 'One strand in the private language argument'. The discussion of some of the most important and controversial topics in the Philosophical Investigations is remarkably brief, and sometimes extremely compressed. Given that Wittgenstein wrote hundreds of pages on the issues in his Nachlass, including a great deal of preparatory material from which he selected the remarks published in the Philosophical Investigations, a number of interpreters have found it attractive and helpful to turn to that source material for further information. The chapter reviews the main approaches to the use of the Wittgenstein Nachlass. It turns to reading of Philosophical Investigations 403, a cryptic passage with a particularly long and complex history, as a case study of a remark where one might expect that the study of sources would be most informative.

  • 1 - From referentialism to human action: the Augustinian theory of language

  • Edited by Arif Ahmed, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein's <I>Philosophical Investigations</I>
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    13 May 2010, pp 11-29
    • Chapter
      • You have access
    • PDF
    • Export citation

  • Summary

    This chapter presents an interpretation of the first twenty or so sections of the Philosophical Investigations. For Wittgenstein, meaningful language is ultimately a kind of human action, indeed the characteristic kind of human action. This chapter compares and contrasts Wittgenstein's philosophical intentions in the Philosophical Investigations with his intentions in the earlier TractatusLogico-Philosophicus. It then explicates the meaning-is-use thesis, unpacking Wittgenstein's opening argument for the meaning-is-use thesis. It concludes, on Wittgenstein's behalf, that the thesis that meaning-is-use is the best overall explanation of all the relevant meaning-facts or meaning-phenomena. From Steps A, B and C presented in the chapter, it follows that the meaning-is-use thesis is true, including the important qualification that sometimes the human act of ostending an object that bears a name also explains the meaning of that name. In this way, the Augustinian theory of language leads directly from Referentialism to human action.

  • 6 - Wittgenstein vs contextualism

  • Edited by Arif Ahmed, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    Wittgenstein's <I>Philosophical Investigations</I>
    Published online:
    06 July 2010
    Print publication:
    13 May 2010, pp 109-128

  • Summary

    This chapter explores whether Wittgenstein is productively associated with contextualism. It shows that if one read contextualism back into passages in the Philosophical Investigations, they end up ascribing views to Wittgenstein that he not only does not endorse, but which are in active opposition to his intent. The chapter focuses on two alleged such ways, one associated with proper names and one with predicates. According to Charles Travis, Wittgenstein seeks to draw the reader's attention to both. The Philosophical Investigations might be taken to provide support for contextualism not merely by explicitly agitating for it, but more indirectly by challenging its nemesis: truth-conditional semantics (TCS). The thesis is that finding contextualism in the passages discussed is not merely unwarranted; it is at cross-purposes with an appreciation of the points about explanation and understanding that these passages are chiefly concerned to provide.

  • 6 - Social issues in computer ethics

  • Edited by Luciano Floridi, University of Hertfordshire
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 April 2010, pp 101-115

  • Summary

    This chapter concentrates on three important social issues in computer ethics: the question of intellectual property (IP), issues related to digital divides, and issues arising out of employment and work. It clarifies the philosophical underpinning of those social issues in computer ethics related to ownership and property in assets that have a form different from the physical entities for which the idea of property was originally developed. With regards to ethical issues raised by information and communication technology (ICT), two groups of intellectual creations currently constitute the main items of IP: software and content. The chapter addresses the ethically and philosophically interesting aspects of digital divides which develops the argument that digital divides share relevant aspects with other social issues of computer ethics. Work and employment issues are driven to a large extent by business interests, for example where ICT leads to a higher degree of employee surveillance or self-surveillance.

  • 12 - The Work of Wittgenstein's Words

  • Edited by William Day, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, Victor J. Krebs
  • Book:
    Seeing Wittgenstein Anew
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 March 2010, pp 249-267

  • Summary

    This chapter restricts itself to defending the coherence of the author's reading against Avner Baz's critique. There is a structural obstacle in the way of determining exactly what weight to attach to the precise forms and general organization of Wittgenstein's remarks in Part II, Section 11 of Philosophical Investigations, and indeed of the writing that constitutes the whole of that part of the book. Despite the fact that the author's discussion begins by explicitly distinguishing three implications of Wittgenstein's remarks, Baz's summary of it simply runs them together. The strategy of the author's writings on seeing aspects is to reduce our sense of puzzlement about aspect-dawning by relocating it in the broader context of our lives with pictures; that context is hidden from us (and by us) because of its simplicity and familiarity, and it evades our notice precisely because it pervades our form of life.

  • 13 - On the Difficulty of Seeing Aspects and the “Therapeutic” Reading of Wittgenstein

  • Edited by William Day, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, Victor J. Krebs
  • Book:
    Seeing Wittgenstein Anew
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 March 2010, pp 268-288

  • Summary

    The distinctive character of Wittgenstein's manner of writing, early and late, must play an important role in accounting for the diverse ways in which it has been approached and engaged. When thinking of Wittgenstein on seeing aspects it is natural to think first and primarily of the remarks in Part II, Section 11 of Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein (often) writes in response to a sense that the possibility of various phenomena, for example, meaning, understanding, naming, following a rule, knowing another, has become mysterious to us, and that our efforts to account for their possibility, for example, by supposing underlying mental acts, universals, a pure logical order, only make matters more mysterious. He directs our attention differently to what is evident: the ordinary circumstances of phenomena of which we are aware but which we, for various reasons, dismiss as merely incidental or irrelevant.

  • 9 - The Philosophical Significance of Meaning-Blindness

  • Edited by William Day, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, Victor J. Krebs
  • Book:
    Seeing Wittgenstein Anew
    Published online:
    05 June 2012
    Print publication:
    15 March 2010, pp 183-203

  • Summary

    This chapter explores how Wittgenstein's investigations of aspect-seeing and related topics in Part II, Section 11 of Philosophical Investigations contribute to our understanding of his views on the nature of philosophical conflicts and confusions, of his diagnosis of our "tendency to sublime the logic of our language", and of his own critical methods. In the course of examining the role of images in the perception of aspects, Wittgenstein points out that seeing aspects require a capacity for imagination, for example, for relating the object seen to other objects not currently in view. Wittgenstein, then, delivers no direct answers to the questions we want to pose about meaning-blindness. The meaning-blindness may prove incapable of modifying familiar concepts, or of improvising on novel occasions, or even of making judgments that involve projecting a word with its customary meaning into new, non-stereotypical situations, of seeing new uses as extensions of old ones.