The Problem of the Will in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (original) (raw)
Related papers
Wittgenstein and the Problem of Will in Philosophical Investigations
The Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics. Contributions of the 41th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 2018
This paper focuses on Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on the nature of the will as presented in Philosophical Investigations. When Wittgenstein first encountered the problem of will, opinions on the issue seemed to be polarized between the ideas of empiricists and those of Schopenhauer. Firstly, empiricist account of the will will be examined; thereupon a brief investigation into current developments of empiricist ideas, particularly within cognitive science, will be undertaken as the basis of further discussion. In subsequent paragraphs, it will be demonstrated that the most fruitful results cannot be obtained from observations of the usual manifestations of will, but from an analysis of failed actions; several prominent examples have been provided by Wittgenstein. Lastly, it will be argued that while Wittgenstein opposed empiricist lines of thought, his philosophy may be reconciled with them in the light of results from contemporary philosophy.
The Ethical and the Metaphysical Will in the Early Wittgenstein (and Beyond)
Análisis. Revista de Investigación Filosófica, 2021
In the Notebooks 1914-1916, Wittgenstein engages himself in a dialogue with Schopenhauer’s project —one that Wittgenstein makes his own— of substituting an immanent metaphysics of human experience for the transcendent metaphysics discredited by Kant’s critique, and thus for finding a path that would be able both of capturing the reality of human agency and of staying away from the kind of self-alienation that appears to be the necessary consequence of philosophical reflection. Wittgenstein’s reflections on the ethical and the metaphysical will are instrumental to bring this project to successful completion. However, I will go well beyond Wittgenstein’s early work in order to elucidate what strikes me as the solution provided by the late Wittgenstein (mainly, in On Certainty) to two problems that the Notebooks and the Tractatus left unanswered. On the one hand, there is the question about whether the agreement between agency and passivity is possible—namely, about how to come to see the friction of the world not only as something that is, but rather as something that ought to be. On the other, there is the problem of how to make of ethical subjectivity and metaphysical subjectivity two constitutively co-related aspects of the same transcendental subjectivity. Keywords: Agency, Free Will, Meaningfulness, Schopenhauer, Transcendental Subjectivity.
Young Wittgenstein’s Account of the Will, Action and Expectation
The Philosophy of Perception and Observation. Contributions of the 40th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 2017
This paper focuses on young and "middle" Ludwig Wittgenstein's reflections on nature of will, action and expectation. It is argued that if empiricist lines of thought in Wittgenstein's work are followed he appears to consider imperative sentences as near-identical or even reducible to sentences expressing expectations. Firstly, Wittgenstein's account of imperative sentences (commands) will be established; thereupon an investigation into the preliminary structure of obeying command will be undertaken as the basis of further discussion. In following paragraphs, we will analyze Wittgenstein's view on the relation of act to will, briefly discussing the concept of will itself. To conclude the paper is a discussion of the nature of expectation and its fulfillment. Wittgenstein's philosophical development is briefly alluded to only where relevant to the discussion.
Neurophilosophical Perspectives on Wittgenstein’s Puzzles of the Will
Platonism. Contributions of the 43th International Wittgenstein Symposium, 2022
Wittgenstein’s reflections on the nature of the will were motivated by the effort to combine two philosophical approaches: one in the empiricist tradition and the second based on Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The philosophical paradoxes that he encountered are described in Philosophical investigations and in several his other works. Although Wittgenstein’s claims are not meant as empirical statements, we believe that several of his questions can be enlightened by comparison to a neurophilosophical approach. We focus primarily to analysis of the relation of the will to wishing, experience and action. The text also provides a short commentary on the complexity of the problem of the voluntary control of body movements from the point of view of philosophical phenomenological analysis as well as from a neurophysiological point of view.
Wittgenstein on the Will and Voluntary Action
In this paper I argue that we may regard Wittgenstein's mature view of the will both as a rigorous adaptation of Schopenhauer's and as the continuation of his early investigations on the nature of the ethical and the psychological will. This means that Wittgenstein is fully committed to develop the consequences and to apply as a test Schopenhauer's insight that any project to capture the will by virtue of experiences and representations and to conceive it as a phenomenon among phenomena is doomed to failure. In section 1, I will introduce the issue of the will such as it appears in the Notebooks 1914-1916 and the Tractatus, and argue that some of the issues he raises regarding the relation of will and body will be continued in Philosophical Investigations, so bridging the gap between his early and his later analysis of the voluntary. In section 2, I discuss Wittgenstein's detailed critique of the model according to which the 'act of will' is a particular phenomenon that can be directly identified by the subject, review the main candidates to occupy that role, and argue why all of them are inappropriate to play it. In section 3, I clear some misunderstandings concerning Wittgenstein's positive view, analyse the constitutive elements that define a grammatical proposition, and apply the latter category to the will. In section 4, I review some of the main problems solved by the non-reductivist reading that I propose. Besides, I draw an analogy between the role played by the will in our language-games and the status of the so-called hinge-propositions. The overarching theses are that Wittgenstein's analysis of voluntary action is not a form of behaviourism, and that ignorance of the prolonged dialogue of Wittgenstein with Schopenhauer originates an aspect-blindness of sorts that deprives us of the most striking features of Wittgenstein's later view.
Two Kantian Issues within Wittgenstein’s Tractatus: Autonomy of the Will and Duty
ESTUDOS KANTIANOS, 2023
The aim of the article is to analyze Wittgenstein’s Tractatus starting from proposition 6.422, which deals with the question of moral duty in the form of the categorical imperative, “Thou shalt”, in the light of Kant’s doctrine of the autonomy of the will. It focuses especially on three Kantian assumptions: the idea of the will as the only foundation of obligation, the idea of a non- empirical subject of the will, and the inseparability between the idea of freedom and the concept of autonomy. These assumptions will be considered in comparison with Wittgenstein’s treatment of the problem of causality within the frame of the picture theory and the idea of a metaphysical subject as bearer of values.
Symphilosophie. International Journal of Philosophical Romanticism, 2020
This volume, which is the result of a conference in Munich in 2017, contains thirteen articles, all expounding the broad topic of the notion of "will" in classical German philosophy from Kant to Schelling and Schopenhauer. Most of the perspectives developed in this book are primarily concerned with questions of ethics and practical philosophy in general. However, this naturally implies discussions about the very foundations of theoretical thought and of metaphysical conceptions as well. In this regard, the close interrelation between the different disciplines of philosophy that is characteristic for classical German thought is adequately highlighted by this volume as a whole. The book is divided into two main parts: the first one (7-85) deals exclusively with Kant's practical philosophy. The second, more extensive part (89-262) offers a broad collection of studies on various post-Kantian thinkers, not only on the most famous representatives of German Idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), but also on some less popular, yet important authors (Reinhold, Maimon, Jacobi, Bouterwek). In the following review, some-not all-of the articles in the volume will be presented in a short, concise way. Markus Kohl (29-48) argues that two different types of selfdetermination by rational beings can be identified in Kant's ethics. Since no such thing as completely lawless freedom of action is possible in Kant's moral philosophy, at least some kind of determination generally has to be included. While there is a model of "absolute unconditional necessity" that "excludes any form of contingency" (29), a second model "involves a form of contingency which entails alternative possibilities for determining oneself" (ibid.). In this case, "absolutely spontaneous intelligence is affected by sensible conditions whose influence inveighs against reason, which makes it contingent whether or not the agent acts in accordance with right reason" (41). Kohl identifies this type of self-determination as "executive freedom," whereas the first type can be called "legislative freedom" (ibid.
In the twentieth century, the concept of the will has been portrayed in bad light. Martin Heidegger, for instance, criticizes the will as a movement of reducing otherness to sameness, difference to identity. Since his diagnosis of the will, the releasement from a wilful manner of thinking and the exploration of the possibility of non-willing has become a prevalent issue in contemporary philosophy. This article questions whether we have to reject the will in such a radical way. Is there not a third position possible beyond willing and non-willing, a concept of willing which exceeds the reduction of otherness to sameness, difference to identity? Heidegger himself attempted to develop a proper concept of the will in the onset of the thirties. We start therefore our inquiry with Heidegger’s phenomenology of the will in the thirties. We will discern three main characteristics of Heidegger’s concept of the will. Although Heidegger later on was very critical of the concept of the will, we are not inclined to reject the concept of the will as he did eventually. By following the intimations of Heidegger's phenomenology of willing, we are able to identify some limitations of his later rejection of the will and offer our own thoughts on how to build on Heidegger's phenomenology of willing.