Program and Book of abstracts: International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium | Faculty of Philosophy and Religious Studies UNZG and Croatian Logic Association “Berislav Žarnić” at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences UNSP (02.12-03.12.2021) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Filozofija i drustvo, 2014
Despite persistent attempts to defend Kripke's argument (Kripke 1982), analyses of this argument seem to be reaching a consensus that it is characterized by fatal flaws in both its interpretation of Wittgenstein and its argument of meaning independent of interpretation. Most scholars who do not agree with Kripke's view have directly contrasted his understanding of Wittgenstein (KW) with Wittgenstein's own perspective (LW) in or after Philosophical Investigations (PI). However, I believe that those who have closely read both PI and Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language with out any preconceptions have a different impression from the one that is gen erally accepted: that KW does not directly oppose LW. Indeed, KW seems to present one aspect of LW with precision, although the impression that KW deviates from LW in some respects remains unavoidable.
Saving Rule Following from Skepticism in Later Wittgenstein
Whether the later Wittgenstein succeeded in destroying " the mythologized " and abstract theories of rule following is still a matter for debate. The question is important because it grounds Wittgenstein's position against a Platonist, idealistic, convention-alist, relativist and even skeptical views regarding the concept of rule following. It has been argued that Wittgenstein's views on rule following does not succeed in giving a comprehensive theory. Some even argued that Wittgenstein's views even leads to a skeptical conclusion that there are no rules to be followed. In this article, I argue that when Wittgenstein rejects necessary conditions that determinate the application of rules, he does not slip into a skeptical position. Rather, he introduces a concept of rule following based on practice, rejecting classical objectivist approaches. Through this concept, in fact, Wittgenstein wants to overcome certain dichotomies such as objectivity/subjectivity, socie-ty/individual, and mind/body. His views on rule following emphasizes the role of individual in following a rule and thereby his or her moral responsibility.
2018NEL"Notes on Middle Wittgenstein on Contradiction as Conflicting Rules"
In this paper, I examine anti-realist remarks made by Wittgenstein in the begin- ning of the 1930s on the nature of contradictions. An anti-realist view of logic rejects the paradigm of correspondence to facts and an independent reality to deal with important logical notions such as logical connectives and contradic- tions. In the 1930s,1 the so-called Middle Wittgenstein discussed the nature of language, logic, and mathematics based on the notion of rules with mem- bers of the Vienna Circle at the close of his influential, but highly problematic, Tractarianproject.2 Inspiredbythesediscussions,Isuggestaphilosophicalac- count using the notion of rules and normativity to understand the philosoph- ical meaning of contradictions in paraconsistent logic. I defend, pace (middle) Wittgenstein and Frege, that contradictions should be taken as conflicting rules in practices rather than as dialetheia, that is, as corresponding to some peculiar but real contradictory entity or state of affairs in the world.
Kripke and Wittgenstein on rule-following: the problem of empty philosophical explanations
Kevin Cahill ed. Wittgenstein and Practice: Back to the Rough Ground, Palgrave-Macmillan.
This chapter discusses the question, what kind of explanation is given when rule-following is characterized as a practice or as involving or based on communal agreement, and how Wittgenstein’s account of rule-following should be understood in light of his philosophical methodology. I argue that certain kind of explanations, often attributed to Wittgenstein and discussed in this essay with reference to Kripke, that treat communal agreement as a condition of possibility and a ground of rule-following, are problematic. Such explanations are not consistent with Wittgenstein’s philosophical methodology, and closer inspection reveals them to be empty pseudo-explanations that cannot do the intended philosophical work. Thus, as I argue, Kripke’s account merely pushes the problem about rules one step further, where it arises again as a problem about understanding communal agreement. Instead the characterization of rule-following as a practice is better construed as clarificatory description that ascribes a role to linguistic practices and communal agreement as the background or context against which instances of rule-following, having certain intentions and understanding meanings are possible.
Wittgenstein on Contradictory Standards of Meaning
Since Saul Kripke’s paradigmatic reading of rule-following that described standards of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations as a radical aporia according to which any given sign is capable of limitless interpretations, Wittgenstein scholars continue to consider whether standards of meaning in the Investigations are incontrovertibly aporetic, or if there is a solution to the Wittgensteinian paradox that allows for objectivity, and the intriguing possibility of semantic realism. Claudine Verheggen is a proponent of this latter position, but I argue that her critical reading of the Investigations is exegetically unsound and does not lead us, as she hopes, to a description of meaning that is ‘robust and illuminating' (Verheggen 2003, 307). Moreover, my position is that to accept Wittgenstein’s aporia does not mean that we must commit to Kripke’s sceptical consequence, nor should we commit to Verheggen’s semantic realist reading. Rather, to accept the aporia is to accept the many different (sometimes contradictory) meaning descriptions, as these contradictory standards of meaning are crucial to Wittgenstein’s overall description of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations.
Our goal in this paper is to propose a new way of understanding just how the famous process of analysis proposed by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus could actually proceed. The guiding line of our presentation will be to assume that in this famous work Wittgenstein adopts as a procedure for elucidating the sense of our representational devices – the propositions – a search for a complete and exclusive determination of its truth-conditions. We will show that it was due to this motivation that Wittgenstein has proposed de analytical process that we will call here “The Great Analysis”. The process of analysis proposed by him is a pretty radical one though and implies a lot of different challenges which has to be faced. Our strategy will be to offer first an explanation of how this process could be executed and, then, try to extract its various consequences. Our main interest will be to show how this radical criterion for the elucidation of propositional sense produces deadlocks and leads to a series of very important philosophical consequences. The most important ones are included in the following list: a strict frontier between senseful and senseless propositions; a view of analysis as a process of “analyzing away” all hidden generality contained in general terms, as well as in grammatically apparent “singular terms”; an alternative way of understanding genuine names and their ontological correlates, the simple objects, which fits better our approach; and finally, the most important one, the conclusion that we cannot have both: the presence of unsaturated parts in the elementary propositions and the construal of sense as truth-conditions.
Rules of Univocity: Wittgensteinean Insights on a Scotistic Notion of Predication
The aim of this paper is simple: I wish to bring into dialogue two unlikely partners on the meaning and character of conceptual predication vis-à-vis "the world"-namely, John Duns Scotus and Ludwig Wittgenstein. It is well known that both Scotus and Wittgenstein were champions of language in their day; both focused intensely on the significance of logic as it concerns (and is concerned by) man's interaction with his environment. And although a boundless gulf separates them insofar as a doctrine of extramental reality is either necessarily defensible or hopelessly vulnerable, the considerations offered by both men on logic as a form of thinking are, I think, remarkably similar and astonishingly complementary.