Les trois conférences qui suivent continuent l’exploration et l’évaluation des rapports complexes entre les descriptions de l’esprit et du langage données par Wittgenstein et celles données par ses prédécesseurs austro-allemands, les héritiers de Brentano et de Bolzano. La première considère le rapport entre quelques distinctions et thèses qui se trouvent dans le Tractatus et quelques distinctions et thèses similaires esquissées auparavant par le phénoménologue réaliste Max Scheler. La deuxième conférence est consacrée à l’examen des descriptions des émotions, du vouloir dire, (...) du vouloir, du vouloir faire et du souvenir données par Wittgenstein et par les premiers phénoménologues — des descriptions dont les sources sont explicitées dans la première conférence. Enfin, dans la troisième conférence, la description du langage et la philosophie de la signification dans la philosophie austro-allemande sont analysées.The three lectures which follow continue the exploration and evaluation of the complex relations between the descriptions of language and the mind given by Wittgenstein and those given by his Austro-German predecessors, the heirs of Bolzano and Brentano. The first lecture considers the relation between some distinctions and theses to be found in the Tractatus and similar distinctions and theses set out earlier by the realist phenomenologist Max Scheler. The second lecture is devoted to an examination of the descriptions of emotions, meaning something, willing, intending and remembering given by Wittgenstein and the first phenomenologists ; the descriptions discussed in this lecture build on ideas set out in the first lecture. The third and last lecture analyses the description of language and the philosophy of meaning in Austro-German philosophy. (shrink)

The ‘Private Language’ sections of the Philosophical Investigations §§ 243–315 serve to undermine the idea that our ordinary felt sensations, e.g., of heat, or cold, or pain, together with our experienced impressions of colour or of sound, are ‘private’ or ‘inner’ objects, where an object mirrors in the mental realm what we associate with that of the physical. This paper explores Wittgenstein's method in these sections, together with the work of several of his commentators who agree with his ‘therapeutic’ approach (...) to the denial of a possible private language. More significantly, however, it discovers a paradox in the fact that a number of philosophers who claim that his ‘Argument Against Private Language’ is unsuccessful point in reaching this conclusion to the very features concerning first-person sensation ascription that Wittgenstein employs to reveal that our ordinary sensations are not ‘private’ to us in that sense identified in § 243, which talks of ‘a language used to refer to what only its speaker can know’, viz, ‘his immediate private sensations’. This helps to explain why there is still no general agreement on the significance of §§ 243–315. (shrink)

Pain, pain talk and pain ascriptions seem to be universal features of human experience and to have little to do with politics. It is often assumed that pain is always bad, a sign of a malfunctioning machine, that pain talk describes this malfunction and that the humane thing to do is to seek to ameliorate or excise pain. I argue that this viewpoint is one-sided at best and imperialistic at worst. In section I, I outline what I term the ‘prima (...) facie model of pain’ and adumbrate later Wittgenstein’s criticism of it. In section II, I marshal ethnographic evidence that deepens Wittgenstein’s reimagining of pain and acknowledgment. In section III, I link this to ‘progressive’ politics and its normative understanding of the self. Finally, in section IV, I turn to Martin Luther King’s writing and discuss a use of pain that undermines this normative conception of the self and aligns with Wittgenstein’s account. (shrink)