In this essay I discuss several questions related to the manner in which concepts generally, and religious concepts in particular, are formed. Are some concepts necessary in the sense that, considering the physical makeup of the natural world and our own bio-chemical, perceptual, and cognitive nature, these concepts had to emerge by necessity? If we put considerations of divine revelations aside, I ask regarding religious concepts, what would be the proper way of looking at how they came to be formed? (...) What role does causality play in the formation of empirical and religious concepts, if at all? One of my aims in discussing these and other related questions is to revisit Hilary Putnam’s justificatory basis for rejecting the intelligibility of speaking of absolute conceptions of the world. Although I support his position on this issue, I show some of the hermeneutical problems in his reliance on Wittgenstein’s views concerning language games and worldviews. I also revisit Wittgenstein’s own views about concept formation to discuss the similarities and differences between how religious concepts and empirical concepts are formed. My aim here is to show that the idea of an absolute conception of the world rests on confusing the regulative role that concepts play in our lives for a causative role. (shrink)

This study examines the relativistic aspects of Arnold Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic theories in the light of a framework of ideas presented in the early writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the logician, philosopher of language, and Schoenberg's contemporary and Austrian compatriot. The author has identified correspondences between the writings of Schoenberg, the early Wittgenstein, and the Vienna Circle of philosophers, on a wide range of topics and themes. Issues discussed include the nature and limits of language, musical universals, theoretical conventionalism, word-to-world (...) correspondence in language, the need for a fact- and comparison-based approach to art criticism, and the nature of music-theoretical formalism and mathematical modeling. Schoenberg and Wittgenstein are shown to have shared a vision that is remarkable for its uniformity and balance, one that points toward the reconciliation of the positivist-relativist dualism that has dominated recent discourse in music theory. Contrary to earlier accounts of Schoenberg's harmonic and aesthetic relativism, this study identifies a solid epistemological core underlying his thought, a view that was very much in step with Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, and thereby with the most vigorous and forward-looking stream in early twentieth century intellectual history. (shrink)