Amongst those views sometimes attributed to the later Wittgenstein are included both a deflationary theory of truth, as well as a non-factualism about certain regions of discourse. Evidence in favor of the former attribution, it is thought, can be found in Wittgenstein’s apparent affirmation of the basic definitional equivalence of ‘p’ is true and p in §136 of his Philosophical Investigations. Evidence in favor of the latter attribution, it might then be presumed, can be found in the context of the (...) so-called ‘private language argument’, wherein Wittgenstein provides an expressivist treatment of first-person present tense sensation utterances. In this paper, by contrast, I will argue that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is best understood as endorsing neither a non-factualism about sensation utterances, nor a deflationism about truth. Wittgenstein should instead be understood as offering a ‘mixed’ view of sensation utterances according to which some while not others are apt for expressivist treatment. Moreover, he should be thought of as identifying truth-conditions with semantic ‘correctness-conditions’, and thus truth with semantic ‘assertibility’. (shrink)

In the present article, I attempt to relate Saul Kripke's “sceptical paradox” to some issues about the self; specifically, the relation between the self and its mental states and episodes. I start with a brief reconstruction of the paradox, and venture to argue that it relies crucially on a Cartesian model of the self: the sceptic regards the Wittgensteinian “infinite regress of interpretation” as the foundation of his challenge, and this is where he commits the crucial mistake. After the diagnosis, (...) I attempt to sketch my own model of the self and its mental states and episodes. This tentative picture binds meaning and the self together, stressing the subjective aspect of meaning without committing the same fallacy. The solution ventured here is relatively independent of the secondary literatures on the sceptical paradox of following rules, for it aims to provide a new angle to understand and meet the challenge presented by the sceptic. (shrink)

Later Wittgenstein is famous for having related meaning and use. Nonetheless, thanks to Dummett and Kripke, and the debates they provoked, a conventional wisdom is nowadays available: Wittgenstein, so the story goes, adopted a theory of meaning in terms of assertability conditions. This paper claims that it is wrong to attribute such a theory to the Investigations. For such a thesis to go through, one of the following two scenarios should be confirmed. It should either be true that Wittgenstein reduces (...) all meaning-engendering uses and conditions of use to assertion and assertability conditions, or that he invokes assertability conditions to show that meaning is always use. But, I will be claiming, the first scenario is excluded by Wittgenstein’s thoughts about the role of assertion and his thoughts about the sense-force distinction, while the second scenario is excluded by Wittgenstein’s thoughts about truth. (shrink)