The main interpretive claim of this book is that both Wittgenstein’s mature philosophical method and his much misunderstood critique of private language have their roots in his critique of the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space–that is, the misleading, figurative analogy between physical space, or space simpliciter, and phenomenal space, or the “space” of appearances. His critique of this metaphor extends from his rejection of sense-data (Chapters 2 and 3), to his investigation of the asymmetry between first- and other-person pronouns in (...) conjunction with psychological vocabulary (Chapter 4), to his discussion of noticing aspects (Chapter 3), and, of course, to his revolutionary critique of the privacy of the mental (Chapter 3) and of the related, but more general, misleading metaphor of the inner and the outer. Wittgenstein’s critique of the idea of phenomenal space is, at the same time, the prototype for his new philosophical method–the method of grammatical investigation, which holds that many of the persistent problems of philosophy arise from failing to command a clear view of the grammar of various regions of our language and finding ourselves, as a result, vulnerable to misleading pictures of our mental lives, of our linguistic practices, of mathematics, and of countless fundamental elements of our world view(s), whose misunderstanding is the locus of the traditional problems of metaphysics (Chapter 3). Chapters 5, 6 and 7 argue for the continued relevance of Wittgenstein's critique of the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space by showing how it applies to contemporary discussions of first-person authority, recent attempts to revive sense-datum theories, and the ongoing debate about sensory qualia. (shrink)
Philosophers have often thought that concepts such as ”knowledge” and ”truth” are appropriate objects for theoretical investigation. In a discussion which ranges widely over recent analytical philosophy and radical theory, Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses takes issue with this assumption, arguing that such theoreticism is not the solution but the source of traditional problems in epistemology (How can we have knowledge of the world around us? How can we have knowledge of other minds and cultures? How can we have knowledge (...) of ourselves?) and in the philosophy of language (How can we know what our words refer to?).The author draws on Wittgenstein and recent neo-pragmatists (Putnam, Rorty, Davidson, Williams) to argue that analytical philosophy and radical theory alike stand in an ambivalent relationship with skepticism, which issues forth in varieties of ”epistemic neuroses” - manifested most clearly in the cases of metaphysical realism, relativism and causal theories of reference. Each of these projects is defined in terms possibilities that conflict with its own chances of cognitive success. Hymers explains not only the mainstream analytical philosophy of such figures as Devitt, Quine and Burge, but also structuralism (Althusser, Lacan), feminist theory (Seller, MacKinnon, Lugones) and critical theory (Marcuse), in an attempt to outline a therapeutic alternative to philosophical theoreticism. (shrink)
RÉSUMÉ: Paul Boghossian soutient contre Wittgenstein que le normativisme au sujet de la logique et des mathématiques est incompatible avec le fait de tenir les énoncés logiques et mathématiques pour vrais et que le normativisme entraîne une régression indue. Je soutiens, pour ma part, que le normativisme n’entraîne pas une telle régression, parce que les normes peuvent être implicites et que le normativisme peut bien être «factualiste» si l’on rejette ce que Rockney Jacobsen appelle le «cognitivisme sémantique». Je tiens en (...) outre que la position de Boghossian repose sur la façon trompeuse dont il découpe le terrain conceptuel. (shrink)
L'A. défend la thèse selon laquelle Wittgenstein développe une conception pragmatique et linguistique des relations internes qui définissent les vérités nécessaires: 1) qui n'implique pas l'analyticité de toutes les propositions exprimant des relations internes, 2) qui établit une distinction entre l'analytique et le synthétique, 3) qui s'avère compatible avec la critique de l'analyticité entreprise par Quine.
I argue that Wittgenstein’s short-lived verificationism (c.1929-30) differed from that of his contacts in the Vienna Circle in not being a reductionist view. It lay the groundwork for his later views that the meaning of a word is determined by its use and that certain "propositions of the form of empirical propositions" (On Certainty, §§96, 401, 402) act as "norm[s] of description" (On Certainty,§§167, 321). He gave it up once he realized that it contradicted his rejection of logical atomism, and (...) that he ever held such a view at all says something about his respect for the leader of the Vienna Circle, Moritz Schlick. (shrink)
Some philosophers influenced by Quine's meaning-holism agree that metaphor matters for science and for language in general, but they part ways over whether metaphors are cognitive. Hesse holds that metaphors have special cognitive content, apart from the literal content of the expressions used metaphorically. Davidson and Rorty deny this. I offer a partial reconciliation, allowing that metaphor has a noncognitive dimension, but holding that there is no sharp boundary between the literal and the metaphorical, between meaning and use, or between (...) the cognitive and noncognitive. This also answers the question: Where do dead metaphors gets their second literal meanings? (shrink)
In 'Sartre on Bad Faith' Leslie Stevenson attempts to formulate the Sartrean notion of bad faith. According to Stevenson, someone is in bad faith, if she reflectively denies some state of affairs, of the truth of which she is pre-reflectively aware. Jeffrey Gordon counters with the criticism that, although Stevenson's analysis of Sartre is correct, it is a position which is philosophically indefensible. I argue that Stevenson's reflective denial account falls to Gordon's criticism, but that it is also inadequate as (...) a description of bad faith. I then offer an analysis of bad faith which provides both a better reading of Sartre and a way of overcoming Gordon's objection. (shrink)
Examining the effectiveness of the Kant’s Refutation of Idealism as a critique of a Cartesian account of consciousness, I argue that Kant's reasoning turns on the insight that self-knowledge presupposes independent temporal determination of the self. This insight bears an intriguing resemblance to claims about meaning and justification that appear in Wittgenstein's later work. Much as Wittgenstein rules out the possibility of a private language, whose meanings derive from acts of inner ostensive definition, on the ground that language requires an (...) independent standard of meaning, so Kant shows that there must be objects in space and time outside me because they constitute the only independent standard of temporality, relative to which I can be conscious of my own existence as determined in time. But Kant only partially anticipates Wittgenstein because the former does not fully appreciate the linguistic nature of judgment. (shrink)
Against the forces of modal ersatzism Lewis launches a variety of attacks, some of which are clearly compelling, others of which are less so. I argue that pictorial ersatzism cannot clearly be distinguished from magical ersatzism, and--more interestingly--that 'genuine' modal realism is subject to precisely the criticisms so fatal for the magical ersatzers.
Tyler Burge says that first-person authority can be reconciled with anti-individualism about the intentional by denying part of the "Cartesian conception" of authority, which claims that I am actually authoritative about my intentional attitudes in counterfactual situations. This clause, he says, wrongly conflates the evaluation-conditions for sceptical doubts about the "external" world with the conditions for classifying intentional attitudes in counterfactual situations. This paper argues that the kind of possibility needed to understand external-world scepticism justifies the conflation and that Burge (...) can reject the Cartesian conception only if he rejects either metaphysical realism or anti-individualism. (shrink)
_Wittgenstein and the Practice of Philosophy_ introduces Wittgenstein’s philosophy to senior undergraduates and graduate students. Its pedagogical premise is that the best way to understand Wittgenstein’s thought is to take seriously his methodological remarks. Its interpretive premise is that those methodological remarks are the natural result of Wittgenstein’s rejection of his early view of the ground of value, including semantic value or meaning, as something that must lie “outside the world.” This metaphysical view of meaning is replaced in his transitional (...) writings with a kind of conventionalism, according to which meaning is made possible by the existence of grammatical conventions that are implicit in our linguistic practices. The implicit nature of these conventions makes us vulnerable to a special kind of confusion that results from lacking a clear view of the norms that underlie our linguistic practices. This special confusion is characteristic of philosophical problems, and the task of philosophy is the therapeutic one of alleviating confusion by helping us to see our grammatical norms clearly. This development of this therapeutic view of philosophy is traced from Wittgenstein’s early _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ through his transitional writings and lectures to his great masterwork, _Philosophical Investigations_, and his final reflections on knowledge and scepticism in _On Certainty_. Wittgenstein’s discussions of naming, family resemblances, rule-following and private language in _Philosophical Investigations_ are all examined as instances of this sort of method, as is his discussion of knowledge in _On Certainty_. The book concludes by considering some objections to the viability of Wittgenstein’s method and speculating on how it might be extended to a discussion of moral value to which Wittgenstein never explicitly returns. (shrink)
This paper argues that the Refutation of Idealism is a clear development of a line of thought expressed in the Transcendental Deduction and the Fourth Paralogism in the 1781-edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. This general line of thought is that the possibility of systematic delusion about the nature of the empirical world is ruled out, in part, by the fact that illusion presupposes a background of veridical perception.
This collection maintains a dialogue between the analytic and continental traditions, while aspiring to situate itself beyond the analytic-continental divide. It divides into four parts, Methodologies, Truth and Meaning, Metaphysics and Ontology, and Values, Personhood and Agency, though there is considerable overlap among the categories. History and temporality are recurrent themes, but there is a lot of metaphysics generally, with some philosophy of language, philosophy of social science, ethics, political philosophy and epistemology. Less prominent is a pragmatic, deflationary attitude, and (...) at a number of points I argue for the virtues of such an approach. (shrink)
This paper (published in Eidos: The Canadian Graduate Journal of Philosophy, not Revista Filosofia de la Universidad del Norte) elaborates and defends Renford Bambrough's contention that Wittgenstein's discussion of family resemblances dissolves the traditional problem of universals, without slipping into either nominalism of realism.
I argue against some of Rorty's radical critics, and against Rorty himself, that there is no necessary connection between his views about truth and metaphor, on one hand, and his liberalism, on the other. Indeed, Rorty's anti-essentialism can be viewed as making a contribution to the critique of ideology in a sense that I extract from Marx and Engels.
I outline the main arguments of my book, Philosophy and Its Epistemic Neuroses (Westview, 2000), in which I defend an anti-theoretical approach to traditional problems in epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophy of language, focusing especially on external-world scepticism, the indeterminacy of reference, relativism and first-person authority, contending that these problems arise from embracing philosophical commitments that are not quite contradictory, but which suffer from what I describe as "epistemic neuroses"--an acceptance of methodological commitments that make these problems look like problems (...) at the same time as they render them insoluble. I contend that such epistemic neuroses plague both the analytical and continental traditions in philosophy alike. (shrink)
Barry Allen, drawing on Wittgenstein's standard-metre example from Philosophical Investigations, argues there can be no determinate similarities or differences in the absence of a practice of measuring such similarities or differences. I contend that one can accept Allen's premises without accepting his conclusion if we draw a distinction between being and being true of the following sort: although it was not true, in the absence human or other epistemic practices, that water was H2O, nonetheless, before there were any human or (...) other epistemic practices, water was H2O. This, I argue, is compatible with retaining the truism that it is true that p if and only if p, and it allows us to avoid the idealism of Allen's conclusion. (shrink)
This paper examines the dispute between Putnam and Rorty concerning truth and rational acceptability, arguing that Putnam's criticisms of Rorty mostly miss the point and that if we treat idealized rational acceptability as immunity to self-defeating doubt, then we can see it as a sufficient, though not necessary, condition of truth.
It is sometimes objected that anti-individualism, because of its assumption of the constitutive role of natural and social environments in the individuation of intentional attitudes, raises sceptical worries about first-person authority--that peculiar privilege each of us is thought to enjoy with respect to non-Socratic self-knowledge. Gary Ebbs believes that this sort of objection can be circumvented, if we give up metaphysical realism and scientific naturalism and adopt what he calls a “participant perspective” on our linguistic practices. Drawing on broadly Wittgensteinian (...) considerations, I argue that Ebbs is right about this, and I show how two likely objections to his view can be circumvented. I also argue that mere adoption of the participant perspective does not serve to refute external-world sceptic. (shrink)
"Being this or that, same or different," says Barry Allen, "stands or falls with the circumstances of historically contingent practice". There is, he claims, no similarity or difference in the total absence of linguistic practice, and thus, counterfactual claims about what would have been the case, had language users never evolved, have no truth-values.
