Wittgenstein and Religion
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Rethinking Fideism Through the Lens of Wittgenstein's Engineering Outlook
University of Dayton eCommons Religious Studies Faculty Publications Department of Religious Studies 2012 Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook Brad Kallenberg University of Dayton, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.udayton.edu/rel_fac_pub Part of the Catholic Studies Commons, Christianity Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Other Religion Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons eCommons Citation Kallenberg, Brad, "Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook" (2012). Religious Studies Faculty Publications. 82. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/rel_fac_pub/82 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Religious Studies at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Religious Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Note: This is the accepted manuscript for the following article: Kallenberg, Brad J. “Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 71, no. 1 (2012): 55-73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11153-011-9327-0 Rethinking Fideism through the Lens of Wittgenstein’s Engineering Outlook Brad J. Kallenberg University of Dayton, 2011 In an otherwise superbly edited compilation of student notes from Wittgenstein’s 1939 Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics, Cora Diamond makes an false step that reveals to us our own tendencies to misread Wittgenstein. The student notes she collated attributed the following remark to a student named Watson: “The point is that these [data] tables do not by themselves determine that one builds the bridge in this way: only the tables together with certain scientific theory determine that.”1 But Diamond thinks this a mistake, presuming instead to change the manuscript and put these words into the mouth of Wittgenstein. -
PHI 351 Nominalism
Philosophy 351 September 9, 2008 Prof. Clare Batty Universals: Nominalism 1. Recap Metaphysical realism: the world contains both universals and particulars. Certain things (particulars) are alike in attribute (property, relation, kind) because they exemplify the same universal. Metaphysical realists claim that their two-category framework not only provides us with the machinery with which to explain attribute agreement/similarity/resemblance but also a pair of important phenomena: i. The truth of subject-predicate discourse ii. Our use of abstract reference. 2. Issues we have raised about metaphysical realism a. What universals is the metaphysical realist willing to allow into his/her ontology? • Does he/she allow the universal bachelor or just unmarried, adult, male (does he/she even allow unmarried?). What about he universal green or just green (or light green)? 52 b. Are there unexemplified universals? • Certainly there might have been different properties in the world. Are there universals corresponding to these non-existent, but possible, properties? c. Is the relation of exemplification itself a universal? If so, doesn’t this commit the metaphysical realist to an infinite regress? • Suppose a and b are both F. That is, they exemplify the universal F-ness. But now they have an additional thing in common: they are both exemplifications of F-ness. That is, they both exemplify the universal exemplification of F-ness. Can you see where this is going? d. Doesn’t the metaphysical realist overestimate the degree of agreement/likeness/resemblance in the world? • Grass, peas and wasabi paste are all similar; but they are not exactly alike. 3. -
What Calvin and Wittgenstein Had Against Images
Works Cited Green, Mitchell S., and John Williams, eds. Moore's Paradox: New Essays on Belief, Rationality, and the First Person. Oxford: Baker, Gordon P., and P. M. S. Hacker. An Analytical Commentary Clarendon Press, 2007. on the Philosophical Investigations. 4 vols. Chicago - Oxford: Jenkins, Keith, ed. The Postmodern History Reader. London - New University of Chicago Press - Blackwell Publishers, 1980- York: Routledge, 1997. 1996. Kerr, Fergus. Theology after Wittgenstein. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Bloor, David. Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. New York: Malcolm, Norman. Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View? Ed. with Columbia University Press, 1983. a response by Peter Winch. London: Routledge, 1993. Bonnell, Victoria E., and Lynn Avery Hunt, eds. Beyond the McGinn, Marie. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture. Philosophical Investigations. London - New York: Routledge, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. 1997. Bouwsma, O. K. Wittgenstein: Conversations, 1949-1951. Ed. J. L. McGrath, Alister. A Life of John Calvin: A Study in the Shaping of Craft and Ronald E. Hustwit. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986. Western Culture. Oxford - Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Battles, Ford Lewis. Trans. Institutes of the Christian Religion, by Blackwell, 1990. John Calvin. Ed. John T. McNeill. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. The Westminster Press, 1960. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991. Crary, Alice Marguerite, and Rupert J. Read, eds. The New Morse, Christopher. "Raising God's Eyebrows: Some Further Wittgenstein. London - New York: Routledge, 2000. Thoughts on the Concept of the analogia fidei." Union Crary, Alice Marguerite. "Wittgenstein's Philosophy in Relation to Seminary Quarterly Review, 37 (1981-1982): 39-49. -
The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play, and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W
DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 8-2012 The idea of mimesis: Semblance, play, and critique in the works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno Joseph Weiss DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Weiss, Joseph, "The idea of mimesis: Semblance, play, and critique in the works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno" (2012). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 125. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/125 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play, and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy October, 2011 By Joseph Weiss Department of Philosophy College of Liberal Arts and Sciences DePaul University Chicago, Illinois 2 ABSTRACT Joseph Weiss Title: The Idea of Mimesis: Semblance, Play and Critique in the Works of Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno Critical Theory demands that its forms of critique express resistance to the socially necessary illusions of a given historical period. Yet theorists have seldom discussed just how much it is the case that, for Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. -
The Debate Over ›Wittgensteinian Fideism‹ and Phillips’ Contemplative Philosophy of Religion
The Debate over ›Wittgensteinian Fideism‹ and Phillips’ Contemplative Philosophy of Religion Thomas D. Carroll Sometimes in a philosophical dispute, conflicting parties debate the truth or falsity of a given proposition. ›A fetus is a person‹, ›The meaning of the truth predicate is captured by the disquotational schema‹, and ›Con- sciousness is an emergent property of complex neural systems‹, are some examples of propositions whose truth and relative warrant are debated in recent philosophical literature. While many philosophical disputes follow this model, not all do. After all, in some philosophical disputes, no uncon- troversial framing of the terms of disagreement is available. Indeed, in some such disputes, it is not the truth of or warrant for a proposition that is be- ing debated, but instead the very words used to describe the disagreement itself. When surveying the scholarly literature over Wittgensteinian fideism, it is easy to get the sense that the principal interlocutors, Kai Nielsen and D.Z. Phillips, talk past one another, but finding the right words for apprais- ing the distance between the two voices is difficult. In this paper, I seek to appreciate this intellectual distance through an exploration of the varying philosophical aims of Nielsen and Phillips, of the different intellectual im- peratives that guide their respective conceptions of philosophical practice. In so doing, I seek to show how a contemplative mode in philosophy may be used to appraise a philosophical dispute and the terms of disagreement. In this case, a contemplative approach to understanding the dispute would frame Nielsen’s and Phillips’ contributions against the backdrop of the ends they conceive philosophy to have. -
Religious Belief, Language Games and Postmodern Narratives
37 Al-Hikmat Volume 27 (2007), pp. 37-58 RELIGIOUS BELIEF, LANGUAGE GAMES AND POSTMODERN NARRATIVES MUHAMMAD IQBĀL AFAQI* Abstract. This paper is centred on the question of objectivity of religious truth-claims in the Wittgensteinian perspective and explains how the evidentialist standard model of rationality leads us nowhere except putting us in a flyglass wherein like distraught flies we hopelessly flutter and flutter without finding the way out. This flyglass was manufactured by the Cartesian epistemology which demanded proofs in order to establish the cognitive validity of a truth-claim. Wittgenstein rejects this standpoint as wholly mistaken and misguided. There is no objectively neutral place from which the philosopher can have a critical look on a particular mode of discourse. The question of true/false depends on forms of life and language games. This line of argument has been followed by D. Z. Phillips, Peter Winch and Norman Malcolm. They also denounced the claim that there must be a common paradigm of rationality for all modes of discourse. Indeed, there are many difficulties in Wittgensteinian criteriology. But it is a fact that evidentialism fails to take account of diversity in modes of discourse. Likewise, the scientism suffers the fallacies of generalization and exclusivism. Rationalist ontology fallaciously promotes the idea of transcendental truth which Prof. Stuhar rejects as a system of delusion. Taking lead from Wittgensteinianism, postmodernism lays emphasis on equality of different cluster of meaning and affirms that there is no objective point of view that gives us access to a global truth. Hence, what is temporary, immanent and historically particular is accepted. -
Rush Rhees: Main Publications
Rush Rhees: Main Publications Books Without Answers, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1%9. Discussions of Wittgenstein, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970. Contributions to Books Introduction to George Boole, Studies in Logic and Probability, London, 1952. ' "Ontology" and Identity in the Tractatus', in Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, ed. Peter Winch, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969. 'Postscript', in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981. 'Wittgenstein on Language and Ritual', in Wittgenstein and His Times, ed. Brian McGuiness, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982. Introduction to Jakob Friedrich Fries, Dialogues on Morality and Religion, trans. David Walford, ed. D. Z. Phillips, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982. Editorial work etc. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and R. Rhees, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953. Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, ed. with an Introduction by R. Rhees, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'A Lecture on Ethics', ed. R. Rhees, Philosophical Review, Vol. 74, 1965. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, ed. C. Barrett, from notes taken by Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees and James Taylor, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966. 'Wittgenstein's Notes for Lectures on "Private Experience" and "Sense Data"', ed. R. Rhees, Philosophical Review, Vol. 77, 1968. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Eine Philosophische Betrachtung, ed. R. Rhees, in Ludwig Wittgenstein: Schriften 5, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970. Ludwig Wittgenstein, 'Remarks on Frazer's "Golden Bough"', trans. A. C. Miles and R. Rhees, ed. R. Rhees, The Human World, No. 3, May 1971. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Grammar, ed. R. Rhees, trans. A. J.P. -
Measuring Conceptual Similarity in Ontologies: How Bad Is a Cheap Measure?
Measuring Conceptual Similarity in Ontologies: How Bad is a Cheap Measure? Tahani Alsubait, Bijan Parsia, and Uli Sattler School of Computer Science, The University of Manchester, United Kingdom falsubait,bparsia,[email protected] Abstract. Several attempts have been made to develop similarity mea- sures for ontologies. Motivated by finding problems in existing measures, we design a new family of measures to address these problems. We carry out an empirical study to explore how good the new measures are and to investigate how likely it is to encounter specific task-oriented problems when using a bad similarity measure. 1 Introduction The process of assigning a numerical value reflecting the degree of resemblance between two ontology concepts or the so called conceptual similarity measure- ment is a core step in many ontology-related applications (e.g., ontology align- ment [7], ontology learning [2]). Several attempts have been made to develop methods for measuring conceptual similarity in ontologies [22, 32, 23, 20, 4]. In addition, the problem of measuring similarity is well-founded in psychology and a number of similarity models have been already developed [6, 30, 26, 19, 29, 8, 12]. Rather than adopting a psychological model for similarity as a foundation, we noticed that some existing similarity measures for ontologies are ad-hoc and unprincipled. This can negatively affect the application in which they are used. However, in some cases, depending on how simple the ontology/task is, using a computationally expensive \good" similarity measure is no better than using a cheap \bad" measure. Thus, we need to understand the computational cost of the similarity measure and the cases in which it succeeds/fails. -
A Model of Human Categorization and Similarity Based Upon Category Theory Michael Healy
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of New Mexico University of New Mexico UNM Digital Repository Electrical & Computer Engineering Technical Engineering Publications Reports 7-1-2008 A Model of Human Categorization and Similarity Based Upon Category Theory Michael Healy Thomas Caudell Timothy Goldsmith Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ece_rpts Recommended Citation Healy, Michael; Thomas Caudell; and Timothy Goldsmith. "A Model of Human Categorization and Similarity Based Upon Category Theory." (2008). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/ece_rpts/28 This Technical Report is brought to you for free and open access by the Engineering Publications at UNM Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electrical & Computer Engineering Technical Reports by an authorized administrator of UNM Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO A Model of Human Categorization and Similarity Based Upon Category Theory Michael John Healy Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering e-mail: [email protected] Thomas Preston Caudell Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Computer Science e-mail: [email protected] Timothy E. Goldsmith Department of Psychology e-mail: [email protected] University of New Mexico Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA UNM Technical Report: EECE-TR-08-0010 Report Date: June 19, 2008 Abstract Categorization and the judgement of similarity are fundamental in cognition. We propose that these and other activities are based upon an underlying structure of knowledge, or concept representation, in the brain. -
The Wittgensteinian Philosophy of Religion Is Misunderstood
CHAPTER EIGHT THE WITTGENSTEINIAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION IS MISUNDERSTOOD Ludwig Wittgenstein’s contribution to philosophy of religion is not very widely appreciated.1 From among those who bother themselves with such contribution critics are so easy to come by. Though it is D. Z. Phillips, rather than Wittgenstein, who bears the brunt of the criticisms.2 This is so probably because he is the most prolific of all those who dealt with religious matters in a Wittgensteinian manner— which makes it probably right to designate him the doyen of the so-called neo-Wittgensteinians, the propagators of the Wittgenstein- ian philosophy of religion—or because his interest in philosophy of religion and theology is a lot more focused than that of Wittgenstein whose concern is less on matters within religion or theology proper than on how religious matters are spoken of, and whose most signifi- cant contribution is providing philosophical materials to those who would care to specialize in philosophizing about religion (cf. Bar- rett 1991, 258). However the criticisms against the Wittgensteinian 1 One commentator points out that “the impact of Wittgenstein in [analytic philos- ophy of religion] has been minimal is self-evident. philosophy of religion goes on as if [he] never existed, or as if he had never written anything on the philosophy of reli- gion. [He] and his followers have certainly not succeeded in changing the agenda in philosophy of religion” (Moore 2005, 210). But, to put this claim in perspective, this case in the philosophy of religion is probably representative of the case in philosophy as a whole: as suggested by one other commentator, mainstream Anglophone philoso- phy has become practically anti-Wittgensteinian (Hacker 1996, 272). -
Wittgenstein and Mid-20Th Century Political Philosophy: Naturalist Paths from Facts to Values
chapter 7 Wittgenstein and Mid-20th Century Political Philosophy: Naturalist Paths from Facts to Values Andrius Gališanka The mid-20th century witnessed a transformation of analytic political philoso- phy. By the 1960s, meta-ethical discussions about the nature of the good and the meaning of ethical utterances were replaced by discussions about the na- ture of justice, liberty, and other substantive political values. This change drew on a variety of intellectual sources and was inspired by a variety of events.1 In this paper, I explore Ludwig Wittgenstein’s role in this intellectual transforma- tion, focusing on his influence on political philosophy in the 1950s and 1960s. While Wittgenstein wrote little directly on political philosophy or ethics, his philosophical approach inspired, among others, Elizabeth Anscombe, Philip- pa Foot, Stephen Toulmin, and John Rawls.2 The nature of this influence is still largely unexplored. Analyzing it will help us to better understand the patterns of political thinking that emerged in mid-century. I argue that Wittgenstein’s influence in the 1950s and 1960s was twofold. Primarily, his thought helped to argue that there is such a thing as normative reasoning, or reasoning about values and ways of life in which values are em- bedded. Wittgensteinians argued that the rules of this reasoning, including in- ferences from facts to values, were embedded in the conventions of normative practices or “language games.” Assuming that these rules have fixed meanings, they concluded that the fact-value gap did not -
How Language Expresses the World After Early Wittgenstein
[VOLUME 5IISSUE 3 I JULY– SEPT 2018]E ISSN 2348 –1269, PRINT ISSN 2349-5138 How Language Expresses the World after Early Wittgenstein NOOR BANU KHATUN Research Scholar in Philosophy, University of Gour Banga, Mokdumpur, Malda, West Bengal. India Received: May 25, 2018 Accepted: July 15, 2018 ABSTRACT In twentieth century philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein holds a unique position as far as his development of linguistic philosophy is concerned. We know his philosophy as early (T.L.P) and later (P.I) Wittgenstein. His both philosophy is very important for us. Language is the universal medium of communication. Only language can reveal the world. Ludwig Wittgenstein is the most proponent of ideal language philosophy. He proposes the ideal language in his early philosophy in Tractatus logico-Philosophicus. He says that language is the picture of the world or reality. Wittgenstein also holds that language always is corresponding to the world and he also prefers in T.L.P the semantic relationship between picture and reality, where picture is a model of reality. Keywords:Language, world (reality), Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (T.L.P). Introduction During twentieth century philosophy, most of the analytic philosophers conceived that philosophical problems are linguistic, because philosophical problems arise due to the misinterpretation of language or misuse of language or ambiguity of the words or expressions or definitions of language. Since Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasizes on language. Language is the most important medium of our communication in our life. Only language can express the world. There are two types of language viz. ideal language and ordinary language. However, in twentieth century philosophy, most proponents of ideal language philosopher are …viz.