DOCSLIB.ORG

(Eds.) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
(Eds.) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information Alois Pichler, Herbert Hrachovec (Eds.) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. New Series Volume 6 Alois Pichler • Herbert Hrachovec (Eds.) Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Information Proceedings of the 30. International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria 2007 Volume 1 Bibliographic information published by Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de Gedruckt mit Förderung des Bundesministeriums für Wissenschaft und Forschung in Wien und der Kulturabteilung der NÖ Landesregierung North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Ire, Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected] Livraison pour la France et la Belgique: Librairie Philosophique J.Vrin 6, place de la Sorbonne ; F-75005 PARIS Tel. +33 (0)1 43 54 03 47 ; Fax +33 (0)1 43 54 48 18 www.vrin.fr 2008 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 978-3-86838-001-9 2008 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper ISO-Norm 970-6 FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag Table of Contents Preface Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec . 3 Section 1: Wittgenstein Grammar and Silence Newton Garver, Buffalo . 7 Medienphilosophie als ethisches Projekt? Vilém Flussers Wittgenstein Matthias Kross, Potsdam . 23 Psychoanalyse der grammatischen Mißdeutungen: Über die Beziehung Ludwig Wittgensteins zum Werk Sigmund Freuds Stefan Majetschak, Kassel . 37 Verdächtige Bilder und Töne: Wittgenstein 1946–1951 Katalin Neumer, Budapest . 61 Mathematical Sense: Wittgenstein’s Syntactical Structuralism Victor Rodych, Lethbridge . 81 Santayana and Wittgenstein on Scepticism Luis M. Valdés-Villanueva, Oviedo . 105 Section 2: Wittgenstein and the Digital Turn On Butterfly Feelers: Some Examples of Surfing on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Luciano Bazzocchi, Pisa . 125 Meaning as Use in the Digital Turn Anat Biletzki, Tel Aviv . 141 Wittgenstein 2.0: Philosophical Reading and Writing after the Mediatic Turn Jos de Mul, Rotterdam . 153 2 Heidegger und Wittgenstein zur Ontologie und Praxis der Technik Peter Keicher, Karslruhe . 181 Towards Future Digital Scholarship Dieter Köhler, Karlsruhe . 195 (Re)-Constructing the Semantic Architecture of Wittgenstein’s Vermischte Bemerkungen by Syntactic Analysis Kerstin Mayr, Innsbruck . 205 Digital Wittgenstein Scholarship: Past, Present and Future David G. Stern, Iowa . 223 Section 3: Philosophy of Information As We May Be Doing Philosophy: Informationalism – A New Regime for Philosophy? Daniel Apollon, Bergen . 241 Irreducible Complexity in Pure Mathematics Gregory Chaitin, Yorktown Heights, NY . 261 The Metaphysics of Information Fred Dretske, Durham, NC . 273 A Subjectivist Interpretation of Relevant Information Luciano Floridi, Hertfordshire/Oxford . 285 Computability of Reality as an Unfulfilled Dream Yukiko Okamoto, Tokyo . 305 PhiloSURFical: Browse Wittgenstein’s World with the Semantic Web Michele Pasin & Enrico Motta, Milton Keynes . 319 Abstracts and Biographies . 335 Preface This is the first of two volumes of the proceedings from the 30th Interna- tional Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, August 2007. It contains selected contributions from sections 1–3 of the symposium: • Wittgenstein • Wittgenstein und die digitale Wende – Wittgenstein and the digital turn • Informationswissenschaft, Texttheorie und Hermeneutik im digitalen Kontext – Information science, text theory and hermeneutics in the digital context. The second volume contains selected contributions from sections 4–6 and the symposium workshop: • Medienphilosophie – Philosophy of media • Philosophie des Internets / Philosophy of the Internet • Ethik und politische Ökonomie der Informationsgesellschaft – Ethics and political economy of the information society • Workshop: Elektronische Philosophie-Ressourcen und Open Source/ Open Access – Electronic philosophy resources and Open Source/Open Access The digital turn was the focus of this Wittgenstein symposium. For this rea- son alone, it was only natural to relate Wittgenstein research to a digital context, but even more so since Wittgenstein research and editing seem to have embarked upon digitality earlier than philosophical scholarship sur- rounding other philosophers. A hot topic in current digital philosophy and digital applications is compu- tational ontologies. The symposium has demonstrated the great value and provided positive examples of such ontologies, as well as voiced both criti- cism and caution. The present volume reflects this double aspect. 4 The philosophy of information has – since its beginnings in the last century – remained an attractive and growing field of research. This volume also contains new contributions in this field, ranging from more (mathematical) information theoretical to humanities and hermeneutical approaches. We thank our contributors for a most enjoyable and fruitful cooperation and the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society for the opportunity to organize the anniversary 30th symposium under a theme which is timely as well as attractive to a public extending beyond a strictly philosophical community. The Wittgenstein Nachlass facsimiles that appear on pages 128 and 132 stem from the Bergen Electronic Edition (Oxford University Press 2000) of the Wittgenstein Nachlass item MS 104 (“Prototractatus”, The Bodleian Library, item MS. Germ. d. 7). They are reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge, Oxford University Press, the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen and The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, which we gratefully acknowledge. The Wittgenstein Nachlass facsimile that appears on page 62 stems from the Bergen Electronic Edition (Oxford University Press 2000) of the Witt- genstein Nachlass item MS 144 (Trinity College Library). It is reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge, Oxford University Press and the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, which we gratefully acknowledge. We would like to thank Deirdre C.P. Smith (AKSIS, Bergen) for help with proofreading and Anne Lindebjerg (AKSIS, Bergen) for help with the lay- out. Alois Pichler and Herbert Hrachovec Bergen and Vienna, May 2008 Section 1: Wittgenstein Grammar and Silence NEWTON GARVER, BUFFALO 1. Introduction 1. Wittgenstein’s early masterpiece, Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, culmi- nated in silence. The relentless steps of the search for clarity and meaning leads to the famous pronouncement of silence in the final sentence, “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.” Because Wittgen- stein returned to philosophy some ten years later and worked persistently at philosophy for more than two decades until the end of his life, the question arises whether his return to philosophical work defied his earlier conclusion or had the effect of canceling it. His later philosophy continued his pursuit for clarity and meaning, but was dominated by what he called grammar rather than by logic. In view of this revision in the fundamental tools of his work, a useful specific form of the issue is whether making grammatical remarks, as Wittgenstein did in his later work of clarification, is a continua- tion or a rejection of the silence that his early work had led him into. The plan of my paper is simple. I will first consider what is included and what is not included in the key terms ‘silence’ and ‘grammar’ as Witt- genstein used them, and then argue that restricting philosophy to grammar was a way of continuing the silence with which Wittgenstein so dramati- cally concluded the Tractatus. I will conclude with some reservations about adopting Wittgenstein as a role-model in this respect. 2. Silence 2. Wittgenstein’s silence is not an absence of noise, nor even an absence of verbalization. The silence applies only to “what we cannot speak about”, and Wittgenstein held that there are indeed things that we can speak about, namely matters of fact, which he equated with the domain of science. The distinction between philosophy and science is drawn sharply in the Tracta- tus,1 and the silence applies to philosophy. This interpretation is uncontro- 8 versial, amply supported by the remarks immediately preceding the procla- mation of silence: The correct method in philosophy would be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e., propositions of natural science – i.e., something that has nothing to do with philosophy – and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person – he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy –
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Uila Supported Apps
    Uila Supported Applications and Protocols updated Oct 2020 Application/Protocol Name Full Description 01net.com 01net website, a French high-tech news site. 050 plus is a Japanese embedded smartphone application dedicated to 050 plus audio-conferencing. 0zz0.com 0zz0 is an online solution to store, send and share files 10050.net China Railcom group web portal. This protocol plug-in classifies the http traffic to the host 10086.cn. It also 10086.cn classifies the ssl traffic to the Common Name 10086.cn. 104.com Web site dedicated to job research. 1111.com.tw Website dedicated to job research in Taiwan. 114la.com Chinese web portal operated by YLMF Computer Technology Co. Chinese cloud storing system of the 115 website. It is operated by YLMF 115.com Computer Technology Co. 118114.cn Chinese booking and reservation portal. 11st.co.kr Korean shopping website 11st. It is operated by SK Planet Co. 1337x.org Bittorrent tracker search engine 139mail 139mail is a chinese webmail powered by China Mobile. 15min.lt Lithuanian news portal Chinese web portal 163. It is operated by NetEase, a company which 163.com pioneered the development of Internet in China. 17173.com Website distributing Chinese games. 17u.com Chinese online travel booking website. 20 minutes is a free, daily newspaper available in France, Spain and 20minutes Switzerland. This plugin classifies websites. 24h.com.vn Vietnamese news portal 24ora.com Aruban news portal 24sata.hr Croatian news portal 24SevenOffice 24SevenOffice is a web-based Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. 24ur.com Slovenian news portal 2ch.net Japanese adult videos web site 2Shared 2shared is an online space for sharing and storage.
    [Show full text]
  • Brian Mcguinness Ist Am 23
    In Honor of Brian McGuinness Josef Mitterer My relation to Brian McGuinness is the respectful relation of a younger colleague and -- many years back -- the relation of an admiring student who met him in Graz where he became an honorary professor in 1988. The achievements of Brian McGuinness have been praised so often and by so many that it is not easy to say something new, to find new praise which has not been offered already by someone else. The basic data: Brian was born 90 years and 4 days ago -- he studied at Oxford university and spent 35 years a Tutor, as a Fellow and a University Lecturer at Queens College. From 1989 to 2002 he was a Professor of History of Scientific Thought at the University of Siena. From the list of universities where he taught as a guest professor: Stanford, Princeton, Bejing, Rome, Leiden, Graz ... Brian McGuinness has authored and edited more than 30 books. They include a new translation of the Tractatus, the edition and translation of the Prototractatus -- both together with David Pears – and together with Joachim Schulte he published the definitive edition of the Tractatus, one of the most influential philosophical books of the 20th century. It is safe to say that nobody in Academia has done as much for the recognition of Wittgenstein in particular and of Austrian Philosophy in general as Brian McGuinness in the course of 60 years of writing and lecturing. The academic world is inhabited by a variety of species. A very rare one is that of the geniuses who publish very little in their lifetime but fill notebooks, journals and "Zettel" with ideas – (nowadays more likely hard discs or memory sticks) 1 which are then left to hardworking academics who clear up the mess and edit collected works which establish the lasting fame and influence of those thinkers.
    [Show full text]
  • Marginal but Significant the Impact of Social Media on Preferential Voting
    Working paper Marginal but significant The impact of social media on preferential voting Niels Spierings, Kristof Jacobs Institute for Management Research Creating knowledge for society POL12-01 Marginal but significant The impact of social media on preferential voting Niels Spierings, Radboud University Nijmegen Kristof Jacobs, Radboud University Nijmegen 1 Getting personal? The impact of social media on preferential voting Abstract Accounts of the state of contemporary democracies often focus on parties and partisan representation. It has been noted by several authors that parties are in a dire state. Parties are said to withdraw themselves from society and citizens in turn are withdrawing themselves from parties. However, two trends are rarely taken into account, namely (1) an increasing personalization of electoral systems and (2) the spread of cheap and easy- to-use social media which allow politicians to build personal ties with citizens. When considering these two trends, the process of ‘mutual withdrawal’ may be less problematic. Our research seeks to examine whether or not candidates make use of social media during election campaigns to reach out to citizens and whether citizens in turn connect to politicians. Afterwards it examines whether social media make a difference and yield a preference vote bonus. Four types of effects are outlined, namely a direct effect of the number of followers a candidate has; an interaction effect whereby a higher number of followers only yields more votes when the candidate actively uses the social media; an indirect effect whereby social media first lead to more coverage in traditional media and lastly the absence of any effect.
    [Show full text]
  • Hacker's Complaint
    VOL. NO. JULY CONTENTS ARTICLES Intentionalism and the Imaginability of the Inverted Spectrum Eric Marcus Metaphysical Arguments against Ordinary Objects Amie L. Thomasson Kant’s Transcendental Strategy John J. Callanan True Emotions Mikko Salmela Wittgenstein and Strong Mathematical Verificationism Cyrus Panjvani DISCUSSIONS Hacker’s Complaint Scott Soames Are There Non-Existent Intentionalia? Alberto Voltolini CRITICAL STUDY The Sort of Creature You Are Anselm W. Müller BOOK REVIEWS BLACKWELL PUBLISHING FOR THE SCOTS PHILOSOPHICAL CLUB AND THE UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. , No. July ISSN – DISCUSSIONS HACKER’S COMPLAINT B S S My goal in writing ‘Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century’ was to identify and explain the most important achievements of analytic philosophy which every student of the subject should be aware of, as well as those of its failures from which we have the most to learn. I attempted to do this by constructing a history that was itself a piece of analytic philosophy in its emphasis on analysis, reconstruction and criticism of arguments. In rebutting Hacker’s critique of it, I explain how my goal shaped my selection of topics, with special reference to the ordinary language period. I correct his misrepresentations of my treatment of the philosophers of this period, I demonstrate his failure to grasp, or understand the significance of, the Kripkean necessary a posteriori, and I reveal the misconceptions in his criticism of my interpretation of the ‘Tractatus’. I I am grateful to the Editors for inviting me to reply to P.M.S. Hacker’s review in this journal of my Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century.1 I begin with his complaint about the materials I chose to discuss: In its selection of materials it is unrepresentative: significant figures are omitted and pivotal works are not discussed ..
    [Show full text]
  • On the Boundary Between Mereology and Topology
    On the Boundary Between Mereology and Topology Achille C. Varzi Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica, I-38100 Trento, Italy [email protected] (Final version published in Roberto Casati, Barry Smith, and Graham White (eds.), Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences. Proceedings of the 16th International Wittgenstein Symposium, Vienna, Hölder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1994, pp. 423–442.) 1. Introduction Much recent work aimed at providing a formal ontology for the common-sense world has emphasized the need for a mereological account to be supplemented with topological concepts and principles. There are at least two reasons under- lying this view. The first is truly metaphysical and relates to the task of charac- terizing individual integrity or organic unity: since the notion of connectedness runs afoul of plain mereology, a theory of parts and wholes really needs to in- corporate a topological machinery of some sort. The second reason has been stressed mainly in connection with applications to certain areas of artificial in- telligence, most notably naive physics and qualitative reasoning about space and time: here mereology proves useful to account for certain basic relation- ships among things or events; but one needs topology to account for the fact that, say, two events can be continuous with each other, or that something can be inside, outside, abutting, or surrounding something else. These motivations (at times combined with others, e.g., semantic transpar- ency or computational efficiency) have led to the development of theories in which both mereological and topological notions play a pivotal role. How ex- actly these notions are related, however, and how the underlying principles should interact with one another, is still a rather unexplored issue.
    [Show full text]
  • Nancy J. Nersessian Regents' Professor of Cognitive Science
    Last updated April 2021 CURRICULUM VITAE PERSONAL: Nancy J. Nersessian Regents’ Professor of Cognitive Science (Emerita) Georgia Institute of Technology Research Associate Harvard University Department of Psychology William James Hall 33 Kirkland St. Cambridge, MA 02138 Email: [email protected] [email protected] Web page: www.cc.gatech.edu/~nersessian EDUCATION: Case Western Reserve University: Ph.D., Philosophy 1977; M.A., Philosophy 1974; Boston University: A.B., Physics and Philosophy (with distinction in Logic) 1969 ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS Harvard University, Research Associate, Department of Psychology, 2014-present Georgia Institute of Technology, Regents’ Professor of Cognitive Science, 2007-2014 Regents’ Professor Emerita, 2014-present Professor, of Cognitive Science 1993-2007 Professor, School of Interactive Computing and School of Public Policy Adjunct Professor, College of Architecture Adjunct Professor, School of Literature, Communication, & Culture N.J. Nersessian Director, Program in Cognitive Science, 1994-1999, 2003-2005 Member: Program in Philosophy, Science, & Technology Program in Women, Science, & Technology Princeton University, Program in History of Science and Department of History, Assistant Professor, 1987-1993 Associate Member, Department of Philosophy, 1987-1993 Member: Program in Cognitive Studies, 1992-1993 Cognitive Studies Committee, 1987-1992 University of Pittsburgh, Learning Research and Development Center, Postdoctoral Research Associate, 1986-1987 Twente University of Technology,
    [Show full text]
  • APA Newsletters Spring 2018 Volume 17, No. 2
    NEWSLETTERS | The American Philosophical Association APA Newsletters SPRING 2018 VOLUME 17 | NUMBER 2 ASIAN AND ASIAN-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHIES FEMINISM AND PHILOSOPHY HISPANIC/LATINO ISSUES IN PHILOSOPHY NATIVE AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS PHILOSOPHY PHILOSOPHY AND COMPUTERS PHILOSOPHY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE PHILOSOPHY IN TWO-YEAR COLLEGES TEACHING PHILOSOPHY VOLUME 17 | NUMBER 2 SPRING 2018 © 2018 BY THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION ISSN 2155-9708 Table of Contents Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and The 2018 Essay Prize in Latin American Thought .... 50 Philosophies ...................................................... 1 Articles ..................................................................... 51 From the Guest Editor ............................................... 1 Surviving Social Disintegration: Jorge Portilla on Ways of Philosophy, Ways of Practice ....................... 1 the Phenomenology of Zozobra .............................. 51 Submission Guidelines and Information ................... 1 Discussion Articles ................................................... 54 “Three Sacrificial Rituals” (sanji) and the The Contradiction of Crimmigration ........................ 54 Practicability of Ruist (Confucian) Philosophy ........... 2 Under the Umbrella of Administrative Law: Traditional Chinese Body Practice and Philosophical Immigration Detention and the Challenges of Activity ........................................................................ 5 Producing Just Immigration Law ............................
    [Show full text]
  • The Joint Philosophical Program of Russell and Wittgenstein and Its Demise
    The Joint Philosophical Program of Russell and Wittgenstein and Its Demise Abstract Between April and November 1912, Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein were en- gaged in a joint philosophical program. Wittgenstein‘s meeting with Gottlob Frege in De- cember 1912 led, however, to its dissolution – the joint program was abandoned. Section 2 of this paper outlines the key points of that program, identifying what Russell and Wittgenstein each contributed to it. The third section determines precisely those features of their collabora- tive work that Frege criticized. Finally, building upon the evidence developed in the preced- ing two sections, section 4 recasts along previously undeveloped lines Wittgenstein‘s logical– philosophical discoveries in the two years following his encounter with Frege in 1912. The paper concludes, in section 5, with an overview of the dramatic consequences the Frege- Wittgenstein critique had for Russell‘s philosophical development. 1. Introductory Remarks The subject of our investigation is the interaction between the three founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Russell, Wittgenstein and Frege, in a most important period of their philosophical development. We discuss the joint program that Russell and Wittgenstein worked on from April till November 1912, as well as its collapse after Wittgenstein visited Frege in Jena in December the same year. Frege‘s criticism of elements of the program underpinned and motivated Wittgenstein‘s attack on Russell‘s approach in philosophy that culminated in May and June 1913 when, facing Wittgenstein‘s criticism, Russell stopped writing the Theory of Knowledge book project. Frege‘s arguments also urged Wittgenstein to rethink and reformulate his own philosophical ideas.
    [Show full text]
  • Dialogical Grammar: Varieties of Dialogue in Wittgenstein's
    ISSN: 2325-3290 (online) Dialogical Grammar: Varieties of Dialogue in Wittgenstein’s Methodology Dorit Lemberger Bar-Ilan university Abstract The dialogical character of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations has received scant attention in the literature, given the work’s status in his total oeuvre, and is dismissed as a marginal as compared to the other differences between the Tractatus and the Investigations. The main lines of interpretation that have been proposed see dialogue as a rhetorical technique intended to present erroneous positions and then refute them, as an exemplification of what can be expressed in language (McGinn 1997; Rhees 1998), or as a reflection of Wittgenstein’s informal teaching method (Malcolm 2001; Savickey et al. 1990). The present article adopts the perspective that Wittgenstein’s use of dialogue makes it possible to track the various modes of language-acts, consonant with his directions to examine the daily use of language (Wittgenstein 2009, §116 and esp. §132), “when language is, as it were, idling.” In his later inquiries, Wittgenstein frequently considers the nature of mental states, accompanied by an attempt to characterize the differences between them while at the same time dealing with the cases in which it is difficult to distinguish them. In this process he made a variety of uses of dialogue, each of which embodies a different aspect of language action. Subsequently I will demonstrate that these different uses are not haphazard. A scrutiny of the nature of the dialogue can help us understand the nature of the activity carried out of the state of consciousness. Finally, I propose a distinction among three main types of dialogue: technical, conversational, and reflexive.
    [Show full text]
  • HUI What Is a Digital Object Metaphilosophy.Pdf
    bs_bs_banner © 2012 The Author Metaphilosophy © 2012 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 43, No. 4, July 2012 0026-1068 WHAT IS A DIGITAL OBJECT? YUK HUI Abstract: We find ourselves in a media-intensive milieu comprising networks, images, sounds, and text, which we generalize as data and metadata. How can we understand this digital milieu and make sense of these data, not only focusing on their functionalities but also reflecting on our everyday life and existence? How do these material constructions demand a new philosophical understand- ing? Instead of following the reductionist approaches, which understand the digital milieu as abstract entities such as information and data, this article pro- poses to approach it from an embodied perspective: objects. The article contrasts digital objects with natural objects (e.g., apples on the table) and technical objects (e.g., hammers) in phenomenological investigations, and proposes to approach digital objects from the concept of “relations,” on the one hand the material relations that are concretized in the development of mark-up languages, such as SGML, HTML, and XML, and on the other hand, Web ontologies, the temporal relations that are produced and conditioned by the artificial memories of data. Keywords: digital objects, phenomenology, metadata, Stiegler, Simondon. In this article I attempt to outline what I call digital objects, showing that a philosophical investigation is necessary by revisiting the history of philosophy and proposing that it is possible to develop a philosophy of digital objects.
    [Show full text]
  • Wittgenstein on Freedom of the Will: Not Determinism, Yet Not Indeterminism
    Wittgenstein on Freedom of the Will: Not Determinism, Yet Not Indeterminism Thomas Nadelhoffer This is a prepublication draft. This version is being revised for resubmission to a journal. Abstract Since the publication of Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Freedom of the Will, his remarks about free will and determinism have received very little attention. Insofar as these lectures give us an opportunity to see him at work on a traditional—and seemingly intractable—philosophical problem and given the voluminous secondary literature written about nearly every other facet of Wittgenstein’s life and philosophy, this neglect is both surprising and unfortunate. Perhaps these lectures have not attracted much attention because they are available to us only in the form of a single student’s notes (Yorick Smythies). Or perhaps it is because, as one Wittgenstein scholar put it, the lectures represent only “cursory reflections” that “are themselves uncompelling." (Glock 1996: 390) Either way, my goal is to show that Wittgenstein’s views about freedom of the will merit closer attention. All of these arguments might look as if I wanted to argue for the freedom of the will or against it. But I don't want to. --Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures on Freedom of the Will Since the publication of Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Freedom of the Will,1 his remarks from these lectures about free will and determinism have received very little attention.2 Insofar as these lectures give us an opportunity to see him at work on a traditional—and seemingly intractable— philosophical problem and given the voluminous secondary literature written about nearly every 1 Wittgenstein’s “Lectures on Freedom of the Will” will be abbreviated as LFW 1993 in this paper (see bibliography) since I am using the version reprinted in Philosophical Occasions (1993).
    [Show full text]
  • Abduction, Reason, and Science Abduction, Reason, and Science Processes of Discovery and Explanation
    Abduction, Reason, and Science Abduction, Reason, and Science Processes of Discovery and Explanation Lorenzo Magnani University of Pavia Pavia, Italy, and Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta, Georgia Springer Science+Business Media, LLC Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Magnani, Lorenzo Abduction, reason, and ,cience: processes of discovcry and explanation/Lorenzo Magnani. p. cm. IncIudes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4613-4637-1 ISBN 978-1-4419-8562-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8562-0 1. Science-Philosophy. 2. Abduction (Logic). 3. Discoveries in science. I. Tirle. Q175.32.A24 M34 2001 501-dc21 00-052061 Front cover: Descartes's explanation of the rainbow (from his Meteora, 1656). ISBN 978-1-4613-4637-1 © 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Kluwer Academic / Plenum Publishers, New York in 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1990 http://www.wkap.nl/ 1098765432 A c.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. AII rights reserved No par! of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without wrilten permis sion from the Publisher To my daughter Giovanna Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or "given" base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground.
    [Show full text]