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 –