Wittgenstein's on Certainty and Relativism Martin Kusch
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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. -
The Philosophy of A.J. Ayer, with Replies 55 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS FRONTISPIECE iv INTRODUCTION vii FOUNDER'S GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE LIBRARY OF LIVING PHILOSOPHERS ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xii PREFACE XVll PART ONE: INTELLECTUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A.J. AYER 1 Facsimile of Ayer's Handwriting 2 A.J. Ayer: My Mental Development 3 Still More of My Life 41 PART TWO: DESCRIPTIVE AND CRITICAL ESSAYS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF A.J. AYER, WITH REPLIES 55 1. Evandro Agazzi: Varieties of Meaning and Truth 57 2. James Campbell: Ayer and Pragmatism 83 REPLY TO JAMES CAMPBELL 105 3. David S. Clarke, Jr.: On Judging Sufficiency of Evidence 109 REPLY TO DAVID S. CLARKE, JR. 125 4. Michael Dummett: The Metaphysics of Verificationism 128 REPLY TO MICHAEL DUMMETT 149 5. Elizabeth R. Eames: A.J. Ayer's Philosophical Method 157 REPLY TO ELIZABETH R. EAMES 175 6. John Foster: The Construction of the Physical World 179 REPLY TO JOHN FOSTER 198 xiv TABLE OF CONTENTS 7. Paul Gochet: On Sir Alfred Ayer's Theory of Truth 201 REPLY TO PAUL GOCHET 220 8. Martin Hollis: Man as a Subject for Social Science 225 REPLY TO MARTIN HOLLIS 237 9. Ted Honderich: Causation: One Thing Just Happens After Another 243 REPLY TO TED HONDERICH 271 lO. Tscha Hung: Ayer and the Vienna Circle 279 REPLY TO TSCHA HUNG 301 1l. Peter Kivy: Oh Boy! You Too!: Aesthetic Emotivism Reexamined 309 REPLY TO PETER KIVY 326 12. Arne Naess: Ayer on Metaphysics, a Critical Commentary by a Kind of Metaphysician 329 REPLY TO ARNE NAESS 341 13. D.J. O'Connor: Ayer on Free Will and Determinism 347 REPLY TO D.J. -
Barry Stroud 1935-2019
BARRY STROUD 1935-2019 ized in frame of the WISDOM Journal. I am in great grief that we have lost such an important philosopher and member of our Editorial Board. Stroud passed away on Friday, August 9, 2019 of brain cancer1. He earned his B.A. from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. from Harvard University2. While most popular for his work in epistemology and philosophical incredu- lity - just as his compositions on such logicians as David Hume and Ludwig Wittgenstein - Stroud's general heritage, fellow philosophers state, was his capacity to see the comprehensive view and get to the core of reasoning. Stroud was The loss of Barry Stroud affected the com- a provocative scholar. As a thinker, Stroud be- munity of philosophers in a very harsh way. One came an adult during when the overall Western of the great philosophers of the past half-century frame of mind was that philosophical inquiries was a key member of the editorial board at the could be replied by the sociologies, and he tested WISDOM journal. Stroud‟s cooperation with the those thoughts. WISDOM journal started the day the journal was Stroud's own work indicated another way: found, in 2013, with the help of his strong he connected without a moment's delay with in- friendship with academician Georg Brutian, the quiries in metaphysics, epistemology, the philos- Founder and Chief Editor of the periodi- ophy of our intellect, the hypothesis of signifi- cal WISDOM and founder-president of the Inter- cant worth, and more, declining to offer thought national Research Institute for Metaphilosophy, to any alleged limits between these subjects or to Transformational Logic and Theory of Argumen- concede to the supposed ability of those with a tation at Khachatur Abovian Armenian State specialist‟s command of them. -
The Nature of Certainty in Wittgenstein's On
THE NATURE OF CERTAINTY IN WITTGENSTEIN’S ON CERTAINTY THE NATURE OF CERTAINTY IN WITTGENSTEIN’S ON CERTAINTY By COLIN MCQUAID, B.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts McMaster University © Copyright by Colin McQuaid, March 2012 McMaster University MASTER OF ARTS (2012) Hamilton, Ontario (Philosophy) TITLE: The Nature of Certainty in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty AUTHOR: Colin McQuaid, B.A. (UNBSJ) SUPERVISOR: Professor Ric Arthur NUMBER OF PAGES: iv, 92 ii Abstract In this thesis I examine the concept of certainty in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, with a focus on the collection of remarks entitled On Certainty. In the first part I examine two essays of G.E. Moore that initiated Wittgenstein’s discussion of certainty and critique of Moore’s two essays. As I show, Wittgenstein believes that Moore misunderstood the use of the expression of I know in relation to the propositions of common sense. Instead, Wittgenstein believes that the common sense propositions stand for a certainty that belongs to the language-game itself, a certainty that stands fast for everyone who participates in the language-game, like hinges on which the rest of our knowledge and doubt turn. The rest of my thesis is spent examining three different interpretations of this notion of hinge certainty. The first is hinges as presuppositions to combat skeptical arguments, offered by the philosophers Crispin Wright and H.J. Glock. The second is that hinges are Wittgenstein’s version of foundationalism, serving as the foundational framework of human language, a notion primarily advocated by the philosophers Avrum Stroll and Danièle Moyal-Sharrock. -
An Anthology of Philosophical Studies
Introduction AN ANTHOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES Edited by PATRICIA HANNA ADRIANNE L. MCEVOY PENELOPE VOUTSINA ATINER 2006 1 An Anthology of Philosophical Studies 2 Introduction Athens Institute for Education and Research 2006 An Anthology of Philosophical Studies Edited by Patricia Hanna Adrianne L. McEvoy Penelope Voutsina 3 An Anthology of Philosophical Studies PUBLISHED BY ATHENS INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 14 Solomou Street, 10683 Athens, Greece Tel. +30 210 36.34.210 Fax +30 210.36.34.209 Email: [email protected] URL: www.atiner.gr This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of the Athens Institute for Education and Research. First Published: 2006 ISBN: 978-960-6672-11-8 Typeset, printed and binding by Theta Co. 4 Introduction Table of Contents List of Contributors i Introduction 1 Voutsina, P. PART I EPISTEMOLOGY 1. Imagination in Descartes’ Skepticism 7 Scholl, A. 2. Descartes on Sensations and Ideas of Sensations 17 Cunning, D. 3. The Myth of Hume’s Compatibilism 33 Morris, E.W. 4. From Contextualism to Skepticism 43 Wilburn, R. 5. The Puzzle of Self-Knowledge 51 Voutsina, P. 6. Unconfined Rationality: A Normative yet Realistic Model of 59 Inference Morado, R. and Savion, L. PART II METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 7. Language as Community Property: What’s Wrong with 75 Chomsky’s Individualism? Hanna, P. 8. What do Concepts Consist of? The Role of Geometric and 93 Proprioceptive Information in Categorization Dellantonio, S. and Pastore, L. -
On Certainty (Uber Gewissheit) Ed
Ludwig Wittgenstein On Certainty (Uber Gewissheit) ed. G.E.M.Anscombe and G.H.von Wright Translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M.Anscombe Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1969-1975 Preface What we publish here belongs to the last year and a half of Wittgenstein's life. In the middle of 1949 he visited the United States at the invitation of Norman Malcolm, staying at Malcolm's house in Ithaca. Malcolm acted as a goad to his interest in Moore's 'defence of common sense', that is to say his claim to know a number of propositions for sure, such as "Here is one hand, and here is another", and "The earth existed for a long time before my birth", and "I have never been far from the earth's surface". The first of these comes in Moore's 'Proof of the External World'. The two others are in his 'Defence of Common Sense'; Wittgenstein had long been interested in these and had said to Moore that this was his best article. Moore had agreed. This book contains the whole of what Wittgenstein wrote on this topic from that time until his death. It is all first-draft material, which he did not live to excerpt and polish. The material falls into four parts; we have shown the divisions at #65, #192, #299. What we believe to be the first part was written on twenty loose sheets of lined foolscap, undated. These Wittgenstein left in his room in G.E.M.Anscombe's house in Oxford, where he lived (apart from a visit to Norway in the autumn) from April 1950 to February 1951. -
Making Reality Bite: a Peircean Approach to Epistemology
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Commons@Waikato Letting Reality Bite: A Peircean Approach to Teaching Undergraduate Epistemology Catherine Legg, University of Waikato 1) Introduction: Academic philosophers who have a research passion for Peirce and who suspect that he has the potential to revolutionize philosophy sometimes wonder how they might bring his ideas more into the teaching of undergraduates − where he frequently doesn’t feature at all, except in the US where a token coverage of his early papers seems to result largely from patriotism. Much could be said about specific Peircean ideas and theories which, if included in philosophy curricula, would expand and complicate the vision of philosophy to which students are exposed, and would most likely be greatly appreciated by many who feel troubled and undermined by a sense of narrowness in the current curriculum which they lack the resources to articulate.1 Just a few examples are Peirce’s understanding of pragmatism as a faith in the capacity of experimentation to deliver stable answers to our questions which − in ironic contrast to an understanding of pragmatism as a claim of ‘anything-goes’ − is in fact the most complete form of realism, his belief in final causes and its potential to resurrect ethical realism against positivism’s lingering nihilist onslaught, his distinctive objective idealism, so illuminatingly intermingled with his vision of (mathematical, logical and metaphysical) ‘continuity’, his belief in real chance, and his most elegant and ambitious theory of signs. Having said all this, however, in my opinion the most valuable legacy Peirce has given me as a teacher of undergraduate philosophy is not any of his theories but one of his instructions. -
Readings of Wittgenstein's on Certainty
CRITICAL NOTICE Readings of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty Edited by Daniele Moyal-Sharrock and William H. Brenner, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2007, pp. 352, £ 20.99 ISBN-13: 978-0-230-53552-7 (paperback) Reviewed by Derek A. McDougall There can be little doubt that had the opportunity been available to him, Wittgenstein would have pruned and rearranged, in this case perhaps to a greater degree than in others, the rough and unrevised notes which Anscombe and von Wright first published in 1969 under the title of On Certainty. Described in their Preface to the work as ‘a single sustained treatment of the topic’, separately marked off in his notebooks, which he ‘apparently took up at four separate periods’ during the last eighteen months of his life, with his last entry only two days before his death, it must appear to even the most casual reader that the same questions arise time and time again, with Wittgenstein often providing only slight variations in his numerous approaches to them. For that reason, it is only natural to assume that he would have with time selected and organised his remarks with the sole aim of directing the reader’s attention to the identifiable goal towards which he must surely have intended them to point. But what can that goal have been ? This is the moot question which this, for the most part outstanding selection of essays attempts to answer, and these answers may seem as much at odds with one another as the bewilderment provoked by the work itself might lead one to expect, a bewilderment which the editors see as integral to the ‘distance and deference’ with which it has so often been regarded: clearly recognising the ‘unpolished gem’ which On Certainty is, readers have been unable to reach agreement on the nature of the message they naturally assume that it must be attempting to convey. -
The Practical Origins of Ideas
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 19/1/2021, SPi The Practical Origins of Ideas Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering MATTHIEU QUELOZ 1 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 19/1/2021, SPi 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Matthieu Queloz 2021 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2021 Impression: 1 Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The pre-press of this publication was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of this licence should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951579 ISBN 978–0–19–886870–5 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198868705.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by TJ Books Limited Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. -
Stanley Cavell's Wittgenstein
WITTGENSTEIN Stanley Cavell’s Wittgenstein By James Conant HE AIM OF THIS PAPER IS TO PROVIDE AN OVERVIEW OF ONE ASPECT OF Stanley Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein: his interpretation of Wittgenstein’s teaching concerning the relation between meaning Tand use. After furnishing a rough overview of this aspect of Cavell’s reading of Wittgenstein, I shall attempt to bring into focus what is most distinctive and elusive about it by illustrating, by means of some examples drawn from commentators on Cavell’s work, how easy it can be to miss Cavell’s and— if Cavell is right about who Wittgenstein is—Wittgenstein’s point. Now Wittgenstein has become quite famous in recent years for putting forward something that gets called a “use-theory of meaning.” Wittgenstein writes: For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word “meaning” it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.1 If you look at commentaries on Wittgenstein’s work, you will find that commentators have wildly different understandings of what Wittgenstein is saying in this passage. Here is what Cavell says: “The meaning is the use” calls attention to the fact that what an expression means is a function of what it is used to mean or to say on specific occasions by human beings. [T]o trace the intellectual history of philosophy’s concentration on the meaning of particular words and sentences, in isolation from a systematic attention to their concrete uses would be a worthwhile undertaking. -
Psychological Knowledge
Psychological Knowledge ‘Martin Kusch’s important philosophical contribution is to demonstrate the implicit individualism running through the entire literature on folk-psychology. By exposing and challenging this, he has radically changed the terms of the debate. To understand Kusch’s thesis that psychological concepts are social institutions is to understand that there must be a Gestalt switch in the entire field of philosophical psychology. To combine such a significant philosophical contribution with a brilliant, in-depth historical case-study is an achievement indeed.’ David Bloor, University of Edinburgh ‘Psychological Knowledge is an extremely fine work. In both approach and subject matter, it is related to Martin Kusch’s earlier terrific book, Psychologism, and is a very worthy successor.’ James Robert Brown, University of Toronto ‘Martin Kusch makes a compelling case that the practices of both “academic” and “folk” psychology are best approached as social institutions. In so doing he provides us with a viable transdisciplinary approach to science studies which speaks authoritatively to philosophers, historians, sociologists, and psychologists of science alike. Psychological Knowledge is an important book.’ Paul Stenner, Bath University ‘Psychological Knowledge is a masterly and timely work. It makes accessible the results of meticulous and wide-ranging scholarship. This book is beautifully clear and well organised, complete with summaries and easily memorable labels—suitable for pedagogical purposes as well as essential reading for the research community.’ Elizabeth Valentine, University of London Martin Kusch is Lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He is also the author of Psychologism, Foucault’s Strata and Fields and Language as Calculus vs. -
269 JHBS—WILEY RIGHT BATCH Short Stand Long Reviewed By
JHBS—WILEY RIGHT BATCH Top of RH BOOK REVIEWS 269 Base of RH Vol. 1: Historiographical perspectives; vol. 2: Methodological perspectives and applications. Amsterdam and Top of text Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Base of text Koerner, E. F. K. (1972). Bibliographia Saussureana 1870–1970: An annotated, classified bibliography on the background, development, and actual relevance of Ferdinand de Saussure’s general theory of language. Me- tuchen NJ: Scarecrow Press. Koerner, E. F. K. (1973). Ferdinand de Saussure: Origin and development of his linguistic thought in Western studies of language. A contribution to the history and theory of linguistics. Braunschweig: Friedrich Vieweg & Sohn. Koerner, E. F. K. (1995). Professing linguistic historiography. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Koerner, E. F. K. (Ed.). (1991). First person singular II: Autobiographies by North American scholars in the language sciences. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Skinner, B. F. (1957). Verbal behavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Skinner, B. F. (1976). Particulars of my life. New York: Knopf. Skinner, B. F. (1979). The shaping of a behaviorist: Part two of an autobiography. New York: Knopf. Skinner, B. F. (1983). A matter of consequences: Part three of an autobiography. New York: Knopf. Swiggers, P. (Ed.). (1999). E. F. K. Koerner: A biobibliography. Leuven: Peeters. Reviewed by JOHN E.E. JOSEPH, professor of applied linguistics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9LL, UK. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 36(3), 269–270 Summer 2000 ᭧ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Martin Kusch. Psychological Knowledge: A Social History and Philosophy. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 413 pp. $99.99 ISBN 0-415-19253-6.