1. Works by Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein, Ryle, Austin, Strawson, Dummett
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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. -
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. -
Wittgenstein in Exile
Wittgenstein in Exile “My thoughts are one hundred per cent Hebraic.” -Wittgenstein to Drury, 19491 Wittgenstein was born in 1889 into one of the richest families in Central Europe. He lived and learned at home, in Vienna, until 1903, when he was 14. We have no record of his thoughts about the turn of the last century, but it is unlikely that it seemed very significant to him. The Viennese of the time had little inclination to consider the possibilities of change, and the over-ripe era in which Wittgenstein grew up did not really end until Austria-Hungary’s defeat, in World War I, and subsequent dismantling. But the family in which Wittgenstein grew up apparently felt that European culture had already come to an end in the 1840’s. And Wittgenstein himself felt he belonged to an era that had vanished with the death of the composer Robert Schumann (1810-1856).2 Somewhere in the middle of the Nineteenth Century there was an important change into the contemporary era, of which Wittgenstein did not feel a part. Wittgenstein’s understanding of history, and his consequent self-understanding in relation to his times, was deeply influenced by Oswald Spengler, who in 1918 published The Decline of the West [Der Untergang des Abenlandes]. This book, expanded to a second volume in 1922, and revised in 1923, became a best-seller in post-war Europe. Wittgenstein made numerous references to it in 1930-1931, and acknowledged Spengler as one of his ten noteworthy influences.3 According to Spengler, cultures grow, flower, and deteriorate naturally, according to their own internal form, much as a human being does. -
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. -
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</Em>
University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 8-6-2008 Three Wittgensteins: Interpreting the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Thomas J. Brommage Jr. University of South Florida Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons Scholar Commons Citation Brommage, Thomas J. Jr., "Three Wittgensteins: Interpreting the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (2008). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/149 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Three Wittgensteins: Interpreting the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Thomas J. Brommage, Jr. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Co-Major Professor: Kwasi Wiredu, B.Phil. Co-Major Professor: Stephen P. Turner, Ph.D. Charles B. Guignon, Ph.D. Richard N. Manning, J. D., Ph.D. Joanne B. Waugh, Ph.D. Date of Approval: August 6, 2008 Keywords: Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, logical empiricism, resolute reading, metaphysics © Copyright 2008 , Thomas J. Brommage, Jr. Acknowledgments There are many people whom have helped me along the way. My most prominent debts include Ray Langely, Billy Joe Lucas, and Mary T. Clark, who trained me in philosophy at Manhattanville College; and also to Joanne Waugh, Stephen Turner, Kwasi Wiredu and Cahrles Guignon, all of whom have nurtured my love for the philosophy of language. -
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). -
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. -
The Puzzle of Goethe's Influence on Wittgenstein
James C. Klagge The Puzzle of Goethe’s Influence on Wittgenstein Abstract: Wittgenstein was extensively influenced by Goethe, yet he specifically did not list Goethe as an influence. We examine this problem in connection with a single issue - the nature of causation and explanation: Goethe and Wittgenstein lived in different times that had different world-views (about, among other things, causation and explanation) pervading their life-contexts. How does one endorse a view that has a home in another life-context? Wittgenstein acknowledged but did not resolve this problem. He accepted Goethe's views, without knowing how to publicly endorse them in his times. This puzzle was created for Wittgenstein by his acceptance of crucial aspects of Spengler's philosophy of history. Brian McGuinness characterized Goethe’s place in Wittgenstein’s thinking as follows: To say what Ludwig admired in Goethe would almost be to say what he found remarkable or worthwhile in life, so many are the themes and attitudes from Goethe that recur in his thought.1 Yet in 1931, when Wittgenstein set down a list of the people who influenced his thinking — Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa — Goethe’s name was 2 conspicuously absent. 1 Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, Young Ludwig (1889-1921), Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988, 34-35. 2 The list was published in: Culture and Value, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 , 19, and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1998, 16; Vermischte Bemerkungen, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1994, 41. At first the list contained only Frege, Russell, Spengler, and Sraffa. -
Ryle and the Para-Mechanical
BRYAN BENHAM Ryle and the Para-mechanical WINNER OF mE 1999 LARRY TAYLOR MEMORIAL AWARD The thesis of this paper is the unconventional claim that Gilbert Ryle is not a logical behaviorist. The popular account ofRyle clearly places his work in The Concept ofMind (1949) in the camp oflogical behaviorist.! The object of this paper, however, will be to illustrate how the conventional interpretation of Ryle is misleading. My argument is not an exhaustive account of Ryle, but serves as a starting point for understanding Ryle outside of the behaviorist label that is usually attached to his work. The argument is straightforward. First, it is apparent on any reasonable construal that logical behaviorism is a reductionist project about the mind. The basic claim of logical behaviorism is that statements containing mental vocabulary can be analyzed into statements containing only the vocabulary of physical behavior. Second, any reasonable account ofRyle will show that he is not a reductionist about the mental, in fact he was adamantly anti-reductionist about the mind. Once these two claims are established it follows quite readily that Ryle was not a logical behaviorist. The first premise is uncontroversial. Anyone familiar with logical behaviorism understands that its aim is to show that mental terminology doesn't refer to unobserved phenomena, supposedly in the head of the person described, but rather to the observed physical behaviors or dispositions to behave (Hempel 1999). In fact, in its strict formulation, logical behaviorism claims that mental terminology signifies only these observed behaviors or dispositions to behave. Thus, I will take it as a reasonably established claim that logical behaviorism is reductionist about the mind. -
THE MYTH of LOGICAL BEHAVIOURISM and the ORIGINS of the IDENTITY THEORY Sean Crawford the Identity Theory's Rapid Rise to Asce
THE MYTH OF LOGICAL BEHAVIOURISM AND THE ORIGINS OF THE IDENTITY THEORY Sean Crawford The identity theory’s rapid rise to ascendancy in analytic philosophy of mind during the late 1950s and early 1960s is often said to have constituted a sea change in perspective on the mind-body problem. According to the standard story, logical or analytical behaviourism was analytic philosophy of mind’s first original materialist-monist solution to the mind-body problem and served to reign in various metaphysically extravagant forms of dualism and introspectionism. It is understood to be a broadly logico-semantic doctrine about the meaning or definition of mental terms, namely, that they refer to dispositions to engage in forms of overt physical behaviour. Logical/analytical behaviourism then eventually gave way, so the standard story goes, in the early 1960s, to analytical philosophy’s second original materialist-monist solution to the mind-body problem, the mind-brain identity theory, understood to be an ontological doctrine declaring states of sensory consciousness to be physical states of the brain and wider nervous system. Of crucial importance here is the widely held notion that whereas logical behaviourism had proposed an identity between the meanings of mental and physical- behavioural concepts or predicates—an identity that was ascertainable a priori through conceptual analysis—the identity theory proposed an identity between mental and physical properties, an identity that could only be established a posteriori through empirical scientific investigation. John Searle (2004) has recently described the transition thus: [logical behaviourism] was gradually replaced among materialist-minded philosophers by a doctrine called “physicalism,” sometimes called the “identity theory.” The physicalists said that Descartes was not wrong, as the logical behaviourists had claimed, as a matter of logic, but just as a matter of fact. -
An Interview with Donald Davidson
An interview with Donald Davidson Donald Davidson is an analytic philosopher in the tradition of Wittgenstein and Quine, and his formulations of action, truth and communicative interaction have generated considerable debate in philosophical circles around the world. The following "interview" actually took place over two continents and several years. It's merely a part of what must now be literally hundreds of hours of taped conversations between Professor Davidson and myself. I hope that what follows will give you a flavor of Donald Davidson, the person, as well as the philosopher. I begin with some of the first tapes he and I made, beginning in Venice, spring of 1988, continuing in San Marino, in spring of 1990, and in St Louis, in winter of 1991, concerning his induction into academia. With some insight into how Professor Davidson came to the profession, a reader might look anew at some of his philosophical writings; as well as get a sense of how the careerism unfortunately so integral to academic life today was so alien to the generation of philosophers Davidson is a member of. The very last part of this interview is from more recent tapes and represents Professor Davidson's effort to try to make his philosophical ideas available to a more general audience. Lepore: Tell me a bit about the early days. Davidson: I was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on March 6, 1917 to Clarence ("Davie") Herbert Davidson and Grace Cordelia Anthony. My mother's father's name was "Anthony" but her mother had married twice and by coincidence both her husbands were named "Anthony". -
English Philosophy in the Fifties
English Philosophy in the Fifties Jonathan Ree If you asked me when was the best time for philosophy in possibly unconscious, as with the contents of the books England in the twentieth century-forprofessional, academic which were destined to become classics. For these reasons, philosophy, that is - I would answer: the fifties, without a I have not engaged with the high-altitude synoptic critiques doubt. And: the fifties, alas. * Under the leadership of - notably those ofMarc use andAnderson - to which Oxford Gilbert Ryle and f.L. Austin, the career philosophers ofthat philosophy has been subjected, either.} period had their fair share of bigotry and evasiveness of The story I tell is meant to be an argument as well as a course; but they also faced up honestly and resourcefully to factual record. It shows that although the proponents ofthe some large and abidingly important theoretical issues. Oxford philosophical revolution prided themselves on their Their headquarters were at that bastion of snobbery and clarity, they never managed to be clear about what their reaction, Oxford University; and by today's standards they revolution amounted to. In itself this is not remarkable, were shameless about their social selectness. They also perhaps; but what is strange is that they were not at all helped philosophy on its sad journey towards being an bothered by what was, one might have thought, quite an exclusively universitarian activity. But still, many of them important failure. This nonchalance corresponded, I be tried to write seriously and unpatronisingly for a larger lieve, to their public-school style - regressive, insiderish, public, and some of them did it with outstanding success.