Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
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“Ludwig Wittgenstein” – A BBC Radio Talk by Elizabeth Anscombe in May 1953
Get PDFPresented here is the transcript of a BBC radio broadcast by Elizabeth Anscombe that was recorded in May 1953 – the month when Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations appeared in England for the first time. In her radio talk, Anscombe provides some biographical and philosophical background for reading the Philosophical Investigations. She addresses the importance of the Tractatus and of the literary qualities of Wittgenstein’s writing. Anscombe warns that it would be fruitless to adopt slogans from Wittgenstein without insight. She also calls it a misunderstanding to think that Wittgenstein had championed something like the Ordinary Language Philosophy as it was practised at the time of the recording
The Wittgenstein Lectures, Revisited
Get PDFIn 2003 I published a survey of Wittgenstein’s lectures in Public and Private Occasions. Much has been learned about his lectures since then. This paper revisits the earlier survey and provides additional material and corrections, which amount to over 25%. In case it is useful, I have provided interlinear pagination from the original publication
Life and Truth: A Response to Joel Backström
Get PDFThe “post-truth” phenomenon is not primarily a cognitive problem, but a moral or existential problem, a problem of self-deception. But what does this mean? In order to clarify that, two things need to be discussed. First, if the conception of belief is rejected according to which a belief has sense in isolation from the roles it, and the holding of it, plays in our lives, then the problem of self-deception needs to be met as a problem of life. Second, a problem of life is not something that individuals get into all by themselves. In other words, ways of living can be self-deceptive. The task of the text is hence to discuss some of the ways in which truth, belief and self-deception unfold on this non-individual level, specifically on the political one.
Keywords: post-truth, self-deception, belief, democracy, Simone Wei
On Wittgenstein, Radical Pluralism, and Radical Relativity
Get PDFIn this paper, I introduce the idea of ‘radical relativity’ to elucidate an undervalued justificatory context for Wittgenstein’s affirmation of radical pluralism. I accept D.Z. Phillips’s definition of radical pluralism as the view that certain radical differences between people’s ordinary practices prevent the latter from being reduced to a necessary set of common interests, meanings, or truths. I argue that radical relativity provides this form of pluralism with the logical justification it requires in that it accounts for how pluralism became radical. More specifically, I argue that the contingent, non-causal, and yet non-arbitrary relation between ordinary concepts and the pluralistic world through which they emerge explains the reality of radical pluralism. Radical relativity is suggested in Wittgenstein’s three notions of ‘concept formation’, ‘agreement in reaction’, and ‘world pictures’, I argue, without endorsing traditional forms of relativism. Finally, I show that although D.Z. Phillips and Hilary Putnam promote notions of pluralism indebted to Wittgenstein, neither philosopher utilizes the radical relativity suggested in his work to justify his respective version of pluralism or Wittgenstein’s version of radical pluralism
On Redrawing the Force-Content Distinction
Get PDFFrege distinguished the thought qua logical content from the assertoric force attached to it when judged to be true. The gist of this distinction is captured by the so-called Frege-Geach point. Recently, several authors have drawn inspiration from Wittgenstein to reject this point and the distinction it is based on. This article proceeds from the observation that Wittgenstein himself did not reject the force-content distinction but urged us to reformulate it in a non-dualistic way. While drawing on Wittgensteinian lessons about thought and its expression, the overall purpose of this paper is systematic, not exegetic: it seeks to contribute to the contemporary debate aboute force and content by arguing that this distinction should be redrawn in such a way as to exhibit force as internal to thought, namely, as that which provides for the unity of thought. To this end, it is investigated what it is for a thought to occur as a forceless part of a propositionally complex assertion (e. g. for p to occur as a part of the assertion that not p)
Wittgenstein to Sraffa: Two Newly-discovered Letters from February and March 1934
Get PDFThis paper introduces and publishes two letters from 1934 written by Wittgenstein to Sraffa. The first of these confirms that on the one hand Wittgenstein and Sraffa had communicative difficulties. On the other hand Wittgenstein acknowledged the strength of Sraffa’s thinking and he was aware of being positively influenced by it. The second longer letter is part of a debate between Wittgenstein and Sraffa that had been ongoing in the few weeks preceding the letter. In the letter, Wittgenstein tried to clarify and review in part his thinking on the points he discussed during the debate
The Problem of Domination by Reason and Its Non-Relativistic Solution
Get PDFThis paper outlines a solution to what can be called “the problem of domination by reason”, “conceptual domination” or “clarificatorory injustice”, connected with how a philosopher may appear to be in a position to legitimately coerce, by means of arguments, an interlocutor who shares with her a concept or a conceptual system to accept a philosophical characterization of a concept or whatever the concept concerns. The proposed solution is based on a particular interpretation of what Wittgenstein means by agreement in his later philosophy, when he says that philosophy only states what anyone grants to it. Wittgenstein’s view and the proposed solution are characterized by their continued recognition of the value of logic and reason, truth and knowledge, as opposed to attempting to solve the problem by embracing relativism and questioning the value of the logic, reason, truth and knowledge. Relevant kind of disagreements licence no relativistic conclusions, because problems relating to them can be solved without going this far.
Keywords: domination, relativism, Wittgenstein, method, agreemen