Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
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Review of Ian Dearden: "Do Philosophers Talk Nonsense?"
No full textBook review of Ian Dearden: Do Philosophers Talk Nonsense? An inquiry into the possibility of illusions of meaning (Revised edition). London, Rellet Press 2013, 136 pp
"Not a Something"
Get PDFWittgenstein’s remark in section 304 of the Investigations that a sensation “is not a something, but not a nothing either” has often been connected with his critique of the “picture of an inner process”, and there is a temptation to read “something” as meaning “something private”. I argue that his remark should be taken more at face value, and that we can understand its purport via a consideration of the notion of consisting in. I explore this multi-faceted notion and its connection with (an extended version of) the Context Principle, beginning with the case of certain “propositional attitudes” and moving on to sensations. Wittgenstein was right to think it a philosophical prejudice to say that X’s being in pain, say, must consist in, be constituted by, something
Numbers in Elementary Propositions: Some remarks on writings before and after Some Remarks on Logical Form
Get PDFIt is often held that Wittgenstein had to introduce numbers in elementary propositions due to problems related to the so-called colour-exclusion problem. I argue in this paper that he had other reasons for introducing them, reasons that arise from an investigation of the continuity of visual space and what Wittgenstein refers to as ‘intensional infinity’. In addition, I argue that the introduction of numbers by this route was prior to introducing them via the colour-exclusion problem. To conclude, I discuss two problems that Wittgenstein faced in the writings before Some Remarks on Logical Form (1929), problems that are independent of the colour-exclusion problem but dependent on the introduction of numbers in elementary propositions
Farewell from an Editor-in-Chief
Get PDFThe first Editor-in-Chief of Nordic Wittgenstein Review bids farewell
The Logbook of Editing Wittgenstein\u27s "Philosophische Bemerkungen": Rush Rhees’ letters to Georg Henrik von Wright 1962-64
Get PDFRush Rhees, Elizabeth Anscombe and Georg Henrik von Wright were Wittgenstein’s literary heirs and edited many posthumous volumes from Wittgenstein’s writings. Their archived correspondence provides unique insights into this editorial work. The selection of letters written by Rhees which is presented here stems from an early phase of his editorial endeavour to shed light on Wittgenstein’s philosophical development between the TLP and the PI. The letters were written between 1962 and 1964, in connection with the volume that appeared as Philosophische Bemerkungen (PB 1964), and show how Rhees’ understanding of Wittgenstein’s texts developed during editing. They contain some of the central considerations that governed Rhees’ work as Wittgenstein’s literary executor
Review of Rebecca Schuman: "Kafka and Wittgenstein"
No full textBook review of Rebecca Schuman: Kafka and Wittgenstein: The Case for an Analytic Modernism. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2015
A Passion for Life: Love and Meaning
Get PDFDoes one’s love for a particular person, when it is pure, also constitute a love of life? The significance of speaking about leading a passionate life, I submit, is found in the spontaneous, embodied character of opening up to and finding meaning in one’s life rather than in heightened fleeting feelings or experiences of meaning that help one forget life’s meaninglessness. I contrast this view with Simone Weil’s suspicion that our passionate attachment to another person is an obstacle to attending to him or her from the distance proper to love and friendship. From that perspective it appears as if the meaning with which personal love endows life is mostly illusory, including the loss of meaning characteristic of grief. I question whether Weil’s view should be seen as an unconditional, though for most unattainable, ideal of love, or if it is rather expressive of a rejection of one of the central features of love: the vulnerability that ensues from the recognition that when we love there are times where we stand in need of the other’s love to be able to embrace life as meaningful
Matters of Fact and Relations of Ideas
Get PDFIn this very first contribution to the new section "Replies", Venturinha adresses some concerns of general interest regarding intrerpretative discussions of Wittgenstein\u27s work, in the form of a reply to James W. Hearne and Marcos Silva. The section aims at opening up for constructive discussion on themes which have arisen in earlier issues of Nordic Wittgenstein Review. The section is open for submissions via http://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com
Excursus on Wittgenstein\u27s Rule-Following Considerations
No full textIn this essay, I seek to demonstrate the interplay of philosophical voices – particularly, that of a platonist voice and a community-agreement-view voice – that drives Wittgenstein’s rule-following dialectic forward; and I argue that each voice succumbs to a particular form of dialectical oscillation that renders its response to the problem of rule-following philosophically inadequate. Finally, I suggest that, by seeing and taking stock of the dilemma in which these responses to the skeptical problem are caught, we can come to appreciate Wittgenstein’s own view of what might constitute a proper a response to the so-called problem of rule-following. This view can be preliminarily characterized by saying that Wittgenstein’s aim is to dissolve the temptation to philosophically rebut the skeptical challenge posed by the rule-following dialectic, an aim he achieves by revealing the semantic emptiness of the apparent sentences that raise the skeptical problem
Chains of Life: Turing, Lebensform, and the Emergence of Wittgenstein’s Later Style
Get PDFThis essay accounts for the notion of Lebensform by assigning it a logical role in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Wittgenstein’s additions of the notion to his manuscripts of the PI occurred during the initial drafting of the book 1936-7, after he abandoned his effort to revise The Brown Book. It is argued that this constituted a substantive step forward in his attitude toward the notion of simplicity as it figures within the notion of logical analysis. Next, a reconstruction of his later remarks on Lebensformen is offered which factors in his reading of Alan Turing’s “On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem“ (1936/7), as well as his discussions with Turing 1937-1939. An interpretation of the five occurrences of Lebensform in the PI is then given in terms of a logical “regression” to Lebensform as a fundamental notion. This regression characterizes Wittgenstein’s mature answer to the question, “What is the nature of the logical?