Nordic Wittgenstein Review (NWR)
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Book Review: "Wittgenstein on Philosophy, Objectivity, and Meaning", eds. James Conant and Sebastian Sunday
No full text“We are Human Beings, and We Value Human Life”: Glock and Diamond on Mental Capacities and Animal Ethics
Get PDFHow should a philosophical inquiry into the moral status of (nonhuman) animals proceed? Many philosophers maintain that by examining the “morally relevant” psychological or physiological capacities possessed by the members of different species, and comparing them with similar capacities possessed by human beings, the moral status of the animals in question can be established. Others contend that such an approach runs into serious moral and conceptual problems, a crucial one being that of how to give a coherent account of the natural sense of concern for profoundly cognitively impaired human beings if moral status is assumed to depend on features that centrally include cognitive capacities. The present article discusses this debate with reference to Wittgenstein-influenced philosophers whose respective approaches, on the face of it, diverge dramatically. With a primary focus on Hans-Johann Glock and Cora Diamond, and a secondary focus on recent work by Alice Crary, I argue that, despite an overt disavowal of the kind of approach favoured by Diamond and Crary, Glock’s affirmation that we simply do “value human life” brings him closer to that approach than he acknowledges.
 
Winds of Change: The Later Wittgenstein’s Conception of the Dynamics of Change
Get PDFThe theme of change is one of the most prominent traits of Wittgenstein’s later work, and his writings have inspired many contemporary thinkers’ discussions of changes in e.g. concepts, ‘aspect-seeing’, practices, worldviews, and forms of life. However, Wittgenstein’s conception of the dynamics of change has not been investigated in its own right.
The aim of this paper is to investigate which understanding of the dynamics of changes can be found in the later Wittgenstein’s work. I will argue that what emerges is a rich and complex picture that has the potential to aid our thinking in politics and elsewhere when developing strategies for creating changes. It can do so both as source of inspiration and by countering tempting, yet ultimately problematic ways of conceptualizing change like the hope for transforming harmful traditions and social practices with the help of a general explanatory theory of the fundamental dynamics of changes
Note from the Editors
Get PDFOriginally published March 20, 2020. This version published December 30, 2020. 
Chadbourne Gilpatric and Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Fateful Meeting
Get PDFOn January 11 1951 Chadbourne Gilpatric met with Wittgenstein to offer him, on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, funding for any forthcoming publications. Wittgenstein politely declined the offer as he did not believe his health would permit him to bring any projects to completion. The meeting is referred to in a letter from Wittgenstein to Norman Malcolm and is also recalled by O.K. Bouwsma. Bouwsma learned of it from conversations with Wittgenstein and by Gilpatric. However, it is also recounted in Gilpatric’s diary. Gilpatric’s account comprises the fullest account of the meeting. It has remained unedited, until now, and is here transcribed for the first time. Five years later on February 1 1956 Gilpatric submitted a report, entitled ‘Logician and Mystic’, to the Rockefeller Foundation This report adds detail to his original account and summarises the Rockefeller’s financial support of the posthumous publication of Wittgenstein’s work. It also sketches Gilpatric’s view of Wittgenstein’s work
Review of Cora Diamond: Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going on to Ethics
No full textReview of Cora Diamond: Reading Wittgenstein with Anscombe, Going on to Ethic
Wittgenstein on "Imaginability" as a Criterion for Logical Possibility
Get PDFThroughout his whole work, Wittgenstein seizes on a distinction between logical and physical possibility, and impossibility. Despite this continuity and although, Wittgenstein brings in this distinction in various contexts and from different vantage points, he often solely brushes over it without elaborating in detail. In the so-called Big Typescript, however, he dedicates himself not only to the distinction between logical and physical possibility but also to the distinction between logical possibility and impossibility in particular investigations. In the course of these investigations, another aspect arises and is tossed and turned repeatedly by Wittgenstein – namely, the place of “imaginability” in these considerations.
On the basis of three focussed chapters in the Big Typescript, I argue that “imaginability” as an utterance of the form “being able to imagine ‘what it would be like’” can be allocated the place of a criterion for logical possibility. To this end, I will first outline the chapters 96., 27. and 26. in one section each. Although in these chapters, Wittgenstein only indicates rather than claiming explicitly “imaginability” to be a criterion for logical possibility, I will discuss in the last section how this conclusion can be drawn by combining the results of the previous sections
Wittgenstein and G. H. von Wright’s path to The Varieties of Goodness (1963)
Get PDFThe development of G. H. von Wright’s work in ethics is traced from the early 1950s to the publication of The Varieties of Goodness in 1963, with special focus on the influences stemming from Wittgenstein’s later thought. In 1952, von Wright published an essay suggesting a formal analysis of the concept of value. This attempt was soon abandoned. The change of approach took place at the time von Wright started his work on Wittgenstein’s Nachlass and tried to articulate the main lines of Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen in spoken and written form. This preoccupation with Wittgenstein led to a new approach to value judgments in an 1954 article, which shows strong late-Wittgensteinian influences on methodical as well as stylistic levels. Some traces of the 1954 approach are still visible in The Varieties of Goodness, while the stylistic imitations and allusions have mostly been dropped. Furthermore, von Wright’s approach in The Varieties is wider in scope, aiming at a broad overview of the phenomenon von Wright calls the “varieties of goodness”. But new conncections to the later Wittgenstein also seem to emerge: the idea of a "perspicuous presentation" of ethical concepts and the will to make philosophy relevant for "kulturens större sammanhang"
Wittgenstein\u27s Forms of Life: A Tool of Perspicuous Representation
No full textThe focus is on two texts by Wittgenstein where ‘forms of life’ constitute the pivot of an extended argument: ‘Cause and Effect’ and the discussion of colour concepts in ‘Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology’. The author argues that forms of life are above all Wittgenstein\u27s response to the question what it is to analyse a concept. The remark that forms of life are ‘given’ and must be ‘accepted’ is a natural corollary of Wittgenstein’s antireductionism and his idea of philosophy as a descriptive enterprise. Wittgenstein is, however, not offering forms of life as the ultimate foundation of our statements about causation or colour. He shifts the focus to the questioning activity itself. Our inquiries and descriptions imply conceptions of how to look and what to accept as verification. Forms of life are given, not because they cannot be analysed further, but because the investigation will take them as given. Comparisons are made, on the one hand, with G.H. von Wright’s interventionist account of the concept of causation and, on the other hand, with the two currently dominant interpretations of ‘forms of life’: the ‘linguistic community’ view and the ‘naturalist’ view