Early Wittgenstein

Ich übergebe euch dieses Büchelchen als einen Spiegel um hinein nach euch und nicht als eine Lorgnette um dadurch und nach andern zu sehen. » Lichtenberg, D 617 « Ich soll nur der Spiegel sein, in welchem mein Leser sein eigenes Denken mit allen seinen Unförmigkeiten sieht und mit dieser Hilfe zurechtrichten kann » Wittgenstein

Dans le cadre de leur interprétation phénoménologique de la pensée de Wittgenstein, Jaakko et Merrill B. Hintikka ont proposé un argument concernant la nature des objets de l’ontologie du Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Selon eux, les objets du Tractatus sont identifiables aux objets de l’épistémologie russellienne, à savoir les sense-data. Cette identification des objets tractariens aux sense-data les conduit à avancer que le symbolisme développé par Wittgenstein dans le Tractatus est un langage phénoménologique, celui dont le philosophe parle dans ses Remarques philosophiques de 1929. Dans le présent mémoire, je montre qu’il existe de bonnes raisons de douter de la vérité de la thèse des Hintikka et défends que l’interprétation non empiriste du Tractatus proposée par David Pears est plus convaincante que leur lecture phénoménologique de la philosophie du premier Wittgenstein.

A critical review of Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty' which he wrote in 1950-51 and was first published in 1969. Most of the review is spent presenting a modern framework for philosophy (the descriptive psychology of higher order thought) and positioning the work of Wittgenstein and John Searle in this framework and relative to the work of others. It is suggested that this book can be regarded as the foundation stone of psychology and philosophy as it was the first to describe the two systems of thought and shows how our unshakable grasp of the world derives from our innate axiomatic System 1, and how this interacts with System 2. It was a revolution in epistemology since it showed that our actions rest not on judgements but on innate undoubtable axioms leading directly to action. I situate the work of Wittgenstein and Searle in the framework of the two systems of thought prominent in thinking and decision research, employing a new table of intentionality and new dual syste...

This paper's aim is to critically analyze Wittgenstein's arguments against traditional philosophy. It is possible to identify three arguments against it in Wittgenstein's work: (1) The tractarian critique of the metaphysical necessary propositions, (2) the critique of the conception of real definition in the PI and (3) the problem of the role of the ideal, or the problem of dogmatism. By analyzing these three arguments we intend to show that none of them implies necessarily that we should abandon any positive conception of philosophy and stick to a negative analytical one as Wittgenstein understands it.

I start with some famous comments by the philosopher (psychologist) Ludwig Wittgenstein because Pinker shares with most people (due to the default settings of our evolved innate psychology) certain prejudices about the functioning of the mind and because Wittgenstein offers unique and profound insights into the workings of language, thought and reality (which he viewed as more or less coextensive) not found anywhere else. The last quote is the only reference Pinker makes to Wittgenstein in this volume, which is most unfortunate considering that he was one of the most brilliant and original analysts of language.

In the last chapter, using the famous metaphor of Plato’s cave, he beautifully summarizes the book with an overview of how the mind (language, thought, intentional psychology) –a product of blind selfishness, moderated only slightly by automated altruism for close relatives carrying copies of our genes--works automatically, but tries to end on an upbeat note by giving us hope that we can nevertheless employ its vast capabilities to cooperate and make the world a decent place to live.

Pinker is certainly aware of but says little about the fact that far more about our psychology is left out than included. Among windows into human nature that are left out or given minimal attention are math and geometry, music and sounds, images, events and causality, ontology (classes of things), dispositions (believing, thinking, judging, intending etc.) and the rest of intentional psychology of action, neurotransmitters and entheogens, spiritual states (e.g, satori and enlightenment, brain stimulation and recording, brain damage and behavioral deficits and disorders, games and sports, decision theory (incl. game theory and behavioral economics), animal behavior (very little language but a billion years of shared genetics). Many books have been written about each of these areas of intentional psychology. The data in this book are descriptions, not explanations that show why our brains do it this way or how it is done. How do we know to use the sentences in their various way (i.e., know all their meanings)? This is evolutionary psychology that operates at a more basic level –the level where Wittgenstein is most active. And there is scant attention to context.

Nevertheless this is a classic work and with these cautions is still well worth reading.

Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016).  For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book  Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization  - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016  662p (2016).

All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. 

Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017)    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. 

  The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017)  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B.

Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017)    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX 

Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQVWV9C

One of the reasons colours, or better the conceptual organisation of the colour system, could be relevant to the philosophy of logic is that they necessitate some mutilation of truth tables by restricting truth functionality. This paper argues that the so-called 'Colour Exclusion Problem', the first great challenge for Wittgenstein's Tractatus, is a legitimate philosophical motivation for a systematic mutilation of truth tables. It shows how one can express, through these mutilations, some intensional logical relations usually expressed by the Aristotelian Square of Oppositions, as contrariety and subcontrariety.

The paper argues that philosophers commonly misidentify the substitutivity principle involved in Russell’s puzzle about substitutivity in “On Denoting” (the so-called "George IV puzzle"). This matters because when that principle is properly identified the puzzle becomes considerably sharper and more interesting than it is often taken to be. This article describes both the puzzle itself and Russell's solution to it, which involves resources beyond the theory of descriptions. It then explores the epistemological and metaphysical consequences of that solution. One such consequence, it argues, is that Russell must abandon his commitment to propositions.

Abstracts for 20 papers to be discussed at a symposium on  Wittgenstein: Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933, From the Notes of G. E Moore, edited by David Stern, Brian Rogers, and Gabriel Citron.  The symposium will be held at the University of Iowa, May 18-22, 2015.

Nel 1949 Wittgenstein stava lavorando all’ultima parte delle Ricerche filosofiche e durante una conversazione con Maurice Drury disse: «Nel libro mi è impossibile dire una sola parola su tutto quello che la musica ha significato nella mia vita. Come posso sperare allora di essere capito?».
In realtà l’importanza della musica è testimoniata dal fatto che negli scritti di Wittgenstein è presente una notevole quantità di osservazioni filosofiche e di riflessioni estetiche sul linguaggio musicale.
Il libro di Piero Niro propone un’indagine sul significato di queste osservazioni e affronta il problema wittgensteiniano dei «limiti del linguaggio» collegandolo alla crisi del linguaggio musicale determinata dalle avanguardie nel Novecento. Da questa indagine possono scaturire le ipotesi per la definizione di una estetica musicale wittgensteiniana.

Dalla Presentazione di Brian McGuinness:
[...] Nell’interessante trattazione di questi e altri argomenti, Piero Niro nota che il conservatorismo musicale di Wittgenstein mal si concilia con le idee del filosofo sulla libertà creativa, per quanto riguarda le regole del linguaggio. Il suo pensiero (ma non il suo gusto) sembra intonato piuttosto alle idee e al lavoro di Schönberg.
[...] A mio giudizio la lezione più importante che traiamo dal libro di Piero Niro è la dimostrazione della capacità di Wittgenstein di stabilire in ogni àmbito, in ogni mondo, un discorso appropriato, capace di verificare il senso e la mancanza di senso (o l’equivalenza tra le due cose). Non esiste una regola assoluta, né un modello matematico o fisico necessario ed esclusivo. Soprattutto, nessuna teoria. Ma anche il fatto che non c’è una teoria onnicomprensiva, allora, deve essere stabilito caso per caso.

(Excerpt from Foreword by Brian McGuinness:
[…] In his interesting discussion of these and related topics, Piero Niro points out that Wittgenstein’s conservatism as regards music sits ill with his ideas about creative freedom as regards language-rules. His thought (but not his taste) corresponds with the doctrines and practice of Schönberg.
[…] To my own mind the most important lesson to be learnt from Piero Niro’s book is the success with which (as he shows) Wittgenstein establishes within each area, each world as I have hinted above, a discourse appropriate to it, which guarantees its own sense and nonsense (or the equivalent). There is no single rule, no model in mathematics or natural science, that has to be followed. Above all no theory. But that there is none is not a theory either – it has to be seen from case to case.)

Table of Contents: Presentazione di Brian McGuinness - I. Introduzione - II. I riferimenti alla notazione musicale, al «linguaggio delle note» e al «pensiero musicale» presenti nel Tractatus logico-philosophicus e nei Quaderni 1914-1916 - III. Osservazioni filosofiche e riflessioni estetiche sul linguaggio musicale negli scritti successivi al Tractatus logico-philosophicus - IV. Il problema dei limiti del linguaggio e la crisi scaturita dalle ricerche delle avanguardie musicali nel Novecento - V. Annotazioni per un’estetica musicale wittgensteiniana - Osservazioni conclusive - Bibliografia delle opere citate - Indice dei nomi

ABSTRACT: One of the main challenges faced by Russell’s theory of judgment was to provide a satisfactory account of judgment that was not committed to the existence of true, false or inexistent complex entities such as Meinongian objectives. In the study of the Russell-Wittgenstein debate on that theory, scholars never considered the idea that Wittgenstein might not have followed Russell on that issue. In this article, I address that question and hold, first, that problems raised by Russell’s theory of judgment find their solution in the picture theory. Then, I show that Wittgenstein hesitated for a long period of time in the Notebooks between a version of his solution which is committed to the existence of possible (non existing) complex entities and one which is not. Finally, I argue that he did, along with Meinong, go for a committing version in the Tractatus.

I argue that Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment was NOT refuted by Wittgenstein’s famous criticisms of it. Russell's theory only came back strengthened as a higher-order theory of belief, a theory which still merits attention today. To see this we need to understand the way in which Russell’s thinking about relations developed, from the view that relations have direction, to the view that that relations are neutral, and back again.

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

This paper aims to a comparative investigation on Wittgenstein’s approaches to philosophical propositions. These approaches will take place in Wittgenstein’s two main philosophical works, namely, his Tractatus logico-philosophicus and his Philosophical Investigations (from now on Tr. And IF, respectively). From Wittgenstein’s perspective propositions said to be philosophical were always considered to have a problematic aspect. This will not change throughout his philosophical development but, as we shall see, will pass through noteworthy changes, which we aim to explore. In the Tr., Wittgenstein assumes that “we make to ourselves pictures of facts” (Tr. 2.1). By assuming this he stablishes the aim of his philosophical work: to deal only with the kind of linguistic expression that makes pictures of facts. Which we all know to be the natural sciences. His main goal, we can assume, is therefore to determinate the logico-linguistic conditions of possibility which allow ourselves to construct picture of facts and which he names logical syntax. In this sense, for the aim of the present paper, we shall then explore the concepts that logical syntax is made of, which are an essential logical form, that all propositions should have in picturing reality, and a denotation system made out of simple objects. The conclusion Wittgenstein draws out of these rules is that the expression “philosophical propositions” should be considered an oxymoron. They cannot at all be said (Tr. 4.112) and are considered to be absurd. For they violate the rules of the logical syntax. Once this thesis is stablished we shall start to discuss the change Wittgenstein pass to in his philosophical interests concerning language, which will be analyzed in the IF. He moves now to a point where he starts to consider the rules of language in connection to the notion of linguistic usage. With that change he opens the path of his philosophical inquiry towards the immense plurality of linguistic uses language is seen to provide. Such an augmentation of the horizons of Wittgenstein’s linguistic interests will have significant impact in his conception of philosophical investigation. Consequently, philosophical propositions will assume a different character. Not anymore to be regarded as absurd but as grammatical statements aimed to clarify rules of linguistic modes of representation. Once we expose this we’ll be able to maintain the thesis that there is a change in Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophical propositions, which is put in place by the different perspective he starts to regard linguistic rules.

The article presents a first part of an interpretation of the intention of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. The intention itself used to be considered a rather marginal topic until so called new-Wittgensteinian interpretations. The present article considers
main sources to show what kind of content we can ascribe to the book. Its aim is to prove that Tractatus is not purely  ractical exercise, however without stripping the book
of its therapeutic side. The first part considers the preface and the motto of the book

Vorrei sapere, quanto è grande il verde, com'è bello il mare, quanto dura una stanza… F. De Andrè, Oceano, 1975 Introduzione. Wittgenstein e la ricerca sul senso Negli anni a cavallo tra XIX e XX secolo la cultura europea attraversa un complesso momento di riqualificazione e ri-articolazione delle maggiori branche del sapere scientifico e filosofico. Questa condizione si manifesta con inedita potenza culturale e vede l'affacciarsi di una schiera di nuovi linguaggi in concorrenza fra loro nel riscrivere i modi di fare scienza, filosofa, o, magari, potremmo dire più in generale, del fare teoria in sé e per sé. La riconfigurazione delle grammatiche dei saperi europei agisce trasversalmente dall'arte alla fisica, all'antropologia, all'architettura e alla matematica, come una forte scossa diretta alle stesse fondamenta di tali pratiche culturali. In molti casi una simile riconfigurazione prende la forma dell'indagine su ciò che sia dicibile o meno entro una determinata branca di pensiero; su come si possa strutturare un discorso fondato e rigoroso tanto in teoria dell'arte, quanto in fisica, in matematica e in filosofia. Per quest'ultima l'evento più celebre ed influente, in tal senso, è costituto dall'avvento del cosiddetto positivismo, o empirismo logico. Secondo quanto asserisce G.H. von Wright i padri spirituali di questo movimento di pensiero andrebbero identificati in Ernst Mach, Bertrand Russell e Ludwig Wittgenstein. 1 In effetti sono molte le personalità che, specialmente nell'ambiente viennese, contribuiscono in vario modo al progetto definito esemplarmente da Carnap, Neurath e Hahn, come concezione scientifica del mondo. 2 Un progetto simile -sotto la cui egida si potrebbero ricondurre le esperienze di pensatori anche non tradizionalmente legati al Circolo di Vienna, come Edmund Husserl -assume proprio in Carnap e nello stesso Husserl il titolo programmatico di 1 Cfr. G.H. von Wright, Wittgenstein e il suo tempo, in M. Andronico, D. Marconi, C. Penco (a cura di), Capire Wittgenstein, Marietti, Genova 2004 [1988 I ]. 2 Cfr. H. Hahn, O. Neurath, R. Carnap, Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung. Der Wiener-Kreis, 1929, ed. it. La concezione scientifica del mondo. Il Circolo di Vienna, a cura di A. Pasquinelli, Laterza, Roma-Bari 1979. 6 Cfr. G. Frege, Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, 1879, trad. it., Ideografia, in C. Mangione (a cura di), Logica e aritmetica, Boringhieri, Torino 1965. 7 L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 1922 (1961), trad. it. di A.G. Conte, Einaudi, Torino 1964. Da ora in avanti T seguito dal numero della sezione nel testo.

This paper argues that Wittgenstein opposed theories of meaning, and did so for good reasons. Theories of meaning, in the sense discussed here, are attempts to explain what makes it the case that certain sounds, shapes, or movements are meaningful linguistic expressions. It is widely believed that Wittgenstein made fundamental contributions to this explanatory project. I argue, by contrast, that in both his early and later work, Wittgenstein endorsed a disjunctivist conception of language which rejects the assumption underlying the question that such theories seek to answer—namely, the assumption that the notion of a meaningful linguistic expression admits of non-circular analysis. Moreover, I give two arguments in favor of the view I ascribe to Wittgenstein: one based on later Wittgenstein's discussion of meaning skepticism, and one based on considerations concerning the identity of linguistic expressions.

《逻辑哲学论》是青年维特根斯坦哲学思想的结晶，本文以该书为主要研究内容, 通过相关内容分析总结出了他的哲学观点。青年维特根斯坦基于“逻辑图像论”构建了严密的逻辑世界。基于这种哲学观念，他认为传统哲学争论的产生是因为混淆了语言的日常语法与逻辑句法；日常语言的外表掩饰了其真正的逻辑句法，哲学的目的就是“语言批判”；对命题的逻辑句法的分析从而将哲学与其他学科划界；哲学家的工作就是首先对哲学问题进行“划界”，然后对不同的问题进行“阐明”；哲学的本质是一种分析命题意义的活动。这种哲学观点对后来的哲学研究发展产生了积极和消极的影响，而积极影响大于其消极影响。
The current author tried to provide an early Wittgenstein’s understanding on philosophy by the way of explicating the related text in the Tractatus. In that book, Wittgenstein built a rigid logical world from the perspective of the “logical atomism”. It is in the context of the logical world that Wittgenstein provided his own understanding of the nature of philosophy: philosophical problem is caused by our misunderstanding on the linguistic grammar and logical syntax our everyday language; Our thought is disguised by our language and the purpose of philosophy is the “critique of language”; Philosophy research must be divided into different areas by the means of logical analysis and the work of philosopher is firstly to divide the problem, then to “elucidate” it; Philosophy is the activity of analyzing the meaning of the word. There are two significance of Wittgenstein’s idea on philosophy upon the later philosophical development: negative and positive, and the current author thought that the positive outweighs the negative.

Here we compare the logical behaviour of negation in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus (1921) with Demos’ account of denial (1917). Even if we hold negation as a pure syntactical device, at least in some context, it shall bring a handful of complex semantic information, potentially infinite (e.g. in the ascription of degrees to empirical qualities or of colours to visual points). We advocate then the existence of at least two negations due to the existence of two different and non-reducible kinds of exclusion. The first one is, in some sense, a tractarian and classical one, based on the notion of contradiction, and the second negation is a non-classical one, based on the notion of contrariety.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most important and influential philosophers of the twentieth century, but he is also one of the least accessible. This volume provides a comprehensible guide to his work by a wide range of experts who are actively engaged in new work on Wittgenstein. The essays, which are both expository and original, address central themes in his philosophy of mind, language, logic, and mathematics. They chart the development of his work and clarify the connections between its different stages. The authors illuminate the character of the whole body of work by keeping a tight focus on some key topics: the style of the philosophy, the conception of grammar contained in it, rule-following, convention, logical necessity, the self, and what Wittgenstein called in a famous phrase, "forms of life." An important final essay offers a fundamental reassessment of the status of the many posthumously published texts.

This paper focuses on the relation between young Wittgenstein's philosophy and the Stoic concept of fate. In the first part, we discuss the current knowledge on Wittgenstein's direct or indirect acquaintance with Stoic doctrines. We show that there is no evidence confirming that he was directly knowledgeable of Stoicism; rather, his knowledge of it was probably limited and mediated by secondary sources, partly by Schopenhauer, and partly by Russell, Moore and his other British associates. In the second part, we discuss some aspects of the Stoic and Schopenhauer's doctrines of will and fate and their (dis)similarities to Wittgenstein's dealings with similar issues in his early texts. We conclude that, while Wittgenstein cannot be considered to have been a fatalist, and his early philosophy is not to be described as stoical in essence, there are still some motives that resemble Stoic philosophy.

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and the most important and longest within the last year. Also I have edited them to bring them up to date (2016). The copyright page has the date of this first edition and new editions will be noted there as I edit old articles or add new ones. All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds  within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality.  As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes.  If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., human ecology and psychology) in school, maybe civilization would have a chance.

In my view these articles and reviews have many novel and highly useful elements, in that they use my own version of the recently (ca. 1980’s) developed dual systems view of our brain and behavior to lay out a logical system of rationality (personality, psychology, mind, language, behavior, thought, reasoning, reality etc.) that is sorely lacking in the behavioral sciences (psychology, philosophy, literature, politics, anthropology, history, economics, sociology etc.). 

The philosophy centers around the two writers I have found the most important, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion.

Now that I think I understand how the games work I have mostly lost interest in philosophy, which of course is how Wittgenstein said it should be. But since they are the result of our innate psychology, or as Wittgenstein put, it due to the lack of perspicuity of language, the problems run throughout all human discourse, so there is endless need for philosophical analysis, not only in the ‘human sciences’ of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, political science, psychology, history, literature, religion, etc., but in the ‘hard sciences’ of physics, mathematics, and biology.  It is universal to mix the language game questions with the real scientific ones as to what the empirical facts are. Scientism is ever present and the master has laid it before us long ago, i.e., Wittgenstein (hereafter W) beginning principally with the Blue and Brown Books in the early 1930’s.

"Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness." (BBB p18)

Nevertheless, a real understanding of Wittgenstein’s work, and hence of how our psychology functions, is only beginning to spread in the second decade of the 21st century, due especially to P.M.S. Hacker (hereafter H) and Daniele Moyal-Sharrock (hereafter DMS), but also to many others, some of the more prominent of whom I mention in the articles.

When I read ‘On Certainty’ a few years ago I characterized it in an Amazon review as the Foundation Stone of Philosophy and Psychology and the most basic document for understanding behavior, and about the same time DMS was writing articles noting that it had solved the millennia old epistemological problem of how we can know anything for certain. I realized that W was the first one to grasp what is now characterized as the two systems or dual systems of thought, and I generated a dual systems (S1 and S2) terminology which I found to be very powerful in describing behavior.  I took the small table that John Searle (hereafter S) had been using, expanded it greatly, and found later that it integrated perfectly with the framework being used by various current workers in thinking and reasoning research.

Since they were published individually, I have tried to make the book reviews and articles stand by themselves, insofar as possible, and this accounts for the repetition of various sections, notably the table and its explanation. I start with a short article that presents the table of intentionality and briefly describes its terminology and background.  Next, is by far the longest article, which attempts a survey of the work of W and S as it relates to the table and so to an understanding or description (not explanation as W insisted) of behavior.

The key to everything about us is biology, and it is obliviousness to it that leads millions of smart educated people like Obama, Chomsky, Clinton and the Pope to espouse suicidal utopian ideals that inexorably lead straight to Hell On Earth. As W noted, it is what is always before our eyes that is the hardest to see.  We live in the world of conscious deliberative linguistic System 2, but it is unconscious, automatic reflexive System 1 that rules. This is Searle’s The Phenomenological Illusion (TPI), Pinker’s Blank Slate and Tooby and Cosmides Standard Social Science Model. Democracy and equality are wonderful ideals, but without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation and any world that adopts them. The monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we sell our children’s heritage for temporary comforts. Thus I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of TPI.

The astute may wonder why we cannot see System 1 at work, but it is clearly counterproductive for an animal to be thinking about or second guessing every action, and in any case there is no time for the slow, massively integrated System 2 to be involved in the constant stream of split second ‘decisions’ we must make. As W noted, our ‘thoughts’ (T1 or the thoughts of System 1) must lead directly to actions.

It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves an heuristic for how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes.

Thus all the articles, like all behavior, are intimately connected if one knows how to look at them. As I note, The Phenomenological Illusion (oblivion to our automated System 1) is universal and extends not merely throughout philosophy but throughout life. I am sure that Chomsky, Obama, Zuckerberg and the Pope would be incredulous if told that they suffer from the same problem as Hegel, Husserl and Heidegger, but it’s clearly true.  While the phenomenologists only wasted a lot of people’s time, they are wasting the earth.

Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle’ 2nd ed (2019). Those interested in more of my writings may see ‘Talking Monkeys--Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet--Articles and Reviews 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Human Behavior (2019), and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019)

Ciò che mi prefiggo con questo scritto è di analizzare la struttura di un esperimento mentale in modo da comprendere se e come sia usabile per stabilire la verità o meno di una tesi. Cercherò quindi di vedere i vari aspetti che sono sottesi da una tale procedura sperimentale e in che modo le varie parti convivono, si collegano o confliggono tra loro. Indagherò alcuni ambiti tra i quali vi sarà ovviamente quello scientifico del metodo, quello fisico della teoria dei colori, quello mentale con un accenno alla teoria dei qualia e quello del linguaggio, cercando di sollevare, per quanto possibile alcuni interrogativi su quest’argomento.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), filósofo austríaco, transitó dos etapas durante su actividad filosófica: la primera, orientada a la confrontación entre lenguaje ordinario y lenguaje ideal. Y la segunda, en la que presta atención a la diversidad de usos y funciones lingüísticas. Luego de publicar su Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922), abandona la filosofía, y vuelve maduro en 1953, al publicar la primera parte de Investigaciones Filosóficas (1953). Este artículo se propone analizar algunos aspectos de Investigaciones Filosóficas.

In this paper I argue that we may regard Wittgenstein's mature view of the will both as a rigorous adaptation of Schopenhauer's and as the continuation of his early investigations on the nature of the ethical and the psychological will. This means that Wittgenstein is fully committed to develop the consequences and to apply as a test Schopenhauer's insight that any project to capture the will by virtue of experiences and representations and to conceive it as a phenomenon among phenomena is doomed to failure. In section 1, I will introduce the issue of the will such as it appears in the Notebooks 1914-1916 and the Tractatus, and argue that some of the issues he raises regarding the relation of will and body will be continued in Philosophical Investigations, so bridging the gap between his early and his later analysis of the voluntary. In section 2, I discuss Wittgenstein's detailed critique of the model according to which the 'act of will' is a particular phenomenon that can be directly identified by the subject, review the main candidates to occupy that role, and argue why all of them are inappropriate to play it. In section 3, I clear some misunderstandings concerning Wittgenstein's positive view, analyse the constitutive elements that define a grammatical proposition, and apply the latter category to the will. In section 4, I review some of the main problems solved by the non-reductivist reading that I propose. Besides, I draw an analogy between the role played by the will in our language-games and the status of the so-called hinge-propositions. The overarching theses are that Wittgenstein's analysis of voluntary action is not a form of behaviourism, and that ignorance of the prolonged dialogue of Wittgenstein with Schopenhauer originates an aspect-blindness of sorts that deprives us of the most striking features of Wittgenstein's later view.

The last proposition of the Tractatus states that "what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence"? 1 However, what concerns ethics, religion, and aesthetics, which do not belong in the empirical world, cannot be represented by any logical proposition. Is it possible, therefore, to speak about transcendental things and in which logical form? In this article, I claim that metaphor is an effective way of showing what we cannot speak about.

O terceiro livro de Teolinda Gersão, Os guarda-chuvas cintilantes, publicado em 1984, constitui-se em um jogo de desafios que se inicia com o paratexto “diário” logo abaixo do título. Ainda que conformado pelo modelo diarístico, com entradas (aparentemente) datadas, o livro da escritora portuguesa viola o principal paradigma daquele modelo – o de que o diário seria um lugar de desnudamento sincero do “eu” que o redige – na medida em que sua autora ficcional aparentemente não se mostra nas linhas que vai traçando. Embora a estrutura do diário imponha uma natural fragmentação do texto, pressupõe-se um enredo, mesmo mínimo, da vida de quem o escreve; tal expectativa também é quebrada, dado o nexo muito frágil, ou quase inexistente, entre as diversas entradas. Tendo em vista esse silêncio, já que o diário parece pouco dizer, propomos sua análise à luz proposição de número 7 do Tractatus logico-philosophicus, de Ludwig Wittgenstein, segundo a qual o que não pode ser dito deve ser calado, uma vez que, ainda segundo o filósofo, toda tentativa de expressar pela linguagem aquilo que é inefável redunda em absurdo. Esse calar, entretanto, não é absoluto, porquanto a filosofia tractatiana considera que o absurdo, ultrapassando o limite da língua, mostra o que não pode ser dito. Pretende-se, por meio da observação da estrutura de Os guarda-chuvas cintilantes, demonstrar como, apesar de heterodoxo, o diário de Teolinda Gersão desnuda o ser humano de uma forma que a lógica da palavra jamais poderia.

Focusing on the particular topic of semantics, the paper investigates some aspects of Wilfrid Sellars's multifaceted attitude towards the history of philosophy by considering, as a case study, the complex way in which Sellars, both for interpretative and for philosophical purposes, confronts himself with the early and the later Wittgenstein.

This article argues that, propaedeutic to the construction of an Objectivist aesthetics, scholars must refute the irrational/immoral philosophical premises that have been destroying the philosophy of art. Due to the troubling combination of its contemporaneity, extremism, and considerable influence, poststructuralism, which, since the 1960s, has served as the default philosophical foundation for philosophers of art, is the target of this article.

This paper reconsiders understandings of Tractarian ethics by proposing to recontextualize it within the anthropological bent that runs through Wittgenstein’s philosophy and culminates in the Philosophical Investigations. More specifically, the claim is that this recontextualizing of the Tractarian vision of value, ethical propositions as nonsense, and ethics as transcendental shows how these are actually instantiated within the anthropological frame of Wittgenstein’s vision of meaning as use, language-games, rule-following, and forms of life from Philosophical Grammar to Philosophical Investigations. The significance of the paper is that it offers a study of Wittgenstein’s moral thought positioned between traditionalist and resolute readings which offers the possibility of new avenues of dialogue with other moral philosophers. (This is a shortened version of the paper submitted to the International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium. That paper is a revision of the author's BA thesis.)

"Este trabajo se ocupa del desarrollo histórico-filosófico de las posiciones subjetivistas sobre los valores surgidas a partir del siglo XVIII con David Hume, en el seno de la tradición del empirismo analítico. Partiendo de esta posición, se centra en la transformación del subjetivismo axiológico de raigambre analítica en el siglo XX hacia el emotivismo, en el marco del giro lingüístico de la filosofía contemporánea. Los filósofos cuyas posiciones se examinan son David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alfred Ayer, Bertrand Russell y John Leslie Mackie.
A partir de la dicha indagación, se examinan las posibilidades actuales del emotivismo como propuesta de análisis del lenguaje moral. En las Conclusiones se toma posición frente a dos importantes objeciones que surgieron contra el emotivismo: su incapacidad para dar cuenta de las pretensiones de verdad o de validez que estarían presentes en todo juicio de valor, y su imposibilidad de ofrecer una explicación suficiente del sentido de la discusión moral, al restringir la misma a mera retórica y negar que existan razones para apoyar un juicio de valor.
Mediante un examen crítico de esas dificultades, se vislumbra en qué medida el emotivismo (y más en general el no-cognitivismo) puede aún hoy ser reivindicado como una posición metaética posible, o bien si debe considerarse definitivamente superado. En ese sentido, se analiza también qué aspectos del emotivismo pueden reformularse de modo de mantener alguna vigencia, incorporando elementos del estudio de los juicios de valor provenientes de otras tradiciones metaéticas.
El capítulo I contextualiza la corriente del ‘empirismo analítico’, a la vez que se ocupa del tipo de tratamiento con que esta tradición filosófica abordó la problemática de la ética en general y del estatus de los valores en particular. Desde el capítulo II al VI, se presentan las posiciones de Hume, el 1º Wittgenstein, Ayer, Russell y Mackie. El capítulo VII ofrece un intento de clasificación de las distintas posturas que reciben el nombre genérico de ‘subjetivismo axiológico’. El capítulo VIII versa acerca de las relaciones del empirismo analítico con diversos temas relevantes para la ética (argumentos contra el objetivismo axiológico, posibilidad de fundamentar la ética, papel de la razón en la práctica moral, emotivismo y empirismo, etc.). Finalmente las Conclusiones recapitulan las diferentes posiciones metaéticas y de la argumentación moral expuestas, a los fines de reexaminarlas a la luz de algunas de las críticas que pretendieron impugnar el emotivismo. Se intenta así demarcar el papel que juegan las pretensiones de verdad o de validez en los juicios de valor, no tenidas en cuenta por dicha doctrina. También se examina y se defiende la posibilidad de dar cuenta de un genuino razonamiento moral en el marco de una posición emotivista."

2 3 "A che cosa serve studiare la filosofia se ti permette unicamente di parlare con una certa plausibilità di questioni di logica astruse, ecc. & se non migliora il tuo modo di pensare alle questioni importanti della vita di tutti i giorni?" [Ludwig Wittgenstein, da una lettera ad uno studente, 1946] 4 Istruzioni per l'uso Introduzione David Foster Wallace nasce il 21 febbraio 1962 a Ithaca (New York) in una famiglia culturalmente molto elevata: suo padre, James Donald, è un professore universitario di filosofia, mentre sua madre, Sally Foster, è sostanzialmente una "grammar nazi", ovverosia un'insegnante di Composizione, autrice di un apprezzato volume sulla grammatica inglese intitolato Pratically painless English.

My paper examines the notion of 'happiness' in the writings of the early Wittgenstein as a notion that does not seem to involve any particular content or objective marks and addresses the worry whether such a thin and abstract notion presents happiness as isolated from the realm of meaning and linguistic expression. I treat this worry as a misinterpretation and argue, instead, that the Wittgensteinian account of happiness is closely related to the realm of meaning but invites us to think of it as distinct from the realm of facts. More specifically, I examine what seems to be the non-contentful character of Wittgenstein's two main routes to happiness, namely the 'good exercise of the will' and the 'artistic way of seeing', and argue that even though they are both disconnected from particular facts -from willing or from focusing on particular things, they both presuppose being attentive to possibilities of meaning. I use the notion of 'meaningfulness' to designate the outcome of being attentive to meaning and argue that for Wittgenstein, having a happy world amounts to seeing the world in meaningfulness.

A close reading of leading passages in which Wittgenstein discusses Jews and Jewishness, and argues that previous interpreters have been too quick to condemn or defend him. If we consider what it could mean to say that Wittgenstein was, or was not, a Jew, we will see that Wittgenstein's problems with "Jewishness" arise out of the philosophically problematic nature of the concept, a philosophical problem he was unable to resolve.

Turbulencias es el signo de los tiempos. La encrucijada de una crisis radical del mundo moderno en la que despunta la filosofía como una ontología de la actualidad (es decir, como una teoría crítica de los procesos históricos en marcha).

Los nueve ensayos del libro se articulan según tres ejes temáticos: lenguaje, política, arte y estética.

En primer lugar, cuando se descarta que el lenguaje sea un mero instrumento del sujeto humano resurgen con fuerza las distintas dimensiones de la pregunta ¿qué es el lenguaje? ¿cómo actúa y se despliega? Emergiendo, además, la encomienda de cuidarlo.

En segundo lugar, la crisis actual de la política suscita la tarea histórica de profundizar en la democracia, lo que conduce a volver a preguntar en qué consisten, por ejemplo, la soberanía popular, la representación electoral y la esfera pública de la interacción ciudadana.

Y, en tercer lugar, la pregunta ¿qué es el arte? resulta relanzada en medio del colapso de la modernidad estética, uno de cuyos episodios más significativos ha sido el vanguardismo artístico de la primera mitad del siglo XX.