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Thought's Footing: Themes in Wittgenstein's “Philosophical Investigations”

Charles Travis

This book is an enquiry into the relationship between the ways things are and the way we think and talk about them. It is also a study of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: the author ... More

This book is an enquiry into the relationship between the ways things are and the way we think and talk about them. It is also a study of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations: the author develops his account of certain key themes into a unified view of the work as a whole. His methodological starting-point is to see Wittgenstein's work as a response to Frege's. The central question is: how does thought get its footing? How can the thought that things are a certain way be connected to things being that way? The second key theme is this: a representation of things as being a certain way cannot take the right form for truth-bearing without a background of agreement in judgements: its form must belong to thinkers of a given kind. The third key theme is that the proprietary perceptions of a given sort of thinker, as to what would be a case of judging when there is a particular way for things to be, is not subject to criticism from outside it. The author's distinctive take on such topics as the problem of singular thought, the notion of a proposition, rule-following, sense and nonsense, the possibility of private language, and the representational content of experience is presented.Less

The Nature and Structure of Content

Jeffrey C. King

Belief in propositions has had a long and distinguished history in analytic philosophy. Three of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore, ... More

Belief in propositions has had a long and distinguished history in analytic philosophy. Three of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore, believed in propositions. Many philosophers since then have shared this belief; and the belief is widely, though certainly not universally, accepted among philosophers today. Among contemporary philosophers who believe in propositions, many, and perhaps even most, take them to be structured entities with individuals, properties, and relations as constituents. For example, the proposition that ‘Glenn loves Tracy’ has Glenn, the loving relation, and Tracy as constituents. What is it, then, that binds these constituents together and imposes structure on them? And if the proposition that ‘Glenn loves Tracy’ is distinct from the proposition that ‘Tracy loves Glenn’ yet both have the same constituents, what is it about the way these constituents are structured or bound together that makes them two different propositions? This book formulates an account of the metaphysical nature of propositions, and provides fresh answers to the above questions. In addition to explaining what it is that binds together the constituents of structured propositions and imposes structure on them, the book deals with some of the standard objections to accounts of propositions: it shows that there is no mystery about what propositions are; that given certain minimal assumptions, it follows that they exist; and that on this approach, we can see how and why propositions manage to have truth conditions and represent the world as being a certain way. The book also contains a detailed account of the nature of tense and modality, and provides a solution to the paradox of analysis.Less

Reason's Nearest Kin: Philosophies of Arithmetic from Kant to Carnap

Michael Potter

This book is a critical examination of the astonishing progress made in the philosophical study of the properties of the natural numbers from the 1880s to the 1930s. It reassesses the brilliant ... More

This book is a critical examination of the astonishing progress made in the philosophical study of the properties of the natural numbers from the 1880s to the 1930s. It reassesses the brilliant innovations of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, and others, which transformed philosophy as well as the understanding of mathematics. The book argues that through the problem of arithmetic participates in the larger puzzle of the relationship between thought, language, experience, and the world, we can distinguish accounts that look to each of these to supply the content we require: those that involve the structure of our experience of the world; those that explicitly involve our grasp of a ‘third realm’ of abstract objects distinct from the concrete objects of the empirical world and the ideas of the author's private Gedankenwelt; those that appeal to something non-physical that is nevertheless an aspect of reality in harmony with which the physical aspect of the world is configured; and finally those that involve only our grasp of language.Less

Wittgenstein's Notes on Logic

Michael Potter

Wittgenstein's philosophical career began in 1911 when he went to Cambridge to work with Russell. He compiled the Notes on Logic two years later as a kind of summary of the work he had done so far. ... More

Wittgenstein's philosophical career began in 1911 when he went to Cambridge to work with Russell. He compiled the Notes on Logic two years later as a kind of summary of the work he had done so far. Russell thought that they were ‘as good as anything that has ever been done in logic’, but he had Wittgenstein himself to explain them to him. Without the benefit of Wittgenstein's explanations, most later scholars have preferred to treat the Notes solely as an interpretative aid in understanding the Tractatus (which draws on them for material), rather than as a philosophical work in their own right. This book demonstrates the philosophical and historical importance of the Notes. By teasing out the meaning of key passages, it shows how many of the most important insights in the Tractatus they contain. It discusses in detail how Wittgenstein arrived at these insights by thinking through ideas he obtained from Russell and Frege. And it uses a blend of biography and philosophy to illuminate the methods Wittgenstein used in his work. The book features the complete text of the Notes in a critical edition, with a detailed discussion of the circumstances in which they were compiled.Less

Being For: Evaluating the Semantic Program of Expressivism

Mark Schroeder

Expressivism — the sophisticated contemporary incarnation of the noncognitivist research program of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare — is no longer the province of metaethicists alone. Its comprehensive ... More

Expressivism — the sophisticated contemporary incarnation of the noncognitivist research program of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare — is no longer the province of metaethicists alone. Its comprehensive view about the nature of both normative language and normative thought has also recently been applied to many topics elsewhere in philosophy. Yet the semantic commitments of expressivism are still poorly understood and have not been very far developed. Expressivists have not yet even managed to solve the ‘negation problem’ — to explain why atomic normative sentences are inconsistent with their negations. As a result, it is far from clear that expressivism even could be true. This book evaluates the semantic commitments of expressivism by showing how an expressivist semantics would work, what it can do, and what kind of assumptions would be required, in order for it to do it. Building on a highly general understanding of the basic ideas of expressivism, it argues that expressivists can solve the negation problem — but only in one kind of way. It shows how this insight paves the way for an explanatorily powerful, constructive expressivist semantics, which solves many of what have been taken to be the deepest problems for expressivism, including making unprecedented progress in attacking the well-known Frege-Geach problem for noncognitivist theories. But it also argues that any account which can attain these advantages will face further, even more formidable, obstacles. Expressivism, it is argued, is coherent and interesting, but false.Less

Objectivity and the Parochial

Charles Travis

Thought, to be thought at all, must be about a world independent of us. But thinking takes capacities for thought, which inevitably shape thought's objects. What would count as something being ... More

Thought, to be thought at all, must be about a world independent of us. But thinking takes capacities for thought, which inevitably shape thought's objects. What would count as something being green—so when it would be true that it was—is identified, somehow, by what those who have being green in mind, are prepared to recognize. Which can make it seem that what is true, and what not, is not independent of us. In which case our thought is not really about an independent world—so not really thought at all. Two apparent truisms thus form an apparent paradox. Much philosophy, from Locke to Quine, from Kant to Frege to Wittgenstein, to Putnam, to John McDowell, is a response to this, often dominated by it. This book contains eleven chapters, each working in its own way towards dissolving this air of paradox, and towards giving the role of the parochial in our thought—features of our thought which need not belong to all thought—its proper, unthreatening, due.Less

Propositions, Functions, and Analysis: Selected Essays on Russell＇s Philosophy

Peter Hylton

The work of Bertrand Russell had a decisive influence on the emergence of analytic philosophy, and on its subsequent development. The essays collected in this volume, by one of the authorities on ... More

The work of Bertrand Russell had a decisive influence on the emergence of analytic philosophy, and on its subsequent development. The essays collected in this volume, by one of the authorities on Russell's philosophy, all aim at recapturing and articulating aspects of Russell's philosophical vision during his most influential and important period, the two decades following his break with Idealism in 1899. One theme of the collection concerns Russell's views about propositions and their analysis, and the relation of those ideas to his rejection of Idealism. Another theme is the development of Russell's logicism, culminating in Whitehead's and Russell's Principia Mathematica, and the author offers a revealing view of the conception of logic that underlies it. Here again there is an emphasis on Russell's argument against Idealism, on the idea that his logicism was a crucial part of that argument. A further focus of the volume is Russell's views about functions and propositional functions. This theme is part of a contrast that the author draws between Russell's general philosophical position and that of Frege; in particular, there is a close parallel with the quite different views that the two philosophers held about the nature of philosophical analysis. The author also sheds light on the much-disputed idea of an operation, which Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.Less

Frege’s Conception of Logic

Patricia A. Blanchette

Frege’s Coneption of Logic explores the relationship between Frege’s understanding of conceptual analysis and his understanding of logic. It is argued that the fruitfulness of Frege’s ... More

Frege’s Coneption of Logic explores the relationship between Frege’s understanding of conceptual analysis and his understanding of logic. It is argued that the fruitfulness of Frege’s conception of logic, and the illuminating differences between that conception and those more modern views that have largely supplanted it, are best understood against the backdrop of a clear account of the role of conceptual analysis in logical investigation. The first part of the book locates the role of conceptual analysis in Frege’s logicist project. It is argued that, despite a number of difficulties, Frege’s use of analysis in the service of logicism is a powerful and coherent tool. As a result of coming to grips with his use of that tool, we can see that there is, despite appearances, no conflict between Frege’s intention to demonstrate the grounds of ordinary arithmetic and the fact that the numerals of his derived sentences fail to co-refer with ordinary numerals. The second part of the book explores the resulting conception of logic itself, and some of the straightforward ways in which Frege’s conception differs from its now-familiar descendants. In particular, it’s argued that consistency, as Frege understands it, differs significantly from the kind of consistency demonstrable via the construction of models. To appreciate this difference is to appreciate the extent to which Frege was right in his debate with Hilbert over consistency- and independence-proofs in geometry. For similar reasons, modern results such as the completeness of formal systems and the categoricity of theories do not have for Frege the same importance they are commonly taken to have by his post-Tarskian descendants. These differences, together with the coherence of Frege’s position, provide reason for caution with respect to the appeal to formal systems and their properties in the treatment of fundamental logical properties and relations.Less

Reference without Referents

R. M. Sainsbury

This book concerns the nature of reference, and the theory it develops is intermediate between direct reference theories and descriptivist theories. A guiding thought is that just as truth conditions ... More

This book concerns the nature of reference, and the theory it develops is intermediate between direct reference theories and descriptivist theories. A guiding thought is that just as truth conditions (rather than truth values) can throw light on the meaning of sentences so can reference conditions (rather than referents) throw light on the meaning of referring expressions. A reference condition need not be a descriptive condition, and it need not be satisfied. The first of these points marks the divergence from descriptivist theories, and the second, from direct reference theories. This idea is applied to proper names, pronouns, and definite descriptions (singular, plural and mass); problems of existential and fictional sentences are addressed; and, in the final chapter, an analogue of the main idea is applied to mental content.Less

Frege on Definitions: A Case Study of Semantic Content

John Horty

This book explores the difficulties presented for Gottlob Frege's semantic theory, as well as its modern descendents, by the treatment of defined expressions. The book begins by focusing on the ... More

This book explores the difficulties presented for Gottlob Frege's semantic theory, as well as its modern descendents, by the treatment of defined expressions. The book begins by focusing on the psychological constraints governing Frege's notion of sense, or meaning, and argues that, given these constraints, even the treatment of simple stipulative definitions led Frege to important difficulties. This book suggests ways out of these difficulties that are both philosophically and logically plausible and Fregean in spirit. This discussion is then connected to a number of more familiar topics, such as indexicality and the discussion of concepts in recent theories of mind and language. The latter part of the book, after introducing a simple semantic model of senses as procedures, considers the problems that definitions present for Frege's idea that the sense of an expression should mirror its grammatical structure. The requirement can be satisfied, the book argues, only if defined expressions—and incomplete expressions as well—are assigned senses of their own, rather than treated contextually. The book then explores one way in which these senses might be reified within the procedural model, drawing on ideas from work in the semantics of computer programming languages. With its combination of technical semantics and history of philosophy, the book tackles some of the hardest questions in the philosophy of language.Less

Frege and Other Philosophers

Michael Dummett

This book deals with Frege's philosophy by comparing and contrasting his views with those of other philosophers, mostly contemporary with him.

The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language

Howard Wettstein

This book presents the development of an anti-Fregean conception on the philosophy of language. It argues that Wittgenstein not only anticipated the important features of the anti-Fregean approach, ... More

This book presents the development of an anti-Fregean conception on the philosophy of language. It argues that Wittgenstein not only anticipated the important features of the anti-Fregean approach, but provided a deeper and more satisfying rationale than recent works. Where Wittgenstein sharply diverged from the anti-Fregeans, he pointed the way forward.Less

Logical Properties: Identity, Existence, Predication, Necessity, Truth

Colin McGinn

This book discusses the nature of identity, existence, predication, necessity, and truth. Its main claims are that identity, existence, and truth are logical properties, that predicates are singular ... More

This book discusses the nature of identity, existence, predication, necessity, and truth. Its main claims are that identity, existence, and truth are logical properties, that predicates are singular terms that refer to properties, and that necessity (and other modalities) are modes of instantiation of properties by objects. The book develops a realist anti‐naturalist stance on logical properties, which takes logical notions at face value, and refuses to reduce them to other notions. Two further contentions central to this work are, first, that the quantifier has been overrated as an instrument of logico‐linguistic analysis; and secondly, that past attempts to define logical notions such as identity or existence have been largely unsuccessful.Less

Facing Facts

Stephen Neale

This book is an original examination of attempts to dislodge a cornerstone of modern philosophy: the idea that our thoughts and utterances are representations of slices of reality. Representations ... More

This book is an original examination of attempts to dislodge a cornerstone of modern philosophy: the idea that our thoughts and utterances are representations of slices of reality. Representations that are accurate are usually said to be true, to correspond to the facts—this is the foundation of correspondence theories of truth. A number of prominent philosophers have tried to undermine the idea that propositions, facts, and correspondence can play any useful role in philosophy, and formal arguments have been advanced to demonstrate that, under seemingly uncontroversial conditions, such entities collapse into an undifferentiated unity. The demise of individual facts is meant to herald the dawn of a new era in philosophy, in which debates about scepticism, realism, subjectivity, representational and computational theories of mind, possible worlds, and divergent conceptual schemes that represent reality in different ways to different persons, periods, or cultures evaporate through lack of subject matter. By carefully untangling a host of intersecting metaphysical, epistemological, semantic, and logical issues, and providing original analyses of key aspects of the work of Donald Davidson, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Kurt Gödel (to each of whom a chapter is dedicated), Stephen Neale demonstrates that arguments for the collapse of facts are considerably more complex and interesting than ever imagined. A number of deep semantic facts emerge along with a powerful proof: while it is technically possible to avoid the collapse of facts, rescue the idea of representations of reality, and thereby face anew the problems raised by the sceptic or the relativist, doing so requires making some tough semantic decisions about predicates and descriptions. It is simply impossible, Neale shows, to invoke representations, facts, states, or propositions without making hard choices—choices that may send many philosophers scurrying back to the drawing board. The book will be crucial to future work in metaphysics, the philosophy of language and mind, and logic, and will have profound implications far beyond.Less