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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Starting with a seeming metaphysics, Wittgenstein sees the world as consisting of facts (1), rather than the traditional, atomistic conception of a world made up of objects. Facts are existent states of affairs (2) and states of affairs, in turn, are combinations of objects. “Objects are simple” (TLP 2.02) but objects can fit together in various determinate ways. They may have various properties and may hold diverse relations to one another. Objects combine with one another according to their logical, internal properties. That is to say, an object’s internal properties determine the possibilities of its combination with other objects; this is its logical form. Thus, states of affairs, being comprised of objects in combination, are inherently complex. The states of affairs which do exist could have been otherwise. This means that states of affairs are either actual (existent) or possible. It is the totality of states of affairs—actual and possible—that makes up the whole of reality. The world is precisely those states of affairs which do exist. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The move to thought, and thereafter to language, is perpetrated with the use of Wittgenstein’s famous idea that thoughts, and propositions, are pictures—“the picture is a model of reality” (TLP 2.12). Pictures are made up of elements that together constitute the picture. Each element represents an object, and the combination of elements in the picture represents the combination of objects in a state of affairs. The logical structure of the picture, whether in thought or in language, is isomorphic with the logical structure of the state of affairs which it pictures. More subtle is Wittgenstein’s insight that the possibility of this structure being shared by the picture (the thought, the proposition) and the state of affairs is the pictorial form. “That is how a picture is attached to reality; it reaches right out to it” (TLP 2.1511). This leads to an understanding of what the picture can picture; but also what it cannot—its own pictorial form. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | While “the logical picture of the facts is the thought” (3), in the move to language Wittgenstein continues to investigate the possibilities of significance for propositions (4). Logical analysis, in the spirit of Frege and Russell, guides the work, with Wittgenstein using logical calculus to carry out the construction of his system. Explaining that “Only the proposition has sense; only in the context of a proposition has a name meaning” (TLP 3.3), he provides the reader with the two conditions for sensical language. First, the structure of the proposition must conform to the constraints of logical form, and second, the elements of the proposition must have reference (Bedeutung). These conditions have far-reaching implications. The analysis must culminate with a name being a primitive symbol for a (simple) object. Moreover, logic itself gives us the structure and limits of what can be said at all. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | “The general form of a proposition is: This is how things stand” (TLP 4.5) and every proposition is either true or false. This bi-polarity of propositions enables the composition of more complex propositions from atomic ones by using truth-functional operators (5). Wittgenstein supplies, in the Tractatus, a vivid presentation of Frege’s logic in the form of what has become known as ‘truth-tables.’ This provides the means to go back and analyze all propositions into their atomic parts, since “every statement about complexes can be analyzed into a statement about their constituent parts, and into those propositions which completely describe the complexes” (TLP 2.0201). He delves even deeper by then providing the general form of a truth-function (6). This form, \([\bar{p}, \bar{\xi}, N(\bar{\xi})]\), makes use of one formal operation \((N(\bar{\xi}))\)and one propositional variable \((\bar{p})\) to represent Wittgenstein’s claim that any proposition “is the result of successive applications” of logical operations to elementary propositions. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Having developed this analysis of world-thought-language, and relying on the one general form of the proposition, Wittgenstein can now assert that all meaningful propositions are of equal value. Subsequently, he ends the journey with the admonition concerning what can (or cannot) and what should (or should not) be said (7), leaving outside the realm of the sayable propositions of ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | In the Tractatus Wittgenstein’s logical construction of a philosophical system has a purpose—to find the limits of world, thought, and language; in other words, to distinguish between sense and nonsense. “The book will … draw a limit to thinking, or rather—not to thinking, but to the expression of thoughts …. The limit can … only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense” (TLP Preface). The conditions for a proposition’s having sense have been explored and seen to rest on the possibility of representation or picturing. Names must have a bedeutung (reference/meaning), but they can only do so in the context of a proposition which is held together by logical form. It follows that only factual states of affairs which can be pictured can be represented by meaningful propositions. This means that what can be said are only propositions of natural science and leaves out of the realm of sense a daunting number of statements which are made and used in language. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | There are, first, the propositions of logic itself. These do not represent states of affairs, and the logical constants do not stand for objects. “My fundamental thought is that the logical constants do not represent. That the logic of the facts cannot be represented” (TLP 4.0312). This is not a happenstance thought; it is fundamental precisely because the limits of sense rest on logic. Tautologies and contradictions, the propositions of logic, are the limits of language and thought, and thereby the limits of the world. Obviously, then, they do not picture anything and do not, therefore, have sense. They are, in Wittgenstein’s terms, senseless (sinnlos). Propositions which do have sense are bipolar; they range within the truth-conditions drawn by the truth-tables. But the propositions of logic themselves are “not pictures of the reality … for the one allows every possible state of affairs, the other none” (TLP 4.462). Indeed, tautologies (and contradictions), being senseless, are recognized as true (or false) “in the symbol alone … and this fact contains in itself the whole philosophy of logic” (TLP 6.113). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The characteristic of being senseless applies not only to the propositions of logic but also to mathematics or the pictorial form itself of the pictures that do represent. These are, like tautologies and contradictions, literally sense-less, they have no sense. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Beyond, or aside from, senseless propositions Wittgenstein identifies another group of statements which cannot carry sense: the nonsensical (unsinnig) propositions. Nonsense, as opposed to senselessness, is encountered when a proposition is even more radically devoid of meaning, when it transcends the bounds of sense. Under the label of unsinnig can be found various propositions: “Socrates is identical,” but also “1 is a number” and “there are objects.” While some nonsensical propositions are blatantly so, others seem to be meaningful—and only analysis carried out in accordance with the picture theory can expose their nonsensicality. Since only what is “in” the world can be described, anything that is “outside” is denied meaningfulness, including the notion of limit and the limit points themselves. Traditional metaphysics, and the propositions of ethics and aesthetics, which try to capture the world as a whole, are also excluded, as is the truth in solipsism, the very notion of a subject, for it is also not “in” the world but at its limit. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Wittgenstein does not, however, relegate all that is not inside the bounds of sense to oblivion. He makes a distinction between saying and showing which is made to do additional crucial work. “What can be shown cannot be said,” that is, what cannot be formulated in sayable (sensical) propositions can only be shown. This applies, for example, to the logical form of the world, the pictorial form, etc., which show themselves in the form of (contingent) propositions, in the symbolism, and in logical propositions. Even the unsayable (metaphysical, ethical, aesthetic) propositions of philosophy belong in this group—which Wittgenstein finally describes as “things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical” (TLP 6.522). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Accordingly, “the word ‘philosophy’ must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences” (TLP 4.111). Not surprisingly, then, “most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical” (TLP 4.003). Is, then, philosophy doomed to be nonsense (unsinnig), or, at best, senseless (sinnlos) when it does logic, but, in any case, meaningless? What is left for the philosopher to do, if traditional, or even revolutionary, propositions of metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics cannot be formulated in a sensical manner? The reply to these two questions is found in Wittgenstein’s characterization of philosophy: philosophy is not a theory, or a doctrine, but rather an activity. It is an activity of clarification (of thoughts), and more so, of critique (of language). Described by Wittgenstein, it should be the philosopher’s routine activity: to react or respond to the traditional philosophers’ musings by showing them where they go wrong, using the tools provided by logical analysis. In other words, by showing them that (some of) their propositions are nonsense. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | “All propositions are of equal value” (TLP 6.4)—that could also be the fundamental thought of the book. For it employs a measure of the value of propositions that is done by logic and the notion of limits. It is here, however, with the constraints on the value of propositions, that the tension in the Tractatus is most strongly felt. It becomes clear that the notions used by the Tractatus—the logical-philosophical notions—do not belong to the world and hence cannot be used to express anything meaningful. Since language, thought, and the world, are all isomorphic, any attempt to say in logic (i.e., in language) “this and this there is in the world, that there is not” is doomed to be a failure, since it would mean that logic has got outside the limits of the world, i.e. of itself. That is to say, the Tractatus has gone over its own limits, and stands in danger of being nonsensical. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The “solution” to this tension is found in Wittgenstein’s final remarks, where he uses the metaphor of the ladder to express the function of the Tractatus. It is to be used in order to climb on it, in order to “see the world rightly”; but thereafter it must be recognized as nonsense and be thrown away. Hence: “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (7). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The Tractatus is notorious for its interpretative difficulties. In the decades that have passed since its publication it has gone through several waves of general interpretations. Beyond exegetical and hermeneutical issues that revolve around particular sections (such as the world/reality distinction, the difference between representing and presenting, the Frege/Russell connection to Wittgenstein, or the influence on Wittgenstein by existentialist philosophy) there are a few fundamental, not unrelated, disagreements that inform the map of interpretation. These revolve around the realism of the Tractatus, the notion of nonsense and its role in reading the Tractatus itself, and the reading of the Tractatus as an ethical tract. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | There are interpretations that see the Tractatus as espousing realism, i.e., as positing the independent existence of objects, states of affairs, and facts. That this realism is achieved via a linguistic turn is recognized by all (or most) interpreters, but this linguistic perspective does no damage to the basic realism that is seen to start off the Tractatus (“The world is all that is the case”) and to run throughout the text (“Objects form the substance of the world” (TLP 2.021)). Such realism is also taken to be manifested in the essential bi-polarity of propositions; likewise, a straightforward reading of the picturing relation posits objects there to be represented by signs. As against these readings, more linguistically oriented interpretations give conceptual priority to the symbolism. When “reality is compared with propositions” (TLP 4.05), it is the form of propositions which determines the shape of reality (and not the other way round). In any case, the issue of realism (vs. anti-realism) in the Tractatus must address the question of the limits of language and the more particular question of what there is (or is not) beyond language. Subsequently, interpreters of the Tractatus have moved on to questioning the very presence of metaphysics within the book and the status of the propositions of the book themselves. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | ‘Nonsense’ became the hinge of Wittgensteinian interpretative discussion during the last decade of the 20th century. Beyond the bounds of language lies nonsense—propositions which cannot picture anything—and Wittgenstein bans traditional metaphysics to that area. The quandary arises concerning the question of what it is that inhabits that realm of nonsense, since Wittgenstein does seem to be saying that there is something there to be shown (rather than said) and does, indeed, characterize it as the ‘mystical.’ The traditional readings of the Tractatus accepted, with varying degrees of discomfort, the existence of that which is unsayable, that which cannot be put into words, the nonsensical. More recent readings tend to take nonsense more seriously as exactly that—nonsense. This also entails taking seriously Wittgenstein’s words in 6.54—his famous ladder metaphor—and throwing out the Tractatus itself, including the distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown. The Tractatus, on this stance, does not point at ineffable truths (of, e.g., metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, etc.), but should lead us away from such temptations. An accompanying discussion must then also deal with how this can be recognized, what this can possibly mean, and how it should be used, if at all. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | This discussion is closely related to what has come to be called the ethical reading of the Tractatus. Such a reading is based, first, on the supposed discrepancy between Wittgenstein’s construction of a world-language system, which takes up the bulk of the Tractatus, and several comments that are made about this construction in the Preface to the book, in its closing remarks, and in a letter he sent to his publisher, Ludwig von Ficker, before publication. In these places, all of which can be viewed as external to the content of the Tractatus, Wittgenstein preaches silence as regards anything that is of importance, including the ‘internal’ parts of the book which contain, in his own words, “the final solution of the problems [of philosophy].” It is the importance given to the ineffable that can be viewed as an ethical position. “My work consists of two parts, the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important point. For the ethical gets its limit drawn from the inside, as it were, by my book; … I’ve managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it …. For now I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion, because they contain the most direct expression of the point” (ProtoTractatus, p.16). Obviously, such seemingly contradictory tensions within and about a text—written by its author—give rise to interpretative conundrums. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | There is another issue often debated by interpreters of Wittgenstein, which arises out of the questions above. This has to do with the continuity between the thought of the early and later Wittgenstein. Again, the ‘standard’ interpretations were originally united in perceiving a clear break between the two distinct stages of Wittgenstein’s thought, even when ascertaining some developmental continuity between them. And again, the more recent interpretations challenge this standard, emphasizing that the fundamental therapeutic motivation clearly found in the later Wittgenstein should also be attributed to the early. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The idea that philosophy is not a doctrine, and hence should not be approached dogmatically, is one of the most important insights of the Tractatus. Yet, as early as 1931, Wittgenstein referred to his own early work as ‘dogmatic’ (“On Dogmatism” in VC, p. 182). Wittgenstein used this term to designate any conception which allows for a gap between question and answer, such that the answer to the question could be found at a later date. The complex edifice of the Tractatus is built on the assumption that the task of logical analysis was to discover the elementary propositions, whose form was not yet known. What marks the transition from early to later Wittgenstein can be summed up as the total rejection of dogmatism, i.e., as the working out of all the consequences of this rejection. The move from the realm of logic to that of the grammar of ordinary language as the center of the philosopher’s attention; from an emphasis on definition and analysis to ‘family resemblance’ and ‘language-games’; and from systematic philosophical writing to an aphoristic style—all have to do with this transition towards anti-dogmatism in its extreme. It is in the Philosophical Investigations that the working out of the transitions comes to culmination. Other writings of the same period, though, manifest the same anti-dogmatic stance, as it is applied, e.g., to the philosophy of mathematics or to philosophical psychology. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Philosophical Investigations was published posthumously in 1953. It was edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees and translated by Anscombe. It comprised two parts. Part I, consisting of 693 numbered paragraphs, was ready for printing in 1946, but rescinded from the publisher by Wittgenstein. Part II was added on by the editors, trustees of his Nachlass. In 2009 a new edited translation, by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, was published; Part II of the earlier translation, now recognized as an essentially separate entity, was here labeled “Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment” (PPF). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | In the Preface to PI, Wittgenstein states that his new thoughts would be better understood by contrast with and against the background of his old thoughts, those in the Tractatus; and indeed, most of Part I of PI is essentially questioning. Its new insights can be understood as primarily exposing fallacies in the traditional way of thinking about language, truth, thought, intentionality, and, perhaps mainly, philosophy. In this sense, it is conceived of as a therapeutic work, viewing philosophy itself as therapy. (Part II (PPF), focusing on philosophical psychology, perception etc., was different, pointing to new perspectives (which, undoubtedly, are not disconnected from the earlier critique) in addressing specific philosophical issues. It is, therefore, more easily read alongside Wittgenstein’s other writings of the later period.) | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | PI begins with a quote from Augustine’s Confessions which “give us a particular picture of the essence of human language,” based on the idea that “the words in language name objects,” and that “sentences are combinations of such names” (PI 1). This picture of language cannot be relied on as a basis for metaphysical, epistemic or linguistic speculation. Despite its plausibility, this reduction of language to representation cannot do justice to the whole of human language; and even if it is to be considered a picture of only the representative function of human language, it is, as such, a poor picture. Furthermore, this picture of language is at the base of the whole of traditional philosophy, but, for Wittgenstein, it is to be shunned in favor of a new way of looking at both language and philosophy. The Philosophical Investigations proceeds to offer the new way of looking at language, which will yield the view of philosophy as therapy. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | “For a large class of cases of the employment of the word ‘meaning’—though not for all—this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language” (PI 43). This basic statement is what underlies the change of perspective most typical of the later phase of Wittgenstein’s thought: a change from a conception of meaning as representation to a view which looks to use as the crux of the investigation. Traditional theories of meaning in the history of philosophy were intent on pointing to something exterior to the proposition which endows it with sense. This ‘something’ could generally be located either in an objective space, or inside the mind as mental representation. As early as 1933 (The Blue Book) Wittgenstein took pains to challenge these conceptions, arriving at the insight that “if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use” (BB 4). Ascertainment of the use (of a word, of a proposition), however, is not given to any sort of constructive theory building, as in the Tractatus. Rather, when investigating meaning, the philosopher must “look and see” the variety of uses to which the word is put. An analogy with tools sheds light on the nature of words. When we think of tools in a toolbox, we do not fail to see their variety; but the “functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects” (PI 11). We are misled by the uniform appearance of our words into theorizing upon meaning: “Especially when we are doing philosophy!” (PI 12) | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | So different is this new perspective that Wittgenstein repeats: “Don’t think, but look!” (PI 66); and such looking is done vis a vis particular cases, not generalizations. In giving the meaning of a word, any explanatory generalization should be replaced by a description of use. The traditional idea that a proposition houses a content and has a restricted number of Fregean forces (such as assertion, question, and command), gives way to an emphasis on the diversity of uses. In order to address the countless multiplicity of uses, their un-fixedness, and their being part of an activity, Wittgenstein introduces the key concept of ‘language-game.’ He never explicitly defines it since, as opposed to the earlier ‘picture,’ for instance, this new concept is made to do work for a more fluid, more diversified, and more activity-oriented perspective on language. Hence, indeed, the requirement to define harkens back to an old dogma, which misses the playful and active character of language. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Throughout the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein returns, again and again, to the concept of language-games to make clear his lines of thought concerning language. Primitive language-games are scrutinized for the insights they afford on this or that characteristic of language. Thus, the builders’ language-game (PI 2), in which a builder and his assistant use exactly four terms (block, pillar, slab, beam), is utilized to illustrate that part of the Augustinian picture of language which might be correct but which is, nevertheless, strictly limited because it ignores the essential role of action in establishing meaning. ‘Regular’ language-games, such as the astonishing list provided in PI 23 (which includes, e.g., reporting an event, speculating about an event, forming and testing a hypothesis, making up a story, reading it, play-acting, singing catches, guessing riddles, making a joke, translating, asking, thanking, and so on), bring out the openness of our possibilities in using language and in describing it. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Language-games are, first, a part of a broader context termed by Wittgenstein a form of life (see below). Secondly, the concept of language-games points at the rule-governed character of language. This does not entail strict and definite systems of rules for each and every language-game, but points to the conventional nature of this sort of human activity. Still, just as we cannot give a final, essential definition of ‘game,’ so we cannot find “what is common to all these activities and what makes them into language or parts of language” (PI 65). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | It is here that Wittgenstein’s rejection of general explanations, and definitions based on sufficient and necessary conditions, is best pronounced. Instead of these symptoms of the philosopher’s “craving for generality,” he points to ‘family resemblance’ as the more suitable analogy for the means of connecting particular uses of the same word. There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally—and dogmatically—for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word. We should, instead, travel with the word’s uses through “a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing” (PI 66). Family resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form—be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favor of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | One of the issues most associated with the later Wittgenstein is that of rule-following. Rising out of the considerations above, it becomes another central point of discussion in the question of what it is that can apply to all the uses of a word. The same dogmatic stance as before has it that a rule is an abstract entity—transcending all of its particular applications; knowing the rule involves grasping that abstract entity and thereby knowing how to use it. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Wittgenstein begins his exposition by introducing an example: “… we get [a] pupil to continue a series (say ‘+ 2’) beyond 1000—and he writes 1000, 1004, 1008, 1012” (PI 185). What do we do, and what does it mean, when the student, upon being corrected, answers “But I did go on in the same way”? Wittgenstein proceeds (mainly in PI 185–243, but also elsewhere) to dismantle the cluster of attendant questions: How do we learn rules? How do we follow them? Wherefrom the standards which decide if a rule is followed correctly? Are they in the mind, along with a mental representation of the rule? Do we appeal to intuition in their application? Are they socially and publicly taught and enforced? In typical Wittgensteinian fashion, the answers are not pursued positively; rather, the very formulation of the questions as legitimate questions with coherent content is put to the test. For indeed, it is both the Platonistic and mentalistic pictures which underlie asking questions of this type, and Wittgenstein is intent on freeing us from these assumptions. Such liberation involves elimination of the need to posit any sort of external or internal authority beyond the actual applications of the rule. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | These considerations lead to PI 201, often considered the climax of the issue: “This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. The answer was: if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here.” Wittgenstein’s formulation of the problem, now at the point of being a “paradox,” has given rise to a wealth of interpretation and debate since it is clear to all that this is the crux of the general issue of meaning, and of understanding and using a language. One of the influential readings of the problem of following a rule (introduced by Fogelin 1976 and Kripke 1982) has been the interpretation, according to which Wittgenstein is here voicing a skeptical paradox and offering a skeptical solution. That is to say, there are no facts that determine what counts as following a rule, no real grounds for saying that someone is indeed following a rule, and Wittgenstein accepts this skeptical challenge (by suggesting other conditions that might warrant our asserting that someone is following a rule). This reading has been challenged, in turn, by several interpretations (such as Baker and Hacker 1984, McGinn1984, and Cavell 1990), while others have provided additional, fresh perspectives (e.g., Diamond, “Rules: Looking in the Right Place” in Phillips and Winch 1989, and several in Miller and Wright 2002). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Directly following the rule-following sections in PI, and therefore easily thought to be the upshot of the discussion, are those sections called by interpreters “the private-language argument.” Whether it be a veritable argument or not (and Wittgenstein never labeled it as such), these sections point out that for an utterance to be meaningful it must be possible in principle to subject it to public standards and criteria of correctness. For this reason, a private-language, in which “words … are to refer to what only the speaker can know—to his immediate private sensations …” (PI 243), is not a genuine, meaningful, rule-governed language. The signs in language can only function when there is a possibility of judging the correctness of their use, “so the use of [a] word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands” (PI 261). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Grammar, usually taken to consist of the rules of correct syntactic and semantic usage, becomes, in Wittgenstein’s hands, the wider—and more elusive—notion which captures the essence of language as a special rule-governed activity. This notion replaces the stricter and purer logic, which played such an essential role in the Tractatus in providing a scaffolding for language and the world. Indeed, “Essence is expressed in grammar … Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar)” (PI 371, 373). As opposed to grammar-book rules, the “rules” of grammar are not technical instructions from on-high for correct usage and are not idealized as an external system to be conformed to, independently of context. Therefore, they are not appealed to explicitly in any formulation, but are only used in cases of philosophical perplexity to clarify where language misleads us into false illusions. Thus, for example, “I can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking. It is correct to say ‘I know what you are thinking,’ and wrong to say ‘I know what I am thinking.’ (A whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar.)” (Philosophical Investigations 1953, p.222). In this example, being sensitive to the grammatical uniqueness of first-person avowals saves us from the blunders of foundational epistemology. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Grammar is hence situated within the regular activity with which language-games are interwoven: “… the word ‘language-game’ is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life” (PI 23). What enables language to function and therefore must be accepted as “given” are precisely forms of life. In Wittgenstein’s terms, “It is not only agreement in definitions but also (odd as it may sound) in judgments that is required” (PI 242), and this is “agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life” (PI 241). Used by Wittgenstein sparingly—five times in the Investigations—this concept has given rise to interpretative quandaries and subsequent contradictory readings. Forms of life can be understood as constantly changing and contingent, dependent on culture, context, history, etc.; or as a background common to humankind, “shared human behavior” which is “the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language” (PI 206); or as a notion which can be read differently in different cases – sometimes as relativistic, in other cases as expressing a more universalistic approach. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | In his later writings Wittgenstein holds, as he did in the Tractatus, that philosophers do not—or should not—supply a theory, neither do they provide explanations. “Philosophy just puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.—Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain” (PI 126). The anti-theoretical stance is reminiscent of the early Wittgenstein, but there are manifest differences. Although the Tractatus precludes philosophical theories, it does construct a systematic edifice which results in the general form of the proposition, all the while relying on strict formal logic; the Investigations points out the therapeutic non-dogmatic nature of philosophy, verily instructing philosophers in the ways of therapy. “The work of the philosopher consists in marshalling reminders for a particular purpose” (PI 127). Working with reminders and series of examples, different problems are solved. Unlike the Tractatus which advanced one philosophical method, in the Investigations “there is not a single philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, different therapies, as it were” (PI 133d). This is directly related to Wittgenstein’s eschewal of the logical form or of any a-priori generalization that can be discovered or made in philosophy. Trying to advance such general theses is a temptation which lures philosophers; but the real task of philosophy is both to make us aware of the temptation and to show us how to overcome it. Consequently “a philosophical problem has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about.’” (PI 123), and hence the aim of philosophy is “to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (PI 309). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The refusal of theory goes hand in hand with Wittgenstein’s objection to have “anything hypothetical in our [philosophical] considerations” (PI 109): “All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place.” In The Blue Book, Wittgenstein explained the difficulty encountered by philosophers to work on a minor scale and to take seriously “the particular case” as originating from their “craving for generality.” This craving is strongly influenced by philosophers’ “preoccupation with the method of science,” a reductive and unifying tendency which is “the real source of metaphysics” (BB 18). Wittgenstein’s determined anti-scientism should not be read as an opposition to science in itself; it is the insistence that philosophy and science are to be kept apart – that (contrary to the prevalent attitude of modern civilization) the scientific framework is not appropriate everywhere, and certainly not for philosophical investigations. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The style of the Investigations is strikingly different from that of the Tractatus. Instead of strictly numbered sections which are organized hierarchically in programmatic order, the Investigations fragmentarily voices aphorisms about language-games, family resemblance, forms of life, “sometimes jumping, in a sudden change, from one area to another” (PI Preface). This variation in style is of course essential and is “connected with the very nature of the investigation” (PI Preface). As a matter of fact, Wittgenstein was acutely aware of the contrast between the two stages of his thought, suggesting publication of both texts together in order to make the contrast obvious and clear. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Still, it is precisely via the subject of the nature of philosophy that the fundamental continuity between these two stages, rather than the discrepancy between them, is to be found. In both cases philosophy serves, first, as critique of language. It is through analyzing language’s illusive power that the philosopher can expose the traps of meaningless philosophical formulations. This means that what was formerly thought of as a philosophical problem may now dissolve “and this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear” (PI 133). Two implications of this diagnosis, easily traced back in the Tractatus, are to be recognized. One is the inherent dialogical character of philosophy, which is a responsive activity: difficulties and torments are encountered which are then to be dissipated by philosophical therapy. In the Tractatus, this took the shape of advice: “The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science … and then whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions” (TLP 6.53) The second, more far- reaching, “discovery” in the Investigations “is the one that enables me to break off philosophizing when I want to” (PI 133). This has been taken to revert back to the ladder metaphor and the injunction to silence in the Tractatus. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Whereas the Tractatus has been interpreted in different ways right from its publication, for about two decades since the publication of Philosophical Interpretations in 1953 there seemed to be wide agreement on the proper way to read the book (along with the vast material from 1930 onwards in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, gradually released over the years). Wittgenstein’s turn from his early emphasis on the role of logical analysis in his philosophical method to the later preference of particular grammatical descriptions was read, quite unanimously, as marking the two clearly distinct – “early” and “later” – phases in his thought. The later phase, it was agreed, consisted mainly of particular descriptions of our ordinary uses of words – especially those words which tend to create the illusion that they represent something profound, words which seem to point at the “essence of language.” “Whereas, in fact, if the words ‘language,’ ‘experience,’ ‘world’ have a use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words ‘table,’ ‘lamp,’ ‘door’.” (PI 97) | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | With the publication of Stanley Cavell’s Must We Mean What We Say? (1969) and especially The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979), it turned out that such notions as ‘description,’ ‘ordinary,’ and ‘usage’ are not as innocuous as they had seemed. Cavell’s reading of Philosophical Investigations suggested a more radical emphasis on the particularity of contexts and blocked the way to any general description of “grammatical rules.” For Cavell, Wittgenstein’s idea that meanings are determined only within language games, i.e., only in particular cases, is the key to reading his philosophy. When ignored, we are bound to import an outside requirement into our investigation and thus, favoring a distilled and rigid account of our linguistic exchanges, miss (and misrepresent) their vividness: “As if the meaning were an aura the word brings along with it and retains in every kind of use” (PI 117). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | In 1980, Oxford philosophers G.P. Baker and P.M.S. Hacker launched the first volume of an analytical commentary on Wittgenstein’s Investigations. This gigantic project, spanning over 4 volumes (the 3rd and 4th written by Hacker alone), advocated and developed the orthodox reading of Wittgenstein’s later work, according to which a systematic mapping – an overview, or Übersicht (Cf. PI 122) – of the use of our words is not only possible but also necessary, if we wish to dissolve the philosophical problems arising from the traditional philosophical inattention to ordinary use, due to a prior metaphysical requirement. For Baker and Hacker, a key notion for reading Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is that of philosophical ‘grammar.’ Acute attention to grammatical rules of use offers a way to elucidate meanings and thus to expose philosophical blunders. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Gradually, these alternatives in reading Philosophical Investigations came to form two schools of interpretation that are broadly parallel to the ones we encounter regarding Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. As noted above (in section 2.4), there is, first, the question of the continuity between Wittgenstein’s earlier and later writings. When emphasis is given – as in the orthodox reading – to Wittgenstein’s switch from logic to grammar, the break between the philosophical stages is easily marked. When, on the contrary, it is the resistance to generalization (of any kind) that is emphasized, then the similarity in Wittgenstein’s therapeutic motivation throughout his life is much more clearly seen. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | As in the previous stage, the debate here has to do with the question of ethics and its centrality in reading Wittgenstein’s oeuvre. According to the traditional approach, amplified in Hacker and Baker’s interpretive project, Wittgenstein’s main objective is to resolve or dissolve general philosophical puzzles – concerning, e.g., the mind, the nature of color, perception, and rule-following – by clarifying, arranging, and contrasting different grammatical rules relevant to the notion examined. This is an intellectual investigation and, apart from its being critical of traditional philosophy and its reflection in contemporary science, it has nothing particularly relevant to ethics and should not be read as an ethical endeavor. Readers taking their cue from Cavell, on the other hand, believe that the gist of the Wittgensteinian effort in toto is ethical, cultural, or even political. They point at the Investigations’ motto (“The trouble about progress is that it always looks much greater than it really is” – Nestroy) and Wittgenstein’s mention of “the darkness of this time” in the book’s Preface; but more substantially, they argue that Wittgenstein’s insistence on the ordinary, the practice of every-day living, is ethical through and through. Our lives are saturated by ethics; we are members of a historically and culturally conditioned society; and our linguistic practices cannot but have an important ethical aspect. Ignoring this aspect, according to these interpreters, entails a rejection of what is human in our linguistic exchanges. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | To be sure, the interpretations’ map is much more complicated than what is briefly sketched here. There are philosophers who object to the characterization each side in the above debate attaches to the other. There are those who claim that while there is a genuine dispute about the right interpretation of the Tractatus, the various interpreters of Philosophical Investigations are much closer to one another than they are ready to acknowledge; and there are independent readings of Wittgenstein which draw their clues from both sides and attempt a different path altogether. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | It is noteworthy that the conventional conceptualization of two Wittgensteins, originally thought to be clearly demarcated between the early and later Wittgensteins, has been repeatedly re-worked in the ensuing interpretative project of understanding the philosopher’s writings, thoughts, and ideas, with no show of subsiding. One of the natural outcomes of such intense investigation is the awareness that, indeed, understanding Wittgenstein means recognizing other times and other developments, such as before the early Wittgenstein (of the Tractatus), between the early Wittgenstein and the later Wittgenstein (of Philosophical Investigations), and following that later Wittgenstein. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The middle Wittgenstein, he of the period between the early Wittgenstein and the later Wittgenstein, was, early on, identified as worthy of exposure and more interpretative work, but such a venture was clearly a function of two mutually impactful grand questions: What is the relationship between the early and later Wittgenstein (as adumbrated in 2.4 and 3.8) and, following upon answers to that question, what is then the more exact time-frame that is worthy of the independent label “middle”? Thus, there is presently much more work being done on the middle Wittgenstein as the questions of the relationship between the early and the later Wittgenstein have taken center-stage and become a constant in Wittgenstein scholarship. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | How, then, to best demarcate the middle Wittgenstein? The wide date recognition, all along from 1929 (or even earlier) to 1944 (the time when Wittgenstein began the final revision of PI) might seem too obvious, though it can house readings of the continuity-between-early-and-later-Wittgenstein school persuasively. Such is work by, for instance, Joachim Schulte (1992), who notes a middle Wittgenstein already in the TLP leading all the way to later Wittgenstein’s key treatments of grammar or mathematics. The opposite extreme, of pinpointing one point in time as expressing a sole significant transformation, seems too summary. This strategy is adopted, for example, by the Hintikkas (1986b) regarding the year 1929 or by Kienzler (1997) concerning a transitional break in 1931. Then there are the various more moderate determinations, which adopt a time-span of a few years, usually sometime between 1929 and 1935, explaining their delineations by philosophical interpretations of the texts and contexts of those times. Such are: O. K. Bouwsma (1961), who points to the period of the Blue and Brown Books (1933–35); P. M. S. Hacker (1986), who follows a two year period – 1929–1930 – as the middle Wittgenstein “bridge”; Alois Pichler (2004), who recognizes a middle Wittgenstein in 1930–1935 based on Wittgensteinian styles; or David Stern (1991), who briefly gives the demarcation of “the late 1920s and early 1930s.” | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | If we adopt that last marker of dates, the late 1920s to the early (or mid-)1930s, we can address, in general, the objects of interpretation that have provided the basis for a middle Wittgenstein. Although everything in the Nachlass is now digitally available to the aspiring interpreter, the published versions of typescripts/manuscripts of talks and notes (sometimes dictated to students) have been the evidence upon which middle Wittgenstein interpretation has flourished. These are (in chronological order of their occurrence, not their publication) “Some Remarks on Logical Form” (1929), “A Lecture on Ethics” (1929), Philosophical Remarks (1929–1930), Philosophical Grammar (1932–33), The Big Typescript (1932–1933); the Blue and Brown Books (1933–1935), and “Notes for Lectures on ‘Private Experience’ and ‘Sense Data’” (1935–36). Just as illuminating, even tantalizing, are the publications of notes taken by participants in Wittgenstein’s classes in those philosophically eventful years, since it was in those surroundings that Wittgenstein was working out – live – the deliberations and moves into what would become the later Wittgenstein. Supplied by Alice Ambrose, Desmond Lee, G. E. Moore, Rush Rhees, and Friedrich Waismann (on Wittgenstein’s conversations with members of the Vienna Circle), these are volumes replete with questions of philosophy, meta-philosophy, method, and style that provide the Wittgensteinian interpreter with voluminous raw data in order to characterize a middle Wittgenstein. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The themes that populate the texts above are wide and varied. Some harken back to Tractarian refrains, more appear to introduce later Wittgensteinian terms; a number of subjects make transitory appearances, never to return. Phenomenology, for one, is a constant Wittgensteinian concern, mostly for interpreters of all Wittgensteins who bicker over the very ascription of phenomenology to Wittgenstein’s thought, accompanied by their attempt to define Wittgenstein’s use of the term. But it is in the middle Wittgenstein that phenomenology makes a literal appearance, specifically in the “Phenomenology is Grammar” chapter of The Big Typescript. The questions then become whether phenomenology can be ascribed to the early Wittgenstein, whether it was really only adopted in the later Wittgenstein, and most relevant here – whether it can be identified as either vacating the scene in the middle Wittgenstein or, contrarily, there becoming terminologically and therefore significantly present. There is also the option that phenomenology appears exclusively in the middle Wittgenstein. These last options may then be seen as (at least partly) definitive of a middle period. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Mathematics, and Wittgenstein’s original thoughts on it, can undoubtedly be seen as another investigative anchor of middle Wittgenstein. Although it is clear that mathematics was of great interest to him in TLP, his thoughts on it became more enigmatic precisely in the middle period. Several “isms” are attributed to his view(s) on mathematics here – verificationism, formalism, and finitism, along with recognition of a “calculus conception” of mathematics. (Intuitionism, a favorite label for interpreters of Wittgenstein’s mathematics, is only identified in the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1937–1944) and after, i.e., in the later Wittgenstein.) It appears, however, that middle Wittgenstein’s dealings with mathematics in this period are, as claimed by Juliet Floyd (2005), constantly changing – and even that, not in any consistent developmental way but in “piecemeal and uneven” fashion. Indeed, along with written evidence of Wittgenstein's influence on and by mathematicians, we can identify the work on mathematics done particularly by the later Wittgenstein and even he of the post-Investigations period, as a substantial overturning of his early and middle conceptions of mathematics. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | While phenomenology and mathematics stand out as almost quirky (and perhaps suspiciously unclear) subjects making their idiosyncratic appearance in the middle Wittgenstein, the more evident Wittgensteinian constructs of this period are, of course, logic, language, and method. Unsurprisingly, “Some Remarks on Logical Form” in 1929 heralds the transition from early to later Wittgenstein, moving from (ideal, formal) logic to (the rules of use of) grammar. Language is also viewed as the connecting factor between the early and later Wittgenstein, either by discovering still “representational” aspects in descriptions of its use or by deciphering roots of the private language arguments in this Wittgenstein’s musings. Other times, analysis of linguistic phenomena as language games rather than tools of logic provides what we have always acknowledged as paradigmatic transitions from early to later Wittgenstein. These all involve methodology – Wittgenstein espousing a method of doing philosophy that is different from that of TLP, but still not the plurality of methods proposed in PI. Furthermore, the method proposed is the turn to grammar as a back turning on dogmatism (and/of metaphysics). David Stern calls the early Wittgenstein’s views on logic, language, and method “logical atomism” and the later Wittgenstein’s “practical holism,” tagging the middle Wittgenstein as “logical holism.” Between logical atomism and practical holism seems to lie a drastic divide, but seeing logical holism as bridging the divide gives us the perception – and understanding – of a natural development between them. As spelled out by Mauro Engelmann (2013), this development can then also encompass all the above elements in a comprehensive transition gesturing towards an “anthropological” view. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | It has been submitted that the writings of the period from 1946 until his death (1951) constitute a distinctive phase of Wittgenstein’s thought. These writings include, in addition to the second part of the first edition of the Philosophical Investigations (PPF), texts edited and collected in volumes such as Remarks on Colour, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, Zettel, On Certainty, and parts of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Part II of the Philosophical Investigations was, in fact, an item of contention ab initio. In Anscombe and Rhees’s first edition of 1953 (translated by Anscombe), reasons were given for including it, admittedly as a differentiated part, in the book. In Hacker and Schulte’s (translated and edited) fourth edition of 2009, its position was contrarily explained. It now became, instead of Part II, an almost independent entity – Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment (PPF). It is also emphasized that it was a “work in progress.” Be that as it may, that installment of a post-Philosophical Investigations text exhibits all the vagaries of Wittgensteinian interpretation – behooving philosophers to attend to questions of placement (which Wittgenstein is here represented, middle, later, or other?), affinity (how do these comments relate to Wittgenstein’s later work in general?), and topic (what is Wittgenstein dealing with here, psychology, epistemology, or the method of philosophy?). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | PPF is the locus classicus of a key Wittgensteinian term – “seeing aspects” (PPF xi), where “two uses of the word ‘see’” are elaborated. The second use, where one “sees” a likeness in two objects, is the one that has given rise to the question of aspect perception and the attendant phenomena of aspect-dawning and change of aspect. “I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this experience ‘noticing an aspect’” (113). Aspect seeing involves noticing something about an object – an aspect of the object – that one hadn’t noticed before and thereby seeing it as something different. Importantly, it also arises as a result of a change of context of our perceptions. This immensely insightful discovery by Wittgenstein, and its successive development, has been the source of a multitude of discussions dealing with questions of objectivity vs. subjectivity, conception vs. perception, and psychology vs. epistemology. It also highlights the move from dogmatic, formalistic universalism to open, humanistic context-laden behavior, aptly reverberating in the to-and-fro of seeing aspects. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | On Certainty is generally accepted as a work of epistemology, as opposed to PPF, which is usually recognized as dealing with psychology (though even that distinction is called into question by some interpretations). It tackles skeptical doubts and foundational solutions but is, in typical Wittgensteinian fashion, a work of therapy which discounts presuppositions common to both. As always before in the interpretative game, the general view sees Wittgenstein as landing on the non-skeptical side of the epistemological debate, choosing instead to peruse “hinge propositions.” These are propositions about which doubt cannot be entertained, but whether this be due to their being epistemically foundational, naturally certain, or logically unavailable to doubt is still a matter for philosophical explanation; as is the question of Wittgenstein’s object of critique – Cartesian or radical skepticism – or, in some quarters, the very assumption of his unequivocal anti-skepticism. This is intimately related to another of On Certainty’s themes—the primacy of the deed to the word, or, in Wittgenstein’s PI terminology, of form of life to logos. Such a clearly delineated philosophical phase has garnered the recognition of a “third Wittgenstein” (initially by Danièle Moyal-Sharrock). | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | Remarks on Colour is a collection of remarks, composed by Wittgenstein during the last year and a half of his life. In these remarks he attempts to clarify the language we use in describing our experience and impression of colours, sameness of colours, saturated colours, light and shade, brightness and opaqueness of surfaces, transparency, etc. These reflections present us with a “geometry of colours,” though Wittgenstein makes it clear that due to “the indefiniteness in the concept of colour” (III-78) the “logic of colour concepts” (I-22) should be given piecemeal. When we consider colours “there is merely an inability to bring the concepts into some kind of order” (II-20). Philosophical attention should be given rather to such particularities as the blending in of white (as opposed to blending in yellow), “the coloured intermediary between two colours” (III-49), “ the difference between black-red-gold and black-red-yellow” (III-51), etc. The investigation is therefore directed not merely to colour phenomena and the language we use to describe them but also to philosophical methodology, in comparison with scientific inquiry, and to what is taken to be conceivable and what is not. It is also unique in reminding us of a hint, by Wittgenstein, that it was prompted by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Zur Farbenlehre (On the Theory of Colour, 1810)! | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | The general tenor of all the writings of this last period can thence be viewed as, on the one hand, a move away from the critical (some would say destructive) positions of the Investigations to a more positive perspective on the same problems that had been facing him since his early writings; on the other hand, this move does not necessarily bespeak a break from the later period but might be more properly viewed as its continuation, in a new light. In other words, the grand question of interpreting Wittgenstein, i.e., the question of continuities or breaks, remains at the forefront of understanding Wittgenstein. | wittgenstein |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ | analysis | Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret | certainty | facts | Frege, Gottlob | logical atomism: Russell’s | logical form | logical truth | mental representation | Moore, George Edward | private language | Ramsey, Frank | religious language | Russell, Bertrand | states of affairs | Vienna Circle | Wittgenstein, Ludwig: aesthetics | Wittgenstein, Ludwig: logical atomism | Wittgenstein, Ludwig: philosophy of mathematics | wittgenstein |
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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Adam of Wodeham (c. 1295–1358) was one of the most significant philosophers and theologians working at Oxford in the second quarter of the fourteenth century. A student of Ockham, Wodeham is best known for his theory of the complexe significabile and his distinctively English approach to questions of philosophical theology. His philosophy and theology were influential throughout the late medieval and early modern periods. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Adam Wodeham [Goddam/Woodham] (c. 1295–1358) was born near Southampton. He entered the Franciscan order at a young age. Wodeham’s earliest philosophical education was at the Franciscan studium in London where he first studied under Walter Chatton (c. 1317–1321) and then William of Ockham (1320–1324). During this period of intense study, Wodeham collaborated with Ockham on his massive Summa logicae, editing it and preparing it for publication. After Ockham departed for Avignon in the summer of 1324, Wodeham was sent to Oxford to complete his studies. At Oxford he attended the sentential lectures of Richard FitzRalph (1328–1329), and subsequently qualified to read the Sentences. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Wodeham lectured on the Sentences of Peter Lombard at the London convent sometime in the 1320s, although his earliest lecture notes have not survived. He later lectured at the provincial school in Norwich sometime in the late 1320s, a work that is now referred to as the Lectura secunda [LS]. Finally, Wodeham delivered the Oxford lectures (referred to as the Ordinatio Oxoniensis [OO]) between 1332 and 1334 (Streveler and Tachau 1995, 22–23, n. 61). According to Thomas de Eccleston (Eccleston 1951, 57), Wodeham was the 61st lector at Oxford, Greyfriars. As is the case with many medieval philosophers, little is known about his latter life after he completed is education. He apparently traveled to Basel in 1339, survived the plague in 1348–49, and died at the Franciscan convent at Babwell in 1358 (Courtenay 1978, 181). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | The extant writings of Adam Wodeham include: his two commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (the Lectura and the Ordinatio); a prologue to William of Ockham’s Summa logicae; a short quaestio on the continuum; a longer Tractatus de indivisibilibus; the Tractatus alphabeticus, and perhaps the 51st chapter of part I of Ockham’s Summa logicae and the last question of book IV of the same author’s Reportatio. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Adam Wodeham’s most significant philosophical and theological works are his two commentaries on the Sentences. The Lectura (c. 1320s) is the earlier of the two works and is a loose commentary on the first 26 distinctions of the first book of the Lombard’s Sentences. The single manuscript of the Lectura (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius, Ms 281 (674), ff. 105–250) has been published in a modern critical edition (Gál and Wood 1990). The Ordinatio (1332–34), Wodeham’s most mature extant work, is a more expansive commentary, treating all four books of the Lombard’s Sentences and extensively re-writing and re-organizing the first 26 distinctions of the first book. A critical edition of the Ordinatio is available at the Scholastic Commentaries and Texts Archive. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | The shorter works of Wodeham comprise several collaborations with his teacher William of Ockham. These include Wodeham’s brief introduction to Ockham’s Summa logicae, which has been edited in the critical edition. Further, Courtenay argues that Wodeham is probably the disciple who wrote the 51st chapter of part I of Ockham’s Summa logicae (Courtenay 1978, 34). Both of these short works were written between 1320 and 1324, as Wodeham collaborated with the Venerable Inceptor. Finally, Gedeon Gál also noted that in one of the manuscripts of Ockham’s Reportatio (Milan, Ambros. 281 inf., fol. 69rb) on book IV of the Sentences, a marginal notation attributes the final question of the work to Wodeham (Courtenay 1978, 34, fn. 61). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Wodeham’s shorter works also include two tracts on the continuum written against the indivisibilists or atomists and the Tractatus alphabeticus. The shorter work on the continuum (Murdoch and Synan 1966, 212–288), consisting of a single quaestio, is an early redaction of the longer work, the Tractatus de indivisibilibus (Wood 1988). Both of the works were probably written between 1323 and 1331 (Wood 1998, 16). The Tractatus alphabeticus considers the latitude of forms and was written around 1333 (Wood 374). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Finally, the lost works of Adam Wodeham include Biblical commentaries on the Canticum canticorum and the first book of Ecclesiasticus. And, based on historical and textual evidence, it is generally held that Wodeham wrote a set of Determinationes, some of which were probably included in the Tractatus de indivisibilibus. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Adam Wodeham’s place in the history of philosophy remains difficult to appreciate because of two related problems, here referred to as: (1) the historiographical problem; and (2) the textual problem. Historiographically, the field of medieval philosophy has been plagued by various narrative accounts of the twelfth through fifteenth centuries that characterize the period in which Wodeham flourished as an age in which fideism, skepticism and scholastic decadence ruled the day (Inglis, 1998). This basic historiographical approach to the late medieval period has recently come under serious attack and scrutiny by specialists working in the field, but a balanced picture of the philosophers and theologians working during this period remains in its infancy. Second, an accurate understanding of Adam Wodeham’s place within the history of philosophy is handicapped by the lack of critical editions for Adam Wodeham, his immediate contemporaries, and numerous medieval philosophers and theologians working in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Regarding Wodeham, it is important to recognize that a critical edition of any complete text of Wodeham was not available until recently (Wood 1988; Gál and Wood 1990). Further, as already noted, an edition of Wodeham’s most mature and complete work, the Ordinatio, is only now underway. As such, the place of Adam Wodeham within the history of medieval thought is difficult to trace at present, and William Courtenay’s important study remains the most relevant point of reference (Courtenay, 1978). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Based on the work of Courtenay, the first references to Wodeham’s place within medieval thought must begin by considering his socii (or contemporary sententiarii). Wodeham lectured on the Sentences at Oxford in 1332–1334, and contemporaneous with his lectures there were other bachelors lecturing on the Sentences (baccalarius sententiarius) in the various other convents or theological schools (Courtenay 1978, 89). Understanding who these bachelors are is important because they often engaged with each other’s work. In the case of Adam Wodeham the list of socii includes: Monachus Niger (Benedictine), Robert Holcot OP, William Crathorn OP, Roger Gosford OP, Edmund Grafton OFM, Hugh Grafton OESA, William Chiterne OFM, William Skelton: Mertonian, Richard of Radford, and an unnamed Carmelite (Courtenay 1978, 89–111). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Beyond his immediate socii, Wodeham’s influence between 1334 and 1346 is evident in England, Paris and Cologne. English theologians, between 1334 and 1350, often do not cite contemporaries by name. That said, there is substantial evidence that Wodeham’s contemporaries took his thought seriously. During these decades, Courtenay lists the following English theologians as making either implicit or explicit reference to Adam Wodeham’s lecturae: Thomas Bradwardine (Mertonian), Robert of Halifax OFM, Roger Roseth OFM and Thomas Buckingham (Mertonian) (Courtenay 1978, 116–123). In contrast to the English authors discussed above, the Parisian authors between 1342 and 1345 were much more willing to cite a contemporary author (Courtenay 1978, 123). Thus, in this period almost all of the Parisian theologians commenting on the Sentences cite Wodeham: Gregory of Rimini OESA, Alphonsus Vargas OESA and John of Mirecourt (Cistercian). These authors exhibit a strong knowledge of Wodeham and all had some access to the Oxford (Ordinatio) redaction of Wodeham’s work (Courtenay 1978, 132). In particular one should note Gregory of Rimini’s extensive knowledge of the thought of Wodeham. The spread of Ockham’s philosophical and theological thought into Germany (both directly and indirectly through the study of Wodeham) took place between 1335 and 1350 and is evident in Cologne. This is perhaps due to the fact that Wodeham traveled to Basel in the summer of 1339 bringing with him a copy of his Ordinatio (Courtenay 1978, 133 and 181). How long Wodeham remained in Germany, or where he traveled, remains unknown. But, it is significant that in Cologne, sometime before 1348, one theologian lectured on the Sentences secundum Adam (Courtenay 1978, 133). This and other evidence suggest that Wodeham was being studied seriously in Cologne before 1348. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | In the aftermath of the Parisian condemnations of Nicholas of Autrecourt in 1346 and John of Mirecourt in 1347, one may expect that the influence of Wodeham would have waned in subsequent years. But, Courtenay argues that the citations of Wodeham throughout this turbulent period demonstrate that this was not the case (Courtenay 1978, 135). Evidence of Parisian masters engaging the thought of Wodeham in the years after 1347 is evident in the works of: Peter Ceffons O.Cist. and Hugolino Malabrancha of Oriveto OESA. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | In the final four decades of the fourteenth century there is an increase in the citations of the moderni as evidenced in the extant commentaries. The list of commentaries that cite Wodeham includes: the anonymous author of ms. Vat. Lat. 986, John Hiltalingen of Basel OESA, James of Eltville O.Cist, Conrad of Ebrach O.Cist., Pierre d’Ailly, Henry Totting of Oyta, John of Wasia, Henry of Langenstein, Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl, Peter of Candia, John Brammart O.C., Peter Plaoul, and Marsilius of Inghen. This period of medieval philosophy remains understudied, but it is clear that there was a strong interest in Wodeham at the close of the fourteenth century. Further evidence of this is found in Henry Totting of Oyta’s Abbreviato of Adam Wodeham’s Ordinatio produced between 1373 and 1378 (Courtenay 1978, 147). Oyta’s Abbreviato of Wodeham was influential in the fifteenth century, as is clear from the number of extant manuscripts spread throughout Europe. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | The influence of Wodeham’s thought in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is a chapter of medieval philosophy and theology that has yet to be written. There are citations of Wodeham in the works of Arnold of Sehnsen O.C., Peter Reicher/Pirchenward, John Capreolus, Gabriel Biel and John Mair (Major), although the evidence at this point has yet to be analyzed in detail (Courtenay 1978, 150–156). What is certain is that Wodeham remained important for philosophers and theologians in the long fifteenth century, and John Mair eventually, in the sixteenth century, published an edition of Oyta’s Abbreviato. This has been both positive and negative for Wodeham studies: positive, as Wodeham has remained available to those who do not have access to the manuscript tradition; and negative as it has meant that scholars often read and cite an inferior text that significantly abbreviates the original work. More attention should be given to the influence of Wodeham in this period. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | To the present day a significant part of Wodeham scholarship has been focused on his philosophy of mind and the sequence of events from sense impression to complex scientific judgment. Modern scholarship’s focus here is partly due to the fact that this was a clear area of interest for Wodeham, to which he devoted significant energy. But it is also a reflection of the availability of texts; the contracted nature of the Lectura secunda has focused the efforts of scholarship on book I and issues of cognition. In the following section, we will try to give an overview of the general consensus and debates of modern scholarship on the process of cognition as it is currently found in the Lectura secunda. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Wodeham turns first to the question of intuitive and abstractive cognition: two concepts developed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. But while they identify the parallel notions of intuitive and abstractive cognition proper to the sensitive and intellective souls respectively, Wodeham distinguishes himself from his predecessors by insisting that this parallel reduplication is redundant and violates the principle of parsimony. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Regarding intuitive cognition Wodeham begins by stating that: “every act of science naturally caused presupposes evidence of some proposition or of the thing signified through the proposition. Science (or a scientific act of assent) is caused by the mediation of this evidence” (LS I:9, ll. 44–46). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | The question is: what is the source of this evidence? The assumption is that an evident proposition arises from, or is formulated from, certain types of simple evident apprehensions, namely, intuitive apprehensions. Wodeham, then asks: does the intellect require an intuitive apprehension distinct from the act of sensation? | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | The definition of intuitive apprehension states that such an apprehension must be sufficient for the intellect to make a judgment about the existence of the object. Given this definition Wodeham wonders why a second act of intuitive apprehension, beyond the apprehension of sensation, is necessary in order for the intellect to make this judgment. The fact that the present object in question has been “sensed” ought to be sufficient for the intellect to feel confident that such an object exists. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Wodeham’s position is distinctive because he denies what was a traditional distinction for Scotus and Ockham, namely, a distinction between the sensitive and intellective soul (a real distinction in the case of Ockham and a formal distinction in the case of Scotus). For Wodeham, the assumption of two separate acts of intuition mandates that a human being have either two souls or that the human has one soul and also another vital power, separate from that soul. But, drawing on the authority of Augustine, Wodeham identifies the notion of two souls as a heresy to be avoided. Another option is to think that the sensitive soul is not really a soul at all, but rather a power distinct and separate from the one human soul. But this too is unacceptable. To be a true sensitive potency, Wodeham insists that it must be a living form (viva forma); if it were not, it would not be able to receive “living” or vital acts, among which apprehensive and appetitive acts are numbered. But if one admits that the sensitive power remains a “living form”, then two souls are once more introduced into the single human being. This, at least, is the case for Wodeham, who holds that to be a “soul” is to be a “living form” (LS I:11, ll. 44–55). Thus, Wodeham is adamant that there can only be one soul in the single human being, and the intuitive act of sensation alone is sufficient for the simple apprehension “presupposed” by an “evident assent” (LS I:9, ll. 44–48). However, by denying this distinction, Wodeham must be willing to say that, strictly speaking, the “intellect senses” because it is the same intellectual soul that both senses and thinks. This was an unsavory consequence for a thinker like Ockham, but one that Wodeham was fully willing to accept (Wood 1990, 21*; LS I:14–15, ll.1–49). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Despite disagreeing with Scotus and Ockham on the nature of the intellective and the sensitive soul, Wodeham affirms the formal definition of intuition originally given by Scotus. This definition is formulated in the third conclusion of the second question of the prologue to the Lectura Secunda: “the incomplex act, which is able to cause evident assent about a contingent truth of a present object, and which naturally requires the existence and presence of that object, is intuitive knowledge” (LS I, 37, ll. 69–72). The presence of the object is required and not just its existence because intuitive cognition requires the object to function as an efficient cause. The object, however, cannot function as an efficient cause unless it is also present to the knower (LS I:45–46, ll. 40–44). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | With this definition Wodeham is also rejecting an important and controversial part of Ockham’s definition of intuitive knowledge. For Ockham, not only was an intuitive knowledge able to produce an affirmative judgment of the existence of an extant object, but it was also able to affirm the non-existence of a non-extant object. By insisting on the criteria of a present object for any kind of intuitive knowledge, Wodeham denies that an intuition of a non-extant, non-present object is possible. Here Wodeham offers an illustrative example. He remarks that sometimes we can judge that something does not exist as a consequence of having a positive intuition. He gives the example of intuitively seeing the dead body of Socrates and knowing that Socrates does not exist. While acknowledging that such an example might be the inspiration behind Ockham’s controversial claim about an intuitive knowledge of non-existents, he points out that in this example, we do not have an intuitive knowledge of the same thing about which we are making a judgment. Rather we are making an inference from our intuitive knowledge of (and a judgment about) the existence of the dead body of Socrates (LS I:38–39, ll. 4–15). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | The difference, then, between intuitive knowledge and abstractive knowledge is again taken from Scotus. Here, in Wodeham’s sixth conclusion, of the second question, the difference is attributable, not to diverse objects of knowledge, but to the attitude that one can take towards that object with respect to existence (LS I:45, ll. 22–26). Unlike intuitive knowledge, abstractive knowledge does not require the existence or presence of the object to be known. However, in this case “what is known” is indifferent to the existence of that object and no judgment about that object’s existence can be made. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Wodeham’s decision to identify the difference between intuitive and abstractive knowledge with the presence or absence of an object, as Scotus and Ockham did, meant that he shared with these two thinkers a common opponent, namely Peter Aureoli. In response to Scotus’s definition of intuitive knowledge Aureoli identified several experiences wherein a person appears to have a sensitive intuition of a non-present object. Such experiences, according to Aureoli, were the consequence of lingering sensitive images that remain even after an object is no longer present. Such lingering images (sometimes called esse perspectivum or esse apparens) were used to explain all sorts of visual anomalies that do not correspond to reality. Such experiences were enough for Aureoli to define intuitive knowledge, not as the direct grasp of a present object, but as direct knowledge (as opposed to knowledge arrived at through a discursive reasoning process). Rega Wood explains: | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Abstract and intuitive cognition were distinguished by the manner in which their objects were presented. The objects of abstract cognition appeared in a quasi-imaginary mode (quasi modo imaginario et absente); intuitive cognition was direct rather than discursive, and it conveyed the impression that its objects existed and were actually present (Wood 1982, 216). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | In short, this meant that a direct grasp of a lingering appearance or esse apparens, even after the object was no longer present, could count as intuitive knowledge. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | For those who came after Aureoli, his definition and his notion of esse apparens raised a host of skeptical concerns. If sensation produces an esse apparens, the intellect must also produce a similar object, something Peter Aureoli called esse intentionale. And if intuitive knowledge is a direct knowledge of either the esse apparens or the esse intentionale, and not of the object itself, from where does the certainty come by which one can firmly and confidently state that “this thing exists”? Aureoli’s esse apparens opened up the possibility of an experience, wherein what appears to be present, might actually not be present or even in existence. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Ockham’s answer to Aureoli’s insistence on the need for an esse apparens to explain certain strange and misleading phenomena was to relocate the source of the error. The error does not come from the impression of some non-existent object. On the contrary, the naturally produced intuitive cognition does not lie. Instead, as Wood paraphrases Ockham, “error arises when the observer infers a proposition which does not follow formally from his perceptions” (Wood 1982, 224). Ockham calls the intuition of those appearances that cause apparitions “imperfect intuitive cognition”. In such cases, the immediate judgment of the intellect is not “that the object represented exists”, but “that the object was impressed” (and, it would seem, that this impression exists). The intellect errs, then, when it assents to what the “imperfect” intuition does not warrant. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | A central concern with Ockham’s account, raised by Walter Chatton and responded to by Wodeham, was the character of these apparition causing “after-images”. For Ockham, the after images were not caused by the object, but by a lingering impression distinct from the object or impression-causing species. For Chatton, it could not be overlooked that these after-images appeared as if they were the object, not as if they were some left-over impression caused by the object. Thus, he argued that the after-images are caused by the lingering of the representative species of the object, even after the object is no longer present. Chatton was therefore willing to admit that intuition of a non-present object was possible, as long as its representative species lingered. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | On this issue Wodeham takes sides with Ockham against Chatton. He expressly attacks Chatton’s description of the lingering species as having a likeness sufficient to cause the observer to believe in the existence of the original object. Wood writes of Wodeham’s position: | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | In after-images only the remains of the form or species caused by the first act of perception are seen. But the belief that the principal object is seen when after-images are present is not caused by the first vision or even by the remains of the species imprinted during vision. It is caused by strong imagination which leads the observer to judge falsely that what he sees in an after-image is the same as what he saw when the principal object was presented (Wood 1982, 228). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | In short, against Chatton, Wodeham defends an Ockham-like position, suggesting that the source of error is not the intuitive cognition of something not actually there, but the fact that the intellect chooses to make a judgment about the existence of something other than what was intuited. In many ways, the case is similar to that inference made about Socrates’ non-existence, when Socrates’ dead body is intuitively grasped. The inference made from one intuitive cognition is not always correct, even if the intuition itself remains reliable. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | What then does all this mean for the question of certitude and the possibility of building a genuine and trustworthy science based on these foundational impressions received from the natural world? Wodeham defended the reliability of our immediate simple apprehensions, but he also admitted the possibility that the imagination can severely distort these impressions such that we are inclined to assent to what the simple apprehension itself does not warrant. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Wodeham discusses the question of evidence for a proposition which can be built from these initial apprehensions in the sixth question of the prologue. He says that the idea of “complex evidence” can be understood in two ways: either as referring to the apprehension of an evident proposition itself or to the so-called “evident judgment” which has been caused by this evident proposition. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | What Wodeham means by an evident proposition is complicated and requires that we have a clear sense of the distinction between apprehension and judgment, which are for Wodeham two distinct and separate acts. An evident proposition for Wodeham can be of three kinds. The first and lowest degree of evidence is identified with the apprehension of the proposition (or what it signifies). Wodeham uses as his example the proposition, “a stick submerged in water is broken”. The apprehension of this state of affairs has all the trappings of an evident proposition, to such an extent that it inclines us to perform the separate act of producing an affirmative judgment. Nevertheless, this type of proposition is one that can still be false, despite the fact that it has all the appearance of truth. This lingering possibility, however, allows the intellect to suspend its judgment on the basis of other experiences or reasons. Distinctive of such propositions is their contingent nature. Though they can appear true, it remains possible that they are false. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | The second degree of certainty associated with evident propositions is exemplified by a proposition that not only appears certain and inclines the judgment to assent, but is also a proposition that cannot fail to signify correctly. According to Wodeham all propositions of this type are categorical and necessary. And, he distinguishes them from those contingent types of propositions which may have every appearance of being true but yet may turn out to be false (LS II:163, ll.17–20). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | Finally, Wodeham distinguishes this second type of evident proposition from a third type of proposition which is also categorical and necessary. This third type of proposition is the highest degree of evidence, because, not only can it not fail to appear and be true, but it also cannot be doubted. That is, it not only inclines to assent, but necessitates the intellect to assent. For Wodeham, this is distinct from the second and less-evident type of proposition. While this second type cannot fail to be true, it nevertheless can still be doubted owing to the fact that other conflicting propositions also appear to be true. The third type cannot be doubted in this way, no matter what other propositions appear to be true. If other evident propositions are genuinely in conflict with (i.e., are inconsistent with) the proposition in question, those propositions cannot be evident in the highest degree. But nor can these conflicting propositions be evident in the second highest degree since the second and third types are both supposed to be necessary. Therefore they cannot actually be in conflict, though it is still possible that they may appear to be in conflict. For Wodeham, propositions of the third and highest type can be known in themselves and are necessarily per se nota (LS I:164, 36). | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | If this is how we can understand an evident proposition, what then constitutes an evident judgment? Again, a judgment, for Wodeham, is sharply distinguished from the distinct act of apprehension or the mental proposition. It amounts to a mental nod of approval to the correspondence between the apprehended proposition and the reality signified. (See LS I, prol., d. 6, § 20, I:176–178.) Clearly, the first two types of propositions do not provide us with absolute certainty. These propositions have all the appearance of truth, but the judgment that follows from them cannot be called evident as long as doubt remains, even if the judgment in question is correct. | wodeham |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wodeham/ | When it comes then to a truly evident judgment, propositions which are per se nota can cause evident judgments because the truth of those propositions can in no way be doubted. However, besides propositions per se nota there are certain mechanisms through which originally dubitable propositions can come to be evident in the third degree, thereby necessitating assent and causing a truly evident judgment. | wodeham |