Philosophical PracticePhilosophical PracticeAnalysis and Application of Wittgensteins Philosophical Methods Articles
We Rarely Have Reasons
2008-02-20 20:00:00 When we engage in activities, under normal conditions, we do not think about foundations, or grounds, or rules. Said simply, reasons for anything that we do are not part of the activity (or thing) for which we give reasons. Reasons are only part of reflection about the activity. So, reasons only arise when there is some purpose to talk about the activity. This often happens in teaching or in learning. For example, when we engage in riding a bicycle, under normal conditions, we do not think about things like balance or pedaling or turning. In most cases, successful riding is non-reflective riding. But, we might start to think about what specific skills we can identify when someone asks us “how do you do that?” Or if we are racing and falling behind, we might wonder to ourselves, “how can I catch up?” But in most cases, at most times when on a bicycle, there is simply riding, and simple riding does not depend on anything that we might think about in the exotic ...
“On Certainty” Notes
2008-02-18 19:21:00 “The world” is no more a foundation for philosophy than “use” is a foundation for meaning. There are connections that are not foundational. Wittgenstein’s occasional insistence, in On Certainty, on “grounds” or “conditions” or “foundations” springs partly from his reliance on “language games” — from his reliance on his own technical terms (e.g., 341ff.) Wittgenstein’s is usually a method of demystification, but too often in the latest works, he re-mystifies — usually in a curmudgeonly way. Talk about “dependence” gets it wrong: i.e., we do not depend on “there is a hand”, etc…. Moore demystifies technical terms like “proof” and “certainty” and “knowledge”: he knocks them off of their philosophical pedestals and gives us a new way to understand the terms — though the “new way” is a mature return to the o... More About: Notes
Freewriting, 6
2008-02-11 21:40:00 A. Philosopher as Musician Musicians read sheet music, interpret it, arrange it, work out proper fingerings, make margin notes and so forth, so that when they perform the piece, they will convey their interpretation accurately and pleasingly. Philosophers read books and articles, they glean new ideas or new expressions of familiar ideas, they critically engage ... More About: Freewriting
Freewriting, 5
2008-02-06 20:22:00 We might say that Wittgenstein?s early philosophy, viz. the Tractatus, went astray when he attempted to say something about the world. His later insight was that ?The world is all that is the case? is not a starting point in philosophical investigation. It is the reason that there is philosophical investigation to begin ... More About: Freewriting
Freewriting, 4
2008-02-06 16:55:00 World-reading commits us to a metaphysical position. If a world-reading is analogous to a literary reading, where the text is the stuff to which we all have access, then for the analogy to work well, there should be stuff in the world to which we all have access. The nature of that stuff ... More About: Freewriting
Freewriting, 3
2008-01-31 20:30:00 Maybe the image is ?in the head?, but it certainly came from outside of the head in some significant sense. The sources of our imagery are external, if you will. We look at things in the world, we notice connections between object and activities and so forth, and those cognitive exercises are the ... More About: Freewriting
Freewriting, 2
2008-01-30 20:32:00 When Wittgenstein writes about ?meaning?, we should wonder whether he is only talking about the meaning of words. We should wonder what the ?unit of significance? might be ? might it also be the paragraph or the page or the book? Where lies the ?meaning? in which he?s interested. It would be odd to think ... More About: Freewriting
Freewriting, 1
2008-01-22 20:36:00 Meaning develops over time, drafts, versions. There is no fixed meaning to a word, much less a passage, even after you work and work and work to make it seem like there is a fixed meaning. Fixing a meaning, in language, in prose, in singleton usage, etc., takes more than you, the author, ... More About: Freewriting
Writing Philosophy
2007-12-12 19:11:00 A surprising number of philosophers are extraordinarily poor writers. Given that part of my project is to develop an innovative teaching technique, I have been reading style guides and texts about how to write. Such texts are enlightening in terms of their pedagogic approaches to the topic, but also they are healthy reminders ... More About: Philosophy , Writing
Tangled Meanings (clip)
2007-11-07 03:18:00 Click on the image to see full size. More About: Clip , Tangled , Meanings , Angle
Extractions
2007-11-06 02:35:00 It is probably striking that I rarely quote from any of Wittgenstein’s texts. I resist extracting quotes from his texts because it is my opinion that his remarks acquire much of their significance from their location in the text. To extract them from the text is, then, to dislodge them in such a way that ... More About: Extract
Technical Exegesis
2007-11-06 02:24:00 In philosophical exegesis, it is tempting to adopt the vocabulary of the work that is under investigation. For example, interpretation of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (or even ?Wittgensteinian? interpretations of other works) often rely heavily on his terminology: language-games, private language, form of life, aspect blindness, and so on. A difficulty arises when what ... More About: Technical , Exegesis , Technic
Method & Content
2007-11-06 02:21:00 (clip from a recent email) 1. The confusion about ?meaning? pivots around how some philosophers have tried to make the notion fundamental ? ?meaning? is supposed to be a defining or essential property of a word, or the object of the word, or the word’s sense. The problem is not that we have ... More About: Content , Method
What?s Left Is Technique
2007-11-05 20:10:00 Subtracting Scientific Thinking From Language Analysis In a discussion about a topic on NPR, Tanya and I were batting a few ideas back and forth. My analysis of what went wrong with the NPR topic, specifically with its treatment of language and meaning in what we might call a “scientific” way, was as follows: The advance ... More About: Technique , Left |
 |
|
 |
