Recent publication

I have been very silent. I promise to have something to say here more frequently shortly.

In the meantime, here is a link to a paper I published recently, and which should be followed by two more related articles within the next half year.

My aim is to show

1. That Frege's doctrine is more homogenous in essence than the changes introduced in 1891/92 might suggest.

2. That most of the criticism young Wittgenstein puts forth against Frege and Russell in the Tractatus applies correctly to the latter but if at all, much less to the former (as I hope my current article exemplifies).

3. That the projection of current views of logic sits badly with Frege, as I hope to show in my next article, mainly by analysing Kripke's treatment of "indirect senses" in «Frege’s Theory of Sense and Reference: Some Exegetical Notes» Theoria 74: 181–218.

4. Finally, I want to show in the last article of the series that giving up "judgeable content" for "the horizontal" and sense/meaning, respectively (yes, I don´t agree with the usual attempts to translate Frege's "Bedeutung" either) is not a radical break from judgements to truth conditions, as Dummett and others suggested. It is, instead, a technical means that -contrary to appearance- does not imply a profound shift in doctrine. Once this is seen, it will also be able to notice that Frege is closer to the mature Wittgenstein than at first it would seem.

I don´t know yet about the language of the two articles I still mean to write. Could be I try German (which means it would have to be published in a bilingual form in Disputatio since only English, Spanish and Portuguese are currently published there without translation; or else I try to publish it somewhere else). I think Spanish should be used more often also when writing on topics related to Language Philosophy. But well, maybe for one of these three articles I'll try my hand on an English paper.

Here's the link:

https://disputatio.eu/vols/vol-6-no-7/

A brief observation about Wolfgang Künne's "Wittgenstein and Frege's Logical Investigations" in Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy. Essays for P. M. S. Hacker. Hans-Johann Glock & John Hyman ed.; Oxford 2009, p. 26-62.

In chapter 2 of his essay, Professor Künne describes one of Frege's objections to the first section of the Tractatus noticing that if things are parts of facts, then things also have to be parts of the world. He says:

"If objects are constituents (Bestandteile) of states of affairs and (obtaining) states of affairs are in turn constituents of facts, as we are told in the Tractatus (2, 2.01, 4.2211) then objects are bound to be constituents of facts, and every constituent of an object has to be a constituent of every fact about that object. ... And, as Frege noticed, it makes for a problem for Tractatus, 1.1, 'The world is the totality of facts, not of things': if facts are composed of things then the world cannot consist of facts without consisting of things."

Künne goes on to report a later reaction Wittgenstein's to this criticism that isn´t really a reply. But he concedes that a the time of Frege's writing the criticism seemed silly to him.

Künne's article is very valuable and I appreciate it highly. But concerning the present question, it seems to me that he is being uncharitable with Wittgenstein's position. I have not done any further reading, but a natural reaction seems to be simply that Wittgenstein does not deny that facts consist of objects (being linked together in states of affairs) but only that objects -without further ado- constitute the world. Objects alone don't constitute anything (see e.g. TLP 2.0122). The world is constituted by facts - which of course, in order to be facts, need that there are objects.

I can think of no argument to the contrary. It seems rather odd that Frege shouldn´t have seen that this was what Wittgenstein says. I also don´t understand why Professor Künne shouldn't admit that this is the natural answer to Frege's objection. Or did he think it too obvious? Then why would he say "Frege's argument... goes through"?

And it seems further odd that Wittgenstein, later on, should not have given exactly that reply to Frege´s criticism. It would seem to me, for that reason, that what Wittgenstein had to say later on struck a very different aspect of the question.

Exceptionally a call for papers, since I collaborate with the journal:

D I S P U T A T I O
Philosophical Research Bulletin
Boletín de Investigación Filosófica
Madrid, ISSN: 2254-0601

is preparing a
SPECIAL EDITION ABOUT WITTGENSTEIN AND BRANDOM

We believe that a formal and systematic effort to evaluate the work of Robert B. Brandom in the light of Wittgenstein’s philosophy has long been overdue and is urgent. We therefore have proposed to set up a special edition about the question as to whether the philosophy of rational pragmatism, proffered by Professor Brandom, may be considered as an amplification of the account Wittgenstein himself gives of language as a human praxis.

The special edition is scheduled for publication by the end of June 2018. We hope to define a list of contributors by the end of next September and shortly after that a table of contents along with extracts of the works included. Among the authors who have announced their intention to contribute to this volume, we are pleased to mention: Robert B. Brandom of the University of Pittsburgh, James Conant of the University of Chicago, Juliet Floyd of the University of Boston, Danielle Macbeth of the University Boston, María José Frápolli of the University of London, Luigi Perissinotto of the Università Ca’Foscari of Venetia, Paul Horwich of the University of New York and Simon Blackburn of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge.

Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin cordially invite philosophers interested in the topic to become part of the discussion we hope to set up, in order to analyse and eventually propose solutions for the incompatibilities and contradictions that certainly are present in the vision of philosophy we may obtain, respectively, from Wittgenstein and Brandom.

The manuscripts can be submitted in Spanish, English and Portuguese. In case you wish to submit a writing in German, we offer translation into Spanish and publication in bilingual form. Submissions will be subject to blind peer review and must meet the usual standards of quality for international Publications. If the idea appeals to you and you wish to participate in our special edition, we just need you to provide us with a title, an abstract​ (max. 200 words), ​and 3-5 ​key words. Deadline for the receipt of submissions: 30/09/2017.

For more information, please feel free to contact: Kurt Wischin, Universidad de Granada, Spain (kurt.wischin@gmail.com). Guest Editor.

https://disputatio.eu/news/cfp-es-wittgenstein-brandom/

https://disputatio.eu/news/cfp-wittgenstein-brandom/

Hope some of you find this interesting.

K.

Philosophical Investigation: eclectic, personal remarks

36. Und wir tun hier, was wir in tausend ähnlichen Fällen tun: Weil wir nicht eine körperliche Handlung angeben können, die wir das Zeigen auf die Form (im Gegensatz z. B. zur Farbe) nennen, so sagen wir, es entspreche diesen Worten eine geistige Tätigkeit.
     Wo unsere Sprache uns einen Körper vermuten lässt, und kein Körper ist, dort, möchten wir sagen, sei ein Geist.
      [Rechtschreibung leicht verändert]

36. And we do here what we do in a host of similar cases: because we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing to the shape (as opposed to the colour, for example), we say that a mental, spiritual activity corresponds to these words.
     Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit.
      [Translation by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, quoted from Wittgenstein, L.; Philosophical Investigations; The German text, with an English translation by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte; Revised 4th edition by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte; Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, 2009]

36. Y hacemos aquí lo que hacemos en miles de casos similares: Puesto que no podemos indicar una acción corporal que llamemos señalar la forma (en contraposición, por ejemplo, al color), decimos que corresponde a estas palabras una actividad espiritual.
     Donde nuestro lenguaje hace presumir un cuerpo y no hay un cuerpo, allí, quisiéramos decir, hay un espíritu.
   [Traducción de Alfonso García Suárez y Ulises Moulines]

(I will continue to comment in English, for convenience. I hope this isn't a problem)

I believe that it was this section that made me a wittgensteinian - probably for all the wrong reasons. If for the wrong reasons, then I must thank my luck.

I've been participating in philosophical small talk at a place called https://www.facebook.com/CafedieGalerie

To structure our talks a bit, we more or less tried to follow the book Think by Simon Blackburn. We didn't really advance a lot and didn't quite stick to the book.

While rereading it, I found a curious discussion of Saint Anselmo's and Descartes' Ontological Argument, in which Blackburn says that the real problem is the difficulty to compare the properties of imagined entities with real, not only imagined entities.

But the real difficulty for the argument is of course the one Kant says, followed up by Frege (and not, as Blackburn maintains, shown by quantification): What the fool gets by hearing about the most perfect being is the concept of such a being. But there is no way to conclude from there that there is an entity falling under such concept.

I can not imagine any way to get around this problem. So everything else strikes me only as a distraction from the main point. It´s hard to believe Blackburn shouldn't have seen that. What could be his point here?

New Start: What I'm up to.

I have not been able to make up my mind as to how to go on with this blog. I have not been able to keep up with a lot of things and I don´t foresee that this will change soon.

But I want to make a statement that I will be able to find later and from which I might be able to continue eventually. It goes something like this:

I am dedicated, as far as I am, to the exploration of Wittgenstein's philosophy and to the genesis of modern logic and semantics at the end of XIX and start of XX. All of this, because I live under the impression that it was there that we missed opportunities and because Wittgenstein is still the best guide to discover them - there are of course many other thinkers who see this similarly in one way or another, Hans Sluga, the "new wittgensteinians", "neofregeans", Jaakko Hintikka and many other bright thinkers close to his ideas, or Robert B. Brandom, to mention just a few.

So I hope, eventually my work through other means (my doctoral research at http://www.ugr.es/; my work as secretary of redaction at https://disputatio.eu/, occasional participation in congresses, conferences, workshops, talks, etc. mainly in Mexico) will spill over here and with time get feed back from my readers here.

So I do not promise any regularity, for the time being.

But I hope I will be able to offer some item of some interest on some occasions.

Your commentaries will always be welcome and appreciated.

Yours truly
K.

EN 006 Kripke's Frege: The "Frege Principle" (continuation)

The "Frege Principle" vs. principle of context

I promised myself that, if I can't publish every day a few lines, at least I will work every day a bit on my next message. But I can´t even keep that promise to myself. I apologize for being so unreliable...

Since it is so important, I will start out by stating the principle, that Kripke largely ignores, in Frege's own words. For translations to English I will largely rely on the translation by Black and Geach, in spite of my quarrels with some particular aspects of that translation, because most commentators use it, in particular in the present case Kripke. The passage I need now, however, has not been translated by Black and Geach, so I will use the translation by Michael Beaney. The passages appear all in Grundlagen der Arithmetik or The Foundations of Arithmetic from 1884:

In this investigation I have adhered to the following fundamental principles:

There must be a sharp separation of the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective;

The meaning of a word must be asked for in the context of a proposition, not in isolation;

 The distinction between concept and object must be kept in mind.

(the emphasis is mine).

The second principle will be shown to be at work in the way Frege pretends to explain how we are given numbers in spite of the fact that we can have no intuition of them.

We'll see that the next time - for now I just ran out of time.