Papers by Nuno Venturinha
4.1 Bolzano and Frege—The rejection of psychologism in logic—Can there be just “signs of signs”?—... more 4.1 Bolzano and Frege—The rejection of psychologism in logic—Can there be just “signs of signs”?—Frege’s notions of “sense”, “reference” and “representation”—Our images of things as psychological—Relativity of any representations: their problematic subjectivity. 4.2 The objectivity of Frege’s “thoughts”—Importance of context—Truth-values and verification as conditions of knowledge—True and false judgments. 4.3 Cases of “indirect reference”: truth and falsity of our beliefs—Frege on intersubjectivity—The social nature of language—The intrinsic non-truth of our thoughts—Inevitability of admitting a reality in itself that is independent from subjective perspectives—Frege’s “third realm”: objectivity as non-actual—The bankruptcy of correspondism—Popper, Dummett and Soames on the dangers of metaphysical realism or Platonism—Analytic and synthetic truths: the timelessness of both timeless and temporal thoughts—Pursuing solid epistemic standards not only for context-independent but also fo...
6.1 There is an apparent freedom of the will—Our actions presuppose free decisions—Is there a nat... more 6.1 There is an apparent freedom of the will—Our actions presuppose free decisions—Is there a natural necessity in the world?—Feldman’s rejection of a contextualist solution to the problem of free will: determinism and scepticism—Wright on even-handedness and factivity—Contextualism at work: Lewis’ infallibilist view and Williams’ concerns. 6.2 Aristotle’s structural account of the actualization of potentialities in contrast with Aquinas’ totalitarianism of the “divine intellect”—Is creativity at risk?—Our making in general as necessitated. 6.3 The question of possible worlds: Lewis’ modal realism—What does it mean for a possibility to be unactualized?—The lack of a hierarchy of importance among possibilia—Idea of interdependency of choices—Does it make sense to talk about alternatives to the actual world?—Infinite variations comprise both infinite actions and infinite reactions—Inoperability of a unique source of causation—The need for the right multiplicity, which nevertheless res...
When Wittgenstein died in 1951, he had published only one philosophical book, the Tractatus Logic... more When Wittgenstein died in 1951, he had published only one philosophical book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. However, he left behind a voluminous collection of papers, generally known as the Nachlass. According to his will, Rush Rhees, G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright were given ‘the copyright in all [these] unpublished writings and also the manuscripts and typescripts thereof to dispose of as they [could] think best’ (quoted in Nedo, 1993, p. 52).
In The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock writes that the ... more In The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock writes that the book ‘stems from the conviction that there is a third Wittgenstein, a Wittgenstein who went beyond what he had achieved in the Investigations’ (2004, p. 1). As stated in her introduction, the aim of the anthology is to ‘supersede the traditional bipartite division of Wittgenstein’s philosophy crowned by the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, and indicate not only a new phase in Wittgenstein’s thinking, but also that Wittgenstein was the author of three, not two, philosophical masterpieces’ (2004, p. 1). This alleged third philosophical masterpiece is On Certainty, something which, as Moyal-Sharrock stresses, was first recognized by Avrum Stroll.1 But she goes further taking ‘the third Wittgenstein corpus as essentially consisting of all of his writings from approximately 1946’, and ‘[t]his includes On Certainty, Remarks on Colour, Zettel, and all the writings on philosophical ps...
One of the chief difficulties in interpreting a text concerns the question of whether the sense o... more One of the chief difficulties in interpreting a text concerns the question of whether the sense of the author has actually been grasped. This is so with every kind of literary interpretation but assumes particular importance in philosophy. The idea of the hermeneutic circle, introduced by Schleiermacher and Dilthey and popularized by Heidegger and Gadamer, has challenged the possibility of arriving at the truth of the text, i.e. the author's view, since we cannot get rid of a whole set of presuppositions in our approach. But can we go beyond the simple projection of a coherent version? In my opinion, philology can help us in this regard, especially when we deal with a philosopher like Wittgenstein, who left us his intricate Nachlass. The Tractatus is the main work of Wittgenstein's early philosophy but its interpretation cannot be limited to the published text. The Tractarian corpus includes, among other materials, the following: (i) the Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung and its English translation revised by Wittgenstein; (ii) the Prototractatus; (iii) the Notebooks 1914-1916, including the "Notes on Logic" and the "Notes dictated to G. E. Moore in Norway"; (iv) the Geheime Tagebücher 1914-1916; (v) his correspondence, primarily with Russell and Ogden; and (vi) MSS 101-103, 104, 201a1 and 2, TSS 202-204 and MS 301 from the Nachlass. Some puzzling aspects of the Tractatus can be seen in an entirely new light when all these documents are taken into consideration. A philological analysis can thus contribute in a determinant way to the philosophical
2.1 The external and the internal world—There is more in the universe than objects and states of ... more 2.1 The external and the internal world—There is more in the universe than objects and states of consciousness—Animal and human certitudes—Sosa on “animal knowledge” and “reflective knowledge”—What is peculiar to man: cultural historicity as a meta-competence. 2.2 History as science versus history as worldview—Unreliability of our information sources—Distinction between strong and weak knowledge: how the immediacy or scientificity of strong knowledge contrasts with the testimonial character of weak knowledge—Differences to Malcolm’s view—Russell on the acquaintance with “historical knowledge” and the case of scientific testimony—Epistemological precision: Quine’s radical empiricism—Immediate, mediate and scientific knowledge as interconnected: their problematic heterogeneity—Personal perspectives and interpersonal praxis—The world primarily consists of states of affairs, which are independent of our subjectivity. 2.3 Relevance of the ontological intertwinedness suggested by the earl...
This paper focuses on Wittgenstein's criticism of Descartes and its significance for epis... more This paper focuses on Wittgenstein's criticism of Descartes and its significance for epistemology and the philosophy of mind. In the first part I claim that Descartes' aim is far from being simply one of reconciling the "ego" with the body as a problem of metaphysics. Their separation plays an essential role in his theological arguments. In the second part I examine Wittgenstein's perspective on the "I" in connection with his attempt at dissolving, as opposed to solving, certain traditional problems. I argue that any dissolution of the "I" can only be achieved if we understand what this comes to in the language games in which the word is used. This applies in particular to views according to which the "I" does not refer.
Interpreting Interreligious Relations with Wittgenstein: Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies
Essays on the philosophy of Wittgenstein
As is well known, Wittgenstein withdrew from philosophy after the completion of his Tractatus, on... more As is well known, Wittgenstein withdrew from philosophy after the completion of his Tractatus, only resuming work on it when he returned to Cambridge at the beginning of 1929. Then he began to write MS105, the first of a series of "volumes". From 2 to 15 February, following the method used in his 1914-17 notebooks (MSS101-103), he wrote down remarks dealing with philosophy on the right-hand pages and personal remarks on the left-hand ones, but the latter were no longer written in code. From 15 February onwards, however, he left the rest of the left-hand pages blank. These pages he later filled up when he had finished "Volume II", MS106, which shared the structure of MS105, and then started to write "Volume III", MS107, in the conventional way as he did with the remaining volumes. In these, the personal remarks appear interspersed, sometimes written in code and sometimes in normal script, but some of the coded remarks are also philosophical in nature. A nice example of this is provided by two remarks of 10 and 15 November 1929 in the third volume. The first sentence of the former was un-coded, but Wittgenstein crossed it out, rewriting it in code. However, he then added the second sentence in normal script again. The whole paragraph reads as follows: What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics. (MS107, 192; CV, 5e) The second remark, written without any code, says: You cannot lead people to the good; you can only lead them to some place or other; the good lies outside the space of facts. (MS107, 196; CV, 5e) These thoughts are not fortuitous; they are closely related to the preparation of Wittgenstein's famous "Lecture on Ethics", given to the Heretics
editor.net
Page 1. CRITICAL NOTICE Wittgenstein After His Nachlass Edited by Nuno Venturinha, Palgrave Macmi... more Page 1. CRITICAL NOTICE Wittgenstein After His Nachlass Edited by Nuno Venturinha, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2010, pp. 224, £ 50.00 ISBN: 978-0-230-55409-2 (hardback) Reviewed by Derek A. McDougall The ...
The Philosophical Quarterly, 2019
Logos & Episteme
This paper outlines the major topics addressed in my book Description of Situations: An Essay in ... more This paper outlines the major topics addressed in my book Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology (Springer, 2018), anticipates some possible misunderstandings and discusses issues that warrant further investigation.
Logos & Episteme
This text brings together replies to three commentaries on my Description of Situations: An Essay... more This text brings together replies to three commentaries on my Description of Situations: An Essay in Contextualist Epistemology (Springer, 2018) written by Modesto Gómez-Alonso, Anna Boncompagni and Marcin Lewiński.
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Papers by Nuno Venturinha