The New Wittgenstein (review

Philosophical Investigations, 2005

'With what account of meaning does Wittgenstein provide us?' The questioner here assumes that Wittgenstein does provide an account of meaning. But: What _grounds_ are there for assuming such? Does not Wittgenstein encourage us to question the assumptions underlying the questions we as philosophers are wont to ask? Should one not do so here? Should one not bring to consciousness this assumption, thus breaking its spell on one? For, once one articulates the hitherto-unconscious assumption that Wittgenstein must have an account of meaning one can acknowledge its status (as non-obligatory) and subject it to scrutiny. This, our paper does. We give reason for thinking that Wittgenstein offers no account of meaning, _at all_.

Philosophical Investigations, 2003

The past few years have seen a revival of interest in Kripke's controversial reading of Wittgenstein's remarks about rule-following. 1 Thus, on the one hand, George Wilson has tried to defend Kripke's claim that Wittgenstein can be understood as providing a sceptical solution to a sceptical problem about meaning -a solution which, though sceptical, can nonetheless, according to Wilson, yield a kind of semantic realism. 2 On the other hand, John McDowell and other 'new Wittgensteinians' have attempted to show that Wittgenstein intended to dissolve, rather than solve, all philosophical problems about meaning and so intended to leave no room for any philosophical account of meaning whatsoever. 3 It seems to me, however, that Wilson's sceptical solution is more scepticism than solution and that McDowell's quietism also leaves untouched a problem that really needs to be addressed. Moreover, I believe that Wittgenstein himself recognized this need. 4 The problem I have in mind concerns the normativity and objectivity of meaning; it is different from the rule-following paradox, though we are led into the paradox by certain ways of trying to solve it. Contra McDowell, I shall argue that dissolving the paradox leaves the problem, and hence the need for constructive philosophy, still standing. But I shall also argue, contra Wilson, that it is only by

Papers of the 16th International Wittgenstein Symposium, vol. I, 501-505, eds. Roberto Casati and Graham White., 1993

Since Saul Kripke’s paradigmatic reading of rule-following that described standards of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations as a radical aporia according to which any given sign is capable of limitless interpretations, Wittgenstein scholars continue to consider whether standards of meaning in the Investigations are incontrovertibly aporetic, or if there is a solution to the Wittgensteinian paradox that allows for objectivity, and the intriguing possibility of semantic realism. Claudine Verheggen is a proponent of this latter position, but I argue that her critical reading of the Investigations is exegetically unsound and does not lead us, as she hopes, to a description of meaning that is ‘robust and illuminating' (Verheggen 2003, 307). Moreover, my position is that to accept Wittgenstein’s aporia does not mean that we must commit to Kripke’s sceptical consequence, nor should we commit to Verheggen’s semantic realist reading. Rather, to accept the aporia is to accept the many different (sometimes contradictory) meaning descriptions, as these contradictory standards of meaning are crucial to Wittgenstein’s overall description of meaning in the Philosophical Investigations.

forthcoming in The Later Wittgenstein on …, 2009

Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 1990

In the first and shorter part of this essay I comment on Wittgenstein's general influence on the practice of philosophy since his time. In the second and much longer part I discuss aspects of his work which have had a more particular influence, chiefly on debates about meaning and mind. The aspects in question are Wittgenstein's views about rule-following and private language. This second part is more technical than the first.

Living Faith Sri Lanka National Seminary Journal , 2019

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) had two clearly distinctive phases in his philosophical career which could be considered not as disconnected from each other but rather as one development of a singular maturation of an idea which has contrasting opposites. His early years in Cambridge from 1910 to the publication of his first great work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921 could be considered as the first phase of his philosophy, for which he was inspired by the writings of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. The collective thought of these three thinkers would later form the core of the twentieth-century Analytic Philosophical movement in the Anglo-Saxon world.