This year will be on the first Thursday of the month. If not marked in red.
we will distribute the talks in late July

October 3, 2024 - Ryan Manhire (Åbo Akademi University) , Title: “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”: Wittgenstein’s Final Words from the Perspective of the World Sub Specie Aeterni

Abstract: On his death bed, shortly after being informed that his close friends would be by his side the following day, Ludwig Wittgenstein spoke his final words, “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”, before losing consciousness. This remark has perplexed many, including Norman Malcolm: the mismatch between a life that he is inclined to describe as “fiercely unhappy”, and an expression of that life as “wonderful”. In an effort to dissolve the puzzle, Ronald L. Hall considers the meaning of the words against the background of Wittgenstein’s remarks in both Culture and Value and Lecture on Ethics, as the expression of a man who had awoken to the wonder of the world. Beth Savickey challenges Hall’s reading, arguing that this makes the meaning of the words a philosophical abstraction, thus diminishing the importance Wittgenstein attached to the role of friendship throughout his life.

I will suggest that though both the notion of “wonder” as well as the significance of friendship are both important aspects of Wittgenstein’s final words, both Hall and Savickey go wrong in offering these aspects as an explanation in the service of overcoming the puzzle Malcolm’s reflection seems to point to. Drawing on Raimond Gaita’s claim that Wittgenstein’s final words ought to be heard as an expression of “gratitude for his life considered as a certain kind of whole”, I suggest that aspects of “wonder” and “friendship” come together in the final words in a way that dissolves the apparent puzzle if those words are understood as an expression of a perspective of the world sub specie aeterni.

November 7, 2024 - Frank Scheppers (Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Université Libre de Bruxelles), Title: Hocus pocus, slimy concepts and the illness of our times: Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics as ethics and cultural critique

Abstract: This talk is a report on ongoing research that should give rise to a book / doctoral thesis in the course of 2025. Starting point is an in-depth study of the overtly critical lines of thought in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mathematics, including the infamous ones directed at Cantor, diagonal methods, and set-theory in general and some of the so-called ‘notorious’ remarks on Gödel-related issues.

I argue that these critical lines of thought are a lot less marginal than the literature suggests and shed light on direct links between the apparently technical aspects of Wittgenstein’s work on mathematics and (1) his views on the aims and methods of philosophy (therapy, etc.) in general, (2) his anti-monist and anti-foundational stances in the context of the foundational issues in contemporary philosophy of mathematics that attracted him to philosophy in the first place, (3) pervasive concerns with issues of fakeness vs. authenticity that Wittgenstein shares in part with such contemporaries as Kraus, Weininger and Spengler (all of which he mentions as influences), as well as Heidegger, both at the existential level and as a matter of cultural critique.

December 5, 2024 - Alexander Porto (Duquesne University), Title: Naturalizing Negation: Responding to the Threefold Puzzle of Negation

Abstract: In The Threefold Puzzle of Negation and the Limits of Sense, Jean-Phillipe Narboux offers a picture of negation that is conceptually bound up with the limits of sense and intentionality. Narboux argues that in order to begin thinking about limit and thought’s answerability to reality, one must attend to a threefold structure of negation: a fold about intentionality; a fold about intelligibility; and a third fold about the apparent uni- and equivocality of negation. Throughout the essay, Narboux provides blueprints for addressing each aspect of the trilemma by emphasizing the two-way unity and distinction, borrowed from Wittgenstein, between the determination and employment of sense. Narboux explicitly sets out to show that the puzzle of negation is only a pseudo-puzzle and to show that one can begin to unfold the puzzle by transposing it into a sceptical tone. I suggest that this is mistaken. I will argue that Narboux’s sceptical treatment of the puzzle of negation stands in the way from a thoroughly ameliorative account of the trilemma. At best, to place the puzzle into the sceptical register allows us to see its complex form; at worst, it prevents us from saying anything about it. I will show that in order to work toward putting the puzzle to rest, we must put it into a naturalized register. The basic idea will be that we ought to see negation as natural to and necessary for thought, something that is bound up with every possible judgment one makes. It is at this point that we can begin to see how negation is bound up with limits of intelligibility and intentionality.

January 2, 2025 - Seeing through moral deep disagreements

Abstract: Recently philosophers have investigated whether there any argumentative strategies to rationally resolve deep disagreements (Feldman 2005; Lynch 2010; 2012; Pritchard 2022). Unfortunately, much of this research has neglected the emotive components that surface in deep disagreements concerning ethical matters, such as abortion or euthanasia. The aim of this paper is to exemplify how Wittgenstein’s later work can contribute to better understanding the emotive component of moral deep disagreements. 

First, it shows that moral deep disagreements can stem from conflicting ethical reactions (i.e., emotions, feelings, and attitudes) owing to different moral frameworks (Wittgenstein, Rhees & Citron 2015, 28-30; MWL, 325, 333-334, 351-352, 358; cf. LA, Part I §§5-7, §10). These deep disagreements occur when, initially, two individuals (or more) identify a case as being susceptible to moral evaluation. Subsequently, they engage in a activity that picks out the morally relevant features and aspects to judge the case (cf. Kuusela Forthcoming). Each of their ethical frameworks “shifts completely different images into the foreground, necessitates completely different images” (MT 15.3.[37]; 4.2.[37]), leading to different (and often incompatible) features being selected as morally relevant. Lastly, the selected features make disputants ethically react in incompatible ways, resulting in conflicting moral judgments that express different emotions, feelings, and attitudes towards the case under evaluation. Although said ethical reactions remain something essentially personal (PPO, 85; MWL, 351, 363; AWL, §36; cf. Mulhall 2002; Christensen 2011; Kuusela 2018), they are ultimately grounded in social patterns of action (AWL, §31–36; Glock 2015, 108; cf. LA, Part I §35; MWL, 321-322; PI, §19;). Living in accordance with an ethical framework involves adopting certain moral values, precepts, rules, and patterns of behavior (both linguistic and non-linguistic), which influence the ethical reactions and judgments one has towards things.

Second, it argues that Wittgenstein’s ‘descriptive method’ can be implemented in reason-giving practices to resolve these peculiar moral deep disagreements. Wittgenstein calls a ‘descriptive method’ a “method which tells you various things in right order = order which impresses you” (MWL, 331). By bringing to the fore aspects of a phenomenon we can cause a change in, say, the way one acts, feels, or thinks. These descriptions can be used in moral deep disagreements to enable a special kind of aspect-seeing that resolves the dispute. For example, a typical way to incorrectly judge a case is to be blind to those aspects relevant for morally judging it (cf. Kuusela Forthcoming). Here, descriptions can enable aspect-seeing by drawing other disputants’ attention to those features of the case that are constitutive of our moral evaluation and which they may have ignored. (LA, Part I §8, §23, §32, §34, MWL, 351; AWL, §§32-36; cf. Kuusela 2018). In turn, by bringing these features to the forefront and allowing disputants to see the same case in a different light, our hope is to cause on impression on them by making them ethically react in a specific way and, accordingly, change the way in which they morally judge the case (PPO, 85; AWL, §32; cf., §608-612; Christensen 2011).

February 6, 2025 - Foivos Syrigos (University of Athens), Title: Wittgenstein on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams 

Abstract: Wittgenstein’s comments on Freud’s work have been widely discussed. Scholars such as Bouveresse and Cioffi have explored Wittgenstein’s conception of the unconscious, while McGuinness examined their intellectual relationship, and Harcourt addressed Wittgenstein’s ties to psychoanalysis. Despite recent efforts to connect Wittgenstein’s work with psychology, little attention has been given to the subject that intrigued Wittgenstein most: dreams. His interest in hypnotic phenomena and dream interpretation significantly predates his engagement with Freud.

In this paper, I aim to analyze Wittgenstein’s engagement with dreams, particularly as reflected in his Conversations on Freud. I contend that a thorough examination of Wittgenstein’s remarks on Freud’s dream theory can yield valuable insights into the philosophical challenges posed by Freud’s psychoanalytic framework, as well as into Wittgenstein’s own philosophical perspectives. This analysis will address issues related to the philosophy of science—such as evidence, explanation, and justification—as well as key concerns in Wittgenstein’s work, including his theory of meaning as use.

March 6, 2025 - TBA

April 3, 2025 - TBA

May 1, 2025 - TBA

June 5, 2025 - TBA

July 3, 2025 - TBA

August 7, 2025 - TBA

September 4, 2025 - ! SUMMER BREAK !

This year will be on the first Wednesday of the month. If not marked in red.

October 4, 2023 - The goals of the society (no talk).

November 1, 2023 - Victoria Lavorerio (Universidad de la República, Uruguay), Title: "Wittgensteinian Pictures and Deep Disagreements" 

Abstract: In this presentation, I focus on the interplay between Wittgensteinian pictures and deep disagreements. A disagreement is deep when it is hard to resolve due to epistemically interesting reasons, and not because of cognitive errors or intellectual vices. They tend to be persistent, systematic, and lead to polarization and epistemic disdain. Although some theories have been put forward to explain what deep disagreements are and why they arise, I argue that these have addressed at most the epistemic, argumentative, and conceptual dimensions of the phenomenon. There is a further dimension of deep disagreement that calls for a different approach: a dimension of sense. In this context, I analyze the second Wittgenstein’s use of the term picture, Bild, offer an account of Wittgensteinian pictures, and explain why pictures can help us understand deep disagreements in a way no other approach can.

(!!This is a Thursday!!)
December 7, 2023 - Zoheir Bagheri Noaparast Katholische (Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), Title "Religion, Madness, and Certainty."
(!!This is a Thursday!!)

Abstract: In On Certainty, Wittgenstein discusses madness, among other topics. Unlike the commonly held view that madness opposes rationality, for Wittgenstein, madness is directly interconnected with certainties. Genuine doubt in certainties is impossible since we cannot find our footing when our certainties are doubted. However, in On Certainty, The mad person is depicted as genuinely doubting our certainties. On the other hand, we find out that some of our certainties are empirical in On Certainty. The scientific worldview informs some of our certainties in this age; for example, we believe that wafers do not turn into flesh and that inserting a cane in the sea will not cause departing of the sea.

Nevertheless, we know that some religious believers hold such views. Therefore, Religious beliefs are, at times, against our certainties. However, Wittgenstein does not announce religious beliefs as madness, no matter how outlandish they might be, including the belief that the earth came into existence with the birth of a king. In this paper, I intend to investigate how madness and religious beliefs are similar and different and how they relate to our certainties in On Certainty.

January 3, 2024 - Christian O. Scholz (Ruhr University Bochum) (special session celebrating the UNESCO-world logic day), Title: "Can aphantasics play the language game of visualization?"

Abstract: Recently there has been a lot of discussion about a group of people who report to have been born without the ability to visualize, a condition referred to as congenital aphantasia. However, despite reporting never to have had this ability, many congenital aphantasics also state to not have been aware of their condition for decades, thus leading to the question of how they could have remained unaware of lacking an ability often considered crucial for everyday cognition. In my talk, I refer to this question as the puzzle of aphantasia nescience and argue that it can be solved once we acknowledge that aphantasics, despite their inability to visualize, can successfully play the language game of visualization by simply acting as if they are visualizing. Furthermore, I propose that Wittgenstein’s late philosophy can help us understand why the cognitive abilities of aphantasics are often underestimated by visualizers, and why visualization is not as important as many may imagine.   

February 7, 2024 - Ásgeir Berg (University of Iceland), Title: Family-resemblance concepts and Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy 

Abstract: Wittgenstein’s discussion of "family-resemblance concepts" in the Philosophical Investigations is well known, as is his metaphilosophy, according to which philosophical questions are pseudo-problems, based on linguistic confusion. The answer to such confusion is meant to be a kind of therapy that aims to get rid of those confusions and thus the problem. The problems are meant to be dissolved, not solved. 

In this talk, I apply my reading of Wittgenstein as a radical conventionalist to his conception of family-resemblance, arguing that we can give a slightly different reading of those passages than usually is done, and subsequently apply that reading to Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy.

The benefit of this reading is that it can provide an explanation for why Wittgenstein adopts his metaphilosophical views that go beyond a mere emphasis and interest in language. 

March 6, 2024 - David Chandler (University College London), Title: Wittgenstein’s “falsche Methode”

Abstract: This paper considers two claims about the development of Wittgenstein’s philosophical methodology: first, that there is a consistency between the method that he used in the Brown Book and the ‘first part’ of the Urfassung (origin-manuscript) of the Philosophical Investigations; and second, that there is an inconsistency between the method which he used in said part and throughout his subsequent discussion of simplicity within the same manuscript. These claims were both made by Moore during a conversation that he had with Rhees in 1938 following the former’s meeting with Wittgenstein in the year prior; however, there is little to no explanation of these claims nor their validity. Therefore, I will attempt to fill this explanatory lacuna by submitting a likely candidate for the method that is used in the ’first part’ of the Urfassung. In doing so, we can establish a secure position from which we can further discuss the aforementioned claims.

April 3, 2024 - Paul Hasselkuss (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf), Title: Wittgenstein on Family Resemblance and Open Texture

A term t is said to exhibit family resemblance, if the objects for which t holds do not share a (relevant) property, but merely resemble one another in interconnected ways. The notion was famously introduced by Wittgenstein (PI §65-9; BB 17) to criticize essentialism about terms such as ‚game’ or ‚language’. In contrast, a term t is said to exhibit an open texture if it is possible that there is an object a such that nothing concerning the established use of t, and nothing concerning the nonlinguistic facts about the current state of affairs, determines whether t holds of a or not. The notion was first introduced by Waismann (1945) in criticism of naive verificationism but has recently received attention in other contexts, such as mathematical practice (Shapiro & Roberts 2021, Zayton 2022). 

What’s the relation between open texture and family resemblance? Early commentators of Wittgenstein already seem to indicate that terms exhibiting family resemblance also have an open texture (Bambrough 1960, Wennerberg 1967). More recently, Pelczar (2000) has argued that family resemblance is constituted, partly, by open texture. In the talk, I’ll discuss to what extent these claims are correct. I’ll argue that, while family resemblance concerns the structure of the things already subsumed under a term, open texture concerns whether the term may be applied to new things, not already falling under the term.

May 1, 2024 - Will Burdess (University of Manchester), Title: On the Attempted Determination of the Concept in the Later Wittgenstein. 

 The later Wittgenstein is usually presented as an anti-essentialist due to his rejection of definitions. That is, his rejection of the attempt to define a concept by reference to some singular feature, this constituting its ‘condition’ or ‘essence’. The first sections of the talk will be concerned to establish the sense in which Wittgenstein not only rejects attempts at definition, but rejects attempts to place various concepts under rigid conditions of application. The key contention here is that the mark of the concept in his later work is that it is non-determined; the standard of concept’s application is not fixed upon rails to infinity. The latter section of the talk will work with the idea that a concept’s application is built up around, and in this sense dependent upon, certain psychological and physical regularities. Specifically, it will attempt to expand on the sense in which we may have had concepts other than the ones we do have.

(!!This is a Thursday!!)
June 6, 2024 - Brice Bantegnie (UC Riverside/University of Southampton) Title: Themes from Wittgenstein

The goal of the talk is to provide a tentative articulation of different Wittgensteinian themes/concepts (family resemblance, following a rule and open texture.) I say "Wittgensteinian" as I will make no claim of interpretative accuracy.

(!!This is a Thursday!!)

July 3, 2024 - Diego Morales (Eindhoven University of Technology), Title: Wittgenstein on the Infelicity of the Question “Can Machines Think?” 

This presentation will be about the language that we employ when we talk about artificial intelligence (AI) and how Wittgenstein’s philosophy may provide valuable insights to understand its challenges. In particular, I am interested in addressing a concern related to the use of cognitive and psychological terms when describing the attributes and abilities of AI systems and AI-enabled agents. This worry may be stated as follows: Cognitive and psychological terms, that is, terms that denote cognitive processes and psychological states, have become part of the basic lexicon of the field of AI. As such, it is customary to say that some AI entities infer, understand, and learn; some are thought of as being capable of holding beliefs, acquiring knowledge and having hallucinations, and some as possessing attentive capacities, memory, and instantiating neural networks. However, more often than not, cognitive and psychological terms fail to accurately depict how AI entities actually are and what they can actually do. In fact, the worry goes, these terms contribute to the formation of a mirage: they support misrepresentations of properties and capabilities of AI, and they elicit misguided expectations about their performance. Despite this concern being recognized within the AI field, its underlying causes have received limited contemporary attention. In this talk, I aim to fill this gap by drawing on the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. His reflections on the semantics of psychological predicates and their use to describe machines provide interesting insights to frame the worry mentioned above, understand why it arises, and explain its persistence. The first part of the talk will introduce the main concern regarding the use of cognitive and psychological terms in contemporary AI. The second part will delve into Wittgenstein’s insights, offering an explanation of the issue based on his philosophy.

August 7, 2024 - Jasmin Trächter (TU Dortmund), Title: Wittgenstein and Feminist Conceptual Engineering – of Idling and Hot Running Wheels

Wittgenstein's descriptive philosophy seems to be irreconcilably opposed to the endeavours of ameliorative projects in conceptual engineering. In this talk, I will critically examine the relationship between Wittgenstein’s descriptive philosophy and some ameliorative projects in conceptual engineering from a Wittgensteinian and feminist perspective. I will first discuss some aspects of Wittgenstein’s metaphilosophy before taking a closer look at the aspirations behind some approaches to feminist conceptual engineering. I will conclude with a critical résumé on the role of philosophy in conceptual change.

September 4, 2024 -  ! SUMMER BREAK !