Meeting 2024

1st Conference of the Young Network for Wittgensteinian Philosophy (16 + 17th-18th October 2024). 

The Young Network for Wittgensteinian Philosophy is comprised by a global community of young philosophers, students, and enthusiasts devoted to exploring and advancing the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein - one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. 

This conference is the first physical meeting of the Young Network for Wittgensteinian Philosophy and it will take place from the 17th to the 18th of October 2024 in the Universitat de les Illes Balears (Palma de Mallorca, Spain). In addition, we will have a one-day workshop (16th of October) dedicated to Hinge epistemology. This event will be in collaboration with the co-organizers of the New Waves in Hinge Epistemology (see here: https://www.hinge-epistemology.co.uk/). This collaborative workshop will be organized in a Hybrid format. 

The aim of the conference is to focus on Wittgenstein's thought-provoking ideas spanning language, logic, mind, mathematics, and culture to demonstrate its application to a variety of philosophical issues. Whether you're fascinated by his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the Philosophical Investigations, or his significant contributions to the philosophy of mind and language, this conference provides an enriching environment to further analyze into these complex explorations. Together, we can push the boundaries of understanding and illuminate the complexities of our shared human experience through the lens of Wittgenstein's enduring wisdom. 

Speaker

Keynotes

• Prof. Dr. Sorin Bangu (University of Bergen) 

• Prof. Dr. Benjamin De Mesel (KU Leuven)

Contributed Talks by

• Lieke Asma (Munich School of Philosophy)

• Joel Bogestad (Göteborgs Universitet)

• Stefan Brandt (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg)

• Gabriel-Nicolás Cruz (University of Salamanca)

• Marcello Di Massa (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)

• Yufeng Fei (Central European University)

• Matej Kapus (University of Ljubljana)

• Federica Melis (University of Bologna)

• Alice Morelli (Ca' Foscari University, Venice)

• Danka Radjenović (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau)

• Andrea Randisi (University of Milan)

• Guido Tana (University School of Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia)

• Swithin Thomas (Central European University)

• Kwing Yui Wong (Soochow University, Taiwan)

Organized by

Jordi Fairhurst (UIB), José Antonio Pérez-Escobar (UNED), and Deniz Sarikaya (Vrije Universiteit Brussels & Universität zu Lübeck) 

Titles and Abstracts

"Defending First-Person Authority over Actions and Reasons" by Lieke Asma (Munich School of Philosophy)

Wittgenstein’s account of reason explanation has inspired many philosophers, mainly those defending anti-causalism (e.g., D’Oro, 2012; Tanney, 2009), according to which action explanation is not about investigating its cause, but understanding the action in its wider context (e.g., Wittgenstein, 1981, §587). It involves providing further, non-puzzling, descriptions of what the agent does (see Cioffi, 2009). Wittgenstein (2009, §628, §631) also maintains that agents have first-person authority when it comes to their actions and reasons: we should presume that the agent is right when they cite reasons for their action. Interestingly, many anti-causalists tend to reject or fail to account for this aspect of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. In their view, others may be in a better position to interpret the action than the agent (e.g., D’Oro, 2012; Tanney, 2009). Likewise, Queloz (2017) has argued that Wittgenstein should be seen as an anti-psychologist, but fails to account for first-person authority, and, I maintain, cannot account for it.

In this paper, I aim to account for first-person authority within Wittgensteinian philosophy of action, in which the normative character of acting for reasons plays a crucial role. I start by setting out Anscombe’s (1963) account of intentional actions, which is inspired by Wittgenstein, and argues that actions are means-end structures: when we act, we do one thing in order to do something else. In such a picture, our ends, or actions at the highest level of description, are the reasons for which we act. Moreover, actions are caused by practical knowledge of the action, which secures the agent’s first-person authority. And even though intentional actions can be placed in a larger motivational background (see D’Oro, 2012; Tanney, 2009), for it to have anything to do with reasons and action, the agent has to be able to recognize what could be worthwhile about acting as such.

I also provide a case in which first-person authority breaks down, namely when the description of the action depends on the fact the agent responds to, and the agent does not recognize responding to this fact. An example is discrimination, when an agent unintentionally considers social facts like gender or ethnicity even when they are irrelevant (see Asma 2023). Such a case shows that, unsurprisingly, first-person authority breaks down when the means-end structure breaks down. Making sense of this, however, still involves taking seriously the agent’s first-person authority regarding what they intended to do.

References:
Anscombe, G. E. M. (1963). Intention (second edition). Blackwell.
Asma, L. J. F. (2023). Implicit bias as unintentional discrimination. Synthese, 202(5), 129.
Cioffi, F. (2009). Making the unconscious conscious: Wittgenstein versus Freud. Philosophia, 37(4), 565-588.
D'Oro, G. (2012). Reasons and causes: The philosophical battle and the meta-philosophical war. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 90(2), 207-221.
Queloz, M. (2017). Two orders of things: Wittgenstein on reasons and causes. Philosophy, 92(3), 369-397.
Tanney, J. (2009). Reasons as non-causal, context-placing explanations. In New Essays on the Explanation of Action (pp. 94-111). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Wittgenstein, L. (1981). Zettel. Blackwell.
Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophical Investigations. Wiley-Blackwell.

"Liberal Arts through the Lens of Wittgenstein" by Joel Bogestad (Göteborgs Universitet)

In my thesis, I explore a particular conception of the education subject called Liberal arts through the lens of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. My key emphasis lies in Wittgenstein’s ideas of language games and family resemblance. I conceive The latter concept as a basis for understanding the meaning of all the practices we call language. What sparked my interest in this was the thought-provoking mention of Wittgenstein and of family resemblance specifically given by Jeffrey Scheuer in his argument that critical thinking plays a key part in Liberal arts today. He argues too that this gives reason to maintain Liberal arts education today.

Liberal arts is a term that can be given a diverse set of meanings. The one I use here is restricted to the account of Scheuer, who represents a perspective in which Liberal arts mainly refers to the structure and organization of American Liberal arts colleges. I explore the possibility of comprehending the form of education which is often associated with virtues labeled as for instance the ability to think critically, being an insightful agent in society and when dealing with knowledge, and similar ideals. I mean to contribute through this text to a discussion on eventual ties between ideas about the nature of language and ideas about the nature of knowledge. Here, I use Wittgenstein’s view on the former and this example of Liberal arts on the latter. Meaning, in practice, that I explore the possibility of comprehending the basis of this Liberal arts education as involved essentially with language. And the description then reached regarding such a basis is given through Wittgenstein’s concepts.

This exploration results in a description that echoes the breadth of the understanding of language in Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Any essential definition of the Liberal arts, through this perspective, Is impossible in the same way that Wittgenstein holds that essential descriptions of language itself are impossible. Being a family resemblance word, like any other word, Liberal arts serves to direct our attention towards a specific direction given what we take the family of Liberal arts to be. The conclusion reached, in other words, is that this type of education can be conceived of as involved with the explicit addressing of the facts of language use as they are understood through Wittgenstein. This is illustrated by Scheuer’s diverse terms such as critical thinking, navigational skills, and transcended perspective: The emphasis on all of them can be boiled down to mere acknowledgment of the consequences of Wittgenstein’s perspective of language: Language is open and flexible, making it sometimes hard to catch. That appears to be a matter shared by this education and this philosophy.

“Know-How and Hinge Propositions” by Stefan Brandt (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) 

Ryle (1946) identifies two ways in which knowledge-that ‘presupposes’ knowledge-how (15-16). First, acquiring knowledge-that often requires knowledge-how. A scientist, for instance, may need to know how to conduct experiments in order to make her discoveries. Second, grasping content of a piece of knowledge-that requires knowledge-how. I can only be said to know a certain truth, if I can draw inferences from it and apply it in a variety of circumstances; and this, according to Ryle, is a kind of know-how.

The first kind of presupposition is platitudinous. Obviously, we need to know how to acquire information in order to acquire it. The second kind of presupposition is, I take it, also accepted by Wittgenstein, when he famously claims, in the course of his ‘rule-following’ discussion, there has to be ‘a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation’ but which is shown in its application (cf. PI §201). While an interpretation may be a kind of knowledge-that, the other way of grasping a rule, Wittgenstein deems necessary, seems to be the kind of know-how Ryle has in mind. It is presupposed by the ability to give an interpretation and seems to be a kind of practical ability to apply a rule.

I want to argue that in On Certainty Wittgenstein identifies a third way in which knowledge-that presupposes knowledge-how.

He, famously, argues that the acquisition of factual knowledge requires accepting certain ‘hinge propositions’ as beyond doubt. Many interpreters have argued that acceptance of these ‘hinges’ is somehow a non‐epistemic, non‐propositional, purely practical matter (see, for example, Moyal-Sharrock 2017). I’ll try to criticize these interpretations from a systematic and a scholarly perspective. Our acceptance of hinges is not fundamentally different from our acceptance of any other kind of proposition. Hinges can figure in reasoning, they can be believed, and they can be expressed in language.

Still, the claim that there is something non-propositional at the basis of our epistemic language-games is correct. It is just not our acceptance of hinges itself, but rather our ability to identify, in a given context, which propositions are hinges (see e. g. OC §§25-28, 43-44). Schroeder (2022) characterizes this ability as a shared tendency to take certain propositions for granted. I’ll argue that while this claim is almost correct, it is preferable to conceive of our ability to identify hinges as a kind of know-how. This shows, I’ll contend, that there is a third way in which knowledge-that presupposes know-how. Recognizing this third way will enrich our understanding of the role of know-how in epistemology more generally.

Literature:
Moyal-Sharrock, D. (2017). Wittgenstein on Knowledge and Certainty. In A Companion to Wittgenstein edited by H.-J. Glock and J. Hyman. Oxford: Wiley.
Ryle, G. (1946). Knowing how and knowing that. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 46, 1–16.
Schroeder, S. (2022). Farewell to Hinge Propositions. In Wittgenstein and Beyond. Essays in Honor of Hans-Johann Glock edited by  Pfisterer, Rathgeb and Schmidt. Oxford Routledge.
Wittgenstein, L. (1969). On Certainty. Oxford: Blackwell.

“Having games in view” by Gabriel-Nicolás Cruz (University of Salamanca)

There is a considerable consensus around the fact that perception is an active phenomenon. The idea is that the agent needs to actively engage with its environment in order to perceive. However, which abilities play a role in such engagement is still in dispute. One interesting debate concerns whether human agents bring forth conceptual abilities to perceive. If the answer is affirmative, perceptual experience would have a normative constraint inherited from the conceptual background brought forth. Thus, it could be argued that it is directly available for propositional articulation and rational justification. John McDowell has developed a perceptual conceptualism that takes this stand. His claim is that perceptual experience has a rational constraint because it is conceptual all the way down to basic impressions. Hence, perception is taken as a part of rational thinking because it is normative in the sense of being propositionally justifiable within what Sellars’ called the logical space of reasons. However, this Sellarsian fashion of McDowell’s approach is not easily integrated with embodied and situated approaches to cognition. The reason behind this seems to be that such approaches (e.g. Enactivism, Ecological Psychology, Phenomenology, etc.) focus on situated body-environment dynamics as an adaptive behavior from which perception emerges, and the logical space of reasons strikes authors on this line not as dynamic and situated but as rigid and abstractly detached –for instance, think about the McDowell-Dreyfus debate.

I believe that it might be fruitful to work out a more situated and dynamic account of the role that concepts play in perception so that embodied and situated cognition can integrate some of the benefits of conceptualism. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to outline the basic elements of a Wittgenstenean perceptual conceptualism that goes in line with embodied and situated cognition. Firstly, I show that the Tractatus (e.g. 5.621; 5.63; 5.361), the Philosophical Investigations (e.g. 18; 19; 25), and the Philosophy of Psychology (e.g. 4; 11; 14), contain several indications that Wittgenstein approaches cognition in embodied and situated terms. Secondly, I revisit Wittgenstein’s take on the perception of aspects (i.e. seeing something as something) as a phenomenon shaped by situated social behavior. Thirdly, I elaborate on this social shaping of perception to argue that we are able to apprehend it conceptually thanks to the normativity of the social practices in which we participate as discursive animals. Hence, the conceptual features found in perception are not brough forth from abstract inferential webs but from forms of life. Consequently, this leads me to conclude by suggesting that the logical space of reasons can be replaced by Wittgenstenean language games as the normative background of perception. Such games are normative in a broader sense that includes not only propositional justification but all the activities in which one can be mistaken. Hence, my final claim is that this allows for a dynamic and situated account of the normative constraints of perception compatible with current approaches to embodied and situated cognition. I would like to call such account: Having games in view.

“Literary Language as Nonsense. A Wittgensteinian Perspective” by Marcello Di Massa (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)

The idea I would like to explore concerns the connection between literary practice and nonsense, investigated through a Wittgensteinian perspective. In particular, the model of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and its notion of nonsense (Unsinn), together with its modernist significance, serves as an important starting point for articulating the possible conceptions of this relationship, depending on the different reading possibilities.

The standard perspective can be termed the “ineffabilist” interpretation, where nonsense is not merely an error but a necessary byproduct of the attempt to speak about what lies beyond the limits of language. According to this view, the Tractatus itself is an exercise in using language to show what cannot be said, ultimately leading to a recognition of the limits of expression. Consequently, if a certain literary practice wants to express high values, the truths about life, the world and what most matters to us cannot be articulated but only shown through the breakdown of conventional language. In this way, literary “illuminating” nonsense shows the ethical realm of life. According to another possibility, the propositions of the Tractatus function somewhat like the grammatical propositions or rules of the later Wittgenstein, because they display or exhibit the conceptual grammar of language. Similarly, literary language creatively or critically displays the criteria governing the grammar of language, and is somehow nonsensical insofar as it is not, strictly speaking, “working” language.

In comparison with the “ineffabilist” approach and the “grammatical” one, I recommend following the insights of the resolute program, which has had great influence in the critical debate on Wittgenstein, and I examine its potential applications to the aesthetic and literary fields. The result is the delineation of a sort of literary paradigm of the extensive use of nonsense, which comes to play a strategic and dialectical function. This idea can be tested, for instance, through the reading of two great writers of the twentieth century: Franz Kafka and Thomas Bernhard. Reading their works with the austere conception of nonsense in mind reveals the pervasive presence of precise dynamics of illusion followed by the delusion of sense, making it misleading to consider their pages as the meaningful communication of something. More precisely, through this perspective, it is realized that these texts deal with a staging of illusions and inclinations that culminate in nonsense, prompting the reader to engage in a task of conscious recognition and practical response. As with the Tractatus, the ethical sense of the work does not lie in what is said or written on the pages, but in the ability to adopt a conscious attitude towards nonsense, by abandoning deceptive pretensions concerning the very idea of the limits of language.

“Wittgenstein and Formalism in Music” by Yufeng Fei (Central European University)

"Time and again Wittgenstein alludes to analogies between language and music in his later works (see, e.g. BB 166-7, 178; PI §531ff; RPP I §546, §660, §888; RPP II §466; Z 160ff). These remarks, however, are scattered and fragmental. It is difficult, for one, to understand what points Wittgenstein was trying to make about language by assimilating it with music; for another, to see what insight we gain about music by comparing it with language. Furthermore, any attempt to draw substantial Wittgensteinian lessons about the aesthetics of music is frustrated by his lack of systematic treatment on the subject, and the suspicion that the fact that it is discussed at all is due to heuristic considerations, to allay other concerns.

Nonetheless, despite the apparent difficulties, Wittgenstein’s discussion of this subject is valuable, in my view. I would like to show, in this work, that Wittgenstein’s comparisons between language and music affects positively the debate (Zangwill, 2004) between the “formalists” and the “emotionalists” in the aesthetics of music. Before approaching this, I first draw some general morals from Wittgenstein’s sporadic remarks on music, language and psychology, guided by analyses of Wittgenstein’s discussions on this topic by two interpreters (Schulte, 1993; Hanfling, 2004): The understanding of music manifests in one’s expressions of it, some such expressions are natural and instinctive — in the same way that certain emotions are characterised by their behavioural manifestations, in the same way that our more primitive language games have their roots in our reactionary and instinctive behaviours, although none of these analogies is to be applied pervasively, none of the behavioural criteria being indefeasible. In return, the appropriateness of one’s expression upon hearing music is a criterion of evaluating his understanding of it.

There is a debate on whether Wittgenstein was a formalist about music (Appelqvist, 2019; Szabados, 2006). A formalist holds that “instrumental music is valuable for its formal properties, rather than for any content it may disclose, or feeling it may arouse” (Ravasio, 2021). Naturally, contemporary formalists select Hanslick as their champion (ibid.; see also Zangwill, 2004), who claims (1854 [2018], p. 64): “The most important factor which accompanies the comprehending of a musical work and makes it enjoyable… is the mental satisfaction which the listener finds in continuously following and anticipating the composer’s designs…” But if Schulte (1993, pp. 42–43) is right, Wittgenstein’s assimilation between language and music goes deeper than the mere appearance that each operates in accord with their own respective rules — as those who see him as a formalist suppose. Instead, the manifestations of the understanding of each — gestures, expressions — assimilate. These are natural, instinctive reactions, where expressions of and understanding music and emotion converge. Wittgenstein, then, would not have agreed with an extreme formalist’s view, that “music, in itself, has nothing to do with emotion” (Zangwill, 2004). 

“The Walls of Language Critique” by Matej Kapus (University of Ljubljana)

"“We are not analyzing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word.” (Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations, §383)

Wittgenstein makes an important distinction between fields within which philosophy can operate, in fact, he is quite clear about which field philosophy should and even is able to operate in (if there were a core to his philosophy, likely this would be it.) Yet the different aspects in which this manifests in his late philosophy can be difficult to communicate clearly. In my attempt to clarify what engaging in philosophy means for Wittgenstein, I will take a brief look at the history and contextual relevance of two figures related to him for surprisingly similar reasons - those of the idea of dissolution of a question. Heinrich Hertz is often quoted by Wittgenstein on the idea of removing contradictions, leading to an abandonment of illegitimate questions. He is sometimes taken as the inspiration for Wittgenstein’s therapeutic approach to philosophy, although the validity of this is disputed. Fritz Mauthner is more generally known through Wittgenstein’s rejection of his work. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein claims that all philosophy is critique of language and specifies that, although this is the case, not in Mauthner’s sense. Curiously, a lot of Mauthner’s own work resembles some of Wittgenstein’s later ideas, if only outwardly. The specific resemblance that interests us, however, is that of Mauthner’s own ideas about the dissolution or displacement of illegitimate questions. We will see that both Hertz and Mauthner fail for similar reasons. Both merely replace one set of questions with another. That said, what is it that allowed Wittgenstein to succeed where others had failed? Hacker notes in a commentary on the above passage: “The essence of thought is not to be found by analysis of the phenomena of thinking, but by clarification of the use of the words ‘think’ and ‘thought’.” (Hacker Wittgenstein, Meaning and Mind Part II, 233) Dissolution of a question cannot occur within our treatment of the phenomena. Merely replacing one analysis with another will inevitably land us in the same place we had started from. True dissolution of a question can only be done through a clarification of the use of words, a true language critique. I will end the talk with a discussion on the implications of these two facts. Must every question be dissolved? Is our treatment of phenomena simply doomed forever due to an inevitable need for critique? Adolf Loos once said to Wittgenstein “you are me!” - in an ideal sense, he was, in philosophy, what Loos was in architecture. Adolf Loos, the plumber, returned to the clean, pure and practical form of architecture that recognizes adornments as having no use. Wittgenstein removed the adornments from the walls of language critique, but the meaning of the walls is double. They are at the same time walls, stripped of all adornment, but they are also walls, which prohibit us, philosophers, from ever entering the garden of phenomena again.

“Tractatus' atomism and his Platonic Counterface” by Federica Melis (University of Bologna) 

In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein reflects on two passages from Plato's Theaetetus. The first of these is found in §46, here he discusses the well-known problem of simple elements, or objects, by recalling his own use of this concept in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP). From this starting point, I seek to develop two lines of inquiry: first, how the Theaetetus represents an exemplification to the theory of objects in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The type of theory that Wittgenstein draws from Theaetetus 201d8-202c5 is the theory of simple elements, or objects, which serves as the metaphysical foundation for the theory of propositions as pictures in the Tractatus, specifically in propositions 1-2.011. According to the metaphysics of the TLP, the world consists of facts, or existing states of affairs, which are composed of configurations of objects. These objects, in turn, constitute the substance of the world. The objects of the TLP are metaphysically irreducible entities and correspond to the elements of the pictures we form of facts (2.1-2.131). Since a proposition is nothing other than the perceptible form of thought, which itself is the logical image of facts, the Theaetetus serves as an example of a flawed philosophical conception, the same one that Wittgenstein ironically assumes in §48. In this section, with the well-known example of the colored square, he imagines a language game in which the world is composed of elementary objects, which can be named but not described, and where sentences are essentially complexes of names. Thus, the model from the Theaetetus—though not Platonic in nature—is compared to the theory of objects in the Tractatus. Secondly, I would like to propose a Platonic model that seems to reflect another aspect of the theory of propositions found in the Tractatus: the concept of the logical form of propositions. For Wittgenstein, what reality and propositions share is their logical form (2.18), which is the precondition that allows a picture, if it is a logical picture, to represent reality. My aim, then, is to draw a parallel with another Platonic model found in the Cratylus. In this dialogue, Plato establishes that names and the things they name must be connected in some way for language to be precise, accurate, and non-arbitrary. What enables linguistic representation, therefore, is not mere imitation, as is the case with artifacts, but the form of the name, that is the nominability (Cra. 387a ff.) of all things that exist. This form of the name appears to be comparable to Wittgenstein's logical form, as it is this form that enables dialectic, i.e. the division of elements of reality. From this perspective, the theory presented in the Cratylus can offer a model that aligns with Wittgenstein's theory of propositions and its articulations, including also the theory of simple objects, previously linked to Theaetetus.

“Is there a Wittgensteinian legacy on habits?” by Alice Morelli (Ca' Foscari University, Venice)

The talk focuses on the connection between Wittgenstein’s late philosophy and the philosophy of habit, both historical and contemporary. Although Wittgenstein does not explicitly develop a particular theory on habit and habituation, references to habit and custom abound in his writings already from the 1930s. The aim of the talk is to argue that it is possible to develop a fruitful engagement between Wittgenstein’s “post-tractarian” philosophy and contributions to the philosophy of habit so that we can speak of a Wittgensteinian legacy on the conceptualization of habit and custom. To do this, I will first discuss Wittgenstein’s use of the notions of habit and custom by looking at three philosophical contexts: 1. remarks on rule-following; 2. imaginary cases; 3. meta-philosophical remarks on philosophical problems. Secondly, I will develop a critical engagement between Wittgenstein’s conceptualization of habit and historical and contemporary conceptualizations of habit, such as Aristotle’s distinction between hexis and ethos, and John Dewey’s remarks on habit in his Human nature and conduct. In particular, I will discuss the Wittgensteinian treatment of habit by looking at (1) the problem of hypostatization – the idea that habits and customs are not matrices of action –, (2) the difference between habit and habituation, (3) the problem of the normativity of habits and (4) the role of custom in changing dysfunctional habits.

I will conclude that Wittgenstein’s reference to habit and custom is an important element of his anthropological or pragmatic turn and that it can provide useful and illuminating insights for current research on habits in the philosophy of mind and language.

“Beyond dichotomy: a New Perspective on Rule Following as a social practice” by Maria Pellegrino (Università degli Studi di Torino) 

The problem of following a rule is one of the most enigmatic topics in Wittgenstein's philosophy and in the philosophy of language. According to the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations, language is a rule-governed practice where rules function as frameworks guiding certain behaviors. The concept of rule can’t be split from two notions: on the one hand, that of ""mastering a technique""— that is, to show a certain skill in applying a given rule after some training—and on the other the notion of praxis, understood as the very act of applying the rule, which at the same time manifests the understanding of the rule itself. In particular, in §202, Wittgenstein presents rule-following as a praxis, from which derives the argument against the possibility of private following of rules. This contribution seeks to address the following question: what kind of praxis is rule-following? Would it be pleonastic to refer to social praxis, as Norman Malcolm suggests, or is the necessity of community for possessing rules not logically required?

Upon the publication of the Philosophical Investigations, many interpreters attributed to Wittgenstein a social view of language; however, Kripke’s interpretation, presented in his famous essay, sparked an intense debate on normativity and the importance of the community in the correct application of a rule. For Kripke, the social constraint is fundamental: an individual, taken in isolation, is not capable of following a rule because there is no fact—whether mental or behavioral—that could determine a consistent link between an individual’s past and present intentions regarding the application of a rule or, more generally, in attributing meaning to a particular linguistic expression.

Kripke offers a “skeptical solution”,  conceding one thing to the skeptic—that there is no objective foundation for an individual to justify their linguistic practices—but he also shows, at the same time, that such practices do not need the element the skeptic considers necessary. According to Kripke, the presence of a linguistic community is what allows overcoming this impasse: the community provides assertibility conditions according to which one is able to judge whether an individual is correctly following a rule or, in cases of deviation, to exclude them from the community itself.

The debate has stalled, exacerbating two, as I will argue, seemingly irreconcilable positions: the community view, which considers the role of the community essential, and the individual view, which emphasizes the regularity of certain behaviors as the foundational element of semantic normativity. I will argue that there is an interstice in the Philosophical Investigations for both views to coexist, and that this very dichotomy might petrify Wittgenstein's positions. Anyway, I won’t discard the idea of an essentially social view of language, which makes the perspective of the Investigations incompatible with those attempts—linked, for example, to the figure of Robinson Crusoe—to demonstrate the possibility of individuals in isolation since birth being able to follow a rule. This is to say, following a rule is a public, community, regular practice.

“How does language relate to life? Or why the references to “life” are irreplaceable” by Danka Radjenović (University of Kaiserslautern-Landau)

Throughout Wittgenstein’s work, especially in the later period (1930s onwards) one can find various references to “life”. They often occur in the context of phrases such as “way of living”, “human life”, “bustle of life”, yet even more often without any further specification. We learn how the use of our words “meshes with our life”, or how our concepts stand in the middle of our life.

In my contribution to the conference, I argue that the talk of “life” cannot be, in any of these contexts, replaced by any other term, that might be more in alignment with the specific (technical) vocabulary of philosophy. Thus, neither the terms practice, nor culture, nor society, seem to convey what Wittgenstein is aiming at, when he refers to “life”.

It has become common to describe Wittgenstein’s later philosophy as dealing with, or looking into the way in which language is connected to different (human) practices, to things that people do or ways that people act. My intention is not to dispute this. It rather consists in showing that speaking of practice does not do justice either to Wittgenstein’s own choice of terms, nor to the scope and complexity of everything that can be meant when we talk about life.

In order to maintain this claim, I will draw upon remarks from several different works, ranging from the Philosophical Grammar to On Certainty.

In the final part of my talk, I will try to reconstruct whether or not one of the most prominent concepts coined by the later Wittgenstein, that of a “form of life” can be said to account for all the previously mentioned scattered references to “life”.

"What is the Missing Criterion in the Private Language Argument?" by Andrea Randisi (University of Milan)

In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein presents the so-called “Private Language Argument” (PLA), in which he denies the possibility of a discourse about subjective experiences whose terms are arbitrarily stipulated via inner ostension by the subject having those experiences (PI §258) since no criterion for correct application of those words could be provided. In this talk, I will try to understand what the nature of such a missing criterion is, focusing on the critiques that the American philosopher Barry Stroud advances to those who interpret the lack of criterion as a consequence of the private nature of the inner experiences named. Among those interpreters, Paul Churchland (1984) argues that the qualitative - therefore, subjective - character of the experiences makes such a process impossible to check. Arbitrarily applying signs to inner qualia makes it impossible to give us any shareable criterion for the correct application of words. If qualia are accessible only through subjective experience, nothing makes us certain that, inside a community of speakers, everyone is applying the same words to the same qualia. David Pears (1988) argues that PLA demonstrates how the nature of inner objects precludes even a solitary speaker from having a criterion for their private attachments. Pears argues that the practice followed by the solitary speaker in naming public objects - sorting similarities between objects, crafting classes and kinds, assigning the name to the kinds he comes up with - cannot be replicated for inner objects since he does not have anything - shapes, colors, smells - that enables to sort his inner experiences. Therefore, if with public objects the kinds in which objects are sorted can enable us to check whether a word is correctly applied or not, this is not true for private objects. Having outlined this first line of interpretation, I will present Stroud’s two critiques. (1) Against the idea that one cannot test the correct application of terms to qualia, Stroud (1983) advances the possibility of extending the argument to all human sensations, which would lead to the impossibility of having any criteria of correct application even for public objects. (2) In direct response to Pears (Stroud, 2000), he argues that prescriptions like “when internally stimulated by an object categorized under class x, I pronounce x” do not offer us a real criterion of application since such a rule is not truly shareable with others, as an object can be classified in innumerable ways, therefore it is not clear to which class the supposed solitary speaker - and legislator - attaches his words. After having highlighted the argumentative nodes of Stroud’s counterarguments, I will argue that those criticisms go beyond the scope intended by the author, who focuses on reconnecting criteria to common and shared practices (PI §262). Rather, I will advance that such a position sheds light on how the missing criterion in PLA is not merely meant as a tool for validating what is being uttered, but as a «means of representation» (PI §50) inside language games.

“On Certainty and the Problem of Rational Authority” by Guido Tana (University School of Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia)

Wittgenstein’s later work On Certainty is where his engagement with traditional epistemological skepticism occurs. However, in other works of his later thought, Wittgenstein often engages with a different variety of skeptical threats, targeting the rationality of our norms and agency. This threat, most famously investigated under the guise of Kripke’s rule-following paradox, is often confronted in complete independence from the kind of perspective Wittgenstein offers in On Certainty. This presentation aims to show how Wittgenstein’s epistemological reflections manage to provide a more satisfactory resolution to this normative threat than previously assumed. This will be achieved by recovering some concepts in On Certainty that have been neglected so far in contemporary hinge epistemology and the rule-following debate. Doing so will also offer the opportunity of rectifying the longstanding habit in Wittgensteinian scholarship of treating his epistemological and his normative reflections isolated from one another.

The presentation has the following structure. The normative problem is introduced via reference to the Kantian variety of skepticism (Conant 2012, El Kassar 2016). This kind of skepticism is understood as concerning the validity of our doxastic practices and norms, raising the specter of a semantic and logical gap between what we say and do and how things are. Kantian skepticism concerns the rational authority of the norms and criteria we assume as correct. It is not preoccupied with whether we possess knowledge but how our norms exert rational constraints on us as epistemic agents. Most often, it is encountered as a problem of rational underdetermination.

The problem is then briefly investigated in terms of how it emerges from both the Philosophical Investigations and the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. The proposed dissolutions offered to this issue in Wittgensteinian scholarship—from quietism to conventionalism to semantic skepticism—have failed to command assent in the literature. On Certainty is then approached to understand how certain of its concepts and reflections can better address the problem of normative authority.

This will be achieved starting from the idea that one of the central themes in On Certainty focuses on the logical role of certain propositions. This role is their establishing normative boundaries for what can be rationally claimed about the world. However, something that is often glossed over in contemporary hinge epistemology is the question of what institutes the rational authority of the shared background that we feel compelled to judge in accordance with.

It will be argued how both the ‘animal’ reading of hinge propositions (Moyal-Sharrock 2003; Pritchard 2016), as well as the ‘framework’ reading (McGinn 1989; Williams 2004), do not manage to provide a satisfactory explanation of rational authority. Consequently, it will be proposed that a better treatment of this problem can be achieved by focusing on specific concepts that Wittgenstein focuses on in On Certainty and that have not received enough attention in the contemporary debate.

Starting from the concepts of Decision and intersubjective agreement, it will be shown how, for Wittgenstein, a crucial dimension of rational authority is cashed in in terms of trust and acknowledgment. What establishes the boundaries of rational authority are the shared attitudes of trusting certain norms and criteria as valid for our purposes and activities and the public recognition of their status within our shared practices.

The conclusion will argue that this framework improves upon treatments of the problem of rational authority that do not take On Certainty into account. In turn, it will show how this reassessment of On Certainty impacts the field of contemporary Hinge Epistemology.

“Does Conceivability Entail Possibility? A Wittgensteinian Response” by Swithin Thomas (Central European University)

I argue that the later Wittgenstein had a negative answer to the question of whether conceivability entails possibility, an issue in Wittgenstein studies that in my opinion merits more systematic treatment than has been given thus far: while Trächtler (2020) argues that Wittgenstein has a positive answer based on The Big Typescript, Hacker (2013, 2019) gives a negative answer although does not spell out its details or sufficiently justify the conclusion.

The question occurs in the Investigations in the form of whether imaginability ensures sense. If we grant that something is (logically) impossible when it lacks sense (or is a string of words without application), and that something’s being conceivable is ensured by its being imaginable, any counterexamples that involve imaginability without sense will be counterexamples to the thesis that conceivability entails possibility. Wittgenstein’s treatment of the subject concludes in PI §395-7 with the negative answer that imaginability is no guarantor of sense on the back of a series of putative counterexamples including of pots seeing and talking (§282), stoves feeling pain (§350-1) and stones being conscious (§390), through which the question is raised of whether such things make sense and are contingently false, the orthodox view in philosophy, or lack sense entirely.

I show that something imaginable can lack sense in three different ways: (i) when one imagines something contradictory, i.e., where the criteria for one aspect of the relevant scenario cuts against the criteria for another, irrespective of whether the contradiction is obvious or not; (ii) when one imagines something in relation to a concept that lacks clear application, and hence sense; and (iii) when one imagines a change in the general facts of nature that provide the scaffolding for our concepts (PI §142, PPF §366) such that judgements involving them no longer yield determinate truth-values. While the first and second are defensible types of counterexamples that apply to many philosophically interesting cases, the latter involves cases such as transmigration that at the very least (pace Hacker) can be given a natural sense.

I apply the preceding discussion to the case of philosophical zombies – an example central to the discussion of knowledge of modalities in contemporary philosophy of mind – and argue that, on Wittgenstein’s view, the notion of a philosophical zombie lacks sense. I defend this position against the objection that it entails an unwelcome form of verificationism, showing that Wittgenstein’s mature position does not assume verificationism and also explaining why it is often thought to. Finally, I show that the issue of conceivability entailing possibility is crucial to understanding Wittgenstein’s response to scepticism, thus taking a different direction to hinge epistemology: we should reject the widely accepted first premise of the radical sceptical paradox, namely that we do not know the denials of sceptical hypotheses.

“The Semantic Uniformity of “I Know”: What happens when the philosophical use of “I know” encounters hinge propositions?” by Kwing Yui Wong (Soochow University, Taiwan) 

This paper delves into the grammar of the phrase “I know”, especially focusing on its alleged philosophical use. According to the hinge-based interpretation from Annalisa Coliva (2022), Wittgenstein in On Certainty distinguishes three different uses of the phrase “I know”: the ordinary use, the grammatical use, and the philosophical use. The first two uses have appropriate senses, while the third use is considered nonsensical. The ordinary use of “I know” expresses an epistemic relation between the subject and a proposition. In contrast, the grammatical use does not express this epistemic relation; instead, it makes hinge propositions, namely the basic certainties, as its content. For example, the sentence “I know that the Earth has existed for a very long time” does not convey an epistemic relation, but rather denotes that this proposition is a basic certainty that we cannot doubt.

According to Coliva’s interpretation, Wittgenstein criticizes the philosophical use of “I know” for combining features from the earlier two uses. The philosophical use attempts to express the epistemic relation between the subject and a proposition while maintaining that the proposition in question is a basic certainty, which ultimately leads to a nonsensical conclusion. This paper defends the so-called philosophical use of “I know” as legitimate within epistemological discourse, also the phrase retains the same meaning across all contexts. I reject the notion that there are different uses of “I know”, upholding the semantic uniformity thesis. I make reference to Moore’s perspective on knowledge, whereby the indubitable fact that “The Earth has existed for a very long time” justifies the claim “I know that the Earth has existed for a very long time”. The sub-proposition in this claim is indubitable, meanwhile the knowledge claim also expresses an epistemic relation. In contrast, Wittgenstein argues that for the phrase “I know” to express this kind of epistemic relation, it must also be grammatically possible to say “I don’t know this proposition”. As seen in Moore’s knowledge claim, since the sub-proposition is basic certainty, we cannot meaningfully assert “I don’t know it”. Thus, this philosophical use appears to violate the grammatical requirements of the phrase “I know”.

However, in Moore’s view, the expression “I know” in claims like “I know that the Earth has existed for a very long time” is used in its ordinary sense, even in the unusual context of philosophical debate aimed at challenging skepticism and idealism. This paper contends that Moore’s use of “I know”, the alleged philosophical use, is coherent and essential for articulating our epistemic commitments and defending against skepticism. Engaging with this phrase enables us to navigate the complexities of knowledge, certainty, and the limits of our understanding effectively.