Publications of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society – New Series

The clean separation between manifold phenomena and a systematic order that prevails in them is a basic feature of the rational-scientific orientation system. The first authoritative formulation of this premise is found in Plato. His discussion of constitutive forms of world events has initiated a broad development in the history of philosophy, which is also effective today in the preference for reason-guided analyses of often confusing circumstances. The authors of this volume address the lasting relevance of this idea within two interrelated areas of research, namely Plato scholarship and contemporary Platonism. Of particular interest is the relationship between Plato and Wittgenstein. Following this overall idea, this volume is divided into three sections: Plato scholarship, Platonism, and Plato and Wittgenstein. As the contributions show, Platonism proves to be not only a purely historical-exegetical field of research but rather a fruitful stimulus for contemporary discussions on logical, linguistic, and social topics.

Contemporary deep-reaching changes – whether in financial or real economy, in Europe’s political conditions, in the context of scientific theories, in the field of global (environmental) security, or gender relations – are also a challenge to philosophy. The volume comprises cutting-edge scholarly articles from renowned philosophers with various geographical backgrounds and from different philosophical strands. Next to investigating general questions as to the relation of philosophy and critique (What is philosophical critique and which philosophical concepts of critique are of importance today? Where do we need it most? Where are its limits?), the articles focus on issues like theories of democracy and modes of election; the roles of emotions in the political realm; challenges from a widespread discontent in society to politics and science; changes to social identities and different theoretical approaches to social identity formation. The book is indispensable for all who are interested in what contemporary philosophy has to say on crucial issues of our time.

This volume presents different conceptions of logic and mathematics and discuss their philosophical foundations and consequences. This concerns first of all topics of Wittgenstein's ideas on logic and mathematics; questions about the structural complexity of propositions; the more recent debate about Neo-Logicism and Neo-Fregeanism; the comparison and translatability of different logics; the foundations of mathematics: intuitionism, mathematical realism, and formalism.

The contributing authors are Matthias Baaz, Francesco Berto, Jean-Yves Beziau, Elena Dragalina-Chernya, Günther Eder, Susan Edwards-McKie, Oliver Feldmann, Juliet Floyd, Norbert Gratzl, Richard Heinrich, Janusz Kaczmarek, Wolfgang Kienzler, Timm Lampert, Itala Maria Loffredo D'Ottaviano, Paolo Mancosu, Matthieu Marion, Felix Mühlhölzer, Charles Parsons, Edi Pavlovic, Christoph Pfisterer, Michael Potter, Richard Raatzsch, Esther Ramharter, Stefan Riegelnik, Gabriel Sandu, Georg Schiemer, Gerhard Schurz, Dana Scott, Stewart Shapiro, Karl Sigmund, William W. Tait, Mark van Atten, Maria van der Schaar, Vladimir Vasyukov, Jan von Plato, Jan Woleński and Richard Zach.

In this volume the philosophy of perception and observation is discussed by leading philosophers with implications in the philosophy of mind, in epistemology, and in philosophy of science. In the last years the philosophy of perception underwent substantial changes and new views appeared: the intentionality of perception has been contested by relational theories of perception (direct realism), a richer view of perceptual content has emerged, new theories of intentionality have been defended against naturalistic theories of representation (e. g. phenomenal intentionality). These theoretical changes reflect also new insights coming from psychological theories of perception. These changes have substantial consequences for the epistemic role of perception and for its role in scientific observation. In the present volume, leading philosophers of perception discuss these new views and show their implications in the philosophy of mind, in epistemology and in philosophy of science. A special focus is laid on Franz Brentano and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A reference volume for all scholars and students of the history, psychology and philosophy of perception, and cognitive science.

Aesthetics is no longer merely the philosophy of perception and the arts. Nelson Goodman, Arthur Danto and others have contributed to develop aesthetics from a field at the margins of philosophy to one permeating substantial areas of theoretical and practical philosophy. New approaches like environmental and ecological aesthetics widened the understanding of the aesthetics of nature. The contributions in this volume address the most important issues in contemporary aesthetics, many of them from a Wittgensteinian perspective.

The 39th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium, organized by the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, was held at Kirchberg am Wechsel, Lower Austria, from August 7th to 13th 2016 and aimed at taking an inventory of important tendencies and positions in contemporary aesthetics. The volume includes a selection of the invited papers.

The book presents papers from leading proponents of realist, relativist, and constructivist positions in epistemology and the philosophy of language and ethics.

The volume takes on the much-needed task of describing and explaining the nature of the relations and interactions between mind, language and action in defining mentality. Papers by renowned philosophers unravel what is increasingly acknowledged to be the enacted nature of the mind, memory and language-acquisition, whilst also calling attention to Wittgenstein's contribution. The volume offers unprecedented insight, clarity, scope, and currency.

This volume is the first collection of articles dedicated to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thoughts on colour, focusing in particular on his so-called Remarks on Colour, a piece of writing that has received comparably little attention from Wittgenstein scholars. The book provides the reader with the state of the art in research on Wittgenstein’s thoughts on colour and brings out some of the intricate relations between the Remarks on Colour and other works by Wittgenstein. The articles in the book discuss why Wittgenstein wrote so intensively about colour during the last years of his life, what significance these remarks have for understanding his philosophical work in general, as well as the upshot of his thoughts on colour.

Contributors to the volume are Andrew Lugg, Joachim Schulte, Gabriele Mras, Richard Heinrich, Herbert Hrachovec, Barry Stroud, Martin Kusch, Frederik Gierlinger and Gary Kemp.

A real book on ethics, as Wittgenstein had it, if one could conceive it in the first place, would be the book to destroy all other books. Yet there is an increasing number of real-world discourses in which ethical values are
mobilized as justifications for socio-political action while, in turn, moral problems are becoming a topic of political negotiation. Although it will be difficult to find systematic accounts of an absolute good or of absolute
values in these debates, it is equally difficult to imagine them not being deeply informed by such considerations.

Rather than merely adding to the corpus of applied ethics on the one hand or remaining in seemingly Wittgensteinian silence about ethics on the other, many contributions to this volume explore the reach of what can be said in ethical terms, while others provide critical discussions of what is being said in various fields of applied ethics and political philosophy under real-world power relations.

This volume collects invited contributions from the 35th International Wittgenstein Symposium 2012 in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria.

Authors include: Alice Crary, Peter Dabrock, Rom Harré, Agnes Heller, Jaakko Hintikka, Peter Koller, Anton Leist, Chantal Mouffe, Julian Nida-Rümelin, Hans Sluga, David Stern, Gianni Vattimo.

This volume collects papers that were presented at the 34th International Ludwig Wittgenstein Symposium 2011 in Kirchberg am Wechsel, Austria. They focus on five key debates in contemporary epistemology: Does the term “to know” vary its meaning according to features of the contexts in which it is uttered? What role may “epistemic virtues” play in our cognitive activities? What is the surplus value of having knowledge instead of mere true belief? What is the structure and significance of testimonial knowledge and belief? And when is disagreement rational, especially if it occurs among “epistemic peers”? In addition, a section is devoted to novel discussions of the work of Wittgenstein.

Papers by A. Beckermann, E. Brendel, W. Davis, C. Elgin, S. Goldberg, J. Greco, A. Kemmerling, H. Kornblith, M. Solomon, M. Williams, and many others.

Wittgensteins Grammatikbegriff ist eigentümlich weit gefasst, das heißt er beinhaltet nicht nur die Regeln für die Anordnung von Wörtern, sondern letztlich alles, was zur Bedeutung eines Begriffes beiträgt. Wittgenstein sieht Grammatik als gleichermaßen mit Willkürlichem und mit Nicht-Willkürlichem verwandt an, wobei der Willkür durch die menschliche Natur und soziale Praktiken Grenzen gesetzt sind. Dieses Buch untersucht genau diese Grenzen mit den Mitteln und Ergebnissen der neuesten linguistischen und kognitionswissenschaftlichen Forschung näher, um die zunächst recht spekulativ anmutenden Argumente Wittgensteins für die Möglichkeit alternativer Grammatiken in Bereichen wie den Farben, der Arithmetik u.a. zu prüfen und über deren Ergebnisse Rückschlüsse zu ziehen auf Grammatiken allgemein und deren Willkürlichkeit.

Diagrams are an essential part of the most diverse processes of communication and cognition. Indeed, today the production of all kinds of text (including this one) is mediated by diagrammatic tools to be found on computer desktops. Not surprisingly, then, diagrams have become the object of much historical and theoretical work. This book--volume 2 of the Proceedings of the 33rd International Wittgenstein Symposium--is dedicated to this quickly growing field of interdisciplinary research. It includes contributions from philosophy, sociology (space syntax), art history, and history of science. Historically, there is a focus on Otto Neurath and his famous visual language (ISOTYPE), while the new attempts at theorizing diagrams presented here are mainly inspired by Charles Sanders Peirce and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

What is an image? How can we describe the experience of looking at images, and how do they become meaningful to us? In what sense are images like or unlike propositions? Participants of the 33rd International Wittgenstein Symposium--philosophers as well as historians of art, science, and literature--provide many stimulating answers. Some of the contributions are dedicated to Wittgenstein’s thoughts on images while others testify to the important role notions coined or inspired by Wittgenstein--“seeing as”, “picture games” and the dichotomy of “saying and showing”--play in the field of picture theory today. This first volume of the Proceedings of the 2010 conference addresses readers interested in the history and theory of images, and in the philosophy of Wittgenstein.

This second of two volumes brings together invited papers of the 32nd International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg/W. (Austria), 2009). The collection not only contains articles related to some of Wittgenstein’s central arguments but also holds contributions that deal with the role and function of signs, as well as with the relations between language and action, consciousness and metaphysics. An interdisciplinary workshop was dedicated to “Wittgenstein and Literature”, an area of study which has been prominent in the philosophical discourse of the last decade. Contributors to this volume are Anat Biletzki, Michael Dummett, Laurence Goldstein, Peter Janich, Brian McGuinness, Marjorie Perloff, David Schalkwyk, Joachim Schulte, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, David Stern, Eike von Savigny among others.

This first of two volumes brings together invited papers of the 32nd International Wittgenstein Symposium (Kirchberg/W. (Austria), 2009). The relation between language and the world was undoubtedly one if not the central issue in Wittgenstein’s whole philosophical oeuvre. His one hundred and twentieth birthday provided an occasion for foregrounding this aspect of his work. A special workshop was dedicated to new aspects of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. In this volume Frank Cioffi, Peter Hacker, Ian Hacking, Roy Harris, Lars Hertzberg, Jaakko Hintikka, Marie McGinn, Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Hans Sluga among others provide substantial contributions on various aspects of Wittgenstein’s writings such as the philosophy of mathematics, the problem of rule following or the relation between meaning and use.

Das Verstehen legt Wittgenstein einem Ich bei: Einer versteht, indem er Zeichen anwendet. Anwendbare Zeichen sind Symbole: Sie werden bedeutsam, wenn sie in Zusammenhang mit anderen Zeichen gebracht werden und eine Funktion in der kognitiven oder praktischen Aneignung der Welt erfüllen. Symbole gehören zu Symbolsystemen und können als Vorschriften für symbolische, d.h. semiotische und insbesondere logische, Operationen mit Zeichen aufgefasst werden. Die Veränderung der Wittgensteinschen Auffassung des Verstehens besteht vor allem im Anerkennen der Erfahrung der Sozialisation als einer der wichtigsten Voraussetzungen der sinnvollen Anwendung von Zeichen. Diese Veränderung, ihre Quellen und Wirkungen sind das Thema dieses Buches.

The investigation of the mind has been one of the major concerns of our philosophical tradition and it still is a dominant subject in modern philosophy as well as in science. Many philosophers in the scientific tradition want to solve the "puzzles of the mind". But many philosophers in the very same tradition do regard these puzzles as puzzles of the brain. So, whilst the former think of the mental as something of its own kind, the latter deny that philosophy of mind has to do with anything else but the brain. And then there are those who think that reduction is the way to go: maybe the mental is brain-dependent and hence reducible to the physical, in some way. This volume collects contributions comprising all those points of view, including articles by William Bechtel, Jerry Fodor, Jaegwon Kim, Joëlle Proust and Patrick Suppes.

Philosophers often have tried to either reduce "disagreeable" objects or concepts to (more) acceptable objects or concepts. Reduction is regarded attractive by those who subscribe to an ideal of ontological parsimony. But the topic is not just restricted to traditional metaphysics or ontology. In the philosophy of mathematics, abstraction principles, such as Hume's principle, have been suggested to support a reconstruction of mathematics by logical means only. In the philosophy of language and the philosophy of science, the logical analysis of language has long been regarded to be the dominating paradigm, and liberalized projects of logical reconstruction remain to be driving forces of modern philosophy.

This volume collects contributions comprising all those topics, including articles by Alexander Bird, Jaakko Hintikka, James Ladyman, Rohit Parikh, Gerhard Schurz, Peter Simons, Crispin Wright and Edward N. Zalta.

This book is a collection of essays each of which discusses the work of one of eight individuals - Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, R. F. Holland, J. R. Jones, H. O. Mounce, D. Z. Phillips, Ilham Dilman and R.W. Beardsmore - who taught philosophy at the University of Wales, Swansea, for some time from the 1950s through to the 1990s and so contributed to what in some circles came to be known as 'the Swansea School'. These eight essays are in turn followed by a ninth that, drawing on the previous eight, offers something of a critical overview of philosophy at Swansea during that same period. The essays are not primarily historical in character. Instead they aim at both the critical assessment and the continuation of the sort of philosophical work that during those years came to be especially associated with philosophy at Swansea, work that is deeply indebted to the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also distinctively sensitive to the relevance of literary works to philosophical reflection.

Bei der Studie handelt es sich um eine Paragraphen für Paragraphen erläuternde Interpretation der "Philosophischen Untersuchungen". Sie wendet sich an alle an Wittgensteins Philosophie Interessierte, insbesondere an Studierende und Schüler. Inhaltlich setzt sie einen Schwerpunkt auf die Sprachphilosophie. Didaktisch versucht sie, den Text Schritt für Schritt verständlich zu machen, und Wittgensteins - oft implizit bleibende - Auseinandersetzungen mit anderen philosophischen Positionen (der philosophischen Tradition und der analytischen Sprachphilosophie) deutlicher hervortreten zu lassen. Daher finden sich in der Studie weitergehende Erläuterungen, die einige bedeutsame philosophiekritische Konsequenzen der "Philosophischen Untersuchungen" herausstellen. Abgeschlossen wird der Text durch eine Zusammenfassung und eine Gegenüberstellung der Wittgensteinschen Sprachphilosophie mit bedeutsamen Konzeptionen anderer sprachanalytischer Philosophen.

This volume gathers papers, which were read at the congress held at the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo (Spain), in September 2007, under the general subject of phenomenology. The book is devoted to Wittgenstein’s thoughts on phenomenology. One of its aims is to consider and examine the lasting importance of phenomenology for philosophic discussion. For E. Husserl phenomenology was a discipline that endeavoured to describe how the world is constituted and experienced through a series of conscious acts. His fundamental concept was that of intentional consciousness. What did drag Wittgenstein into working on phenomenology? In his 'middle period' work, Wittgenstein used the headline 'Phenomenology is Grammar'. These cornerstones can be signalled by notions like language, grammar, rule, visual space versus Euclidean space, minima visibilia and colours. L. Wittgenstein’s main interest takes the form of a research on language.

This is the second of two volumes of the proceedings from the 30th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, August 2007.

It contains selected contributions on the Philosophy of media, Philosophy of the Internet, on Ethics and the political economy of information society. Also included are papers presented in a workshop on electronic philosophy resources and open source/open access.

This is the first of two volumes of the proceedings from the 30th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, August 2007. In addition to several new contributions to Wittgenstein research (by N. Garver, M. Kross, St. Majetschak, K. Neumer, V. Rodych, L. M. Valdés-Villanueva), this volume contains articles with a special focus on digital Wittgenstein research and Wittgenstein's role for the understanding of the digital turn (by L. Bazzocchi, A. Biletzki, J. de Mul, P. Keicher, D. Köhler, K. Mayr, D. G. Stern), as well as discussions - not necessarily from a Wittgensteinian perspective - about issues in the philosophy of information, including computational ontologies (by D. Apollon, G. Chaitin, F. Dretske, L. Floridi, Y. Okamoto, M. Pasin and E. Motta).

The aim of this volume is to investigate the topic of Substance and Attribute. The way leading to this aim is a dialogue between Islamic and Western Philosophy. Our project is motivated by the observation that the historical roots of Islamic and of Western Philosophy are very similar. Thus some of the articles in this volume are dedicated to the history of philosophy, in Islamic thinking as well as in Western traditions. But the dialogue between Islamic and Western Philosophy is not only an historical issue, it also has systematic relevance for actual philosophical questions. The topic Substance and Attribute particularly has an important history in both traditions; and it has systematic relevance for the actual ontological debate.

The volume includes contributions (among others) by Hans Burkhardt, Hans Kraml, Muhammad Legenhausen, Michal Loux, Pedro Schmechtig, Muhammad Shomali, Erwin Tegtmeier, and Daniel von Wachter.

Naturalism is the reigning creed in analytic philosophy. Naturalists claim that natural science provides a complete account of all forms of existence. According to the naturalistic credo there are no aspects of human existence which transcend methods and explanations of science. Our concepts of the self, the mind, subjectivity, human freedom or responsibility is to be defined in terms of established sciences. The aim of the present volume is to draw the balance of naturalism’s success so far. Unlike other volumes it does not contain a collection of papers which unanimously reject naturalism. Naturalists and anti-naturalists alike unfold their positions discussing the success or failure of naturalistic approaches. "How successful is naturalism? shows where the lines of agreement and disagreement between naturalists and their critics are to be located in contemporary philosophical discussion.

With contributions of Rudder Lynne Baker, Johannes Brandl, Helmut Fink, Ulrich Frey, Georg Gasser & Matthias Stefan, Peter S.M. Hacker, Winfried Löffler, Nancey Murphy, Josef Quitterer, Michael Rea, Thomas Sukopp, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski and Gerd Vollmer.

What can systematic philosophy contribute to come from conflict between cultures to a substantial dialogue? - This question was the general theme of the 29th international symposium of the Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society in Kirchberg. Worldwide leading philosophers accepted the invitation to come to the conference, whose results are published in this volume, edited by Christian Kanzian Edmund Runggaldier. The sections are dedicated to the philosophy of Wittgenstein, Logics and Philosophy of Language, Decision- and Action Theory, Ethical Aspects of the Intercultural Dialogue, Intercultural Dialogue, and last not least to Social Ontology.

Our edition include (among others) contributions authored by Peter Hacker, Jennifer Hornsby, John Hyman, Michael Kober, Richard Rorty, Hans Rott, Gerhard Schurz, Barry Smith, Pirmin Stekeler-Weithofer, Franz Wimmer, and Kwasi Wiredu.

This wide-ranging collection of essays contains eighteen original articles by authors representing some of the most important recent work on Wittgenstein. It deals with questions pertaining to both the interpretation and application of Wittgenstein’s thought and the editing of his works. Regarding the latter, it also addresses issues concerning scholarly electronic publishing. The collection is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction which lays out the content and arguments of each contribution. Contributors: Knut Erik Tranøy, Lars Hertzberg, Georg Henrik von Wright, Marie McGinn, Cora Diamond, James Conant, David G. Stern, Eike von Savigny, P.M.S. Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock, Allan Janik, Kristóf Nyíri, Antonia Soulez, Brian McGuinness, Anthony Kenny, Joachim Schulte, Herbert Hrachovec, Cameron McEwen.

This wide-ranging collection of essays contains eighteen original articles by authors representing some of the most important recent work on Wittgenstein. It deals with questions pertaining to both the interpretation and application of Wittgenstein’s thought and the editing of his works. Regarding the latter, it also addresses issues concerning scholarly electronic publishing. The collection is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction which lays out the content and arguments of each contribution. Contributors: Knut Erik Tranøy, Lars Hertzberg, Georg Henrik von Wright, Marie McGinn, Cora Diamond, James Conant, David G. Stern, Eike von Savigny, P.M.S. Hacker, Hans-Johann Glock, Allan Janik, Kristóf Nyíri, Antonia Soulez, Brian McGuinness, Anthony Kenny, Joachim Schulte, Herbert Hrachovec, Cameron McEwen.