This contribution discusses some of the challenges involved in building an ontology for research about the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. It pays special attention to different ontological conceptions (event based versus object based). It also discusses how best to model, within the ontology, conflicting views emerging in both Wittgenstein’s work and Wittgenstein scholarship. The contribution...

James Conant, a proponent of the ‘New American Wittgenstein’, has argued that the standard interpretation of Wittgenstein is wholly mistaken in respect of Wittgenstein’s critique of metaphysics and the attendant conception of nonsense. The standard interpretation, Conant holds, misascribes to Wittgenstein Carnapian views on the illegitimacy of metaphysical utterances, on logical syntax and gram...

No account of Hao Wang’s philosophy can be complete without discussion of his serious engagement with Wittgenstein. This began in the period 1953-1958, immediately following the publication of Philosophical Investigations [1953] and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics [1956], and culminated in a second phase of engagement from 1981 to 1995. It closed in the final chapter, “Alternative phi...

augustine, in addition to some theories regarding theology, has theories on language and meaning that have inspired contemporary philosophers of language in their philosophical research. based on augustine, when a listener hears a sentence, he is not to understand the sensible language, but he follows something that the ear cannot hear. augustine was one of the philosophers found favor with wit...

Central to a new, or 'resolute', reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus is the idea that Wittgenstein held there an 'austere' view of nonsense: the view, that is, that nonsense is only ever a matter of our failure to give words a meaning, and so that there are no logically distinct kinds of nonsense. Resolute readers tend not only to ascribe such a view to Wittgenstein, but als...

Wittgenstein as Davidson on Metaphor In Wittgensten und die Metaphor, eds. Arnswald, Kertscher, and Kross, Parerga Verlag, Berlin, 2004, as “Wittgenstein mit Davidson uber Metaphor,” (German translation) pp. 195-220. This essay has five parts: First, I explain some fundamental agreements between Davidson and Wittgenstein. I argue that Donald Davidson’s views and Wittgenstein’s views in the Inve...

The outlines of Wittgenstein’s conception of propositions can be sketched by means of the following four or five points. First, in 1913 Wittgenstein focuses on whatever it is that judgments have in common that allows them to depict a sense and express a thought. In so doing Wittgenstein is pressing to find a sense or proposition – what is believed in -of concern to logic and independent of psyc...

2 In the hallway of the university Wittgenstein asked a colleague: " I've always wondered why for so long people thought that the sun revolved around the earth. " " Why? " said his surprised interlocutor, " well, I suppose it just looks that way. " " Hmm " , retorted Wittgenstein, " and what would it look like if the earth revolved around the sun? " This puzzled the interlocutor.

A historical review is presented of the link between Ludwig Wittgenstein, considered the most important philosopher of the 20th century, and medicine, particularly neurology and psychiatry. Wittgenstein worked as a porter at Guy's Hospital in London, and then as a technician at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle. He wrote about his important insights into language, and neuroscience. It h...

This paper tries to give some substance to local holism, a picture that seems to fit Wittgenstein’s analysis of the working of language. In the first part I state the well-known paradox of semantic holism, as discussed in philosophy of language: if meaning is holistic there is no possibility to share any meaning. In the second part I present the different answers to this paradox, from atomism t...