Month: August 2020

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Wittgenstein Tags: ,
Suzhou

On foundationalist readings of On Certainty

What distinguishes the foundationalist reading from the constitutive (‘framework’) reading is that the latter acknowledges the interdependence of certainty and knowledge, whereas the former considers certainty to be independent.

Some, e.g., Robert Brice, make a distinction between  ‘heterogeneous’ and ‘homogeneous foundationalism’, arguing that  the former position is the one  Wittgenstein takes in On Certainty, whereas the latter is the traditional position, that is incapable of fending off the attack by the radical sceptic. The distinction between these two positions as such is clear, and important. But why exactly would one want to call them both ‘foundationalism’? That suggests that besides the difference there is also something they have in common. But what might that be?  A constitutive relation is not a founding relation, the former involves an essential dependency that the latter lacks. What constitutes and what is constituted depend on one another, one cannot consists without the other. But what is founded and what founds are not in that way dependent: one can clear what is founded and be left with the foundations. 

Moyal-Sharrock  argues that the fundamental difference between what she considers Wittgenstein’s foundationalism and traditional foundationalism that the latter, but not the former, is propositional. This raises an interesting question. Is Descartes cogito propositional, or is it Descartes’ exposition of it that is propositional? The latter is certainly true, but does that entail the former?  Or consider forms  of foundationalism that consider sensory experience as foundation. Any exposition of this position will have to resort to descriptions of sensory experience, and these descriptions are, of course, propositional. But does it make sense to say that the sensory experiences themselves are necessarily also propositional? That seems not to follow, at least not without additional premisses. 

Martin Stokhof
from: EOL Discussion Board
date: March 2020

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Wittgenstein Tags:
La chapelle, Saint Polycarpe

Religious belief

Religious beliefs as colouring, rather than as separate language games or as distinct frameworks of certainties. A language game is like a stage set: actors, props, decor. Religious beliefs are the stage lights: they don’t change the stage set, they do not add or remove anything, yet by colouring it they can make it appear completely different.

Martin Stokhof
from: Aantekeningen/Notes
date: 20/11/2002

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Wittgenstein Tags: ,
Avignon

Pluralism and the possibility of philosophy

In a sense one might regard the transition from monism to pluralism, as exemplified in the contrast between Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations, as a move that rescues the possibility of philosophy. In the monistic (absolutistic) approach of the Tractatus (but that applies to many others; cf., e.g., Being and Time) philosophy is doomed by the ineffability of any kind of analysis that leads to non-contingent answers. In a pluralistic setting, such as the one explored in Philosophical Investigations, On Certainty, however, there is at least the possibility of reflection from within one framework on another framework. (But additional  conditions have to be met, of course.) Interestingly, the result of such a reflection is not descriptive, but conceptual. And to the extent that it is possible, one might regard it as a kind of reflective investigation of imagination.

Martin Stokhof
from: Aantekeningen/Notes
date: 16/10/2002

Random thoughts on random topics

Martin Stokhof Interpretation
Saint Petersburg

On interpretation

What is the mystery of interpretation is not that it would be impossible: we are not able to fly, nor do we have the ability of bi-location, and no-one wonders why we don’t. Nor that it would be: we breath, walk, and again we take this for granted (which does not mean that we can not investigate the actual physiology of these abilities). Regarding interpretation the real problem seems to be that it is both possible and impossible. That interpretation comes natural to us — understanding somehow happens to us without us knowing how —, and that it is an impossible task — no matter how much conscious effort we put in to it we are in the end always defeated. The otherness of the other makes us strangers to ourselves, yet our familiarity with ourselves makes us understand them. Conscious and mechanical, possible and impossible: interpretation is always all of that, but none of it completely.

Martin Stokhof
from: Interpretation
date: 05-1997