Dear All,

The "Wittgen=Steine" group organizes a talk this week Friday:

May 16th, 2025, 15.00-16.30h, HS 3D

Charles Travis (U of Porto): "After the Fall (Russell's Puzzle)"

Abstract:

In 1929, the Tractatus collapsed before Wittgenstein’s eyes. By December 1931 he had come to see it as dogmatic, and worse yet, shot through with the idea that there was an (uncompleted) research agenda in full swing, and it was only a matter of time until details were filled in. By 1931 he had ceased to believe any of this.

As I now read the Investigations, the first 79 paragraphs are devoted to diagnosing what went so thoroughly wrong with the Tractatus, and outlining, not what a fix for it would be, but how the problems raised should in fact be handled.

Russell, especially of 1918, is a convenient foil for Wittgenstein in carrying out these aims. First, Russell placed a very strong demand on truly singular thought. (Though not such an unnatural one considering the history of philosophy, or philosophical logic, from 1893 on). Second, to satisfy this demand (not unreasonably given what the demand was), Russell relied on a very minimalist conception of an item susceptible to being the object of a singular thought. It paralleled, in obvious ways, the demand on being an object of sensory awareness placed by familiar sense-datum theory. And in both cases the demand was strong enough to condemn the would-be solution to a problem to failure.

In that beginning section of the Investigations, there are three prominent ideas. One is that of a language game, another, related, of family resemblance (a rope of many strands with no one running all the way through), and a certain conception of the world-involvingness of representing centring on something like a notion of supposition (and, incidentally, spelled out both by Leibniz and by Putnam, the latter in terms of the idea he called cluster concept.

On reflection it is not surprising that things would take this turn for Wittgenstein. But in the present talk I will try to make the key ingredients more transparent. (I expect in advance that my success, if any, will certainly be far less than total.)

All welcome!

Best wishes from the organizers,

Esther Ramharter

Anja Weiberg

Martin Kusch

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Prof. Martin Kusch
Univ. of Vienna, Dpt. of Philosophy
https://philosophie.univie.ac.at/institut/