[PhilWeb] Lugano Philosophy Colloquia. April 21

We are pleased to announce that on Friday April 21 at 18:00 (CET), Annalisa Coliva (UC Irvine) will give the talk "So one cannot, e.g. say ‘There are objects’ as one says ‘There are books’”. From Tractatus 4.1272 to Carnap, via On Certainty 35-37 as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia. This hybrid talk will take place in Room SI-003 Black Building (USI West Campus) and online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining it online, please write to amm.map(a)usi.ch Here is the abstract of the talk: In On Certainty (1969, 35) Wittgenstein claims that “There are physical objects” is nonsense. This claim is strongly reminiscent of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (4.1272) where he claims that “one cannot say ‘There are objects’ as one says ‘There are books’”; and of T 4.1274, where he says “The question about the existence of a formal concept is nonsense”. Despite such a superficial similarity, however, the reasons why “There are (physical) objects” would be nonsense are entirely different. In the case of the Tractatus, they depend on the rules that govern a correct logical symbolism, on the distinction between saying and showing and presuppose an ontology of objects. In the case of On Certainty, in contrast, they depend on thinking of “physical object” as a means of representation – as an “inference ticket”, which licenses (and forbids) certain inferences, without any ontological import. In his 1950 paper “Empiricism, semantics and ontology”, Carnap proposes a metalinguistic reading of questions such as “Are there physical objects?”. Surprisingly, he credits Wittgenstein, and indeed the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, with the ideas from which he took inspiration. If I am right, however, there is only a superficial similarity between the ideas presented in the Tractatus, and Carnap’s. In fact, the deeper similarity is to be found between Carnap’s views and the ones that Wittgenstein developed, at about the same time, in On Certainty, published only in 1969, with which Carnap could have no familiarity. Yet, even there, the divide between two remains insurmountable, as they had entirely opposite views regarding the very possibility of there being a metalanguage and, therefore, a metalinguistic reading of the question “Are there physical objects?”. For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/24091