David G. Stern

Models of memory : Wittgenstein and cognitive science

Abstract The model of memory as a store, from which records can be retrieved, is taken for granted by many contemporary researchers. On this view, memories are stored by memory traces, which represent the original event and provide a causal link between that episode and ones ability to remember it. I argue that this seemingly plausible model leads to an unacceptable conception of the relationship between mind and brain, and that a non‐representational, connectionist, model offers a promising alternative. I also offer a new reading of Wittgensteins paradoxical remarks about thought and brain processes: as a critique of the cognitivist thesis that information stored in the brain has a linguistic structure and a particular location. On this reading, Wittgensteins criticism foreshadows some of the most promising contemporary work on connectionist models of neural functioning.

Wittgenstein, mathematics, and ethics

A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words. - Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. (PI, 122) How does Wittgensteins later thought bear on moral philosophy? Wittgenstein himself having said so little about this, philosophers have been free to take his ideas and methods to have the most various implications for ethics. I shall in this essay be concerned with Wittgensteins ideas about mathematics and some possible ways of seeing their suggestiveness for ethics. I shall bring those ideas into critical contact with a rich and thoughtful treatment of ethics, that of Sabina Lovibond in Realism and Imagination in Ethics. She defends a form of moral realism which she takes to be derived from Wittgenstein (RIE, p. 25); and her work is thus of great interest if we are concerned not only with questions about how Wittgensteins work bears on ethics but also with questions about the relation between his thought and debates about realism. Wittgenstein is misread, I think, when taken either as a philosophical realist or as an antirealist. Elsewhere I have argued against antirealist readings. One aim of this present essay is to trace to its sources a realist reading of Wittgenstein - its sources in the difficulty of looking at, and taking in, the use of our words. The clearest unchanging feature of the course over the decades was the opening question: How does the Investigations begin? Against even the brief, varying introductory remarks I would provide - all omitted here - concerning Wittgensteins life and his place in twentieth- century philosophy, in which I emphasized the remarkable look and sound of Wittgensteins text and related this to issues of modernism in the major arts, the opening question was meant to invoke the question: How does philosophy begin? And how does the Investigations account for its beginning (hence philosophys) as it does? And since this is supposed to be a work of philosophy (but how do we tell this?), how does it (and must it? but can it?) account for its look and sound?

The “Middle Wittgenstein”: From Logical Atomism to Practical Holism

Wittgenstein arranged the Tractatus in its final form during the summer of 1918; Part I of the Philosophical Investigations was put into the form in which we now have it during the mid 1940s. The Tractatus was published in 1922; the Philosophical Investigations in 1953, two years after Wittgenstein’s death. Because the two books were widely studied and interpreted at a time when the rest of his writing was unavailable, it became common practice to speak of the author of the first book as “Early Wittgenstein”, and the author of the second as the “Late Wittgenstein”. As it gradually became clear that his writing during the intervening years was not only voluminous, but also could not simply be understood as a rejection of one view and the adoption of another, it was natural to speak of the author of this further body of writing, or at least those parts of it which could not be regarded as “Early”, or “Late”, as “Middle Wittgenstein”.

Tracing the Development of Wittgenstein’s Writing on Private Language

The discussion of private language in the Philosophical Investigations is one of the last pieces of Part I of that book to have been drafted. Most of it was written between 1937 and 1945, after the first 190 remarks of Part I of the book had almost reached their final state. The post-1936 writing on private language that leads up to the final version of section 243 ff. represents a fresh start, both in wording and in conception, on the pre-1936 drafts. Almost none of the post-1936 writing is a direct reworking of the previous material, and while it discusses many of the same topics, it approaches them differently.

Sociology of Science, Rule Following and Forms of Life

Ludwig Wittgenstein was trained as a scientist and an engineer. He received a diploma in mechanical engineering from the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, Berlin, in 1906, after which he did several years of research on aeronautics before turning to the full-time study of logic and philosophy. Hertz, Boltzmann, Mach, Weininger, and William James, all important influences on Wittgenstein, are authors whose work was both philosophical and scientific. The relationship between everyday life, science, and philosophy, is a central concern throughout the course of his writing. He regarded philosophy, properly conducted, as an autonomous activity, a matter of clarifying our understanding of language, or investigating grammar. Wittgenstein thought philosophy should state the obvious as a way of disabusing us of the desire to formulate philosophical theories of meaning, knowledge, language, or science, and was deeply opposed to the naturalist view that philosophy is a form of science. In his later work, Wittgenstein rejected systematic approaches to understanding language and knowledge. Wittgenstein’s answer to the Socratic question about the nature of knowledge is that it has no nature, no essence, and so it is a mistake to think one can give a single systematic answer: If I was asked what knowledge is, I would list items of knowledge and add “and suchlike.” There is no common element to be found in all of them, because there isn’t one. (Wittgenstein, MS 302, “Diktat Mr Schlick” 1931–33.)

Wittgenstein’s Lectures on Ethics, Cambridge 1933

The paper reviews the historical significance of the notes taken by G.E. Moore at Wittgenstein’s lectures in Cambridge during 1930–1933, and sets out the editorial principles for a forthcoming edition of those notes. After looking at Wittgenstein’s very brief discussion of ethical concepts in Philosophical Investigations §77, and its relationship to the discussion of games and family resemblance concepts in §§ 66 ff. , the paper turns to Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures in May 1933 for a more detailed treatment of the topic. 1. Moore’s notes on Wittgenstein’s lectures, Cambridge 1930–1933 In 1929 Wittgenstein returned to Cambridge and philosophical writing, criticizing his own earlier work and turning his focus to how language is used in ordinary life. From January 1930 onward, he regularly gave lectures and discussion classes during the university term. These years were a time of transition between his early and his later work, and are of great interest for anyone who wants to understand the development of his

From The Archives. Moore’s Notes on Wittgenstein’s Lectures, Cambridge 1930-1933: Text, Context, and Content

Wittgenstein’s writings and lectures during the first half of the 1930s play a crucial role in any interpretation of the relationship between the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations . G. E. Moore’s notes of Wittgenstein’s Cambridge lectures, 1930-1933, offer us a remarkably careful and conscientious record of what Wittgenstein said at the time, and are much more detailed and reliable than previously published notes from those lectures. The co-authors are currently editing these notes of Wittgenstein’s lectures for a book to be published by Cambridge University Press. We describe the materials that make up Moore’s notes, explain their unique value, review the principal editorial challenges that these materials present, and provide a brief outline of our editorial project.

Reading Wittgenstein (on) Reading An Introduction

The list appears to be arranged according to the chronological order in which they influenced Wittgenstein. One sign of this is the odd punctuation of the list, which is due to the fact that Wittgenstein first wrote just four names – “Frege, Russell, Spengler, Sraffa” – and added the other names, carefully arranged in order, above the line. Thefirst three names are authors Wittgenstein read as a teenager; Frege and Russell first had an impact on him when he was in his early twenties. While Wittgenstein would certainly have known of Kraus andWeininger long before 1914, for both were famous and controversial in fin-de-siecle Vienna, their position on the list, and the fact that Kraus, Loos and Weininger all had an influence on the Tractatus, which was composed during the First World War, suggests that their influence should be dated to the war years, or immediately before. All three were important influences on Paul Engelmann and his friends in Olmutz with