| Phi 346-01 Spring 2014 |
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Our topic this week is Wittgenstein’s later views on language and meaning, but we will approach his work somewhat indirectly, by way of a sort of review of Wittgenstein’s most important late work, the Philosophical Investigations. The review is an early work of Paul Feyerabend (1924-94), who became an influential figure in the philosophy of science. Feyerabend had met Wittgenstein after WWII and was planning to study with him at the time of Wittgenstein’s death in 1951. He had an opportunity to read the Investigations before its publication in 1953 and, after it was published, made a summary that he called a “paper monster I had made for my own enlightenment” (Paul Feyerabend, Killing Time, Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1995, p. 93). That monster is what we’ll be discussing.
Feyerabend had a strong personality and is known for adopting fairly distinctive philosophical positions, so don’t assume you are seeing Wittgenstein unvarnished. When Feyerabend was unable to study with Wittgenstein, he studied instead with the philosopher of science Karl Popper (1902–94), and you’ll also find Feyerabend drawing on Popper’s thought. On the other hand, Feyerabend says his monster was rejected by one editor as “an efficient condensation, not a review” (ibid.), and it does seem an effort more to present Wittgenstein’s ideas than to comment on them; moveover, it offers a generous supply of actual quotations.
• The first part of the article (through §V) elaborates an argument Feyerabend finds in the Investigations against a theory of meaning which he outlines in §I (and labels T). That theory is, I think, intended (by Wittgenstein) to be more a matter of philosophically elaborated common sense than the special views of any philosopher, but it does bear some similarity to the views of meaning held by Russell at the time he wrote “On Denoting,” and which he still held when Wittgenstein studied with him a few years later.
• Feyerabend next, in §§VI-VIII, begins an account of Wittgenstein’s own view of meaning, which he formulates initially as an alternative theory T′. Much of his presentation of the theory T′ comes by way of responses to certain objections or misunderstandings. The basic line of objection begins to be stated in the latter part of §VII, and various aspects of it are addressed and disposed of in the first four subsections (A)-(D) of §VIII, with the short subsection (E) summarizing the discussion.
• In the last three sections, he first (in §IX) states the upshot of the preceding discussion of T′ and then (in §§X-XI) considers the status of this theory given the view of philosophy Wittgenstein offers in the Investigations, a view that Feyerabend sees as close to the one Wittgenstein presented in the Tractatus.