scholarly journals Nel tempo e nello spazio. Linguaggio e natura nella filosofia di Ludwig Wittgenstein

Author(s):  
Alice Morelli

The paper focuses on some naturalistic aspects of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Wittgenstein has often been considered a radical anti-naturalist philosopher, mainly because he does not endorse the thesis of the continuity between philosophy and science. However, it will be argued that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy incorporates a kind of naturalism without naturalization, i.e., a liberal naturalism, in virtue of the relation between human nature and language. It will be concluded that Wittgenstein’s liberal naturalism provides an example of a naturalistic perspective on language which avoids the limits of an intellectualist approach without leading to scientism: this is meant to express the irreducibility of naturalism to the mere scientific version.

Author(s):  
José M. Ariso Salgado

RESUMENAl analizar si Ludwig Wittgenstein mantiene una posición fundamentalista en Sobre la certeza, suele discutirse si la citada obra se adapta al modelo de fundamentalismo propuesto por Avrum Stroll. Tras exponer las líneas básicas de dicho modelo, en esta nota se mantiene que Sobre la certeza no se adapta al modelo de Stroll debido al importante papel que Wittgenstein concede al contextualismo. Además, se añade que Wittgenstein no puede ser calificado de fundamentalista porque no reconoce ninguna propiedad que, sin tener en cuenta la diversidad de casos particulares, permita justificar de forma conjunta todas nuestras creencias básicas.PALABRAS CLAVEWITTGENSTEIN, FUNDAMENTALISMO, CONTEXTUALISMO, CERTEZAABSTRACTDid Wittgenstein hold a foundationalist position in On Certainty? When this question is tackled, it is often discussed, whether On Certainty fits in the foundationalist model devised by Avrum Stroll. After expounding the main lines of this model, I hold that On Certainty does not fit in Stroll’s model, because of the important role Wittgenstein attaches to contextualism. Furthermore, I add that Wittgenstein cannot be seen as a foundationalist –or a coherentist–, because he does not admit any feature in virtue of which the whole of our basic beliefs are justified without considering circumstances at all.KEYWORDSWITTGENSTEIN, CERTAINTY, FOUNDATIONALISM, CONTEXTUALISM


2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-62
Author(s):  
Joshua R. Farris

When we wait for a significant other, it is not as if we are waiting for someone who looks like her, talks like her, or even walks like her. Instead, what we want is her. And, the same goes for the afterlife: if there is an afterlife, we long to see our loved ones. Not those who look like our loved ones, who sound like them, or even smell like them, but we actually want them. In the study of human nature, this is, arguably, one of the modern insights on humanity. The question of the “particularity” of human beings matters. In technical philosophical studies, the question of “particularity” is a question of thisness (i.e., the fact that objects are countable as discrete in virtue of some property or feature that makes an object what it is). What makes one person this person rather than that person? By showing how the concept of thisness is important in modern and contemporary theology, I will argue for a specific view as that which accurately captures both the historical consensus and the modern emphasis of personhood.


This volume makes a contribution to the field of neurolaw by investigating issues raised by the development, use, and regulation of neurointerventions. The broad range of topics covered in these chapters reflects neurolaw’s growing social import, and its rapid expansion as an academic field of inquiry. Some authors investigate the criminal justice system’s use of neurointerventions to make accused defendants fit for trial, to help reform convicted offenders, or to make condemned inmates sane enough for execution, while others interrogate the use, regulation, and social impact of cognitive enhancement medications and devices. Issues raised by neurointervention-based gay conversion “therapy”, the efficacy and safety of specific neurointervention methods, the legitimacy of their use and regulation, and their implications for authenticity, identity, and responsibility are among the other topics investigated. The focus on neurointerventions also highlights tacit assumptions about human nature that have important implications for jurisprudence. For all we know, at present such things as people’s capacity to feel pain, their sexuality, and the dictates of their conscience, are unalterable. But neurointerventions could hypothetically turn such constants into variables. The increasing malleability of human nature means that analytic jurisprudential claims (true in virtue of meanings of jurisprudential concepts) must be distinguished from synthetic jurisprudential claims (contingent on what humans are actually like). Looking at the law through the lens of neurointerventions thus also highlights the growing need for a new distinction—between analytic jurisprudence and synthetic jurisprudence—to tackle issues that increasingly malleable humans will face when they encounter novel opportunities and challenges.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Heather Stewart ◽  

Though philosophers are beginning to pay attention to the phenomenon of microaggressions, they are yet to fully draw on their training and skills in conceptual analysis to help make sense of what microaggression is. In this paper, I offer a philosophical analysis of the concept of microaggression. I ultimately argue that ‘microaggression’ as a concept gets its meaning not by decomposing into a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather by means of what Ludwig Wittgenstein (1953) has called “family resemblance.” That is to say, what unifies the concept of microaggression is a set of common, overlapping features that link related instances together, but are not necessarily all present in all cases. I identify and explain a common set of features that together form the basis for a family resemblance account of the concept. I then argue that despite the difficulty that microaggressions pose in terms of being reliably recognized and understood as such, some people, in virtue of their epistemic standpoint, are better suited to recognize these features and subsequently identify instances of micraoggression in practice. I argue this by drawing on the vast literature in feminist standpoint epistemology (Alcoff, 1993; Hill Collins, 1990, 2004; hooks, 2004; Harding, 2004, 2008; Wylie, 2013).


Author(s):  
Jay L. Garfield

This chapter addresses the causes of the passions and their role in Hume’s psychology. I argue that the passions form the foundation of Hume’s naturalistic program to explain human nature and normativity. It also addresses the relationship between the passions and the idea of the freedom of the will, showing that the account of the passions undergirds Hume’s critique of the idea of freedom. This chapter also shows how central our social context is to the development of the passions, and to our psychology in general, in virtue of Hume’s argument that not only is our social nature determined by our passions, but that many of our passions are conditioned by social factors.


1988 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Everson

Aristotle's Politics shows an apparent tension between a recognition of the desirability of individual liberty and his claim that ‘none of the citizens belongs to himself but all belong to the state’. We can start to resolve that tension by considering Aristotle's doctrine of man as a political animal. Artistotle offers a particular account of the nature of man according to which his specifically human capacities cannot be realized outside of the state. This is not an account adopted arbitrarily for Aristotle's political theory but follows directly from his analysis of substances in the Physics. On Aristotle's account of human nature, man is essentially rational and virtuous and the political theory allows the rational and virtuous man to be as free as possible without intefering with others. Some are less rational and are subject to authority in virtue of this. We can see that Aristotle's theory has advantages over rights-based theories since Aristotle has an account of what constitutes human flourishing, without which one cannot found rights claims.


Vox Patrum ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 713-725
Author(s):  
Adam Tondera

The apologetic treatise Against Hierocles is a polemical reply of Eusebius of Caesarea to an antichristian work of Sossianus Hierocles who drew a comparison between Apollonius of Tyana and Christ. The philosophical aspect of the Euse­bius’ polemics contains his critique of the image of Apollonius as a „divine man” in the Philostratus’ The Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Eusebius negates the alleged divinity of the hero of Philostratus on the ground of the providential conception of the world, according to which human nature, in virtue of the order established by the Providence, is not able to rise to divine because of its limits. An approach of both natures is possible solely through a mission of a being that belongs to the heavenly sphere and is illuminated and sent by God. Only the envoy of heavens, who brings the salvation to the whole human race and leaves „the effects of eter­nal divinity” to people, can be really considered divine.


Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry

Though it is not his sole motivation, central to Hume’s overall philosophy is his intention to undermine the credibility of superstitious, super-natural accounts of what makes humans and their social life function. The argument of this paper is that attempts to downplay Hume’s universalism and, in virtue of his recognition of diversity, to identify him as subscribing to some form of historicism or relativism, are mistaken or at best fail to apprehend the centrality of his assault on unscientific accounts of human nature.


Author(s):  
John Tasioulas

This chapter investigates whether or not human rights are grounded in human dignity. Starting from an interest-based account of human rights, it rejects two objections to that account that have been pressed in the name of human dignity: the deontological and the personhood objections. More positively, it contends that human dignity is the equal moral status possessed by all human beings simply in virtue of their possession of a human nature, and that so understood, it has an essential role to play in grounding human rights, but that it can only play this role in tandem with universal human interests. In particular, human dignity is central to explaining both why humans can possess rights and why these rights are resistant to trade-offs. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the implications of this view for whether each and every human being possesses all of the standard human rights.


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