Wittgenstein's role was vital in establishing mathematics as one of this century's principal areas of philosophic inquiry. In this book, the three phases of Wittgenstein's reflections on mathematics are viewed as a progressive whole, rather than as separate entities. Frascolla builds up a systematic construction of Wittgenstein's representation of the role of arithmetic in the theory of logical operations. He also presents a new interpretation of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations - the `community view of internal relations'.

Understanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus provides an accessible and yet novel discussion of all the major themes of the Tractatus. The book starts by setting out the history and structure of the Tractatus. It then investigates the two main dimensions of the early Wittgenstein's thought, corresponding to the division between what language can say by means of its propositions and what language can only show. It goes on to discuss picture theory, logical atomism, extensionality, truth-functions and truth-operations, semantics, metalogic and mathematics, solipsism (...) and value, metaphysics, and finally, Wittgenstein's idea of the duty of maintaining silence. Frascolla also proposes a new interpretation of the ontology of the Tractatus. Based on the identification of objects with qualia, the argument put forward in the book challenges the currently prevalent ideas of the ‘New Wittgenstein'. The paradoxical nature of the Tractatus itself, and the theme of "throwing away the ladder", are thus revisited in a new key. _Understanding Wittgenstein's Tractatus_ is essential reading for anyone wishing to further their insight into one of the most influential works of twentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

On the Exceptionality of Philosophy: Is There Discontinuity between Philosophy and Science? The article is devoted to a short presentation of the controversy between the meta-philosophical conception of the nature of philosophy and its relation with natural science known as exceptionalism, and the opposite anti-exceptionalist conception. The exceptionalist view is traced back to the linguistic turn and is illustrated by focusing on the early and intermediate Wittgenstein, Waismann and Schlick. Quine’s naturalism is identified as the background of the anti-exceptionalist view, (...) whose developments in the area of analytic metaphysics are taken as paradigmatic. Some issues concerning anti-exceptionalism are raised. (shrink)

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, COMMON SENSE: HOW THE EXTRAORDINARY COULD TURN INTO THE OBVIOUS The paper is devoted to an examination of some aspects of the relation between science, philosophy and common sense. By referring to crucial episodes of the history of astronomy and physics such as the Copernican Revolution and the birth of Relativity Theory, attention is paid to the process by which new scientific ideas contrasting with deeply entrenched intuitions and socially shared beliefs are gradually absorbed into the conceptual schema (...) underlying common sense. Some light is thrown on the role that philosophy can play in that process. (shrink)

Leading scholars discuss whether some of the main tenets or theses that are currently or traditionally ascribed to Wittgenstein are still both theoretically and exegetically viable, by focusing on three well-established Wittgensteinian themes: mind, meaning, and metaphilosophy.

A conjecture on the metaphysical nature of Tractatus objects is put forward and its interpretative adequacy is tested. The clarification of the true import of the metaphor of logical space and the recognition of the theoretical role played by Wittgenstein's explicit claim that the emptiness of logical space is conceivable enable us to account for the thesis that objects are the substance of the world. Once objects are identified with those universal abstract entities which are qualia, and complexes or states (...) of affairs with their concrete instances, some statements of the Tractatus become liable to a consistent reading: that objects are colourless ; that space, time and colour are forms of objects ; that Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, though still holding for complexes, does not apply to objects . Lastly, it is shown how the interpretation of objects as qualia sheds a vivid light on the theme of the relation between objects and time. (shrink)

On the basis of an analysis of the relevant parts of Tractatus logico-philosophicus, a definition of the property of saying something, and of the obviously correlated property of saying nothing, is given. By applying that definition, both tautologies and contradictions are sanctioned as saying nothing, as lacking sense, in full agreement with Wittgenstein's explicit statements. On the other hand, a recent systematic attempt by A. Negro to extract from the Tractatus a criterion for sense containment and a criterion for saying (...) more, that is, for comparing the amount of sense of propositions, leads to the conclusion that the sense of any proposition is contained in the sense of a contradiction and that contradictions say more than any other propositions. The problem faced in this paper is that of restoring consistency between Negro's criteria, which on the whole give a correct interpretation of the text of the Tractatus, and Wittgenstein's thesis that, not only tautologies, but also contradictions say nothing. (shrink)

The philosophy of arithmetic of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is outlined and the central role played in it by the general notion of operation is pointed out. Following which, the language, the axioms and the rules of a formal theory of operations, extracted from the Tractatus, are presented and a theorem of interpretability of the equational fragment of Peano's Arithmetic into such a formal theory is proven.

In the first paragraph, the focus is on the early Wittgenstein's conception of truth: the Disquotational Schema is shown to be derivable from the semantic and ontological principles of the picture theory. Then, the article scrutinises the way the Disquotational Schema provides the basis for what the later Wittgenstein takes as a philosophically appropriate description of the practice of making assertions. The general abstract notion of truth makes room for a situated notion of warranted assertibility as the key-notion. Last, the (...) issue of how Wright's Argument from Informational Neutrality could be neutralised from the later Wittgenstein's viewpoint is dealt with. (shrink)

CAUSES AND REASONS: EXPLICATIVE MODELS IN NATURAL AND HUMAN SCIENCES Starting from Wittgenstein’s distinction between causes and reasons of an action, the paper presents two influential models in the methodology of explanation: the deductive‐nomological model elaborated by C. G. Hempel and the model based on Aristotle’s practical syllogism, in G. H. von Wright’s version. The controversy between methodological monism and methodological dualism, which has its roots in the opposition between explaining and understanding, is examined.

1 Qualche considerazione preliminare È opportuno cominciare citando per intero la sezione 5.1362 del Tractatus, attorno alla quale ruoterà gran parte di ciò che andrò sostenendo: Il libero arbitrio consiste nell’impossibilità di conoscere ora azioni future. Noi le potremmo conoscere solo se la causalità fosse una necessità interiore, come quella della conclusione logica. — La connessione di conoscere e conosciuto è quella della necessità logica. (“A sa che p" è priva di senso, se p è una taut...

Critica discussion of Pasquale Frascolla, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Introduzione alla lettura, Carocci, Roma, 2000, 322 pp.

I rely on Frascolla's interpretation of the Tractatus ontology to develop an account of depiction in which a picture is conceived of as a visual structure constituted by pixels that are conceived of, in their turn, as elementary propositions. Then I argue that such an account is complementary to the considerations about «noticing aspects» in the Philosophical Investigations, to the extent that the visual structure constituted by pixels provides a design allowing the picture’s viewer to notice aspects. Finally I (...) argue that a joint reading of the considerations about pictures in the Tractatus and in the Philosophical Investigations allows us to address some important issues in the contemporary philosophical debate about depiction. (shrink)

Proposition 5.122 of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus has been the source of much puzzlement among interpreters, so much so that no fully satisfactory account is yet available. This is unfortunate, if only because the containment account of logical consequence has a venerable tradition behind it. Pasquale Frascolla’s interpretation of proposition 5.122 is based on a valid argument and one true premise. However, the argument explains sense containment only in an indirect way, leaving some crucial questions unanswered. Besides, Frascolla does not (...) address the issue of how to make sense containment notationally perspicuous, an essential theme in Wittgenstein’s reflections. In this paper, we elaborate on Frascolla’s account by looking at the issue through the Tractarian notion of logical space. Our analysis shows that, for containment to be fully appreciated, one should adopt a negative perspective on the notion of sense, in line with the exclusionary theory of conceptual content, as labelled by Ian Rumfitt. Besides this, we introduce and discuss two methods—one envisaged by Wittgenstein himself—for making sense containment notationally perspicuous. (shrink)

The extra propositions which Wittgenstein added to Ramsey's copy of\nthe 'Tractatus' during their discussions in 1923 provide evidence,\nWrigley argues, that Wittgenstein's view of mathematics was quite\ndifferent from logicism. Contrary to this, Frascolla tries to prove\nthat the label 'no-classes logicism' tallies with the 'Tractarian'\nview of arithmetic.

The paper analyzes the conception of free will defended by the Tractatus, and in contrast to Pasquale Frascolla’s recent verificationist reading of 5.1362, it argues that Wittgenstein’s conception of free will squarely places future contingencies within the boundaries of truth-conditional semantics.

1. Hume e a Magna Carta: em torno do círculo da justiça, Maria Isabel Limongi; 2. Hume e o problema da justificação da resistência ao governo, Stephanie Hamdan Zahreddine; 3 O surgimento dos costumes da sociedade comercial e as paixões do trabalho, Pedro Vianna da Costa e Faria; 4. O sentido da crença: suas funções epistêmicas e implicações para a teoria política de Hume, Lilian Piraine Laranja; 5. O Status do Fideísmo na Crítica de Hume à Religião Natural, Marília Côrtes (...) de Ferraz; 6. Da imaterialidade da alma: a desconstrução mais incisiva de Hume de um pressuposto metafísico, Marcos César Seneda; 7. A “irresistibilidade” e a “inevitabilidade” das crenças naturais e o caráter normativo da epistemologia de Hume, Claudiney José de Sousa; 8. Filosofia e vida comum na epistemologia de Hume, Marcos Fonseca Ribeiro Balieiro; 9. Hume e o relativismo moral, Flávio Zimmermann; 10. Hume e a vivacidade das crenças morais, André Luiz Olivier da Silva; 11. Virtudes sociais e refinamento na filosofia moral de David Hume, Andreh Sabino Ribeiro; 12. O movimento razão-crença na interpretação da teoria da motivação de Hume, Franco Nero Antunes Soares; 13. Sentimentos e Normatividade em David Hume segundo Annette Baier, Giovani Lunardi; 14. Simpatia e aprovação moral da justiça na filosofia de David Hume, Denize Carolina da Cunha & Nivaldo Machado; 15. Do eu como feixe de percepções ao eu das paixões: Hume e a identidade pessoal no Tratado, Susie Kovalczyk dos Santos; 16. Imaginação em Hobbes e Hume: cadeias mentais reguladas e princípios de associação, Andrea Cachel; 17. Hume e o princípio fundamental da filosofia moderna, Rafael Bittencourt Santos; 18. A conexão necessária entre Hume e Malebranche, Bruna Frascolla; 19. Realismo ontológico e antirrealismo epistemológico na problemática sobre o mundo externo em Hume, Leandro Hollanda; 20. Uma possível inversão kantiana da tese humeana da inércia da razão, Carlos Eduardo Moreno Pires; Nota sobre João Paulo Monteiro, Rolf Nelson Kuntz. (shrink)

We offer a reading of some passages from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in which, dealing with the symbolic constructions of arithmetic, Wittgenstein puts in motion the most outstanding features of Leibniz’s concept of Symbolic Knowledge: the computational and the “ecthetic” functions of the notion of Symbolic Blind Though. We begin with a brief presentation of some conceptual distinctions proposed by Oscar Miguel Esquisabel in his investigation about the Leibnizian origin of the tradition of Symbolic Knowledge. We then contrast these topics with (...) the way Pasquale Frascolla interprets those same Tractarian passages, emphasizing the way in which he suspends any relevant sense in which we could speak about formal knowledge in Wittgenstein’s opera. To make our criticism better suited, our projection of Leibnizian lights into the Tractatus and into Frascolla’s interpretation of it is assisted with a concise exposition of one historical development in the Leibnizian tradition. Grounded in a study in which Javier Legris retraces the features of Symbolic Blind Though in Frege’s works, we then conclude proposing the advantages of our approach. (shrink)