How Not to Read Philosophical Investigations: Brandom’s Wittgenstein

John H. McDowell; Kurt Wischin

doi:10.5281/zenodo.2653928

John McDowell University of Pittsburgh, USA
Kurt Wischin Universidad de Granada, Spain

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2653928

Keywords: Regulism, Rule-Following, Making Explicit, Practice

Abstract

This paper, originating from a Wittgenstein conference in Delphi, Greece in June 2001, questions Brandom’s reading of Wittgenstein on “Following a Rule”. For the purpose of our current investigative dispute, it is a very good starting point to draw our attention to some of the vital differences between Wittgenstein’s and Brandom’s approach to the relation between practice and rules that may not be quite as clear at first sight from Brandom’s own writings. This writing maintains that Brandom misconstrues Wittgenstein’s remarks about signposts and Philosophical Investigations §201 with the consequence that his own explications about tacit rules involved in practice seem more Wittgensteinian than they really are. For one, Brandom duplicates Wittgenstein’s requirement of correctness in rule following: “...correctness that consists in following a rule [does not presuppose] correctness that does not.” On the other hand Brandom’s reading makes Wittgenstein’s quietism look like ”a pretext for not doing constructive work”, while Wittgenstein’s point is that there is nothing left to enquire

Author Biographies

John McDowell, University of Pittsburgh, USA

John H. McDowell is a University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1986. He has taught before that at University College, Oxford. He has held visiting appointments at Harvard University, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and Princeton University. He was the John Locke Lecturer at Oxford University in 1991. His major interests are Greek philosophy, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. He is a fellow of the British Academy and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Kurt Wischin, Universidad de Granada, Spain

Kurt Wischin is currently CPhil at the International School for Graduate Studies of the University of Granada. His first formational contact with academic philosophy occurred in Vienna during the 1970s. He obtained a BA in Philosophy at the Autonomous University and a MPhil at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. His work in philosophy takes as it starting point the philosophy of Wittgenstein, in particular as condensed in Philosophical Investigations. His current investigative activities a focussed on the foundational years of contemporary philosophy of logic and language, putting special emphasis on the development of Frege's doctrine and its influence on the formation of the Tractatus, as well as generally early analytical philosophy. He has published various articles and translations y some anthologies' and academic reviews.

References

Brandom, Robert B. (1994). Making it Explicit. Reasoning, Representing, and Discoursive Committment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McDowell, John (1998). «Wittgenstein on Following a Rule» In Mind, Value, and Reality, edited by John McDowell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kant, Immanuel (1929). Critique of Pure Reason [CRP]. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philosophical Investigations [PI]. Translation by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. The translation into Spanish of quotes from this book is based on the German original in: Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2001). Philosophische Untersuchungen [IF]. Kritisch-genetische Edition. Herausgegeben von Joachim Schulte in Zusammenarbeit mit Heikki Nyman, Eike von Savigny und Georg Henrik von Wright. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1978). Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics [RFM]. Edited by G. H. von Wright, R. Rhees, G. E. M. Anscombe, Translation by G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. The translation into Spanish of quotes from this book is based on the German original in: Wittgenstein (1984). Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik. Werkausgabe Band 6. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1958). The Blue and Brown Books [BB]. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. The translation into Spanish of quotes from this book is based on the German original in: Wittgenstein (1984). Das Blaue Buch. Werkausgabe Band 5. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

How Not to Read Philosophical Investigations: Brandom’s Wittgenstein

Abstract

Author Biographies

References

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