<p>This paper studies the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein during his years (1920–26) as an elementary school teacher in remote Niederösterreich, Austria. The paper gives a survey of his life, and also a brief account of three of his main works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Attention is given to his alphabetical word list, Wörterbuch für Volksschulen, published for educational use in elementary schools. The study is focused on Wittgenstein’s educational practise, and establishes a connection between his experience as a teacher and his late philosophy.</p>

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

The aim of the present study is to develop a solution to the problem of skepticism about the external world ("skepticism", for short), inspired primarily by Hume's "skeptical solution" to the problem of skepticism about induction, but also by epistemological externalism and Wittgenstein's discussion of skeptical doubts in On Certainty. The author accepts certain elements in P. F. Strawson's interpretation of Hume and Wittgenstein, but rejects the "psychological" argument against skepticism which Strawson ascribes to the two philosophers. The problem of skepticism is understood as that of showing that we can know what we in common sense claim to know about external objects, despite skeptical arguments to the contrary. A "moderate" skepticism is accepted, according to which it is possible that we are globally mistaken in our beliefs about external objects, and it is argued that there is in fact no conflict between this moderate skepticism and common sense. A distinc-tion is drawn between two types of "strong" skepticism, which does conflict with common sense: prescriptive skepti-cism, the recommendation to abandon our common sense ways of forming beliefs, by suspend-ing judgement or in other ways; and theoretical skepti-cism, the thesis that we can have no rational grounds for our beliefs about external objects. An argument against prescriptive skepticism is devel-oped, according to which each of three possible forms of prescriptive skepticism is unacceptable. An externalist argument against theoreti-cal skepticism is developed, according to which it is suffi-cient for knowledge that one is in fact not globally mis-taken, whether or not one has grounds for believing this to be the case. It is argued that this variant of externalism constitutes a form of natu-ralistic epistemology, and that it as such fills a gap in Quine's argument for the natu-ralization of epistemology. An interpretation of On Certainty is defended, according to which Wittgen-stein accepts a form of moderate skepticism and presents an argu-ment against strong skep-ticism similar to Hume's.

This paper studies the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein during his years (1920–26) as an elementary school teacher in remote Niederösterreich, Austria. The paper gives a survey of his life, and also a brief account of three of his main works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Attention is given to his alphabetical word list, Wörterbuch für Volksschulen, published for educational use in elementary schools. The study is focused on Wittgenstein’s educational practise, and establishes a connection between his experience as a teacher and his late philosophy.

This thesis examines the relation between philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1940s writings on seeing and seeing aspects and Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler’s theory of perception as set out in his Gestalt Psychology (1929). I argue that much of the existing literature on the Wittgenstein-Köhler relation distorts Köhler’s ideas and thus also Wittgenstein’s engagement with Köhler’s ideas. This double distortion underrates Köhler’s insights, misconstrues Wittgenstein’s complaints against Köhler, and masks points of contact between the two concerning the nature and description of human perceptual experience. In my view, Wittgenstein sympathizes with Köhler’s call to reflect on basic psychological categories such as “experience”, his respect for the “naïve” experience of the layperson, his method of “rediscovering” pervasive features of experience that escape our notice, and his efforts to identify intellectual prejudices that stymie inquiry. But a warning emerges from Wittgenstein’s discussions of seeing and seeing aspects: It is especially difficult to command a clear view of 'seeing' and its interrelations with other everyday, psychological concepts. I argue that Wittgenstein’s far-reaching criticism of Köhler is that the latter's account of visual “organization” overextends an analogy between seeing and seeing aspects and pushes aside other justifiable comparisons, for example between seeing and thinking and seeing and imagining. A consequence of Wittgenstein's criticism is that Kohler falls short of his aim to depict faithfully naïve visual experience. Moreover, despite Kohler's commitment to battling prejudices, the latter's emphasis on similarities between seeing and seeing aspects to the exclusion of their differences is a form of intellectual prejudice. For Wittgenstein various comparisons are justifiable by appeal to the interrelations between ‘seeing’ and other psychological concepts. A perspicuous view of the concept 'seeing' involves steady appreciation of the multitude of justifiable, criss-crossing comparisons. So although Wittgenstein does not deny Köhler’s claim that organization is a feature of visual experience rather than thinking, he does not unqualifiedly endorse it either. We have conceptual grounds for various ways of speaking about our experiences of aspects.

This thesis is a work of practical philosophy situated at the intersection of bioethics, environmental ethics, and social and political thought. Broadly, its topic is the moral status of nonhuman animals. One of its pivotal aims is to encourage and foster the “sympathetic imaginative construction of another’s reality” and to determine how that construction might feed back on to understandings of ourselves and of our place in this world that we share with so many other creatures. In the three chapters that follow the introduction, I explore a concept (vulnerability), a tradition in moral philosophy (the ethic of care), and a philosopher (Wittgenstein) that are not often foregrounded in discussions of animal ethics. Taken together, these sections establish a picture of other animals (and of the kinship that humans share with them) that can stand as an alternative to the utilitarian and rights theories that have been dominant in this domain of philosophical inquiry. In my fifth and sixth chapters, I extend this conceptual framework by turning to the work of Michel Foucault. Here, I develop a two-pronged approach. The first direction – inspired by Foucault’s work on “technologies of power” – is a broad, top-down engagement that explores many of the social apparatuses that constitute the power-laden environments in which human beings and other animals interact. I focus on the slaughterhouse in particular and argue that it is a pernicious institution in which care and concern are rendered virtually impossible. The second direction – inspired by Foucault’s later work on “technologies of the self” – is a bottom-up approach that looks at the different ways that individuals care for, and fashion themselves, as ethical subjects. Here, I examine the dietary practice of vegetarianism, arguing that it is best understood as an ethical practice of self-care. One virtue of my investigation is that it enables a creative synthesis of disparate strands of philosophical thought (i.e. analytic, continental, and feminist traditions). Another is that it demonstrates the philosophical importance of attending to both the wider, institutional dimension of human-animal interactions and to the lived, embodied experiences of individuals who must orient themselves and live their lives within that broader domain. This more holistic approach enables concrete critical reflection that can be the impetus for social, and self-, transformation.

In this thesis, I discuss John Searles account of Intentionality which includes his theory of the Background as something which is necessary, in some sense, to there being such a thing as Intentionality. In chapter one I briefly introduce the notions of both background and normativity. In chapter two, I discuss the motives and initial rationale of Searles theory. In chapter three I discuss the philosophers he has had contact with who anticipated the Background. In chapter four I claim that Searle has always been conflicted about his theory and I diagnose the root of his conflict, namely that the original rationale required the Background to be normative in nature, but over time it was additionally conceived neurophysiologically, causally, and thus non-normative in nature. I argue that his conflict is inevitable given the irreducibility of the intentional to the non-intentional, and more generally of the normative to the non-normative.

This thesis examines the relation between philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1940s writings on seeing and seeing aspects and Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Köhler’s theory of perception as set out in his Gestalt Psychology (1929). I argue that much of the existing literature on the Wittgenstein-Köhler relation distorts Köhler’s ideas and thus also Wittgenstein’s engagement with Köhler’s ideas. This double distortion underrates Köhler’s insights, misconstrues Wittgenstein’s complaints against Köhler, and masks points of contact between the two concerning the nature and description of human perceptual experience. In my view, Wittgenstein sympathizes with Köhler’s call to reflect on basic psychological categories such as “experience”, his respect for the “naïve” experience of the layperson, his method of “rediscovering” pervasive features of experience that escape our notice, and his efforts to identify intellectual prejudices that stymie inquiry. But a warning emerges from Wittgenstein’s discussions of seeing and seeing aspects: It is especially difficult to command a clear view of 'seeing' and its interrelations with other everyday, psychological concepts. I argue that Wittgenstein’s far-reaching criticism of Köhler is that the latter's account of visual “organization” overextends an analogy between seeing and seeing aspects and pushes aside other justifiable comparisons, for example between seeing and thinking and seeing and imagining. A consequence of Wittgenstein's criticism is that Kohler falls short of his aim to depict faithfully naïve visual experience. Moreover, despite Kohler's commitment to battling prejudices, the latter's emphasis on similarities between seeing and seeing aspects to the exclusion of their differences is a form of intellectual prejudice. For Wittgenstein various comparisons are justifiable by appeal to the interrelations between ‘seeing’ and other psychological concepts. A perspicuous view of the concept 'seeing' involves steady appreciation of the multitude of justifiable, criss-crossing comparisons. So although Wittgenstein does not deny Köhler’s claim that organization is a feature of visual experience rather than thinking, he does not unqualifiedly endorse it either. We have conceptual grounds for various ways of speaking about our experiences of aspects.

Le présent travail vise à présenter la conception de l'intériorité que partagent Robert Musil et Ludwig Wittgenstein. Pour être en mesure d'apprécier à sa juste valeur l'originalité de leur pensée, il importe de comprendre que le sort du Moi, à Vienne, au début du vingtième siècle, était pour le moins incertain. À l'époque, on hésitait en effet entre deux tendances: soit rejeter complètement l'existence du Moi, soit le réifier et le recouvrir de concepts obscurs. La façon dont Musil et Wittgenstein conçoivent le rapport entre l'intérieur et l'extérieur se situe en marge de ces grands courants philosophiques, puisqu'elle n'endosse ni la thèse introspectionniste, ni la thèse comportementaliste. Pour bien faire comprendre le cadre conceptuel dans lequel s'inscrit leur pensée, nous avons mis en évidence la pensée de Ernst Mach qui a lui aussi cherché à circonscrire la vraie nature du Moi. Ne trouvant nul part une telle chose, il prononça son célèbre verdict: « Le Moi ne peut, en aucun cas, être sauvé». Musil et Wittgenstein ne vont pas aussi loin dans leur redéfinition du Moi, même s'ils présentent tous les deux une version minimale de l'intériorité. Le Moi, selon eux, doit être compris davantage comme un processus que comme une chose. Ce qui disparaît complètement chez Mach réapparaît ainsi sous une forme procédurale. Ainsi le Moi n'est pas un phénomène psychique, ni un sentiment interne, mais une capacité à transformer en pensée notre expérience du monde. Musil et Wittgenstein sont de ceux qui partagent la conviction qu'il existe bien quelque chose qui, dans l'expérience que nous avons du monde, dépasse le simple comportement, mais qu'il est difficile d'en parler directement sans s'empêtrer dans des confusions langagières. Le Moi dont parlent Musil et Wittgenstein est un Moi entièrement tourné vers l'extérieur, et pour le comprendre, il est vain de tenter de l'observer de l'intérieur. C'est plutôt par ses manifestations externes qu'il est possible de voir se profiler cette chose qui réagit d'une manière toute personnelle à ce qu'il trouve autour de lui. Nous ne prétendons pas, par ce travail, résoudre tous les problèmes philosophiques liés à la question de l'intériorité, mais plutôt exposer une conception qui tienne compte de la nature créatrice du Moi. Ce travail cherche aussi à montrer que la définition de l'intériorité que proposent Musil et Wittgenstein comporte une dimension éthique importante. En effet, cesser de concevoir l'intériorité comme quelque chose d'immuable, et la concevoir plutôt comme un processus, peut possiblement nous permettre, c'est du moins ce que croient Musil et Wittgenstein, de mieux vivre. Le pari qu'ils font est qu'une conception de l'intériorité qui nie l'existence matérielle du Moi, mais qui lui confère tout de même la fonction de donner un sens à l'expérience, oblige à se concevoir soi-même comme un processus qui évolue au fil de l'expérience. Aussi ne doit-on pas juger son Moi propre, de même que le Moi d'autrui, avec la sévérité des choses immuables, puisqu'il est toujours possible que le Moi et le monde prennent des formes différentes. Contre le pessimisme ambiant du début du vingtième siècle, et contre la nostalgie du monde d'hier, Musil et Wittgenstein proposent de retourner à la table de travail, et de faire de l'ordre dans nos conceptions du monde. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Intériorité, Moi, Éthique, Invention, Mach, Musil, Wittgenstein.

Carlo Michelstaedter's Persuasion and Rhetoric (1910) is one of best examples of what Massimo Cacciari calls the early twentieth century "metaphysics of youth." Persuasion and Rhetoric is the result of Michelstaedter's academic investigation on the concepts of "persuasion" and "rhetoric" in Plato and Aristotle. Michelstaedter saw in Plato's corpus the gradual abandonment of Parmenidean "being" and Socrates' dialogical philosophy. He reinterpreted the notions of "persuasion" and "rhetoric" terms of a radical dichotomy, using them to represent two opposed ontological modalities, two epistemological attitudes, and two existential alternatives. If "rhetoric" comprehends language, institutional knowledge, and all manifestations of empirical life, then "persuasion" is defined as the unity of the individual with Parmenidean being. Persuasion is an impossible choice: "lifeless life." Being a decisive alternative to rhetoric, persuasion - much like Platonic mania - can neither be articulated nor communicated. Nevertheless, Michelstaedter speaks, aware of his inevitable failure: he will not persuade anyone.