One cant help but be struck by the range of incompatible positions that Wittgensteins philosophy, his rule-following considerations in particular, have been taken to support. For instance, according to one very popular interpretation of the rule-following considerations, Wittgenstein proves that claims about the meanings of words arent objectively true. On another interpretation, Wittgenstein shows that discourse about meaning, though without foundation, is as capable of robust truth as any. Still others argue that the Wittgenstein of the Investigations was neither a realist nor an antirealist with respect to discourse about meaning. On the contrary, according to proponents of this last interpretation, Wittgenstein rejected as nonsense both the questions that the rule-following considerations seem to pose and the answers that realists and antirealists have tried to give to these questions.
This third, quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein has received increased critical attention of late. Some commentators have suggested that there is no textual basis for the quietist interpretation of the early Wittgenstein. Less has been written that purports to assess the arguments that quietists have found in Wittgenstein, early or late.
In this dissertation, I assess the philosophical credentials of the quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein. In the first part, I argue that the material from Frege that inspired the Tractatus doesnt support quietism in the way that proponents of the quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein suppose. In the second part, I argue that the rule-following considerations support a position thats closely related to, but in important respects different from the one that the proponents of the quietist interpretation of Wittgenstein endorse.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-02122006-115848 |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| Creators | Finkelstein, David M. |
| Contributors | Kieran Setiya, John McDowell, David H. Finkelstein, Nicholas Rescher |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-02122006-115848/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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