L2. Dimensions et
paradigmes. Wittgenstein et le problème de l’exemplarité.
[= Dimensions and Paradigms,
Wittgenstein and the problem of exemplariness]
Doctorate Thesis defended at the
The thesis attempts to show along the
lines of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy that it is both impossible and
superfluous to account for exemplariness by a theory of categoriality. It
identifies the two predicaments which any such theory is in the grip of, namely
the exemplariness predicament and the logocentric predicament, and traces them
back to the two requirements fundamental to traditional categorial frameworks
(up to that of the Tractatus), namely
that of articulation (which assigns to every thought a unique logical form),
and that of coordination (which assigns to every thought a unique logical place
in logical space). The two predicaments are overcome by first displacing the
two requirements and then proceeding to relinquish them in favor of two
concepts claimed to be crucial to Wittgenstein’s stance on the problem of
universals and to jointly operate in the idea of family resemblances, that of
adjunction of paradigms and that of adjunction of dimensions.
Key words: abstraction –
as (als) – aspect – dimension – exemplariness – expression – Husserl –
intentionality – one-to-one correlation – paradigm – Plato – phenomenology –
proposition – normativity – synthetic a
priori – universals – Wittgenstein.
C1. F.
Waismann : Textures logiques, J.-P. Narboux & A. Soulez
(éds.), Cahiers de philosophie du langage, vol. 6, Paris,
L’harmattan, 2008.
Friedrich
Waimann (1896-1959) was not only one of the most famous members of the Vienna
Circle, but also one of the most acute critics of the doctrines for which that
“movement” came to be known. His work bears the influence of Wittgenstein, with
whom he had intense exchanges, and whose philosophical innovations he was often
able to discern better than anybody else. But Waismann’s work also evinces an
original thought, underwritten by a few crucial insights, which was to have a
deep, though diffuse, impact on the then emerging analytical philosophy.
Waismann’s original thought is still hardly studied for its own sake, though it
foreshadows many a turning point which the analytical philosophy was
subsequently to take, and though it conjugates philosophical methods which are
often assumed to be incompatible. Waismann puts forward a radical logical pluralism which aims at doing justice both to the heterogeneous, and
multi-layered, character of phenomena and to the rigor of logical analysis.
This volume makes available for the first time in French translation two major
essays of Waismann, “Language-Strata” (1953) and “How I See Philosophy” (1956).
It is completed by studies which either comment or drawn upon the polymorphous
work of Waismann.
C2. Les aspects, J.-P. Narboux & A. Soulez
(éds.), Cahiers de philosophie du langage,
vol. 7, Paris, L’harmattan, en préparation.
C3. Wittgenstein,
Cahiers de l’Herne, C. Chauviré,
S. Laugier, J.-P. Narboux, A. Soulez (éds.), l’Herne, en
préparation.
A1. « Les usages
du als : entre le superlatif et
l’ordinaire » [= Wittgenstein and the Uses of As]
A2. « La preuve
par le film » [= Proof by Film]
A3. « La construction : abstraction
ou schématisation ? Quine et Goodman lecteurs de l’Aufbau. » [= Construction,
abstraction and schematization: Quine and Goodman on Carnap’s Aufbau]
A4. « Ressemblances
de famille, caractères, critères » [= Family Resemblances, Characters, and
Criteria]
A5. « Aspects de l’arithmétique »
[English unabridged version: Aspects of Arithmetic]
In their attempt to give an account of
number, Frege and Husserl are faced with the problem of accommodating both
equality and distinguishability. I argue that Frege solves it at the level of
attribution (as opposed to the level of generation), but only at the cost of
assuming the existence of concepts whose characters depict discriminating properties.
In spite of Frege’s insistence that numbers should not be conceived as
dependent upon our ways of seeing, one may well wonder whether a discriminating
character does not amount to a way of seeing, albeit in a non-psychologistic
sense. Through a failure to acknowledge the non-psychologistic,
quasi-formalistic, import of Husserl’s early theory of so-called figural
moments, both Husserl and Frege fail fully to account for the process of
specifying manifolds through comparisons by means of one-to-one correlations.
Following the lead of Wittgenstein, I intend to show that considering numbers
as internal properties of symbols for classes, i.e. as aspects perspicuously
exemplified by lists, provides a way out in this respect. Talk of symbolic
representations of numbers as improper representations is accordingly
relinquished in favour of talk of patterns whose aspects exemplify numerical
equivalences. Against Frege, Wittgenstein shows that the significance of
figural moments should not be restricted to psychology. Against Husserl’s
phenomenology of mathematics, he shows that the idea of positing a categorical
intuition of number, in so far as such an intuition implies the intuitive grasp
of a (grammatical) status, is equally untenable.
Key words: Aspect – Categorial Intuition – Figural
Moment – Gestalt-qualität – Grammar rule – Internal property – Number –
Paradigm – Scheme.
A6. « La logique
peut-elle prendre soin d’elle-même ? » [= Can Logic
Take Care of Itself?]
A7. « Incommensurabilité
et exemplarité (I) » [= Incommensurability and Exemplariness (I)]
A8. « Incommensurabilité et
exemplarité (II) : Aliénation logique et problème des universaux »
[= Incommensurability
and Exemplariness (II): Logical Alienation and the Problem of Universals]
A9. « Wittgenstein
et le problème de l’en-tant-que » [= Wittgenstein and the Problem of the Qua]
A10. « Epilogue à
propos de Scruton : l’entendre-comme » [= On Scruton on Hearing-as]
A11. « Non-sens, contresens et
contre-exemple : Husserl et Wittgenstein sur les démonstrations
d’impossibilité »
[= Nonsense,
countersense and counterexample: Husserl and Wittgenstein on Impossibility
Proofs]
A12. « La conception pragmatique de l’a priori et du non-sens dans Mind and the World-Order de
C.I. Lewis »
[=
C.I. Lewis’ Pragmatic Account of the A Priori and of Nonsense]
A13. « Jeux de langage et jeux de
dressage : la critique éthologique d’Augustin dans les Investigations Philosophiques de
Wittgenstein »
[= Language-games
and Training-games: on Wittgenstein’s Ethological Critic of Augustine]
A14. « Diagrammes,
dimensions et synopsis » [= Diagrams, Dimensions and Synopsis]
This paper
aims at showing that diagrams acquire operational perspicuity through
restricting, exhibiting, and coordinating with each other those dimensions of
what they symbolize that are being symbolized, whether these dimensions are
standards according to which diagrams assess what they denote (this is true of
« denotative » diagrams) or whether they are standards in terms of
which they set the standards of what they exemplify (this is true of
« exemplificative » diagrams). Due to their rule-governed
perspicuity, diagrams can essentially be operated upon. Their manipulation
brings to the fore, now external relations between coordinates (in the case of
denotative diagrams), now internal relations between dimensions (in the case of
exemplificative diagrams). We proceed to substantiate the claim that
perspicuity and dimension-selection are closely linked, by inquiring into the
significance of a shift in Wittgenstein’s thought concerning the interweaving
of generality and negation. It turns out that if each and every state of
affairs possessed its own set of intrinsic dimensions, diagrams would indeed be
bound to be indeterminate or incomplete, since they are confined by nature to a
limited range of dimensions. On the other hand, the fact that diagrams are endowed with a fully
determinate sense might suggest that it is to their perspicuity that diagrams
owe the determinacy or completeness of their sense.
Key words: denotative /exemplificative diagrams –
dimensions – generality notation – Goodman – images – intentionality – method
of projection – negation – picture-theory – quantification – perspicuity –
Wittgenstein.
A15. « L’exemplarité
de la preuve mathématique selon Wittgenstein »
[=
Wittgenstein on the Exemplariness of Mathematical Proof]
If a
thought has as many coordinates as the system of its variants has dimensions,
then what is exemplified by each of its coordinates is completely settled by the
dimensions of this system (it can be called a ‘category’) and such a thought
can be adequately expressed through one single longitudinal axe (namely the
axis constituted by the ‘proposition’ which sets its coordinates). But if, on
the other hand, a thought cannot be uniquely characterized by any single set of
coordinates and if it has coordinates only
relative to a system to which it is being correlated by being put against other thoughts, then what is exemplified by each of its coordinates is bound to remain indeterminate as long
as its expression is confined to a
proposition. It is argued in this paper that in comparing mathematical
proofs with paradigms, Wittgenstein meant to question the former alternative
and to embrace the latter.
A16. « Négation,
contrariété et contradiction: sur la théorie éliminativiste de la négation dans
l’idéalisme anglais »
[= Negation, Contrariety and Contradiction:
on the Eliminativist Theory of Negation in British Idealism]
The author scrutinizes three major insights
contained in the eliminativist view of negation peculiar to the British
Idealists, according to which negation amounts to the elimination of one among
a complete set of alternatives that are disjunctively asserted of the subject
of the negative statement. These three insights are: first, that a proposition
is endowed with a determinate sense through being assigned logical coordinates
in a logical space; second, that the sense of a proposition bears an internal
relation to the sense of its negation; third, that the logical space in which a
negation acquires its sense is context-sensitive. Yet, it is argued, in its
attempt to do justice to the third insight, the eliminativist view of negation
fails to compose adequately the first two. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, on the other hand, combines them adequately but misses
altogether the third. Any sound theory of negation has to do justice to all
three insights at once.
Key-words: Bare negation – British Idealism –
Context – Contradiction – Contrariety – Logical Space – Negation –
Wittgenstein.
A17. « L’obvie en
négatif » [= The Negative Obvious]
A18. « Unité propositionnelle et unité
aspectuelle dans le Tractatus de
Wittgenstein »
[=
Propositional Unity and Aspectual Unity in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus]
A19. « L'intentionalité : un parcours fléché
(Wittgenstein, Recherches Philosophiques, §§428-465) »
[= Intentionality in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations §§428-465]
A20. « Logique et
téléologie chez Kant et Wittgenstein » [= Logic and Teleology in Kant and
Wittgenstein]
A21. « L’indexicalité, pierre d’achoppement
de l’intentionalisme husserlien ? »
[=
Indexicality as the Stumbling Block of Husserl’s Intentionalism]
A22. « L’intentionalité
au prisme de l’indexicalité » [= Intentionality and Indexicality]
Qualifies
as a version of ‘intentionalism’, in the broad sense of the term, any
philosophy which assumes that the presence of the mind to objects of thought
and the presence to the senses of objects of perception are not so heterogeneous that one cannot talk of
‘presence’ in both cases without equivocation. The concept of ‘intentionality’
functions as the key operator of the alignment of the two modalities of presence.
Now,
the semantic behaviour of indexicals, namely the rule-governed dependence of
the meanings of certain expressions upon the context in which they are used, constitutes
a cornerstone for all versions of intentionalism. In effect, and precisely
because it seems to bridge the gap between language and perception,
indexicality is bound to constitute either a promise or a threat for
intentionalism, according to whether it is designed in the first place to accommodate
the behaviour of indexicals or it meets indexicality as an exception to a
definition whose model lies elsewhere.
This
essay takes the phenomenon of indexicality as a prism through which to decompose the spectre of the varieties of which intentionalism
comprises. At the same time, the aim is to circumscribe both their common core
and their common limitations.
It
is argued in this essay that intentionalism, under each of the two fundamental
guises of which it admits, is constitutively unable to account for indexicality.
It is further argued that even if the
concept of intentionality could account for indexicality, intentionalism itself
would still be untenable, to the extent that the concept of intentionality
cannot espouse the contours of indexicality without doing violence to the specificities
of perception. As it manages to capture the specificities of indexicality,
intentionalism inevitably looses sight of the specificities of perception.
A23. « Négation et dimension » [=
Negation and Dimension]
A24. « Négation et totalité dans le Tractatus de Wittgenstein » [=
Negation and Totality in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus]
A25. « The
Logical Fabric of Assertions (I):
A26. « The
Logical Fabric of Assertions (II): some Lessons from
This
essay argues that the relative oddity of Austin’s “How to Talk: some Simple
Ways” is a function of its mounting an attack against the best case that can be
made against a certain integrated account of truth, assertion and logical
structure which is epitomized by the classical concept of the logos apophantikos and its modern
avatars, and constitutes the core doctrine of logic (the authors calls it the “apophantic model”). That integrated
account constitutes the kernel of pre-Austinian logic, including the so-called “modern”, post-Fregean, logic.
A27. « L’architecture
de la légèreté » [= The Architecture of Lightness]
A28. « La
doctrine et son ombre » [= The Doctrine and its Shadow]
A29. « Many
a Sip between Cup and Lip: Dimensions and Negations in
For
A30. « Lecture
externaliste de De la certitude »
[= An Externalist Strand in Wittgenstein’s On
Certainty]
The thesis attempts to show along the
lines of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy that it is both impossible and
superfluous to account for exemplariness by a theory of categoriality. It
identifies the two predicaments which any such theory is in the grip of, namely
the exemplariness predicament and the logocentric predicament, and traces them
back to the two requirements fundamental to traditional categorial frameworks
(up to that of the Tractatus), namely
that of articulation (which assigns to every thought a unique logical form),
and that of coordination (which assigns to every thought a unique logical place
in logical space). The two predicaments are overcome by first displacing the
two requirements and then proceeding to relinquish them in favor of two
concepts claimed to be crucial to Wittgenstein’s stance on the problem of
universals and to jointly operate in the idea of family resemblances, that of
adjunction of paradigms and that of adjunction of dimensions.
Key words: abstraction –
as – aspect – dimension – exemplariness – expression – Husserl – intentionality
– one-to-one correlation – paradigm – Plato – phenomenology – proposition –
normativity – synthetic a priori –
universals – Wittgenstein.