Danièle Moyal-Sharrock

In much of her writing, Cora Diamond stresses the role of the imagination in awakening the sense of our humanity. She subtly unthreads the operations of the ethical imagination in literature, but deplores its absence in philosophy. Borrowing the notion of ‘deflection’ from Cavell, Diamond sees ethical understanding ‘present only in a diminished and distorted way in philosophical argumentation’. She does, however, herself make a philosophical, if idiosyncratic, use of the imagination in her appeal to it for a ‘transitional’ understanding of nonsensical Tractarian remarks. I begin by delineating and endorsing Diamond’s humanistic view of the creative imagination; I then argue against her opportunistic use of the imagination in her interpretation of the Tractatus and her condemnation of philosophical ethics

This paper surveys the impact on neuropsychology of Wittgenstein's elucidations of memory. Wittgenstein discredited the storage and imprint models of memory, dissolved the conceptual link between memory and mental images or representations and, upholding the context-sensitivity of memory, made room for a family resemblance concept of memory, where remembering can also amount to doing or saying something. While neuropsychology is still generally under the spell of archival and physiological notions of memory, Wittgenstein's reconceptions can be seen at work in its leading-edge practitioners. However, neuroscientists, generally, are finding memory difficult to demarcate from other cognitive and noncognitive processes, and I suggest this is largely due to their considering automatic responses as part of memory, termed nondeclarative or implicit memory. Taking my lead from Wittgenstein's On Certainty, I argue that there is only remembering where there is also some kind of mnemonic effort or attention, and, therefore, that so-called implicit memory is not memory at all, but a basic, noncognitive certainty.

I take issue with Pieranna Garavaso’s contention - lodged in a rapprochement between Wittgenstein and Quine - that for Wittgenstein, there is no sharp categorial distinction between logical and empirical propositions, but only one of degree. I argue that Garavaso’s conclusion results from a misunderstanding of the river-bed analogy in On Certainty (96-99). When Wittgenstein maintains there is not a sharp boundary between propositions of logic and empirical propositions, he does not imply that there is not a sharp categorial difference between them, but that the boundary is permeable. The consequent changeability of status of logical and empirical propositions does not entail the collapse, or even a partial blurring, of their respective categories. I then address Wittgenstein’s puzzlement, in On Certainty, about the logical status of some apparently empirical propositions, and show that he resolves this not, as is often thought, by concluding that some empirical propositions are necessary, but by recognizing the ‘empiricality’ of these propositions as merely apparent. A line is thereby drawn between empirical propositions and framework propositions that only have the form of empirical propositions (OC 401). I conclude that, unlike Quine, Wittgenstein held a foundational view of our system of beliefs, making a categorial distinction between the foundation-walls and the house, and regarding part of these foundations as immovable.