Wolfgang Huemer

Fin dall’antichità esiste una tensione tra filosofia e letteratura, a cui David Hume ha dato voce dicendo che i poeti sono «mentitori per professione»: i testi letterari, in quanto opere di finzione che parlano di persone che non sono mai esistite e di eventi che non sono mai accaduti, non contengono proposizioni vere. Ciò implica, però, che essi sono privi di qualsiasi valore cognitivo. Questo articolo cerca di mostrare che tale atteggiamento anticognitivista si basa su una concezione errata del progresso cognitivo, che lo riduce a un accumulo di dati. Quando apprendiamo da un testo letterario, invece, è perché esso ci offre nuove prospettive, approfondisce la nostra comprensione o ci invita a riflettere e ad arrivare a conclusioni nostre.There is an old tension between philosophy and literature that has been brought to the point by David Hume who stated that poets are «liars by profession». Literary texts, as works of fiction that talk about people who have never lived and events that have never taken place, do not contain true propositions and hence do not have any cognitive value. This article aims to show that the anticognitivistic argument is based on a false conception of cognitive progress, which reduces learning to the acquisition of information. We can learn from literary texts, however, because they offer new perspectives, deepen our understanding and invite us to reflect and arrive at our own conclusions

A team of leading contributors from both philosophical and literary backgrounds have been brought together in this impressive book to examine how works of literary fiction can be a source of knowledge. Together, they analyze the important trends in this current popular debate. The innovative feature of this volume is that it mixes work by literary theorists and scholars with work of analytic philosophers that combined together provide a comprehensive statement of the variety of ways in which works of fiction can engage questions of worldly interest. It uses the problem of cognitive value to explore: literature’s contribution to ethical life literature’s ability to engage in social and political critique the role narrative plays in opening up possibilities of moral, aesthetic, experience and selfhood This remarkable volume will attract the attention of both literature and philosophy scholars with its statement of the various ways that literature and life take an interest in one another.

Die Philosophie der Wahrnehmung der letzten Jahrzehnte ist stark geprägt von der Begrifflichkeitsdebatte. Dabei ist allerdings eine dialektische Pattstellung zu erkennen: während die Begrifflichkeitsthese für gewöhnlich mit der epistemischen Rolle er Wahrnehmung begründet wird, verweisen Argumente für die Nichtbegrifflichkeitsthese zumeist auf die qualitative Reichhaltigkeit und die erlebnismäßig gegebenen, also phänomenologischen Aspekte der Wahrnehmung. Um diese Pattstellung zu überwinden, skizziere ich in diesem Beitrag Überlegungen für ein Argument für die Begrifflichkeitsthese, das wesentliche auf den phänomenologischen Aspekten der Wahrnehmung beruht.

_The Literary Wittgenstein_ is a stellar collection of articles relating the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein to core problems in the theory and philosophy of literature. Amid growing recognition that Wittgenstein's philosophy has important implications for literary studies, this book brings together twenty-one articles by the most prominent figures in the field. Eighteen of the articles are published here for the first time. _The Literary Wittgenstein_ applies the approach of Wittgenstein to core areas of literary theory, including poetry, deconstruction, the ethical value of literature, and the nature and logic of fictional discourse. The literary dimension of Wittgenstein's own writings is also explored, such as the authorial strategy of the _Tractatus_, and writing and method in the _Philosophical Investigations_. Major literary figures discussed in the book include William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad, and Friedrich Hölderlin. By mapping out the foundations of a new approach to literature, _The Literary Wittgenstein_ is essential reading for anyone interested in the relevance and application of Wittgenstein's thought to literary theory, aesthetics, and the philosophy of language and logic

In this article I focus on the question question of why we actually do read literary texts and what the merits of engaging with literary works are. The central argument is that (among the many other functions literature is abile to perform) literature is cognitively valuable by focusing not on what is said, but on how it is said. Reading literary texts adds to our expressive capacities, enriches our conceptual schemes and can so allow us to get a better grasp of (relevant aspects of) the world. In short, Literature is cognitively valuable not in virtue of the content it expresses, but by means of formal or stylistic elements to which it draws our attention.

Anti-reductionist philosophers have often argued that mental and linguistic phenomena contain an intrinsically normative element that cannot be captured by the natural sciences which focus on causal rather than rational relations. This line of reasoning raises the questions of how reasons could evolve in a world of causes and how children can be acculturated to participate in rule-governed social practices. In this paper I will sketch a Wittgensteinian answer to these questions. I will first point out that throughout his later philosophy Wittgenstein draws a sharp distinction between "teaching" and "training": newly-born children are trained (conditioned) to react to specific stimuli in specific ways, which then allows them to acquire concepts and follow rules. I will then show that this picture presupposes a strong analogy between concepts and capacities, which is also present in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. In the last section I will point out that Wittgenstein only discusses the ontogenetic question of how individual children can acquire speech, but not the phylogenetic question of how rule-governed behavior could evolve in the first place. I will argue that this strategy should not be seen as a shortcoming, but rather as an expression of Wittgenstein's approach that can be characterized as naturalistic in a wide sense.