António Marques

This chapter analyses the expression “I know” in language-games of Wittgenstein’s late philosophy. Many philosophical questions regarding the meaning of “ontological commitment” arise from reading Wittgenstein’s late work, not only from Philosophical Investigations, but also from the latest writings on the philosophy of psychology and writings On Certainty. The sense in which it was possible to speak of ontological commitment in his late work is a general question that involves unique problems and difficulties in the philosophy of language. The author investigates language games that contain expressions of the kind “I know p” or “I’m sure that p”. These language games are central to the epistemic and ontological questions that Wittgenstein explored in his late philosophical writings.

The study is motivated by the question whether any transcendental elements can be found in Wittgenstein’s late writings. The aim is to contrast the positions of Kant and Wittgenstein making reference to P.M.S. Hacker’s Wittgensteinian Critique of Kant’s transcendental deduction. The author discusses the dichotomy between the expressive and descriptive use of language and the necessity to overcome the division between the inner and the outer. Making reference to Wittgenstein’s proposals, the author argues that the use of a common logic-grammatical framework enables mankind to share experiences and coincide in forms of life. These conditions exhibit similarities with Kant’s position and suggest that Wittgenstein’s late philosophy contains transcendental elements.

To what extent is the form of our life fixed, i.e. is there a form of life or forms of life? How does this bear on the nature of experience? These are two Wittgensteinian questions in need of clarification. Wittgenstein on Forms of Life and the Nature of Experience sheds light on a much exploited but rarely analysed topic in Wittgenstein scholarship while addressing central themes of contemporary philosophy. Bringing together essays from some of the leading scholars in the field, the book concentrates on Wittgenstein’s concept of Lebensform(en), and more specifically its evolution in the author’s thought until his death in 1951.

My analysis of Wittgenstein’s conception of what constitutes “understanding” starts from Philosophical Investigations § 109, where the activity of “Beschreibung” plays a central role. There Wittgenstein traces a sharp contrast between the activity of “describing” and that of “erklären” and defends the former as the correct philosophical method. Here we want to explore that kind of activity as well as the meaning of such a gap. I claim that in the late Wittgenstein this activity (describing) cannot be separated from the perspective of the first person and often includes expressive language (Ausdruck). Thus, “understanding” has special connections with what one can call “describing with expression.”

Para el pensamiento contemporáneo, el argumento schopenhaueriano en contra de la moral kantiana ofrece un modelo de crítica radical de la razón que será en muchos sentidos, más o menos explícitamente, desarrollado a lo largo de nuestro siglo. La autoafirmación moderna, que se funda en las leyes incondicionadas de la razón, empieza a ser considerada como una ficción de ésta. Es, sin embargo, importante recuperar la génesis de este pensamiento crítico, examinando de nuevo la argumentación schopenhaueriana. Nuestra conclusión es que ella no destruye los supuestos básicos de la ética kantiana, sino que aparece como un reto que promueve una comprensión más profunda de la dialéctica naturaleza-libertad de las dos primeras Críticas

Predictive statements deserve a specific grammatical inquiry, since they have not only an epistemological status, but also appear in Wittgenstein"s writings on philosophy of psychology and touch deeply the problem of free will. So predictive knowledge covers a very large spectrum of human experience. This grammatical exploration leads to acknowledge an essential difference between predictive statements, which are expressions or exteriorisations of will (Willensäusserungen) and predictions, which are made from the perspective of the third person (although they can be uttered in the first). As Wittgenstein notes: "Two things however, are important: one, that in many cases someone else cannot predict my actions, whereas I foresee them in my intentions; the other, that my prediction (in my expression of intention) has not the same foundation as his prediction of what I shall do, and the conclusions to be drawn from these predictions are quite differentâ€? (PI, Iixi, 224e). It is the grammatical elucidation of predictive language games that allows us to solve the problem of the incompatibility between predicted and at the same time free choices.