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40Normativity, meaning and philosophy: essays on WittgensteinAnthem Press. 2024.This is a collection of essays on Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinian themes that appeared between 1996 and 2019. It is divided into three parts, with a common trajectory laid out in a substantial introduction. The first part links meaning, necessity and normativity. It defends and modifies Wittgenstein’s claim that the idea of a ‘grammatical rule’ holds the key to understanding linguistic meaning and its connection to necessary propositions. The second part elucidates the connections between meani…Read more
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38Review of Howard Wettstein, The Magic Prism: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2005 (12). 2005.
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38Vorprung durch Logik: The German Analytic TraditionRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 44 137-166. 1999.Although at present analytic philosophy is practiced mainly in the English-speaking world, it is to a considerable part the invention of German speakers. Its emergence owes much to Russell, Moore, and American Pragmatism, but even more to Frege, Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle. No one would think of analytic philosophy as a specifically Anglophone phenomenon, if the Nazis had not driven many of its pioneers out of central Europe.
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36Knowledge, certainty and scepticism: in Moore's defenceIn D. Moyal-Sharrock (ed.), The Third Wittgenstein: The Post-Investigations Works, . pp. 63-78. 2004.
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36Animals, Thoughts And ConceptsSynthese 123 (1): 35-64. 2000.There are three main positions on animalthought: lingualism denies that non-linguistic animalshave any thoughts; mentalism maintains that theirthoughts differ from ours only in degree, due totheir different perceptual inputs; an intermediateposition, occupied by common sense and Wittgenstein,maintains that animals can have thoughts of a simplekind. This paper argues in favor of an intermediateposition. It considers the most important arguments infavor of lingualism, namely those inspired byDavid…Read more
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35The quest for rigour in early analytic philosophyRivista di Filosofia 114 (3): 589-614. 2023.This article is devoted to the historical roots of the quest for rigor associated with analytic philosophy. Starting out from distinctions between different senses of “rigourµ, it considers the rather diverse conceptions and pursuits of rigour in Frege, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein and Carnap. On that basis it diagnoses a potential conflict that some of them were aware of, but that has been ignored by recent commentators, namely between certain kinds of rigour on the hand, clarity and surveyabil…Read more
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33Concepts: Where Subjectivism Goes WrongPhilosophy 84 (1): 5-29. 2009.The debate about concepts has always been shaped by a contrast between subjectivism, which treats them as phenomena in the mind or head of individuals, and objectivism, which insists that they exist independently of individual minds. The most prominent contemporary version of subjectivism is Fodor's RTM. The Fregean charge against subjectivism is that it cannot do justice to the fact that different individuals cansharethe same concepts. Proponents of RTM have accepted shareability as a ‘non-nego…Read more
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32My paper reflects on the debate about reasons for action and action explanations between Wittgensteinian teleological approaches and causalist theories inspired by Davidson. After a brief discussion of similarities and differences in the philosophy of language, I sketch the prehistory and history of the controversy. I show that the conflict between Wittgenstein and Davidson revolves neither around revisionism nor around naturalism. Even in the philosophy of mind and action, Davidson is not as re…Read more
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31All kinds of nonsenseIn Erich Ammereller & Eugen Fisher (eds.), Wittgenstein at Work: Method in the Philosophical Investigations, Routledge. pp. 221-245. 2004.
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31Notions of arbitrarinessMind and Language. forthcoming.Arbitrariness is a distinctive feature of human language, and a growing body of comparative work is investigating its presence in animal communication. But what is arbitrariness, exactly? We propose to distinguish four notions of semiotic arbitrariness: a notion of opaque association between sign forms and semiotic functions, one of sign-function mapping optionality, one of acquisition-dependent sign-function coupling, and one of lack of motivatedness. We characterize these notions, illustrate t…Read more
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30IntroductionIn Hans-Johann Glock & John Hyman (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 1-4. 2017.
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30The object of philosophy: Tugendhat’s semantical transformation of ontologyCogito 8 (3): 234-241. 1994.
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29Philosophy of languageIn Hans Johann Glock, Michael N. Forster & Kristin Gjesdal (eds.), Glock, Hans Johann (2015). Philosophy of language. In: Forster, Michael N; Gjesdal, Kristin. The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 371-397, . pp. 371-397. 2015.
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29Strawson and non-revisionary naturalismIn , . 2022.In Scepticism and Naturalism Strawson characterized his position as a form of naturalism. Not even in that work, however, did he subscribe to any standardly recognized types of naturalism (ontological, epistemological, meta-philosophical). Strawson’s naturalism, as far as it goes, is anthropological instead of scientific, and descriptive rather than revisionary. It insists that central features of our common-sense conceptual scheme are part of our human nature and therefore immune to naturalizat…Read more
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28Propositional Attitudes, Intentional Contents and Other Representationalist MythsIn Danièle Moyal-Sharrock, Volker Munz & Annalisa Coliva (eds.), Mind, Language and Action: Proceedings of the 36th International Wittgenstein Symposium, De Gruyter. pp. 523-548. 2015.
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28Review of: Donald Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (review)Philosophical Investigations 26 (4): 348-360. 2003.
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28The Euthanasia Debate in Germany - What's the Fuss?Journal of Applied Philosophy 11 (2): 213-224. 1994.Both opponents and proponents of Singer's right to speak about euthanasia have concentrated on the tenability of his claims. They have ignored the question of what legitimate grounds there are for suppressing academic discussion, and have failed to take into account the discussion of freedom of speech in recent legal theory. To do this is the aim of my paper. Section I claims that Singer's position is immoral. Section 2 turns to the question of whether it is protected by freedom of speech, irres…Read more