Lars Hertzberg

“Tell me," Wittgenstein once asked a friend, "why do people always say, it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the earth rather than that the earth was rotating?" His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth." Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?” What would it have looked like if we looked at all sciences from the viewpoint of Wittgenstein’s philosophy? Wittgenstein is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His complex body of work has been analysed by numerous scholars, from mathematicians and physicists, to philosophers, linguists, and beyond. This volume brings together some of his central perspectives as applied to the modern sciences and studies the influence they may have on the thought processes underlying science and on the world view it engenders. The contributions stem from leading scholars in philosophy, mathematics, physics, economics, psychology and human sciences; all of them have written in an accessible style that demands little specialist knowledge, whilst clearly portraying and discussing the deep issues at hand.

In the interpretive literature from the 1950's through the 1970's the term 'criterion' was thought to be a central key to the understanding of Wittgenstein's later philosophy. Later on, it was relegated from this place of honour to being one of a variety of expressions used by Wittgenstein in dealing with philosophical questions. This Element tries to account for the shifting fate of this concept. It discusses the various occurrences of the word “criteria” in the Philosophical Investigations, argues that the post-Wittgensteinian debate about criteria was put on the wrong track by a problematic passage in Wittgenstein's early Blue Book, and finally gives an overview of the main contributions to this debate, trying to achieve a reconciliation between the rival conceptions.

We are all familiar with robots and other computers producing linguistic expressions. The essay discusses the question in what sense these speech-like phenomena can be regarded as an outcome of what might be called learning to talk. The question might also be rephrased as follows: in what sense can a talking robot be considered a speaker. In the debate becoming a speaker is often construed as an ability to connect signs with objects. As was shown by Wittgenstein this conception of being a speaker is highly impoverished. To be a speaker is to be able to express oneself by means of words. This ability is connected with having a life, which robots lack. What concerns me in this discussion is not so much the ongoing debate about what robots can and cannot do. Rather, it is the light it may throw on what it means for a human being to learn to talk.

We are all familiar with robots and other computers producing linguistic expressions. The essay discusses the question in what sense these speech-like phenomena can be regarded as an outcome of what might be called learning to talk. The question might also be rephrased as follows: in what sense can a talking robot be considered a speaker. In the debate becoming a speaker is often construed as an ability to connect signs with objects. As was shown by Wittgenstein this conception of being a speaker is highly impoverished. To be a speaker is to be able to express oneself by means of words. This ability is connected with having a life, which robots lack. What concerns me in this discussion is not so much the ongoing debate about what robots can and cannot do. Rather, it is the light it may throw on what it means for a human being to learn to talk.

Peter Winch, following Wittgenstein, was critical of the notion that philosophy could pass judgment on matters like the sense of words, the rationality of actions, or the validity of arguments. His critique had both what we might call a local strand – the insight that criteria of thought and action are not universal but vary between cultures and between practices – and a personal strand – the insight that those local criteria are ultimately given shape through the particular applications made of them by individuals. These strands are prominent, for instance, in Winch’s discussion of cross-cultural understanding as well as his treatment of the distinction between valid reasoning and illicit persuasion.

Which famous twentieth-century philosopher instigated a revolution in philosophy, arguing that the philosopher’s business is not to advance general theories about reality, but rather to help release our thinking from the intellectual cramps produced by a misunderstanding of the forms of language? Wittgenstein? Wrong! according to John W. Cook. This revolution in philosophy actually had no author. Apparently, it arose through a misinterpretation of Wittgenstein’s later writings. In fact, Cook implies, Wittgenstein himself was not genuinely engaged in a struggle with philosophical puzzles, but rather had an ontological theory up his sleeve: he was a conventional empiricist in the tradition of Berkeley, Ernst Mach, and Russell, though he happened to express himself so obscurely that some philosophers, believing themselves inspired by his writings, dreamed up the whole revolution by mistake, as it were. However, Cook is not arguing that the revolution should be canceled; rather he looks at Wittgenstein’s work from the standpoint of that accidental revolution, berating Wittgenstein, as it were, for not having thought to be a Wittgensteinian himself.