Yara Windmüller

John McDowell’s philosophy is well-known for tackling dualisms concerned with the relation between the individual and the world. One question that he leaves open, however, is how the dualism of first and second nature can be overcome. The paper is devoted to sketching a way towards answering this question by taking the Wittgensteinian and McDowellian therapeutic approach seriously also where human nature is concerned. It shows that it is not enough to mediate two conceptions of nature; instead, this is just a necessary step on the way of climbing the full metaphorical ladder. I claim that the endeavor is only successful where again just one conception of nature is put in place which entails all aspects that current debates on first and second nature highlight.

Wittgenstein’s (later) philosophy may well be read as encouraging a conservative standpoint towards forms of life. Especially in his remarks on rule-following and in On Certainty, Wittgenstein implies that our practices create an unchangeable functional whole, which we must accept as providing a foundation for everything else. However, this is certainly not the only way to read Wittgenstein: Especially from a feminist standpoint, Wittgenstein seems to offer plenty of room for allowing constant development of practices, and even for substantial change amidst criticism that profoundly questions a given practice. Such change doesn’t just happen accidentally, but is rather brought about by active intervention on the part of those practitioners who see the need for a rethinking of certain practices. To make this thought plausible, I draw on Kristie Dotson’s contributions on epistemic oppression, particularly on her concept of third-order change, which provides exactly the kind of reflection on the mechanisms of unjust practices that ideally leads to the change I have in mind. I argue that the implementation of third-order conceptual change by means of such critical awareness is itself a practice, and that, therefore, a Left Wittgensteinian and feminist- inspired reading of On Certainty is not only consistent with Wittgenstein’s thinking, but also especially desirable where marginalized perspectives are concerned.

Synesthesia is a rare phenomenon that is often described as a merging of the senses. Some of Wittgenstein’s remarks discuss different forms of synesthesia, including the case in which the e is yellow for someone, a case of grapheme-color synesthesia. In this paper, I will explore the connection between synesthesia and aspect-seeing, the broader topic into which Wittgenstein’s remarks on synesthetic experience are embedded. I claim that synesthetic experience is a form of aspect-seeing, specifically in the way in which synesthesia reveals a certain of the objects perceived, making them physiognomy speak to synesthetes in a special way. Beyond the mere experiential uniqueness that it brings about, synesthesia can be used as a strategy to be better at performing certain tasks, thus potentially impacting a synesthete’s daily life. This, in turn, carries philosophical significance insofar as the example of synesthesia shows how aspect-perception (in general) influences a speaker’s reality.