2:57 p.m.
We are pleased to announce that on Friday April 21 at 18:00 (CET), Annalisa Coliva (UC
Irvine) will give the talk "So one cannot, e.g. say ‘There are objects’ as one says
‘There are books’”. From Tractatus 4.1272 to Carnap, via On Certainty 35-37 as part of the
Lugano Philosophy Colloquia.
This hybrid talk will take place in Room SI-003 Black Building (USI West Campus) and
online via Zoom. If you are interested in joining it online, please write to
amm.map(a)usi.ch
Here is the abstract of the talk:
In On Certainty (1969, 35) Wittgenstein claims that “There are physical objects” is
nonsense. This claim is strongly reminiscent of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
(4.1272) where he claims that “one cannot say ‘There are objects’ as one says ‘There are
books’”; and of T 4.1274, where he says “The question about the existence of a formal
concept is nonsense”. Despite such a superficial similarity, however, the reasons why
“There are (physical) objects” would be nonsense are entirely different. In the case of
the Tractatus, they depend on the rules that govern a correct logical symbolism, on the
distinction between saying and showing and presuppose an ontology of objects. In the case
of On Certainty, in contrast, they depend on thinking of “physical object” as a means of
representation – as an “inference ticket”, which licenses (and forbids) certain
inferences, without any ontological import. In his 1950 paper “Empiricism, semantics and
ontology”, Carnap proposes a metalinguistic reading of questions such as “Are there
physical objects?”. Surprisingly, he credits Wittgenstein, and indeed the Wittgenstein of
the Tractatus, with the ideas from which he took inspiration. If I am right, however,
there is only a superficial similarity between the ideas presented in the Tractatus, and
Carnap’s. In fact, the deeper similarity is to be found between Carnap’s views and the
ones that Wittgenstein developed, at about the same time, in On Certainty, published only
in 1969, with which Carnap could have no familiarity. Yet, even there, the divide between
two remains insurmountable, as they had entirely opposite views regarding the very
possibility of there being a metalanguage and, therefore, a metalinguistic reading of the
question “Are there physical objects?”.
For more information: https://www.usi.ch/en/feeds/24091