29 Jul
Recurring

WITTGENSTEIN AND MOORE´S PARADOX

Veranstaltungsort: AAU Klagenfurt (O.0.01 Stiftungssaal)

Wittgenstein wrote a letter to G. E. Moore after hearing Moore give the paper inwhich he first set forth a version of (what has come to be known as) Moore's paradox.The version of the paradox that Moore first set forward invotved imagining someoneuttering the fottowing sentence: "There is a fire in this room and I don't betievethere is." Wittgenstein's understanding of the importance of Moore's paradox maybe summarized as fottows: Something on the order of a , 365)The aim of this workshop witt be to understand why Wittgenstein thinks that Moore'sparadox provides an exampte of something that is akin to a contradiction and how itbrings out (as Wittgenstein puts it) that logic isn't as simpte as logicians think it is.His treatment of this case invotves an expansion of what is ordinarily considered tobetong to togic. Section x of Part ll of Wittgenstein's Philosophical lnvestigations isdevoted to an exploration of Moore's paradox. We there find Wittgenstein makingthese three remarks:1. My own retation to my words is wholty different to other people's.2. lf there were a verb meaning'to betieve fatsely,'it woutd not have ameaningfuI fi rst-person present i ndicative.3. "l betieve...." throws tight on my state. Conctusions about my conduct can bedrawn from this expression. So there is a similarity here to expressions ofemotion, of mood, etc,.The workshop witt seek to understand: how my retation to my own words is whottydifferent from my retation to those of other peopte; wherein the asymmetry liesbetween the use of a range of verbs (such as "believe," "know," and "perceive") inthe first-person present indicative form and other uses of the same verbs (e.g., inthe second-person or past tense form); and how the logical grammar of these verbsis retated to that of expressions of emotion, of mood, and of sensation, includingexpressions that takes the form of avowats. Finatty, we wi[[ explore why Wittgensteinthinks a philosophical investigation of these three points ought to lead to anexpansion and transformation of our entire conception of [ogic.