Morgan Adou, Centre Gilles Gaston Granger Aix-Marseille

Title: The Influence of Wittgenstein on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract: The following paper aims at providing a comprehensive understanding of the influence of Wittgenstein on David Bloor’s famous “strong program” in sociology of scientific knowledge which he initiated in the seventies. This will allow us to understand: 1) the well-known four principles of this program (causality impartiality, symmetricity, reflexivity), 2) certain central aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and 3) his influence on major thinkers of the twentieth century, which will enrich our representation of the history of analytic philosophy in this century.

Anton Alexandrov, University of Barcelona/LOGOS

Title: Frege’s Explication of Function and its Relevance for Logicism

Abstract: A number of philosophers have suggested that Frege’s logicism constitutes a Carnapian explication rather than an attempt of conceptual analysis. Curiously, none of the arguments given for the explication view elaborate upon FB. There, Frege explicitly mentions that, in the course of mathematical development, the initial notion of function was replaced by a more encompassing one and he goes on to introduce an even more general notion of function which he uses in Gg. In this talk, I reevaluate the explication view in light of this.

Aude Bandini, Université de Montréal

Title: Sellarsian Insights on the Scientific Status of Human and Social Sciences

Abstract: Sellars’ description of a so-called clash between the manifest and scientific images of man-in-the-world seems to be primarily concerned with the status of naturalized sciences like human biology and, most notably, psychology. However, he insists that there is a genuine form of scientific rationality involved in the manifest image itself. Accordingly, the manifest image cannot be reduced to some sort of pre-scientific image of the world that, as the inquiry progresses, should eventually be discarded as the outcome of mere unreflective opinions. In this presentation, I wish to address the extent to which, in a sellarsian framework, human and social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, but clinical medicine as well) can be genuinely considered sciences without any qualification, despite the persisting challenges the various attempts to naturalize them has faced in history. Since according to Sellars, human beings are persons rather than featherless bipeds, what kind of science—if any—would be appropriate in terms of description, explanation and understanding when it comes to human affairs.

Michael Beaney and LIANG Xiaolan 梁小岚

Title: Zhang Shizhao 章士釗 and the Translation of ‘logic’

Abstract: In this talk we will discuss Zhang Shizhao’s famous essay ‘On the Meanings of Names in Translation’ (Lùn fānyì míngyì 論翻譯名義)’, which played a key role in establishing what is now the standard translation of ‘logic’ into Chinese, sketching the historical context and analysing and evaluating the argument he gives for providing a phonemic rather than semantic translation.

Gabriela Besler, University of Silesia in Katowice

Title: Gottlob Frege’s Collaboration with two Italian Mathematicians: Giuseppe Peano and Giovanni Vailati

Abstract: Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) collaborated for around fifteen years with two Italian mathematicians interested in his scientific activity: Giuseppe Peano (1859–1932) and his student and later co-worker, Giovanni Vailati (1863–1909). Some of their letters have survived. Frege, Peano and Vailati studied mathematics, and they were not well educated in philosophy. The talk will be divided into three parts: Reconstruction of the timeline of Frege’s collaboration with Italian mathematicians. Contacts with Frege helped Peano publish the German translation of five of his articles in 1899. The topics of Frege – Vailati discussion in Jena in 1906.

Johannes L. Brandl, Universität Salzburg

Title: Brentano’s Concept of Intentionality: A Proposal for a New Beginning

Abstract: Within the analytic philosophy of mind, the study of Brentano’s concept of intentionality long followed the influential interpretation by Roderick Chisholm. According to this interpretation, Brentano understood the concept of intentionality both ontologically and psychologically, but later revised his ontological view considerably. In light of the criticisms that have been leveled at this view in recent years by Werner Sauer, Mauro Antonelli, and Carlo Ierna, I will argue in this talk for making a fresh start in dealing with Brentano’s concept of intentionality. The guiding idea will be that for Brentano intentionality in the case of sensory (receptive) phenomena is primarily an immanent consciousness, whereas in the case of cognitive (post-receptive) phenomena it is primarily a transcendent consciousness. Thus, Brentano’s notion of intentionality proves to be a precursor of a “two-factor analysis” of objective representations, as most recently proposed by Kenneth Taylor.

Christopher Campbell, York University Canada

Title: First Title: Wittgenstein’s Categorially Indeterminate Approach to Generality in the Tractatus Second Title: Wittgenstein’s letter to Russell and the significance of ‘N(ξ‾)’

Abstract: The Tractatus notion of an “object” is deliberately categorially indeterminate: Wittgenstein denies that it is the logician’s job to give a particular doctrine of categories. But how can the logician give an account of generality without distinguishing between name and predicate, or object and concept? This paper canvasses the resources the Tractatus is able to muster in the service of an account of generality while remaining categorially indeterminate. The result is not a full formal systematization of inference, a Begriffsschrift; but in Wittgenstein’s view it limns more faithfully the conceptual terrain, by respecting the distinction between logic and its application.

Siobhan Chapman, The University of Liverpool

Title: Susan Stebbing on Philosophical Analysis: Publication, Revision and Letters to G. E. Moore

Abstract: In this talk I will consider the development of Stebbing’s thought about philosophical analysis, concentrating on the period during which she was writing her seminal A Modern Introduction to Logic (1930), and then subsequently revising it for the second edition (1933). In doing so, I will draw on Stebbing’s published works, but also on her side of a long personal correspondence with G. E. Moore. These letters, held in the G. E. Moore papers at the University of Cambridge Library Archive, offer fascinating insights into Stebbing’s work and her relationship with Moore. In particular they provide evidence of the development of her response to Russell’s theory of descriptions and his account of incomplete symbols. Stebbing’s response to Russell contributed to the development of her ideas about ‘directional’, ‘new level’ or ‘metaphysical’ analysis, which was foundational to what became known as the Cambridge school of Analysis. It also enabled her to articulate what she saw as problematic in the ideas of logical positivism, which were being disseminated by members of the Vienna Circle. The reconsideration of some of Stebbing’s most influential published works in the light of her unpublished correspondence with Moore has both particular and more general significance. Firstly, while confirming the importance to Stebbing of her professional relationship with Moore, the letters serve to debunk any misconception that she was straightforwardly his ‘follower’ or merely his ‘disciple’. Secondly, recent scholarship has emphasised the importance both of the Cambridge school of analysis and of Stebbing’s response to logical positivism to the development of analytic philosophy in the early to mid twentieth century. An understanding of the genesis of this period in Stebbing’s work, informed by archival as well as by published sources, is therefore of importance to the wider history of analytic philosophy.

CHEN Bo 陈波, Wuhan University and HU Lanshuang 胡兰双, Nankai University

Title: Hintikka and Williamson on the KK Principle

Abstract: The controversy about the KK principle (Knowing implies knowing that one knows) has greatly revived in contemporary epistemology and epistemic logic. This paper carefully examines and critically reviews Hintikka’s and Williamson’s arguments about KK, and make three final conclusions: First, although Hintikka and Williamson have some similar viewpoints on KK, they essentially talk apart on KK: Hintikka advocates KK based on his strong concept of knowledge, i.e. ideal knowledge and ideal cognitive subjects, but Williamson rejects KK based on his talks of inexact knowledge and margin for error. Second, Williamson’s two arguments against KK don’t succeed, since the principle of knowledge reliability, the principle of humans’ cognitive limitation, and the margin for error principle used in them are all challengeable. Third, Hintikka has to face such troubles as that his strong conception of knowledge has nothing to do with our ordinary knowledge, that his epistemic logic is not applicable to the latter, and that it is very difficult for him to justify so strong conception of knowledge. Williamson has to face such troubles as that he holds double standards of knowledge: one is that knowledge implies truth, another is that knowledge is inexact and has its margin for error, and that it is very hard for him to justify his double standards of knowledge and make them coherent.

CHEN Bo 陈波, Wuhan University

Title: Quine’s Naturalism: Clarification and Vindication

Abstract: Naturalism is the dominant characteristic of Quine’s philosophy. This paper presents a more comprehensive and sympathetic clarification of Quine’s naturalized epistemology (NE for short), and vindicates its main positions by critically responding to the three objections to it: replacement (Quine’s NE is the replacement of traditional epistemology), circularity (Quine’s NE is viciously circular), and non-normativity (Quine’s NE is devoid of normative dimension), and to Williamson’s three charges to naturalism (mainly Quine’s brand), finally concludes that the three objections and Williamson’s three charges are mainly due to misreading or misinterpretation, so all of them failed, and that there are illuminating, reasonable, and valuable insights in Quine’s NE, which are worthy of further development.

Richard Creath, Arizona State University

Title: Whitehead’s Geometry as a Model for Quasi-Analysis

Abstract: As is well-known, Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World (OKEW) was a significant inspiration for Carnap’s Aufbau. For many years it was thought that the chief point of the Aufbau was ontological reduction, and its chief inspiration was Russell’s program of reducing the external world to sensory phenomena. Now, this seems not to have been the case. Carnap was happy to use the word ‘reduction’, but I’m not sure that, especially in its present sense, that it is the best description of what Carnap was doing. Moreover, it seems that the closest model for the most significant accomplishment of the Aufbau, quasi-analysis, is not Russell’s external world program, but Whitehead’s geometry, which is also discussed briefly in OKEW.

Gary Ebbs, Indiana University

Title: Quine’s First Significant Step in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”

Abstract: Quine’s first significant step in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is to criticize the initially tempting idea that we can clarify the vague term “analytic” by glossing it as “true by virtue of meanings and independently of facts.” His highly compressed criticism of this idea concludes with the sentence, “Once the theory of meaning is sharply separated from the theory of reference, it is a short step to recognizing as the primary business of the theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of statements; meanings as obscure intermediaries may well be abandoned” (FLPV, 21) I shall argue that this conclusion rests on Quine’s commitment to a methodological principle that is central both to Carnap’s strategies for explicating analyticity and to Quine’s criticisms of them in “Two Dogmas”: the principle that our practical ability to use our words in discourse is methodologically prior to and independent of our consideration of the question of whether or not there are meanings.

Joshua Eisenthal, California Institute of Technology

Title: An Essential Similarity: Hertz’s Method in Wittgenstein’sTractatus

Abstract: Although the importance of Hertz’s influence on Wittgenstein is widely accepted, the specific nature of this influence has not yet been fully understood. Honing in one aspect of this issue, I will argue that there are overarching methodological parallels between Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In particular, I will argue that both Hertz and Wittgenstein aim to capture an essential similarity in our ordinary forms of description, and both hope that the recognition of this similarity will help their readers to avoid fundamental confusions. I will also comment on the most important methodological divergence between the two texts.

Landon D. C. Elkind, Western Kentucky University

Title: Why didn’t Bertrand Russell cite the logical works of his PhD Advisee Dorothy Wrinch?

Abstract: In this paper I consider Bertrand Russell’s promotion of his other students like Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially citation and discussion of their work in print, and his decision not to similarly promote Dorothy Wrinch. At first blush it looks as though Russell cited his male students and not his female students without much intellectual cause. If this appearance is accurate, then it is tempting to infer that the explanation for this was simply blatant sexism. However, I argue that the appearance is inaccurate. Wrinch did share many of Russell’s 1911-1919 views about logic, science, and their relationship that are characteristic of logic-centric analytic philosophy. On the other hand, the chronology of Russell’s own philosophical interests and that of Wrinch’s intellectual activity do not match up. The story of influence and collaboration between them is in fact more complicated than the blatant sexism hypothesis would suggest. After unpacking these chronologies and showing how they weigh against the overly simple hypothesis of blatant sexism, I consider other explanations of why Russell cited the work of his male students and not Wrinch’s work.

Mauro Luiz Engelmann, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Title: “What would it look like?”: Wittgenstein’s Radical Thought-Experiments in Philosophical Remarks

Abstract: My aim is to elucidate the role and consequences of the use of thought-experiments in manuscripts 105-108 and, thus, in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Remarks (1930). Roughly, they are of two kinds. The first kind grounds the creation of a phenomenological language (symbolism), and appears in MSS 105 and 106. The second kind connects the phenomenological language in MSS 105-7 with Wittgenstein’s phenomenology in grammar project in Philosophical Remarks (MSS 107-8). Both kinds of thought-experiments should reveal the implicit rules of syntax (or grammar) that determine what is possible

K. T. Fann, Emeritus York University Canada

Title: Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy

Abstract: The mainstream of academic philosophy in English-speaking countries was “Analytic philosophy,” and it was divided into two currents: “Logical Analysis” and “Ordinary Language Analysis”. Both schools were inspired by Wittgenstein, the first by his early work: Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, and the second by his later thought and posthumous publication: Philosophical Investigations.

This widely considered the greatest philosopher of the 20th century was amazing not only in inspiring two diverse schools of thought but also in repudiating both in his lifetime. Today, I only have time to tell the story of how he formulated his early philosophy and how he later repudiated it. Analytic philosophy has its origin in England. I think this has something to do with the rise of modern science and industrialization in England. The industrial revolution depended on machines. If you want to understand how a machine works the best way is to take it apart and look at its constituent parts and see how they are related. This is also the method of science; if you want to understand how anything works, you take it apart, dissolve it, and analyze it until you reach the final stage where it can no longer be further analyzed, the atoms. Analytic philosophy adopted this successful scientific method to philosophy. Its clearest formulation is found in the Tractatus. The central theme of the Tractatus is to answer the question: How can language describe the world? Wittgenstein employed the a priori logical analysis method to arrive at his conclusion: the result of this analysis must finally come up with a set of “elementary propositions.” An elementary proposition consists of “names,” and names refer to “objects.” Objects related to each other in a certain way constitute a “fact,” and the totality of facts constitutes the world. Thus, by pure a priori logical analysis, Wittgenstein arrived at an ontology, which was appropriately called “Logical Atomism” by Russell. Language can describe the world because it is the picture of the world. Language consists of propositions. If a proposition matches with a fact then it is true; if not, it is false. Everything else is nonsense. Science-leaning philosophers really liked this part of Wittgenstein as it seemed to capture the scientific spirit. Scientific propositions are either true or false, everything else is nonsense, especially metaphysics and religion. The Vienna School of Logical Positivists regarded the Tractatus as their Bible. Their interpretation of the Tractatus spread to Russia and China. Much later they found out from their personal contact with Wittgenstein that they were deeply mistaken. Wittgenstein clearly stated in the Preface that he was trying to show “what cannot be said” through clearly presenting “what can be said”. “What can be said” (i.e. science) is not important to him; it is “what can not be said” that’s important to him. He was a mystic. But, that’s another story. In what follows I will merely discuss how he constructed his early analytical philosophy and later started to question and finally repudiated it.

Giulia Felappi, University of Southampton

Title: Langer on Saving Western logic from a Metaphysical Limbo

Abstract: In my paper, I will discuss Langer’s notion of logic. The purpose will be two-fold. I. I will show that Langer’s approach was to take logical languages, natural languages and other communicative media to create together an inextricable whole. Hence her approach was, as Gardener briefly noted, much more aligned with the Chinese tradition than with the Western Early Analytic tradition. II. Second, I will show how fruitful her approach to logic is, as compared to the more restricted approach of Russell and the first Wittgenstein.

Juliet Floyd, Boston University

Title: Reflections on Turing as a Philosopher

Abstract: In recent work I have argued for the sophistication of Turing’s work as a philosopher. By setting him into context against the backdrop of his Cambridge environment as a student, we see the work of Hobson and Wittgenstein as two elements to which he responded most creatively. My first purpose was to de-emphasize and re-construe the attention that has so far been paid to Turing’s philosophy of mind: philosophy of logic, I argue, was more central to his concerns. Next, following suggestions Zhao Fan, with whom I have been discussing Turing for several years, as well as the work of Jack Copeland, Diane Proudfoot and Oran Shagrir, I am turning to Turing’s wider thoughts about how computability as a notion should figure in AI and the foundations of mathematics. I will survey this growing literature and share some of my recent thoughts about Turing’s development in relation to Hilbert and his reactions to Wittgenstein’s 1939 Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics at Cambridge.

Carsten Fogh Nielsen, University of Southern Denmark

Title: Revising the Standard Story: How William Frankena invented Virtue Ethics

Abstract: The paper argues that the Standard Story of contemporary virtue ethics omits an important contributor to the development of virtue ethics as a distinct theoretical position within normative ethics, namely William Frankena. I provide evidence for this claim and argue that the Standard Story is flawed and should be revised.

Yael Gazit, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Title: McDowell, Sellars, and the History of Philosophy

Abstract: This paper examines and constructs John McDowell’s approach to the history of philosophy. While McDowell argues for his views with and by engaging the great philosophers of the past, he rarely reflects on it. His vigorous objection to the kind of reading-in that is practiced by his colleague and friend, Robert Brandom, suggests that he sees himself committed to a different approach. By closely looking into McDowell’s engagement with Sellars, and the interestingly similar accusations of reading-in that McDowell raises against Sellars’s reading of Kant, I account for McDowell’s approach and argue that it is closer to Brandom’s than it might seem, albeit substantial differences between the two.

GU Chengcheng 谷城成, Shanxi University

Title: The Evaluation Criterion of Chinese Argumentation

Abstract: There are huge differences between Chinese expressions and Indo-European expressions. Chinese expressions format a language with a “topic-explanation” structure but not the “subject-predicate” structure. So, it is difficult to analyze Chinese expressions by logical analysis method. Based on Shen Youding’s discussion about language, thought and meaning, this paper further discusses the evaluation criteria of Chinese argumentation, is a further attempt to study and introduce Chinese philosophy by using analytical philosophy method.

Raimundo Henriques, University of Lisbon

Title: Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Architecture

Abstract: Among the remarks collected in Culture and Value, some concern architecture. In this talk, I will discuss those remarks, aiming at providing a systematic account of Wittgenstein’s conception of architecture. I will argue that Wittgenstein took ‘architecture’ to refer to two distinct activities, one which can be seen as a form of art and another which cannot. I will argue also that he took the latter to be the only form of architecture there could be in his time.

Michael R. Hicks, Miami University

Title: Sellars’s Logical Empiricism: Between Schlick and Neurath

Abstract: At a crucial point in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” Wilfrid Sellars discusses the protocol sentence debate and it can seem clear that his sympathies lie more with Neurath than Schlick. I complicate this story by observing that foundationalism is less central to Sellars’s concerns than this line of thought takes for granted. If we take seriously Sellars’s self-identification as a logical empiricist, methodologically he is closer to Schlick than to Neurath. This is my clue, then, to interpret the passage in question as attempting to highlight an epistemological constraint that the Neurathian coherentist cannot so much as recognize much less meet.

HUANG Min 黄敏, Sun Yat-Sen University

Title: The Tractarian Transcendental Idealism

Abstract: Whereas the solipsism in the Tractatus has been understood by many authors as a version of transcendental idealism, Peter Sullivan (1996) has derived from the visional field metaphor in 5.6331 a refutation of the solipsism. He then concludes that the transcendental idealism occurs in the Tractatus as an enemy, not an embraced position. For Adrian Moore, however, since the visional field metaphor is used by Wittgenstein to eliminate the occurrence of the eye from the field, it is a confirmation of the transcendental idealism. For both of them the defining feature of the transcendental idealism is just the absence of the limitations of representations within the representations, and in that metaphor, the eye, as a limitation, is absent in the visional field, or the representation. Sullivan agrees with Moore of the presence of a transcendental idealism in the Tractatus, while insists on that it was presented as a refuted target, rather than an embraced position. His reason is that, as Wittgenstein claims, there is no a priori order of things, and the limitations of the representations, if there were, would require such an order. In this talk, I will develop a different understanding of the nature of the Tractarian transcendental idealism, and steer a way out of the controversy. The idea is to explain the notion of limitations in a way different with one that Moore and Sullivan share. The explanation they share is made in terms of contrast, while the one I suggest in terms of autonomy. The latter effects without presupposition of a priori order of things. This changes the dialectic situation. Sullivan then could not reject the transcendental idealistic account of the Tractatus on the ground of its rejection of a priori order. The new notion of limitation also shapes our understanding of the transcendental idealism. It can be tracked back to two accounts of Kant’s transcendental idealism, one realistic and the other anti-realistic. According to the realistic account, the subject’s capacities are eventually facts about the subject and its interactions with objects in themselves. According to the latter, they are manifestation of the subject’s self-legislation, or a moment of its autonomy, which is intrinsically normative, rather than factual. In Moore’s understanding of the transcendental idealism, it is the realistic account that takes the advantage. In my explanation, however, it is the latter that works. So I call it the autonomy account of limitations. I argue that when Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus the subject “is the limit of the world”(5.632), that limit should be casted as a limitation of the autonomy account. This is nicely demonstrated by his well repeated remark, “logic must take care of itself”(5.473; NB, etc.). Such a limit has simply no outside. It is drawn from within, and it is not necessary to consider the outside in order to draw it. The autonomy account is connected with the say-show distinction, which is drawn in terms of language. Language constitutes a fulcrum so that logic can take care of itself. What are shown are the working of the language. They are manifested in forms of facts about the language itself, but do not figure in a representation as independent facts. Rather, they are internal to the representation, and can only be specified from the first-person perspective of the subject. On the other hand, what are said are independent of the representation (2.173). They are not sensitive to perspectives. Therefore, what can be shown cannot be said. To let what are shown be shown is to force us staying in the first-person perspective, and staying as a subject. This explains how a limit works. It works not by eliminating alternatives, but by defining the role of the subject, by showing what it is to be a subject. There is no a priori order of things presupposed, because nothing is eliminated before any representation is made. But it is not to say that there is no order of things before a representation among others is made. The subject is autonomous in the sense that it is governed by nothing but its self-consistency. Tautologies show how this consistency is to be achieved. Logic, as Wittgenstein understands it, offers no truth, but it governs inferences, namely derivation truth from truth. A subject, whose thinking is characterized with such a logic, would make representations possible. It plays a role as a transcendental idealist requires, but brings no contents into representations. We have a non-substantial transcendental idealism.

Robert Hudson, University of Saskatchewan,

Title: Rudner’s Second Argument (for the Value-ladenness of Science)

Abstract: In his 1953 paper, “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments”, Richard Rudner endorses Quine’s 1951 argument in “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology” that disputes the legitimacy of Carnap’s internal/external distinction, with the result that the influence of practical factors should “be conceded for every scientific hypothesis” (as Rudner quotes Quine). In this paper, I show that Carnap in his 1956 paper, “The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts”, has an effective response to Quine in defense of the external/internal distinction, a response that severely limits the relevance of practical considerations to the choice of theoretical frameworks.

David Hunter, Ryerson University

Title: Anscombe and an “Adequate Philosophy of Psychology”

Abstract: In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Anscombe said that we cannot profitably do ethics until we have a more adequate philosophy of psychology, but her text leaves it unclear what such a philosophy might say. My paper is speculative. I suggest that her primary complaint concerns desire, its role in practical deliberation, and its connections to goodness. I start with the idea, implicit in “MMT” but explicit in Geach’s “Good and Evil,” that goodness is always relative to a sortal. Eschewing Moorean intrinsic goodness shifts our ethical focus onto what a thing needs to be a good thing of its kind. The idea of such a need applies to all living things and is not peculiarly human. When a thing knows it has an unmet need it can sometimes reason how best to fill it and then act on this knowledge. It is through known needs that (sortal) goodness enters practical reasoning and intentional action. This knowledge might be psychological, but the need itself is not. The idea of desire as a psychological state with its own representational content and its own motivational force plays no role in this story. It is replaced with the idea of knowing how to fill an unmet need. My speculation is that this is what Anscombe was urging on us.

Jim Hutchinson, Nazarbayev University

Title: Frege’s Metaphysical Separatism

Abstract: Commentators attribute to Frege realist, idealist and quietist views regarding the abstract objects he calls “thoughts”. I argue that these attributions are insufficiently motivated: it seems instead that Frege deliberately does not commit himself to any of these positions. I argue that this makes sense in the light of Frege’s separatist policy: a commitment not to answer metaphysical and psychological questions raised by his claims, in order to emphasize the epistemological autonomy of logic.

Peter Hylton, Boston University

Title: Naturalism and Tolerance

Abstract: Quine is a naturalist, by his own account and that of many commentators. In spite of similarities in the views of the two philosophers, Carnap is not a naturalist, at least not in anything like the same sense. I argue that this difference between the two arises from the fact that Carnap accepts the Principle of Tolerance, and Quine does not.

Ryo Ito 伊藤 遼, Waseda University

Title: An Interpretation of the Gray’s Elegy Argument

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the Gray’s Elegy Argument—the notoriously dense passage in Bertrand Russell’s ‘On Denoting’—can be interpreted as a single, coherent argument against the notion that a definite description corresponds to what I call a multifaceted object—an object having multiple facets or sides. I also attempt to show that before writing the paper, he effectively employed the notion of multifaceted object in order to philosophically motivate a certain solution to the set-theoretic paradox and to offer a general account of complex objects.​

Henry Jackman, York University Canada

Title: William James on Truth and Assertion

Abstract: William James notoriously argued that “truth” had both an ‘absolute’ and a ‘temporary’ sense. However, it remains the case that almost everyone else (1) understood “truth” as having, at best, only the ‘absolute’ sense, and (2) considered “temporary truth” to be just a misleading way to talk about belief. However, while Peircian Pragmatists typically take it for granted the notion of absolute truth flows out of our practice of assertion, it will be argued here that James had reasons for thinking that the connection between truth and assertion (when combined with some of his other metaphysical views) gave one grounds for needing a notion of temporary truth as well.

JIANG Yi, Shanxi University

Title: On the Reverse Reading of the Tractatus and its Problems

Abstract: The order of the seven main propositions of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus have been read normally as the process from ontology through epistemology to the philosophy of language, which is seen as being along with the historical order of Western philosophy in the past. However, those readings could not interpret the significance of the seven main propositions and understand the intention Wittgenstein wants to express in the book. In this paper, I would like to interpret the logic relation of these propositions by a reverse reading in order to overcome the difficulties in the previous readings and to understand the true intention of the book in depth. The reverse reading explains Wittgenstein’s approach to thinking of the structure of the book rather than his approach to the writing of the book. This reading is appropriate closely to Wittgenstein’s way of thinking. But it also raises a key question to understanding Wittgenstein’s thoughts: in which way Wittgenstein presents his thoughts in the book, the logical or the ethical? In the end of this paper, I shall try to answer the question by analyzing the process of Wittgenstein’s thinking.

Alexander Johnstone, University of Pittsburgh

Title: Shieh on Frege: Judgement, Truth, and the Context Principle

Abstract: In the third chapter of his recent Necessity Lost: Modality and Logic in Early Analytic Philosophy, Sanford Shieh defends a deep and novel interpretation of Frege’s late conceptions of judgement, truth, and thought (2019). This paper raises two problems for Shieh. I first argue that a Fregean judgement à la Shieh must involve a multiplicity of judgements concerning the component senses of the thought judged. This is implausible. I then argue that this points towards a more general issue: Shieh’s line of interpretation sits uncomfortably with Frege’s Context Principle.

Junichi Kasuga カスガ ジュンイチ, LEC Graduate University Tokyo

Title: R. G. Collingwood as a Philosopher of Perception

Abstract: R. G. Collingwood occupies a curious place in the history of the earlier half of twentieth-century British philosophy. He has tended to be seen as an idealist and opponent of the analytic philosophy. On the other hand, he was reluctant to be seen as an idealist, albeit being critical of the emerging movement of analytic philosophy. By focusing on his philosophy of perception, this paper aims to consider the significance of Collingwood’s philosophy, contextualising it in its contemporary philosophy–the time of the drastic change of the philosophical agenda from the realism/idealism disputes to the emergence of analytic philosophy.

Juliette Kennedy, University of Helsinkis

Title: Gödel and the Entscheidungsproblem

Abstract: In “The Church-Turing ‘Thesis’ as a Special Corollary of Gödel’s Completeness Theorem,” Kripke has recently asked why Gödel didn’t solve the Entscheidungsproblem, given that it is, as Kripke claims, an immediate corollary of Gödel’s 1931 Incompleteness Theorem? In this talk we attempt a preliminary answer to Kripke’s question.

Alex Klein, McMaster University

Title: Introspection: From Jamesean to Russellian Monism

Abstract: Bertrand Russell was in Brixton Prison when he first set down on paper a newfound commitment to neutral monism—the view that mental and physical data are in some way built out of a more fundamental stuff that is itself “neutral” to being mental or physical. The Brixton papers constitute an initial sketch of themes he would develop more completely in “On Propositions” and, especially, in The Analysis of Mind. Two things are immediately evident in these notes. One is the centrality of considerations concerning introspection in Russell’s initial argument for neutral monism; and the other is the influence of William James. My question: are these themes related in Russell? James had developed a distinctive psychological conception of introspection that gave both metaphysical and epistemological shape to his own neutral monism (I will argue). So when Russell provisionally “adopt[s] William James’s view”—neutral monism—did Russell also adopt James’s account of introspection? I think the answer is a qualified “yes,” but we will find it (intriguingly) difficult to pin Russell down on this important issue. This interpretive difficulty raises deeper questions about some metaphysical and epistemological subtleties of the view Russell intended to adopt.

Teresa Kouri Kissel, Old Dominion University

Title: Stebbing: Translations and Verbal Disputes

Abstract: Merely verbal disputes can be problematJic. They have the potential to derail conversations and prevent progress. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I will provide evidence that Susan Stebbing, in Ideals and Illusions, provided a test which foreshadowed some of the modern work on verbal disputes. This test has a potentially fatal flaw which can be fixed by making use of some of Stebbing’s previous work on directional analysis. Second, I will show how some problems with a similar, more modern test, provided by David Chalmers, could have been avoided if Stebbing’s work had been readily available.

Gregory Landini, University of Iowa

Title: Stipulations Missing Axioms in Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik

Abstract: This paper explores the implications of Frege’s never adding formal axioms for some of the stipulations of his Grundgesetze. It offers the explanation that Frege held that such axioms would over-determine what logical objects are. In particular, the True might well be a number, say 0, in accordance with the mathematical practice of forming characteristic functions. But 0 is the value-range of a concept. Frege allows this ontologically circularity. Since the functions that are concepts require the True (and the False) for their very existence, they would depend on the existence of value-ranges. At the same time, Frege explicitly says that he can achieve a theorem: ├┬ 2. It appears that he cannot. The paper adds a new axiom

in taking steps toward achieving this theorem and offers textual evidence that Frege held it and that it therefore it is not an overdetermination. But it is still not enough. It is argued that difficulties face any attempt to separate (without overdetermination) Frege’s logic of functions from his theory of value ranges, unless the existence of concepts is abandoned. The existence of concepts requires a consistent theory of value-ranges.

Jim Levine, Trinity College Dublin

Title: Pragmatism vs Naturalism in Quine’s Philosophical Development

Abstract: I argue (in accord with Sander Verhaegh’s 2018 book Working from Within) that Quine was not, by his later standards, a naturalist at the time of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Further, I argue that at the time of “Two Dogmas”, Quine had a specific understanding of pragmatism (one that he finds in James but not Peirce) on which he regarded himself as a pragmatist and that, for Quine, becoming a naturalist required jettisoning central elements of the pragmatism he accepted in “Two Dogmas”. I conclude by suggesting that once it is recognized that Quine did not become, by his standards, a naturalist until the period between “Two Dogmas” and Word and Object, questions arise regarding elements of his view that he introduces in his pre-naturalist period—in particular, his commitment to “extensionality” and hence his scepticism regarding modality and the propositional attitudes—and his later naturalism.

LIANG Xiaolan, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,

Title: Seeing-as in Wittgenstein’s Middle Philosophy

Abstract: In this paper I demonstrate that a substantial part of seeing-as in Part II of the Brown Book indicates seeing-as contributes to developing Wittgenstein’s position on psychological concepts in his later work. It indicates seeing-as could shed light on Wittgenstein’s approach to dispelling philosophical bewilderment. It leads us to notice that seeing-as epitomizes a transition from a vertical conception that analyses the way down to the foundation of objects to a horizontal conception that sees relations and similarities among things.

Francis Y. Lin 林允清, Beijing International Studies University

Title: Wittgenstein on Criteria, Scientism and Skepticism about Other Minds

Abstract: “Criteria” (or “criterion”) is an important notion, and also a most difficult one, in the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Many commentators hold that the presence of the criteria for a mental state does not entail the presence of the mental state, because criteria are defeasible. They propose that criteria are typical manifestations, or the like, of mental states. But this non-entailment view suffers from a number of problems, one of which being that it lets in skepticism about other minds. In this paper I offer a solution to these problems and present a clear view of Wittgenstein’s notion of criteria.

Bernie Linsky, Emeritus University of Alberta

Title: On the Use of Dots in Principia Mathematica

Abstract: It might appear that there are two uses for dots in Principia Mathematica, one use replacing parentheses or brackets to indicate the scope of connectives and operators and the other to symbolize the sentential connective “and”. A careful examination of the paragraph “The use of dots” on pages 9 – 10 of the Introduction shows that the use of punctuation dots to “indicate” conjunction shows that in some sense, conjunction in PM is represented by the juxtaposition of formulas. How this all works was the subject of an exchange between Haskell Curry, writing in 1937, and Alan Turing in 1942.

LIU Jinfang 刘晋芳, Nankai University Tianjin

Title: Interaction between Wittgenstein and Ramsey

Abstract: 本文在遵从原文的基础上来探寻《逻辑哲学论》对拉姆塞的影响，以及拉姆塞对维特根斯坦的影响。这种探究进路为我们提供些许解读《逻辑哲学论》的线索，也使我们至少能够在一定程度上理解维特根斯坦如何看待语言与实在的关系，以及理想语言表达所需的逻辑标准。（only in Chinese）

Kirk Ludwig, Indiana University

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA

Danielle Macbeth, Haverford College

Title: Under the Fregean Microscope: A Preliminary Analysis of Traditional Chinese Mathematical Practice

Abstract: Mathematics has always mattered to western philosophy, but philosophers (globally) have hitherto focused only on western mathematical practices in their thinking about the nature of cognition and knowledge, about truth and rationality. My aim is to bring the traditional Chinese mathematical practice of rod manipulation—which is in essence an algebraic practice, one that culminated in results not to be seen in Europe until centuries later—into the conversation. Applying conceptual tools provided by Frege’s work in logic, I aim, in particular, to clarify some essential features of this extraordinary, and extraordinarily fruitful, traditional Chinese practice.

Mathieu Marion, Université du Québec à Montréal

Title: Early Analytic Epistemology

Abstract: The usual account of early Analytic epistemology starts with the sense-data theories of Moore and Russell in opposition to the then prevalent idealism, in this paper I shall sketch an sketch an alternative account which makes room to another ‘realist’ reaction, in the work of John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard, which was also critical of sense-data theories and closer to a form of ‘direct realism’. I shall briefly trace its roots in changes in late nineteenth-century British philosophy and also explain its later impact on J. L. Austin. Involved in this school of realism is the idea that knowledge is a factive state of mind undefinable in terms of belief and some other properties – the view now known as ‘knowledge first’ – and I shall end with a discussion of its role in the subsequent history of Analytic philosophy.

Benjamin Marschall, Trinity College, Cambridge

Title: Carnap and Quine: The Best of Both Worlds?

Abstract: Carnap and Quine are well-known for their disagreements, for instance about the analytic/synthetic distinction. Their overall conceptions of philosophy are quite different as well. Carnap emphasises the normative task of improving language through explications, whereas Quine stresses the continuity of philosophy with descriptive natural science. Does one have to choose sides, or is it possible to combine their approaches in a fruitful way? Contrary to some views in the secondary literature I defend a conciliatory conclusion. A detailed analysis of two apparent disagreements will show them to be matters of emphasis and strategy rather than clashes about factual theses.

Robert May, Emeritus University of California, Davis and Sanford Shieh 谢舜虎, Wesleyan University

Title: Truth-Values as Value-Ranges: Grounds and Perplexities

Abstract: In this talk we discuss the metaphysical commitments of the Begriffschrift, the language of logic, in the Grundgesetze. We see Frege as taking logic to be committed to a hierarchy of concepts of finite levels. Concepts are functions whose values are the truth-values, the True and the False. Thus logic is committed to the arguments of such functions, and these arguments, along with the truth-values, are objects, entities of the 0th level. In order for the language of logic to express senses and denote referents, objects must include value-ranges as well as truth-values. In this context, Frege’s argument in Grundgesetze §10 is aimed at showing that logic can be as metaphysically lightweight as possible: the truth-values can be stipulated to be value-ranges satisfying certain criteria. However, these stipulations turn out to be creative: they endow the value-ranges in question which features they would not have without the stipulations. We conclude that, in the context of Frege’s aims for the Begriffschrift of Grundgesetze, commitment to truth-values as sui generis objects is best not avoided.

Nikolay Milkov, University of Paderborn

Title: Susan Stebbing and Some Uncharted Sides of Analytic Philosophy

Abstract: Analytic philosophy started with the ambitious program for a revolution in philosophy. In fact, however, it was a complex project; its founding fathers, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, were united in their fight against the British Idealism but at the same time followed different intuitions. Unfortunately, the philosophical movement they stirred up, analytic philosophy, developed only some of them, putting others in shadow. This paper claims that such interpretations deliver one-sided picture of analytic philosophy. In order to reveal a more complex view of this project in philosophy we call for help Susan Stebbing.

Tyke Nunez, University of South Carolina

Title: The Twilight of Intuition and Russell’s Early Hylomorphism: Space in Russell’s Foundations of Geometry

Abstract: In Bertrand Russell’s An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry he develops his account of space by responding to Kant and Carl Stumpf. Russell charges both with hypostatizing empty space and claims that, as a result, antinomies afflict their views. I argue that Russell’s hylomorphism about geometry is at the root of his own resolution to these antinomies. This is because the source of these antinomies is the confusion of unenformed geometrical matter with enformed geometrical matter, and unenmattered geometrical form with enmattered geometrical form. So long as these are kept distinct, however, Russell holds that the antinomies dissolve.

Luca Oliva, University of Houston

Title: Frege and Rickert on Mathematics

Abstract: This paper challenges the current picture of the relations between Frege and the neo-Kantians, at least those concerning mathematical issues. Contrary to common beliefs, Frege significantly influenced some neo-Kantian views of numbers, as the similarities between his Grundlagen (1884) and Rickert’s EEE (1924) show. Among them are a) the semantic analysis of the terms ‘one’ (das Eine), ‘singular’ (Einzahl), ‘unity’ (Einheit), and ‘number one’ (die Eins). (cf. Frege 1884: §§29-32; Rickert 1924: 1-6); b) the notion of “identity combined with distinguishability” (cf. Frege 1884: §40; Rickert 1924: 58); c) the rejection of naturalism and its naïve abstractionism (cf. Frege 1884: §§3, 7-8, 12 and 1894; Natorp 1910: 3; Rickert 1924: 7-8); and d) the semantic foundations of mind-independent numerical objects (cf. Frege 1884 §§58- 62; Rickert 1924: 7-8, 81-2). Although these similarities don’t overcome the significant differences between Frege’s logic developments and Rickert’s narrow subject-predicate relationship, they nevertheless prove an evident (although unexamined) influence of Frege’s logicism on the philosophy of mathematics of the neo-Kantian School of Baden.

Alessandro Palacio, Hamilton College

Title: The History of J. L. Austin’s Philosophy

Abstract: In this paper, I show that J.L. Austin’s philosophy is part of a revolutionary philosophical movement founded by John Cook Wilson, a now-forgotten late-19th-century Oxford don. This proposal challenges the established view, according to which Austin’s philosophy—as well as Oxford ordinary language philosophy more generally—is peculiar to the post-Second-World-War scene. It also challenges the widespread prejudice according to which Austin’s philosophy is an offshoot of the later Wittgenstein’s. This proposal can pave the way for fruitful future applications of Austin’s work to contemporary concerns.

Lydia Patton, Virginia Tech

Title: Mnemic Phenomena: History, Physiology, and Perception in Russell’s Analysis of Mind

Abstract: In Lecture IV of Analysis of Mind, Russell argues for a version of the Semon-Hering theory: that organisms inherit prior responses to stimuli. This theory was developed by Richard Semon and Ewald Hering to account for a range of psychological and physiological phenomena. The view was central to the dispute between Hering and Hermann von Helmholtz, in a debate usually conceived as between empiricism (Helmholtz) and nativism (Hering). The true stakes of the debate, though, was about the influence of an organism’s history on its present experience. Helmholtz argued that organisms must learn from their environment starting with a comparatively blank slate, while Semon and Hering argued for inherited instinctual responses coded in an organism’s ancestral history: in other words, for an early version of the law that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. Russell’s account in Analysis of Mind is an interesting mixture of Helmholtzian empiricism and Semon-Hering nativism. This unlikely background informs several perplexing aspects of Russell’s account of perception in Lecture VII. The analysis of perception, imagination, sensation and the like in Lecture VII is clarified by understanding Russell’s position on how physics, physiology, and psychology – and the history of the perceiving subject – play a part in the analysis of perception.

Christopher Pincock, The Ohio University

Title: Propositional Attitudes in Russell’s Analysis of Mind

Abstract: In 1913 Russell famously abandoned his Theory of Knowledge manuscript due to Wittgenstein’s objections to Russell’s theory of judgment. In this paper I consider Russell’s account of belief in Analysis of Mind (1921) with these earlier objections in mind. I argue that the main features of Russell’s new account of belief can be motivated by tracing Russell’s reactions to Wittgenstein’s work from 1913 through 1921. In particular, Russell comes to endorse Wittgenstein’s claim that “ ‘A believes that p’ … [is] of the form ‘ “p” says p’: and this does not involve a correlation of a fact with an object, but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects” (Tractatus, 5.542). But, unlike Wittgenstein, Russell used empirical investigations to clarify how such correlations were achieved.

Fabian Pregel, University of Oxford

Title: Frege’s Concept of Completeness

Abstract: Existing literature suggests that Frege did not have the concept of completeness. Yet, Frege’s project is usually understood as finding a formal system from which all arithmetical truths could be proven. Furthermore, Frege is credited with devising the first calculus complete for first-order logic. How are we to reconcile these three claims? I argue that Frege did not just stumble across this complete calculus, but in fact had an early conception of theory- and calculus-completeness. Heck had briefly suggested this—I pick up on Heck’s work and substantially strengthen its case. The paper offers several text passages in support. Furthermore, I maintain that the reading to the contrary is based on an outdated overall reading of Frege (logocentricity). Finally, I use Blanchette’s account of Frege’s notion of logical consequence to illustrate what his notion of completeness looked like.

QIU Renzong 邱仁宗, ,Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Title: Ethics in China Needs Taking the Approach of Aristotle’s Practical Reasoning

Abstract: In my presentation I will first describe the main points made by Stephen Toulmin in his paper “How Medicine Saved the Life of Ethics” including the objectivity of interests, the importance of cases. my station and its duties, and equity and intimacy. Before ethicists in the West turn to practical ethical issues in medicine, they had been playing kite in the sky since Henry Sidgwick in mid-19th century only focusing on general theoretical inquires and later on metaethics, never willing to stand side on concrete, practical and substantial ethical issues in any of human activities. They never say which particular action is good or bad, right or wrong, they are only interested in what does it mean by the words “good”, “bad”, “right” or “wrong”. So ethics became a philosophical discipline without life. Toulmin argues that medicine saved the life of ethics. Ethics in China had been dead for a long time, it is only a discourse, and nothing to do with human action. An exception is the discipline bioethics always flourishing. It is a revelation that ethics must take the approach of Aristotle’s practical reasoning which focuses on concrete and particular as well as objective cases, human needs, interests, situations, circumstances, contexts and all other relevant elements when applying general ethical rules rather than linguistic dimension of these rules.

Erich Reck, University of California, Riverside

Title: Wittgenstein’s Reception of Frege

Abstract: While Wittgenstein was a fiercely independent philosopher, even he built on the contributions of earlier thinkers. In this talk, I will consider Wittgenstein’s reception of Frege as a case in point. I will start with a survey of the changing, often radically different views about their relationship that one can find in the secondary literature, arguing that these views, typically tied to external agendas, make it hard to understand Wittgenstein’s reception of Frege in a more objective and comprehensive way. Next, I will provide a summary of Wittgenstein’s contacts with Frege, in person and in terms of correspondence, together with some relevant and striking remarks by Wittgenstein even long after Frege’s death. In the third and main part of the talk, I will distinguish a variety of ways, each illustrated by examples, in which Frege was important for Wittgenstein: from introducing central themes for Wittgensteinian investigations; through providing targets for criticisms in terms of Fregean claims; all the way to sympathetic developments of shared ideas. Overall, both the shape and the depth of Frege’s influence on Wittgenstein, from early to late, should become clearer.

Marcus Rossberg, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Title: The Success of Logicism: Frege, Russell, Dedekind

Abstract: Logicism is the proposal that mathematics is just logic further developed. My investigation concerns three major and highly influential thinkers who carried out logicist programs (or attempted to do so): Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Richard Dedekind. The failure of Frege’s program owing to the discovery of Russell’s paradox usually takes pride of place today and is presented as marking the failure of logicism of any form tout court. My main focus, however, will be the remarkable and under-appreciated successes of logicism. These include, inter alia, Frege’s creation of a logical language that is capable, for the first time in history, of formulating mathematical propositions; the partial success in reducing mathematical content to logic, starting with Frege’s definition of the ancestral; in general, providing a means to establish which parts of mathematics can be reduced to what other parts (many research programs in mathematical logic, and reverse mathematics in particular, are heirs of logicism in this respect); the rigorous delineation of the arguably extra-logical resources required to complete the reduction of mathematics: to wit, in addition to higher-order logic, we really only need an axiom of infinity (and beyond arithmetic an axiom of choice), as comes out in all three historical investigations, but particularly clearly in Russell and Dedekind. Understanding logicism thus properly, it is a resounding success: arithmetic really is the pure logic of (countably) infinite domains. Even the downfall of Frege’s project due to Russell’s Paradox can be seen in a positive light: without the painstaking detail and rigor of Frege’s development, the inconsistency couldn’t have been established with the same devastating force.

Georg Schiemer, Universität Wien

Title: Carnap’s Formalist Thesis

Abstract: The aim of the talk is to retrace the development of Carnap’s views on the formality of logic and mathematics from the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, it will focus on a central shift in his understanding of these fields, namely from an object-theoretic approach to formality to a syntactic formalism presented in his Logical Syntax of Language (1934). I will offer a closer analysis of Carnap’s linguistic “formality thesis” from 1934 and discuss several connections to metamathematical work in logic and on the formalist foundations of mathematics from the period in question.

Stewart Shapiro, The Ohio State University

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA

Robert Sinclair, Soka University

Title: Quine, Lewis, and Phenomenalism

Abstract: Recent work on the historical development of Quine’s naturalism has stressed his early engagement with phenomenalism, the view that truths about the physical world can be derived from truths of observation. In this paper I argue that C.I. Lewis’s position in Mind and the World Order offers an important source of Quine’s engagement with phenomenalism, especially with regard to assigning epistemic priority to phenomenal elements rather physical objects. This is seen by examining three stages of Quine’s philosophical development, culminating in his recognition that sense data are themselves scientific posits and therefore dependent on science.

David Stern, University of Iowa

Title: Tree structured readings of the Tractatus

Abstract: In an unpublished letter that G.E.M. Anscombe sent to G. H. von Wright in May 1948, Anscombe suggested a new way of reading the Tractatus: “By the way, it occurred to me to try a method of reading it which is pretty obvious but has not been tried by anyone I mentioned it to, and which I think helps: it is to read it in successive steps, first whole numbers, then these together with the first decimal point, then up to the second point, and so on.” Anscombe’s suggestion amounted to the first formulation, or perhaps anticipation, of what has since become known as a tree-structured reading. On this approach, the starting point consists of the seven whole-numbered remarks, which form the trunk of the tree; from there one turns to those with just one cardinal number after the decimal point, the main branches that are directly attached to the trunk; next come those with two cardinal numbers, the branches that are attached to the main branches, and so on. However, Anscombe never publicized this approach, and so it received almost no attention for over forty years, until work by Brian McGuinness, Verena Mayer and others made it clear that Wittgenstein had used that system to assemble and organize his work between 1915 and 1918.

Luciano Bazzocchi and Peter Hacker have recently argued that a tree-structured reading provides the key to understanding the structure of the Tractatus. In this paper, I draw on earlier discussions of tree-structured readings to argue that such readings can both help us see how Wittgenstein’s conception of the main themes of his book changed in the course of writing it and also provide us with a valuable alternative reading order. However, I also argue against Bazzocchi and Hacker that such readings cannot decisively settle much-debated questions about the book’s aims and methods.

Fredrik Stjernberg, Linkoping University Sweden

Title: The Essential Openness of Waismann’s Notion of Analyticity

Abstract: Waismann’s papers on analyticity (Waismann 1949, 1950, 1951a, 1951b, 1952, 1953) came just as Quine’s attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction (Quine 1951) was published. There are many similarities between their views, but also some important differences. Waismann shares some of Quine’s objections to analyticity, but he draws different conclusions from them. This paper examines Waismann’s notion of analyticity, and stresses how his views employ a conception of language and meaning as essentially open. There is no final determination of what analyticity amounts to, or of which truths that are analytic. Parallels with current theories are mentioned and discussed briefly.

Sebastian Sunday Grève 王小塞, Peking University

Title: Turing’s philosophy of AI

Abstract: The value of Turing’s work on artificial intelligence has traditionally been reduced to what is now known as the Turing Test, but it is more nuanced and compelling than previously assumed. This talk focuses on Turing’s writings and public speeches to provide a clear picture of what his primary goal was in formulating the imitation game in his famous essay. For instance, they show that, from 1947 onwards (and perhaps earlier), in pursuit of the same general goal he in fact proposed not one but many tests for comparing humans and machines. These tests concerned learning, thinking, and intelligence and could be applied to various smaller and bigger tasks, including simple problem-solving, games such as chess and go, as well as general conversation. But his primary goal was never merely to define or operationalise any of these things. Rather, it was always more fundamental and progressive in nature: namely, to prepare the conceptual ground, carefully and rigorously in the manner of the mathematical philosopher that he was, on which future computing technology could be successfully conceived, first by scientists and engineers and later by policymakers and society at large.

Timur Cengiz Uçan, Bordeaux Montaigne University

Title: The Phrase and the Word

Abstract: This paper is a comparative study of the criticisms of solipsism and methodological solipsism by Putnam and Descombes and an attempt to think of this debate in the actual circumstance of climate change.

Ragnar van der Merwe, University of Johannesburg

Title: Kant and Whewell’s Hylomorphism: Then and Now

Abstract: In this talk, I trace the genealogy of hylomorphism that originates with Aristotle and then influences Kant and Whewell. I argue that Whewell’s hylomorphism – his form/matter metaphor – offers us a cogent way to think about the subject/object or mind/world relationship. Whewell’s account presents a viable middle way between realism and anti-realism about the external world that is reminiscent of experience pragmatists’ notion that subject and object entwine in experience.

Simon Wimmer, Technical University Dortmund

Title: Cook Wilson’s Accretion

Abstract: John Cook Wilson is widely regarded as having accepted what Travis and Kalderon call the accretion: roughly, the claim that knowing entails knowing that one knows. Travis and Kalderon argue, however, that the accretion makes knowledge collapse, or at least contract beyond plausibility. I explore how Cook Wilson would have responded to this objection. My main aim is to leverage two distinctions that Cook Wilson makes amongst cases of knowledge in order to argue that the accretion, as Cook Wilson thought of it, in fact leaves our knowledge, as we typically think of it today, intact.

XU Ao 徐鏖, Southwest University of Politics and Law Chongqing

Title: Preliminary Discussion on Otto Weininger’s Influence on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Abstract: 魏宁格对维特根斯坦的重大影响是为研究者们所承认，然而，魏宁格与《逻辑哲学论》的思想关联却为研究者所忽视。其原因在于冯特对维特根斯坦1931年名单的误读，使得研究者认为魏宁格对维特根斯坦前期没有影响。本文将对此进行反驳，并初步探究二者魏宁格与《逻辑哲学论》的思想关系，这些关联不仅对于理解《逻辑哲学论》显得十分重要，而且透过它们，还可以了解魏宁格被人淡忘的哲学思想，重拾魏宁格的思想价值。（Only in Chinese）

XU Qiang 徐强, Southwest Minzu University

Title: The Availability of Middle Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

Abstract: Did Wittgenstein experience an essential transformation of his philosophy in a certain period (roughly the early 1930s.)? It is a big question concerning the essence of “middle” Wittgenstein philosophy, and I argue that it is caused by the tensions lying behind different attempts to answer that question. In this paper I construct the Wittgenstein scholarship into a six-level hierarchy, and I put forward ten arguments concerning the hierarchy.

XU Yingjin 徐英瑾, ,Fudan University

Title: How Could Ōmori Shōzō Use Wittgenstein to Fight against Wittgenstein?

Abstract: Ōmori Shōzō’s philosophy can be generally described a hybrid system composed of both a Wittgensteinian skin and a Husserlian core, in the sense that he systematically uses a Wittgensteinian philosophical methodology to fight against Wittgenstein’s own publicity-oriented philosophical tendency. His first recipe for doing so, according to my reconstruction, is to appeal to the notion of tachiaraware (namely, “phenomena standing for themselves”), via which the gap between synthesizing activity and sense-data to be synthesized can be filled. Therefore, the first-personal character of tachiaraware could be easily transmitted to the formal features of “my language”, without which no public language can be formed. Ōmori’s second recipe for refuting Wittgenstein is to appeal to his Kasane-egaki (namely, “recoloring”)-narrative, according to which the ordinary language (L2) is nothing but the “recoloring” of the phenomenal language (L1), while the scientific language (L3) is nothing but the “recoloring” of the ordinary language. Given that the L1-L2-L3-hierarchy has to be elaborated without implementing double standards, a Wittgensteinian emphasis on the putative primacy of public languages cannot be recommended due to its patent violation of the so-called “Double-Standard-Abominating Principle” (DSAP). Hence, since both the respect of the “tachiaraware” and DASP are required by a thorough implementation of the phenomenological principle itself, Ōmori’s stance simply appears to be a natural result of radicalizing Wittgenstein’s stance alongside the phenomenological route.

ZHU Jing 朱菁, Xiamen University

Title: Yuelin Jin’s Epistemology: A Masterwork Ahead of Its Time with a Lamentable Fate

Abstract: Yuelin Jin (Yeuh Liu Chin, 1895-1984) was among the first generation of analytic philosophers in China, arguably the most influential one. Whereas he was a highly respected scholar who had introduced modern logic to China and a successful teacher who had trained a group of distinguished Chinese logicians and philosophers, his own original academic contributions to analytic philosophy have not been well recognized, assessed and appreciated, especially in light of the history of analytic philosophy worldwide.

Epistemology is the most important work of Yuelin Jin, a voluminous monograph written in the 1940s but not published until nearly 40 years later in 1983, one year before his death. Viewed in hindsight, this work may be ranked as one of the best in the time, when analytic epistemology was in its incubation stage before becoming one of the major branches in contemporary analytic philosophy since the 1960s. Jin’s Epistemology is extraordinarily rich in philosophical insights and novelties, many of them only proposed and discussed by contemporary epistemologists in recent years. As an instance, I shall show that Yuelin Jin has already developed a full-fledged disjunctive theory of perception, a hotly debated topic in past decades, twenty years earlier than the Oxford philosopher J. M. Hinton, who is regarded as the pioneer of disjunctivism (Hinton 1967).

The fate of Yuelin Jin’s Epistemology is a story with lamentable twists. Jin wrote and almost completed the draft during the hard times of the nationwide Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945, a part of the World War II), while trekked from Beijing to southwest China and eventually settled in Kunming. Unfortunately, the draft was lost in a turmoil of air raid by accident. So Jin had to rewrite the whole book, and finally handed the draft to a publishing house at the end of 1948, when the regime change from the Nationalist Party to the Communist Party happened, resulting in the halt of this book’s publication. In the 1950s, Jin embraced Marxism wholeheartedly, and began to abandon and criticize the brand of philosophy that he had studied in the first half of his life as part of western and bourgeois ideologies. The Reform and Open-up movement starting from the late 1970s eventually revived the life of Yuelin Jin’s Epistemology, and he was fortunate enough to see its publication before he passed away. The intricate and lamentable fate of Jin’s Epistemology tangibly reflects the bumpy journey of analytic philosophy in China in the 20th century, and respectful and thoughtful studies of this masterwork may provide inspirations and lessons to better develop analytic philosophy in China in the 21st century.