Tag Archives: Language

Catching Criminals: Stopping Doing Philosophy

Posted on December 2, 2011 by

I had the great pleasure of attending Kelly Jolley’s final lecture in his intro course to philosophy today. In the last moments of the period he mentioned that the crux of the course as a whole had been the philosophical … Continue reading →

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Frege on “Begriffsschrift” and Leibniz

Posted on November 30, 2011 by

Here is an interesting quotation from Frege that I hope to return to soon. Jean van Heijenoort uses it as evidence of Frege’s dissatisfaction with the term ‘Begriffsschrift’. “I do not start from concepts in order to build up thoughts … Continue reading →

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Remembering Absolute Certainty: A Questionable Requiem

Posted on November 29, 2011 by

In what follows, I want to let all of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty stay in the background, as well as what is commonly said by him about the problems of philosophy. I hope the connections are clear.  While thumbing through the articles … Continue reading →

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Of Alterations: Leibniz, Frege, Wittgenstein

Posted on November 8, 2011 by

“The cottage fades before his sight, The garden and its lovely charms; The guests are scattered through the land —For the eye altering, alters all—; The senses roll themselves in fear, And the flat earth becomes a ball.” ~William Blake … Continue reading →

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“Remember, Remember…”

Posted on November 5, 2011 by

Today is the fifth of November. Traditionally, this is a day marked by the lighting of bonfires, a day of kindle and match, of flint and tender, of flame and ash. It is a memorial characterized by burning. It certainly … Continue reading →

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On the Universality of Language

Posted on October 20, 2011 by

My recent interest in Leibniz has been influenced by a question concerning Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This might sound odd. I promise it isn’t. You see, Leibniz had this crazy idea about language. He noted around 1677 that there was a … Continue reading →

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Leibniz and the (Less-Than) Ideal Language

Posted on October 17, 2011 by

From Preface to the General Science, 1677: Whence it is manifest that if we could find characters or signs appropriate for expressing all our thoughts as definitely and as exactly as arithmetic expresses number or geometric analysis between lines, we … Continue reading →

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