Wittgenstein, Non-Factualism, and Deflationism

Abstract

Amongst those views sometimes attributed to the later Wittgenstein are included both a deflationary theory of truth, as well as a non-factualism about certain regions of discourse. Evidence in favor of the former attribution, it is thought, can be found in Wittgenstein's apparent affirmation of the basic definitional equivalence of 'p' is true and p in x136 of his Philosophical Investigations. Evidence in favor of the latter attribution, it might then be presumed, can be found in the context of the so-called 'private language argument', wherein Wittgenstein provides an expressivist treatment of first-person present tense sensation utterances. In this paper, by contrast, I will argue that Wittgenstein's later philosophy is best understood as endorsing neither a non-factualism about sensation utterances, nor a deflationism about truth. Wittgenstein should instead be understood as offering a 'mixed' view of sensation utterances according to which some while not others are apt for expressivist treatment. Moreover, he should be thought of as identifying truth-conditions with semantic 'correctness-conditions', and thus truth with semantic 'assertibility'.

Wittgenstein, deflationism and moral entities

“…Furthermore, Lovibond's (and Brandhorst's and Horwich's) attribution of syntacticism to Wittgenstein is questionable (see Sect. 7.2 and Diamond 1996;Connelly 2013). 16 Some of the criticisms I am going to present in this section have already been made clear on independent grounds elsewhere in the literature.…”

“…3 I will not discuss the topic of Wittgenstein and truth deflationism here, as it exceeds the scope of this paper and requires a separate investigation. For a critical discussion see Vision (2005), Connelly (2013) and Bartunek (2019) and for a detailed defense see Horwich (2012Horwich ( , 2016b. 4 Horwich (2012, 2016a) has recently argued that Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical pronouncements suggest that he adopts a deflationary meta-philosophical point of view, which is the foundation of his treatment of specific issues concerning language, mind, numbers, and so on.…”

“…12 Some Wittgenstein scholars have pointed out that the idea that deflationism about a given property or notion supplies a complete and satisfactory explication of said property or notion does not find a comfortable home in Wittgenstein's later work. This is due to the fact that "it is doubtful that Wittgenstein believes it was possible to obtain such explanations anywhere in philosophy" (Vision 2005, p. 162; see Bartunek, 2019;Connelly, 2013 for similar pronouncements). That is to say, the nuances of Wittgenstein's later work exceed the explanatory limitations inherent to deflationism.…”

“…239-242) rightly points out, Wittgenstein rejects these Platonist views on the basis that the analogy they employ is unintelligible and "extremely misleading" (LFM, 1976, p. 240). By contrast, Wittgenstein developed the idea of an enormous difference between reality corresponding to experiential propositions and reality corresponding to mathematical propositions (see Diamond, 1996;Connelly, 2013 andBrandhorst, 2015 for further discussion). Take, for instance, the propositions '2 is even' and 'The sofa is green'.…”