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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy of Language

Wittgenstein And Hume On Miracles, Samuel Wheeler Mar 2022

Wittgenstein And Hume On Miracles, Samuel Wheeler

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In this paper, I intend to contrast the positions of Ludwig Wittgenstein and David Hume on miracles. While Hume holds that miracles are violations of laws of nature which can never be probable, Wittgenstein would reject this definition. Instead, he takes a broader stance on miracles and holds that many events which are not transgressions of laws of nature can be seen as miraculous. And the point of this is to highlight the vastly different events we call miracles. Contra Hume, Wittgenstein thinks that even some of our greatest certainties can call up in us a sense of absolute wonder …


Psychoanalysis, Dignity, And Life: An Introduction, David Metzger Jan 2019

Psychoanalysis, Dignity, And Life: An Introduction, David Metzger

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Derrida’S Deconstruction Of Logocentrism: Implications For Trauma Studies, Julie Elaine Goodspeed-Chadwick Apr 2006

Derrida’S Deconstruction Of Logocentrism: Implications For Trauma Studies, Julie Elaine Goodspeed-Chadwick

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article examines Derrida’s conception of logocentrism as it is discussed throughout the entirety of his seminal work Of Grammatology, as well as in his collected interviews, Points...: 1974-1994. Systematically refuting logocentrism, Derrida’s deconstruction enables exposure of the mechanisms, such as binary constructions, that exert a dominant—and domineering—influence over marginalized people, places, and concepts. Specifically, presence and the (falsehood of the) totality of the sign define logocentrism, and these terms cannot productively contribute to trauma studies because it is precisely in texts and textuality that embodied states can be studied. Texts are themselves material embodiments that display …


Notes On Wittgenstein’S Method, The Practice Of Cultural History, And Early Film Theory, Markus Rheindorf Apr 2005

Notes On Wittgenstein’S Method, The Practice Of Cultural History, And Early Film Theory, Markus Rheindorf

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Markus Rheindorf's contribution offers some reflections on the critical potential of Ludwig Wittgenstein's uebersichtliche Darstellungor concise presentation, his self-consciously employed method of philosophical writing in the 1930s, and explores its theoretical and methodological potential for the practice of cultural history. In so doing, it articulates a substantial critique of conventional disciplinary historiography, taking as its case in point the history of (early) film theory. Rheindorf then takes up the suggestions gained from juxtaposing Wittengstein's method with conventional accounts of the history of early film theory and suggests concrete ways in which these might be put to practical use in the …


Brown Meets Green: The Political Fecology Of Poopreport.Com, Marisol Cortez Apr 2005

Brown Meets Green: The Political Fecology Of Poopreport.Com, Marisol Cortez

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In engaging with the culture of filth, Marisol Cortez's Brown Meets Green: The Political Fecology of PoopReport.com questions contemporary cultural criticism's emphasis on shit's textual ambivalence. In order to avoid relapsing into either the Bakhtinian celebration of the grotesque or the too narrowly conceived Kristevan category of the abject, Cortez argues, and to find a way out of this theoretical dualism, one must rethink the very categories of filth and waste through an ecocritical reading of the scatological -- the meeting of brown and green -- performed at the confluence of ecology, cultural studies, and Marxist political economy. This perspective …


Wittgenstein On Freedom Of The Will, Grant Allen Marler Apr 1996

Wittgenstein On Freedom Of The Will, Grant Allen Marler

Institute for the Humanities Theses

This thesis is an exposition and clarification of two lectures on freedom of the will delivered by Ludwig Wittgenstein in 1939. Wittgenstein asks whether it makes sense to say that the "decision of a person was not free because it was determined by natural laws." I offer a brief explanation and defense of Wittgenstein's method of linguistic analysis, then proceed in its spirit. Associated with the words 'determined' and 'free' are certain pictures which, if misapplied, may lead us to misjudge their function. Among these are the picture of natural laws as "rails" that compel events, and that the meaning …