Grazer Philosophische Studien

We experience evidence, but experienced evidence does not entail objective validity of the evident content. There are different kinds of intuitive evidence: logical and analytical evidence, the presuppositions of realism etc.; there is intuitive evidence in the cognitive field as well as in the practical realm. Intuitive evidence is linked with the basic framework of the respective field. Intuition may be replaced by deeper intuition on the basis of new views that evoke a reconstruction of the framework. Value intuition is characterized as an established opinion which seems undubitable. All persons, all groups and all institutions have actually some practical convictions on which they found their practical evaluation.

Neuraths bildtheoretische Überlegungen und Wittgensteins philosophisch orientierte Verwendung von Bildern werden miteinander konfrontiert, um zu zeigen, daß beider Interpretationen der Verwendung grafischer Darstellungen geeignet sind, das Problem einer lebensformübergreifenden Sprache am Beispiel einer internationalen Bildersprache neu zu diskutieren. Wittgenstein spricht zwar nicht von „autonomen Bildern", verwendet Bilder aber auf ganz pragmatische Weise in seiner Philosophie, und eben die pragmatische Rolle des Bildes als visuellen Aufklärungsmittels bei Neurath verbindet Neuraths und Wittgensteins Bildbegriff. Die normierende Funktion von Bildern als paradigmatischen Illustrationen legt eine gemeinsame Konzeption visueller Argumente bei Wittgenstein und Neurath nahe.

It is known that Wittgenstein enjoyed reading Plato; but the significance the philosopher had for him is quite underrated, and has never been properly understood. Utilizing insights by Ortega and E. Havelock, the paper argues that while the background of Plato's philosophy was the emergence of literacy, the genesis and the direction of Wittgenstein's later philosophy, by contrast, is not independent of the emergence of post-literacy (or "secondery orality", to use Walter J. Ong's term). A post-literal phenomenon clearly having specifc impact on Wittgenstein was the film: it is striking that he regularly used the film metaphor to illustrate philosophical points. Analyzing these metaphors the paper reaches the conclusion that according to Wittgenstein the carrier of uncorrupted meaning is, actually, spoken language; if we leave the rein to written language, philosophical problems will arise.

Der Aufsatz geht von J.C. Nyiris Wittgenstein-Interpretation aus, der zufolge die vom späten Wittgenstein vertretene handlungsorientierte Theorie der Sprache nur dann wirklich einleuchtend ist, wenn man hauptsächlich die mündlichen und nicht die schriftlichen Varianten der Kommunikation im Auge hat. Im Aufsatz wird untersucht, (1) inwiefern Nyiris Wittgenstein-Interpretation akzeptabel und (2) inwieweit seine Beschreibung der schriftlichen Kommunikation haltbar ist.

Paul Engelmann hat über zwanzig Jahre seines Lebens an einer systematischen Darstellung der Psychologie mittels einer von ihm entwickelten graphischen Methode gearbeitet. Das Resultat dieser Arbeit bildet seine Psychologie graphisch dargestellt, die sich in seinem Nachlaß befindet. In diesem Werk will Engelmann die Klärung geistiger Aufgabengebiete, wie sie seine Lehrer Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos und Ludwig Wittgenstein betrieben haben, in der Psychologie fortsetzen. Hierbei fiihrt er Freuds Methode weiter, psychische Erscheinungen räumlich darzustellen, und wendet die Bildtheorie Wittgensteins auf seine Theorie psychischer Vorgänge an.

Distinguishing sense and referent in true belief that is not knowledge and true belief that is knowledge implies scepticism as regards facts. That is because it falsely reduces knowledge to mere true belief To remove the scepticism, it might be held that sense and referent are the same in both. But this over-correction makes the opposite mistake of reducing mere true belief to knowledge. It also implies either assimilating false belief to true belief or saying, counterintuitively, that the sense of a belief varies with the truth-value of the belief The way out is to take the middle path of distinguishing sense and referent in true belief that is not knowledge and identifying sense and referent in true belief that is knowledge.

Donald Davidson has argued against a thesis that is widely shared in the philosophy of language, e.g., by Wittgenstein, Dummett and Kripke: the thesis that successful communication requires that speaker and hearer share a common language. Davidson's arguments, however, are not convincing. Moreover, Davidson's own positive account of communication poses a serious problem: it cannot offer criteria for the correct use of a language, especially in the case of a language that only one speaker speaks. Even though Davidson's own position is not convincing he shows us that the opposite position is weaker than one might assume (compare, e.g., the wittgensteinian idea that a common social praxis of rule-following can supply us with criteria of correctness). Furthermore, the whole discussion shows us that the issue is not settled yet.

Meinong's realist theory of measurement is brought up against the presently dominating positivist and operationalist view. His criticism of 19th century positivist analysis of measurement (J. v. Kries) turns out to be pertinent to modern model-theoretic analysis (Suppes and Zinnes). Meinong's ontology of quantities as well as his view of associative and derived measurement is confronted with the operational analysis. The positivist cannot make sense of measurement error and tries to push it aside. In Meinong's view it is pivotal. This view harmonises with the practice of measurement where error is used as a means of gaining knowledge. Starting from Meinong and his pupil Mally a more adequate theory of measurement could be developed.

Do all methods of moral justification resemble the method of reflective equilibrium in presupposing that moral judgment's being justified depends at least in part on its being appropriately related to our actual substantial moral views? Can a moral judgment be justified without such a presupposition? I shall distinguish three versions of the no-option argument According to any version of the no-option argument, there is certain fact which characterizes moral theories, and that fact implies that there is no option other than to justify moral judgments by presupposing that their justification depends at least in part on their being appropriately related to our actual substantial moral views. Versions of the no-option argument differ in their specification of the characterizing fact that proves that in ethics there is only one option. I shall argue that the most common versions of the no-option argument are indefensible, while the defensibility of a more sophisticated version depends on the meaning of a notion of moral argument in philosophical ethics.