Wittgenstein between philosophical grammar and psychology

Rosaria Egidi

pp. 171-184

in: Rosaria Egidi (ed), Wittgenstein, Berlin, Springer, 1995

Abstract

It is known that Wittgenstein's interest in philosophical problems of psychology goes back to Tractatus and his first writings. It certainly has its origins in the commitment which he shared with Frege, to challenge the long-established psychologistic solutions to the problems of logic and of the theory of knowledge. Nevertheless, the very "plan for the treatment of psychological concepts' assumed a specific form only later, when Wittgenstein lost his confidence in the anti-psychologistic strategy of Frege as well as the belief — which he had briefly held — in a phenomenological analysis of internal experience, which was in a way similar to the one already developed by Brentano and the Austrian-German schools of phenomenology. This treatment, together with reflections on the foundations of mathematics, was intended to form the II part of Philosophical Investigations ¹ and constitute therefore a corollary or — one might say — the application of the new theory of meaning elaborated in the I part.

Cited authors

Brentano Franz

Frege Gottlob

Wittgenstein Ludwig