Philosophy of Language: Wittgenstein (PHIL-4420; 55008)

Philosophy of Language: Wittgenstein (PHIL-4420; 55008)

Dr. Edgar Boedeker

Spring 2012: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 12:30-1:45pm in Lang Hall 20

Office hours: 3:00-3:30 Wednesdays and 2:15-3:00 Thursdays in my office, 145 Baker Hall. I would also be happy to meet with you at another time. To arrange a meeting, just send me an e-mail at or give me a call at 273-7487.

Required books (available at University Book & Supply):

-  Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (New York: Dover, 1999; or any of the other editions of this text by various publishers).

-  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Major Works: Selected Philosophical Writings, Harper Collins, 2009, (ISBN 978-0-06-155024-9) (or Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and On Certainty separately, although these are more expensive than the Major Works).

-  Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (revised 4th edition; translated by Anscombe, Hacker, and Schulte) Wiley-Blackwell, 2009 (ISBN: 978-1-4051-5929-6).

Course description: Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th Century. One of his achievements was to demonstrate how important language is for understanding philosophical questions. We will begin by examining his first book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), which gives a philosophical foundation to the new logic introduced by Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) and Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), and develops a view of language as essential to thought. We will then follow Wittgenstein as his perspective on language broadens from formal logic, to the various roles language plays in people’s lives, examining his revolutionary views of knowledge, understanding, and mind and some of their applications in contemporary philosophy.

Course goals: This course has three main goals:

(1)  to introduce you to some of the main issues in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language;

(2)  to help you analyze and evaluate arguments; and

(3)  to give you practice in writing cogently and persuasively.

Course format: Class meetings will consist of a mixture of lecture and discussion. In order to benefit from both, it is essential that you do all of the reading for each class. One of the most important things that this course will offer you is the opportunity to hone your interpretive, argumentative, and rhetorical skills by writing several papers on the often difficult texts we will be reading.

Evaluation:

1. Two papers on an important aspect of one of the texts we read. Your first paper will relate to Wittgenstein’s early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; and your second paper will relate to his later On Certainty and Philosophical Investigations. Suggested paper topics are linked to their due-dates.

- The first paper, due on Tuesday, March 2, should be around 6-7 pages in length, and will be worth 25% of your final grade.

- The second paper, due in my mailbox (Baker 135) by 4pm on Wednesday, May 5, should be should be around 7-9 pages in length and will be worth 35% of your final grade. Please feel free to discuss your papers with me as you write them.

I strongly encourage you to co-write your paper with (just) one other member of the class. Co-writing is an increasingly important skill in such fields as business, science, academia, law, etc. Since I will hold a co-written paper to exactly the same standards as a single-authored paper, it may well be to your advantage to co-write a paper. After all, two heads are better than one! If you co-write a paper, however, please make sure that you and your co-author both check it for consistency in style, verb tense, coherence, etc.

2. 40% of your final grade will come from 10 “analytic response papers” from 1 to 2 pages in length on a study question or a topic of your choosing. Analytic response papers will be graded with a check (4% of final grade), check-plus (6% of final grade), or check-minus (2% of final grade). See the syllabus for due-dates. No extensions whatsoever will be granted for these analytic response papers. It goes without saying that this applies also to the last 2 weeks of class.

The purpose of the analytic response papers is to encourage you to do each reading assignment, and to come to class prepared to discuss it. They may be turned within a week after we have discussed the topic in question.

3. Class participation: I expect that all students will participate actively and constructively in classroom discussions. Asking questions and responding to what I or fellow students say are excellent ways for you to learn. Doing so regularly will boost your final grade by up to two-thirds of a letter-grade, for example, from a B+ to an A. On the other hand, if your presence in class contributes to a negative learning environment (for example, repeatedly coming to class late, or treating fellow students with disrespect), this can reduce your final grade by one third of a letter grade.

4. Attendance: Attendance will be taken at the beginning of each class period. You are permitted two unexplained absences during the semester. For each unexplained absence beyond these two, your final grade will be reduced by one third of a letter grade. For example, someone with a B+ average with 5 unexplained absences (i.e., 3 more than the 2 allowed) will receive a C+ in the course. The only explanations I will accept are a doctor’s note, funeral announcement, and the like.

I realize that this is a fairly strict attendance policy. I have instituted it mainly because much of the learning that you will do in this course will take place in class. Asking questions, raising objections, and listening to others are important skills that you will get to practice in class discussions. In addition, coming to class is necessary to doing well in this course.

Each time that I notice you ‘texting’ on an electronic device, I will ask you to leave, and will reduce your final grade by 1/3 of a letter grade, e.g., from B to B-. I have instituted this policy because texting is very distracting to me, reduces my ability to teach effectively, and hence does a disservice to the students in the class.

5. I reserve the right to hold, from time to time throughout the semester, brief quizzes, whether announced or unannounced, on straightforward questions of technical terms, key concepts, etc. All told, these will be worth no more than 20% of your final grade.

Criteria for writing and evaluating a paper. You are responsible for reading the syllabus carefully, a forteriori including this section, and for writing your papers in conformity to these guidelines.

I. Thesis (20 points).

A. Does your essay have a clear, informative, and compelling thesis that appears at the end of an interesting introduction that explains why your thesis matters, why it is important?

B. Is your thesis new, an original, creative and compelling insight into the text and issue under consideration? Do you set the historical and cultural context for this thesis, explaining why this thesis is important and therefore giving the reader a reason to take interest in your essay?

II. Support of thesis (60 points).

A. Thesis defense. Does your essay have a consecutive argument that defends your thesis, carefully moving the reader from one point to the next (or does it simply run in place)? Your aim is not to prove to the reader that your thesis is iron-clad, but to show that it is reasonable, that what you see in the text is there to be seen. So do you cite and quote evidence from the text (a good rule of thumb is to use three examples), and do you explain how that evidence supports your thesis? Do you lead the reader through your argument, one step at a time, explicitly telling me how that step supports your thesis?

Remember that the reasons you give for or against an argument should be more than simply your beliefs or opinions. Rather, they should be potentially convincing to someone else, even if this person may not initially share your beliefs or opinions. After all, are you convinced that something is true just because someone else happens to believe it? Thus in trying to bring your reader over to your side, make sure to meet him or her in the middle by appealing to reasons that they might accept.

B. Evidence and reasoning. Does your essay have adequate citation and quotations from relevant texts that support the argument of the paper, and do you explain how those citations and quotations in fact support the argument?

C. Consistency. Does your essay demonstrate internal consistency or ways of handling contradiction and paradox as they emerge in the argument?

D. Addressing an objection. Does your essay show an awareness of a possible objection to your thesis? Does your essay address this objection?

III. Style and presentation (20 points).

A. Does your essay

1. avoid grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors? (This is very important, since the reader can’t help but take these factors as indicating the author’s care in writing the paper.)
2. have clear and well-structured sentences, paragraphs, and arguments?
3. have properly defined key terms?
4. have properly documented quotes? Page numbers in parentheses placed after the quote are sufficient if you are dealing with just one text.

B. Succinctness. Is every paragraph, sentence, and even every word absolutely necessary to your argument (or do you have irrelevant material and rambling discussion)?

Notes on the papers:

One thing that a philosophy paper should not be is a “book report”, i.e., an attempt to summarize an entire philosophical text. Instead, a good philosophy paper should give a close analysis of a single key argument in a text. An “argument” in this sense isn’t a verbal fight (this isn’t the Jerry Springer Show, after all!). Rather, an argument is a chain of reasoning from certain statements (called the “premises”) to another statement (called the “conclusion”) that the argument claims is supported by the premises.

A good philosophy paper contains both an analysis of such an argument and some criticism of it. A good criticism generally consists of either (1) reasons why one or more of the premises of the argument is false, or (2) reasons why the premises in fact do not support the conclusion (in which case the conclusion still might be false even if the premises were true). You may or may not agree with the argument; and you may or may not agree with your criticism of it. This doesn’t matter for the purposes of this course. Remember that the reasons you give for or against an argument should be more than simply your beliefs or opinions. Rather, they should be potentially convincing to someone else, even if this person may not initially share your beliefs or opinions. After all, are you convinced that something is true just because someone else happens to believe it? So don’t just state whether or not you agree with the author’s conclusion. Instead, try to give reasons for or against the author’s argument for this conclusion.

In my experience, the most common way for paper grades to suffer is due to a lack of documentation in the texts. You should use direct citations sparingly – generally only if the exact wording of the passage is either directly relevant to the argument you’re making, or particularly clear and concise. (Short direct citations should be placed in quotation-marks; direct citations over 3 lines long should be offset and indented, without quotation-marks.) In other cases, use indirect citation – paraphrasing in your own words what the author says, and telling the reader where s/he says it.

MAILSERV: Most Republicans in the Iowa State House claim to believe that Iowans don’t have a right to a college education financed largely by the State of Iowa. This is a major reason why they have shortsightedly drastically cut state appropriations for the Regents Universities, including UNI. Among the many deleterious effects of these policies, tuition has more than doubled over the past decade, and the Department of Philosophy and World Religions has very few funds available for photocopying. The great majority of our course materials will therefore be in the form of e-mail attachments. These materials will include worksheets for you to fill out on the readings, handouts outlining lectures, and perhaps also materials for use in in-class group projects. From time to time, I will also send announcements pertaining to the class via e-mail. To facilitate our electronic communication, a MAILSERV distribution list has been created for this class using your UNI e-mail addresses. The list members include me and the students who were registered for the class when the list was created (in early January, 2010). It is a private list (i.e., only the list members may post to it), but has open subscription. To send to the list, use .

If you registered late, or if you wish to be able to send and receive e-mails at an e-mail address other than your UNI one, then please add your e-mail address to this list by sending a message to

where the body (not the subject heading) contains these two lines:

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In a similar manner, if you drop this course, you may remove yourself from the list by sending a message to

where the body (not the subject heading) contains these two lines:

UNSUB PHIL-4420-01-SPRING
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It will be your responsibility to make sure you are subscribed to the MAILSERV right away, check your e-mail regularly, read the announcements, and print out all attachments. I strongly recommend that you purchase a 3-ring binder to organize and store the various handouts for this class.