Yet, there is scarcely a page of Wittgenstein's work, including his work on the foundations of mathematics, that is not devoted to an attempt to rescue our understanding of meaning by linking it…

Yet, there is scarcely a page of Wittgenstein’s work, including his work on the foundations of mathematics, that is not devoted to an attempt to rescue our understanding of meaning by linking it to the ordinary practices of human beings using language; and the many striking examples of Wittgenstein’s imaginative anthropology are testimony to his commitment to the imaginative nature of rationality. Practice fetishism and particularism may indeed culminate in the denial that human beings can conserve and transmit shared experiences and in a related refusal to recognize the imaginative elements in human rationality. But because these very ideas-how human beings learn a language, how imagination plays a crucial part in that learning-are so much at the center of Wittgenstein’s work, it casts some doubt on whether Winter’s charges of fetishism, among others, are accurate.

Evidence

Winter heatedly denies that he “believes that there must be ‘something standing between the Constitution and our understanding of it … I have argued, in contrast, that . . ‘the meaning of [the Court’s] constitutional interpretation is as much a matter of… our interpretive commitments, as it is a matter of the understanding of the Justices.’"" g And here one begins to see the problem: What exactly does Winter think this “understanding” consists in? If it is a matter of interpretive commitments, objectified sedimentations, and the like, then is Winter’s outrage really justified? — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 366 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Some kinds of understanding cannot be transferred, only cultivated — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 3945; Ethnophilosophers undermine their own thesis under Wittgenstein-Quine logic; Meaning arises from articulating linguistic systems rather than reflecting the world (+11 more)

Related

• Winter is not writing about Wittgenstein, but about the Wittgensteinian account, which I fear must mean me. (similarity 0.95)
• Winter’s entire essay is structured around such small coups de theatre, which culminate in announcements of such banality that they are made ludicrous by the portentous, jargon-ridden analysis… (similarity 0.92)
• Winter insists that ‘the importance and ubiquity of imaginative processes such as metaphor undermine the Wittgensteinian claim that there is no more to meaning than its performative significance… (similarity 0.90)
• Winter’s denial may be inconsistent with his own theory of meaning (similarity 0.90)
• Ethnophilosophers undermine their own thesis under Wittgenstein-Quine logic (similarity 0.87)
• Wittgenstein denies psychological effects any necessary role in meaning while not denying their reality. (similarity 0.84)
• Wittgenstein never treated practice as an isolated conceptual primitive (similarity 0.84)
• Understanding a linguistic practice does not require understanding larger social practices first. (similarity 0.84)
• Wittgenstein conceives language-games as parts of an activity or form of life. (similarity 0.84)
• Winter misrepresents Wittgenstein by attributing to him a composite of several thinkers’ views. (similarity 0.82)
• Some kinds of understanding cannot be transferred, only cultivated (similarity 0.80)
• When Winter discloses that ‘in effect, then, Bobbitt concedes that law faces the very predicament that Unger identifies’—that legal decisions are sometimes indeterminate—he discloses nothing… (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Winter insists that ‘the importance and ubiquity of imaginative processes such as metaphor undermine the Wittgensteinian claim that there is no more to meaning than its performative significance… #responds-to (0.85)
• Winter asserts ‘Consider how a Wittgensteinian such as Bobbitt might respond to Unger’s argument. First, he would exhort us to abandon the question of justification precisely because it… #responds-to (0.80)
• Winter’s denial may be inconsistent with his own theory of meaning #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 366
• Wittgenstein conceives language-games as parts of an activity or form of life. #corroborates (0.70) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 793