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What Is Wrong with H acker's W ittgenstein? On Grammar, Context and Sense‐Determination
Author(s) -
Dobler Tamara
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
philosophical investigations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.172
H-Index - 14
eISSN - 1467-9205
pISSN - 0190-0536
DOI - 10.1111/phin.12019
Subject(s) - nonsense , interpretation (philosophy) , hacker , grammar , context (archaeology) , sense (electronics) , epistemology , philosophy , common sense , computer science , linguistics , history , computer security , biochemistry , chemistry , archaeology , electrical engineering , gene , engineering
Peter Hacker defends an interpretation of the later Wittgenstein's notion of grammar, according to which the inherently general grammatical rules are sufficient for sense‐determination. My aim is to show that this interpretation fails to account for an important contextualist shift in W ittgenstein's views on sense‐determination. I argue that Hacker attributes to the later Wittgenstein a rule‐based, combinatorial account of sense, which Wittgenstein puts forward in the T ractatus . I propose that this is not how we should interpret the later Wittgenstein because he insists that particular circumstances of use play a necessary role in determining the boundary between sense and nonsense.