I cannot understand why Wittgenstein's considerations about rule-following had such a large impact in many areas of philosophy. May you explain it to me?

This is a very good question. But there are several layers of answers, depending upon the question is asked from the point of view of the sociology of philosophy, the point of view of the history of it, or from the point of view of the intrinsic interest of a philosophical problem. If you question is about the latter, one can discern in it the following , fairly sceptical, one: why such a tiny, trivial sounding issue, dealing with such obvious facts as that people follow rules, can have become such an industry of ink spilling within the philosophical community for so many years? With respect ot the sociological/ historical setting, it seems that W and although I am not an expert of the history of Wittgenstein scholarship and Wittgenstein reception, ittgenstein's "rule-following" considerations have started during the 1970, when a number of philosophers have ceased to concentrate , when reading Wittgenstein, upon the private language problem or family ressemblances, and started to...

What makes a statement (particularly one not factually-based, such as about society) true, and who decides? Not sure if this is more philosophy or sociology, but in studying for end-of-school exams my English class have a few problems unearthing the syllabus' meaning! We've read something of the basic theories about Truth, such as proof by correspondence, but we are completely confused by the need to discover (without help from our teacher who is determined to keep us away from philosophical debate) the 'processes by which statements come to be accepted as true', including who has the authority to make such statements and the ways in which statements are explored, tested, endorsed or refuted, etc. While we suspect that all the answer required is to mention something about the legal system (the focus of our text), it is still frustrating not being able to fight this out ourselves and we were hoping that you could help us by providing a few ideas as to what really does make statements true (the ...

The view that there is something which makes true a statement or something in virtue of which the statement is true is usually referred to as the conception of truth as correspondence. It presupposes that the something which makes true the statement - say the statement that the cat is on the mat - and which is is "out there" in the world, i.e a cat being on a mat, or some sort of "fact" or "truthmaker". This view is often considered problematic because we do not know exactly the nature of the "facts" in question, which seem to be arbitrary depending upon the language wxho use to describe them. For instance is "the cat is on the mat" is made true by the presence of *several* cats on the mat ( in which case it is false to talk of "the" (unique) cat, or by an animal who is boardline for a cat (say a lynx)? Some facts seem to be identical although the descriptions differ ( for instance that I gave you 100 $ is the same fact as that you received 100 $ from me, but not quite) We feel that in this case it's a...

Hi, I'm a poet, I've published a few poetry books in French. I've been told that my poems are beautiful. I know that they are beautiful but I don't understand why. I also know that I can create beauty but I can't understand where this ability comes from. Is it a god-given ability or is it about technique? Any answers? Umar ( Mauritius )

The classics ( up to the XVIIIth century) believed that beauty is an objective matter, and that there are rules to attain it, based mostly on the imitation of nature, the depiction of human nature, and a certain aspiration for truth. At the same time many philosophers doubted that there is real beauty: the British "sentimentalists", e.g Hutcheson, Shafestbury, Smith , Hume and others believed that beauty ( like goodness) is a matter of expression of feelings. Nevertheless they thought that there could be agreement on such aesthetic and moral feelings ( see for instance Hume's famous essay "On the Standard of Taste". Why is it that today we have lost not only confidence in real beauty as an objective fact but also in the possibility of agreeing on aesthetic standards ? This is a long story of course, which ends up in today's post-modernist and relativistic themes. Not everyone agrees with that. I recently read the book by the XVIIIth century painter William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty. Although...

I am involved in an ongoing battle with someone about the following issue and am beginning to doubt my own argument!! The issue : The example was of contrasting European and British attitudes to the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The person claimed that the French are more likely to understand the Iraqis due to their experience of being occupied in WW2, whereas Britain, although they fought in the war, were never invaded, and no battles were fought on British soil. He believes that you cannot fully understand what you do not experience, or at least, that when you do experience something, your preconceived opinion of it is bound to change as a consequence. Whereas I am (was?) an adamant believer in the capacity for human imagination and speculation, which allows people to feel empathy for others even if they have not directly experienced the situation at hand. What are your opinions? I believe it may have something to do with empiricists and rationalists, although maybe that's just because I'm...

Understanding can be empathy, the capacity to put oneself into another's shoes, in which case it needs some sort of projection of one's mental states and experience onto the other's experience, in the sense : of "what would *I* think or feel or do in the same circumstances ?" But understanding can also be rational understanding, in the sense of the question : "what would a rational person, or a person in more or less idealised situation, think or do or feel in such circumstances?" Some philosophers call the first principle, the more empathic one, the principle of humanity in interpretation, and the second the principe of charity. But the difference between the two may not be so great in many cases. In trying to understand other people's political and social opinions, one certainly has to take into account their experiences, especially their historical ones. But that does not mean that one cannot understand in the purely rational manner, by trying to think of what, normally, a rationa person should think...