[FOM] Wittgenstein?

[Hartley Slater]

I have just located the details of an important recent article on one 
aspect of this matter: see P. Mancosu and M. Marion's, 
'Wittgenstein's Constructivization of Euler's Proof of the Infinity 
of Primes', in Friedrich Stadler, ed. The Vienna Circle and Logical 
Empiricism, Kluwer, 2002.  Mancosu and Marion say, in the 
introduction, 'there has been a strong presumption that Wittgenstein 
did not know much about mathematics in general and about issues 
pertaining to the foundations of mathematics in particular, and that 
his remarks on these topics were marred by this lack of proficiency 
in mathematical matters'.  They go on to provide direct evidence from 
Wittgenstein's Nachlass about his mathematical skills, and his 
support for a constructivist stance in at least one period of his 
life.

On my previous points related to this topic (FOM Digest, Vol 4 Issue 
24), about the context sensitivity of reflexive pronouns, and the 
consequent non-constant properties expressed by predicates such as 
'shaves himself', and specifically by 'is not self applicable' and 
'is not a member of itself', see my 'Is 'Heterological' 
heterological?' Mind 327 (1973) p439, and 'Sensible Self-Containment' 
Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1984) p164, respectively.
-- 
Barry Hartley Slater
Honorary Senior Research Fellow
Philosophy, School of Humanities
University of Western Australia
35 Stirling Highway
Crawley WA 6009, Australia
Ph: (08) 9380 1246 (W), 9386 4812 (H)
Fax: (08) 9380 1057
Url: http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/PhilosWWW/Staff/slater.html