Rupert Read

We’ve gambled too much on succeeding in preventing or mitigating anthropogenic dangerous climate change and the anthropogenic extinction crisis. Because we were unwilling to face up to the alternative. But the alternative is not as simple as an instantaneous end of life would be. The alternative is complex, involving many possible variants of ‘unthinkably’ horrendous, bad, and even good. Most crucially: there is a huge difference between the various versions of complete irrecoverable societal collapse, on the one hand, and the rise of a successor civilisation(s) out of the wreckage of this one, on the other. We have to be willing to think this. And face it. We have to get serious about the processes of transformational and deep adaptation that are now necessary. We cannot any longer avoid the vast effort involved in attempting to adapt our communities to cope with our changed and changing world; not least because the time-lags built into the climate system mean that, even in the ext...

My purpose in this note is as follows: to show that, even if Wittgenstein in his later work could be said to have achieved some "resolution" of the much-vexed question of "the harmony between language and reality", this has little or nothing to do with the way that a RULE and ist APPLICATION are in accord.

ABSTRACT: I argue that the language of some schizo-phrenic persons is akin to the language of Benjy in Williams Faulkner’s novel The Sound and the Fury, in one crucial respect: Faulkner displays to us language that, ironically, cannot be translated or interpreted into sense... without irreducible ‘loss ’ or ‘garbling.’ The same is true of famous schizophrenic writers, such as Renee and Schreber. Such ‘garbling ’ is of an odd kind, admittedly: it is a garbling that inadvisably turns nonsense into sense.... Faulkner’s language is a language of paradox, of nonsense masquerading beau-tifully as sense. When this language works, it gener-ates the powerful illusion that we can make sense of the ‘life-world ’ of a young child or an ‘idiot’—or a sufferer from chronic schizophrenia. But this remains, contrary to Louis Sass’s claims, an illusion. Thus, drawing on the thinking of Wittgenstein (his On Certainty, especially, with its incisive critique of the very idea of being able to make claims...

This short paper is a note offering provisional results of my current research in philosophical economics and the philosophy of economics. It is offered in the spirit of promoting discussion of an interesting topic worthy of further investigation.

In this short case study we critically assess The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) framework in the light of an ecological-relational view of the source of value. This view takes all value to be generated by the whole range of relations between living beings. We show that whilst the TEEB has advantages over some rival frameworks, allowing limited room to assign value to the non-human, it still does not take seriously enough the participation of non-human life in the very processes of value formation.

Inspired by the philosophy of Wittgenstein and his idea that the purpose of real philosophical thinking is not to discover something new, but to show in a strikingly different light what is already there, this book provides philosophical readings of a number of ‘arthouse’ and Hollywood films. Each chapter contains a discussion of two films—one explored in greater detail and the other analyzed as a minor key which reveals the possibility for the book's ideas to be applied across different films, registers, and genres. The readings are not only interpretive, but they offer a way of thinking and feeling about, with, and through films which is genuinely transformative. Rupert Read’s main contention is that certain films can bring about a change in how we see the world. He advocates an ecological approach to film-philosophy analysis, arguing that film can re-shape the viewer’s relationship to the environment and other living beings. The transformative 'wake-up call' of these ...

The death of Peter Winch in 1997 sparked a revived interest in his work with this book arguing his work suffered misrepresentation in both recent literature and in contemporary critiques of his writing. Debates in philosophy and sociology about foundational questions of social ontology and methodology often claim to have adequately incorporated and moved beyond Winch's concerns. Re-establishing a Winchian voice, the authors examine how such contentions involve a failure to understand central themes in Winch's writings and that the issues which occupied him in his Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy and later papers remain central to social studies. The volume offers a careful reading of the text in alliance with Wittgensteinian insights and alongside a focus on the nature and results of social thought and inquiry. It draws parallels with other movements in the social studies, notably ethnomethodology, to demonstrate how Winch's central claim is both more significant and more difficult to transcend than sociologists and philosophers have hitherto imagined.

There is a widespread (if rarely voiced) assumption, among those who dare to understand the futurewhich climate chaos is likely to yield, that civility will give way and a Hobbesian war of all against all will be unleashed. Thankfully, this assumption is highly questionable. The field of ‘Disaster Studies’, as shown in Rebecca Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell, makes clear that it is at least as likely that, tested in the crucible of backto- back disasters, humanity will rise to the challenge, and we will find ourselves manifesting a truer humanity than we currently think ourselves to have. Thus the post-sustainability world will offer us a tremendous gift amidst the carnage. But how well we realise this gift depends on our preparing the way for it. In order to prepare, the fantasy of sustainable development needs to be jettisoned, along with the bargain-making mentality underpinning it. Instead, the inter-personal virtues of generosity, fraternity and care-taking need fostering...

In the main bulk of this chapter, I offer a Wittgensteinian take on infinity and deduce from this some Wittgensteinian criticisms of Chomsky on ‘creativity’, treating this as one among many examples of how metaphors, following the understanding of Lakoff and Johnson, following Wittgenstein, can delude one into metaphysics. As per my title, ‘metaphysics’ turns out to be, really, nothing other than metaphorics in disguise. Our aim in philosophy, then, is to turn latent metaphors into patent metaphors. When we do this, the charm of metaphysics evaporates. Or again, its charm, if still felt, is properly contextualised: ‘metaphysics’ becomes at best a kind of accidental or un-self-aware poetry, rather than something like a super- or supra-science.

In this second Introduction to the volume, I attempt first to unanswer this question, and then to sketch through ‘abstracts’ what the individual essays in the volume consist in, especially in relation to the concepts of ‘theory of film’ and of ‘film as philosophy’.

A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes examines how some of the classic philosophical paradoxes that have so puzzled philosophers over the centuries can be dissolved. Read argues that paradoxes such as the Sorites, Russell’s Paradox and the paradoxes of time travel do not, in fact, need to be solved. Rather, using a resolute Wittgensteinian ‘therapeutic’ method, the book explores how virtually all apparent philosophical paradoxes can be diagnosed and dissolved through examining their conditions of arising; to loosen their grip and therapeutically liberate those philosophers suffering from them (including oneself). The book contrasts such paradoxes with real, ‘lived paradoxes’: paradoxes that are genuinely experienced outside of the philosopher’s study, in everyday life. Thus Read explores instances of lived paradox (such as paradoxes of self-hatred and of denial of other humans’ humanity) and the harm they can cause, psychically, morally or politically. These lived paradoxes, he argues, sometimes cannot be dissolved using a Wittgensteinian treatment. Moreover, in some cases they do not need to be: for some, such as the paradoxical practices of Zen Buddhism (and indeed of Wittgenstein himself), can in fact be beneficial. The book shows how, once philosophers’ paradoxes have been exorcized, real lived paradoxes can be given their due.

Here I lay out why talk of ‘the private language argument’ in PI 243ff. is on balance unhelpful and ultimately indicative of a misunderstanding of what is taking place in these famous passages of the PI. In this regard, I contest the work of authors (such as Severin Schroeder) who have offered reconstructions of the ‘argument’ putatively contained within these passages. In the course of this re-reading, I draw out neglected ‘existential’ and ‘ethical’ aspects of Wittgenstein’s meditations on solipsism and ‘private language’. (All of Wittgenstein’s writing in the PI is ethical, on my understanding, as it is concerned with a struggle for clarity and honesty (with oneself and with others) and to offer freedom; but some of it is doubly so (in that it actually directly concerns how to comport oneself toward others or how to act in the life-world): including much of 243-315.)  Attention to the particulars of these neglected aspects help free up the reader from the grip of the ‘private language argument’ picture: both in substantive philosophical terms (by questioning the very idea of what a ‘private language’ was meant to achieve for one) and as a reading of what Wittgenstein himself was trying to do (by questioning the assumption that Wittgenstein offers what is best regarded as an ‘argument’ against the supposed ‘private language’ idea). Self and other can be seen as ‘internally related’: so long as this is not seen as an excuse for not having to put in the work of attending to others. (Here, Wittgenstein is close to Gandhi’s notion that what is wrong with ethical systems is the phantasy they suggest that one can be saved the trouble of having to be good.)
One’s unavoidable freedom not to acknowledge others’ pain is directly tied to the import of the utterly basic ethical demand to do so.
The ethical and the liberatory readings of the Investigations are, in this sense, one and the same: they culminate in the same realisation, the same human condition.
The anti-'private-language' considerations are a culmination of the entire liberatory trajectory of Wittgenstein's text from section 1 onward: these considerations are ‘just’ another form of the question, 'What are you/we willing to count as language, and why?' …Thus chapter 10 brings the body of the present text to its logical conclusion. The entire trajectory of Wittgenstein’s text in the PI, from Augustine and the ‘builders’ to ‘private language’, has the same fundamentally ethical, fundamentally ‘liberatory’ character (though it is in 284-315 especially that this character, as I put it above, ‘doubles’: that is, fully flowers, or matures.)… The anti-‘private-language’ considerations are the natural continuation of the offering to the reader of the opportunity to decide where they stand on the question of what it takes for something to be counted as a language (and related/parallel questions) that begun in the early sections of -- the ‘overture’ to -- PI…

This draft chapter considers the sense in which, in PI 217, Wittgenstein means us to be able to rely on bedrock, where our spade is turned, as a conversation-stopper, as something which we can and should count on — and the sense in which he does not. In other words, there is also a key sense in which ‘the bedrock’ is a transitional term only. It cannot diminish the sense in which one is inevitably free, in philosophy.
This consideration helps us to understand better the sense in which Wittgenstein resists the temptation toward a set of ‘technical terms’ in philosophy (including “bedrock” and “form of life”), and the sense in which the idea of the bipolarity of the proposition is not a theory or a true (nor a false!) thesis but rather an object of comparison. We come in turn to see what is going on in sections such as 217 itself better, insofar as we appreciate these respecifications of what Wittgensteinian philosophy accomplishes.

This draft chapter of my forthcoming 'Liberatory philosophy' comprises my critical discussion of the epic exegetical struggle around PI 201f., and my own ‘resolute’ reading of this, the climactic moment in the so-called ‘rule-following considerations’. I advance a reading of these passages of PI which serves to throw into question what one can be stably wanting to mean if one wants to purvey a ‘constitutive’ scepticism a la Kripke’s Wittgenstein (‘Kripkenstein’). For, if one’s present meanings are thrown into doubt (as Kripke seems to claim), then the doubts that one raises (in the present) about the past are also thrown into doubt. But this deprives one of the resources needed even to state the constitutive scepticism. Reluctantly, one is driven to conclude that Kripke has not, so far as one can tell, succeeded in assigning any stable meaning to his central ‘claims’ in his reading of Wittgenstein. In this regard, Kripkean scepticism is even worse off than Cartesian scepticism. It need not trouble us, because ‘it’ fails even to exist. Kripke’s Wittgenstein evinces merely a fantasy of ‘total’ freedom, rather than anything coherent. It is freedom as mere license; it is the ‘freedom’ of nonsense without due attention: The purveyor of nonsense is free to ‘say’ whatever they want; but, sadly, they don’t actually succeed in saying anything at all.
        So none of what I establish in this chapter involves the imposition of a constraint, any more than one is ‘constrained’ when one is asked to speak a natural language that one’s hearer is capable of comprehending, or than when one is asked to talk sense. It is rather about committing to using words in one way or another. Rather than permanently hovering. Kripke merely hovers. It is as if he wants to stay permanently in the state of the merely exposed grammatical form discussed in the previous chapter, the state of mere interpretation that is diagnosed in 198 and 201. But we saw in the previous chapter how remaining thus permanently in a state of possibility rather than actuality is precisely not to act, precisely not to follow (aka act from) a rule. And Kripke’s discussion was supposed, precisely, to concern: rule-following. Thus that discussion fails.
For the very idea of doubting that one’s words mean anything, on the basis of doubting whether they may have meant something usual rather than something unusual at some point in the past, just does not amount to anything.

Logical existentialism?: A reading of PI 186

I seek here to produce a more accurate (and workable) estimation of Wittgenstein's treatment of ‘rule following’ than those provided either by Kripke--who divorces rule from the action of application--or by Baker and Hacker--who elide this action by assimilating application to rule in grammar.
Contra mainstream interpretations such as that of Baker-and-Hacker, Wittgenstein’s ‘rule-following considerations’ do not require any kind of tacit or ineffable metaphysics or structure of internal relations. ‘Internal relations’ are transitional, or presumptive relations.
Nor is any kind of intuitionism licensed by PI 185-200.
I emphasize, in developing my deflationary ‘model’ (sic) of rule following (as actions presumptively interleaved with the rules which they may be said to instantiate), that acting from rules may always involve a transition from one (point in a) grammar to another--sometimes quite novel--one. (And thus that we should be open to speaking of grammar as something that is far more in flux than philosophers usually like to suppose.)  And, correlatively, that in general the only ‘logical’ relations among points in a dialogue, among rule and act and rule, are presumptive and even constructive/constructed. ‘Internal relations’, if they are going to do the job needed by them in rule-following contexts, will actually be cashed out as presumptive relations. But then these are not all fixed. They can sometimes (and in certain cases need to) develop as a creative process, even. One might imagine a settled grammar or unarguable perspicuous representation of ‘internal relations’ if those were taken as Baker-and-Hacker had proposed them. One will not, for presumptive relations.
Rather, we should note carefully that Wittgenstein says in 186 that it would almost be more correct to say that a new decision is needed at every stage of the development of an arithmetic sequence. The idea of ‘logical existentialism’, mocked by Baker-and-Hacker, is not quite so far away from Wittgenstein’s intentions as has been thought. One might even say: for Wittgenstein, one is / we are condemned to be free, even - to some greater than zero extent - in matters of logic.
Linguistically-conditioned acts are, then, in one relevant sense, prospectively non-grounded; but this ‘existential’ condition should ultimately be conceived not as a worrying void needing to be characterised/filled by skeptical pronouncements, but as conditioning the acting from rules which gives them their life. One might say, figuratively: language is like an ecological system. It is alive, constantly in flux, constantly re-balancing. What is speakable is quite extraordinarily, utterly context-dependent. And much of what “context” means, when we give it its proper context, is: the condition of the people with whom we are in dialogue.
So the paradoxical phrase – “logical existentialism” – does seem at times--almost--to catch some of the complexity and surprisingness of Wittgenstein’s treatment of rule following, of his realistic vision of the full fluxing nature of language-in-action in the world. A vision in which human agency is not subordinate to rule-tyrannies in the way that the likes of Baker-and-Hacker have seemed to suggest, but rather, rules are understood, through and through, through their practical presence in actual and possible human and social life. A presence which, as Sartre might have said, is most present in their absence: for it is when rules are acted from, and thus no longer stand there like signposts (PI 85), that their purpose is fulfilled.

There has been a swathe of writing in Analytic philosophy during the past decade or two aiming to undercut the ‘Rylean’ category of ‘knowing-how’. The “intellectualist” desire, focal in the work of Timothy Williamson and his followers, to convert know-how into knowledge-that, is a seemingly-captivating desire, one that is troublingly easy for philosophers to fall into and not be able to get out of again. But, I argue here, it is not a desire best countered simply by a defence of know-how as an independent category of knowledge. Nor even by claiming it necessarily to be a more fundamental category of knowledge. To the contrary: we ought to question whether there is any such thing as an over-arching category of ‘knowledge’ at all; we ought to question therefore whether know-how is well-understood as a kind of that (of knowledge); and, only insofar as it might (not ‘must’) be seen thus ought we, roughly, to follow Ryle et al in inverting the supposed pre-eminence of knowledge-that over ‘knowledge-how’. Understanding the heart of Wittgenstein’s discussion of knowledge and understanding, which opens with PI 149, enables one to do these things; that is, enables one to appreciate the depth of the difference between know-how and our ‘paradigms’ of knowledge(-that), a difference that recent Anglo-American philosophy has tended to obliterate. Such understanding requires one to place this sequence in its correct context: which goes back ultimately to PI 16.

The critically-important sections introducing Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘objects of comparison’ are here considered. This notion, itself an ‘object of comparison’, is  read as intended to displace the hegemony of ‘scientific’ (i.e. scientistic) modelling in philosophy.
This leads into the famous invocation of therapies and the discussion of the real discovery - the one that enables one to stop philosophising - in 133. The point of the therapeutic comparison is argued here to be its essentially 2nd-personal nature. 133 brings out the way in which, as noted throughout this book, (our method in) philosophy proceeds in a manner quite different from the 3rd and 1st person models that dominate Modern philosophy.
The translation of 133  is carefully pondered, and a reading proposed wherein this passage certainly does not amount to any crude ‘end of philosophy’ thesis, but rather engages once more with our temptations toward hopeless desires for such things. In other words, I ask the question: Is “the real discovery” actually posed as one that Wittgenstein thought he had made, or even one that he thought could conceivably be made? I tentatively suggest not, unless we speak instead of “real discoveries”, making each relative first to a problem and then to a person(s) with that problem.

[NOTE: this is a draft of Chapter 5 of my in progress book, 'Liberatory philosophy'. I will also, for those interested, be putting Chapters 6-10 up, in the coming days]