Conference in Paris

Wittgenstein : Images of the Mind

10-11 April 2008

Collège de France
11 place Marcelin-Berthelot
75005 Paris

Thursday April 10th
9h00 – 9h30 : Ouverture.
9h30 – 10h45 : Denis PERRIN (Université Pierre-Mendès-France, Grenoble)
Ressemblance et synopsis : l’aveugle à la signification comme objet de comparaison.

11h00 – 12h15 : Wolfgang KIENZLER (Friedrich Schiller Universität, Iéna)
The psychological concepts from the Philosophical Grammar to the Investigations.

14h00 – 15h15 : Jean-Philippe NARBOUX (Université Bordeaux III)
La pensée aux dimensions de l’image.

15h15 – 16h30 : Élise MARROU (Université Paris X, EXeCO–Paris I)
“L'essentiel dans l'intention, c'est l'image”. La figurativité à l'épreuve de l'intentionnalité.

16h45 – 18h00 : Céline VAUTRIN (Collège de France, EXeCO–Paris I)
« Être une image » : question de forme et question d’usage.

Friday April 11th
9h30 – 10h45 : Sandra LAUGIER (Université de Picardie-Jules-Verne, Amiens)
La voix est-elle une image de l’esprit ?

11h00 – 12h45 : Edoardo ZAMUNER (University of Edinburgh, University of Melbourne)
Wittgenstein on Perception, Emotion, and Expression.

14h00– 15h15 : Joachim SCHULTE (Universität Zurich)
The Life of a Picture

15h15 – 16h30 : Jean-Jacques ROSAT (Collège de France)
Les paraphrases, images du langage et images de l’esprit.

16h45 – 18h00 : Ludovic SOUTIF (EXeCO–Paris I)
L’image du contenu. De sa critique grammaticale dans les années 1930 à sa réhabilitation partielle dans les Remarques sur la philosophie de la psychologie.

The philosophy of Wittgenstein offers a good and rather uncommon example of a radically and rigorously descriptive thinking. Although it discards all theories and explanations, it does not fall into the myth of an innocent eye since all that is seen is always seen through images. As practised by Wittgenstein, philosophy does not consist in throwing away those images. Its aim is, rather, to pass them through the sieve of the grammatical investigation in order to clear them of the confusions they are full of and the metaphysical temptations they give rise to. Philosophy also aims at producing images that help us acquire a broader and clearer view of the working of our language.
Moreover, Wittgenstein’s treatment of images underwent significant changes over time. A number of them which had first been considered from a critical point of view came to be eventually reassessed and rehabilitated. Similarly, his understanding of their fitting into language and their connection with our (on the whole, incorrect) representations of its functioning changed in the course of his work.
In this conference, entitled Wittgenstein : Images of the Mind, we shall test out a number of hypotheses concerning the role played by images in Wittgenstein’s philosophy in general and, in particular, his philosophy of psychology.
1. As it turns out, Wittgenstein’s reflection on concepts such as that of picture (Bild), model (Modell, Vorbild), and representation (Darstellung) played as much decisive a role at the time of the Philosophical Investigations and the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology as at the time of the Tractatus.
2. Against the background of this underlying continuity, a number of changes occurred in his way of understanding and using those concepts : (i.) while writing up the first part of the Philosophical Investigations, (ii.) in the period spanning from the Investigations to the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, (iii.) at the time of the Remarks down to the second part of the Investigations. Not only did those changes affect his view of the gearing of those images into our language games, but also and accordingly his treatment of images on a purely descriptive and analytical level.
3. Those changes can be brought to light through a comparison between the manuscript sources of the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (1946-1949) and those from the so-called ‘transitional’ period (1929-1932), in particular if we take the former as a ‘resumption’ (Wiederaufnahme) of a number of issues, examples, and insights already present in the latter.
4. Wittgenstein’s reassessment of the role of images in the second half of the 1940s is conspicuous in his treatment of images of the mind (the inner, the stream of consciousness, the contents of experience, the tapestry of life) and of the functioning of our language (the logical germs, the meaning-body image). Not only does Wittgenstein rehabilitate those images (or, at least, some of their uses), but he shows that they lie at the heart of our most ordinary language games.
All contributions shall be based on a systematic reading of Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and a careful comparison of remarks picked out from different periods of his work. Our aim, in this conference is to highlight the significance of the methods of descriptive philosophy and of Wittgenstein’s work with images for the contemporary philosophy of mind.

ORGANIZATION COMMITTEE :
Elise Marrou, Denis Perrin, Jean-Jacques Rosat, Ludovic Soutif, Céline Vautrin

INFORMATIONS : Jean-Jacques Rosat jean-jacques.rosat@college-de-france.fr
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