TY - JOUR

T1 - Friedrich Waismann’s Open Texture Argument and Definability of Empirical Concepts

AU - Оглезнев, Виталий Васильевич

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

PY - 2022/4/6

Y1 - 2022/4/6

N2 - The appearance in 1945 of the idea of the open texture of empirical concepts, which anticipated Friedrich Waismann’s thesis of a many-level-structure of language, led to a re-evaluation of “context”. It widens the sense of context that we are accustomed to mentioning as being Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning in his later philosophy. The new idea Waismann brought into the landscape is how to “clarify the context”, which is in a way a very non-Wittgensteinian question as well as an “explanation of context”, where open texture plays a key role. But despite the amount of literature about open texture, this idea of Waismann is still not properly understood. Open texture must be situated as an obstacle to exhaustiveness of definition for internal reasons not only because of unforeseen conditions that could always arise in the future, but also by virtue of an a priori aspect of the texture of concepts. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to propose an interpretation of open texture as an immanent property of a concept, that is, as something that is underlying its nature.

AB - The appearance in 1945 of the idea of the open texture of empirical concepts, which anticipated Friedrich Waismann’s thesis of a many-level-structure of language, led to a re-evaluation of “context”. It widens the sense of context that we are accustomed to mentioning as being Wittgenstein’s conception of meaning in his later philosophy. The new idea Waismann brought into the landscape is how to “clarify the context”, which is in a way a very non-Wittgensteinian question as well as an “explanation of context”, where open texture plays a key role. But despite the amount of literature about open texture, this idea of Waismann is still not properly understood. Open texture must be situated as an obstacle to exhaustiveness of definition for internal reasons not only because of unforeseen conditions that could always arise in the future, but also by virtue of an a priori aspect of the texture of concepts. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to propose an interpretation of open texture as an immanent property of a concept, that is, as something that is underlying its nature.

KW - Definition

KW - Description

KW - Empirical concept

KW - Open texture

KW - Vagueness

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85127633977&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/20ac4ad9-b9f2-38cc-a461-e1815898cc7c/

U2 - 10.1007/s11406-022-00510-2

DO - 10.1007/s11406-022-00510-2

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85127633977

VL - 51

SP - 273

EP - 286

JO - Philosophia Philosophical Quarterly of Israel

JF - Philosophia Philosophical Quarterly of Israel

SN - 0048-3893

IS - 1

ER -