Nino Gobechia
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität
If thinking is the business of philosophy, and if philosophy must be able to reflect upon itself, then thinking cannot be understood as a mere psychological process. Otherwise theorizing about thinking would only be up to empirical sciences like psychology and, in consequence, philosophy would not be able to reflect upon itself and what it does. In my talk I would want to discuss how the early Wittgenstein’s framing of the phenomenon of self-refutation in thought can give us a non-psychological, and therefore genuinely philosophical, insight into what thinking might be.
Firstly, I will discuss a common misconception about the relevance of self-refutation in thought: I inevitably refute myself when I attempt to think the thought “I am non-thinking”. This, according to the misconception, only shows the trivial (and tautological) fact that I, as a particular subject, am currently involved in the (psychological) act or process of thinking when I am currently involved in that act or process. I will continue by introducing the preface and especially passage 5.61 of the “Tractatus” as passages where Wittgenstein is concerned with the self-refutation of thinking what is unthinkable. Based on this, I will, secondly, show how, from those passages, it follows that anything essential about thinking shows itself in every particular sentence of language, and anything that shows itself in a sentence does not need a particular subject as a bearer of content beyond that sentence. Lastly, I will conclude that this thesis allows for avoiding the psychological misunderstanding and allows us to understand “thinking” as a word for the logical framework of every sentence, as something that makes sense in language possible at all, and therefore, as something that has always and already taken place by being the logical form of language (and of the world). And this essentially means: Anything concerning thinking that does not show itself in language is not the topic of philosophy.
Chair: Ragna Oeynhausen
Time: September 13th, 15:20-15:50
Location: SR 1.004
SOPhiA 2026 