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Would we be correct to say that, in a sense, Wittgenstein(2) eliminated the need for the Kantian distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal?

I'm thinking more about Remarks on the Foundations on Mathematics and On Certainty and less about the Investigations... More precisely, if all that can be said can be said in natural language alone--therefore in the context of a language game--then aren't we unable to think/speak of a reality "behind" or "outside" of the games? If we can't express "empirical facts" otherwise but within language games, then aren't we unavoidably committed to the rules of one particular game or another?

(If we attempt to deconstruct the way we "play" with phrases such as "the real world" or "the noumenal", can we go further than Nietzsche's allegorical evolution and mystification of the real world in Twilight of Idols?)

Is the noumenal nothing more than something we artificially construct by logical opposition to our mundane experience of knowing, thinking, feeling, experiencing? Does it hold any more fascination for today's professional philosophers? If it was not Wittgenstein that got rid of it for us, who did?

Thank you!

Gabriel Mihalache

October 10, 2005

Response from Richard Heck on October 13, 2005

The sort of remark made in the second paragraph is one I see and hear a lot. But, frankly, I just don't get it. In particular, why is it supposed to follow that I can't use language to speak of a reality that is independent of language? I can use language to speak of all kinds of things that seem to have nothing very much to do with language: Flowers, rocks, supernovas, non-recursive sets, and so on and so forth. Obviously, everything that can be said has to be said in language. But that is so mind-numbingly obvious that I can't see how anything of consequence could follow from it: It's "analytic" in pretty much the "bachelors are unmarried men" sense. And even if one assumes, more strongly, that anything that could be thought at all could be said, nothing in this vicinity follows.

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