Charles Travis
King's College London, Philosophy, Emeritus
- I changed into philosophy (from mathematics) in the middle of my junior year at Berkeley. I then had no idea what phi... moreI changed into philosophy (from mathematics) in the middle of my junior year at Berkeley. I then had no idea what philosophy was. But I got lucky. I was engrossed by it, and that stuck. It has only become more and more of a pleasure. In those first years, my main (living) influences were William Craig, Hans Herzberger and Thompson Clarke at Berkeley, and Montgomery Furth at UCLA. When I graduated, in 1963, I went south to UCLA, where I did a dissertation mostly under Keith Gunderson, but also partly under Robert Yost. In 1966 I took up my first position at UNC Chapel Hill. In 1967 I met Hilary Putnam. We had a close friendship up to his death this year (2016). He also had a very profound effect on me philosophically. I think he was the only great philosopher I ever knew, and suspect he might be the only one I would ever want to.
I left UNC after three years and moved to Canada. No, I was not eligible for the draft. But I didn’t like what was going on in the US (and especially in North Carolina) in 1968. Also, I left for Canada to be in the same department as my friend, Zeno Vendler. I stayed in Calgary for 11 years, but was then invited to take up a position at what is now Tilburg University, was then the Katholieke Hogeschool Tilburg. (I won’t tell the joke.) To be brief, I couldn’t resist. That was my first tour in Europe, to be followed by two more. The reason for the back and forth is always the same: In general, universities in North America are closer to the academic ideals I have always held. On my first tour I was not willing to accept the distance from those ideals that I found in Europe. On the other hand, I found life in Europe more decently human and agreeable. As I write this from my home in Portugal, I still so find. In the end, I always opted for life, though my last tour, in London, was prompted, too, by George Bush’s 2004 electoral victory. Some might see such ambivalence as vacillating. In any case it led to positions at Illinois State University, the University of Stirling, Northwestern University, then King’s College London (and visiting positions at the University of Michigan and Harvard).
When I left for Chapel Hill I saw myself as in both philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. But I was meant to be their philosopher of language. I did my best to oblige. One upshot, influenced by Austin, was my first work on what I now call occasion-sensitivity. At first, though, not quite conceived aright, as I learned on further reflection. I was not yet attuned to the importance of the idea of both theory-receptive and theory-resistant phenomena (though I should have been, influenced as I then was by Chomsky). When I saw the shortcomings of my early work, I naturally turned to Wittgenstein who, I think, has better ideas on these matters.
So that is one turning point in my philosophical makeup. The other occurred later, in my years at Northwestern (around 2001-2002), when I read Cora Diamond’s wonderful essays on Frege (and on Wittgenstein). I know I was very late doing this. I am not, I suppose, an avid reader. But it did change my life. Up to that point I viewed Frege as more or less a foil for Wittgenstein and a target. When I actually paid attention to what he wrote I got an entirely different impression. Though I do think that he occasionally takes a misstep, I also think that in his writings there is a powerful picture of the relation of thought to world, so, too, of truth. This picture, in my view, is largely lost in the oral tradition. It is lost, too, because of a certain logocentrism which permeates our times, even in those trying to work against it.
I am still busy working out the consequences of this ‘Fregean turn’. And philosophy is still as much fun as ever, or more. In 2013 I left London entirely. I have plenty of time for what I enjoy best, and, living by the sea, agreeable surroundings in which to do it. It’s a shame, I think, that the education which prepared me for all this fun and which was absolutely free is now at best rare, and certainly not at anything like that price.edit - Keith Gunderson, Robert Yostedit
This essay was a contribution to a Lauener Foundation conference in honour of Hilary Putnam, who was awarded the Lauener prize that year. It is an elaboration on Putnam’s idea that, as he put it, “reason can transcend whatever it can... more
This essay was a contribution to a Lauener Foundation conference in honour of Hilary Putnam, who was awarded the Lauener prize that year. It is an elaboration on Putnam’s idea that, as he put it, “reason can transcend whatever it can survey”, thus on the limits of the receptivity of reason to theory. It aims to identify how concepts, or ones we might grasp, make room in their way of relating to what there is to instance them or not (to be, or not, what they are concepts of being), for a contribution of the world not only to fixing what falls under them, but also in fixing what it would be for something to do so. The essay is not new. But perhaps it is of some interest to those concerned with the issues Putnam did so much to help us understand.
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This essay focuses on the logikgemäss notion object, that is, on whatever can play the role of an object with respect to a singular thought. A central question: is object a role or a category? The guide here is, throughout, Frege. Having... more
This essay focuses on the logikgemäss notion object, that is, on whatever can play the role of an object with respect to a singular thought. A central question: is object a role or a category? The guide here is, throughout, Frege. Having unfolded this notion, the essay turns at the end to the notion ontology and to several derivative notions of a category—notions with a plural. It shows how some such notions may be both unmotivated and at odds with the objectivity of truth.
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Language falls on the psychological side of Frege’s logical/psychological distinction. Its business is in Fürwahrhalten, not (directly at least) in the business of Wahrsein. Therefore there is no reason to expect that the notion of being... more
Language falls on the psychological side of Frege’s logical/psychological distinction. Its business is in Fürwahrhalten, not (directly at least) in the business of Wahrsein. Therefore there is no reason to expect that the notion of being true will be a central one for an account of what identifies expressions of a language as meaning what they do. This essay argues for a further claim: that there is good reason to expect what words mean not to be explicable in such terms. The relation between what words mean and the thoughts expressed (in a mouth) in using them is a very different thing than that. For one thing, a thought, something there is for words to express, is identified by very different sorts of properties than is what an expression means. One aim of the essay is to pinpoint such differences.
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It has been said that the conceptual is unbounded. Whatever exactly this means, it is clear from context that it at least means this: “When we trace justifications back the last thing we come to is still a thinkable content; not something... more
It has been said that the conceptual is unbounded. Whatever exactly this means, it is clear from context that it at least means this: “When we trace justifications back the last thing we come to is still a thinkable content; not something more ultimate than that …” (Mind and World, 28-29) It must be like that, the thought is, because anything without the bounds of the conceptual simply could not stand in any relation to something in it such that for it so to stand would be proof of the relevant bit of conceptual. This cannot be right. For it to be would be for there to be no such thing as thought at all. Which leads one to ask what could make it seem that some such thing ought to be right. The answer is: a misconception about proof (or rational relations). A final point: with this misconception in place, what are empirical psychological hypotheses may come to seem to a philosopher as results which follow from a philosophical investigation of the nature of rationality as such. Since rationality is not species-specific, such must be a mistake. Such are the main theses of this essay.
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In 1929 Wittgenstein saw the Tractatus collapse before his eyes. In the ensuing years (through 1931) he had two things much on his mind. One was what the collapse of the Tractatus showed. With what might its picture of representation (of... more
In 1929 Wittgenstein saw the Tractatus collapse before his eyes. In the ensuing years (through 1931) he had two things much on his mind. One was what the collapse of the Tractatus showed. With what might its picture of representation (of thought) be replaced? The other was philosophy of mathematics. Here Wittgenstein was particularly interested in formalism of various forms. Which naturally led him back to Frege and, in particular, volume 2 of Grundgesetze. There, I suggest, he found a clue to the question ‘Whence hence from the Tractatus?’. In particular, there Frege floats an idea that for there to be a thought is for there to be its applications (and vice-versa). Such, I will suggest, is inspiration to the Investigations notion of a language game, and for the role that notion is to play in the story the Investigations have to tell. This essay elaborates the story just sketched.
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In 1929 Wittgenstein watched the Tractatus collapse before his eyes. By 1931 the outlines of a new view were in place. One thesis of this essay is that what happened then also changed drastically Wittgenstein’s relation to Frege. The... more
In 1929 Wittgenstein watched the Tractatus collapse before his eyes. By 1931 the outlines of a new view were in place. One thesis of this essay is that what happened then also changed drastically Wittgenstein’s relation to Frege. The source of the collapse can be traced back to the difference between Russell’s and Frege’s conceptions of thought, or of representing-as, as emerges in the correspondence between these two, between 1902 and 1904. Though young Wittgenstein took pains to hold Russell at arm’s length, what separated Russell from Frege—what Russell failed to understand about what Frege was doing—were so profound as to survive mere arm’s length distances, so that what remained of Russellian influence in the Tractatus is precisely what undermined it. In brief, the Tractatus is blind to the point of Frege’s argument (nominally) against ‘correspondence’ theories of truth. Later Wittgenstein thus emerges as much closer to Frege than his young self. The present essay begins to say some things as to just how. In particular, later Wittgenstein took over Frege’s anti-reductionist (in particular anti-naturalist) concerns. Which, of course, is more than reason enough, if not the only reason, for Wittgenstein to feel alienated from the temper of the times.
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This essay is about how to count thoughts, in Frege’s sense of a thought (a thinkable, to use another terms). By counting thoughts, I mean answering questions when two thoughts are encountered (expressed, mentioned, entertained) each... more
This essay is about how to count thoughts, in Frege’s sense of a thought (a thinkable, to use another terms). By counting thoughts, I mean answering questions when two thoughts are encountered (expressed, mentioned, entertained) each once, and when there is one thought encountered twice. The main upshot is that there could be no one right way of doing so. It is correct that in words which express a singular thought, the function of a principal noun phrase is simply to identify the object the thought is about, and not per se the Sinn by which that thought makes that object the one. But it is an error to think that this shows that there is no need for multiple thoughts of one object in each of which that object is represented as being just the same way as it is in each other. How to count such multiplicity depends on the occasion for doing so.
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This is a new version of the previous paper of same title. It is about two contrasting pictures of representing something as being something: on the one side John McDowell, Jennifer Hornsby, the Tractatus. On the other Frege, Austin and... more
This is a new version of the previous paper of same title. It is about two contrasting pictures of representing something as being something: on the one side John McDowell, Jennifer Hornsby, the Tractatus. On the other Frege, Austin and me. The last part of the paper explains why (or about what) Frege and Austin come out on the same side.
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A while (roughly 40 years ago) a philosopher found himself in a supermarket (probably in Palo Alto) making a mess. Such moved him to an insight. A thought (a thinkable—that by which truth comes into question at all) is impersonal,... more
A while (roughly 40 years ago) a philosopher found himself in a supermarket (probably in Palo Alto) making a mess. Such moved him to an insight. A thought (a thinkable—that by which truth comes into question at all) is impersonal, unlocatable. (Frege: “It is not necessary for the thought that he is cold to be expressed by the one freezing. An other may also do this in naming the cold one by name. …Thus the thought can be garbed in a sentence more suited to its independence of the thinker”—an independence shared by any thought. (What, Frege suggests, separates expressions of thoughts from interjections.) (vide 1897: 146) So there is always room in conceptual space for a distance between holding any thought true and, when it comes to acting, seeing the thing to do. Roughly this is the insight. In (Perry 1979) this insight goes paired with a misperception of the nature of such distance, or of its significance for explaining action. Or so I argue here. In retrospect, what can we learn from all this about the relation of thought to action—or, for that matter, about the relation of thought (mass noun) to thoughts (count noun)? This essay explores that question.
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This paper centres on (Wittgenstein on) seeing-as. As prelude it explains why the Tractatus picture of representation collapses and discusses Frege on the essential publicity of thoughts. Its main concern is to sketch how ideas emerging... more
This paper centres on (Wittgenstein on) seeing-as. As prelude it explains why the Tractatus picture of representation collapses and discusses Frege on the essential publicity of thoughts. Its main concern is to sketch how ideas emerging from seeing-as can motivate disjunctivism. A distinction between authority as to how things stand, and authority over how things stand works as a main expository tool. This is not a final version. Inter alia, another section is to come. It will deal with the idea that psychology (the science) will uncover factors to replace executive authority in the role assigned it here.
This new version of the essay, aside from a series of minor improvements, addresses some issues left under, or un-discussed, in the previous version. Notably this: the essay starts with two motives Wittgenstein might have had for his very late interest in seeing aspects (or as)—at first sight an arcane, and peripheral, subject. The bulk of the essay essay (previous version) extracts from the late manuscripts a response to the first motivation. But in what way those manuscripts might be responding to the first one is left (largely) undiscussed. This is now changed (by additions to the penultimate section)—though not to the extent I would have hoped. (It seems that a sequel will be necessary.) Another issue left largely undiscussed in the previous version is the possibility of a subject for expert authority, delivered by seeing-as, in the workings of perception’s enabling mechanisms. Again, this gets less discussion than it should. But at least more than in the last version. The last section, on disjunctivism, remains as it was. I am not certain that this version actually is better than the last. It is at least my current best effort.
This new version of the essay, aside from a series of minor improvements, addresses some issues left under, or un-discussed, in the previous version. Notably this: the essay starts with two motives Wittgenstein might have had for his very late interest in seeing aspects (or as)—at first sight an arcane, and peripheral, subject. The bulk of the essay essay (previous version) extracts from the late manuscripts a response to the first motivation. But in what way those manuscripts might be responding to the first one is left (largely) undiscussed. This is now changed (by additions to the penultimate section)—though not to the extent I would have hoped. (It seems that a sequel will be necessary.) Another issue left largely undiscussed in the previous version is the possibility of a subject for expert authority, delivered by seeing-as, in the workings of perception’s enabling mechanisms. Again, this gets less discussion than it should. But at least more than in the last version. The last section, on disjunctivism, remains as it was. I am not certain that this version actually is better than the last. It is at least my current best effort.
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This is a review of John Searle’s book, Seeing Things As They Are. It differs, but not very substantially, from the version published in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. I am placing it here mainly for the convenience of anyone who finds... more
This is a review of John Searle’s book, Seeing Things As They Are. It differs, but not very substantially, from the version published in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. I am placing it here mainly for the convenience of anyone who finds the one source more convenient than the other. It is, though, the most recent version.
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I am uploading this paper by way of answering the question why, in my book, Perception: Essays After Frege, I changed its title. The answer is that I did not. Somehow an error slipped in during the proofreading. Otherwise, this is a... more
I am uploading this paper by way of answering the question why, in my book, Perception: Essays After Frege, I changed its title. The answer is that I did not. Somehow an error slipped in during the proofreading. Otherwise, this is a pre-copyediting version of what appears in the book. It is liable to differ from the published version in minor respects, either typographical, or very minor improvements of the kind which occur when one reads his own work. I hope, though, that it may be helpful, and not confusing, to have this version on the webpage. The main point remains Austin’s, though I now believe one can work his way to the same point by following out Frege faithfully.
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In 1963 Donald Davidson published “Action, Reasons and Causes”. It quickly changed the form of discourse about reason explanation for all who engaged in it. More than 50 years have passed. Time for a reassessment. What we find, I argue,... more
In 1963 Donald Davidson published “Action, Reasons and Causes”. It quickly changed the form of discourse about reason explanation for all who engaged in it. More than 50 years have passed. Time for a reassessment. What we find, I argue, is this. One of Davidson’s main moves is to use the notion of belief to push the locus of explanans where reasons explain actions towards the intradermal. His methods for achieving this would strike us as tendentious to say the least. The result is a false picture of what it is to have a reason, and of how having one bears for us on what to do. This essay ends with an alternative.
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This is a new version. My apologies to those who read the old. This is shorter and, I hope, clearer. The problem: What is it for the world we judge of to be veiled from us? One idea: it is for there to be objects of perceptual awareness... more
This is a new version. My apologies to those who read the old. This is shorter and, I hope, clearer. The problem: What is it for the world we judge of to be veiled from us? One idea: it is for there to be objects of perceptual awareness which intervene between it and us. Another: it is for there to be anything which so intervenes. John McDowell (Mark Sacks lecture) has given the idea that he veils the world from us 'short shrift'. He is right on that first idea of what a veil would be. But not, I argue, on the second. In his story, content acts to veil the world from us.
How can perception make us knowledgeable as to what is so? Is it enough for it to gain us access to, awareness of, what is there before our eyes? Our must it also furnish us experience in which what is there before us is presented with a... more
How can perception make us knowledgeable as to what is so? Is it enough for it to gain us access to, awareness of, what is there before our eyes? Our must it also furnish us experience in which what is there before us is presented with a certain structure imposed on it—a structure matching that of what is so? This essay continues a debate with John McDowell on this question.
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We can learn much from Frege about philosophy of mind. This essay lays out that in Frege which undermines 'The Representational Theory of Mind'. (It is still, to an extent, work in progress.)
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The present thesis: (representing to oneself aside) only a thinker (in Descartes’ demanding sense) can represent something as something. 1) I would like to make this idea compelling. Missing the point, I think, does harm. On recent... more
The present thesis: (representing to oneself aside) only a thinker (in Descartes’ demanding sense) can represent something as something.
1) I would like to make this idea compelling. Missing the point, I think, does harm. On recent rereading two sections, 8 and 9, seemed to me to miss this mark. They are rewritten here.
2) This version is a composite of two others, each written for a slightly different purpose. The appendix comes from one of these; section 10 from another. The reader is (of course) free to pick and choose.
1) I would like to make this idea compelling. Missing the point, I think, does harm. On recent rereading two sections, 8 and 9, seemed to me to miss this mark. They are rewritten here.
2) This version is a composite of two others, each written for a slightly different purpose. The appendix comes from one of these; section 10 from another. The reader is (of course) free to pick and choose.