Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Language

Dans le cadre de leur interprétation phénoménologique de la pensée de Wittgenstein, Jaakko et Merrill B. Hintikka ont proposé un argument concernant la nature des objets de l’ontologie du Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Selon eux, les objets du Tractatus sont identifiables aux objets de l’épistémologie russellienne, à savoir les sense-data. Cette identification des objets tractariens aux sense-data les conduit à avancer que le symbolisme développé par Wittgenstein dans le Tractatus est un langage phénoménologique, celui dont le philosophe parle dans ses Remarques philosophiques de 1929. Dans le présent mémoire, je montre qu’il existe de bonnes raisons de douter de la vérité de la thèse des Hintikka et défends que l’interprétation non empiriste du Tractatus proposée par David Pears est plus convaincante que leur lecture phénoménologique de la philosophie du premier Wittgenstein.

RESUMO: Neste artigo pretende-se sugerir a possibilidade, a partir das concepções observadas na obra Investigações Filosóficas, de L. Wittgenstein, que a geometria, a matemática e a lógica são derivações da linguagem ordinária e não possuem ou descrevem nenhuma lei, regra ou caráter universal nem necessário.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Linguagem, seguir regras, semelhanças de família, matemática, universalidade

ABSTRACT: This paper is intended to suggest the possibility, based on conceptions observed in the work Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein L., that geometry, mathematics and logic are derivations of ordinary language and do not have or describe any law, rule or universal nor necessary character.
KEYWORDS: Language, follow rules, family resemblances, mathematics, universality

Nel 1949 Wittgenstein stava lavorando all’ultima parte delle Ricerche filosofiche e durante una conversazione con Maurice Drury disse: «Nel libro mi è impossibile dire una sola parola su tutto quello che la musica ha significato nella mia vita. Come posso sperare allora di essere capito?».
In realtà l’importanza della musica è testimoniata dal fatto che negli scritti di Wittgenstein è presente una notevole quantità di osservazioni filosofiche e di riflessioni estetiche sul linguaggio musicale.
Il libro di Piero Niro propone un’indagine sul significato di queste osservazioni e affronta il problema wittgensteiniano dei «limiti del linguaggio» collegandolo alla crisi del linguaggio musicale determinata dalle avanguardie nel Novecento. Da questa indagine possono scaturire le ipotesi per la definizione di una estetica musicale wittgensteiniana.

Dalla Presentazione di Brian McGuinness:
[...] Nell’interessante trattazione di questi e altri argomenti, Piero Niro nota che il conservatorismo musicale di Wittgenstein mal si concilia con le idee del filosofo sulla libertà creativa, per quanto riguarda le regole del linguaggio. Il suo pensiero (ma non il suo gusto) sembra intonato piuttosto alle idee e al lavoro di Schönberg.
[...] A mio giudizio la lezione più importante che traiamo dal libro di Piero Niro è la dimostrazione della capacità di Wittgenstein di stabilire in ogni àmbito, in ogni mondo, un discorso appropriato, capace di verificare il senso e la mancanza di senso (o l’equivalenza tra le due cose). Non esiste una regola assoluta, né un modello matematico o fisico necessario ed esclusivo. Soprattutto, nessuna teoria. Ma anche il fatto che non c’è una teoria onnicomprensiva, allora, deve essere stabilito caso per caso.

(Excerpt from Foreword by Brian McGuinness:
[…] In his interesting discussion of these and related topics, Piero Niro points out that Wittgenstein’s conservatism as regards music sits ill with his ideas about creative freedom as regards language-rules. His thought (but not his taste) corresponds with the doctrines and practice of Schönberg.
[…] To my own mind the most important lesson to be learnt from Piero Niro’s book is the success with which (as he shows) Wittgenstein establishes within each area, each world as I have hinted above, a discourse appropriate to it, which guarantees its own sense and nonsense (or the equivalent). There is no single rule, no model in mathematics or natural science, that has to be followed. Above all no theory. But that there is none is not a theory either – it has to be seen from case to case.)

Table of Contents: Presentazione di Brian McGuinness - I. Introduzione - II. I riferimenti alla notazione musicale, al «linguaggio delle note» e al «pensiero musicale» presenti nel Tractatus logico-philosophicus e nei Quaderni 1914-1916 - III. Osservazioni filosofiche e riflessioni estetiche sul linguaggio musicale negli scritti successivi al Tractatus logico-philosophicus - IV. Il problema dei limiti del linguaggio e la crisi scaturita dalle ricerche delle avanguardie musicali nel Novecento - V. Annotazioni per un’estetica musicale wittgensteiniana - Osservazioni conclusive - Bibliografia delle opere citate - Indice dei nomi

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

Wittgenstein’s “grammatical method” analyzes multiple uses of language across contexts of use, with the aim of identifying differences and dissolving conceptual confusion. This paper uses Wittgenstein’s method to undermine Jorge L. A. Garcia’s volitional account of racism. Garcia claims that his theory accommodates the ordinary use of terms like “racist belief.” However, he did not consider whether such terms might have multiple uses/meanings. My paper identifies three uses of “racist belief” that escape Garcia’s analysis. Consequently, philosophers should take Wittgenstein’s advice to heart: do not assume that target-terms have a single use, but “look and see” whether they do.

The article is available here: https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=soctheorpract&id=soctheorpract_2017_0999_2_8_3

Der Artikel stellt verschiedene Verbindungen zwischen Wittgenstein und der Literatur bzw. der Philosophie der Literatur dar und gibt im zweiten Teil eine Einleitung zu den Artikeln des Sammelbandes "Wittgenstein und die Literatur" (hrsg. von John Gibson und Wolfgang Huemer, Suhrkamp 2006)

This paper distinguishes between five types of ‘misleading picture’, four of which Wittgenstein is concerned with in his later philosophy. First, pictures embedded in language (§2); second, pictures embedded in and about language (§3); third, pictures about language (§4); fourth, misleading analogies, similes or metaphors (§5); fifth, conceptual pictures (§6). The third of these is not of concern to Wittgenstein, but we can conceptualize the form such a picture would take. By outlining and demarcating between each type of picture, the paper aims to provide a clearer description of Wittgenstein’s conception of the kind of philosophical confusion that can be caused by each kind.

By distinguishing between, on the one hand, misleading pictures that take a linguistic form and philosophical confusions arising from misleading features of language (§§2-5) and, on the other, conceptual pictures (§6), it is argued that some philosophical confusions do not arise through misunderstandings concerning the workings of language. What all misleading pictures share is what Wittgenstein regards as the fundamental cause of all philosophical confusion: they risk generating or exacerbating misunderstandings concerning conceptual connections. It is argued that misleading pictures are, therefore, always concerned with conceptual representation, but not always with linguistic representation. In this way, misleading pictures offer a good way of understanding the central aim of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy: providing ‘the understanding which consists in “seeing connections”’ (PI §122).

A video of my most recent presentation of this paper is available here (from 1:04:41-1:34:41): https://youtu.be/hRvSJo9R9tE

La centralità del problema e del termine «trascendenza» negli scritti heideggeriani pare essere stata finora non troppo riconosciuta. Certo è che a ciò può aver contribuito già il solo fatto della mancanza di una diffusa e chiara trattazione del concetto in Sein und Zeit. Tuttavia, proprio negli anni immediatamente successivi a quest’opera, soprattutto da quanto si evince dai corsi di lezioni, il problema pare assumere un ruolo determinante. Ciò che questo termine indica non è semplicemente, nello sviluppo dell’opera e del pensiero heideggeriani, un rinvio a un al-di-là ontologico in vista di cui è possibile qualcosa come l’intenzionalità; non solo la trascendenza è condizione di possibilità dell’incontro dell’ente in generale, né tanto meno essa può essere semplicisticamente ridotta alla netta determinazione decisiva per la differenza ontologica. Tuttavia, pure entro questa mancanza di determinabilità, si deve leggere necessariamente l’interrogativo circa il rifiuto, successivo alla Kehre, della trascendenza medesima, palesato nei Beiträge. La possibilità, sul piano esplicito da lì in poi inespressa, di intendere il Dasein stesso in quanto trascendenza con ciò che questa concezione comporterebbe, spinge in certo modo proprio a riconsiderare tale possibilità nella sospensione della sua negazione. Che può esserne della struttura di una comprensione dell’essere in quanto convenire di Dasein e mondo? Che possibilità rappresenterebbe, negli effetti, una simile considerazione della trascendenza se letta nella chiave proprio dell’apertura comprensiva di un mondo in quanto sua immediata articolazione semantica e quindi anche pratica? Che ne è, in altri termini, del dialogo che sembra poter instaurarsi, nei corsi sulla «filosofia della trascendenza», immediatamente precedenti la Kehre stessa, tra essere umano e mondo soprattutto sul piano della mondità significativa del mondo stesso, pur senza che si possa parlare espressamente di una oggettività dello spirito come articolazione del senso (Sinn)? Come può comunque spiegarsi il fatto che la trascendenza rimanga per certi versi ospite nascosto, in una chiarificazione che Heidegger assai più tardi diede del senso della sua grande opera, Sein und Zeit, per cui il Dasein sarebbe praticamente solo «l’estatico»? Se le opere pubblicate rappresentano una fonte a tratti incompleta e in generale difficilmente sufficiente allo scopo di una elucidazione il più possibile compiuta del problema, appare chiaramente giustificabile la necessità del ricorso integrante al più ricco e utile materiale offerto dai corsi di lezioni.

This is the introduction to Seeing Wittgenstein Anew, a collection of essays on Wittgenstein and Seeing Aspects. Awareness of what Stanley Cavell called Wittgenstein’s  “spiritual fervor or [the] seriousness of his writing” reached a critical mass during the last decade  of the XXth century. We seek to draw renewed attention to what is, in its sustained development and wealth of instances, already a central notion for Wittgenstein in the later texts, a notion which should contribute to a more coherent picture of his thinking than it has been credited with doing. The growing awareness of the importance of seeing aspects to Wittgenstein’s thought clarifies, and in many respects transfigures, our understanding of that thought. In this introduction we set out what we take to be the most important issues seeing aspects opens.

This paper looks at philosophical accusations of talking nonsense from the perspective of argumentation theory.  An accusation of this sort, when seriously meant, amounts to the claim that someone believes there is something she means by her utterance when in fact she means nothing whatsoever by it.  Such accusations may indeed be peculiar to philosophy.  They also involve the claim that there can be ILLUSIONS OF ARGUMENTATION, both inter- and intra-personal.  The problem of how one could possibly diagnose such illusions is raised and I suggest that, if there is a way, it will require a therapeutic rather than a polemical approach.  This suggestion is of course made by Wittgenstein and some of his followers but, in my view, it has remained undeveloped.  It often takes the form of a comparison with psychoanalysis.  I note that the more like psychoanalysis it becomes, the less like traditional argumentation, philosophical or otherwise, it will be.

In this paper I show that Wittgenstein’s explorations of the roots of the ‘referentialist idea’ sketched in PI #1 reach far deeper than has so far been noticed. I shall reconstruct these philosophical explorations in two major parts: First, some subtleties of the inner structure and wording of #1 are shown which the vast majority of readings, above all Goldfarb’s influential one, have failed to account for, which is partly due to a problem in Anscombe’s translation. Second, I shall reconstruct these explorations by offering a new reading of PI #38 in the light of the clarifications from the first part. In #38, I claim, Wittgenstein diagnoses and scrutinises a certain illegitimate analogy to spatial relations we are prone to draw, unintentionally and unconsciously, when reflecting on the meaning of words. This analogy amounts to a certain relational and pictorial structure of our pre-theoretic assumptions about meaning. I will conclude with some reflections on the question of whether Augustine’s words from #1 are, as Goldfarb and Travis aver, ‘innocent’. From my reading it follows that they are not and that Baker’s and Hacker’s qualification of #1 as the target of Wittgenstein’s criticism is correct in its outline.

This book is an introduction in a double sense. It is intended to introduce beginners in philosophy to the idea of philosophical nonsense and the problems it raises. But it is also addressed to professional philosophers, most of whom seem virtually unaware of the issue.

Certain philosophers, here called ‘nonsensicalists’, believe that much philosophy (philosophical questions as well as assertions) is simply nonsense in the strict sense of being meaningless. They proceed as though it were an established fact that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and the notion were quite unproblematic. By contrast, many other philosophers proceed as though either they had never heard of it or it were quite obvious that there is no such thing.

There can be little doubt that what the nonsensicalists are saying is of great importance – if they are right. But there are at least eight questions that must be addressed before anyone is in a position to start hunting down philosophical nonsense and they have all been woefully neglected.

The idea of philosophical nonsense goes back to Thomas Hobbes at least and yet its history remains largely unresearched.

In view of the neglect of the problems raised by the notion of philosophical nonsense, even by professional philosophers, it is not unduly optimistic to suggest that it is a topic to which relative newcomers to the subject might make a contribution.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that good philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that bad philosophy has put there and must make movements as complicated as the knots it unties. Is the notion of philosophical nonsense an essential aid to this – as Wittgenstein himself thought – or just another knot?

Stimulated by T. P. Uschanov’s paper ‘The strange death of ordinary language philosophy’, I try to reach a balanced assessment of Gellner’s notorious book and also to decide where Gellner stands on the notion of philosophical nonsense.  Some of the things he says suggest that he rejects the notion but he neither clearly formulates what it would have to be nor gives much in the way of argument that there could be no such thing.  One gets the impression that when philosophers he does not like – Wittgenstein and Oxford ordinary language philosophers – use it, it is unacceptable but not necessarily when philosophers to whom he is less hostile – Russell and the logical positivists – do so.

This dissertation (published in 2011 & 2012) focuses on quantum linguistics, a sub-field of philosophy of language, preoccupied with studying of the processes on a virtual drive of the human mind: patterns and dynamics of thoughts, verbal and non-verbal codification, cultural conditioning, and foreign language acquisition. While adopting an educational perspective fitting with the humanistic legacy of great democrats-educators, this study embraces a relativist, quantum-mechanical framework in consideration of perceptive experiences, group dynamics, and foreign language express instruction with cross-cultural alertness. To help improve the national capabilities in foreign languages, this doctoral research investigates the nature, mechanisms, and factors affecting academic acceleration, intensification, and optimization.

This summer/fall 2018 issue of Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology includes the following items:
• A “book note” on the recently published 2nd edition of philosopher Jeff Malpas’ groundbreaking Place and Experience: A Philosophical Topography, originally published in 1999. This expanded version includes a new chapter on place and technological modernity, “especially the seeming loss of place in the contemporary world.”
• A “book note” on EAP editor David Seamon’s recently published Life Takes Place: Phenomenology, Lifeworlds and Place Making, which gives particular attention to the generative aspects of place and locates six place processes that Seamon identifies as place interaction, place identity, place release, place realization, place intensification, and place creation.
• An essay by the late philosopher and science educator Henri Bortoft, who focuses on ways of thinking holistically, including the conceptual efforts of proto-phenomenologist Wolfgang Johann von Goethe; physicists Niels Bohr and David Bohm; and philosophers J. G. Bennett, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
• An essay by retired environmental educator John Cameron, who begins a new series of essays on the lived relationship between interiority and exteriority, particularly as qualities of the natural world and place contribute to that relationship.

There are passages in Wittgenstein where he compares his method to psychotherapy and one or two where he seems to suggest that the ‘patient’ has the last word on his ‘illness’ and ‘cure’.  This paper tries to take these seriously, especially in connexion with the idea that victims of philosophical confusion talk nonsense.

Philosophical accusations of talking nonsense made in a polemical spirit are bound to fail, since the only way one can effectively criticise another’s utterance is by attaching some meaning to it.  But if the other acknowledges the possibility that his puzzlement arises from his having been taken in by nonsense, then perhaps a co-operative investigation of this suggestion might be fruitful.  Indeed self-diagnosis ought in principle to be possible.  Ought it not to have happened at least once in the history of philosophy if philosophical nonsense has ever been exposed? 

But there are difficulties.  For example:
a) We must ask whether or not philosophical nonsense, when exposed as such, is supposed to lose all appearance of meaningfulness.  Either answer is problematic.
b) The acknowledged similarity of the methodology under investigation to that of psychoanalysis exposes it to many of the familiar objections to the methodology of psychoanalysis, especially those that draw attention to the misleading influence of suggestion by an authority-figure.
c) The proposal that relentless cross-questioning of a suspected nonsense-talker will eventually lead her to ‘dry up’ (if she really is talking nonsense) seems to involve a version of the so-called Socratic Fallacy.

This paper starts from Tractatus, 6.53, and ask how one could show someone ‘that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions’.  Once one has fully mastered the ‘austere’ conception of nonsense – that nonsense has neither meaning, form, content, nor logic – the difficulties of the enterprise become evident.  It is not clear how one could be in a position to conclude much about an utterance without first finding a meaning in it.  Suggestions made by Guy Robinson, Edward Witherspoon and Hans-Johann Glock are considered but it is concluded that the last, best hope for nonsensicalism lies in a therapeutic approach.  I end with a plea for someone who is sympathetic to this aspect of Wittgenstein’s philosophy to make a serious attempt to work out the details.

The aim of this paper is to show that " traditional " and " resolute " interpretations have not freed the Tractatus from the apparent paradoxical self-defeat. I argue that these readings only give it new clothing. Hacker's " traditional " reading ends up ascribing a metaphysical conspiracy to the “Tractatus”, which is incompatible with the aims of the book. The “resolute” reading of Diamond and Conant ascribes an authorial conspiracy to Wittgenstein, which contradicts his views on authorship and method. Grounded in the difficulties found in both sides of the current debate, I conclude this paper by proposing several requirements that the correct interpretation of the Tractatus should fulfill.

I originally entitled this paper ‘Why are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense?’, but since this seemed apt to provoke rather superficial responses, I decided to re-title it.  In it I ponder the fact that, not only are there no uncontroversial examples of philosophical nonsense, there are no uncontroversial examples of what one might call ‘analogue philosophical nonsense’.  These would be non-philosophical cases of someone’s believing he means something when in reality he means nothing.  (Someone’s saying, ‘It’s 5 o’clock on the sun’ is sometimes offered as an example.)  I ask what conditions such cases would need to satisfy.  What would count as a compellingly clear case of an illusion of meaning?  Why has no one described one?

Se me propuso hablar de la poesía en el lenguaje filosófico; me lo planteó la poeta María Malussardi a raíz de la experiencia que viví en la escritura del libro de poesía “El diario inédito del filósofo vienés Ludwig Wittgenstein”. Agradezco a ella, pues a través de la tarea que me encargó pude aterrizar en el papel reflexiones que aún estarían en el aire. Si este no hubiese sido el horizonte, creo que mi presencia hubiese sido innecesaria en esta mesa junto a los poetas Noe Jitrik, Hugo Mujica y Emmanuel Taub.

Versión online:
“Mi Ludwig Wittgenstein: La poesía y su presencia en el lenguaje filosófico”, [artículo de Internet]  Revista de Poesía La Otra,  Septiembre de 2013, disponible en: http://www.laotrarevista.com/2013/09/fredy-yezzed-mi-ludwig-wittgenstein/ , Ciudad de México, México. Acceso el 23 de enero de 2015.

Video online:
Fredy Yezzed - Hugo Mujica - Noé Jitrik - Mi Ludwig Wittgenstein: La poesía y su presencia en el lenguaje filosófico
http://vimeo.com/73284279
Duración: 19 minutos.

.Taking as my starting-point Cora Diamond’s paper ‘What nonsense might be’, I extend her ‘austere’ conception of nonsense to encompass the talking of nonsense.  We need to focus on the utterer as well as the utterance.  This brings out how difficult it is going to be to DIAGNOSE the talking of (philosophical) nonsense, without falling into the ‘sense that is senseless’ trap (PI, I, 500).  It is not clear to what extent Diamond sees the problem here.  I suggest that if there is a way round the difficulty, it will involve adopting a therapeutic approach.

I argue against inferentialism about logic. First, I argue against an analogy between logic and chess, before considering a more basic objection to stipulating inference rules as a way of establishing the meaning of logical constants. The objection-the Mushroom Omelette Objection-is that stipulative acts are partly constituted by logical notions, and therefore cannot be used to explain logical thought. I then argue that the same problem also attaches to following existing conventional rules, since either those rules have logical contents, or following those conventional rules is done for logical reasons. Lastly, I compare this argument with other arguments found in Quine's early work, and consider two attempts to reply to Quine.

¿En qué sentido podría Wittgenstein ser considerado un pensador romántico? Partiendo de esta pregunta, el autor desarrolla a lo largo de cinco ensayos una interpretación poco ortodoxa del pensamiento wittgensteiniano. Los ensayos transitan los más variados temas: filosofía de la filosofía, filosofía del lenguaje, epistemología y filosofía de la mente. De este modo, aunque quizá su título podría sugerirlo, el texto no es antropológico: trata más bien del trasfondo antropológico de otros temas que el pensador austriaco abordó con mayor detenimiento.

I argue that Wittgenstein’s engagement with Russell’s The Analysis of Mind was crucial for the development of his new method. First, I show that Wittgenstein’s criticism of the causal theory of meaning (namely: that it generates an infinite regress and that it does not determine the depiction of a fact) is motivated by its incompatibility with the pictorial conception of language. Second, I show that in reacting against that theory he comes to invent the calculus conception of language. Third, I argue that the calculus conception is vulnerable to critiques that parallel those presented against Russell’s theory (a rule-following regression and the indeterminacy of depicted facts). Fourth, the striking similarity between the problems present in Russell’s theory and in Wittgenstein’s own views makes him realize that both were working under misleading trains of thought and false analogies. It is this realization that brings Wittgenstein to the view that his task is to investigate the genesis of philosophical puzzlement in order to stop philosophical theorizing right from the beginning. Thus, in explaining the invention of Wittgenstein’s new method I show its relation to Russell’s philosophy and indicate the origins of the rule-following problem.

In answering the main question “what is/ought to be a good architect?”, I’d like to discuss the Wittgenstein’s thesis by which “the work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connexion between art and ethics”. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Notebooks, 7.10.16).
The analysis will be led along two directions: in the domain of ethics and in the aesthetic one.
First I’ll try to clarify the meaning of the Wittgenstein’s statement with reference to Spinoza’s Ethics, via the interpretation of the contemporary Italian philosopher Carlo Sini.
Is Wittgenstein sharing, in these notes, the Spinoza’s abyssal thought? Wittgenstein’s idea of eternity seems very close to Spinoza’s definition: as essence of the substance, eternity is unexplainable by means of the concepts of duration or time. Eternity is rather the logical space of the necessity that gives itself in the figure of contingency of the event: so every action, as every project and art decision, is undecidable, always kept in the original oscillating and mirroring margin between the freedom of possible and the chains of necessity.
Furthermore, the Spinoza’s overcoming of the alterity between body and mind, implies and strengthens the relationship between Ethics and Aesthetics.
So in second place, I propose to investigate the aesthetic domain through the Merleau Ponty’s approach, whose perspective goes back to the root of aesthetics as phenomenology of perception (aisthesis), with the aim of finding the connection among art, body and behaviour. According Merleau Ponty the things of the world, including the works of art (and architecture), aren’t simply neutral objects standing in front of us to our contemplation: each of them have, on the contrary, an emotional significance and symbolizes and recalls a behaviour of our body. We don’t have a relationship of contemplative distance to the things: each speaks to our body and to our life”.
Hence, in this horizon, we must consider the architectural practice as inscribed in a double gesture: the design action that traces, cuts, incises, decides and our experience of architecture as rebound of our gesture. A double gesture that establishes a double threshold involving a double ethical dimension.
So, going back to the initial question, I think that, if we want to answer in a meaningful and philosophical way, first we need to answer the question “which can be the contribution of philosophy to the architect task?”. I think its contribution coincides with the very aim of the philosophical practice itself: it’s an ethical deep task, it’s the exemplarity of the exercise of inhabiting the limit and the threshold of the project, as place of the “mutuomorphomutation” (Joyce) of necessity and freedom, of history and life.
In each instant stays the eternity, in each event the free game of necessity that gives itself in a figure of the contingency, in every project the emergence of a destiny in, as it were, a "body to body" with the world.
A good architect is an architect sub specie aeternitatis"

Full italian text in Noema, online journal of philosophy:
http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/noema/article/download/2479/2703

I suggest that, although the nonsensicalist challenge (obviously) matters, it has, at least in its Wittgensteinian form, been widely ignored.  On the other hand, those who still adhere to nonsensicalism (mainly Wittgensteinians) have been equally remiss in their failure to examine its presuppositions.

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.