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[...] Wallace is not calling for a return to old truths and values. In other interviews, he says: 'we're going to have to make up a lot of our own morality, and a lot of our own values'. And: 'there's probably no absolute right in all situatons handed down from God on the stone tablets. [...] it …

[...] our use of these concepts cannot take place without their being 'founded' by what we could call 'paradigmatic cases': examples that are common knowledge within a certain life-form, that function as a sort of standard, and thereby form part of the foundation of our meaningful use of certain co…

[...] according to Wittgenstein, meaning is not determined by reference to the world or to the thoughts of the speaker but results from the communal structures of language users. In light of this view, the non-referentiality of literary texts does not pose a problem: fiction is not an atypical form…

Wallace's story illustrates the solipsistic problems caused by the (hyper)reflexive attitude. For this attitude causes us to regard our so-called internal processes--thoughts, feelings, et cetera--as objects, 'as things that we have', and ourselves as the exclusive 'owners' of those objects. Althou…

Wittgenstein writes that there seem to be two ways of explaining the meaning of a word: through 'verbal' and through 'ostensive' definitions. A verbal definition explains a statement with the help of another statement. An ostensive definition is, in the words of McGinn, 'an act of giving the meanin…