The Wright-Wing Defense of Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Logic

C rispin Wright's recent book purportedly is a systematic account of Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mathematics.' In this paper, I shall analyze Wright's defense of Wittgenstein's views on logical consistency, primarily for two reasons. First, this defense provides a crucial test of the Wright-Wittgenstein philosophy of logic: most of the basic theses attributed to Wittgenstein by Wright are brought into the defense. Second, focusing on this defense will facilitate presenting my evaluation of the quality of the reasoning found in this book, by allowing me to contrast Wright's assessment of Wittgenstein's views on consistency with an assessment I gave earlier.2 Wright defends Wittgenstein against the sort of criticisms I gave. And he has a vigorous ally in Michael Wrigley, a philosopher with whom he has had more than a superficial intellectual contact.3 Wright also finds support for some of his doctrines in the works of Michael Dummett. Two Wittgensteinian views I criticized in my earlier paper are

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