| Summary: | In his post-Tractatus work on natural language use, Wittgenstein defended the
notion of what he dubbed the autonomy of grammar. According to this thought,
grammar - or semantics, in a more recent idiom - is essentially autonomous
from metaphysical considerations, and is not answerable to the nature of
things. The argument has several related incarnations in Wittgenstein’s
post-Tractatus writings, and has given rise to a number of important
insights, both critical and constructive. In this paper I will argue for a
potential connection between Wittgenstein’s autonomy argument and some more
recent internalist arguments for the autonomy of semantics. My main
motivation for establishing this connection comes from the fact that the
later Wittgenstein’s comments on grammar and meaning stand in opposition to
some of the core assumptions of semantic externalism.
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