Clearly Richard is right that it is a major omission to not mention that at
2.025 W claims "It is form and content". But where does this get us exactly?
Does this mean form and content are indistinguishable, and, if not, how are
they distinguished?
It would appear W is saying that "substance" is both "form and content"?
Does this mean that space, time and colours are both "form and content"?
Or is this assertion that "substance" is both "form and content" a kind of
mystical claim about the realm of "objects"? Is W implying that at the level
of "substance" both "form and content" are one? If they are not one how, at
the level of substance, are they to be distinguished?
Richard does not address these questions that seem to me crucial if we are to
rely on 2.025 to deny that space and time and colours are "mere forms
and not objects", as I claimed.
The claim that "substance" is not mere form but is
"form and content" is not, without further ado, sufficient to show that
space and time etc are content as well as the forms of objects, and even that
they are objects. Not only that, but if W meant that why did he not say it in
terms?
Instead of saying "Space etc..are forms of objects" he could easily have said
they are the forms and content of objects, and even then made clear that
objects are located in space and time and colour.
As a result of not answering such questions, Richard's reply strikes me as
problematic.
Other comments below, marked *:-
To take up Donal's questioning, let me begin with that
part of his post in
which he seems most to stray from Wittgenstein:
> 2.024 "Substance is what subsists independently of
what is the case".
>
> That is:- objects, since these "make up the
substance of the world"
(2.021),
> are independent of "what is the case" ie. "the
world" - objects are "the
> unalterable form" (2.023), no matter what is "the
case" or "the totality
of
> facts".
This is good. This is clear, but there is one section
left out between the
2.024 and 2.0251that Donal cites. It is the following:
2.025 Sie ist Form und Inhalt.
2.025 It is form and content.
>
> 2.0251 "Space, time, and colour..are forms of
objects".
>
> Ie. These MERE forms are NOT objects - objects are
BEYOND these mere
forms.
I've blown up the words of Donal's that lead him
astray. It is not an
accident of language that the plural "forms of
objects" referring to "space,
time, and colour" is the same "form" as in the
"objects are 'the unalterable
form' (2.023)."
*I am not sure I feel the weight of this argument from
'same term can't be just an accident', which seems to me
an argument open to easy abuse and its thrust here specious.
The answer to the puzzle may be in the
next two sections:
2.026 Nur wenn es Gegenstände gibt, kann es eine feste
Form der Welt geben.
2.026 Only if there are objects can there be a fixed
form of the world.
[This "fixed form" is what P&M call "an unalterable
form" here and in
2.023--"Diese feste Form besteht eben aus den
Gegenständen" (This fixed form
consists of the objects.)] [Much can be learned about
Wittgenstein by
reflecting on what is wrong with (a) any translation
and (b) especially
P&M's translation, especially--because it has almost
canonic acceptance. W's
"feste Form" becomes in P&M "unalterable form," while
Ramsey's "fixed form,"
*while* less expressive, roughly speaking, is better,
strays less far from
"feste Form" than "unalterable form" which turns
"fixed" into something more
like "rigid" or "permanent" or "unchanging." P&M
should never have
translated a positive term by a composite term
combining a negation with a
positive term (un-alterable)--a difference built into
the form of the
translating element and thus immediately a reason for
a poor correspondence,
a weak equivalence.
2.027 Das Feste, das Bestehende und der Gegenstand
sind Eins.
2.027 The fixed, the existent and the object are one.
From this we can see that the fixed (form), the
substance or what subsists
independently of what the case is, and the object(s)
are ONE ("and the same"
P&M add unnecessarily). The form is not mere and it is
not beyond the
object--it is the object.
*This is compatible with saying that at the level of substance/object
"form and content" are merged. This is also compatible with saying that this
level
_goes beyond_ the mere categories or forms of space, time and colour.
*For example:- objects/substance might well be spaceless, timeless and
"colourless".
It is so close to the object
that two objects with
the same logical form cannot be distinguished except
by the fact that they
are 2, i.e. different. Remember, the "substance" is
"form and content.
*Remember, this is not to say that space, time and colour
are "form and content". At least, Richard does not explain the link
clearly or why the text does not state the link clearly. Ie. why
if "substance" is "form and content" then space etc must be "form
and content". While substance equals objects perhaps, why would
substance/objects equal space, time and colour - especially as we are told
that objects are "colourless".
> But the question arises: if objects are somehow
beyond space, time and
colour
No--not beyond space, time and colour. "Roughly
speaking: objects are
colorless" (2.0232), but that objects are "beyond
space and time," even
roughly speaking, would remove objects from the
imaginable, from "logical
form."
*I don't see how this necessarily follows. And it is noteworthy
that later in this same post Richard states that, as far as
considering "objects" in their "logical space", "space, time and colour
are inessential." Is this even consistent? It appears possibly muddled.
> - if they are crucially independent of "what is the
case" - surely this
> implies they are phenomenally unknowable "objects"
since the only stuff we
> can know phenomenally must be known (at least 'as
if') in space or time or
> colour.
>
> If they are not phenomenally knowable, how is it
right to think that their
> content is to be established by science, experience
etc.? - even though
the
> logician may deign to tell us, from on high as it
were, a priori that they
> _simply must_ exist.
>
> How, fer feck sake, is a "cat" or a "blue dot" etc.
an "object" that
subsists
> independently of space, time and colour?
For Wittgenstein, the "cat," "blue dot" and other
objects are better
described by their possible functions in states of
affairs in "logical
space" where space, time and color are inessential.
*First, W does not say this in terms afaicansee.
* Second, is this consistent with denying that space and time
and colour are mere forms of "objects" but are rather
both "form and content" of "objects" - and even that they are
"objects"? I am unclear. As I am on the following...
If you didn't have a "cat" there where the cat is or a
"dot" where the blue
dot is, there would be a hole in the objects, the
"fixed form."
*Why this is so is unclear, nor am I even sure I understand
what Richard is trying to convey.
That
impossible hole, its impossibility, is the subsistence
background that makes
everything possible, roughly speaking. It might be
good to consider the
German word for object: It is Gegen-stand, the
"stand-against." Think of the
objects, not so much as physical or even phenomenal
things, but as the
standing-against of differences (in color in a visual
field, for instance,
or of one "part" of space from another/the next, or
one moment from the
next). Perhaps you can begin to comprehend why the
object must be simple. If
the "standing-against" were *also* a standing *with*
that which it is
"standing-against," it would lose its
"standing-against-ness," its
objectivity, its integrity.
*Again it is unclear to me why it follows that a standing-against
cannot also be a standing-with - or what this kind of talk is
meant to convey.
There would be no
"correspondence" of picture
elements to object (elements), no picturing of any
kind, no comparing of the
pictures we make ourselves of facts and the facts
themselves. All objects
would lose their form and bleed into the other (now no
longer) objects.
* Is Richard doing more here than appealing, in somewhat high-sounding
language, to the intuition that if we could not distinguish one object
from another then everything would just be an indistinguishable morass?
I am unclear. And even if this intuition is right I am unclear where
it gets us on the issue of whether space, time and colour are "mere forms",
as I suggested, or are both "form and content" of objects, as Richard
appears to suggest.
That is the fixed form (Kant would say "necessary for
thought"). A proposition's
truth would only be based on the truth of another
proposition because there
would be no way to compare the sense of the
proposition to the world it is
describing.
*Again this claim, I feel, needs some fleshing out. It is all rather unclear
to me.
Donal
Still in Puzzleland
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