[Wittrs] Re: Stuart Mirsky's Review of McGuinness' Young Ludwig
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:31:02 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, brendan downs <wittrs@...> wrote:
>
>
> Per McGuinness, what can be said are things that may be true or false, which
> include all the propositions of natural science. What can be shown are the
> relations of logic. What must be passed over in silence is all the rest
> which, since we can't speak about them, well we can't explicate any further
> than this. More mysticism it seems to me!
I've always thought that this was W's attempt to separate language
from the world, and whenever TLP gets ambiguous, one should keep
that in mind. There would be little or no mysticism in that.
That's *my* Wittgenstein.
> I'm not sure if this is the correct reading, but I try an understand it with
> Witt responses to the Posivists.
>
> 6.53 The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say
> nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science--i.e.
> something that has nothing to do with philosophy -- and then, whenever
> someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that
> he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.
> Although it would not be satisfying to the other person--he would not have
> the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy--this method would be the
> only strictly correct one.
>
> Say "that is a tree" is a scientific statement. "is a scientific statement"
> is not a scientific statement. if this makes sense? I'm not sure If Witt was
> meaning this but this is how I interpret it.
I'm utterly unclear as to what this "scientific statement" is
supposed to mean, especially to the latter Wittgenstein, not to
mention the latter Wittgensteinians. I can see no way at all to
separate scientific statements from other statements.
Popper criticizes Wittgenstein for saying that all problems of
philosophy are pseudo problems - or even that all philosophy is
a pseudo problem. Popper says philosophy needs to be about things,
or it is empty. Which I guess is what Wittgenstein is saying here,
more or less, but that would mean that this idea of "science" is
only a strawman anyway. That's my reading.
Josh
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