Messages In This Digest (16
Messages)
Messages
- 1.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 6:10 am (PST)
Rationalism ? truth can be reached through thought (e.g. mathematics)
Empiricism ? truth derives from observation
Realism ?truth objectively reflects an independent world (of whatever sort of phenomena)
Constructivism ? truth is constructed
Positivism ? truth is established by the scientific method (observation and experiment) and involves correct representation of the world
Pragmatism ? truth is what works in practice or even is the working in practice
Relativism ? truth is relative, not absolute
Some translations of WITTGENSTEIN
Pears/McGuinness translation
1. The world is everything that is the case. The world is all that is the case.
2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. What is the case ? a fact ? is the existence of states of affairs.
3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought. A logical picture of facts is a thought.
4. The thought is the significant proposition. A thought is a proposition with sense.
5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. A proposition is a truth-function of elementary propositions.
(An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.) (An elementary proposition is a truth function of itself.)
6. The general form of truth-function is [p, ξ, N(ξ)]. The general form of a truth-function is [p, ξ, N(ξ)].
This is the general form of proposition. This is the general form of a proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Extracted from Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
Thank you
sekhar
- 2.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 6:16 am (PST)
Still, it is precisely via the subject of the nature of philosophy that the fundamental continuity between these two stages, rather than the discrepancy between them, is to be found. In both cases philosophy serves, first, as critique of language. It is through analyzing language's illusive power that the philosopher can expose the traps of meaningless philosophical formulations. This means that what was formerly thought of as a philosophical problem may now dissolve "and this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear" (PI 133). Two implications of this diagnosis, easily traced back in the Tractatus, are to be recognized. One is the inherent dialogical character of philosophy, which is a responsive activity: difficulties and torments are encountered which are then to be dissipated by philosophical therapy. In the Tractatus, this took the shape of advice: "The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science ? 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" (TLP 6.53) The second, more far- reaching, "discovery" in the Investigations "is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to" (PI 133). This has been taken to revert back to the ladder metaphor and the injunction to silence in the Tractatus.
Extracted from Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
thank you
sekhar
- 3a.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 10:05 am (PST)
.. does anyone know why Wittgenstein always seemed to address people by their last names? I'm not refering to people he is most intimate with, but just in general. Other professors. Students. People he knew. He always seemed to refer to people as "r-r-r-Hussle" (Russell), Sraffa, Moore, etc. I assumed he did this when directly talking to them as well. Is this just a personality thing or is it something other Austrians would do?
Regards.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
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- 3b.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 3:00 pm (PST)
How he referred to them and how he addressed them might be two different things. But as a young man, Wittgenstein made his fellow students uncomfortable by insisting on "sie" rather than "du", and that sort of formality may have continued and manifested itself in other ways.
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- 4.1.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 3:37 pm (PST)
SWM: I prepared these notes before reading your Posts. I'll see if it
applies.
Reduction vs. Emergence
One way of expressing our difference.
While all agree that a physical description is primary, earlier, basic,
some insist
1- that all descriptions that follow can be appear to be autonomous from
the
physical but can, in principle be reduced to the physica (Reduction).
Those we
disagree (2) insist that there unique levels of organization requiring
specialized
accounts that are not reducible to the physical, i.e., Emergence.
Reduction comes in many flavors. Causal reduction may allow for unique
types of
explanation not in a physical language but still insist that these
emergent accounts
stand in a causal relation to the physical. That causal reduction is
intelligible is
the precise point of our disagreement.
From a paper on the biology of taste.
"When we taste...the information must past through the thalamus, a kind
of relay
station in the brain that allows us to attend to different aspects of
perception."
What does the above mean?
The molecules of food cause taste in the thalamus? But it isn't the
thalamus that
tastes. We do. And our brain, the thalamus specifically "allows us to
attend." This
is not a causal account. Rather it is an intentional account of how we
do something
with our brain. The account is "top-down" rather than "bottom-up."
--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@.. .> wrote:
> This idea is relatively simple, and it is not far from the one that
Daniel Dennett proposed when he said that
> consciousness is "fame in the brain". What I propose is that
"consciousness is global information in the brain"
I see. D appears to be a physicalist. C is in the brain matter. Calls it
a theory. In what sense? 1- One specific brain area rather "According to
this picture, consciousness is not accomplished by one area alone" or
2- consciousness is fully accounted for in terms of brain matter and is
the causal basis for any emergent phenomena.
Help me with this. While it is clear that D holds to #1. I'm not
convinced he holds to #2. To claim #2, he can't switch from brain
activity producing consciousness to a person becoming conscious because
the "person", in this context, comes from nowhere. Just tacked on to
make the biological claim intelligible.
I will elaborate upon emergence as I respond to your other Posts.
bruce
- 4.2.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 4:34 pm (PST)
From Wikipedia
"In philosophy, systems theory and science, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems."
Two points:
1- While Emergence typically implies a vertical dimension of complexity, i.e., lower less so and higher more so, I don't think that this assumption is critical (or maybe even appropriate) to Brain/Mind. Irreducible difference between accounts is sufficient.
2. Emergence is "the way", not causation from another level. In that sense, emergence is unpredictable, a bit of a surprise.
"In philosophy, emergence is often understood to be a much stronger claim about the etiology of a system's properties. An emergent property of a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any component of that system, but is still a feature of the system as a whole."
Simply put, consciousness is not a property of the brain, as such, but of the person who has a brain.
There are folks quite displeased with Emergence since it sounds mysterious and, as it were, breaks the causal chain. For people who causality is the gold-standard for explanation, Emergence is is a term for not yet knowing the cause.
As I've written before, if you start with the "bottom", molecules in motion", then it appears to be a break -- Chalmer's gap. But do scientific accounts actually start at the bottom.
bruce
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this.
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- 4.3.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 5:16 pm (PST)
--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@. ..> wrote:
>
> SWM: I prepared these notes before reading your Posts. I'll see if it
> applies.
<snip>
>
> "When we taste...the information must past through the thalamus, a kind
> of relay
> station in the brain that allows us to attend to different aspects of
> perception."
>
> What does the above mean?
>
> The molecules of food cause taste in the thalamus? But it isn't the
> thalamus that
> tastes. We do. And our brain, the thalamus specifically "allows us to
> attend." This
> is not a causal account. Rather it is an intentional account of how we
> do something
> with our brain. The account is "top-down" rather than "bottom-up."
>
But the issue is where do we get the "we" kimosabe! What is the "we" or the "I"? Cayuse says it has no application but that is patently false as we use the term intelligibly everyday. In a strictly phenomenological sense the usage may well break down (I agree that it does), but we don't operate in a phenomenological way, referring to phenomenal bits or sense data or whatever you want to call it. We operate in an already realized world and, indeed, we could not operate if the world weren't thus realized.
What has this to do with the notion that brains cause consciousness? It's a matter of determining where the subject comes from, how it arises in what appears, otherwise, to be an objective, physical world. Of course these are categories, reflecting HOW our brains operate to make sense of the phenomena around us. But there is no reason to question the categories insofar as they work and they manifestly do.
You say the thalamus doesn't taset, we do. But the point is that the we consists of alots of things including, but not limited to (not even necessarily including) tasting. The point of Dehaene's research is to explore and discover how the brain produces the phenomenon of subjective awareness. He argues that it does this not in any single part (no pineal gland need apply here) but in the course of many complex, interlinked operations, all of which involved doing many different things, one of which might be tasting. He says consciousness (he means awareness here) arises when a certain threshold in brain operations is crossed, when enough of the brain's operating centers are in action and communicating and coordinating what they do.
> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
> > This idea is relatively simple, and it is not far from the one that
> Daniel Dennett proposed when he said that
> > consciousness is "fame in the brain". What I propose is that
> "consciousness is global information in the brain"
>
> I see. D appears to be a physicalist. C is in the brain matter. Calls it
> a theory. In what sense? 1- One specific brain area rather "According to
> this picture, consciousness is not accomplished by one area alone" or
> 2- consciousness is fully accounted for in terms of brain matter and is
> the causal basis for any emergent phenomena.
>
> Help me with this. While it is clear that D holds to #1.
Yes, Dennett never makes any kind of claim about one specific brain area. In fact that is contrary to his position which is that consciousness is like a set of serial "virtual" machines (computer programs) running on a massively parallel platform, so that the different things are happening in the same time spans and communicating (interacting and affecting one another).
> I'm not
> convinced he holds to #2.
He never equates consciousness with matter but with the operations of certain kinds of matter. That's all. What are you suggesting, that he thinks mind is an extra layer of something added on, or emerging out of, brains? That would be a wrong picture.
> To claim #2, he can't switch from brain
> activity producing consciousness to a person becoming conscious because
> the "person", in this context, comes from nowhere.
There are different uses of "consciousness" and "becoming" at work here. If you attend to them you won't be confused by this.
>Just tacked on to
> make the biological claim intelligible.
>
> I will elaborate upon emergence as I respond to your other Posts.
>
> bruce
>
I will read on then. Note that your comment above makes no real sense to me because there is no reason why we cannot speak about how brains bring about (cause, produce, result in) subjectness and how persons become conscious. After all, if we mean by "conscious", awareness, we can say persons become conscious upon awakening, or when cold water is splashed on their faces after they've fainted, or when the blood is restored to their brains, etc. None of this gets at how brains produce consciousness in the persons (though the last, the reference to blood flow) starts to do that.
SWM
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- 4.4.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 5:27 pm (PST)
--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@. ..> wrote:
> From Wikipedia
> "In philosophy, systems theory and science, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems."
> Two points:
>
> 1- While Emergence typically implies a vertical dimension of complexity, i.e., lower less so and higher more so, I don't think that this assumption is critical (or maybe even appropriate) to Brain/Mind. Irreducible difference between accounts is sufficient.
>
Why lower less so? If wetness is an emergent property of water's atomic constituents it's pretty hard to say that the atomic-level description is less complex. It is only different (though it could well be more complex)!
> 2. Emergence is "the way", not causation from another level. In that sense, emergence is unpredictable, a bit of a surprise.
>
That only reflects when we are ignorant of something. Once we aren't the surprise is gone.
> "In philosophy, emergence is often understood to be a much stronger claim about the etiology of a system's properties. An emergent property of a system, in this context, is one that is not a property of any component of that system, but is still a feature of the system as a whole."
>
> Simply put, consciousness is not a property of the brain, as such, but of the person who has a brain.
>
That is not "simply put" because it says nothing about "a person who has a brain" but it would be a good description of Dehaene's claim that consciousness is a "global neuronal workspace" where no individual component is conscious but the outcome of the combined operation is the property of being conscious.
> There are folks quite displeased with Emergence since it sounds mysterious and, as it were, breaks the causal chain. For people who causality is the gold-standard for explanation, Emergence is is a term for not yet knowing the cause.
>
You yourself liken it to being surprised!
> As I've written before, if you start with the "bottom", molecules in motion", then it appears to be a break -- Chalmer's gap. But do scientific accounts actually start at the bottom.
>
> bruce
>
I don't know what this means. But your gap, or Chalmers', is here assumed in order to deny the possibility of a physical account. What you need to do is make the case for why there are some aspects of consciousness that can never be accounted for in terms of physically based processes. Otherwise, all you've done is assumed dualism at bottom. Chalmers, of course, is an acknowledged dualist (though you aren't).
SWM
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- 4.5.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 6:00 pm (PST)
--- In WittrsAMR@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <wittrsamr@. ..> wrote:
>
> From Wikipedia
>
> "In philosophy, systems theory and science, emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems."
>
Wikipedia
[edit] Language
It has been argued that language, or at least language change, is an emergence phenomenon. While each speaker merely tries to reach her or his own communicative goals, s/he uses language in a particular way. If enough speakers behave in that way, language is changed (Keller 1994). In a wider sense, the norms of a language, ie. the linguistic conventions of its speech society, can be seen as a system emerging from long-time participation in communicative problem-solving in various social circumstances. (Määttä 2000) Language and culture are treated as emergent phenomena in The Extended Mind: The Emergence of Language, the Human Mind and Culture.(Logan 2007)
Emergence may be observed in our daily life too.When one mixes two different particles or liquids resultant activity is either predicted or not.This is the activity of world.
thank you
sekhar
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- 5.1.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 3:43 pm (PST)
Dehaene wrote
> attention is a prerequisite of consciousness
In other words, to be conscious, one must be aware that one is conscious. Is he proposing that the brain is aware or a person with a brain is aware?
bruce
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- 5.2.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 5:21 pm (PST)
--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@. ..> wrote:
>
>
> Dehaene wrote
>
> > attention is a prerequisite of consciousness
>
> In other words, to be conscious, one must be aware that one is conscious. Is he proposing that the brain is aware or a person with a brain is aware?
>
> bruce
>
No, you really should read the whole text (which is why I didn't limit myself to a few sentences but even so I couldn't give you the whole content -- ya gotta read it for yourself).
His use of "awareness" has to do with "access consciousness" , the idea that we know what we're doing when we're doing something (as in intentionality, thinking about things). He specifically excludes other aspects of being conscious such as self-consciousness (having an idea of a self) and reflexive consciousness (thinking about thinking about what we're doing).
Once you see this you should see that your question is out in left field vis a vis his point, i.e., it makes no sense to ask it because it misses the thrust of what he's talking about.
SWM
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- 6.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 6:07 pm (PST)
Sean Wilson < whoooo26505@yahoo.com> added Wittgenstein Labors at Guy's During WWII:
[... continuing a segment that might be called, "Wittgenstein at War, Again." - sw]
Wittgenstein thought it intolerable to teach philosophy during World War II when Britain was being blitzed. He wanted to help with the civilian war effort. In September of 1941, he therefore obtained a job at Guy´s Hospital in London, working as a dispensary porter. Monk writes,
"Wittgenstein´s job as a porter was to deliver medicines from the dispensary to the wards, where, according to John Ryle´s wife, Miriam, he advised the patients not to take them. His boss at the pharmacy was Mr. S F. Izzard. When asked later if he remembered Wittgenstein as a porter, Izzard replied, `Yes, very well. He came and worked here and after working here three weeks he came and explained how we should be running the place. You see, he was a man who was used to thinking.´ After a short while, he was switched to the job of pharmacy technician in the manufacturing laboratory, where one of his duties was to prepare Lassar´s ointment for the dermatological department. When Drury visited Wittgenstein at Guy´s, he was told by a member of the staff that no one before had produced Lassar´s ointment of such high quality. " (433)
Wittgenstein´s work was physically grueling. He was 52 years old and had said to Rowland Hutt, "When I finish work about 5 ... I´m so tired I often can hardly move." (434).
Source: Ray Monk, The Duty of Genius, 433-434.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
< http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrs-blog/2009/12/12/wittgenstein-labors-at-guys-during-wwii.html>
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- 7.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:11 pm (PST)
With the help of the game-analogy Wittgenstein
is able to illuminate his use of primitive
languages/language-games. It serves to disperse
"the haze" which "surrounds the working of
language" [PI 51, and which arises when we look
at it through the general notion of the meaning
of a word as found in Augustine. Instead of
primitive, fictitious kinds of word application
one can also take the primitive forms of language
which "a child uses ... when it learns to
talk. Here the teaching of language is not
explanation, but training ("Abrichten" in German
-R.R. ) . " bid. 1 2 = SO we must register another
important distinction Wittgenstein makes, a
distinction between:
- "the practice of the use of language", and
- the "instruction in the languaget' [PI 71 .*'
That distinction has furthermore the aspect of
bringing into account the fact that people have
to be instructed in their language. Wittgenstein
writes in PI 6 that an "important part of the
training will consist in the teacher's pointing
to the objects, directing the child's attention
to them, and at the same time uttering a word;
for instance, the word 'slab' as he points to
25 The language in question here is our language.
" This distinction is not the same as the distinction
from PI 5 between explanation and training.
Explanation as well as training can be a component of
learning. Whether explanation can in a special case,
with regard to a special language-fragment, be a form
oE teaching depends on the faculties the child has
sofar learned. Explanation cannot be at the beginning
of learning language at all, for the child cannot ask
questions.
thank you
sekhar
- 8.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:20 pm (PST)
edit]Translation and Interpretation
Translation and interpretation are two other problems that philosophers of language have attempted to confront. In the 1950s, W.V. Quineargued for the indeterminacy of meaning and reference based on the principle of radical translation. In Word and Object, Quine asks the reader to imagine a situation in which he is confronted with a previously undocumented, primitive tribe and must attempt to make sense of the utterances and gestures that its members make. This is the situation of radical translation.[57]
He claimed that, in such a situation, it is impossible in principle to be absolutely certain of the meaning or reference that a speaker of the primitive tribe's language attaches to an utterance. For example, if a speaker sees a rabbit and says "gavagai", is she referring to the whole rabbit, to the rabbit's tail, or to a temporal part of the rabbit. All that can be done is to examine the utterance as a part of the overall linguistic behaviour of the individual, and then use these observations to interpret the meaning of all other utterances. From this basis, one can form a manual of translation. But, since reference is indeterminate, there will be many such manuals, no one of which is more correct than the others. For Quine, as for Wittgenstein and Austin, meaning is not something that is associated with a single word or sentence, but is rather something that, if it can be attributed at all, can only be attributed to a whole language.[57] The resulting view is calledsemantic holism.
Quine's disciple, Donald Davidson, extended the idea of radical translation to the interpretation of utterences and behavior within a single linguistic community. He dubbed this notion radical interpretation. He suggested that the meaning that any individual ascribed to a sentence could only be determined by attributing meanings to many, perhaps all, of the individual's assertions as well as his mental states and attitudes.[16]
Extracted from Wikipedia
This is the fate of religious and philosophical propositions all over the globe.We require a state of lucidity,flexibility to understand any thing in its true sense but not as we wished it to be.
thanking you
sekhar
- 9.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:38 pm (PST)
ii): Wittgenstein
really does not give us a theory. Not only
is it lacking in the immediate context, it is
not to be found in the entire PI. At least he
does not give us a theory in that sense of the
word, in which it is taken by him. With regard
to (i) we can choose: we can take one of the two
alternatives, both or neither of them. (i") is
in my view relatively uninteresting for an
interpretation, whereas it could be very interesting
for a critique, or a systematically
oriented elaboration, of the sparse Wittgensteinian
remarks - assuming, that is, that Wittgenstein
gave an answer. But since the problem here
is interpretation and neither critique nor
further elaboration, (i") shall not further be
mentioned, without justifying why (is') is
probably false.
Identity is the only relation between a name and named.Entire human world and existence rests in that.There is crisis in that identity if one sees clearly.
thank you
sekhar
- 10.
-
Sat Dec 12, 2009 9:42 pm (PST)
One issue that has bothered philosophers of language and logic is the problem of the vagueness of words. Often, meanings expressed by the speaker are not as explicit or precise as the listener would like them to be. In consequence, vagueness gives rise to the Paradox of the heap. Many theorists have attempted to solve the paradox by way of n-valued logics, such as fuzzy logic, which have radically departed from classical two-valued logics.
Wikipedia
Philosophy of language
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