[Wittrs] Re: Aftermath
- From: Justintruth <justintruth@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 03:07:52 -0700 (PDT)
Can either you or Patti say simply what it is about language that
Wittgenstein believed prevented the speaking about which he spoke?
Intuitively I believe that Wittgenstein was speaking of literal
language that involved the nominal case - or involved statements about
nouns - that about which the usual form of logic is - even if those
statements were not just declarations. Is that true, at least of early
Wittgenstein? If not to what subset of language does the Tractus
refer?
Should one "remain silent" because it is technically not possible to
speak or is he referring to a broader ethical issue and if so do you
know what it is? Is there something *ethically* wrong about trying to
say what Wittgenstein is trying to say (or refusing to say) or is he
saying that it just cannot be said - and his statement is then just
that its senseless to attempt what cannot in principle be done? Is
there something else, other than speaking that we can (are supposed
to) do to express or is it a prohibition on expression itself - that
the norm is saying to cease an attempt at expression? Is it that being
and expression are contradictory?
Are there other possibilities for doing philosophy or is philosophy
the project of speaking when one should remain silent per se? I don't
think so.
I read once that Heidegger believed that a poet would come after him
to really say the truth. Did Wittgenstein have any relationship to
Husserl-Heidegger-Sartre? Does Wittgenstein have a place where he
addressed poetry?
I have a lot of detailed questions about the Tractus itself. I for one
would love to go through it in meticulous detail line by line with
someone who can provide insight into it. There are times when I just
run into brick walls in it - as Hans mentions - technical walls -
places where I am at a loss to see his statement as true because I
sometimes cannot even find the sense in which they are not obviously
false - or there are statements that I am not sure which way he means
them - this or that. I understand about the Tractus not being a proof
but it is not the opposite either - one needs I sense to approach each
line in much the same way as one does in a proof in geometry. (Perhaps
Sean's comments are true of geometry itself in the end but without
understanding the Tractus I will not know. Perhaps it is true that all
poetry starts out as an attempt to express a statement in the same way
one does in Euclidean geometry and remains successful only when not
deviating from that.)
Is it possible to use a thread in this group to do what Hans is
suggesting? Slow enough so that we don't just move ahead until we can
get it? You know, like the old Republican idea of when we withdraw
from Iraq - "Its not based on a timetable but progress on the ground."
Something like: "We will only move on from this statement when
progress on the ground allows us to do so"
If so count me in.
Its so much better to decide to agree or disagree with someone only
after you understand them.
The wonderful thing about authors such as Wittgenstein is that their
work seems to illuminate the meaning of what one knows - or changes
its meaning without adding additional facts. Perhaps it is not
agreement with a statement that is the function of Wittgenstein's book
that is important but rather to see what it means - or in context how
to use it. If so perhaps he needn't pull up the ladder so fast as he
may have found the one way to speak - namely by illuminating the
problem by participating in it. And then we will know how to use his
book to pull the right apples off of the shelf! Is that the case with
the Tractus or has he really got some proposition there? Is the
Tractus clear or is he attempting to show that one cannot be clear
when writing about what he is writing? Of what use is the Tractus? Can
further illumination of the problem come by examining the foundations
of logic using logic - can the program of the Tractus be advanced or
is it complete? Is the Tractus about a flaw in logic? Can that flaw be
used to show that extensions of logic or its future development are
all futile like Mandelbrot did with the analysis of noise? Or does it
have such an extension in it?
I think that it would probably not work for you or anyone else to try
to answer any of these questions for me because I sense that then I
would not be able to derive the answers from a real understanding of
the point of the Tractus itself which I suspect is its real value and
in fact I sense that it is its real meaning and use. So wouldn't it be
better to somehow get to the Tractus itself and examine exactly what
it is saying so that answers like these I could derive myself and
would be obvious?
We need not hijack the group as we can use one thread. The real
question is do one of you have the patience - or the time - to answer
line by line sophomoric questions?
Of what use is the Tractus? The future of all of Western Philosophy
may be stake! Then again... it may not be.
JT
On May 23, 10:47 pm, Sean Wilson <whoooo26...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Greetings Patti.
> That was a very interesting way of saying it. Thank you very much for that.
> Regards and thanks.
>
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> [spoiler]Assistant Professor
> Wright State University
> Personal Website:http://seanwilson.org
> SSRN papers:http://tinyurl.com/3eatnrx
> Wittgenstein
> Discussion:http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs[/spoiler]
Other related posts:
