[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Free Will and Wittgenstein
- From: John Phillip DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2011 17:55:47 -0400
Anna,
It is good to see you again!
I would certainly agree that he would reject the idea that advancing
theses, constructing theories, or creating a somehow more precise
language for discussing these issues would not address the philosophical
problems/puzzles.
I also would maintain that he would regard a contemptuous or dismissive
attitude toward such discussions as less than useless.
Wittgenstein recognized the futility of this whole attitude of simply
dismissing discussions nonsense. For example, On Certainty might have
been a much shorter work had Wittgenstein been content with the approach
some take.
37. But is it an adequate answer to the scepticism of the idealist, or
the assurances of the realist, to say that "There
are physical objects" is nonsense? For them after all it is not
nonsense. It would, however, be an answer to say: this
assertion, or its opposite is a misfiring attempt to express what can't
be expressed like that. And that it does misfire
can be shewn; but that isn't the end of the matter. We need to realize
that what presents itself to us as the first
expression of a difficulty, or of its solution, may as yet not be
correctly expressed at all. Just as one who has a just
censure of a picture to make will often at first offer the censure where
it does not belong, and an investigation is
needed in order to find the right point of attack for the critic.
And he certainly would not have stigmatized the patient rather than
trying to ascertain the roots of the difficulty. Sometimes the roots
may be linguistic, other times...
Compare, the tenured professor more or less content with his life,
speculating about the relationship between quantum indeterminism and
individual freedom...
To a young man who, knowing he was conceived by the rape of his mother,
wonders if he is in some sense cursed, doomed by perhaps by a gene, a
brain abnormality, or what have you, to repeat the sins of his father, a
sin to which he owes his very existence...
Suddenly, Sean's dismissive attitude isn't quite so appropriate!
I'd alluded to remarks from Culture & Value, such as these.
Election by grace: It is only permissible to write like this out of the
most frightful suffering--& then it means
something quite different. But for this reason it is not permissible for
anyone to cite it as truth, unless he himself says
it in torment.--It simply isn't a theory.--Or as one might also say: if
this is truth, it is not the truth it appears at first
glance to express. It's less a theory than a sigh, or a cry. MS 118
117v: 24.9.1937
In religion it must be the case that corresponding to every level of
devoutness there is a form of expression that has
no sense at a lower level. For those still at the lower level this
doctrine, which means something at the higher level, is
null & void; it can only be understood wrongly, & so these words are not
valid for such a person.
Paul's doctrine of election by grace for instance is at my level
irreligiousness, ugly non-sense. So it is not meant for
me since I can only apply wrongly the picture offered me. If it is a
holy & good picture, then it is so for a quite
different level, where it must be applied in life quite differently than
I could apply it. MS 120 8: 20.11.1937
In some cases, such discussions are hardly idle.
In Zettel, he makes passing reference to some issues related
tangentially.
610. I saw this man years ago: now I have seen him again, I recognize
him, I remember his name. And why does
there have to be a cause of this remembering in my nervous system? Why
must something or other, whatever it may
be, be stored up there in any form? Why must a trace have been left
behind? Why should there not be a
psychological regularity to which no physiological regularity
corresponds? If this upsets our concepts of causality
then it is high time they were upset.
An essay by Duncan Richter, available online, compares and contrasts the
attitudes of Wittgenstein and Carnap toward Heidegger.
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:XOA-R_4oOWIJ:web.abo.fi/fak/hf/filosofi/fsemi/papers/07_03_19.doc+carnap+wittgenstein+heidegger&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgdpgQy8c3k4_6nD50QVS7xbuONjif1xDPvh_gP8fVQmKuz3APUl1f5x6Iw9i-Pqy-Vis1g-6_-YulDlqE-gNk9hVE98Gy0dgzFyUmdk9FaWBvLLLd5dKaRIdEWxJV-IraztSjm&sig=AHIEtbSCLgYYAwySo_HmgYDaCDyK_yW2jA&pli=1
Neither man was enthused with Heidegger's writing certainly. But there
is much more subtlety to Wittgenstein's approach. The issues are not so
simple as they may appear. And it would not be unfair to suggest that
those who do take the simplistic approach of summarily dismissing
metaphysics as "nonsense" are in that sense "Carnapian".
On Sun, 2011-04-17 at 21:51 +0100, Anna Boncompagni wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I don't remember the remarks that ou are referring to, anyway my
> opinion is
> that he thought that believing in free will might indeed be very
> important
> in the life of people (this is something he had in common with William
> James), but that philosophical discussions about what free will really
> is,
> if it exists or not, if it is the will or the action that has to be
> free in
> order to have freedom... all these discussions are quite pointless.
> Regards
> Anna
>
> 2011/4/17 John Phillip DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> > The idea that it is properly "Wittgensteinian" to assume a
> dismissive
> > attitude toward discussions of "free will" and related topics, to
> treat
> > these issues as having no relevance to anyone, is belied by
> > Wittgenstein's own reflections of the issues of predestination and
> > Calvinism as recorded in Culture & Value. He believed these issues
> > could have great importance in an individual's life and upbringing.
> >
> > Contrast with the discussion of "Battle-cries" of idealists and
> Realists
> > as recorded in Zettel, in which the upbringing of a child raised by
> > parents with one or the other view is shown to make little
> difference.
> >
> > I'm just sayin'...
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
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