[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Notes on Duncan Richter's essay 'Did Wittgenstein Disagree With Heidegger?'
- From: John Phillip DeMouy <jpdemouy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:57:15 -0400
On Wed, 2011-04-20 at 21:47 -0700, Sean Wilson wrote:
>
> 1. How do you know you have found the person's "picture."
>
> It's difficult to talk about how to find a picture, because it isn't,
> say, a
> muffin recipe.
Wittgenstein is quite explicit about the criteria that apply here and I
provided relevant quotations.
I have no idea what you're doing here but I have difficulty not
supposing that you are resisting acknowledging what he wrote and
engaging in evasion and obscurantism because ascribing pictures to
others, contra Wittgenstein's own professed method, is something you do
to gratify some sense of superiority.
> Analytic folks live under the false impression that arguments are
> understood by
> such things as premises and structure.
That is one way of understanding some arguments. Many arguments. In
fact, in a certain sense, it is a tautology to say that to understand an
argument is to understand its premises and structure. "Argument" does
have other senses however.
>
> Wittgensteinians know that the true edifice of any "argument" lies in
> the
> picture one has that facilitates the matter.
That sort of dogmatic claim suggests to me a "craving for generality"
Wittgenstein would have warned against.
> One knows the picture of another
> when one can "live" the other person's idea. When one can, e.g.,
> "become the
> argument." (Cf: the skills accessed by some in theater. Not too far
> off as a
> kind of thing).
I would concur with the comparison to Stanislavski here. I would not
concur with the idea that the picture is the "royal road" to
understanding, however. Though it is in many cases.
>
> 2. When to use the "therapy."
>
> I agree with you that some pictures should not be messed with.
Odd, since I wasn't making such a claim.
I am merely questioning where Wittgensteinian methods are appropriate or
applicable, not trying to set up some rule against intervention.
>
> Also, I think your "dilemma for the Wittgensteinian interventionist"
> is simply
> an exceptional point. Really, a great point. I do, of course, have a
> different
> vision. I fear your point makes therapy available only for those who
> are asking
> for it -- like a Priest waiting for one to ask for confession.
Not "asking" but "receptive". And if they are not receptive, then
whatever my scruples, my efforts would be ineffective.
> I think, in a
> sense, it would put Wittgensteinians in a closet (or have that
> effect). My own
> view sees therapy as being licensed whenever the person asserts
> something as a
> proposition, asking, as it were, to show its validity. I think that is
> the way
> Wittgenstein treated Moore. Moore did not come to confession.
I do not read Moore as the patient in On Certainty. As in much of his
work, the patient is Wittgenstein himself. Wittgenstein was unsettled
by some remarks Moore had made, saw something quite right and something
quite wrong in the things Moore was saying and sought to find his way
about in that.
> Every philosopher
> who takes a paper to the podium asks for "therapy" in my book.
>
> 3. The relationship of the picture to the merit of the idea.
>
> I don't agree with this statement: "Being a picture is neither here
> nor there in
> terms of the merit of an idea." The answer is: it depends upon the
> picture (and
> the idea). I think in many cases you will find that a shallow picture
> leads to a
> simplistic idea. Goodness: don't all the really poor ideas suffer from
> this? (I
> think we could flesh this one out better with examples of argument --
> not of
> Wittgenstein, but in general).
Again, this is non sequitur: whether a picture is "deep" or "shallow" -
however one may draw that distinction - is surely a separate matter from
whether it is a picture or something else. A picture's status as a
picture is neither honorific nor pejorative.
>
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