[Wittrs] Re: Die Welt is alles, was der Fall ist
- From: Bob Doyle <bobdoyle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: CHORA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 11 Apr 2011 11:32:32 -0400
JL,
The translation by Pears and McGuiness may be more faithful to Wittgenstein
(than Ogden's "everything").
The world is all that is the case.
Cheers,
Bob
On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 10:35 AM, JL Speranza <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> In a message dated 4/11/2011 1:48:46 A.M. ,
> bobdoyle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> Die Welt is alles, was der Fall ist.
> The world is everything that is the case.
> In German, chance is Zufall. Can we see Wittgenstein pointing to the utter
> contingency of the physical (and even the verbal) world?
>
> ---
>
> Yes, since Sean is joining the discussion and he leads a Wittgensteinian (I
> won't use "Witters") that should help. I think perhaps Wittgenstein (I
> won't say "Witters") meant to say,
>
> "Die Welst is alles, was der Zufall ist" but changed his mind?
>
> One should check with Grice's colleague, D. F. Pears, who perhaps did the
> wrong thing (but then Moore was already writing in English) when he decided
> that Ogden's translation of Wittgenstein (I won't say "Witters") was
> dated.
> He provided a new one with McDowell. I haven't checked it, to see if it
> reads, 'the case', too.
>
> But I wouldn't think since 'case' is such a glorious word:
>
> --- from Etymology online:
>
> "case (1)
> "state of affairs," early 13c., from O.Fr. cas "an event, happening,
> situation, quarrel, trial," from L. casus "a chance, occasion,
> opportunity;
> accident, mishap," lit. "a falling," from cas-, pp. stem of cadere "to
> fall,
> sink, settle down, decline, perish" (used widely: of the setting of
> heavenly
> bodies, the fall of Troy, suicides), from PIE base *kad- "to lay out, fall
> or make fall, yield, break up" (cf. Skt. sad- "to fall down," Armenian
> chacnum "to fall, become low," perhaps also M.Ir. casar "hail, lightning").
> The
> notion being "that which falls" as "that which happens" (cf. befall). Given
> widespread extended and transferred senses in English in law, medicine,
> etc.; the grammatical sense was in Latin. In case "in the event" is
> recorded
> from mid-14c. Case history is from 1912, originally medical; case study is
> from 1933, originally legal."
>
> ----
>
> This should combine, in a pro-exegetical manner, with Grice, when he
> irritatingly writes,
>
> "Any attempt to remedy this situation" -- whatever -- "by resorting to the
> introduction of chance or causal indetermination [is that pleonastic? what
> sort of indetermination could there be which is not causal?] will only
> infuriate the scientist [some of them--not Doyle and the majority
> nowadays]
> without aiding the moral philosopher [if you find one!]."
>
> ----
>
> but 'chance' is already sort of introduced because 'case' is 'chance' and
> we do say things like "is it the case that Mary did it?"
>
> -----
>
> Perhaps we can elaborate on:
>
> --- stem distinctions:
> 'casus' "from L. casus "a chance, occasion, opportunity; accident", but it
> seems 'casus' and 'chance' have slightly different implications. Perhaps
> due to the fact that 'casus' derives from the stem of "what has fallen"
> while
> 'chance' may derive from the stem (same root, though) of something that
> "_is_ falling" (the '-nt-') root. And there may be a distinction there. If
> something HAS fallen or did fall, there's nothing much we can do about it,
> as
> opposed to something yet falling -- we can move away from any forthcoming
> 'accident' as it were.
>
> ---- the redundancy of 'casus' constructions.
>
> "it is the case"
> The world is everthing that is the case.
>
> ---- That is some GRAND statement, and if I were a cosmologist I would have
> it, inscribed in Greek, as my all-time motto.
>
> But in small-letter uses of 'case', as in:
>
> "It is the case that p"
>
> the implications may be different. When would we use, "it is the case
> that".
>
> It seems the usages correspond to what Grice called Strawson's "ditto"
> theory of truth (WoW:III)
>
> A: It is raining.
> B: That's true!
>
> --
>
> Or more interestingly:
>
> A: It is raining.
> B: That is _not_ the case.
>
> "It is not the case that it is raining".
> "Oh yes. It is the case that it is raining".
>
> This may connect with what Grice discusses in "Actions and Events" re this
> Reichenbach operator:
>
> Reichenbach coined an operator -- sigma operator -- to be read:
>
> "it is the case that..." -- discussed by Grice, op. cit., p. 5ff --.
>
> Thus
>
> Caesar was murdered.
>
> becomes
>
> "It is the case that Caesar was murdered."
>
> ----
>
> Grice (and indeed Davidson) found Reichenbach to be slightly otiose (if not
> contradictory), for one can prove with it that:
>
> "any event which consists of [some case] also consists of [some other case]
> and vice versa; that is to say, any pair of randomly chosen events are
> identical." (Grice, p. 6).
>
> -----
>
> (Grice manages to retain the redundant operator, though, with a license, or
> rather a prohibition to use "the 'co-referentiality principle' after the
> 'logical equivalence principle' has been used". But other issues may
> remain.
> Or not.
>
> Cheers,
>
> J. L. Speranza
>
> Messages to the list will be archived at
> http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/chora.html
>
--
Bob Doyle
Information Philosopher - *"beyond logic and language."*
http://www.informationphilosopher.com
http://blog.i-phi.org
http://www.bobdoyleblog.com
rodoyle@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Associate, Astronomy Department
Harvard University
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