[Wittrs] Re: Meaning, Nonsense and Verifiability (for Kirby)
- From: "SWM" <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:08:14 -0000
I generally agree with you, Kirby, about the importance of what you call
"aspect shifts", of seeing something familiar in a new way. I think that was a
very important element of Wittgenstein's thinking and that it speaks to his
reluctance to engage in argument about things. For him you either saw something
or you didn't. As Sean has sometimes noted here, argument and logical exchanges
can generally go on forever. Because of the flexibility of language and the
imprecision of so much of what we tend to want to argue about, there seems to
be little chance of reaching agreement this way. A good interlocutor can always
turn an issue around, latch onto another nuance of a significant term in the
discourse, redirect the exchange down a new path and then all hope of finding
agreement is lost.
That's why I don't think argument a very good way to proceed in philosophy
myself although it is something of a necessary vehicle for such exchanges. That
is, we often start with a claim and then proceed to say why we hold it, which
last is subject to dispute (and demands reasons why we dispute the initial
reasons and so forth) and then we're off to the races, i.e., argument.
In my time on these lists I have often found argument useful as a vehicle for
discovering the holes and weaknesses of a claim but never as a means of
bringing the parties to agreement. Perhaps in a court of law argument works
because there is an institutionally established entity (the judge and/or the
jury, depending of course) whose job is to bring the debate to closure by
rendering a decision. But even then, the resolution is a matter of convention,
i.e., we all agree to abide by the decision (once appeals have been exhausted)
though we may not think the decision correct and may continue to argue against
it off-line so to speak. Think of the OJ trial or of ongoing disputes about
Supreme Court decisions. Not convicted he was officially innocent of the
charges but most in the wider society, and especially opinion makers, disagreed
(which eventually led to other trial losses for him).
In the matter of philosophy, how do we resolve anything by debate? In fact, as
with debate in general, we don't. There is the court of philosophical opinion
(some philosophers are held in higher esteem than others) but even that is
informal and hardly official and certainly subject to dispute by minority
opinion holders. On lists like these the main value of debates, aside from
satisfying the urge of some to perform for an audience, lies largely in the
opportunity to test one's ideas in a broader forum than one's own mind
(hopefully one with some bright and skilled thinkers on-line, too) and hone
rhetorical skills. It also offers a chance to see how others are thinking and
pick up a few interesting new ideas that one might otherwise have missed.
But I have learned, over the years, that there's no chance of convincing anyone
else of anything significant (the occasional agreement to some minor point or
correction aside). I'm reminded of an old interlocutor of mine, McD from the
old Critical Rationalist list (Popper inspired). McD was a great debater but
totally and completely off the wall in his positions. But you could never argue
him down or show him what you thought was the light because he always had
surprising come-backs and his underlying views proved to be impervious to
criticism. He used to argue that there was no such thing as knowledge, only
conjecture (there is a modicum of truth to that) and that everything we want to
call knowledge is only that if it survives refutation (thus sanctioning a
culture of endless debate!). Based on such a view he held that anything one
believed ought to be taken as true if it could not be refuted and so one could
hold anything at all as true as long as it withstood refutation. For a clever
arguer as he is, that pretty much let him hold any thing he wanted and get away
with it.
What was missing was insight, getting it. He had no room in his model for that
because he thought it was only about argument. (He hated Wittgenstein, claiming
he was a charlatan by the way, because Wittgenstein eschewed the game of
arguing.) But one thing McD taught me was that argument doesn't get us
anywhere, at least not during the period of the actual argument anyway. Even
McD admitted, of course, that over time, in the course of many arguments, we
might gradually revise our views. But that seems to be because we gradually
take in positions pressed on us by others which seem to become ours. Once they
seem like our own, there's no longer the seem resistance to changing one's
view, I guess.
SWM
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, kirby urner <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> In my telling of the story, gestalt psychology (the duckrabbit one of
> its icons) was just getting going around then as well, in conjunction
> with anthropology. The need to "see in new ways" was simply the
> practical need of the field worker, trying to get into the head of
> some tribe in the Amazon jungle or whatever.
>
> <snip>
> It's an unending process.
>
> Clearly the verification principle is too brittle to be of much aid in
> anthropology. People believe the darnedest things, and if you go on
> the basis of trying to believe what appears to be unbelievable
> nonsense, you'll never get anywhere.
>
> The Tractatus armed one as a debater maybe (its intimidation quotient
> seemed high, thanks in part to the cryptic notation, then much in
> vogue), and prepared one for heated arguments with the natives over
> the nature of God in the Heavens or whatever the hell. I think of
> poor Aguirre (aka Ozymandius), great conqueror of this same jungle.
> He utters his private language of imperial domination, but what sense
> does it make to the monkey people? See notes
> below.
>
> So when you get to Philosophical Investigations Part 2, you're really
> looking at an investigation into the centrality of aspect shifts to
> meaning, and how usage patterns may operationally trigger them.
>
> <snip>
>
> There's no mysticism here, just flexibility and an ability to remain
> trainable, ready for a next challenge. To study philosophy is to stay
> limber enough to new meanings. Training in W's later philo helps
> lengthen one's career in anthro, as now one has a less brittle way of
> approaching the whole "meaning" thing. Connecting the dots, getting
> into a mind set, is not just an armchair activity (per tag line:
> "math is an outdoor sport" -- trying to get people off their duffs
> around math learning as well).
<snip>
>
> Yes, that sleepwalker image is a lot like each of us for sure (a moral
> of that tale), but then there is such a thing as "growing awareness"
> (a direction), and such growth has its practical applications -- which
> is why "being a philosopher" need not be a complete waste of time,
> once you get away from those tiresome old organ grinders and their
> crufty / ritualized "time honored" debates.
<snip>
Other related posts:
