[Wittrs] Re: Meaning, Nonsense and Verifiability (for Walter)
- From: "SWM" <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 18 Apr 2011 01:18:45 -0000
Okay, thanks Sean. I was scratching my head all morning, trying to figure out
why my response didn't come through. Not that it was any great shakes of
course, but I did want to make the point about the distinction between the
logical positivists' (and Carnap's, specifically, of course) notion of meaning
vs. the Wittgensteinian approach which, it seems to me, was different even at
the beginning, though Wittgenstein was then too cryptic (probably because he
was unclear himself) on why he rebelled against the ideas of the logical
positivists (who thought they saw, in him, a fellow traveler). His Tractatus
seemed to them, and to others it turns out (like Popper), to uphold their
radical restrictions on the notion of meaning. And yet from the first he told
them they had misunderstood him. He read them poetry when they wanted to
discuss and debate.
His later efforts, though, do the real work, I think, in laying out the
difference between his notion of meaning and theirs. It is in works like the PI
that we find his notions, "language games" and meaning as use and rule
following, take shape and it is in terms of these that he finds or denies
meaning, definitively abandoning the idea that statements and terms which do
not lend themselves to truth tables are meaningless, even if nonsense of a
special kind.
What he only seemed to be reaching for in the Tractatus, that there is
significance beyond the true and false, a valuable sort of nonsense, he
achieves in his later work by recognizing the multi-polar nature of meaning, as
discovered in the contexts within which our words and statements are used.
That said, I want to go on record as also noting that the issues raised by the
philosophical problem of "free-will" are not nothing and ought not to be waved
away as you have done. They do require philosophical attention rather than
dismissal, even if the ultimate conclusion is that they should, rightly, be
dismissed once we understand the reason they aren't real problems for us.
Perhaps you jump the gun here in peremptorily dismissing them without first
explicating the problem in a way that shows us why we ought to do so? I don't
think it's an illegitimate move to raise the problem or even to consider its
implications. It's just this sort of thing that provides the grist for the
Wittgensteinian mill, no?
SWM
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> (Stuart)
>
> I see you did not correct this. There is no "block" on threads. Your post was
> sent back by ecartis, the system used at freelists, because it contained a
> character that the machine took to be a command of some sort. The machine was
> confused about whether the mail was intended for the list or for the ecartis
> system. My guess is that it may have been the formatted headline that you put
> in
> there. It was in bold in its original version. The markup for bold probably
> used
> a character that ticked off ecartis. But I'm not sure; it's just a guess.
> There
> have been some choppy waters in the system of late: I've had several CHORA
> posts
> that did not get through. I've written to them for help over it.
>
> But nothing is blocked. If there is a post that doesn't make it: try again or
> just wait for me to manually forward it.
>
> P.S. Here is the ecartis message:
>
> This message was received for a list you are a moderator on, and
> was marked for moderation due to the following reason:
> Failed administrivia check on pattern '^.* subscribe .*$'
>
>
>
> Regards and thanks.
>
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> Assistant Professor
> Wright State University
> Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
> SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
> Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: SWM <swmirsky@...>
> To: wittrsamr@...
> Sent: Sun, April 17, 2011 12:28:26 PM
> Subject: [Wittrs] Meaning, Nonsense and Verifiability (for Walter)
>
> Okay, since my last response did come through, I am concluding that my
> earlier
> efforts were obstructed because of some block placed on the thread to which I
> was responding. Given that, I'll place my response to that earlier thread
> here,
> while changing the header above!
>
Other related posts:
