[Wittrs] The Tractarian vs. the Author of the Philosophical Investigations
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 23:14:24 -0000
So what's been gained from this exercise of combing closely throught the
Tractatus? I don't know what the feedback was on the other site where this
discussion has been conducted, but I found it interesting to read along,
especially some of the commments.
And yet I am struck anew by just how radically the later Wittgenstein, as
exemplified in works like the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty,
differs from his earlier incarnation. While I would agree with those here who
have insisted that many of his concerns and even the direction of his thinking
(what he comes up with) do not seem radically divergent, still his results most
certainly do. Again and again, while reading along, I am struck by how much I
think the later Wittgenstein would have challenged and dismissed the ideas of
his younger self if he had encountered them in a student of his during his
years teaching his later philosophy at Cambridge. A few examples below:
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, wittrsamr@... wrote:
> ----- Forwarded Message ----
> From: walto <calhorn@...>
> To: quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Sun, August 15, 2010 9:52:46 PM
> Subject: [quickphilosophy] The Conclusion of the Tractatus
>
>
> 6.41
>
> The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is
> as it is and happens as it does happen. In it there is no valueâ?"and if
> there were, it would be of no value.
>
> If there is a value which is of value, it must lie outside all happening and
> being-so. For all happening and being-so is accidental.
>
> What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this
> would again be accidental.
>
> It must lie outside the world.
>
Does anyone think the later Wittgenstein would have thought it made sense to
speak about what lies outside the world?
Of course we see at the end that he dismisses all his earlier statements in the
Tractatus as a form of "nonsense" but without telling us what that nonsense
amounts to! After all, the later Wittgenstein explicitly recognized ranges of
meanings in word usages and would surely have seen that "nonsense", like so
many other words, has many different uses and thus meanings and that it cannot
be helpful to assert things without a clear indication of their context and the
role which the words asserted play.
If, in the Tractatus, he reverts to characterizing his own prior words as
"nonsense" he yet shows an insufficient appreciation here of just how vague and
nonsensical such blanket statements, words extracted from their ordinary
meanings and thrust into a metaphysical context (words gone "on holiday" as it
were) must be.
I know that such an accusation will be taken as heretical in some quarters but
I want to remind readers again that he explicitly acknowledged that he had made
"grave mistakes" in the Tractatus and implied that at least one point of the
Investigations was to correct those.
> 6.42
>
> Hence also there can be no ethical propositions.
>
> Propositions cannot express anything higher.
>
Of course in the later work he does not focus any longer on propositions per
se, that is the conjunction of words in terms of what they are taken to
signify. Instead he shifts to a focus on the actual uses we put words to,
noting that not all such seemingly coherent combinations of words are
propositional (signifiers of referential meaning).
> 6.421
>
> It is clear that ethics cannot be expressed.
>
> Ethics is transcendental.
>
> (Ethics and æsthetics are one.)
>
I cannot imagine the later Wittgenstein asserting claims about the
transcendental. What does the word mean? It suggests a word or phrase that
somehow points at something that cannot be actually pointed at. This is wholly
inconsistent with the later Wittgensteinian philosophy where words are seen to
do a great many things, including but not limited to pointing, and where words
that do point are seen to have no purpose and no meaning if they are not
actually able to pick out
what they are pointing at. Although Wittgenstein continues to concern himself
with language and meaning and so forth, he has done a 180 degree turn away from
the metaphysical musings that informed his work in the Tractatus.
I don't honestly see how we can study and appreciate Wittgenstein without
recognizing the radical shift and its implications for the earlier work.
> 6.422
>
> The first thought in setting up an ethical law of the form "thou shalt . . ."
> is: And what if I do not do it? But it is clear that ethics has nothing to do
> with punishment and reward in the ordinary sense. This question as to the
> consequences of an action must therefore be irrelevant. At least these
> consequences will not be events. For there must be something right in that
> formulation of the question. There must be some sort of ethical reward and
> ethical punishment, but this must lie in the action itself.
>
> (And this is clear also that the reward must be something acceptable, and the
> punishment something unacceptable.)
>
Here I think he shows evidence of already seeing, however indistinctly, what he
will later articulate more sharply: that ethical language is a different
language game than what it superficially appears to be when looked at from the
point of view of the descriptive/denotative paradigm whose form it often takes.
> 6.423
>
> Of the will as the subject of the ethical we cannot speak.
>
> And the will as a phenomenon is only of interest to psychology.
>
Would the later Wittgenstein concern himself with talk of "the will"? I believe
he would not as in his later period he got away from such abstractions in favor
of focusing on how we actually talk and the things that are suitable for the
application of our words in the context of ordinary language. Where is the
will? Well yes we can speak of having the will (or strong intention not easily
thwarted) to do X. Or of making a will to express our wishes. Or of lacking the
will to go on. Or of acting wilfully or of lacking willpower and so forth. But
the later Wittgenstein would surely ask how philosphers have got from talk of
these things to assertions about something in us called our "will". He would
have said go back to the actual usages and find your meanings there.
> 6.43
>
> If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of
> the world, not the facts; not the things that can be expressed in language.
>
What, the later Wittgenstein would say, is good or bad willing besides some
strange notion of philosophers and theologians (religionists as philosophers)?
And what does it mean to speak of the "limits of the world"?
In fairness, here at least he has been fairly explicit in his Tractarian
exposition earlier so we can see that he means by this to delineate the notion
of the subjective perspective.
But even so, in recognizing that there is no way to really talk about this,
that we can see it and, using various artifices -- both linguistic and
otherwise -- can even hope to point to it at times he shows that we cannot,
finally, refer to it as a referent that is locatable in the world. And, if we
cannot, we may have a way of experiencing the solipsistic notion through other
means (a movie like Inception?) but, as he later points out with his private
language musings, in the end there is no sense in talking about this kind of
thing in any serious philosophical way because it cannot be captured
denotatively -- though poetry and other art froms can prompt in us the sense of
what is being referenced.
Thus here the Tractarian insight seems to partake of the poetic but loses the
purely philosophical which, no doubt, is why so many see in the Tractatus a
different kind of work than just a bit of philosophical exposition. And,
finally, however flawed, that is what it is. And yet we must get beyond it as
Wittgenstein himself did. And not just by pronouncing it nonsense but the good
kind. We must recognize the mistakes inherent in its exposition and start
again, as Wittgenstein did.
> In brief, the world must thereby become quite another, it must so to speak
> wax or wane as a whole.
>
Oy! How does a world wax or wane, as a whole or otherwise? Would the later
Wittgenstein have spoken in this way? I suggest those of us who care look
closely at the later works and answer honestly.
> The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy.
>
Meaning, no doubt that a happy person feels differently about the things around
him or her than the unhappy. Well, yes . . .
> 6.431
>
> As in death, too, the world does not change, but ceases.
>
A useful insight and yes, the world, insofar as it is the world of the given
subject, ceases with the subject. Whatever persists does so if it does but it
is irrelevant to the deceased who is only deceased to those who remain, those
for whom a world still exists because they exist.
> 6.4311
>
> Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.
>
Of course not though dying is and the deaths of others certainly are. It always
depends on what we mean, in this case on what he means by "death".
> If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness,
> then he lives eternally who lives in the present.
>
A very Buddhist insight here.
> Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.
>
Again the subjective picture of existence . . . the sort that leads to
solipsism. I think Wittgenstein's long periods in isolation led him out of his
solipsism of this sort and toward his later mode of thinking. That and his
experiences teaching grammar school in the Austrian back country.
> 6.4312
>
> The temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say, its eternal
> survival after death, is not only in no way guaranteed, but this assumption
> in the first place will not do for us what we always tried to make it do. Is
> a riddle solved by the fact that I survive for ever? Is this eternal life not
> as enigmatic as our present one? The solution of the riddle of life in space
> and time lies outside space and time.
>
Here he rightly points out that the religious notion of eternal life, which is
so often conceived as the perpetuation of some shadow or aspect of the living
person, is confused and would not even be satisfactory were it to be somehow
true. But, of course, sophisticated religious thinking renders a different
picture for us. Buddhism and Hindusim have has the cycle of death and rebirth
at multiple levels of existence ending finally, if it does end, in a
non-existence (conceived either as a merger with a greater reality or as the
negation of all reality). The Judeo-Christian and Muslim ideas are more clearly
anthropomorphic but sophisticated thinkers in these traditions also imagine
this in other terms, e.g., eternal communion with a super mind outside the
realm of space and time. But finally there is nothing that can be said about
this sort of thing. One either imagines something like this, which because
imagined is necessarily inadequate, or one simply shuts off one's thinking
about it and engages in the prescribed practices.
> (It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved.)
>
> 6.432
>
> How the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher. God does not
> reveal himself in the world.
>
Would not the later Wittgenstein ask what would it even mean to say that "God
reveals himself"? Still apparently religious at some level at the end of his
life, he seems to have moved further and further from such orthodox
pronouncements and claims.
> 6.4321
>
> The facts all belong only to the task and not to its performance.
>
I'm not sure what to make of this but presume he is referring, here, to the
idea that real religion is found in its practices (including its language
games) and not in the information ostensibly referenced by religious words and
statements. It is not referencing, on his view, that characterizes religion,
but doing. (By the way, I am not entirely in accord with this as I think he
erred in his understanding of the way religions operate -- from what I have
seen, the denotative dimension of religious words certainly do matter -- if we
are not resurrected as the bible promises, what's the point?)
> 6.44
>
> Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.
>
This is a keen and powerful insight on my view.
> 6.45
>
> The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a
> limited whole.
>
Is such a contemplation even possible? What does it even mean? Note that the
later Wittgenstein stopped referencing the religious experience in his work. I
think that is significant, even if he continued to consider himself a Catholic
of a sort to his dying day.
> The feeling that the world is a limited whole is the mystical feeling.
>
> 6.5
>
> For an answer which cannot be expressed the question too cannot be expressed.
> The riddle does not exist.
>
Also keenly insightful, no?
> If a question can be put at all, then it can also be answered.
>
Assuming he means, of course, answered in theory rather than in fact.
> 6.51
>
> Scepticism is not irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if it would doubt
> where a question cannot be asked.
Here he has found the line of thinking that will mature so dramatically in the
later work. Skepticism is not to be argued for or against but is to be simply
dismissed in terms of discourse because, as he will later see, the very notions
behind it cannot be coherently expressed in words, in our thinking.
>
> For doubt can only exist where there is a question; a question only where
> there is an answer, and this only where something can be said.
>
!
> 6.52
>
> We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the
> problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then
> no question left, and just this is the answer.
>
Insightful again. Here is why the earlier parts of the Tractatus must finally
be seen to fail. They cannot get us to this kind of thinking while
Wittgenstein, himself, wanted desperately to go there. Thus he must finally
surrender to the realization that, if you can't talk about some things (as he
repeatedly maintains in the Tractatus) then the reason must lie finally in our
language (its limits) and not in some gap between its capacity to express and
the world about which those expressions are finally made. Thus, again, to talk
about the limits of our language is not to talk about the limits of our world
but only to talk about the limits of our language!
> 6.521
>
> The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.
>
Here I think we have a glimpse of the deeply troubled soul of this very
sensitive man, the problems of life, his life, being found referenced again and
again in his personal jottings published later as Culture and Value.
> (Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life
> became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted?)
>
Yes. What cannot be said cannot be said and if you are engaged in thinking
about such things then how can you expect to report back what you have
discovered?
> 6.522
>
> There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
>
This is a cryptic statement that yet seems to have a very important point to
it. And is not "the mystical" all the senses we get of things which simply defy
our ability to convey them. My son and his wife, having seen the movie
Inception reported back to me that I had to see it to because it is, my son
assured me, mind blowing. Well I did not find it so though I found it
interesting. I think for those who have not grappled with such things, it would
indeed have the effect my son described. But, having thought about such things
for years, I was not so moved -- and yet I thought it a nicely done film
rendering of that which cannot be adequately articulated: what is real and if
the real isn't real what finally is?
> 6.53
>
> The right method of philosophy would be this: To say nothing except what can
> be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has
> nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone else wished to
> say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no
> meaning to certain signs in his propositions. This method would be
> unsatisfying to the otherâ?"he would not have the feeling that we were
> teaching him philosophyâ?"but it would be the only strictly correct method.
>
I always felt troubled by this claim of his. I don't think it is the right
method at all and, indeed, I don't think he came to think it was either, for
the work he did later on is not that but, rather, to explore linguistic usages
in order to return our attention to actual meanings in our words and actions.
This is NOT just to remind someone that he has given "no meaning to certain
signs in his propositions" though it is that, too. That is, it is a method for
correcting meanings and, thus, for showing WHY the metaphsyical meanings fail.
> 6.54
>
> My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally
> recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them,
> over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed
> up on it.)
>
> He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.
>
And here we come to it. He says I have written all this and now you must see
that it is nonsense, without meaning. But if it is worth reading (as so many of
us think it is and as Wittgenstein himself thought it was worth writing) then
it must have meaning or why would we have bothered with it? Well, is not the
meaning in it that it is to be a mechanism for boosting ourselves onto a higher
plane of understanding? Is not this the mystical to be found in the Tractarian
Wittgenstein?
And yet does not the later Wittgenstein avoid such claims, shy away from
assertions about the mystical in favor of focusing on the here and now or
ordinary language? Again, would the later thinker have tolerated such confused
usages from the younger man?
> 7
>
> Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
>
And so falls the curtain -- until awakening again, Wittgenstein resumed his
journey only now setting his feet upon a somewhat different path. If the
mystic's job is to experience but not speak (because what is experienced on a
certain level is simply inarticulable) does he not finally come to see that the
role of the philosopher is not to be mystical, i.e., to write a kind of logical
poetry, but rather to pay attention to such problems as trouble philosophers
and those who are philosophically inclined in order to show them the way
through to resolution -- as he says in the Investigations, to "shew the fly the
way out of the bottle"?
As noted, I think this has been a useful exercise to follow along with but I
think it would be more useful for those of us who regard Wittgenstein with awe
and respect to study how he changed from the young thinker of the Tractatus to
the wiser head we discover in the Investigations. But I know that this is an
heretical notion for some.
SWM
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