Re: [Wittrs] more pondering on "(Over)interpreting Wittgenstein"

kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx> · Thu, 15 Mar 2012 17:12:34 -0700

On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 5:30 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Book cover (in the field):
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/6830344528/in/photostream
>
> I continue to work my way through this road map of Biletzki's.  It's
> like a guidebook to the world of Wittgenstein interpretations, and
> cries out for visual diagrams, ala 'Maps of the Mind' by
> Hampden-Turner.

So what does Biletzki think of he Kimberly Cornish speculative science fiction.

Here's what I wrote to Alex (cc Suzanne):

"""
Anat Biletzki pronounces 'Jew of Linz' cheap speculative gossip mas o meno.

I'm more inclined to use Tara's word "sketchy" but still with some appreciation.
"""

Tara is my daughter, last over at Alex's to meet a Nepalese guy who'd
been attending Earlham, a Quaker college.

Alex, for those joining us, stocked my "time capsule" (art deco
shelves) with a large collection of Wittgenstein books, to which I've
been slowly adding.

That pilot I was sketching for the BBC, wherein we used Cornish as a
consultant, as being cast as flashback like episodes in the mind of
one Whitney, a social engineer for Facebook, clambering over the
Oregon high deserts near Prineville, wondering if she might be losing
it.

That way I'm not bound to some literal truth and can play up the
somewhat Wagnering superhero comic book mythos Cornish stirs up, with
WIttgenstein and Hitler arch enemies from the school yard, old recess
foes.

There's sort of a Holmes versus Moriarty flavor, but then with Cornish
undercutting our hero by making fun of his stutter and suggesting
heroics against the Fascists in Spain was somehow wimping out on His
and/or Her Majesty.

I could never follow this twist, just flagged it as where he and I
would apparently part company.  Leave him to his "Special Branch" (not
saying he gets Le Carre though -- and I'm keeping Norman O. Brown,
Julia Child, other OSS).

Still, I think Logicomix already does a good job around Russell and
its time to veer more into Otto Weinenger territory.

We don't have to resolve Whitney's confusion about whether she's a
reincarnation or even believes in that.  An aspect of surrealist
television, tracing to 'Lost' and some others, is the metaphysics are
not permitted to gel -- not enough rules are given (or too many are
broken?) to let a cosmology / weltanschauung solidify -- and that's
OK.

Against such a fragmented backdrop a story gets told.  It's still good
television.

We flash back as if to the days of Titanic, and stand by the graveside
with Wittgenstein's sister, in the rain, as dear Otto is lowered to
his grave **.  I'd give it all a somewhat gothic tinge -- tempting to
give his sister a nose ring (shades of Portlandia).  Maybe Whitney can
have one.

http://bit.ly/xfEgsq  (Titanic, Wittgenstein, Weinenger)

http://wittgensteininskjolden.blogspot.com/2009/03/wittgenstein-in-skjolden-personality.html

Kirby

** there's some thought Hermine Wittgenstein was at Otto's funeral and
might have taken her younger brother.  In any case, it's known that
they corresponded about his writings.  I've come to see him as a young
"shock jock".  Today, Otto might have had his own radio program.

>
> http://www.amazon.com/Maps-Mind-Charts-Concepts-Labyrinths/dp/0020768702
>
> We could subtitle this "A brief tour of the Hive Mind of the
> Wittgenstein scholars" but of course that's a mind with many chambers,
> which would be the point of the diagrams.
>
> I've been reading on how Continental versus Analytic interpretations
> stack up, and that comes across as another signature exercise in how
> to distinguish the two camps.  Like, there's no rule saying you cannot
> talk about Schopenhauer just because your an Analytic.  Rather, it's a
> tell tale sign that you're analytic if, in admiring Wittgenstein, you
> choose to downplay Schopenhauer's influence.
>
> What I've not come across yet is any explicit mention of a noosphere,
> which corresponds to the biosphere much as memes go with genes.
> That's close enough to Holy Spirit to rope in a lot of teleological
> writers, whom I would consider close neighbors with
> transcendentalists, and by extension with the types who might take
> Schopenhaurer more seriously.  Latter day Jungians.  These would be
> your Continentals.
>
> Myself, I've read enough Teilhard de Chardin to be attracted to
> reverse causality, which looks like destiny molding past events to
> insure "the right stuff" happens.  Applied to the history of
> Russell-Frege style logic, one sees the seeds of a future computer
> science already germinating, teaming up with boolean logic, to give us
> today's PyBool (an example of something high level -- like the role of
> "the eye" in Darwinism:  the intermediate stages seem to have few
> evolutionary advantages, indeed the contrary would seem true, and yet
> once a real eye is formed, the ends appear to justify the means
> (reverse causality in a nutshell)).
>
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/17157315@N00/6976463155/in/set-72157629206299498
>
> In my view, the Analytics are less comfortable with wholes governing
> the parts and would prefer to see the logic of the action as reducible
> to the logic of the parts considered more in isolation.  From a
> problem solving perspective, I see little reason to argue against the
> utility of such an approach, given its impressive track record.  It's
> not either/or though.
>
> I guess my question is whether "belief in a noosphere" (or something
> like it) is indeed a simple and direct enough litmus test to divide
> our two camps.
>
> The other remark I have at this time is I'm always amazed by
> interpretations which don't connect "the limits of my world"
> (Tractatus) to its "waxing and waning" (also Tractatus).  They come as
> a package:  solipsism and the eternal state of one's "soul" (as in
> "microcosm").
>
> Analytics do believe in "memes" (if reluctantly) and by that means
> might be brought to appreciate "alchemy" in the form of Hollywood feel
> good movies etc, the power of music to inspire mood shifts. Just
> because you're an Analytic doesn't mean you can't be the designer of
> strong advertising / media campaigns, at least apparently
> sophisticated in ways Continentals appreciate (but aren't sure they
> trust -- and why should they?).
>
> In other words, I think teleological theories come and go in the meme
> pool, as many grammars are simply prone to bubble away in that vein.
> An ability to stand back from "belief" as a kind of spellbound
> fascination (leading to superstition), is one of the promises a
> philosophy may hold out.  "Study me, and you will be able to
> appreciate the efficacy of beliefs without needing to believe them."
> Analytics should feel right at home with such an approach.  "Let
> philosophy be your channel changer."  "Remember your remote."
>
> I think this particular guide book could be abetted by another with
> more of the Wittgenstein and Buddhism lineage (still emerging).  The
> anti-Cartesianism of non-believers (those who don't believe in a
> "cogito" -- except as a kind of sham) receives nourishment from a well
> developed library of dharmas.  I suppose that would come under
> "religion" (one of the chapters), but there's so little to distinguish
> same from philosophical or psychological lineages.  You can wire Zen
> to gestalt psychology and get away with it.
>
> Kirby

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Re: [Wittrs] more pondering on "(Over)interpreting Wittgenstein"

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