[lit-ideas] Re: EP has left the building (Was: Saying an EP)
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 12:57:11 +0100 (BST)
There has, imvho, been an absence of properly talked-through examples of what
W meant by Eps in TLP. This is perhaps hardly surprising if W provided not
one single such example nor talked it through. Such a possible fact should
still give us all pause I feel.
Though perhaps like a lawyer looking at certain sections of legislation while
realising anything he says might be knocked down in some other section he
overlooked (a risk the TLP?s presentation possibly exacerbates), here are
some short comments ? specifically re objects at the 2 section.
1.1 ?The world is the totality of facts, not of things?
(Pears and McGuinness translation throughout, God help us). Here is one
explanation for this. That ?There is no elephant in my room? may be a fact,
but it is a not a thing: no thing corresponds to it; it is the absence of the
dreaded thing, ?the elephant in my room?, that constitutes the fact. Yet, and
quite rightly from a logical POV, W wants to insist such facts should be seen
as being as much a part of the world conceived as ?the totality of facts? as
?things? usually are.
If this is so, though we might accept the existence or non-existence of a cat
will be part of the ?totality of facts?, it seems far removed from showing
that the cat may be a simple ?object?.
Or is this missing the point of 1.1 completely, or somewhat etc?
As to ?objects?, we start at 2.02 with the claim ?Objects are simple?.
Can a ?cat? can be ?simple object??
Here are some potted comments on the text that someone might wish to explain
away.
2.022 ?It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from
the real one, must have something ? a form ? in common with it.?
Ie. Another ?imagined? world than the actualised world must nevertheless have
something in common with the actualised world ? a ?form?.
2.0233 ?If two objects have the same logical form, the only distinction
between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are
different.?
This, unless we take the ?If? as not implying a genuine possibility, assumes
A. different objects can have the same logical form;
B. they can differ for a different reason than their mere ?external
properties? differ (or even are the same?).
I take ?external properties? to refer to, say, colour.
2.024 ?Substance is what subsists independently of what is the case?.
That is:- objects, since these ?make up the substance of the world? (2.021),
are independent of ?what is the case? ie. ?the world? ? objects are ?the
unalterable form? (2.023), no matter what is ?the case? or ?the totality of
facts?.
2.0251 ?Space, time, and colour..are forms of objects?.
Ie. These mere forms are not objects ? objects are beyond these mere forms.
Of course, this may all rest on my colossal misunderstanding of the text -
but it may be worthwhile to clarify this, if so.
But the question arises: if objects are somehow beyond space, time and colour
? if they are crucially independent of ?what is the case? - surely this
implies they are phenomenally unknowable ?objects? since the only stuff we
can know phenomenally must be known (at least ?as if?) in space or time or
colour.
If they are not phenomenally knowable, how is it right to think that their
content is to be established by science, experience etc.? ? even though the
logician may deign to tell us, from on high as it were, a priori that they
_simply must_ exist.
How, fer feck sake, is a ?cat? or a ?blue dot? etc. an ?object? that subsists
independently of space, time and colour?
Donal
Still In Puzzleland
Hoping not to be passed over in silence
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