[lit-ideas] Re: Elementary, Dr. Watson
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:11:46 -0700
I wrote in reply to Donal
He nowhere says that we can never (that it would be logically impossible
to?) describe or give examples of the objects.
Paul Stone asks
But doesn't he sort of, kind of, imply that it would be futile for us
(or at least him) to try?
'I asked Wittgenstein whether, when he wrote the _Tractatus_, he had
ever decided upon anything as an example of a "simple object". His reply
was that at that time his thought had been that he was a _logician_; and
that it was not his business, as a logician, to try to decide whether
this thing or that was a simple or complex thing, that being a purely
_empirical_ matter! It was clear that he regarded his former opinion as
absurd.'
—Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Memoir, p. 86. This conversation
would have been in 1949, when Wittgenstein was visiting the Malcolms, in
Ithaca.
Robert Paul
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