[lit-ideas] Re: Jorie Graham and Wittgenstein
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 4 Apr 2004 07:25:48 +0100 (BST)
--- Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > --- S
Before embarking, may I note that a lot of RP's response
does not strike me as obviously directly relevant to challenge the
claim that the "essence" of Wittgenstein is two
doctrines of the unsayable - and the more specific claim that both the
elementary propositions of the TLP and the 'rules' of the PI
are unsayable: their existence can be shown not said.
My new comments marked 'D-'
*I wrote: Nevertheless, 'my propositions' refers to
propositions such as e.g.
6.432 'How things are in the world is a matter of
complete indifference for what
is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.'
This is, strictly
speaking, nonsensical, for it is not a proposition
whose elements can be matched
with elements of the world.
*I wrote: It cannot be resolved into 'names' in
'immediate combination.' This
and similar propositions are elucidatory but
ultimately dispensable.
Donal replies: Well, this idea they are "dispensable"
gives me pause -
especially as we seem to agree that W gave these
nonsensical propositions the
greatest value. He does suggest that they are a ladder
of nonsense we may climb
up on, then discard. But this doctrine of transcending
these propositions
borders on, if
not crosses the line, into some form of mysticism.
*No doubt it does. If this is a problem for the
Tractatus, though, it is a
problem for anyone who wants to limit the kinds of
things that 'can be talked
about,' i.e., meaningfully expressed, to empirical
propositions and the
propositions of mathematics and logic. The Positivists
had to say, 'a
proposition is meaningful only if it can be
empirically verified (etc.),' but of
course in saying this they were not saying anything
empirically verifiable, nor
were they setting forth a proposition of mathematics
or logic. One might say at
least Wittgenstein had the courage of his convictions.
D - Hmm. He did have a courage of some kind of conviction in admitting
his propositions were nonsense though definitively and unassailably true.
Donal explains: In fact, the thesis that what binds
the earlier and later W are
two doctrines of the unsayable could be reworked as
the thesis that what binds
them are two different doctrines fusing a kind of
positivism with a kind of
mysticism: for both doctrines of the unsayable involve
a combination of a
positivistic/sayable and a mystic/unsayable.
*I can follow little of this. The thesis here is
Donal's (although for all I
know it can be found elsewhere, maybe in Popper--?).
How one _fuses_ positivism
(Wittgenstein was no 'positivist') with mysticism is
positively mysterious.
D - Why this is so mysterious is a mystery to me.
You appear to concede that there is a mystical aspect to W's TLP
theory, and it seems to me obvious that it is a positivistic thesis
to identify what can be said sensibly about the world with the
"propositions of natural science". Wittgensteinian scholar David Pears
has, afair, also expressed the view that W brings into combination
a kind of positivism and a kind of mysticism.
D- It is an intriguing combination that perhaps explains the appeal of W's
thought: whether it is sustainable is another matter of course.
D - Popper at fn301, p.180, his Schilpp volumes:
"Wittgenstein ('The riddle does not exist') exaggerated
the gulf between the world of describable ('sayable') facts
and the world of that which is deep and which cannot be said.
There are gradations; moreover, the world of the sayable does not
always lack depth. And if we think of depth, there is a gulf within those
things which can be said - between a cookery book and Copernicus's _De
revolutionbus_ -
and their is a gulf within those things that cannot be said - between some
piece of artistic tastelessness and a portrait by Holbein; and these gulfs
may be far deeper
than that between something that is sayable and something that is not. It is
his facile solution to the problem of depth - the thesis "the deep is the
unsayable" - which unites Wittgenstein the positivist with Wittgenstein the
mystic. Incidentally, this thesis had long
traditional, especially in Vienna, and not merely among philosophers. See the
quotation from Richard Reininger in _LScD_, n.4 to section 30. Many
positivists agreed; for example, Richard von Mises, who was a great admirer
of the mystic poet Rilke."
D -Reininger is there quoted as saying: "Metaphysics _as science_ is
impossible..because although the absolute is indeed experienced, and for that
reason can be intuitively felt, it yet refuses to be expressed in words."
Is this so far away from TLP thinking?
D - Clearly Popper regards Wittgenstein as positivist, in his criterion of
sense as co-terminus with "propositions of natural science", but mystic in
his attitude to what cannot be said according
to this criterion of sense. He also saw this stance as unoriginal within
Viennese tradition.
D - Your assertion that Wittgenstein was no positivist hardly begins to
explain away the clearly positivist elements of TLP - never mind
Wittgenstein's later 'verificationist' phase as detailed in Monk's book. That
Wittgenstein later distanced himself from what the VC
called "Wittgenstein's principle of verification" confirms rather than
refutes the affinities between his TLP views and Logical Positivism. Monk
[p.288] writes: "...despite these later disavowals,
throughout 1930..we find the principle expressed by Wittgenstein in
formulations that sound every bit as dogmatic as those of the VC and of
Ayer...We can, it seems, talk of a 'Verificationist
Phase' of Wittgenstein's thought. But only if we distance the verification
principle from the logical empiricism of Schlick..etc...and place it within
the more Kantian framework of Wittgenstein's 'phenomenological', or
'grammatical' investigations".
D - How much "distance" this puts between W and the VC is surely a matter of
judgment?
D - It seems to me positively mystical to think Wittgenstein's TLP is
something unrelated to 'positivism' where this is a view that takes "the
propositions of natural science" as the core of non-nonsense. We need not
confuse the kind of doctrine of sense which results with
the _attitude_ to non-scientific claims on which Wittgenstein certainly
differed from some Logical Positivists.
D - I have added to Popper's broad comments the specific claim
that both the 'rules' of PI and the elem.props. of TLP cannot
be said only shown. These are not, for all I know, claims P makes.
*About the unsayable: the unsayable isn't coextensive
with 'the mystical.' That
is, what cannot be said but only shown isn't a species
of the mystical. (The
original claim, I think, was that what could not be
said but only shown was 'the
unsayable,' and that it was this 'unsayable' we were
discussing. Das mystische
cannot even be shown.
D - What about 6.522: "There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into
words. They _make themselves manifest_. They are what is mystical."
D - On the face of it this might be read as saying - what cannot be said
['put into words'] ... [at least sometimes] is the mystical. That is, the
mystical is a species of what cannot be said.
D - It might be read more widely as saying that what cannot be said is
co-extensive with the mystical - though it is not an essential part of any
claim I have made to stick to this reading. Still, since the mystical seems
to _make itself manifest_I am curious as to why you insist it "cannot even be
shown".
*I've explained why what cannot
be said but only shown
cannot be said. Simply: if that the form of a
proposition shared its form with
the world could be expressed by that proposition there
would be an endless
regression of such explanatory propositions, so that a
proposition has this
relationship with the world can only be shown. ('This
shows itself.')
D - Hmm. I'm going to skip this point. For now.
* Donal cites part of a letter quoted in Monk's book:
"The main point is the
theory of what can be expressed by props - ie. by
language - (and, which comes
to the same, what can be _thought_) and what cannot be
expressed by props, but
only shown; which, I believe, is the cardinal problem
of philosophy."
*The problem is how to to explain (my word) how
propositions mirror the world,
how the elements of a proposition represent objects in
the world (so that the
whole proposition represents a state of affairs--viz.,
an arrangement of
objects). I don't mean that this is 'the problem of
philosophy,' but that this
requirement led to the 'picture theory,' in which a
proposition is a logical
picture of how the world would be if it were true. A
proposition shows by its
'pictorial' form that it is a picture of such-and-such
a state of affairs, but
this cannot be _said_ but only shown: a proposition
_shows_ how things stand if
it is true and it _says_ that they do so stand.
(4.022) This is the unsayable,
that which cannot be said.
D - Well, this may be among the things that cannot be said: is it the only
one? And isn't it part of the mystical?
*If we wanted to add to this
the 'unsayability' of the
elucidatory propositions, we could, but this is a
different topic.
D - Ah, but this topic is the one of the ones I raised.
Are W's own "elucidatory propositions" sense or nonsense, and is their truth
as nonsense shown rather than said? And are elem.props. 'sayable'. Etc.
*Donal confuses, I think, this conceptual truth about
what would be unsayable if
the picture theory were true, with the 'unsayability'
of Wittgenstein's
'elucidatory' propositions.
D - Despite your suggestion, I don't think I made this confusion.
*This is a confusion
because it is only in the former
case that the saying/showing distinction makes sense.
D - Here we seem to disagree. The showing/saying distinction
seems to me to have much wider application than the picture theory,
and to have such wider application for W.
*The elucidatory propositions, so called, the 'framework,' as it were,
are not unsayable yet
'showable.' They are, strictly speaking, neither. That
they are said at 6.54 to
be 'nonsensical' rules out their being somehow
'showable.'
D - Why does it?
* Propositions are
never 'showable.'
D - Why cannot propositions that are strictly nonsense not be definitively
and unasssailably _true_ in a way that can only be shown not said [because if
it could be said, the propositions would have a sense]? And why is this not
W's position [see W's TLP Preface]?
*He continues: This, I suggest, remained for W the
"cardinal problem of
philosophy".
*'Nonsense,' I argue.
*I wrote: The propositions which 'can be said,' viz.,
'the propositions of
natural science,' and the 'factual' propositions of
ordinary language ... are
neither dispensable nor nonsensical, and it does not
follow that because 'my
propositions' in the foregoing sense are ...unsayable,
that atomic propositions,
the ultimate residue of the 'analysis' of propositions
are unsayable: 'The
simplest kind of proposition, an elementary
proposition, asserts the existence
of a state of affairs.' [4.21]
Donal replies: It does not necessarily follow, but nor
does it necessarily
follow that it is not the case.
*To say that P does not entail Q _is_ to say that P
doesn't entail Q. so, I am
lost here. Perhaps Donal means that it might be true
that the elementary
propositions are unsayable but not for that reason.
However, in what he wrote
earlier, he did give just that reason, or appeared to.
D - This has been covered at some length elsewhere. I did not
say P entails Q, but I do suggest they are all of a piece.
*He continues:
The open question, which your comment and quotation do
not resolve, is whether
an "elementary proposition" is *sayable*. If so, one
should be able to give an
example - to *state* one. No?
*If someone wants to argue that although 'the simplest
kind of proposition, an
elementary proposition, asserts the existence of a
state of affairs,' such a
proposition is unsayable, then I have no response.
D - Oh dear, because that is what I am arguing: certainly as a possibility,
as an open question [on which perhaps W and the TLP are unclear].
I have tried to explain elsewhere that to say x asserts the existence of y is
not necessarily to say either x or y may be stated or said or captured in
language: it may be impossible to do this even though x must exist and its
existence must involve asserting y.
*However:
*[4.25] 'If an elementary proposition is true, the
state of affairs [it depicts]
exists: if an elementary proposition is false, the
state of affairs does not
exist.' [4.26] 'If all elementary propositions are
given, the result is a
complete description of the world. The world is
completely described by giving
all elementary propositions, and adding which of them
are true and which false.'
D - Below you offer a specific and plausible argument for the
sayability of elem.props. which I try to address.
*I take it that a description of the world is a
'logical picture' of it, and
that insofar as it is, the proposition(s) in question
can be said. Arguing
against this--but this is not your argument--might be
that elementary
propositions are characterized as 'names in immediate
combination.' Arguing for
it, is not only what I just laid out, but the claim
that 'It is a sign of a
proposition's being elementary that no [other]
elementary proposition
contradicting it.'
D - As you point out, and as Ramsey I think also did, this last claim
created difficulties for W's overall theory. So that in 'Some Remarks
on Logical Form' W abandoned the claim that elem.props. are independent.
The question is how this bears on the sayability of elem.props...
*[4.22] Why does this support the
claim that such propositions
are 'sayable'? Because in 6.3751, we have 'For
example, the simultaneous
presence of two colours at the same [point] in the
visual field is impossible,
in fact logically impossible. ...(It is clear that the
logical product of two
elementary propositions can be neither a tautology nor
a contradiction. The
statement that a point in the visual field has two
different colours at the same
time is a contradiction.)'
*So, why is _this_ relevant? Because, it was a
_problem_, and Wittgenstein saw
it as a problem, as to how it could be true that [1]
one elementary proposition
can't contradict another, _and_ that [2] 'the
statement that a point in the
visual field has two different colors _is_ a
contradiction.
D - A problem he later attempted to resolve by abandoning [1].
* One might reasonably
infer from this that he believed that something like
'x is blue,' had the form
of an elementary proposition--if not, he would have
seen no conflict.
D - One might reasonably infer this, but it does not strictly follow.
D - Monk writes, p.273, " In the _Tractatus_ it is claimed that
atomic propositions are logically independent of one another, with
'This is red' quite clearly _not_ being independent of 'This is blue'", then
'This is red' could not be an elem.prop. "...W had appealed to the analysis
of colour in terms of the velocities of particles as a way out of this
difficulty".
D - The gist of my reply is this:- that W's problem here is not to save 'This
is red' as an elem.prop.; for by appealing to its further analysis in terms
of velocities, W is making it clear that 'This is red' is not itself an
elem.prop. In other words, W did not believe 'This is red' or 'This is blue'
were elem.props, since they were capable of further analysis.
D - His problem is to explain how these non-elem.props can contradict
logically without the elem.props into which they may be analysed also
contradicting logically, and thus not being logically
independent of each other.
D - I admit this reply may be quite mistaken. But it is an answer. 'This is
red' is simply not atomic enough to be an elem.prop. But even if we concede
colours are 'complex' rather than 'atomic' or 'simple', we still
have the problem of explaining how the elem.props into which they might be
analysed are logically independent of any other elem.props. - a problem that
the apparent mutual exclusivity of 'colour ascriptions' throws up.
D - I should repeat, I am not necessarily claiming that W had a definite view
as to whether elem.props. could be said or not,
or that his thinking does not exhibit any confusion on the point. I am
suggesting they turn out not to be sayable - no examples can be given.
D - He later realised [Monk p.330] that the idea of elem.props was
unworkable; and perhaps that he had not fully worked out its implications
earlier? He and Russell had, W wrote, expected to find "possible atomic
propositions, by logical analysis...
And we were both at fault for giving no examples of atomic propositions or of
individuals".
D - This might be taken as evidence that W thought EP's sayable; but it may
also be taken as a confession that misled by his programme of logical
analysis W had simply brushed the issue aside, not completely - but enough
to be blind as to the problem of giving examples and what
this meant for the characterisation of EPs. He took it that EPs exist and
then worked on that assumption: their characterisation was something that
might be filled in more later.
*So, yeah,
I'll say that 'Blue, here,' has the form of an
elementary proposition, even
though 'Blue here and red here,' do not (on his
initial, unsatisfactory account)
contradict each other, a claim which he later saw as
incompatible with 6.3751.
What this yields, if there is a conflict, is that
'Blue here,' e.g., is an
elementary proposition, one that someone might assert.
(He's already said that
they are assertible.)
D - I suggest neither 'Blue here' nor 'Red here' are atomic enough
to be EPs: blue and red are 'complex', not atomic terms. The question
remains:- how to explain how these colours exclude each other without the
EPs into which they may be analysed also excluding each other, and how these
EPs could exclude each other while being logically independent?
D - W saw the question, as 6.3751 perhaps shows:
but only eventually realised he had no good answer within the
TLP framework.
That's it for now.
Sunday Best,
Donal
Ps.My previous post resending another post was an accident.
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