[lit-ideas] Re: Philosophical Investigations online - amplification re PI
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:54:02 -0700
Phil wrote
>The issue is not the rules, which can be clearly articulated,
but rather their use.>
to which Donal replied
Phil puzzles me by earlier asking for clarity where I have been very
clear and indeed have used italics to identify a key tenet that provides
a fundamental continuity between TLP and PI: /the sense of 'what is
said' is never said in 'what is said/ etc.
In the Tractatus, the sense of a proposition is how things would be if
it were true.
[From the C. K. Ogden translation <http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5740>
4.022 The proposition shows its sense.
The proposition shows how things stand, if it is true. And
it says, that they do so stand.
4.023 The proposition determines reality to this extent, that one only
needs to say “Yes” or “No” to it to make it agree with reality.
It must therefore be completely described by the proposition.
A proposition is the description of a fact.
As the description of an object describes it by its external
properties so propositions describe reality by its internal prop-
erties.
The proposition constructs a world with the help of a logical
scaffolding, and therefore one can actually see in the proposition
all the logical features possessed by reality if it is true. One can
draw conclusions from a false proposition.
4.024 To understand a proposition means to know what is the case, if
it is true.
(One can therefore understand it without knowing whether
it is true or not.)
One understands it if one understands its constituent parts.
[sections skipped]
4.031 In the proposition a state of affairs is, as it were, put together
for the sake of experiment.
One can say, instead of, This proposition has such and such
a sense, This proposition represents such and such a state of
affairs.
Now this tenet means that we can perhaps have rules that seem "clearly
articulated" or whose sense is clear. But, and it is a fundamental but
for W, their sense is not /said/ in 'what is said' but can only be
shown. So all the apparent clear articulation or expression of "rules"
is beside the point and philosophically deceiving if we think 'what is
said' contains the sense of the "rules".
I don't recognize anything of what Wittgenstein says in this. He nowhere
explicitly says it, nor does this 'tenet' arise from the pages like an
explanatory mist. His discussion of rules and rule following is long,
interesting and complicated. It begins at §201, gets pushed aside at
§243 (which most people believe is the beginning of the Private Language
Argument) and is taken up from time to time after that. Wittgenstein
wrestles with various problems about rule following, acting in
accordance with a rule, and agreement, as it it pertains to these
problems. It's fairly obvious that he himself is puzzled about much of
this. He gives a number of examples to consider; no one of them
paradigmatic.
We might argue out a case to see W's POV here: take the rule 'for every
number add 2 and then for that number add two' and then ask how "what is
said" determines its sense?
Why should we do this, when much richer examples are right there in the
text? That Wittgenstein has a single 'point of view,' which would become
clear, did we only consider the 'sense' (sic) of the 'add two' rule,
and, once clear, would allow me to stop doing philosophy when I feel
like it, is an ever-receding fiction
Right now, it's too painful for me to continue typing, so I won't.
['Thank God,' says Adriano.]
Robert Paul
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