[lit-ideas] Re: "The Austrian Engineer"
- From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:21:53 -0700
I quoted Malcolm
'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.'
Donal responded
And you suggest this implies there was no problem or nothing problematic? (It
does not matter that W did not see a problem at some stage or only saw it at
a later stage: 'objectively', as with the contradiction at the heart of
Frege's work, there was surely a problem).
Walter elaborates
I think Donal's comment here is an important one for how we understand
philosophical argument and the "existence" of philosophical problems. Once we
bestow some sort of privileged authority on the author's own interpretation or
assessment of her texts or accounts we cease doing philosophy and start doing
biography or sociology. (Sometimes, the move commits a form of informal fallacy
- argument from authority.
Donal was not addressing Malcolm's remark that Wittgenstein 'regarded
his former opinion as absurd.' He implies that even if Wittgenstein
didn't see a problem, that doesn't mean there wasn't one. We need no
ghost come from the grave to tell us that philosophers, physicists,
mathematicians, automobile mechanics, etc., often miss things in their
own work. (I offer myself as an example.) What's left out here is any
account of just what the problem was, although it has something to do
with describing simple objects.
Certainly, if I'm discussing something with a real, live person, I could
point out something that I believed he had overlooked; that is, I might
see a problem in something my interlocutor said, even though what he
_said_ was agreed upon by both of us. He might reply that he still saw
none (this is called dialogue, I think), and so on.
A better example might be that of someone, (call her Alice), who said
that as an _astronomer_ (as opposed to a physicist) she hadn't thought
it was her job to account for the apparent retrograde motions of the
planet Mercury. This wouldn't show, of course that Mercury's apparent
behaviour posed no problem for interpreting the solar system strictly in
terms of Newtonian physics.
However, this biographical fact about Alice shows neither that she was
unaware of the problem or that she was aware of it but couldn't solve
it. _Her_ testimony is compatible with either. She is not posing as an
authority on anything.
> We are motivated to think that if someone of the
intellectual stature of a W comes to believe a view is absurd, be it one of his
own past ones or not, then that belief possesses epistemic, justificatory status
or warrant by the mere act of its evincement. But philosophers rarely possess
papal infallibility.)
'Evincement,' is a daunting term. I would disagree with Walter a bit
here. If Aristotle were available, I'd really, really like to get his
views on how practical wisdom is necessary to achieve the virtues _and_
that the virtues are necessary to practical wisdom. I mean, I'd like to
hear him explain his own views more thoroughly. And, I'd like to have
Wittgenstein explicate what he meant, in the Tractatus, by the sense of
a sentence.
No one is an expert on absurdity, but I'd like to suppose that someone
of Wittgenstein's stature knew it when he saw it. I'd like to think too
that he was a better 'authority' on his own work than most other people,
and that to defer to him in this way is not to commit some philosophical
version of the Intentional Fallacy. Most of the informal fallacies are
context-dependent: the very fact that A is an authority on loons, makes
his views on them important. 'This is so because A said it, and he's an
authority,' is a bad argument. 'A is an authority (on loons), and he
said it, so it's likely true,' is not so bad.
Robert Paul,
immersed in Spring
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