If you stare at your hand and say "This is my hand" (or "I know that this is my
hand") aren't you just reporting on a test of your eyesight? W maintained that
if the distinction between the verified and the verifying isn't clear, you're
not dealing with a knowledge claim.
But in certain circumstances, W went on to say, "This is my hand" or "Here is my
hand" IS a verifiable belief, hence a knowledge-claim. I can be mistaken;I can
doubt whether it is indeed mine. As in, after a terrible plane accident I
search for my severed hand and claim to have found it.
Actually, now that I think about it, I only believe he came up with that
example. It may be my own or I read or heard it somewhere.
Walter O
MUN
Quoting Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>:
I am not sure why "Here is a hand" is supposed to be essentially different
from any other empirical proposition. It just happens to be one that is
easily verifiable; I cannot easily verify the location of Salzburg from
where I am sitting but I can always stare at my hand, touch it etc. So the
issue is whether (verified) empirical propositions can supply knowledge.
O.K.
On Tue, May 19, 2015 at 4:52 PM, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Did Wittgenstein do anything wrong?"certainty"
Yes, he did not be grice
-----Original Message-----
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Walter C. Okshevsky
Sent: 19 May 2015 15:09
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: The Devil's Chord
As is so often the case, I'm not quite sure what Speranza is saying (or
why).
But in this case I find myself having to support his (?) claim that there
is nothing dogmatic about W's bedrock or riverbed as we have it in *On
Certainty.*
While a dogmatic belief is one that refuses to learn, riverbed
"propositions" - i.e., "This is my hand" - constitute a form of
that is not verifiable/falsifiable precisely because certainty is notin
epistemic. It is not open to doubt and verification/falsification in the
way that, say, the belief that Salzburg is between Vienna and Munich is
open to question. That is why W exclaimed "Moore doesn't know anything"
response to Moore's hand waving while delivering a lecture at Muttoninterval.
College on a proof of an external world.
Believe it or not.
Walter O
MUN
Quoting dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx:
In a message dated 5/15/2015 11:37:01 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,adapt W's metaphor:
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
"I do not accept that W thinks such "rules" would be "arbitrary". Nor
do I guess the word "dogmatic" is one we will find in W in the
context of this issue or is one which he would find appropriate (to
when our "spade is turned" because it has "hit bedrock" it is not"tritone,"
because it
is a "dogmatic" spade but because it is a tool with limits to what it
can do
[yes - it is the "limits of language" that underlie W's "Remarks on
Colour" as they underlie nearly all his philosophising]) . But of
course I may be mistaken in all this (and in my general view of W as
engaged in examining philosophical problems given the "limits of
language"): perhaps [it] can [be] show[n] that W indeed uses the word
"arbitrary" or "dogmatic" in this context - more than this, perhaps W
does somewhere say "that whatever "rules"
we might teach, as to what is "jarring"or "non-jarring", these rules
will be "arbitrary, dogmatic.."" But I doubt it. If W does say such
things, I would like the actual words quoted. ... I do not think we
can infer any such thing from what [is quoted]."
I'm not sure about Goethe, but I would think Witters was familiar with
the so-called "Devil's Chord", and so, we may also want to consider
(i) to what extent Goethe merely SHOWED (or shew as Anscombe prefers)
things, rather than said them.
(ii) to what extent Witters SHOWED (or shew as Anscombe prefers)
things, rather than said them.
The Devil's Chord seems like a good candidate for what others (not the
Devil I expect) may call jarring.
Although this ratio [45/32] is composed of numbers which are multiples
of
5 or under, they are excessively large for a 5-limit scale, and are
sufficient justification, either in this form or as the tempered
for
the epithet "diabolic," which has been used to characterize the
itself:
This is a case where, because of the largeness of the numbers, none
but a temperament-perverted ear could possibly prefer 45/32 to a
small-number interval of about the same width.
In the Pythagorean ratio 81/64 both numbers are multiples of 3 or
under, yet because of their excessive largeness the ear certainly
prefers 5/4 for this approximate degree, even though it involves a
prime number higher than
3. In the case of the 45/32, 'tritone' our theorists have gone around
their
elbows to reach their thumbs, which could have been reached simply
and directly and non-'diabolically' via number 7.
The name diabolus in musica ("the Devil in music") has been applied to
the interval from at least the early 18th century, though its use is
not restricted to the tritone.
Andreas Werckmeister cites this term in 1702 as being used by "the old
authorities" for both the tritone and for the clash between
chromatically related tones such as F and Fââ¢Â¯, and five years later
likewise calls "diabolus in musica" the opposition of "square" and
"round" B (Bââ¢Â® and Bââ¢Â,
respectively) because these notes represent the juxtaposition of "mi
contra fa".
Johann Joseph Fux cites the phrase in his seminal 1725 work Gradus ad
Parnassum, Georg Philipp Telemann in 1733 describes, "mi against fa",
which the ancients called "Satan in music", and Johann Mattheson in
1739 writes that the "older singers with solmization called this
pleasant interval 'mi contra fa' or 'the devil in music'".
Although the latter two of these authors cite the association with the
devil as from the past, there are no known citations of this term from
the Middle Ages, as is commonly asserted.
However Denis Arnold, in the New Oxford Companion to Music, suggests
that the nickname was already applied early in the medieval music
thirdEnchiriadis.
It seems first to have been designated as a "dangerous" interval when
Guido of Arezzo developed his system of hexachords and with the
introduction of B flat as a diatonic note, at much the same time
acquiring its nickname of "Diabolus in Musica" ("the devil in music").
Because of that original symbolic association with the devil and its
avoidance, this interval came to be heard in Western cultural
convention as
suggesting an "evil" connotative meaning in music.
However, suggestions that singers were excommunicated or otherwise
punished by the Church for invoking this interval are likely fanciful.
At any rate, avoidance of the interval for musical reasons has a long
history, stretching back to the parallel organum of the Musica
In all these expressions, including the commonly cited "mi contra fa
est diabolus in musica", the "mi" and "fa" refer to notes from two
adjacent hexachords.
For instance, in the tritone Bââ¬âF, B would be "mi", that is the
scaleC.
degree in the "hard" hexachord beginning on G, while F would be "fa",
that is the fourth scale degree in the "natural" hexachord beginning on
So one can imagine a 'Lehre' that is composed of rules that 'forbid'
the 'diabolus in music' without having to SAY it but 'show' it.
Cheers,
Speranza
--- Witters, Remarks on Colour: 91. "If there were a HARMONY theory of
colors, it would probably begin with a division of the colors into
different
groups and would FORBID certain MIXTURES or combinations, would allow
others; and it would, like HARMONY theory, not JUSTIFY its rules." 92.
"Can that not shed us some light on the nature [Art] of those
differences between the
colors?" 93. "[We do not say A knows something, B knows the opposite.
But if one replaces "knows" by "BELIEVES," then it is a proposition.]".
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