[lit-ideas] Re: The Wittgenstein Tautology -- as identified by Torgeir Fj...
- From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 05:20:36 -0800 (PST)
Regarding "The boss is the boss", it is or is not a
tautology depending on whether you understand it as
B = B
or
B(b)
latter meaning the boss has the property of being the
boss, that is being in charge. Roland Barthes wrote,
and later regreted writing, a book on political use of
similar tautologies ("Boys will be boys") where he
basicly stated that the rhetorical use of above kind
example is to argue for B(b) and give B = B as a
justification.
I'll say nothing of Tractatus, or Wittgenstein and
body language until I've unpacked my books (I just
moved) but there is if memory does not fail me quite
an interesting discussion on that in Richard
Shusterman's
Practicing Philosophy.
Btw, "Wovon mann nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss
mann schweigen." can be sung. Check
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/%7Ertp1/nordic/music/uusi/numminen.html
Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland
--- Robert Paul <Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> If someone asks, where the boss gets off asking her
> to do something she hadn't
> anticipated and finds burdensome, we might reply,
> 'The boss is the boss.'
>
> If the complainer says that she _knew_ that (for
> what else could the boss be?)
> she hasn't understood the import, let alone the
> implicature of the reminder. One
> could always take refuge in the claim that these
> words don't, strictly speaking,
> merely mean that the boss is the boss, but something
> else instead, viz., that
> the boss has the proper standing to require this
> work done--which may seem a bit
> tautological too, but not all the way tautological,
> if you see what I mean. But
> that one feels the need to take refuge there may
> simply show that one hasn't
> understood the original utterance, which is
> perfectly all right just as it is.
>
> Tractatus 7: 'Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber
> muB man schweigen.'
>
> Now it will be clear, at least to Richard Henninge,
> and some others, that the
> McGuinness-Pears rendering of this as
>
> 'What we cannot speak about we must consign to
> silence.'
>
> is not a _literal_ translation. The 1922
> translation, by C. K. Ogden, 'Whereof
> one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,' is
> closer to the original:
> whether it is closer to the spirit of the original,
> I cannot say. Someone--F. P.
> Ramsey?--once said, 'If it can't be said, it can't
> be said, and it can't be
> whistled, either.'
>
> To repeat: I see this passage as a reminder that we
> should not, having
> understood from 6.54 that the framing propositions
> of the Tractatus cannot be
> 'said' (for they do not have a sense), keep trying
> to do philosophy, i.e., keep
> trying to say things like them. Thus I see
> Wittgenstein in the Tractatus, as
> being _very_ unlike the Logical Positivists, who
> kept right on making
> pronouncements which, in light of their own
> criterion of meaning, were
> meaningless.
>
> As for 'can/cannot' referring only to 'physical'
> possibility/impossibility, one
> should try to identify the greatest prime number,
> and see how much an appeal to
> the material world has to do with that.
>
> It would not be misleading to understand Tractatus 7
> as saying, in effect, that
> one must stop trying to do philosophy as philosophy
> is commonly conceived, an
> injunction that is in keeping with 6.53:
>
> 'The right method of philosophy would be this: To
> say nothing except what can be
> said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e.
> something that has nothing
> to do with philosophy: and then always, when someone
> else wished to say
> something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that
> he had given no meaning to
> certain signs in his propositions. This method would
> be unsatisfying to the
> other -- he would not have the feeling that we were
> teaching him philosophy --
> but it would be the only strictly correct method.'
> [Ogden trans.]
>
> Robert Paul
> The Reed Institute
>
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