[lit-ideas] Re: anti-egalitarianism, more on

  • From: palma <palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 23:32:58 +0200

there is a partial defense, in order to get a real language for philosophy
is somewhat more
complicated & there is a form of radical disagreement on what terms need to
go really technical.
there is indeed no reason to have theories of causality depending upon what
the anglos mean by 'because'.
it is slightly more difficult to be able to give any understanding of
justice without any linking to what people understand by justice and the
second occasion of 'understainding' is pre-theoretical


On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 11:24 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Well, I don't want to go Heideggerian, but such terms as 'being' and
> 'essence' are scarcely meaningful in every-day modern English. They are
> derived from classical Greek, in which they might have had every-day uses
> but even then they were given special meanings by philosophers. Even the
> more translatable terms like truth or justice can scarcely be expected to
> match in their every-day English (or, I suspect German) uses the meanings
> that they were given to them by ancient Greek philosophers. The attempts to
> elucidate terms that were derived from an older language and given
> specialist meanings long ago through their rough renderings in modern
> languages, and by relying on every-day amateur use strike me as seriously
> misguided. We don't tell doctors to analyze ulcus by observing how
> 'ordinary' people use this term in every-day non-medical parlance, so by
> the same token it is unclear to me why philosophers should be expected to
> follow such a method.
>
> O.K.
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 11:01 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> >Still waiting for an interpretation of W.'s statement  that says
>> something meaningful and nontrivial about this.>
>>
>> This is one line of objection to W's "form of life" contention: that in
>> so far as it is true it is "trivial" and not that insightful (Popper, for
>> example, expressed the view that he did not disagree with Investigations
>> but confessed it bored him - "to tears"; and Russell also could not see why
>> people saw important wisdom in Investigations).
>>
>> But there are at least two lines of defence: (1) W admits that in a way
>> he is pointing out the obvious but what this shows is something we are apt
>> to lose sight of when we do philosophy: particularly when we do philosophy
>> that is a search for underlying meaning, we tend to overlook that the
>> "sense" of language must come to an end somewhere and it typically comes to
>> end at the very point at which we use language - so "nothing is hidden" and
>> there is no underlying sense to be exhibited by the philosopher that goes
>> deeper than the sense of language as exhibited by how we use it. So while
>> perhaps obvious, W's view is an important corrective to the mistaken
>> attempt by philosophers to offer some theory or account that seeks to
>> reveal the underlying sense of language when, actually, the sense of
>> language lies (mostly) in the sense it has as it is used
>> non-philosophically. (2) The less obvious aspect to this is when this view
>> of language, where "nothing is hidden" as to its sense, is allied to the
>> view there are "limits of language" such that the philosopher is typically
>> making a mistake of trying to say what cannot be said given those "limits":
>> and where this view gives rise to a therapy to counter the philosopher's
>> temptation pursue questions of meaning beyond the limits that language
>> permits - a therapy that allows us to show where language has sense and
>> then how the philosopher moves from this to something of questionable sense
>> or even to "patent nonsense".
>>
>> Dnl
>> ldn
>>
>>
>>   On Sunday, 15 June 2014, 20:56, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>  As a 'thought experiment', we might imagine the mason and his assistant
>> working together while not talking at all. Let's say that they had a heated
>> argument the previous evening over the assistant's share of the wages, and
>> they are not talking to each other now, but the work still needs to be
>> finished by the deadline. Since the tasks are fairly routine, and they are
>> an old tandem, the assistant knows when the mason needs a brick and when a
>> slab without him saying anything at all. This does not take anything away
>> from their being representatives of human life-form, if that is what is
>> meant, or of a masonry life-style. Still waiting for an interpretation of
>> W.'s statement  that says something meaningful and nontrivial about this.
>> (Where is R.P. ?)
>>
>> O.K.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 9:17 PM, palma <palmaadriano@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> yes, though the man lw would refuse to allow any talk of necessary and/or
>> sufficient conditions, so if asked the question would be fudged by the
>> usual bluster
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 9:11 PM, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  So, perhaps W. does not mean that language is a necessary condition for
>> something being a form of life, but that something having a language is a
>> sufficient condition for it being a form of life. (To give it a charitable
>> interpretation, although it certainly sounds like he is saying that life is
>> defined by language.) Well, computers can use quite a few linguistic
>> expressions nowadays; quite a few more than 'brick' and 'slab,' as the
>> matter of fact. My computer is even capable of sending ambiguous messages
>> like: "The application is not responding; you can close the window, or
>> continue to wait." Is it therefore a form of life ?
>>
>>  To sum up, I don't think that there is any kind of necessary connection
>> between forms of language use and forms of life.
>>
>>  O.K.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 6:53 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >"to imagine a language... is to imagine a form of life." is, in my
>> humble opinion, one of those solemn, semi-mystical pronouncements by W.
>> that do not stand to critical examination even of a superficial
>> sort. Rhododendrons don't have a language, yet are a form of life. On the
>> other hand, a mason and his assistant who have a very simplified and
>> specialized code of communication consisting of a few expressions like
>> 'brick', 'hammer' and the like do not thereby constitute a form of life
>> separate from wider human society. (For one thing, their work belongs to,
>> and makes sense only within, a wider network of economic relations.)>
>>
>>  Unlike some commentators, I take "form of life" as a non-technical
>> expression, at least in Wittgenstein's own hands: while admitting W might
>> have been clearer and his compressed style can be gnomic, the expression "to
>> imagine a language is to imagine a form of life" might be re-written as "to
>> conceive the sense of a language is to conceive of a form of life within
>> which it has that sense". It is a Kantian point:- that sense of what is
>> immediate in language depends on an assumed background that is not 'given'
>> by that immediate language but only against that background can immediate
>> language have the sense it has.
>>
>>  Long ago I posted how a 'slab-brick' language, which might appear to a
>> language for performing tasks with 'named' objects, might turn out to be a
>> language of prayer or of honour to the memory of a deceased builder - how a
>> hidden background, not apparent from the immediate language used by
>> speakers, might entirely change the sense of that immediate language from
>> its sense in the background we assumed. For Wittgenstein this kind of
>> background - the background we might check by making a 'surveyable
>> representation' - is indispensable to the sense of any kind of language;
>> and it is a background that can be seen as linked to a specific "form of
>> life".
>>
>>  As flowers do not have language in W's sense, it is irrelevant that
>> they are a "form of life": that they are a "form of life" (without
>> language) neither refutes nor proves W's contention about how the sense of
>> language correlates with the "form of life" within which it is used.
>>
>>  Nor is W suggesting the builders have a "form of life" distinct from
>> other humans: on the contrary, their slab language makes sense to other
>> humans because humans share a "form of life" within which referring to
>> objects to perform tasks makes sense across widely different cultures and
>> between widely different occupations.
>>
>>  As far as the above goes, it seems to me W's Kantian point is on the
>> right lines and is far from merely mystical. The key (as always with W) is
>> that W also thinks there are "limits of language" such that we cannot
>> express in language the conditions by which language has sense and we can
>> only show them - but we show them only by assuming a "form of life "
>> within which language has the sense it has. It is this doctrine of
>> showing that is perhaps 'the mystical'.
>>
>>  Dnl
>>  ldn
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>   On Sunday, 15 June 2014, 16:58, Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>   "to imagine a language means is to imagine a form of life." is, in my
>> humble opinion, one of those solemn, semi-mystical pronouncements by W.
>> that do not stand to critical examination even of a superficial
>> sort. Rhododendrons don't have a language, yet are a form of life. On the
>> other hand, a mason and his assistant who have a very simplified and
>> specialized code of communication consisting of a few expressions like
>> 'brick', 'hammer' and the like do not thereby constitute a form of life
>> separate from wider human society. (For one thing, their work belongs to,
>> and makes sense only within, a wider network of economic relations.)
>>
>>  O.K.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 4:03 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >As in Wittgenstein's game of chess, the rules serve to constitute the
>> players and pieces.>
>>
>>   Wittgenstein's "game of chess" is offered as an analogy rather than an
>> explanation; and one of the main points W wishes to make is against the
>> possibility of a fully stated explanation of "rules":- W's view is that
>> what we might accept as a "game of chess" is never said by the "rules" [for
>> no "rule", whether of chess or of mathematics or of "grammar", ever says
>> its own sense] but is something that may be shown - shown, for example, by
>> considering what variations on a standard game of chess we might accept as
>> a compatible with it remaining a "game of chess" and what variations we
>> would not so accept, instead saying that what was happening was no longer a
>> "game of chess". [If a dictator played a "game of chess" with blindfolded
>> humans who were shot when 'taken' in the game, we might say this was really
>> a form of sadistic torture or a cruel exercise in caprice rather than a
>> "game of chess", even if it were played according to the "rules" of a
>> normal "game of chess": the dictator's "game of chess" might not have
>> anything like the same sense or play the same role as a standard "game of
>> chess" within our "form of life".]
>>
>>  Given this, it is going too far to say "the rules serve to constitute
>> the players and pieces" for in many senses they do not, and Wittgenstein is
>> alert to the ways they do not; in particular, they do not "constitute"
>> in that the "rules" do not say exactly what counts as a player or a
>> piece for all purposes and all occasions, rather (in Wittgenstein's view)
>> what we accept as a player and piece etc. shows the "rule".
>>
>>  Dnl
>>  Ldn
>>
>>
>>
>>   On Sunday, 15 June 2014, 14:17, Torgeir Fjeld <torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>   its much talk of the subject -- grammatically and policed state
>>
>>  it may be futile blabber
>>
>>  the coming community will be characterized by singularity. and not just
>> any singularity, but any-singularity. singolarita qualunque.
>>
>>  this kind of any-singularity disregards the specificity of singularity.
>> its sole interest is in "unqualified" belonging.
>>
>>  it is NOT established though categories of belonging (being republican,
>> canadian, state-employed, say). it is ALSO NOT established though the
>> absence of such conditions (this is the case with the kind of "negative
>> community" suggested by georges bataille and maurice blanchot [and
>> HEGEL???] -- the community of those without community)
>>
>>  the child at play, the vagabond, the franciscan monk signify forms of
>> life  NOT based on group belonging, NOT based on class, NOT based on
>> rights. they share an approach to life characterized by practice and an
>> ethic of openness. can we describe their life forms without recourse to
>> metaphysical categories (such as subjectivity, rights, class projects)?
>>
>>  the franciscan monk abandoned all claims to property, to rights, and so
>> challenged sacred and political authority. "how can we imagine a form of
>> life, a human life, entirely exempted from the clutches of the law; and how
>> can we imagine a USE OF THE BODY and the world that never materializes AS
>> POSESSION?"
>>
>>  Saint Francis of Assisi insised that the example of the Master should
>> be sufficient and that He alone should serve as guide. It is a claim to a
>> way of life, NOT a doctrine. A life in poverty -- absolute poverty. In
>> stead of property and rights the Franciscans lived by "free use": in
>> accordance with natural law they would freely consume food, drink, wear
>> clothes without ownership. (In the manner of the Master who may not have
>> had ownership of the robe He wore.)
>>
>>  What has this to do with Wittgenstein? What the Fanciscans did was to
>> establish a third element between law (rule, universality) and life
>> (application, particularity), and this is USE (usus) -- practice. As in
>> Wittgenstein's game of chess, the rules serve to constitute the players and
>> pieces. The rules that establish the space of possibilities come about
>> through common practice -- use. Language games are parts of life forms: "to
>> imagine a language means to imagine a form of life."
>>
>>  Mvh / Yours,
>>
>>
>>  Torgeir Fjeld
>> Gdansk, Poland
>>
>>
>>  Blogs: http://phatic.blogspot.com // http://norsketegn.blogspot.com
>> Web: http://independent.academia.edu/TorgeirFjeld
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> palma,  e TheKwini, KZN
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>  palma
>>
>> cell phone is 0762362391
>>
>>
>>
>>  *only when in Europe*:
>> inst. J. Nicod
>> 29 rue d'Ulm
>> f-75005 paris france
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>


-- 
palma,  e TheKwini, KZN












 palma

cell phone is 0762362391




 *only when in Europe*:

inst. J. Nicod

29 rue d'Ulm

f-75005 paris france

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