[Wittrs] Re: How Much of Wittgenstein I is Repudiated by Wittgenstein II?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:05:52 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>
> .. I think this is a difficult subject, Stuart. I haven't been following
> everything with Cayuse, but one must take great care here. Firstly,
> Wittgenstein surely did remove large segments out of his engine wholesale, to
> be specifically replaced by a new sort of motor -- but whether the vehicle is
> an upgrade or a repudiation is really a matter for the marketing. [Side note:
> must be auto simile week].
>
> Let me say this another way. I would be careful relying upon quotes of what
> Ludwig said about his work to establish any substantive points. Case in
> point: although it is true that he did admit to "grave mistakes" in his
> earlier work, it is also true that he regularly had doubts about his later
> work, and he admitted that it would be difficult to follow because it had
> "egg shells" of the old view sticking to it. I personally do not view
> Wittgenstein II as a repudiation of Wittgenstein I. I see it as a
> substantial upgrade. Sort of like going from Dos computers to whatever they
> have now.
>
I also don't think he wholesale repudiated (if we must put it that way). But I
think there were very dramatic changes and it pays for us to give attention to
that. Otherwise we aren't taking him at his word but reading into his thoughts
our own admiration of him. We want to say he was always just as we find him at
the end, always right. But that can't be since he, himself, acknowledged "grave
mistakes" and his shift from the way he approached things in the Tractatus to
his later approach, exemplified in the Investigations, unsettled many including
Russell as Russell notes in those passages I posted nearby! That shift marked a
dramatic break from the Wittgenstein who fit in with the Russellian
philosophical project. There is a reason Russell describes them as falling out
of intellectual sympathy in later years.
Moreover, it's clear enough that Wittgenstein abandoned not only certain ways
of talking but certain ways of depicting things when we compare his later to
his earlier work. What then do we think he was describing as his "grave
mistakes"? Though he wasn't precise in that preface, surely the words and
strategies and claims he departed from in the Tractatus must be seen to be that
or else why did he not persevere with them? Certainly he abandoned the
metaphysical construction he so carefully built in the Tractatus.
Even more, though, we need to look at him in his earliest days, as shown in
Russell's comments. THAT Wittgenstein was clearly an early and less developed
version, Wittgenstein 1.0 to the later 2.0 or 3.0 model we have in the
Investigations and On Certainty (to again borrow a metaphor). Surely the later
man would have had little patience with the younger had he been in Russell's
shoes, not least because he tossed out the old Frege-Russell approach to
philosophy that he was working within when he first came to Russell.
I think it's a great error to so revere him that we want to embrace him en toto
despite his own clear statements of disavowal concerning his earlier thinking.
We must not let our awe or reverence for the man and his work turn him into an
idol and us idolators!
> Here's what I think should be focused upon. You ask yourself what are the
> outcomes (the stakes) of each of Wittgenstein's views? In each system of
> thought, what are you allowed to do with language? What can be said and not
> said? What must we be silent of? What is nonsense in each system?
>
Do you not think part of his point in the PI was to abandon the "system" of the
Tractatus wholesale? Indeed, his whole approach changes in the later work.
Instead of the carefully laid out picture in numbered paragraphs forming a
cohesive whole with all sorts of claims about logic and knowledge carefully
incorporated, he gives us in the PI numbered paragraphs that look at cases,
that question and explore and seek insights on specific questions. No longer
have we a logical edifice telling us what we can and cannot know, how the world
is. Instead we have a free ranging set of carefully examined examples aimed at
getting us to see things in new ways and break out of old intellectual logjams.
The Tractatus is interesting but Wittgenstein himself left it behind. Do we not
do him a disservice by trying to reclaim what he discarded?
> When you ask these questions, what you will find is that the new creature
> really does a hell of a lot of what the old one did, just with a different
> way of doing it. (And, of course, with different winners and losers --
> different stakes). One way of summing this up might say that Wittgenstein I
> was concerned with demarking nonsense (and the unspeakable) whereas
> Wittgenstein II was concerned with demarking senselessness and confusion.
> Note the subtle difference:
> nonsense versus pointlessness.
I think it's better to see it this way: in both periods Wittgenstein ws
concerned to delineate what we could hope to know from what we could not (thus
a common thread throughout). In the earlier period he thought this could be
done via logic to build a metaphysical construct of what was, finally, knowable
and mark off where we could not go. In his later period he saw the futility of
that (the "grave mistakes" in that approach) and, realizing that our ideas are
controlled by how we use language rather than the formal structure of logic
(which, in the end, is just another language game), he redirected his efforts
to show what could be sensibly understood (what could be said intelligibly)
toward identifying the ways in which we allowed our language to confuse us.
So yes, there is a common thread but no, you cannot have it both ways and
Wittgenstein himself came to see that. To embark on the new path he had to
discard the older one. You cannot do philosophy by demolishing muddles if you
also spend your time constructing them (building ladders to climb up only to
kick them away). Once we understand things as he came to see at the end, there
are no ladders to build and kick away. There is only the instant of seeing
clearly.
> The former is the result of an algebra for policing these things -- it comes
> from a rule -- the other is the result of showing someone "why bother" on
> their own terms. Wittgenstein II doesn't need to invent an algebra to police
> language or to constitute meaning; he'll simply allow language and meaning to
> be whatever they can be in a person's behavior -- but then he will comment
> retrospectively upon how inadequate the offering was (under the laws of the
> person's own making).
>
> My point is really very simple. Whether any position, X, is repudiated by
> Wittgenstein is a function of how that X fits in the
> new way of thinking. Some of the old X's may still fit.
Yes, I think that is a fair point and is exemplified by the fact that
Wittgenstein was from the beginning concerned with the same thing understanding
by way of getting clear on what was intelligible and what was not.
> And among those that do, some may also have been required to have shed some
> of their baggage or their containers, so to speak. Imagine someone telling
> you that you had to move to a new house. What a lovely time it would be to
> take with you only what you could and leave behind the stuff not worth
> moving. And when you are in your new home, do you treat it as a repudiation
> or a "moving along." All that has happened is that Ludwig has moved along.
>
> Regards.
>
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
As you can see, I think that's a mistaken view but then, as John Wisdom might
have said in his heyday, 'that's what makes horse races.'
SWM
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