--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "J D" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:

> Did you come across this:

> (from PI pt. II)

> One judges the length of a rod and can look for and find some method
> of judging it more exactly or more reliably. So--you say--what is
> judged here is independent of the method of judging it. What length
> ...
> What "determining the length" means is not learned by learning
> what length and determining are; the meaning of the word "length"
> is learnt by learning, among other things, what it is to determine
> length.

The wording is a bit awkward. But, if I am correctly understanding
Wittgenstein's point, then I agree with it. In particular, the point
made in that last sentence is what I was using when I implied that
"true by virtue of empirical practices" is an alternative way of saying
"true by virtue of the meanings of the terms used."

> (For this reason the word "methodology" has a double meaning. Not
> only a physical investigation, but also a conceptual one, can be
> called "methodological investigation".)

I used "empirical practice" rather than "empirical methodology" in an
attempt to avoid some of the ambiguity associated with "methodology."

> and

> (from OC)

> 314. Imagine that the schoolboy really did ask "and is there a table
> there even when I turn round, and even when no one is there to see
> it?" Is the teacher to reassure him--and say "of course there is!"?

I'm not quite sure why you introduced this. But let's get to the nitty
gritty:

> 318. 'The question doesn't arise at all.' Its answer would
> characterize a method. But there is no sharp boundary between
> methodological propositions and propositions within a method.

> 319. But wouldn't one have to say then, that there is no sharp
> boundary between propositions of logic and empirical propositions?
> The lack of sharpness is that of the boundary between rule and
> empirical proposition.

I certainly see a sharp distinction between propositions of logic and
empirical propositions. To avoid ambiguity, let me restate that as: I
see a sharp distinction between propositions of mathematics (includes
mathematical logic) and empirical statements. That's why I don't like
the way the word "proposition" is often used in the philosophy
literature.

I'm not sure whether I am agreeing or disagreeing with Wittgenstein
there. Continuing with your quoted text, we see:

> One almost wants to say "any empirical proposition can,
> theoretically, be transformed...", but what does "theoretically"
> mean here? It sounds all too reminiscent of the Tractatus.

So one can perhaps presume that Wittgenstein had some of the same
reservations about how "proposition" is used in the literature.

Regards,
Neil

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

Neil,

No major disagreements but a few clarifications.

1. My purpose in sharing that material was to assist you in determining whether we were talking past one another when I mentioned "methodological propositions". I wanted to provide the context of Wittgenstein's usage. And my own.

2. Translating "Satz" as "sentence" in some contexts and "proposition" in others is a tricky issue for Wittgenstein translators. Since he did follow the distinction in some of his writings and lectures in English, the translations are well motivated but sometimes underdetermined.

3. "Methodological propositions" so-called would be verbal expressions of rules within a methodology. And they could be called "true" to the extent that they accurately reflect the practice. But calling them "true" could be misleading if it suggests that rules, per se, can be true or false, i/e/ that we can justify our grammar by reference to reality. Because that is misleading, it would also be misleading to call them "propositions" since that may suggest bipolarity.

4. The boundary he is suggesting is not a sharp one, the boundary between rules and empirical propositions, is blurred by such things as the way that symptoms and criteria determining the applicability of an _expression_ can shift (as per BB and PI) and that sometimes what has been treated as a well-supported empirical claim can come to be treated as a rule (as per PI and OC).

JPDeMouy

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "J D" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:

> 1. My purpose in sharing that material was to assist you in
> determining whether we were talking past one another when I mentioned
> "methodological propositions".

We were, but the miscommunication seems to have not been very serious.

> 3. "Methodological propositions" so-called would be verbal
> expressions of rules within a methodology. And they could be called
> "true" to the extent that they accurately reflect the practice. But
> calling them "true" could be misleading if it suggests that rules,
> per se, can be true or false, i/e/ that we can justify our grammar
> by reference to reality.

What had turned up in a google search for "methodological propositions"
were comments and skepticism by Wittgenstein with respect to using such
propositions as foundational (in the sense used in epistemology). Your
comment above about "justify" seems to indicate that is also your
concern. Personally, I am not at all interested in foundationalism, so
I see the point as moot.

In any case, I have no disagreement with your statement "3." quoted
above.

Regards,
Neil

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

... Recently, one issue that has been raised on the list is to what extent the Tractatus supports the requirement of empirical verification for propositions that are not analytic (tautological). What are the arguments against the idea? The argument for it are as follows:

2.12     A picture is a model of reality
2.131   In a picture the elements of the picture are the representatives of objects
2.14     What constitutes a picture is that its elements are related to one another in a determinate way
2.15     The fact that the elements of a picture are related to one another in a determinate way represents that things are related to one another in the same way 
2. A picture is a fact (2.141)
3. A logical picture of the facts is a thought (3)
4. In the proposition the thought is expressed perceptibly through the senses (3.1)
4.01     A proposition is a picture of reality
4.023   A proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yes or no.
6-something. the correct method of philosophy is to say nothing at all but the propositions of natural science ...  (yada yada)

Add to this the invention of truth-tables.

Given all of this, it would be correct, would it not, to say of any utterance that is not an analytic proposition, that it must be empirically verifiable for it to be a "proposition?"  So if I say "God is in heaven," this cannot ever be a proposition even though it seems to have the format of one (that X resides in the place you can't see). It must reduce to a verifiable statement of natural science -- is that a correct reading? 

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:
>...
> Given all of this, it would be correct, would it not, to say of any utterance that is not an analytic proposition, that it must be empirically verifiable for it to be a "proposition?"  

I don't follow.

What then do we make of sentences like:

1. The world is all that is the case.

Can this be taken as analytic?

Josh

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 8:06 PM, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@yahoo.com> wrote:
> [sending this again to clear up a few things -- sw]
>

<< SNIP >>

> Devoutly-felt spiritual statements must be regarded as per-se erroneous under Tractarian thought -- not because God is false or absent -- but because the form of life cannot language outside of itself (the extra-worldly cannot be understood). But non-devoutly felt metaphysics of the sort not revealed to us must be perpetually regarded as noise.
>
> You on board here, J?
>
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> Assistant Professor
> Wright State University
> Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
> SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
> Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
>

Hi Sean --

You were addressing J, not me, so please forgive my butting in here.

I just wanted to add my appreciation for recent postings about the
Tractatus, including those remarks to the publisher about "gassing"
(lets remember that context: letter to a publisher), and all your
thinking around a taxonomy of nonsense varieties, ending up narrowing
the categories to approximately two.

I also want to register my suggestion that you not lose sight of the
question: where does the Tractatus itself fit in to your taxonomy,
i.e. what kind of nonsense is it?

Of course that's somewhat begging the question (to ask "what kind of
nonsense?"), but not really, because Wittgenstein has already given
his endorsement for the view that we consign the Tractatus to the
nonsense side of the fence (after taking the time to appreciate how
come).

This isn't a work in the realm of true/false. Depicting the
relationship of language to the world is actually not the proper
business of language. Depicting the world is its proper business.

The Tractatus is an attempt to pry apart what, at a logical limit, is
a non-dual enterprise, with its author not trying to conceal this
point. The author has a consistent intent, an agenda: to move from
disguised to patent nonsense.

To bring this up is not to negate any of the points you were making.
I'd simply suggest we fit the Tractatus itself into your "bona fide
_expression_ of an aesthetic viewpoint" category, the kind of nonsense
of which Wittgenstein approved.

He isn't apologetic about his work, on the contrary is coming off as
victorious in the sense of feeling he's made a sincere and worthwhile
contribution to the literature. Don't you agree?

The plot twist, however, is that Wittgenstein later did come to have
aesthetic problems with the TLP. He wanted to update his name and his
image with a second take, another angle. We could say he reinvented
himself and made a comeback.

I'm not trying to trivialize his achievement in describing his career
(trajectory) in those terms. I think a mark of a great philosopher is
an ability to shed one's own skin as it were. We do not begrudge him
either attempt. Applause in both cases. And in some ways the
philosophy is all the more clear because of the contrast (TLP + PI is
better than either on its own).

I don't think he repudiated the Tractatus because he thought it was
false. That's the trap one falls into if one thinks it was true. The
true/false world is where sense is being made. That's not his world
when doing philosophy.

When all your theses are true (alluding to the PI, recent threads),
you're in some other realm (the terms "exotic" and "esoteric" come to
mind -- but not "aloof" and not "idle").

In addition to your "varieties of nonsense" taxonomy (allusion to
William James), let's give a nod to "false" as a category.

You've got "nonesense", usually considered inferior to "true", but
then you also have "false", also less valued than "true".

What do we think about "false" versus "nonsense," which is worse?

In asking the question that way, I'm inviting naive moral judgments
and that's probably not constructive at face value.

However, I do think your somewhat Nietzschean endeavor to "rank"
different kinds of nonsense might be enhanced with some consideration
of "false" (misinforming, misleading, incorrect) as a separate
category.

To be more specific, we might take your two categories of nonsense and
say the lesser kind ("gassing") is nonsense tinged with falsehood,
precisely because it's not logically pure enough to admit it's not
truth. Make any sense?

Kirby
=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/

Wittgenstein does not try to refute skeptical doubts about the existence of an external world so much as he tries to sidestep them, showing that the doubts themselves do not do the work they are meant to do. By suggesting that certain fundamental propositions are logical in nature, Wittgenstein gives them a structural role in language: they define how language, and hence thought, works. "Here is a hand" is an ostensive definition, meaning that it defines the word by showing an example. That statement explains how the word hand is to be used rather than making an empirical claim about the presence of a hand. If we begin to doubt these sorts of propositions, then the whole structure of language, and hence thought, comes apart. If two people disagree over whether one of them has a hand, it is unclear whether they can agree on anything that might act as a common ground on which they can debate the matter. Communication and rational thought are only possible between people when there is some sort of common ground, and when one doubts such fundamental propositions as "here is a hand," that common ground shrinks to nothing. Skeptical doubts purport to take place within a framework of rational debate, but by doubting too much, they undermine rationality itself, and so undermine the very basis for doubt.

Behind Wittgenstein's belief that "here is a hand" is an odd proposition, either to assert or to doubt, lies his insistence on the importance of context. The very idea of doubting the existence of the external world is a very philosophical activity. A philosopher can doubt away, but it is impossible to live out this sort of skepticism. In essence, skepticism only has a foothold when we abstract it from the activity of everyday life. Similarly, skepticism gains its foothold by doubting propositions like "here is a hand" when these propositions are abstracted from the activity of everyday life. According to Wittgenstein, a proposition has no meaning unless it is placed within a particular context. "Here is a hand," by itself, means nothing, though those words might come to have meaning in the context of an anatomy class or of a parent teaching a child to speak. However, once we give propositions a particular context, the doubts cast by a skeptic lack the kind of generality that would throw the very existence of the external world into doubt. Only by removing language from all possible contexts, and hence rendering language useless, can skepticism function.

SW,

I believe it may be helpful to examine the entire paragraph from Wittgenstein's letter to Ficker:

"The book's point is an ethical one. I once meant to include in the preface a sentence which is not in fact there now but which I will write out for you here because it will perhaps be a key to the work for you. What I meant to write, then, was this: My work consists of two parts: the one presented here plus all that I have not written. And it is precisely this second part that is the important one. My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits. In short, I believe that where many others today are just gassing, I have managed in my book to put everything firmly into place by being silent about it. And for that reason, unless I am very much mistaken, the book will say a great deal that you yourself want to say. Only perhaps you won't see that it is said in the book. For now, I would recommend you to read the preface and the conclusion, because they contain the most direct _expression_ of the point of the book."

Now, where he writes, "My book draws limits to the sphere of the ethical from the inside as it were, and I am convinced that this is the ONLY rigorous way of drawing those limits," I would agree that the most natural way to read "from the inside" would be as "from within the ethical sphere". But I want to impress upom you how odd (which is not to say "incorrect"!) such a reading is in the wider context.

First, the Tractatus doesn't say much about ethics.

Second, Wittgenstein here says that he had "put everything firmly into place by being silent about it". How could being silent about it fit with drawing the limits from within the sphere of the ethical? (This is not a rhetorical question.)

Third, in the preface, one of the parts to which Wittgenstein referred Ficker, we find, "It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense."

One way to address this oddness is to suppose that Wittgenstein was simply being imprecise. This is correspondence after all. And Ficker would find things clarified by actually reading the parts Wittgenstein suggested.

But perhaps we could also distinguish between being within the sphere of the ethical and using language (in an attempt) to talk about ethics. Couldn't the distinction between saying and showing help here? He is not saying anything about ethics but showing something by the "rigorous" approach he takes - by not "gassing".

But we should never forget that the Tractatus itself is nonsense according to Wittgenstein. And it isn't (at least for the most part) nonsense dealing with the sacred or other-wordly. Or rather, if it's nonsense, it doesn't deal with anything: but it doesn't even present the appearance of discussing other-worldly things. It is nonsense that presents the impression of largely being about about language, logic, and metaphysics of a kind that isn't particularly religious at all!

So which side of your distinction would it fall on?

My point that there may be a single logical concept of nonsense while still permitting a recognition of various ways that nonsense might be motivated is quite able to accommodate all of this. The Tractatus is nonsense that tries to show things about language but also about ethics and does so from an ethical standpoint while for the most part not using words associated with religious talk, but it may still be deemed important.

And this also accommodates the fact that Plato's words (for Augustine) could be as much a matter for devout seriousness as Kierkegaard's.

JPDeMouy

=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/