[C] [Wittrs] Re: Re: Metaphysical Versus Mystical
- From: "J D" <ubersicht@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:59:08 -0000
SW,
It might be helpful if I restate my interpretation of the Tractatus on these
issues in a brief and orderly manner.
1. From a logical standpoint, nonsense is nonsense. It lacks a truth-value
and so lacks meaning.
2. From an interpretive standpoint, we can speak loosely about what nonsense
is "about", though this is clearly misleading. What it amounts to: we can
recognize certain words from other contexts and so get a sense of what the
utterer of nonsense might be trying to say. From this standpoint, nonsense is
not all the same.
3. From a position that might be called "psychological" or "anthropological",
we can get a sense of what the speaker of nonsense is "on about". We can
sometimes understand what motivates him to say utter such words, what role
those utterances play in his life.
4. For the early Wittgenstein, these psychological or anthropological
considerations don't save the speaker from uttering nonsense. For the later
Wittgenstein, things are more complicated.
5. Even for the early Wittgenstein, the psychological and anthropological
considerations do make a difference in how we ought to treat nonsense. We
should not use "nonsense!" as a rebuke if that means failing to understand
something about the person uttering nonsense and the experiences that motivate
them to make those utterances. Some nonsense is more serious than other
nonsense.
6. Whether nonsense is serious is not a matter of the interpretive point (2,
above) that we recognize some words as, e.g. religious in nature.
Understanding someone is a lot more subtle and complex than that. Someone
talking about "God" or "meaning" may be "gassing" and someone talking about
"objects" and "logical concepts" may be expressing something of deep
importance, even though both may be talking nonsense.
Someone saying things that sound Cartesian or Platonist or Berkeleyan may be
talking idling nonsense or nonsense of great importance. Consider affinities
between the things some Buddhists have written and things Berkeley and Hume
wrote. There are all sorts of reasons to distinguish between these utterances
even though comparative philosophy can find many similarities. And I mentioned
before the significance of neo-Platonism in Augustine's thought and life.
Now, having said all of that, I really don't see how this could be taken as
denying the importance of Wittgenstein's religious experiences or of the role
that section 6 plays in the Tractatus. But what I am saying also accommodates
his claim that the whole work has an ethical significance!
> Here is what the problem reduces to: (a) something is
> senseless because the symbols and signs have no meaning; and
> (b) something is shown to us which cannot be an utterable
> truth.
But this distinction is not mutually exclusive. Rather, some things that can
be shown (b) still cannot be said because attempts to say them result in
sentences (a) some of whose signs have no meaning (or rather, following the
context principle, none of the signs have meaning in that context). There are
not two "buckets" here. At least not logically. But see above for how
different "buckets" would function on my reading.
(Note, "meaningless symbol" is an oxymoron in Tractarian terms. It is signs
that do or do not have meaning and when they do not, they are not symbols.)
I don't know whether we could come to an agreement here but I wanted to clarify
matters in hopes that you would at least recognize that my reading in no way
denies the importance of Wittgenstein's religious experiences to the text.
JPDeMouy
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