[C] [Wittrs] Re: Re: Metaphysical Versus Mystical
- From: "J D" <ubersicht@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:39:42 -0000
SW,
> J: I don't mean to abuse
> your presence here,
Please, do not worry about such things. Presumably, anyone who posts here does
so because such topics as we discuss hold some interest. If I have been
irritable with anyone, it is less about the topics discussed so much as a
steadfast refusal to acknowledge or follow suggestions that would clearly make
discussion more fruitful. But that doesn't apply at all to your case nor does
it apply to most others here.
And it is flattering that you would take such an interest in my particular take.
I should warn you that in discussing the Tractatus my sole interest is in the
light that can be shed on the later philosophy by examining the concerns of the
earlier, the ideas that were later rejected, and the reasons for their
rejecting. Such a largely negative approach to the Tractatus is inevitably
going to be a one-sided appreciation and that may in some ways limit the value
of my reading.
but if you have time, tell me what you
> think of this simile. I put it in the paper I am working on.
> It concerns summarizing the essential idea that Wittgenstein
> has about LANGUAGE in the tractatus. I think the simile is
> good and does the job. Looking to see how it hits you:
>
> Perhaps Wittgenstein's early approach to language might
> be summarized with the following simile. Imagine a blurry
> picture that did not "show" something that could be
> verified with eyesight,
I'd be careful here. A Tractarian "picture" is not necessarily a visual image
and reading conditions of verification or verifiability into the Tractatus is
problematic as well.
The relevance of a "picture" to Tractarian thought is that it presents
relationships between "objects", that there are correlations between the
pictorial elements and the objects making up the states of affairs the picture
would be able to represent.
The model of Tractarian pictures is a model used in a trial dealing with a
traffic incident, where the different vehicles, the streets, and so forth, are
each represented by elements of the model, but the elements can be rearranged
to represent different states of affairs.
But even this is an analogy because whatever Tractarian objects may be
(subsequent analysis was meant to uncover this), a car is surely not an
"object".
but where the reality that is the
> subject of the picture was not, in fact, blurred or
> obstructed. In other words, the person's picture was
> simply poor or ill-taken (and was not at attempt at abstract
> art or something similar). In a certain sense, a picture of
> this sort would be useless. It would be cast aside among the
> other pictures that show the world properly.
I think I see where you're going with this. And why you would read him that
way. But my own supposition (and since we don't have concrete examples, we
have only suppositions here) would be that the analysis of such a vague, blurry
picture might well be a disjunction of elementary propositions. (Perhaps it
would be an endless disjunction and this is one of the places where the idea of
elementary propositions as independent runs into trouble.) A proposition
corresponding to a vague picture may be neither senseless nor nonsensical but
merely include several different states of affairs. It would be the logical
sum of those propositions that are consistent with the picture.
(That's not quite right either, because any number of elementary propositions
that feature objects not involved in the picture would be consistent with the
picture but presumably would not feature in the disjunction.)
Very crude: the propositions might be something like "Either there are 5
walnut trees or there are 6 walnut trees or..." which is vague but not
meaningless. On the other hand "...or Obama is President", which is also a
possibility the picture does not exclude would still not be part of the meaning
of the picture.
Vagueness and ambiguity are distinct matters from nonsensicality.
For early
> Wittgenstein, language has this sort of ethic. Assertions in
> language that do not picture an otherwise clear reality are
> meaningless, unless the reality itself is blurred, making
> the picture accurate, but depicting only the mystical.
I'd be very suspicious of a simile that seems to equate the putative
meaninglessness of the mystical with mere indeterminacy.
> Although an accurate picture of a blurred nothing was not
> "meaningless" ? because it showed its subject ? it
> made no sense to speak of it, because the
> depiction was hidden from the start.
The depiction was hidden? Or the thing depicted?
JPDeMouy
=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
Other related posts:
