[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Re: Metaphysical Versus Mystical

  • From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:06:33 -0800 (PST)

[sending this again to clear up a few things -- sw]
 
... gosh J, good stuff in here. Really good stuff. Let's parse this out. I've 
printed the quotes again below my signature for reference. 

First, note that he speaks of his work drawing a limit to the ethical sphere. 
This means that something lies within the limit and something lies OUTSIDE the 
limit. Notice also that he says that the limit is drawn from "the inside," 
 which apparently means from within the ethical itself or within the person 
claiming to feel it (which I believe are one in the same). What is meant by 
this is to say that he has not drawn the limit from some outside source, which 
would be, for example, saying that postulate-type A are of one sort, 
postulate-type B of another. It's not a division based on CONTENT (or 
substance). This would square with Monk's recording of how devoutly he was hit 
with spirituality when he wrote props 6. The limit comes from within. It is 
felt. This is how the ethical shows itself.

Note the existential implications: all of the problems of life (that require 
silence) hit you like this -- joy, love, anguish, remorse, etc. These things 
hit you as though they are other-worldly. They can be transformative. They can 
shake you.  Note also that these things are characterized as EXTRA-WORLDLY. 

Now the issues:

1. You can't speak of extra-worldliness in any manner because it is beyond 
language. But this only means you can't get it right (completely understand). 
It doesn't mean it doesn't show itself. It doesn't mean it isn't felt. If you 
try to speak of it in any manner you will end up with nonsense in the sense of 
being incorrect. 

2. But if you speak of metaphysics that is NOT extra-worldly (not devout, not 
felt, not shown in the form of life), then what of this? You seem here to have 
spoken of something that is not only NOT a proposition, but also not encumbered 
by being beyond your language. Under the Tractarian view, this clearly is 
nonsense of a different sort. It's seems to resemble gibberish. Gibberish is 
language at your control that is pointless.  

I wonder if that doesn't do it? If your ethic or aesthetic is refined or devout 
-- of the kind that is shown to the form of life -- assertions of it are always 
unacceptably impoverished. But if your ethic or aesthetic is NOT refined or 
devout (or shown in life),  it's a kind of gibberish. So, some 
metaphysics are a kind of stupidity while others are a kind of random noise. 
The difference, I think, is that at least someone is "home" in the former. I 
want to say (although it is very crude), that one sentence is treated as a kind 
of stupidity and the other as a kind of retardation. Talking only about the 
sentences, not people! 

How about this: one is treated as erroneous (perpetually), the other as noise 
(perpetually). That's it!!  Doesn't that do it??

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 


WITTGENSTEIN QUOTES 

 "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."

"You will say: Well, if certain experiences constantly tempt us to attribute a 
quality to them which we call absolute or ethical value and importance, this 
simply shows that by these words we don't mean nonsense, that after all what we 
mean by saying that an experience has absolute value is just a fact like other 
facts and that all it comes to is that we have not yet succeeded in finding the 
correct logical analysis of what we mean by our ethical and religious 
expressions. Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it 
were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of 
would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject 
every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, 
on the ground of its significance."

"That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not 
nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their 
nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was 
just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language. My 
whole tendency and, I believe, the tendency of all men who ever tried to write 
or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language."

"This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. 
Ethics so far as it springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate 
meaning of life, the absolute good, the absolute valuable, can be no science. 
What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But it is a document 
of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting 
deeply and I would not for my life ridicule it."



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