[Wittrs] Re: [C] Re: Re: Metaphysical Versus Mystical
- From: "gabuddabout" <gabuddabout@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 16 Jan 2010 20:59:46 -0000
Sean writes:
"...the objective of the Tractatus --to silence certain kinds of philosophy and
metaphysics, yet to set aside a
certain status or realm for the transcendental."
Wittgenstein gets this main view directly from Schopenhauer. It's just that
Schop. was much more chatty and makes it clear that physics and physiology are
"honest" when working from material principles while metaphysics/philosophy is
dishonest if working only from material principles in what is today called an
eliminatively materialistic way. Functionalism has been found to be
eliminative as well as insufficient for the mental, many words to the contrary
notwithstanding..
Schop. describes materialistic philosophy as a philosophy which simply forgets
to account for the subject--without going dualist though.. Schop. continually
suggests that the forms of our intellect aren't designed for metaphysical
knowledge while suggesting that "immanent metaphysics" simply allows for
pointing this out, i.e., the limitations of science/philosophical materialism
of the eliminative variety, even though he allows honest physics and physiology
their proper place purely on materialistic principles--important to keep that
in mind.
So it seems that Wittgenstein wants to draw a similar distinction without
giving up what is important (Schop. constantly criticized Spinoza and
materialism proper as having a weak ethical side). Wittgenstein would say
stuff like "pain is neither a something nor a nothing."
Searle, like Schop., was more chatty too. I think Searle is the Roger Federer
of philosophy as Wittgenstein, arguably, with poker in hand, is more akin to a
John McEnroe. He could get hot while remaining relatively silent! Was he a
lefty or what?
One imagines Wittgenstein remarking McEnroe-esquely on almost any philosophical
text, having gotten a whiff of some of its nonsense thanks to Schop., (see
Schop.'s dissertation on the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient
Reason): "You can't be serious!"
No one will know this until they actually read Schop.'s _The World as Will and
Representation_, especially the preface to the first edition since one is
warned that Schop.'s goal is to impart just one thought.
That thought, he tells us, couldn't be shared by him in less words than the
whole of his book (really the whole of his writings since he assumes the reader
ought to have read all his writings throughout WWR).
Geez, what an egoist!! :-)
Anyway, one should have a better appreciation of Wittgenstein if sufficiently
familiar with Schopenhauer. He gets his "nonsense" sense directly from Schop.
It is to be remarked that Schop. was fond of arguing against materialism by
invoking various lice--generatio equivocal, or some such Latin for spontaneous
generation. He sounds as if he's hip to evolution, on the other hand, even
though he died just as Darwin was about to publish.
The will is somehow something one can know independently of the principle of
sufficient reason.
These days it goes by the name of practical reason such that one can talk a lot
about it (Cf. Searle's _Rationality in Action_), including Putnam, as if it
goes untouched by all eliminativism as well as functionalism--such philosophies
simply cannot account for a part of the real world which seemed to matter not
only to Schop., but to Wittgenstein, Searle and Putnam respectively.
But I suppose even eliminativists like Armstrong, Susan Blackmore, the
Churchlands, Dennett, and the rest of the alphabet assume that practical
reasoning takes place in the real world. It's just that it is sometimes
impossible to conceive how if one's philosophy can't account for it.
Cheers,
Budd
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