[Wittrs] Re: My Chinese Encyclopedia: The Red Chicken Footnote
- From: "College Dropout John O'Connor" <sixminuteabs@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 01:25:46 -0400
> You wrote:
> I think Wittgenstein's point in his later phase (which is the one that mainly
> interests me) is that our word usage is context dependent, i.e., there is no
> overarching meaning or use for a term, only how we deploy it in this or that
> instance, how it fits within some particular "language game". So yes, it's a
> matter of a given word or word usage being relative to this or that context,
> this or that intention of the speaker, this or that understanding of the
> facts in play.
>
> I write:
> But what you just described is not a point, but a description of what he
> says. The point, if I can be so arrogant, is as you put it, but with a
> direction (so to speak). In the PI, he begins with "primitive" word uses and
> then steadily moves up (and he never finished the PI, should facts have to
> enter this dialog). It could be argued that such a work could never be
> finished, but then I would be assuming the goal of such an endeavor. Is my
> assumption unjustified?
>
You wrote:
It's dangerous to make assumptions about what others are saying, especially
when it's Wittgenstein.
I write:
Sheesh. You say "I think W's point is..." and I say "He never finished the
PI". You say point, I say direction. You think the TLP is closure, I
disagree; etc. etc.
You wrote:
The later Wittgenstein would never talk of the essence of things, certainly not
of propositions. One has to be very careful reading the Tractatus and the
Investigations together. There are certainly points of confluence but there are
also many areas of divergence. Certainly the idea of essences is one.
I write:
There is no fucking latter Wittgenstein. It is dangerous to make assumptions
about what others are saying, especially when it's Wittgenstein. Albeit, it is
true he did not talk about "essences" in the PI (though he did abundantly in
the PR & I'll have to get back to you on the PG). What would be your point,
though, in responding to my quote of Wittgenstein with a statement along the
lines of "Wittgenstein would never make that claim!" You act as if two
Wittgenstein's existed, the one who published the TLP, the other who published
the PI. I must confess he said a lot and wrote a lot; why do you unilaterally
disregard anything he wrote before the PI? Feel free to quote.
> I wrote:
> > We were originally speaking of the uselessness of the word >"mind" in
> > scientific discourse. Your response seems to be that >it is not useless;
>
> You wrote:
> Yes. I think it is perfectly useful, particularly when we are keen to
> distinguish the mass of tissue we call the brain from the array of subjective
> experiences we think of as being conscious, i.e., having a mind.
>
> I write:
> But does not your point here imply that metaphysics is related to physics?
>
Well there is a relationship -- several, actually. "Metaphysics" is the name
given by subsequent scholars to the work that Aristotle presumably wrote after
the Physics. It also deals with claims concerning things not amenable to
empirical observation and study as suggested by that work), hence the
application to the non-empirical. But insofar as it is theoretical, it is very
like theoretical thinking in the empirical sciences. For instance, at a certain
level, it is very hard to differentiate purely metaphysical claims from the
claims of theoretical physics. Here we might want to say that theoretical
physics is not metaphysics insofar as it leads to predictions about events in
the world, the occurrence of which would serve to confirm (or in classical
Popperian terms disconfirm) those predictions. Metaphysical theory, on the
other hand, will be seen to be consistent with any kind of empirical outcome as
it must, by design, offer an explanation that is consistent with every po!
ssibility.
I write:
So science can objectively study the subjective? Or do you not take
metaphysics to be subjective? And the "mind", after countless threads arguing
over it, has it not entered your "mind" that "mind" might be subjective?
Pardon the silliness.
> You wrote:
> Do you think that Wittgenstein would not have thought the meaning depends on
> the context, the language game in which the word whose meaning we are
> interested in is deployed?
>
> I write:
> I do,
You wrote:
Please clarify: Are you saying you do think Wittgenstein would NOT have thought
the meaning of the terms we use in language depends on their context?
I write:
What? All he talks about is the context. But there is such a thing as the
right context. I mean, he has all these aphoristic remarks-- do you really
think he is always hitting upon how important context is because there is no
good context for his words? If everything is relative to context, then context
is everything.
I wrote:
> but that does not mean I think there is no significant context. The language
> I would spew if I were following what is customary in philosophy has no place
> in my life if I am to follow Wittgenstein's
> lead (Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent).
You wrote:
He abandoned the idea of showing through linguistic assertions (propositional
claims) that he held in the Tractatus. By the Investigations he sought to show
particular instances of language use to throw light on various claims
concerning the words being used.
I write:
See my earlier remark on using Wittgenstein vaguely against Wittgenstein. When
he says 'I said this; it might better be said like this', then a certainly this
is a clarification. But when he says "I say this; now I say this" and you
infer that there is a contradiction involved in Wittgenstein's words, you make
grand assumptions. Everyone cites the intro to the PI as damning of the TLP--
but there is no such language. And this sort of response does little for our
debate.
I wrote:
> Again, his lecture on ethics: should you find any reviews on this lecture,
> they will undoubtedly come to diverse conclusions. But is then the point of
> Wittgenstein that all is relative? No.
You wrote:
I agree that the answer is no. But that is not the same as thinking that our
terms find their meanings in particular contexts, within the language games we
are accustomed to play with them. The issue is that once we see that terms find
their meanings in contexts, there is no issue of relativity. Within any given
language game, the meaning is the way in which we deploy the term(s) according
to the game's rules. And that is not relative even if it is open-ended (subject
to ongoing alteration).
I write:
Wonderful! So what is the right context? Has it not been made abundantly
clear?
> You wrote:
> In his later phase Wittgenstein shifts famously from a focus on logic to a
> focus on the grammar and it is certainly the case, given his discussions of
> grammar as being given rules of usage deployed in different activities, that
> he has something quite differnt in mind than classical formal logic which
> informed his earlier work in the TLP.
>
> I write:
> Wittgenstein himself said the TLP had an ethical point. You say it has a
> logical focus. The TLP is no more concerned with classical logic than the PI
> is with correcting grammatical mistakes like a schoolteacher.
>
You wrote:
Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus in a rigid logical form where each proposition
supports the next, etc. He also famously invented the Truth Tables, an
important logical tool, in that work. As to his claim that what he left out was
what was most important and that was ethical, well, it's hard to see what that
is from the affirmative claims alone. Presumably he meant to build a
scaffolding that would give structure to our overall picture of how the world
is, a picture which, when "rightly" grasped would lead one to certain choices
in one's behavior. I think that aspect of the Tractatus simply failed. His
later work, abandoning the method of the Tractatus, suggests to me that he saw
that, too.
I write:
Well, you have not been paying much attention on these boards. I do have such
difficulty in even spelling this out, but I guess it is not clear even then.
The point of the TLP is Ethical. It is one of two works, of which he did not
author the other. Without the numbering, the book would be worthless. The
Ethical is delimited uniquely by his book. He had a wonderful life.
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1 The world is everything that is the case.
2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the
darkness.
4 The thought is the significant proposition.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the
evening and the morning were the first day.
5 Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.
(An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.)
6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let
it divide the waters from the waters.
6 The general form of truth-function is: [ p-bar , xi-bar , N( xi-bar )].
This is the general form of proposition.
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the
firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were
the second day.
Not that I really have anything to argue here, but simply contend the failure
of the TLP and of course something about context and grammar.
One could compare the two lines and ask "What are the differences between this
line 1 and this line 1?" And do likewise for the others. I might remark that
the Greek word for light was not the one of our scientific concepts, but
something more akin to understanding as it emitted from the eyes.
Proposition 8 could be said to be an ellipse. :p (All in good humor!)
> I write:
> But have you exhausted the the fact that all that you describe is in
> words/propositions/etc.? What could you see that you could not iterate in
> words? Where will words fail you? (And then turn to Wittgenstein, and not
> before this.)
>
You wrote:
How is that relevant to a claim that language, like everything else we do, is
behavioral?
I write:
"To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life" -LW
I think you need to inverse your umbrella concepts. Language > Behavior, not
vice versa.
> > I write:
> > All I see is a bunch of abstract language in that last paragraph. Which,
> > as I have attested to, says nothing. I don;t think I can stand to hear
> > much more of it. "proper" and "particular" and "some thing" ...
> >
>
> You wrote:
> . . . I certainly have no illusions that I can forcefeed what I think I
> understand into some other, either on this list or anywhere else. You either
> see my point or don't. If you don't, you can ask for clarifications of course
> and I would try to oblige, but if your response is simply to announce that
> all you "see is a bunch of abstract language", implying, thereby, that it is
> empty for you, then that's it then, isn't it? No sense my trying to be
> clearer or to elaborate. However, sometimes what looks "abstract" to us does
> so because we simply don't grasp what has been said.
>
> I write:
> And I thought this was the part where I was least peevish! But can you not
> see the similarity between me saying "a+b=c is true" and agreeing with your
> definitions or "descriptions"?
You wrote:
No. I don't see what you're getting at.
I write:
Context!
"Courage is grace under pressure" -Ernest Hemmingway
Says the man of war. There is no point in agreeing or disagreeing with his
definition; it is in some sense poetic, another, self-disclosure. But what is
the sense of saying definitions are true and false?
I wrote:
> And if you don't think Wittgenstein is about following rules, then you may
> have skipped part II of the PI. I wouldn't be so vain as to say I can
> express those rules, or that if you followed the rule then you would do as I
> (or even Wittgenstein). Here we might be at the limits of language. I was
> looking for a quote, I think in C&V, where W expresses that it isn't always
> bad to follow a tyrant. ;)
You wrote:
Wittgenstein famously focused on the way speaking a language, expressing
oneself in words, is to follow rules in the same way that playing a game is
(hence "language game"), or many other human practices are. However he did not
suggest by this that there we should expect to find, thereby, lists of fixed
and finite rules but only that to play such games we must engage in the
formulating or following of rules as part of the commonality of our public
lives, i.e., our community practices.
I quote:
(Zettel) 432. For I describe the language-game "Bring something red" to
someone who can himself already play it. Others I might at most teach it.
(Relativity.)
If there be any axiom that I adhere to, it is that "We must avoid everything
that smacks of the high priest." -LW
I wrote:
> Do you suggest that I need write out "all" numbers (assuming such a thing
> even exists) for there to be something not left out? What is not open ended
> (other than Popper's Open Society)?
You wrote:
Yes, all numbers absent which, insofar as you are communicating a series of
numbers that is infinite, you are saying by the "..." and so forth or and we
can then continue, etc., etc. That's the point of this particular convention in
this particular context.
I wrote:
But I cannot say an ellipse, can I? Does every math instructor end class with
"and so on" so that the students know there is more to mathematics? Lets say
a+b=c; so then that must mean a-b=c is false, right? Or mightn't we be missing
the logic for the customary?
There is no such thing as all numbers, for numbers are endless; and asking me
to write out everything that is implied in an ellipse (which is open ended) is
baffling. It is as if you are suggesting one should count to infinity, knowing
infinity is no number. (I'll refrain from a quantum mechanics jab here)
Hope I helped. And I hope you don't might logical atom bombs. Cheers!
Nonsense and stuff,
John O
--
He lived a wonderful life.
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