[Wittrs] Re: My Chinese Encyclopedia: The Red Chicken Footnote
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:15:55 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "College Dropout John O'Connor" <wittrsamr@...>
wrote:
>
<snip>
> . . . 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.
>
I think the Tractatus is superseded by his later work (the Philosophical
Investigations and its associated texts), as he expressly indicated in the
later work's preface. This is not to say there aren't common strands,
connections, and so forth. But he clearly felt he had made errors in the
earlier work and his later work appears to be an explicit attempt by him to
move away from those mistakes. We can see in the approach and words he used, in
the later work, just how far he moved away. Thus it's dangerous (in the sense
of misunderstanding him) to want to treat the two major works as being a single
opus or as revealing no change of significance (from the earlier to the later).
I know some students of Wittgenstein are enamoured equally with both the
Tractatus (for its semi-mystical sense of a deep unveiling of a great mystery)
and the Philosophical Investigations (for its idiosyncratic and subtle methods
and its insights which share, with the earlier work, a common interest in the
significance of language and in showing what we cannot quite say). But I think
any effort at fusing the two works (beyond recognition that they have some
common elements) can lead to serious error, i.e., a deification of the man as a
kind of philosopher-saint in lieu of a deeper understanding of his insightful
way of thinking.
> 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.
I write: There most certainly is (though I would leave out the expletive).
Unlike many philosophers he has a clear break in his philosophical activity,
roughly a decade when he walked away from philosophy, after the Tractatus,
thinking he had resolved all issues in need of resolution. Gradually during
this period he came to see he hadn't, that there was something he hadn't put to
rest, that he, himself, still had things to say. By the time he returned to
Cambridge, as Sean has pointed out, he was already very much different in
approach and thinking, but he did not fully formulate the changes in his views
for some time. As he says in the preface to the Investigations, he had much to
thank the mathematician Frank Ramsey for, as well as the economist Sraffa, in
getting him to see more clearly his earlier mistakes. Since he did not have
dealings with these two until he returned to Cambridge, it's obvious that he
was still in a state of transition upon his return.
> 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 don't disregard it. I regard it as a foundation, as the first steps he took
in his movement toward the later ideas of his mature years, ideas which
dispense with the approach and many of the concerns of the Tractatus. Read his
own brief remarks in the preface he provided in the Investigations to see what
I mean.
> > 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. . . .
<snip>
> I write:
> So science can objectively study the subjective? Or do you not take
> metaphysics to be subjective?
I don't take it to be the study of the subjective though the practice of it
may, finally, rely on one's subjective perspective, i.e., insofar as it is a
matter of getting at what is mystical.
> And the "mind", after countless threads arguing over it, has it not entered
> your "mind" that "mind" might be subjective? Pardon the silliness.
>
I don't know what you mean by "'mind' might be subjective". If you mean our
ideas about it may be highly personal and dependent on our individual
introspection, I would not disagree. But that wouldn't make it any more
subjective than lots of other things. The notion of mind is an idea we have
about what goes on "in" others in association with their observable behaviors,
i.e., their mental lives (subjective experience). I think it makes perfect
sense to reference that, with the proviso that it isn't a referent like
publicly observable phenomena and so the language of reference works a bit
differently, the referent we have in mind is not the same as publicly observed
referents, etc.
> > 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?
I said nothing about what he is always doing in every remark. I only made the
point that words have their meanings in their uses, that their uses are seen in
terms of what he referred to as "language games" and that to speak of "language
games" is to speak of contexts as in the context in which a word is deployed
(i.e., what purpose it serves, how it serves it, etc.).
> If everything is relative to context, then context is everything.
>
So you agree that he emphasized the importance of context? And your "I do" in
response to my question:
"Do you think that Wittgenstein would not have thought the meaning depends on
the context"?
Was to say you agreed with my point then?
> 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.
What is needed here are specifics. The specific reference I was making was to
your claim about the "essence of a proposition". I noted he discarded reliance
on ideas like "essence" in his later work ('I will show you differences') and
"propositions" (in favor of talk about the actual statements we make themselves.
> 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.
>
He writes (p.xe):
"For since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago,
I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first
book. I was helped to realize these mistakes -- to a degree which I am hardly
able to estimate -- by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank
Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last
two years of his life. Even more than to this -- always certain and forcible
--criticism I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr. P.
Sraffa, for many years unceasingly practised on my thoughts. I am indebted to
this stimulus for the most consequential ideas of this book." (Preface to the
Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Anscombe, Third Edition, The
McMillan Company, New York)
One disregards Wittgenstein's own assertion of his past errors and correctives
at one's intellectual peril. One comes to see the errors by reading what he has
to say in the Investigations and comparing his thoughts there to the claims
made in the Tractatus.
I know that there is a tendency among Wittgensteinophiles to want to treat all
his works as being of equal merit and weight but one can only do that in this
case by disregarding what the man, himself, said on the subject!
> 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?
>
One discovers it by paying attention to the many ways the word is used and
comparing that to the use in question. It's a method that he recommended and
practiced, not a doctrine declaring what is right and wrong in all cases and
for all times.
>
> > 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.
So he said. But what did he have in mind by "ethical"? Was it relative to some
system or listing of standards or to a way of being in the world which, if
that, is not the ordinary use we make of a word like "ethical". Maybe
"spiritual" would be closer to that meaning.
> 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.
>
So you assert. And so he asserted on his deathbed with regard to his final
message to anyone who might need to know how he viewed things at the end.
> 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
> 1 The world is everything that is the case.
>
I think it's always a great mistake to treat Wittgenstein as some kind of
prophet or to equate any of his works, including the Tractatus, with some
sacred scripture. But that IS how religions get started I suppose.
> 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.
>
Note that the original Hebrew does NOT number its statements nor is it layed
out in logical form which was something introduced by the Greeks a good deal
later.
> 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
> 3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
>
This shows that the Tractarian Wittgenstein was very influenced by the tendency
of religion to deliver its message in didactic form, without argument or room
for debate. It's not unlike Spinoza's method of logically constructing his case
for a pantheistic universe, point by point. But, of course, Wittgenstein moved
away from this sort of thing in his later years in favor of a rather
free-flowing method of ruminating on cases, following the strands of the ideas
revealed from one case to another, to understand how they worked and what they
led to.
Though both books have an aphoristic structure with numbered paragraphs
delivering self-contained statements, their similarity ends there.
The numbered statements in the Tractatus are part of an overall system of
claims designed to show us how the world should be seen.
The numbered statements in the Investigations are several series of remarks,
loosely related in a number of different ways, covering a wide range of ideas
which historically concerned Western philosophical thinkers and which, through
case by case examination, aim to show how the ideas in question reflect
mistaken ways of thinking and speaking that we often fall into.
> 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.
>
And the Bible got it wrong about a firmament dividing waters from waters since
water is found in the forms of the seas of earth while beyond the sky (the
other side of the Bible's firmament) are not seas but something quite different.
Of course one could insist on redefining "waters" to include the seas and the
vast emptiness of outer space, but that would be rather pointless since then no
word used in the Bible may be taken to have the meaning we would otherwise
naturally give it in which case it would be beyond comprehension which, if it
is, means there's no point in reading it other than for the sounds it makes,
but if the sounds are what matter, then you need the sounds in the original
Hebrew because the English sounds would have no relation to the original text,
etc., etc.
> 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.
>
Except that the original Bible you are quoting was not written in Greek but in
Hebrew! (The actual Hebrew translates "and the evening and the morning, the
second day")
> 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.
>
Why would you think language precedes behavior instead of vice versa, or that
Wittgenstein was making that case?
> > > 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?
>
"Automobile" means a large spotted mammal with a long neck which travels in
herds, eats leaves off the tops of trees and whose only natural habitat today
is found on the plains of Africa.
True or false? If it's not the correct definition then telling a child it is,
or a new English speaker, is to mislead them.
>
> 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 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
>
Again, Wittgenstein's point was to do with the open ended quality of rule
formulating and rule following, not with an idea that there are fixed rules to
be discovered and never departed from.
> 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?
>
You can name an "ellipse" as you have done here already. Or an ampersand or a
plus sign or the letter "a" or the number "3" or the equation "a+b=c". These
notations all have certain roles in certain contexts. What we can do with them,
what we mean when we use them, is to be found in discovering and understanding
the relevant context(s).
> 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.
Of course, I didn't ask you to do it so why do you feel "baffled"? I noted
that, since one cannot do it, one adopts certain conventions for the purpose of
expressing such ideas or of expressing the inabilities to definitively denote
them.
> 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)
>
I think you are rather too keen to play Wittgenstein here for you are reading
into things I say things I haven't said in order to find a pretext to make what
sounds like a Wittgensteinian point. But if it's only a pretext, the point
isn't really going to be a Wittgensteinian one, is it?
> Hope I helped. And I hope you don't might logical atom bombs. Cheers!
>
> Nonsense and stuff,
> John O
> --
> He lived a wonderful life.
> ==========================================
I find what you make of Wittgenstein's work, and the draw you feel towards his
ideas, interesting. But you really should desist from this tendency to deify
him.
SWM
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