[Wittrs] Re: My Chinese Encyclopedia: The Red Chicken Footnote
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2010 02:30:48 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "College Dropout John O'Connor" <wittrsamr@...>
wrote:
> You wrote:
> I think the Tractatus is superseded by his later work (the Philosophical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 write:
> It seems to me I just showed you that the thesis that the TLP failed is a
> false one. If anything, he simply had to die for it to
> make sense.
You mean like Christ and our sins?
> And you put bullshit in my mouth.
I said you were wrong and gave my reasons. You took that as an imputation of
"bullshit". Are you trying to say that no one can suggest you are wrong about
your claims?
> Wittgenstein himself in the PI introduction said he would have liked to
> publish the TLP and PI back to back (and, of course, he
> never published the PI).
The clear implication of that is to show just how the mistakes of the Tractatus
are addressed and, he hoped, corrected in the Philosophical Investigations.
> Anyhow, I've read a lot of Wittgenstein, and I cite the TLP, the PI, Zettel,
> Lectures, PR, the blue/yellow/brown books, etc. and all
> you say is that is dangerous.
No, I say imputing one's own hopes and expectations to him is dangerous. Where
he says he made serious mistakes in the earlier work and that they are
hopefully corrected in the later work, it is dangerous to pretend that he
didn't mean what he said.
> Bullshit. You can't read too much. The message is always the same; people
> don't read Tolstoy and say in Brothers'K he means this
> and in WarnPeace he is like a different author.
Wittgenstein is manifestly a different author in his two periods, by his own
admission, but that is not to say he isn't the same person (albeit aged
somewhat). Are you trying to say that we don't age, have new ideas, change our
thinking, etc., etc.? Are we all the same at the end as we were at the
beginning?
> No man on the planet gets treated like that, but maybe the Socratic Dialogs
> (because, of course, you need to stay away from the unofficial Socratic
> Dialogs-- just like you have to stay away from the unofficial Wittgenstein).
> Bullshit. I obviously didn't come here to say what everyone else says,
> otherwise ther!
> e would be no point in me speaking.
>
That's fine. Nor should you expect others here to abstain from commenting and
offering their own views. I do think your views on Wittgenstein are a little
unorthodox and also mistaken in certain important ways but that's what makes
horse races (as John Wisdom might have put it). There are plenty here and
elsewhere who disagree with my take on Wittgenstein. The point is to back up
what we say. But no one is obliged to accept that back-up. In the end we are
each on our own and grasp what we grasp.
> You write:
> I know some students of Wittgenstein are enamored 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.
>
> I write:
> Whence did I star fusing the two? I quote Wittgenstein, a man. If he
> doesn't make sense to you, start a club. You won;t be alone. But don't use
> this as a defense. I have yet to see you quote the man in all these pages of
> us discussing what Wittgenstein has said.
>
Actually I just did quote from his preface to the PI a post or so back (maybe
you hadn't reached it yet before writing the above). But I don't think one
needs to quote him chapter and verse to make or share his points. Quoting and
citing are important if we are disputing something he said or something we are
imputing to him, i.e., did he really say THAT, did it really mean what it seems
to mean, etc.
As of now I have seen no need (except for that instance with the preface) to go
to the trouble of pulling out one of his books and transcribing some passage or
other from it. If you think philosophical discourse is about who can mouth his
words more often or more broadly, I think you are deeply mistaken. Philosophy
is about ideas. If one has inculcated Wittgenstein's thinking then one ought to
be able to speak about those ideas readily enough without chapter and versing
it.
His writings are not scripture and I think he would have been alarmed to have
thought some who came after him were treating them that way. But that, of
course, is just an opinion. I can't prove it!
> I wrote:
> > There is no fucking latter Wittgenstein.
>
> You wrote:
> 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.
>
> I write:
> Well, when he expects to die any day and it never comes because no one
> understands the book he wrote, and he keeps doing what he always has been
> doing- teaching: what break are you referring to? I mean, if you only know
> the TLP and the PI and 30 years of blank history, I guess I can see how you
> miss the subtle stuff. But, again, there is a lot that W wrote; one thing he
> published; and it is all good.
>
It is not all equally good. But much of it is worthwhile. I am quite familiar
with most of his writings. But the Tractatus was the culmination of his early
period and reflects that. The Philosophical Investigations (and On Certainty)
the culmination of his later period, reflecting that.
In between there are numerous texts that have been preserved, reflecting his
transitional thinking as he worked his way toward the PI. If you're interested,
I refer you to some earlier discussions we had on this list in which Sean and I
disputed the import and significance of The Blue and Brown Books. Sean took the
position (if he's still hanging around, he can always weigh in to correct me if
I am mischaracterizing this) that the texts in question, written down by
Wittgenstein's students as notes in a class or in the course of taking his
dictation, were already full blown, fully thought out works revealing his new
thinking after the Tractarian period.
I took the position that they evidenced that he was still feeling his way
forward, not quite achieving the clarity of thought about the issues he was
aiming at and so these texts were representative of him in a transitional
period and ought not to be seen as the definitive statement of his ideas. I
claimed that my interpretation was borne out by Rush Rhees who edited The Blue
and Brown Books for publication and cited extensive passages from Rhees' own
introduction to those books. I'm sure you can find those exchanges here if you
go back to the early months of this list. If not, maybe Sean can help.
> You wrote:
> 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 said:
> "Feel free to quote" is what I said. I've read the published intro, the
> unpublished ones, the intros to the PR, and loads more. I never see W saying
> "act as if I never wrote the TLP; although I solved all philosophical
> problems in that book, I have moved on to
> bigger, better things."
Where do you think I said he claimed or acted as if he never wrote the TLP?
> Because that is what you say, not W.
Nope, I didn't say THAT.
> And I don't see how you draw those conclusions. Granted, the man is
> cryptic, but I still miss the logic. That is why I asked for quotes. You
> seem to know the PI well enough- take your time in making another post.
>
I don't plan to go the chapter and verse route, sorry. Philosophy isn't a
religious enterprise on my view. The point of citing is either to resolve a
disputed issue (did he say that and what did he mean?) or to find in someone
else's words a better (clearer, more succcinct, more amusing) statement of the
point one is making than one could produce with one's own words. I don't see
any need at this point in our discussion to do much of either. But that may
change as we proceed.
> You wrote:
> 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.).
>
> I write:
> You say everything is relative(according to W); I ask why; you say because
> context is everything(according to W); I say, so doesn't that mean you need
> the right context? And then you jump ship, avoiding the context of
> Wittgenstein in favor of what the "philosophers" are doing, saying how
> everything is relative to context etc.
>
I am saying that Wittgenstein's later thinking involved the point that language
(as in how we use our words) is significant to our way of understanding things.
I said that he aimed to show us how language misleads us and that he pointed
out that speaking a language consists of following rules and that the meaning
of a term is (as he put it, in a great many cases but not all) in its use. For
the use he pointed us toward what he called "language games", different things
we did with words. If you take a word out of its game (its context) and use it
in a place where it is not rightfully at home, you end up in a muddle because
the word loses its meaning (the use is no longer in play). Here language, he
famously said, "goes on holiday" (from the PI but I don't recall the paragraph
just now, nor do I see any reason to cite it since it's pretty well known and
hardly a subject of serious dispute and easily found in any case).
When language "goes on holiday" it is as if it's been unmoored, our words
seeming to mean one thing but not doing so because they are no longer in their
proper home, properly applied, etc., etc.
I said he also pointed out that language is behavioral, i.e., that it is a
matter of practice, of doing something and that, as such, it is a "form of
life" for us, in particular an aspect of our culture in which we are embedded.
"If a lion could speak, we would not understand him." Why? Because a lion's
form of life is different than anything we can conceive of. A lion lives in a
different world from its perspective even if it shares the same physical world
with us. It sees things differently, it relates to things differently, it
understands what occurs to it differently, etc., etc. For us our language is
part of our "form of life" while it is not part of the lion's.
> You wrote:
> 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.
>
> 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 write:
> "grave mistakes"-- which ones? You say we need specifics and then you go
> vague, trying to make W say things he doesn't. He has corrections to the TLP
> is the PR (and probably PG). So what?
>
I quoted precisely from his text. The point is that the whole Philosophical
Investigations is a corrective to the Tractatus. The whole way of thinking, of
approaching philosophy, is radically different. Gone are the efforts to
construct a logically grounded system that covers all bases and tells us how
our language relates to the world and how the world is. Gone is the logical
atomist presumption that our language is a mirror of the world in all its
particulars.
In its place are numerous insightful examinations of how we use our language
and what those uses entail for us. He offers in the later book a new way of
doing philosophy, a way that is NOT premised on system building, on trying to
say it all, but on taking things as they come, focusing on cases, looking at
differences, seeking insights and new perspectives, asking questions rather
than answering them, etc., etc. The very idea of language has changed, from the
older picture theory (words and propositions picture the world) to that of the
toolbox metaphor (words do many different things and only some of those things
involve picturing the world) and that our words actually determine how we think
and understand things.
In the preface Wittgenstein acknowledges that he has changed his views since
the Tractatus. In the body of the Philosophical Investigations he shows us how.
> You write:
> 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 write:
> Like what? Did he say, burn the TLP? Or did he say, burn the manuscripts of
> the TLP? Did he say disregard my earlier work, or did he say print my new
> work along side it? Why did he publish so little? If he says, "Whereof one
> cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" and all you know is what the man
> said, not what he was silent about, then what can you say about it?
>
What can you say about what he didn't say? About what anyone didn't say? He
tells you in the preface that he made mistakes in the earlier work and he gives
you the later work, which is radically different from the earlier. What one
must do is read and understand the later work (he writes that it would be best
to do that with the Tractatus beside it so one could see more precisely the
mistakes). Unless you see the radical change in the later work, you cannot
understand what he means in the preface by "grave mistakes".
Why would anyone fail to take him at his word and recognize that the later work
is intended to supercede, in the field of his ideas, the earlier work?
<snip>
> > . . . 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 write:
> 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.
>
> I write:
> I smell some hate here. You are trying to say I am dogmatic, or supporting
> some doctrine, or something of the sort. Like I think things are black and
> white. But you are the only one saying "this is the correct Wittgenstein and
> this is the incorrect one". Please, cease the petty BS. quote quote quote!
>
You smell hate? Where does THAT come from? I am pointing out to you that you
are treating Wittgenstein as a kind of mystical prophet, a source of
revelation. While he was an insightful thinker and his work is very often
cryptic AND hinged entirely on "getting it", that should not, on my view,
suffice to prompt us to treat him in a religious way.
As to how we each are interpreting Wittgenstein, I readily acknowledge that my
views are my views and that not all who study or teach Wittgenstein's work
agree with me in all the particulars. Sometimes there is greater disagreement,
sometimes minor disagreement. As I say above, that's what makes horse races --
and discussions like this. You are mistaken if you take my comments here
personally. I do think you misread Wittgenstein but some (perhaps many) think I
have done so as well. We don't come to lists like this to find fawning
agreement, believe me!
<snip>
>
> > 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.
>
> You wrote:
> 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.
>
> I write:
> What are you talking about? It is a hint. So are the following:
>
Yes, it's a hint. Still, if he thought the Tractatus had got it right, he
wouldn't have bothered with his later efforts.
> > 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.
> >
>
> You write:
> 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.
>
> I write:
> What are you talking about? I practically quote the guy and you say I am
> making shit up. Read The Duty of Genius, by Ray Monk. And I dunno how he
> viewed things in the end; he never seemed to keen on living long and being
> prosperous as the early Wittgenstein, Latter Wittgenstein, Middle
> Wittgenstein, and even the fourth Wittgenstein.
>
I said nothing about your "making shit up". I am saying that I think you have
fastened on the wrong aspects of Wittgenstein and that you read him wrongly.
You admire and seem to deify the Tractatus and the man who wrote it. But that
man went on to do other things, including leaving philosophy for about a
decade, and then, on returning, developed ideas far removed from his earlier
work. And when he came to prepare those ideas for publication he made the point
of penning a preface that explicitly acknowledges "grave errors" that he made
in the earlier work. How much more do you need to tell you that the place to
look for the definitive Wittgenstein is in his later work, rather than hanging
onto the work of a younger and less developed thinker?
> > 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
> > 1 The world is everything that is the case.
> >
>
> You write:
> 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.
>
<snip>
>
> You write:
> 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")
>
>
> I write:
> *an ellipse*
>
>
> You wrote:
> 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.
>
> I write:
> What are you talking about? I wasn't aware that you were a Bible Scholar and
> a Wittgenstein Scholar when I brought the first 8 lines into play. I was
> hoping you could see what was being said (in silence) and still have high
> hopes.
>
So you wanted my silence only? I am quite familiar with the Bible (more the Old
Testament than the New but I have some familiarity with that, too). As to
Wittgenstein, I would never claim to be a scholar but I am fairly well steeped
in his philosophy. Not an expert. But not the tyro you imagine, either.
> But if I must criticize, it would be that W doesn't have ideas to express in
> his works, but a method. If, in trying to relay this method and make it
> clear I have come off as a poor imitation, I find that perfectly reasonable.
> But what are you trying to do?
>
Point out some mistakes I think you are making.
> If you don't have an answer, how could you be graded? (or do PhDs count as
> high scores?)
> --
> He lived a wonderful life.
> ==========================================
>
> Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
>
I'm not a professional philosopher. Just one of the guys. You don't have to
worry that I'm talking down to you. On the other hand, the whole point of
discussions like this is to share ideas and that means being honest with one
another. Otherwise why bother? Just to feel good about how wise we think we
are? Or others aren't?
SWM
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