[Wittrs] Re: My Chinese Encyclopedia: The Red Chicken Footnote
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:53:34 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "College Dropout John O'Connor" <wittrsamr@...>
wrote:
>
> "He said that he had always regarded his lectures as a form of publication"
> -Norman Malcolm, 48, Memoir
>
> If you don't think you have to quote a man you are making claims for, then
> all I can say is that your claims are unfounded. And if that isn't a clear
> tautology, well ellipses and stuff.
>
I don't have to quote when I am not claiming anything controversial about what
he actually said (or challenging something someone else claims about something
he said). Philosophy isn't about citing chapter and verse. It's about ideas and
exploring them. If you think otherwise then we are clearly not talking about
the same thing.
> I am not interested in what textbooks say.
I am not giving you what textbooks say. I am giving you what I say in relation
to the Wittgensteinian works we have been discussing here.
> I find it quite easy to quote the man; I read a little bit, see something
> that relates to our discussion, and stick a scrap piece of > paper in the
> book at that page.
Just repeating his words is not to properly consider and understand them. He
said lots of things. Context is critical in understanding his points.
> I dunno why you say the things you do and act as if you have proved a point;
If I make a claim and then support it (sometimes with quotes, when needed, as
in the case of the text I provided here from the preface to the Investigations)
then I suppose I do think I have proved something. Why would I not? Obviously I
think X and if I give reasons Y and Z for thinking it, and claim that those
reasons are supportive, then, having given them, I think I have shown why I'm
right. If you respond with reasons to disregard what I've cited and those
reasons make sense, then you may very well undermine my claim to having made my
case. But just denying them and saying you think otherwise and/or citing some
unrelated text from Wittgenstein as justification for thinking otherwise isn't
sufficient to demonstrate that what I've offered doesn't do the job I've set
for it.
> if you think quoting in philosophy is religious fanaticism, then allow me to
> refer you to philpapers.org; I've quoted Wittgenstein, Mark Twain, Joseph
> Conrad, Ernest Hemmingway, etc. I may not be in college, but I still know
> how to back up a claim; I can only hope that you don't fall into the
> following category:
>
I have no problem with anyone offering quotes but the quotes should support
one's case. I have not agreed that you have offered quotes here that support
some of the claims you've made re: Wittgenstein's thinking and I have told you
why. What you do with that is up to you.
> "Apart from other things, I think that there was indeed something in the
> content of his philosophy that, improperly assimilated, had and still has an
> unfortunate effect on those influenced by it. I refer to his conception that
> words are not used with 'fixed' meanings, that concepts do not have 'sharp
> boundaries'. This teaching, I believe, produced a tendency in his students
> to assume that precision and thoroughness were not required in their own
> thinking. From this tendency nothing but slovenly philosophical work could
> result."
> -Norman Malcolm, 53, Memoir
>
While I do not think Malcolm is the most perspicacious expositor of
Wittgenstein, I think he is absolutely right in the above. Precision is
important in examining our word uses. Indeed, it is just that precision we must
apply in every case. In fact, it's what I have been urging on you here, i.e.,
to pay attention to the changes in his approach over the years and don't
lightly disregard his own words concerning his earlier work merely because you
find that work attractive. Noting that word usage is flexible and dependent on
context, on the other hand, is not a denial of precision. It's just to look for
it in the right places, i.e., in the places where the words are used in
ordinary language as opposed to in some rarified realm of our philosophical or
theological imaginations.
> I have been saying that 'mind' is nonsense, and so is a lot of other stuff;
> and there is no point in differentiating nonsense (and
> I've quoted W on this matter).
I don't believe your quotes showed that Wittgenstein didn't think that nonsense
takes many different forms and I explained why.
However, let's say your quotes showed he did agree with that viewpoint. Would
that oblige me to agree, too, do you think? After all, Wittgenstein was an
insightful thinker but not a prophet who was infallible. Indeed, he himself
acknowledged having made what he called "grave mistakes". Is the ultimate
source of the rightness of any idea to be found in Wittgenstein alone?
Is the term "mind" nonsense as you seem to want to put it? Can you show that
this was Wittgenstein's position since you seem to take this position on the
grounds that that was what he thought?
Now I will grant that you can likely come up with some texts of his seeming to
suggest something along those lines, e.g., it's nor a something but not a
nothing either. But Wittgenstein also had occasion to speak of minds. Did he do
so because the term was nonsense?
> But treating nonsense like the bubonic plague is not my intention. Simply,
> nonsense is not scientific. W says the TLP is nonsense (and philosophers
> tend to say the TLP is a contradictory) and I thought I showed that well
> enough, and also why it is tautological (not contradictory). I've given the
> example of how the world was created in 6 days by God, according to the
> Bible, and that no one knows how long those days are, according to the Bible;
> It is complete nonsense and the 'Beetle in the Box' shows how these days
> could be of varying length or even constantly changing, etc. When I gave
> this sort of example before, you didn't seem to have a problem with it (or,
> at least, you didn't say much on it). I don't think I quoted the Bible in
> that topic, but I did a little quote from the
> opening lines in this topic and !
In your later presentation it was offered by way of showing how the Tractatus
is laid out. I think that reflects another "grave mistake", in this case a
deification of Wittgenstein and his work. The Tractatus is a book, a
metaphysical effort built on logic which aims to delimit and differentiate the
zones of speech from what is beyond speech. In the end, he writes, we must
climb up the ladder he has built, then throw the ladder away beneath us. Aside
from the peculiar imagery of THAT metaphor, it has the effect of acknowledging
that the Tractatus, in the end, is nonsense (in the way you take nonsense to be
-- referentless terms that seem to make references). I suggested to you that
the later Wittgenstein abandoned this approach in favor of one that looks at
language in all its manifestations equally. Just as there is not only one way
of using language, i.e., as referencing the elements of the world, so there is
not only one way of speaking nonsense.
The later Wittgenstein had a richer, more robust understanding of language and
its role in our thinking, in our ideas. That is the point you should not
forget. Let the Tractatus go. He did.
> you seemed to have a lot to say about translating languages and the numbered
> verses, etc. And you seem to accuse me of some things while using some
> nonsense words (and, going by what I've been saying, > I cannot reply to
> nonsense with agreement or disagreement).
Well if you aren't specific about what you deem nonsense in what I said, I
cannot respond. Maybe that's the easiest way to go here.
> I must say that if you think I (or W) is about hierarchies, you have simply
> misunderstood.
>
I don't know what that refers to.
> If W can write the opening lines of the Bible without mentioning 'creation'
> or 'God' or 'Heaven', I do not know why you wish to speak to me about
> 'deities' or 'minds' or 'infinities'.
What makes you think "The world is everything that is the case" is equivalent
to the opening lines of Genesis? They do have a similar cadence in English and
a similar apodictic tone. And both seem to be about the world, of course. But
in the end those aren't a lot of similarities nor do they get at the meaning to
be found in the two statements.
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" hardly seems like "The
world is everything that is the case" -- unless you want it to.
> I hope I have made it clear that if I am to say anything about those words,
> it is that they are nonsense.
>
Since you don't recognize kinds of nonsense, but do accept that we can speak
nonsense, you essentially shut the door on further inquiry here by labeling
these statements as nonsense. Perhaps that is all you want to do though?
In fact the biblical phrase purports to tell us a story about how things came
into being while the opening lines of the Tractatus announce a logical truth.
There is a great disjunction there unless one decides to treat both statements
as just "nonsense", and mean by this term that nothing more is to be said about
either of them, in which case the disjunction in their meanings is merely to be
ignored (there being, of course, no meanings now to be discovered!).
You are asking us to accept the two statements as nonsense in both cases, the
biblical phrase being a pronouncement from on high that may not be questioned
because of its provenance; the opening statement of the Tractatus being a
pronouncement from the true philosophical prophet which is also, presumably,
beyond questioning.
But how is this philosophy? And why, if it is, did Wittgenstein alter his
methods in his mature years? Did he receive a new revelation? Or are you still
certain that he didn't really alter anything at all, despite his own
acknowledgement that he did?
I would suggest that this is the kind of stuff that often gives Wittgenstein a
bad name in the minds of other schools of philosophy, i.e., he is interpreted
by some as being beyond question because he is seen to be beyond all logic and
discourse, to have entered the realm of pure revelation. I think his Tractatus
does point in that direction which, on my view, is part of the "grave errors"
he made there.
> However, applying the notions of language-games to the evolution of religions
> doesn't seem too far out. Language-games are sometimes used as a notion for
> comparative theology. Maybe there are other applications, but applications
> would be significant. And this goes back to whether a+b=c is true or false
> or nonsense.
>
"language games" a la Wittgenstein "as a notion for comparative theology"? Well
I think he would have said that yes, the claims of different theological
persuasions reflect different ways of speaking. But does that convert into the
doing of theology? Isnt theology, as a way of describing notions of the deity,
to fall into the very mistakes he was on about in his later years, to suppose
that one can speak of a deity, which one wishes to have faith in, as though it
were a provable object in (or outside) the universe?
> But here I am stuck (for the moment :p ). I wish to say something about
> applications. 1+2=3 comes to mind, and so too does apple+pine=pineapple.
> Maybe the 'verification principle' would do good here. It seems to me, at
> least, that it may be related to the good old quote, "Back to rough ground!"
>
We should be very careful emulating the master here! As Malcolm notes, many get
him wrong because he is so cryptic at times, leaving so much open for the
individual's own interpretation. (And that's because, in his case, philosophy
was about individual instances of seeing things in a new way.)
Just as students can latch onto the notion that language is always somewhat in
flux and that meanings of terms (their uses) are relative to the contexts in
which they are deployed (the language games in which they are used) -- which
can change with the need -- and think from this that anything goes in word
usage (it doesn't and can't if language is to work because there must be fixity
of meanings for words to convey information), so it is easy to think that by
emulating his often cryptic style we are saying profound things!
> Have you seen modern art? Don't you know the shuttle is being retired while
> the top scientists are looking for the reality particle? I cannot tell the
> difference between democrats and republicans these days, nor the policies
> they implement. Back to rough ground indeed! Citizens seem to vote and not
> read the constitution; sure, they are taught it in grade school, but never
> read it. From what I have heard, this is not unlike how the Catholic Church
> operates. At the least, I hope you don't go taking classes on Wittgenstein.
> /rant
>
?
> You continually insist that what W has said in anything but the PI is
> irrelevant (or maybe you think Oc is good too, and what of Remarks > on
> Color?), and you have not backed this claim up;
I never said what he said outside the PI is irrelevant so why would I have to
back it up? What I said was that there is a sharp break between the later and
earlier Wittgensteins and that the Tractatus represents the earlier at its
zenith, the PI the later at its. There are lots of good intervening materials
to be discovered and read and certainly the Tractatus is not without interest.
But the works he produced are not all of equal merit and even he explicitly
announced that there were "grave errors" in his earlier thinking (manifested in
the Tractatus).
> W did say something about the TLP and PI's relationship, and it was that the
> PI could only be understood in the light of understanding the TLP--
"Four years ago I had occasion to re-read my first book (the Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus) and to explain its ideas to someone. It suddenly seemed
to me that I should publish those old thoughts and the new ones together; that
the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against
the background of my old way of thinking." (Anscombe translation of the
Philosophical Investigations pub. by The McMillan Company)
"I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first
book." (ibid)
"I should not like my writing to spare other peoople the trouble of thinking.
But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own." (ibid)
> and this is very much like the introduction to the PR.
>
> I don't know what you do for a living; I have merely a part-time job and so
> read a plenty, and have always read. Is it too much of an > assumption to
> say you have less time for studies than I?
I am a retired bureaucrat who studied philosophy in his youth with an emphasis
on Wittgenstein. I currently write a bit.
> I do indeed hope you take time in posting your next reply (maybe a read a
> little to back your up your claims); if there is any testament on these
> boards, it is that this back-and-forth dribble can become silly rather
> quickly.
>
I always back up what I say when there's a need (see immediately above).
SWM
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