[Wittrs] Re: My Chinese Encyclopedia: The Red Chicken Footnote
- From: "College Dropout John O'Connor" <sixminuteabs@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:20:33 -0400
Whew, there was a lot of text in those last posts; I hope the dotted lines
helped you a bit. It isn't really my intention to carry on the argument here,
but simply offer my thoughts on some of the quotes, as you seem to have offered
some of yours. Regardless, it seems that we are no longer speaking about the
red chicken, and so these posts might be considered off topic. :)
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LW:
599. To say, "This combination of words makes no sense" excludes it from the
sphere of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds
of reason. If I surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the
purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in or out; but it may also be
part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary; or
it may shew where the property of one man ends and that of another begins; and
so on. So if I draw a boundary line that is not yet to say what I am drawing it
for.
SWM:
[Comment: Note the importance of the purpose or "game" in which the distinction
between sense and nonsense is being made. As I noted to you, he recognized many
types of nonsense BECAUSE words in his later understanding were much more than
merely referents referring to some particular thing. Context, the game,
matters. Meaning is the use the word is put to in the game. And meanings are
not some essential thing attaching to the word in all cases, discoverable by
our digging deeply enough to find the essential commonality of the different
uses. Rather, think of his idea of family resemblances.]
JTO:
I am missing your point here. Have I not been playing a language-game in which
there is a boundary (either sharp or fuzzy), or are you simply suggesting that
I could play other language-games? Obviously, language-games and languages are
similar in theme. A language-game is almost like a picture of language in that
it is a metaphor for [a way of life]. I think you may confuse my choice to not
define nonsense as implying there is only one kind of nonsense. If I said
there were infinite kinds of nonsense, would you feel satisfied? And I don't
recall quoting this; is it yours? Nice addition! As for my quotes, I must
confess laziness; I simply went to Wiki quote and tried to stay within the
'latter' years. There wasn't much cherry picking as the I took wholesale
sequences of quotes from that page. I, of course, didn't take everything, but
I was not trying to be biased in my choices. Obviously, I thought some of them
did not relate to our conversation (and that could si!
mply be a misunderstanding on my part).
LW:
"When a sentence is called senseless, it is not as it were its sense that is
senseless. But a combination of words is being excluded from the language,
withdrawn from circulation. (Philosophical Investigations § 500)"
SWM:
[Comment: And is "The world is everything that is the case" excluded from the
language, "withdrawn from circulation"? Do we not have a way to understand it?
Have you not told us it is a tautology? Haven't I pointed out at least three
different ways "world" (the subject of the sentence in question) could be used,
only one of which is a tautaology? Why do you think he took the time to write
such a different work as the Investigations, a work that treats language so
differently than he treated it in the Tractatus?]
JTO:
Well, if we take the account of the microcosm, tautologies are different for
every person on the planet. I've found that the latter works of Wittgenstein
are still full of tautologies (RFM for example, and its associated lectures).
LW:
"If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is
turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do." (§ 217)"
SWM:
[Comment: And this supports your view that Wittgentein claimed that there was
one and only one kind of "nonsense" how?]
LW:
"When I obey a rule, I do not choose.
I obey the rule blindly. (§ 219)"
SWM:
[Comment: Again, same question as above. It's nice that you can find pithy
quotes in the Investigations. Anyone with access to the book can do that. The
question is to find pertinent quotes, of course, and not just grab them at
random because they sound good!]
JTO:
Well, which ones are not pertinent? Maybe the ones after remark 188? They are
all pertinent as far as I can tell.
LW:
"The human body is the best picture of the human soul. (Pt II, p. 178)"
SWM:
[Comment: Again, what is the relevance to what you have claimed and are trying
to establish based on his ideas? If I thought there was relevance to the
question at hand, that Wittgenstein held that there was one and only one kind
of nonsense and never changed his views on that (presuming he did, initially,
hold that view), then I would take the time to look at the context of the
remark by looking at the preceding and subsequent paragraphs. But since there
is no obvious relevance, and it looks like you are just pulling quotes that
seem to resonate with you, I see no point in doing that. But if you can show
the relevance I will consider that.]
JTO:
I did really enjoy this quote. It reminds me of the spiel we had on the
ellipse and also illustrates a change. Zeitgeists and Deities and Revelations
aside, we are men, and so is Wittgenstein. of course, my signature is
nonsense... is it choice nonsense? I like what Kirby is doing with mathematics
around his home; and I do like the mathematics. So, we take the tetrahedron
and put more of these around it; we find that it has the same mathematical
multiplicity as the sphere (ie the mathematical ideal). And that is all there
is to it. Sure, we can reference Kepler and Fuller and use words like
transcendental and all this other stuff, but that is all really quite
irrelevant. The tetrahedron has the same mathematical multiplicity as the
sphere. I don't know if that is a Wittgenstein pedagogy...
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LW:
"The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one
had to find the common element in all its applications has shackled
philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also
made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone
could have helped him understand the usage of the general term."
SWM:
Precisely, John! No "common element", no single meaning of "nonsense"! ("I will
show you differences.") This is contrary to your position concerning the idea
that there is one and only one meaning of "nonsense" in Wittgenstein! What is
the source of this quote by the way? (Note that in his later period, the LATER
Wittgenstein moved from constructing logical scaffolding to exploring the
ramifications of concrete cases. It is a sea change from the earlier approach!)
JTO:
I've said that 'absurdah' and 'the world was created 5 minutes ago' are
nonsense. There obviously is not any common element in that claim. [Blue
Book, BTW; which, do you think is part of "latter W"?]
LW:
"For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules
-- it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either."
SWM:
In other words, language is open ended, not fixed, subject to change over time
and use.
LW:
"What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined
terms?"
SWM:
And by "definition" what do you think he had in mind? (Source, by the way?)
JTO:
I really don't know what you mean by 'fixed language' and what it opposes.
Surely my use of NONSENSE is quite dynamic. I cannot define it and when new
opportunities arise I can use it alright.
LW:
"But ordinary language is all right."
SWM:
Yes. No more emphasis/reliance on ideal language a la Russell and the early
Wittgenstein (who was, of course, Russell's student).
JTO:
I am sorry but this shows a lack of understanding the TLP, which, of course,
has nothing to do with an 'ideal language'. There are remarks in the TLP
defending colloquial language, and in the Philosophical Remarks and early
remark (which I think I quoted later in this last post) says something like
'how strange if logic were concerned with an 'ideal' language and not ours!' I
really have no idea how to do those simply calculations found somewhere deep in
proposition 5 (ya know, the one that looks like the FOIL [first, outer, inner,
last] Method from math class).
LW:
"The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know."
SWM:
Pages? You should take a look at the exchange Sean and I had a long while back
re: the Blue Book by the way. My point then (and now) was that the Blue and
Brown Books were transitional in Wittgenstein's thinking. Sean demurred as, I
presume, you will. Here is Rush Rhees, who edited these two books for the
volume in which they appear:
JTO:
The pages can be found on Wiki Quote, if they are accurate. Could you link the
discussion you and Sean had? It is nice to see him comment as I have not seen
him around here for a while. I will have to read the topic on On Certainty
again as well as I recall liking it.
Some Guy:
"Philosophy was a method of investigation, for Wittgenstein, but his conception
of the method was changing."
JTO:
Oh, well now its settled. ;P
Some Guy:
"He speaks of coming to understand what people mean by having someone explain
the meanings of the words, for instance. As though 'understanding' and
'explaining' were somehow correlative. But in the Brown Book he emphasizes that
learning a language game is somehow prior to that. And what is needed is not
explanation but training -- comparable to the training you would give an
animal. This goes with the point he emphasizes in the Investigations, that
being able to speak and understand what is said -- knowing what it means --
does not mean you can say what it means; nor is that what you have learned. He
says there too (Investigations, par. 32) that 'Augustine describes the learning
of human language as if the child came into a strange country and did not
understand the language of the country; that is, as if it already had a
language, only not this one.' You might see whether the child knows French by
asking him what the expressions mean. But that is not how you tell whether a!
child can speak. And it is not what he learns when he learns to speak.
Some Guy:
"When the Brown Book speaks of different language games as 'systems of
communication (Systeme menschligher Verstanddigung), these are not just
different notations. And this introduces a notion of understanding, and of the
relation of understanding and language, which does not come to the front in the
Blue Book at all. In the Brown Book he is insisting, for example, that
"understanding" is not one thing; it is as various as the language games
themselves are. Which would be one reason for saying that when we do imagine
different language games, we are not imagining parts or possible parts of any
general system of language.
???:
"The Blue Book is less clear about that . . ."
JTO:
I did enjoy the Blue Book a great deal. I read a passage to a friend and he
said it sounded like the end of humor. Curious. But I think this summary
(from the back cover or the editor's note?) shows a common misunderstanding.
It is as if W's writings had no purpose, as if there was no way the two could
be connected. Were they not dictated in back-to-back semesters? It is said the
Brown Book is like the PI, but is the Blue Book like the TLP? And is this
where you think W splits (because its the first time he used the notion of
language-game)?
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LW:
"The aim of philosophy is to erect a wall at the point where language stops
anyway." (Philosophical Occasions (also, The Big Typescript; Philosophy)
SWM:
A new one on me however, again, there is no apparent relevance here to what we
have been discussing so why are you offering the quote? Just to show you have
access to and have read some Wittgenstein? Well no one ever doubted you or said
otherwise. What is in question here is whether you have read him right!
JTO:
Really? Have I not been erecting a wall where language stops anyways (even if
you disagree with me where it stops) by saying what is NONSENSE? [Granted,
this is from the PG era, so you could say its not the most recent of what LW
said on the matter]
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LW:
"What I invent are new similes"
JTO wrote:
He obviously went from using logical syntax to colloquial language, but the TLP
defends colloquial language against any ideal language.
SWM:
The Tractatus focuses on the logical relations of certain propositions and of
propositions in general. Nor is it written in "colloquial language". Moreover,
in the era in which Wittgenstein wrote that work he was a student of Russell
who was one of the fathers of the ideal language movement (the effort to
convert ordinary language to a logically perfect one). Russell, of course,
credited Wittgenstein's work in this period with inspiring him to formulate his
logical atomist philosophy (the idea that language has as its main objective to
mirror or picture the world, unit by unit, logical atom by logical atom).
Wittgenstein in the Tractatus follows the same procedure in addressing the form
of propositions and how they relate to the world.
JTO:
The Lecture on Ethics makes clear exactly what he cannot express in words and
also what his philosophy does.
http://www.geocities.jp/mickindex/wittgenstein/witt_lec_et_en.html
I do hope you are not arguing that the logical positivists read the TLP
correctly. Bertrand Russell was notorious for not not understanding LW. I
don't really have anything to say about your summary of the TLP. Read the
Lecture on Ethics, please; it is quite short and of course quite good.
JTO Wrote:
> In regards to Wittgenstein never changing, I hope I never insinuated as
> much; but, as with all things, you start at !
> the beginning and build up. Have I not located the beginning? ;)
SWM:
Probably. Certainly the Tractatus is his earliest known published work.
JTO:
He did a review while studying with Bertrand. I won't be piling any more
reading on your shoulders in this topic. Whereas the Lecture on Ethics is 5-10
pages, this review is about 2. And quite hilarious, I might add.
http://fair-use.org/the-cambridge-review/1913/03/06/reviews/the-science-of-logic
JTO wrote:
And the picture/proposition and game/language similes are in some ways similar
and different. Maybe it is my dull head again, but could you elucidate as to
their similarities and differences as notes of comparison? If so, then maybe
we can speak of those mistakes; if not, maybe they can be made somewhere else.
SWM:
I think it would be helpful if a few of us who are interested decided to take
up the Tractatus and go through it together on-line by way of doing precisely
what Wittgenstein recommended, i.e., read the Tractatus through the lense of
the Investigations.
JTO:
A wonderful idea! I did attempt to read the TLP with others on another board,
but was not really able to get into proposition 4 very in depth. Good luck!
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JTO wrote:
Well, I've found the quote. It is from the selected parts of the Yellow Book,
found in Ambrose' Wittgenstein's Lectures 1932-1935. In part two of the Yellow
Book, lectures aside the dictation of the Blue Book, near the end of remark 12
(top of page 64 for me):
LW:
"Most of us think there is nonsense which makes sense and nonsense which does
not- that it is nonsense in a different way to say "this is green and yellow at
the same time" from saying "Ab sur ah". But these are nonsense in the same
sense, the only difference being in the jungle of the words."
SWM:
Interesting. Thanks. Since it is recorded in a period contemporary with the
Blue and Brown Books which he actually reviewed and supervised, we ought to be
able to find an equivalent thought in one or both of these, no? I recall no
such quote off hand but perhaps you have read those two books more recently (or
someone else here has) and can provide some support from those more reliable
documents. Insofar as the Yellow Book (which I have never seen by the way!) is
represented as notes from lectures he gave, there is the usual problem of the
reliability of the "scribe". Is their evidence Wittgenstein had some
supervisory hand in the preparation of this document as he had in the Blue and
Brown Books?
JTO:
I think the Blue book was actually the first thing I read by LW (as I thought
C&V was a rip-off at the time). I guess i went from the meaning of a word, to
proposition, then language (-game). The Yellow Book is in Ambrose' notes and
no, he didn't double check. I forget what Ambrose actually said about those
notes, as there are several sets of notes from various terms and classes in
that small book.
SWM:
I would also note, again, that the fuller context would help, i.e., is he
reported here as saying this in response to some specific question as to what
we mean by "nonsense" and whether some nonsense is more nonsensical than others
and, if he is, how does that accord with his claim that what he wrote in the
Tractatus was simply nonsense? If his view of nonsense was the same at that
time as when he gave those later lectures then isn't he saying that the
sentences in the Tractatus are just like "ab sur ah" which is to say
unintelligible? But if so, then why would he have thought it worth writing?
After all he could have simply produced a book of nonsense syllables! Of
course, he didn't. What he did do was to produce a book of logically related
statements/claims which, at the end he announced must be seen as nonsense once
one had understood him! So obviously it is already the case that the words in
THAT book had some level of meaning since they could be read productively from
b!
eginning to end (where the gain for the reader comes in realizing that what
has been said changes nothing).
JTO:
You could probably Google the quote and find a direct link to the page in
Google Books, and thus, see its context.
.................................................................
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"Don't, for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay
attention to your nonsense." -LW, 1947
SWM:
And yet above you have him, farther up, likening nonsense to word jumbles in
every case! Are you sure the notetaker got the meaning of his statements right?
What does the editor have to say in the preface?
JTO:
If it is nonsense, how am I to make sense of it (let alone to you)?
SWM:
Recall paragraph 599 where he says: "To say, 'This combination of words makes
no sense' excludes it from the sphere of language. But when one draws a
boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. . . if I draw a boundary line
that is not yet to say what I am drawing it for."
Already in this remark in the PI he is opening the possibility that different
assertions of nonsense will differ in various ways, e.g., in their purpose!
That is NOT consistent with the claim that:
"Most of us think there is nonsense which makes sense and nonsense which does
not- that it is nonsense in a different way to say "this is green and yellow at
the same time" from saying "Ab sur ah". But these are nonsense in the same
sense, the only difference being in the jungle of the words."
JTO:
I am sorry. The purpose of nonsense or the purpose of speaking nonsense (and
is there really a difference)? I can hardly recall what the purpose of
nonsense was... to strike notes upon the imagination... and maybe create music?
Take the guitar, for example. Some of my friends tell me it is far superior
to the piano because you can do all these cool things with it (because they
look cool to do). Are those things actually that important? I asked one of
these friends whether or not Bach or Tenacious D playing Bach was preferable.
He said that Tenacious D does Bach a lot cooler (or something like that). We
don;t understand music in the same way. They think music played at a different
pace is a different 'style'.
SWM:
Now in this very late quote you give us (1947) he is telling us not to be
afraid to talk nonsense. Do you think he only meant 'don't be afraid to jumble
your words'? But if not, then surely he was recognizing more than one type of
"nonsense".
JTO:
How did music come about? Were people just making jumbled sounds and then one
day someone said, "Hey! You have to be aware of the sounds you are producing!"
? In the review of The Science of Logic, LW mentions several epochal changes
in the history of man. Would this be like a shift in language-games?
LW:
"387. [I believe it might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to
read my notes. For even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize
what targets I had been ceaslessly aiming at.]" LW, On Certainty
SWM:
Which notes do you think he had in mind? The ones he scribbled off or the ones
he agonized over and painstakingly reworked (such as the text of the Brown Book
or the Investigations)?
JTO:
I don't know. Obviously some of the published material is better than others.
The TLP, PR, PG, and PI are surely well edited by LW, but that doesn't mean the
assorted notes found elsewhere (like C&V) are to be passed over. I do value
the recorded lecture notes over the C&V. As for the Blue/Brown Books against
say Ambrose' notes or Lectures on Foundations of Mathematics or King's notes,
etc., I think it has to be taken on a case-by-case basis. I do like much of
Ambrose' notes. Some are recorded like Blue/Brown Books and she claims her
notes were mostly verbatim at the time in those accounts, but not all her note
collections are like that and I never got around to reading much of the other
(recollected?) notes. They didn't have the same zing. But I am open to other
opinions on these. For example, my valuing is actually contra Ambrose'
according to her intro. I have been reading Zettel lately and was not
expecting much but am now quite convinced of its awesomeness. i!
t's remarks are all choice remarks selected by LW over his entire life. A
nice followup to either the TLP or PI, imo.
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JTO wrote:
Some things can be said, others shown. Show your wife the two books lined up
against each other; she could probably tell you what it means.
SWM:
As we have seen in some of the excerpts I've posted nearby, there is certainly
a difference of opinion as to the role of the shown in Wittgenstein, both in
the earlier and the later.
As to your cryptic reference to the two books, I don't follow. 'What can be
said can be said clearly.' Since you chose to say something rather than simply
observe silence on the subject, why didn't you specify clearly what you had in
mind?
JTO:
It is like a+b=c. Genesis is a, TLP is b, and c is what your wife will tell
you it means. You may have to bring Genesis 1:8 into the equation as well...
The reason I refrain from telling you that 1+2=3 is because that is no way to
do philosophy (imo). Ask yourself what the difference and similarities are
between the two books. Post your thoughts. Surely a certain latitude exists,
but what?!
LW:
"The danger in a long forward is that the spirit of a book has to be evident in
the book itself and cannot be described. For if a book has been written for
just a few readers, that will be clear from the fact that only a few people
understand it. the book must automatically separate those who understand it
from those who do not. Even the foreword is written just for those who
understand the book.
Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you
add that he will not be able to understand it. (That so often happens with
someone you love.)
If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a
lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in
talking to them about it, unless you want them to admire the room from the
outside!"
-LW, Culture and Value page 7e, 1930
SWM:
So is your point that he is telling us to disregard his preface to the PI there
(though he wrote it long before he wrote that preface -- could he have had THAT
preface in mind then do you think)?
JTO:
Oh, no. I was simply following up my remarks on the TLP with a quote. This
quote was before the PI chronologically, iirc. Forms of life, keys to locked
doors, stuff like that.
Fare Well!
JTO
--
He had a wonderful life.
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