[Wittrs] Re: Wittgenstein and radical Konstructivism
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:49:04 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, David Kästle <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
> If you want to answer to this, just the passages that are typed fat (at the
> bottom) are the genuine problems, that concern me.
>
> I don't want to discuss radical Konstructivism (rK) here. There is just one
> thing I am trying to understand about Wittgensteins thought.
>
> My Professor is in many parts a rK. He says, that we are just aquainted with
> our constructs about the world, not with the world itself. True enough, that
> the concepts that we create are neither right or wrong, they neither fir the
> world nor fit it not. The conceptual scheme that we use can just be practial
> for what we want to do with it or unpractical for it (that is Wittgensteins
> autonomy of language principle). You can for example tell the lenght of
> something in meter, kilometer, centimeter, but also in miles, and lightyears,
> neither measure is the right one.
>
This reminds me a bit of what I took Neil to be saying though, perhaps, he will
say I have gotten him wrong, which may well be the case. I am never quite sure
in these discussions.
But it seems to me that insofar as your professor is addressing the contrast
between the idea that we know the things in the world through bits and pieces
(sense data) and the idea that we know the world in terms of complex objects
first, I would tend to agree with the latter. While it may be reasonable to say
that the organisms we are build up the world from such stimuli, the idea of
sense data already occurs in terms of a complex picture of the world that sees
objects rather than Russellian sense data.
On the other hand, while the ideas we hold about the world are somewhat
contingent and imposed on the world (here is where it seems to me Neil's point
comes in) there is a point where the conventions we choose must accord to some
extent with the reality of our environments. If you want to say "The conceptual
scheme that we use can just be practical for what we want to do with it or
unpractical for it", then the fact remains that noting can be practical for
anything if there is not some accord with the world at large, some matching of
the convention selected to the way things actually are.
> From this the rKs seem to me wrongly to infer, that every judgement that we
> make about the world also carries this arbitraryness with it, that the
> concepts (that comprise/are part of the judgement) have. They want to say,
> that because our concepts are arbitrary, our judgements are also. And thus we
> can never know anything about the 'real world' (thought of as looked at
> without any (allways arbitrary) concepts).
>
I think you are right here. It is a wrong inference if, in fact, it is what
they are saying.
> But thats a wrong conclusion. Even the most prinitive conceptual scheme, that
> divides the world just in two cathegories, say red and not-red things, is
> enough to create right or wrong (and not just practical or not practical)
> judgements.
>
I would link this to the idea that things may match up in lots of ways, i.e.,
that lots of approaches, lots of conventions, might work, but that just any
approach is not necessarily going to work. If we have different ways of
measuring distances still there are some basic facts involved, e.g., that a
distance involves points traversed spatially, that time in movement between the
endpoints matter, and so forth. Just because there is a very wide range of
possible variant ways of capturing information about distance and measuring it
doesn't mean that any approach will suffice.
> Now comes my problem: When I thus argument against my Professor, how can I
> argument, that our judgements can be true? Because for this, he might say,
> you need to have absolutely sure evidence, that (at least one) judgement is
> true. But for no jedgement there seems to be evidence, that is enough to
> guarantee the truth of it. There seems to be allways the possibility, that
> new evidence shows, that the judgement is not true.
>
Isn't this a different issue, namely what does it mean to speak of anything
being true? What are the criteria for claiming truth, in what contexts, etc.?
Philosophers in the West have traditionally sought certain truth, something
indubitable that can be established by argument alone for all time and against
any and all comers. But is that what it means to say of anything that it is
true? With the later Wittgenstein shouldn't we ask for the use and view it in
context? And isn't it the case that the idea that one can know anything in the
world to be true in an apodictic (and discursive) sense an overstepping of the
philosophers bounds on examination of how words like "true" are actually used
in ordinary language?
> Now this is the typical sceptical problem. I don't know how to encounter it
> with Wittgenstein. He would say (in OC): It's the sceptical, that needs to
> make intelligible his doubt, who needs to argue, that it really is not sure.
> But if the sceptic just want to say, that we don't know, that there is a
> tomato in front of us (if there is one, that we see), because it could be an
> illusion, than why does he need to arguen further? Is he not just right to
> say, that we don't know?
>
Is philosophical skepticism the real thing? Does a philosopher disregard the
traffic on crossing the street even if he is the sort who says we can know
nothing for sure? But if he does not act with disregard of the traffic, then
what sort of skepticism does he really adhere to?
> I definitely see a problem here in the sceptics argument, because it seems
> then, that we lose the use of 'knowlege'
Yes, I have noticed the same with those who follow Popper's notion that we can
never know anything for sure and so all the knowledge we claim can be no more
than conjecture, more or less robustly refuted, Such a strategy does away with
the very idea of knowledge since conjecture or guessing is merely speculative
knowledge, an idea advanced contingently, waiting to be strengthened on the
basis of experience. While it can be fairly argued that all knowledge is
contingent in an important sense (we never know what will happen next), still
that is not how we operate in the world and to operate in the world we must
have this thing we call knowledge, among other things of course. But what will
count as knowledge will depend, as with truth, on the context of the use, the
language game within which we are speaking of knowing something.
> and thus he himselve would not even be able to state, that we can not speak
> of knowledge here (in the case of the tomato). But I feel just not clear
> about what to say against the sceptic or the rK. I still want to say: â??he
> is right, what justification do we have to say, that we know... ?"
>
> This is my trouble. I think it has something to do with 'normal conditions'
> as Anscombe calls it (in 'On brute facts'). But I still can not 'stop doing
> philosophy' here. Can someone help me to stop?
>
As in where to come to rest or to stop feeling that we know but we don't know
so how can we think we know?
I think the answer lies in going back to ordinary usage. There it will be seen
when and why it is appropriate to speak of true things and knowledge, and why
the philosophical problem of radical skepticism is a false one, the outcome of
mixing our uses.
SWM
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