Re: [quickphilosophy] Re: 1.12; 1.13; 1.2 & 1.21
- From: wittrsl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- To: quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2010 10:52:35 -0700 (PDT)
My typo: should read Revista Hispanoamericana.
--rla
--- On Wed, 9/8/10, Ron Allen <wavelets@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Ron Allen <wavelets@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [quickphilosophy] Re: 1.12; 1.13; 1.2 & 1.21
To: quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Wednesday, September 8, 2010, 10:48 AM
Hello again Martin:
Let me address some of the points you raise about interpreting the Tractatus.
OK, I misrepresented your stance: You're not calling him an idealist, and maybe
you're not calling him anything except, perhaps, obscure (I might do so myself,
in fact). But, in any case, there is a distinction between an idealist
philosophy and a rationalist philosophy, and I am calling Wittgenstein in the
TLP a rationalist. And, again, I don't see any clear reason to suggest that
he's putting out an idealist line of thought here. Someone might make the
argument that idealism is the only way to make sense of the TLP, but no one
seems to have ever made great strides in such an exegesis. But, I'm listening.
I don't see W. as being insincere. Looking at the guy's life, I don't see
anything but integrity and determination within his personality. (You want
insincere? Derrida's your man.) I think there is a certain irony that is
reached at the end of the work. I disagree with the interpretation Diamond
wants to give, and I think that Anscombe spotlights the irony fairly well:
"And now I come to the matter of the penultimate proposition of the
Tractatus. I think it has not been translated well. I give you what I think is
a more accurate translation thus: 'My sentences are illuminating in the
following way: one who understands me rejects them as nonsensical if, using
them as stepping stones, he has climbed out over them. He must as it were throw
away the ladder after he has climbed it. Then he sees the world rightly.'
"Notice that this does not say that someone who rejects the sentences of the
Tractatus as strictly nonsensical [rla: e.g. Diamond and Conant] understands
Wittgenstein. There is a condition: the rejection as nonsense depends on the
process of using the propositions of the Tractatus, i.e. climbing on them as on
the rungs of a ladder; if the climber so climbs out over them and so comes to
recognize them as nonsensical then they have been enlightening to him."
[Anscombe, 'The simplicity of the Tractatus,' in Critica: Revista
Hispanoamerican de Filosofia, vol. 21, no. 63, pp. 3-16, December 1989.]
So, 'nonsense' has a technical meaning inside the TLP. One can't just read the
word like a guy off the street does. Well, one just might not like neither
Wittgenstein nor the TLP, and in that case, nonsense is as good a label as any!
Thanks!
--Ron
--- On Sun, 9/5/10, Martin N Brampton <martin.lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Martin N Brampton <martin.lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [quickphilosophy] Re: 1.12; 1.13; 1.2 & 1.21
To: quickphilosophy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Sunday, September 5, 2010, 2:50 PM
Ron Allen wrote:
>
>
> Hi Martin:
>
> Well, you seem to want to draw the discussion away from Wittgenstein and
> the TLP. My emphatic claims were not about me but about W and his points
> in his early work. I don't see any basis for calling him an idealist
> here. I could see calling Berkeley, or Schelling, or Fichte, or Hegel an
> idealist, or Whitehead, but not Wittgenstein. Not in the TLP.
> Rationalist? Yes. Idealist? No.
Do I? I'm not "calling" him an idealist, I'm simply looking for a
reading of TLP that makes sense. It seems to follow from the concluding
remarks that the TLP is not to be taken at face value, so that leaves us
looking for an interpretation to show how the book can have significance
without being so taken. Presumably the bulk of TLP is *not* W's view or
the closing comments would not be sincere.
Kant is certainly a self proclaimed idealist, although a transcendental
idealist, and therefore opposed to Berkeley as well as Hume. But the
point is more to do with whether any sense can be made of claiming a
relationship between statements and some unspecified other called "facts".
Why do you think of W as a rationalist?
> But, it any case, I'm not opposed to metaphysics. It seems like everyone
> is just itching to call someone a logical positivist. Kant claimed that
> we must have God because without Him we would have no morality. So, his
> efforts at dismissing metaphysics didn't quite clear the whole field.
I haven't called anyone a logical positivist, I mentioned LP only in
connection with Ayer as an illustration of another philosopher who
changed his mind quite radically.
Are you sure Kant said that? It's a while since I read the Critique of
Practical Reason. The involvement of God seems peripheral according to
the account given at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/
> If the TLP was truly the nonsense that Diamond asserts it to be, then it
> would not deserve scholarly articles asserting it to be nonsense. There
> must be, therefore, some intellectually motivating core within the TLP.
That seems a non sequitur.
> The propositions of the TLP do not have sense, because they are not
> built up from logical operations from elemental propositions about
> states of affairs. It is an equivocation to say that they are nonsense
> because of that.
I have never argued that, but why is it an equivocation? If the
standard of sense is (and I'm not saying that it is) that a statement be
built up from logical operations from elementary propositions about
states of affairs, then what are things that are not so built? Unsense?
Not sense?
> I don't know how many different kinds of statements there can be. I
> haven't yet seen all the statements that are possible, so I can't begin
> to put them into bins, let alone determine how many bins should be set
> aside for the universe's propositions.
Why do we need to put them into bins?
> The history of science is an example of logical atomism at work. In
> designing a philosophical theory, it would be better to proceed from how
> something works rather than from how you, or I, or Wittgenstein might
> think it should work. So, epistemology doesn't have an exclusive hold on
> philosophy; there is a spot for methodology too.
Why do you think that?
> I'll try to continue this later.
>
> Thanks!
> --Ron
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