Sure, and I can use the term a different way.. — schopenhauer1
Why would it do "much harm"? — schopenhauer1
But the bigger question, and the one that's more important is why non-scientific/empirical kinds of questions cannot be true or false. — schopenhauer1
I don't know if you miss the point or are just being argumentative. If a term is used in more than one way then if we are to understand an author we must understand how they are using particular terms. This is not something unique to Wittgenstein. That is why some editions and discussions of a philosopher's work includes a glossary. — Fooloso4
It can lead to confusion or nihilism. — Fooloso4
You might argue that it is either true or false that God or the Good exists. Are you able to determine and demonstrate to the satisfaction of others whether it is true or false? — Fooloso4
except for certain people who deem it so (Russell, Mach, Vienna Circle, etc.). — schopenhauer1
That is really subjective. — schopenhauer1
The bigger point from this is, much of philosophy relies on the basis of thought, which goes beyond what can be proven empirical. — schopenhauer1
Lots of philosophy involves this "looking where the light is best" (or "hammer entails nail") sort of behavior, or solutions in search of problems.
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Those are the people he is addressing, the people he is engaged with. — Fooloso4
Right. Unlike the facts of natural science. — Fooloso4
In the Tractatus Wittgenstein distinguishes between philosophy and natural science. Philosophy is not about the facts of the world. — Fooloso4
The philosophers write for those who already have faith in philosophy. Peer reviews, , publications in books, journals and pamphlets (the old-fashioned ways). The one that could be in a position to critique another's theory or hypothesis is no other than the philosopher himself.I would think a philosophical position would be more than simply having the acceptance of one's social circle.. — schopenhauer1
The philosophers write for those who already have faith in philosophy. Peer reviews, , publications in books, journals and pamphlets (the old-fashioned ways). The one that could be in a position to critique another's theory or hypothesis is no other than the philosopher himself. — L'éléphant
I would think a philosophical position would be more than simply having the acceptance of one's social circle.. — schopenhauer1
What makes them then have "sense" in language? — schopenhauer1
Does he think a philosopher like Kant is a valid form of thinking about reality or not — schopenhauer1
The contention is that they don't. When people talk about God there is no one thing that they are all referring to. No one thing they all mean. — Fooloso4
I think he might be following Kant with regard to making room for metaphysics as a matter of practice, of how you live. — Fooloso4
Don't play coy here. — schopenhauer1
6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.
6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.
And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. — ibid.
The sciences too. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Does the irony of all this escape you? Wittgenstein is not to blame for your asshole tendencies. Across multiple threads I have attempted to discuss Wittgenstein with you as I understand him. In response you have called me a "fanboy" and other things including now accusing me of playing coy. — Fooloso4
Do you realize why both the Tractatus and the PI come off as infinitely arrogant? — schopenhauer1
They don't show evidence of philosophical insight — Leontiskos
Wittgenstein possesses no authority to try to change us — Leontiskos
Wittgenstein is nothing like Socrates. — Leontiskos
Wittgenstein is deeply time-bound in a way that Plato is not. In my estimation no one will read Wittgenstein 50 years hence. Part of it is that Plato's method is better at pulling people in and appealing to a broad audience, but that is part of his magic. — Leontiskos
But Wittgenstein himself only uses Augustine to put forth a very simplistic image of language (and I don't think he is being unfair to Augustine here, he is just not using very much of him). So, his ideas then aren't connected to past thought in a way they might have been. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Why would it do "much harm"? — schopenhauer1
But the bigger question, and the one that's more important is why non-scientific/empirical kinds of questions cannot be true or false.. Different criteria can be used, for example, as to what counts as "evidence". — schopenhauer1
It's not so much a matter of the answers to such questions not being able to be true or false, but about our ability to establish definitely the truth or falsity of them, as we can when it comes to (at least some) empirical, logical and mathematical questions.
The point is that we know what evidence looks like in those last-mentioned domains but have no idea what could constitute definitive evidence for the truth of aesthetic, ethical, moral or religious assertions. — Janus
Well you hit the nail on the head with this. Unapologetically arrogant. And, on the face of it, inexplicably so. It comes off as personality, but there is something to be said. In the Tract he had a desire and an imposed standard for every statement. He would only say what he could be sure of, certain about (a la Descartes)—so it has a dictatorial ring. What he learns through the PI is that this singular requirement (before starting; an imposed pre-requisite) of what he would allow himself to state, narrowed his topics and what he would see/could say. In the PI, instead of imposing a requirement, he is looking first (investigating) for the requirements (criteria) that already exist, each different, for each individual example (their grammar/transcendental conditions, e.g., of: following a rule, seeing, playing a game, guessing at thoughts, continuing a series…). — Antony Nickles
There's a valid distinction between propositions which can be confirmed or disconfirmed by the senses, and in accordance with the ways in which we make sense of experience; namely, causality, logic and mathematics, and aesthetic, ethical and metaphysical judgements or beliefs, which cannot be decided in those sense or rule-based ways.
The former understandings which are consistent and coherent with those sense-based modalities and the massively complex and mostly coherent web of understanding that has evolved by virtue of those ways of making sense, are readily distinguishable from the other kinds of undetermined speculations based on aesthetic, moral or religious intuitions or desires or fears or anxieties, with the former appropriately being named 'sensical' and the latter non-sensical.
The implication there is that the latter are not clearly related to the world of the senses, or the causal, logical and mathematical understandings which have evolved from the experience of that world. And I take 'non-sensical' in this context to indicate that difference in distinction to 'sensical', and not to be a declaration that such speculations are utter nonsense, or worthless, which they clearly are not, any more than poetry is or moral attitudes or aesthetic judgments are. — Janus
The way Wittgenstein leads with Augustine in PI rubs me the wrong way. It feels like he is setting up a caricature, both with respect to Augustine's thought and with respect to the tradition which went on to develop Augustine's thought. It looks like Wittgenstein read a few sentences of Augustine's most popular work (The Confessions) and then used this (caricature) as a point of departure or foil for his own approach. — Leontiskos
But we all know this distinction. We didn't need Tractatus to tell us this.. in fact, Kant did an excellent job spelling out the differences in possible justifications for "truth" conditions.... To focus on synthetic a posteriori truth as somehow the only one that one "meaningfully" discuss, is the very point that needs to be contested.. — schopenhauer1
Also, your use of "sense" here I believe, is playing around with the term "nonsense".. Nonsense does not necessarily mean "non-sensed by the five senses", but more in the Frege "sense" of "sense" and "reference". — schopenhauer1
But anyways, there is nothing he is proving such that language cannot be meaningful if it is discussing something that has no direct reference by way of empirical a posteriori means.. — schopenhauer1
But that being said, no one is contesting that human communication is almost impossible to be 100% clear or meaningful, because it is impossible to get in someone's head and go, "OH YOU REALLY GET IT!". .Rather, you can never truly know beyond public displays that someone's inner understanding corresponds with their public use. — schopenhauer1
I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. — Antony Nickles
I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. — Antony Nickles
That is a predominantly psychological observation. — Paine
All men by nature desire to know
Is it? — Srap Tasmaner
Is that also predominantly psychological? No philosophy? — Srap Tasmaner
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