What's the point of "objects" for Wittgenstein, if he already has "atomic facts" as the primary constituents of his language?

"Objects" indicates a metaphysics beyond the linguistic. Since there is a distinction between objects and atomic facts, there must be a reason why it is important to note. And if it is important, why is more not said about objects (entities, things, as he "clarifies")? It seems like a metaphysics shoe-horned into something that is intended to be completely about how language describes the world...

And if we want to go around the merry-go-round again we can discuss how objects don't have to be physical. Right.. but then later he distinguishes between concepts proper (things of the world), and formal objects (their signs in formal language), and pseudo-objects, (abstracted objects that are neither true or false).

So Bishop Berkeley is ridiculed for his appeal to God to support the temporal continuity of existence, but this appeal is derived from sound principles, whereas Hume is able to remove God, but he does so by using false premises. — Metaphysician Undercover

:clap:

I will try again. You said; — Fooloso4

You tried?

Simple objects do. — Fooloso4

Which are....???

An object is not a function. The possibility of and ways in which simple objects combine is determined by those objects themselves. — Fooloso4

Why would that be the case being that we don't have any idea what objects are other then they are "simples"? Why would it be the objects themselves that determine it and not some other factor of relations? But here further investigation, commentary, etc. is needed. Not opaque statements..."Thus spake Zarathustra!".

An object is not a way of organizing data. Objects are self-organizing in that the possibilities of combining are build into the objects. — Fooloso4

Why? How? What views is this set against?

Objects are not in memory. They subsist independently of what is the case. — Fooloso4

How do we know? What are some reasons for at least, strongly believing this?

None of this is a matter of what I say being right or wrong. It can all be supported and has been supported in this thread by reference to the text. — Fooloso4

But is it supportable, whether or not Wittgenstein believed it or not?

These claims are without explanation as far as I see. Now, I believe strongly in comparing styles and content to show if and where there is an insufficient account of explanation for one's exposition on one's worldview. Well, where is the explanation for any of this other than supposition and possibly because "The rest of my beliefs won't work if these initial claims don't hold"? Having your theory not be coherent if it isn't the case, is not a case in itself for somethings soundness, though certainly validity. This is why I said that it is very much like a programmer writing a language setting out how the language will operate so that it doesn't run into errors.

How is it that objects are the building blocks for atomic facts? Why should there even be atomic facts? Why is objects the building blocks and not processes? This is all strange to simply "Thus claim...".

You can say to me, "Because it has to stop somewhere". Sure, but imagine if any other thinker said that he doesn't have to explain themselves any further.. It just seems like a strange thing to NOT demand from a thinker trying to give you such a comprehensive take on the world. And I would suspect that any modern, living thinker would be grilled to death with more questions to answer for, and the work would NOT just stand on its own to have fanboys be gatekeepers for the deep mysteries of the great Witty.

Now let's compare this to a radically different thinker (from the same time period), Alfred North Whitehead:

4] With the purpose of obtaining a one-substance cosmology, 'prehensions'
are a generalization from Descartes' mental 'cogitations,' and from
Locke's 'ideas,' to express the most concrete mode of analysis applicable
to every grade of individual actuality. Descartes and Locke maintained a
two-substance ontology-Descartes explicitly, Locke by implication. Descartes, the mathematical physicist, emphasized his account of corporeal
substance; and Locke, the physician and the sociologist, confined himself
to an account of mental substance. The philosophy of organism, in its
scheme for one type of actual entities, adopts the view that Locke's account of mental substance embodies, in a very special form, a more penetrating philosophic description than does Descartes' account of corporeal
substance. Nevertheless, Descartes' account must find its place in the
philosophic scheme. On the whole, this is the moral to be drawn from
the Monadologyt of Leibniz. His monads are best conceived as generalizations of contemporary notions of mentality. The contemporary notions
of physical bodies only enter into his philosophy subordinately and derivatively. The philosophy of organism endeavours to hold the balance more
evenly. But it does start with a generalization of Locke's account of mental
operations. — Process and Reality- A.N. Whitehead

Notice the author explains, detail, what his terms mean, provides some context, etc. Or here:



Or just look at Kant:

Of time we cannot have any external intuition, any more than we can have an internal intuition of space. What then are time and space? Are they real existences? Or, are they merely relations or determinations of things, such, however, as would equally belong to these things in themselves, though they should never become objects of intuition; or, are they such as belong only to the form of intuition, and consequently to the subjective constitution of the mind, without which these predicates of time and space could not be attached to any object? In order to become informed on these points, we shall first give an exposition of the conception of space. By exposition, I mean the clear, though not detailed, representation of that which belongs to a conception; and an exposition is metaphysical when it contains that which represents the conception as given à priori.

1. Space is not a conception which has been derived from outward experiences. For, in order that certain sensations may relate to something without me (that is, to something which occupies a different part of space from that in which I am); in like manner, in order that I may represent them not merely as without, of, and near to each other, but also in separate places, the representation of space must already exist as a foundation. Consequently, the representation of space cannot be borrowed from the relations of external phenomena through experience; but, on the contrary, this external experience is itself only possible through the said antecedent representation. — Kant- Critique of Pure Reason

Notice here Kant EXPLAINS his reasoning. Even if you disagree with his premise, he gives why he thinks what he thinks.

The world is everything that is the case.*
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the
facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines both what is the case, and
also all that is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2 The world divides into facts.
1.21 Any one can either be the case or not be the case, and everything
else remain the same.
2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
2.01 An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things).
2.011 It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an
atomic fact.
2.012 In logic nothing is accidental: if a thing can occur in an atomic
fact the possibility of that atomic fact must already be prejudged
in the thing.
2.0121 It would, so to speak, appear as an accident, when to a thing
that could exist alone on its own account, subsequently a state
of aairs could be made to t.
If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them. — Tractatus

No exposition. No context. No justification. We just accept that these statements must be true without why, how, what for, etc. It builds from there, but from what epistemic foundation other than fiat of the author? "Entities and things" are also extremely vague, yet even this can be somewhat forgiven if it's explained. But its vagueness is not explained ("This is purposely left vague by me, the author, because...??""")

Of course he could! But you being wrong about him is still wrong. — Fooloso4

Ah yes the old, YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HIM game. I could also write some stuff and then say that you just don’t understand it and continually do it so that I am always at an advantage whereby whatever I wrote is correct and whatever your interpretation of it is incorrect. And somebody who I just like his interpretation of what I wrote will be correct while yours will always be incorrect. it’s a bullshit game. quit it.

Wittenstein wasn’t writing unambiguous shit. It’s clearly ambiguous to the point that even people who knew him best, including Russell didn’t quite understand it he thought.

Go fanboy yourself.

He is not explaining epistemology. He is saying that logic is a transcendental condition for epistemology. — Fooloso4

Wittenstein is not a god to me he could be wrong. Schopenhauer could be wrong can could be wrong. All of them could be wrong. He’s trying to say that certain things cannot be stated clearly in language. He’s using the methods of a programmer to do this in my opinion. This isn’t Explaining anything. It is just limiting language using language, parsing, syntax errors and such. It is making claims on EPISTEMOLOGY without EXPLAINING IT.

Is Aristotle correct on the definition of a human because he wrote a passage in a book on it and that book is studied in philosophy?

We do not simply see things as they are but according to the way we represent or picture them. — Fooloso4

How would this be different thank Kant or Plato for that matter?

One main difference is he’s using language parsing to explain epistemology. That’s like me saying that you got a coding error because you didn’t follow the correct syntax from the Programming language I created. I could’ve created a different language with a different syntax where that error didn’t occur, but according to the Tractatus and Wittenstein’s view, these errors occur. Notice, this isn’t how necessarily reality works just how his programming language (I.e. his Tractatus claims) works, which he uses to somehow describe the limits of reality. I just don’t buy it.

Not following a certain limited programming, syntax isn’t how epistemology works. Kant was explaining how various epistemological reasoning occurred. Cognitive science does the same. Anthropological evolutionary science does the same. None of them need rely on syntax errors of language parsing. Writing bad code is not an epistemology. Acting as if epistemology is writing code that is not in the correct syntax is not an epistemology. And yes, I believe that Tractaus is the rules for basically writing some programming language (pretending to be some key to the limits of what we can say about reality).

And what about scientific ideas like "evolution" that require clues from nature, and are not "states of affairs" of the world, but a combining of phenomena into a concept of how not "what" is happening? To me, Early Witt would just say that this kind of explanatory evidence is not suitable for logical analysis so has to be considered a pseudo-concept. But that seems at odds with how science works, which is by not just observing "states of affairs", but creating explanations from the "states of affairs" of various experiments.

At the end of the day, it seems like Tractatus gives us an interesting computer coding framework. What you can do with his ideas is create a neat coding language from it. I can probably map out Tractatus claims to "constants" and "variables" and "boolean", syntax errors, undefined variables, and such from his propositions of linguistic analysis- and as it works for that purpose, it is fine and dandy.

However, as it is trying to actually picture the "world" and "reality" (not just be an internal guide for parsing out terms in a language), it falls short. And I am not saying that Kant is RIGHT or has captured THE TRUTH. But rather, I see Kant as actually doing epistemology while Witt is doing proto-programming. That is to say Witt might be coherent within the system he defines thusly, but it's explanatory power for how his claims map onto the world is anemic. That is to say, there is nothing really doing this corresponding. There is nothing putting the claims to the world as to how this occurs. It doesn't have to be Kantian, but it does have to be explanatory as far as how the epistemology operates and works. This is not done, so there is no "picture theory". Objects are ill-explained. How the mind creates objects, observes objects, observes cause and effect, are given short shrift, etc. It is coherentism looking to be correspondence theory.

Objects such as blue, unicorn and hat and concepts such as processes and evolution are not referred to in the Tractatus as they are concepts proper in ordinary language and the Tractatus is not dealing with ordinary language.

Another reason that concepts such as process and evolution are not referred to in the Tractatus is that they are abstract concepts, such as angst and beauty, which can neither be described nor shown. Only concrete concepts such as blue, unicorn and hat that can be either described or shown. — RussellA

Again, these distinctions between "concept", "formal concept", and "pseudo-concept", I know come from the broader analytic hay-making of only looking at language, and not the psychology behind the language. This is why I think Kant is much more interesting, as he actually not only covers these various issues with great rigor (especially his analytic-synthetic distinction), he goes on to explain how it is that both of these understandings of reality come about. He is widening the field of explanation, not limiting it. And thus I find this early 20th century positivist-analytic anti-metaphysics/epistemology distasteful and cloyingly more arrogant than the usual philosopher's arrogant schtick (they killed you Socrates for asking too many questions...and possibly siding with Sparta...!!).

We have psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, biology, and a whole host of other scientific and humanistic disciples that can explain how language might possibly work, the psychology behind concept formation, etc. Many "theories" (like evolution), are groupings of phenomenon for explanatory power, yet they are real. I don't see Wittgenstein's "state of affairs" as even encompassing these kind of meta-understandings of the world. "Evolution is the mechanism of biological change in species". That statement according to Witt, would probably be some kind of "pseudo-concept". Ridiculous.

I agree that explaining how the mind can learn the meaning of the world "ngoe" from just five pictures is beyond my pay grade. All I know is that it works, and is in principle very simple.

The Tractatus only begins after I have learnt the word "ngoe", and only then, does the word "ngoe" in language mirror the "ngoe" in the world. — RussellA

Sure, but then, why make a theory that limits language thus in such a way with how he treats language, objects, concepts, propositions, etc.? Don't these types of explanatory things that go "beyond" mere showing refute his claims on the limits of language?

On the one hand the propositional variable "x is a number" signifies a formal concept and on the other hand the variable x signifies a pseudo-concept object. Therefore, a formal concept cannot be a pseudo-concept. — RussellA

Even this on the face of it seems odd to call a "pseudo-concept". Why can't it just be a concept that represents possibilities of states of affairs? And what about "Blue unicorns where hats on Tuesdays"? That is a pseudo-concept / proposition?

And even if it is, so what? This is similar to the problem of Russell, "The present King of France is Bald".

By empirical means, this sentence is about an imaginary or made-up class of characters. That is still a class of things, a kind of concept. Does Wittgenstein allow for that, if he is "object-agnostic" (he doesn't elaborate on what an object is in any significant metaphysical description)?

And what about "concepts" like "processes"? It's arguable that "processes" like "evolution" don't really "exist" but are groupings of how we identify the world as to what happens to objects. "Evolution" itself may not be a "thing" in the world per se, but a descriptor of a series of phenomena that is grouped together by humans for explanatory power.

What do you think "ngoe" means, now you have been "shown" the picture? — RussellA

So is this illustration supposed to be showing a potential "theory" of cognition for words associated with objects? If so this itself would be an illustration of a "psychological theory" that goes beyond simply "acquaintance" (showing) the object, thus refuting that "acquaintance" or "showing" is where it must stop. Actually, it can go further into explanatory theory- whether that be Hume's constant conjunctions, Kant's Transcendental Idealism, or modern cognitive neuroscientific theories!

IE, I agree that Kant's Critique of Pure Reason makes more sense than Wittgenstein's Tracatus, although the Tractarian idea of modal worlds is very important in philosophy. — RussellA

Curious your thoughts on this part:

Both can be communicated using symbols. One tells us about the state of affairs of the world, whether the case is true or false (synthetic-contingent, and experiential-empirical), and the other is necessary for language itself to function. Certainly, this could lead to a regress (definitions of definitions of definitions), and surely, at some point, it is simply just a matter of "knowing" the object is the object without any further explanation, but then we are getting into psychology, and NOT the "limits" of language. Surely I can point to these processes that account for object formation in the mind, and how we attach meaning to objects. And then, I have a "state of affairs" about how the mind KNOWS objects, and is not an infinite regress of definitions of the concept, but a theory of meaning that accounts for the concept-formation, and thus where language ends definitionally, I can continue on explanatorily with the psychology of concept-formation. — schopenhauer1

I am basically challenging Wittgenstein's project in Tractatus as the limits of language being actually "limits" the way he defines them (at some point you cannot say but show only).

One difference between Kant and Wittgenstein is that Wittgenstein's Picture Theory in the Tractatus does not engage with the possibility of knowing that 1 + 1 = 2 prior to observing the world (as I understand it). — RussellA

I think he might say something like, "1 + 1 =2" might be non-sense if it doesn't have a state of affairs in the world that it is discussing that can be true or false. But you used an interesting word here- knowing. Knowing is something the mind does. Wittgenstein seems to not care to discuss mind, but language limits. If signs are not signifying a possible states of affairs, they are not picturing anything, and thus cannot be communicated with any sense.

However, clearly, analytic and a prioricity statements exist. "All bachelors are male" is not a state of affairs. 1 +1 =2 is not derived from empirical evidence, but as a functioning of how numbers work. What does he think of such things that are not "states of affairs" in the world, but are nevertheless statements that can be communicated.

Let's say that his idea is, "These analytic a priori statements cannot provide information about the world itself", what does this add to the philosophical school of ideas? Kant already elucidated that it is only empirical and synthetic statements that the "world" can inform us, but that a priori and analytic statements are truths that our reasoning can inform us. Both can be communicated using symbols. One tells us about the state of affairs of the world, whether the case is true or false (synthetic-contingent, and experiential-empirical), and the other is necessary for language itself to function. Certainly, this could lead to a regress (definitions of definitions of definitions), and surely, at some point, it is simply just a matter of "knowing" the object is the object without any further explanation, but then we are getting into psychology, and NOT the "limits" of language. Surely I can point to these processes that account for object formation in the mind, and how we attach meaning to objects. And then, I have a "state of affairs" about how the mind KNOWS objects, and is not an infinite regress of definitions of the concept, but a theory of meaning that accounts for the concept-formation, and thus where language ends definitionally, I can continue on explanatorily with the psychology of concept-formation.

It has been said that Wittgenstein never studied philosophy as such, although he may have learnt from certain other philosophers he was in direct contact with, such as Bertrand Russell. So he did ignore epistemological history as he was not interested in the history of philosophy as a field of knowledge. — RussellA

And sure, why should a philosopher NOT consult past philosophers who were discussing similar themes :roll:. Let's reinvent the wheel!

There may be a difference between Kant's analytic a priori and Wittgenstein's formal concept, in that Kant's analytic a priori is knowledge prior to any knowledge about the world, whereas Wittgenstein's formal concept straddles on one side language and thought and on the other side the world. — RussellA

He cared about thoughts? He sure seems to give it short shrift....Just read some Kant, and bring some thought back (and stop pretending everything is "language") :wink:.

In the Tractatus, the formal concepts existing in language, which cannot be described but only shown, are mirrored by formal concepts that also exist in the world
4.21 - "The simplest kind of proposition, an elementary proposition, asserts the existence of a state of affairs. — RussellA

Why can't they be described but 1 + 1 = 2 can be so?

IE, within the Tractatus, the number 3 cannot be a pseudo-object as it doesn't make up the substance of the world, but because it is part of the logical structure of both elementary propositions and state of affairs, it must be, as with all particular numbers, and as with all logical constants, a formal concept. — RussellA

So, are you agreeing with me? That was what I said, that numbers (or rather equations) are formal concepts because they are not abouts states of affairs of the world. Again, Kant is informative here, it is an analytic a priori statement. You don't need to know a state of affairs of the world, for this to be true (i.e. one doesn't need experiential evidence, and it is not contingently true on a state of affairs in the world).

Mathematical equations are pseudo-proposiitons , but this does not mean the equation is a concept, either proper or formal. 1+1=2 is not concept, it is a calculation. — Fooloso4

@RussellA

Right, and that makes no sense to me to break that apart from the notion of "formal concepts". Being this is his own system, he can do whatever, I guess.

Why is "One is a number" a formal concept and "1 + 1 = 2" not a "formal concept"? I can break the world up in any number of ways, and make exceptions for everything that doesn't fit quite right.

'Number' is the constant form. 1, 100, and 1,000 are variables that have as a formal property this formal concept. — Fooloso4

I am unsure what you are saying here. I don't see how a mathematical statement like "1 + 1 = 2" is NOT a formal concept, UNLESS it was about a "state of affairs of the world". It isn't. It is Platonic non-sensing according to this view. If it IS something that is a state of affairs, tell me "where" it is found, other than the concept itself (the set of 1 and the set of 1 combining). It is a purely logical statement, not a state of affairs in the world. It's not saying THIS 1 plus THAT 1 = 2. Just 1 + 1 = 2, a generalized statement. As I said to @RussellA:

Yes, but Kant would simply classify it as analytic a priori. It is a truth that can be grasped through purely reasoning and not experience (equivalent to Wittgenstein's "state of affairs in the world"). But I am perplexed why with all this epistemological history he could have drawn from, he ignores it. — schopenhauer1

As numbers are formal concepts, I think I am right in saying that Wittgenstein would call this proposition meaningless. — RussellA

Yes, but Kant would simply classify it as analytic a priori. It is a truth that can be grasped through purely reasoning and not experience (equivalent to Wittgenstein's "state of affairs in the world"). But I am perplexed why with all this epistemological history he could have drawn from, he ignores it.

It seems that an object like the number1 is a formal concept, and being a formal concept, can never be the sense of a proposition and can never be described by a proposition, but only shown. — RussellA

Thus, it seems to be the case for Witt’s theory, 1 + 1 = 2 is formal as it is not a state of affairs per se, but a description of a category of sets that may occur as a state of affairs. It’s a description of a class not of a particular state of affairs that could be true or false.

I might argue that more Kantian discussion is needed here which is completely ignored it looks like.

I think Wittgenstein is saying that an "object" like the number 1 has a sense if it is an object or a description. So, "There is one horse". Or "Look, 1 plus 1 is 2." Or "Here is one". But once you juxtapose 1 with a class of objects that it belongs, (a number), that cannot be "shown" in the state of affairs, so fails to make "sense" (literally, because obviously the phrase resounds as true to us in grammatical form).

I just don't buy this distinction which he was trying to make, which seemed to be following Russell's own paradox about the logic of the logical structures themselves, and the incompleteness theorem, etc.

Ideas exist in the world, and therefore, ideas can be objects. All this seems to stem from a need to lock things into "states of affairs of the world" that can be true or false. Since "One is a number" cannot be true or false as a state of affairs in the world, it fails to be a sensical sentence, at least for what he thinks is proper as to what can be said clearly.

So on the one hand I think there is a bit of begging the question with respect to the "plain meaning of the text." — Leontiskos

If it makes it clearer I mean that they accepted the very apparent notion that Abraham had fidelity in his faith.

On the other hand, I think you are correct that obedience is central to the text, as I've noted above. I'm not quite sure what you and Hanover are disagreeing on. — Leontiskos

In a way, I don't either. He's trying to subtly suggest that all the extra-Biblical interpretations found in Rabbinic/Talmudic/Mishnaic literature is what the text means (because "use" is meaning, and the Rabbis are "using" it a certain way).

But my point was even the Rabbis commentary sees the apparent plain story of the text (Abraham being faithful), whatever other midrashic elements they can excavate from the text. The rest of my ideas rest for themselves in the previous post, if you look back. If you have specific questions on that, I can explain.

Yes, that is the understanding of logos that seems to be universal. The problem is knowing right from wrong. From one point of view cutting down the forest is a wonderful idea and from another point of view, it is a terrible idea. Then the ones who want to cut down the forest may come to an agreement with those who want to protect the forest and both sides get part of what they want. This thinking does not require religion, and denying non-religious people also weigh the good and the bad, is just wrong. I say so because I have dealt with Christians who think they have morals and people without God, do not have morals. While coming from a science point of view, science deniers lack morality and are the problem.

How do we know truth? — Athena

Somewhere in the post-WW2, perhaps really the 70s, the Republican party started gaining the favor of Southern and rural Evangelical Christians. So the more economic version of conservatism that represented the Calvin Coolidge/Herbert Hoover economic laisse-faire became intertwined with moral fundamentalism of Christian fundamentalists. Mind you, it wasn't always that way. In the Civil War, there were a good deal of Christian abolitionists that were advocating the end of slavery. In the late 1800s, there was the populist movement supporting the working class, mainly in the Democratic party, led by the super-fundamentalist Christian, William Jennings Bryan. At some point in the 70s, with the televangelists like Billy Graham and the like, you had this alliance of the the Christian fundamentalists with the business laisse-faire conservatives, and you get the pillars the Republicans from 1970s-2016.

However, Donald Trump has added an element of populism and isolationism back into the Republicans, somewhat changing the traditionally, "neoliberal" worldview into classical isolationism of earlier times. Christian fundamentalists tend to put a lot of stock into the immanence of the return of Jesus and that political happenings reflect Biblical prophecy. I suspect many Evangelicals see Donald Trump as an instrument of God- the irony being that he is way more corrupt than presidents conservatives condemned previously for moral reasons (e..g Bill Clinton). All actions are justified then, if he is an instrument from God. A sense of fairness of how corruption is applied goes out the window. Liberals and non-Trumpian conservatives can be condemned for corruption or moral reasons, but everything Trumpians do is or can be justified. It is a stark authoritarian streak of blind allegiance and double standards.

I take the rabbinic period to have begun after the fall of the second temple, which I also take to be the beginning of the Talmudic period, which is what I also take to be the beginning of Judasim as we currently know it. Prior to that, I would consider it a religion centered around the Temple and sacrifice, and, if we go back far enough, we have questions about origins generally in terms of when monotheism emerged. — Hanover

Which is to say pretty much what I said.. The Pharisees fall squarely under the Second Temple period, and the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods fall right after but before the Middle Ages period (technically late Roman Empire/early Middle Ages), so that is to reiterate a pedantic point to make it seem muddled, it looks to me. But I'll just interpret it as in agreement I guess. The Rabbis of the Tannaim (Mishna) and Ammoraim (Gemaras) in Yavneh, Sepphoris, Caesarea, Tiberias, Pubembita, and Sura thought of themselves continuing the Pharisaic lineage, and the tradition is that the bridge was started by Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai c.70 at the destruction of Jerusalem.

My point being that we're now to decipher what the beliefs of a people were dating back from the Bronze Age and then we get into questions of when the various parts of the Torah were written, compiled, and edited into a single version as we know it today. Laying claims to how these stories were interpreted and what significance they had is entirely speculative. For example, we have today a creation story that could just be a fable to try to explain our origins that the ancients might have taken literally, but very well might not have. In fact, Genesis has two entirely different origin stories. That story has morphed into an account of original sin and the need for God to give his only child to save us from that sin. It is also argued that Jesus is the slaughtered lamb in the Isaac story. — Hanover

Yeah, the written word regarding historical/romanticized/mythologized fables can be interpreted in any number of ways. You are trying to thread the fine needle by buying into the Rabbinic idea that all their notions of interpretation of Torah go back to the original author's intent. The Pharisees, from which the Rabbinic tradition largely derives from only appear around the 2nd-3rd century BCE. It could be that this group held traditions that went back further. Obviously, that will be their claim. It could also be that they were actually innovators rather than preservers. There are some indications that the rituals that were meant purely for priests were, for the Pharisees, incumbent upon all Judeans. That is to say, they democratized some of the ritualistic aspects. Not only this, they added midrashic interpretive techniques to get as much out of the text as they could and to resolve various debates on how each law was to be interpreted.

The claim of succession in Perkeit Avot, is that the Great Assembly codified the Tanakh during the Persian period in the 5th century BCE (around Ezra and Nehemiah), and that from there the "Zugot", or Great Pairs of Sages (like Hillel and Shammai) headed the Sanhedrin and kept the traditions intact.

I'd imagine the truth is somewhere in the middle. There were some elements that perhaps were kept in some traditional form by this group going back to the Persian period, but that much of it was their own particular interpretive approach to the writings. That is to say, they didn't necessarily hold some "pure" originating version, any more than the Sadducees or Essenes, or other lesser known groups, they simply had an approach that became adopted around the 200s BCE.

What is fair game is that we know the facts- Judah was captured by the Babylonians in the 500s BCE and the elites taken to Babylon for many decades. When they came back to the province of Yahud (under the directive of the Persian regime), they reformulated much of the religion to be more in line with the Monotheism more resembling the Judaism we read about in the Jewish writings, Josephus, or even the gospels in the Greco-Roman period. However, if Yonatan Adler is correct, even this picture is too simplisitc, as it was only the priests, scribes, and elites in Jerusalem that practiced this form while the populous still held onto the older heterodox religious beliefs. It wasn't until the Maccabean Revolt that the religion of the elites became THE religion of the masses, according to this theory. And then the history was retrojected as if it was always thus. So you have the establishment of Second Temple Judaism of the elites int he 400s BCE, and by the 160s BCE, you have the spread to the whole population in the guerilla war against the Seleucids.

The Talmud was written in the late 1st century AD, which is the best we can say regarding how the Torah has been interpreted since then. Per Jewish tradition, however, it is believed that the Talmud encompasses the oral tradition passed down by the Pharisees, and it is this oral tradition that holds as much weight as the written tradition of the Torah. That is, it is tenant of Orthodox Judaism that the oral tradition was received alongside the written word at Mt. Sinai. The point being that tradition argues that the written law was never interpreted without the oral tradition alongside it. — Hanover

Yes it is a fact that this is a belief the Pharisees held about their own methods, traditions, and interpretations.

So where this leaves us is in a highly contextualized spot, where we can't just say the Binding means we should blindly follow God's will without question. It certainly does present an argument that we should listen to and trust God, but it would also suggest that God wouldn't steer us wrong, and it is presented as a story that attempts to end the idea of human sacrifice, which I suspect was an issue among other religions at the time. — Hanover

You are whitewashing this in a ridiculous manner. My whole point is even if the Rabbis of the Talmud and Pharisees before them interpre

But you can't make an argument that the Torah stands for the proposition generally you shouldn't argue with God and question him. There are plenty of examples of that from Moses, Abraham, and Job (and more) directly questioning God.
— Hanover

But, what does the story mean to those who read it? https://www.sefaria.org/topics/binding-of-isaac?sort=Relevance&tab=sources All sorts of things. — Hanover

None of which contradicts the main point of the story...Look here from one of the older texts from the Ammoraim period (300s CE):

Another matter, Rabbi Yitzḥak said: When Abraham sought to bind Isaac his son, he said to him: ‘Father, I am a young man, and I am concerned that my body will tremble due to fear of the knife, and I will [thereby] upset you, or perhaps the slaughter will [thereby] be rendered unfit and it will not be counted for you as a valid offering. Therefore, bind me very well.’ Thereupon, “he bound Isaac his son.” Is a person capable of binding a thirty-seven- year-old [variant reading: a twenty-six-year-old] without his consent?
Immediately, “Abraham extended his hand.” As he extended his hand to take the knife, his eyes were emitting tears and the tears were falling into Isaac’s eyes, because of the father’s mercy [for his son]. Nevertheless, his heart was joyful in fulfilling the will of his Creator. The angels gathered themselves into groups up above. What did they cry out? “The highways are desolate, those passing on the way have ceased, he breached the covenant, he has spurned the cities” (Isaiah 33:8) – does He not in fact desire Jerusalem, and the Temple that He had planned to bequeath to Isaac’s descendants? “He had no regard for man” (Isaiah 33:8) – if the merit of Abraham is not sufficient, there is no significance for any person before Him… — https://www.sefaria.org/topics/binding-of-isaac?sort=Relevance&tab=sources

But you can't make an argument that the Torah stands for the proposition generally you shouldn't argue with God and question him. There are plenty of examples of that from Moses, Abraham, and Job (and more) directly questioning God. https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/5298/Arguing-with-God.pdf — Hanover

Yes two Jews, three opinions. Arguing with God is part of the Jewish tradition. Abraham bargained on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah. Whatever points regarding the ability to argue with God, you don't totally ignore him. In this case, Abraham had faith in God and was rewarded for it. If you take away the main impetus of the story (faith in God), then the whole story becomes a Kabuki show whereby the characters know what's going to happen but they are just performing it for "funsies". But that isn't the case. Abraham was thought to be a real human who was making real decisions in some historical time and place. Certainly as modern critics we can see it as simply literature and find all kinds of meanings. Certainly, the rabbis approached it as a real event and used the sparse text to gain all sorts of justifications and reasonings from it. I doubt it was the other way around.

It's a hard argument to make that the Torah stands for the notion one should not wrestle with God, considering the strange story of Jacob wrestling with God and having his name changed to "Israel." (“Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Genesis 32:28) — Hanover

As other posters pointed out, the Torah and the Tanakh has many themes. Certainly, one of them is "wrestling with God". But you also have stories where God is pretty clear on what he wants, and is generally good to his closest adherents. If anything, the story perhaps shows God's mercy, as he would never try to ask more than what one can handle. However, it could not be ONLY this point. It also had to be Abraham's fidelity, because it was the element of not truly knowing what was going to happen that makes the story so powerful. It was at the end that we see that it was the ram all along that should be sacrificed. In the story, Abraham was not told prior, "Hey I'm just doing this symbolic ritual, and I want you to bring your son so I can tell you". He had Isaac bound and then the big reveal at the end.

Faith didn't mean then what it means now. If we're accepting the Bible literally, when Abraham was told by God to sacrifice Abraham, he literally said it to him (although, again, not all traditions accept that God literally talked ever). That is, if there is some guy walking around being all powerful and I hear it and see it daily, it's hardly an act of faith to agree to do what he tells me. It's a fair stretch to then say the Bible must be followed blindly because it's God "telling" me what to do in the same sense Abraham was "told" what to do. Reading a several thousand year document contextualized with all other documents is a very different sort of "telling" than what Abraham meant by "telling." Abraham meant he was told it, not that he read a old document about it.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough, but interested in your thoughts on all this. — Hanover

Well, I don't think it's about the sense of faith as in "does God exist?", but rather, faith whatever God asks is the course of action one needs to take. He didn't waver in his actions.

There are poems and fragments of older texts dating back centuries earlier perhaps as early as the 11th century BC for some of the poems which conceptualize God in highly anthropomorphic, warrior-like ways like song of the sea. Perhaps the texts were completed around the 7th century BC? — BitconnectCarlos

This. I am not saying the myths themselves, and variations of them in previous forms didn't exist, but ones with a cohesive narrative and historical bent, one's conforming with the El only prophets perhaps, centered around Jerusalem, and became the core views/writings that were compiled later in the Babylonian/Persian period in the 400-500s BCE. I am not saying my synthesis here of events is EXACTLY how it went, or the only theory, but I think it is reasonable.

Certainly various priestly prayers, poetic writings, and at least allusions to earlier historical/political goings on and writings in Chronicles, Samuel and Kings (from 800s-900s BCE perhaps?) can be seen,.

According to Shaye Cohen scribes appear in the second temple period. By scribes he means laymen knowledgeable of the Tanakh. — BitconnectCarlos

I mean it in the broader sense. That is, people who could write. So this would be presumably many of the later Prophets, the people who wrote down what a prophet supposedly said, and the people who revised and compiled the Torah, Prophetic books, and Writings (TaNaKh).

Yes the general theme of the Tanakh is obey God, follow his directive, and good will come. And of course the inverse is true too. But this isn't universal as seen in Job and Ecclesiastes.
an hour ago — BitconnectCarlos

Yes, which is basically what I stated previously as here:

And again, this works generally how the God of the Israelites in the Tanakh operates- good is rewarded, evil is punished, and sometimes good people are punished for unclear, but heavenly reasons (Job). — schopenhauer1

You put so much work into your post and I want to honor that. My questions are sincere wonderment, trying to figure out a puzzle about how we judge truth. — Athena

Thank you for the nice words. :smile:.

Those men could not have experienced a god in an empirical way because that god is not made manifest on earth. So in want did they have faith? It seems to me they had a very high opinion of themselves, to think they could know god. What evidence of god were they using? — Athena

When you say, "Those men", you mean the men in the story or the men who wrote it? If it was the men who wrote it, I always find that question to be the most mysterious. What is the mindset of people writing a tribal historical narrative replete with historical-sounding fables, and commandments? I don't know. But if we are to exclude the idea that these things were exactly as they wrote them, or even divinely inspired (the naturalistic approach), we can only accept that cobbling together of stories and reinterpreting them for a nationalistic mythos and ethical system was something they thought important.

:chin: Just about everyone had a patron god or goddess and around the world people have done all in their power to please the gods and goddesses. There is nothing unigue about believing the Nile or an irrigation ditch will flood or there will be a good harvest if a god/goddess is pleased and bad things happen when they are displeased. People turned on their leaders when it seemed obvious the gods no longer favored them. I don't understand what you said if you said others didn't have a god's protection. — Athena

Correct, and I guess what I wrote can be interpreted one of two ways...

The Tanakh/Bible is ancient Israel's unique spin on a common one in the ancient world of people appeasing a deity OR
The Tanakh/Bible is unique in itself in that it centered-around only one patron god who could only be appeased, or the only one that matters or counts.
But again, even this idea developed slowly in Judaic thought. And if Adler's theory is right, it didn't really become THE view of the main populous until around the Hasmoneans, much later than even other scholars (who usually want to say at least the Babylonian Exile or a bit before).

That is, let us assume the Abrahamic religionists have foolishly accepted a literally evil text to support their morality but they themselves are folks like all others in search for the truth and the good. And so they did as you say and have turned the text upside down to have it mean something you don't see anywhere in the text, that etymology impacts the meaning in no way.

This history lesson of how their world was formed even if true doesn't matter to what the binding of Isaac means. That you can read "break a leg" to mean break a leg doesn't mean you want an actor to fracture a leg. — Hanover

@Banno
@Leontiskos

But even the Pharisees and their intellectual descendants, the Rabbis of the Mishnaic and Talmudic periods would have more-or-less accepted the plain meaning of this text, even if they "flavored" it with various other interpretations, as is the custom with Judaic hermeneutics of the Second Temple period into the Middle Ages and beyond.

That is to say, there is no way you can read that text and not come away with the impetus of it, which is that faithfulness in God is what is necessary. There are of course many ambiguities in the story, such as that of Abraham's psychological state, God's motivation, Isaac's psychological state, and so on. As happens with stories that lack such nuance, folktales (a sort of early form of fan-fiction) could have formed around the stories to fill it in an teach even more lessons from it. It could have been done deliberately even, to make a greater point, but considered "inspired".

Either way, this text is teaching that Abraham had great faith in God and therefore was rewarded.. as the text says:

Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test, saying to him, “Abraham.” He answered, “Here I am.”
....
“Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”
When Abraham looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.
...
I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes.

All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed My command.” — Genesis- Tanakh online

There is no way to reinterpret that otherwise. You can add to it, provide more context or whatever, but that is the main impetus of the story.

And again, this works generally how the God of the Israelites in the Tanakh operates- good is rewarded, evil is punished, and sometimes good people are punished for unclear, but heavenly reasons (Job).

This goes along with the uniquely Israelite spin on a god who protects his people if they maintain their faith in him. The Book of Job is unique in that it had a more ambiguous spin on the relationship, trying to convey that it wasn't as transactional as simply "reward and punishment". However, I would say this is more an aside (a more interesting nuanced one, and one more in line with a more complex Pessimism in my opinion), but the gist of most of the other books and stories, is to convey that if Israel and its gentile allies follow God, he will show his favors, sometimes individually, sometimes geopolitically (ancient Israel /Judah being favored or castigated based on the misgivings of the people).

We also must look at the actual archeological and historical records of the period the Tanakh was being written. Scholars generally attribute the oldest texts some time around the 7th century BCE, with various prophets. These were innovators in that they had the notion that El would be the sole god for worship, and identified with him as the patron god of the Israelite tribes and kingdom. They would implore the kings to banish the other traditional Canaanite gods (Baal and Asherah especially), for the sole worship of this god. The unique laws of kashrut and shabbat and such may have been practiced by the intellectual elites only centered around Jerusalem in the First Temple Period (c.1000 BCE-586 BCE), but probably wasn't adopted fully until the time of the Hasmoneans (c.140 BCE). As scholar Yonatan Adler points out in this article:

Now, in a study published today in the journal Tel Aviv, the pair reveals that ancient Judeans, in a period that spans throughout much of the first millennium B.C., enjoyed a diet that didn’t fully adhere to Jewish kosher laws. According to the study, archaeologists have found the remains of three non-kosher species in the two ancients Judean settlements—the Kingdom of Israel in the region’s north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. Judah residents in particular ate a lot of catfish. These findings help scientists and historians build a more complete picture of how the ancient Judean cultures developed and adopted these rules.

According to rabbinic tradition, Moses, the most important prophet in Judaism, received the commandments that outlined how to live life as a Jew sometime around the 13th century B.C. Scholars don’t know exactly when these rules and practices were written down into the Torah, but in his upcoming book, Adler argues that evidence for its observance does not appear until the Hasmonean period that lasted from 140 B.C. to 37 B.C. And the point in history at which Judean citizens adopted the dietary rules prescribed in Torah into their lifestyles, essentially becoming kosher, is also not certain.

Adler has been working on the Origins of Judaism Archaeological Project, which aims to find out when ancient Judeans began to observe the laws of Torah, including dietary rules. He was hoping that the centuries-old fish scraps tossed away after dinner might help shed some light on that. “I can find out a lot about people by going through their garbage,” he says. “So we can learn a tremendous amount of what people were actually doing through the material remains they left behind—and this is particularly true for food.”

When both kingdoms rose to prominence, an average Judean denizen lived under the rule of a king, and was a farmer who plowed fields and harvested crops. With the exception of the societal elite, most individuals were illiterate. So while the educated intellectuals of the time had penned down laws, scribbling them on animal skins or papyrus, the vast majority of Judeans didn't necessarily know about them and couldn’t read them either. Even if the societal intellectuals may have started adopting kashrut, the masses likely hadn’t yet gotten the memo. — What Archaeology Tells Us About the Ancient History of Eating Kosher - Smithsonian Magazine

Whatever the case may be, the people who wrote the Prophetic books were mainly condemnatory towards the kings for not following their unique cult. The "people" barely had much interactions with the elites. Once the neo-Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar conquered the rebellious Jerusalem stronghold c.586 BCE, the "elites" (including the royalty, priests, and scribes), were taken to Babylonia. Here the "El only" faction cobbled together an Israelite mythological-history, retrojecting their viewpoint into the history (that El was always the main god, and the Israelites simply went astray rather than it being an innovation later on). Their goal was tribal historical narrative weaving stories of El throughout, and probably also to give context to rituals they were following to give those rituals greater significance for why they were practiced. They were not, however, doing deep ethical commentary- though ethical commandments and themes are definitely a part of it. Their goal and style was that of certainty and not of debate and contextual relevance. They needed a national, historical narrative to fit the reformed nation, especially when it was reestablishing the Second Temple.

However, again, this reestablishment itself was not fully integrated into the wider Judaic population until the nationalistic campaign against he Greek Seleucid dynasty c.160s-140s CE, when these elite-formulated texts became taken as a sort of constitution for the independent Jewish Hasmonean Dynasty. This is when the Pharisees with their oral story contextual analysis came into play, Sadducees simply adopting the written text as is, which suited their interests as keepers of the sacred rites, and the Essenes, who envisioned a more pure and apocalyptic version, repudiating the other two.

Now, I do think the text lauds Abraham's obedience. That is part of the meaning. I'm not convinced that Hanover was disagreeing with this. — Leontiskos

So what is this debate about? That was the question at hand.. Is this about obedience? As here:

If God is interpreted as Good, then where is the secular/religious distinction you make here? — Hanover

He took this completely out of context, and even added ideas of “Goodness”. You can make a text do whatever you want.

This is just incorrect. Fundamental literalism is a reactionary response to perceived threats of the scientific revolution. It's a modern phenomenon. — Hanover

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshat

Peshat interpretations also note the importance of context, both historical and literary.[3] This is in contrast to Drash, which will often take the text of a verse out of its context, for uses beyond the context such as ritual or moral purposes.[3]

There is nothing in the text or commentaries contradicting the basic text’s meaning which is Abraham was obedient. You might get other things, like god is merciful, and would not allow human sacrifice, but the main character here is Abraham and his fidelity and trust.

For God to be an ogre demanding obedience, you have to take a very literalist definition and you must assume he decrees without being subject to interpretation.

If, though, you apply a more open interpretation throughout all contexts, your demand for obedience isn't to some angry demanding man in the sky, but it's to a conceptual goodness.

God is fully incorporeal, so what exactly do you propose you're being obedience to? — Hanover

Why would I apply a more open interpretation when most likely, at the time, it was precisely the literal one in the text which was trying to be conveyed? Sure, later on, the rabbis in Talmudic fashion, will try to gain more meaning from the text, but even if one believed these post-facto, clever retrojected interpretations, the plain one, and probably the original meaning is right there in the text- Abraham was rewarded for his faith and obedience.

22:9. They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.

22:10. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son.

22:11. Then an angel of the LORD called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.”

22:12. And he said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.” — Genesis

It's clear God in these stories, likes tests of faith, sometimes rewarding, sometimes punishing, sometimes basically saying, "Hey I do what I do.. don't question it." (Looking at you, Job).

The Ancient world had all kinds of fables. The Israelite/Jewish ones tended to have an explicitly ethical command attached to it that encumbant on the adherent/tribe-member. But even if there is this ethical difference, it resembled other ones like Near Eastern and Greco-Roman ones in that these stories, though set in some time-frame are still kind of happening in "noumenal space". These "historical events" just so happen to be timeless, literary morality tales. They lack the slice of life that even a good historical fiction provides.

Now Iapetus took to wife the neat-ankled maid Clymene, daughter of Ocean, and went up with her into one bed. And she bore him a stout-hearted son, Atlas: [510] also she bore very glorious Menoetius and clever Prometheus, full of various wiles, and scatter-brained Epimetheus who from the first was a mischief to men who eat bread; for it was he who first took of Zeus the woman, the maiden whom he had formed. But Menoetius was outrageous, and farseeing Zeus [515] struck him with a lurid thunderbolt and sent him down to Erebus because of his mad presumption and exceeding pride. And Atlas through hard constraint upholds the wide heaven with unwearying head and arms, standing at the borders of the earth before the clear-voiced Hesperides; [520] for this lot wise Zeus assigned to him. And ready-witted Prometheus he bound with inextricable bonds, cruel chains, and drove a shaft through his middle, and set on him a long-winged eagle, which used to eat his immortal liver; but by night the liver grew [525] as much again everyway as the long-winged bird devoured in the whole day. That bird Heracles, the valiant son of shapely-ankled Alcmene, slew; and delivered the son of Iapetus from the cruel plague, and released him from his affliction—not without the will of Olympian Zeus who reigns on high, [530] that the glory of Heracles the Theban-born might be yet greater than it was before over the plenteous earth. This, then, he regarded, and honored his famous son; though he was angry, he ceased from the wrath which he had before because Prometheus matched himself in wit with the almighty son of Cronos. [535] For when the gods and mortal men had a dispute at Mecone, even then Prometheus was forward to cut up a great ox and set portions before them, trying to deceive the mind of Zeus. Before the rest he set flesh and inner parts thick with fat upon the hide, covering them with an ox paunch; [540] but for Zeus he put the white bones dressed up with cunning art and covered with shining fat. Then the father of men and of gods said to him: “Son of Iapetus, most glorious of all lords, good sir, how unfairly you have divided the portions!” — Hesiod

If God is interpreted as Good, then where is the secular/religious distinction you make here? — Hanover

I’m not quite getting your question. If you replace a major concept with another, it loses the value of its point. Can you explain what you mean?

It's how you wish use such documents that comes into debate, and that informs how you'll interpret it, meaning how you use it determines its meaning. — Hanover

Surely, you can’t say that the only takeaway from the story of Isaac is that it means that sacrificing humans is not a requirement. Yes that is a proposed explanation for why Israelites didn’t sacrifice like some Canaanites or ancient groups did but that’s like a smaller functional retrojection common in Talmudic pilpul. Rather, the main point is being obedient to god, and being rewarded for doing so.

Others suggest it stands for the proposition that human sacrifice is prohibited. Others as a foretelling of the coming of Jesus. — Hanover

Yep. It sits in the foundational story of Abraham, who would sacrifice his son because god wills it, glorifying doing what one is told to do over taking personal responsibility. — Banno

Banno offers the moral interpretation. Hanover provided a functional interpretation. Combined it might say:

“God wants your full obedience and in doing so will show you that he’s not too unreasonable”.

But he did screw with Abraham’s head and majorly gaslighted Job in the pursuit of “testing” their loyalty. I find that an interesting godly trait.

Reward and punishment for being loyal, and loyalty tests that might require emotional and physical anguish.

Ok, well we might debate what counts as adequate explanation here. But what is not a good response is to say, "yes, it does seem inadequate, but that's only because human reason is ultimately deficient." This essentially amounts to saying "I do not need to offer a convincing explanation or demonstration, because such a thing is not possible, but you should still accept the truth of what I'm saying."

This is like Luther's response to Erasmus. Erasmus says "a God who predestines — forces — man to sin, and then punishes him for it seems evil."

To which Luther responds: "yes, but it only seems evil because our reason is deficient due to the fall." This is not an explanation though. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Killed two birds with one stone there. :snicker:.

I hear you...What I am saying is that just as it isn't uncommon to flip through a Socratic dialogue, and see Socrates challenging what others say about certain things (such as the good), and through dialogue shows how the thought leads to problems, we see Witt doing the same. In the preface to the Tractatus, Witt says his concern is first and foremost thoughts, not language...he just happens to concede that it is through language that the analysis has to be conducted since that's how we communicate our ideas with one another. — 013zen

Well, of course it's done through language. But that is not his major point. That is just a truism. His major point is that it is invalid to attempt to talk about the world outside certain bounds, that he sets out to limit.

My point is, let's assume that you're right and Witt is Saying that metaphysics such as Plato's theory of forms, really doesn't belong in a modern day metaphysics. Wouldn't you agree? (I, personally, wouldn't necessarily take Witt to be committing to this view)Is it so strange that someone that:

1. Graduated from a mechanical engineering program
2. Enrolled in an aeronautics doctorate program with the intent to design his own plane
3. Designed and patented his own propeller (tbh it was kinda a stupid design though lol)

And only after 5-6 years of this, when trying to manufacture his propeller, did Witt become interested in extremely complicated mathematics and learned about Frege and Russell. — 013zen

Then what view is Witt taking? What's the point of Tractatus if not to criticize theories just like Plato of things like "The Good" and "Forms" above the "divided line", and levels of knowledge like "gnosis", etc. This is all written words about things that are not necessarily "objects" that can be put in propositions of true or false. Of course you can say, "No, he meant any object, not just material ones", then he needed to explain that point more rather than it be deduced from various cobbling of his claims. So this difference here may be how we are reading Tractatus, which I had alluded to earlier. That is, you seem to be giving Witt a more open view of previous metaphysics, when I think that he thinks himself demolishing previous metaphysics. It's not just a matter of how they are grammatically phrasing their words. It's not just that Plato could have kept his theory coherent if he had just worded his ideas of Forms more syntactically correct, but rather, that the content of his thoughts are non-sense, and thus are beyond the bounds of language.

I am not saying that his project was different, but rather his approach, and some of his conclusions. — 013zen

Right so we are debating here really is subjective to how we group this, but to my view of Tractatus, it is just his peculiar spin on the ideas Russell and Frege and others were working on. He is allowed to have his own take on it without it being wholly different in kind. The same then can be said to Russell's response to Frege, and others response to Russell, etc. I think Wittgenstein has just particularly been mythologized. A similar phenomenon has happened to the character of Nietzsche, great mustache that he had.

So, to the original point, I don't find it even remotely odd that someone that worked in mechanical engineering for 5-6 years and then worked on philosophy for another 6 years wrote something that was somewhat of an outlier when compared to a lot of the other analytics at the time. He explicitly references Heinrich Hertz in the Tractatus, and is quoted elsewhere saying that his line of thinking was influenced heavily by Ludwig Boltzmann alongside Frege and Russell. — 013zen

Yes, as I admitted earlier, his philosophy indeed resembles that of an engineer or programmer. I'm not sure why you are reiterating what I already characterized as thus (he wrote in a manner perhaps appealing to engineers).

However, what I don't really agree with is just because he was an engineer, this confers greater approaches to philosophy. As @RussellA quoted:

Perhaps the following is relevant.

It may not be the case that Wittgenstein was trying to break away from the tradition of epistemology and metaphysics, but rather that he didn't know much about the tradition in the first place. From IEP Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889—1951) — RussellA

Perhaps that gave him more freedom to do his own thing without being encumbered by tradition, but it also seemed to lack epistemological considerations, as if by replacing epistemology with the structures of language, you can bypass epistemology altogether. But doing this is a sort of epistemology. You cannot just bypass it, and thus, this approach must be explained (not ignored or worse, assumed). Russell, for example, wrote a whole history of philosophy, so he was well-aware of traditions that came before and what he was trying to do (away with).

You've just summarized, like, 75% of the philosophy papers that I have read. xD — 013zen

It is exhausting to have philosophers not explain themselves well. There are many reasons for this. Obviously, ancient philosophers didn't necessarily have the amount of refutations written down in the form of essays that developed later. It was oral more than anything. There are commentaries on previous philosophers, for sure, but then we just get certain ones. There obviously weren't as many academics and so on either and the writings that are there are scant or lost to history if they existed at all. For modern day philosophers, it is about academic credibility. It is slow chess versus speed chess. We can answer quickly to our interlocutor in an philosophy forum with little repercussion other than hurt feelings or pride. For professional philosophers in the ivory towers of academia, they must worry about every word they published and so are much more careful to provide responses to commentary. The less you respond to interlocutors, the more the original work has to stand on its own. Then acolytes and mythos form around certain works and philosophers, and it becomes its own thing, with commentators and commentators of the commenters of the original.

He was well aware that he wasn't the most articulate, but he thought there was something of value in his thoughts. I'd like to say that just as each of us is articulate to differing degrees, that being less articulate than another neither preclude one from engaging in philosophy, nor does it inherently suggest that the ideas are wrong, or not useful at their core.

I've read plenty of philosophers that I couldn't make heads nor tales of (I'm looking at you Hegel), but others are able to discover some merit within. There is a reason that Witt says:

"This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it - or similar thoughts." — 013zen

:up:

Perhaps it's the acolytes that are more to blame.

Truthfully, I was being a bit tongue in cheek :P — 013zen

:up:

Positivists are. Not all analytic philosophers are positivists... it just so happens that historically, a lot of them have been. — 013zen

Where do you think Witt stands? I present as evidence the "Whereof.." quote.

This is hardly the case. All philosophy, from Aristotle to Putnam has always started with some set of basic assumptions before moving forward. Its a perennial belief that can be endlessly quoted, and pointed out, whether it be a scientist assuming materialism or Aristotle assuming first principles. — 013zen

But they are doing metaphysics by expositing what they think of reality. Wittgenstein is trying to quickly move past that to facts. Objects are there behind the facts, but they are only useful for his idea of facts and propositions. Why doesn't he delve deeper into these initial beliefs? He certainly could have. And if you answer in a way that I already addressed (his demolishing of metaphysics as proper content of language), then I will simply point back to that.

Now you're not even trying to be charitable to what I'm saying, if you take that bit to be me simply saying, "Witt and Socrates were doing exactly the same thing in every regard" :P — 013zen

What I meant by this is that Socrates was not clarifying language itself but the notions and ideas of people, or its content. Wittgenstein is trying to determine what is in the bounds of language. It might be said, Socrates would not even be deemed worthy of his discussions on Forms, The Good, and a whole range of other things, because they are not corresponding to a "State of Affairs" that can be determined as true (presumably through empirical means, but then again, since Witt offers us such a bereft explanation of objects and states of affairs, we can interpret it to mean any entity, ones that are not material etc, and go around in circles trying to fit it together instead of it being clearly stated from the beginning.). The only thing Witt can take from Socrates is the questioning, which he uses to death in the PI in order to showcase how fluid and ambiguous language is, countering his former self and other analytics of the early 20th century.

Idk what that means. Providing historical context is this "hipster fandom talk"? — 013zen

No that is fine, I like historical context. I was commenting on the idea that he was such an outlier that he was wholly different from the projects of other analytics of the time. As I stated before, I disagree. Rather it is the "narcissism of small differences". But if he is misunderstood so thoroughly, this whole project of trying to interpret the "right" Wittgenstein itself is insipid to me because it just speaks to the lack of good communication of the author; it's a lack of quality explanation of ideas. A defense of any ambiguously phrased sentence can always be said, "No, THIS is what the author TRULEY meant", and so on infinitum. And to make him a rebel and outsider, is to weirdly make him a sort of mythologized hero and Prophet.

I'm sure you wouldn't want to say the analytic tradition is nonsense, despite being the result of logicians and scientists "doing philosophy " like logicians and scientists. — 013zen

You are extrapolating that, but I did not say that. Logicians and scientists "doing philosophy" like logicians and scientists is fine and dandy, but it's more than that. They are committing to a form of philosophy whereby any metaphysical or epistemological claims cannot be stated without being non-sense. It is limiting the field of play to their own preferences for being the explainer and referee of the sciences. The problem is, once you make statements about the world (objects, states of affairs), you ARE doing metaphysics, and all you are doing is being abbreviated in your explanations so as to try not to violate your own premises about non-sense. But objects are and states of affairs need explanation besides being simply posited as to their nature, their necessity, etc. The only necessity it has in Tractatus, is because without it, the theory cannot be true. That is circular reasoning.

These folks were interested in what science could say about reality and how we can ensure that our theories map to reality. So, naturally they start from the assumption that our words should somehow tie back to reality in some guaranteed fashion. — 013zen

Naturally. If philosophy started with "Naturally this that and the other..." that begs the question and is simply taking one's assumptions as given by fiat.

Thank goodness we had physicists like Helmholtz, Hertz, and Boltzmann engaging in philosophy otherwise the atomic theory would have continued to be ridiculed by positivists and younger thinkers like Einstein would have never engaged with the concept of atoms, particles, fields, etc. In the first place since they lacked empirical evidence. — 013zen

I didn't say otherwise. But if philosophy is simply the handmaiden for the sciences and thus should be nothing else, it isn't complete. Some things are not useful for scientific theory, they are just explanatory, investigative, speculative, etc..

Perhaps the following is relevant.

It may not be the case that Wittgenstein was trying to break away from the tradition of epistemology and metaphysics, but rather that he didn't know much about the tradition in the first place. From IEP Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889—1951) — RussellA

:up:

He was influenced by Schopenhaur's division of reality into the phenomenal and the noumenal. From Schopenhauer's Influence on Wittgenstein by Bryan Magee. — RussellA

Yes, there was a conversation a while back where I believe @Banno asked what Wittgenstein got from Schopenhauer, and I believe it was as you quoted. If anything, Tractatus can be a sort of linguistic-based version of Schop's Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, but taking only the two of the four roots as able to be conveyed linguistically. The rest (intention/inner states/psychology/will) he seemed to relegate to "Thereof one must not speak". If it's noumenal or transcendent, it cannot be stated, as there is no sense to it, as it has not objective form.

The problem here is where Schopenhauer (and previously Leibniz) actually laid out their reasoning for their premise and built a foundation, Wittgenstein simply asserts it to build his linguistic project of atomic facts and propositions that can be stated clearly.

This is a recasting of my position :P I take him to be concerned with the logical clarification of thought, which might occasionally involve critiquing how one uses a term, and whether or not it makes sense. This isn't new to philosophy, in any sense, with Socrates objecting to how folks use the word "good", Aristotle to how others use the word "cause", etc. How else are we meant to clarify the thoughts in our heads, except, by occasionally engaging in correction of language. This is not to say that correcting grammar is the goal in and of itself. — 013zen

Would you say what Socrates was doing and what Wittgenstein were doing were equivalent? This is itself some clever word-play.

One might wonder why then, upon returning from the war, and having his work acclaimed by the positivists, that Wittgenstein so vehemently rejected them. Why, Witt considered Russell's atomist interpretation so foreign to his own in spirit that he spent three years of his life trying to get the work published, despite being poor from having given his fortune away - in the hopes that he'd find someone that understood the work. That's a pretty strong response to a bunch of people basically understanding what you were trying to do. — 013zen

This is hipster fandom talk. I don't care that Wittgenstein felt misunderstood. Poor Witty. I'm just saying how it looks to me, and it looks pretty stereotypically logical positivist. It doesn't have Russell's exact approach, but why do all logical positivists have to be the same? A lot of people don't like being grouped with others of a similar ilk. It's called "narcissism of small differences".

these are not interchangeable. — 013zen

Of course not, neologisms have their place in philosophy! Analytics are not exempt! Schopenhauer's Will, and Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Kant's thing-in-itself and transcendental and empirical apperception.. Let's add Wittgenstein's clever distinction between nonsense, senseless, and meaningless! Why the hell not! We can have a dictionary for schopenhauer1 terminology too and splice it between Nietzsche and Wittgenstein. I got plenty of neologisms to add, but unfortunately, I won't have the acolytes to endlessly determine what I meant by them. :sad:.

You know, historically, positivism was actually very pervasive in society. What I mean, is that it had real "pull" in the scientific community. Einstein's theory of special and general relativity was influenced by positivism, believe it or not. Einstein says that concepts like "space" and "time" were not clear at all, and he prepossess redefining them in a relativistic fashion ala Ernst Mach. — 013zen

Yes, I remember reading this in an Einstein biography. To a lesser degree, he was also influenced by Schopenhauer, who, oddly enough would have been much more in line with Einstein's theories than the positivism of the time. He had a bust of Schop I believe on his mantle.

Witt also says that he was influenced by Boltzmann and Hertz, and he studied to be a mechanic prior to studying philosophy, so he was no doubt familiar with the contemporary argument between positivism of Ernst Mach and the up and coming "picture theory" of Boltzman and Hertz that challenged it in an attempt to provide science with metaphysical speculation once again. — 013zen

This comes out in spades. This is an engineer or programmer doing philosophy like an engineer and programmer. I think if this book instead of being about "reality" was a primer for object-oriented programming, it would be different. No doubt, different philosophies will speak to different mindsets and methodologies.

Anyways, I actually admire the project of the positivists/analytics/Vienna circle. It's quite nice and tidy to think that what is captured through defining best how philosophy of science and parsing the world via analytic statements and logic are all the philosophy that can discussed, but even Wittgenstein himself saw the flaw in this straightjacket. However, I don't think his Investigations necessarily corrected himself.

I get why Wittgenstein is appealing. I just don't find it as much.

Positivism developed slowly, but from some basic assumptions, one of which was that metaphysics needed to be put on proper footing. This is what Bacon, Hume, Kant, etc. were concerned with...they thought metaphysics lacked clarity and rigor.

Wittgenstein, is attempting to say with the final statement that any metaphysical statement will have to first and foremost be made logically clear. Until this is done, we should be cautious of wasting too much time talking about it, since language will lead us in circles. Clarity must be established first.

Throughout the work, he tries to offer suggestions on how to do this, and also gives examples of other thinkers formulations and how they are logically unclear, offering methods to reformulate the idea in a more clear manner. — 013zen

I think this is recasting Wittgenstein as just trying to be a simple corrector of grammar rather than trying to make (anti-)metaphysical commitments. I think that it is the latter that is exactly what he is doing. He clearly thinks that what is "sense" are objects and their arrangements. If they obtain as a state of affairs in the world, they are facts, "true propositions". This to me excludes a lot of other types of metaphysics, and is itself a type of metaphysics- one that is poorly explained but yet he asserts is the only way in which "sensical" language is thus communicated.

Basically, I think you are playing apologetics and putting early Wittgenstein as more heterodox than he was. He was indeed basically a logical positivist. He might protest such a label, and find value in various forms of "non-sense", but he still labeled it "non-sense". He was not laying out simply the correct "syntax" to put language in, but making commitments (by way of objects) to the contents of what sensical language could be about. Everything else is non-sense, and "thereof one must be silent". You first, Witt.

I see him to be trying to re-furnish the metaphysics that positivists had stripped to all but "positive facts" or experience. — 013zen

How is this the case when he clearly is trying to show that anything that is not about objects and how they "hang together" [ atomic facts/propositions.. yadayada, I'm not arguing his particularities so don't picayunish this point.. ] is "non-sense"? Perhaps he finds the non-sense "useful" in some spiritual way, but then again, he doubles down on its inarticulate nature as it (defies language) in his view when he states ""Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

One can say that he is castigating all the metaphysicians and epistemologists that came before. Think of The architectonics of Plato, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, Spinoza, and the rest. I see this as saying basically, "These guys should have not wasted ink as what they were discussing cannot be stated in any 'meaningful' way". It's inflammatory, not conciliatory towards these philosophies. To me, that is squarely in the milieu of the early analytics, whether or not he disagreed on the value utility of poetry, religion, or whatnot.

Therefore, a state of affairs being objects in possible combinations cannot be d/t but must be time divided by distance. If this state of affairs obtains, then the fact is distance divided by time, not d/t. — RussellA

To invoke a bit of Zizek here, Wittgenstein is simply elaborating on his own ideology whereby language can only make "sense" if it is about discrete objects and how they are arranged in certain ways. These would be "state of affairs" that obtain (facts). Propositions of true and false are about this. But the problem is, all of these assertions require a robust epistemology and metaphysics. He knew this when he said it of his own work, which is, however thinly laid out, an epistemology of language and its uses in explaining facts. It's an ideology as much as anything. Why must we buy into Wittgenstein's idea of "sense" and "nonsense"? Why can't more speculative epistemology and metaphysics be discussed intelligently in a language community? Why must we follow or agree with his ideology on the bounds of language use? And ironically, to buy into his ideology, I am saying he should have delved deeper into the epistemology and metaphysics (ala Kant). But he doesn't because he needs to follow his own rules as not to be a hypocrite. But even the little crumbs he provides is hypocritical because it's an epistemology, however bare-boned. And thus he impoverishes his own program by being a series of assertions that cannot be elaborated on, lest he "break his own ideological commitment he is thus laying out". Besides the fact that he is already breaking it anyways, he cannot commit any further into "whys and hows", because "nonsense".

And furthermore, because this may be said to be Wittgenstein's ideology (one ideology amongst a range of possible ones he presumably could have committed to), we must understand that the author has a commitment and thus a value in even propounding on his ideas. Thus, there is value "smuggled" into the whole work, being the author chose to explain his ideas to the reader and had his reasons to do so.

An object is a unified whole. — Fooloso4

I mean by this that why are things beyond the "atomic facts" discrete objects and not some monistic thing, like Schopenhauer's Will, or perhaps Plato's Forms, or Whitehead's "actual occasions"? It's ill defined and only a shill for having something for which the atomic facts can be "attached to", for lack of better words.

And thus...

Where does he say that an atomic fact is about something? — Fooloso4

To me, his stuff about objects are to imply that without objects hanging onto each other and arranged in, it would be a picture representing an empty set. A no-thing.

An atomic fact is a combination of objects (entities, things) — 2.01