I did not say I had no idea what you are saying.

You repeat the terms of your objections as if I was not following along with your comments.

I hazard the guess that your answer to me is no.

Would you be willing to recognize that you are offering me a "tails you lose, heads I win" set of alternatives?

What can either of us be talking about in this context?

To which statement are you directing your question?

I would not call it 'gatekeeping' but you have often offered an undialectical version of the works.

In many cases, you seem to ride two horses at the same time:

The work intends to establish a thesis and fails at it.

The work does not intend to establish a thesis, so it is mental floss.

Heidegger tells a long story about how the concerns of philosophy were corrupted by some elements of its practice. He wrote (and lectured) at length upon how Nietzsche was the last practitioner of the mistake.

There are a lot of other points of contrast and conflict between their views but let me start with simply observing that Wittgenstein has negative interest in the romance and nostalgia expressed thereby.

Wittgenstein refers to many of his contemporaries in his writings. He does not mention studying others. I think the Count's point about the depth of 'classical education' is germane. But it is a matter impossible to settle from text alone.

We have all read stuff we are not going to bring into arguments we wish to make.

Antonia Soulez (sorry, I cannot find a public link to it) makes interesting observations that Wittgenstein's references to Plato, Kant, Russell, etcetera are not designed to solve their problems but as instances of what concerns his views and development. That suggests a conscious departure from the "philosophy of history" discussion.

Some have made that departure to be a parting shot, an assassination in Deleuze's view or a trip to the couch for various expressions of "therapy."

As an opponent of the means of 'natural sciences" to explain everything, I think it is helpful to compare Wittgenstein to others who did something seemingly similar but chose to wear the ermine of The Philosopher of History.

Heidegger is the true antipode to Wittgenstein.

That is painting with a broad brush. Are you assigning all who evince interest in the writings as gatekeepers?

For my part, the work is an interesting kind of argument and not a Prolegomena for any future Metaphysics. If I resist that latter conclusion, am I, too, a gatekeeper?

We know that Aristotle was wrong, and an idea more akin to Democratus' was more right...there is serious concern regarding the method Aristotle employs to reach "metaphysical knowledge". — 013zen

The sense of what is "metaphysical" knowledge is not presented as the anti-thesis to "material" causes. The beginning of the discussion is how the inquiry into the way of knowledge is distinguished from using theoria to learn specific natures and their causes:

Lectures, however, produce their effects in accord with people’s habits, since we expect them to be spoken in the manner we are accustomed to, and anything |995a1| beyond this appears not to have the same strength but to be something quite unknown and quite strange. For it is the customary that is familiar. Indeed, the extraordinary power of what we are accustomed to is clearly shown by our customs, where mythical and childish stories about things have greater power than our knowledge about them, because of |995a5| our habits. Now some people do not accept what someone says if it is not stated mathematically, others if it is not based on paradigm cases, while others expect to have a poet adduced as a witness. Again, some want everything expressed exactly, whereas others are annoyed by what is exact, either because they cannot string all the bits together or because they regard it as nitpicking. For exactness does have something |995a10| of this quality, and so just as in business transactions so also in arguments it seems to have something unfree or ungenerous about it. That is why we should already have been well educated in what way to accept each argument, since it is absurd to look for scientific knowledge and for the way [of inquiry] characteristic of scientific knowledge at the same time—and it is not easy to get hold of either. Accordingly, we should not demand the argumentative exactness of mathematics in all cases |995a15| but only in the case of things that include no matter. That is why the way of inquiry is not the one characteristic of natural science, since presumably every nature includes matter. That is why we must first investigate what a nature is, since that way it will also be clear what natural science is concerned with, and whether it belongs to one science or to more than one to get a theoretical grasp on causes and starting-points. |995a20| — Aristotle, Metaphysics, 995, translated by CDC Reeve, emphasis mine

An excellent clarification of the situation before and after.

I would like to add some observations but will wait to see if the original poster of the discussion has something to say.

The Southern states had a powerful stake and influence upon Federal policy. The compromises made in the Constitution continued right up to the outbreak of war. A clear indication of that is how many of the military leaders on both sides were trained at West Point.

A great book that discusses these matters and more is Battle Cry of Freedom, by James McPherson.

I heard that the American Civil War was in some sense the second American Revolution, please clarify this. — Linkey

It would be better seen as the third iteration of the English Civil War. The struggle between aristocratic and plebian democratic forms occurred in the fight between the King and Parliament. The fragility of democratic process can be seen in how Cromwell went from being an MP to becoming a Dictator. War, itself, is a kind of tyranny.

The American Civil War was also the collision of two incompatible forms of economic expansion. The first fights occurred in Kansas and Missouri between slave holders and farmers who paid for labor. John Brown was forged in that violence before he brought it to Harper's Ferry.

An excellent introduction to that history is The Cousins' War, by Kevin Phillips

The remarks in the essay and Nagel's remark in his essay are reasonable, as a description of a point of view.

Those statements do not confront Wittgenstein's argument to not talk that way.

Do you see the Wittgenstein approach as a challenge to a general study of religion?

It is always difficult to sort out ancestors but if the matter is to be seen through the establishment and reactions to religious thought, the results of the "Reformation" (not as tidy an idea as often described) is the immediate progenitor of "europe" through the terrible process of the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia that paused some conflicts for a bit.

The messy vastness of all that makes me reluctant to pin the tail upon a particular donkey.

Got it, shop talk.
I will leave the matter alone.

When you say:

On the one hand, we have reality, and on the other we have our "picture" of reality. What bridges that gap? Well, I think Witt's answer is the logical relations. — 013zen

There is the assumption of inner and outer, things for ourselves versus things in themselves. That is not how logic works in the Tractatus. First of all, that assumption requires a duality to separate the realms or a monism to unite them.

4.18 Logical forms are without number.
Hence there are no pre-eminent numbers in logic, and hence there is no possibility of philosophical monism or dualism, etc — ibid.

Perhaps the scenario you have in mind is by means of:

5.5561 There cannot be a hierarchy of the forms of elementary propositions. We can foresee only what we ourselves construct.
Empirical reality is limited by the totality of objects. The limit also makes itself manifest in the totality of elementary propositions. — ibid

But this is said on the way to discussing solipsism. The rationalist/empiricist debate is excluded by:

5.61 Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits.
So we cannot say in logic, ‘The world has this in it, and this, but not that.’
For that would appear to presuppose that we were excluding certain possibilities, and this cannot be the case, since it would require that logic should go beyond the limits of the world; for only in that way could it view those limits from the other side as well.
We cannot think what we cannot think; so what we cannot think we cannot say either.

5.62 This remark provides the key to the problem, how much truth there is in solipsism.
For what the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest.
The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world.

5.621 The world and life are one.

5.63 I am my world. (The microcosm.)

5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it. — ibid.

The discussion of experiences is established through a distance from logic:

6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.

6.6631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one.
It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized. — ibid.

These statements about what is and isn't logic do not provide a ready ground to situate your idea of two realms bridged by "logical" relations.

To be precise, I accepted the probability of the application doing better than I would have in that situation proposed by you. It was not my point.

You seem uninterested in my questions regarding our responsibility for how these results are used.

I've been asking it questions about Wittgenstein's Tractatus and it does well. — Sam26

That is a highly contested realm of interpretation. It sounds like you have found expressions you endorse. Since you are available for challenge for what you endorse, whatever element you wish to advance will be what you advance. That is different from noting the success rate of a Bar Exam.

Unless, of course, you are the last resort for understanding Wittgenstein.

Not an area of my expertise. I should have kept it to the limits of general comparison and left it at that.

There, again, you have been given an array of choices of some of what can be given to you as array of choices.

Can we pluck Plato's discussion of truth out of his work and set it down next to the other salt-shakers?
Is Nietzsche concerned with "truth" as the best option out of other possibilities as offered?

The selection offered narrows the conversation to where nothing can come up from behind as an unexamined condition of the choices.

I'll bet it would do better than you in a university setting. — Sam26

That certainly must be the case in survey courses. Not so much when called upon to directly engage with works and discussion of them with others.

I don't consider it authoritative. I view it as a summarizing algorithm to produce Cliff notes.

I don't want it to do a better job of grouping ideas so as to find the most general point of view. I question the value of the most general point of view. It leads towards distinctions without a difference.

My problem with those answers is that it treats all of those categories as accepted individual domains when so much of philosophy involves disputing the conditions of equivalence implied in such a list.

However, the more serious press noted the disaster of Horse Face’s testimony yesterday. — NOS4A2

A nice counterpoint of reasoned argument combined with personal denigration. The apprentice learns from the master.

Witt is thinking, I believe, of the realist/idealist/, empiricist/rationalist debate. — 013zen

He denigrates that distinction in the Tractatus and in the Philosophical Investigations. It is one of the persisting themes preserved from the early works and carried on into the later ones.

I agree with your view. I had a more scholarly beginning, but my actual work life has benefited from spending that time learning how to learn.

That influence also helped me be a better teacher on the job. My problems with particular practices are very similar to other people's problems. That helps counter the natural tendency to be an asshole.

That question takes different shapes.

In the realm of strictly psychological models, theories of development range from the Vygotsky approach, where those elements are never completely separated, and the black hole of Lacan, where they never actually meet.

The question of where philosophy ends and psychology begins is either germane or not. It is not clear how the disagreements in that conversation relate to the disagreements amongst the self-identified psychologists. Nonetheless, it would be a stupid world if these endeavors did not touch upon the same reality.

I know, I am not much help, so far.

I understand Le Rochefoucauld to be saying that a narrative and a motive for acting for oneself is shaped by education. So, there is a "paying of dues" associated with both environments. And that sense of expenditure does play a part in self-image as well as defending one's place in the world.

What Le Rochefoucauld is also pointing out is that we love that element in ourselves.

I think the expectations within a family play a big role in how education is experienced as the training outside of that realm. Having to give an adequate account of yourself is important, both when you can and cannot. For some, it is a complete revolt from family where that account begins. My coming of age was more fortunate.

I became attracted to the idea of the liberal arts as a way to become more capable for my own purposes. The study involved finding out the idea was entangled with so many other people and their purposes.

But I also had an education quite separate from the practices of scholarship when I learned a number of the building trades. My schooling was some preparation for that, but it would have all died out if it was not part of the actual learning while working. This process did involve learning some skills in a formal way but they, too, were part of a continued practice over many decades.

Those different origins in my learning have many differences but the critical element of agency is central to both. As Kierkegaard said, freedom is the ability to do something.

Another intersection of the different processes relates to Le Rochefoucauld saying: "Education is a second self-love."

The welding together of pleasure and pain etches a deep mark into the wax in both cases.

I agree that the 'machine learning' is not impressive as a tool of new interpretation and discovery. It always has the tone of a college paper cribbed from reading Cliff notes. It is a sophisticated version of "I know you are but what am I?

Understood.
I am interested in your actual response.

Who are these people who want me to think this way?

Or is your comment a rhetorical device?

Some of the actual scholars of the texts do promote such views. Others do not. A concerted engagement with the texts is needed if one is to decide for oneself.

Thank goodness. Do you think the emerging romantics who want to go back to the Greeks count as philosophy or is this just a romantic nostalgia project? — Tom Storm

I was not aware of such a movement. Does that category include those who have read a lot of Greek texts?

Asking for a friend.

including yourself? Just curious.

Saying "possibly" adds a wrinkle to simply noting one is at a loss of words. Can one observe a limit only when considering how to supersede it?

If I can share a "subjective truth", what makes that possible? Where should one look for that possibility?
Does not the question ask for a world where the investigation will take place? Have you not invoked that world by asking the question?

Pray tell, what is your opinion on the state of global education. For me, the critical thinker is resilient to rhetoric and propaganda, the fact learner is however....not. — Benj96

It does happen that way. But it also happens in the opposite direction.

The power of universal literacy and an informed consensus is the engine of democratic life. What people do with their education, however, is widely various. The academy has given birth to the normative as well as the revolutionary. Those who learned through applied skills can be as closed minded or open minded as those from other backgrounds. The Liberal Arts happen where they are alive and kicking.

You have the attention span of your hero.