That's a nice little cage you have built for yourself.

Maybe see https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/826747

So the dog knows that it is raining, even though the dog cannot say that it is raining. The content of the dog's knowledge is given by "it is raining", even though the object of it's knowledge is not the proposition that it is raining, but the rain.

Subtle, easily misconstrued, but important.

Yep. That was my point ). What animals know can be put into a proposition. The content of an item of knowledge can always be put into a proposition.


Knowledge is propositional.

First off, what you referred to was not about simple objects: — Fooloso4

That was what I was talking about.

I've no clear idea of what you are talking about, if not objects. Here is where you joined my part of the conversation:

Does Anscombe mention a single simple object? The claim that language demands it is not the same as actually identifying either a simple object or a simple name. — Fooloso4

That sentence appears to me to be about objects.

You are all over the place.

What an atomic object is, as Anscombe argues, is unimportant to the argument in the Tractatus as presented. I'm arguing along with Copi and Anscombe that names refer to particulars, along the lines of individual variables in modern logic. Further I think that the way in which simples are viewed is one of the main changes between the Tractatus and the PI.

But the vital thing here, which permeates all of Wittgenstein's work, is that the world is not made of objects but of facts.

That's the view that I, and I think @Sam26, are setting out. And again, while your tone suggests that you adamantly disagree with me, I really do not know what it is you are suggesting, and hence how you agree or disagree with what I have said.

So unless you are able to explain what it is you are saying in a way that is comprehensible, I do not see how this conversation might proceed.

Hu?

Nuh, best leave it.

Animals know things, but what kinds of beliefs do they have? Certainly not propositional. — RogueAI

So can you tell us, without putting it in a proposition, something some animal knows?

You are only as certain as how much you can convince yourself of certainty. — Beverley

Yep, certainty is a form of belief, not of truth. One can be certain of whatever one choses. Or doubt whatever they like.

What I am pointing to is simply the performative contradiction in folk expressing such certainty in their doubt.

twisting language — Beverley

You mean using logic?

I was more a Samuel Becket sort.

We can start from wherever we want. — Lionino

Yep.

That's much better than the incoherent claim that we know nothing, or its inane sibling, that there are no true statements. It has a huge pop status, a mark of rebellion, sticking it to the man, talking truth to power, and so on.

But it undermines itself.

Doubt and certainty are twins, you don't get one without the other.

One can't play chess without the certainty that one's opponent will keep their bishop on the same colour.

Certainty is absurd! — Chet Hawkins

Again, why are you so adamant about this?

Lakatos?

Is it set in stone that nothing is set in stone?

You are clever enough to understand that we must start somewhere...

In the post above, ( ) where you quote my comment about simple objects and then go on to reply to it as if it were about elementary propositions.

...copies of Being and Nothingness and Camus' The Outsider... — Tom Storm

Candyland sums up their relation... Camus was not an existentialist.

Just edited my previous post, as is my want.

I remember the crowds lining the street when Sartre died.

Were they being ironic?

Existentialism only works until you take it seriously.

Your bad faith is showing...


You have to decide for yourself, not just give me the nod... :wink:

Did I say or imply otherwise? Why bring this up? — Fooloso4

Because you seemed to me not to be differentiating between atomic objects and elementary propositions.

So you are certain of that formula?

Knowledge is delusional because it implies knowing which is impossible. — Chet Hawkins

And you know this to be so?

Exactly. Further showing how nothing is set in stone. — Lionino

This is said without irony?

:lol:

Can one call oneself an existentialist without irony? — Tom Storm

Well, what do you think? :wink:

You get to decide.

You have to explain what exactly you meant by know to have a good definition. — Abhiram

Justified true belief?

Subjective experience is there we know it. — Abhiram

Whatever "it" is. Our knowledge is not limited to subjective experience. For example, that you answered my post demonstrates that you know you are a participant in a social organisation that spans the globe...

The mooted hegemony of subjective experience is a philosophical conceit, nothing more.

To be blunt - my specialist area - those who have answered "yes" to the question in the OP have thereby shown that they have not understood existentialism.

Ok, but elementary propositions are not atomic objects.

See also the last whole paragraph on p.27. "The theory of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology.

I'll leave you to your musings.

Can you prove there can’t be a perfect definition of existentialism? — Rob J Kennedy

The essence of existentialism...?

Something's amiss here.

We cannot know about anything for sure. Definitely not 100%. Only thing we can be sure of is the subjective experience we have. — Abhiram

...so we know our subjective experiences for sure, and hence there is something that we know for sure, and so it is not true that we cannot know about anything for sure.

you have to at least conceptually recognize both phenomenal awareness and object awareness. — hypericin

Coming back in after not reading the diatribe since my last, we do indeed recognise the difference between dreaming of eating a steak and eating a steak. that's why we have words like "dream", "hallucination", "illusion".

It follows that we can tell when we are seeing things and when we are not.

And hence, that we on occasion see things.

You seem to be arguing the realist case.

Perhaps this is how one should think about these objects. The analysis of language demands that there are elementary propositions. These elementary propositions are about possible atomic facts, consisting in combinations of names. These names name elementary objects

Of course this is muddled, hence the PI.

Does Anscombe mention a single simple object? — Fooloso4

I doubt it. Look for yourself. That there are such things is implied by the structure of language Wittgenstein develops. What they are is irrelevant. See p. 28 op.cit - I can't easily quote from it here. What they are is an issue for psychology.

And this is what was later rejected in the PI. Anscombe does not mince words and is not protective of the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus.

But what elementary propositions are not, is simple observation statements.

Sorry - elementary propositions - Popper used "atomic propositions" and I was reading his account in Anscombe.

This is too fast for sufficient care.

(I had written that before your last post... yes, I'm going for a walk.)

1. Fact can either be the case or not be the case. — 013zen

No. If you had said "possible facts can either be the case or not be the case", I would agree. All facts are the case.

Then followed with

In the event that it is the case, a certain set of atomic facts obtain. In the event of a possible fact not being the case, a certain set of atomic facts do not obtain.

Not at all.

I haven't read the replies here in detail, focusing on your posts instead. My interest is in the change between Tract and PI. In Tract, objects and atomic propositions are taken as essential, I suspect as the result of a transcendental argument: without these, language could not work; language works; therefore there must be objects and atomic propositions.

But this is rejected in PI, replaced by meaning as use, and simples as whatever is needed for the language game.

:smile:

We are writing over each other.

An excellent few pages. Well done. Still think you should put it into WIki...

Then I think we are on the same page.

Have you read Anscombe's book? She had this stuff at first hand, of course, so is I think authoritative; the only problem is that she is not that much more comprehensible than the original...

You're not saying there are untrue facts are you? — Sam26

That is what they have said. :roll:

Please tell me to what the expression "Any one" in 1.21 is referencing? — 013zen

What it does not say is "any fact can be true or not true". Facts are all of them true. Some possible facts are not true.

The trouble with talking to two folk at once in a forum.

↪Banno All propositions picture possible facts, a true proposition is one where the fact obtains. — Sam26

Yep.

In more modern parlance, of all the possible worlds, only one is the actual world.

You are misreading it. There are no untrue facts.

Ok. I'm not that interested, since it seems so obviously misguided.

That's a misquote.

1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same. 

An item is only a fact if it is true.

Here's a PDF of Anscombe:

https://archive.org/details/g.-e.-m.-anscombe-an-introduction-to-wittgenstein-s-tractatus/page/n9/mode/2up

I recommend reading a few pages from about p. 28.

And the pages before that, if you are under the illusion that elementary propositions are somehow observed. If you disagree, I have a poker handy.

I mean to say, a fact can either be the case, or not the case. — 013zen

No, it can't. If it is a fact, then it is the case.

Wittgenstein cannot mention a single simple object because he could not find one. He simply assumes them. — Fooloso4

I don't quite agree with this. As Anscombe says, simple objects are demanded by the nature of Language (see her text, p.29), referencing 2.021 and 2.0211.

The rejection of this view strikes me as one of the main departures from the Tractatus found in the PI.