He said at the end of tractatus that "what one cannot say one shouldn't speak of". This was confused by carnap and the austrian school that he was a logical empiricist. He wasn't saying that though, he was christian after reading cs lewis's famous christianity book about the gospels (which he liked better than the gospels he read after and had to be convinced that the gospels were worthy of cs lewis attributions).
In that I'm not sure what you mean by a mystic unless you mean christian who wasn't very religious.

Newton was into very esoteric spirituality and became a private unitarian after investigating the bible.

or rather he believed there is something mystical about the world — Sapien1

I think you are expressing your hypothesis about Wittgenstein's mysticism in a way that is not helpful to make things clear. Wittgenstein was not a metaphysical philosopher, which means, he didn't think of reality as something having an established, autonomous, external existence, distinct from our ideas. Nor he thought that reality is just a product of our mind. So, your hypothesis I quoted doesn't makes much sense in his thought, because you wrote "he believed there is...". Rather that believing in the metaphysical existence of thing, he approached experience in terms of dynamics where language has an essential role. This is my understanding of him and of your question.

human beings have evolved from primitive fish. — Sapien1

Anaximander! I recognize you! Don't eat fish, they're our ancestors.

Wittgenstein, though he thoughtfully warned us of bewitchment of our intelligence by language, was himself a victim of linguistic witchcraft.

Witty's critique of 'linguistic betwitchment' consists, after all, of internal criticism (re: ordinary language) since there isn't an external or nonlinguistic means to do so.

Witty's critique of 'linguistic betwitchment' consist, after all, of internal criticism (re: ordinary language) since there isn't an external or nonlinguistic means to do so. — 180 Proof

Hermes commits seppuku: Trust the guy who warns you that he can't be trusted!

Hermes commits seppuku: Trust the guy who warns you that he can't be trusted! — Agent Smith

:100: :wink:

Wittgenstein attempts to draw the limits of thinking through its expression in language. What lies on the other side of those limits, what can be shown and experienced, but cannot be said, the ethical and aesthetic are mystical. They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical.

The OP is onto something. Despite my misgivings as to Wittgenstein's theory of language vis-à-vis philosophy at all levels, from the man on the Clapham omnibus to tenured professors, I nevertheless agree that mystical experiences seem baked into his notion of, roughly speaking, private language.

It appears that comprehension and communication both are either wholly or significantly, if only in bits and pieces, a function of language. Mystical/religious experiences are such that one can't find words to describe them in a dictionary. Words, as sometimes happens, fail us. Thus, I can only show you the door. What's beyond that is post-language, but mind you, not necessarily pre-language (the wordless infant in Daoism).

It's well known now that human beings have evolved from primitive fish — Sapien1

If I understood correctly your thoughts, it seems that you mean "we come from fishes and that's it", in the sense that reality is limited to what we can scientifically understand about it; if something cannot be grasped or at list imagined by science, then it doesn't exist. Wittgenstein thought the opposite, but not in a methaphysical way. Being mentally open to the existence of things outside the horizon of science does not mean being open to believe in the existence of supernatural things like spirits, angels, energies, telepathy, reincarnation and so on. Wittgenstein's mysticism does not mean this. Believing in the existence of supernatural things is again metaphysics, but Wittgenstein's mysticism is not metaphysical. The problem of metaphysical mysticism is that it frames the idea of things beyond science still in the frame of existence, things that exist objectively. It is not necessary to believe in the objective existence of supernatural things to be mystical. You can be open to the idea of things beyond science without framing these things into the mental scheme of objective existence. Actually this is the true mental openness towards mysticism, because thinking of supernatural things as framed in the concept of objective existence is actually not really beyond science. This is the real openness to something different, otherwise we are actually still in the mental frame of science, let's say pseudo-science. Wittgenstein was intelligent enough to understand that mysticism practiced as pseudo-science is not a real jump to another level: pseudo-science is in the same mental frame of science, because pseudo-science and science are both based on metaphysics, which is, framing things in the field of objective existence.

If I understood correctly your thoughts, it seems that you mean "we come from fishes and that's it", in the sense that reality is limited to what we can scientifically understand about it; if something cannot be grasped or at list imagined by science, then it doesn't exist. Wittgenstein thought the opposite, but not in a methaphysical way. Being mentally open to the existence of things outside the horizon of science does not mean being open to believe in the existence of supernatural things like spirits, angels, energies, telepathy, reincarnation and so on. Wittgenstein's mysticism does not mean this. Believing in the existence of supernatural things is again metaphysics, but Wittgenstein's mysticism is not metaphysical. The problem of metaphysical mysticism is that it frames the idea of things beyond science still in the frame of existence, things that exist objectively. It is not necessary to believe in the objective existence of supernatural things to be mystical. You can be open to the idea of things beyond science without framing these things into the mental scheme of objective existence. Actually this is the true mental openness towards mysticism, because thinking of supernatural things as framed in the concept of objective existence is actually not really beyond science. This is the real openness to something different, otherwise we are actually still in the mental frame of science, let's say pseudo-science. Wittgenstein was intelligent enough to understand that mysticism practiced as pseudo-science is not a real jump to another level: pseudo-science is in the same mental frame of science, because pseudo-science and science are both based on metaphysics, which is, framing things in the field of objective existence.

— Angelo Cannata

This and your other post. It's all fine and dandy. But it doesn't answer my question. What is wittgenstein's mysticism in the light of mysticism being impossible for an evolutionary realist or to us homo sapiens to whom everything is the "real" and non mystical? I have a knack for expending certain belief in people who are thought to be or have been geniuses.

What's an evolutionary realist? The nature of causation and definition of evolution is still undefined which is partially why it's a theory still. As far as I'm aware it's just an observation and nothing people can do hard science on at least as macro-organisms. Taxonomy is still not a science sorta as a result.

I don't see mysticism qua mysticism in any contradiction with evolution.

I incidentally defined evolutionary realist after the word or.

I'm just seeing this.

or to us homo sapiens to whom everything is the "real" and non mystical?

Are you saying evolutionary realism is just reality which is non-mystical? Then definitionally that's what it is but there's an issue with soundness there and a conflation of evolutionary theory along with mysticism and the inaddressable, too-general word "real".

If so, what is mystical about evolution? — Sapien1

This

. It's well known now that human beings have evolved from primitive fish. — Sapien1

What is the essence of what we call life,which makes that procedure possible.

Actually that's just part of my definition of what an evolutionary realist is. An evolutionary realist is an independent or otherwise "thinker" who believes that the reality of evolution is the reality of existence.

I get what you're trying to say but the way you're wording it makes it seem like you're making evolution equivalent with existence. It's hard to answer your question because the ideas and words are structured in ways that come off as contradictory.
An x realist is one who asserts x is the foundation of reality or, less commonly, is a part of reality (which is pretty trivial unless you don't have a foundation for reality or that foundation contradicts the part of reality).

Anyways I don't know Wittgenstein's views on evolution but anyone can be a mystic or fan of mysticism and contemporaneously be an evolutionist or fan of evolution.

:up:

mysticism being impossible for an evolutionary realist or to us homo sapiens to whom everything is the "real" and non mystical — Sapien1

It seems to me that this assumption of yours is what makes you impossible to understand Wittgestein’s mysticism: why should mysticism be impossible for an evolutionary realist?
I think your answer is already in the second part you wrote:
“to us homo sapiens to whom everything is the "real" and non mystical”:
I think you should realize that by saying “everything is the real and non mystical”, you are automatically saying: “what I cannot understand does not exist, cannot exist” which is a kind of faith far from being evolutionary. If evolutionary means that reality is just what is material, like our material origin from fish, by saying that “everything is real”, your are not being connected to reality, because you are just closing yourself inside your idea of what “real” means. So, instead of connecting yourself to reality, that is external to you, you close yourself inside your idea of reality, that is internal to you.
Wittgestein didn’t close himself inside his comprehension of what reality is: he understood that, if reality is to be thought as something external to us, then we need to keep ourselves always open to something that will be always different from how we imagine it. As soon as you think that the only existing world is material reality, you are automatically closing yourself inside your mental comprehension of what reality is, closing your connection to the world external to your mind.
Saying “I don’t know” is one way to keep connection, openness, to external reality. But this kind of connection can be refined. For sure not by saying that reality is the only thing that exists in the world.

Wittgenstein attempts to draw the limits of thinking through its expression in language. What lies on the other side of those limits, what can be shown and experienced, but cannot be said, the ethical and aesthetic are mystical.They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical. — Fooloso4

:fire:

End of thread.

@Fooloso4

Wittgenstein attempts to draw the limits of thinking through its expression in language. What lies on the other side of those limits, what can be shown and experienced, but cannot be said, the ethical and aesthetic are mystical.They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical.
— Fooloso4
:fire:

End of thread. — 180 Proof

Blaze of glory :fire:

Bonum & Pulchrum (undefined they remain) out of sync with Verum.

The problem of metaphysical mysticism is that it frames the idea of things beyond science still in the frame of existence, things that exist objectively. It is not necessary to believe in the objective existence of supernatural things to be mystical. You can be open to the idea of things beyond science without framing these things into the mental scheme of objective existence. — Angelo Cannata

:100: :clap:

the ethical and aesthetic are mystical. They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical. — Fooloso4

I like what you wrote but can you clarify the last 'regarded as mystical'? Was there any nuance provided or explication of what mystical meant? Did it just mean 'nothing further' or was it an open question? The temptation of course is to proffer the transcendental card...

...can you clarify the last 'regarded as mystical'? — Tom Storm

A few quotes from the Tractatus:

6.41
The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no
value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens
and is the case is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental.
It must lie outside the world.

6.422
So our question about the consequences of an action must be unimportant.—At least those consequences should not be events. For there must be something right about the question we posed. There must indeed be some kind of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but they must reside in the action itself.
(And it is also clear that the reward must be something pleasant and the punishment something unpleasant.)

6.43
If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world, it can alter only the limits of the world, not the facts—not what can be expressed by means of language.
In short the effect must be that it becomes an altogether different world. It must, so to speak, wax and wane as a whole.
The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.

From his Notebooks:

Being happy means being in agreement with the world (NB 8.7.16)
Living in agreement with the world is living in accord with one’s conscience, which is the voice of God.

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16)

More from the Notebooks on God:

God is how all things stand, how it is all related (NB 1.8.16)

To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning (NB 8.7.16)

There are two godheads: the world and my independent “I”. (NB 8.7.16)

Being happy means being in agreement with the world (NB 8.7.16)
Living in agreement with the world is living in accord with one’s conscience, which is the voice of God.

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16)

From his Lecture on Ethics. In no particular order:

I believe the best way of describing it is to say that when I have it I wonder at the existence of the
world. And I am then inclined to use such phrases as 'how extraordinary that anything should exist'
or ‘how extraordinary that the world should exist.'

I will mention another experience straight away which I also know and which others of you might
be acquainted with: it is, what one might call, the experience of feeling absolutely safe. I mean the
state of mind in which one is inclined to say 'I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens.'

This running against the walls of our cage is perfectly, absolutely hopeless. Ethics so far as it
springs from the desire to say something about the ultimate meaning of life, the absolute good, the
absolute valuable, can be no science. What it says does not add to our knowledge in any sense. But
it is a document of a tendency in the human mind which I personally cannot help respecting deeply
and I would not for my life ridicule it.


Now instead of saying “Ethics is the enquiry into what is good” I could have said Ethics is the enquiry into what is valuable, or, into what is really important, or I could have said Ethics is the enquiry
into the meaning of life, or into what makes life worth living, or into the right way of living. I believe if you look at all these phrases you will get a rough idea as to what it is Ethics is concerned with.


Now when this is urged against me I at once see clearly, as it were in a flash of light, not only that no description that I can think of would do to describe what I mean by absolute value, but that I would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the ground of its significance. That is to say: I see now that these nonsensical expressions were not nonsensical because I had not yet found the correct expressions, but that their nonsensicality was their very essence. For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language.

Mysticism is just the knowledge that none of you know what you're talking about.

If so, what is mystical about evolution? — Sapien1

Let me try to answer. I'm not sure what Wittgenstein's take is though. Mysticism is related to not knowing. Evolution is the gradual appearing of a wide spectrum of species. Here and probably the entire universe. Evolution cant be denied. It's demystified by Dawkins and the like. The central dogma of biology underpins the view of selfish genes and memes programming all creatures in order for them to replicate. Now what a view! Sounds like evil religion to me. "The commandments of the central dogma command the genes and memes to replicate by guile and stealth, by programming bodies to achieve this goal". Damned! From this so-called scientific POV on evolution (pseudo-scientific!), all diverging views are just memes with no basis in reality. The new cruscade led by pope Dawkins. I'm sure Wittgenstein didn't like this idea. But what then is the mystique? Consciousness? The miracle of language? Dunno, but the ultimate question that can't be answered is why the heavenly gods, from the virus-gids to the blue whale-gods, got bored with playing the game of love and hate. They created an eternal infinite universe similar to heaven to eternally watch us. They hadn't taken into account the faulty play of the homonid-gods...

Thanks. I'm afraid I find Wittgenstein almost incomprehensible.

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16) — Fooloso4

A theist at the point he was writing this, then?

The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man. — Fooloso4

That's for sure.

A theist at the point he was writing this, then? — Tom Storm

Maybe, but not in the traditional sense. His notebooks were what he described as "thinking with a pen". Rather than a supreme Being most of this thoughts on God are centered around his relationship to the world.

I can see it and my favorite theists take a similar approach.

An essay published by Philosophy Now on Wittgenstein and positivism: Wittgenstein,Tolstoy and the Folly of Logical Positivism, Stuart Greenstreet.

The declared aim of the Vienna Circle was to make philosophy either subservient to or somehow akin to the natural sciences. As Ray Monk says in his superb biography Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990), “the anti-metaphysical stance that united them [was] the basis for a kind of manifesto which was published under the title The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna Circle.” Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all” (6.52); “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (6.522). None of these sayings could possibly be interpreted as the views of a man who had renounced metaphysics. The Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle had got Wittgenstein wrong, and in so doing had discredited themselves.

An article by Ray Monk, Wittgenstein's Forgotten Lesson:

His work is opposed, as he once put it, to “the spirit which informs the vast stream of European and American civilisation in which all of us stand.” Nearly 50 years after his death, we can see, more clearly than ever, that the feeling that he was swimming against the tide was justified. If we wanted a label to describe this tide, we might call it “scientism,” the view that every intelligible question has either a scientific solution or no solution at all. It is against this view that Wittgenstein set his face.

All that said, I don't think Wittgenstein would have ever used the term 'mysticism' in respect of his work even if it may be implied by it. But there is a strong tendency of a lot of people to use that phrase which ends the Tractatus, 'that of which we cannot speak...' in exactly the way the Vienna Circle (mis)intepreted it, as a prohibition against anything of the kind. His was an apophatic silence.

Thanks - interesting piece. How do you read W when he writes this:

I am then, so to speak, in agreement with that alien will on which I appear dependent. That is to say: “I am doing the will of God” (NB 8.7.16)

It seems oddly emphatic, but then maybe it is metaphor??