• Banno
    24.9k
    Where in Wittgenstein is this from?
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    Except you said "Correspondence with fact is what makes statements true", limiting yourself to language.Banno

    What? Limiting one claim is not equivalent to limiting myself. It is what makes statements true. I didn't say only statements, nor would I
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    No. That would make truth a binary predicate - it isn't.Banno

    What are you talking about?

    A relationship that predates language. That's what correspondence with fact is. Predicates are existentially contingent upon language. It is a construct thereof that names something therein.

    Truth is not existentially contingent upon language.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    From my understanding of the TLP. The problem of Universal's is omitted by appealing to logical simples which can't be further reduced.
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    And again I must point out that merely naming the posited relationship between beliefs and facts tells us nothing.Banno

    Sometimes what is posited doesn't require our positing it in order for it to exist, as it is, prior to or discovery. Certain relationships are such things. Truth is a relationship 'between' thought, belief, statements thereof and states of affairs; events; happenings; that which was/is the case; that which has happened or is currently happening; reality; fact; the world; the circumstances we find ourselves within; observed interactions; etc.("fact" from henceforth)

    Relationships do not have a spatiotemporal location. Do not take the term between as an indication of such(hence the scarequotes above). Correspondence is a relationship. Relationships do not have precise enough a spatiotemporal location to be sensibly called a 'property' of a statement. Statements have quite precise locations. Relationships do not.

    Correspondence with fact happens prior to language. As a result of that, and that alone, we can know that correspondence with fact doesn't always require language. Accompany that with our already knowing that empirical knowledge is accrued and we can further know that thought and belief is accrued. I mean, that's what empirical knowledge consists in/of. True belief is formed and put to further use prior to language.

    What not understood Banno?
    creativesoul
  • Banno
    24.9k


    Single place predicate: "the cat is black". Represented by f(a)

    Double place predicate: "The cat is on the mat", setting out a relation of "...is on..." between cat and mat. Represented f(ab).


    We say:

    "The cat is black" is true.

    This has the form of a single-place predicate.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    And you think this is objects and things. Ah.

    Do you agree that logical simples were rejected in PI?
  • Banno
    24.9k
    SO you just want to go in circles. I'm not so keen.
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    And you think this is objects and things. Ah.Banno

    Things are logical simples, whatever that means if anything at all. Or 'things' manifest another way, is what Wittgenstein meant when asserting that 'logic takes care of itself'.

    Do you agree that logical simples were rejected in PI?Banno

    I have yet to find a passage in the Investigations that even addresses logical simples. It's been a while since I've read it, or even from cover to cover without some external reference. If you happen to find a passage that addresses the logical simples professed in the TLP, I'd appreciate that piece of the puzzle I'm trying to find between Wittgenstein's evolution in thought between the two works.

    I might be at the limits of my language and world, or any more and nonsense will manifest.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    I have yet to find a passage in the Investigations that even addresses logical simples.Posty McPostface

    So what is ❡48 about?
  • Akanthinos
    1k
    Except Wittgenstein??Banno

    Well, yeah, I guess. Depending on the reading. I know of no other philosopher who spent so much effort building an ontology just to show that ontologies shouldn't be built.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Tell me more.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    I'd call it meaning as use, and agreement. If anything it smells of pragmatism, a lot!

    It doesn't negate the notion of logical simples; but, attempts to show that they aren't necessary for agreement between individuals about the use of names for things. Yet, those things are important when talking about language at the risk of climbing that ladder and then throwing it away, not strictly referring to meaning as use or language in practice, as I understand it. See:

    Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case?Wittgenstein, PI, 48.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    @creativesoul

    The closest you will get is the T-sentence, and that sets out an equivalence.
  • Shawn
    13.2k
    You can never get enough of Wittgenstein. Just reading passage 49, reeks of nominalism; but, then Wittgenstein says or tantamounts, 'So what?' Names only have to mean something in their use in any particular language game, so speaking of them in isolation is futile and pointless. Here's the passage:

    49. But what does it mean to say that we cannot define (that is,
    describe) these elements, but only name them? This might mean, for
    instance, that when in a limiting case a complex consists of only one"'
    square, its description is simply the name of the coloured square.
    Here we might say—though this easily leads to all kinds of philosophical
    superstition—that a sign "R" or "B", etc. may be sometimes
    a word and sometimes a proposition. But whether it 'is a word or a
    proposition' depends on the situation in which it is uttered or written.
    For instance, if A has to describe complexes of coloured squares to B
    and he uses the word "R" alone, we shall be able to say that the word
    is a description—a proposition. But if he is memoming the words
    and their meanings, or if he is teaching someone else the use of the
    words and uttering them in the course of ostensive teaching, we shall
    not say that they are propositions. In this situation the word "R",
    for instance, is not a description; it names an element——but it would be
    queer to make that a reason for saying that an element can only be
    named! For naming and describing do not stand on the same
    level: naming is a preparation for description. Naming is so far not a
    move in the language-game—any more than putting a piece in its place
    on the board is a move in chess. We may say: nothing has so far been
    done, when a thing has been named. It has not even got a name except
    in the language-game.
    This was what Frege meant too, when he said
    that a word had meaning only as part of a sentence.
    Wittgenstein, PI, 49.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Compare it to the discussion of logical simples in TLP ❡2.0...
  • Shawn
    13.2k

    Yeah, here's 2.0121:

    2.0121 OGD [→GER | →P/M]
    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 affairs could be made to fit.
    If things can occur in atomic facts, this possibility must already lie in them.
    (A logical entity cannot be merely possible. Logic treats of every possibility, and all possibilities are its facts.)
    Just as we cannot think of spatial objects at all apart from space, or temporal objects apart from time, so we cannot think of any object apart from the possibility of its connexion with other things.
    If I can think of an object in the context of an atomic fact, I cannot think of it apart from the possibility of this context.
    Wittgestein, TLP, 2.0121

    Same thing being said in the PI 48&49, no?
  • Banno
    24.9k

    That's not how I understand it, and I am not alone.

    See, for example,

    The discussion of sections 44–66 focuses on the problems of logical analysis and logical atomism. Wittgenstein criticizes not only Frege and Russell, but also Wittgenstein's own early work in the Tractatus. A driving impetus of early analytic philosophy was the notion that logical analysis could uncover the underlying structure of language and reality. Analysis relies on the assumption that language and reality can be broken down into smaller and simpler parts, and that there must be a bedrock of utterly simple objects that can be named but not defined or described (since that would suggest they were analyzable). Russell famously remarked that the only true proper names are "this" and "that," because they cannot be further analyzed or broken up.

    http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/investigations/section2/page/2/
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    SO you just want to go in circles. I'm not so keen.Banno

    ...again I must point out that merely naming the posited relationship between beliefs and facts tells us nothing.Banno

    And yet... you began doing it. What still lies between your twice saying that is my answer.

    Grown-up?

    Sigh.
  • Banno
    24.9k
    SO you be the grown-up and help me out of this loop.
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    If you could refer me to some other works, as the link seems more like handwaving than a serious philosophical critique of logical atomism.
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    The closest you will get is the T-sentence, and that sets out an equivalence.Banno

    Care to tell me what my goal is?

    X-)

    Single place predicate: "the cat is black". Represented by f(a)

    Double place predicate: "The cat is on the mat", setting out a relation of "...is on..." between cat and mat. Represented f(ab).


    We say:

    "The cat is black" is true.

    This has the form of a single-place predicate.
    Banno

    The cart before the horse. Meaningful thought and belief does not require metacognition. The rules you've invoked do. What makes you think that those rules are an appropriate thing to use as a means for setting out what they, themselves, require?

    Those are belief statements(assuming sincerity). "Is true" becomes and/or is redundant as a result of precisely what I'm setting out Banno. "Is true" is not truth.

    True thought and belief is prior to language, thus prior to predicate logic. If true belief is not existentially contingent upon predicate logic, then neither is truth. Truth is what makes belief true. If truth is not existentially contingent upon language then we can get it wrong. If predicate logic says something about truth that conflicts with it being prior to language, then predicate logic is wrong.
  • Akanthinos
    1k
    Tell me more.Banno

    About what? Like, how I wish Adolf Reinach hadn't died so young, and should've been the 1880-ish intellectual to come to proeminence out of the german intellectual world?
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Anthony Kenny? What secondary sources have you available?
  • Banno
    24.9k
    Pissing competitions. Meh.
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    What are you talking about Banno?

    Sometimes what is posited doesn't require our positing it in order for it to exist, as it is, prior to or discovery. Certain relationships are such things. Truth is a relationship 'between' thought, belief, statements thereof and states of affairs; events; happenings; that which was/is the case; that which has happened or is currently happening; reality; fact; the world; the circumstances we find ourselves within; observed interactions; etc.("fact" from henceforth)

    Correspondence with fact happens prior to language. As a result of that, and that alone, we can know that correspondence with fact doesn't always require language. Accompany that with our already knowing that empirical knowledge is accrued and we can further know that thought and belief is accrued. I mean, that's what empirical knowledge consists in/of. True belief is formed and put to further use prior to language.

    That addresses what you done by virtue of invoking the rules of predicate logic. It shows that truth doesn't require metacognition. Predicate logic does. Truth doesn't require predicate logic.

    All else above applies to your earlier mischaracterization of what I've been doing here. I'm a bit disappointed.
  • creativesoul
    11.9k
    Holding expectation is possible prior to language.

    When my cat comes to me expecting treats as a result of hearing the plastic treat bag rustle, she has recognized the sound. She has long since drawn a mental correlation between the sound and the treats. She expects to be given treats. She hears the sound, and she makes her way to me.

    When my cat hears the treats hitting the inside of the glass food bowl, her expectation is much stronger. She has formed meaningful thought and belief about the events she's immersed within. She believes she's about to eat treats.

    She has drawn correlations between 'objects' of physiological sensory perception and/or herself(her own mental/emotional state). Those correlations are the origen of meaning. Correlation presupposes the existence of it's own content, regardless of subsequent qualification(s). <-----------that is the presupposition of correspondence to fact inherent to all thought and belief formation.

    What do the rules of predicate logic have to do with that which predates language itself?
  • Shawn
    13.2k


    No secondary sources apart from Max Blacks interpretation of the TLP. Send me a link to what you have in mind and I'll give it a good reading. Thanks.
  • Akanthinos
    1k
    Pissing competitions. Meh.Banno

    Oh, come on, be a sport. You asked me a question without specifying what it was about. What do you want me to tell you about?
  • creativesoul
    11.9k


    We most likely agree on much when it concerns statements. As you know, statements are statements of thought and belief. Because true belief is prior to language so too is truth, for truth is what makes statements of thought and belief true. My position differs in the main from your own in that regard. Truth is a relationship; correspondence with fact. So, being true requires what I set out earlier. There must be something happening and a way to take account of that. Fact on the one hand, with meaningful thought and belief on the other. That suffices.

    Thought and belief are prior to language. Arguing for that could seem difficult, perhaps impossible for some. It certainly doesn't work with a position that holds i that all belief has propositional content, ii that neglects to draw the crucial distinction between thought and belief and thinking about thought and belief, or iii that works from the ambiguous claim that we cannot get beneath or beyond language.

    Regarding the last bit above, we do not need to get beyond or beneath language in order to become aware of things that exist as they are prior to our discovery and/or becoming aware of them. True belief is one such thing, as is false belief. Unless you've changed your position, I think we still agree that cats can have true belief.

    I say that that is because their mental correlations correspond to fact. When my cat hears the sound of food hitting her glass bowl, she draws a correlation between that sound and getting food. She has been making that connection for a very long time. It took a few times of her watching me poor the food and hearing the sound. She recognizes and/or attributes causality. She knows that food makes a certain sound when it hits her bowl. As a result of holding that thought enough, she now clearly believes that there will be food in her bowl after hearing it.

    She, just like us(at first), employs truth unknowingly by virtue of presupposing it. She, just like us(at first), attributes meaning unknowingly. She, just like us, is connected directly to the world by virtue of doing so.
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