• Fooloso4
    6.2k
    In order to avoid the appearance of attempting to hijack another thread I have removed my comments from that thread and posted them here.

    Tool 1 is the simplest and, I think, the most important: “Look and see.”

    When a philosophical question starts to feel deep, Wittgenstein’s first move is often to stop, and look at how the words are actually used in ordinary situations ...
    He isn’t saying every philosophical problem is just language in the sense that we're doing wordplay. He’s saying many problems are really problems about our concepts, and you can spot the trouble by paying close attention to how our words function in real situations.
    — Sam26

    Although Wittgenstein attempts to bring clarity to conceptual confusion, to clear away problems, there is something deeper to what he is doing. He tells us:

    When you are philosophizing you have to descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there.
    (Culture and Value)

    Rather than attempt to navigate through all this I will give a few quotes to help orient us.

    (PI Part II 251).
    We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.

    (PI Part II 257.
    The question now arises: Could there be human beings lacking the ability to see something as something a and what would that be like? What sort of consequences would it have? ... We will call it “aspect-blindness” - and will now consider what might be meant by this. (A conceptual investigation.)

    (PI Part II 261.
    The importance of this concept lies in the connection between the concepts of seeing an aspect and of experiencing the meaning of a word.

    (PI Part II 111.)
    Two uses of the word “see”.
    The one: “What do you see there?” - “I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness in these two faces” - let the man to whom I tell this be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.
    What is important is the categorial difference between the two ‘objects’ of sight.

    He goes on to say at 116:

    But we can also see the illustration now as one thing, now as another. - So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.

    The idea of seeing something according to an interpretation blurs the line between seeing and thinking. "Now I see it" can mean, "Now I understand". Seeing is not limited to passive reception, it involves both perception and conception.

    The elimination of conceptual confusion has received a great deal of attention but it is a preliminary step.

    PI Part II 254.
    The concept of an aspect is related to the concept of imagination.
    In other words, the concept ‘Now I see it as . . .’ is related to ‘Now I am imagining that’.
    Doesn’t it take imagination to hear something as a variation on a particular theme? And yet one does perceive something in so hearing it.

    PI 122.
    A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.

    The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)
    [Emphasis added]

    It is not simply a matter of looking but of how we look.

    Sow a seed in my soil and it will grow differently than it would in any other soil.
    (CV42)

    PI 126.
    The name “philosophy” might also be given to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

    There is a connection here with 90:

    PI 90
    … our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena.
  • Fooloso4
    6.2k
    Looking back over this it is clear to me that too much was left unsaid.

    In the preface to the Tractatus Wittgenstein says:

    ... what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

    He concludes the Tractatus by saying the same thing:

    What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
    (7)

    He attempts to draw the limits of thinking by an examination of its expression in language. Passing over is silence does not mean to disregard. He is not denying that there are things that are important to us, things that cannot be expressed in words:

    Propositions can express nothing that is higher.

    It is clear that ethics cannot be put into words.
    Ethics is transcendental.
    (Ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.)
    (T 6.42-6.421)

    These are things we encounter in experience. We must pass over them in silence because the attempt to articulate them in words renders them nonsense.

    For the early Wittgenstein it is the world seen aright when one transcends propositions. (Tractatus 6.54) The later Wittgenstein comes to reject the idea that there is a logical scaffolding underlying both language and the world. The problems of philosophy are not solved by understanding the logic of language. (T preface). He comes to reject scientism:

    ... philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does’
    (Blue Book, p. 18).



    Rather than the attempt to theorize and explain away, it is an invitation to open your eyes and mind.

    Man has to awaken to wonder . . . Science is a way of sending him to sleep again’
    (CV 5).

    [Added]

    He no longer regards thinking and seeing as being on opposite sides. Philosophy is not simply a matter of conceptual clarification.

    Work on philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more work on oneself. On one's own conception. On how one sees things. (And what one expects of them.)
    (CV, 24)
  • Paine
    3.2k

    Welcome back to the Forum.

    Your comment puts the one I just made in Sam's thread in a larger context. I will try to come back to your points after pulling together some other thoughts I have about responses to the Tractatus.
bold
italic
underline
strike
code
quote
ulist
image
url
mention
reveal
youtube
tweet
Add a Comment

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.