He makes no mention of the "goal of philosophy" in either of those sections. If you want to pretend like you've already proven otherwise, then so be it. — Luke
Your claim that "he is talking about the ordering of words in a sentence" at §98 is ridiculous. — Luke
Take it as you will, but if "the business of philosophy" is to do such and such, then I would assume that its aim or "goal" is to do that. Don't you think? — Metaphysician Undercover
A sentence consists of words and nothing else. If a sentence has perfect order within it, then that order must be the order of its words. If you happen to think that the "perfect order" which is "in the vaguest sentence", could possibly refer to something other than the ordering of its words, perhaps you could try your hand at explaining this. — Metaphysician Undercover
That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language still had to be constructed by us. — On the other hand, it seems clear that where there is sense, there must be perfect order. — PI §98
It seems undeniable that even a vague sentence like 'There is something on the table' must have a 'perfect order' buried in it, one that pins down its meaning exactly. [...]
The fact that ordinary language lacks the definiteness philosophers aspire to is no strike against it. Sentences that fall short of perfection in the philosopher's sense are not unusable. Ordinary sentences should not be regarded 'as if [they] had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense'. They do not have to have a perfect order of the sort philosopher's envision to make perfectly good sense in the normal course of events.
That's reasonably intuitive from the perspective of pure math or logic (though still debatable), but it's very wrong for applied math/physics and statistics. — fdrake
There is a distinction to be made - which I have tried to make it in my previous posts - between the work of philosophy and the goal of philosophy. I think that the work of philosophy, per Wittgenstein, is to lay things out to get a clear view, but that this is not the goal of philosophy. The goal of philosophy is to make the philosophical problems disappear, which is achieved when we attain complete clarity (§133). The process of arriving at that goal (i.e. the work of philosophy) is not the goal. — Luke
My reading: On the one hand, we don't need to provide some unexceptionable sense to our ordinary (vague) sentences or to construct a perfect language. On the other hand, the sense of our ordinary vague sentences is already in perfect order. So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest (i.e. in terms of sense) sentence. — Luke
It seems undeniable that even a vague sentence like 'There is something on the table' must have a 'perfect order' buried in it, one that pins down its meaning exactly. [...]
Not much to say about these other than they recapitulate, again, that philosophy is descriptive and subtractive, and not explanatory. That said, I'm not sure what it is that the philosopher 'marshalls' when he or she 'marshalls recollections': recollections of what? Any ideas? — StreetlightX
You're missing a key part of the description, which is explored at 128-132. — Metaphysician Undercover
The point I'm making is that at 127 there is a shift in the description of the method of philosophy, from simply describing things and even doing things (laying things out) to provide a clear look at things, to now, actively arranging things for the purpose of clarity. The latter might be called explanation. — Metaphysician Undercover
the sentence consists of words. If the order is not the order of the words, then what is it? — Metaphysician Undercover
Hmm, I don't think that works: "The work of the philosopher consists in marshalling recollections... of just what it is that philosophy is trying to do". — StreetlightX
I know it seems a finicky distinction, but I think that's the 'range of application' of what Witty is saying. One should also read these passages with Witty's intellectual context in mind: he's responding here to Frege, Russell, Cantor and the like: the 'atmosphere' in which his words are being set out are against these debates on the status of math qua math. Some of this might be brought out in read §125. Let me move on to that and see. — StreetlightX
Did you have any further defence for your claims about the goal of philosophy? I directly responded to your question. Don't insult me with this crap. — Luke
It might surprise you that there is more to a sentence than its words; sentences also have a meaning or a sense — Luke
At §98, "order" refers to the sense/meaning of a sentence. (How many times do I need to say that?) — Luke
At §132, "order" refers to the arrangement of grammatical evidence. — Luke
That said, I'm not sure what it is that the philosopher 'marshalls' when he or she 'marshalls recollections': recollections of what? Any ideas? — StreetlightX
I pointed out that your response missed a key point. The so-called goal of philosophy requires a process, or work, described at 130-132, which is inconsistent with the described work of philosophy prior to 127. Why does that insult you? — Metaphysician Undercover
Order does not refer to sense or meaning, — Metaphysician Undercover
‘. . . our language “is in order as it is” ’: an allusion to TLP 5.5563 (see 2.1),
contra Russell and Frege. In the Preface to the Tractatus Russell had revealed
his incomprehension:
Mr. Wittgenstein is concerned with the conditions for a logically perfect language —
not that any language is logically perfect, or that we believe ourselves capable, here
and now, of constructing a logically perfect language, but that the whole function of
language is to have meaning, and it only fulfils this function in proportion as it approaches
to the ideal language which we postulate. (TLP p. x)'
This view W. repudiated, both then and later. What was wrong with the Tractatus
conception of the ‘good order’ of ordinary language was, among other things,
its forcing the requirement of determinacy of sense upon language. This theme
is pursued in §§98–107. — Baker and Hacker
Right, and at 98, "order" refers to the "grammatical evidence" of the sentence. — Metaphysician Undercover
You said that the business (work) of philosophy was the goal of philosophy, and I painstakingly pointed out to you that this was incorrect. — Luke
I supported this with quotes from a secondary source reading of the text. — Luke
See the association of order and sense? — Luke
"The signpost is in order - if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose"; the philosohper's job consists in recalling these purposes). I think that works. — StreetlightX
This is where I part company with Wittgenstein. — Sam26
A theory, on Witty's account so far, is one that sets out what language 'should' be - an idealized account of how it 'should' function. — StreetlightX
Does Witty simply mean that all theory collapses into description? But surely people can describe 'wrongly' - we can be wrong about descriptions, and therefore there is room for debate? — StreetlightX
That people can be wrong about description does not mean that there can be room for debate, the two are not necessarily linked. — Isaac
...the kind of explanation he struggled to avoid was only the scientistic kind, and that this leaves coherent room in Wittgenstein’s philosophy for both the conceptual and the theoretical, thinly rendered. Perhaps the temptation for the latter – which we might call simple explanation – was too great to pass up, particularly as it makes so obvious the idleness of explanations that involve speculative metaphysics or the fabrication of ghostly processes. Simple explanation thus became an extension of the perspicuous presentations of a philosopher aware of all the wrong ways of importing explanation into philosophy. Indeed, non-theory-laden, perspicuous explanation is the only kind of explanation that should be expected from a clear philosophical vision. — Daniéle Moyal Sharrock
Does Witty simply mean that all theory collapses into description? But surely people can describe 'wrongly' - we can be wrong about descriptions, and therefore there is room for debate? Questions to provoke some replies, hopefully. — StreetlightX
5. If one looks at the example in §1, one can perhaps get an idea of how much the general concept of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. - It disperses the fog if we study the phenomena of language in primitive kinds of use in which one can clearly survey the purpose and functioning of the words.
A child uses such primitive forms of language when he learns to talk.
Here the teaching of language is not explaining, but training.
65. Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations. - For someone might object against me: “You make things easy for yourself! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what is essential to a language-game, and so to language: what is common to all these activities, and makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you the most headache, the part about the general form of the proposition and of language.”
And this is true. - Instead of pointing out something common to all that we call language, I’m saying that these phenomena have no one
thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word for all a but there are many different kinds of affinity between them. And on account of this affinity, or these affinities, we call them all “languages”.
89. With these considerations we find ourselves facing the problem: In what way is logic something sublime?
For logic seemed to have a peculiar depth a a universal significance.
Logic lay, it seemed, at the foundation of all the sciences. For logical investigation explores the essence of all things. It seeks to see to the foundation of things, and shouldn’t concern itself whether things actually happen in this or that way. —– It arises neither from an interest in the facts of nature, nor from a need to grasp causal connections, but from an urge to understand the foundations, or essence, of everything empirical. Not, however, as if to this end we had to hunt out new facts; it is, rather, essential to our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand.
92. This finds expression in the question of the essence of language, of propositions, of thought. - For although we, in our investigations, are trying to understand the nature of language - its function, its structure - yet this is not what that question has in view. For it sees the essence of things not as something that already lies open to view, and that becomes surveyable through a process of ordering, but as something that lies beneath the surface. Something that lies within, which we perceive when we see right into the thing, and which an analysis is supposed to unearth.
‘The essence is hidden from us’: this is the form our problem now assumes. We ask: “What is language?”, “What is a proposition?” And
the answer to these questions is to be given once for all, and independently of any future experience.
94. ‘Remarkable things, propositions!’ Here we already have the sublimation of our whole account of logic. The tendency to assume a pure intermediary between the propositional sign and the facts. Or even to try to purify, to sublimate, the sign itself. - For our forms of expression, which send us in pursuit of chimeras, prevent us in all sorts of ways from seeing that nothing extraordinary is involved.
97. … We are under the illusion that what is peculiar, profound and essential to us in our investigation resides in its trying to grasp the incomparable essence of language. That is, the order existing between the concepts of proposition, word, inference, truth, experience, and so forth. This order is a super-order between a so to speak a super-concepts. Whereas, in fact, if the words “language”, “experience”, “world” have a use, it must be as humble a one as that of the words “table”, “lamp”, “door”.
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