I think we already went through this in the other thread and I demonstrated that this is a mistaken view. — Metaphysician Undercover
Your basic misunderstanding in this post is based on your conflating the logic of language with formal logic and reason. If you can get that straightened out then you should be able to see how misguided your post is. — Fooloso4
If, as usual, you are convinced you are right, that Wittgenstein is mistaken rather than you being mistaken about what Wittgenstein is saying, then so be it. I am not going to try to convince you otherwise — Fooloso4
Did you read 2019's post, which is what I was replying to? Logic is an idealized use of language, it is a type of use, the use of language for a particular purpose ... — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't think so. Evolution does not follow any rules. — Metaphysician Undercover
What are you saying, that evolutionary processes follow some sort of informal logic? Who would have been carrying out this logical thinking which took place in the early development of language? — Metaphysician Undercover
The evolutionary processes are not following rules. — Metaphysician Undercover
Then I suggest you read it again, carefully , without your assumptions about what logic must be. — Fooloso4
By rules, I mean a kind of set of patterns based on constraints. That is how I am intending to use it. Evolution, like all other phenomena, has constraints on its system and its elements. You have the constraints of time and place, the constraints of how DNA, genetics, and cellular biology works, constraints on behavior, constraints on survival in general. All these constraints prove to produce similar patterns of morphology, behavior, and survival-mechanisms in animals repeatedly over and over. — schopenhauer1
So I meant a kind of structuring logic based on the constraints of the system. — schopenhauer1
Oh c'mon, this rather uncharitable interpretation. Evolution mainly works through differential survival rates. And as explained above, these do indeed create a kind of structuring system- an informal logic of its own, if you will. Systems can produce patterns of action. These are language games again. I am not using logic in the "formal logic" sense nor even in the "general inferencing" sense, but more of the arrangement and structure of a system sense. The "logic" of how a human heart works, or the "logic" of evolutionary mechanism clearly means something different than, "he is practicing logic". — schopenhauer1
Then I suggest you read it again, carefully , without your assumptions about what logic must be.
— Fooloso4
My assumptions of what logic is, are derived from Wittgenstein's descriptions. — Metaphysician Undercover
He sees Wittgenstein as trying to extend logic beyond calculus-based methods, by introducing alternative logical methods such as grammatical rules ... philosophical problems are primarily logical and are solved by logical investigations, while, at the same time, extending logic beyond calculus-based methods and into "ordinary" language-games, grammar etc. — 2019
Wittgenstein takes into account the way we talk in order to show the logic behind it, its grammar, by comparing language with calculi or games according to fixed and exact rules. — 2019
If you read closely PI 81 and 98, you'll see that Wittgenstein believes that there is an order of perfection, which underlies all language use, but we cannot say that this order is a logical order because logic is based in an ideal, and this order is based in a perfection which is other than an ideal. — Metaphysician Undercover
PI 81. ... But if someone says that our languages only approximate to such calculi, he is standing on the very brink of a misunderstanding. For then it may look as if what we were talking about in logic were an ideal language. As if our logic were, so to speak, a logic for a vacuum.
One is on the very brink of a misunderstand if he thinks that what we were talking about in logic were an ideal language. Our logic, that is, the logic of language, is not logic in a vacuum. It does not exist on its own. It is not independent of the language-game and thus not some one, universal, invariant thing. — Fooloso4
The perfect order Wittgenstein refers to in §98 cannot be an illogical order. — Fooloso4
I really do not see how a constraint is a rule. That makes no sense to me. I agree with what you say about constraints, time and place are constraints, and all the physical features of genetics, DNA, etc. are constraints. These may all be classed as the particulars of the circumstances. But how do you construe the particulars of the circumstances as rules? — Metaphysician Undercover
We can analyze the system using logic, and produce some laws which describe the actions of the system, but these laws are descriptive. They do not actually structure the system, so it's inappropriate to say that the system "follows" these laws. The laws describe the system, the system is not following the laws. — Metaphysician Undercover
I can see how a system might produce patterns of action, and that we might understand these patterns through logic, but I do not see how you can say that there is any "informal logic" within the system, governing the actions of the system. To say that the system has "an informal logic of its own" which is creating the patterns of action, is to say that the system has a mind of its own, because only minds use logic to govern actions.
You might do as Fooloso4 appears inclined to do, and define "logic" in a way which is completely inconsistent with the way that Wittgenstein uses it, but in the context of this thread, what's the point in that? — Metaphysician Undercover
Again, because we are playing language-games. Constraints in nature, cause there to be patterns. If we want to call it n-rule instead of strictly "rule" because it is not a human-created, top-down creation, then that is fine. We are just debating the meaning of how a term can be used then. — schopenhauer1
This makes no sense to me. The system is shaped by the constraints. This shaping by the constraints, is "following laws". This version of "following laws" does not need intentionality, simply actions that are constrained to create certain probable outcomes and patterns. — schopenhauer1
So what if I am using it in a way that Wittgenstein is not? This is a different language game. What I am doing is explaining/describing how our pattern-recognition powers, like inferencing powers, were created by pattern-generating phenomena from constraints, that allowed us to see those very patterns that created the us. We perhaps could not help but be a creature that recognizes patterns. The other option of nature would be to strictly follow those patterns of behavior unreflectively, or non-recursively rather, which is more-or-less the instinctual abilities that other animals have rather than the inferencing/social learning/pattern-recognition pattern abilities that our species has, which very much can recognize patterns for use in a community. It just so happens that mathematically-derived empricism has refined our pattern-recognition and inferencing onto the world itself instead of a particular subset of other use-contexts and has given us results we would not have initially expected, through falsification and applications of prior maths/logic to new phenomena as far as explanatory and technical results. — schopenhauer1
Constraints do not necessarily cause patterns. The constraints must be designed, or systematic to cause patterns. So you are overlooking the real cause of the patterns, which would be the design of the system of constraints, and you are assigning the cause of the patterns to the constraints themselves. So we are not just debating how a specific term, "rule", may be used, we are discussing how it is that a pattern may come to exist. Constraints may be completely random, there is no necessity in the concept of "constraint" which would require that constraints are ordered. So if it comes to be, that constraints are arranged in such a way as to create a pattern, we need to account for the reason why this has occurred. It doesn't suffice to say that the constraints are following a rule. — Metaphysician Undercover
It seems like I need to emphasize the fact that a constraint is not a law, or a rule. A constraint is a particular physical thing an obstacle or an object of restriction. In order that constraints might produce a pattern they must be arranged in such a way so as to do that. Recognizing that there are patterns, and that the patterns come about through constraints, and even describing the existence of those constraints in terms of laws or rules, does not address the reason why the constraints exist in such a way that allows them to be described by rules. The fact that the arrangement of constraints required to produce a pattern may be described by rules, does not mean that the arrangement of constraints required to produce that pattern is caused by rules. — Metaphysician Undercover
The ontological point was that the systemically-defined, constraint-patterns are intelligible to humans. Sure we can say that anything that makes sense to us, makes sense to us because it could not be otherwise. But it can be said, it makes sense to us, because a humans evolved in a way where pattern-recognition, a part of the human capacity to survive, turned its capacity on the broader phenomena of the world itself, they could not help but find these patterns, originally used for general inferencing abilities in other contexts. — schopenhauer1
How do we cross this gap (which is similar to an is/ought gap), to say something about the patterns themselves, when our premise says something about what serves a purpose? We need another premise which relates what is, to what serves a purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover
Right, that is a theory I posited is that, "what serves a purpose" is telling us "what is", and the confirmation is through accidental (contingent more accurately) language-game of math-derived science. — schopenhauer1
I don't see how "what serves a purpose" tells us "what is". What if all the patterns which human beings come up with are imaginary, fabrications, and the universe is just a program which rewards people for coming up with imaginative patterns? Coming up with an imaginative pattern serves the purpose, it produces the reward, the universe behaves according to the pattern created, so the person is rewarded by this. But this really doesn't tell us anything about "what is", and that is the system which hands out the rewards for the creation of imaginative patterns. The "universe" as we know it may have been created by evolving living creatures imagining patterns, and getting rewarded for this, by the system. — Metaphysician Undercover
I know this is highly contrary to Wittgenstein, but that is my point. Math works not because it "has to work" in the internal logic, when it is applied to empirical evidence and technology. It works, because there is something about how it is describing the very patterns that we initially used to recognize more practical or immediate situations in our development. — schopenhauer1
I don't think this is contrary to Wittgenstein... I don't see him as a conventionalist either regarding math or logic (or, I should say, especially regarding logic): "it has often been put in the form of an assertion that the truths of logic are determined by a consensus of opinions. Is this what I am saying? No". — 2019
The point is that Wittgenstein is not interested in explaining the "source" of regularities in nature. It's taken as a brute fact that they exist. Not only he's not interested in such "explanations", he seems to think that it's not philosophy's business in general. If the source of natural regularities is an empirical question, it's science's business; if it's not an empirical question, most probably it falls within the domain of a mystery which many try to explain by another mystery or: "a nothing could serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said". — 2019
The last part of this quote seems like an allusion to another distinction: "We must distinguish between a necessity in the system and a necessity of the whole system". — 2019
There are necessities within our mathematical system, but the system itself is not necessary. I don't see him as a conventionalist either regarding math or logic (or, I should say, especially regarding logic): "it has often been put in the form of an assertion that the truths of logic are determined by a consensus of opinions. Is this what I am saying? No". Given the world we live in, that's the math we can have. There's not a whole lot to say about "why this world" though. I take him to hold that (in its metaphysical depth (or shallowness rather)) this is a nonsensical question which produces nonsensical explanations. — 2019
Saying, "Wittgenstein just isn't interested" is shoving off any philosophical debate into "it's just brute fact" which in that case, makes sense why people often put Witty under "non-philosophy" or "anti-philosophy".
Any speculation is shrugged off. Thus, all that's left is to describe various contexts of language use. Great, all debates off. Let's just shut the forum down, all philosophical inquiry should be under creative writing/religion sections, and we can focus on something else now. — schopenhauer1
Throughout his career, Gellner depicted Wittgenstein as a relativist who claimed that all conceptual schemes are equally valid, and who therefore represents "one of the most bizarre and extreme forms of irrationalism of our time" (Gellner 1992: 121). To do this, he used a strict adherence to the fideist conception of Wittgenstein’s notions of "form of life" and "language-games," according to which these notions can be invoked in justifying any political, social or religious view. For Gellner, language-games are windowless monads that fight each other without even really knowing what they fight. He once claimed, when interviewed as an anthropologist, that the Wittgensteinian notion of a form of life "doesn’t make sense in a world in which communities are not stable and are not clearly isolated from each other" (Davis 1991: 65). Shortly before his death, he summed up his position on forms of life:
[T]he most important events of human history — the emergence of abstract doctrinal religion, the possibility of Reformations which invoke abstract truth against social practice, the possibility of an Enlightenment which does the same in secular terms, the emergence of a trans-cultural science confirmed by a uniquely powerful technology — all these facts show that thought is not limited by the form of life in which it occurs, but can transcend it.
(Gellner 1996: 671)
But Gellner never even tries to show exactly where Wittgenstein disagreed. He never stops to consider the possibility that the Wittgensteinian notion of "form of life" might include elements opposed to each other that interact and compete in the most complex ways. In an exceptionally conciliatory mood, he once wrote: "All that needs to be added to Wittgenstein’s view to the effect that concepts are legitimated by their role in the living system of which they are part, is … that this world contains more than one culture, and that the various cultures found in it differ quite a lot" (Gellner 1968d: 457). He never manages to show where Wittgenstein tries to deny or even play down this fact. Neither is there a sign in Words and Things of a realization that a Wittgensteinian language-game can be criticized, rejected or condemned in any other Wittgensteinian language-game, even one played within the same form of life. — link
https://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/tuschano/writings/strange/Are we dealing with mistakes and difficulties that are as old as language? Are they, so to speak, illnesses that are tied to a language’s use, or are they of a more special nature, peculiar to our civilization?
Or again: is the preoccupation with language, which permeates our whole philosophy, an age old move of all philosophizing //of all philosophy//, an age old struggle? Or, again, is this it: does philosophizing always waver between metaphysics and critique of language? — Wittgenstein
However, within the very belief here "philosophy doesn't say something that is in the realm of empiricism/scientific explanation" the question still remains as to the "why" of the regularities. Saying, "Wittgenstein just isn't interested" is shoving off any philosophical debate into "it's just brute fact" which in that case, makes sense why people often put Witty under "non-philosophy" or "anti-philosophy". — schopenhauer1
Any speculation is shrugged off. Thus, all that's left is to describe various contexts of language use. Great, all debates off. Let's just shut the forum down, all philosophical inquiry should be under creative writing/religion sections, and we can focus on something else now. That is the implication here. That there are "brute facts" begs the question- point lost for Witty then, as this cannot be explained, and he is not willing to even "go there" other than to say it is a limit, and all limits should not be crossed (pace famous quote about nothing can explain what cannot be said". Also a limit is human nature itself which "empiricism" as a blunt approach is not going to elucidate. Again, more room for philosophy. It seems more of trapping the fly and gluing it shut, then letting it free. — schopenhauer1
The point is that Wittgenstein is not interested in explaining the "source" of regularities in nature. It's taken as a brute fact that they exist. Not only he's not interested in such "explanations", he seems to think that it's not philosophy's business in general. If the source of natural regularities is an empirical question, it's science's business; if it's not an empirical question, most probably it falls within the domain of a mystery which many try to explain by another mystery or: "a nothing could serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said". — 2019
I take schopenhauer1's point to be that the limits of Wittgenstein's philosophical inquiry should not mark the limits of philosophy. That there are questions and issues that Wittgenstein puts beyond the limits of philosophy that are legitimate philosophical problems.
It is not that he calls Wittgenstein an empiricist but that, contrary to Wittgenstein, the empirical should not be regarded as beyond the bounds of philosophy. — Fooloso4
These do seem like good criticisms of one questionable interpretation of Wittgenstein. For me the use of Wittgenstein is going through the issues again and eliminating some of them as pointless. A person is more wary of their tendency to say nothing important as if it were profound, drunk on the jingle of their words. After his basic linguistic insights are digested, his more metaphysical/mystical ideas in the TLP become more fascinating. You mention brute fact. Well perhaps we do eventually bump up against brute fact (and is this not an old issue in philosophy?) — g0d
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