It is for some the former [world, existence, etc.] via the latter [study of philosophical texts]. — Fooloso4
Why is much philosophical focus devoted to the study of philosophers and their texts? Perhaps in order to use the work of others to articulate fresh concepts of world, existence, reality and truth. — Joshs
For a student of philosophy, sure. — SophistiCat
Have you ever happened across Wigner's essay — Wayfarer
↪jgill
Coming to think of it, here's a legitimate question within your area of expertise: there is a 'domain of natural numbers', is there not? And there are numbers outside that domain, like the imaginary number −−−√1 which is used in renormalisation procedures in physics. — Wayfarer
Philosophy is self-reflexive and dialogic. What others have said is not separate from what one says about world, existence, reality and truth.
Original ideas and concepts have always been the exception. — Fooloso4
Philosophy is self-reflexive and dialogic. What others have said is not separate from what one says about world, existence, reality and truth.
Original ideas and concepts have always been the exception. — Fooloso4
Don’t they have their colleagues to spar with? — Noble Dust
Philosophy struggles to define its own field and methodology [...] There is a version of the history of philosophy that identifies it as the chaotic starting-point of all other disciplines, which have spun off from it as they have developed through the chaotic discussions of philosophers. — Ludwig V
Philosophy struggles to define its own field and methodology. This presupposes that the model of other disciplines, like mathematics and science. But that model doesn't necessarily apply There is a version of the history of philosophy that identifies it as the chaotic starting-point of all other disciplines, which have spun off from it as they have developed through the chaotic discussions of philosophers.
Philosophy is not unlike mathematics or science in some ways. But it is also like disciplines such as Literature or History, and like them, a small number of texts function as canonical. These texts open the field of philosophical discussion and show what it is like; they also provide common reference points for discussion as well as a mine of philosophical mistakes - and since there are so few philosophical successes, the mistakes are all the help we are going to get. I have even heard it said that in philosophy, getting it right is less important than being wrong in interesting ways. — Ludwig V
The idealist would maybe hold that justice exists and that some acts indeed are just and unjust. A materialist would have to either fold on the question or translate justice to some sort of material term like benefit. Such an exercise, here undertaken in a very ramshackle and shorthand way about justice, does reveal something though. It reveals the origins of our commitments and may explain different usages of the term and therefore also the miscommunications surrounding it. — Tobias
When we consider its method immutable we see that it is not an empirical science and will never be. It therefore cannot yield any observable empirical truths about the world. What it can do is examine the concepts we use to think about the world. It can show us their relations, their mutual support or their antinomies. Philosophy then, is thinking about thinking, because the concepts we use to examine the concepts are the very same concepts themselves. It is a circular activity of reflection. — Tobias
I’m trying to think of an example of something that exists only within philosophy’s practice (or doesn’t exist only within its practice). Put differently, isnt the aim of philosophy to address within its practice such inclusive concepts as world, existence , reality and truth?
— Joshs
Entities in thought experiments? Swamp man, twin earth, brains in vats, grue and bleen, the utility monster, Gigantor... — fdrake
That fits with his idea that what he is looking for is an “oversight” (Übersicht) which I take to mean something like a map. — Ludwig V
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’?)
The name “philosophy” might also be given to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.
… our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena.
I am not interested in constructing a building, so much as in having a perspicuous view of the foundations of possible buildings. (CV 7)
What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory, but of a fertile new point of view. (CV 18)
He mentions a metaphor and passes on, as if it was transparent. Then elsewhere, you find another metaphor from which he passes on. And another and another... — Ludwig V
For if a book has been written for just a few readers that will be clear just from the fact that only a few people understand it. The book must automatically separate those who understand it from those who do not. Even the foreword is written just for those who understand the book.
Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.)
If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside!
The honorable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only by those who can open it, not by the rest. (Culture and Value, 7-8)
Is there a translation other than Anscombe's around? — Ludwig V
The fact that there are things he deliberately hides is deserving of our attention. That there are locked rooms hidden in the pages of his work is an intriguing confession and interpretive challenge. The question of where these rooms are and what is hidden in them, is not something that is even asked in the secondary literature that I am aware of — Fooloso4
I don’t interpret him as meaning that he deliberately hides things from readers ... — Joshs
If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key.
if one isn’t ready to recognize what he is saying, no amount of explication will help. — Joshs
The last thing he wants is to limit beforehand who has access to his thinking. — Joshs
On the contrary, he was desperate to share his ideas with as many as possible, and to write in such as way as to achieve this goal . — Joshs
—Its purpose would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.
In the draft for Philosophical Remarks he says:
For if a book has been written for just a few readers that will be clear just from the fact that only a few people understand it. The book must automatically separate those who understand it from those who do not. Even the foreword is written just for those who understand the book./quote]
What is written for just a few readers is not something written to desperately share with as many as possible.
In the preface to the PI he says:
Until recently I had really given up the idea of publishing my work in my lifetime. All the same, it was revived from time to time, mainly because I could not help noticing that the results of my work (which I had conveyed in lectures, typescripts and discussions), were in |x| circulation, frequently misunderstood and more or less watered down or mangled. This stung my vanity, and I had difficulty in quieting it.
...
I make them public with misgivings. It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another a but, of course, it is not likely.
Integers are outside the naturals... — fdrake
He doubts he will be understood by most. But his concern is not simply that he will not be understood, but that he will be misunderstood, his thoughts will be watered down or mangled. I don't think he writes despite the fact that he will be misunderstood but strategically so that what is most important will not even be noticed — Fooloso4
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