Consider though that, if you could teach a fly that it is a fly, that it is in a fly bottle, and what a fly bottle is, you might be able to help the fly stop flying back into the same fly bottle over and over. — Count Timothy von Icarus
More perplexing is whether the sock puppets are real sock puppets.But the feet aren't, right? — Ciceronianus
If so, then there are standing waves."fundamental particles don't really exist, they are just mathematical descriptions of standing waves — Count Timothy von Icarus
Then I'd suggest that you reconsider your "I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality". You are a member of a community, and you learned to divide the world up thus-and-so as a member of that community, and overwhelmingly, you are in agreement with that community. The very fact that you are reading this shows that there is more going on than just your "perceptions".I was looking for feed back on my logic — vanzhandz
If so, then there are standing waves.
What makes the structure physical and not mathematical? That is a question that we refuse to answer. In our view, there is nothing more to be said about this that doesn’t amount to empty words and venture beyond what the PNC allows. The ‘world-structure’ just is and exists independently of us and we represent it mathematico-physically via our theories. (158)
So you would build another, somewhat larger bottle
This brings me to the second way that I think HW’s metaphilosophy overgeneralizes. According to HW, philosophy is purely descriptive; it should “leave the world as it is” — only describe how we think and talk, and stop at that.
I think philosophy can play a more radical role. Return to our fly. Wittgenstein was not the first to compare the philosopher to one, nor the most famous. That award goes to Socrates, who claimed that the role of the philosopher was to act as a gadfly to the state. This is a very different metaphor. Leaving the world as it is isn’t what gadflies do. They bite. As I see it, so can philosophers: they not only describe how we think, they get us to change our way of thinking — and sometimes our ways of acting. Philosophy is not just descriptive: it is normative.
As he points out, philosophers traditionally assumed that truth has a single nature — something all true statements share. Some said that all truths correspond to reality, others that all truths are useful, or are rationally coherent, and so on. Each one of these views falls short. Not every truth is useful, nor does every truth — think of the fundamental truths of morality or mathematics — clearly correspond to an objective reality. In HW’s eyes, we got ourselves into this mess by ignoring the real function of the concept, which isn’t to pick out some deep property all and only true statements share, but to allow linguistic shortcuts. And that is all there is to it: seeing that there is no “nature” to truth is the way out of the fly bottle...
First, just because we can’t reductively (“scientifically”) define something doesn’t mean we can’t say something illuminating about it. Go back to HW’s account of truth. He assumes that there is either a single nature of truth (and we can reductively define it) or that truth has no nature at all. But why think these are the only two choices?
Well, within the context of a philosophical discussion, the meaning of "know" has nothing to do with truth — LuckyR
In particular, Wittgenstein went to some length to point out that language is embedded in out activities, and certainly not "too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience"
PI 114(Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.5): "The general form of propositions is: This is how things are."——That is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.
PI 126One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.
PI 116The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These
bumps make us see the value of the discovery.
The question "What is a word really?" is analogous to "What is a piece in chess?"
It was true to say that our considerations could not be scientific ones. It was not of any possible interest to us to find out empirically 'that, contrary to our preconceived ideas, it is possible to think suchand-such'—whatever that may mean. (The conception of thought as a gaseous medium.) And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.
And he might well have agreed with you that it is impossible to avoid metaphysics, being what is shown rather than just said.
In particular, Wittgenstein went to some length to point out that language is embedded in our activities, and certainly not "too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience". And he might well have agreed with you that it is impossible to avoid metaphysics, being what is shown rather than just said. The sense of wonder is at the core of Wittgenstein's thinking. — Banno
No facts that language could latch onto. — Sam26
What you said looks like a complex, hidden, tricky way, of just reviving Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. If not, what is the difference between what you said and Descartes? — Angelo Cannata
We know that this point of Descartes, like any philosophical point aimed at gaining power, grasping existence, is exposed to criticism. Still, it seems that after centuries this human desire is irresistible to our psichology and our mind carries on devising stratagems to comfort ourselves and think that there is still hope to get some kind of ultimate power, ultimate control, able to finally withstand every possible present and future criticism. — Angelo Cannata
Then I'd suggest that you reconsider your "I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality". — Banno
You are a member of a community, and you learned to divide the world up thus-and-so as a member of that community, and overwhelmingly, you are in agreement with that community. The very fact that you are reading this shows that there is more going on than just your "perceptions".
And if you think not, then solipsism has you and there's no point in your conversing here. — Banno
You know things that are not true? I don't think so.
What you can be said to know is true. Otherwise, you don't know it. Been that way since at least Theaetetus
I would say that there must be a base reality for my consciousness to exist within, due to me having not been conscious at one point (unborn) and therefore incapable of creating any reality for myself, (...) — vanzhandz
After Wittgenstein, the standard response is that there is nothing you can say about this "base reality". The corollary, that it therefore drops out of any discussion; it is irrelevant.
So back to plain ordinary reality, socks and hands and cups and kettles.
For an example of such ill effects, consider someone interested in the privacy of sensations who asks the following question, and who struggles to find any satisfactory answer: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether I feel pain?’ On Wittgenstein’s view, if we attend to the way in which sentences like ‘I feel pain’ are actually used, then this will appear akin to someone grappling with the gibberish: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether ouch!?’ Philosophy can be used to show that there is no real problem here.
I think Wittgenstein (both versions) has a fundamentally flawed conception of language. Ordinary language is clearly flawed, whereas the later Wittgenstein makes too much of the distinction between language and other elements of experience. We understand language through experience, and have the innate ability to develop linguistic skills due to the same selection effects that shape the rest of our biology… — Count Timothy von Icarus
it seems to me like he, and those who followed him in the "linguistic turn," make the mistake of making language too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I think you have it backwards. We don’t understand language through experience de, we understand experience through language.
It is sometimes said that animals do not talk because they lack the mental capacity. And this means: "they do not think, and that is why they do not talk." But—they simply do not talk. Or to put it better: they do not use language—if we except the most primitive forms of language.—Commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing.
Thinkers in physics (Karen Barad), biology(Stuart Kauffman, Lynn Margolis), the social sciences and philosophy extend Witt’s work on human discourse to the non-human world in order to show that reciprocal interaction within a field or configuration applies not just to human discourse but to the biological and physical worlds in themselves.
↪chiknsld
We can't assume that the world exists, because we have no idea of what "exist" means. — Angelo Cannata
You seem to have forgotten about forgetting. — Ø implies everything
Even if my consciousness did exist before it was aware of its consciousness, then in what reality did that unconscious mind exist? — vanzhandz
I think there's more value in actually expressing that criticism than just making references to it. — vanzhandz
Angelo but isn't our conversation right now proof that the world exists? — chiknsld
One essential criticism about Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is that we have no idea about what “to be” or “to exist” means. The same applies to our conversation as a proof that the world exists, which is almost the same argumentation adopted by Descartes: it cannot be proof of the existence on the world, because we have no idea of what “existence” means.
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