The point is we see only light; our mind does the rest. — Art48

Phenomenalism just advises we not invest too much in the idea of concrete objects which possess ever changing properties.

It says that an object basically is its properties. There's no extra "object" out there that has redness, or softness, or whatever.

"Light" and "mind" wouldn't be exceptions to that. See what I mean?

I suppose it's a win you realise at least one of the problems. — Benkei

:lol:

Running out of precious metals to make phones doesn't affect the climate. Burning any fossil fuels at all does. We either need to come up with a good way to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere, or stop burning fossil fuels all together.

I make 100 phones each year but only 50 are recycled, I still need resources for 50 phones. — Benkei

True. That doesn't affect the climate, though.

Even with a profound technological shift we are depleting the earth. — Benkei

There really isn't anywhere for it to go. It all just goes round and round.

There would be no public language if there were no private thoughts. — RussellA

Username checks out.

But to say we need *more* fossil fuels, not less, is a recipe for certain destruction. — Manuel

The solution is a profound technological shift.

I see. Withdrawing from drugs can be fatal, so an addict probably should take drugs to avoid death. Same thing:

If we try to abruptly withdraw from fossil fuels use, people will die from that, so we should withdraw more slowly.

Paywall. Could you summarize?

In the TLP, language can be used to talk about the world. The world is whatever happens to be the case. If the proposition that I saw a red truck is true, then it's a picture of (an aspect) of the world. No problem.

We enter into nonsense anytime we ask about stuff that is not "in' this world, or that requires a vantage point beyond it. Asking whether there is such a thing as subjective experience is in that category.

Also, announcing that there is such a thing as subjective experience is nonsense.

Plus what I just said is nonsense.

In the end, it's all down to the sauce. — Banno

"the sauce is the boss"

I think this video will help:

Hume spoke of phenomena, hence he must be a phenomenologist...
— Tate

A misquote? This seems to be your argument. — Banno

The title of the OP is phenomenalism, not phenomenology.

Hume was a phenomenalist.

Those who support a resolute reading. — Fooloso4

Oh. There's another interpretation after that. If I understand it correctly, it says that the Tractacus can be taken as a demonstration.

No one climbs a philosophical ladder thinking that it's nonsense. There is firmness to it to the extent that there's logic behind it.

It's only at a certain point that one glimpses the trajectory.

I get the resolute interpretation because my own first impression was that it's a joke. I'm moving on from that, though. I think I'm going to get McGinn's book.

The world is all that is the case.

Is this nonsense? What does that mean? Is it not true that the world is all that is the case? — Fooloso4

Who are you directing this question toward? Wittgenstein? Us? Yourself?

David Hume will still be famous after I'm dead and buried, so I'll hold back on calling him a philosophical novice. :grin:

So we have interpretations by decade:

1960s:. mystical readings
1980s:. metaphysical readings, some insisting on realism
1990s: the "resolute reading", no mysticism, no metaphysics, no theory of meaning, no theory period, and nonsense means nonsense (as opposed to some technical jargon). The 1990s interpretation is the one I immediately assumed, and apparently the SEP pretty much does as well.

For some interpreters, TLP 3.3 foreshadows the private language argument:

"Only propositions have sense; only in the nexus of a proposition does a name have meaning."

It's called the context principle. As opposed to Russell, who thought that private contact with an object gives its name a meaning, TLP 3.3 is saying that only in use does the name have meaning. Why? Because the name has to have a fixed use to have a fixed meaning.

This view is from the 1960s. In the 1980s, interpreters began to say that what fixes the use of a name is not language use, but rather the object itself. In the 1980s, prominent interpreters saw "uncritical realism" in the Tractacus, agreeing among themselves that Wittgenstein probably didn't understand what he was writing. :chin:

Reading Schopenhauer left me pondering the limits of the intellect, at how some intellectual avenues seem to be dead ends. This is a theme I'm picking back up in the Tractacus.

I've just given three examples in which the subject of observation is the hidden state. As I said, why don't we start with the papers from which you've arrived at the impression that what we observe are inferences, and we can see what the differences are. — Isaac

This is just garbled.

Kant's belief was Scientific Realism rather than mysticism. — RussellA

I wasn't saying Kant was a mystic. I was saying that the metaphysics Wittgenstein offers would be compatible with a lot of different ontologies. He's also interpreted as promoting mysticism.

The Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard connection makes that seem fairly likely.

Yes. An inference regarding a hidden state is never called an "observation." I'm glad to see papers aren't being written with that kind of confusion.

See the papers I cited earlier. Or any papers on inference systems. — Isaac

If you recall a specific case of a hidden state being referred to as "observed", could you point that out? As I mentioned, in Markov analysis in general, it's not used that way. I think you've misunderstood something along the way.

In the uses of the term I'm familiar with "observed" and "hidden" are very distinct. Could you give an example of the two being used to refer to the same thing?

were talking about perception. — Isaac

Sorry, I wasn't talking about perception. I was talking about hidden states in general. It makes more sense to me to say we have some degree of confidence in our inferences. That lets me distinguish hidden states from observations.

Cool!

Comments welcome. — Art48

I think phenomenalism is from Hume's bundle theory, isn't it?

You can't imagine an object that has no properties. And somehow we get from there to: an object is a bundle of properties.

I'm missing a step. Do you remember what it is?

.'The nature of his new philosophy is heralded as anti-systematic through and through, yet still conducive to genuine philosophical understanding of traditional problems. In more recent scholarship, this division has been questioned: some interpreters have claimed a certain unity between all stages of his thought, while others talk of a more nuanced division, adding stages such as the middle Wittgenstein and the post-later Wittgenstein.'. --SEP

"To sample the future, what you do is first sample the last state, given its distribution. Then sample the next hidden state, using the transition matrix and repeat ad nauseum. Since you have no actual observations after the last point in the sequence, you are sampling from a markov chain. This will get you samples of the future, given everything you know of the partial sequence."

We know the hidden state. — Isaac

Nah. There's an 80 percent chance of rain. I don't know it's going to rain.

Well, if we're not 'overstating', you only know what you currently remember about what happened when you tested the model.

All thought is post hoc by at least a few milliseconds. — Isaac

So we're not trying to be serious here?

You can read it. If you don't like it, fine. If you think his message is mystical, fine. If you think he was a materialist, fine.

I'm going to turn my back on you and read poetry.

You know what happened when you tested the model. That gives some degree of confidence in your subsequent inferences.

No need to overstate things.

Clearly you think there is something philosophically appealing about this that separates it out from other "fictions". — schopenhauer1

Yes. I'm not sure why Wittgenstein bugs you. If you're a Schopenhauer/Tolstoy/Kierkegaard fan, it seems to me you'd at least be curious about what's going on with the Tractacus.

Critique of Pure Reason - A239 - "We can only cognize objects that we can, in principle, intuit. Consequently, we can only cognize objects in space and time, appearances. We cannot cognize things in themselves." — RussellA

I guess the metaphysics he presents would be compatible with Kant. It would be compatible with some kind of mystical view.

Does it matter though? In the context of the whole book?

Who said anything about unknown. We can know a hidden state. If we have a successful model of it, we know it. What more is there to knowing something? — Isaac

Strictly speaking, you know what you inferred. Inference is not extra-sensory perception.

Wasn't @Isaac the one who started talking in terms of hidden states? He could probably expand on what he was referring to.

So it’s one long troll? — schopenhauer1

Not exactly. He's making fun of Schopenhauer in some respects: the stuff about the subject being the limit of the world.

You should be laughing at the end. It's awesome.

But you have it all figured out. — Fooloso4

That is correct. I read the text as well.