Comments

  • Is there an external material world ?
    Without that wider association you couldn't say they discriminated (or equated) according to colour. Only that they discriminated.
    — bongo fury

    You confuse me being able to know that that he recognises colours with him being able to recognise colours. He either can or he can't, irrespective of what I think.     — Michael

    Hence my edit: it wouldn't make sense to say they discriminated according to colour, without their associating according to a background classification.

    It's everything to do with comparing and classifying, whether or not using word-pointing so to do.
    — bongo fury

    No it doesn't. I don't need to have words for pleasure and pain to recognise the difference between me feeling pleasure and me feeling pain. Qualitative experiences differ, and that they do has nothing to do with being able to make and make sense of my own and another person's vocalisations or ink impressions.     — Michael

    I clearly allowed for there being no language as such: no word- or symbol-pointing. But there will be comparing according to a wider classification, if it makes sense to speak of colour recognition, and not merely discrimination.

    And that's how seeing colours is seeing objects. It's recognising classes of objects. (Or classes of illumination events.)
  • Is there an external material world ?
    It's nothing to do with language. — Michael

    It's everything to do with comparing and classifying, whether or not using word-pointing so to do.

    A hermit with no language could look at two objects and see them to be the same colour (or different colours). — Michael

    Not without associating those two objects with all the others of their class (or each with a different class).

    Without that wider association, and background classification, it wouldn't make sense to say they discriminated (or matched) according to colour. Only that they discriminated (or matched).
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    Plato is not only warning us about misusing language in the sense of bad grammar or syntax. Speaking badly also includes saying untruths, telling lies, creating a conflict between speech and reality - between what is said and what is. — Harry Hindu

    And didn't he say something about cutting and pasting large chunks of text from the, er, realm of ideas, with cursory changes and no attribution?

    (I was enjoying your change of style!)

    https://www.emmitsburg.net/archive_list/articles/misc/hhp/language.htm
  • Evidence of conscious existence after death.
    Which will you choose then? Let us see... Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your self-respect? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that we live again. If you gain, you gain nothing, an eternity of smug self-satisfaction, in the company of equally repellent souls; if you lose, you lose everything, as you wasted your chance to live authentically and perceive reality. Wager, then, without hesitation, that we don't. — Pascal's Other Wager
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    If I had been mentioning "aRb" I would have put it in quotes. I am surprised that was not apparent from the context. — Banno

    It was apparent, on the assumption that you were being deliberate in your use or omission of quote marks, but not on the assumption that you understood and were conveying W's meaning in 3.1432.

    So, this,

    Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world... — Banno

    says,

    Insofar as some relation aRb, which is itself the fact pictured by the proposition "aRb", is true in virtue of itself picturing a fact in the world... — Banno

    ?

    I don't see why you wouldn't much rather accept,

    Insofar as some true proposition "aRb" (and/or some spatial relation within its sign) pictures a fact, — bongo fury
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    As far as I can see, 3.14 and what follows concerns the structure of propositions rather than how they might picture the world. — Banno

    What I quoted clearly concerns both, but I'm grateful for reassurance that you appreciate the difference between the two. Notice how W puts quote marks around the a-R-b string when referring to (mentioning) the proposition and/or its associated sign, and deliberately leaves it unadorned when using it (the string) as a proposition to refer to (show, if only hypothetically and generally) the relation itself, i.e. the fact.

    I don't see why that is so painful to address.

    I need it clarified to see if you are saying something of interest to me (and @RussellA?) about the showing. Yes, W does seem passionate about it, in a way that raises the question whether he would approve of glossing it simply as an "isomorphism". Does he have (perhaps nascent) nominalist scruples about granting the existence of relations as such?

    But there doesn't seem much point in such a discussion if you can't bear to clarify between use and mention, using the usual convention of quote marks. Why is that so difficult? (Always.)
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    You asked how a relation pictures the world, — Banno

    No, I asked what you meant by

    Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world, — Banno

    and offered a reasonable paraphrase consistent with the text in question, where the author / translators / editors used quote marks in the usual way to clarify between use and mention. (Crucial in the context.)
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    So you want to put into words how a relation pictures the world. — Banno

    No, W does that perfectly well.

    3.1431 The essence of a propositional sign is very clearly seen if we imagine one composed of spatial objects (such as tables, chairs, and books) instead of written signs. Then the spatial arrangement of these things wil express the sense of the proposition.

    3.1432 Instead of, ‘The complex sign “aRb” says that a stands to b in the relation R’, we ought to put, ‘That “a” stands to “b” in a certain relation says that aRb.’

    Using quote marks in the usual way to clarify between use and mention.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    How to parse it? — Banno

    Semantically. Make sense of it. For example,

    Is "aRb" being used or mentioned (in your sentence)? — bongo fury
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    No. — Banno

    What, then? How are we to parse,

    Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world, — Banno

    ? Is "aRb" being used or mentioned (in your sentence)?

    Nor are "proposition" and "relation" interchangeable. — Banno

    Hence,

    A proposition, for W, is any such [relation] which... — bongo fury

    Further, propositional signs are distinct from propositions (3.12) — Banno

    3.12 — And a proposition is a propositional
    sign in its projective relation to the world.

    I.e. in the isomorphism shown between the fact and a certain relation in the sign.
  • Phenomenalism
    And what does it mean to "see something differently"? — Michael

    It means to classify the same thing differently. — bongo fury

    It means that we experience different sense-data. — Michael

    It means that we reach for different pictures and exemplars.

    I experience white and gold, you experience black and blue. — Michael

    You reach for uncontroversially white and gold pictures and exemplars, I reach for uncontroversially black and blue.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    and is it a fact that the relation shows the state of affairs, and as such is part of the world and not distinct from it? — Harry Hindu

    I don't know exactly which other squabble you're alluding to, but bear in mind that when someone opposes "world" to "language" they often mean the less encopassing "fact" and "proposition" respectively.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    Insofar as some true relation aRb pictures the world, — Banno

    Do you mean

    Insofar as some true proposition "aRb" (and/or some spatial relation within its sign) pictures a fact,

    ?

    Just trying to follow.

    Sure, the relation shows the state of affairs, — Banno

    Yes. Fact = state of affairs = relation.

    A proposition, for W, is any such entity (by whatever of those names) which is used in a language to (if true) show (be a diagram of) another.
  • Phenomenalism
    the visual and auditory imagery is causally covariant with
    — Michael

    Yes that's much better than

    the thing that we hear is causally covariant with
    — Michael

    But then what's indirect about it?     — bongo fury

    Maybe I chose the wrong bit to make the point about indirectness.

    Not that "the visual and auditory imagery is causally covariant with" isn't much better than "the thing that we hear is causally covariant with". It's a lot better, at least when comparing with hallucination, for the same reason that referring to Frodo-discourse is better than referring to Frodo, in literal-minded analysis.

    But causation is one of many varieties of (roughly speaking) binary relation that appear to warrant inference of indirectness, willy-nilly. Any cause and effect step is plausibly a causal chain or story. We need merely zoom in, to see more steps.

    The other varieties sharing this apparent warrant include acquaintance, information, access, trace, [etc, suggestions welcome].

    (I do think it's weird that making the theatre Cartesian by having an audience appears to satisfy a (vain?) urge to insert a properly direct step; but that may be beside the point.)

    So, I shouldn't have to ask what's potentially indirect about "causally covariant with". Every step of causation might be a chain.

    Whereas,

    this visual and auditory imagery is isomorphic with — Michael

    Yes that's much better than

    the thing that we hear is isomorphic with — Michael

    ... for the same reason that it avoids equivocating between real and imagined. But it's also a better example of directness, in the relation between image and (if there is one) object. The isomorphism is perfectly direct. So are: conventional (i.e. an agreed pretence of) reference between word and object, and derivative notions of about-ness, such as Putnam's or Goodman's.

    So, one reason to question the doctrine of indirect realism is to resist the one-way or "bottom-up" notion of learning, as a transmission of knowledge along a chain or channel or conveyer belt.

    Admittedly, dispensing with causation, acquaintance, information, access, trace etc., might leave the success or truth of the imagery (and hence learning) unexplained. If reference (including pictorial reference, according to Goodman) is conventional and pretended, it can't convey anything intrinsic about objects. If perceptual imagery is the directly-about-history book re-writing itself, how does it get to be true, as well as direct?

    Ok. But the notion of a causal or other chain-like process might still be wrong.

    Someone contesting indirect realism doesn't necessarily want to claim that knowledge about the rock flows specifically from the rock to the person. It might result rather from the vast network of interactions and interpretations in the background.

    Someone contesting direct realism doesn't necessarily want to claim that knowledge about the rock flows specifically from rock to TV screen to person. It might result rather from the vast network of interactions and interpretations in the background.     — bongo fury

    Advocates of causation, acquaintance, information, access, trace etc., may find the caricature in terms of chain and channel to be libelous. The author takes full responsibility.
  • Phenomenalism
    Why? — Isaac

    "Why is it the words and not the events that inform us?" ?

    Or "why are the words still about the events?" ?
  • Phenomenalism
    ↪Michael


    No worries.
  • Phenomenalism
    ↪Michael


    He's straw but intellectual?

    Why the denial about the Cartesian theatre?

    Or, better denial, please.
  • Phenomenalism
    Ah good, you added more.

    the visual and auditory imagery is causally covariant with — Michael

    Yes that's much better than

    the thing that we hear is causally covariant with — Michael

    But then what's indirect about it? You say the homunculus is straw, but don't you need him, for indirectness?
  • Phenomenalism
    That's just playing word games. — Michael

    Logic, hopefully.

    They don't see a picture. They see an apple. — Michael

    Do you mean, they notice an apple (shape) in their mental picture?

    It's like saying that Frodo carried the One Ring to Mordor, that the One Ring is a fiction, and so that Frodo carried a fiction to Mordor. — Michael

    You're not being serious. Ok.
  • Phenomenalism
    I didn’t say it’s not a mental image. — Michael

    Oh, so it's a picture, after all?



    it’s bad grammar to then describe this as “hearing mental imagery.” — Michael

    But you just did:

    When a schizophrenic hears voices those voices [that you just said this person hears] are just “mental imagery” — Michael



    do you accept that schizophrenics see and hear things that aren’t there? — Michael

    Literally, they obviously don't. They 'see and hear things'.
  • Phenomenalism
    Does the schizophrenic who sees people who aren’t there see a picture of people? — Michael

    That's my question. Prompted by,

    the kind of thing that we hear in the case of a veridical perception is the same kind of thing that we hear in the case of an hallucinatory perception (e.g. the schizophrenic who hears voices). — Michael

    What kind of thing is it, if not an actual voice, and now apparently not a mental image either?
  • Phenomenalism
    Obviously the point for me is the usual one, of whether or not seeing an apple is a case of seeing a picture of the apple.
  • Phenomenalism
    Reading a history textbox doesn't give us direct access to history. — Michael

    But the book itself: is it directly about the historical events, or only indirectly?
  • Phenomenalism
    Yes. — Michael

    So the true factual literature "my dog has fleas" isn't about an actual dog?

    Or is it that actual things are the same kind of things as made-up things?
  • Phenomenalism
    the kind of thing that we hear in the case of a veridical perception is the same kind of thing that we hear in the case of an hallucinatory perception (e.g. the schizophrenic who hears voices). — Michael

    And, I suppose: the kind of thing that we read about in true factual literature is the same kind of thing that we read about in fiction?
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    Entities are patterns of properties. — Harry Hindu

    At a stretch. Ok. If mental entities include linguistic conventions, then no one counseled dispensing with them.
  • Is there an external material world ?
    we renounce dualism (Dennett, 1991). We
    put in its place a dual aspect monism     — Hobson and Friston's Choice
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    ...a mental entity — Harry Hindu

    Not an entity, that's the thing. A linguistic regularity. A pattern.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    For instance, how do we non-korean-speaking people know that Korean is a language? It just looks like scribbles and strange sounds being made by some people to us. How can you explain the difference in how different people interpret different scribbles and utterances if not by referring to mental entities? — Harry Hindu

    Convention?
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    The Eiffel tower is in Paris, is 330m in height and is made of wrought iron. I can replace "I saw the 330m tall wrought-iron structure in Paris" by "I saw the Eiffel Tower". Is this what Wittgenstein is referring to ? — RussellA

    The structure facts, definitely. The top being 330m from the bottom. The iron molecules being roughly 40 times as numerous as the carbon, thank you Wikipedia. These are like the spatial arrangement of the "tables, chairs and books" (3.1431) or of the "a" and the "b" in "aRb" (3.1432).

    The tower's being in Paris: not sure, good question. Or two questions: if its being in Paris is its relation to a different structure (Paris), then may a proposition analogously derive its sense (it's potential interpretation as a diagram) from its relations to other propositions? I'm guessing no, because atomism. Or, if its being in Paris is a unary relation, i.e. a property, then how might an isomorphism (between this tower fact and some other fact) obtain? (Does W somewhere discuss the redness of the rose in something like this respect?)

    The definite description aspect, I doubt the relevance. Or rather, I've no idea.




    An aesthetic is a unity between its parts, rather than just being an aggregation of parts loosely related. — RussellA

    Ok, but then, still curious that you would downplay the very relations, tight as you like, by which unity of your required sort is achieved.




    but did he say that music uses propositions, that propositions are used in music as well as language ? — RussellA

    The gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, and the sound-waves, all stand to one another in the same internal relation of depicting that holds between language and the world. — 4.014
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    If we dispense with mental entities then what is left? — Harry Hindu

    Language, art, music, etc.

    https://monoskop.org/images/1/1b/Goodman_Nelson_Languages_of_Art.pdf
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    In great music, as with great painting, the notes, or brush marks, combine into a single aesthetic experience, — RussellA

    That depends on how you look at it, as W points out in the case of sentence tokens:

    For in a printed proposition, for example, no essential difference is apparent between a propositional sign and a word.
    (That is what made it possible for Frege to call a
    proposition a composite name.)     — 3.143

    Curious that you want to downplay the relational/factual/structural aspect of the artwork and stress the whole, er, feeling, while W is keen to use musical and pictorial structure to explain propositional structure.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    ↪Tate


    Never mind then. Back to words and music.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    (that's the overall message of the TLP, anyway). — Tate

    What is?
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    ↪Harry Hindu


    That's the kind of reason I (and I claimed also W) counseled dispensing with mental entities.

    I was going along with it (entities included) out of interest, while I thought I could follow. Awareness too, and I'm out of here.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    So yes, as far as I know. — RussellA

    Well I did specify:

    (For you?) — bongo fury

    So, yes.

    Good. I didn't misunderstand.

    But that line of thinking was leading me to expect,

    the individual notes and combinations of notes in music express feelings not [while combinations of notes express] thoughts. — RussellA
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    ↪RussellA


    So, yes?
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    Feelings are different to thoughts. Feelings are not propositional, thoughts are propositional. — RussellA

    Are feelings to thoughts as words are to propositions (and things are to facts)?

    (For you?)

    Just trying to square this with,

    the individual notes and combinations of notes in music express feelings not thoughts. — RussellA
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    There would be no public language if there were no private thoughts. — RussellA

    Interesting theory.
  • A Newbie Questions about Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
    But as Wittgenstein is identifying thought as proposition, in talking about propositions, he is also talking about thoughts. — RussellA

    Loosely (indirectly, residually) of course, but he (like the grade school teacher) isn't heading towards your kind of diagram, in which thoughts or any other mental units combine or map as discrete units (in the manner of word or picture tokens). Is my point.

    He's getting out of the head, into the language.
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