Posted by zeugma on January 16, 2005, at 11:49:35
In reply to Re: Wittgenstein on thought » zeugma, posted by alexandra_k on January 6, 2005, at 4:45:19
Hi again. This is not the response I wanted to write, but sometimes writing something is better than writing nothing. Gets around writer's block, you know :)
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> >Wittgenstein is paradoxically going to disenchant language- by more language? He is going to make us see- by describing seeing?
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> We could describe it as a paradox... But then again we could describe it like this:
> -He is going to show us how language functions by describing the ways in which we use it.
> -He is going to tell us where to look so that we may see for ourselves.
> Have I dissolved the paradox?Maybe. I see Wittgenstein (perhaps wrongly) as practicing philosophical hygiene, i.e. by being more careful with his language than his predecessors. The paradox is that Frege saw his relation to Mill in the same light, and Russell saw his relation (in "On Denoting") to Meinong in the same light. Russell makes us see something about certain kinds of expressions, something that is different from the way we saw them before. I actually see Wittgenstein as closer to frege than to Russell in that Frege and W. are extremely hygienic, i.e. careful about getting their meanings right. Russell wants to rush to conclusions about reality, and meaning is in his way, just as Meinong is. Wittgenstein is VERY, VERY careful about meaning. Paradox: this drives us into metaphysics, which is where W. wanted to guide us from.
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> Bit like how Skinner's 'theory' of behaviourism was sorta senseless in theorising that we should refrain from theorising :-) Contradictory in the sense of being a theory aimed at justifying why it is that we should abandon theory. Yet prima facie the theory seems to make sense.
>Skinner practices a method, and as long as the behaviorism is 'methodological', not 'logical', it isn't contradictory. The trouble is that such relentless insistence on pure method is not feasible, because science is not simply a method. It is a way of seeing things. And now we have another paradox, or so I think :) We get away from theory by just looking. And what we see makes us theorize, even if the theory is that the other person's theory is wrong. That's a theory, not an observation. And we can go further. we can say that only observation-statements are valid, because uncontaminated by theory. But that is not itself an observation-statement, and so contradicts itself. Can I avoid the dilemma by saying that I am not going to theorize, not at any costs? Then I have to examine my statements for traces of theory, and we get Quine's 'dogmas of empiricism,' which when rejected bring us back to theory. I need a criterion for isolating the observation-statements from the theoretical (or a priori), but then I need a theory, because the criterion cannot be any type of observation-statement.
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> > Well, there’s ‘thought’, noun, and ‘think’, verb. If we follow Frege and say that nouns name objects, then we can use ‘thought’ (n.) to name the class of all ‘thoughts’ (n. pl.). This is an object.
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> What sort of things are thoughts? Propositions? Not 'in the head', but 'grasped by the head'?
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Yes. Propositions, senses, sets of possible worlds designated by an utterance. Each of these are equivalent in explanatory value and in the number of questions they raise :)
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> I have indeed heard of Wiggens. Didn't he do some personal identity stuff, or maybe I am just placing him incorrectly... I have the same battle with Lewis' modal realism and the notion of counterparts.You're placing him correctly. By the way, what do you think of counterpart theory? I like the idea because I try to imagine how well my numerous counterparts are doing at the moment. One of them, who can pass for me, is having a great time now. He'll be my role model :)Actually, I'm doing OK at the moment. What strikes me as remarkable is Lewis' rehabilitation of a despised philospher, Leibniz.
-z
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poster:zeugma
thread:436252
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20041210/msgs/442749.html