Reviews for Communication, relationships and care

The average rating for Communication, relationships and care based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-15 00:00:00 Edward Mantyla "The philosopher is not a citizen of any community of ideas. That is what makes him a philosopher."--Ludwig Wittgenstein. "Philosophy gives no pictures of reality and can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigations."--LW. "Philosophy teaches us the logical form of propositions: that is its fundamental task."--LW. During his military service, LW wrote his philosophical thoughts into notebooks which he carried in his rucksack. Most of them were destroyed at his orders in 1950, but three survived and have been published posthumously. Out of those notes grew the only philosophical book he published in his lifetime, the Tractatus. He composed it by selecting the best thoughts out of his notebooks and reordering and numbering them until he was satisfied with their sequence. One of his preliminary orderings has been discovered and published under the title Prototractatus. He sent the Tractatus from prison camp to Russell through the good offices of Keynes. Those two men discussed the manuscript line by line in Holland in 1919. Some of LW's favorite films were Westerns, just as some of his favorite books were detective novels. He thought the philosophical journal Mind was filled "with all its impotence and bankruptcy." His notes from classes from 1933-34 circulated in copies and became known as The Blue Book. Another, more carefully prepared manuscript dictated the following year was known as The Brown Book. These notes were composed in English, unlike his other works. They were published posthumously and are the easiest to read. LW almost lived in the Soviet Union. The growing tyranny of Stalin probably prevented that. He believed university life led to "hysterical artificiality." He described a professor's life as "a living death." He told a PhD graduate he would be expected to "cheat" himself and his students. He resigned as a professor after only two years. LW said we are tempted to explain a word like "pain" as being acquired by our own private, incommunicable sensation. This temptation must be resisted. No word can acquire meaning in this way. A proposition is like a sentence. But not a command or a question. Some sentences are made up of two propositions. A proposition is an indicative sentence capable of standing on its own. A different language is a different proposition. So we must add that a proposition is a sentence considered with respect to its meaning and not (say) with respect to its sound when spoken or appearance on the page. Propositions express thoughts. LW on the Tractatus: 'The aim of this book is to set a limit to thought--or rather, not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts' (TLP Preface). LW aimed to show what is thinkable by by showing what is sayable, to mark the limits by setting the limits of language. Frege spoke of the Morning Star and the Evening Star. Both refer to Venus, but there are differences. So Frege suggested a distinction between two sorts of meaning: sense and reference. The two expressions have a different sense, but they both refer to Venus. Frege seemed to have believed that all expressions had both a sense and reference. Wittgenstein disagreed by saying the name 'Socrates' had both a sense and a reference. Russell agreed and was admired by LW for this. Russell said a phrase like the 'teacher of Plato' was not a name at all. Russell called it the theory of definite descriptions. LW's theme was that logic must take care of itself. He rejected a philosophy of logic as Russell and Frege conceived of it. 'Everything which is possible in logic is also permitted' (TLP 5.473). LW counts as pictures paintings, drawings, photographs, maps, sculptures, musical scores, gramaphone records, and other representations. Any representation can be an accurate or inaccurate representation: it can give a true or false picture of what it represents. Two things need to be considered: 1. what it is a representation of; 2. whether it represents what it represents accurately or inaccurately. Spacial representation is important to accuracy. That is itself a fact. This led LW to say that a picture is itself a fact. There is no a priori truth. As LW said, 'In order for a proposition to be capable of being true it must also be capable of being false' (NB 55). In other words, all genuine propositions are contingent propositions. To each pair of contradictory propositions, there corresponds one and only one fact: the fact which makes one of them true and the other false. The totality of such facts is the world (TLP 1.1). Facts may be positive or negative: a positive fact is the existence of a state of affairs; a negative fact is the non-existene of a state of affairs (TLP 2.06). A state of affairs is a combination of objects or things. An object is essentially a possible constituent of a state of affairs (TLP 2.011), and its possibility of occurring in combination with other objects in states of affairs is its nature (TLP 2.0123), its internal properties (TLP 2.1231), and its form (TLP 2.0141). Since every object contains within its nature all the possibilities for its combination with other objects, if any object is given, then all objects are given (TLP 5.524), and if all objects are given then all possible states of affairs are given (TLP 2.0124). Objects combine into states of affairs, in which they stand in a determinate relation to one another 'like the links of a chain' (TLP 2.023). States of affairs, we are told, are independent of one another (TLP 2.061); from the existence or non-existence of another. Since facts are the existence and non-existence of states of affairs, it follows that facts too are independent of each other (TLP 1.21). The totality of facts, of reality, is the world. 'My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognzies them as nonsensical, when he has used them--as steps--to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions and then he will see the world aright' (TLP 6.54). 'The Real, though it is an in itself, must also be able to become a for myself'--and uses single terms with a variety of different meanings. We must replace it by a symbolism which gives a clear picture of the logical structure, excludes pseudopropositions and uses its terms unambiguously. Redness and blueness represent an impossible combination--an attempt, as it were, to put both redness and blueness where there is only room for one of them. Can anyone see both red and blue at the same time? Once again, though, the answer must come from science. '. . . it is possible to invent words; but I cannot think any thoughts to go with them.' (WWK 68) Wittgenstein believes that the definitive verification of a hypothesis is neither possible nor necessary. On verificationism: 1. 'I am in pain' is a proposition which I verify by inner observation of myself. 2. 'He is in pain' says the same thing about him as 'I am in pain' says about me. 3. Therefore 'He is in pain' is a proposition which is verified by inner observation of him. (1 and 2) 4. I cannot inwardly observe him: I cannot stand to his pain in the relation that he stands to it, or that I stand to mine. 5. Therefore 'He is in pain' cannot be verified. (3 and 4) 6. Therefore 'I am in pain' cannot be verified. (2 and 5) 7. Therefore 'I am in pain' is meaningless. (6 and the principle of verification) LW was fond of telling a joke about a French politician who said that it was a characteristic of the French language that in it words occur in the order in which one thinks of them. Calling this a joke means he thought there was something wrong in treating thought as an articulate process like saying. Thoughts go through our heads like lightning. The sentence 'Think before you speak' is nonsense. No one thinks before they speak. Do they? Try it. Don't speak unless you consider the words carefully in your mind along with other possibilities. What then is the relation between thought and language? Can one think without speaking? It has been said that animals cannot think because they cannot speak. But my kitty understands me when I say to her 'Do you want to eat?' She gets all mushy and pushes her paws against me and I get all mushy because I love her to freaking pieces. Yes I do. Yes I do. . . . ahem . . . Sometimes she answers me with a meow of 'Yes'. So is thought possible without language? I think so. Is language possible without thought? I think so. But my responses negate my responses. I go in circles. Is a 'rod' a 'lever' only when it is in use? (BM 140) 'What ties the ship to the wharf is a rope, and the rope consists of fibers, but it does not get its strength from any fiber which runs through it from one end to the other, but from the fact that there is a vast number of fibers overlapping' (PI I, 65-7; BB 87) The comparison between language and a game was not meant to suggest language was something trivial; on the contrary, it is a part of a communal activity, a way of living in society which LW calls a 'form of life' (PI I, 23). In On Certainty LW enunciates a number of conclusions about doubt: 1. Doubt needs grounds. 2. Doubt must amount to something more than the verbal utterance of doubt. 3. Doubt presupposes the mastery of a language-game. 'If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either' (OC 114). 4. Doubt outside a language-game, or about a whole language game, is impossible. In other words, universal doubt is impossible. It would be like a student doubting every word that came out of a teacher's mouth. His doubt is hollow: he has not learned how to ask questions; he has not learned the game that he is being taught (OC 310-315). Not calling things in doubt is often a precondition of learning certain games (OC 329). The child learns by believing the adult, and the doubt comes after belief (OC 160). 'A doubt that doubted everything would not be a doubt' (OC 450). 5. Doubt presupposes certainty. Doubt is possible only where testing is possible (OC 125), and tests presuppose something that is not doubted and not tested ((OC 163, 337). 'Our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as if it were like the hinges on which those turn' (OC 341). Hence 'The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty' (OC 115). We can make list of things, as did Wittgenstein and Moore, that cannot be doubted. Try it. It's a good start to logical thinking. Providing, of course, your list doesn't disagree with mine. And saying something cannot be doubted is not the same thing as saying that it can be known. Again, saying one has a pain means nothing. It follows from this that 'I know' makes no sense either (OC 58). A few weeks before he died, LW said: 'Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language, then you will see it.' (OC 501) He also said: 'Logic must take care of itself.' (NB 2) No proposition is a priori true. LW continued to insist that if a sentence makes sense, its negation must make sense, consequently an real synthetic a priori proposition is impossible. His feelings about philosophy: 'In philosophy there are no deductions; it is purely descriptive. The word "philosophy" ought always to designate something over or under, but not beside, the natural sciences. Philosophy gives no picture of reality, and can neither confirm nor confute scientific investigations. It consists of logic and metaphysics, the former its basis. Epistemology is the philosophy of psychology. Distrust of grammar is the first requisite of philosophizing. Philosophy is the doctrine of the logical form of scientific propositions (not primitive propositions only). A correct explanation of the logical propositions must give them a unique position as against all other propositions.'

Review # 2 was written on 2019-11-03 00:00:00 Erin Goodin Anthony Kenny made a difficult subject not just painless but actually a pleasure to read! My favourite chapter was Private Languages