Mike: what we are doing here is a thought experiment,
within this thought experiment only reasoning
matters, only what can be rationally proven – or at least
agreed upon – is considered valid. at the end of the day
we take this rational argument and each do whatever we
want with it when we step out of it. we, in essence,
integrate it freely to our beliefs as just another
belief.
Brody: clear enough, I suppose.
Mike: good, now do we agree that both ‘objective truth’ and
‘subjective truth’ are first concepts?
Brody: yes.
Mike: therefore we can say that both the ‘objective’ and
the ‘subjective’ articulations of truth are
fundamentally subjective, in that they are concepts
first
Brody: if you mean by how we perceive and express
those concepts, then yes, I agree.
Mike: do you believe there is anything more to these
concepts beyond what we ‘perceive and express’?
Brody: not the concepts themselves, perhaps.
Mike: so insofar as we can know ‘objective truth’ it
depends on our subjective inclination to believe it
‘extends beyond us’
Brody: to believe that it has a firm grounding
despite our perceptions, yes.
Mike: which is a belief, and for clarity sake i like to
think of as a meta-belief, in that it is a belief about
a belief
Brody: okay, I can go with that.
Mike: so based on what we have already said i consider
our ‘human condition’ to be trapped in a subjective
bubble, whereby the primacy of belief is the only
plausible law, which can be refuted through belief
itself, but that would only support the notion (insofar
as we need maintain logic in all this)
Brody: the ‘human condition’ is a pretty good way
to put it.
Mike: a crucial point of all this, and one i think has
been giving you initial problems is that in no way does
the subjective bubble of human condition prove there are
no objective truths, or that nothing exists outside of
our minds. it is not an either/or scenario. it is not
unlikely that though we are prevented from rationally
grasping objective truths, there may still be some
tangible objective reality within which we exist
Brody: but what of these ‘self-evident’ truths,
the ones that don’t make logical sense to disbelieve?
like “I exist” and “I have perceptions”?
Mike: i will get to these, but i need you to follow my
line of reasoning first, do you agree with the last
thing i said, at least, that through faith a truth has
the potential to be made objective?
Brody: yes, and those beliefs I touched on are
self-evident only in the good faith that we believe we
couldn’t act without believing them.
Mike: so we agree then that reason-based arguments
cannot prove objective truths, but faith-based acts
can?
Brody: reason-based arguments really can’t prove
much of anything because of their dependence at the most
basic level on faith.
Mike: now your terminology troubles me, saying something
is ‘self-evident’ is declaring something you cannot
prove, and its not that i disagree, its just the
terminology might get misleading so i would rather not
call them self-evident, and just say that within the
bubble we believe some things more consistently than
others
Brody: well, I’m implying the perception of
infallibility. but I think self-evident best describes
the general idea.
Mike: how so?
Brody: well, simply in the fact that people
almost take them for granted. I started a post on a
message board I frequent, and when I brought up
questions like “Do I exist?”, the general response was
“Well, I don’t sit and think about my existence.”
Mike: they are not self-evident so much as they are
consistent. self-evident implies a value that you
cannot prove, whereas i am describing the activity, that
they are frequent, they are there, irrespective of any
explanation why
Brody: well, can you call objective truths
objective even though their veracity lies solely in good
faith?
Mike: this will detour somewhat, and i am trying to
think of the fastest way to make my case to persuade you
that you are supposing beyond your means, and if it is
faith-based only what you believe than you cannot assert
with any authority to another person its objectivity.
actually talking about paradoxes now would be
helpful. what we call paradoxes actually happen in the
world (insofar as there is one) without much distress,
we talked about the wave/particle paradox which within
the mathematics is not actually paradoxical, yet from a
macro-level analysis it becomes one… the point is the
paradox is a matter of perspective. that being the case
paradoxes are not bad, or wrong, or anything until we
import meaning into them via belief
Brody: better save that for another time. I need
to get going, and I know this will take a while.
Mike: now last we left we had a subjective bubble…
it is essential to make this point because i can
not prove the primacy of belief, i can only show the
limitations of rational argument, which in itself
indirectly implies the primacy of belief
Brody: alright, we’re definitely in agreement on
that.
Mike: ok, now i thought of an interesting diagram to
explain what we were talking about last time which i
hope will help… of course i am going to describe the
diagram rather than draw it but it is simple enough.
considering what we have so far agreed on the reality of
knowable ‘objective truths’ they can be thought of as such:
there is the subjective bubble and within that bubble
there are those beliefs which are admittedly subjective,
and do not suppose anything more. than there are those
beliefs which suppose ‘objectivity’, and in this same
diagram we can draw them extending beyond the bubble
though still attached by umbilical cords. in the act of
believing their objectivity we in effect persuade
ourselves to ignore the umbilical cords and see these
beliefs as standing alone outside of ourselves,
independent of belief. and in this personal perspective
they are ‘objective’, and through this belief of their
objectivity they can influence us ‘as if they were
objective’. however, and this is where the paradoxical
element came in last time, assuming other subjective
bubbles exist within which people exist, we can suppose
that these same ‘objective truths’ we personally believe are not
necessarily perceived in the same way; thus the
umbilical-ness of them may or may not be observed, and
there is nothing but our own bias to prove objectivity.
Brody: so what you’re saying is that certain
objective beliefs are apparent to us because we can
perceive them inside the subjective bubble, and they
connect directly to the objective metaphysical?
Mike: we haven’t yet really broached the subject of what
exists beyond the subjective bubbles, and intentionally
so, i said to hold off on the ‘self-evident’ ideas
first, and follow the logic we have so far
Brody: but I’m just clarifying, are these
objective beliefs ones like I’m describing by my label
of ‘self-evident’ beliefs?
Mike: they can be, but they are not limited to them, nor
are they limited to what really really exists beyond the
bubble
Brody: okay, fine.
Mike: the subjective bubble is impregnable in one sense,
in the sense that we cannot know what if anything is
beyond it. however by believing something, and for
example simply believing in the a priori nature of
‘logic’ you open up a whole new world of possibilities
for ‘knowing’ objective reality. but what i am still
asking is, is this semantics, just a misuse of the word
‘objective’ as we have so far used it, or, through faith
in something like ‘logic’ have we made it, or uncovered
its genuine ‘objectivity’?
Brody: well, it would be semantics in the respect
that we base our logical beliefs off a faith in logic.
but to distrust logic is to distrust our senses, our
existence, and everything stable that comes from its
knowledge.
Mike: ok good. i agree with the first part, and the
second part of that statement is a presumption which
anticipates the worst, and something i still think i can
persuade you rationally to not believe
Brody: you might have a difficult time with that,
because I have a firm belief in the appropriate use of
logic. but I’ll try to be open-minded.
Mike: you still agree that there is subjective bubble
and no objective truths can be rationally known, and that when we
know them, we know them based on personal faith
Brody: I don’t know about that.
I agree that there is a subjective bubble
and that any ‘objective’ truths we know are based off
logic, which is a belief system in and of itself.
Mike: actually what i am trying to do is show you using
logic how it proves that it is dependent on faith, and so
your capacity to use logic and live as if it is
‘objective’ is in one sense untrue, but in another sense
quite true, and this ability to believe it despite it
being true or not still determines activity in our lives.
therefore it ultimately doesn’t matter if logic
is objectively true or not, we use it, and our use of it
determines other beliefs
Brody: hold on, this is a segue way into
paradoxes, isn’t it? hah.
Mike: well it could be but lets stick with this, you
mentioned that ‘logic’ is a belief system in and
of itself and i agree, but to know that you still have to
believe it, so there is a thread of beliefs involved, a
meta-meta-belief to presuppose logic is true, and then
logic becomes a meta-belief which informs other beliefs
And we already talked about this before, that
reason has provisionary authority, all sciences, all
mathematics have this same provisionary authority
Brody: well, that’s a given. mathematical and
scientific systems give blanket statements to explain
phenomena based on the context of the systems they
create.
Mike: and i would say they cannot prove fundamentally
because of their provisional nature, that they are one
belief within a thread of beliefs that cannot genuinely
erase its context. so from all of this then logic is a belief.
Now we can talk about the outside world reacting with
the subjective bubble. do you agree that not all beliefs
are equal in that some beliefs reoccur more often than others,
and therefore on the basis of frequency there are some beliefs
which are more consistent than others? Your ‘self-evident’
truths, but do you see why I dont want to call them
‘self-evident’, because that implies more than we can prove
Brody: well, a large number of people
consistently believe they are self-evident and don’t
consider them. that’s my point.
Mike: its a poor use of language to call them
self-evident because it makes it seem like they exist
without umbilical cord to us, and that we can force
others to believe the same due to this objective
quality
Brody: okay, I’ll grant you that it’s perhaps a
little misleading by the connotation of the
terminology.
Mike: we can never know if everyone, even if there is
one, we have no authority to say it is self-evident
so we can talk about its consistency, and not that
it is ‘consistent’, because unfortunately that is
misleading too, we can only say some are more consistent
than others, i.e. the value is relational not intrinsic.
now i think we both agree this base substrate of
predominating beliefs is that there is space and time,
and that we exist within a world with other beings who
are similarly to us with respect of the same subjective
bubble condition
Brody: yeah, although people will argue about the
nature of space and time. but the human condition is
fairly universally accepted.
Mike: this is a good point actually, in the canonization
of hierarchal beliefs there is no clear division,
everything blends into one another, like what you said
about space and time, there is a lot of complications
about that, but to some extent we believe there is time
and space outside of us.
now if you agree with all of this i do not see how
you can make your logocentric arguments without
appreciating that logic itself indicts itself if its
valid, because it leads to this subjective bubble
scenario we have set out, and if it is untrue, then we
return to the primacy of belief by default. logic is contingent
on belief, applied logic indicates this when examining
our human condition.
Brody: okay, I’m with you so far, and I can agree
that logic-based arguments only work within the context
of the belief that logic is a force that helps us
dictate some higher-level beliefs.
Mike: now to believe that ‘belief is primary’ and ‘logic
is primary when you are consciously using it’ is an act
of doublethink because when using logic you are enacting an
objective quality through it, you cannot half-way believe logic
in believing logic, when you believe it, you believe it truly.
i will give an example: if you use logic to
prevent from being suffocated by getting out of a room
filling with smoke, that anxious activity of escape is
not some removed imagining of beliefs, in the act of
using logic you absolutely believe in it. it is
objectively true as a result of your action, as a result
of your whole being’s desire to escape. yet you can
also believe that logic is just a belief, because
logically that is all it can be. through faith it
becomes something more, it becomes true in the highest
sense you can personally imagine. even though it can
never be logically so. logic itself is a paradox.
And that it is a paradox, or that you cope with it in
life without much duress, does not change all that abstract
logical thinking is, and this is why what i am saying is
not radical. i am merely letting logic reveal itself
nature to us. i would add, in order to diffuse you anxiety about
paradoxes, fear of paradoxes is a western thing, and zen
philosophy, and indeed much of eastern mysticism strives
to get beyond dualist thinking (i.e. right/wrong,
good/bad) now how can you say this eastern culture is
any less true about the nature of paradoxes?
Brody: well, first, saying that something is
‘less true’ judges on objective truth.
Mike: that’s my point, you ultimately can’t judge with any authority
Brody: you’re saying that we believe logic based
on belief, but we believe it fully, and that’s the
paradox? I’m afraid I’m lost.
Mike: understandable… the problem is we are speaking
passively about acts in the mind, it is a whole
different thing ‘in the moment’ and i am asking you to
think about what believing in logic ‘in the moment’ is.
and for the sake of emphasis i make use of using logic
in order to get out of a dire situation, in which case
you believe ‘logic’ without doubt. yet you have another
belief that logic is not worthy of this absolute faith,
sometime immediately after the crisis. there are
passive and active uses of the same belief, one which
assumes it is provisional and not real, and one which is
certain it is real, certain through the blind devotion
of it
Brody: okay, so you’re saying that under certain
circumstances, we adhere to it without questions, and
under normal circumstances (like now), we can believe
that it is an arbitrary system of belief?
Mike: yes, but it is not so cut and dry either, because
if you really think about, or try to keep aware of your
thoughts, you may tend to notice the frequency this goes
on at, where you believe two things nearly
simultaneously, not as a rare periodical event but
daily. i will give you an example, as a means of
protecting one’s vanity a person may use two mutually
exclusive lies to cheer himself up, without difficulty.
i.e. he may think everyone else are idiots so who cares
what other people think and similarly think of how they
valued him in the past, to bolster his self-image.
now if one of these beliefs is true the other is
logically false, insofar as the value has any meaning
but we can believe any number of contrary things
without problem, via doublethink, and still when we use
logic, and put our minds to it to be thorough we can
also be logical. being paradoxical is not necessarily
being illogical
Brody: expound on the last statement. how is it
not illogical to believe two things that are logically
inconsistent?
Mike: for logic is illogical, if you take into
consideration its origin.
due to the primacy of belief we can have more than
one belief system existing nearly simultaneously, this
does not mean that in the process of working out the
rules of one of these systems and applying them through
concerted effort (i.e. writing things down, articulating
them in sound arguments) they are in themselves
illogical, belief-systems can be self-consistent, as
much as you want them to be, considering the rational
parameters of them also, but it is only relationally, as
a part of the human condition that we see paradoxes,
between the multiplicity of things we can believe
without concerted effort to restrict our thoughts
our capacity for believing things is not as
restrictive as a calculus. our capacity may be
restricted, but in the act of believing we influence to
some indiscernible extent the effect of these
restrictions.
Brody: this isn’t helping, but let me see if I
can grasp this. logic is illogical because its basis is
belief, right?
Mike: actually that is wrong, logic is whatever you put
into it, it can be illogical, it can be very sound. it
depends on belief ultimately. i cannot make an
assertive statement, nor should have, that logic IS
illogical. just that the means of knowing the soundness
of logic is via faith.
Brody: okay.
Mike: now an attack of this would be to say then how can
the fruits of logic come up with so many valuable ideas,
which have advanced civilization if they are not
irrevocably true. and the answer is: it just does.
unless you want to change the logic of logic, which
itself will only indicate the faith-based origins of it.
we may suspect that this ‘consistent’ belief of our is
like an instinct, or something closely related to the
outside world, and is useful because it best coincides
with the external reality, but this is only a hunch.
still that would explain the success of logic without
logic having to be absolutely logical.
either you believe this logical explanation of
logic or you make your own. but you see the dilemma
dont you?
Brody: still trying to ingest…
Mike: logic is fundamentally a belief, one which
benefits us, which may relate to an external world, but
which is one belief of many we have, one belief-system
of many
Brody: but if a belief works in the sense that
empirical evidence shows it to be successful or
accurate, then why the dilemma?
Mike: if you agree that we believe things emotionally
also, i.e. the very act of crying is believing something
is sad, and therefore ‘logic’ does not have a monopoly
over our beliefs. we are not computers.
Brody: but that’s symbology, which is logical by
nature.
Mike: i meant there was a dilemma for your originally
held view, logocentric view. in actuality, for you or
for me there is no dilemma whatsoever. that is why i
say this is not radical. and it is not just me saying
this, i can show you loads of reputable intellectuals,
not least of all Nietzsche.
…the problem lies in abstracting what goes on in
the thought process which is hermetically sealed from
us, save our consciousness, but in our consciousness we
cannot know for sure whether or not what we think our
our motives are actually our motives (is it not possible
me growing up learning about induction makes me think
self-consciously that i am thinking inductively? or any
other adjective for that matter, that i think
symbolically, logically, or that my psyche is based on
subconscious) all of these are abstractions, there will
forever be a divide between these abstractions worked
out on paper, in rational confines (like this thought
experiment) and what ultimately occurs in the mind,
which we cannot know.
Now in Abstract form:
[Belief precedes essence by default of man’s epistemological condition; insofar as we know the truth of something we are asserting a belief. For the sake of my present purposes I will call this meta-belief the ‘doctrine of free-belief’. The doctrine of free-belief is rationally irrefutable, or at least irrefutable to a form of logic that is uninhibited. Of course with provisional logic, like that used in mathematics and science, most anything can be refuted nominally within a provisionary bubble safe from real scrutiny. Philosophically speaking, DFB remains rationally irrefutable.
To the extent we need to speak of these concepts logically, ‘doublethink’ is the application of the paradoxical inherent in the doctrine of free-belief, where surpassing the authority of logic itself a plurality of belief-systems can co-exist in an individual without error or discomfort. The key point of this is that we do not need to think of these things logically, and therefore the capacity for doublethink is not genuinely paradoxical, but is rather the inevitable result of the human condition.
This said however, by extension of the ‘doctrine of free-belief’ the individual is able to compartmentalize beliefs and work within self-consistent belief-systems in order to derive regulated doctrines which are socially transferable. i.e. Euclidean geometry can be socially supported and its applications independently verified, but its value is forever dependent on personal faith in its rationally indefensible first axioms.
Due to the emphasis on concerted effort in managing self-consistent belief-systems these acts depend on abstract thought. That is to say they are limiting of man’s capacities for belief so to impose order, which is an abstraction of the potentialities inherent in the doctrine of free-belief. Thus abstract thought cannot definitively explain the happenings of the mind, because it is provisional, although it can have the appearance of objectivity through personal faith, but belief is individual, and insofar as it is objective in this respect it remains individualistic when demanding others to agree also.
Logic is a meta-belief contingent to the ‘doctrine of free-belief’ (the meta-meta-belief). Any number of threads can be conceived from this origin source, even threads which in their believed existence deny the existence of DFB, hence the rise of ideologies and potential fanaticism. Rationally articulated ideologies can be undermined by playing out their logical dependence to DFB]
16 Comments
“The unintelligible cannot be doubted—nor believed.” C. Wright
I would disagree with that statement… I would say it is more often than not the unintelligible that is believed and acted upon, i.e. religious fundamentalism, or religious acts of all sorts. I suppose what is meant is the unintelligible cannot be believed within the confines of reason, which is a thought experiment quite distinct from the realm of indwelling existence (by its very definition). we do not live in reason, nor do we believe solely through it.
To a zealot, his unshakeable belief is NOT based upon something unintelligible. To him (usually a “him” instead of a “her”), it’s quite clear. That it is unintelligible to you is of no concern to him. And THIS is what is so concerning about zealots!
Wright wasn’t thinking of zealots, though. He was thinking the same thought that Wittgenstein came up with much later: “That which can be said, can be said clearly.” He was thinking about the logic—if you can call it that—of language.
Witt’s purpose was to provide therapeutic assistance for those engaged in philosophical problems… “that which can be said, can be said clearly” has particular resonance for that sort of application. it is one language-game within many, one context within many.
Wittgenstein was undoubtedly religious, and frequently spoke of his faith and analyzed aesthetically the value of Dostoevsky on the basis of this faith: within this context he saw no problem speaking about what could not be spoken of, and it is within this context (the context of ‘being’ and of ‘practice’) that I consider the implications of doublethink to reside. I cannot prove it exists, nor is it my intention, but I can describe it in order to determine for myself the significance. I make an effort to describe this distinction in my entry of last month “describing relativism”, which is linked to that of Nietzsche’s perspectivism. I would be interested to know your thoughts on this distinction.
I took a look at “Describing Relativism” but was unable to make head nor tails of it. This is entirely my fault; I seem to have lost the capacity to accept a series of premises as sufficient grounds for another premise. It’s a kind of mental juggling that I can no longer manage. My apologies.
Honestly, I don’t have much interest in the specific questions that we are discussing, but instead find it gratifying that there are people asking them. Such as yourself.
No worries. the concept of multivalent logic is daunting, and one I have lots to learn about.
The modularity of language-use fascinates me, how we can at one moment communicate under a tacit agreement of some rules of dialogue (i.e. in the confines of a thought experiement) and just as easily talk in another context and another tacit agreement. Witt was right to make a distinction, but it was mostly out of an interest of putting philosophy in its place, because it was getting carried away with itself.
My aim is to embrace this modularity, to be rational in those times I need to be, and to be open-ended in those times when just such tolerance is required. The topic of aesthetics is one that saddles both realms and becomes very hard to talk about, leading to much confusion. There is always the risk with this modular-thinking that my reasoning will suffer, that I will confuse contexts, and I have in the past no doubt. But when the issue becomes explicit, i.e. when a discussion takes on more rigid limitations in order to “know” something, I, like everyone else, will follow the sign and regiment my thinking in a way suitable to the ‘game’.
“The map is not the territory.” —Korzybski
It’s not that I found the essay “Describing Relativism” daunting, it’s more that it seemed to, well, lack sense. It seemed to me to be a good example of begging the question, of (to echo Wright) concluding or conceiving things based on assumptions that are themselves unproven.
“Philosophy is the bewitchment of intellect by means of language.”
ah but you are then prescribing a precondition for ‘sense’, namely the need for proof. what I was trying to illustrate (and it is by no means a novel idea of mine) is that some concepts do not require the law of bivalence in order to make sense (grammatical). This is so because bivalent logic has no more authority than multivalent logic, (made clearer in the Nietzsche’s perspectivism entry). For bivalent logic depends on thingness, and capacity for self-identical relationships between things, which to borrow from Wright, I may argue is ‘based on assumptions that are themselves unproven’. so why should there be proof for any declaration of multivalent logic, or for that matter, shades of truth? I would argue the bewitchment is believing there has to be either/or conditions for truth as a precondition.
this is a grammatical inquiry into the significance of ‘relativism’. the meaning of relativism does not correspond with the nominal appearannce it is given via bivalence as ‘the opposite of absolute’. part of this mistake, I argue, is supposing both need to be proved, whereas relativism needs only to be described. The bewitchment is supposing it needs some sort of proof.
whether the very notion of truth can be talked about sensibily, is perhaps another thing.
Are you quite sure that something called “bivalent logic” can have, or lack, or have anything to do with “authority”? Do you have a clear idea of what you mean by a “capacity for self-identical relationships between things”? It is these sort of assertions that, while they may be grammatically passable, seem to me to be patent nonsense.
One can form a sentence—indeed, a whole mythology—around nonsense terms. This happens all the time and most people don’t notice or care.
But wasn’t Wittgenstein urging those of us who DO care to be precise, accurate and accountable in our use of language? If that which can be said, can be said clearly, then we ought to be clear in our assertions. “Thingness” and “self-identical relationships” seem not to be provable or unprovable concepts, but useless fictions.
‘thingness’ and ‘bivalence’ are perpetuated through traditional expressions of logic: for example a statement that ‘socrates is a man because he is not a woman’ assumes that there is such a thing as ‘Socrates’ and such a thing as a ‘man’ and that they can be related in a self-identical relationship on the basis of the bivalent fact that Socrates is not a woman. The law of bivalence is the notion that every proposition has a truth-value.
Now I am saying these assumptions are implicit in some uses of logic (and I will use the book ‘Nietzsche’s perspectivism’ as physical evidence if necessary). In order to make self-identical relationships (for example uses of the the verb ‘is’) grammatically speaking the thingness of the terms is inferred. if you want you can call thingness the presence of a noun, however when self-identical relationships are implied in the meaning of a proposition these ‘nouns’ are made to be things with solid fixed attributes that can be so compared: I consider this to be the fiction of ‘logic’.
My ‘authority’ for saying bivalent logic exists is to show that it occurs in sentences such as ‘socrates is a man because he is not a woman’ or any number of analytical propositions. 2 + 2 = 4 is another example. Could this proposition have meaning if we were to exclude the possibility of thingness, self-identical relationships and the law of bivalence? it could have formal meaning I suppose, merely signs. But you cannot deny that the tendency is to treat the proposition 2 + 2 = 4 as if thingness and bivalence applied, otherwise 2 + 2 = 5 is different only in form.
thingness and bivalence have substantial use-currency because conscious application of logical arguments is so plentiful in human discourse. The authority for me saying bivalent logic exist is use.
now my point is this form of logic cannot substantiate its own existence, there is no reason to believe 2 + 2 = 4 beyond its formal aspect. It is no more justified to believe in bivalence then it is to believe that all propositions do not have truth-value. One can describe several versions of truth without indictment by reason. in the end the individual decides. This is a fairly scandalous view because of the bewitchment of absolutes in our use of language, not because it is absolutely wrong.
Philosophical Investigations was Witt’s acknowledgement of the lack of crystalline purity of logic, which was a precondition for his work in the Tractatus. logic, insofar as there is one is best descrbied as mutable, and for it to be mutable, there cannot be in any absolute sense such things as ‘thingness’ and ‘bivalence’... which I agree with.
I see no particular offense to Witt’s views in this line of argument.
here is Wittgenstein in his own words:
“(107). The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.) The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty. — We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!
(108). We see that what we call “sentence” and “language” has not the formal unity that I imagined, but is the family of structures more or less related to one another. — But what becomes of logic now? Its rigor seems to be giving way here. — But in that case doesn’t logic altogether disappear? — For how can it lose its rigor? Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigor out of it. — The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination around. (One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need.)…
(109). 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 such-and- 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.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953
Amazingly, the Wittgenstein that you read and the one that I read seem to have little overlap. We come to opposite conclusions, in any case.
I suppose that, at bottom, the question for each of us is whether we enjoy what we’re doing. As you seem to be enjoying yourself, I will leave you with a line from Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth: “I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours”. I will return to my hobby of elucidating the propulsion system of Santa’s sleigh.
Carry on, and good luck.
I would be quite amazed if you came from reading the above quotes with anything else but the declaration that logic, insofar as we need concern ourselves with it must be treated as mutable, a result of use. which is precisely my conclusion regarding the concept of bivalent logic. If I have done anything wrong in my description it was but being too eager, and attempting to tell what I should have only showed.
The quote you are fond of using comes from the Tractatus, and should be recognized within that context, when Witt still had hope for the crystalline purity of logic… the above quotations, and indeed the P.I. as a whole has come to challenge this notion. If there is a different interpretation, perhaps it is because I am adopting the late Witt and you are adopting the early. In P.I. what can be said is what is said, using usage to be the determinance of value, and attempting to link the common usage of words and expressions in order to draw out their bewitchments. One of the most rampant uses of language in effect is analytical, which because of its popularity has bewitched our understanding of logic itself, to the point we take for granted our presupposition of the crystalline purity of it, and delineate the world and its things by it without consultation of this first error.
if you disagree, and can show me my fault I would be greatly interested.
That we view Wittgenstein differently is, it seems to me, evidence of the fact that we differ in “the inherited background against which (we) distinguish between true and false.” (‘On Certainty’; st.94)
It is really a matter of aesthetics, of brain-style, if you will. The kind of patterns, the problem-solving forms, that characterize my mental apparatus seem to be different from yours. The elements of Wittgenstein that harmonize with my style of thinking jump out at me, just as other elements do for you. This is great, but it may mean that we are stuck at what amounts to an “apples and oranges” impasse.
If, as Holmes said “you can’t talk a man into liking a glass of beer”, we don’t stand much chance of being able to talk each other into liking a different thought-style.
fair enough. I am all for appreciating multiple interpretations, particularly when the subject is Wittgenstein.
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[...] y can one argue for a hierarchy of hunches? My own belief (and the one mentioned in the original thought experiment) is that the beliefs which occur most consistently ha [...]
[...] but supposing it was a philosophical challenge, I can think of no evidence that Truth is inexorably tied to logic. The linguistic argument, besides being circular, does not take into account the fullest implications of the concept of Truth (as posited in the thought experiment) which extends beyond the subjective bubble of an individual’s consciousness. Insofar as we agree in phenomena beyond our consciousness and are not solipsists, the higher meaning of abstract thought is subjectively concealed from us. Much like a computer has a base substrate beyond its ability to self-reference, conventional wisdom suggests that abstract thought is dependent on neural activity that is veiled from our consciousness, thus the truth relevance of logic can only be gleaned through indirect inference, which brings upon its own philosophical dilemma, namely the problem of induction. Our ability to discern the Truth-value of the statement “Truth is inexorably tied to logic” is insufficient, therefore Brody’s logical hunch cannot be substantiated, and the prime authority of logic in determining Truth-value is nothing more than a subjective preference on his part. [...]
[...] It does not surprise me that Brody would draw the conclusion he did. From what time we have spent conversing on issues of philosophy and religion I noticed there was always this predisposition towards logic, towards formulating the questions to fit the preconceptions of the answers set about by his logocentrism. The mere want of logic to be primary is, philosophically speaking, an insufficient justification for a logocentric worldview. There is no logical justification for logocentrism as a worldview ( my exhaustive musings on this can be read here and here). I believe Brody universalized the logical anxiety he had from accommodating the deeper implications of a doublethink worldview, without properly appreciating the leap in logic required to make that claim. To persist within a logical framework, i.e. a logocentrism, arguments have to be singularly formed to suit that framework, and in this respect Brody’s rebuttal of doublethink falls short; nowhere is there a logical revision of the proofs enacted in our first thought experiment. If he wishes to persist within a relativistic framework, i.e. a doublethink worldview, then his arguments do not need to be singularly formed, they may be modular, working within multiple contexts (even paradoxical ones) without corrupting the integrity of the worldview. [...]