Apart from the fact that it comes from a position, as it were, only partway up the ladder, what, if anything, is wrong with the following line of thought? Something feels wrong about it (perhaps something very obvious), but I haven't put my finger on it yet:
Tractatus 6.43 does not
say that the world can or does wax and wane, but only that if good or bad willing changes the world then it must do so in this
way, by changing the limits of the world. And these limits change as a whole,
not here and there. The waxing world does not increase in this place or that, so to
speak, by the addition of this or that. We cannot say in logic that the world
has this and this in it but not that. And we cannot say that this world is bigger than that one because this has such-and-such in it but that world does not. The reference here to the limits of the
world calls to mind 5.61, in which Wittgenstein writes that, “Logic fills the world;
the limits of the world are also its limits.” The limits of logic in the world
of the happy are greater than those in the world of the unhappy.
What can this possibly mean? It
seems to have to do with language. By 5.61 the world is the space of
possibilities. To say in logic that the world does not contain this would be precisely to exclude a
certain possibility. And this, Wittgenstein says, we cannot do. The world
contains everything that can be said or thought. So an expanded world, the
world of the happy, is one in which more can be thought. The possibilities are
greater. For the person who lives eternally (which is not a matter of living
endlessly), the possibilities are unlimited.
I am not sure how much this
helps explain what Wittgenstein means, and of course he tells us later that his
propositions are nonsense, so it is easy to despair of understanding. But I
think it is worth going on a little before giving up. The idea of languages or
logics of different size, or an idea of such things, is not very difficult to
grasp. The builders’ language in the Philosophical
Investigations, for instance, is small. It contains few words and
recognizes few possibilities. A language like English, on the other hand, is
much bigger and seems to contain endless possibilities. We can create new
sentences using existing words and grammatical forms, but we can also introduce
new words and new grammatical forms. Tractarian happiness, then, might mean
using the entire language or being open to it, not closing oneself in a rigidly
conservative region of the language. The mind of the happy is rich, open, and
imaginative.
Children are happy.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds right. Their minds are open, hopefully and presumably, too, even if their vocabularies are limited. And 'limited' might be the wrong word in this case. Developing, maybe.
Deleteyes, i was thinking, the world is constantly full of possibilities, and expandingly so.
DeleteI don't really have anything to add, but yes. And thanks.
Deletemore my own bias than anything directly attributable to Witt but I would venture that he is gesturing at something like Gibsonian affordances and resistances, tho how this might fit into worlds and not environs/niches is beyond me.
ReplyDelete-dmf
I liked the idea of affordances when I read about it, but I don't quite see how it fits in this case either.
Deletewould fit in better perhaps if we were talking in terms of capabilities and frustrations vs moods
DeleteYes, although there surely is some connection between capabilities and frustrations, on the one hand, and moods, on the other.
DeleteWhat if we say that the expansion here is a matter of more dimensions--that is not a matter of more possibilities, but of more spaces for possibilities? would that help?
ReplyDeleteSo for instance, (very) hardcore utilitarianism in this sense would be an example of relative unhappiness. I imagine here someone who can only think about the value of things like relationships and art in terms of pleasure and pain quantifiable push-pin wise. The dimensions don't exist in their world for certain kinds of value. - Would that begin to answer your question?
Yes, thanks. I think that's what I vaguely had in mind, but talking about spaces for possibilities is probably better than talking simply about possibilities.
DeleteIt doesn't fully answer your question whether the builders are unhappy or not.
DeletePerhaps for unhappiness (in this sense) there needs to be some sort of awareness of how one language limits us?
If this is the case, then perhaps my classifying the utilitarian as unhappy is unjustified.
Or maybe one can say this about them from an external point of view?
i don't know, it increased my pleasure.
DeleteI imagine that being happy is not the same thing as having a good time, even if it is related to that idea (or kind of experience) somehow. So perhaps you don't need to be aware of any limitations to be unhappy. And in fact I'm not sure how someone could be aware that their world was limited. It isn't possible to say that it lacks this or that. Only the external perspective seems to be left, and that is the one we (or at least I) want.
DeleteThere are three kinds of happiness--utilitarian, Aristotelian, and Wittgensteinian.
DeleteThe kind of awareness I had in mind that might be involved in Wittgensteinian happiness is the kind that for W' would be akin to having a philosophical problem, the kind that would drive one to 'run up against the limits of language,' or against the very conditions of human life. So, for instance, someone who finds the fact that they must have a body in order to exist offensive, or someone who can't reconcile themselves with the fact that they are mortal, would be unhappy in this sense. Such unhappiness involves a kind of frustration.
I think the builders are not unhappy in this way--at least not necessarily. They are not frustrated. I'm not sure how to imagine an unhappy builder, or a frustrated one. (In fact, I'm not sure I really know how to imagine a Wittgensteinian builder at all--a builder form of life.)
Yes, the builders are not unhappy in that way. And they are very hard to imagine, at least, as you say, it is hard to know how to imagine a builder form of life. But they aren't happy in either an Aristotelian or a Wittgensteinian sense (so far as it's possible to say anything at all about them). They seem incapable of Wittgensteinian unhappiness, which perhaps makes them in some sense happy but seems more to suggest that they can't be called happy either.
DeleteOne idea of Wittgensteinian happiness that I have (which I don't think comes from the Tractatus) is of living harmoniously with everyone and everything around you. Perhaps the builders could be thought of as happy in this sense, but it doesn't mean much to me to call them happy. Perhaps because they are just so hard to imagine.
I think what you are now raising connects to something Iris Murdoch used to be bothered about--the virtuous peasant: Can a simpleton be (meaningfully said to be) happy (or virtuous)?
DeleteI don't know. I think we have here two competing notions of happiness, and I think both involve a kind of harmony with things (perhaps Wittgenstein in the Tractatus would emphasize harmony with the conditions of thought, or something like that, rather than with others and the environment). I'm not sure about that, but it seems to me that what distinguish these two notions of happiness from one another is that one involves awareness of this harmony--a kind of reflective harmony--and the other (the virtuous peasant, the happy builder(?)) doesn't.
I had a teacher that once spoke of the difference b/w innocence and second-innocence (probably not his distinction). He was describing what Wittgenstein was aiming at in his philosophical arguments: to get us back from the holiday of philosophy to the rough ground of life with language, but this time be aware of why we are there.
Didn't Wittgenstein think that Moore could not be virtuous for roughly this reason? That he had a kind of natural innocence for which, because it was natural, he could not be praised? I want to say that a simpleton can be virtuous and happy, but when I try to imagine such a person I end up with a cartoon only. If second-innocence is to be desirable and attainable, doesn't something like first innocence have to be both too? I realize that it doesn't in the sense of being logically required to be, but where did anyone get the idea that something called second-innocence is good and possible if first innocence is not both? If it exists only as an ideal, should we be (more) suspicious of it? I think I need to think more about this. It's easier to see the bad (e.g. philosophical confusion) as bad than the contrary ideal as positively good.
Deletethoreau meets a simple woodcutter, alek (alec?) therien, in walden, about whom he has similar doubts. but there, the woodcutter doesn't just seem natural or unsophsticated (he's not dumb), there's something egoistically unconcerned with others about him.
Deleteinnocence is a state one is thrown into. second innocence is an achievement. in the first, one is passive, in the second active. So perhaps we can say of both that they are good, but in different ways?
DeleteQuestions: What is the source of these remarks? Are the last two paragraphs comments on the first? Or do the first two hang together with the last as a comment on them? Or do all three comments come from one and the same author NN, such that NN is interpreting and commenting on the passages of the T?
ReplyDeleteIt's the last of these possibilities, and the author is me. But it isn't something I've published or finished or am very happy with as it stands.
DeleteOK, thanks. Just wanted to make sure how to read it as the formatting threw me off. If you copy-pasted it (the three paras) from a doc. then consider running it though rtf. (e.g. wordpad) before posting so as to get rid of Word-formatting. Tip.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Are the builders happy?" Provided all parties have the same concept of happiness, to find out, you'd have to ask each individual builder.
ReplyDeleteI think "the limits of the world", as whole but for now at least in 6.43, mean "the metaphysical self" and should be read in light of phrases such as "I am my world", "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world", "the world of the happy man is a different one...", "The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world" and the like.
ReplyDeleteThe world does not wax and wane in size, not in what can be said (the facts, language), but in darkness and light. The will cannot alter the world (the facts) but it can alter its limits (the self) and how it takes the facts. Sub specie aeterni or not.
I think Schopenhauer misleads here. He has no conception of a happy soul.
Thanks. I have a hard time understanding talk of darkness and light in this context though. I don't mean that it says nothing at all to me, but I don't have a clear understanding. And when I try to think of a dark world that is not subjectively miserable or engaged in doing evil deeds then something like the builders' world is what comes to mind. And you can't ask them because they only know four words. Perhaps you could look for smiles or a joyful tone as they call for a slab, but that would seem to miss the point. What could their smiles mean? (I don't mean: nothing. I mean I wouldn't know what to make of them.)
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete"Wax and wane" as an image I relate to the moon, so I think of darkness and light as seeing clearly and not seeing clearly what is there—what one knows and doesn't. Later W spoke of different colors of glasses. The main point is that the world is seen differently, not that there are many worlds.
ReplyDeleteI don't think of the builder's world as dark, though. Why would you say that? Because they only have four words? Shakespeare had only 20 or so thousand. Webster might have thought him miserable on those grounds but I don't see why, necessarily. He's difficult to make sense of too.
Four words are sufficient for a work song. It might be sung in any number of moods and variations.
Is the lion happy?
I don't know about the lion. And I don't know about the builders either, but I don't feel inclined to call them happy. And in terms of waning or darkness versus waxing and light they seem closer to the dark end of the spectrum (if there is one) to me. Not just because they only have four words but partly because of that. Their world seems very small. But what I'm calling the smallness of their world is very close to what causes Rush Rhees to suggest it might be impossible to imagine them, or their form of life, at all. So are they unhappy or simply unreal (or something else)? I'm not sure.
Delete"The main point is that the world is seen differently, not that there are many worlds."
DeleteI agree with this, by the way.
"Wax and wane" was Ogden and Ramsey's translation for abnehmen oder zunehmen, which Pears and McGuinness retained. The association with the moon is a bit unfortunate, as the German hints more at the exhaustion and replenishment of physical stocks (or suchlike).
ReplyDeleteHeikki Nyman's Finnish has huvettava tai kasvettava ('dwindle or grow'); Pierre Klossowski's French, diminuer ou augmenter ('diminish or be augmented'); Gilles-Gaston Granger's French, diminuer ou croître ('diminish or grow'); Anders Wedberg's Swedish, avta eller tillta ('ebb or grow'); Sten Andersson's Swedish, krympa eller växa ('contract or swell').
Abnehmen and zunehmen are used of the moon, and it's not a mistranslation in that sense. But I have always thought that the image is meant to be much more odd than the association with the moon and with moonlight has it as being. It's as if the addition of a few more sacks of wheat to a granary would transform the granary as a whole into something qualitatively different (this at any rate is the image that always comes to my own mind from the passage). It's unclear what it would mean for this to happen. But that's precisely why Wittgenstein 1) speaks in the conditional, and 2) adds a further qualification with his "so to say".
"To grow short or long as a whole"?
Thanks, Tommi. I don't think I've ever made the association with the moon before, oddly enough. I just think of growing and shrinking. But you're right that it's a strange image.
Deletenot a translation, but
Delete'dilate'
Very good. A bit reminiscent of Andersson's krympa (a cognate, but not a synonym, of the English "crumple").
DeleteYes, very good. Thanks.
DeleteWell, abnehmen does translate as wane and zunehmen as wax so I see no problem there really. What strikes me as odd is the literal translation proposed of growing in size or number, as if for the happy there is more world than for the unhappy, which just sounds wrong, and goes against proposition 1: The world is all that is the case. I don't think this is meant to suggest that for some there is more of it (of what is the case) than for others.
ReplyDeleteWe also think of the moon as growing and shrinking imagewise, so again, not a problem. I rather think Ogden and Ramsey got it right and with good reason.
ReplyDeleteOf course the moon image is an analogy and not to be taken literally.
ReplyDeleteWhat strikes me as odd is the literal translation proposed of growing in size or number,
ReplyDeleteWell, my point was that it's supposed to be odd; it's precisely the oddness that's part of what speaks in its favour. If it's not meant to be odd, I don't see where the need would be for the "so to speak" (sozusagen). For doesn't the moon simply wax and wane as a whole, instead of "so to speak waxing or waning as a whole"?
And the conditional mood ("If the good or bad exercise of the will does alter the world...") I associate with doubts that this what is being discussed even conceivable intelligibly in the first place. This is all just my interpretation, but it is my interpretation.
as if for the happy there is more world than for the unhappy, which just sounds wrong, and goes against proposition 1: The world is all that is the case. I don't think this is meant to suggest that for some there is more of it (of what is the case) than for others.
This would be the view of someone for whom the difficulty whose presence I take the conditional mood to indicate is not a difficulty. There have been some philosophers who seem to fit this description; for instance Jaakko Hintikka in his interpretation of §6.43, which he has expressed more than once in various writings. But right now I cannot find the passages where he does so, and as I'm not sure I remember the details correctly, I don't want to say more about it.
Well, there's this: http://thelimitsoflanguage.blogspot.com/2014/07/hintikka-on-tractatus-643.html
DeleteI like the translation in terms of waxing and waning, but agree that the idea is (meant to be) odd.