tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.comments2024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00language goes on holidayDuncan Richterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comBlogger5271125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-785909253529637522024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:002024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00thanks ! dirkthanks ! dirkAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-31028878576028895152023-09-06T18:26:04.754-04:002023-09-06T18:26:04.754-04:00Thanks! I'm starting to think a lot of these s...Thanks! I'm starting to think a lot of these stories about Anscombe are not trueDuncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-19288075868732683132023-05-14T08:50:38.027-04:002023-05-14T08:50:38.027-04:00Thanks! I am about to go visit the house (2023).Thanks! I am about to go visit the house (2023).JAMES MAHONhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05727457821351747752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-12020283025609631302023-05-05T22:50:52.687-04:002023-05-05T22:50:52.687-04:00The "Chicago mugger" story is told also ...The "Chicago mugger" story is told also about the elderly American physicist Robert Moon. But in that telling there were several muggers, whom he invited home to receive something much more valuable than money - instruction in astronomy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-57181561432354515392022-08-16T15:08:33.949-04:002022-08-16T15:08:33.949-04:00Well, I'm not on holiday any more but I'm ...Well, I'm not on holiday any more but I'm still not sure what to say about this. I don't really have a worked out view of what Wittgenstein thought about ethics (except what he says in this or that specific work). As I think I've said, he does sometimes seem to think that ethics requires that one obey one's conscience. What this means in practice will be different for different people, but it isn't impossible to express in language. It isn't a hugely appealing conception of ethics, though, I think. I'm afraid I have to do a lot more reading and thinking before I can say more on the subject with any reliability. DRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-32720041613263400382022-08-10T05:10:45.023-04:002022-08-10T05:10:45.023-04:00Thanks. I don't mean to ignore this comment, b...Thanks. I don't mean to ignore this comment, but I'm on holiday at the moment (no room of my own, for instance) and won't be able to think about it properly until I get home.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-88487862127675993482022-08-09T12:52:34.532-04:002022-08-09T12:52:34.532-04:00I think there is a tension in the later Wittgenste...I think there is a tension in the later Wittgenstein's thinking between a kind of transparency that should exist for any attribution to a person of a thought (this being a general consequence of the PLA) and the kind of (radical) individuality that informed Wittgenstein's ethical outlook. You're right to worry. His view, I think, which is also more or less latent in 6.422, is that the things of the world are no locus for ethics. No ethical improvement or failure occurs through the coming to obtain of this or that happening or state of affairs. A man makes his life a good or a bad one in an ethical sense in some endeavour that is not realised in the world. One way to go then is to think that there are some ethical predicates that apply to the *attitude* one took in life, but these ethical predicates are neither grounded as other predicates nor expressed using the usual bases for meaning. This looks shaky to me, but there is a hint of what this might look like in PI §77, where W seems to posit a manifestable concept that lacks much objectivity in the sense that we cannot reliably expect that one person will use it the same way as another (hence the failure of copying mentioned in §77). In this sense, it is a kind of individual concept that does little for anyone else. A second approach is to suppose that Wittgenstein is enjoining the taking up of a supernatural perspective on the world 'as a limited whole' seen 'sub specie aeternitatis' which we might recognise as treating the world like a miracle. Here, we often recognise in someone else what we might call the physiognomy of treating something as a miracle, without being able to say in what that attitude consists. Our recognition of the physiognomy might elicit respect, but neither they nor we can express in language anything of why we take it as a miracle, what is miraculous about it, etc. That, he says in the lecture, is precisely in the nature of taking something as a miracle. And the ethical perspective is precisely that one which is directed from the world of facts to the world as a whole, taken in the attitude of a miracle.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-12486774617086800712022-08-09T04:46:30.160-04:002022-08-09T04:46:30.160-04:00I agree that his ethical outlook does not seem to ...I agree that his ethical outlook does not seem to have changed much over the course of his life. This is not to say, though, that it did not change at all, nor that his thinking about philosophy didn't change. <br /><br />Let me try to get the issue here into focus. SWM suggested that ethical demands seem to come from outside the world and be imposed on it. As if, we might say, from God. I do think that Wittgenstein thought this way. You seem to be saying something similar at the end of your comment here. But (if I'm understanding correctly) you question the idea that ethics intrudes into the world because, like logic, it is a condition of the world. <br /><br />I'm not sure what to say about this. I'm quite sympathetic to the idea that ethics is a condition of the world, and that Wittgenstein believed this, but it also sounds a bit metaphysical or theoretical in a way that he would not have liked. So I'm torn/undecided. (Perhaps "ethics is transcendental" could be understood as purely analytic and not really metaphysical at all. I don't know.) As for ethics coming into the world from outside, I suppose it can't really do this if it is a condition of the world (in something like the way logic is), but it could still *seem* to do so. Indeed being ethical might seem to require that we think of it as a demand that comes from outside. <br /><br />Which is all to say that there is a lot to think through here, and you're right that I was going much too quickly. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-42146358815189158962022-08-08T11:04:03.489-04:002022-08-08T11:04:03.489-04:00It is true that his view of logic might have chang...It is true that his view of logic might have changed, though the introduction in the book to which you linked argues that his ethical outlook had not and did not. The tenor of the ethical remarks in the Geheime Tagebucher (newly translated into English FYI) and the 1937 diaries is strikingly similar. Indeed, he makes identical notes in 1916 and 1930, viz. “the good life is the world seen *sub specie aeternitatis.* This suggests that in Wittgenstein still thought the perspective the ethical (or the ethical subject) was outside the world, in some sense related to what is higher, absolute or supernatural.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-58751598457969445082022-08-08T03:52:31.442-04:002022-08-08T03:52:31.442-04:00Yes, all of this is fast. But I'm not sure we ...Yes, all of this is fast. But I'm not sure we can assume that in the LE he still holds any particular view that he expressed in NB. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-45635933030824873162022-08-08T03:49:55.794-04:002022-08-08T03:49:55.794-04:00Thanks, there's a lot to think about here. I t...Thanks, there's a lot to think about here. I think I agree with your last point (if I understand correctly).Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-86880670246999711042022-08-08T03:25:13.007-04:002022-08-08T03:25:13.007-04:00For this sentence:
And I will make my point still...For this sentence:<br /><br />And I will make my point still more acute by saying ‘it is the paradox that an experience, a fact, should seem to have supernatural value’. <br /><br />You noted the switch to supernatural value, but you did not notice the switch to his *saying* something and to his introduction of quotation marks. In these two sentences (one of which was omitted from the TS207/1965 version) he gives a map to the next to macro stages of the discussion. First he describes the factual problem and considers how we might deal with it, then he turns to the linguistic problem. Notice that the factual problem ends with the discussion of an attitude like that of a miracle. And then he has to move the linguistic analysis again, albeit beginning with the miracle. Whereas he had a reasonably satisfying conclusion to the factual discussion, for the linguistic conclusion he has no real argument, just what he sees in a flash and takes ab initio.<br /><br />I would urge you to think more carefully about the role of language at this stage in the argument. You move quite quickly over this passage:<br /><br />Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of language itself.<br /><br />Is it not a miracle on Wittgenstein's view that signs, that is facts, should have life [sic], that there should be this harmony between psychical elements [sic], signs (i.e. facts) and states of affairs such that each has the same logical form? One crude way to put the point is this: the totality of propositions in a language represents the totality of existence. To put it another way, at any given moment, a being without our merely medical limitations could think (i.e. think a sign in its projective relation to the world) *all* the propositions of the language and thereby express a logical picture of the whole of the world's existence at that moment.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-10371434192314201802022-08-08T03:07:39.893-04:002022-08-08T03:07:39.893-04:00That seems rather fast. Isn't Wittgenstein...That seems rather fast. Isn't Wittgenstein's conception of ethics that it is a condition of the world like logic? I'm paraphrasing one of his comments in NB to precisely that effect. Logic does not intrude into the world. It is notable in the lecture that he says there is no state of affairs that would be compelling or cause us to feel guilty if we do not comply--these are chimeras.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-21802575743883600102022-08-05T16:29:28.267-04:002022-08-05T16:29:28.267-04:00Schopenhauer is very explicit in his essay on Ethi...Schopenhauer is very explicit in his essay on Ethics that morality is contingent on a state of mind and the early Wittgenstein certainly seems to take a similar view though the states of mind they seem to be thinking about are not quite the same. Schopenhauer argued for a rejection of desires qua attachment (though arguably Wittgenstein lived a somewhat ascetic life that seemed to put THAT into practice). For each there is the sense, as you note, that it is a matter of feeling not arguing. Just as with Moore's intuitionism (we know the good when we see it) so with theirs we can be said to know the good when we feel it (as in being in a certain state of mind -- for Schopenhauer it's to be detached from the Will that underlies all being, for Wittgenstein it seems to be something like "feeling absolutely safe" in what appears to be a transcendental or metaphysical sense).<br /><br />I guess my point is that not only do none of these views resolve the matter of how ethics can be explained in a manner that makes ethical judgment what we take it to be (a means for making decisions between different motivations we may find in ourselves) but also that we cannot understand ethics without recognizing that it is fundamentally a rational activity, a process of looking for, and accepting or rejecting, reasons to act in one way rather than another.<br /><br />There seems to be more to rational discourse than just articulating some set of rules and expecting people to accept them by following them.<br /><br />I do think you are right that this is somewhat to do with THEIR concepts of rationality. Perhaps what's needed then is a broader account, one that covers all the ways we use discursive deliberation both internally and in discourse with others. Stuart W. Mirskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247784373895331173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-15006940085833672912022-08-05T12:17:16.721-04:002022-08-05T12:17:16.721-04:00Schopenhauer's view, roughly, I think, is that...Schopenhauer's view, roughly, I think, is that ethical behavior stems from certain feelings, not reasoning. So you cannot make someone ethical by teaching them rules, theories, etc. Any more than you can create an artist by teaching someone aesthetic theory. (I don't think he denies that some rules of thumb might be helpful in each case.)<br /><br />Wittgenstein's view, at least sometimes, seems to be that being ethical means obeying one's conscience, whatever it says. And there is nothing especially rational about doing this.<br /><br />Whether either of them is right, of course, is another matter. As is whether we should accept the conceptions of rationality that they use.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-60305682632429391232022-08-05T09:47:45.685-04:002022-08-05T09:47:45.685-04:00But how can moral comments NOT be "a rational...But how can moral comments NOT be "a rational thing"? We always look for reasons to do this but not that (when we are in a deliberative mode, of course). And we don't count something as morally creditable if we just did the thing by accident or did it because we gained something from doing it for ourselves (not in the usual sense of self gain, anyway).<br /><br />If we give charity because it makes us feel good or because others looking on will think better of us for doing it, then we say it wasn't done for a moral reason, even if it is understood by observers to have served a moral good. Or at least observers judging our action in a moral way would not count the action as moral. Schopenhauer makes this point, too.<br /><br />If we reduce moral valuing to having certain sentiments and acting on them, then we still have to have a reason to act on them and not do something else. If the argument is that sentiment is a kind of bottom line for moral choice but not for other choices we make, then, when it comes to the moral, we are saying that we can inculcate it in others through education or conditioning. But then, while we may have given those so inculcated a "reason" to act morally, acting morally itself would not be grounded in a moral reason.<br /><br />Once they realized they had been inculcated with the sentiment in question, or with the belief that that sentiment is the right one to act on, then they would lose any reason to act on it.<br /><br />For the early Wittgenstein it seems the moral right was somehow inexpressible (the Tractatus, the Lecture on Ethics), Like Moore's intuitionism, we know it, if not when we see it, as with Moore, then when we feel it. It is inexpressible but somehow shown, not described. And it shows itself to us as persons if we are sufficiently sensitive to this sort of thing. <br />But the problem circles back then to why we should act on one feeling rather than another. We still have a choice to make and it is still a moral one and making a choice, in deliberative mode, involves identifying and relying on a reason to do so.<br /><br />As long as we are in a deliberative mode, as long as we are thinking about what we should do and looking for the right reason, we cannot avoid the need to justify our choices.<br /><br />We can, of course, justify what we do in lots of ways. But all of those ways are, finally, moral issues because even to act immorally is itself a moral decision.<br /><br />Should we be self-interested above all else, or on occasion place another's interest ahead of our own?<br /><br />We need a reason and moral discourse and the teaching it drives is about finding and applying the reasons that we take to be the right ones. In truth, I don't see how moral valuation can be anything but a rational function. Ethical inutitionism, whether Moore's variety or the early Wittgenstein's or Schopenhauer's for that matter (by demolishing our own connections to the universal Will we become inherently moral because moral behavior rests on a disconnect between the individual self and his or her world of desired things and so act rightly on mere instinct alone) doesn't seem to me a satisfactory way around this.<br /><br />In the end we must look to how reasoning itself works because there's no difference between deciding which road to take to get to the nearest city quickly and which act to perform when dealing with another. Of course different factors are to be taken into account in the two cases and there is a different area of attention in each assessment. But at bottom both are about considering the facts available to us and making a decision by eliminating other options in favor of some particular one. And that is a rational activity.Stuart W. Mirskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247784373895331173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-72172947658559218592022-08-05T07:40:06.005-04:002022-08-05T07:40:06.005-04:00I don't think there's much reason to think...I don't think there's much reason to think Wittgenstein accepted Schopenhauer's moral theory as a whole, but I think he was probably sympathetic towards parts of it: ethics not being a rational thing, fear of death and attachment to riches being bad, and so on. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-45067916968806549672022-08-04T16:47:47.000-04:002022-08-04T16:47:47.000-04:00Well Schopenhauer thought that eradication of the ...Well Schopenhauer thought that eradication of the will (understood as the source of desires for this or that) was the best thing, the best goal to look to realize, since desires only disturb us when unmet though meeting them never extinguishes the state of desiring but only pushes the current desire aside for the next. Like the Buddhists and Hindus, he rejected the pleasures of life as being the source of its pains. The truly moral person, he thought, extinguishes his or her desiring self and so achieves a kind of ultimate compassion because desires, the expressions of each self's selfhood as it were, blinds us to others. Only by removing the blindfold of individuated selfhood can we become truly moral on his view.<br /><br />There are some deep problems with his picture of the moral good (by tearing off the blindfold of selfhood we are more likely to treat other selves -- those still blinded as we were -- with disinterest than with the compassion he extolled as the source of all moral judgment). Is there any evidence Wittgenstein was at all sympathetic with Schopenhauer's picture of the moral good, do you think? From what I can see, Wittgenstein could be construed as being drawn to such an outside-the-world notion of ethics in his younger phase but I don't see how it would accord with his later work at all. On the other hand there ARE still echoes of this sort of thinking in the Lecture, no? Stuart W. Mirskynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-19668740468083087482022-08-01T13:18:15.006-04:002022-08-01T13:18:15.006-04:00I actually meant to place these comments after you...I actually meant to place these comments after your commentary on the Lecture but it seems I put them in the wrong place. In any case, one of the things that jumped out at me is his failure to explicate the sense of "absolute" as I said above. I think the later Wittgenstein would have done that but here we see him in a kind of transition phase.<br /><br />Anyway, I think he was more right than wrong when he dismissed this effort as unworthy of him. He offers some interesting points but has not yet moved far enough along in his development of his later thought. If all our words have many meanings, the first place to start in this sort of analysis is to look at the range of meanings (uses) we put what he seems to think of as his most important words to. And here "absolute" recurs throughout his lecture as a way of distinguishing the moral from the factual. So it certainly deserves his and out attention which it does not receive adequately in that Lecture.<br /><br />I did wish to thank you for your perceptive commentary along each step of the way as the Lecture unfolds. Very thoughtful and insightful.Stuart W. Mirskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247784373895331173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-31324470959414483352022-08-01T12:37:57.510-04:002022-08-01T12:37:57.510-04:00Yes, it could indeed.Yes, it could indeed.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-20982387817007870862022-08-01T12:36:34.762-04:002022-08-01T12:36:34.762-04:00I think if we are to find a plausible alternative ...I think if we are to find a plausible alternative to Wittgenstein's way of thinking then it does indeed lie in this kind of direction. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-39902616946513242652022-08-01T12:33:05.202-04:002022-08-01T12:33:05.202-04:00We tend to think in terms of something otherworldl...<i>We tend to think in terms of something otherworldly, something from outside the world that imposes itself on the world (as Wittgenstein himself conceived it in his comments in, and about, his own Tractatus). But is THAT really what we mean by "absolute"?</i><br /><br />Possibly not, but it does seem to be what Wittgenstein meant by it. Perhaps that was misguided of him, but if we're going to argue with him (rather than talk past him or just ignore him, which might ultimately be wise to do) then we seem to have to accept his meaning of the term.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-46393298043269871182022-08-01T12:01:15.848-04:002022-08-01T12:01:15.848-04:00"So would just any nonsense do equally well?&..."So would just any nonsense do equally well?"<br /><br />I think this is the crucial question. In favor of a negative answer, you mention the possibility of identifying recurrences of 'the same' experience. Related to this, it could be asked: If any nonsense would do equally well, then how could the experience of (what we are tempted to express as) 'wonder at the existence of the world' be distinguished from the experience of 'a feeling of absolute safety'? Bradford Bluehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12052774923767969506noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-73634101410861667162022-08-01T11:50:58.368-04:002022-08-01T11:50:58.368-04:00Second part:
If moral judgement is applicable to ...Second part:<br /><br />If moral judgement is applicable to individual humans, as persons within this or that societal milieu (since moral questions seem to have no traction outside a social domain), then it is also applicable to the range of practices by individuals that this or that society sanctions or rejects. Thus societies, like individuals, can be assessed in moral terms and the idea of moral progress is applicable both to individuals and to societies as a whole.<br /><br />But in that case, for there to be a notion of moral progress, there must be standards against which to measure them, no? And for standards to exist, they must stand outside the judgements and judgers themselves, so our judgements can be measured against them. This implies the need for an "absolute" moral norm (or norms), not subject to the vagaries of ordinary human life and sentiment.<br /><br />And yet if there is nothing beyond the human, how can such a standard be?<br /><br />Well the possibility I'd like to suggest is that the standard we seek lies within human existence, not in particular sentiments we may happen to hold but in the kind of beings we are and can discover ourselves to be. That is, the standard can be elaborated from a kind of analysis that reflects our coming to grips with the nature of human existence itself. And this should be understood as not culture-specific, though it may manifest differently and at different stages in different cultures. Rather it is trans-cultural in the sense that all human cultures are capable of coming to it, and do come to it, given certain conditions (i.e., certain cognitive development) and so find ways to express this common realization. Thus an "absolute" standard can be found for moral judgement, even if it is not "absolute" in any religious or metaphysical sense (where "metaphysical" refers to speculations concerning the underlying pillars of existence itself).<br /><br />It is enough to ground our moral judgements and beliefs in certain insights concerning ourselves, our own nature, that can be achieved through cognitive effort. The idea that to have ethics we must have some absolute standard (which seems to be implied by the idea of ethics) is, thus, salvageable if we do not think of "absolute" in some abstract, metaphysical sense but as being grounded more deeply in ourselves, in what kinds of creatures we are.<br /><br />In Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics I see an omission of what would later come to characterize his most enduring work, attention to the uses of key terms like "absolute" and its apparent opposite, "relative." And, I'd suggest, it is just this attention that, if applied, holds the key to providing a positive answer to the question of ethics' validity in human life because it gives us a way to have our ethical cake and eat it, too. We can have standards outside ourselves as individuals that are standards because they are discoverable within the foundation of human experience itself, and expressible in various but related ways across human communities.Stuart W. Mirskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247784373895331173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-17921297015889206482022-08-01T11:50:05.234-04:002022-08-01T11:50:05.234-04:00Thanks for an excellent and perceptive commentary ...Thanks for an excellent and perceptive commentary on this rather, and sometimes, cryptic talk by Wittgenstein (which he later dismissed -- perhaps with excess humility? -- as not amounting to much). As your comments show, there is quite a bit there and much worth following up on. [Because of limitations on responding here, I will add the second half of my thought on this in a second post below.] <br /><br />In that vein I would suggest one omission in his talk which his own later philosophical work suggests he ought to have covered ("ought" in the practical or relative sense, of course), and that is the distinction between "absolute" and "relative" re: how we use these terms.<br /><br />Ethical claims do have an important sense in which we expect them to be "absolute." But what does it mean to be "absolute"? We tend to think in terms of something otherworldly, something from outside the world that imposes itself on the world (as Wittgenstein himself conceived it in his comments in, and about, his own Tractatus). But is THAT really what we mean by "absolute"?<br /><br />Why do we expect "absolute" to designate something beyond ourselves, beyond the relative judgments we are prone to make in getting around in the world?<br /><br />Perhaps "absolute" should not be thought of as something transcendent, as if it is beyond us, but as something we can find at a deeper level of our very human, contingent experience -- something which is deep enough to be, if not transcendent, as in being outside our world, but trans-cultural and so something common to human experience itself. If moral judgement addresses how we ought to behave with one another, and particular cultures sanction different behavioral practices, perhaps it is not wrong to look for commonalities across cultures in those sanctioned practices and those that cultures tend to reject.<br /><br />Stuart W. Mirskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247784373895331173noreply@blogger.com