Lew Rockwell interviews me on today’s LRC podcast, on the subject of anarchism. (Actually the interview took place last September; there’s a bit of a podcast backlog.) I tried to avoid too much duplication with my previous LRC podcast on the same subject from two years earlier. (I vaguely remember now that we also did one on taxation two years ago but I don’t think that one ever aired.)
I’ve been bothered by this:
I understand that logic cannot be explained to someone in the illogical terms of an irrational person, but a “failure to adhere to logical grammar” can be explained to someone that understands logic and wants to understand in what way you think he failed to use it.
Aren’t all explanations a kind of logical demonstration?
Well, technically: certain truths make themselves manifest. For instance, you wouldn’t argue against the skeptic that there is a world. You would try to make manifest to the skeptic that thinking otherwise is senseless. You wouldn’t explain that the world is there: “But sir just look around you; these things prove the world.” You would demonstrate that doubts about the world are inarticulable: “If language comes from a community of people sharing a form of life, then how could you use language to question life?” The difference is analogous to the difference between saying and showing.
That’s right; your statement is the only argument or explanation you can make to such a fundamental skeptic; it amounts to a demonstration of his senselessness. He either sees it or he doesn’t; until he does, there’s nothing else to discuss.
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Sorry about the error: “someone that understands”
No. It’s not an argument or an explanation so much as a reminder of something they already know.
I didn’t mean to pair off “logic” with “truth grounds” and “signs” with “rational”. That wasn’t part of the point I was trying to make. I only have a vague notion of the precise definitions of the terminology from trying to guess your points. I was only hoping/suspecting that it might be possible to make your arguments with plainer vocabulary.
Are you saying that there’s a certain form that a phenomenon takes, but that not every phenomenon takes it? If so, then what is it? physicality?
You did say:
So it’s a phenomena that’s not part of the world of phenomena?
Is this a way of saying that causality is an illusion or that it only approximates a more complex reality within the limited scope of human interaction with the world?
If so, I interpret that interpretation to be a rationalization of some preconceived notion with incoherent implications.
My comment was messed up when my computer started freezing, so you may have missed:
“To be “undetermined” implies: causing nothing and having no cause. That doesn’t sound like any kind of will to me; it’s sounds more like “not existing”.”
I was going to say that theological religion is only a particular kind of irrational and dogmatic religion, but, with your arguments against referring to “irrational philosophy” as “philosophy”, you’ve convinced me that theism is not religion. A rational definition of religion is: “something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience”. The other, “God” related, definitions should be discarded.
I.e., “God” is the yet unknown truths that we seek? But isn’t it more likely that “God” is the lazy explanation for things we don’t yet understand?
So if 8 is not a number, is it also true that 8 is not a digit?
Since what you say implies that we can’t say, “The set of all numbers.”, what would be the proper terminology for this concept that I failed to express properly?
It may be, but it will still require six different levels.
Each instance of phenomenon is a derivative of the entirety of phenomena.
If by “the world of phenomena” you mean “the sum of phenomena,” then no, it’s not in the sum.
It’s a way of saying that truth-grounds represent the more fundamental level of interrelationship between phenomena. That causality is a more vague notion of relationship, and therefore that causality will be unable to describe observations at the Quantum level.
Do you? Then by all means explain to me the EPR paradox strictly in terms of causality. Or talk about quantum non-locality without appeal to something deeper than causality. I love to watch the resultant tail-chasing moments…
The Space of Reasons has no cause and causes nothing. Do you want to say that to be in that space is to not exist?
Sounds good to me.
“God” is not the unknown truth. “God” is the constant variable that symbolizes, “another perspective is out there that grasps the world more clearly and fully.” I say that perspective is the disjunctive field. Plenty of people turn it into the lazy explanation, which is tragic and sick. That probably happens more often than not. But that’s a reflection of a contemporary collective psyche, not a reflection of, say, the Torah’s intention.
I’m not familiar enough with the grammar of ‘digit’ to yet say. What do you think?
All signs within the grammatical gravitational field of ‘operation’.
“the world of phenomena” is your expression; the question is my way of finding out what you mean by it.
How can any phenomena not be in the sum of phenomena?
Please define truth-grounds.
There are no direct observations at Quantum level, only interpretations of indirect evidence. Causality doesn’t fail just because our model is incomplete or because our model, while statistically derived and statistically functional, is incoherent.
You are aware that it’s called a paradox, not a contradiction? From what I can gather, there are many interpretations of what’s happening and what it means that are beyond my knowledge level, but it seems that nothing’s been settled. BTW: I doubt that anything that contradicts Einstein’s relativity or Heisenberg’s uncertainty necessarily disproves causality.
What is the space of reasons?
What ever it is, I’ll have to say, “Yes.”
So you’re saying that the “God” of the “5 books of Moses” is not actually the omnipotent creator being described, but was intended to be understood as a metaphor? What evidence do you have for this? Judaism evolved from pagan religions; originally “God” was a phallic stone hidden in the “Holy of Holies”.
“any of the Arabic figures of 1 through 9 and 0.” and “any of the symbols of other number systems, as 0 or 1 in the binary.”
According to your grammar “digit” is the formal concept and 8 is a proper concept.
You’ve have to be kidding me; right?
Not that I agree yet, but how about, “All signs that consist of symbols of a number system and a decimal point.”
BTW: I take it that you’d say that the dictionary definition of “number”, “a word or symbol, or a combination of words or symbols, used in counting or in noting a total.” should be disregarded as meaningless incoherence.
Let me answer a couple that I can give off the cuff. I’ll get to the rest in a few hours.
Do you want to say that nothing can be greater than the sum of its parts?
“God” is a metaphor and a metonym. Splitting the Red Sea is a metaphor for distinguishing truth-grounds/internal relations. The metonymic use represents an inner sanctuary that houses the Ark of the Covenant — a metaphor for that which unfolds from the 10 commandments — that which is analogous to what Kant describes as Good Will.
p follows from q not because “p follows from q” but because the truth-grounds of p are the same truth-grounds of q. The sense of p is inside the sense of q and the sense of q is inside the sense of p. That sense-sharing feature is revealed in a comparison of the truth-grounds of p and the truth-grounds of q. Truth-grounds are a feature of the fact that p, a feature that unfolds when p is the case and when p is not the case. For ‘p follows from q’ to be the case, the truth-grounds of p and the truth-grounds of q must match. See Tractatus 5-5.123.
Do you want to say that causality is a feature of observation or a feature of what we observe?
What is settled is disproof of locality, and so, any notion of causality that entails locality (Bell’s Theorem, 1964).
That which deals with truth-grounds. But to say this “space” is equivalent to non-existence is like saying a person who doesn’t deal with the mere surface of things is dead. Wouldn’t that be a strange thing to say?
‘Digit’ is a region of digits.
‘Operation’ is to the set of all numbers as ‘criteria’ is to language. ‘Operation’ acts as a map for numbers in the same way ‘criteria’ acts as a map for language. (Loomis, p.160).
As long as ‘a number system’ means the by-product of infinite operations upon variables, then that’s fine. Only it does blur what a number system is.
Insofar as that omits the nature of those symbols, yeah, that blurs the meaning of number.
No…I’m saying that, by definition, all parts are included in the sum of all parts.
If you have a good imagination, you can interpret biblical mythology metaphorically to support just about any viewpoint, be it political, moral or philosophical.
Maybe, but I’m making the specific claim that the interpretation of ‘God’ can’t be made simply metaphorically. I’m saying that — for example — metaphor is like a Y-axis and grammar is like an X-axis for any legitimate interpretation. That takes more than a good imagination. It also takes logic.
Since a metaphor uses implied analogy, of course it requires logic. If the logic doesn’t work, then the metaphor doesn’t work. The imagination comes into play in finding a logically consistent way to interpret something as a metaphor for your particular viewpoint.
That’s fair.
So truth-grounds means sense. Since “sense”, in this context, means “meaning”, then “truth-grounds” means “meaning”.
This means that:
p follows from q not because “p follows from q” but because the meaning of p is the same meaning of q. So p follows from q because p is q.
And:
The meaning of p is inside the meaning of q and the meaning of q is inside the meaning of p.
This appears to be nonsense.
Causality is a feature of the world and, also of logic, if what we call logic is based in reality. When we interpret our observations in a way that’s consistent with causality, we express our faith in logic (faith in ourselves).
When our interpretive powers fail to show causality in an observation, we can substitute faith in the supernatural for faith in ourselves, positing “God” or some other mystical explanation, for what we cannot logically understand or we can accept that understanding aspects of the world sometimes eludes us and may require a great deal of patients.
I don’t have the scientific expertise to come up with my own interpretation, but from what I gather, there are people who question the interpretation and/or the premises upon which this is based. As per my previous statement, I’m not going to throw causality and logic in the toilet because of an interpretation of an experiment. Like flawed experiments that “proved” there is no ether, it’s probably just another scientific mystery based on false premises or faulty interpretation.
Until you give me a coherent definition of “truth-grounds”, I will have no idea of what you mean.
Do you mean that it’s a region of the formal concept “number”? What kind of concept is a region of a formal concept?
I don’t know whether this is right or not, but I hope it’s wrong or our language is a hopeless mess.
Not quite. Truth-grounds is to sense as criteria is to language.
Reality is to logic as truth-grounds is to sense. Reality is internal to logic just as truth-grounds are internal to sense. If the world is what is the case, then causality is a feature of the world — agreed. But if logic is the truth-grounds of propositions, then logic is determined a priori and causality has nothing to do with what is determined a priori. So causality is a feature of the world, but not a feature of logic.
Sure.
It’s a nearly hopeless mess. In my PhD research on distractions (Festinger, 1968), I find evidence that cognitive dissonance can be overridden and a window can open to communicate rationality to those who would otherwise resist reason. I hope that my color-coded rheomode is an instance of such purposeful distraction toward truth. That’s a middle ground between hopeless language and sublime but inaccessible logic.
You still haven’t defined “truth-grounds”. Unless you know what it is, then how can you use it in an analogy? and how can I be expected to understand the analogy? You’re supposed to answer me in the following form:
“Not quite. Truth-grounds means_____. Truth-grounds is to sense as criteria is to language.”
If causality is a feature of the world, then it is internal to reality and since reality is internal to logic, then so is causality.
Truth-grounds is a map of sense. Truth-grounds are the scenarios in which something is true and the scenarios in which something if false. These scenarios and what’s true and what’s false are all determined a priori. If x is the case, then whatever has the same truth-grounds — let’s stipulate y and z — is automatically also the case. So we’re not saying “if x, then y and z.” We’re saying “x and y and z.”
No. Look at the above example. X does not cause Y and Z. X is manifest with Y and Z. If you want to say that the truth-grounds cause X, then that’s fine. But the truth-grounds aren’t in the world.
Due to my computer slowing down, I had to end the last comment in the middle. I also don’t like that the quote button no longer italicizes, so I’m doing the whole comment over:
You still haven’t defined “truth-grounds”. Unless you know what it is, then how can you use it in an analogy? and how can I be expected to understand the analogy? You’re supposed to answer me in the following form:
“Not quite. Truth-grounds means_____. Truth-grounds is to sense as criteria is to language.”
If causality is a feature of the world, then it is internal to reality and since reality is internal to logic, then so is causality.
In the event I misunderstood your use of “internal”, I can rephrase it like this:
If causality is a feature of the world, then it is a feature of reality and since reality is internal to logic, then so is causality.
You didn’t answer my question. Is the region of a formal concept a formal concept, a proper concept or is there some other designation?
For me, trying to read the Tractatus seems like a hopeless mess. When I find a sense of a word that he uses that gives his propositions a coherent meaning to me, his use of the word in subsequent propositions, if they are to be coherent too, doesn’t seem to fit with my first understanding of its sense, making it difficult for me to continue. Sometimes I’m completely unsure of what he’s actually saying, e.g., “The substance of the world can only determine a form and not any material properties. For these are first presented by the propositions — first formed by the configuration of the objects.”
If facts are “something that actually exists”, are not some facts dependent upon other facts?
I’m guessing that to follow the Tractatus requires a background of formal training.
Manifestation is a feature of the world, not causality.
The totality of it is a formal concept. Parts of it — the terrain — are proper concepts.
Frege made the same complaint in his correspondence with Wittgenstein. But Frege also thought that a word only has a sense within a sentence. I take Wittgenstein to be saying that a word only has a sense within a context. If sentences are, as Frege calls them, complex names, then surely the names themselves can have different senses in different contexts.
With “The substance…” as contextual, 1.2-as-complex-name means (holds the sense that) The world — the totality of substances, which are forms — divides into facts — which are present in propositions.
With “The substance…” as contextual, 1.21-as-complex-name means (holds the sense that) Any one — proposition(s) — can either be the case or not be the case — have the feature of T/F — and everything else remain the same — whether in one situation the T outranks the F or the F outranks the T, every other situation does not reflect an outranking because of this situation. Here is where you see the way in which causality is not a part of the world.
Yes.
Am I correct that, in this context, “sense” means “meaning”, not “reasonableness”?
If so, then “a map of sense” is a map illustrating the conditions where something is true and the conditions where something is false.
In this case, my first impression must be wrong, as truth or falsehood is related to whether something is reasonable or unreasonable, not to what something means.
So to state it more clearly:
Truth-grounds is a map of conditions under which something makes sense or doesn’t make sense.
No…in this case, “what’s true and what’s false” is not determined; it’s what is given or “something”. It’s the conditions that are the variable c and the value of the function, something at c, s(c) is determined a priori as true/false.
s(c) = true/false
Of course, by definition of truth grounds, this is true.
You have contradicted your previous sentence: If x is the case, then….., so I don’t understand this point.
I don’t know that I see why those should be distinguished — in an essential way — from one another.
You’re right. But what is given determines a priori whatever else is given or not given.
On a superficial level, it looks that way. I’ll grant the point so as not to make things any more complicated than they have to be already.
The truth-grounds here is the truth-grounds of propositions (logic). I didn’t say that logic causes anything; I said that causality is internal to logic via reality, i.e., causality may be one of the criteria for determining the truth of a proposition under a set of conditions.
You seem to be of two minds. Addressing MBH #2: What do you mean (which definition) by “manifestation” and do you mean to imply that it precludes causality?
Does this imply that “number” is the broadest concept? Isn’t “number” part of the terrain of a wider concept: “graphic symbols”?
If 8 is not a number, then is k not a letter?
I agree with you, but the sense can sometimes change the context, in which case, the only way to give the sense or the context is to define the word.
I didn’t put “The substance…” there for a context; it was just an example of a proposition about which I’m completely unsure of what he’s actually saying.
Are facts things that actually exist?
If substances determine forms, why do you seem to be saying that substances are the forms?
Are not some propositions premises for other propositions? Then how can a secondary proposition not have its truth-grounds (logic) dependent upon its premises’ truth grounds?
Then what was the point of throwing all this Tractarian terminology at me? was it as an argument from authority, where I don’t need to understand anything other than that I should accept your superior training as sufficient proof of your viewpoints? do I represent an experiment to see how a layman would respond to your arguments? are you playing Smeagol challenging Bilbo Baggins with unfair riddles, like when you give me analogies involving a word and expect me to work backwards to the meaning? Anyway…I like the challenge, or I wouldn’t still be here.
(1) I grant that “causality may be one of the criteria for determining the truth of a proposition under a set of conditions.” But this criteria is not innate to a proposition or to the world. A criteria is a lens for looking at the world. Causality is a way of observing the world, not something in the world.
(2) It really shouldn’t be said that reality is internal to logic. In the sense that reality only comprises non-tautologies and non-contradictions — what could be otherwise — then logic has no place in reality. Logic is the boundaries for reality. But unlike causality, these boundaries aren’t a way of looking, but are necessarily manifest.
I think (1) and (2) above remove this worry.
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that 8 is an (a) proper concept, ‘number’ is a (b)formal concept, and ‘formal concept’ is a (c) transcendent symbol. If someone objects that (c) is being employed and so must itself be the terrain of something greater, I say that ‘transcendent symbol’ is the by-product of (d) operation — an operation by (e) the general form of a proposition on (f) elementary forms/names. If someone objects that the enabling conditions for such an operation to occur must itself be mapped, even if under ‘operation’ but above ‘transcendent symbol’, I say that (e) truth-grounds are the field on which operations are enabled. If someone objects that these words are all (f) a bunch of names and words that don’t necessarily mean anything, I say that (f)’s understood as puzzle pieces within (a) — (e) are hardly meaningless. If we take the perspective of (f)’s created by (d)’s through (e) onto (a)’s organized by (b)’s and recorded by (c)’s, then we see the real world.
Yeah, but as you can see in (a) — (f), we’re dealing with 6 different levels of sense. If you just lay it all out there in the beginning, then you don’t feel the reason for the Tractatus. It would be like starting the Lord of the Rings with Gollum and the ring of Sauron irrecoverably burning in the pit. The viewer wouldn’t even feel relief because the ring and Gollum would be merely (f)’s rather than representative of the disentanglement of (a) — (f).
Another objection: if (a) — (f) are all articulable, then what do we say about this perspective that puts all 6 in view?—I suppose that would be (g) peace. Although, that may cannot be represented as (a) — (f) can be represented. It might be said that (g) has to be shown. One has to live it.
Is it a fact that you wrote that question? If it weren’t a fact, would it still be there?
Substances don’t determine form. Substances manifest as form. There is no such thing as substances in and of themselves. Even the Quantum theory treats “particles” as collapsed waves, or a narrow view of a field. But the field itself is primary. The form is primary. The substance is a mere derivative of the field, of the form. It has no existence in and of itself.
And how can the premises’ truth-grounds not automatically lead to the secondary propositions? How are elementary propositions not given alongside all the “higher” level propositions that coincide with its truth-grounds?
I think that between me, Roderick, Kelly, P., and RadGeek, you’ll be able to follow the Tractatus. And so will anyone else who reads this (and takes the time to grapple with these issues).
Whether the Tractatus is an authority or not, you can decide.
You represent a person that may understand this.
Aren’t we all reverse engineers? Isn’t that reason? Isn’t that what makes us human? To know everything in a flash, is not a communicable experience. Don’t we have to break it down? And don’t we have to channel it properly so that it helps us rather than destroys us? If I’m playing Smeagol, then it’s to help others see the Gollum inside themselves — your shadow — so that we may sublimate it as a whole (A Perfect Circle, 2006).
Before I answer this, I want to make the observation that it seems to me that truth-grounds can only be for propositions, in that any concept amounts to either a proposition or an implied proposition as to its existence; so in all cases, truth-grounds means “logic”. The truth-grounds of a thing is the logic of proposing the existence of a thing. It seems that the term “truth-grounds” is unneeded; we can just as easily say,
“Logic is a map illustrating the conditions where something is true and the conditions where something is false.”
“Meaning” has a different meaning from “reasonableness”; that they both mean different senses of the word “sense” only shows that their meanings are related, but they’re still different.
If “a map of sense” is a map illustrating the conditions where something has meaning and the conditions where something has no meaning, then it’s no longer logic being referred to; “a map of sense” is then “coherence”, a related word that means “understandable in terms of logic”; that a concept has meaning doesn’t require that it be true. Then Tractarians would have to invent another superfluous word: “meaning-grounds”.
Works for me.
I wouldn’t go that far. It was extremely helpful for me in getting a grasp of the Tractatus. But, as long as we’re using this terminology to make broad sense, I’m OK replacing it with ‘logic’.
OK. Meaning is situation-dependent and reasonableness is coherence-dependent. And we’re saying that both have their own sense. In this context are we saying that logic underwrites the field on which meaning and reasonableness are found and not found? That logic prompts the field? That logic shapes the field? All of those?
The logic of what is given (something) is independent of the logic of something else and so it cannot determine what else is given, unless this something else incorporates the original something in its definition; it’s not “whatever else” but only things that internalize what is given that are determined.
I don’t get your sense here. The logic of one thing is spatio-temporally inseparable from the logic of everything else — even if the truth-conditions are different. I mean, everything in the Space of Reasons is dependent on everything else. If A, B, and C have identical truth-conditions, then when those conditions are met, it is physically and conceptually impossible for any one of A, B, and C to not manifest. Maybe you mean something else?
I don’t know what that means.
I don’t see the difference. But yes, the logic is the criterion for what is determined, not some external property.
You said,“So we’re not saying “if x, then y and z.” We’re saying “x and y and z.”
You can’t say that! I think you probably meant to say something like this:
But we’re not just saying “if x, then y and z.” We’re also saying “x and y and z.”
OK. But I would say that we can only say “if x, then y and z” because “x . y . z” .
I didn’t say causality was innate to a proposition; I said it was innate to its logic.
If causality is a feature of the world, then isn’t it innate to the world? or are you implying that causality is a feature that comes and goes?
No…I didn’t imply it was in the world; a criterion is a rule or principle by which we judge something. Causality is one of the rules by which we judge whether something follows logic.
A rule or principle is not something in the world so causality is no more in the world than that which it designates: the unilinear nature of time.
Where causality is one of those boundaries and so is one of the criteria of logic.
You’re the one who said:
This boundary approach appears to be more straightforward anyway.
I don’t see how that could be. Causality is the opposite of concept. But logic is purely conceptual. Where is causality in logic?
I’m not saying either. Causality is a mode of viewing the world. But it’s not a fact any more than creationism is a fact. Under the creationist lens, you don’t see monkeys turning into humans, so humans must be absolute. Analogously, billiard ball A moved toward billiard ball B. They touched and B flew off only and necessarily only because A made B do so.
Both views are needlessly narrow, and neither is essentially in the world. Both may, though, be like maps which approximate this or that.
I don’t know what something-not-following-logic could possibly be.
I think I follow. But if causality is a rule by which we judge whether something follows logic, then we can’t be talking about logic — truth-grounds — because nothing can ever not follow logic. Maybe you’re using another sense of logic here, a “logic” that could be otherwise. But I don’t know that ‘logic’ is what we’re examining here so much as probability. Maybe you want to say that causality is the rule by which we judge whether propositions turn out to symbolize, in a new situation, the way we assumed they would.
Wait, I didn’t realize you were saying that causality is a criteria for logic. But I don’t understand how that would work. Criteria for what about logic?
I know. “It really shouldn’t be said” was a self-critique.
Well, what are you saying comprises the boundaries? Are you saying it’s logic and causality? If so, I have no idea why causality plays any role in the boundary. As far as I can see, the boundary is the result of operations by the general form of the proposition on elementary propositions. Those operations are made manifest and so — by definition — beyond causality. That makes the boundaries comprised of reason itself and what’s inside the boundaries are all the facts. Causality has no role in the foundation.
You said:
Your contradiction is your worry; not mine.
You haven’t explained which “manifestation” you’re using nor whether number 2 implies that it precludes causality.
Here’s the relevant comment:
By “manifestation” I mean that the boundaries of reality aren’t caused by anything. The boundaries display reason itself. The world is the by-product — not the end result — of the general form of a proposition operating upon simples. This state of affairs makes itself evident through rationality in our communication, reason in dialogue. This state of affairs does preclude causality: that the world is thus and so is not because of these operations. These operations are that the world is thus and so. That a coin has two sides doesn’t mean that one side caused the other. Both sides co-arise. In the same way, these reasonable operations and the world co-arise.
Ha ha!
I don’t see how this answers my question. Maybe you’re trying to say too much at once.
What is a formal concept?
If 8 is not a number, is:
g a letter?
fish a word?
Fe an element?
Please name some formal concepts.
Formal concepts are general categories of things. Formal concepts are what imply themselves automatically along with proper concepts. “The desk is brown,” implies that we’re referencing an object. “2 + 2 = 4” implies that we’re referencing numbers. When we try to make these automatically implicit expressions explicit, then we violate the nature of what they are: namely, implicit categories. For instance, imagine that we’re playing a board game — say, monopoly — and I draw the ‘go directly to jail’ card. If I ask you whether the card is part of the game or if I’m actually supposed to go to the county jail, you’d look at me like I was Glenn Beck. Formal concepts are like that. They’re built into the fabric of a state of affairs. To call them into question is like asking whether the Monopoly card is “for real.”
Well, let me put it this way. 8 is a number, and the Monopoly card is just part of the game. Do you see?
I mean, ‘Internet’ is a formal concept. It’s implicit that everything said here is on the Internet, and if I said — explicitly, and like I was providing information — that these arguments are being made on the ‘Internet’ you’d think I’m Glenn Beck again. ‘Proposition’ is a formal concept. If I prefaced a sentence with, “here comes a proposition:” Glenn Beck. ‘Fact’ is a formal concept. “It is a fact that the United States is two words.” Glenn Beck.
Formal concepts go without saying and to say them is awkward. And yet, they’re always there in the background or enfolded in propositions.
I hesitate to wade into this when I haven’t read much of the recent contributions. But I am pretty sure that Internet is not the sort of thing that the author of the Tractatus means to treat under the heading of “formal concepts.”
The examples that he gives in 4.1272 are “object,” “thing,” “complex,” “fact,” “function,” and “number” (with an “etc.” suggesting that there may be more).
What marks them as deserving of special attention is not the extent to which they are “implicit” or somehow pragmatically presupposed by this or that proposition (as, say, the existence of the Internet might be presupposed by the attempt to intervene in an endless blog comment thread). Lots of proper concepts, ordinary objects, etc. are in that way. (An attempt so to intervene presupposes the Internet in roughly the same way that it presupposes my computer’s keyboard.)
Rather, what marks them as deserving of special attention is the role they play in the elucidation of logical form. 4.1271 says that in a propositional variable (for example, “x is a book”, “x is evenly divisible by y”) the variable places are the signs for formal concepts (presumably in “x is a book” “x” is supposed to be the sign for the formal concept object; in the second case, “x” and “y” are signs for the formal concept number).
To mention the formal concept which a variable-sign signifies is to mention something about “the constant form that all its values [the values of a particular variable] possess,” that is, the role that giving a value to the variable plays in giving a definite meaning to the proposition.
If it helps, you might think of this in connection with PI 1 and the discussion of “kinds of word” or parts of speech. You can say “8 is a number” if you like; but the point here seems to be that this is to show which variable-places in a propositional variable 8 could be a candidate value for. This is in some sense like saying “Dog is a noun,” or “To bark is a verb.” They tell you something about where you might put the signs into a meaningful sentence, and the sort of role that the signs you put in would play in giving the sentence its meaning. To say that “dog is a noun” is not to give some sort of special information — even very basic information — about dogs; to say that “8 is a number” is — according to the author of the Tractatus — not to give some sort of very basic information about 8, but rather simply to elucidate the role that the sign “8” plays in giving meaning to a proposition like “There are 8 books on the shelf and none on the floor.”
So you’re trying to give some drama and mystery to the Tractatus, but, the more likely result is my confusion. It’s better to lay ideas out in clear and simple steps.
I just wanted to make sure we’re using “facts” in the sense of “things that actually exist”, as opposed to “knowing about things”.
But you wrote:
and Wittgenstein wrote:
so what gives?
The either is a substance.
How about as standing waves in the either?
The field is, itself, comprised of either waves.
In your “science”, the field and the particle are also comprised of waves in the “either”, except your “either” is given the euphemism “space-time”.
OK.
Yeah: things that actually exist.
Think of ‘substance’ as a formal concept. If you pick up a stone and say “This stone has substance,” then… Glenn Beck. Philosophers — materialists specifically — have a tendency to say things like “Substance gives us material properties.” Double Glenn Beck. “Objects are things.” Double Glenn Beck. “Numbers are signs.” Double Glenn Beck. “Concepts are immaterial.” Double Glenn Beck.
We want no Glenn Beck, and this very recognition spells out how we’re to think of what Wittgenstein is saying.
‘The substance of the world’ is ‘a formal concept’. So we turn it into a symbol ‘x’, since we can’t make explicit what’s naturally implicit. ‘x’ can only determine a form and not any material properties. That proposition also says: a symbol can only determine a form and not any material properties. How would a symbol determine “material properties?”
Consider 2.021
So it’s even more clear: objects — implicit formal concepts — are the reference of ‘substance’.
Stepping back, these “explanations” themselves could, on the surface, be seen as Glenn Beck also. However, the difference is that the context here (and with philosophy in general) is that these sentences are like training wheels. For Glenn Beck, these sentences are ends in themselves.
So is Rainbow Brite. To search for — what you might want to call — an actual substance, is going to end, at best, with names. Remember that to find something independent of our concepts is to take the sideways-on view, and so merely to dilute oneself. The facts are going to have to be as substantial as substance can go. But like you said, facts are actually existing. What more can we want? We might be better off treating the desire to find something more basic — Roderick gave me approximately this simile after class in 2004 — as an itch that you just cannot possibly scratch. And while that may be frustrating for a while, eventually you realize that the itch itself was brought about by senselessness.
If you mean something like the divergence of a particle after collapse, then that’s not a particle. That’s a wave.
The field is a metaphor. So is the wave. So is the particle.
No. Space-time is only a representation of logical space.
Propositions are not automatic. There are always new propositions to be devised from the old.
Elementary propositions are incorporated within higher level propositions.
Your questions did not imply answer to my question:
Einstein discovered relativity. It would be senseless to say that he invented it. The proposition: ‘Energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light multiplied by itself’, is not a proposition that just appeared when Einstein got there. That proposition is built-in to the world. The truth-grounds that manifest reality also manifest that proposition and others that physicists are yet to discover. To say they’re automatic is not to say that we know them automatically. It’s to say that through the right work, we’ll find them.
I think you’re the only one left.
I’m not convinced yet that I will be able to follow it or, even if I can, that I’ll agree with it. (Who knows?)
Do you think anyone else is reading or will be reading this?
Kelly’s still truckin’. And I’m drawing a good bit from him.
If you agree to the head-on view, then you’re 90% of the way there — comprehension-wise and agreement-wise. No one knows, but if you see that you’re committed to reason-as-present-in-dialogue, then it’s hardly a blind pursuit.
Someone that I’ve never met mentioned to me last night — in a facebook dialogue — a set of comments on this site from last summer that he remembered. Who knows? (Other than Brandon, the omniscient administrator…)
I just passed by to say that I don’t think MBH’s views are close to Roderick’s.
Roderick seems to reject the “metre-stick” principle, rejecting the claim that metaphysical realism is vacuous. MBH not only seems to adopt that principle, he also seems to say that sentences like “8 is a number” are not only vacuous, but also meaningless.
Roderick is, primarily, an aristotelean. To say that causality is not metaphysically real would be at odds with aristotle.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Roderick seems to follow Kripke and Putnam in saying that the referent of a word need not always be a description, so that we can directly refer to things in the world. And MBH doesn’t seem to agree with that.
Define ‘close’. I took virtually every philosophy class he taught for three years while I was at Auburn. I consider him a mentor/friend. That’s not to say I mimic his ideas, but I think he’s even used the term “cross-pollination” in this context.
That might be true, but as long as you distinguish actual metaphysics from conventional metaphysics, as he does, then both actual metaphysics and conventional-metaphysics-for-the-sake-of-demonstrating-mistakes both have their place. I try to be — explicitly — context-dependent: if I’m trying to elucidate something for someone then I try to steer them into a recognition that, on the formal level, Wittgenstein’s sense/nonsense distinction holds the same power as Frege’s logical/psychological distinction — even if that means rejecting the “meter-stick” in technical terms. But for my thinking about my thinking, I can coincide with the neo-Aristotelian framework. Even David Bohm explicitly did so, and I draw from him as much as anyone, save Roderick and Kelly. In the proper context, nonsense is articulable, but it’s a game (transitive) — a specialized mode of interaction. In this context, the mode has a distinct sense, but only instrumentally.
In one’s thinking about thinking, the logical and psychological may move in opposite directions on their own respective sides of the road, but if she processes both thinkings simultaneously — within the sense/nonsense framework — then she’s dealing with de-psychologized psychology “moving” south, and conceptualism “moving” north, at the same time, and on the right sides of the road. And so metaphysically, the world is de-psychologized psychology manifesting as conceptualism (if one pictures the “movement” in Parmenides’ sense) . I believe this dual-track, or co-arising, is itself the sketch of de-metaphysicized metaphysics (Long, p. 89).
To agree with Roderick’s take still further (Long, p. 90), I accept that Wittgenstein’s more profound contribution is in logicizing metaphysics by, I quote:
For the sake of my own comprehension, I think of the subject of this enterprise as, to coin a phrase, ubiquitous non-physical contiguity. The missing variable is the object of the undertaking. So, to combine a few Tractarian rungs — reverse-engineer style — I think I can nail down the direct object. (With full awareness that I am and have been using formal concepts in — technically — inappropriate ways)
If, then, one can provide a logical picture that represents the broadest state of affairs of the world — a de-psychologized psychology lane displaying “movement” in one direction and an adjacent conceptual lane displaying “movement” in the opposite direction — then this picture will demonstrate the universal essence of the world. It will capture the universally intransitive: the Form of the forms.
Kelly posts one such picture (Jolley, 2011). And this picture most certainly touches the world. It represents the essential elements of the world. I know, personally speaking, that it is therapeutic, tastes like ambrosia, and functions like windshield wipers in a storm. Yet, we cannot stop there. According to Wittgenstein in his introduction to the Tractatus,
I believe Kelly and Roderick both do it better. But, on the pictorial front, I may know of a picture that does it better than Kelly’s picture. I have one framed poster right now in this room from which I write and it may hit the nail on the head better than anything I’ve seen on this level (The Mars Volta, 2005). On my understanding, this picture represents the ubiquitous non-physical contiguity manifest as the world, all the facts.—Is that previous proposition metaphysical, ontological, grammatical, etc.?—I would propose that such a question assumes that these formal concepts do not contain, built within them, more formal concepts, concepts of an even higher, or more deeply ingrained, sort. For instance, those concepts are themselves engulfed in a more fundamental context, a primordial light as it were.
How could ‘grammar’ have a sense outside of communication-immersed-in-logic? How could ‘ontology’ have a sense outside of folks-doing-stuff? How could ‘metaphysics’ have a sense outside of man symbolizing? To turn back to Roderick (Long, p. 87 — 91): — In the beginning was the deed —
Wittgenstein might have said, in the beginning was the operation — well aware that Schopenhauer had already said, in the beginning was the manifestation.
In the austere sense, it is meaningless. ‘Number’ is a formal concept and formal concepts necessarily go without saying. They’re built into their instantiations. To call them into question is awkward. Let me repeat an analogous situation. Say that we’re playing Monopoly and I draw a ‘Go directly to jail’ card. I say to you, in all seriousness, “Oh no! But we just started playing this game. I’ve got all kinds of homework to do. I don’t want to be strip searched. This is terrible. County prison is notoriously violent. I’ll probably be severely injured!” The very situation in which you have to explain to me that the card is limited to the game is an awkward situation, an uncomfortable exception to natural adaptation.
The same thing would go for the question “Is 8 a number?” I might as well be asking “Is the ‘go directly to jail’ card part of the game?” Of course I’m not going to deny that 8 is a number, and of course I’m not going to deny that the card is part of the game. But the most significant aspect to these questions is that they’re considered questionable by someone. If someone asked you “Is Monopoly really going to put me in the county prison?” then your intuitive response wouldn’t be a matter-of-fact, “No. It’s part of the game” Your intuitive response would be, “We have more pressing issues than the answer to this particular question. We need to address your inability to make distinctions that should be second nature.”
Roderick is primarily an epistemic conceptualist, I think. Which tells me that he interprets Aristotle as privileging the Agent Intellect as a priori the particular Passive Intellects. Since the Agent Intellect is everywhere and nowhere — like logic and symbolization per se are for Wittgenstein — then causality, on the neo-Aristotelian story need not be anything “out there” in the world like an unmoved mover of external thingies.
Well, that’s just a downright weird accusation. The world is every fact that there is. And… drum roll… I just directly referenced everything in the world without describing them at all. You’re saying that I don’t directly refer to anything in the world. How’s this: “The case is that a beer bottle is on my desk, and I will likely take a sip soon.” Is that not direct enough?
I think you may be using the names of philosophers to inform your way of understanding philosophy, rather than trying to understand — primarily — their philosophy itself. For instance, when I see the sign ‘Kripke’, it symbolizes to me ‘analytic a posteriori judgments’ — a super cool category that was originally thought to be a contradiction and impossible. I think about how a cognition would yield that — through communicative action — one might analyze that certain phrases and words in certain contexts are simply inoperative. And then from the logic of inoperativeness, one could focus on the negative “space” and build a positive program.
P., I used to fall into this trap too, where you try to see through the eyes of philosophers. The Chair of the AU Phil Department gave our class a talk in 2004 explaining how, while we may “think” such empathy offers insight, it serves as nothing but a blinder to actual philosophy.
MARK: “Meaning” has a different meaning from “reasonableness” […]
MBH: OK. Meaning is situation-dependent and reasonableness is coherence-dependent.
I’m confused; isn’t meaning coherence-dependent and truth situation-dependent?
MBH: In this context are we saying that logic underwrites the field on which meaning and reasonableness are found and not found? That logic prompts the field? That logic shapes the field? All of those?
No…logic doesn’t underwrite the field, but is the field of conditions where the truth of something is found/not found.
But logic underwrites the field of meaning; meaning is the field of conditions where the coherence of something is found/not found, which is identical to the field of conditions where the logic of something is found/not found.
Logic: s(c) = true/false
Meaning: s(c) = logical/illogical
Yes, I think you’re right.
OK: the Space of Reasons.
OK: the Space of Senses.
Would you say it’s fair then to talk about the Space of Reasons and the Space of Senses? Is it fair to fair to say the Space of Reasons is the home of logic and the Space of Senses is the home of causality? Is it fair to say that “the world” is the contact between these two Spaces?
Logic also has another sense, where it means truth, as in, “I disagree with the logic of your proposition.” I used it in this sense unconsciously. I can see how that might be confusing under the circumstances.
Yeah, I mean, in that sense I would take ‘logic’ to signify something like “basic assumptions.”
Causality is a rule or a principle governing time; how is it anything other than a concept?
Causality, as a boundary for reality, is a product of inductive logic. If logic is the boundaries for reality, then, as a boundary for reality, causality is integrated, as one criterion, into a map illustrating the conditions where something is true and the conditions where something is false.
You may object that, “In epistemology, only deductive logic is valid.”
My answer is that even deductive logic and all of metaphysics had to, at some point, be derived using inductive logic as a basis. Do you remember when I said that all philosophy is empirically derived?
I was probably — incorrectly — picturing causality as one situation after another. Though I should note that ‘situation’ is in this way as incoherent as ‘sense-data’.
Is it fair to call it a measurement of operations?
I can understand this if by ’empiricism’ you mean thinking through operations. That makes ‘rationalism’: thinking through empiricism, or thinking through thinking through operations.
Really? What series of repeated observations led you to inductively infer that modus tollens (*) is a deductively valid form of inference?
Is there a different series of observations which might have falsified the validity of M.T., had you encountered it? If so, what would the hypothetical falsifying case(s) look like?
(*) “If p, then q. It is not the case that q. Therefore: it is not the case that p. QED.”
Looking at the above response as a whole, I wonder: if we say that empiricism is thinking through operations, and rationalism is thinking through thinking through operations, then why not say that causality is thinking about thinking through thinking through operations? And in this way, we’re not infringing on causality’s role in natural science as the measurement of cause and effect; we’re naming the measuring stick itself.
In this context — causality as a measuring stick — we can say that this measuring stick is time a priori.
You’re implying that causality comes and goes, as it’s existence is dependent upon the observer.
But causality is a universal law.
You’re proposing the possibility of something in the world that is affected by nothing and affects nothing. A member of such a class of things would be undetectable; it could pass right through us unnoticed; it would have no attributes; it wouldn’t even affect others of its type, it would have no mass nor velocity nor structure nor form, as all these things require interaction. In what sense could it even be said to exist?
Essentially, you’re saying that there are no absolutes, and so “Anything goes.”, but you are forgetting to distinguish between logical induction and “inductive” fallacy. Deductive logic itself is inductively derived and so is also not absolute, but I don’t see you saying that deductive logic is a needlessly narrow view of the world. The idea of a world unbounded by causality, just as the idea of a world unbounded by logic, is no idea at all; it’s just incoherent nonsense.
E.g., contradictions, violation of causality, inconsistency.
To say that something follows logic means that it is logically determined to be true. My guess is that philosophers tend to avoid these types of vernacular words and expressions and so tend to forget what they mean.
For what logic is, i.e., one of the criteria of a map illustrating the conditions where something is true and the conditions where something is false.
Logic is the boundaries. Causality is one of them. Any universal law is one of the boundaries; to defy a universal law is to defy logic. If a universal law is supplanted by a transcending principle, then what we consider to be logic must be corrected.
Yes, but they display much more than just deductive reason; they both display and govern the form of everything.
So there’s nothing incoherent about “8 is a number” after all; it just has an implicit redundancy that makes it a waste of time.
But there are times when it may not be known to which formal concept a proper concept belongs, e.g., a child may ask, “What is hydrogen?” Among other things, it would be reasonable to answer, “Hydrogen is an element.”
A child may recognize 8; know its name is eight, but not yet know it’s a number or even what a number is. A child may ask, “What is 8.” Among other things, it would be reasonable to answer, “8 is a number.”
So, if I say,”It’s my proposal that MBH likes to demonize and ridicule Glen Beck because he feels the need to be politically correct.”, then you would reply,”Glen Beck.”
You are confusing your “facts”. Why can’t it be a fact that something doesn’t exist?
‘The substance of the world’ is a general category for what things? I thought it was only the essence of all things. Do you mean compounds and elements; as in “Each kind of thing has its own kind of substance.”? Which meaning of substance are you using?
When you use an “x” to represent substance, it doesn’t stand for “substance” just as “substance” doesn’t stand for “substance”; it stands for the particular kind of substance; “substance”(x).
just as:
“x” doesn’t stand for “number”; it stands for a particular number; “number”(x).
So, if you’re using “x” for “substance”, you’re implying that “substance” is a variable “x”, where the particular “x” determines physical properties.
So now we have another meaning for substance to confuse things further.
Not just names, but properties.
That’s right; Einstein’s relativity is senseless.
A standing wave is a wave.
And so it must be; when your theory is senseless.
Actually…illogical space. If you want a proper human symbol for “irrational”, then replace all your iterations of “Glen Beck” with “Einstein”.