display all the ideas for this combination of texts
19 ideas
| 12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
| Full Idea: No idea can be properly understood apart from its history. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is somewhat dubious. Comte is preparing the ground for asserting positivism by rejecting out-of-date theology and metaphysics. The history is revealing, but can be misleading, when a meaning shifts. Try 'object' in logic. |
| 12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
| Full Idea: Our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes in succession through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictitious state, the metaphysical or abstract state, and the scientific or positive state. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 5077 for the abstraction step. The idea that there is a 'law' here, as Comte thinks, is daft, but something of what he describes is undeniable. I suspect, though, that science rests on abstractions, so the last part is wrong. |
| 2937 | What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 7) | |
| A reaction: This is either a boring truism, or points towards some sort of verificationism (where we can speak meaninglessly). Compare Ideas 7973 and 6870. |
| 6870 | I say (contrary to Wittgenstein) that philosophy expresses what we thought we must be silent about [Ansell Pearson on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I recognise the incredible force of Wittgenstein's closing statement in the 'Tractatus', but I hold the opposite view: philosophy exists to give expression to that which we think we can only remain silent about. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 7) by Keith Ansell Pearson - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.267 | |
| A reaction: A wonderful remark, with which I totally agree. Compare Idea 1596. I think it is just a fact that philosophers are able to articulate a huge number of ideas which other intelligent people find very interesting but on which they are unable to speak. |
| 2944 | If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Just the sort of unsubstantiated metaphysical claim that philosophers are always making. |
| 9810 | The 'Tractatus' is a masterpiece of anti-philosophy [Badiou on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The 'Tractatus' is without doubt one of the masterpieces of anti-philosophy. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Alain Badiou - Mathematics and Philosophy: grand and little p.16 | |
| A reaction: French philosophers do love making wicked remarks like that. It seems that analysis is anti-philosophy, or 'little' philosophy in Badiou's parlance. |
| 23459 | This work solves all the main problems, but that has little value [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. ….and this work shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is LW's deep pessimism about the value of philosophy, right from the start. You can only idolise LW if you agree with him on this. |
| 23512 | Once you understand my book you will see that it is nonsensical [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who understands me eventually recognises my propositions as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.54) | |
| A reaction: A much discussed passage. It can't possibly say that his book is pointless, because you can't attain this recognition without climbing his ladder. He speaks like an eastern guru. Perhaps Hume should have ended 'so commit my book to the flames'? |
| 12112 | Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The development of positivism was caused by the concept of metaphysical agents gradually becoming so empty through oversubtle qualification that all right-minded persons considered them to be only the abstract names of the phenomena in question. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I have quite a lot of sympathy with this thesis, but not couched in this negative way. I take abstraction to be essential to scientific thought, and wisdom to occur amongst the higher reaches of the abstractions. |
| 2938 | The limits of my language means the limits of my world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The limits of my language means the limits of my world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: This is dangerous rubbish. For a start, if you accept (as you should) the existence of propositions, our heads are full of unarticulated ones. And truth emerges by degrees from what cannot be articulated. |
| 6429 | All complex statements can be resolved into constituents and descriptions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the complexes completely. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0201) | |
| A reaction: Russell says this embodies Wittgenstein's belief in analysis. Obviously Wittgenstein is making this claim 'in principle', as life is very short, and people are rather dim. I don't know how to begin evaluating such a claim. |
| 23492 | Our language is an aspect of biology, and so its inner logic is opaque [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.002) | |
| A reaction: It is normally assumed that ordinary language philosophy was derived from the later Wittgenstein, but this para in the Tractatus seems to contain the germ of the idea. He is pessimistic about finding logical forms. |
| 23510 | Most philosophical questions arise from failing to understand the logic of language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.003) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what the scope of 'logic' is here. I suppose it means everything about language which is expounded in the Tractatus. I assume this includes Plato and Aristotle? I don't think I agree. It's about concepts, not about logic. |
| 23499 | This book says we should either say it clearly, or shut up [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This also provides the last sentence of his book. I think this is an axiom of modern analytic philosophy. The dream is to clarify everything, and belief that this is possible puts logic centre-stage, as the most precise language available. |
| 12106 | Positivism gives up absolute truth, and seeks phenomenal laws, by reason and observation [Comte] |
| Full Idea: In the positive state, the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute truth, gives up the search for hidden and final causes. It endeavours to discover, by well-combined reasoning and observation, the actual laws of phenomena. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Positivism attempted to turn the Humean regularity view of laws into a semi-religion. It is striking how pessimistic Comte was (as was Hume) about the chances of science revealing deep explanations. He would be astoundeds. |
| 12111 | Positivism is the final state of human intelligence [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The positive philosophy represents the true final state of human intelligence. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of remark which made Comte notorious, and it looks a bit extravagant now, but the debate about his view is still ongoing. I am certainly sympathetic to his general drift. |
| 12114 | Science can drown in detail, so we need broad scientists (to keep out the metaphysicians) [Comte] |
| Full Idea: Getting lost in a mass of detail is the weak side of positivism, where partisans of theology and metaphysics may attack with some hope of success. ...We must train scientists who will consider all the different branches of positive science. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This would be Comte's answer now to those who claim there is still a role for metaphysics within the scientific world view. I would say that metaphysics not only takes an overview, but also deals with higher generalisations than Comte's general scientist. |
| 12116 | Only positivist philosophy can terminate modern social crises [Comte] |
| Full Idea: We may look upon the positive philosophy as constituting the only solid basis for the social reorganisation that must terminate the crisis in which the most civilized nations have found themselves for so long. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is proposing not only to use positivist methods to solve social problems (he coined the word 'sociology'), but is also proposing that positivism itself should act as the unifying belief-system for future society. Science will be our religion. |
| 23508 | Science is all the true propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of the natural sciences). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.11) | |
| A reaction: So if it is true, it is science. What about truths about science? What about true speculations beyond science? What about bad science? What about trivial everyday truths? This is said to be a rare precursor of logical positivism in Tractatus. |