Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Letters to Russell' and 'Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

19. Language / D. Propositions / 4. Mental Propositions
A thought is mental constituents that relate to reality as words do [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: Does a Gedanke [thought] consist of words? No! But of psychical constituents that have the same sort of relation to reality as words.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Letters to Russell [1919], p.125), quoted by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 4B
     A reaction: This is roughly my view of propositions, as non-lingustic mental events. The 'psychical constituents' seem to be concepts, in a psychological rather than a Fregean sense. This idea allowed transfer of his representation theory from thought to language.
19. Language / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
Plato's whole philosophy may be based on being duped by reification - a figure of speech [Benardete,JA on Plato]
     Full Idea: Plato is liable to the charge of having been duped by a figure of speech, albeit the most profound of all, the trope of reification.
     From: comment on Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12
     A reaction: That might be a plausible account if his view was ridiculous, but given how many powerful friends Plato has, especially in the philosophy of mathematics, we should assume he was cleverer than that.