53 ideas
18730 | The history of philosophy only matters if the subject is a choice between rival theories [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: If philosophy were a matter of choice between rival theories, then it would be sound to teach it historically. But if it is not, then it is a fault to teach it historically, because it is quite unnecessary; we can tackle the subject direct. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V A) | |
A reaction: Wittgenstein was a bit notorious for not knowing the history of the subject terribly well, and this explains why. Presumably our tackling the subject direct will not have the dreadful consequence of producing yet another theory. |
18704 | Philosophy tries to be rid of certain intellectual puzzles, irrelevant to daily life [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is the attempt to be rid of a particular kind of puzzlement. This 'philosophical' puzzlement is one of the intellect and not of instinct. Philosophical puzzles are irrelevant to our every-day life. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.1) | |
A reaction: All enquiry begins with puzzles, and they are cured by explanations, which result in understanding. In that sense he is right. I entirely disagree that the puzzles are irrelevant to daily life. |
18710 | Philosophers express puzzlement, but don't clearly state the puzzle [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Philosophers as 'Why?' and 'What?' without knowing clearly what their questions are. They are expressing a feeling of mental uneasiness. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.1) | |
A reaction: He suggests it is childish to express puzzlement, instead of asking for precise information. How odd. All enquiries start with vague puzzlement, which gradually comes into focus, or else is abandoned. |
18732 | We don't need a theory of truth, because we use the word perfectly well [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: It is nonsense to try to find a theory of truth, because we can see that in everyday life we use the word quite clearly and definitely in various different senses. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V B) | |
A reaction: This was a year before Tarski published his famous theory of truth for formal languages. Prior to that, most philosophers were giving up on truth. Would he say the same about 'gravity' or 'inflation'? |
18714 | We already know what we want to know, and analysis gives us no new facts [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: In philosophy we know already all that we want to know; philosophical analysis does not give us any new facts. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B V.1) |
18706 | Words of the same kind can be substituted in a proposition without producing nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: 'Blue' and 'brown' are of the same kind, for the substitution of one for the other, though it may falsify the proposition, does not make nonsense of it. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4) | |
A reaction: He chooses an easy example, because they are determinates of the determinable 'coloured'. What if I say 'the sky is blue', and then substitute 'frightening' for 'blue'? |
18719 | Grammar says that saying 'sound is red' is not false, but nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: If grammar says that you cannot say that a sound is red, it means not that it is false to say so but that it is nonsense - i.e. not a language at all. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B IX.6) | |
A reaction: I am baffled as to why he thinks 'grammar' is what prohibits such a statement. Surely the world, the nature of sound and colour, is what makes the application of the predicate wrong. Sounds aren't coloured, so they can't be red. False, not nonsense. |
18735 | Talking nonsense is not following the rules [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Talking nonsense is not following the rules. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C X) | |
A reaction: He doesn't seem to distinguish between syntax and semantics, and makes it sound as if all nonsense is syntactic, which it isn't. |
18731 | There is no theory of truth, because it isn't a concept [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: It is wrong to say that there is any one theory of truth, for truth is not a concept. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V B) | |
A reaction: This makes you wonder how he understood the word 'concept'. In most modern discussions truth seems to be a concept, and in Frege it can be an unsaturated predicate which is satisfied by sentences or thoughts. |
18707 | All thought has the logical form of reality [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Thought must have the logical form of reality if it is to be thought at all. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A V.1) | |
A reaction: This links nicely the idea that true thoughts somehow share the structure of what they refer to, with the idea of logical form in logic. But maybe logical form is a fiction we offer in order to obtain a spurious map of reality. |
18724 | In logic nothing is hidden [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: In logic nothing is hidden. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XII.3) | |
A reaction: If so, then the essence of logic must be there for all to see. The rules of natural deduction are a good shot at showing this. |
18709 | Laws of logic are like laws of chess - if you change them, it's just a different game [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: I might as well question the laws of logic as the laws of chess. If I change the rules it is a different game and there is an end of it. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A XI.3) | |
A reaction: No, that isn't the end of it, because there are meta-criteria for preferring one game to another. Why don't we just give up classical logic? It would be such fun to have a wild wacky logic. We can start with 'tonk'. |
18736 | Contradiction is between two rules, not between rule and reality [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Contradiction is between one rule and another, not between rule and reality. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C XIII) | |
A reaction: If I say 'he is sitting' and 'he is standing', it seems to be reality which produces the contradiction. What 'rule' could possibly do it? The rule which says sitting and standing are incompatible? But what makes that so? |
18723 | We may correctly use 'not' without making the rule explicit [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Correct use does not imply the ability to make the rules explicit. Understanding 'not' is like understanding a move in chess. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XII.1) |
18718 | Saying 'and' has meaning is just saying it works in a sentence [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: When we say that the word 'and' has meaning what we mean is that it works in a sentence and is not just a flourish. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VIII.2) |
18727 | A person's name doesn't mean their body; bodies don't sit down, and their existence can be denied [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: The meaning of the words 'Professor Moore' is not a certain human body, because we do not say that the meaning sits on the sofa, and the words occur in the proposition 'Professor Moore does not exist'. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B Easter) | |
A reaction: Brilliant. Love it. Kripke ending up denying the existence of 'meanings'. |
1553 | No perceptible object is truly straight or curved [Protagoras] |
Full Idea: No perceptible object is geometrically straight or curved; after all, a circle does not touch a ruler at a point, as Protagoras used to say, in arguing against the geometers. | |
From: Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE], B07), quoted by Aristotle - Metaphysics 998a1 |
18738 | We don't get 'nearer' to something by adding decimals to 1.1412... (root-2) [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: We say we get nearer to root-2 by adding further figures after the decimal point: 1.1412.... This suggests there is something we can get nearer to, but the analogy is a false one. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], Notes) |
18708 | Infinity is not a number, so doesn't say how many; it is the property of a law [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: 'Infinite' is not an answer to the question 'How many?', since the infinite is not a number. ...Infinity is the property of a law, not of an extension. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A VII.2) |
18737 | There are no positive or negative facts; these are just the forms of propositions [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: There are no positive or negative facts. 'Positive' and 'negative' refer to the form of propositions, and not to the facts which verify or falsify them. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C XIII) | |
A reaction: Personally I think if we are going to allow the world to be full of 'facts', then there are negative, conjunctive, disjunctive and hypothetical facts. |
18715 | Using 'green' is a commitment to future usage of 'green' [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: If I say this is green, I must say that other things are green too. I am committed to a future usage. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VI.2) | |
A reaction: This seems to suggest that the eternal verity of a universal concept is just a convention of stability in a language. |
18726 | For each necessity in the world there is an arbitrary rule of language [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: To a necessity in the world there corresponds an arbitrary rule in language. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XIV.2) | |
A reaction: This seems to be hardcore logical positivism, making all necessities arbitrary. Compare Quine on the number of planets. |
18712 | Understanding is translation, into action or into other symbols [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Understanding is really translation, whether into other symbols or into action. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.5) | |
A reaction: The second part of this sounds like pure pragmatism. To do is to understand? I doubt it. Do animals understand anything? |
1549 | Everything that exists consists in being perceived [Protagoras] |
Full Idea: Everything that exists consists in being perceived. | |
From: Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]), quoted by Didymus the Blind - Commentary on the Psalms (frags) | |
A reaction: A striking anticipation of Berkeley's "esse est percipi" (to be is to be perceived). |
18280 | We live in sense-data, but talk about physical objects [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: The world we live in is the world of sense-data, but the world we talk about is the world of physical objects. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], p.82), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 13 'Verif' | |
A reaction: I really like that one. Even animals, I surmise, think of objects quite differently from the way they immediately experience them. |
18729 | Part of what we mean by stating the facts is the way we tend to experience them [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: There is no need of a theory to reconcile what we know about sense data and what we believe about physical objects, because part of what we mean by saying that a penny is round is that we see it as elliptical in such and such conditions. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C III) | |
A reaction: This is an interesting and cunning move to bridge the gap between our representations and reallity. We may surmise how a thing really is, but then be surprised by the sense-data we get from it. |
18734 | If you remember wrongly, then there must be some other criterion than your remembering [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: If you remember wrongly, then there must be some other criterion than your remembering. If you admit another test, then your memory itself is not the test. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C VII) | |
A reaction: If I fear that I am remembering some private solitary event wrongly, there is no other criterion to turn to, so I'm stuck. Sometimes dubious memories are all we have. |
1545 | Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything [Protagoras, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything. | |
From: report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE], A01) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.51 |
3305 | There is no more purely metaphysical doctrine than Protagorean relativism [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: No purer metaphysical doctrine can possibly be found than the Protagorean thesis that to be (anything at all) is to be relative ( to something or other). | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.3 |
1547 | Man is the measure of all things - of things that are, and of things that are not [Protagoras] |
Full Idea: He began one of his books as follows: 'Man is the measure of all things - of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not'. | |
From: Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE], B01), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.51 |
3313 | If my hot wind is your cold wind, then wind is neither hot nor cold, and so not as cold as itself [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: Because the wind is cold to me but not you, Protagoras takes it to in itself neither cold nor not-cold. Accordingly, I very much doubt that he can allow the wind to be exactly as cold as itself. | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.8 |
3317 | You can only state the problem of the relative warmth of an object by agreeing on the underlying object [Benardete,JA on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: Only if the thing that is cold to me is precisely identical with the thing that is not cold to you can Protagoras launch his argument, but then it is seen to be the thing in itself that exists absolutely speaking. | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.8 |
247 | God is "the measure of all things", more than any man [Plato on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: In our view it is God who is pre-eminently the "measure of all things", much more so than any "man", as they say. | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Plato - The Laws 716c |
612 | Relativists think if you poke your eye and see double, there must be two things [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: In fact there is no difference between Protagoreanism and saying this: if you stick your finger under your eyes and make single things seem two, then they are two, just because they seem to be two. | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1063a06 |
606 | Protagoras absurdly thought that the knowing or perceiving man is 'the measure of all things' [Aristotle on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: When Protagoras quipped that man is the measure of all things, he had in mind, of course, the knowing or perceiving man. The grounds are that they have perception/knowledge, and these are said to be the measures of objects. Utter nonsense! | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1053b |
18721 | Explanation and understanding are the same [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: For us explanation and understanding are the same, understanding being the correlate of explanation. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XI.2) | |
A reaction: I'm not convinced that they are 'the same', but they are almost interdependent ideas. Strevens has a nice paper on this. |
18720 | Explanation gives understanding by revealing the full multiplicity of the thing [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: An explanation gives understanding, ...but it cannot teach you understanding, it cannot create understanding. It makes further distinctions i.e. it increases multiplicity. When multiplicity is complete, then there is no further misunderstanding. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B X.3) | |
A reaction: The thought seems to resemble Aristotle's idea of definition as gradual division of the subject. To understand is the dismantle the parts and lay them out before us. Wittgenstein was very interested in explanation at this time. |
18716 | A machine strikes us as being a rule of movement [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: We are accustomed to look on a machine as the expression of a rule of movement. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VII.2) | |
A reaction: What a beautiful definition of a machine! I like this because it connects the two halves of my view of the 'essence' of a thing, as derived from Aristotle, as both a causal mechanism and an underlying principle. Cf Turing machines. |
18713 | If an explanation is good, the symbol is used properly in the future [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: The criterion of an explanation is whether the symbol explained is used properly in the future. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B II.4) | |
A reaction: This appears to be a pragmatic criterion for the best explanation. It presumably rests on his doctrine that meaning is use, so good explanation is understanding meanings. |
18717 | Thought is an activity which we perform by the expression of it [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Thought is an activity which we perform by the expression of it, and lasts as long as the expression. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VIII) | |
A reaction: I take this to be an outmoded view of thought, which modern cognitive science has undermined, by showing how little of our thinking is actually conscious. |
18725 | A proposition draws a line around the facts which agree with it [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: A proposition gives reality a degree of freedom; it draws a line round the facts which agree with it, and distinguishes them from those which do not. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XIII.2) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the idea of meaning as the range of truth conditions. Propositions as sets of possible worlds extends this into possible facts which agree with the proposition. Most facts neither agree nor disagree with some proposition. |
18728 | The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification (and two propositions cannot have the same verification). | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C I) | |
A reaction: Does this mean that if two sentences have the same mode of verification, then they must be expressing the same proposition? I guess so. |
18705 | Words function only in propositions, like levers in a machine [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Words function only in propositions, like the levers in a machine. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4) | |
A reaction: Hm. Consider the word 'tree'. Did you manage to do it? Was it just a noise? |
18711 | A proposition is any expression which can be significantly negated [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: Any affirmation can be negated: if it has sense to say p it also has sense to say ¬p. ...A proposition therefore is any expression which can be significantly negated. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.2) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure about 'therefore'. I'm thinking you would have to already grasp the proposition in order to apply his negation test. |
6016 | Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD] |
Full Idea: Protagoras and Hippias evidently believed that convention was an improvement on nature, whereas later sophists such as Antiphon, Thrasymachus and Callicles seemed to contend that conventional morality was undermined because it was 'against nature'. | |
From: report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Fred D. Miller jr - Classical Political Thought | |
A reaction: This gets to the heart of a much more interesting aspect of the nomos-physis (convention-nature) debate, rather than just a slanging match between relativists and the rest. The debate still goes on, over issues about the free market and intervention. |
1580 | For Protagoras the only bad behaviour is that which interferes with social harmony [Protagoras, by Roochnik] |
Full Idea: For Protagoras the only constraint on human behaviour is that it not interfere with social harmony, the essential condition for human survival. | |
From: report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.63 |
205 | Protagoras contradicts himself by saying virtue is teachable, but then that it is not knowledge [Plato on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: Protagoras claimed that virtue was teachable, but now tries to show it is not knowledge, which makes it less likely to be teachable. | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Plato - Protagoras 361b |
1659 | Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos] |
Full Idea: The distinction of punishment from revenge must be regarded as one of the most momentous of the conceptual discoveries ever made by humanity in the course of its slow, tortuous, precarious, emergence from barbaric tribalism. Protagoras originated it. | |
From: report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.187 |
532 | Successful education must go deep into the soul [Protagoras] |
Full Idea: Education does not take root in the soul unless one goes deep. | |
From: Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE], B11), quoted by Plutarch - On Practice 178.25 |
1552 | He spent public money on education, as it benefits the individual and the state [Protagoras, by Diodorus of Sicily] |
Full Idea: He used legislation to improve the condition of illiterate people, on the grounds that they lack one of life's great goods, and thought literacy should be a matter of public concern and expense. | |
From: report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Diodorus of Sicily - Universal History 12.13.3.3 |
18733 | Laws of nature are an aspect of the phenomena, and are just our mode of description [Wittgenstein] |
Full Idea: The laws of nature are not outside phenomena. They are part of language and of our way of describing things; you cannot discuss them apart from their physical manifestation. | |
From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V C) | |
A reaction: I suppose this amounts to a Humean regularity theory - that the descriptions pick out patterns in the manifestations. I like the initial claim that they are not external to phenomena. |
12709 | Motion is not absolute, but consists in relation [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: In reality motion is not something absolute, but consists in relation. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Motion [1677], A6.4.1968), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3 | |
A reaction: It is often thought that motion being relative was invented by Einstein, but Leibniz wholeheartedly embraced 'Galilean relativity', and refused to even consider any absolute concept of motion. Acceleration is a bit trickier than velocity. |
1551 | He said he didn't know whether there are gods - but this is the same as atheism [Diogenes of Oen. on Protagoras] |
Full Idea: He said that he did not know whether there were gods - but this is the same as saying that he knew there were no gods. | |
From: comment on Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE], A23) by Diogenes (Oen) - Wall inscription 11 Chil 2 |