back to the beginning: the limitations of language

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Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

The Purpose of Philosophy

Included in Wittgenstein’s list of nonsense, as well as the logic of language, is any talk about ethics, aesthetics, religion and mathematics. In fact, all philosophical reflection is meaningless.

Mathematics?

As for the others, my own frame of mind here revolves around the assumption that in a No God world meaning is existential. In other words, given our day to day social, political and economic interactions meaning is everywhere. Much of it we share objectively. On the other hand, pertaining to ethics, aesthetics and religion “failures to communicate” are as well often everywhere.

To many, this conclusion is incredible. Many philosophers devote their efforts to discussing ethical arguments, for example; why would they do this if all they say is meaningless?

Exactly. While an argument might be made that all reflection is philosophically meaningless, once you bring that…“down to Earth”?

Look around the globe. Meaning up the wazoo, right?

On one way of reading the Tractatus, Wittgenstein’s main message is the meaningless of philosophy in general. So the picture ‘theory’ I discussed above should not be called a theory at all, for a theory can be stated meaningfully. However, even though philosophical sentences are meaningless, philosophy as an activity can show us certain things – things, that is, that cannot be said meaningfully.

Again, however, says who? And given what particular set of circumstances? Me? I tend to make what I construe to be a crucial distinction between what things mean to us “in our heads” and what we are then able to demonstrate that, in fact, all reasonable men and women are obligated to share that meaning.

[iambiguous]

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus.

In reading the Tractatus, we are not being presented with arguments which attempt to establish a conclusion, for to do so would rely on the subject matter being the kind of thing that can be talked about meaningfully.

That’s basically my point as well. There can be a precise relationship between words and worlds when the words describe and encompass a world derived from the laws of nature. Words that are “naturally” true for everyone.

Though even in regard to conflicting goods and moral conflagrations there are any number of things that can be accepted as in fact true for everyone involved.

They then just reach a point where in reacting to particular words in the is/ought world they reach what can become radically different moral philosophies.

But the aims of the Tractatus, and of philosophy in general, are not the same as the aims of science. Instead, for Wittgenstein, philosophy aims at the clarification of our thoughts. Through pursuing philosophy as an activity, we come to realize the boundaries of sense.

On the other hand, science continues to clarify any number of material interactions. How else to explain extraordinary engineering feats and, well, this technology in and of itself. Where’s the philosophical equivalent of that pertaining to ethics and political science?

As for the “boundaries of sense”, tell that to the objectivists here. Their own senses have come to conclude that their own boundaries “necessarily” devolve into One True Path.