…Which is a pretty impressive feat all things considered!
But there’s something to this challenge.
I think we can understand Ierrellus’ as pointing out that we should be careful not to state the problem like this:
This is the project for Russell and the Analytical group. You clarify problems by removing mistakes, then you are able to solve the problems.
Russell and his bunch originally understood Wittgenstein as another philosopher working on this project. Russell write the preface to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In this preface he explains Wittgenstein in just such a way, but adds at the end that Wittgenstein didn’t get it quite right. When it came to the aspects of the Tractatus which Russell found at fault, he simply wrote them off as anomalies. Later readings of Wittgenstein try to show how these so-called anomalies actually undermine Russell’s project, and the Analyticals eventually fall out of favor in general (not necessarily directly by Wittgenstein’s hand).
Wittgenstein is not in the business of removing mistakes, and I think the critique John Jones was getting at is not about removing mistakes, but dealing with them in a different way. For sure, the mistakes are important, but you don’t remove them persay. The assertion that truth is arrived at by removing mistakes is a product of the sort of representational thinking about truth which is central for Russell-Whitehead, and perhaps surpassed in Wittgenstein’s later work in the Philosophical Investigations.
Yes, a blooper reel. It may or may not be historically pertinent. The blooper reel would be a set of reminders, a map, given through the example of bloopers. That’s all that can be written about philosophy.
I’ve had ten years of …banging pipes, rumbling washing machines, sparking toasters and blown light bulbs. After ten years you get used to it. I can’t be asked to even flap my arms about it now. I generally hang around if at least 10 per cent of the stuff in the kitchen works.
If that’s true (and I doubt it) then that’s really good. It would be really REALLY good if there was a good reason why I hadn’t heard about it earlier. Perhaps academics weren’t bothered by it.
[free-thinking here - By the phrase “history of foundations” I refer to the foundations of the pursuits of man, pursuits such as sciences, arts, ethics, etc. By “foundations” I refer to the principles through which the elements of their discourse are given their meaning. The meaning or manifestation of elements in a particular discourse (such as matter, idealism, etc) is given through their foundation or framework which is not an element itself. Academic philosophy ties foundations to date, personality and transmission or movement of ideas.
The establishment of foundations must be a grammatical pursuit, unlike the elements of foundations which can merely be listed. So I could have said that academic philosophy is about “the history of elements” rather than he “history of foundations”. ]
History of Foundations?:
Hm. Now I get my own point. Vitally, “foundations” can be taken to be a list of the elements of a discourse - discursive, or it can be taken to be a condition for the manifestation of the elements of a discourse. So, it would seem that a “history of foundations” refers to the former - a discursive interpretation of “foundations”. Whereas what we need to work on is a grammatical study of foundations, for only a grammtical examination, freed from the elements of discourse, can bear fruit here. The two diferent interpretations of “foundation” are not different meanings of the word because the word is itself not being presented as distinctive elements, like the words/meanings in a dictionary.
That’s probably why I felt that, when I wrote the phrase “history of foundations”, some more work needed to be done.
Well if it wasn’t historically pertinent it would be indefinitely long. I can think of mistake after mistake that COULD be made. Might as well just pick the ones people have made.
Not that this is at all what philosophy actually is. I honestly think that this idea of philosophy would be tossed in the blooper reel as well.
Yes, as I said above, elsewhere, a list of mistakes won’t do for philosophy if we take the mistakes to be about particulars, or about general principles or rules for the governance of particulars. When we work on foundations we are not working on particulars. What work we ought to be doing on foundations has been described as logico-grammatical, etc.
As for the rest, it looks like you might think that it’s better for cowboys to be enemies than indian-lovers.
Sometimes I’ve found it necessary to administer an old-fashioned intellectual beatdown on you, in the name of your own benefit. I don’t need a “thank you”—I’m even too modest for that. … But you should know, that when a dentist fills a cavity because you don’t brush properly, there is pain. And when you have to take a spoonfull of some harsh stuff because you’ve been catching germs, there is pain. And when I operate, relieving you of the blamable opinions of a lifetime of shady thinking, I will most definately be bringing the pain, as well. Don’t cry foul. I’m being…magnanimous.