Psychic Detectives and Wittgenstein

[Jonesboy]

PSYCHIC DETECTIVES, WITTGENSTEIN and KANT

Anyone who has watched TV’s “Psychic detectives” (freeview UK, ch.68) will have noted how, according to the police themselves, all the information the psychics give them is not only always correct, but it often appears as though their involvement skews physical events toward a solution.

This suggests, against Wittgenstein and his “language games”, that all objects, like keys, photographs, rooms, places, etc. are the source of their own reality, giving out their astral and physical vibes or whatever it is objects seem to do.

Wittgenstein’s (and Kant’s) idea is exactly the opposite: that there are no pre-defined objects, because objects need boundaries and in Nature there are no boundaries. Instead, we, people, are the boundary-makers who set up the physical limits that define objects, through language games, etc.

The odd thing to note here is that, also against Wittgenstein, science, too, seems to tacitly accept the idea that objects set up their own physical boundaries. For example, they identify the brain’s “functions” in terms of the brain, seemingly failing to recognise the fact that the brain and its structures are set up by “the boundary-makers” - people reporting their experience; which supports Wittgenstein, of course.

Which begs the question, why, if Wittgenstein was spiritual, did he duplicate a Kantian view of objects - where objects are not independent items but are set up by us, the boundary-makers, through “language games” and “forms of life”?

This question points to the idea that it is the unthinking animism of science that Wittgenstein is instinctually opposed to, and all his works critical of the sciences feature this position strongly. For, science offers no grounds for its blasé animism, whereas for Wittgenstein objects ARE animistic and ARE announced independently of language games (recall his disgust at soldiers using a medical bed pan to carry holy water) but through a source, presumably spiritual, that he never talked about. After all, he makes enough allusions to the nonsense of that other animism - the hated blasé animism of science and logic, especially in the Tractatus.

[Zoot_Allures]

Go on.

[James_S_Saint]

Conflated subjectivism and objectivism by those having little, if any, understanding of the constituency of Truth - leading to mere double-talk. Despite what they recognized, neither Wittgenstein, Kant, nor Science understood the make of Truth and its association to Reality.

[Orbie]

@Jonesboy

PSYCHIC DETECTIVES, WITTGENSTEIN and KANT

Anyone who has watched TV’s “Psychic detectives” (freeview UK, ch.68) will have noted how, according
to the police themselves, all the information the psychics give them is not only always correct, but it often appears as though their involvement skews
physical events toward a solution.

This suggests, against Wittgenstein and his “language
games”, that all objects, like keys, photographs,
rooms, places, etc. are the source of their own reality, giving out their astral and physical vibes or whatever it is objects seem to do.

Wittgenstein’s (and Kant’s) idea is exactly the
opposite: that there are no pre-defined objects,
because objects need boundaries and in Nature there are no boundaries. Instead, we, people, are the boundary-makers who set up the physical limits that
define objects, through language games, etc.

The odd thing to note here is that, also against
Wittgenstein, science, too, seems to tacitly accept
the idea that objects set up their own physical boundaries. For example, they identify the brain’s “functions” in terms of the brain, seemingly failing to recognize the fact that the brain and its structures
are set up by “the boundary-makers” - people reporting their experience; which supports Wittgenstein, of course.

Which begs the question, why, if Wittgenstein was
spiritual, did he duplicate a Kantian view of objects -
where objects are not independent items but are set up by us, the boundary-makers, through “language games” and “forms of life”?

This question points to the idea that it is the
unthinking animism of science that Wittgenstein is
instinctually opposed to, and all his works critical of the sciences feature this position strongly. For, science offers no grounds for its blasé animism,
whereas for Wittgenstein objects ARE animistic and
ARE announced independently of language games (recall his disgust at soldiers using a medical bed pan to carry holy water) but through a source,
presumably spiritual, that he never talked about.
After all, he makes enough allusions to the nonsense of that other animism - the hated blasé animism of science and logic, especially in the Tractatus.

 The Tractatus ,has been noted by Pierce, to be applicable to moral and ethical questions, and limits do apply here, as separating philosophical from empirical questions.  there is no relevance to objective theory (objects) in general, and such limits,nor boundaries, as You put it would've an unnecessary and unwarranted stretch. The categorical imperative, seems justified, at any rate, regardless.  The concern here, is Wittgensteing prioritizing cognition after the foundations of the logic of language, and here the Tractatus flounder, because it concerns a psyche-empirical basis of exploring why the cognition would precede.  he is treating a psychological ,after with philosophical tools, and that is to beg the question, psychology, after all is preceded by philosophical analysis.

I do not think that an appeal to mysticism would give an adequate ground here, however it would not be able,to be defeated psychologically, either. William James among others, is an example of a case to be made.

[Orbie]

For more in depth analysis, the ongoing forum on the psychology of objectivism may shed further light on what is involved in a philosophical-psychological analysis.

[Jonesboy]

Orb, just a note to say that your inspirational poem at the end of your posts is full of typing errors - I mean big typing errors, and looked as though you couldn’t be bothered to fix them. Did you know that the English language uses a capital “I” and not a small “i” for the the first person pronoun? Don’t you have a spell check, or is it all part of your cool, casual style?

[omar]

@Jonesboy

PSYCHIC DETECTIVES, WITTGENSTEIN and KANT

Anyone who has watched TV’s “Psychic detectives” (freeview UK, ch.68) will have noted how, according to the police themselves, all the information the psychics give them is not only always correct, but it often appears as though their involvement skews physical events toward a solution.

This suggests, against Wittgenstein and his “language games”, that all objects, like keys, photographs, rooms, places, etc. are the source of their own reality, giving out their astral and physical vibes or whatever it is objects seem to do.

Wittgenstein’s (and Kant’s) idea is exactly the opposite: that there are no pre-defined objects, because objects need boundaries and in Nature there are no boundaries. Instead, we, people, are the boundary-makers who set up the physical limits that define objects, through language games, etc.

The odd thing to note here is that, also against Wittgenstein, science, too, seems to tacitly accept the idea that objects set up their own physical boundaries. For example, they identify the brain’s “functions” in terms of the brain, seemingly failing to recognise the fact that the brain and its structures are set up by “the boundary-makers” - people reporting their experience; which supports Wittgenstein, of course.

Which begs the question, why, if Wittgenstein was spiritual, did he duplicate a Kantian view of objects - where objects are not independent items but are set up by us, the boundary-makers, through “language games” and “forms of life”?

This question points to the idea that it is the unthinking animism of science that Wittgenstein is instinctually opposed to, and all his works critical of the sciences feature this position strongly. For, science offers no grounds for its blasé animism, whereas for Wittgenstein objects ARE animistic and ARE announced independently of language games (recall his disgust at soldiers using a medical bed pan to carry holy water) but through a source, presumably spiritual, that he never talked about. After all, he makes enough allusions to the nonsense of that other animism - the hated blasé animism of science and logic, especially in the Tractatus.

I think that LW was a very deep and complicated man. For example, the use of medical bed pan to carry holy water should have been accepted by him, based solely on his philosophy. But there is much that is not said and cannot be said, or put into words, and this is also part of his philosophy. In the end he spoke about the language game by what he saw rather than what he felt, I think, in my humble opinion. LW is in part an irrationalist, and as such the disgust of using a bed pan for holy water is instinctual.
I don’t think that LW philosophy stood at odds with science, but with a particular science that branded what it believes as what they “know”.