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From a Provincial Monk to his Friend in the Capital

Related to the question of whether there can be verification in ethics is Wittgenstein's remark that "the type of certainty is the type of language game".

Further about philosophical ethics. Is Wittgenstein's ineffable "the mystical" or is Socratic discourse of reason the guide in "no small matter, but how to live"? (The ethics of Socrates and Kant contrasted.)

Topics on this page ...

Context: logic of language or how language with meaning is distinguished from nonsense. Much of this page needs revising (Thinking in philosophy is not static). The title alludes to E.T.A. Hoffmann's Letter of a Cloistered Friar to his Friend in the Capital City (Hewett-Thayer (1948), p. 30). And the capital in this case? I don't know. (How quotation marks are used in logic-philosophy.)

Certainty in Ethics

Note: the following was an early exploration of its ideas, and it is rough. "A philosophical problem has the form: I don't know my way about." (PI § 123)

Background: Wittgenstein used his jargon expression "language game" in three ways, one being the comparison of primitive forms of language to games played according to strict rules (where what defines a game is its rules), another being in the sense of "parts of speech", where 'ethics-word' would be a "grammatical" (in Wittgenstein's jargon) category. But there is also a third sense ("proposition types"), which is, it appears, the topic of the present page.

Propositions are not used in ethics as they are used in the sense-perception activities of weighing objects and measuring length, which is how Plato thought that ethical propositions were or thought they should be (Euthyphro 7c), as is suggested by a misleading analogy between different regions of language. (Ironically, Plato appears not to have seen that the analogy to calculating in maths (ibid. 7b-c) is appropriate in the case of his own method of tautologies in ethics in Republic Book One (332a-335e), for pure mathematics is also tautological.) The rules of the "language games" (in the sense of proposition types) are different.

The kind of certainty is the kind of language game. (PI ii, xi, p. 224)

And I think it is correct to say that "the type of verification is the type of language game" (Ethics and verification). That is the background of this discussion.

Is Albert Schweitzer's ethics rational? (Werner Picht)

About Albert Schweitzer's "fellowship of those who bear the mark of pain", i.e. about the obligation of those whose suffering has been eased by medical care to make provision for the medical care of others, Werner Picht wrote:

... the moral obligation which is advanced here as matter of course proves on closer examination not to be so matter of course at all. On its own it is not universally compelling even though it may seem obvious enough to nobler souls. Schweitzer himself regards it as an idea which must conquer the world because of its "inexorable logic" [which "carries with it the intellect as well as the heart" On the Edge of the Primeval Forest, tr. Campion, p. 117 (my addition)]. Here too we once again recognize the urge which is in him to present those things he regards as obvious with the authority of "intellectual necessity" [as the outcome of "thought" (my addition)].

Now although the obligation certainly makes a powerful appeal to heart and conscience, it is not all that obvious and matter of course to rational thought. (Werner Picht, Albert Schweitzer [1959], tr. Fitzgerald (1964), p. 163)

How would Dickens' hard-fact man respond to Schweitzer's Reverence for Life? "I paid for my medical care out of my own funds; if I hadn't the funds I would not have sought care. Let the African pay for his care; and if he hasn't the wherewithal, then he must go without. I certainly have no obligation to pay for him."

Mr. Gradgrind was at home for the vacation. He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving something no doubt -- probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist. (Hard Times, xii, "Down")

Picht writes: "obvious enough to nobler souls" ... But isn't that what concerns ethics -- "the life that is noblest" (Epictetus)? Isn't the subject-matter of ethics, not merely a possible way of life, but the way of life that is in accord with rational moral virtue, which is the areté, the excellence that is proper and unique to man? (That is of course the key to this apparent dilemma, to contrast the noble man with the ignoble man: if the noble [= good, just, wise] man is indifferent to the suffering of others, then what is the ignoble man -- concerned? This is one of Plato's methods in ethics: the method of tautologies or antitheses.)

It is not often that the secularized expressions used by Schweitzer (Work of humanity! Human civilization!) so transparently reveal the background of Christian belief on which his thought is based. (Picht, p. 164)

(1) What does Picht mean by "Christian belief" -- i.e. what does 'belief' mean here? For Schweitzer, Jesus is "the Master", the one who calls "Follow me" and Schweitzer answers -- but not because this belief is Christian dogma. (2) Is the claim that "humanism is little more than secularized Christian ideas" really historically justified? Is free speech (Gorgias 461e) -- indeed, free thought -- really a Christian idea, pace what Schweitzer wrote about the Apostle Paul? Are there not humanist ideas in Greek and Roman Stoicism -- indeed, our concept 'humanity' was invented by the Roman Stoics. And it cannot be said that the Greeks thought nothing of compassion (mercy), because Aristotle's definition of 'kindness' belies that claim.

At the same time it is not often so clear that the real significance derives from this origin; and that it can, in fact, not be replaced by any supposedly compelling logical argumentation. (Picht, ibid.)

Is that using the correct logical = "grammatical" yardstick? Or does Picht show a fundamental misunderstanding, not of Schweitzer as such, but of the language of ethics, or better: of the "language game" (in the sense of "proposition type") of ethics? Picht uses the expression 'logical argumentation', but he gives no examples of its application: what does a "logical argument" in ethics look like (other than what Plato offers)?

"The non-rational conclusion of thought"

Well, but Schweitzer does say that there is a subjective element in what he calls "thought". (By 'thought' Schweitzer means thinking that is independent of tradition and received doctrine, never silencing questions or conforming to the spirit of the age. He means acceptance or rejection of ideas only after a long time pondering.)

Schweitzer writes that "if rational thought thinks itself out to a conclusion, it comes to something non-rational which, nevertheless, is a necessity of thought" (Civilization and Ethics, 2nd rev. ed. (1929), tr. Campion, p. xv), and so Schweitzer's thoughts are not "necessary" in the sense that other conclusions are not logically possible. But isn't that what we mean by 'necessary', that 'no other conclusion is logically possible'?

And so in this particular case, from Wittgenstein's grammatical point of view ("The kind of certainty is the kind of language game"), I don't think that Schweitzer has given a correct account of the "proposition type" of ethics -- as if by 'certainty' in ethics we meant subjective ("I am certain of the proposition") rather than objective certainty ("The proposition is certain"), which is the distinction between belief and knowledge.

In contrast to Etienne Gilson's principles, without which Gilson says "one cannot think at all", (which like Kant's innate categories would be "necessities of thought"), Schweitzer's "thoughts" come at the end of his thinking not at its beginning, as a conclusion comes at the end of an argument not at its beginning (if the argument isn't circular); his "thoughts" are based on experience and reasoning; they are not preconceptions. Nonetheless, his conclusion is, in Schweitzer's account of it, not logically necessary (as Plato's tautological rules of ethics are).

Schweitzer's ethics is not Kant's "categorical imperative", but it nonetheless belongs to the category 'irrational ethics', as does Wittgenstein's "absolute value" ethics.

"Compassion is the foundation of ethics"

But the conclusion "reverence for life", which Schweitzer calls a "necessity of thought", is not the only account of ethics Schweitzer gives. For he also says that compassion is the foundation of ethics (Civilization and Ethics 2e (1929), tr. Campion, xv, p. 169). Compassion is a human way of life, is it the specific excellence (areté = excellence) proper and unique to man? According to Socratic ethics (i.e. that part of philosophy concerned with "life and all that has to do with us) that specific excellence is rational (i.e. discourse of reason) moral virtue. Does Schweitzer say that compassion is defining of man -- that without compassion man is not recognizable as man (except e.g. in appearance)? And if he does, then is Schweitzer correct to found ethics on compassion?

Is this a question of points of reference? or are Schweitzer and Socrates in disagreement about a proposition that can be agreed to or refuted in dialectic (thesis and cross-question)?

Wittgenstein will say that the foundation of Schweitzer's ethics is, like all others, from a logical point of view more or less arbitrary, whereas Socrates will say that it is a question of fact -- because what the specific excellence of a thing is, e.g. man, is a fact of nature (I would like to hear Wittgenstein argue that the good for a thing is an existence that is in contradiction to its nature). Certainly Plato's method of antitheses or tautologies in ethics is objective, as are arguments about the results of "the good is the useful". (Note: by 'ethics' in philosophy is meant not a mere collection of values, but reasoning (reflection) about values, and in this sense "categorical imperatives" and "absolute value" are not ethics. And Wittgenstein, even after the TLP, said there were no propositions of ethics.)

I'd say, maybe untruly, that, despite what he says in the Philosophical Investigations (ii, xi, p. 224: "The kind of certainty is the kind of language game"), by using the standard of propositions of sense experience, Wittgenstein is following a misleading grammatical analogy, just as does Plato in the Euthyphro. They both try to apply the method of one "language game type" (namely propositions of sense experience) to a different "language game type" (namely ethics). And that is a grammatical category mistake, like asking how to use a tailor's tape-measure to measure time.

If compassion is the excellence proper and unique to man, then life in accord with that excellence is the good for man

In Schweitzer's "necessities of thought", unlike in Socratic ethics, there is subjective certainty (and 'objectivity' is undefined), whereas in language games of measurement there is objective certainty (and 'subjectivity' is undefined) .... Which is an interesting thought, but it is wrong. For if compassion is indeed the foundation of ethics (because it is the specific excellence that is both defining of, proper and unique to man), then does nothing objectively follow from that?

Can the life of rational moral virtue be reduced to compassion? Tolstoy's Resurrection reaches that conclusion: "When people think there is something more important than treating other people with love, that is when every cruelty becomes possible." But what of piety, courage, fairness (justice), and self-control? Rational moral virtue encompasses all these, whereas compassion does not.

Wittgenstein and Ethics

Can you say that by choosing not to investigate or give an account of the vocabulary of ethics (of that grammatical category or part of speech), Wittgenstein avoided the difficult problems in philosophy that Socrates confronted? Wittgenstein dismissed the problem of life as non-rational in TLP 6.521; "the riddle" cannot even be put into words. And if we look back to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, it may seem that Wittgenstein was not much interested in ethics -- but that would be wrong: Wittgenstein wrote to his publisher Ludwig Ficker and explained to his friend Paul Engelmann that the purpose of the book was ethical, that what is most important in our life is precisely what cannot be put into words. And that was why he did not talk about it.

Nevertheless, Wittgenstein did, to an extent (i.e. excluding discussion of any particular "ultimate value"), discuss ethics, as he did in his "Lecture on Ethics" (circa 1929-1930), as he did discuss religious belief (in lectures circa 1938) -- so Wittgenstein could have chosen to write about ethics in what he referred to as "my book" (i.e. the Philosophical Investigations), and yet he did not. Was that because the foundation of ethics is according to Wittgenstein "absolute value", discussion of which is nonsense? But he wrote his book to show that all philosophical discussions are nonsense (PI § 111).

Is an investigation of the grammatical category 'ethical proposition' that same as an investigation of the Foundations or Philosophy of Ethics? Compare the Foundations of Mathematics, e.g. geometry's "undefined terms" is one but not the only thing discussed.

I just do not understand why Wittgenstein devoted his last years to the philosophy of psychology, that is, to that grammatical class of words, rather than to our life's important questions. Did he believe that there was no need to talk about them, or that he had nothing worthwhile to say about them, or that talking about them would do more harm than good? (And yet he did talk intensely to his friends, particularly M. O'C. Drury and Rush Rhees, about them.)

Is silence a guide to how man should live his life?

The question sounds silly, foolishness, but it is the final proposition of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, sc. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (7, tr. Ogden). There is, nevertheless, something to be seen in the silence: "There is indeed the inexpressible [the "whereof one cannot speak"]. [Although it cannot be put into words, i.e. language that is not nonsense, "the inexpressible "] shows itself ..." (6.522). Wittgenstein calls what is shown (namely God, value) "the mystical" (ibid.), but at the same time he says that "The riddle does not exist" (6.5), that --

The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. (Is this not the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not say wherein this sense consisted?) (TLP 6.521, tr. Ogden)

That is not philosophy, not if philosophy is rational, which it is. If men "could not say wherein this sense consisted", then they did not know "wherein this sense consisted", and that means that "the sense of life" only seemed to become clear to them. Remember the Socratic standard for knowing in philosophy: If a man knows anything, he can explain what he knows to others (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). That is what makes philosophy rational (objective, verifiable); that is discourse of reason.

["Wittgenstein versus Philosophy": Pro et Contra Wittgenstein.]

Plato has Socrates say "we are discussing no small matter, but how to live", and out of our discussion a rational way to live may develop, e.g. if the good for a thing is the specific excellence that is proper and unique to that thing, then the good for man is rational (i.e. discourse of reason) moral virtue.

Is reason or "the mystical" the true guide in ethics? Is silence a guide to anything?

In his Lecture on Ethics (p. 11) Wittgenstein said it was impossible to explain what he meant by 'absolute value' (Was this a "grammatical remark"?), and if that is what the TLP says cannot be put into words, then Wittgenstein did not speak about ethics. But maybe there is an "on the other hand".

Ethics as exhortation rather than argument (Wittgenstein)

With respect to "no small matter, but how to live", Wittgenstein did not simply give practical advice, for when he told a young student at Cambridge, "Take life seriously!" that was not a statement about how best to reach an agreed-upon goal -- it was a statement about "absolute value" (although not a definition). It was like saying "The higher exists" in Engelmann's context.

Of course what Wittgenstein said to the student was an exhortation, not an argument. Wittgenstein did not say, "Here are the reasons that demonstrate why one ought to take life seriously." Nonetheless, an exhortation even if it merely assumes a proposition, namely that such-and-such is good or not good, is not silence. (Exhortation as a grammatical category, although it is not a proposition type.)

David Hume claimed that it not possible "to derive an ought from an is", and according to some philosophers exhortation to unjustifiable goals is the sum of the subject of ethics. But neither Socrates nor Plato agreed. They did discuss the correctness of the goals themselves: they did discuss how we ought live our life based on what is. Know thyself: life in accord with the specific excellence that is proper and unique to man is the good for man, and what that excellence is (what man's nature is), is a question of fact -- or, in other words, of an is.

But suppose someone said, "It may well be that the specific excellence proper and unique to man is rational -- i.e. discourse of reason -- moral virtue; however, calling life in accord with that excellence the good for man is quite arbitrary: there is no reason why one ought to live a life of reason, an examined rather than an unexamined life. Is philosophical reason logically obliged to accept that, saying, "Quite right! There is no disputing ethical points of reference? There is no real definition of the essence of man, of the that without which man would not be man" that is not more or less arbitrary? But not as if there were no facts in plain view, but only that all facts are already conceived facts, and all facts belong to a community of ideas. But not as if Plato, Wittgenstein, and we did not live in the same community.

"Why ought I to live a life of reason?" I want to call self-refuting, because the question sets reason as the standard of judgment: It asks "why", meaning it asks for reasons why man should be reasonable rather than unreasonable. The foundation of all standards of judgment, namely reason, cannot be used to refute itself: The combination of words 'Is logic logical? Is reason reasonable?' is nonsense.

Philosophy is not mere exhortation without reason. Philosophy -- the thinking we mean by the word 'philosophy' -- does not issue commands, which is what Wittgenstein presumed to do. For philosophy reason and experience alone must demonstrate whether a claim has meaning and whether it is true or false. (The exhortation to philosophy and virtue in Plato's Euthydemus 278d-282a is an example of philosophical exhortation.)

"Unnecessary and harmful"

The missionary, known for his deep evangelical faith, wondered aloud about taking a manuscript on philosophy [for safekeeping. But he agreed] to take charge of the writings, "although he admitted to me, he would have liked best to throw the heavy packet into the river, because he considered philosophy to be unnecessary and harmful". (Marshall, Poling, Schweitzer: A Biography (1971), p. 144; Schweitzer's full account in Out of My Life and Thought)

Was that Wittgenstein's view -- that philosophy is "unnecessary and harmful"? He wrote in 1947: "I am not certain I would prefer a continuation of my work by others to a change in the way we live that would make all these questions superfluous" (cf. CV p. 61). The words 'superfluous' and 'unnecessary' are equivalent.

Conformity to Nature

The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mold. So you must change the way you live and ... what is problematic will disappear. (ibid. p. 27)

What is unnecessary or superfluous, namely philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, would disappear from our life. (But of course, unnecessary ≠ unwanted, much less undesirable. Art, for instance, is not necessary. Man needs only air, water, food, shelter, but is the life of an animal worthy of a rational moral being or indeed worth living?)

The following remark is not an example of "passing over in silence". Neither is it the explicit expression of an elementary and ultimate value, but it appears to be the expression of an opinion that can be discussed. It does concern how man should live his life.

The people now making speeches against producing the bomb are undoubtedly the scum of the intellectuals ... (ibid. p. 49)

The translation was later changed to "the dregs of the intelligentsia" (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 131 66c: 19.8.1946]), but either way the metaphor alludes to a presumed worthless byproduct of fermentation. Wittgenstein's words would apply to Bertrand Russell, and, I imagine, after Wittgenstein's death, to Albert Schweitzer who, because he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1952) and what he believed went with it -- namely the obligation to be a spokesman for peace -- spoke out against nuclear bomb testing. In his Goethe address of 1928, Schweitzer wrote: "Before us, Goethe worried about and worked for his time" (tr. Neugroschel). Russell and Schweitzer did too, but what would it mean to say that Wittgenstein did? There is of course his contribution of philosophy -- although it was given only to those who attended his lectures.

Wittgenstein was by my not very bright lights a brilliant logician -- but of what philosophical worth is his work: "What has it to offer us when we demand from it those elemental [fundamental or basic] ideas which we need if we are to take our position in life as men who are growing in character through the experience given by work?" (Civilization and Ethics, tr. Campion (1929), p. v) Well, it has nothing to offer; Wittgenstein's investigations are silent about this, although Wittgenstein was very angry at the suggestion that this was because contemporary philosophers were neglecting or dodging it -- although he did not explain his anger or how they were not neglecting or dodging "work for their time" (ethics).

Candles, lights, tables and baskets

In contrast, Schweitzer by his philosophy of "reverence for life" responds to Plato's question of "no small matter, but how to live", regardless of whether Schweitzer is agreed with or refuted in dialectic. If philosophy ("the pursuit of wisdom") is not, as Socrates said when he "made ethics part of philosophy", the guide to how to live our life, then whatever is it? Logic and metaphysics? The understanding of these belongs to the good for man, but they are not a guide to how man should live.

Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow man ["such people, with whom I have, perhaps, never exchanged a word, yes, and others about whom I have merely heard things by report, have had a decisive influence upon me; they entered into my life and became powers within me." (p. 67)]. Thus we have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us.

Impart as much as you can of your spiritual being to those who are on the road with you, and accept as something precious what comes back to your from them. (Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, tr. Campion (1924), v, p. 68-69)

What did Wittgenstein do with the gift of insight he was given? "No one lights a candle in order to put it under a basket", but maybe Wittgenstein did. The Philosophical Investigations were only published two years after his death and almost ten years after they were written. Is what I have called his "logic of language" not an important light to guide the way out of the darkness of "vagueness and confusion" that surround us? But if that is so, then why hide it for so many, many years? On the other hand, what do I know of Wittgenstein's inner problems or what he had to do about them? Nothing, but do inner problems affect right and wrong, wisdom and folly?

"Think about things for yourself!" Wittgenstein wrote to Sraffa: "Every way of thinking is all right as long as it isn't stupid." But thinking and thinking worthwhile thoughts are not the same thing: without Socrates and Plato (ethics and logic), Wittgenstein and Kant (logic), and Schweitzer and Bonhoeffer (philosophy of religion), I would be truly lost. For as high as I regard the Gospel according to Luke, it is not by itself a guide to how to live, which with my temperament must be a philosophical guide, a thoroughgoing use of reason working on experience.

Wittgenstein and presumptuous ignorance

Who of us nowadays has any idea of what a Bach fugue really meant at the time in which it was composed? (Recollections p. 132; Drury dates this conversion as from 1936)

Albert Schweitzer, Orfeo Catala, 1911
Albert Schweitzer, organist, L'Orfeó Català, 1911

Albert Schweitzer had, of course, and not only an idea of what it "really meant", but an idea grounded in thoroughgoing scholarship. (Wittgenstein is not an easy man to think well of: he could be arrogant and judgmental about things he had no knowledge of, relying on his own genius as if that made his judgment universally correct. As if to say, "One doesn't need further evidence if one's world-picture is not stupid" (cf. Plato, Phaedo 99d-100a). Wittgenstein's fundamental inclination and ethics were "non-rational" rather than philosophical.)

Schweitzer, Albert [1875 (Alsace) - 1965 (Gabon)]. Philosopher, theologian, medical man ..., organist, and leading authority on Bach, editing his organ works (with Widor) and writing important biographical and critical study (1905). (The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, Scholes [1952], 2nd ed. Ward [1964])

What makes someone into a philosopher? (Albert Schweitzer)

Note: this alludes to the discussion: the philosopher is not a member of a community of ideas (which should be "unthinking member").

Some want -- above all else -- to know the truth. Some "take life seriously", as the philosopher takes life. But not everyone does -- and the one does not understand the other.

On everyone who met me in the street I wanted to inflict thoroughgoing and closely reasoned considerations on all the questions that were then being generally discussed in order to expose the errors of the conventional views and get the correct view recognized and appreciated. The joy of seeking for what was true and serviceable had come upon me like a kind of intoxication, and every conversation in which I took part had to go back to fundamentals ... it was a passionate need of thinking, and of seeking with the help of others for the true and the serviceable. The light and truth-seeking spirit ... The conviction that human progress [In Schweitzer's view "ethics is the perfecting of the individual and of society"] is possible only if reasoned thought replaces mere opinion and absence of thought ... (Memoirs of Childhood and Youth, tr. Campion (1924), iv, p. 54-55)

Philosophical Replies to Philosophical Queries

Note: Words that follow "Query" are Internet search that were directed to the wrong pages of this site.

Wittgenstein, definition, comparison, metaphysics

Query: Wittgenstein, metaphysics is meaningless.

But you owe us definitions of 'meaningless' and 'metaphysics'. In the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, for a proposition [statement of fact] to have meaning is for it to have the form: 'This is how things stand' [or 'Such-and-such is the case'] [4.5] ... But how do you know how things stand (i.e. whether a proposition is true or false)? Wittgenstein does not say. "How does one know or verify what is the case [how things stand]? Surely it goes without saying that you look and listen." But the TLP does not say that. And, indeed, how could one see or hear a "constellation of absolutely simple objects" (an "atomic fact")? [According to Wittgenstein's later criticism of this notion in Philosophical Investigations § 48, 'absolutely simple' is nonsense, an undefined combination of words.] In any case, the TLP gives no examples of "atomic facts". Wittgenstein does no more than vaguely allude to "the propositions of natural science" [The example Wittgenstein gave Franz Parak is not an atomic fact], saying that they are meaningful, and that any other form of language is not. Those other forms include the propositions of logic, as well as "the propositions of metaphysics" or "the mystical", which concern things that are not seen or heard such as "God" or "value" (ethics , aesthetics), statements about which apparently have no connection whatever to seeing or hearing. Yet, if the propositions of logic are "meaningless", then how is it that they communicate a meaning (i.e. that they are not mere noise)? In a word, the TLP is extremely vague about all this.

Query: is it possible to give a definition of game?

Again, you owe us a definition of 'definition'. If to "define the word 'game'" is to state what all games have -- and, indeed, must have -- in common [a defining common nature], then no it is not as a matter of fact possible. And indeed you could say that this is an instance of "real impossibility": we have looked at all the facts and seen that there is no defining common nature. (That is the inductive part of Socratic definition, which according to Aristotle is empirical.)

Query: Wittgenstein, picture theory versus tool theory.

But there is a profound difference between saying that a proposition is a picture of the "really real" (as the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus does), and saying that words are like -- i.e. that it makes philosophical troubles clearer if we make this comparison -- a tool (as the Philosophical Investigations does). There is a "picture theory", but there is no "tool theory".

Physical and Logical Atoms

Query: Socrates and early Wittgenstein.

For the TLP words are names and the meaning of a name is the object the word names. -- But the TLP's objects are "concrete", unlike Plato's intangible Forms [Patterns, Archetypes, Absolutes] or essences, which would presumably be the meaning of words in Plato's account: words are names and the meaning of a common name is the Form it "partakes of " or "participates in".

The objects of the early Wittgenstein are logical atoms -- i.e. their existence is known by reasoning to it, not by experience. And this I do not understand, for isn't the notion of absolute indivisibility nonsense from a logical (and mathematical) point of view, because we never reach a point at which x/2 is not possible? At no point can you say, as Saint Thomas says, "But this can't go on forever" (which is another notion I don't understand). (This is a different question from whether there are objects that are, so far as is known, empirically uncuttable ('atomic' = 'uncuttable') atoms.) But, of course, all this was known to Wittgenstein, and therefore what did he mean by 'logical atom'? (Wittgenstein's later criticism of his earlier idea contrasts 'simple' and 'complex' as relative concepts (PI §§ 46-49).)

Frederick Copleston says that it follows from Descartes' "geometrical conception of body as extension" that there can be no absolute atoms.

For any particle of matter must be extended, and if it is extended it is in principle divisible, even though we have no means of dividing it physically. (A History of Philosophy, Volume IV, v, 3-4)

But particles of what?

... to use the phrase of the great Sir Isaac Newton ... 'little particles of matter so hard as to be indivisible'.

But the atomic physicist replies:

"Little hard particles of matter? My dear fellow, don't you know that we exploded that theory long ago; one fine day over Hiroshima." (DW p. 69)

So it would seem that not only is 'absolute logical atom' nonsense but that apparently there are no "uncuttables". Does the latter fact, if it is a fact, affect the world-picture of the TLP, because that book's "objects" have not only a logical existence -- they are real?

Mathematics allows limitless fracturing, but it seems the logical atomists want to say that you can always divide by two -- until you reach the ultimate -- i.e. indivisible -- unit. And this is like Francis Bacon's criticism of Aristotle: that as soon as the principle that everything that moves is moved by something else becomes inconvenient -- i.e. when the Aristotelians want to introduce an "unmoved mover" -- they drop that principle, and it is the same with the logical atomists. There is no ultimate -- i.e. indivisible -- unit, which is another way of saying that the combination of words 'ultimate unit' is undefined (It is "mere sound without sense"). There are no logical atoms.

Either it is that simple, or I don't know what I'm talking about (and I don't think I know what I'm talking about).

What is matter?

Apropos of "atomic particles", Drury asked what are they "particles of"? (ibid.) I think this means: "What is matter itself?" The answer is that we don't speak of matter as such, but only of this or that bit of matter, as e.g. solid matter such as tables and chairs and liquid matter such as water and alcohol; cf. the word 'thing': what is thing itself, thing as such? (We also speak of subject matter: what things does philosophy study?)

In physics 'matter' contrasts with 'energy'. Is the word 'matter' in physics, as is the word 'energy', without meaning apart from how matter is measured, i.e. is the word 'matter' in physics only defined by how physics measures matter (mass, volume, color, location, velocity)?

Is time discrete or continuous?

Note: this discussion was suggested by Copleston's A History of Philosophy, Volume I, xxx, 6(b).

Aristotle's reply to Zeno of Elea's paradoxes is that time is a "continuum", that although we can divide events into parts in thought, that does not mean that time itself consists of parts (if I know what Aristotle is talking about, which I don't imagine I do). Time does not consist of "independently-existing parts". But if we use the analogy of changing stage-sets, it appears that time does consist of discrete parts, and not in thought only -- but not as if there were anywhere else for it to appear! If time is divided into discrete parts, it is human beings who divide it, who set the limits of the divisions, not time itself (whatever "time itself" is when it's at home. Recall: the meaning of the word 'time' is the method of measurement of time; the word has no other meaning).

A 'continuum' is 'that without parts or divisions'. Then are there any continuums? Is pure water an example? Well, the essence of water cannot be divided into parts (because, presumably, an essence is atomic: it has no parts). Time flows like a river of pure water (if it were impure, then "you can't step in the same river twice" would apply).

What distinction was Aristotle making with the expression "in thought"? All concepts are in thought only if concepts define phenomena (and not vice versa). All concepts are "abstractions": we disregard aspects of things when we define -- i.e. set the limits of -- concepts. "Then are you saying then that time is whatever we say it is?"

These are of course grammatical questions, and they show the absurdity of trying to treat a conceptual problem -- namely a clarification of how we use the word 'time' -- as if it were a factual-metaphysical problem, namely "What is time itself?"which is what Aristotle and Augustine do. Philosophical problems present themselves as if they were questions about the facts (reality) -- in the examples Wittgenstein gives. (Note that the question of "what time is" is not among the questions without answers" unless we confuse imaginative pictures (in which we may depict time as either discrete or continuous) with actual grammar: Time is no more or less mysterious than the rest of our existence.)

Arthur Eddington's One Table

Query: philosophy, two tables, scientific table. Eddington two contradictory tables.

There are not two tables; there is only one table, but looked at from different points of view. Or rather, there is a table and there is a scientific theory about the physics of the table.

No one has ever seen Eddington's "scientific table"; no one has ever seen an electron, which is a scientific theory, a model, picture, map -- i.e. a summary of the data, not a datum itself. The table we see is reality; the picture of atoms in the void is a abstraction of human creation. (Eddington's example of an "abstract picture".)

The word 'table' has no meaning at the atomic level; if an electron could speak, it would not understand us: our word 'table' would have no meaning in its language. What you cannot say, because it is nonsense, is that Eddington's "scientific table" is not solid. That lack of solidity -- that picture -- is the false inference Eddington's readers draw when they say that "The table we see is, therefore, not really solid".

Query: Wittgenstein, semantic rules, games.

Well, yes, this is good, 'rules of sense and nonsense' = 'semantic rules' ... except you must be careful because the word 'semantic' may carry a lot of baggage, baggage which suggests a meaning that you do not want to suggest. We could use the expression 'semantic grammar' or 'semantic logic' rather than say: "grammar" (in Wittgenstein's jargon), but however we refer to it, Wittgenstein's revised concept is jargon.

Wittgenstein versus 'infinity'

Query: Wittgenstein, if someone asked you which was the last house in the village.

Why is it without meaning (incoherent) to say that: "There is no last house in our village; you can keep walking and walking and walking and you will never come to a last house: our village goes on and on indefinitely ('on indefinitely' = 'to infinity') -- i.e. without ever coming to an end; there is no last house. "There is always a next house." That is not a prediction that there will always be a next house. 'In arithmetic n+1 is always possible' -- that is not a prediction but a rule. Why shouldn't 'infinite' be defined that way -- indeed, has the word any other meaning?

That is of course a picture, and one can ask: Has it an application anywhere -- i.e. is there a reality to compare that picture to? But the absence of a reality ("The map is not the territory") does not render a picture meaningless (at least in the logic of language sense of 'meaningless'). Cf. "Where does the universe end?" And what if the universe is spherical, for then you could say that space was not infinite? "If you begin at house A, you never come to a last house; you only return to house A." But if the universe is flat like the Euclidean plane, then space is infinite: you never come to the last house because there is no last house (nor is there a first house, of course).

What that picture shows is that the word 'infinity' is not the name of a place, but of a procedure. And so you could say that the word 'infinite' is an adverb, and that there is no noun 'infinity', unless it is as the name of a procedure (defined by an instruction for how to follow a particular rule).

Is asking for "the last house in the village" in a fairy tale in flat space different from asking for the last (the largest) whole number in maths? For in both cases the answer is the same, that there is no such house; there is no such number. But not as if that were a prediction, an hypothesis.

Query: Wittgenstein, bad infinity.

As I wrote, I don't understand Wittgenstein's criticism of the concept 'infinite' or 'infinity'. But then, I don't know what is meant by 'infinity' in maths either. Is there any reason to believe that the n + 1 rule for the series one, two, three, etc., will at some undetermined point in the series stop being followable? I am not saying that it won't, only that I see no reason to say that it will. (And what would it look like if it did? A possibility that cannot even be described is no possibility, not as 'logical possibility' is defined.)

Wittgenstein's second "real definition" of logic

Query: logic is a description of our language, Wittgenstein.

"Any explanation of the use of language" is "grammar". But if you say that, you are using Wittgenstein's jargon, his definition of the word 'logic'. It is not a "real definition of logic" -- or is it? Because Wittgenstein identifies logic with semantic grammar -- i.e. language meaning (which is not a function of syntax, but of use in the language) -- at the conclusion of an empirical study (of the facts in public view) of language. (But the word 'logic' has a long history, and so any limit set to the concept 'logic' is going to be jargon.) (Wittgenstein's first real definition of logic.)

Query: logic in language.

The rules of the game (as in "language game") are the logic in language. Meaning (the "rules" of sense and nonsense), however, overrules syntax (the rules of sentence structure or form). In Wittgenstein's jargon 'grammar' = 'logic'.

Query: rules that give the meanings of the words of the language.

In Wittgenstein's jargon, those rules are called "grammar". In everyday English, they are called 'definitions'. Any explanation of the use of words in the language is "grammar" or, when the use is the meaning, definition.

Query: did the Seven Wise Men think Socrates was the wisest?

The Seven Sages lived a bit more than a bit before Socrates was born. But did Apollo's oracle say that Socrates was wiser than "the seven wise men"? or only that no one was wiser than Socrates? (A variant has that no man living was wiser than Socrates.)

Twenty-five years ago I proclaimed that the world was unknowable and that it was impossible to base a philosophy on knowledge of the world. (Albert Schweitzer, Letters 1905-1965, ed. Bähr [1987], tr. Neugroschel [1992], Lambaréné, 4 January 1951, July 1950, p. 216)

By 'philosophy' here Schweitzer means 'ethics' (Plato's "no small matter, but how to live"). It is also impossible to base an ethics on an understanding or knowledge of "the logic of our language" (pace Wittgenstein) alone.

The Limit of Sense

Note: these are comments apropos of the Fable of The Born-Blind-People.

If all human beings were color-blind, seeing everything in gray-scale, then words such as 'blue' and 'green' would have no place in our language. ("What work would these tools be used to do?" -- "Well, none. They are like gears that do not engage other gears" (PI § 271), non-functional, idle -- or, in linguistic terms, nonsense (i.e. words or a combination of words with no work to do.) Nonetheless, or so we imagine, green and blue would nevertheless exist regardless of whether we could perceive those colors or not. (The picture of a god who sees what we cannot see.)

And that is the point, or one point, of the fable: in philosophy the young student yearns for "absolute knowledge", for "the Truth". That is one thing that "makes a man into a philosopher". -- But the notion of "absolute knowledge" does not reflect how our language works. The word 'know' is a tool like any other; it has a use or uses in the language, nothing more.

A fable may have many meanings, however. Another is a simple thought, a thought that is not original to Wittgenstein (Indeed, he nowhere mentions it; nonetheless it is inherent in the notion "form of life"). Voltaire wrote a story in which he described a man who had, if I remember correctly (I did not read the story), maybe 172 senses rather than our five (as someone might have four rather than five senses, being e.g. blind or deaf). The idea is simple, but its implications seem to run deep metaphysically.

Words of one syllable do not necessarily tell a simple story

I think that so far as my thinking and study goes, philosophy can -- and must -- be written in simple language if it is to be understood at all, because the standard, the Socratic standard, must be "every explanation I can give myself I can give you too" (PI § 210). But that does not make its ideas simple [easy] to absorb.

"The peace that surpasses all understanding"

Albert Schweitzer wrote to a crippled woman in the Rhineland:

Do not quarrel with God, do not quarrel with man; leave all incomprehensible things alone, seek only one thing: the growth of the spiritual person, so that you may achieve peace of mind ... and so that you may give people something of the spirit of peace.... I have experience in struggling for stillness in God. That is why I can talk to you about it. (Lambaréné, 1954, Letters 1905-1965, tr. Neugroschel [1992], p. 254)

"Do not quarrel with God, do not quarrel with man; leave all incomprehensible things alone ..." Schweitzer does not mean not to think about the "riddle of existence", but not to dwell on the injustices of this world that you cannot put right -- because it is that dwelling (cf. Wittgenstein's metaphor: if you stare at a black door long enough you become convinced that the door rather than your fixed focus is causing your unhappiness) that disturbs peace of mind and the spirit of peace. The way to peace may be as simple as turning your head to look elsewhere, but it is profound, and difficult ("The evil habit of allowing your mind to wander about like an untethered donkey").

And the peace of God, which surpasseth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4.7, tr. Douay-Rheims)

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