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Motto: [Only it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways] (PI § 108)

Organizing Principles

Preface: these are two kinds of logic of language remarks. Some are first blush, not yet put to the test of Socratic cross-questioning, even in discourse with myself. Others are more considered.

Query: can one examine oneself, philosophy?

To learn to hold discourse with oneself is the good that comes to someone who studies philosophy (Antisthenes). That cross-questioning [dialect] of one's own views is philosophical self-examination (Plato, Apology (37e-38a).

Is there an absolute point of reference? Are the propositions of ethics such points?


Topics on this page ...


Absolute point of reference

If I look at a revolving phonograph disc from above, it is moving clockwise; if I look at the disc from below, it is moving counter-clockwise. And there is no such question as: "But, absolutely, how is it moving -- clockwise or counter-clockwise?" That is undefined language, speaking of an "absolute frame of reference".

Again. Imagine a phonograph disc, turning on a vertical axis. If I stand on one side of the disc, the disc is moving clockwise. If I stand on the other side of the disc, the disc is moving counter-wise. Those are two perspectives, two points of reference; and the words 'absolute perspective' (or 'absolute reference point') are undefined -- i.e. we can't ask: "But which way is the disc really turning -- clockwise or counter-clockwise?"

An ordinary phonograph disc (LP), turning horizontally, one person standing on one side, another person standing on the opposite side, and an object is placed on the rim of the disc. From one perspective, i.e. from one side of the disc, the object is moving away, while from the other side, the object is moving towards the viewer (the other perspective). So we have two points of view, points of reference, and there is no absolute reference /of either moving away or moving towards/ point: you can't ask (because the question's combination of words is undefined): Now, which is the object really doing: is it moving towards or moving away?

You may be able to make any point the standard of reference (as the Greenwich meridian, for example), but --.

Apropos of: "It is possible to choose any point as the origin ..."

First blush. It is possible to choose any point as the origin of the Cartesian grid, and once that origin is chosen, every other point has a location [= everything has a location]. But before that -- before the origin-point [= absolute-reference-point is chosen] -- no point has a location [= nothing has a location].

Emendations. Before the origin is chosen, nothing [= no point has a location], i.e. an unidentifiable address is no address [= not an address].

The chosen origin for the Cartesian grid is its designated absolute point of reference. Well, but every point of reference becomes absolute after the origin is chosen: i.e. it can be used to locate every other point on the grid relative to itself. Actually, we could begin at any point, that is, there might be a particular case where we want to begin mapping our grid at a point other than the origin, e.g. at {x,y,z = 3, 4, 5} -- and deduce the location of the origin-point {x,y,z = 0,0,0} from there.

The point again is that a choice is made -- an absolute point of reference must be chosen. It is not discovered, hidden away somewhere in the universe [= reality]. Why is such a point needed? Because the values of {x,y,z} are determined relative to it; they have no values without it [= otherwise].

The one way, or only many ways?

We can't ask what the disc is really doing. Why? [Cf. 'motion' is a relative -- i.e. relational -- concept], Because you can [the "can" of logical possibility: just try to describe the opposite] only look at it from some perspective, some point of view, or another. And the selection of any particular point of reference is not logically necessary ["what is practical" is a question of "real" possibility", although of course nonsense can't be selected (or indeed not selected either)], because others points can [the "can" of logical possibility = what can be described (because it is described)] be chosen.

AB. 'A is to the left of B.' Can we set the problem up [i.e. write the rules of the game] so that there is more than one way to see the relation between A and B? Suppose we turn the sheet of paper 180°, then [upside down] A is to the right of [upside down] B. [If the rules of the game do not allow the sheet of paper to be rotated, then the rules themselves impose a point of reference.] ABC. 'B is between C and A' is a definition of the word 'between', not a statement of perspective, point of view.

The question of what the disc is really doing, when it isn't a misunderstanding of the logic of language, belongs to metaphysics of course: the one who asks it wants to know reality itself (as does Plato), not mere relative reality (e.g. the cave shadows of the Republic). Or is this a muddle even in metaphysics? Is the notion "absolute reality" a metaphor (analogy), or is it nonsense (i.e. undefined sound)? (Cf. Relative frames of reference and dragging pictures from one frame into another.)

Does reality exist?

The eternal questions without answers seek the absolute viewpoint [= absolute point of reference], i.e. to see [= know] reality through God's eyes (as it were). But is there, in reality, an absolute point of reference [= an absolute point of view] -- or is reality really just countless relative points of reference [= countless relative points of view]? Would the point of reference God uses itself be just one more relative point, no more the absolute point of view and therefore the true view of reality than any other reference point [because "a point of view" is just that: it is not itself true or false, but only within a point of view are propositions true or false]?

But when we say that we want to see reality through God's eyes, we don't mean God's view merely in contrast to our own -- as if all points of view were on the same level. And so what are we seeking when we ask for God's point of view?

In other words, is what is being sought merely the product of conceptual confusion [= self-mystification, as if because there is a relative point there must also be an absolute one, which of course from the point of view of sense, nonsense and antithesis there must be -- and is, although only by designation, as in the geometric plane or Cartesian geometry. (Cf. there can be no measurement before a standard of measurement is assigned)]? But then how could even reality's Creator know what reality is?

There is the prophet Isaiah's picture of God [55.9] to serve as a reminder and warning: "My thoughts are not your thoughts; my thoughts are as high above yours as the heavens are above the earth." Is it not this way: that to speak of "God's point of reference" is anthropomorphism: it is making God in man's image. How the Creator of all that is knows His creation would hardly be something man can imagine ("For God all things are possible, but for man not all things are imaginable").

Theologians say that God "is rather than has his attributes". Is its limited point of view -- limited as e.g. man is by his by five senses as well as by Kant's notion of innate and inescapable categories of thought -- an attribute [= quality] of a thing? (If "to be is to be perceived", that applies equally to the bumblebee as to man's conceptions-perceptions.)

What we wanted to say is that God's own point of reference is the true one, i.e. not one that is more or less arbitrarily assigned [= designated] as Cartesian geometric origins are, but is instead the absolute [= fixed (Archimedes)] point of reality. And by saying that we would not be simply using different forms of expression to say the same thing -- because our investigation assumes that God must exist whereas "God's own point of reference" needn't.

"... that there is something you are never going to understand", and that this something that you're never going to understand is precisely the most important thing to understand ..... Or so it seems to you that it must be. But is there a "the riddle" [TLP 6.5], or are there instead as it were only riddles? Is our picture of God the expression of a preconception [= requirement rather than the result of an investigation (PI § 107)] that there must be an absolute reality [i.e. a true absolute rather than a more or less arbitrarily designated geometry-like "absolute"] rather than limitless relative realities? (Imagine a child told us that he thought a true origin-point had to exist in the Cartesian grid .... Is that what we are in philosophy, "like children scribbling"?)

"The one true ..."

"Natural science: enriching but also impoverishing" (cf. CV p. 60-61). Its method (theoretical reductionism), in our thinking, sets aside all others as, if they were muddle-headed. Wittgenstein says something like this (although not quite this). And now I will characterize it this way: The one reference point, the one way of being interested in a phenomenon, pushes out all the others, as if every other reference point, way of being interested in the phenomenon, stood on the same relative level to the viewpoint of natural science that alchemy does. As if this were a persuasive definition of the word 'truth', as in "the one true method" (cf. ibid.), "the one true point of view".

There is also Wittgenstein's "one true way" of seeing philosophy -- namely, as conceptual confusion, despite its not always being that, unless the "questions without answers" really are just undefined combinations of words.

Cf. "What is death?" (Someone who asks that question is not asking for a definition of the word 'death', as if he were confused about how we normally use that word; cf. 'What is man?'), where sense perception (materialism) is regarded as the point of view of the man who faces facts [the "hard fact" man who is dismissive of "fancy" (Dickens)], in contrast to the self-deluding fantasist. (But is reality confined to what can be seen and heard?) Natural science is identified with materialism (Is this an assigned meaning or the normal one, this identification?), and therefore "the one point of view, the one way of being interested in the phenomenon", is the materialistic point of view, the point of view of materialism (Plato, Sophist 247c).

Difference in world-picture

Is the answer to the question of whether the soul is a ghost (or not) a difference in world-picture? What is the use in the language of the word 'soul' -- because you can't say that referring to a ghost (how do you refer to a ghost? How do you refer to God?) isn't a language institution in our community of ideas = language; you can't say that 'The soul is a ghost' is nonsense (sound without sense) in our community. Life after death beliefs -- a difference in world-pictures.

If it is a difference in world-pictures (soul as ghost or not), then it is a difference in metaphysical world-pictures. But then "we" can't bring the word 'soul' back "from its metaphysical use to the language games that are its original home" (PI §§ 38, 116). Wittgenstein speaks of "our educated vocabulary" and the strangeness that the words 'soul' and 'ghost' and 'spirit' should belong to it, as if Plato were a primitive.

Talk about the soul is perplexing. As perplexing as that we exist at all.


Ethics, Virtue, the natures of

Ethics consists of statements of principle as e.g. 'The good man harms no one, but does good even to his enemies' (Plato, Republic 335e), which does not tell you how to apply it in the particular case. That is, ethics consists of principles which are very general propositions.

And these propositions are categorical? If that means they are not subject to exceptions, I don't know. If it means they are irrational-unjustifiable, i.e. not subject to the test of truth or falsity [or even of meaning (grammar and sense and nonsense)] in Socratic dialectic, then they are not categorical.

Query: ethical questions which do not have any answer.

If ethics does, as I say, consist only of general principles, then there may be many unanswerable particular questions (moral quandaries, dilemmas), for as Plato points out the same deed may be just or unjust depending on the context in which it is done (Republic 331c-d). And so one may be left perplexed about what one should do if one is to do what is just.

Plato gives an example, the deed of returning a weapon to the man it belongs to -- but suppose the man is drunk at that time (ibid.)? which is clear enough (But now, suppose the man wants to join an insurgency?) Plato uses this particular example to argue against the truth of the general principle 'Justice is paying back what one has received from anyone'. But in discussing "making one's enemies worse", Plato uses particular examples to argue to a true general principle (Republic 335b-c), by stating the answer to that particular case's question (with the background rule of defining 'x' only as 'x qua x').

In the Protagoras [329c-d] Plato asks whether virtue [moral/ethical excellence] is one or many [i.e. if there are many different virtues or only one], and my answer to this was that virtue is like the faces of a child's alphabet-block -- that virtue is like a child's block: It is one, but it has many faces [just like there are many sides of an child's block]. For example, to do what is just [fair and merciful (equitable)] is to do what is good; but if to do what is good is to act rightly towards the gods [God], and if to act rightly towards the gods is what we mean by 'piety', then what is just is also pious. We are looking at the same act but from different points of view. And so there is only one virtue but it presents itself to us in different ways, with different faces, from different points of view.

Philosophical grammar

Query: what is virtue is knowledge?

What kind of proposition is 'Virtue is knowledge'? Is it a statement of fact (an hypothesis verifiable by experience), a rule of grammar (verbal definition), the directive of a way of working at ethics -- i.e. of saying what is needed to amend one's life, not as a thesis (to be tested in Socratic dialectic), but as a life project (method), ...?

Which proposition type is 'Virtue is knowledge' an example of? A proposition that directs you to see ethics from the point of view Socrates does. In other words, it is a precept-proposition. 'Virtue is knowledge' means: Seek to know the good, for the man who knows what is good does what is good, and indeed he cannot do good without having knowledge of the good, if its perceived good is that at which all life aims.

The precept 'Virtue is knowledge' contrasts with the precept 'Know thyself' only in form. But remember that in Wittgenstein's logic of language, meaning is not a question of form but of use in the language. Is there a type precept-proposition? Well, a precept can be rewritten as a proposition, e.g. 'The wise man knows himself'. And so, from that point of view, this type of language can be given the name "precept-proposition".

One of Plato's methods in ethics consists of discovering grammatically interlocking propositions, which taken together form a tautology. And is 'Virtue is knowledge', besides being a precept, also an organizing principle? We might say that it tells you how to organize your thinking about ethics, in contrast to seeing ethics as consisting of unconnected principles (categorical imperatives). But there are many meanings of 'organize' and a precept should not be confused with a scientific theory (which uses imagination to give order to a selection of facts (data) but can be falsified by anomalies).

Query: virtue is identical with knowledge.

No, they may be different faces of a single child's block, but 'moral virtue' and 'knowledge' are distinct concepts, if not separable in reality, separable in thought (points of view). If they were identical, we could discard either of the two concepts without any loss of meaning.

If to know reality is to see the world from the absolute reference point, then reality is unknowable, because man can only see from relative points of reference, "can" because this is the only language that is defined. (That is of course metaphysics, for the word 'reality' contrasts with 'illusion', its antithesis, but here everything is said to be essentially illusion, i.e. mere appearance.)


Questions of Socrates and others

Query: Pythagoras and Parmenides, one and the many.

Pythagoras: reality is number, but 1 = 1 -- i.e. there is only one number, although there are many combinations of it (some "solid")? But are those combinations mere appearances, as the many is for Parmenides, or are they real?

Query: origin of philosophy - Pythagoras.

What would Pythagoras say the origin of philosophy in the human mind is (not the origin of the word 'philosophy' which may indeed have had its origin in modesty)? Well, what would Pythagoras have said philosophy is -- the desire to find and know the reality that underlies all things, a desire implanted by the gods? (What would Protagoras have said philosophy is -- a delusion of grandeur?)

Query: if you know rules does that imply that you understand concepts?

There is more to the game than just following rules, e.g. the rules of a game may have a point [RFM i § 20, p. 109]. Suppose there were a rule that chess pieces must be black or white, that the use of any other colors was prohibited. Suppose someone said that you were not really playing chess if the pieces were other colors (e.g. red and white), would we say that person understands the concept 'chess'?

But this is not a question of "imply" (as the query presumes) -- for the question here is instead of defining the words 'understand a concept', as e.g. 'to understand a concept' =DEF. 'to know [i.e. to have mastered] the rules of a game [as in "language-game", i.e. to have learned the rules for using a word or combination of words]'.

Query: Socrates, ignorance aware of itself.

Aristotle does not call the awakening of wonder "Socratic ignorance" although it is "ignorance coming to awareness of itself". No, as I am using that expression, 'Socratic ignorance' means 'not thinking you know what you don't know'. Kierkegaard's definition is different from what Aristotle is talking about, that 'Socratic ignorance' means 'awareness that there is something about existence that one is never going to know [i.e. understand]'.

Query: who is the wise man according to Socrates?
Query: a man who acknowledges his ignorance.

That is the wise man, the man who does not think he knows what he does not know. That is not what either Aristotle or Kierkegaard has in mind: for Aristotle the wise man is the man who does know what he thinks he knows; and for Kierkegaard the wise man is the one who, in Kant's words, is filled with wonder by "the starry sky above and the moral law within", or in other words the man who is fully aware of the profound mystery of our existence. [Now, is this a question of defining the words 'wise man' or of characterizing a phenomenon, namely the phenomenon of wisdom?]

Query: do words mask meaning, Wittgenstein?

A dictionary (CV p. 22) would be such a mask, for the dictionary is the surface in contrast to depth grammar.

Query: why does Plato say that soul is reason?

Does Plato say that? Then to care for the soul would be to reason well, which appears consistent with Socrates' view that virtue is knowledge.

Philosophy in Pictures

Query: branches of philosophy, with pictures.

What pictures might we draw of what, according to the Stoic model, are the three parts of philosophy? And what might we do with them?

Query: the Greeks often talked about things they could not see. What is this type of thinking called? What does it mean?

W.K.C. Guthrie uses the expression "thinking in the abstract" (Parmenides, one or many), and the meaning of 'abstract', according to the query, would be 'things you cannot see'. But then the natural question is: what are these things? Guthrie's expression suggests [ghost-like] "abstract objects", as e.g. the word 'elf' suggests "something you cannot see". -- The word 'thing': the danger of talking this way is forms of language conjuring up false pictures of language meaning [the uniformity of language appearance]. Wittgenstein's philosophy is a battle against the conjuring tricks of language (PI § 109).

Hegel, Marx (pictures)

And so I have been reading in my children's book about Hegel and Marx, a story which I shall retell in my own way. That Hegel described the development of ideas as: (1) thesis (just as in Socratic dialectic), antithesis (counter-thesis, the result of cross-questioning), and (3) synthesis (compromise between 1 and 2, but closer to the truth than either, which I don't know why ideas must develop that way, because as it happens in Plato's Socratic dialogs (Euthyphro) both 1 and 2 (and 2' and 2'' as well) are rejected as mistaken and without a way forward from them being spied, whereas in Plato's Republic 331e-335e the counter-thesis (335e) simply replaces the thesis (332d) altogether). But then that according to Marx historical events also develop -- indeed, apparently must (but then why make revolution to bring them about?) develop -- Hegel's dialectical way too.

And so Hegel's "dialectical idealism" (because it concerns ideas) and Marx's "dialectical historical development" (because it concerns events) ... except that it isn't given that name, but instead is called "dialectical materialism" -- Why? Because 'material' contrasts with 'ideal'? ... And then the question, What is the idealist's reality? is it gaseous, soft, unreal, whereas the materialist's reality is solid, hard, brutal? Pictures are conjured. (And even if we point out that ideas are neither soft nor hard -- i.e. that the words 'hard' and 'soft' only have meaning when applied to objects (although when 'object' is contrasted with 'idea', the words 'soft' and 'hard' don't even apply to objects, as if spirit were a kind of object) -- we are stopped because we do speak, "figuratively", of soft and hard ideas.)

Fichte's "idealism is a speculative position, not something one can picture" is heard by [grammatically] deaf ears. (But calling ideas 'invisible objects' makes it appear as if all words were names of objects of one kind or another, visible or invisible, tangible or abstract (cf. PI § 339), a distinction that seems to populate reality with ghosts, indeed that seems to make idealism's reality a ghost world. 'Plato's Forms are neither visible nor invisible' is a grammatical remark.)

Friedrich Engels (religion)

According to Engels, human beings must -- and the word 'must' is operative as "necessary" real possibility -- have food and drink before they can take interest in religion, philosophy, art. And perhaps if human beings are starving to the point of death ... but on the other hand religion is often all people have left, the only thing that gives meaning and dignity to their lives, even if, in the case of starvation, it is the end of life. [Maximilian Kolbe]

If Engels "must" were correct, then, if some group were to offer food and drink in exchange for conversion to their religion [apostasy], all people would convert [at least outwardly]. But we know this is not true: all people won't [don't] convert but will choose to remain in their faith. As to philosophy and art, I don't know that food and drink are a prerequisite even for these [For the development of the brain? But Engels' remark can't be applied to the human being in childhood, because small children know nothing of philosophy and art; they could only be applied to the grown-up human being]; religion, however, requires no more than breath.

Man does not live by bread alone, but neither does man live without bread? But what does 'live' mean if applied to man? Strange category this: {food and drink, religion}.

Engels' "must" is a metaphysical picture, or rather, world-picture. It is not an empirical hypothesis; it cannot be falsified.


The owl of Socrates does not fly in the dark

The allusion is to the Hegel's picture of understanding as a private event, which contrasts with Socrates' definition of 'understanding' [or, 'knowledge'] as a public event, that "if a man knows anything he can explain what he knows to others" (Memorabilia iv, 6, 1). Of these two grammatical accounts, which describes how we normally use the word 'understanding'? (If understanding were not a public event, how would we know whether anyone understood anything or not, i.e. would not the word 'understand' be nonsense?)

But crow, not the owl, is the bird of Apollo. And the crow's flock is articulate, having a vocabulary of twenty-four signs, i.e. distinctive caws, (as e.g. "farmer" and "farmer with a gun"), and enforces flock ethics (if a crow breaks the rules the other crows gather together and caw at him). Or so we would say if crows were a human tribe; yet the comparisons to man are compelling.

The very word 'discussion', according to him, owes its name to the practice of meeting together for common deliberation, sorting, discussing things after their kind: and therefore one should be ready and prepared for this and be zealous for it ... (Xenophon, Memories of Socrates iv, 5, 12)

And so Apollo's crow seems the proper bird, in so far a bird could fill this role (for man is free to follow the argument, the crow only the rails of instinct), for the Socratic philosopher, unlike Athena's solitary, inscrutable owl.

Does reality exist? (Thales and Plato's shadows)

Query: why is philosophy ignorance?

In another sense ignorance is the origin of philosophy, but in its earliest meaning 'philosophy' means 'the search for knowledge (in metaphysics, logic and ethics) by the natural light of reason alone', and thus the question: Can we say that knowledge -- [at first I thought to say: all discursive knowledge, i.e. puttable into words knowledge, but the discussion of this question does not require that limit] -- is ignorance? What inclines us towards that metaphysical paradox? This: that what we call 'knowledge' is always from one point of view or another, never from the point of view.

Is there a single reality?

And that is different from the view of the first Greek philosophers, who made a distinction between "the appearances" with "the reality that underlies them", because their picture presumes that there is a single reality underlying the appearances ... whereas a more fundamental question is whether there is a single reality at all: for why shouldn't the only reality [there is] be relative realities?

"Which of those two pictures is reality?" is a question without answer. (Can this question be dismissed as a mere conceptual muddle? Wherein lies that muddle?)

Are aspects the only reality?

If someone with aspect-blindness states of the duck-rabbit that as a matter of fact, 'This is a duck', is that "fact" one of "the conceived facts"? But will it not be in contradiction with another's aspect-blindness' statement that as a matter of fact 'This is a rabbit'? Or are both "the conceived facts" -- they are certainly different statements of facts "Percepts without concepts are blind," Kant says -- but what of percepts that have more than one concept to give them sight? Then are the two aspect-bind people living in different worlds -- if a world is made up of "the conceived facts"? And if someone who is not blind to either aspect of the duck-rabbit living in a third world? (And what of someone who could identify three aspects, or four, or five, etc.?)

["The meaning is the method of measurement" for 'time' and also both for 'energy' and for 'matter' (Cf. "The meaning is the method of verification"). Measurement is not always the meaning of a proposition, but only sometimes, as here, where the meaning of the word 'reality' is given by the method by which reality is measured, i.e. the grammatical rules by which we determine what is real and what is not. (Cf. the meaning of the word 'time' is determined by how we measure time, by the criterion we set.)]

Can philosophers' earliest thought be revised thus, that appearances are like relative reference points, reality the absolute? Compare Protagoras' thesis that "the individual is the measure of all things" (Plato, Cratylus 385e-386a"), i.e. there is no independent measure of reality in itself.

The truth needn't be what we presume it to be: absolute reality was not the result but the presumption of our investigation (PI § 107). But reality needn't conform to a grammatical analogy made from 'relative reference point' to 'absolute reference point', an analogy which is misleading, because absolute points are only relatively assigned (cf. Descartes' geometric origin); no absolute point exists in its own right, absolutely independent of assignment.

It seems that our discussion asks a grammatical and not a metaphysical question, that it asks for a definition of 'single reality' ['absolute reference point']. Or is our discussion, looked at from another point of view, a metaphysical question? I don't know, but nonsense, i.e. an undefined combination of words, cannot be used to compose a question of any kind.

"Absolute knowledge really would be knowledge," metaphysics wants to say, "whereas relative knowledge is ignorance". But in which sense of 'ignorance' -- in the sense of 'not knowing the truth', which is the normal sense of that word? No, because the words 'true' and 'false' are only defined in the context of frames of reference, i.e. this is a grammatical remark: A true proposition within a particular frame of reference is the truth; it is not a statement of ignorance (of what we call 'ignorance').

"But it is not the truth," metaphysics says, as if the truth would be to know whether it is the sun that really goes round the earth or vice versa. "Well, which is it, for surely it must be the one or the other! Both q and ~q can't be true." Well, but they can and are both true, each with respect to a particular reference point. (Cf. 'This is beautiful and this is not beautiful' is a formal contradiction with a use in our language. (RPP i § 37))

Our accustomed form of expression is: "So you are saying there is no absolute truth?", whereas all we are saying is that the combination of words 'absolute truth' has no application (or, if we liked, we could say that all truth is absolute -- but only within one particular frame of reference or another).

All this is not to deny that there is objective reality. Within a frame of reference there is objective reality. But there are unlimited -- because what would this be limited by? human sense perception? and imagination (concept-formation)? -- frames of reference. And so maybe rather than speak of objective reality we should speak of objective realities.

If it seems otherwise to use, if that seems implausible, it is because we are set in the groove of our particular frame of reference, and see no alternative. (How science is useful to philosophy: "Realities are so many possibilities for the philosopher" (LWPP i § 807n1).)

[That is what my misreading of the actual query (which was "What is socratic ignorance?") suggests to me as a response, a very rough response indeed.]

Query: philosophy as origin of the world.

Did philosophy invent the world -- i.e. the concept 'the world'? That concept is ambiguous (It is also vague, but that is not the question here), because although it might indeed mean 'reality' as "a single reality", but it might also simply means "everything that is not oneself" or "everything outside oneself" or "everything independent of oneself" with no further determination of the general nature of that "everything" (cf. Plato, Sophist 233e-234a, "all things"). In Wittgenstein's TLP "the world" ≠ reality but only that part of reality that "can be put into words".

Query: can a lover of myth be a philosopher?

Not to be contrary to the etymology of the word 'philosophy', only if 'myth' = 'wisdom', which in which sense can it? In this context: if we mean by 'myth' a story told from a relative reference point. For example (maybe, very maybe), the fox and the stork of the fable: which is the correct shaped dish, a plate or a vase, is relative to the animal that is to eat from it. There is no absolutely correct dish shape, but only relatively correct dish shapes.

Knowledge of the absolutely correct shape is something the Greeks could have called "wisdom", but the wisdom here is only relative and therefore we could call it "myth", if we liked. (We can invent a meaning for any word or combination of words; it does not follow, however, that what we invent is the word's normal meaning.)

If philosophy's theories, which are all from relative reference points, are ignorance, and 'theory' = 'myth', then why not accept the query. "We make for ourselves accounts of the raw data" [We explain things to ourselves = organize things to make them understandable] -- if there is such a thing as raw data (in the metaphysical, absolute sense). [Seeing is "concept-laden".]

Is there an absolute sense of 'raw data'? Question: is the analogy "... then where is the mind?" nonsense, i.e. unintelligible, mere sound without sense? It doesn't seem (PI § 258) to be, but to seem to understand is not to understand. (This discussion is too vague by far.)

Pictures of God

Query: relationship between metaphysics and human knowledge.

If metaphysics really is no more than a rational search for a longed-for absolute point of view, the longing [akin to magic, not having real power] to be "in contact with ultimate reality" (James Jeans), or in other words, to know God's thoughts, whereas the only logical possibility is relative points of reference/view, then that is the relationship between metaphysics and knowledge: namely that metaphysics is not and can never be knowledge (not even knowledge within a frame of reference).

The thoughts of the God who is "witness to all times and space" (M. O'C. Drury) -- if that picture is not incoherent, i.e. if it is a picture at all -- it is certainly not a visual picture, for what we can "logically" picture (i.e. what we can describe) is only one more relative point of reference. ("Each man's eye is the center [Cartesian] origin of the universe." But is it essentially so?)

Query: the difference between the wisdom of God and philosophy.

Three of possible replies, one contrasting the philosophical view with the religious view of our life and reality; another contrasting Socratic philosophy with the religion of Abraham; and the last contrasting relative with absolute: That God's wisdom -- if there is an absolute reference point, as it were, named 'God' -- would be absolute wisdom, unlike man's wisdom which is relative -- (i.e. parts, as individual frames of reference are parts of the presumed totality of points of reference; the eye of God's view would presumably oversee/overlook this totality [Metaphysics is a picture book/photo album of blurred images]) -- wisdom and therefore also ignorance (regardless of whether Socratic or conceited ignorance). Man's wisdom is therefore illusory, "worthless" (Plato, Apology 23b), because it is admixed with ignorance.

Newton's physics has absolute time and space, which is what reality would be through God's eyes, or rather, reality through the eyes of man imagining reality as seen through the eyes of God. The words 'see', 'space', 'time' -- what have these to do with God? Isaiah has "My thoughts are as high above your thoughts ..." but does God have thoughts? [If that is a metaphor, what is the prose -- this? "Who can understand the ways of God? You can ask but you will receive no answer."]

"Absolute space and time" is an anthropomorphic notion, seeing God through the eyes of man's longing and therefore limiting God to man's own image. [Man may be made in the image of God, knowing good and evil (the Serpent in the Garden), or endowed with reason (Prometheus), but the reciprocity of that relationship goes no further, other than that God is love (Christ).]

Network of Reference (fisherman's nets)

Albert Einstein's "the ether" (Eddington's statements lack James Jeans' insight) is in the same class as Newton's "absolute space and time" and Descartes' deduction from his "clear and distinct ideas" that "there can be no extension that is extension of nothing" (i.e. no void space). All three belong to the frame, not to the picture.

But maybe "net of reference" would be better than "frame of reference", because 'net of reference' makes it clear -- not that a frame changes the picture it frames -- but that it changes our perception of it ... But is there a difference? Does the picture exist as such, in itself, independent of any and all frames? (Who are we asking this question of -- God?) The frames sets the rules for perception (It does this with its particular concepts [concepts are like fisherman's nets], its particular categories). Why better? Because a net is a grid of various possible sizes and shapes [cf. TLP 6.341] which determines what we can perceive and what we can't (just as a fisherman cannot catch small fish if the grid of his net is widely-spaced, so too "percepts without concepts" are blind -- but the blindness is our own, not as it were reality's ... if reality exists). Various possible meshes, mesh sizes.

[It is very easy to slip back into the old way of thinking, the way of thinking of so many years, assuming "Why of course there's an independent reality; surely it can't be as Bishop Berkeley says ... that reality only exists as it is perceived-conceived to exist! that, to use Wittgenstein's metaphor (PI § 103), we must look through some pair of spectacles or other, that we are blind without a pair of eyeglasses.]

We wouldn't naturally call a frame of reference a "reference point" or "point of reference", but that the points of intersection of a network's grid are reference points. As if e were to say, "Don't imagine that by 'frame of reference' we mean a frame unmarked by grid points" (cf. a political map with a letter-and-number grid; e.g. A4 and G6 are points of reference on the grid mapped out from the frame).

To what is truth relative?

"Truth ... is a polygon ... a many-sided figure ... truth is purely relative to the position of the beholder. In other words, what's truth to one person is damned lies to his next-door neighbour." (Bruce Marshall. The Stooping Venus (c. 1926), vi, 2)

By 'truth' we 'true statements', not a thing of any kind (metaphysics and the reification of nouns). It is, rather, reality that is polygonal -- meaning that there are many sides to it? or that there are many ways of looking at it = points of view (reference points)? But if two people are looking at the same side (using the same reference point), then the truth is relative to the side, not to the individuals who are looking at the side. "Truth is relative to the position of the beholder" -- not to the beholder himself.

If reality itself is many-sided, a "one that is many" (like the faces of a child's block: one block, six faces), then truth is relative to the particular face of the polygon.

There are many ways of looking at a thing, and truth is relative to each specific way, not to the individual who looks at the thing that way. In other words, truth belongs to the community, not to the individual (See the word 'truth' as a tool of language, not as something's name).


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