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The Philosopher's Stone, the Bluebird of Philosophy

The concepts of philosophy are abstractions, but what is an abstraction?

Topics on this page ...

Context: the remarks on this page are set against the background of the philosophy of logic of language (or, Logic of language philosophy: how is sense distinguished from nonsense in philosophy?), and they may well not be understood without first understanding that background.

Remember that as in Socratic dialectic, these are the conclusions of today. Tomorrow they may be refuted or amended.

The Philosopher's Stone (of philosophy)

"Philosophy seems to be always tied up in language questions, and talking about language is not what I want from philosophy." For this you will have to blame Socrates (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1), not Moore, Russell and Wittgenstein (PI § 120: "Your questions refer to words; so I have to talk about words").

"Philosophy is talk about abstractions"

Query: philosophy - why must we define everything?

Why? because in philosophy we are not talking about objects, neither about "visible nor invisible" objects, but about "abstractions" -- i.e. concepts. We are describing the use of a word, not the nature of the object the word stands for. In this context the clearest definition of the word 'concept' is 'rules for using a word'. And with respect to abstractions those rules are a word's only kind of definition.

"Philosophical investigations -- conceptual investigations" (Z § 458), and 'investigating concepts' means: giving explanations of meaning (PI § 560) -- i.e. defining words. That is simply a reminder of what philosophy can do. Maybe philosophy can clarify our thinking about reality, but it cannot discover a hidden reality for us -- for how would it do that? Surely not by describing the use we make of words. (The distinction between explaining the meaning of a word by pointing to the bearer of a name and describing the word's use in the language (PI § 43).)

Note.--The expressions 'abstraction', 'abstract object', 'the object the name stands for' all suggest fundamental misunderstanding. All presume the following picture of how language works: all nouns are names of either visible or invisible objects, and the meaning of a name is the object the name stands for. And that is a false presumption about the logic of our language -- indeed, it is in fact an untested metaphysical thesis rather than a description of how we actually use language.

Philosophy's task remains what it was since Socrates: to distinguish what we know from what we don't know (although we may think we do). And therefore philosophy's first question is: How are we to distinguish between sense and nonsense in the language we use in philosophy, where we are not talking about objects, perceptible or otherwise? Because if there is no objective distinction to be made, then we cannot know what we are talking about, and then what will become of philosophy?

Note: the following remarks are not quite right, but maybe they are pointed in a right direction. They are quite rough.

Procrustes isn't dead

"... and the meaning of a name is the thing the name stands for." That is a Procrustean model ("All words are names"). It is requirement set by a mistaken logic of language, a preconception taken by logic from metaphysics, not a description of visible language use, the grammar of which is for the most part Protean rather than Procrustean. (Wittgenstein used the words "I'll teach you differences" from King Lear to emphasize this.)

Theseus killed all "the bandits that beset the road between" the place of his birth in the south and Athens. And he killed each of the bandits in the way the bandits had killed their own victims. So Procrustes the innkeeper was placed on his own bed to be either stretched or shortened (it isn't known which) and killed in this way. (Hamilton, Mythology (1942), iii, 2, p. 210)

If Wittgenstein aimed to play Theseus to the misunderstood logic of our language (i.e. the Procrustean misunderstanding), did he succeed? What he did was to set aside the ancient questions, saying "Look at things this way!" instead. But introducing a new point of view, namely of logic as description of the facts in plain view only (in contrast to the ancient speculative point of view), is not a refutation of the ancient point of view, because only reasoning and statements of facts can be refuted; a point of view cannot be. (And that is the difference as well between the TLP and the Philosophical Investigations, that they are based on different kinds of principles: the preconceived conclusions of the earlier work are Archimedean and therefore possibly mistaken.)

Procrustean logic would be e.g. that the meaning of a common name must be a common nature ... whether visible or invisible, tangible or intangible, knowable or unknown (by the standard Socrates set for philosophy; Xenophon, Memories iv, 6, 1). From which the real existence of abstract objects would seems to follow, indeed does follow (although what that "real existence" looks like "eye hath not seen nor ear heard").

That is an incomparable picture, of course, a one-sided metaphor: I cannot show you the analog at the abstract object end, but the analogy is: Just as 'x' names a tangible object, 'y' names and intangible object (abstraction), as e.g. 'hat' and 'love'.

Personification without Personality

"Terror and Destruction and Strife, whose fury never slackens, all friends of the murderous War-god ..." (Mythology, iv, 1 , p. 266). And so we use the word 'personification' (although those three friends of War don't have personalities), but our interest is not literary but philosophical: Imagine a people living in a world /peopled with abstractions/ in which abstractions fill reality, so that 'strife' isn't merely a concept, but the name of a living reality; and that the whole atmosphere is full of these living intangible objects, "abstract objects", abstractions. This is like primitive man's belief that he is surrounded by malevolent nature spirits ... although maybe that world-picture is not so primitive, because it also belongs to civilized man ("grasping hold of linguistic ghosts").

Of course you could say that Proteus despite his limitless changes in form has an essence, namely his personality: he is always the sea-god Proteus. But in the metaphor the essence is simply language despite it varying forms. Like seawater.

Query: seeing a rabbit shift shaper.

The "shape shifter": does the duck-rabbit drawing itself change -- or does only one's perception of the drawing itself change? And how is that question to be answered: what "really" happens? What criteria are being used to answer this question? What is the difference between Proteus and the duck-rabbit? That the drawing is static, we say, but how do we decide that? If we say that one's perception changes rather than that the perceived thing-in-itself changes -- how do we know that? (Nebulous questions: questions out of the nowhere: they are combinations of words for which meanings have to be assigned. Many philosophical questions are this way.)

Can one see the duck-rabbit drawing without seeing either a duck or a rabbit? And if one cannot [Would this have to be logical possibility rather than an hypothesis?], then why not say that the drawing changes rather than one's perception of it? Do we see the drawing "as" a duck, as Wittgenstein says -- or do we simply see a duck?

Seeming right is not being right

... whatever is going to seem right to me is going to be right. And that means that we can't talk about 'right' here. (PI § 258)

If I say that a sentence has meaning for me, then no one has the right to say it is senseless. (W.E. Johnson, logician at Cambridge University, to Wittgenstein's student Drury in 1929)

"If I say what a sum adds up to, then no one has the right to say it does not." What if arithmetic were that way. Then there would be no arithmetic. And if it really is that way with philosophy --

And that is the question Plato asked some 2,500 years ago: "And what becomes of philosophy, then?" (Parmenides 135b-c) Because if we cannot make a distinction -- an objective distinction -- between language with meaning and language without meaning, then what does philosophical discussion amount to?

I couldn't compare, as if to say which I prefer, Plato to Wittgenstein or vice versa, because I use their works in ways that are too different. Wittgenstein for me is a collection of tools, methods, like Aristotle's "organon", to investigate Plato's work. Socrates too is methods, but also ethics, philosophy as a way of life, which the other two are not.

"And that means we can't talk about 'right' here." Why? -- because the word 'right' is without meaning if it does not contrast with its antithesis 'wrong'. And here there is no way to distinguish between right and wrong; what I am inclined or disinclined to say is not an objective criterion -- indeed, it is no criterion at all.

Query: were ancient people angry when Socrates claimed not to know anything?

Not to know anything of importance. It was conceited ignorance -- i.e. believing oneself wise when one is not (i.e. thinking one knows what one does not know) -- that became angry. There were several kinds: (1) those who saw what was implied by Socrates' claim not to know anything of importance -- namely, that they themselves also knew nothing of importance (Apology 23b); (2) those who became angry only after Socrates showed them through Socratic dialectic that they did not know what they thought they knew (Apology 21c-d); and (3) those who thought that "free thinking" (questioning, doubting) did harm to men and undermined the way of life their city (Meno 90a-95a; cf. Aristophanes' The Clouds).

But what is important for man to know? How to live his life, surely ... But doesn't Socrates already know this? But knowing how generally to live your life does not take you as far as you need to go -- i.e. it does not tell you what specifically you should do in every circumstance. And that is why Socrates wants defining-common-nature definitions for the ethical virtues (such as courage, piety, justice, self-control), because such definitions would serve, as Plato describes Socrates' thought, as the standard Socrates seeks in ethics -- indeed they would be the philosopher's stone for every circumstance of man's life.

The philosopher's stone of natural philosophy (alchemy) would turn base metals into gold. The philosopher's stone of Socratic philosophy would turn ignorance into wisdom.

Because philosophy's stone -- i.e. millstone around its neck -- is our ignorance, our presumption that we know what we don't know.

Query: how does Socrates define ignorance and wisdom in the Apology?

Well, but that should be clear to you from Plato's text (Apology 23b): Ignorance is thinking you know what you don't know, and Wisdom (for man, although not for a god) is just the opposite -- i.e. not to think you know what you don't know. Furthermore, "those who think they know what they don't know are misled themselves and mislead others" (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1), and that is why "Wisdom is the only good, ignorance the only evil" (Plato, Euthydemus 281e), for what evil could be greater than to be misled -- i.e. mistaken -- about how man should live his life.

The distinction between "What does Socrates say ignorance is for man?" and "How does Socrates define the word 'ignorance'?" is not without a difference. If we want our thinking to be clear, we will avoid using the word 'define' equivocally -- i.e. both in the sense of 'define words' and in the sense of "define things".

The word 'ignorance' does not name an object of some kind or other. Ignorance is not a thing -- nor is it a "nothing" either (cf. PI § 304). That is of course a grammatical remark.

But yet we may be tempted by the vagueness of language to say that 'ignorance' is the name of an phenomenon. But the word 'phenomenon' is like the word 'thing': anything and everything may be called a phenomenon -- the indefinite article 'a' or 'an', for example. And if abstractions ('abstractions' I say for want of another name) are called phenomena, then the Ship of Philosophy is lost with all hands (namely us) in the Sea of Nebulosity.

What is an "abstract object" when it's at home? A word. And what is a word when it's at home -- is it anything more than spoken sounds or ink marks on paper? And the question is: what gives those sounds or ink marks meaning? Is the name of an abstraction given meaning by pointing to the bearer named by that word -- i.e. to what the word "stands for"? What gives the word 'ignorance' meaning?

Philosophy does not investigate phenomena; that is the realm of the sciences, unless someone sees a need for metaphysical speculation in the apparent absence of knowledge.

The word 'abstraction' suggests something hidden, something private. But if we talk about the use of language, then we talk about something public. And when we talk about something public we are also talking about something objective -- which we cannot say about the notion of "abstractions" -- i.e. that it conceives something public and therefore objective. It is like the notion "thought". If the meaning of language is to be found in thought, then its meaning is something neither public nor objective.

Philosophy -- does it develop?

Query: describe the origin and development of philosophy.

In all men there is a desire to know, although there is not in all men a desire [thirst] for philosophical knowledge [philosophical understanding]. In Greece that desire took the form of an impulse to hold discourse both with oneself and with others in a spirit of free-thinking disputation -- i.e. in assertion and cross-questioning [dialectic] -- to demonstrate solely by the natural light of reason that some propositions are true, others false. That is what we now call 'knowledge' in contrast to belief or insight. And it is very different from the impulse to the telling of tales by poets, which is the second spring of Greek wisdom, although it is from the philosophical point of view, untested as wisdom. But the Greek wisdom that is loved (i.e. philosophy) is the thoroughgoing use of natural reason -- in other words, rational discourse. And that is the origin of philosophy.

Even before the time of Socrates, the Greeks Xenophanes and Myson had followed the standard of using reason to examine our life in the world and mankind's beliefs about it -- which is one way we can define the word 'rationalism', for the latter said (Diog. L. i, 108) that the argument must follow the facts rather than the facts follow the argument. This may have several meanings, among which are that: (1) facts should not be selected to support a preconception (i.e. the conclusion comes at the end of an investigation -- not at the beginning), and (2) facts should not be invented because a preconception says that they should/must exist. In the context of Socrates' way of thinking: a preconception is not proof -- i.e. it is no defense against refutation in dialectic of a claim to know (This is a rejection of Plato's axiomatic method in metaphysics); man's preconceptions are at best theses to be subjected to cross-questioning, at worse prejudices that cripple our understanding.

But for philosophy as I conceive philosophy -- i.e. as I define the word 'philosophy' -- it was Socrates who set philosophy's defining standard of thoroughgoing rationalism -- i.e. the standard of using natural reason and experience as the sole guide for examining the world and how man should live his life. And that means that every proposition in philosophy must be tested in Socratic dialectic, to either be agreed to or refuted.

As to the second part of the query: Philosophy does not develop; it just moves from here to there to somewhere else, sometimes nearer, sometimes farther away. It does not develop because no one can think a philosopher's thoughts for him. You can say, "It is a logical development of his thought" -- but e.g. Plato's application of Socratic definition outside ethics is not Socratic -- it is Platonic. Because it was not what Socrates wanted from philosophy, and even had Socrates turned his attention towards metaphysics, he might have approached it in a very way from Plato's (Note that, according to Aristotle, Plato's early thought was as strongly influenced by Heraclitus as by Socrates). Another example: If Wittgenstein had never lectured about aesthetics, we might logically deduce that if he were to lecture about it he would focus on words such as 'beautiful' -- whereas in fact he did just the contrary.

When I composed "Wittgenstein's logic of language", I wrote that Wittgenstein never claimed to have invented a logic-of-language nor had he ever gathered all the elements of his logic in one place. Further, he did not claim to have been the originator of a line of thought, but only to have applied other philosophers' thought to his own work of clarification.

You don't "go beyond" a philosopher -- you just go someplace else, and the place you go may be very different from the place the philosopher himself might have gone, had he thought there need to go further. I likewise use Wittgenstein's tools [or, methods] toward my own work of clarification (e.g. writing comments to Plato's dialogs or about "Questions without Answers"), but Wittgenstein would have regarded my work as showing little philosophical insight, certainly nothing original, and making use only of a "mangled or watered down" version of his ideas.

"You don't go beyond a philosopher -- you just go someplace else." Philosophy only "develops" in the sense of increasing the number of points of view. That is what every philosopher (worth the name 'philosopher') adds to philosophy: a new way of looking at things. But on the other hand ...

Query: justify the claim that the origin and development of philosophy is dialectical.

Philosophy tests claims, to either agree to them -- or refute them. As to the rest, well, I am going to guess that with respect to development this would be Hegelian dialectic, and I am going to disagree with it: philosophers do not synthesize the work of their predecessors (Wittgenstein ≠ Hegel + Russell). As to the origin, that may have been as I suggested for democracy, that discussion decided who would rule the small community, in which case it would be Socratic dialectic: claims challenged by the tests of reason and experience.

Query: origin and development of philosophy.

If Hume really did awaken Kant from his dogmatic slumber, that is, if Kant could not have developed his philosophy as he did without that impulse from Hume, then ... That is, do we want to call Kant's philosophy, at least in this respect, a development of Hume's philosophy? (Which kind of possibility is 'could' here? But the word 'would' would suggest something accidental rather than essential, and is that what we are asking about here?) But, back to the first hand, would Hume have accepted Kant's philosophy as the logical outcome of his own, as if Kant's idea had been what Hume was aiming at? or did Kant's philosophy simply go where Hume would not have gone or wanted to go?

Query: why doesn't recollection alone prove that we will continue to exist?

Doesn't it? The query is looking for a confirmation of its thesis -- i.e. it is implicitly telling rather than asking. According to Plato, recollection shows that the soul can exist independently of the body, and if that is the case, is there any reason for the soul to cease to exist when the body dies? (Of course one might dream up many possible reasons for it to -- but the question asks for a demonstration that one or the other of those reasons is true rather than simply a logical possibility).

An important motto we might derive from Socrates would be: "Don't tell -- Ask!" That is the method of Socratic dialectic. Any thesis that is accepted without being forced to face cross-questioning in dialectic is "telling". It is a preconception. It is not philosophy.

More about "signs" and "symbols" (Wittgenstein's distinction)

Mr. Franklin's suspicions apparently took the same turn. He tugged hard at his beard, and went and shut himself up in the library, with a bang of the door that had a world of meaning to it. (The Moonstone, i, 9)

Which kind of meaning -- "grammatical meaning" (i.e. 'meaning' in Wittgenstein's logic of language)? Is the sound of the door being banged closed an example of a "sign" (-- In Wittgenstein's jargon: the physical aspect of language, e.g. a sound, considered apart the use that gives it meaning --) and the context of that sound its meaning (-- i.e. the use of the sign that gives it meaning, without which the sound is only "sound without sense" like the crunching of gravel underfoot --)? Only I think if the banging is intended to convey a meaning, e.g. of displeasure to someone else. That would be, and maybe is, conventional behavior among men: everyone knows the meaning (i.e. the convention) of door slamming.

And if that is a convention, then that communicative behavior may be misunderstood: It may have another meaning (What?) -- or no grammatical meaning at all: e.g. a door may slam because someone loses his balance and falls against it.

But it's a nice question, grammatical. That is, do we want to classify that sound as a sign or compare it to one. It appears that we might do either. It could either be called a gesture or it could be compared to one. (It might also be compared to a natural sign in that a banged door tends to indicate the mood of the one who bangs it closed. Every A is like every B -- in some aspect or another.)

If you have read thus far, I trust that you will leave this page no wiser than when you came to it. Because no one can think your thoughts for you in philosophy -- and you must subject what I have written here to your own cross-questioning before you can make it your own -- or refute it.

Of language "sounds without sense": undefined combinations of sounds

We tie a piece of chalk to a bird's foot and have it walk across the blackboard. So we have scratches without sense, chalk without sense. It sounds English, that example I gave of 'pieped quasil'. It looks like language; it sounds like language -- but it isn't.

The example that was given by our professor at school: "Did a bird walk across wet clay, or are these marks a language?" But there was no discussion of that topic. My comment: There is no one alive to tell us. That a way has been found to read marks ("decipher" them) as a language does not prove that they actually ever were. That remark doesn't seem right -- is it though? But what would prove that those marks were never a language? If you could create the same marks by allowing a bird to wander about across wet clay? Set which criteria you like: human testimony (cf. the Rosetta stone) or the failure to verify an hypothesis (i.e. wandering birds do not create the same patterns of marks on clay).

About spoken sounds or ink marks on paper. A small child's misunderstanding: Do you think they have an inherent meaning, that they must have a meaning? An illiterate or uneducated man might well presume what for an educated man would be superstition. (An African story retold by Schweitzer of men who believed that words written on paper had a magical effect on the warehouse manager. Cf. PI § 194)

A book that would show what philosophy really is

A book that would be a thoroughly honest book of philosophy: the book that Wittgenstein said he would like to have mimeographed for his friends (Memoir 2e, p. 75), one with notes like "This is not quite right", "This is fishy". A book like that would show that philosophical thought isn't static, that "holding discourse with oneself" (Socratic dialectic) does not come to an end. A book that showed this would be a completely honest book.

Is my understanding only blindness to my own lack of understanding? It often seems so to me. (OC § 418)

That is not a rational doubt (because 'rational' doubt requires grounds for doubt) -- but that is the state of mind of philosophy, of one who philosophizes. "Despite not believing that I am wrong, I may very well be wrong." The thing is not to regard your ideas as more that merely one way to conceive the problem. That there are others. And so you may even come to think that your conception is fundamentally mistaken, and that you have been blind to that mistake -- 'blind' -- i.e. ignorant of.

Fundamentally mistaken conceptions. That was what I thought when I turned from Kantian-like ethics to Socratic ethics, that the former ethics was not the most serviceable way to look at ethics, indeed that, being irrational, it is not ethics at all. But the way I conceive ethics now -- which is in accord with my precept that "There is no place in my life where I would want to say: Here I do not use reason" -- is nonetheless only one possible conception, not the only and not the true conception, i.e. way of looking at things. (Yes, of course the word 'true' is undefined here.)

Because man is possessed of the excellence of reason -- which is an excellence proper, unique and defining of man -- for Socrates ethics is knowledge.

That is not the only mistake that can be make in philosophy, however -- although, in the case of Frege in Russell's story, where was the mistake? Was it in Frege's presumption that the notion of "classes" would not lead him into contradiction -- or was it in his dependence on the notion of "classes" -- i.e. in his way of conceiving the problem -- to begin with?

Frege and reverence for truth

Russell wrote to Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) -- this was in June 1902 -- that Russell had discovered a contradiction in Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic, something to do with classes.

Background. "Does the class of all classes-that-are-not-members-of-themselves -- e.g. the-class-of-all-teacups is not itself a teacup, whereas the class-of-all-classes is itself a class -- itself belong to that class or not?" Both yes and no answers result in contradiction, because if the class of all classes-that-are-not-members-of-themselves is not a member of that class, then it must be a member of that class; and if it is a member of that class, then it cannot belong to the class of all classes-that-are-not-members-of-themselves. (Well, quite. But the notion of "classes" was, to use Clark's word, the cornerstone of both Frege's and Russell's projects to reduce mathematics to logic -- i.e. to rewrite mathematics entirely as propositional logic.)

And Frege wrote back that Russell was indeed correct. Russell was to say about Frege:

His entire life's work was on the verge of completion ... his second volume was about to be published, and upon finding that his fundamental assumption was in error, he responded with intellectual pleasure clearly submerging any feelings of personal disappointment.

Russell called this an act "of integrity and grace" and said that "there is nothing in my knowledge to compare with Frege's dedication to truth" (Clark, Life of Bertrand Russell (1976), Chapter 3, p. 80-81).

But is this not comparable? Plato offers even his most fundamental ideas to be cross-questioned in dialect, and, indeed, he says in Gorgias 457e-458b that he more values being refuted than being agreed with. And in Parmenides 132a-135c he does appear to refute his earlier thesis that his notion of "Forms" can do the job he created it to do.

About Plato's dialogs. It is the nature of dialectic to allow the nature of philosophy to come through: that philosophy's results are a thing of today, for perhaps in tomorrow's discussion those results will be refuted or amended.

And is this not comparable? Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations certainly modifies many of the ideas of the Philosophical Grammar, but does it refute them? When does a modification become a refutation -- when we can no longer point to any significant resemblances to the original? If so, then the Philosophical Grammar's ideas are modified, not refuted. (Of course I still owe us a definition of 'significant' here.) But Wittgenstein does appear to refute propositions of the TLP in his later work, as indeed he wrote:

Four years ago I had occasion to re-read my first book ... It suddenly seemed to me that I should publish those old thoughts and the new ones together: that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my old way of thinking. For since beginning to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I have been forced to recognize grave mistakes in what I wrote in that first book. (PI Preface from 1945)

"... against the background". For once Wittgenstein saw the need to show the background of his later thinking, because he did not see that when he first spoke the word 'grammar' in the lectures G.E. Moore made notes of. And without the background of what I have called Wittgenstein's "logic of language", which he did not give his students in his later lectures, I don't see how his students could have understood much of what he said in those lectures.

*

"The ability to hold discourse with oneself"

According to Antisthenes, that is the benefit of studying philosophy, even if there were no other.

I wonder -- I have to wonder because I have no experience of another kind -- if solitary philosophical discourse, self-criticism, is not inferior to face to face cross-questioning, as in the example of Wittgenstein's discussions with Ramsey and Sraffa that the Preface of the Philosophical Investigations alludes to.

On the other hand, to adapt to this context what Wittgenstein said about writing down your ideas to allow them to develop (Recollections p. 109), It is only by trying to explain your thoughts to others that those thoughts can be properly tested for their soundness. Even if you only explain your thesis to someone imaginary when you are talking to yourself, you may uncover places where that thesis is unclear, and thus whether your thinking is sound or not -- i.e. and thus whether you know what you think you know or not.

Because, as always, if a man knows anything, he can give an account of what he knows to others (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1), an account that can be put to the test in dialectic, to be refuted or agreed to. That was the standard Socrates set for us in philosophy, and, although it does have its limits, I have never found a better one.

*

If, as Plato says, philosophy begins in perplexity, then in all branches of philosophy questions arise ... although in Socratic dialectic one's thinking may begin with a categorically made assertion (for insights sometimes strike us in that form), which only afterwards one sees problems with. (Thus the form is often: thesis followed by question, rather than: question followed by thesis.) And that is when questions arise: Discourse with oneself alone, if it is philosophy and not merely rhetoric (speech making), is dialectic (theses and cross-questioning of theses).

(... if philosophy does always begin in 'wonder' = 'perplexity', although of course that "always" may be tautological.)

*

Philosophy is like and therefore also unlike detective work, because in detective work there is a correct conception -- i.e. there are well-established standards of investigation just as there are laws of evidence (These of course have varied by place and time) -- that is, not just any conception that leads to "solving" the riddle, in this case explaining the crime, is acceptable. "The one whose face I like least is the murderer", for example, is an unacceptable conception.

Whereas in philosophy there is no one correct conception -- there are countless, as many as man can imagine. However within each of those conceptions, philosophy is very much like detective work -- it tries to find the solution to the riddle (but within the context of that particular conception -- i.e. frame of reference).

And now I owe us a definition of 'conception' -- because otherwise, like the concept 'concept' (RFM vii § 45, p. 412), it is too vague by far. By 'conception' here, then, I mean: a comprehensive way of looking at things, a way of organizing, of setting standards for truth, falsity and nonsense, as well as acceptable methods, things like this. (By 'world-view' Schweitzer means 'a comprehensive way of looking at the world and man's place in it'. That is an example of what I am calling 'a conception'.)

Reverence for Truth

Albert Schweitzer's precept in his work was reverence for truth -- but the German word Ehrfurcht, if indeed that is the word being rendered as 'reverence' here, implies not only respect but also awe -- i.e. treating the truth as sacred. And when writing critical theology he quotes Paul's "For we can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth". (Bertrand Russell's words when Schweitzer died: "Good and dedicated men are rare. Our age is hardly able to understand them -- It certainly doesn't deserve them. Albert Schweitzer was both a good and a dedicated man.")

*

In sum, a book like Wittgenstein's mimeographed manuscript would be a thoroughly honest book, and I wish he had published the Philosophical Investigations marked-up in just that way. An honest book; it would show what philosophy -- i.e. philosophizing -- really is, that it is not something ever finished and done with, but something always subjected to cross-questioning and revision.

Philosophy is unending perplexity

Tell me then, does reality exist, the reality sought by the pre-Socratics? (This is a conceptual, not a metaphysical question.)

Query: philosophical questions for 1st year.

But, I think, only if I were the instructor: How in the context of philosophy are we to distinguish sense from nonsense in the language we speak? Because either there is an objective distinction -- or what is discourse, mere babble of words, of tongues? (The word 'objective' is unnecessary, because a subjective distinction would be no distinction at all.) And this would ask questions of the next query's kind. And only after that would we turn to Socratic ignorance, and Socratic ethics in Plato and Xenophon.

And I hope students would leave that course thoroughly perplexed -- but not because they had been mystified by language -- and wanting to think more about these issues. That would be the aim of my instruction. (Although I suspect all that would be beyond me -- that I would be over-reaching myself, and not only because I am too old, too muddled, to teach now.)

Query: meaning Socrates: I wander about in unending perplexity, Hippias major.

I had forgotten this, maybe because it is said ironically. Socrates does not really believe Hippias is a wise man -- Hippias is a Sophist, but not a sophist (i.e. "wise man"), in Plato's eyes. But I should not have done. Because whatever its secondary meaning, its primary is an apt description of my state of mind, particularly in my student days (much of it wasted in the classrooms of Sophists minor (professors of philosophy), to whom my attitude was also ironical). The words are in fact from Hipp. maj. 304c.

Man is a myth-maker

Query: what life would of be like without rationalism.

There would be no philosophy, no natural science, no secular historiography, no, nor even theology. In place of reason there would be instinct. And man, even if endowed with language would be "a beast wanting discourse of reason" -- because can there not be primitive language-games that do not require the use of reason to play? But would such life be human life? Man is a myth-maker (Natural science is a development of this characteristic, because its theories are composed of selected facts plus imagination to organize that selection.) Even superstition requires the use of reason, because it assigns a cause to an effect. And even man in his most primitive state reasons, and not only as a child reasons.

We make for ourselves explanations of the facts (Man the myth maker). Nothing is more characteristic of us than to ask, Why?

Natural reason -- What is natural reason?

A theory by any other name is still a theory. In other words, by 'the natural light of reason alone' we mean 'within the frame of reference of materialism'. And materialism isn't magical: it traces material mechanisms with no breaks in the causal nexus (That is materialism's picture of things).

[In the northern Asian city of Khotan, famous for its jade, an] inferior variety was mined in blocks from the neighbouring mountains, the best fished from the bed of the Khotan river. The Turkis [speakers of the Turkic languages of Central Asia], believing jade to be crystallized moonlight, noted the stretches where the moon was most brilliantly reflected and dived there during the day. (Cronin, The Wise Man from the West: Matteo Ricci and his mission to China (1955), xiii)

"Crystallized moonlight." It is certainly poetic, as it is just as certainly crazy, by our lights. Man is "by nature" a superstitious animal; there doesn't seem to be anything aptly comparable in other animals ("Only of what is like a human being do we say" (PI § 360) etc.)

Superstition is just one more way of thinking oneself wise when one is not -- i.e. of thinking one knows what one doesn't know, as is the reification of scientific theories as e.g. "The heliocentric model is reality in itself" or "The theory of evolution is a fact".

Plato's refutation of Socrates' definition of 'knowing' as 'being able to give an account to others'

Query: difference between knowledge and ignorance according to Socrates or Plato.

As if that difference were a matter of opinion rather than of grammar. Rather, how does Socrates or Plato use (or, define) the words 'knowledge' and 'ignorance' -- because knowledge and ignorance are "abstractions", not the names of things? But that distinction is only the beginning of a long discussion of How are words to be defined? (For there may be many logics of language, Socrates' logic, for example, or Aristotle's logic, or the logic of the Stoics (lekton), and so forth.)

Note, and this is important, that the historical Socrates and Plato's literary Socrates make that distinction differently. Because for the historical Socrates that distinction is a question belonging to logic, whereas to Plato's Socrates it belongs to metaphysics. The historical Socrates sets a clear criterion for knowing or not knowing: namely, being able to give an account what you know to others (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; cf. Laches 190c: "And that which we know we must surely be able to tell?"; see also Theaetetus 202b-c). But the investigation of "what knowledge is" in the Theaetetus by the Platonic Socrates is muddled by two assumptions Plato makes, one about our concept 'knowledge', and one about our concept 'definition'.

The historical Socrates never speaks of 'knowledge' as "having an account" or "getting hold of an account", but only as "being able to give an account to others when defending a thesis against refutation in dialectic". Plato's 'knowledge' as "having an account" seems to regard "knowing" as a state of mind. But that notion, which is a metaphysical rather than a logical notion, is as foreign to the historical Socrates as Plato's notion of Forms is.

Plato's real criticism is the same as Wittgenstein's -- namely, Just try to give an account of what the scent of an orange is or of how a clarinet sounds (PI § 78). Well, you can't, because there is no defined technique for putting that knowledge into words -- and that's what an account is for Socrates: words. Nonetheless, you do know those two things and many other things like them. So, Plato concludes, that "being able to give an account" cannot be what knowing is -- not if knowledge is one thing always the same -- rather than a variety of different things. But in the Philebus (13e-14a) Plato will recognize that we call many different things 'knowledge'.

Plato only allows for verbal definitions, not also for ostensive definitions, and says, in effect, that there are indefinable words. But we define such very basic words as 'object' and 'space' ostensively, not verbally, just as we can demonstrate ostensively that we know how a clarinet sounds (e.g. by identifying the clarinet from among the other orchestral sounds in an audio recording). It is as if Plato were saying that definition, like knowledge, is one thing always the same, as if there could only be one form of definition. Plato doesn't seem to recognize as yet (although he will in the Parmenides) -- that if knowledge is not demonstrable (either verbally or ostensively), then there is no distinction to be made between sense and nonsense -- "And, then, what becomes of philosophy?"

Plato and the Historical Socrates

As an aside. It might be argued that Plato's refutation of Socrates' account of 'knowing' in the Theaetetus marks Plato's final break with Socrates, that in his next dialog he places Socrates under Parmenides' tutelage and thenceforth dismisses him.

It should be clear now that making a sharp distinction between the historical Socrates and Plato's literary Socrates is not pedantic. There are real and important philosophical differences between the two from which there is much to learn.

Logic of Language and the Old School

What I wanted to study at school is what I now call logic of language (definition and such like), although at that time I was only familiar with "linguistic analysis" (which my teacher had told me about), but what I was given instead at school was metaphysics, an always-afternoon of metaphysics [Tennyson, The Lotos Eaters]. And so I wrote in The Old School: "Maybe the only one who can really feel the liberation that is Wittgenstein's logic of language -- who can understand its importance -- is the long-suffering student of philosophy, who has spent years under the yoke of the "professional philosophers" (Sophists)." I wanted to cry out like Paul: "Who can save me from this body of conceptual confusion?" that was my mind during those many years so long ago now. The "old school" author of that confusion is not fondly remembered (although he continues to reign; and, Yes, who else would he be but Old Scratch, the Deceiver).

Is only one correct classification system?

And how is the word 'correct' to be defined here? Can a classification system be likened to a scientific theory in this respect, that both seek to organize (or, arrange) all the selected data into a self-consistent whole? Now, do you think there is only one way to do that? And if there is only one way, then what type of possibility sets that limit -- is it logical or imaginative (i.e. does it depend on your ability to invent alternative schemes) -- or is it limited by reality itself -- i.e. is this a matter of metaphysical possibility (whatever that may be when it's at home)?

Language Classes

Query: all cats are animals fact.

A fact it may be, but the philosophical-logical question is: What kind of fact? For we call many different things 'statements of fact' -- i.e. there are many different criteria for a statement's being a statement of fact. Is it a fact of nature about cats and animals, for example, or is it a fact about our language's implicit system of classes and subclasses?

Invisible Concepts

Query: words such as dog and horse name concepts that are invisible.

The query appears to be asking not about this or that dog, but about "dog-ness", or, in other words, about the common nature of dogs. Is there such a thing despite no one ever having seen it? Diogenes told Plato he had seen cups but never "cuphood".

By the word 'concept' does the query mean 'common nature'? Does the query presume "the real existence" of common natures? And if those common natures are invisible and if they are not Platonic Forms, then -- what are they? The query seems to allude to Plato's theory about the meaning of common names, which is a philosophical thesis Plato himself appears to have refuted the usefulness of (Parmenides 132a-135c).

"... name concepts that are invisible." -- Are there also visible "concepts" then -- aren't all "concepts" invisible? (Do you see why we need to define the word 'concept' if we are to use that word intelligibly?)

If both "dog-ness" and "horse-ness" are invisible, does this not suggest that they exist in the same way elves do? (Or does "the mind" also "abstract the common nature" of elves by observing particular elves?)

Are the common natures presumed to be named by common names invisible, or non-existent -- or should that way of thinking be rejected because it is a false picture of our language's logic -- i.e. a picture that does not describe how we actually use common names but instead theorizes about what "it seems" common names "must" name?

Query: are numbers abstract or concrete?

Either/or. Categories can be aides to the understanding -- or obstructions to it. They can be wise or misleading guides. Dividing all things into the categories 'abstract' and 'concrete' invites the picture realm of "invisible objects". But contrast object with use of a word -- as a way of looking at things. (And that's what a categorization scheme is: a way of looking at things.)

The notion that a given set of categories must be correct somehow (I don't know how, but presumably because it is dictated by reality itself -- whatever "reality itself" is when it's at home). A misconception that so often seems forced on us: Trapped by a classification scheme -- i.e. by our own inability to imagine alternative categories. "Everything is either solid or fluid, surely." -- "But which, then, is gas?" (Poverty in categories.)

So then, to answer the query -- or, rather, to reject the categories it tries to force on us: Numbers are neither "concrete" nor "abstract". To regard numbers as either is to create "objects" out of what are in fact no more than rules for the use of words. (On the other hand, it might be said, and as I have used double quotes to indicate, that the query owes us a definition of the words 'concrete' and 'abstract' in its context -- because as it now stands, it isn't clear whether the distinction it makes is sense or nonsense.)

Numbers, if imagined to be objects, whether concrete or abstract, as well as any other apparent name-of-an-object (which is what the word 'number' is), can be reified/hypostatized by the imagination of man. And what man can imagine he can worship too. And so there can be a heavenly world where geometry's "abstractions" exist in their own right, quite independently of man their creator, an invisible realm of "geometric objects" in invisible space somewhere "up there".

Russell's early belief that mathematics exists in just that way was "belief in", comparable to religious belief -- although, I think, it is more akin to superstition fostered by a misunderstanding of the logic of our language. "The greater "purity" of objects that do not affect the senses, numbers for instance" (CV p. 26) is part of the fascination of "geometric objects", as if neither the dust nor the uncertainty of reality clung to them. (Russell later came to the view that mathematics consists, not of eternal mathematical truths, but only of man-made tautologies. But to geometry itself, that question is not a question. Indeed, it is only a question for the Philosophy of Mathematics, which is the view from outside the calculus and as such without effect on the calculus itself.)

Query: an undefined term in geometry which has no dimension and just specifies a position.
Query: according to Euclid all of the following are "undefined terms" that we choose to describe rather than define except?

Two queries that are the work of parrots -- of thoughtless handers-on of tradition. The first is in any case nonsense -- because it is not the term that is claimed to have no dimension, but the object named by the term. And why is the word 'term' invoked here rather than simply the word 'word'?

As to the second: Is there a difference between describing the use of a term and defining it? And what on earth or in the heavens does 'choose' mean here -- for what would it be like if we did choose to define those terms? What would their definitions look like?

Nothing fosters misunderstanding more than instructors who think they know what they don't know, and force their students -- with the threat of not passing exams -- to think that way too. That is how misunderstanding -- i.e. ignorance -- is passed on from generation to generation, with no end of it in sight.

Query: branch of philosophy of Albert Schweitzer?

We could call it Lebens-Philosophie ("Life philosophy"). It takes in more than Ethics, because it is about ethics and world-view (of which some are life-and-world-affirming, as was the rationalism of the Aufklärung (or, Enlightenment), whereas others are life-and-world-denying, as are many eastern religions). This is what I wrote quite a few years ago:

Albert Schweitzer believed that each of us was by nature intended to create a world-view [overview of the world and man's place in it] for himself through "reflection about final and elemental [elementary] things". He saw evidence for this in that a "fundamental impulse to reflect about the universe [Welt, also translated as "world"] stirs us during those years in which we begin to think independently". (The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization 2nd. ed., tr. Campion (1932), Chapter 5, p. 92, 100, 93)

Then we could, I think, say the branches of Ethics and (broadly) Metaphysics wedded together. Of the three parts of philosophy (as the Stoics partitioned Philosophy), Schweitzer did not write about Logic, nor about "Epistemology" if that is classified as distinct from Logic (which by my lights is a misconception -- i.e. a way of dividing up Philosophy based on a false premiss -- because criteria for 'knowing' belong to Logic, not Metaphysics). But Schweitzer also wrote about the Philosophy of Religion.

As always when talking about classification schemes -- in this instance, branches of Philosophy -- remember that there are many ways to slice a pie (A pie chart shows parts of a whole). Because Schweitzer might also be placed among the rationalists -- i.e. those who try to apply thoroughgoing reason to all aspects of our life, although he was willing to step "beyond" that into mysticism -- i.e. presumed insights into reality which are so-defined that they cannot be demonstrated to be either true or false -- so long as that final step was the result of "thought", a word (namely 'thought') he did not well-define, except to contrast it with "thoughtlessness" or "conformism" maybe.

Query: why does Newton want to banish hypotheses?

Because otherwise he cannot get his project off the ground: "This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses" -- and to accomplish this, he has to make his Natural Philosophy different from metaphysical or any other kind of speculation ("hypothesis") that is allowed to float free of the induced evidence.

Query: do you need wisdom to be wise? Socrates.

Yes, if you are only going to allow there to be "positive wisdom", but No if you willing to also allow there to be "negative wisdom" -- i.e. Socratic ignorance. Are you willing to call "not fancying you know what you don't know" wisdom? The query concerns choosing a definition of the word 'wisdom', which in this particular case amounts to selecting a standard of classification. In other words, there is no true or false answer to the query until the query's criterion for making a decision is decided on.

Ethics, Plato and fear of punishment ("But if the point of ethics is right-doing ...")

Punishment. Plato's picture in Gorgias 522c-526c, that wrong-doing is punished in the afterlife if it is not punished here -- but what has that to do with ethics? Fear of being punished, like fear of danger, is powerful, but the grammar of the word 'fear' does not intersect the grammar of the word 'ethics'; they pass one another by.

As to Socratic ethics, I would say that simply being someone who does evil is punishment enough for wrong-doing (Would you like to be, well, someone who does even more evil than you yourself already do?) -- if ignorance were equivalent to punishment, that is. But then again, if fear has the power to amend one's life towards the good, and if ethics is practical, then this may be one way that works for some individuals, if they are willing to subject themselves to an environment where fear drives away all impulses towards wrong-doing.

Query: the oracle at Delphi said that no man was wiser than Plato.

According to Diog. L. ii, 37, the oracle said, "Of all men living, Socrates most wise", which does imply that no one is wiser than Socrates. But, well, who is speaking in Plato's Apology which reports the oracle as saying only that "No man is wiser than Socrates" (which form of expression, when you come to think of it, may easily amount to the same thing) -- the historical Socrates or Plato? Is any man wiser than Plato -- e.g. is Socrates?

Given that Plato presumes to put his own thoughts in Socrates' mouth, where, according to Aristotle, they never were, in the Phaedo, which dialog purports to describe Socrates' last discussion with his companions before being put to death, an event Plato was absent from, it does appear that Plato thought himself to be wiser than Socrates. Because it's one thing to give an account of an event that never happened, as is the case with most, if not all, of the dialogs, but quite another to give an account of an historical event. ("Platonic presumption")

Although possibly in fairness to Plato, I should say that for me, unlike for Plato, Socrates is "the master", truly the wisest of men: Socrates was the first philosopher, precisely because he did not think he knew what he did not know (This is found both in Xenophon's Memorabilia and in Plato's Apology), and thus he was never accepting of opinion, but always seeking to know the truth by the method of examining "accounts of what you know" in Socratic dialectic. And beyond this, or rather as part of this, is his thoroughgoing use of reason in ethics, which, "Virtue is knowledge" thought of as a way of looking at things (Is that what it is?), for me is the most effective method for amending one's life to the good. (That I do not believe that Socratic definition is always or often the method to use in that search does not in the least diminish Socrates in my eyes: his method is reason, of asking for an account of what you know, and that is what is important. That is the standard he set for us students of philosophy.)

[Related to the thoroughgoing use of reason in philosophy is the thoroughgoing use of reason in religion (Schweitzer: "Reason ... is given us that we may bring everything within the range of its action"), which the Greek philosophers practiced.]

Plato's Republic, after Book One, is I'd say full of Plato's opinions rather than questions. And although he does present them as what he believes rather than as what he knows, Plato proceeds step-by-step in a false dialectic because his beliefs are not seriously offered as theses to face agreement or refutation in discussion.

And then there is Plato's confessed axiomatic method -- i.e. method of setting aside any facts that run contrary to his own preconceptions -- in the Phaedo.

Are those two examples suggestive of a wisdom superior to Socrates' wisdom? (As to Plato's old-age mis-adventures in Syracuse, if they are indeed historical -- these do not display a judgment superior to the historical Socrates' way of life. Quite the contrary.)

Query: Socrates to be human is to be ignorant.

That is what I wrote earlier, that man's natural condition with respect to his existence is ignorance (see e.g. The origin of our own ideas, and The devil as ignorance, because 'Satan' = 'the Deceiver', I think), from which there is no escape -- other than not to think you know what you don't know -- and to use of all the tools of philosophy toward that end, beginning with logic of language. (In our age Philosophy of Science is also especially important, as in all ages are the eternal questions without answers.)

What - not whom - you mean by the word

Some thoughts are mere groping in the dark (Acts 17.27), as are these thoughts that neither sow nor reap (CV p. 78). They are not going to lead me into the light (Faust, Part I).

Religion is deep. Possibly Kant's and Plato's metaphysics are deep. But logic is not deep. Or maybe logic is deep, if Plato and Kant are seen as clarifying concepts. But Wittgenstein did not think distinguishing sense from nonsense to be deep: "Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? ... What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand" (PI § 118). But is that what we are doing: does Wittgenstein's work show Plato to have been deluded, i.e. talking nonsense, or does Wittgenstein say only: "Look at this some other way"? Of course often language in philosophy amounts to undefined combinations of words, but not always, and there is far more to philosophy than conceptual confusion. (Further, even if we are always aware of the distinction between language with meaning and language without, whether what is said is sense or nonsense in philosophy is puzzling at times, i.e. not always clear in the particular case.)

The danger when thinking about God, i.e. about the concept 'God', is defining 'God' by making analogies from man ("Man is made in the image of God", but is God therefore made in the image of man?). But is clearing away such unserviceable concepts, the final aim of Philosophy of Religion? And how are we to distinguish between God and a god of straw -- unless saying anything anthropomorphic about God is really not saying anything about God? But then what can be said except: stop trying to "picture" God, because there is no such picture: "My thoughts are as high above yours as the heavens are above the earth" (Isaiah 55.9) and that means "and I am as well".

It should be clear that these are not remarks about the god Pascal called "God of the philosophers and wise ... [in contrast to the] God of Jesus Christ", a problematic (well, is it sense or nonsense?) collection of words that has nothing much to do with the gods of religion, except mischief.

Wittgenstein's picture of God as an inscrutable legislator -- ("For this cuts off the path to any and every explanation of "why" it is good ... If any proposition explains just what I mean it is: Good is what God orders") -- and judge (CV p. 87, March 1951) -- but isn't that picture anthropomorphic [It is man who makes laws and judges guilt], notwithstanding Wittgenstein telling Drury that he did not think of God as someone like himself, outside himself, only more powerful (Recollections p. 108)?

Whereas what I mean (CV p. 50, September 1946: "The way you use the word 'God' shows not whom you mean -- but instead what you mean") by the word 'God' can best be said by statements such as: My only loyalty is to the good and the true, or, in other words, to God  [variation: which some people call 'God']. "Confess thine ignorance": the TLP [6.5] notwithstanding, "The riddle does [not] not exist", and that riddle is also what I mean by the word 'God'.

Well, but what do I myself gain by using that word, the word 'God', at all? A connection to things I have no connection to, old Catholic churches and saints, the synoptic Gospels ... maybe. And maybe that connection is a cheat, because maybe the concept 'God' does not play the central role in my thinking about our life, whereas for Wittgenstein it seems very much to have done. Of course, the place the concept 'God' has in a person's life is determined by which descriptions (Russell's Theory of Descriptions as a method of definition) play a role in that person's thought and life. If someone says that the picture of God as legislator or the picture of God as creator plays no role in his thinking, then is that person to be said not to believe in God?

Rather than "the indefiniteness of God" (Kraus-Schweitzer), it could be "the nebulosity of [the concept, i.e. rules of grammar] God". Protean: countless things can be done with the notion "God", and if this concept is that way, maybe it is because humanity feels the need for it to be that way. (In the case of the concept 'God', where unclarity seems not to be a blunder.)

Prayer. How to pray. Maybe you must stop thinking of God as being up there in heaven, because that God is love can be seen only in oneself and in others. That is the God one must pray to.

For the Greeks, as for me, the gods or God -- the two forms of expression 'God' and 'gods' amount to the same thing -- command that what is good for man be done because, being fully rational (rather than being like man who is a rational animal, i.e. half irrational), they know what the good for man is. And man can also know (i.e. demonstrate in Socratic thesis and cross-questioning) what is the good for man, if the good for man is indeed to live in accord with the specific excellence that is proper to man -- and seeking to know by the thoroughgoing use of reason what the good is for man is what Socratic ethics does.

Other unanswered (because rejected) questions

Query: what is a question with no right answer called?

You mean a question to which there are only wrong answers? "A question without an answer"? What is the value of 1/0? That question can only be rejected, not answered? The boundaries of the concepts involved are too fluid: we do in fact call even rejections answers.

If the word 'concept' is defined as 'rules for using a word', which is the most useful definition in philosophy, then it must be said that: A rule that is not breakable is no rule at all -- i.e. it is not what we mean by the word 'rule'. And so although all concepts are more or less fluid -- none is utterly so. Concepts are not infinitely plastic (extensible, extendable). They can be broken -- that is, if you extend the borders of a concept too much (If you define a word too broadly), you end up with no concept at all.

Query: paradox or contradiction?

Note: see also the discussions Language paradoxes (Question: can these be contrasted with philosophical paradoxes? Venn diagrams) and Socrates' paradox (and "mysteries of faith"), as well as Must a contradiction be nonsense? and Contradictions in form versus Contradictions in sense.

Do those two categories exclude one another? Is every contradiction either nonsense -- i.e. an undefined combination of words -- or false? If we liked we could say that a paradox is an instance of a contradiction that is neither nonsense nor false -- or that by 'contradiction' we mean a proposition's form, whereas by 'paradox' we mean its meaning. I.e. isn't the distinction here between "contradictions in form" and "contradictions in sense"? No, maybe it isn't, not if the distinction I made earlier fosters a misunderstanding of the logic of our language -- i.e. not if it suggests that if 'p and not-p' is neither nonsense nor false, then it isn't "really" a contradiction. But, on the contrary, Yes, it is really a contradiction: Contradictions are not of logical necessity either nonsense or false. Some are true. And among the contradictions that can be not-nonsense and true are paradoxes. Not all contradictions are paradoxes, but all paradoxes are contradictions.

Goethe writes [in Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, I think] that good people place themselves in our debt, because we miss them when they go away. That seems an example of a paradoxical statement, because surely it is we who are in the debt of good people for the good they bring to us? It seems a contradiction to say that the one who gives is debtor to the one who receives.

The "curious incident" of the non-incident

In the story Silver Blaze, when asked by police inspector Gregory, "Is there any point to which you wish to draw my attention?" Holmes' answers with what seems a paradox:

"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

But, as we normally use the word 'incident', an incident is when something happens or something is done, not when nothing happens or nothing is done. Thus, how can it be an incident if the dog did nothing -- i.e. if there was no incident? Is the answer a contradiction or a paradox, or both: "conspicuous by its absence"?

Oxymorons

An 'oxymoron' is, I read (=DEF.), a 'paradoxical form of expression, linking antitheses' as e.g. 'learned ignorance'. And for example 'life after death', although this is not self-consciously ironical. Socrates is "wisely unwise", "knowingly unknowing".

Does a proposition that states a paradox only have the form of a contradiction -- or is it a contradiction? If a proposition has the form of a contradiction, then it is a contradiction. Period. Full stop. And no contradiction is necessarily false -- unless it is false by definition, as in the TLP: (p and not-p) = F. (But see the paragraph about contradiction in the discussion of the word 'logic'. Remember that in the propositional calculus some logicians replace the words 'true' and 'false' with '1' and '0' -- and now what does '(p or not-p) = 1' suggest to you? That '1' = 'tautology', and '0' = 'contradiction'.)

Question: is a tautology true? Only if it can also be false. So either we should not call tautologies true -- i.e. not apply the word 'true' to tautologies at all -- or by calling tautologies true, we are saying no more than that the negation of a tautology is an undefined combination of words. (But do I know that every proposition that has the form of a tautology is true? For if some contradictions are true, then why shouldn't some tautologies be false. Of course the difficulty is to find examples.)

Delphi's Socratic Paradox

Query: the wise man knows he knows nothing. The wise man is wise because he knows that he is not wise.

How can anyone be ignorant yet wise? This is the riddle the oracle posed for Socrates, the riddle which either the historical Socrates or the philosopher Plato solved thus: the highest wisdom for any man is to know that he is without wisdom, i.e. ignorant of things it is most important for man to know if he is to obey the precept "Know thyself".

Query: the wise man knows what he does not know.

Well, which does the wise man do -- know or not know, for surely it is a contradiction to say that he does both? The form of expression is paradoxical, and to make it Socratic "knows what" should be replaced with "knows that" ... although you couldn't know that you don't know apropos of nothing but only apropos of something (i.e. "what)"); you could hardly know that without a what to know or not know. (If someone says he knows that he doesn't know the Finnish language, we don't call his statement paradoxical.)

The Socratic paradox could also be called the Socratic irony (although not in Plato's sense of 'Socratic irony').

Query: to know what you do not know is the characteristic of one who knows.

Half the characteristic, because you must also "know what you know". The query is a paradoxical form of expression for the words of Confucius through Western philosophy's eyes rather than the eyes (and language) of his native China.

A paradox makes you pause to think about its meaning, the point its author seeks to make. And that seems to be this form's only philosophic worth.

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