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The Essence of What-is

What is, is; and what is-not is not.  (Parmenides)

The background, without which the remarks on this page may not be understood, is Wittgenstein's revision of the concepts 'grammar' and 'logic', the question of whether there is an objective distinction between language with meaning and language without meaning in philosophical problems. Because if there is no distinction, then, as Plato asks (Parmenides 135c), what becomes of philosophy?

Is there a metaphysics of man (despite Wittgenstein)?

Outline of this page ...

Philosophy and Logic-of-language (Are the two coterminous?)

Wittgenstein notwithstanding, philosophy does not seem to end where logic of language ends, i.e. questions of language-meaning do not seem to be the limit of philosophy.

Query: what is philosophy essentially according to Wittgenstein?

But this is it: does Wittgenstein define the word 'philosophy' as we normally use that word (as he says he does with the word 'meaning' (PI § 43)) when he says "... bewitchment" (ibid. § 109) etc. [Well no, clearly he is not saying how we use the word 'philosophy', but rather characterizing the things and activities we normally call [classify as] philosophical or philosophizing] or is he saying what philosophy (but What's that when it's at home? i.e. how do we normally use the word 'philosophy'?) is "essentially" -- i.e. that without which philosophy would not be what it is? Is Wittgenstein saying that: If there were no conceptual vs. factual obliteration [muddle/s], there would -- i.e. could [can] -- be no philosophy? (Pace the eternal questions? or are those also conceptual -- i.e. language "grammar" -- muddles?)

Propositions of more than one use

Query: what is philosophy in general?

A general definition of 'philosophy' or philosophy? Which -- the word or the phenomenon? A rule of grammar is not hypothetical; now which is this? Is it not hypothetical: i.e. the definition of a phenomenon: "Philosophy is love of [rational] wisdom in logic, ethics, metaphysics" -- or 'Philosophy' is 'love of [rational] wisdom in logic, ethics, metaphysics'? (cf. 'Logic' is 'the art of reasoning' in contrast to 'Logic is the art of reasoning'.)

Remember this: "... the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (PI § 43)? and a single sentence (marks on paper, sound) can have more than one use in the language: it can, looked at from one point of view, be a rule of grammar, and, from another point of view, be a statement of fact (cf. ibid. § 108). Words are tools -- now, look to see what work are we doing with the proposition 'Philosophy is ...'? in the particular case.

A proposition stating a rule of grammar (or, in other words, definition) is not an hypothesis (not in Drury's or my sense of 'hypothesis'). But if that proposition states a definition (i.e. description) of actual usage -- and if the actual usage is to name a phenomenon by identifying the nature of that phenomenon [because an abstraction cannot be pointed to] -- in that case, doesn't it seem that the rule of grammar is hypothetical (i.e. true or false)? But, of course, the rule itself is not true or false, but only whether that rule is, as a matter of fact, the rule we follow when using that word.

Query: answers cannot be given without questions.

The query's proposition is both a tautology (meaning and antithesis) -- if it makes things clearer to call this particular kind of rule of grammar tautological (and it does, because although the proposition is not a tautology in form, it is a tautology in sense, because in Wittgenstein's logic 'meaning' = 'use in the language rather than syntax') -- and a motto (precept: You must question, as Socrates taught us, not sleep-walk through life ...) Now, grammatically, how can that be? Because a sign can have more than one use in the language (and that means: in our life: "to imagine a language[-game] is to imagine a way of life" (PI §§ 19, 23)).

Query: Man, know thyself, is a statement made by the philosophy called?

If part of the essence of knowing oneself is to examine what one thinks one knows so as not to think one knows what one doesn't know (Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 6, 1; iii, 9, 6), then I think, above all others, that statement is made by the philosophy called Socratic (two reasons why "Man, know thyself" would be said by Socrates) --

-- or should I write 'Socratic'? "What is the philosophy called that ...?" Are we stating a fact about our language, or a fact about philosophy? It looks like we are doing both: again: stating both a rule of grammar and an hypothesis -- although we distinguish different uses of the single sentence (or, marks on paper, spoken sound). The same sentence is used here to do different work/s: to state a (1) rule of grammar which, if it is not the actual rule, is also a false (2) statement about the nature of something, namely, philosophy.

A way of looking at, a way of seeing a single object in various ways? like a Gestalt shift? How like a Gestalt shift, in what particular way like a Gestalt shift (any comparison says like and unalike)? Not in the way that a shift is involuntary. But in the way, as with the duck-rabbit image, that there is no right or wrong way of seeing it: e.g. it is not a mistake to see the duck rather than the rabbit when looking at the image -- although it would be a mistake not to see that the use of a language sign, the same sign, a single sign, in a particular case may be ambiguous, so that it may be used, so to speak, both as a duck and as a rabbit at the same time -- i.e. so that it isn't clear which it is: there is an ambiguity. (Our conceptual scheme rule of grammar versus statement of fact has limits to its usefulness; in this case it seems it can do no more than allow us to see that a single proposition may possibly be used in more than one way at the same time, that its meaning-use may be essentially ambiguous, as may be the question it is the response to.)

[And it seems that my thinking had become so muddled that I was asking myself, "Which type of proposition is this really?" as if a language-sign were ...]

Question: are there propositions that are essentially ambiguous in meaning? (The response to that question apropos of proposition types as language-games is itself ambiguous.) There are concepts maybe that are essentially ambiguous in meaning, as e.g. the concept 'clear': the proposition 'This is clear' will have countless meanings determined only by the particular case.

The Essence of Man (Plato and Aristotle)

Query: if the soul pre-existed the body, then how did the soul get entombed in the body?

The soul is released when the body dies. Plato says that is what death is: when the soul is "disentombed" from the body [Phaedo 64c]. But how the soul comes to be entombed in the body, so far as I can see, Plato cannot say, because, although it's a nice question, any answers to how or why could only be fairy tales -- i.e. neither facts of experience nor deductions from the facts of experience.

Plato can only deduce from the facts of experience that the soul is entombed -- because, in fact (according to Plato's account of the facts), the soul knows the Forms (i.e. the common natures of things named by common names), which it has never seen with the eyes of the body [Phaedo 65d], and therefore it must be that the soul did become entombed in the body [Cratylus 400b and Gorgias 492e-493a], for otherwise it would never have known the Forms.

Plato presumes that as a matter of fact [Goethe's warning: that a fact is only a fact within some particular world-picture or other] the meaning of a common name, e.g. 'cup', is a common nature, namely "cuphood", and that 'cuphood' is the name of a Form. Or, in other words, that the meaning of a common name is the Form it names.

["How did the soul come to be entombed in the body?" I want to say -- but this is not clear -- that for Plato to know the answer to that question would be for Plato to have solved the riddle of our existence. As it is, with his theory of Forms, Plato can only leave us with another "why?"]

Essence, Plato, Aristotle, the historical Socrates

Query: Socrates believed that the human psyche is the essence of humanness.

Plato: the soul is the essence of man, i.e. the "that without which" man is "not" man. Note that an essence cannot be "reduced", i.e. diminished (taken from) -- but that it also cannot be augmented (added to). When Aristotle includes the body with the soul as the essence of man, he is not augmenting Plato's essence of man, but offering his own, distinct "real definition" (metaphysical hypothesis) of man.

The historical Socrates saw rational moral virtue as the "essence", but by that he means that a man who is neither governed by reason nor by moral sense is a caricature of himself, not that man ceases to exist if he is not rationally morally virtuous. Traditionally, the Greeks did not at all deprecate the body: they thought "gymnastics" -- i.e. the training of the body -- to be equally important to "music" -- i.e. intellectual training -- in their education of the young, although of course they recognized that training the body is something done for life in this world only, not in the afterlife (which Plato believed there was, and Aristotle denied that there was). (Gymnastics and Music)

Query: concept of psylosophy.

If there were such a subject as "psylosophy", I imagine that would be what we are discussing here: "philosophical psychology".

Query: is Plato correct, that man is simply a soul?

The query suggests the old way of thinking in philosophy, i.e. presuming every answer to every question to be a thesis to be tested in Socratic discussion, either with oneself alone or with one's companions. And that seems not to be the case (according to Wittgenstein anyway) ...

But that is not what I earlier said "the old philosophy" is, for I said then, following Wittgenstein, that the old way of philosophizing is to mistakenly presume that all philosophical questions are questions about phenomena (i.e. facts of experience) and "abstractions" (i.e. ??) rather than about concepts (i.e. rules for using words). But note that for conceptual questions -- indeed, for all philosophical questions -- we use Socrates' method of cross-questioning, which presupposes that "that which we know, we can surely tell others", which if that is not presumed means the end of discourse of reason, which means the end of philosophy.

Facts about our language use are facts of experience, of course. Nevertheless we distinguish grammar from non-grammar, e.g. facts about the river Rhine from a description of how we use the word 'river'. (We set language facts apart from other facts of experience, just as we distinguish man from nature although of course man is part of nature. It is a question of a point of view.)

Thus it seems that, according to the old philosophy, the question is whether or not the soul is the essence of man, of both the species and the individual man, for as I will read the query, 'simply' = 'essentially'. The philosophical question would be whether man need have, or at least at one time have had, a body. Is the essence of man simply to know the Forms (true reality, according to Plato)?

But if that without which man would not be man, i.e. if the essence of man is the soul, then (1) what of Aristotle's Man is a rational animal, because, I imagine, the body is the animal "half" of man, whereas the soul is the rational; and (2) But if man is essentially a soul, then man is essentially rational -- but isn't that what the gods are [The concept 'god' is an example of "grammar stripping", i.e. of a priori conceptual invention], but then how is the essence of man distinguished from the essence of the gods, for man and god would seem to have the same Platonic Form if man is essentially a soul?

But it is possible e.g. to be fully rational but ignorant. Are the gods all-knowing, or is their ignorance of different things from the ignorance of man? That is, there may be countless distinctions that might be made -- but thy would all be grammatical inventions, because about the gods there are no facts of experience to base them on. The essence of God is rules of grammar (PI § 373). But is the essence of man likewise?

Essence and grammar -- what does it mean?

Wittgenstein writes that "essence belongs to grammar" (PI § 371) -- i.e. to rules for using words rather than an hypothesis about the nature of some thing (Why?). And if that is true, then whether or not man is simply a soul is not a question for agreement or refutation in Socratic dialectic -- because "what man essentially is or is not" belongs to grammar, i.e. to rules for using the word 'man', rules which are public and which "anyone knows and must admit" (Z § 211; PI § 599).

We learn to use the word 'man' by ostensive definition, but does it end there? or is it as N.R. Hanson says, that "seeing is theory laden"? i.e. that many facts of experience are the basis by which we call something a man or not. But do our expectations belong to grammar? Or is grammar so to speak more rudimentary? Well, the word 'grammar' is our tool -- what work do we want to do with it? What do we want to call 'the grammar of a common name' -- what limits do we want to set, and why?

Is What is the essence of man? a grammatical question: why does essence belong to grammar (if indeed essence does belong to grammar) in this particular case? Go back to first principles. By 'essence' of a thing, would we mean (1) the meaning of the thing's name (which would be a convention of grammar), or (2) an hypothesis about what the defining common nature of the thing is? Would what we mean by the word 'essence', then, be a matter of choice -- i.e. between various of points of interest (PI [§ 108])? Plato's interest in man is of the second kind, because if the nature of man answers the question of how we should live our life (Socrates and "Know thyself") -- an unavoidable question it seems if man is to live at all -- it would seem wise to ask what the essence of man is.

(Although it may not have meaning in every case to ask the second kind of question, it is enough here -- i.e. it will prove our point -- if it is possible to ask that question in some cases, as indeed Wittgenstein does in the case of games, which is no different from Plato's asking about the essence of piety -- even if the answer is that there is no defining essence, that does not make the question nonsense. Of course, it also doesn't prove that any essence belongs to nature rather than to convention.)

The abbé said that it was not the high temperature of hell which hurt most, but the loss of God, which went on forever. Death, the abbé said, was an alchemy, which changed not only bodies into dust but worldly souls into spiritual souls so that they desired what they had formerly despised. (Marshall, To Every Man a Penny (1949), li, p. 245)

(2) "We are discussing no small matter, but how to live" (Plato, Republic 344e, 352d), in contrast to (1) "Philosophical investigations: conceptual investigations (RPP i § 949), which, setting aside Wittgenstein's generalization, i.e. SOME therefore ALL (which is not a valid argument), is only another point of interest (Why -- are there no instances of philosophical problems = conceptual muddles? Hardly that, but those need not be what interests someone about philosophy).

What is the essence of the phenomenon 'games'?

Should Wittgenstein have said "Verbal -- as opposed to real -- essence belongs to grammar"? But yet when he talks about games, he talks about games, not about the grammar of the word 'game'. "Have games an essence, a defining common nature?" Is that different from asking if the common name 'game' names a common nature? But how else to know except by comparing the various things we call by the name 'game'? (Socrates' method and induction.)

Query: an essential definition is important to Socrates because a material essence is a definition that is easy to see.

Plato says that if we know what all pious acts have in common, we shall never be in doubt about what is pious and what is not (Euthyphro 6d-7d). In that sense, an essential definition is "easy to see". But why "material essence"? Because Plato believes that essence belongs, not to grammar, but to nature (Although solely from the point of view of finding a universal standard of judgment, does it matter whether that standard is dictated by nature or convention?) And sometimes it seems it may, as e.g. "Man is a rational animal". At most you could say: one needn't use the categories {rational} and {animal}; the categories themselves do not belong to nature. But, well, I don't know: how do we decide what is and what isn't a "very general fact of nature" (Wittgenstein, PI II, xii, p. 230)?

The question "What is the essence of the phenomenon?" misconceives the relationship between concepts and phenomena. The concept says what the phenomenon is -- That is all we know about it. If, as Kant said, "percepts without concepts are blind," then the combination of words 'the phenomenon in itself' is nonsense (an undefined combination of words.)

Convention, reality or partially both?

Aristotle's "rational animal" definition of man -- is it an hypothesis or a convention? We might say: you are classifying man as an animal: you are making comparisons to other life forms. That man has "discourse of reason" (for that is what we mean by 'rational') and the other life forms haven't -- isn't that a fact? How are we to distinguish between facts and verbal conventions with respect to 'man is a rational animal'?

When Plato say that man is essentially his soul, that is an hypothesis (an example of what we call an hypothesis), but of the metaphysical kind (No one has ever seen a soul). It is not a verbal definition, because that is not how we define the word 'man'; we would not find it -- or place it -- in a dictionary of the English or any other language. It is a statement about man's nature (although not in the way that a statement about the average man's height would be).

But Aristotle's "rational animal" formula -- could that be a verbal definition of 'man'? But we define the word 'man' ostensively, not verbally; that is how the child first learns or is taught to use that word. The class of objects {animal} -- man fits that class's criteria. But if we choose the criteria, doesn't that make our classification system verbal (i.e. conventional) rather than real (i.e. belonging to reality)? Classification systems are more or less arbitrary: because we set the criteria -- but reality says which objects match those criteria. (Common names are classes; they are concepts, categories.)

Query: Socrates. Man, know thyself.

Both the Delphic imperative and, -- as Socrates interprets it --, the Socratic imperative to cross-question one's life using the standard he set to distinguish what one knows from what one falsely thinks one knows.

In Plato's Apology Socrates says that self-knowledge is to know that you don't know anything of much importance ["anything worth knowing"]. But in Plato's Phaedrus Socrates says that self-knowledge is knowing what kind of creature one is. For example, self-knowledge, according to Aristotle's "definition of man, or, the essence of man", would be to know that in man [the "rational animal"] there is not only a rational root, but there is also an irrational root [the irrational root that bars the way to virtue's being knowledge].

Now, in that discussion are we defining the words 'Know thyself' ['self-knowledge'] or we saying "what self-knowledge is"? Or are we doing both? Is this a question of points of view, that is to say, of being interested in a phenomenon from different points of view? (How else can the meaning of 'know thyself' be given except by suggested examples? And they are only suggested, for none is by itself defining [none is an essential definition], and all can be cross-questioned [challenged/tested in discussion].)

What was Wittgenstein's interest in the phenomenon?

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

In which way was Wittgenstein interested in the phenomenon? (which phenomenon?)

Which phenomenon in this case? Man? Then it's possible to be interested in how we use the word 'man' but also in "what man is"? Wittgenstein gives his own examples:

[Different investigations are possible]

We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language, not about some non-spatial, non-temporal phantasm. [Note in margin: Only it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways]. But we talk about it as ... when we are stating the rules of the game ... (PI § 108).

We are not analyzing a phenomenon (e.g. thought) but a concept (e.g. that of thinking), and therefore the use of a word. (ibid. § 383)

Why are we talking about it that way? Why are we analyzing it that way?

... the sense of 'meaning' of which he held these things to be true, and which was the only sense in which he intended to use the word, was only one of those in which we commonly use it ... (PP i, p. 257)

Then Wittgenstein's choice of interest [in language (PI § 108), i.e. the meaning of the word 'meaning' he chose] appears to be more or less arbitrary -- or to be chosen specifically in order to do away with philosophy (metaphysics). I somehow (why? Because there exists the confusion between concept- and phenomenon- investigations which anyone who philosophizes is made familiar with by Wittgenstein) don't think the second possibility is true.

"Wittgenstein's philosophy's false consequences"

On the other hand, Bertrand Russell did accuse Wittgenstein of inventing a lazy philosophy for himself.

The later Wittgenstein, on the contrary [i.e. in contrast to "the earlier", the author of the TLP], seems to have grown tired of serious thinking and to have invented a doctrine which would make such an activity unnecessary. I do not for one moment believe that the doctrine which has these lazy consequences is true. (My Philosophical Development, New York: 1959, p. 216-217)

And so the question is: Is it possible to do philosophy "in the old way"? Is Wittgenstein's project in philosophy -- nothing more than just another way of looking at things? Because to select only one meaning of 'meaning' as Wittgenstein does is to select a viewpoint, or in other words, to select one way to look at things rather than some other. [A reference point, the point of reference from which to investigate philosophical problems, one among others, not the only one.]

Every way of thinking is all right as long as it isn't stupid. (Letter to Sraffa, 17.3.1935, Wittgenstein in Cambridge (2008), Document 184, p. 238)

But sometimes our way of thinking, our way of looking at things has a point [aim], and what is the point of Wittgenstein's way of looking at things? Why does he look at things the way he does? Is it to make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense in the language we use in philosophy? -- and does his meaning of 'meaning', which belongs to his method and project in philosophy, succeed in doing that?

"Is it possible?" And what does 'possible' mean in this case? Logically possible? But here there does not seem to be a difference between logical and real possibility, because here 'possible' = 'describable, because it is described in actual examples'.

The question is, must metaphysical speculation be banished because it is language without sense -- or because Wittgenstein simply doesn't want metaphysics, but wants conceptual clarity from philosophy instead? [cf. TLP 4.112: Wittgenstein's project in philosophy, his view of what philosophy is (and isn't) never changed.]

What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. (PI § 116)

It has to be "their metaphysical non-use = nonsense = undefined language = disguised nonsense" -- because if there were a metaphysical use, then Wittgenstein's project in philosophy would simply be a project for ignoring metaphysics. Which would be philosophically pointless; it would have nothing to do with the truth. The objection to metaphysics has to be that language in metaphysics is nonsense, not merely that the project of metaphysics is not wanted by Wittgenstein. It can't be that Wittgenstein wanted a way to look at language that eliminates metaphysics, and that is why he chose this way. Rather, it has to be as I said: Wittgenstein chose this way in order to make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense. (On the other hand, maybe I'm wrong, for why would both Wittgenstein's early and revised views of language meaning make metaphysics nonsense?)

Can hypotheses about phenomena ("conceptions") rather than concepts (definitions of words) be the proper subject of philosophy (Wittgenstein notwithstanding)?

"... or because Wittgenstein doesn't want it." Well, he does choose the particular meaning of 'meaning' that he chooses .... But I don't think that's it, the whyever of his project, that is. For what other meaning would he have chosen (if there is to be an objective distinction between sense and nonsense). No, it's not that; but is it that he chooses to interest himself in the concepts, that is to say, in the use of words, rather than in the phenomena?

For example, there is the word 'mind', but there is also the phenomenon of thought [PI § 383], and why shouldn't the nature of that phenomenon be the subject of philosophy, albeit with mindfulness to how we use the word 'thought' so as not to mistake conceptual muddles (i.e. nonsense: undefined combinations of words) for philosophical propositions about the phenomenon. Nevertheless, why shouldn't it be possible to say something philosophical about the phenomenon of thought; and why shouldn't that be a philosopher's project in philosophy rather than the project Wittgenstein himself chose? Well, this is the question, I think.

Question: If "nonsense" isn't meaningless (Aristotle's "mere noise without sense") -- and one could not even climb the ladder [TLP 6.54] if it were, then why should anyone throw the ladder away?

But I think Wittgenstein's answer is that remarks about phenomena are empirical -- and therefore they belong to natural science (broadly): "as soon as a question becomes empirical it becomes a question for a science of some sort" rather than for philosophy. Thus if philosophical propositions are to be distinguished from scientific propositions, they would have to be propositions that could be known to be true independently of any empirical or experimental verification (i.e. of any observed or induced phenomena). And Wittgenstein says that there are no such propositions, that all candidates show themselves to be grammatical propositions -- i.e. rules for using words -- rather than propositions about phenomena.

And, as long as we deny that ethics is one of philosophy's parts (a denial that does not belong to my own Socratic project in philosophy), as far I know Wittgenstein is correct -- i.e. I have never been able to find a counter-example. But, on the other hand, then what is the question I next ask, the question, What is the essence of man? -- isn't that a philosophical question, for it clearly isn't an empirical question that is being asked.

Is it possible "to say something philosophical about the phenomenon" of man -- i.e. (and this is the difficulty, to say what the meaning of those words would be) to say something of interest to metaphysics, i.e. something about the ultimate reality of man, of "what man really is" in himself, whatever that may prove to be when it's at home?

Destination determined by the path chosen

... he chooses a particular meaning of 'meaning' -- and if the end [i.e. outcome, conclusion] of a philosophy really is in [i.e. determined by this beginning] the choice of a meaning of 'meaning' ... That is why I wrote: Look for an alternative logic of language. -- But I don't know of an alternative that makes the distinction between sense and nonsense objective (and without that objective distinction, philosophy is "mere sound without sense").

"... in a variety of ways"

Query: what is the meaning of philosophy?

The query appears to ask for "a definition of philosophy", not for what philosophy amounts to ('meaning' = 'importance' ['significance']), which would be another point of view from which -- or in other words, another way -- to be interested in the phenomenon of philosophy (PI [§ 108]). Cf. the points of view of anthropology (philosophy seen as a cultural activity), psychology, religion ("the worth of human wisdom"); none of those concerns our use of the word 'philosophy', nor the various "conceptions of philosophy" (its aims, possibilities and methods), which the query's 'meaning' = 'definition [of philosophy]' appears to do. Yet all these points of view do say, in their particular way, "what philosophy is".

The question of what the individual wants from philosophy, for "there are many ways to be interested in a phenomenon" (PI § 108 [margin]), and someone may look to philosophy for the answer to "no small matter, but how to live" (Plato), or not (Wittgenstein did not).

"Essence belongs to grammar"

When Aristotle said that man is a rational animal, was that a definition of the word 'man'? And yet it is a statement of what man's essence is, according to Aristotle, a thesis that can be cross-questioned in Socratic dialectic. "Essence belongs to grammar" -- how or does this apply in the case of Aristotle's "definition of man"? Isn't 'Essence belongs to grammar' itself a philosophical-logic-of-language thesis?

Is that man has a body an empirical proposition? Is it anthropology?

If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them. (PI § 128)

That does not appear to be true in this case. Someone who asks whether man is essentially a soul is not confused about the meaning of the word 'man', as if simply describing the way we normally use that word would dissolve his "not knowing his way around" (PI § 123). No, he is simply wondering -- but not 'wondering' in the sense of 'being perplexed'; what he wants is to know is "what man is" (cf. Plato's Phaedrus 230a: "to know what kind of creature I am"; cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia iv, 2, 25). He is looking a various pictures -- and these are the picture-grammars of metaphysics. But the choice of pictures here is not arbitrary: reasons are given for, as well as counter-reasons (reasons against); in other words, there is "debate" (either with oneself alone or with one's companions). And that is philosophy as it has been since Socrates' day, and not Wittgenstein's philosophy or "logic of language".

[Cf. Someone who asks "what death is" is not asking for a definition of the word 'death'. They are not in a grammatical muddle.]

Thales has a picture that there is something unchanging behind the changing appearances of things, and that this something is water. That is a metaphysical picture (speculation), and it is another counter-example to Wittgenstein's general proposition, for it does not seem to me that Thales is bound up in a conceptual muddle, that the question he asks is nonsense, i.e. an undefined combination of words.

[Wittgenstein says that the pre-Socratics weren't philosophers in the sense that later philosophers were, but I don't see that the pre-Socratics were any different, their work any less metaphysics than the work of Plato, for example.]

Grammar is more or less arbitrary, but when a concept = a grammar = rules for using a word, is the expression of our interests (PI § 570), it may seem less so.

The good before Christ

Socrates and Plato and Aristotle and Isaiah had been happy in Limbo because like this poor young woman's baby [who died without baptism], they wouldn't have known what they had missed until Our Lord died on the Cross and opened Heaven to all the good men and women who had lived on earth before His Sacrifice. Such was the teaching of the Church ... (Marshall, The Bishop (1970), xxii, p. 128)

But Aristotle certainly won't be there, because according to Aristotle it's impossible for the soul to exist without a body. Plato will of course be there. But as to Socrates, he said he didn't know (Apology 40c-41c, 42a), and is that reason enough to place him there? (Dante's First Circle of Hell is not Limbo, because Limbo was conceived as a place on the border between Hell and Heaven.)

"The essence of God"

"It belongs to the essence of God that you cannot see God." That is a grammatical remark (a proposition that states a rule of grammar). In the case of 'God', essence clearly (Why? or do you think there are empirical propositions about God?) belongs to grammar ("theology as grammar" (PI § 373); cf. the concept 'God' and Russell's Theory of Descriptions). But is the philosophical question of the essence of man clearly a logic of language question about the grammar of 'man'? Does "the essence of man" belong to grammar?

(Wittgenstein denies that there are any such things as "metaphysical definitions" of phenomena -- but is he correct, for do they not belong to philosophy as much as logic-of-language's definitions of linguistic-signs do? Although, note, not every "abstraction" has both types of definitions, e.g. non-name words haven't. Some "abstractions" name phenomena (e.g. virtuousness) about the cause of which philosophical hypotheses may be formed -- but not all do.)

Neither do we not take a philosophical interest in the bearers of all common names, nor is the logic of common names our only philosophical interest. And if the questions we have asked about the nature of man are philosophy rather than nonsense, then it seems, contra Wittgenstein, that not all questions philosophical are necessarily questions logical, that not everything philosophical about the discussion of man is really (despite appearances to the contrary) a discussion of the grammar of the word 'man'.

What is the difference between the grammars of 'God' and 'man'? That 'God' names an "abstract object"? Nay, that makes the grammatical difference seem much too small (PI § 339). The essence of man, as Plato saw, is no more perceptible than the essence of God.

Two general propositions, associated I think with Locke and Kant: 'There is nothing in the mind that was not first in the senses' and 'The mind determines what can be in the senses'. I am wary of these propositions, not as to their truth or falsity, but as to their meaning, for they might be given countless meanings. It is in the particular, in examples, that meaning is found -- [which is itself a general proposition? It is a suggested method for meaning -- no, not for meaning-discovery, but -- for meaning-invention: examples make meaning clear by giving our language meaning(!), not by making its already existent meaning clear] -- i.e. examples are explanations of the meaning of general propositions; they respond to: How so? How do you mean? And so too with the general proposition 'Essence belongs to grammar'. (Synonyms for 'general' are 'vague', 'amorphous', 'nebulous'.)

Query: Wittgenstein and some questions should not be asked.

The important distinction: cannot versus should not. The TLP says man "cannot" ask about ethics and God, because the logic of our language does not make it possible [indeed, makes it impossible: language is a cage] to ask. But still in his later work Wittgenstein thinks it "impossible" to philosophize about ethics, e.g. about the value of music in a human life -- And is that "should not" or "cannot"? Where is the misunderstanding, i.e. conceptual muddle, if someone asks, in philosophy, about ethics and God? About Wittgenstein in later times, this is what I don't see. Would it be wrong-headed (a mistaken view of things -- in what way mistaken?)?

Query: Wittgenstein's second theory.

Whyever not call it that, for isn't it a theory? What are we calling a 'theory' -- a 'selection of facts looked at from a particular reference point' [a 'selection of facts seen from a particular point of view, or, framed in a particular way']? Then isn't there a "Wittgenstein's second theory"? The viewpoint is a particular definition of 'meaning' [a particular revision of the concepts 'grammar', 'logic'], and the facts [data, which the philosopher tries to see raw] is the use of language in philosophy.

If by 'theory' mean facts plus imagination -- i.e. how the facts are looked at, e.g. how they are selected and organized -- is "imagination", i.e. something added to the facts by the one who looks at the facts, then we can speak of "Wittgenstein's second theory about what the essence of philosophy is". (If we want to map the room, placing the origin of our grid is an act of "imagination". It is not inherent to the facts that the grid's origin be located here rather than there or somewhere else.)

And according to -- i.e. within the frame of reference of? -- Wittgenstein's second theory of what philosophy is or "really [i.e. what its essence]" is, philosophy is conceptual (i.e. linguistic) confusion, man's failure to understand -- i.e. to look at language from Wittgenstein's conceptual revision's point of view [i.e. language compared to games] -- the logic (or, connection between "grammar" [i.e. rules of the game, as in "language-game"] and sense and nonsense) of our language.

"Wittgenstein's first theory about what philosophy really is"

Question: was there a "Wittgenstein's first theory" in the above sense of the word 'theory'? Wittgenstein's first account -- i.e. first statement of "what philosophy is" -- was a metaphysical theory: it said: This is how reality stands; it did not claim to be a mere way of looking at things; it claimed to have found an absolute reference point.

Then was "Wittgenstein's second theory" a scientific theory? What comparison between philosophy and science are you wanting to make? Cf. Schweitzer spoke of critical theology's "historical hypotheses", i.e. possible ways of accounting for the data in a self-consistent way that solves more problems than it creates.

In these three cases -- Wittgenstein II, natural science, and Schweitzer's critical-historical theology -- the facts (to which imagination is added) are empirical facts: they are theories about verifiable public (and therefore objective) facts. Empirical facts contrast with e.g. Descartes' non-empirical propositions from which he draws deductions, e.g. 'I think' and 'I exist' cannot be verified by Descartes's own experience (The grammar of the proposition 'I exist' is queer -- is it like 'I have a headache'? The language-games are different: 'I exist' is not a statement of experience (It is not a move in that game); the language-game of Descartes: Is there any proposition I cannot give grounds for doubting the truth of? But is there such a language-game, or is Descartes talking nonsense? Why?), and Descartes' propositions such as 'There can be no extension that is extension of nothing', which is not an empirical proposition: if it is a statement of fact, it is not a statement that any experience can verify (and therefore it is not DEF. empirical).

Plato's philosophy seems to consist of both kinds of theories. For Plato's evidence for the Forms is the fact of experience that many common names do not name perceptible common natures (Phaedo 65d). And that is different from deducing from the deduction that there are Forms that these Forms must have been learned in a pre-existence, that is to say, prior-to-the-body existence, which is not an empirical statement of fact -- because it is not based on induction (which the absence of visible common natures is) -- but is only a case of deriving [How exactly?] one proposition from other propositions (cf. OC § 1).

Empirical verification -- i.e. verification by experience or experiment [if we want to call Socratic discussion "experiment"] (We can verify by public experience -- [Note this is a tautology, because a proposition that isn't public isn't verifiable] -- that a particular common name does not name a common nature) -- seems to be the difference between these cases. And I have called specifically the second (e.g. that knowledge of the Forms must predate the body) type of case "metaphysics", but why not the first (e.g. that there must be Forms) type also?

"... bewitchment by language"

But is "Wittgenstein's second theory" not also metaphysical -- i.e. does it not too claim to be a statement of what philosophy really is? "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language" (PI § 109). Really, is that all philosophy -- i.e. logic and metaphysics -- is? That it is, is a thesis that must be put to the test in Socratic dialectic.

Does the essence of philosophy belong to grammar?

Query: who was the philosopher and mathematician who first used the word philosophía? Failure was built into the word 'philosophy' as namely 'love of wisdom' rather than 'wisdom itself'.

The Greeks credited Pythagoras with the invention of the word 'philosophy' (or, rather, the word 'philosopher' = 'lover of wisdom', in contrast to 'sophist' = 'wise man'). And that appellation's aptness seems confirmed by Socrates' failed search for a wise man, a man who knew -- not merely mistakenly thought he knew -- what is important for man to know; and further, Socrates as portrayed in Plato's Apology says that, although he is without wisdom, he is a lover (wooer) of wisdom. But on the other hand, although 'twas modesty invented the word 'philosopher', I don't think Pythagoras thought that in trying to find wisdom man must fail. The Pythagorean proposition that "reality is number" was not thought by its holders to be mere "metaphysical speculation" -- but instead knowledge (wisdom) of reality. (The Sophists, Socrates, and the Socratics introduced doubts about all human wisdom, but they came much later.)

Query: origins of philosophy derived its name.

Can the name 'philosophy' be derived/deduced from the origin of philosophy? or can the origin of philosophy be derived/deduced from its name?

Wittgenstein would not have invented the name "love of wisdom" for what we call philosophy or philosophizing, because, according to his account, philosophy fails and must fail -- because it is a mere child of confusion bred by the natural language we inherited in childhood, by the false grammatical analogies that are suggested to us by syntax -- as well by as our naive schooling (i.e. inadequate classification system: "A noun is the name of a person, place or thing", but since "thing" = anything, that class can simply be defined as: "Nouns are names of things", and consequently the meaning of a 'noun' (= 'name') is the thing the noun names) -- as if these false analogies had been built into our language by an incompetent builder.

Language, the only tool we have with which to think in philosophy, can be either functional ("civil meaning") or dysfunctional, and in philosophy it is dysfunctional (PI §§ 132, 38) -- because when we philosophize we take as granted the un-misleadingness of the analogies suggested to us by syntax. In other words, because our thinking presumes these false analogies to be correct, our reasoning is built on mere sounds without sense, combinations of words without defined uses in the language, the verbal illusion of a foundation.

Therefore "loving wisdom", according to Wittgenstein, means to not philosophize -- to not engage in metaphysics. (The questions of ethics do not belong to philosophy, according to Wittgenstein, for he holds that philosophy is logic and metaphysics only, and that logic only shows that metaphysical propositions are not speculations about reality, but only idle pictures at best, and at worst "mere sound without sense".) Because metaphysics is mere constructions of houses of cards (PI § 118), and thus philosophy isn't "love of wisdom" -- but mere windbaggery.

The difficulty with the thesis of Wittgenstein's later work is that it is itself metaphysical, for it generalizes from some to all, claiming that all philosophy is really only conceptual confusion, confusion which, according to Wittgenstein, is the essence of philosophy (Z § 458). -- But if "essence belongs to grammar" (PI § 371), then that's simply the way Wittgenstein is choosing to define the word 'philosophy', designating what he is going to call by that name -- or the essence of philosophy does not belong to grammar but to reality, and then Wittgenstein's general proposition does not belong to logic but to metaphysics. (That essence belongs to metaphysics is a proposition Plato might agree to.)

The illusion of wisdom seeking (Wittgenstein, Kant)

If the origin and defining method of philosophy -- i.e. of what we title 'philosophical thinking' -- is to investigate metaphysics, logic and ethics by the natural light of reason alone, without the aid of divine revelation (religion) or experiments with verification (natural science), with the aim of knowing reality as it is in itself, or, in other words, of gaining philosophical wisdom, then the shared view of Wittgenstein and Kant isn't that there is no philosophical wisdom -- but that there cannot be any philosophical wisdom. And that is very different from saying, as the Socrates of Plato's Apology says, that mankind is without wisdom but that it must seek wisdom (23a-b, 37e-38a). For according to Kant and Wittgenstein, philosophical wisdom can't even be sought.

Query: who invented philosophy?

Thales and the Milesians, it seems. But I misread the query as "inverted philosophy", and I thought: Wittgenstein, so to speak, by saying that metaphysics -- the very origin of philosophy in pre-Socratic times -- isn't metaphysics but merely conceptual muddle instead, a conjuring trick of language.

And Kant had said earlier, although for different -- i.e. for metaphysical rather than logic-of-language -- reasons, the same, namely that metaphysical knowledge is unattainable due to the limits set by the innate categories of human thought, categories that belong to the human mind, not to the world in itself. Mysticism -- i.e. knowledge of the transcendent, of what, if anything, lies beyond ("transcends") sense perception -- isn't possible.

And so philosophy = love of wisdom becomes in their hands philosophy = the exposure of language sorcery (Wittgenstein, PI § 464) and philosophy = "healing the human understanding" (Kant). Is that standing philosophy on its head? I don't know, but it does upend it.

Someone who really did turn philosophy upside down was Albert Schweitzer when he said that life-philosophy is prior to nature-philosophy, that the first question of philosophy is not "What is the world?" but rather "What am I?" and answering that all I know is that I am life that wants (even involuntarily) to live. And so the meaning of man's existence, in so far as he can know it, lies in ethics rather than in knowledge of the world, metaphysical knowledge of which he doesn't have.

(Descartes too begins with a basic view of himself, that he is thinking (because of that he cannot doubt) -- but from this view he proceeds to deduce (prove by deduction) that he knows the nature of transcendent reality, e.g. of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul.)

Hypotheses and Grammar

Query: reasons why philosophy as a discipline has many definitions.

I don't know; has "philosophy as a discipline" many definitions? My question: are we asking about the word 'philosophy' or the thing (subject) philosophy ... and is there a difference in the meaning of 'definition' with respect to word and thing in this particular case? (Answer: see above)? Has "philosophy as a discipline" many definitions because people disagree about "what the nature of philosophy is" as if one might ask "What is philosophy in itself?" (Why shouldn't [i.e. can or can't] one have a theory about what philosophy is, in Drury's sense of the word 'theory'?)

Plato's "words about whose meaning we are at variance" (Phaedrus 263a-b): well, isn't there a phenomenon of philosophy? Yes. Can/how do we distinguish that phenomenon from the use of the word 'philosophy'? Suppose you said: This is how we use that word: We don't define the word 'philosophy'; we only say things about what the phenomenon of philosophy is (and there may be a connection in this to Russell's Theory of Descriptions as a method of defining words: we say selected things about, for we needn't all accept the same things).

We might use Russell's "Theory of Descriptions" to define 'Philosophy'? No. The word 'philosophy' is defined by a general, very general definition, rather than by this and that particular and not this and that other particular.

Are we in disagreement about what the word 'philosophy' points to/names, and is what it points to that word's meaning?

Philosophical problems are solved by "looking into the workings of our language" -- but this looking "gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems" (PI § 109). Language is only important because philosophy is important.

So I wrote elsewhere. But language itself is a philosophical problem: there are questions about language itself that "give philosophy its light": it is possible to be philosophically perplexed about language, about language-meaning e.g.

Question: do Wittgenstein's logic/conceptual tools (i.e. revision of the concept 'grammar') resolve those problems about language for us -- or do Wittgenstein's concepts only create more/other problems for us/philosophy? If I cannot even respond to this query, then do I understand Wittgenstein's work? Or maybe I have responded to it.

(Maybe I am interested in the logic of language for its own sake, more so than Wittgenstein was? No, hardly, but maybe the questions that move me to philosophize are different from the questions that moved him.)

[Which does philosophy investigate, phenomena or concepts?]

What is, is  (Parmenides)

The that-ness and how-ness (both aesthetically for man as animal, and ethically for man "knowing good and evil") of existence is absurd -- i.e. "out of the irrational". It makes no sense to man, either that it is or that it is in the form that it is. ("Is there providence? Is there a plan?" God as "the only refuge of the wretched left". But it is not a philosophical refuge.)

Variation. In the eyes of man, existence (that-ness) is absurd -- i.e. both man and the world appear to exist for the sake of nothing; existence is irrational / inexplicable / inconceivable (if a conception DEF.= is rational, which means word-use defined by more rather than less strict rules), and although there are (natural) laws of how-ness, aesthetically and ethically the world's how-ness is absurd (irrational, inexplicable, inconceivable).

I am trying to describe the feeling, the sense that existence, my existence is altogether too absurd to be real.

Looking at the world, even at the bookshelf, at the colors and sharp lines, it seems impossible to me that I should exist as such, that a creature to which nothing about its existence makes sense (for what else are the eternal questions without answer a confession of) should exist. It seems impossible to me that I should exist, and therefore that it must be that I don't exist. At least not in the form that I appear to myself to exist.

Of course this is not the way we normally use the words 'appearance' and 'reality', and, as Wittgenstein asks (rhetorically), how else shall we use them. But of course metaphysics does not talk about things on that level but "in a deeper sense", as does Thales. Again we are talking about pictures, not about propositions to ever test empirically (These pictures are not hypotheses subject to verification or falsification by experience or experiment). Wittgenstein: these pictures are idle -- and so they are, to anyone who is not fascinated by [Wittgenstein: self-mystified, bewitched by language (PI § 109)] them as responses to: In what ways can sense -- how can order -- be given to what is senseless? (Thought experiments are not experiments, but new concepts, conceptualization (i.e. picturing). These may or may not be what someone wants from philosophy. What matters, I'd say, is to remember that "Thought experiments are not ..." etc.)

Wouldn't Wittgenstein have to demonstrate that there is no "deeper sense", i.e. that what appears to be a sense (i.e. meaning) is instead only a logic-of-language muddle? conceptual confusion about the meaning ("logic") of our language? (Wittgenstein's proof might be according to only one meaning of 'meaning' -- but that meaning is objective; a subjective distinction, e.g. between sense and nonsense, is as good as none in philosophy.) But does Wittgenstein demonstrate that?

[You could say that despite or even if there are no answers, mankind finds these questions compelling in themselves. (The questions do not say more than the answers would -- i.e. the questions are not more important than answers would be -- but asking the questions says more than not asking them would.)]

Picture: reality is not what we see, but instead what we see is a shadow play (as in Plato, Republic 515c).

James Jeans: "we are not yet in touch with reality"; that is a metaphysical proposition in Jeans' context, and metaphysics will never be "in touch with reality" -- ultimate reality or otherwise. But then what is the point? The eternal questions answer to some human drive to know, a drive that cannot be silenced ("cannot" because it in fact never is) by simply pointing out that there is no answer to "The riddle" and therefore, grammatically, there is no riddle. But 'grammatically' implies that the riddle is nonsense (Why? the absence of the antithesis of 'question') -- but I want to say that it is not: it is instead a picture (Meaning of 'picture' here? E.g. "that there might be nothing rather than something", no world rather than a world).

Maybe it is not possible to put the outrage (as well sometimes the bitterness) of this senselessness (vanitas vanitatum is mere resignation, not the deepest perplexity conveyed by the word 'senseless') of existence into words, because it is as much a feeling as an idea -- i.e. of being almost physically struck by something -- but not akin to moods, moodiness.

And so I have read that it was the ancient Greek picture of things that if anything exists it is because it cannot not exist (But does 'anything' = 'everything' = 'the whole' = 'the world' = 'all things', as in Plato's Sophist 233e-234a, or does 'anything' = 'each and every particular thing'?). Why "cannot"? That is why I have called it a picture: because the necessity here is logical -- i.e. the dictate of a rule (This is different from 'logical possibility' in the sense of 'what can be described'). As in Parmenides, what is, is, and cannot not be ("Never shall this be proved, that things-that-are-not are"). Not in appearances of course. But if Thales says that all things are water, it is water that cannot not exist. Or it is the atoms of the atomists that cannot not exist, or Plato's Forms, not individual men but manhood itself (Diog. L. vi, 53) that cannot not exist.

And shall this ever be proved, that things-that-are are not? Picture: The world ought not to exist; there should be nothing, and therefore there really is nothing.

Parmenides: If a thing is, it is because it cannot be other than that it is. If the world exists, it is because it cannot not exist. I.e. that is must exist. And what kind of necessity is this -- word magic only? There is a vague, a nebulous picture ... but it is not visual (or aural), and so why call it a picture. A sense of ... A sense that vague might as well be no sense? You can't say that.

[According to Parmenides, that anything changes is illusion ("The One and the Many" or "Parmenides versus the appearances"): What-is cannot cease to be, and what-is-not cannot come into being. But why there is this illusion he does not say, for it seems that the illusion itself must exist -- i.e. that it too cannot not exist, because it does exist; the illusion itself belongs to what-is.]

If what-is cannot cease to exist, then does the existence of a thing belong to the thing's essence, so that -- not to the appearance of the thing -- but the thing's essence must exist? Then does existence belong to the essence of essence? An essence must exist before it can have an essence, as it were ["as it were" what?] -- that is, there is not an essence and standing beside it its existence.

So why not say that existence is a quality of an essence, that existence belongs to the essence of everything that exists? You can say that if you like, but why are you saying it? -- for with it you are only inventing rules of grammar (i.e. rules for using words), not exploring the nature of things. [Where do these essences exist -- in Plato's "the other side of the sky"? Isn't that, however, the realm of what, to use the word 'idea' as we normally do, are called ideas?]

Very well, but then what is my essence, according to the Greek view? Cannot I not not-exist? Is my death then merely a change in appearance? (This may be the contrast between the existence of a phenomenon versus the existence of a concept; but Parmenides does not make that distinction.)

Recursion circles

Query: Socrates saw knowledge (wisdom) and virtue as antithetical. True or false.

And so, according to the query, we have two (three) "things", and we ask if Socrates "thought" -- (on the basis of what? either drawing the meaning of "abstractions" out of the air, or saying what "the phenomena" really are: concepts ['concepts' in the nebulous sense of 'ideas', not 'concepts' in the sense of 'rules for using words (conventions)'] versus facts of experience) -- those "things" to be in opposition/opposites; but if I cannot distinguish between conceptual and factual investigations, then I cannot distinguish between sense and nonsense in the language we speak -- and then anything you like (or don't like) can be language's meaning and therefore any proposition be "true" or "false".

If I cannot say: Words are mere marks on paper, spoken sounds, and now what gives those marks or sounds meaning? But suppose the reply is: Words are given meaning by being the names of things: those things are/give/are what give the words meaning? And then we have to put that thesis that "the meaning of a word is the thing the word stands for" to the test. Yes, but 'elf' is one thing, 'wisdom' and 'virtue' another: in one case there is no phenomenon to name, in the other case there are ..... And so I go round in circles.

Recursive reasoning, as in 'recursion' as 'the art of going back', as in 'running round in circles'.

Query: a philosophical way of describing going in circles.
Query: circle philosophical.

I imagine, logical paradox, e.g. 'Everything I say is a lie' (Diog. L. ii, 108; cf. the Socratic paradox). But that's not the normal case in philosophy, because with the logical paradoxes we see the circular path of our thinking and how to break out of it, whereas normally in philosophy we don't but just keep walking round and round, saying the same things over and over again.

Query: reasons why philosophy cannot be easily defined.

Which -- the word or the thing? If you are going to define the phenomenon, then you are going to have to set criteria for a correct or incorrect definition -- and that (i.e. setting criteria) is a conceptual process/act (in contrast to a factual investigation/investigation of the nature of the as-yet-unidentified (to identify is the role of the criteria) phenomenon). All too vague, too vague, too vague.

I expect, but don't know, that the key to this lock is found in strict examination of particular cases rather than in a general statement of principle which would, in any case, have to be given meaning by particular examples -- i.e. a guide which would have to be given an explanation of meaning.

Then this as a way forward: Look (as in: make a numbered list) at various propositions about (1) so-called abstractions ("abstract objects of thought") and about (2) the names of nebulous phenomena (e.g. love) one by one, asking of each: Is this proposition a statement of fact about a phenomenon (i.e. factual proposition) or a rule of grammar (i.e. grammatical proposition)? (And what does it mean if I can't say which it is?)

And we have to ask why we are making this distinction -- what is our aim? (Wittgenstein's aim was clarity; he was not seeking knowledge about phenomena [but of our conceptualization of phenomena ("philosophy of psychology", he said, in which I have little interest)?].) What I want is to know if my understanding is clear or muddled, and the method is to distinguish between language with meaning and language without meaning -- i.e. I want to know the logical-grammatical status of statements ("an account of what you or I know", in Socrates' words). I am not against metaphysics; but I want to recognize metaphysical propositions as being such.

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