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Wolf and Duck | Pictures and Language-Meaning

On the decline of my mental powers such as they were. The ideas of the last page, "To Banish Metaphysics" (Wittgenstein's project to banish metaphysics by uncovering philosophy's true origins), are not sharp. As the following ideas also are not. And they may be wrong.

When you see that Wittgenstein's grammatical analogy theory of the origin of philosophy, for example, is just that -- namely a theory, a one plausible way of looking at things, not the "true" way, not the only possible way to explain [account for] the existence [origin] of philosophy; that e.g. questions about the mind are dismissed by it but not silenced (PI § 108), not unless the sense of wonder has been lost; that metaphysics sometimes belongs to the riddles of existence , not to the riddles of language ... disillusionment sets in, sc. over the years one feels were wasted with Wittgenstein. The heart may go out of one's studies. For marking off false paths -- is not enough to ask of philosophy. Wittgenstein wants to explain philosophy away, to banish the fairies from the forest (Klein Zaches), but existence won't be explained away.

Philosophy begins in perplexity (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d), but not all perplexity is self-mystification (or concept-confusion = bewitchment-by-language, PI § 109). Existence, both in itself and in its characteristics, is perplexing. (Philosophy is to question the why and how of things.)

[A plausibly true proposition is not a true proposition. Plausibility is not truth, and plausible is all that a philosophical theory is; just as (1) "useful for some particular purpose" (different networks catch -- and don't catch -- different fish) or (2) "appealing to a particular temperament" -- is all that a frame of reference is.]

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Logic of language and philosophy

How do we distinguish between sense and nonsense? We make rules, set limits, clarify boundaries. It is not a criticism of Wittgenstein's language games idea to say that, although we normally play games according to strict rules (We would not normally say that a lonely child skipping rope or throwing a ball into the air and catching it is playing a game), we don't normally use words according to strict rules (BB p. 25) at least in philosophy, although we often do follow strict rules in the primitive language games of everyday life. (Maybe it is a criticism of Wittgenstein's logic of language -- if that logic is intended to be a description of how we normally make the distinction between sense and nonsense in philosophy -- because primitive language games is a false model of that (PI § 81).)

If I say that a sentence has meaning for me, no one has the right to say it is senseless. (W.E. Johnson to M. O'C. Drury, Recollections p. 103)

Johnson's language is a language without rules. Rules are public, shared. Where there are rules, judgments are objective (verifiable). Where there are rules there is no for me, but only for everyone.

Where there are no rules, there is no clarity, because there can be no knowing you know what you're talking about [what you mean] without rules (You can only, unsocratically, think you know what you don't know). And so the answer to many philosophical problems is: make a rule that will resolve the vagueness that results from the absence of rules. [But vagueness sometimes has its source in the mystery of existence itself; it is not always we ourselves who have made philosophical problems vague (Zettel § 259).]

It is because we presume the language of philosophical problems to be like the language in primitive language games, i.e. to follow strict rules, that we confuse ourselves in philosophy, presuming there to be strict boundaries to our concepts where there are none [This is how we may confuse conceptual and factual investigations (Z § 458): because we expect (and look for) natural boundaries to our concepts to exist in the way that other facts of nature exist].

Apollo, the god of limits, is the patron of philosophy. Logic is Apollonian.

Can a picture be nonsense?

In Wittgenstein's logic of language, nonsense DEF.= undefined (as a word or combination of words may be), and for statements of fact logical impossibility is nonsense, where 'logically possible' means describable (Moritz Schlick) -- and 'describable' means described (There is nothing theoretical, no "in principle", about this).

But now what state of affairs does 'I doubt that I exist' (Augustine versus the absolute skeptics) describe? But by 'indescribable' we wouldn't mean (~DEF.=) we cannot draw a picture of it -- for would it be normal to explain the meaning of 'I doubt whether the principle of contradiction is a sure standard of falsity' by drawing a picture?

The Picture is the Meaning

A thought may be nonsense in words, but not nonsense in pictures.

Put cats in the coffee and mice in the tea. (TtLG ix)

That combination of words suggests pictures to us. Are those pictures its meaning? Has it a meaning -- if meaning DEF.= use in the language? Has it a meaning if the meaning of a name is explained by pointing at its bearer? (PI § 43)?

If a picture can serve as an explanation of meaning ... and the service is what matters" (cf. PI II, iv, p. 178). If pictures can be used to make an objective distinction between sense and nonsense, then, as I defined 'logic of language', pictures can be the meaning of language.

The Picture is not the Meaning

From the point of view of grammar (from the point of view of rules for the use of language), propositions of religion are not statements of fact (They do not say: This is how things stand in the world if the proposition is true. [Only what is verifiable can be true or false (That remark is a grammatical reminder -- i.e. a rule].)

Although religious propositions may suggest pictures that resemble the pictures suggested by statements of fact, those pictures are not the meaning of religious propositions; that is not their use in the language. For example, 'God has the whole world in his hands', 'His eye is on the sparrow' [Luke 12.6], 'The souls of the just are in heaven' -- but heaven is only cloudy and God has hands and eyebrows only (cf. LC iii, p. 71) in artists' pictures, pictures which there is no way to compare with what they are pictures of (ibid. ii, p. 63). And we cannot say that they are figurative pictures, because metaphors must be re-expressible in prose (LE/Notes p. 14), which these pictures are not.

Undefined combinations of words versus Absurdity

(Even a nonsense-poem is not nonsense in the same way as the babbling of a child.) (PI § 282)

A "nonsense-poem" is absurd, but it is not nonsense DEF.= meaningless sound (as "the babbling of a small child" or the chirping of a cricket is).

For example, the proposition 'The rule is jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today' (Alice in Wonderland vii) states a logical impossibility, because of course if there is never jam today, then it is logically impossible that there was jam yesterday or that there will be jam tomorrow. That is, although the phrases 'jam yesterday' and 'jam tomorrow' and 'never jam today' [which = there is never jam] have a use in our language -- their combination, as we normally use that language, has not.

Or do we explain its meaning if we draw pictures labeled 'today', 'tomorrow', 'yesterday'? If that serves as an explanation, then it shows that not only does logically possible = describable, but also logically possible = not self-contradictory.

Should it be said that I am using a [combination of words] whose meaning I don't know, and so am talking nonsense? (PI § 79)

The grammars of 'today', 'yesterday', and 'tomorrow' are interlocked. Their bonds cannot be broken without robbing the words of meaning (cf. "essence reduced") = talking nonsense.

When in the fairy tale the applewife Lise says 'I was there the whole time. I was the coffeepot. Didn't you recognize me?' (E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Golden Pot), is this language nonsense = without meaning or only nonsense in the sense of 'nonsense' = 'absurd in meaning'?

Which is the combination of words 'The rule is jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today' -- (1) nonsense = without meaning or (2) nonsense = absurd in meaning? The first: the combination is without meaning.

Definition, Idea, Abstraction

Nothing is easier, than to define in terms or words that which is incomprehensible in idea, forasmuch as any words can be either separated or joined as you please, but ideas always cannot. It is as easy to say a round square as an oblong square, though the former be inconceivable. If the Reader will but take a little care to distinguish between the Definition and the Idea, between words or expressions and the conceptions of the mind ... (George Berkeley, A Defence of Free-Thinking in Mathematics (1735) xlviii)

By 'idea' or 'conception of the mind' Berkeley can mean nothing other than a drawing. For while we can define 'round square' as 'a simple figure that is at once both round and square; a zero-sided figure of four sides', to draw such a figure is another matter (for the rules of what to construct are contradictory). The definition serves to give us the illusion ("sense") that we know the meaning of 'round square', i.e. that it has a meaning rather than being nonsense -- "it is not its meaning that is nonsense [meaningless]" (PI § 500).

But I hold the direct contrary, that there are indeed general Ideas, but not formed by abstraction in the manner set forth by Mr. Locke.... Mr Locke acknowledgeth it doth require Pains and Skill to form his general Idea of a triangle. He farther expressly saith, it must be neither oblique nor rectangular, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenum; but all and none of these at once. He also saith, it is an idea wherein some parts of several different and inconsistent Ideas are put together. All this looks very like a Contradiction. (Berkeley, op.cit. xlv; cf. xlvii)

All this is a contradiction. And it is not merely a contradiction in form, but also a contradiction in sense. It is unreason (Anyone who says he can abstract a self-contradicting essence is in effect saying "Here I do not use reason").

Long before Hertz: instruments versus names

Berkeley gave particular attention to the meaning and use of abstract terms, such as those occurring in the Newtonian scientific theories. Scientific theories are hypotheses, and it is a mistake to think that because a scientific hypothesis "works", it must necessarily be the expression of the human mind?s natural power of penetrating the ultimate structure of reality and attaining final truth. Further, terms such as 'gravity', 'attraction', and so on, certainly have their uses; but it is one thing to say that they possess instrumentalist value and quite another thing to say that they connote occult entities or qualities. The use of abstract words, though it cannot be avoided, tends to contaminate physics with metaphysics and to give us a wrong idea of the status and function of physical theories. (Copleston, A History of Philosophy: Volume V, XI, 3)

[Wittgenstein and Hertz's Principles of Mechanics | Hypostatization (Ockham)]

Absolute Nonsense

Berkeley's rhetorical question 'What is the velocity of a velocity?' and his combinations of words 'velocity without motion' and 'motion without extension' are examples of absolute nonsense -- if we are willing to call any sentence absolute nonsense.

'The division of nothing into parts' -- these forms of expression ('signs' in Wittgenstein's jargon) seem to suggest pictures to us. Are these pictures their meaning? Are the uses of the individual words the meaning of the form of expression [i.e. combination of words], or has the combination of words its own meaning -- i.e. are the individual words with meaning and the combination of words without meaning? [The individual words have, not a "use", but a usage (custom or establishment of use) in the language; that is what 'meaning' would mean here.]

'How many raindrops do you see, if you look at the rain?' (PG i § 127)

'How many grains of sand do you see if you look at a beach?' Does that question have a meaning if, in the absence of a method of measurement, the only answer is a rejection of the question?

We make a false analogy from cases where "it makes sense" -- i.e. is not nonsense [meaningless , undefined] -- to ask 'How many?' In the case of sand and raindrops, is that question an undefined combination of words [i.e. nonsense like 'the velocity of a velocity']?

Normal Use

A question for logic of language: whether the following proposition is true or not, namely that 'I doubt' normally has a use in the language (PI § 199), as has 'I am doubting', but that the combination of words 'I doubt that I am doubting' normally has no use in the language.

A "normal use in the language" contrasts with an improvised use, because any combination of words can be given a use if one applies one's imagination, and thus imagination can evade the resolution of philosophical problems of the kind that arise when our normal use of language goes unrecognized.

(A murder in a sealed room cannot be solved if one imagines that the room is not sealed, thus changing "the rules of the game" DEF.= its grammar.)

Absurd. Without meaning.

"... but never jam today."

Humor is breaking the rules of the game. We call this absurd behavior: saying absurd things. Understanding the joke is recognizing that the rules have been broken.

"Nice weather we had tomorrow." (Laurel and Hardy, Oliver the Eighth (1934) )

It is foolishness; that is why it is a joke. But a combination of words for which there is no use in the language is meaningless -- as Wittgenstein defines the word 'meaning'. But if a grammatical joke is an undefined combination of words -- if it is "mere sound without sense" -- then how can it be a joke? Doesn't it have to have a meaning if it is to be understood?

What has to be understood is the rules of the normal "language game" and that those rules have been broken -- not the meaning of a meaningless combination of words! Breaking the rules is the joke; that is the absurdity. That is how a combination of words can be both meaningless -- i.e. without a use in the language -- and absurd (foolishness).

It is not this way: "Four values that a contradiction can have: true, false, nonsense (without meaning), and foolishness (absurd)."

A grammatical joke's "meaning" is not its apparent meaning, e.g. as a statement about the weather. If "you play the game wrong" (OC § 446) that is foolishness (in contrast to playing the game right or not playing it at all).

[But recall that there are many meanings of the word 'meaning', not just the one Wittgenstein chose.]

The order of logical questioning

About any philosophical proposition (thesis), Wittgenstein asks: Has this combination of words a use in the language? (Philosophy does not ask about objects; it is not natural science). Plato has Socrates ask: Is the proposition clear in meaning? and Is the proposition true? (although nonsense is neither true nor false).

Another example. 'She eats her cake and has her cake', whereas, as we normally use this language someone can do only one or the other.

Normal usage is what should be discussed according to Wittgenstein, because it is in normal usage, or in misleading analogies made from that usage, that philosophical problems arise.

And so 'She has her cake' and 'She eats her cake', while both have a use in the language, the combination of those two propositions hasn't. But is their combination nonsense ("sound with no meaning") or is it merely absurd?

If 'meaning' is defined as 'use in the language', then the combination is nonsense DEF.= sound without meaning (noise). Or is "making a joke" a use of language? Yes, but that is not what Wittgenstein means by "the use of a word in the language"; that "use of language" is not Wittgenstein's meaning of 'meaning'.

This is an example of a "contradiction in sense" that is not also a contradiction in form. In "Russell's philosophical grammar", the true form of the [complex] proposition, its "logical form", would be 'She eats her cake, and she does not eat her cake', because that form makes the contradiction explicit.

Wolf and Duck

Both having and eating one's cake is an example of logical impossibility. In contrast, The Story of Peter and the Wolf has many examples of real impossibilities: "The duck was so frightened that she jumped clear out of the pond, and the wolf swallowed her in one gulp ..... And if you listen very carefully you can hear the duck inside the wolf's stomach crying, Let me out! Let me out!"

"Foundation or No Foundation?"

A foundation that stands on nothing is a bad foundation. (PG ii § 12, p. 297)

Eh? A foundation that stands on something is not a foundation. There is no bedrock beneath the bedrock (OC §§ 253, 166). What part of 'foundation' don't you understand. If A stands on something else, then that something else is the foundation, not A. (And so, what did Wittgenstein mean?)

"Philosophy cannot give anything a foundation." (Cf. PI § 124)

So I once wrote, but isn't the distinction between sense and nonsense (the distinction between a factual and a conceptual investigation) a foundation, and isn't that foundation given by philosophy? Philosophy may choose to make use of particular meanings of 'meaning' (it may make distinctions, revise concepts) -- but it takes as its foundation the proposition that there is a distinction between language with meaning and meaningless sound (PG i § 81, p. 126-127) -- you might say it presumes that our rationality is not madness.

... we always have to reach some sort of firm ground, either a picture or something else ... (CV p. 83)

But what makes the ground firm? Only our treating it as such? No, we can't choose just any proposition and call it firm ground. If a justification -- i.e. grounds -- can be given for a proposition, then they must be given (These are rules belonging to the grammar of the word 'foundation'). Where there is no logically possible further justification, that is a foundation, bedrock, something we logically can treat as something firm.

Foreword: Many of these comments are unripe (mistaken); they are examples of my groping my way in the dark (Acts 17.27). There is a continuation of this discussion in "Religion and Superstition, the Distinction".

Philosophy of Western Religion

Rather than Western, I imagine maybe I should say Christian, or even closer, the Catholic Christian religion. That religion is concerned with two things: (1) religious metaphysics (religious cosmology), and (2) with good and evil, or, how man should live his life.

Natural theology ("the God of the philosophers and schoolmen") either has no contact with experience -- i.e. the only test of the truth of its propositions is self-consistency -- or it is falsified by experience (it is an inapplicable model). Neither is it possible to know the history or intention of God, except from claims of revelation.

If someone came to a Moslem with the Christian Bible [and told him it was the Word of God], or if someone came to a Christian with the Moslem Koran, both would be skeptical. We ought to be as skeptical towards our own religion as we are towards other people's. Everything must be examined by thoroughgoing reason, including sacred things.

All religious metaphysics (i.e. natural theology) is speculation, i.e. fantasy in my eyes. Those who seek to discern the divine intent through holy books, as Isaac Newton did, I don't understand the disposition of, as their way of thinking is wholly foreign to me. In my eyes they are as superstitious as the ancient Greek general Nicias who was responsible for Athens' defeat at Syracuse.

The other concern is "your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" [Genesis 3.5] and the consequence of that knowledge for how man should think and live his life. In this for me, as for Albert Schweitzer, Jesus is the religious master: forgiveness, reconciliation, "to love one's neighbor as one loves oneself" in a neighborhood without borders [Matthew 22.39; Luke 10.36-37] is the truth. In Augustine's words, "Whatever is not done from love is not done as it should be done."

Whether discovered by religious reflection or by philosophical argument, there is only one test of truth, namely verification by reason and experience. From Greek and Socratic thinking we know that the good for man is rational moral virtue, and Plato demonstrates that "in no case is it just to harm anyone", to return bad for bad; on the contrary, the good man benefits even his enemies (Republic335d-e).

Life's Goal (Paul at Athens)

God made all men to seek him, that by groping their way towards him, they might perhaps succeed in finding him. (Acts 17.27)

Seeking God is seeking a world-view, a complete world-view.

God, i.e. our concept 'God', is invented to answer two questions: (1) "Why is there something rather than nothing?" And (2) "Why are things the way they are?" both in nature and in the moral order, specifically the existence of good and evil. ("The how-ness of the world is at least as puzzling as its that-ness.')

The non-existence of God creates more problems than it solves. Man seeks intelligence in existence itself, for not only is intelligence the excellence proper to man (according to Aristotle), but it is also the excellence proper to God.

Man is provident (he makes provision, plans; he makes) and he looks for there to be [a parallel or, rather, corresponding] supernatural [divine] providence. In this, as in other ways, man does make God in his own image, because nature is spendthrift. ("If we had made God in our image, we could have made Him anything, even a clown" (Karol Wojtyla). And the gods of the Greek myths often are clowns, but when gods became the Christian God, that was no longer possible.) We look at the universe as if looking in a mirror when we look for its meaning, at least when we look at the sky -- but we look for what is "the higher" in us there.

Forms, Blends, and God

["... of good and evil." But if "acts are pleasing to God, not because they are in obedience to His commands, but instead because they are good" (Plato, Euthyphro), then God is superfluous to [unneeded by] ethics (since the good is independent of God). And if we identify God with the Good, as W.K.C. Guthrie says Plato does (although Gilson denies that he does), i.e. if God = the Good, then the word 'God' is superfluous ... but only if the Good is an Intelligence (a person), which is absurd.]

[No, it seems to me that God must have His own essence. For if He is identified with some other simple Platonic form (e.g. Power, Goodness, Knowledge, Personality), then He -- i.e. the concept 'God' -- can be discarded.

On the other hand, if God is a blend of simple Platonic forms (e.g. of Power, Goodness, Knowledge, Personality), it should be possible to construct a concept 'God' that is consistent with our experience of the world. Such a concept [conception] would be an hypothesis rather than a speculative concept (metaphysics).

If we presume that there is a creator, an author, and if "God is know by the things he has made", then what is the excellence that is proper and unique to God? That would be an hypothesis, a going from what we know to what we don't know. That would contrast with metaphysics which begins with a proposition (e.g. 'God is that than which nothing more perfect can be imagined') and deduces the nature of God from that. What is the relationship of either of those concepts to the God of the religion of Catholic Christianity?]

'There will be a Last Judgment'

According to Wittgenstein, religious prepositions are not hypotheses, i.e. they are not statements of fact about the world which may or may not be true. They are instead life-guiding pictures; for example, if someone believes in the Last Judgment, that is not belief that a proposition is true; it is belief that he ought to live his life in a particular way and that if he does not he will be punished for it.

It may be that the person who believes in the Last Judgment believes that the proposition 'There will be a Last Judgment' is a statement of fact. But Wittgenstein is describing the use in the language or "grammar" of the statement of belief, and as an essentially unverifiable statement, its use in the language is not that of a statement of fact. (Wittgenstein: "The grammar of our language is misunderstood.")

The point is that if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business. (LC i, p. 56)

Religious belief, according to Wittgenstein, is not belief about this world (that is, about perceptible reality), and statements of fact are only statements about this world. But this world is not the whole of reality; there is as well what he calls "the mystical", and that part of reality belongs to God and religion.

In his later work Wittgenstein talks only about kinds of human belief, about kinds of language use. He does not speak of a "mystical reality" (an existential realm beyond human perception, if he ever did speak of such a realm), but only of the experience of life, of a religious view of life. If there is any evidence for a proposition, if there are any verifiable-by-experience statements of fact or claims about the world, then it is not a case of religious belief or a religious use of language.

(We are talking about a system of language-use classification, or, "grammar" in Wittgenstein's jargon.)

A proof of God ought really to be something by means of which you can convince yourself of God's existence. But I think that believers who offered such proofs wanted to analyse & make a case for their "belief" with their intellect, although they themselves would never have arrived at belief by way of such proofs. [Comment: "I seek to understand what I believe, not to understand in order that I may believe." That is "faith seeking understanding" (Augustine, Anselm). Theology is faith seeking understanding, not faith seeking proof.]

"Convincing someone of God's existence" is something you might do by means of a certain upbringing, shaping his life in such & such a way. Life can educate you to "believing in God". And experiences too are what do this but not visions, or other sense experiences, which show us the "existence of this being", but e.g. sufferings of various sorts. And they do not show us God as a sense experience does an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, -- life can force this concept on us. [Comment: what concept exactly? Wittgenstein never says what rules he follows when using the word 'God'; what does he mean by that word? -- if he doesn't mean a Person ["what, not whom, you mean" (CV p. 50)] by it, as he appears not to mean, then what does he mean?]

So perhaps it is similar to the concept 'object'. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 174 1v: 1950])

Wittgenstein does not use his language game" metaphor above (Note that he even puts the expressions 'God's existence' and 'belief in God' in quotation marks [as if doing that made anything clearer (If those forms of expression are incorrect or misleading, why doesn't Wittgenstein say which forms of expression would not be? As if belief in the supernatural (in anything non-empirical) were necessarily superstition.] Wittgenstein's remarks about religious belief in his notebooks are a bit more than a bit opaque). And I myself do not think his language game metaphor is helpful for understanding religion, unless we mean by 'language game' we mean types of language use such as Wittgenstein's example of belief in the Last Judgment. In that example we see that belief is independent of anything that happens in this world. 'God punishes men who break their oaths' -- if there is any empirical test of that proposition, Wittgenstein would say that it is not a proposition of religion.

Some beliefs Wittgenstein classifies as superstition (belief in magic, a false science) rather than religion. (Cf. a distinction between religion and superstition can be made using an idea of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's).

Two Principles - Literal and Metaphor

Question: can Wittgenstein's philosophy answer the question of whether sacred scripture should be read literally or figuratively. Can his logic of language answer that question? (Stories -- myths, parables, histories -- are told for many reasons; each of these ways is a type of use of language or "language game".)

There are "still" pre-Enlightenment thinkers in the West, e.g. Biblical literalists. They read the Book of Genesis as if it were historiography and deduce that the world is 6,000 years old. Wittgenstein would maybe say that these people are only mistaken if they try to justify their belief with false science. "6,000 years old" is a literal reading of Genesis; a figurative reading would say: Genesis is not a history lesson; it is intended only to impart the magnificence and wisdom of God: "the excellence of God is known by the excellence of the things He has made" -- that doesn't mean God flies like a bird.

Wittgenstein speaks of ways of living, as belief in a book ["sacred scripture"] would be. He does not judge between them. That is his anthropological project (cf. CV p. 37 [MS 162b 67r: 2.7.1940]) -- i.e. to do no more than describe ways and patterns of human life -- in philosophy. [To describe is Aristotle's project, which I'd say is more science than philosophy.] That is not a project I am in agreement with, nor Russell said, would all philosophers before Wittgenstein, who defined 'philosophy' as an attempt to understand life and the world in the light of common [shared, public, verifiable] experience and what can be reasonably deduced from it. Thus logic of language criticism is not the whole of philosophy's work of criticism.

And, I would say, it is the place of philosophy to counter all irrational views of things, as e.g. belief in miracles, in revelation, dreams, divine inspiration and books that are said to be the word of God.

[Variation: I would not accept Wittgenstein's project -- to do no more than describe what human beings do [forms or patterns, ways of life], because in my view it is the task of philosophy, not only to describe but to criticize, because philosophy is an effort to give an account of the essence of existence by the natural light of reason alone (Thales), and therefore to refute false accounts.]

Belief in oracles (OC § 609)

Following Socrates, criticism would be to show that I may not know what I think I know. We would ask: how do I know the meaning of these words (and have these words only one possible meaning)? and how do I know that they are true? (Deep skepticism, doubt, modesty make up the philosophical mind.) Wittgenstein wants only to describe; I want to answer the Socratic question of how man should think, how he should live his life.

Socrates, of course, believed that the Oracle at Delphi spoke for the god Apollo, but Socrates put the oracle's words to the tests of reason and experience, as Socrates alsoput his inner voice to those tests. Socrates was not an atheist, but someone who subjected everything to reason.

Darkness and Infinite Mercy

Most people (me, for example) have only just enough brains to be stupid, incomprehending existence. One thing seems certain, however, that it will not be a catechism test that opens or closes the gates of heaven, but that all men must be able to find the good -- if they thoroughgoingly apply the reason man has been endowed with ("Other sheep have I who are not of this fold"). Either that or God's mercy really must be infinite.

Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither ... (Job 1.21)

Ignorant of the meaning of existence I came into the world and ignorant of the meaning of existence I shall leave it.

Things that are Important

The meaning and moral of the end of Bruce Marshall's One Foot in the Grave (London: Robert Hale, 1987), of the two legs found on the body in the grave, that the dead twin's prayer had been answered: his lost leg had been restored, although only after death. Which shows of how little importance the leg was. Because the twin who died was a good man, whereas the twin who lived, the one who had not lost a leg in the war, was a scoundrel. Which shows that human beings are so often preoccupied with things that are of little importance, while they neglect the things that are.

The only important thing in life is the traces of love we leave behind when we are gone. (A. Schweitzer)

Another word for 'love' is 'good'.

Two Ways of Thought

One thing the Enlightenment definitely took was a sharp empirical turn, a way of thinking totally at odds with belief in unverifiable revelation. It was logico-empiricism with an stubborn strain of skepticism, but not materialism, which is a metaphysical doctrine, but the view that if there is anything supernatural, it has no part to play in the explanation of phenomena [This was a rejection of "God as a working-hypothesis" (Bonhoeffer)]. The questions, however, remain the same, namely Socrates' questions: what do you know, and how do you know it to be true? ("Socrates wants an account of what you know.")

[By 'reason' Voltaire meant empiricism. It was a principle of rejection (rejection of religious revelation and institutions), but also a temperament, disposition.]

One thing is clear: the Enlightenment's way of thinking is not compatible with religion. Wittgenstein tries to preserve a place for both, but with him religion is consigned to an austere silence, since according to the TLP language can't be used to talk about God without talking "nonsense" [although why nonsense in the TLP's sense of 'nonsense' is to be feared or abandoned Wittgenstein does not say].

My own view of how to think about how to live (ethics, religion) is the same as what I take to be Socratic and Platonic ethics, because Plato's ethics is thoroughgoing reason (logic) and verifiable experience. I think I can only be religious if there is only one standard, not one for religion, another for everything else, although I wonder if that is possible if the concepts 'religious' and 'Here I do not use reason' are essentially connected. [Am I religious? Well, is it religious to think about religion every day your life?]

[Our legal system is an example of our empirical world-picture. And it is a picture that is not logically compatible with a [literalist] religious world-picture.]

"What do you know?" and "How do you know it?" Meaning and then truth -- the same order in Socrates as in WII; sometimes it is the same question, as when "the [method of] verification is [shows] the meaning".

[It is my nature (it is not a matter of choice) to demand the verification ("How do you know?"). This skepticism cuts off many religious lines of thought (imagination).]

Frederick Copleston: "The proposition 'God loves humanity.' It would be absurd to treat this as an empirical proposition." But quite the contrary: what is absurd is not to treat it as an empirical proposition. Religion is absurd from a rational point of view.

'God is all-powerful and all-good' -- if that is an empirical proposition, then it is false, but if it is not an empirical proposition, then what is its meaning?

Earlier I wrote that there is no place in my life where I would or should wish to say "Here I do not use reason". Well, but in the light of these remarks ...

"Fool and Heretic"

There are two principles here: the literal and figurative readings of sacred scripture. I will quote the whole of Wittgenstein's On Certainty §§ 608-612 (tr. Anscombe) apropos:

608. Is it wrong for me to be guided in my actions by the propositions of physics? Am I to say I have no good ground for doing so? Isn't precisely this what we call a 'good ground'?

609. Supposing we met people who did not regard that as a telling reason. Now, how do we imagine this? Instead of the physicist, they consult an oracle. (And for that we consider them primitive.) Is it wrong for them to consult an oracle and be guided by it? -- If we call this "wrong" aren't we using our language-game as a base from which to combat theirs?

610. And are we right or wrong to combat it? Of course there are all sorts of slogans which will be used to support our proceedings.

611. Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and heretic.

612. I said I would 'combat' the other man, -- but wouldn't I give him reasons? Certainly; but how far do they go? At the end of reasons comes persuasion. (Think what happens when missionaries convert natives.)

[What does happen?] Wittgenstein speaks of "persuasion" (OC § 612) -- is there a mechanism of persuasion? No, persuasion is an antithesis of syllogism. How can the "figurativist" [allegorist] persuade the literalist, or the literalist persuade the "figurativist" [allegorist] ?

Wittgenstein's notion of "language games". For example, scholars may point out that stories are told for many different reasons, for example not only to impart history, but that religious myths can impart religious truths (All the Gospel parables, the prodigal son, the merciful Samaritan, are myths; they might all begin "Once upon a time ..."). Telling stories is a use of language -- or, rather, various uses of language. You might use this idea to persuade someone to a particular reading of sacred scripture.

What I have written is wholly inadequate -- because I think that Wittgenstein is wrong (Note that he gives no examples of two irreconcilable principles, although only examples could make his idea clear, not general remarks [speaking in generalities]). Calling those who disagree "fools" (OC § 611) is not a use of reason (ethics is rational moral virtue).

The two principles (reason and unreason)

As an example, what of the Greek general Nicias? We could hardly call him "primitive" (ibid. § 609), but we would call him a [superstitious] fool. Wittgenstein says we could do no more than that. Or in the case of the patriarch Abraham. Well, we cannot if there is no common ground of rationality: our opponent must recognize the Socratic tests of reason and experience. You can't say "Be reasonable!" to people who don't use reason -- any more than you can to a dog or cat. We cannot use reason against the irrational. "He only errs who thinks he knows what he does not know" (Augustine) -- but look at the word 'know' as a tool in the life of various communities of ideas.

There really are only two principles that "cannot be reconciled" (ibid. § 611), namely reason and unreason. Everything reasonable (everyone who uses reason [Nicias in effect says, "Here I do not use reason, but am instead guided by priests and omens"]) is open [subject] to argument and refutation.

An Alternative Ending

"... a fool and a heretic" (OC § 611). Is there an alternative to this? I think there is. Religious evil-doers seem to me to share Wittgenstein's view of good and evil -- namely the view that the good is whatever [whatsoever] God commands. Thus God may command the burning of heretics, the displacement and dispossession of a native population of its homeland (Deuteronomy 7.1-6), the cutting off of the hands of thieves. And since God commands these things, it is good to do them, and those who do them are good.

"Is a thing holy because it pleases the gods, or does it please the gods because it is holy?" is the same question as "Is a thing good because it pleases the gods, or does it please the gods because it is good?" (Plato, Euthyphro)

If gods do evil, they are not gods. (Euripides)

Platonic tautology

I think the Platonic reply would be to contrast God with the devil [good-doing with evil-doing]. If God commands cruelty, then the devil must command mercy; if God commands war and genocide, then the devil must command peace and tolerance (co-existence). Thus God commands what is evil; and the devil commands what is good. Well, this is absurd. In contrast to the view that the good is whatever God commands is the view the concept 'good' is defined without reference to God ["The good is pleasing to God because it is good"]. Man can reason between good and evil independently of God. And thus man can distinguish between God and the devil. Religious evil-doers, those who blindly obey whatever they believe to be God's commandments, do not do this.

That is the method of Plato's tautologies in ethics, and it contrasts with Wittgenstein's counsel of despair ("fool and heretic"). The Platonic-Socratic philosophy offers a path for resolving differences through the use of reason.

The limit of religion, that is, of the concept 'religion'

The point is that if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business. (LC i, p. 56)

The limit of religion -- is the empirical. (Cf. RFM iv, §29)

Religious testimony and sacred scripture are not verifiable; if they were, they would not belong to religion (to what we call by the name 'religion', or, in other words, to our concept 'religion'), and commandments are not true or false. But neither are religious statements figurative. Wittgenstein: "Religious language is not metaphorical, because you must be able to restate a metaphor in prose", that is, non-metaphorically. (Grammatical reminders)

Yet it seems that in religion we are always talking about God metaphorically: we are always comparing God to man (What other comparison than to man -- a living thing uniquely endowed with reason and morality -- would we make? We must use the means we have at hand). We talk about the eye of God, the hand of God, the will and thoughts of God. That is, we attribute to God human attributes: sight, thought, will. [We make comparisons, not identities; e.g. Wittgenstein says that when we talk about the eye of God, we don't talk about eyebrows (LC iii, p. 71).]

Can we restate the phrase 'the eye of God' in prose? We may want to say that "the eye of God" is a picture -- but it is not a picture that can be compared to anything (as we can put a picture of a human face side by side with a human face, a picture eye with a human eye) [ibid. ii, p. 63].

But, on the other hand, if we didn't talk about God as if God were a person, what use could we have for the word 'God' in religion? Theism entails a Person.

Words are tools; man did not invent the word 'God' in order to name something he had perceived.

If we can only use language to talk about the world we perceive (and what we imagine based on what we perceive, as we do in fairy tales and scientific theories), and if, as Wittgenstein says, "God does not show himself in the world" (TLP 6.432) -- then how shall we talk about Him? But the limitations of language are the same as the limitations of human imagination, not the limitations of sense perception (contrary to the TLP).

We are talking about our concept 'God', that is, about the rules for the use of a word in our language. What do we do with that word? what do we want to do with it? what can we do with it?

Language exists to serve man, not man to serve language. Concepts exist to serve man, not man to serve concepts. The same is true of interpretation and ways of life ("communities of ideas"). Philosophy [thoroughgoing reason] can free man of all conventions and habits, except reason itself. [The unreasoning man is certainly not living in accord with the excellence that is proper and unique to man.]

Natural science, Metaphysics, and God

Natural science has no place either for "God as a working-hypothesis" (Bonhoeffer) or for "the God of the philosophers and schoolmen" (Pascal), i.e. for metaphysics (speculative fantasy or "philosophy fiction"). Which God (which concept) interests us -- the God of metaphysics or the God of religion? That is a question to be clear about.

Science asks for a natural explanation; religion asks for a supernatural explanation (for the reason that to us it seems that a natural explanation is inadequate to explain [account for] existence itself). [Isn't the solution to that riddle what the word 'God' is used for in metaphysics and religion both?]

The mystery of God is the same as the mystery of existence itself -- it is a mystery (and a mystery isn't something we know the answer to). I think this is why Wittgenstein says we must "pass over it in silence" (i.e. not try to say what can't be said, deluding ourselves that we can say it).

The Range of Reason

In all discussions we must remember that "no one lights a candle in order to put it under a basket": Reason and verifiable experience are the light we have to guide our path; they are not given to us to blind us. (Polybius on truth, light and history). Two quotations from Albert Schweitzer:

[As a child I was told] that in submission to faith all reasoning must be silenced. But I was convinced -- and I am so still -- that the fundamental principles of [religion] have to be proved true by reasoning, and by no other method. Reason, I said to myself, is given us that we may bring everything within the range of its action, even the most exalted ideas of religion.

... reverence for truth must be exalted above everything else. With this conviction I began the work ...

Philosophy is outraged by lies, e.g. by the misrepresentation of experience with regard to evil. Evil does not have a mere shadow existence.

Ethics and Philosophy

The Vienna Circle notes. I am in disagreement with Wittgenstein (and Hume), because according to Wittgenstein ethics is not part of philosophy because philosophy is rational, whereas ethics is not. The subject of ethics would be "absolute value", which cannot be disputed rationally, according to Wittgenstein. When Wittgenstein says that the good is whatever God commands, he means that the good is inscrutable (it cannot be rationality justified).

Unlike Wittgenstein, I share the view of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, that it is possible to know by reason and public experience alone what is good and what is evil. Ethics is rational and part of philosophy.

To say that ethics is subjective in contrast to objective is to say that there is no good or evil apart from whatever seems right to some individual. But I would like to hear someone argue that torture, rape and murder are good. If someone says that the good man murders, then I would want to know what the evil man does. [That is an example of Plato's method of tautologies in ethics.]

Philosophy and Religion

Plato's method of tautologies is also a guide to when sacred scripture is to be read literally or figuratively: when it depicts God commanding that evil be done, it is to be read figuratively. We can contrast Socrates with Abraham. When God tells Abraham to kill a child, Abraham does not question this [Abraham "reads literally"], but prepares to kill Isaac ("The good is whatever God commands"). Socrates, in contrast, reasons with himself, "To kill a child is evil. God would not want me to do evil. Therefore, what does God mean by telling me to do this?" [Reason is the difference between"our father in faith" and "the father of philosophy".]

If anyone refers to Socrates as "one who would be a prophet", this is mistaken. Philosophy is not concerned with trying to discern the intentions of God. Indeed, about the gods Plato says no more than that we don't even know what their names are (Cratylus 400d). Philosophy attempts to know what can be known by the light of natural reason and natural experience alone. It does not attempt to explain as religion does with claims of revealed truth about the supernatural, but uses only what can be known independently of such claims; like natural science, its intellectual project (principles, methods) is atheistic, even if the philosopher himself is not.

The excellence proper to a man in contrast to a child is, not obeying God's commands (submitting to or accepting God's will [The 'sln' in 'Jerusalem' and 'Islam' means 'submission']), but relying on his own reason to make a moral choice. (Not only "a soldier has a moral choice". The statement "I am only obeying God's commands" is not a justification; it belongs to an eternal childhood, which is a condition of moral abdication which is morally impossible [because man is endowed with reason and has knowledge of good and evil that is independent of God] and unworthy of man, whose proper and unique excellence is rational moral virtue.)

What God is Not

Wittgenstein was not an atheist, although it is easier to say what he did not believe than what he did. For example, by the word 'God' Wittgenstein did not mean the Creator, as if God were a Super-man lording it over mankind; were that what he meant, he told Drury, he would have been in rebellion against God (Recollections p. 108; cf. Malcolm, Memoir 2e, p. 59).

"All-powerful and All-good"

If we look at our experience of the world, we see that God is either all-powerful or God is all-good, but not both. For if everything that happens is the will of God, then God wills evil (earthquakes, floods, droughts, pestilence, every kind of cruelty), and therefore God is not all good. But if evil things do not happen because God wills them to happen, then God is not all-powerful. (The only thing that makes the problem of evil "intractable" is an unwillingness to accept that there is a contradiction in the claimed nature of God -- which is not a contradiction in logic, but in experience of the world.)

An "ethical religion"

[Whether to be an explanatory or an ethical religion (A. Schweitzer). The Christian religion does not explain why the natural world is as it is, i.e. why there is cruelty and evil, things hardly consistent with its faith that God is love. [In Graham Greene the girl says: "They say God loves us. If that's love, I'd rather have a bit of kindness." That is putting claims about God (e.g. Jesus's words) to an empirical test.] As an ethical religion, Christianity says, in Augustine's words, "Whatever is not done from love is not done as it should be done", which is a statement about how man must live, not an explanation of why things are not done from love in this world.]

[The Abrahamic religions are based on obedience to the commandments of God [They are religions of obedience]. But Christianity, as Schweitzer saw it, is not that way; instead it is "a religion men could understand with their minds and could affirm with their hearts". Only what is good can be so affirmed: If God commands evil, then God is not the God of Christianity.]

The reason for the great flood. "Men were snoring; the gods could not sleep; so the gods sent a flood to wash them all away." The gods are amoral and capriciousness, just as nature is. In contrast, and characteristically, Jewish thinkers saw the flood as a morality story: men were punished by God for their evil-doing [i.e. for disobeying God's commands]. This all-important point of view of good and evil [i.e. obedience and disobedience to God's commands] is of course carried over into Christianity.

An ethical religion in contrast to superstitious metaphysics or metaphysical superstition. (Metaphysics and Mysticism: the difference between metaphysics and mysticism is that metaphysics is deduced from experience (speculative physics) whereas mysticism is the product of imagination alone, as e.g. the transmigration of souls, the Incarnation and Resurrection, divine revelation. What they have in common is that neither is empirically verifiable.)

Standards (Yardsticks)

I think that Wittgenstein, in contrast, must say that God is neither good nor evil: God's will is like the meter standard in Paris: everything has a measurable length except the meter standard itself: everything is good or evil except God Himself. [If the will of God is identical to natural history, then all one can do is to accept and submit to whatever happens, because whatever happens is good (and to wish otherwise is to wish for evil).]

Wittgenstein: "The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mold" (CV p. 27), which is what it must do if you are to live the life that is the good for man. In my view, that is an eternal childhood: it is man not "knowing good and evil". God must be obeyed as a child obeys its father; that is the good for man, according to God: accept; submit; obey.

But, contrary to Wittgenstein, man knows good and evil independently of God -- and must play god to God, not accepting natural disasters as if, coming from God's hands, earthquakes, birth defects, and all the rest of nature's cruelties, were not evil. Of course, it is not as it were God we put on trial but various concepts 'God', to see which is serviceable.

The Historical Evolution of the Concept 'God'

If we look at what I imagine to be the oldest work of Abrahamic literature, namely the Bible's Book of Genesis, we find a super-man: the Lord God walks in His garden; Adam sees His back. Later Noah will hear God's voice from the sky and God will speak to Moses from behind a burning bush. These are events in the world.

But in later books God loses his body and physical presence: He is no longer in the world [-- not as if there were two worlds: the "in the world" visible and the "outside the world" invisible; this is grammar, not metaphysics --], and therefore statements of fact (in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus sense) can no longer be made about Him. In the TLP statements of fact (propositions) all have the form: This is how things stand in the world.

In contrast to the world of facts, Wittgenstein says there is "the mystical": God is not in the world of facts, but the "existence of God" is shown by the existence of the world of facts. [Of course, God does not exist as a fact in the world; I don't know whether Wittgenstein would say that God "exists", for what would the word 'exist' mean as applied to God in the context of the TLP, if to exist is to be a fact, and God is not a fact?]

As to seeing or not seeing the presence of God in things, e.g. if we see a bird flying freely in the sky, we may say we see the glory of God in this; but we cannot point to the glory of God independently of the flying bird. That is why God's presence is not a fact in the world.

If someone does not believe in fairies, he does not need to teach his children that there are no fairies; he can simply not teach them the word 'fairy'. (Z § 413).

The same is the case with the word 'God'.

Skepticism: we can't know whether God exists, and if we could know, we could do nothing with that knowledge. ["Is reality confined to what is in principle perceptible to the senses? [Does the supernatural/suprasensible exist?]" Whatever we mean by 'God', whether a Person or not, we don't mean anything perceptible (natural in contrast to supernatural).] But can we deduce God's existence from what we can know? That would certainly not be a deduction made by natural science: natural science has no place for the concept 'God' ["God as a working-hypothesis" (Bonhoeffer)] -- because it seeks natural explanations, not supernatural fantasies [From the point of view of knowledge, metaphysics is fantasy]. Maybe religion makes that deduction from the riddle of existence; but religion is not knowledge.

Mysticism and Philosophy

What is the point of pantheism, for if we identify God with Nature, then God becomes superfluous, if by 'God' we mean morality and purposeness or even simply purposeness. Pantheism: "What is natural is good, and what is good is natural" or, alternatively, nature = God is "beyond" or outside good and evil [amoral]. [Wittgenstein's expression of pantheism: "The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mold. So you must change the way you live ..." (CV p. 27 [MS 118 17r c: 27.8.1937)]

Nature [the natural world] is amoral (and an amoral God is an absurdity, not in metaphysics, but in [Western] religion), whereas man knows good and evil (and therefore is a moral/immoral being), and man, because he has self-awareness (consciousness), is not part of Nature: man outgrows nature [instinct] when the child becomes a man.

God must be fundamentally different from nature; He must, like man, know good and evil. [Concept requirements belong to grammar. We can invent concepts, not only inherit them; and we can also revise concepts.]

If God is identified with nature, then religion has revised/reversed the story: the "fallen" angels rebelled against God's cruelty; in which case "the devil" would be the hero of the story, as the serpent is the hero of the Garden of Eden story. Nature has the character of a capricious sadist, not the character of God. [Characterizing an act as "natural" is no moral justification for it. Every moral perversion is natural to some individuals or others.]

God is what stands in opposition to nature. Ethics stands in opposition to nature. [No, rather, God and ethics stand in opposition to what is evil in nature, for there is also good in nature.] "The mystical" stands in opposition to nature. Man's conscience stands in opposition to nature [no, rather, it stands in rebellion against what is evil in the natural world]; conscience separates man from nature. Nature [or, rather, the evil in nature] is independent of God's will, because God's will is that good be done. [Are these grammatical rules? What else would they be.]

The limit of concept revision

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, in all things visible and invisible ... (Catholic Christian Profession of Faith)

That is what Westerners normally mean by the word 'God' [regardless of whether or not they "believe that God exists" as a metaphysical or religious proposition ("belief in God", "belief in ghosts")]. That is the way we are taught to use that word: 'God is the creator and ruler of the of all things visible and invisible' is a rule of grammar. How much and in what ways can we change that "picture" without going beyond the limits of that concept, i.e. without creating a too-faint resemblance to the original? Can we revise the concept in any way that seems reasonable to us [e.g. removing any contradictions in both reason and experience]? At what point is a concept no longer a revised concept, but now a new concept? Is it nonsense to say that God is not the creator and ruler of the world? [Is the contradiction of a rule of grammar -- i.e. the normal rule for using the word 'God' (i.e. the rule we learned when we learned to use that word) -- nonsense? (In which sense of 'nonsense'?)]

"If God is not all-powerful, then God is not God." Would we say that? Would we say that was an essential rule of grammar? I think so. But on the other hand, if a concept is unserviceable, then it must be either revised or discarded. And if we don't want to discard it ...

Furthermore, is it not an essential rule that God is providential [theism]? God is purposeful: "God does not throw dice." (This is essential to the grammar of the word 'God' as used in the West. Wittgenstein's version of Russell's theory of descriptions has limits.)

[These comments keep oscillating between religion and metaphysics (natural theology), between the God of religion and "the God of the philosophers and scholastics" (Pascal). Catholic theology ("faith seeking understanding") and its background in Greek natural theology is responsible for this -- but so is Socratic philosophy's universalizing the tests of reason and experience.]

Divine Providence

I have been reading Takashi Nagai's Leaving My Beloved Children Behind (1948). He says that when God gives and when God takes away [Job 1.21], both are acts of love. He believes in divine providence. Can someone just believe or not believe in that at will? Do I believe that? Certainly not: where is the love in cruelty ["They say God loves us. If that's love, I'd rather have a bit of kindness" (The Captain and the Enemy ii, 7, 1]? Nagai says it is beyond our comprehension [as does Albert Schweitzer, although the latter did not believe in divine providence: nature is simply indifferent]. Could I say that? Again, certainly not. [The obvious solution is not always the correct one; nonetheless, here I cannot help feeling that it is the solution, i.e. that God's benevolence is not effected [brought about] by nature [natural events]; there is no divine providence if 'divine providence' means direction, intervention, miracles: God does not play god.]

To earth and heaven I will complain;
To earth and heaven why do I call?
Earth and heaven conspire my fall.
To Fate I sue, of other means bereft,
The only refuge for the wretched left. (Dido and Aeneas)

It appears that a human being's nature is a DNA throw of the dice. That picture: "I did not choose this face, this voice, this body, this temperament ... nor do I believe that they were chosen for me. They were most certainly not an act of love, but of cruelty, if they were an act at all, which I do not believe." (The picture of a capricious sadist is an example of a monstrous God, an unserviceable concept.)

With regard to concept-formation, we either create, from the ethical point of view, a monstrous God, all-powerful but capricious with both his blessings and cruelties, an amoral or immoral monstrosity -- or we conceive something superfluous, a mere metaphor for the good, since good and evil are independent of God (even if God commands that the good be done).

[Mysteries of Faith]

The problem is that as soon as we connect God and the world ("maker of heaven and earth") we lose the Ethical God. Good does not create evil. I would say that the relationship between God and his creation cannot be called a "mystery of faith", not if we are going to apply Socrates' [and Schweitzer's] universal test of reason [working on experience] to our religion [But, on the other hand, if we are going to call Jesus's picture of a loving Father a mystery of faith, then we can't very well refuse [if we are to be consistent] to call the relationship between God and His creation a mystery of faith. But it is a religious, not a rational mystery [Empiricism's universal test is rational: it has no category 'mysteries']; we must stop this fluctuation between religious and empirical thinking; if it's a question of evidence, then it isn't DEF.= a religious investigation]. Schweitzer says it is a "thought of God's", as far beyond the understanding of men as man's thoughts are beyond the understanding of goats.

My thoughts are as high above your thoughts as the heavens are above the earth. (Isaiah 55.9)

But isn't that "silencing reason"? Suppose we said, "Everything Jesus says about the Father is counter-factual [As if the kingdom of God were a fantasy world, a parallel world of the imagination, rather than this world, the world of our experience]. Therefore, how can it be believed in?" The Gospel says, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and the rest will be given you" (Matthew 6.33). Faith begins with a deed. Faith begins with an act of love, not with an explanation.

"It's foolish to theorize in the absence of facts," Sherlock Holmes says. Theories close the mind. But here there are a plethora of facts. Man is very often given a stone rather than bread, a serpent rather than a fish (ibid. 7.9-10); the Father very often does not know what his child needs, unless 'God knows what man needs' is a tautology ("really needs"). ["The tautologies of faith"] "What Jesus says applies to the kingdom of God, but not to this world." -- that theory is well justified by our experience of the world.

No evil can befall a good man in this world or any other. (Plato, Apology 41c-d)

That is a tautology, because the only evil that can befall man is to do evil, and the good man [by definition] does no evil. The Gospel's proposition "Your Father in heaven knows what you need" is like this. But God would be concerned for what you need for the kingdom of God, not for what you need for "this world".

[But does Jesus speak of "this world and all it loves" or of the kingdom of God: "Blessed are the ... for they shall be ..."? "You cannot both love the kingdom of God and cling to [anything other than what is true and good in] this world."]

Supplicating and appeasing gods is superstition ("God as a working-hypothesis"). The Christian religion, as Schweitzer describes it, is not only non-explanatory; it is also non-manipulative. Worshipping God [as a consequence] means [amounts to] working toward the kingdom of God.

'God is the heavenly Father'

The Lord tells us that God is a father who loves his child as a father who is fatherly does [i.e. as a good father does]. If there were an empirical test for this, would it be a scientific hypothesis rather than religion? Wittgenstein's "The point is that if there were evidence, this would in fact destroy the whole business" is a grammatical remark [or, definition].

Faith is not belief in the mysteries of faith despite the evidence; it is instead a non-empirical way of thinking (or world-picture) ["The heart has its reasons which reason knows not" (Pascal). Love is one such "reason", hope another, I would say. (By "the heart" are also known the undemonstrable assumptions of geometry, according to Pascal, which I find at best a difficult analogy)]. If it were in any way a matter of evidence, then it would be not a matter of religion.

If the proposition 'God is a loving father' cannot come into conflict with any facts of nature, then its use in the language is not that of a statement of fact, but rather as a guide to life, like the picture of a Last Judgment is, according to Wittgenstein. (That would be the reply to Frederick Copleston's "But it does exclude something ...")

Mysticism and delusion

There is enough light for those who desire only to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition. (Pascal)

Evil is a darkness, or the darkness, and goodness the light. [That is one meaning that can be given to Pascal's proposition.] Good is as much a part of nature as evil is; evil needn't be seen as the more real -- indeed, evil may be seen as nothing more than the dysfunction of the good; but, then, dysfunction is as much a part of nature as function is. (Pascal's remark is a religious statement, but it is not a statement of mysticism: good and evil are public events.)

About the statements of private religious experience (mysticism), if anyone asks: How can one verify that these claims are true? or How can one verify that these experiences reveal the truth? in place of an answer that can be put to a public test, only private conviction is offered. Religious mysticism cannot be put to the tests of Socratic philosophy, and therefore I have [and want to have] nothing to say about it. For the same reason I have nothing to say about Wittgenstein's reading poetry to the Vienna Circle (as if "showing" could be a substitute for philosophy ["discourse of reason"], as if "intuition" [instinct, inclination, disposition] could be a replacement for reason and verifiable experience).

[Religious disposition. Pascal: light and darkness: ""Aren't you shutting your eyes in the face of doubt [about your choice]?" They are shut [disposition makes the choice]." (cf. PI II, xi, p. 224)]

To see beyond what cannot be seen beyond (To perceive the imperceptible (ghosts, spirits))

And this satisfies besides a longing for the supernatural [variant: transcendent] for in so far as people think they can see the "limit of human understanding", they believe of course that they can see beyond it. (CV (1998 rev. ed.) [MS 111 133: 24.8.1931])

For my part, I would call mysticism self-mystification.

Philosophical Doubt

Philosophical doubts are not practical doubts ("Idealism", for example, "is a speculative position" (Fichte); it does not affect sense perception or natural science) . They are acts of pure curiosity, of wanting to know "what is behind reality", because it seems that what is perceptible and evident is not all that there is. They are doubts on a metaphysical level.

Query: 'rational animal' ('Man is an animal that is rational') is not a good definition of the word 'man' as ordinarily used, since if a donkey were to talk and reason we would call it a rational donkey not a donkey shaped man.

Would we? We might call it either, because there is no grammatical rule in "ordinarily usage" to guide us here ("concept fluidity": the limits of the concept in this respect are not strictly defined).

Why would there be rules for events that in fact never happen if language is a tool used to do some work in our life?

Compare the Cheshire-cat (Alice in Wonderland vi), for example: should it be called a cat or a cat-shaped man ("a smile is a smile only in a human face")?

"Were a donkey ..." That is counter-factual. We do not classify things on the basis of counter-factuals, but of reality. It is precisely because the other animals lack discourse of reason that man is classified ["defined"] as a rational animal. The query's definition [i.e. hypothesis (an hypothesis can be falsified, but a verbal convention cannot)] should be: 'Man is an animal that is uniquely rational.'

Query: everything can be doubted except appearances.

We don't have doubts about how things appear to us but about the causes of those appearances. "Does that object really appear to be a tree?" No, when we take a second look we are not trying to verify how something appears to us but to verify what the thing really is.

An exception, a counter-example that refutes the query's thesis; a counter-example is a contradiction: 'Does that color appear more reddish orange or reddish yellow (to me)?'

Is this a general rule of grammar: when there is no defined possibility of verification, i.e. whenever whatever seems correct is "correct" (PI § 258), then the appearances themselves can be doubted, i.e. the possibility of doubt (or how to doubt) is defined language?

Query: everything in the world can be doubted except doubt itself; this is the essence of practical criticism.

If doubt (doubtfulness) belongs to the essence of our thinking (sense of reality), does that essence belong to grammar (language conventions) or to the nature of our existence? Do the "eternal questions" belong essentially to the human condition -- or is philosophy (metaphysical speculation) merely an optional "form of life"? In other words, does "the riddle" really exist?

Can I doubt that I am doubting? Maybe if I am unclear about the meaning of the word 'doubt' (or about my own sincerity). What I cannot doubt, Augustine pointed out to those who claimed that they could doubt everything, is that I exist. The combination of words 'I doubt that I exist' are without meaning (although you can of course have doubts about in what way you exist, e.g. about your essence: body and soul (Aristotle) or soul alone (Plato)).

Are there limits to skepticism? And are those limits are set by grammar (rules of language) -- e.g. where there are no objective grounds for doubt, there can be no objective doubt -- or by an empirical world which must supply those grounds?

Query: what type of person are called philosophers?

... what I wrote at the very end, in the remarks about Socrates, the Athenians, and "what a philosopher is". But there are many types of persons called philosophers, many different types of interests called philosophy.

Query: another name of philosophy is?

Is 'the author of Waverly' another name for Walter Scott? Is 'love of wisdom' a description of philosophy?

'Walter Scott ' is a name, but it is also a combination of words. Is 'love of wisdom' a name? That is, that 'love of wisdom' is a combination of words is not the criterion, but rather whether 'love of wisdom' can it be used with no loss of meaning for the word 'philosophy'.

The word 'philosophy' seems to have a special status, but no more than 'physics' has ... Attachment to forms of expression -- what is the relation of this attachment to grammar (rules for using language)? Has it any if the sign-for-sign substitution is valid?

Philosophical grammar and Plato's Sophist

Query: Sophist and prefix theory.

In the dialog the "prefix" is the word 'not' in the context of Plato's invention of "logical form". (If we say that the "philosophical grammar" or "logical form" of a sentence is different from its factual form -- e.g. that the true form of 'The house is not large' is 'The house is small' -- are we stating a falsifiable hypothesis? How could it be falsified?)

When we speak of "that which is not", it seems that we do not mean something contrary to what exists but only something that is different [from what exists. Rather than "not tall", we may say "what is short"] ... the prefix 'not' indicates something different ... from the things designated by the words pronounced after the negative. (Sophist 257b-c, tr. Cornford)

What might we mean by calling that, as the query does, a theory? Would it be a theory about the true meaning of the language? How would it be verified? It's not an empirical theory (hypothesis); rather, it is an application of the Parmenidean principle "Never shall this be proved -- that things that-are-not are ..." ["Never say that what-is-not is", i.e. "that falsehoods have a real existence"] (ibid. 237a). (Cf. Russell's Theory-of-Descriptions on "philosophical grammar" or logical form. For example, rather than 'There is no golden mountain', Plato could write 'A mountain is made of something other than gold'.)

Things "established once and for all time"

Query: why do philosophers question everything, including things that have been established?

Because, from philosophy's point of view, nothing is, nor can ever be, forever established. Socratic dialectic [dialog] is the result of today, not of forever. There is no philosophical establishment. (Cf. Drury's response to Thomas Macaulay, contrasting philosophy with natural science.)

Query: which Greek philosopher first introduced the theological conception of things?

The first philosopher was the one who did just the opposite: Thales introduced the non-theological "concept of things". But there was a theological conception or presumption before there was philosophy, namely that all things are designed by God with a function or purpose unique and proper to them (ergon).

For natural theology, I'd say the Greek Stoics "first introduced the theological conception of things", that Aristotle's unmoved mover looks like merely "a fillip to his system", to use Pascal's characterization of Descartes' God, because otherwise what role has God in Aristotle? (Well you know I don't know).

Query: why philosophy of education is based on question rather than answer?

As I recall Alan Wood thought to title his book about Russell something like "The Passionate Questioner", but Russell had replied that he had not only asked questions but that he had answered a few as well.

When, at one time, I thought of sub-titling this book "The Great Questioner", he pointed out that he had done something to answer questions too ... (Alan Wood, Bertrand Russell: the Passionate Skeptic (1957), p. 243)

Wood says that Russell "only asked philosophical questions because he genuinely wanted to know answers" (ibid.), and Russell had indeed provided a few answers as well. But the question of whether he answered those questions with finality is itself a philosophical question. (In my view, philosophy is rational ways of looking at things (cf. CV p. 61 [MS 134 143: 13.-14.4.1947]), but there many ways, not one way only, many different points of view from which to be interested (PI § 108).

Education in philosophy is not professional training -- there isn't a body of knowledge and methods to impart as in legal studies; in the history of philosophy, those vary from philosopher to philosopher. Uncertainty is the root of philosophy (and trunk, branches and leaves). It begins -- and ends -- in perplexity (Things are only clear until they are again unclear). As with Socrates' method: "Don't tell -- ask!"

Query: types of truths established by different periods of philosophy.

Philosophy doesn't establish truths. "When a philosopher lives in his own times rather than in eternity, his work is left behind with the times he lives in." Is that correct? In the Medieval period, the concern was the existence and nature of God, a question that didn't much concern 20th Century philosophy. Was that because that question was non-eternal? Hardly. Some times and philosophers have been concerned with the eternal questions, but not all philosophers and not all times.

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