Philosophy Now Forum

Start here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... uage/30540

All the way back to when I Love Philosophy revolved around those who truly did love philosophy. Back when those like faust and only-humean more or less kept it that way. Sure, there were lots of disagreements regarding what exactly being a philosopher entailed, but by and large the Kids, the yak-yak-yak social media sort, the trolls, etc., were a distinct minority

Alas, however, for some they love it so much they insist that others are obligated to love it in exactly the same way. Scarier still however are those who anchor their political agenda to "or else".




Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

In this article I am going to describe Wittgenstein’s famous picture theory of language. The aim of this theory is to set out an account of what sentences mean and just as importantly, to give us a way of distinguishing sense from nonsense.

On the other hand, language used by some here to make sense of the world around us is often construed to be utter nonsense by others.

So, as always, in my view, it's less the language we use to explain what we believe about the world around us and more our attempts to demonstrate why all rational men and women are obligated to use the same language.

For instance, what might be the optimal language for encompassing Friday's exchange in the White House between Trump, Vance and Zelenskyy? There's what you think or believe or claim to know is true about it "in your head", and there's what you can in fact demonstrate is anything but a political prejudice rooted existentially in dasein.

The theory is found in Wittgenstein’s first book, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which ranks as one of the hardest-to-read of all the great works of philosophy.

Perhaps if he spent more time back then actually connecting the dots between the words he used and the life he lived?

It is an unusual book, written whilst Wittgenstein was serving in the Austrian army during the First World War and finished whilst he was a prisoner of war in Italy.

Can you say that?

It is remarkably short for a great work of philosophy; this is in part due to Wittgenstein's condensed writing style, which has put off many readers and confused a good number of philosophers. But Wittgenstein’s aim was not to confuse his readers: he simply wanted to express himself as precisely and as logically as possible.

Any Wittgenstein advocates here? If so, how do you imagine he might react to my own arguments regarding words and worlds?

So the picture theory of language is an attempt to discover the essence of language. In its simplest form, the theory says the function of language is to allow us to picture things.

Picture this: doctors gathering to exchange assessments of abortion as a medical procedure

Picture this: ethicists gathering to exchange assessments of abortion as a moral quandary.

even Ludwig thought a lot of his Tractatus was incorrect...

language is a tool used between humans - between is the key

there are many tools

Zelensky was asking for 7.62 mm, Trump offered a white flag

-Imp

Impenitent wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 2:35 pm even Ludwig thought a lot of his Tractatus was incorrect...

language is a tool used between humans - between is the key

there are many tools

Zelensky was asking for 7.62 mm, Trump offered a white flag

-Imp

Okay, using the tools of philosophy, what are all rational men and women obligated to believe regarding that particular White House meeting? And there are any number of factual assessments that are applicable to all of us.

On the other hand, using the tools of philosophy, how might the war in Ukraine itself be encompassed in the most rational -- virtuous? -- manner?

Then back to this part:

Picture this: doctors gathering to exchange assessments of abortion as a medical procedure
Picture this: ethicists gathering to exchange assessments of abortion as a moral quandary.

In a world where biologically only women can become pregnant.

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

In itself, this doesn’t tell us all that much. Pictures can have many purposes – just think of the differences between hieroglyphics and modern artworks.

With artworks, of course, beauty is often said to be in the eye or the mind of the beholder. On the other hand, there are any number of artists who have few qualms about including their political convictions in the works they produce. Something might be created such that technically, artistically it is a great work of art. But it depicts human interactions that champion values you find appalling. Or the art is completely apolitical but the artist who created it embraces moral and political convictions that you detest.

Therefore it is helpful to consider a very basic type of picture, such as a diagram I might draw to show a friend the way to my house. I do not have to sketch every detail of the route my friend should take, such as what the view will look like along the way. Rather, I need to show my friend where to turn, and perhaps mark some prominent landmarks along the route.

An "either/or" transaction. The sketch is either successful in bringing you to another's house or it isn't. But suppose you get there only to find out the house is occupied by a hardcore Nazi or Communist. Someone interested in recruiting others to their own extremist views.

Then this part...

Suppose that my diagram indicates that my friend should take the second right after the lights. Of course, the situation that the diagram presents to my friend need not be true to the facts; my diagram might be part of a practical joke on her, in which I send her to someone else’s house. In constructing a picture such as this, I am not constrained by the actual facts. Although my house is on the second road on the right, I am perfectly able to draw a diagram in which the house is pictured on the second road on the left.

Okay, but in the end, the picture drawn either accomplished what you wanted it to accomplish, or it did not. Where the moral and political conflagrations come into play, however, revolves around why you were invited in the first place. What do those there want from you, expect from you, command of you?

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 3:36 am Start here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... uage/30540

All the way back to when I Love Philosophy revolved around those who truly did love philosophy. Back when those like faust and only-humean more or less kept it that way. Sure, there were lots of disagreements regarding what exactly being a philosopher entailed, but by and large the Kids, the yak-yak-yak social media sort, the trolls, etc., were a distinct minority

Language is Universal and Intelligible, Grammar is Particular and Perceptible.

Language is derived from the Universal Binary exampled in the definition of A Thing., Relative and Correlative, noun and verb, exampled by the computer which can process all information, Plato called it Dialectic. A thing can be said to be a standard of behavior, standard is to limit or noun as behavior is to the relative, or verb. Just like a line segment, the Limits are nouns, the relative difference between them a verb.

Now, every thing is a binary expression, how then is binary recursion, as a physical manifestation of the Universe, different from binary recursion expressed by every possible system of grammar? How does binary differ from binary other than one is intelligible and the other perceptible? How then can one say that Language is limited without stating a falsehood, the intelligence of man is limited, but not Language.
Secondly, who, with any common sense, use Witless stein, as an example of a philosopher?

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

Wittgenstein is keen to emphasize that what a picture means is independent of whether it is a truthful representation or not. But if a diagram can be misleading or downright false, so that it does not picture the facts, what does it picture? Wittgenstein says that what a diagram or picture represents exists in logical space.

Logical space in a "world of words"? Or is someone who subscribes to the point above able to describe how it is applicable to their own life.

One way to understand this is to see that the way the world has turned out is not the only way that it could have turned out. Had things turned out differently, my house could have been on the second left, even though it is actually on the second right. So a picture represents something that is the case, or alternatively, could have been the case had the world turned out differently.

Then the part whereby, had things been different in your life, you might actually be defending what you now reject. In fact, some will insist that contingency, chance and change are effectively blunted given their very own Intrinsic Self. Again, in my view, it is easily the most convenient and self-serving moral philosophy. You "just know" what is right or wrong, good or bad, true or false. And since no one else is you, what could they possible know about your own assessment and conclusion.

What is it that makes the arrangement of lines on my diagram a picture, whereas a scribble produced at random (say, by a crab crawling around in the sand) is not counted as a picture? According to Wittgenstein, it is that the lines in the diagram are related together in a way that mimics the way the things they correspond to are related. For example my diagram has symbols for roads and houses, which if true, are arranged in a way which mimics their arrangement in reality.

So, how do the pictures you subscribe to mimic "their arrangement in reality"? And roads and houses are either correctly pictured or they are not. I'm far more interested myself in how men and women picture the world around them morally and politically and spiritually.

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

Wittgenstein’s theory of language holds that sentences work like pictures: their purpose is also to picture possible situations.

Then the gap between pictures depicting what is in fact true for all of us empirically/experientially and the seeming futility of attempting to picture the world of normative interactions -- morally, politically -- in the same way.

Instead, we live in a world where literally hundreds of different religious denominations and/or political parties and/or ideological dogmas are all clamoring to insist the picture they paint of the world need be as far as anyone goes. Then the part where some objectivists will note those who can never be "one of us". The wrong skin color, for example, or the wrong sexual orientation.

It must be pointed out that Wittgenstein is not concerned with mental pictures, ie the images we conjure up in our minds. The thesis is not that the meaning of a sentence is what we picture in our minds when we hear or think the sentence. That was the theory of language advocated by John Locke, the 17th century empiricist philosopher. Rather, Wittgenstein is concerned with a more abstract notion of a picture, as something that either agrees or disagrees with any way the world might have been, and which says, this is the way things actually are.

Okay, for those who believe they do understand the distinction being here, please note how it is embodied in your day-to-day interactions with other.

I can close my eyes and picture any number of my own interactions...past and present. Interactions that involve behaviors able to be pictured. It just all more or less collapses [for those of my inclination] in regard to value judgments.

You can picture a day in the life of Elon Trump such that the pictures are able to illustrate the actual things that they do. But if the exchange shifts to discussions and debates regarding the rationality/morality of the policies that they are pursuing?

How would that be most effectively pictured?

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

Logical Analysis

On the other hand, are there or are there not facets of human interactions where logic appears to be considerably more problematic? I focus here on value judgments, but how exactly would a logician encompass the existence of existence itself. Or the existence of God.

Then this part: Is logic "a priori given or a product of language"?

The next element of Wittgenstein’s first theory of language concerns how sentences are built up from simpler sentences (or propositions, as Wittgenstein calls them], meaning a sentence that’s unambiguously either true or false.

On the other hand, in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, everything that is may well turn out to be only that which it ever could have been.

But, surely, it is obvious that logic is considerably more applicable to the either/or world.

Then this part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_and_rationality

His idea is that whenever a sentence contains one of the logical connectives ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘or’, or ‘if … then’, we can work out the truth-value of that proposition (i.e. whether it’s true or false) if we know the truth-values of the sentences that make it up. This is seen most easily by giving an example. Suppose I say, “If it isn’t raining, then we will go to the park and have a picnic.” This sentence is made up from the following simpler sentences:

1. It is raining
2. We will go to the park
3. We will have a picnic

Indeed, it either is or is not raining. You either go to the park or you don't. You either have a picnic there or you don't.

On the other hand, suppose someone doesn't want to picnic in the park but would rather go bowling instead. Or suppose someone wants to picnic in the park but the park doesn't allow people of color there.

Logic here?

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

Meaning and Nonsense

We can now turn to Wittgenstein’s more general remarks on what counts as sense (ie what is meaningful) and what is nonsense.

At least until we come upon those who insist that what makes sense to us [morally and politically] is sheer nonsense to them.

In the introduction to the Tractatus, Wittgenstein says that he set out to draw a boundary between thinking something meaningful and thinking nonsense. He does not discuss thought at any length, for he claims that the boundary between sense and nonsense can be drawn only in language.

Which may explain all those here who are adamant that philosophers must first encompass the most rational -- technically correct -- definition of sense and nonsense. That's how they tell them apart in regard to...the real world?

To recap, Wittgenstein argues that the meaning of a sentence is just what it pictures. Its meaning tells us how the world is if the sentence is true, or how it would be if the sentence were true; but the picture doesn’t tell us whether the sentence is in fact true or false.

Okay, with words, paint a picture of abortion as a medical procedure. Now, with words, paint a picture of abortion as a moral issue. And as long as someone believes the sentence is either true or false that need be as far as it goes.

That's why it's so important to distinguish between things that are in fact true for all of us and things that are instead merely moral and political prejudices rooted existentially in dasein.

Thus we can know what a sentence means without knowing whether it is true or false.

For instance, "Joan was arrested for having an abortion." It's either true or false. On the other hand, ought she have been arrested? Where are the words that, philosophically or otherwise, establish this as true objectively for all of us?

Meaning and understanding are intimately linked. When we understand a sentence, we grasp its meaning. We understand a sentence when we know what it pictures – which amounts to knowing how the world would be in the case of the proposition being true.

All the more reason it's crucial to focus not on what we think the words mean but on our capacity to demonstrate why all reasonable men and women ought to think the same.

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

This [the above] is a truth-conditional theory of understanding: we understand a sentence when we grasp the conditions in which the sentence would be true.

Back to this [if I do say so myself] crucial distinction:

Sentences that revolve around, say, Donald Trump. Lots and lots of sentences can be accumulated that are in fact true for all of us.

But as soon as the discussion shifts to value judgments and Trump's social, political and economic policies...?

Truth-conditional theories of understanding have a counterpart in the theory of meaning: ‘the meaning of a sentence is a condition on how the world would have to be for that sentence to be true.’

Okay, let's shift from theory to practice: Donald Trump is a great president.

You tell me what the world might look like if Trump's approval rating soared? Then note the optimal manner in which ratings and value judgments might be intertwined to create -- deontologically? -- the best of all possible worlds.

How about if those here who embrace his policies debate those here who detest them.

This part...

The truth-conditional theory of meaning has been popular in recent years because it provides a realist theory of meaning, on which one can say what a sentence means without appealing to what anyone might or might not know to be the case.

See the difference? Trump's approval rating has never topped 50%. In fact, he is the only president going back to Harry Truman whose approval rating never managed to make it above 50%

Click, of course.

Now we turn to Wittgenstein’s analysis of what counts as a meaningful sentence, and by the same token, what counts as nonsense. As we have seen, Wittgenstein holds that meaning rests on a sentence being a picture of a possible situation, and so meaning is linked to truth conditions. Therefore, without truth conditions, a sentence cannot be meaningful.

Which, of course, for all practical purposes, is...ridiculous? If only in regard to those aspects of human interactions revolving around conflicting goods?

Then the part where I react to moral realists here by asking them to note any "objective moral facts" pertaining to a particular moral or political conflagration of note.

Pictures and Nonsense
Mark Jago looks at Wittgenstein’s first theory of language, in the Tractatus. One of the conclusions of this theory is that the theory in the Tractatus is nonsense…

All elementary propositions purport to describe a basic fact about the world, and so an elementary proposition is true if that fact exists and false otherwise.

In other words, encompassing any number of things we communicate to others and others communicate to us from day to day. And with a minimal of uncertainty or confusion or conflict.

But: what exactly is an elementary proposition in regard to far more complex human interactions revolving around conflicting goods?

As a consequence, all elementary propositions are meaningful. According to Wittgenstein, a sentence can only be meaningful if it is an elementary proposition or else is built from a number of elementary propositions using ‘not’, ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘if … then’. (We might also allow sentences beginning ‘for all’ or ‘every’.) Every sentence that does not fit this template is meaningless, according to Wittgenstein.

Really, imagine reading what others post here...going from sentence to sentence to sentence pinning down all of the meaningful propositions. And, as well, all of the more or less meaningless propositions. Imagine, in other words, all of the confrontations when others see things...the other way around?

This does not guarantee that all the sentences that are built in this way are meaningful. A sentence can be built from elementary propositions in this way but because of the way it is put together, the meaning drops out of the sentence. This loss of meaning happens when we arrive at a sentence that just has to be true or just has to be false. This is the case for tautologies, which logic guarantees to be true, and logical falsehoods, which could not possibly be true.

What we need to do then is to note actual examples of this pertaining to contexts in which the words are either meaningful and reasonably in sync with the "real world" or they are not. Some will picture this and others that.

"Either it’s raining or it’s not” is a tautology, because however the world might have turned out, it would be true. Accordingly, saying “either it’s raining or it’s not” does not tell us anything about the world: it does not allow us to distinguish the actual situation from any situation that might have been. On the other hand, “It’s both raining and not raining” is a logical falsehood. It could not be or have been true, however the world might have turned out. So this too tells us nothing about how the world is.

Then this part...

Either Jane had an abortion or she did not. On the other hand, if someone comes along and argues that the abortion was either moral or immoral...what then? Logic and value judgments?

iambiguous wrote: ↑Sun Mar 02, 2025 3:36 am Start here: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/t/back- ... uage/30540

All the way back to when I Love Philosophy revolved around those who truly did love philosophy. Back when those like faust and only-humean more or less kept it that way. Sure, there were lots of disagreements regarding what exactly being a philosopher entailed, but by and large the Kids, the yak-yak-yak social media sort, the trolls, etc., were a distinct minority

So, you human beings, in the days when this is being written, still, have not yet come to an agreement and an acceptance of what, exactly, being a "philosopher" entailed.

One day you beings, here, might, also, get HERE.

For what being a 'philosopher' actually entails, exactly, is very, very simple and easy to come to understand, and know.

Age wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 2:59 am One day you beings, here, might, also, get HERE.

Because for any transmitter of unorthodox CAPS the reason for using CAPS may be unknown, delusory, or ignorance of grammar, then seeking the possibilities and likelihood of a singular cause for CAPS transmitted in any particular instance, that relies on the transmitter’s verification, shows a lot of trust in the CAPer, as it would for any rationale that leaves the transmitter smelling like a rose.

If the CAPS are a mystery to be solved, then determining a solution without interrogating the CAPer offers the receiver of CAPS the opportunity to explore assumptions about CAPS, as preparation for venturing into the emotion-triggering world of acronym CAPS, such as MAGA, or deciphering philosophers of yore, the biggies.

Walker wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 8:25 am

Age wrote: ↑Thu Apr 10, 2025 2:59 am One day you beings, here, might, also, get HERE.

Because for any transmitter of unorthodox CAPS the reason for using CAPS may be unknown,

Although the very reason for why the use of capital letters has been expressed, clearly, a number of times already.

Walker wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 8:25 am delusory, or ignorance of grammar, then seeking the possibilities and likelihood of a singular cause for CAPS transmitted in any particular instance, that relies on the transmitter’s verification, shows a lot of trust in the CAPer, as it would for any rationale that leaves the transmitter smelling like a rose.

If the CAPS are a mystery to be solved, then determining a solution without interrogating the CAPer offers the receiver of CAPS the opportunity to explore assumptions about CAPS, as preparation for venturing into the emotion-triggering world of acronym CAPS, such as MAGA, or deciphering philosophers of yore, the biggies.

Again, it appears quite clearly that 'the message':

'If any one, really, wants to find out the actual Truth of things, then just ask clarifying questions',

seems to have got missed, or misunderstood, by some, here.

Age wrote: ↑Fri Apr 11, 2025 11:21 pm
'If any one, really, wants to find out the actual Truth of things, then just ask clarifying questions',

How do you ask clarifying questions of dead philosophers, the biggies, to find out the actual Truth of things?

Answer: You don't. You study what they said or reportedly said until you understand. Go forth and do likewise with life, or else you're always to be intellectually dependent upon the limitations of language.