walt_sak@proper.UUCP (Walt Sakai) (02/15/85)
This is a follow-up to the January 27th notice regarding the
Wittgenstein discussion group (the condensed version appears
below in *'s). My query prompted some interesting responses and
suggestions for discussion topics. The replies are edited
below. I hope that all the "players" get to know each other.
Thank you for responding. Look forward to some fruitful
discussions... Everyone is invited !!!
Walt Sakai
{ucbvax,amd,zehntel,unisoft}!dual!proper!walt_sak
----------------------------------------------------------
* Discussion Group: LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN --> net.philosophy *
* ---------------------------------------------------------- *
* The topics will involve overlapping fields such as linguistics, *
* philosophy, and mathematics, in order to maximize the number of *
* participants. However, all discussions will be located in *
* "net.philosophy", which will serve as a common meeting ground. *
* *
* I imagine that some communication will be made via "mail" between *
* private individuals meeting through the main line of discussion. *
* Hopefully, these private discussions will be posted to *
* net.philosophy for source of further thought by everyone else. *
> From nsc!seismo!mcnc!ecsvax!unbent Sat Feb 2 05:13:16 1985
> --Jay Rosenberg ...{decvax,akgua}!mcnc!ecsvax!unbent
> Dept. of Philosophy; University of North Carolina;
> Chapel Hill, NC 27514
>
> OK, I'm willing to play --so you'll have at least one semi-pro in
> the game. (I've published articles on both the Tractatus and the
> Investigations and know my way around in the rest of the corpus
> fairly well.) A cautionary note: Wittgenstein is a lot rougher
> going than he looks!
>
> Here are a couple of bibliography items, so you can find out
> where I'm coming from:
>
> "Wittgenstein's Theory of Language as Picture", AMERICAN
> PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, V,1, January 1968, pp. 18-30.
>
> "The Concept of Linguistic Correctness", PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES,
> 30, 1977, pp. 171-84.
>
> "Speaking Lions", CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, VII,1, 1977,
> pp. 155-60.
>
> I haven't been doing too much with Wittgenstein lately, but I
> think I still remember enough to have an interesting chat. Either
> mail or news is OK with me. I don't mind eavesdroppers.
Jay, I have not yet examined the above articles, but it looks
like perhaps we can use them as a springboard to develop
interesting topics. If the articles exit in electronic form,
would it be possible to "mail" them to participants?
> From dual!amd!pesnta!hplabs!decvax!mcnc!duke!phs!paul
> Paul Dolber @ DUMC (...duke!phs!paul).
>
> I'd love to see a discussion of Wittgenstein on the net.
> ...it should be noted that Barrett's "Illusion of Technique"
> was, in large part, devoted to Wittgenstein --and thus may be a
> proper subject of discussion as well. (Furthermore, it seems that
> Barrett thinks Wittgenstein --i.e., the later Wittgenstein --owed
> a great deal to Heidegger; some discussion of Heidegger might be
> of interest as well if this is so, especially as [a] Barrett
> thinks Heidegger is a genius, and [b] Walter Kaufmann thinks
> Heidegger is a moron. I've thus far only tried to read his
> "Introduction to Metaphysics," and can conclude only that he's
> nearly impenetrable.)
>
> Consider this a weak vote in a way; I definitely will be far, far
> more an observer than a contributor. Particularly if net interest
> centers on "Tractatus" and on language.
Thanks, Paul, for expressing your interest. Regarding the
incoherence of Heidegger's writing, some say it is a function of
the original in German which is difficult to translate. I think
Heidegger should have known that "What we cannot speak about we
must pass over in silence (TRACTATUS #7)." Indeed, Heidegger
does converge toward this sort of conclusion in his later years
when he gets deeply involved with poetry and language.
Language turns out to be the "house of Being" for the later
Heidegger. Many devoted housekeepers are still around, and
keeping very busy.
Schopenhauer had a very lasting effect on Wittgenstein. The
"metaphysical" aspects of early Wittgenstein can be easily traced
to Schopenhauer (see the NOTEBOOKS 1914-16).
> From: ucbvax!unmvax!convex!smu!leff (Laurence Leff)
> I am responding to the news article on Wittgenstein that showed
> up in net.math.symbolic. As the founder of the Usenet side of
> this (the group is gatewayed to a mailing list), I am curious
> what a Wittgenstein is and what it has to do with symbolic math.
The connection to symbolic math involves the following topics and
people historically: foundation of mathematics, logic, set
theory, proof theory, recursion, language, semantics, syntax,
Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Cantor, Hilbert, Godel,..., and so
on,... Wittgenstein is not a mathematician per se, but has
made contributions to the above via philosophy. His influence on
Russell was considerable in terms of his critique of the theory
of types and sense/reference issues. There is considerable
evidence that what got Wittgenstein back into philosophy after
the TRACTATUS period was Brouwer's lectures on the foundations of
mathematics. Wittgenstein's view of mathematics as a game,
like chess, is quite interesting. Ultimately, however,
Wittgenstein's treatment of mathematics is subsumed under
languages in general, since they are the final non-arbitrarily
defined "meta-language."
> From dual!amd!pesnta!hplabs!decvax!mcnc!duke!jas
> Original-From: Jon A. Sjogren <duke!jas@mcnc>
>
> Sign me up! I haven't read "Philosophical Investigations", but
> hope to follow the discussion. I propose that installments be
> specially mailed to subscribers, as has been done for other
> "special interest groups". jas@duke
That might be a good idea, but I don't know how to step-up the
subscription mailing process. Would you like to volunteer?
Anyways, if we all keep tuned to "net.philosophy" I don't see any
major differences, especially if the private discussions between
individuals are posted.
> From dual!cbosgd!osu-eddie.UUCP!bgsuvax!schaefer Feb 10 1985
> From: cbosgd!osu-eddie!bgsuvax!schaefer (Stephen Schaefer)
>
> I am currently trying to get through Tractatus Logico-
> Philosophicus, translated by C. K. Ogden. Fascinating. Obscure
> writing style. (The German appears on the facing pages and the
> translation isn't much more than an automated dictionary.) These
> first sections seems to be the most difficult from my occasional
> peeks ahead, but then proofs are usually more difficult than
> conclusions, no? Don't get me wrong -I speak in analogy. I have
> read up to 4.06 three times now, and always appear to get
> interrupted there. I am very interested in compare/contrast with
> other thought, e.g.:
> In the beginning was the WORD
> And the WORD was with God
> And the WORD was God... (Jn 1.1)
> Also, see my poem <198@bgsuvax.UUCP> on net.poems -"...Powerful
> the discipline of symbol..." And even (especially?) Amon Liner -
> "...And the tiger, snowing, snowing."
For everyone's reference #4.06 says: "A proposition can be true
or false only in virtue of being a picture of reality."
Stephen, is your point that a poetic statement is incapable of
being assigned a truth value? Since Wittgenstein could not
give any examples of what might be a "simple object" (vide
TRACTATUS 2.02 ff), I suppose there is lattitude for some sort of
poetic re-interpretation of the TRACTATUS. But that's not what
Wittgenstein had in mind, I think.
> From dual!amd!pesnta!hplabs!hao!seismo!harvard!panda!rmc
> R Mark Chilenskas
>
> My primary interest in Wittgenstein is the interpretation of
> rules and the private language argument. This makes me most
> interested in Philosophical Investigations and the Foundations of
> Mathematics. I am also quite interested in Saul Kripke,
> particularly Naming and Necessity and his interpretation/
> translation of the private language argument in Wittgenstein:
> Rules and the Private Language Argument.
>
> Although i think these works have a lot to do with how humans
> handle language, i am not certain how useful they would be for
> teaching computers language. Kripke's ideas about the meaning of
> proper names being dependent upon a kind of an "initiation" by
> other people make sense to me but would be hard to do to a
> computer program. So i guess for "natural language processing" i
> am more interested in the Tractatus and how its limitations would
> affect teaching a computer to "almost understand" language.
> From dual!cbosgd!ihnp4.UUCP!gargoyle!mark
> From: cbosgd!ihnp4!gargoyle!mark (Mark Turner)
>
> I'm Mark Turner, Department of English, U Chicago, 60637,
> uucp address: . . . ihnp4!gargoyle!puck!mark; and I work in
> linguistics/philosophy/cognition. Let me know what develops.
I find the connection between cognition and language, with
computation sandwiched in between, quite fascinating. One might
regard language as the concrete manifestation of a immaterial
process called cognition. But also, it seems that cognition
does not take place without some sort of underlying symbolic
system, call it language. Clarifying these interrelationships,
we have studies in computation, formal languages, and AI systems.
The September 1984 issue of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN has a good
introductory article touching on these subjects: "Computer
Software for Working with Language" by Terry Winograd, author of
LANGUAGE AS A COGNITIVE PROCESS. It is general and accessible
enough so that it can serve for broad-based discussions. The
connection with Wittgenstein might not be so obvious, however.
The issues pertaining to linguistics I suppose can be better
framed with Chomsky (transformational grammar) and Searle (speech
acts). Both have roots that are motivated by Wittgenstein.
The key "lies in analyzing the nature of linguistic competence
and how that competence is related to the formal rule structures
that are the theoretical basis of all computer software
(Winograd, op.cit.)." Well, if this has nothing to do with
Wittgenstein's PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS, I'll ....
One might also take a look at: "The meaning of a sentence in a
natural language is dependent not only on the form of the
sentence but also on the context (Winograd, op.cit.)." Doesn't
this compactly express the unity between the early LW ("form")
and the later LW ("context" or use)? The problem here is in
the formalization and explication of the multitude of factors
that constitute "context."
> From: amdahl!amd!twg!scc!steiny@scc.ARPA (Don Steiny)
> Several months ago, maybe a year, I started posting copious
> quotes by Wittgenstein to try to help sort some of the language
> mistakes people were making. They had very little impact. The
> volume of discussion created was nil. There is little interest in
> Wittgenstein. If people really understood "Philosophical
> Investigations" do you think that there would be endless
> discussions on "the meaning of this or that?"
>
> Once I was at a seminar given by my friend, John Grinder. John is
> a linguist that applied some of the princlples to psychotherapy.
> At that seminar, with about 250 people in the room John asked if
> anyone had read Wittgenstein. I was the ONLY person in the room
> that raised my hand. These people were all professionals,
> doctors, lawyers, and psychotherapists.
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is
no guarantee of eventual success.
EOT