Mike : For now there is next to nothing I can say about Wittgenstein. I only remember a few fragments of information about his ideas and life from a philosophy course many years ago. However, a review of Wittgenstein is on my agenda for some time in the future, maybe later this year, maybe early 2012. Two reasons, one benign, his early use of game theory in philosophy. The other reason was his homosexuality, possibly including pedophilia.. My question is this : To what extent did his homosexuality condition his philosophy ? To what extent did it "excuse" his homosexuality, to what extent does it seek to "evangelize" for homosexuality ? How has it happened that homosexuality, once universally reviled in our society, has gained the level of acceptance it now has despite the fact that people really ought to know better than to tolerate this form of pathology ? Clearly there is something going on in the realm of ideas that has done much to make this possible. Wittgenstein would seem to offer insights into answering the question. Billy -------------------------------------------------------------- 10/25/2011 10:20:22 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
I'm reminded of how Ludwig Wittgenstein opens his Tractatus Logicus Philosophicus: 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things. I hated that thought initially, but I came around to realize that being analytical requires the quantification of everything. The set of prepositions makes total sense when you think about it. It's difficult to describe where my mind is on this without a hasty analogy... a deaf person doesn't know that a trumpet is loud, but that doesn't mean that the trumpet doesn't have the property of being "loud". The issue is that the property is unobserved (or unobservable). It retains the property, but that person hasn't observed that fact. If the fact is, indeed, unobservable and whether it is loud or not loud makes no difference to a deaf person, then the pragmatic definition is that a trumpet's sound holds no meaning. Applying that to politics, if corporate tax breaks do not affect the poorest populations either positively or negatively, then the pragmatic definition of a tax break to them means nothing. They're like a deaf person listening in on a trumpet concerto. In essence, then, it's as if government and the musician are doing nothing at all. Then again, I may just be projecting my thoughts onto Wittgenstein. The Tractatus was almost incomprehensible at points. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
