At 12:59 9/12/98 -0400, Ricardo wrote:
>So much hogwash has been said about the enlightenment in pen-l that
>perhaps it is time someone set out to answer "what is the
>enlightenment?" First, contrary to what everyone in pen-l thinks, the
>enlightenment is NOT about science. The enlightenment is a phenomenon
>of the eighteenth century. Do not confuse it with the scientific
>revolution of the seventeenth century. If we divide the enlightenment
>into three stages, then the early stage directly reflects the
>influence of Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, Newton and others. But the
>enlightenment strictly speaking begins with the publication of
>Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1748). Enlightenment thinkers
>greatly admired the rigors of the scientific method, and insisted that
>humans must discover truth *for themselves* through logical reason
>and experimentation, not religious dogma. But what makes enlightment
>thinkers like Voltaire, Kant and Diderot unique is their claim that
>POLITICAL institutions should be subjected to the self-legislated
>criteria of reason. Where the enlightenment falls short is in not
>realizing that two different learning processes are involved in
>ethical and scientific judgements; hence the confusion of pen-l.
>
>(The third stage may be said to begin with Rousseau and his turn to
>romanticism)
____________
I have been reading Wittgenstein's PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS as a
preparation for my work on "Sraffa's method". This is probably the most
remarkable book I have ever read. I think you must read it sometime. Here
I'll just quote a couple of passages which tangentially ties in with the
Enlightenment discussion.
81. "F.P. Ramsey once emphasized in conversation with me that logic was a
'normative science'. I do not know exactly what he had in mind, but it was
doubtless closely related to what only dawned on me later: namely, that in
philosophy we often COMPARE the use of words with games and calculi which
have fixed rules, but cannot say that someone who is using language MUST be
playing such a game.-- But if you say that our languages only APPROXIMATE
to such calculi you are standing on the very brink of a misunderstanding.
For then it may look as if what we were talking about were an IDEAL
language. As if our logic were, so to speak, a logic for a vacuum.--
Whereas logic does not treat of language--or of thought--in the sense in
which a natural science treats of a natural phenomenon, and the most that
can be said is that we CONSTRCUT ideal languages. But here the word "ideal"
is liable to mislead, for it sounds as if these languages were better, more
perfect, than our everyday language; and as if it took the logician to shew
people at last what a proper sentence looked like.
All this, however, can only appear in the right light when one has
attained greater clarity about the concepts of understanding, meaning, and
thinking. For it will then also become clear what can lead us (and did lead
me) to think that if anyone utters a sentence and MEANS or UNDERSTANDS it
he is operating a calculus according to definite rules.
82. What do I call 'the rule by which he proceeds'?-- The hypothesis that
satisfactorily describes his use of words, which we observe; or the rule
which he looks up when he uses signs; or the one which he gives us in reply
if we ask him what his rule is?--But what if observation does not enable us
to see any clear rule, and the question brings none to light?--For he did
indeed give me a definition when I asked him what he understood by "N", but
he was prepared to withdraw and alter it.--so How am I to determine the
rule according to which he is playing? He does not know it himself.--Or, to
ask a better question: What meaning is the expression "the rule by which he
proceed" supposed to have left to it here?" (All the emphasis are by
Wittgenstein)
