At 12:22 11/12/98 -0400, Ricardo D.wrote: > >Ajit, now that you are reading Wittgenstein I can only defer to you. >Let's say my knowledge of him is based on hearsay. Checking one of >my readily available sources on 20th century philosophy, I can say >that, in the passages cited below, W is questioning the presumption >of an ideal language (and Sraffa may have felt the same about the >language of economics). There are no "independent" truths out there >waiting to be discovered. Even the rules of math, like "add one", is >not fixed in the sense that it would hold true in the same way for >all rational beings. Other beings might follow this rule >differently, the point of which is that what matters is not the >rule, in the sense that there is a rule out there, a logical law, but >the actual way people go about adding one. >What matters is the practical way we decide what truth is for us; >how a particular culture actually goes about deciding what is correct. > >BTW, on another occasion you might tell me if Sraffa's critique of >neoclassical economics is "immanent", as I read somewhere, which >obviosly ties with your study of his method. _______ I don't have any disagreement with what you say above. On Sraffa, I think I shouldn't say any more than what I have already done before I get some results. Cheers, ajit sinha > > > >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) > >
