At 18:37 14/12/98 -0800, Ken Hanly wrote: >P.P.S. (post post script) Wittgenstein himself noted his pupils tended to >defer to his genius. He was such an intense, sincere person that students >were simply overwhelmed and as a result were neither critical of him nor >capable of independent thought while under his sway. Wittgenstein always >admired G.E.Moore who didn't have a clue what Wittgenstein was talking >about very often, but would tell Wittgenstein so. He sat in his classes >with a puzzled look on his face, not the look of adoration he saw on the >faces of his admirers. Wittgenstein was always upset at the effect he >tended to have on students. ________________ >From the few accounts of his students I have read, there was only one arm chair in Wittgenstein's room, where he held his class, which was reserved for G. E. Moore. And Moore was the only person allowed to smoke. His students suggest that though Moore would sit there saying nothing, and Wittgenstein would not address to him, still everybody had a feeling that there was a silent debate going on between the two. As a matter of fact G. C. Moore wrote an article on his recollections on Wittgenstein's lectures in *Mind*, Jan. 1954, where, among other things, he says that Wittgenstein held it to be a "mistak" "the view that the meaning of a word was some image which it calls up by association--a view to which he seemed to refer as the "causal" theory of meaning." This I think is the most important point. *Philosophical Investigations* is a critique of *causal theory of meaning*, and I think Sraffa's PCMC is a critique of *causal theory of value*. The two seem to also come together in relation to Heinrich Hertz. Sraffa had already read Hertz in 1927-28, before Wittgenstein had returned to Cambridge, and was quite impressed with it. In Wittgenstein's biographical sketch von Wright writes in a footnote: "It would be interesting to know whether Wittgenstein's conception of the proposition as a picture is connected in any way with the introduction to Heinrich Hertz's *Die Prinzipien der Mechanik*. Wittgenstein knew this work and held it in high esteem." The idea of Proposition as a "picture" also brings an important meeting point between the two. Sraffa too held the idea that propositions of his economic system was like snap shots. In a conversation with me Hienz Kurtz suggested that Sraffa had moved away from the snap shot idea, but I'm at the moment holding on to it. By the way, do you know if Wittgenstein had ever read Saussure's *Lectures on Linguistics*? or what do you think his general attitude toward this book would be? Cheers, ajit sinha
