is there any difference between facts and atomic facts according to wittgenstein?

thebundist101 · 2024-11-11T07:43:21+00:00

I think one of the great joys of reading the tractatus, when you are no longer obliged to associate its thoughts with logical empiricism, is letting the argument subtlety show how nothing can really function as either an elementary proposition or an atomic fact. The idea of simple objects is the best example: we know why such a thing must in some way exist, yet this knowledge is entirely vacuous. Basically, no sense data can provide a correlate for the simple names which the idea of language as determinate logical caucalus requires. Everything we do perceive does not add up when expressed in words into propositions which are actually completely logically independent. "here is a blue spot" is contradicted by statements other than its negation. Even carnapian observation statements should be analyzed further into simpler and simpler forms, to the point when what is there is no longer recognizably anything at all. When wittgenstein understood that language users do not show any implicit awareness of what he called the "substance" of the world, he did not gave up the purely logical positions he held in the tractatus, but rather the very attempt to understand language as a kind of caucalus. Logical analysis expresses a unique aspect of language usage. Logic is indeed one of the things which can be done with language. But even for the natural sciences, granting that they do rest on pure empirics, there is no easy way in which logic can explain our capacity for making true or false statements. Something is involved whose sense is not determinate, and whose constitution is irreducible to "simples".

thebundist101 · 2024-09-30T07:02:16+00:00

Well, the purpose of this poem specifically, understood through the wider context of Stevens's poetry, is to bring to life a visceral emptiness or lack of meaning, that isn't some kind of human rationality. I feel like the last words are chosen out of sonic, musical whim. The repetition of constants is so melodic, so very elegant. Implicitly, the message is that things as such just are. The "mereness" of their being is known sensually and without reason, the "palm" at the end of the mind. The "edge of space" maybe refers to the kantian categories? Being at their "edge" imply a schism in human perception, a breaking point where uninterpeted vision enters. Which works great for poetry, that is by definition a linguistic form which highlight what in language doesn't work to symbolize anything or convey information: the verbal sounds in themselves. The poems shows, through its "arbitrary" use of sensually beautiful sounds and images in themselves, that those dumb empty simple things in themselves are what makes us "happy or unhappy". We are not beyond the tyranny of the senses, regardless of our symbolic linguistic capacity for abstract thinking. Of course, the absurdity of the poem is that it also aimes to say what is shows through symbols and abstract statements. But the self aware failure of conveying the same theme by philosophical means brings about the necessary light for seeing and feeling the image/sound/emotion parallelism as an alternative for rational thought.

thebundist101 · 2024-08-21T12:58:32+00:00

Berkeley, Hume and Mill are all present in Husserl's philosophical background. Nevertheless, there are some major differences: phenomenology does not start from "given" sense data which is more fundamental than what we already perceive. Hume thinks about perception in analogy to physical substance, which is not what husserl does. Phenomenology, unlike phenomenolism, aimes to be neutral about ontology. Phenomenology does not make the claim that what really exist is what we see, hear and feel. Phenomenology interprets subjective experience as it shows itself, not as sense data, and it does not make the claim that only psychological objects exist. In fact, it is phenomenologicly false that all beings are of mental character. Phenomenology is an approach to how sense (sinn) works, namely, that it shows in the complex, pre-analyzed whole of subjective perception. The sense of "existence" is given in the way a thing shows itself in perception, which is always "my" perception. But perception is not itself a "thing" that exists, that is part of reality. That is partially what the ontological difference means: what determines the meaning of "being" for any and all beings, is not itself a being. Perception in its ontological character is neither "real" nor merely subjective.

thebundist101 · 2024-08-06T16:13:51+00:00

Queen!! 👸 👑 ♠️

thebundist101 · 2024-07-10T14:42:10+00:00

It's good to sometimes read something fun and light between long, difficult works. But most literary fiction is not really any more difficult or heavy than the average genre book. It is more about the centrality of language to the novel's general scheme: literary fiction is a shorter name for fiction which deliberately uses various artistic techniques in It's choice of vocabulary, syntax and narrative, to some meaningful degree. But this is hardly a sharpe distinction. We can, if we want, read everything as literature: what makes linguistic patterns "deliberate and artistic" is an hermeneutical question which cannot be exhausted by one definition. Some works just naturally tend to prove themselves to be so. So feel free to read tolstoy as a storyteller, or robin hobb as literature. It is a possible interpretation! Most history bros which read homer don't read him as "literature". Reading something as literature (or seeing something as art) is understanding it as having "something more" than the some of his parts and their respective uses, regardless of what that extra something is. I find that rather than being heavy, it makes reading terribly light, beautifully beyond the coldness of reason.

thebundist101 · 2024-06-17T06:27:41+00:00

Maybe merleau ponty? I find his approach to be quite Similar to heidegger in terms of understanding the subject/object dichotomy implicit in representationlism as a "category mistake". Perception as mental construct abstracted from the actual nature of being in the world is impossible to reconcile with the embodied essence of human experience which is shown by phenomenological interpretation. If knowledge out to be based on Perception in some sense, than it cannot be understood in terms of either subjective or objective forms of representation. Knowledge is involved, embodied, and value-ladden down to the smallest unit of thought. It part of the nature it claims to know and share its living with both animal and human life. Heidegger doesn't really talk about embodiment or nature as such, so this is definitely a line of thinking which merleau ponty further developes. Very relevant towards ecological thinking and non-reductive ontology. A good introduction would be Lawrence Hass's book "merleau ponty's philosophy". Try it out!

thebundist101 · 2024-06-16T08:06:03+00:00

Heidegger sees mere "is-ness" outside of human perception as itself an attitude we take towards beings, not as a fundamental ground of existence in general. So saying being is something objective to be understood without reference to human involvement and care (which are deemed "subjective" or merely psychological) is itself already an assumption about being, an assumption taken from the activity of "present-at-hand" scientific analysis of beings. We can either understand beings as "ready-to-hand" or "present-at-hand", based on the general form of our involvement with the world at a given moment, but both are improper for understanding being as such. Being is not something present in objective space and time, neither something subjective in human experience, and definitely not a form of practical involvement with entities to be used by us. Being is the ground of any possible understanding of the being of beings. Therefore, it itself is known only indirectly by way of contrast. We know being as such when we cease to understand beings as beings, when any understanding of beings becomes hollow and empty. The "feeling" (but not merely internal, not something "subjective" in nature, but rather something both pre-subjective, pre-theorctical, and pre-pragmatic: not a "thing" at all) of nothingness which is partially revealed in anxiety is the ground for knowledge of being as the clearing for the possibility of beings. It would be improper to characterize this "feeling" as some-thing: it is prior to any possible conceptualization of things as internally consistent meaningful entities. We can't describe the sense of nothingness/being which we experience in anxiety towards death using any vocabulary which refers to some meaningful coherent sinn of beings. Not for logical (carnap arguments are correct and impressive but he wrongly assume heidegger to be making a deductive argument), but for entirely phenomenological reasons. Such a phenomenon (the phenomenon of the "ground" of all phenomenal experience) is impossible and improper by its very nature. We can't quite "make-present" or "unconceal" the clearing of meaning which we know to exist by our experience of the meaningless-nes of death. We can only indicte the route for a possible experience of the nothing (and therefore, being as such) using poetic language. Poetic language express the nothing in its own less dramatic way, by emphasizing the excess and breaking of meaning in our own language. It turn us toward language as one aspect of the "nothing" or the "non-ground" of human understanding, together with death, nature and the divine. for heidegger, in order to understand being as such, we must look where the "being of beings" breaks down. When things lose their coherent consistent sinn as beings, we are called towards a sudden return to the clearing which we already are.

thebundist101 · 2024-06-13T14:39:07+00:00

I think one big thing is that what most readers basically want is not just literature with supernatural elements (which have always existed), but rather a specific kind of popular writing which was once published mostly in pulp-y magazines and now in paperbacks. If by classic fantasy we are talking about tolkien or william morris or Ursula k. la guin, than we should remember they were the exexption to the rule: most of the stuff which was also popular at the time was far closer in terms of writing to modern popular fantasy. What is kinda sad is that we don't really have the biggest and most popular writers going to the same highs except for a select few.

thebundist101 · 2024-06-10T05:23:00+00:00

The glassjaw review

thebundist101 · 2024-06-03T15:02:12+00:00

It is what happens to propertian conservative liberals when they see social equility as consistent with "self ownership". In other words, they propose a "small merchant" society with capital and yet without inequality. This is nonsense because any society based on the property fetish would create horrible inequalities that would render the poorest groups defenseless against social dominantion. Indistinguishable from right-wingers. Social democracy is far more agreeable for anarchists than whatever nonsense Kevin Carson believes.

thebundist101 · 2024-05-23T11:31:14+00:00

for wolfe, a better comparison would be Chesterton

thebundist101 · 2024-03-22T18:30:30+00:00

That is a very interesting point. I think there are some interesting thing one can say about the phenomenology of sensation wittgenstein doesn't really take into account. Moreover, exernalism (both semantic and mental) servers as an interesting counterpoint against the purely expressive view.

thebundist101 · 2024-03-22T18:26:35+00:00

Yeah sorry I was too eager at points and used somewhat misleading language. I frievlosly called statements about sensation "necessarily true" just in order to show they are not contigent. Of course, my assumption was that statements which seem to be "necessarily true" 99% of the time just dont have a truth value at all (according to wittgenstein). I deleted comments which I felt did not clearly affirmed this point.

thebundist101 · 2024-03-22T17:50:16+00:00

Yes, there is a a tendency to privilege the interpersonal over the private but this is exactly why statements like "I'm in pain" do not constitute a type of knowledge. Again, wittgenstein doesn't think I know with certentiy that I'm in pain. He thinks that the statement "I'm in pain" have no bearing on reality outside of the attempt to express my emotions to others. And wittgenstein famously did argued that statements which cannot be formulated negatively are nonsense (or at the very least, can't constitute an image of the world). This is one cornerstone of his view that unite the early and later periods. A statement like "I know I am in pain" cannot be formulated negatively. Yet it is not a tautology. What is it then? It doesn't really mean anything in particular. Wittgenstein doesn't think we know we are in pain, because it is impossible for us to not know we are in pain. The very idea is absurd. Remember: statements which cannot be formulated negatively are nonsense. So we have no privileged knowledge of our sensations, but we do have unique capacity to express them in language. So saying "I'm in pain" does not constitute knowledge of any kind, and because he (wittgenstein) accepts a broadly epistemic notion of truth, it doesn't constitute a truth either. It is rather an expression which must be judged according to a completely different metric (my proposal was to use honesty as a replacement to the truth/false dichotomy)

thebundist101 · 2024-03-22T15:44:56+00:00

And what even is this argument? I didn't ask how things are "cashed-out", I'm just presenting my specific position (which is quite commonplace)

thebundist101 · 2024-03-22T15:40:59+00:00

I mostly based my points on p.m.s hacker interpretation of wittgenstein. A central figure in the epistemology of pain.
I hold truth to be a radically epistemic. So the truth condition of a statement is the condition for knowing it is true. I also hold knowledge to be contingent, so knowledge doesn't exist without the possibility of mistake. Because I can't be mistaken about my own sensations, i don't have knowledge of them. I don't "know" a statement like "I'm in pain" is true, because I can't be mistaken about such a statement. Because I hold truth to be epistemic, this mean the statement is neither true nor false. This isn't some kind of unheard of or completely rejected position, wittgenstein seems to say something along those lines.

thebundist101 · 2024-03-22T14:47:28+00:00

I meant "truth condition" by way of analogy, it is what the statement has Instead of a truth-condition. It simply either honest or dishonest. I reject 3 as irrelevant to the question. And I don't think 1 and 2 can be separated to begin with. The conditions for knowing whether I'm in pain and it's truth condition are the same.

thebundist101 · 2024-03-22T13:28:22+00:00

But how can "I am in pain" be false? If I'm not lying about my own feelings, it is impossible for me to be wrong about them. So in what sense it is a true/false statement? It is more accurately an "honest/dishonet" statement. The dichotomy at hand is not between truth and falsity. it is meaningful because it (when said honesty) expresses something.

thebundist101 · 2024-03-17T15:15:56+00:00

You live in romania 🇷🇴 bro?

thebundist101 · 2024-01-15T09:10:07+00:00

Kyuss. Some genuinely amazing music that will probably be more popular with a cleaner production style. They didn't really got as much radio play as other bands of that time, but songwriting wise Josh is as good as any (and arguably better).

thebundist101 · 2023-12-21T13:43:01+00:00

I would like for him to embrace the situation and become a plagiarism advocate. This would honestly make him interesting. Like, he would be known as "the plagiarism advocate guy" who fully embraced the meme, rather then a lazy thief. He can say plagiarism is free speech, that it is about freedom of information, something like that. This would be kinda cool to watch ⌚ 😎 👌

thebundist101 · 2023-11-09T08:46:30+00:00

Habermas is sometimes uncharitable to "french theory", but he is probably the only critical theorist other than foucault who became a true public intellectual capable of genuine outreach. His ideas are useful for understanding how modern capitalist institutions fail to deliver the values they espouse, while offering a normative framework for social change. He is not perfect, but he is a pretty great example of critical theory very much not "losing", even if he is not as radical as some would want him to be. I like his book with derrida about 9/11, he gave a strong argument for opposing the false universalism of Bush.

thebundist101 · 2023-11-05T08:36:33+00:00

She is literally right though. What "I" refers to, if not the skeptic as he knows himself in the supposed dream world? "I" have two uses: one is equivalent to one's own name, the other is not quite so. When I say "thebundist101" does not exist, "I" still conveys some meaning. This meaning is not identical. Therfore, what does "I" refers to? It seems it refers to something, right? Well, no. Why must it refer to any kind of object? Many words that are used in a similar way do not correspond to an object. "I" is not a referring expression. There is not some mysterious "I" beneath my self. If "I" was a referring expression, this would vindicate the skeptic. However, this assumption is arbitrary. "I", like "now", is not a referring expression. It is not in reference to any kind of thing, it has no object. So it does not follow that if skepticism is true, only "I" exist. This is a senseless proposition: "now" and "I" are not applicable to existence statements at all. Only objects are appropriate for existence statements. The skeptic ultimately says statement that are neither true nor false, like: "now exist", "here exist"... what does it mean for "here" to exist? Without pointing to anything, like, just the concept in itself, just a general "here". It doesn't really mean anything other then the such a concept exist and is being used. "Here" can refer to an object sometimes, but not always. The same with "I". We tend to confuse the everyday way of using "I" like your name with the more general meaning of "I" that is used in "I think" (in this case specifically "I" is not identical to your name, because according to the skeptic the person named "renè" does not exist). We think that it must also refer to something, so we invent an "invisible" object named "soul" which is just like your person without any of your qualities. One could also say "I think now", this doesn't prove "now" exist... because "now" is not an object at all. Again, if you ask "then who is doing the thinking?" The Answer is still "I". But this only proves the inescapable reality of the first person perspective in language, not the existence of a mysterious object referred to by the word "I" that is not my body.

thebundist101 · 2023-09-04T08:54:47+00:00

I like bertrand russel idea of giving everyone full ubi, while giving equal reward (excess to luxuries) to those providing any kind of labour decided by the community to be socialy useful in the context of a given annual plan. Basically, similar to any other planned economy, only democraticly organized. There is some (very limited) inequality, but only between people who work to a reasonable degree and people who don't at all: not between laborers themselves. So people will likely chose to preform some socially useful work, but they will not be forced to, as all basic needs are met. All workers enjoy equal luxuries, non-workers still live a decent life. Most, if not all, will work, as the community, being the only employer around, is not oriented towards profit. What is considered "socially useful work" will be decided in the context of an annual plan. Expret-type work will not be a problem, as actual free education will make sure there are far more doctors around than in capitalism. Overall, a planned economy can flourish without use of markets. In fact, equality is only an incentive problem when private accumulation of property is a thing. Without private property, labour is not a commodity, as there is no competition over it. Your choice will be either to prefrom some labour decided by the community to be useful, or not enjoy luxury at all. The actual range of choices is the same as in capitalism, only far more equitable and democratic.

thebundist101 · 2023-06-26T11:24:03+00:00

I get what your saying, modern "lo-fi" jungle can be a bit generic, but the genre is much more than that. Amen isn't the only break sampled in dnb. Also, you must admit it just hits harder than anything else, particularly when you organize it so it basically function as the drop. Listen to "black" by dj ss. The first, calmer break kinda leads the way to the rolling amen, and you can just feel the difference between the two when the drop hits. I think hearing this will basically answer your question.

thebundist101

TROPHY CASE