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/lit/ - Literature

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4503938 No.4503938 [Reply] [Original]

Is Wittgenstein's infamous 7th proposition a normative statement? By "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." does he really mean, "Thereof one OUGHT TO be silent."? Or does he mean it is physically impossible to discuss what one cannot conceive? Isn't this trivial? I cannot discuss what I cannot discuss?

>> No.4503947

>>4503938

In response to what you've just asked:


>Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.


Hope that clears up any misunderstanding.


>inb4 no it doesn't

Then think about what just happened. Think until you get it.

>> No.4503946

If it is a normative statement, what does he define as "cannot speak"? If I can physically talk about something, what criteria should keep me from doing so?

Or is he pretty much saying, "Morons who don't understand something should keep their fucking mouths shut?" If this is true, why isn't this used when morons open their mouths? Isn't this a much better retort than "shut up, pleb?"

>> No.4503951

It's an ought as we cannot obtain facts about the true state of affairs about it.

/thread

>> No.4503954

>>4503947
so you're saying that, since it's in German, I cannot speak about it, assuming I do not know German?

>> No.4503959

>Giving a shit about what this hack had to say
>Thinking this hard about his childish stolen bullshit

Does everyone on this board have actual autism?

>> No.4503955

>>4503946

> "Morons who don't understand something should keep their fucking mouths shut?"

This has absolutely nothing to do with what he meant.


He was making the single climactic philosophical statement (of all time, mind you), not imparting wisdom or humility to people.

>> No.4503960

>>4503954

No.

That it was in German is arbitrary. I just prefer the original German to the choice of having to go with either of the two Englisch translations.

>> No.4503966

>>4503955
>Sucking unoriginal jewish dick THIS hard

Wow. Time to go do something else with my weekend. Enjoy being terrible.

>> No.4503970

>>4503960
Everything is "stolen" plebe. It's simply how we learn.

>> No.4503974

>>4503966

Enjoy hating everything because you never give anyone the benefit of the doubt enough to revel in their genius.

Or ever experience the genius of another at all. You narcissistic faggot.

>> No.4503983

>>4503966

To be fair though I don't personally care for Wittgenstein the person in any sort of particularity. He was after all a raging homosexual and likely turbosperg. But you're an absolute mong to attempt to deny his genius.

>> No.4504025

He was making a physical statement, and everyone who read him misinterpreted it as some big important thing. All he was saying was that the limits of our reason and imagination dictate the limits of our speech. For instance, I cannot conceive of a square circle, or a right triangle whose hypotenuse doesn't equal the sum of the square of it's legs. Saying these things means I'm simply making noise, because my speech fails to be infused with reason.

>> No.4504036

>>4504025

Nope. You're wrong.

>> No.4504052

>>4503938

One widely known fact about the Tractatus was its intention to discount metaphysics, aesthetics and ethics. Most notable Wittgensteinian scholars - Max Black, Kripke, etc. - argue that the "Whereof" aphorism means that when we talk about morality or God, we're just speaking in tautologies and no insight is actually gained. We're speaking words and while the words have this syntactic representation, they lack the accompanying semantics - it is not meaningful because our language is trying to speak outside of its capabilities. Since we really can't speak of (say, metaphysics) meaningfully, we're best off not speaking of it. There is no "ought" statement because Wittgenstein thought ethics was an inane practice on the get-go. He's also not trying to say we "cannot conceive of" these things. There appears to be something in our language that allows us to talk about these things, but its really just an inherit problem with the nuances of language.

Hope this was clear!

>> No.4504058

This thread has been filled with misattempts at explaining and those being shot down immediately without any explanation.

Don't say someone is wrong without providing what is right. Your statement means nothing without explanation.

>> No.4504065

>>4504058

bump for this

>> No.4504069

>>4504058
Don't feed the trolls.

>> No.4504073

>>4504025
You're almost right, he's saying that let's take the obvious example everyone on the Internet knows (don't derail pls.) to speak about the existence or non-existence of god is futile because it cannot be discerned as a clear and precise picture of some thing that exists in the world of facts (which by young Wittgenstein is the whole comprehensible world) to speak of something that is not factually grounded in the observable world is fruitless and ought to be passed over into silence. Thus all if philosophy is resolved.

>> No.4504083

>>4504073
I wrote this in a hurry, sorry for the incomprehensibility of my flow of thought.

>> No.4504099

>>4504073
>to speak of something that is not factually grounded in the observable world is fruitless and ought to be passed over into silence

I think it should be added that to speak OBJECTIVELY about such things is what should be passed over; because, as it's pointed out, they aren't objective.

Speculation is a different matter.

>> No.4504102

>>4504052

You're wrong. Your post reeks of 'I was fed this by people who don't understand and I ate it right up'


>>4504058

Let me put it this way, to provoke some thought.

There was a reason it was the last proposition. He was communicating something doing it that way. Just stop being such fucking eggheads and think about it. Your interpretations are all naïve. Then again, what am I doing, maybe they should be. Who cares if you morons don't understand.

>> No.4504128

>>4504099
Anything that can't be spoken about objectively ought to be passed over in silence. Mind he was an brilliant engineer with no philosophical (corruption) training. Thinking about things with no 'practical' value is futile. It's only when he discovered the power of poetry in his seclusion he learned the err of his STEM ways.

>> No.4504148

>>4504102

I love the pseudo-intellectual elitism that floods this board oh-so-regularly. Case in point right here. I think he's following all the steps Schopenhauer once discussed on "How to win an argument". If your posts are sufficiently cryptic and you come across as well-aware, you're immune to criticism. And when someone calls you out, you retreat and refuse to elaborate by referring to everyone else as "unworthy" or "unable to understand". Sure, you don't have to contribute, but the question then becomes: "Why are you on this thread posting anonymously?" No one thinks you know what you're talking about since you haven't proved it thus far. You can "not care" all you want, but why continue posting here? Either help us understand or leave. Your posts are derailing potential discussion and hindering any attempts at arriving at "what he meant".

Sure you can respond to this comment and argue with me about your intentions, but this will only further derail the discussion, and before you know it we'll all forget about Wittgenstein and start talking about you.

So please, for the sake of this thread, just stop posting as you are. It's neither insightful nor impressive in any manner.

Thanks

>> No.4504151

I think it is normative in the sense that he means any statement that does not give a picture of the world is not a statement with logical force. All metaphysics, ethics, art etc. falls under this category. In his later thought, this was revised to mean that most of these are discourses in their own right with certain rules (except philosophy and metaphysics, which are just confusions).

>> No.4504161

>>4504148

Look at how mad you are right now.


Take that over two and you've got how much of a complete fucking faggot you are. It's a bretty big number. I have no obligation to help you understand something which is the one thing you need to figure out for yourself. If you don't understand Wittgenstein now, you likely never will, and no amount of 'hurrrr ur jus being cryptic becos u dnt no' will do you fuck.

Stupid cunt.

>> No.4504163

Wittgenstein talks about speaking not saying. What is at stake here is, then, an actual intervention with speech rather than the abstract opposition of the sayable and the unsayable. He continues, in the next paragraph: Moreover, the opposite of silence is not necessarily speaking with sense but, rather, making noise. Speaking without sense is one way of being noisy. The ending of the Tractatus should therefore be read in conjunction with the epigraph of the book, which places the act of expression against a background of noise: “…and whatever a man knows, whatever is not mere rumbling and roaring that he has heard, can be said in three words.” The implication is that the noise of empty talk, whether it be nonsense or mere mindlessness, conceals something. To be silent means primarily not to fall prey to the rumbling and roaring of rumor. Silence is what we need in order to be attentive to what there is, to the showing of truth.

>> No.4504204

>>4504161
oooffff you got rekt by >>4504148 m8 hahahaha

>> No.4504251

He's saying talking about stuff like ethic, aesthetics, religion etc. is impossible so don't even bother (he didn't celebrate this though)

>> No.4504358

>>4504073
But the thing is I can conceive of an idea of God, and can speak of it, therefore I must wherefore not be silent. I can speak of unicorns, but I cannot even name the things I cannot speak of because I cannot conceive that of which I cannot speak. Any example of something I "cannot" speak of is something of which I can actually speak.

>> No.4504405
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4504405

My take on it is this:

>Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

This is more in the sense of "should be silent" as opposed to "is only able to be silent". Of course we can always attempt to speak about things, but Witty is positing that it is fallacious to attempt to truly (key word) say anything about their nature. In the sphere of philosophy, this would be attempting to describe and ultimate truth, the Real, the Absolute, God, whatever you see it as.

The nature of our language is such that is it endlessly susceptible to re-appropriation and reinterpretation, whether we divide these into primary and secondary meanings (say, for example, "football" meaning both association and American) is unimportant as philosophers have traditionally striven for a truth which is universal. Our speech is forever riddled with "aporia", to quote Derrida (I think he popularised the term anyway).

That is, I suppose, up until Kant's Copernican revolution, which I think was pretty key in how philosophy has developed up to Witty's thesis. It suggests more that philosophy is not supposed to solve our metaphysical, existential crises more than it is supposed to show how there are not really problems in the first place. Maybe in this sense you could view Witty's work as some form of "giving up", whether you see it as wise or cowardly.

We lack the sufficient means to even perfectly communicate with another human on a basic level, let alone transmit to them the idea of the ultimate truth. We would require some kind of telepathy by which language is eliminated and rendered unnecessary and cumbersome.

That's my guess on the whole thing anyway - a statement on linguistics more than anything else.

>> No.4504428

>>4504405
But what does he mean by "cannot speak"? ''Cannot speak'' accurately, or ''cannot speak'' physically due to lack of ability-to-conceive? What is his reasoning behind this normative commandment, for normative it is?

>> No.4504449

>>4504428
I view it as cannot speak accurately. We can always attempt to speak accurately, most of us aren't mute after all, but Witty sees this is only worsening our philosophical confusion.

>> No.4504460

>>4504358
Wittgenstein's use of "speak" is very strict. So even though you think you can speak of certain things you're just speaking nonsense. Like "all unicorns are white" is senseless because unicorns don't exist.

If you say "unicorns exist" that's a scientific statement because it requires us to go and look for evidence (and in this case the statement is false)

>> No.4504464

A lot of you are confusing "speaking" with "uttering". You can "utter" whatever you want, but that doesn't mean you'd be saying anything. You could be talking nonsense.

>> No.4504482

I wrote like a 3000 word essay on this. It's fun to compare witty with the marx bros.

>> No.4504484

>>4504251
He wrote in his diary that both logic and ethics are transcendental. That means that both these areas are not of this world, there is no logic or ethic in this world, but they are imposed by human thinking, and yet both establish the condition of possibility of truth and of human interaction. And they both do not describe states of affairs!
But here comes the problem. In point 5.6., Wittgenstein says: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." We have no possibility whatsoever to leave our respective points of view, we are always restricted to how we perceive things (My hunger is always my kind of hunger - you only know a similar feeling) and to our own language (The way I use my language differs from yours and the terminology and phrases I employ constitutes my way of thinking).
Yet our limited point of view cannot restrict logic. Logic pretty much establishes our everyday social language, the basis of our communications. We might have several conceptions of several meatphysical and ethical "ideas", but we all agree on basic things.
It all boils down to Wittgenstein's definitions, I guess. What can be said, can be spoken of in a clearly defined way. Speaking implies making sense, which means it is perfectly comprehensible.

Also providing the official music for this thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57PWqFowq-4

>> No.4504495

It's "you literally can't speak of" - any attempt to produce sentences will be meaningless.

This is because a lot of things are condemned to be mere tautologies, which are true by definition and therefore not composed of states-of-affairs as to how the world works. These tautologies are literally absolutely empty and devoid of content.

That's not to say they can't be useful in establishing a grammar for a system in which you CAN say things, though. For example, "force = speed*mass" is meaningless by itself, but structures a certain paradigm-of-speaking which you can then use to make meaningful statements about the real world. The whole thing goes back to a rejection of Fregean multiple decomposibility of thought, more often and in stronger ways than you might think.

I know this was poorly explained, by the way, typing from my phone and it's hard to structure posts cohesively.

>> No.4504526

>>4504449
This last proposition of the Tractatus is where he then starts with the investigations. He doesn't try to make philosophy, he doesn't build a system. He just points at things, makes questions and proposes mental experiments to make a therapy. He just tries to take philosophy and cure it from the illness that that creates itself.

>> No.4504532

>>4504464
ill utter ur mum's udders.

>> No.4504538

>>4504460
>If you say "unicorns exist" that's a scientific statement because it requires us to go and look for evidence (and in this case the statement is false)
Hm, not exactly. Science departs from observation, not just making random hypotheses to see if they work or not (that would be too inefficient, it would take too long to get to a useful hypothesis).

>> No.4504540

>>4504073
>Thus all if philosophy is resolved.
You mean metaphysics

>> No.4504541

>>4504495
Isn't "you cannot speak of what you cannot speak of" a tautology? Isn't Wittgenstein pretty much shooting himself in the foot and blowing out his brains when he says that? He just uttered a tautology, thus committing philosophical suicide, in his own words.

>> No.4504554

>>4504541
The statement is observably true, so I don't think so?

>> No.4504560

>>4504526
>He just tries to take philosophy and cure it from the illness that that creates itself.

Yeah, exactly.

It's hard to even describe Witty as a philosopher.

>> No.4504562

>>4504538
But you're talking about the practice that we call science nowadays. Technically you are doing science because you're using the scientific method.

>>4504541
He says at the end he knows that he's shooting himself in the foot but one must "kick away the ladder" so to speak.

>> No.4504563
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4504563

>this thread

I swear there is something about Wittgenstein that just attracts the most lifeless fucking sadsacks to him, like his reductionism somehow justifies all their miserly anxiety-driven bitterness.

>> No.4504569
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4504569

>>4504563
buttmad christfag detected

you mad christboy?????

>> No.4504573

>>4504563
>reductionism
>Wittgenstein

Here, have some keks

>> No.4504579

>>4504562
So you're saying that he wrong because he's already disproven himself? Why do people still read him then?

>> No.4504583

>>4504541
Nope. It has a point (later developed on his other works). It looks obvious but it isn't. There are things you, because your own limitations, cannot speak of in the sense of fully conceptualizing them and understanding them. You just can't. And trying any kind of intellectual trick (traditional metaphysics) only will get you to delude yourself and it will be harmful to you, since you just deluded yourself to think you could and then just feel relieved like you achieved something, but you not only wouldn't have achieved nothing, you also would have gotten more lost than you were in the beginning.

>> No.4504596

>>4504563
Yep. That's totally me. It's not like I'm trying to hide it or feel any kind of shame.

>> No.4504606

>>4504569
>>4504573

>this truth is too much for me to handle right now, please stop

>> No.4504611

>>4504583
So he's arguing against speaking about things about which we have a crude or broken conception? Isn't that the same as saying that people shouldn't try to develop those crude understandings into full ones? Does that make Wittgenstein obscurantist?

>> No.4504623

>>4504579
He knows his method is somewhat flawed, but he wants you to listen to HIM as a person and over analyse his method

>> No.4504631

>>4504611
dubs confirm the truth: Witty wanted people to remain stupid.

>> No.4504629

>>4504623
I meant *not over analyse his method

>> No.4504640

>>4504611
He just tries to say "guys, at this moment we have a mess of different theories that compete with each other but never reach to definitely prove which one is the correct. We are wasting time and effort. Before we continue with this philosophy thing we first should realize we sometimes make the wrong questions, let's try to make questions that help us get somewhere".

Pfff, trying to summarize Wittgenstein in a single post gets shitty results.

>> No.4504646

6.54 My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)

He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.

>> No.4504659

The Tractatus is definitely not one of these books you just read because they are interesting. it's meant to be a manual to memorize its major propositions and have it by your side when you read metaphysics like Descartes' or Kant's and use it to help yourself understand what were these thinkers obviating, where they made questions that got them into sterile grounds they couldn't get out of.

>> No.4504664

>>4504358
Yes, but it's fruitless endeavor. You have to kick the ladder away that led you to his realization and only speak of that part of the world (which is the totality of the revealed existing world) which is constituted as fact outside yourself in the most precise and cogent way possible. That you can dream up concepts is a flaw in language. It's ok if you don't agree with young Wittgenstein, but don't try to make his particular worldview yours. His worldview actually makes sense within his own logic.

He read some poetry that made him realize that language had the ability to create much more potent imagery of the world than facts by what is not said and left over to the reader. He basically became a mystic.

He then concedes this worldview later to the position that language is a game we play, the way we act in the world is constituted by language and thereby language becomes the actual total limit of our comprehension of our world.

>> No.4504665

>>4504646
So Wittgenstein is saying that we should just ignore him and go about our business? Again, why did he even waste pen and paper if we don't need to listen to him?!

>> No.4504697

>>4504665
No, no, no. The point is: you need to read him and get his point. Then you can get back to your regular philosophy with those new tools to optimize your investigations. He isn't explaining how things are. He's just trying to help you understand what's the deal behind traditional metaphysics.

>> No.4504695

>>4504665
>>4504665
Because he solved philosophy (he thought) and wanted to make everything clear

>> No.4504723

>>4504664
*Your particular worldview his

Sorry

>> No.4504739

oh, the perr cunt, the perr perr cunt, so sad whit happind tae the bai,

>> No.4504766

He meant what he said: there or states of affairs language/humans is/are not able to speak about, therefore, we have no be silent about them. No normativity there...

>> No.4504769

>>4504739
I don't understand what you say but I feel like I do.

>> No.4504770

*to

>> No.4504775

>>4504563
But a LOT of Wittgenstein's work is a reaction against reductionism.

>> No.4504783

>>4504769

"It is rather unfortunate how this gentleman met his end."

>> No.4504799

>>4504775
His own mostly. He made up for his juvenile philosophy in investigations.