Touchy Subjects

Understanding Wittgenstein // Why Philosophers are Ignored

Some philosophers come to controversies and want to set the existing arguments on some strong foundation. They want to make explicit just what everyone is assuming, the grounds on which the argument takes place, …and no one pays any attention.

Descartes is one of these. He wanted to find a way to resolve disputes. He thought, well, if we can all agree to our starting point, maybe we can get somewhere. But, what he ended up saying was that, well, it was hard to say exactly what anyone could agree on. He wanted to say that he could say, without a doubt, that he existed. Then things got controversial. He wanted to solve problems out in his community. He ended up showing that it might be impossible to even begin those arguments. He was not helping. So, people thought he made interesting philosophy, but not very helpful advice.

Understanding Wittgenstein // His Attack on philosophically peculiar Theories

The following is a  summary of what I take to be Ludwig Wittgenstein’s place in the philosophical universe.

We must imagine what Socrates was telling the Athenians. He was teaching them a lesson. The lesson was his assessment of  how we understand reality. The lesson is really about his own foundationalism. That is, our understanding of everything is like a house. That house has to be built on a firm and steady foundation. For him, the foundation of our understanding is the way we argue. The way we argue, according to Socrates, is a matter of logical argument.

By logical argument, Socrates meant that such arguments were a matter of just a premise and a conclusion, where the premises were supposed to be evidence or arguments for the claim or conclusion of the argument. Socrates’ preference for this account of argument was in contrast to an alternative account of argument involving not just two, but three terms, including a controversy which arguments are about, a claim made about that controversy, and support given for the claim.

According to Socrates, it was very important that people accept his lesson that arguing logically was the basis or foundation for our understanding of anything.

Wittgenstein as Tragi-Comic Hero // About his Concerns about Strife

It seems people suppose Wittgenstein had no deep concerns about political, social, or religious strife. At least, they believe, once he got into philosophy his concerns about what was going on in the world were minimal. That is, he felt no urge to do anything about these kinds of conflict. He felt no desire to participate or to make some meaningful efforts in the world’s disputes, except for philosophical ones.

One piece of evidence that might be used to support this supposition was the fact that he didn’t seem to write anything about the wars that went on during his lifetime. He didn’t write much about what was happening in Europe with his own country, Austria, or the places he grew up in Vienna. 

Another piece of evidence would seem to be the fact that his family was rich, but instead of using his inherited wealth to “make a difference” in European politics, culture, art, or its religious life, he gave all his money away. Granted, he seems to have given it away to worthy causes, but he had here no thought that he could personally make a difference in resolving disputes.

Another piece of evidence that suggests he had no interest in strife was the fact that in philosophy, he didn’t have much interest in those areas of philosophy that traditionally involved one in public  disputes, such as moral or political philosophy. Instead, he focused on logic and language.  This kind of interest strikes many as “geeky” and makes it seem Wittgenstein was interested primarily in exorcising his “inner demons” and not concerned at all in what might make a difference in the tragic events of his lifetime.

I would not be surprised if  someone would find some box of letters or a diary shown to include Wittgenstein’s private thoughts about the political, social, or religious disputes of his time. He must have had thoughts about the issue of what was happening to European Jewry, about WW I and the fate of Austria, why  people think about suicide, the rise of Fascism in Germany and Austria, and so on.  I imagine people suppose that Wittgenstein focused on logic and language, not because he was uninterested in these issues, but because he felt his talents were best used in these fundamental issues in philosophy, and he chose not to distract himself from making progress in these areas by being a political, social, or religious dilettante.

I want to make the case for another interpretation of Wittgenstein. I think strife was very much on Wittgenstein’s mind. I think he wanted very much to make some difference in the disputes that he saw raging in his world. I suspect most everything he did  in going into philosophy and into the seemingly abstruse philosophical fields of logic and language was because he believed it was just in these fundamental issues in philosophy, in providing some clarity and resolution,  that he could make the most difference in those disputes.

I take Wittgenstein to have supposed that the primary influence of philosophy on our lives, and our lives in its politics, sociology, and its religions,  is to have persuaded people that our lives are described by the great metaphors. So, from Socrates we’ve learned that our lives are like the lives of his cave dwellers. Our lives are described by the Allegory of the cave. We learn from Hume and others that our lives are like those of Zombies driven by our insatiable hungers or the commands of our voodoo masters. Or from Marx, and others, that we are like kids on a playground run by a bully. It is the fact that we have adopted these metaphors as descriptions of our lives and the character of these metaphors that have, on Wittgenstein’s view,  brought is to such tragedy and suffering in the world. 

It was Wittgenstein’s project to somehow undermine the credibility these pictures  have in our understanding of the world.  It was his thought that though philosophy gave people these theories about the world, that philosophy could not give any good justification for them. It was his thought in the Tractatus that these pictures were only mysticisms or cleverly deceptive truisms. In the Investigations, these pictures or theories were examples where “language was on holiday.”  In On Certainty these philosophical ideas were generated when we were not paying enough attention to “assertability conditions.”  In all of his work, his goal was to show that the theories or pictures that stood as the basis of strife and disputes in the world were themselves unjustified and should not cause any such disputation.

Some philosophers talk about there being two distinct Wittgensteins. The first is found in the Tractatus. The second in the Investigations. In these two writings, supposedly, Wittgenstein develops two different accounts of logic and language. There is not much to connect these two Wittgensteins except that the later is about how one should reject the former.  I’m arguing that though he did reject the Tractatus when he wrote the Investigations, and was likely rejecting both as he was developing On Certainty, all these works shared the underlying  goal of undermining the credibility of philosophical theories as the basis of political, social, and religious strife.

Two questions about the 1% // 1) given the 1%, what does the 99% do about them? and 2), what justifies this metaphorical way of looking at our predicament?

In speaking with a friend of mine, we came to the conclusion that the economy could be described by two main claims, 1) the crooks are in charge, and 2) we don’t make anything here anymore. I supported my contention that the crooks are in control here by talking about the ideas put forward by the protesters, that the 1% have rigged the system to make them rich and undermine the 99%’s ability to support themselves. The other idea that supports this claim is Greenwald’s that the country is no longer run by the ‘rule of law,’ but run by the powerful.  The powerful in this country are above the law. As for the problem of making things here, I referred to Paul Craig Roberts arguments about how the manufacturing part of our economy has been transferred out of the country and how almost impossible it will be to bring it back.

I have recently watched a discussion between Thom Hartman and David Korten discussing these same issues. I was struck by how Korten thought of the problem and how his thinking repeated the same thinking Marx pushes in his work, and,  how both repeat the thoughts we get from considering the playground metaphor. That is, our lives are like the lives of kids on a playground run by a bully. Korten describes the behavior of the financial sector and the devastation it has caused and says this:

…If change comes, the leadership will come from below through citizen action that originates from outside of the institutions that are failing us on so many fronts. Change from below can succeed only when a large number of people have a shared understanding of the roots of the problem and share a vision of the path to its resolution.

As a society, we cannot create a future that we cannot see in our collective mind. One of the most important tasks of the moment is to define a vision of the life-serving New Economy it is ours to create and to build popular commitment to its realization.

http://www.alternet.org/story/148917/replacing_our

_failed_economy_is_long_overdue_and_we_have_the

_power_to_change_it/

If we are one of the kids on the playground, we have to be careful not to be cornered by the bully. The bully if he gets you in his clutches will slap you around a bit and take your lunch money. The financial sector in the United States has been slapping us around a lot and has been taking our lunch money.  Marx and Korten have thought that the way the little kids on the playground could have safer lives is to work together, or form a gang, so to speak, and threaten the bully with their collective action, as a response to his bullying.

 

Political Voices / Cornel West

 

If Joe Blow is a crook, it doesn’t matter who points it out. This is why making anything of who passes along this information  an “ad hominem” argument, that is, it goes to the messenger instead of the message.

If Obama is a crook, it doesn’t matter who points this out, or why. We are still obliged to examine the evidence for such a claim, and if it has merit, do something about it.

Cornel West claims that Obama is a crook. He said he would do one thing, but when he got in office, he did another. It seems to West as though he promised things to people so he would get their votes, and then did exactly the opposite.

But, some people insist that the claims that West makes about Obama are not about the evidence that West has that Obama reneged on his promises, but, instead, because  West is angry at some snubbing that Obama did to him. It’s about some personal anger issues.

Levi’s Dilemma and the false choice between Critical Thinking and Logic

I have been thinking about what Don Levi says in his discussion of argument in Critical Thinking and Logic. He winds up his book with a question:

“Part one offered lessons in Critical Thinking. Part two offered lessons in Logic. Which is right? Must we choose between them?…”

(Page 408, Critical Thinking and Logic)

federal reserve system as one institution run by words // One example of the tyranny of words

It is easy to go back to Thrasymachus for a succinct statement about the nature of life in these United States. Here is Stanford discussing what Thrasymachus proposes:

Thrasymachus eventually proposes a resounding slogan: “Justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger” (338c; tr. Grube-Reeve here and throughout, sometimes with minor revisions). He explains that each kind of regime (democratic, oligarchic, and so on) makes laws in the interest of the ruling party in it (the mass of poor people, or the very rich, etc.). “And they declare what they have made — what is to their own advantage — to be just for their subjects…. This, then, is what I say justice is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established regime.” (338e-339a).

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/callicles-thrasymachus/

It is easy to return to Thrasymachus because it seems the Federal Reserve system, as one institution of the state, is all about how the powerful make something, like our money, and say to us how wonderful and just it all is, when really, it’s all about making something that will give advantages to them at our expense.

Thrasymachus is saying, well, what Socrates has been supposing cannot be the real story because, the meaning of words, words like “justice”, are really determined by the tools of power and force.

This goes back to what Kripke tells us of Wittgenstein, that he concluded that there can be no objective or factual determinants of meaning, that meaning therefore, has to be all about assertability conditions.

I’m saying Thrasymachus was only repeating what he heard from philosophers who realized then what Wittgenstein was onto only recently.

So, here is the discussion of the Federal Reserve and some of the details about that institution which Thrasymachus would have gone into if Socrates had given him the time. The point being,  Mr. Griffin describes how the Federal Reserve system is described as just to the masses when in reality it’s a scam.

 

Mr. Griffin on the Federal Reserve.

 

Corruption in Government and Private Life is Always a Possibility // Attacking “Whistleblowers” assumes that what is right is what the Gods Approve

When we grow up our parents take care of us. They protect us from ourselves as when we heedlessly walk into traffic or want to place our hands on hot burners.  We look up to our parents because we realize that our survival has depended on their watchfulness and concern for our well-being. Our existence and how well we’ve held on is dependent on how adept these adults have been at watching. Adults with poorly developed “watching” skills can and have let their kids get injured or harmed by life’s dangers. But, we assume that our parents have nothing else going on in their lives except catering to our needs. They don’t have needs and desires of their own. We think sometimes that our parents don’t have lives outside what they do for us, their kids. But this is just naive.

People are not just parents. This implies that people can be just as crooked or principled when they are parents as anyone. This is not to say that parents are crooked. It’s to say that we shouldn’t  deny the fact that parents could be crooked.

In the same way, we should not deny the possibility that people who work in government, or business,  labor unions, or non-governmental agencies supposedly working for the common good,  are themselves crooked, or capable of being crooked.

How do you establish that people are crooked? How is this discovered, especially when the people are public servants whose work is secret? Who watches the watchers, to use a notorious metaphor?

Could our watchers be crooked? Is it in them? This is another question implied by the Socratic conundrum about whether what is good is that way because it is approved  by the Gods, or whether even the Gods approve of it because some standard of goodness tells us it is good.

I get the impression that whistleblowers assume that  what is good, or in their case, corrupt, is so because of some objective commonly recognized standard. Because of this assumption, they believe that any activity contrary to the implications of those standards is corrupt, even if the Gods should tell you differently. It is not alright if the Gods tell you to steal from the poor, for example, because even the Gods, according to their assumption, appeal to their understanding of what’s right and wrong by looking to the same standards as have the whistleblowers.

I suspect  our government is now filled with people who assume that it’s the Gods who determine what’s right and wrong and also what is corrupt and they think it’s therefore  treason to go against the will of the Gods as these whistleblowers have been doing. Instead of applauding these people for pointing out where our watchers have been doing wrong, they go about arresting them, prosecuting them, and putting them in prison because they have gone against the Gods.

The problems discussed by Sibel Edmonds below, as well as the issues around WikiLeaks, involve this Socratic conundrum. What is the relationship between our understanding of morality, the Gods, and some objective standards?

Discussing Greta Christina’s Atheism // part two

“Can you prove it?”

There’s often this challenge put out as a way to shut down one’s opponent. If you can’t prove it, whatever “it”  is, then you can’t have much of a position. What the opponent is saying can’t be worth much.

Religion is important and valuable to a lot of people. But, those who resist what religion has to say will say, at some point, that whatever the religions have to say can’t be worth much because, well, they can’t prove their claims.

Much of the interest in figuring out what Jesus was like in his own day, what people wrote about him contemporaneously, is an attempt to justify whatever the Christian apologists have been saying about his religion. Whatever people have said about Jesus in the intervening two thousand years is not as important as what the people in those days documented and witnessed. People since then could be saying things more out of their own agendas than trying to speak about what truly went down. But you’d think people who lived in those days would be interested in documenting what went on, what happened, what the facts were, and not try to say things that benefitted some other project.

I have to be skeptical about this assumption that about Jesus, there could never have been any ulterior motivations.

Even then, there were stories within stories.

Give Senator Sanders Credit for making his case // But, recognize that he has only one perspective on our Problems // There’s the viewpoint of the rich and powerful, for example

It may seem obvious that there is a war going on between the very rich and the weak and poor in this country. It’s a war that has been written about and observed by others in other countries. The same war was described, for example, by socialists and Marxists in Europe. But, we have this war going on here, the class war, which isn’t much talked about in the U.S. One reason is that the public people who would talk about this war in the Media and the governmental institutions like the Congress, from which Sen. Sanders was speaking, are owned by these very rich people. So, says Sen. Sanders.

He does have a point of view. He thinks there is a war where the rich are attacking the poor and weak and the rich are winning.

YouTube - Sen Bernie Sanders Amazing Speech!