The Moon is Made of Granite
Loose Ends, Wittgenstein June 10th, 2007As an initial response to your thoughts on language, there was an interest conversation in the play Insignificance by Terry Johnson. I heard it on Radio 4 on Saturday. Not that I have a grasp on later Wittgenstein, it might be a comment on separation of language and empiricism. (It’s a funny play: one scene has special relativity explained in 5 minutes by Marilyn Monroe.)
The Actress (Marilyn Monroe): So I try to know things, is that so wrong?
The Professor (Albert Einstein): If I told you the moon is made of cheese, would you belive me?
A: No.
P: If I told you it was made of granite?
A: Maybe.
P: If I told you I knew for certain?
A: I believe you.
P: So now you know the moon is made of granite.
A: Yes.
P: But it isn’t.
A: I only said I knew because you said you knew.
P: Precisely. But I was wrong. Knowledge is not truth. It is merely agreement. You agree with me, we agree with someone else, we all have knowledge. But we get no closer to the truth of the moon. You cannot understand by making definitions, only by turning over the possibilities; it’s called thinking. I know something I know is there are men, there are such men “I know of greed”, “I know of hate”, “I know of evil” but I do not, I will not understand these things. If I say I know, I stop thinking. But so long as I think, I come to understand, I might approach some truth.
A: This is the best conversation I ever had.
Anti Citizen One
June 11th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
“To sum up: if by ‘name’ one means ‘word whose meaning is learnt by bare ostensive definition’, then ‘pain’ is not the name of a sensation; but if by ‘name’ one means what is ordinarily meant by that word, then of course ‘pain’ is the name of a sensation. (BB 82).
If the word ‘pain’ does not refer to a sensation by being attached to it by bare ostensive definition, how does it refer? In what way is it connected with the sensation? One possibility, Wittgesnetin says, is that it is a learnt, articulate replacement of unlearnt, inarticulate expressions of sensation such as moans and winces (Pii, 244).
The word ‘pain’ cannot, as it were, hook on to pain directly; it must be atached to pain throught connections with the natural expressions of pain.”
September 15th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
[...] Or brainwashing. Verbal information is ripe to be understood by Wittgenstein’s theory as a socially constructed interpretations. Although knowledge is necessary to practice students skills, it should not be the goal. For [...]