Comments on: Ethical Intuitionism

By: El Sordo

El Sordo — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 15:53:29 +0000

Not too muddled Wittgenstein and Moore were contempories of sorts. Wittgenstein succeeded to Moore’s professorial chair at Cambridge, and Moore took notes for Wittgenstein in his early days. They both reached similar conclusions on many subjects. And they both used colour analogies quite a lot.

You are quite right taken in isolation 4.1212 is pretty unclear.

He clarifies himself (sort of) later in the Tractatus.
“There is indeed the inexpressible. This Shows itself; it is the mystical” Among those things that show themselves are ethics, aesthetics, religion, the meaning of life, logic and philosophy. Wittgenstein believes there are such things as truths, but none of these truths can be expressed in language they have to be shown.

In notes to Moore in 1914 he puts it:
“This same distinctoin between what can be shewn by the language but not said, explains the difficulty taht is felt about types – e.g., as to [the] difference between things, facts, properties, relations. That M is a thing can’t be said; it is nonsense; but something is shewn by the symbol ‘M’. In [the] same way, that a proposition is a subject-predicate proposition can’t be said: but it is shown by the symbol.”

Hopefully this will help (lifted en masse from a lecture)
“Perhaps the best way to understand the distinction is as one between depiction (saying) and exemplification (showing). I think this way of understanding things illuminates how the “structure” of a fact (its decomposition into particular and universal) can be shown but not said in language. For a propositional sign is itself a fact (3.14) and indeed of the same logical type as the possibility it depicts. “Brutus killed Caesar” is a fact about two objects, “Brutus” and “Caesar”, standing in a relation. Thus it exemplifies the same metaphysical structure as the fact it depicts, wherein two objects, Brutus and Caesar, stand in a relation. Similarly, Dummett hit on a happy employment of the distinction when he said that you can show the sense of a word by saying
what its reference is (that is, by employing a word that exemplifies the same sense).”

By: Anti Citizen One

Anti Citizen One — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:14:30 +0000

I might be getting Wittgenstein and Moore muddled up there… but the point is more or less the same.

AC1

By: Anti Citizen One

Anti Citizen One — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:11:35 +0000

Ok let me put the yellow point another way, Wittgenstein said “You cannot describe what yellow is” – I say when we known this is true, then we should discuss its philosophical implications

I find Wittgenstein’s point in 4.1212 as clear as mud I am afraid. Where does he define “shown”? Nether 4.1212, 4.121, etc mention non-sense or metaphysics.

AC1

By: El Sordo

El Sordo — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:05:00 +0000

For Wittgenstein sentences that attempt to say what can only be shown are non-sense or pseudo-sentences.

By: El Sordo

El Sordo — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 12:39:14 +0000

Wittgenstein is a whole and not a part. Read Philosophical Investigations when you get the chance.
Non-sensical language as found in metaphysics is of no use to the philosopher who should be focused on logic and to a degree epistemology.
Likewise he proposes Ethics to be a seperate school of thought, that in reality cannot be said but can only be shown. Tractatus, 4.1212
Do not forget that we can differentiate between prescriptive ethics that tell us what we ought to do in a particular situation and descriptive ethics that describes what people have done in a particular situation.
Much like Moores intuitionism Wittgenstein is supporting the second of these. A descriptive ethic cannot be prescriptive but it can point to what we maybe ought to do.

When or more pertinently if there comes a time when one can describe in terms of cognitive processes and perception what yellow is, then we should discuss its philosophical implications.

By: Anti Citizen One

Anti Citizen One — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:45:54 +0000

“Unlike the Logical Positivists [Wittgenstein] was not content with discarding them to the dustbin as non-existent.” Preferably referring to Tracticus (the book of his I have read), where does he say non-sense propositions have usefulness and should not be discarded? I got a strong impression from the last three paragraphs of the book that they were not worth discussing.

“You cannot describe what yellow is, you just need to point at it and say ‘that’s what I mean by yellow’.” I prefer to think that we cannot describe, in terms of cognitive processes and perception, what yellow is – yet.

AC1

By: El Sordo

El Sordo — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 13:58:45 +0000

Ethical Intuitionism actually provides greater clarity to my abortion analogy regarding incoherence and inconvenience.
The idea that the good is not something that we describe but that we point at, to say “that is good”.

Pro-lifers point to abortion and say ‘that is bad’ and give their manifold reasons.
Pro-choicers point to the freedom of the woman to choose and say ‘that is good’ whilst ignoring the pro-life argument on the grounds of its incoherence and inconvenience.
Pro-choicers never really call themselves pro-abortionists. Generally they will describe themselves as being pro-choice and not as pro-unborn-child-killers (which is the implied language that pro-lifers would use).