This follows Wittgenstein on Philosophy. 

We are beginning to plumb Wittgenstein’s concepts deeply.

It took 5 books to get to this point – but I audaciously believe that I can illuminate his intentions better than the several rehashed critical essays I have read, which to me sell his thoughts short.

The best starting point comes from The Blue Book, which is not conventionally considered in the major canon of Wittgenstein, but ought to be.

“It is a typical metaphysical question; the characteristic of a metaphysical question being that we express an unclarity about the grammar of words in the form of a scientific question.”

The philosopher attempts to “fix” the meaning of a word in a certain situation and treat it as general, instead meaning is deeply invested in real world use of language and impossible to distill otherwise. 

He proposes: “Consider as an example the question ‘What is time?’ as Saint Augustine and others have asked it.”

Clock Explosion

To ask such a question assumes that there is a “time” that exists outside of our everyday usage of the word. In reality, time can be and is employed in a variety of situations.  These are what Wittgenstein called language games and will be very important in future posts:

Time to go outside.

I don’t have the time.

Time just keeps moving on.

I won’t miss this time.

Time is the 4th dimension.

What time is it?

There is a time and place for everything.

“A man’s future is inherited in that man . . . there is no such thing as was. That time is; and if there is no such thing as was, then there is no such thing as will be. That time is not a fixed condition, time is in a way the combined intelligences of all men who breathe at that moment.” (Faulkner)

All of these phrases express different variations of the word time.  Isolating the word time into a set defintion is useful, essential rather, in science, but extremely problematic when used in a philosophical context.  The question “what is time” assumes a general term - which exists in our mythos – but impossible to pin down the way we would in a question of physics. 

Wittgenstein continues: “At first sight what this question asks for is a definition, but then immediately the question arises: “What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead to other undefined terms?”  And why should we be puzzled just by the lack of definition of time, and not by the lack of a definition of ‘chair’?  Why shouldn’t we be puzzled in all cases where we haven’t got a definition?  Now a definition often clears up the grammar of a word.  And in fact it is the grammar of the word ‘time’ which puzzles us.

The vast majority of philosophical problems posit themselves, deceived by the grammar of a word.  

Language, grammar, and philosophy are inextricably linked. 

The actions “to spell” and “casting a spell” both come from the same root in Old French, espeller.  When creating a word, a sort of magic occurs, conjured into existence as an enchantment is summoned. 

But in practical usage the volatility behind a word is lost, glazed over, and its presence confuses one into thinking there is a permanence behind it.  ”Time” does not exist except within language; it is a convention used to describe myriad phenomena that could be ordered and formulated in infinite different ways.  The negation of this confusion is the basis of Hindu philosophy.

A philosophical question is described as a phrasing of confusion: “We are only expressing this puzzlement by asking a slightly misleading question, the question: ‘What is…?’  This question is an utterance of unclarity, of mental discomfort, and is comparable with the question ‘Why?’ as children so often ask it.  This too is an expression of a mental discomfort, and doesn’t necessarily ask for either a cause or a reason.  Now the puzzlement about the grammar of the word ‘time’ arises from what one might call apparent contradictions in that grammar.”

This is where particular usage becomes important.

“It was such a contradiction that puzzled Saint Augustine when he argued: How is it possible that one should measure time?  For the past can’t be measured, as it is gone by; and the future can’t be measured because it has not yet come.  And the present can’t be measured because it has no extension.

The contradiction which here seems to arise could be called the conflict between two different usages of a word, in this case of the word ‘measure.’  Augustine, we might say, thinks of the process of measuring a length: say the distance between two marks on a travelling band in front of us.  Solving this puzzle will consist in comparing what we mean by ‘measurement’ (the grammar of the word ‘measurement’) when applied to a distance on a travelling band with the grammar of that word when applied to time.  The problem may seem simple, but its extreme difficulty is due to the fascination which the analogy between two similar structures in our language can exert on us.  (It is helpful here to remember that it is sometimes almost impossible for a child to believe a word can have two meanings.)

The Persistence of Memory

The final point corresponds to rule-making: “Now it is clear that this problem about the concept of time asks for an answer given in the form of strict rules.  The puzzle is about rules. – Take another example: Socrates’ question ‘What is knowledge?’  Here the cases is even clearer, as the discussion begins with the pupil giving an example of an exact definition, and then analagous to this a definition of the word ‘knowledge’ is asked for.  As the problem is put, it seems that there is something wrong with the ordinary use of the word ‘knowledge’.  It appears we don’t know what it means, and that therefore, perhaps, we have no right to use it.  We should reply ‘there is no one exact usage of the word knowledge; but we can make up several such usages, which will more or less agree with he ways the word is actually used.’

The man who is philosophically puzzled sees a law in the way a word is used, and, trying to apply this law consistently, comes up against cases where it leads to paradoxical results.”

In conclusion: “Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.”

Lugubrious Game

*** All paintings are by Salvador Dalí (whose most famous work “The Persistence of Memory” was painted in 1931, “The Blue Book” by Wittgenstein from which the preceding quotes were adduced was dictated in 1933-34.)

Women Related:

The Ground beneath her feet/ Salman Rushdie

Nana/ Emil Zola

The Bell Jar/ Sylvia Plath

The Women’s Room/ Marilyn French

Little Women/ Louisa May Alcott

Madame Bovary/ Gustav Flaubert

History Related:

Biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein/ Ray Monk – Wonderful bio of one of History’s most prominent and intriguing philosophers

Tomorrow Morning you will all be Killed with your Families/ Phillip Geurevitch – story of the Genocide in Rwanda

The Blinding Absence of the Sun/ Taher Ben Jalun – About the unrest in Morocco

Mao/ Jung Chang & Jon Halliday – Great bio of China’s former leader Mao Tze Dong

Becoming Madame Mao/ Anchee Min

Generally recommended:

On the Road/ Jack Kerouac – one of the Great Beatniks of the 50’s in the United States

Wuthering Heights/ Emily Bronte

The Secret History/ Donna Tart

Pope Joan/ Donna Woolfolk

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (September 29, 2009)
• Official Logicomix Website
• Amazon

The wedding of philosophical mathematics and a graphic novel seems an ideal marriage. What in other forms of media could be an overlong, tedious tale, can spring to life and breathe in an illustrated story. That’s my impression after reading Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. Logicomix tells the story of mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell’s decades-long search to establish an unshakeable foundation for mathematics in logic. Russell narrates his own life story and describes his quest, which began in childhood and continued well into his adult life. Along the way, he interacts with some of the greatest logicians, mathematicians, and philosophers of the early twentieth century—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Georg Cantor, G. E. Moore, David Hilbert, Kurt Gödel, Alfred Whitehead, and Gottlob Frege.

While the quest comprises the main storyline, the authors also shed light on Russell’s private life, which had its fair share of drama and conflict. Having a family history of mental illness, one of his greatest ongoing fears was losing his mind. (On a side note, nearly all of the thinkers mentioned above contended with a serious mental illness.) Russell was married four times, though the book only features his first two wives, and his well known affairs are hinted at. Though his contributions to mathematics and logic were considerable, he came to see his original quest as a failure, especially in light of Wittgenstein’s criticisms and Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (which the authors explain in the text and in a helpful glossary of terms in the back).

At the same time, the authors suggest that Russell was admired for his pacifism, his endeavoring to apply reason and logic to every area of human activity, and his ideas, which influenced a younger generation of mathematicians such as Alan Turing, who helped break the German “Enigma” code in World War II and whose work importantly influenced the development of the digital computer.

An interesting and intentionally ironic literary device used by the writers is inserting themselves into the story, so that the reader follows the process (interspersed occasionally) of the writing of Logicomix along with Russell’s story. Logicomix is thus self-referential, which characteristic also lies at the heart of “Russell’s Paradox” (also nicely described in the glossary).

At the end of his life, the Russell of Logicomix arrives at the conclusion that much of human nature and behavior can’t be explained or captured by logic, and that no single system can encompass the multi-faceted nature of reality. He declares, “If even in logic and mathematics, the paragons of certainty, we cannot have perfect assurances of reason, then even less can this be achieved in the messy business of human affairs—either private, or public! . . . Wittgenstein has a point, you see: ‘All the facts of science are not enough to understand the world’s meaning.’” (p. 296).

While the authors admit that they have taken some liberties with the reconstruction of Russell’s life, the major characters “are based as closely as possible on their real-life counterparts” and no liberties were taken with “the content of the great adventure of ideas which forms our main plot.” (p. 315, 316). I was pleased to know this, since a mainly fictional account wouldn’t have interested me nearly as much.

Logicomix succeeds, in my view, in shaping a fascinating story out of complex and abstract ideas. The story is epic, recounting some of the most important events in philosophy and mathematics in the last century, while also capturing the very human face of that unfolding drama. Who said comic books couldn’t be educational?

Thanks to Bloomsbury USA for this review copy.

This post is a response of sorts to Maya: “All Duality is Falsely Imagined.”

This comes from Wittgenstein’s The Blue Book which was at first only a manuscript guarded by his students at Cambridge.  It is the most organized of his later works and helpful when trying to explain his intent in others.  His concepts are more detailed, a bit more “telling” instead of “showing.” 

I want to use this book as a stepping stone for the writing on Wittgenstein I was hoping to do previously - able finally to coalesce my ideas into a useful exposition. 

This first quote is an excellent introduction to his views on knowledge as it corresponds to reality and why, although an admirer of philosophy, he found it ultimately limited.

 ”Imagine we had to arrange the books of a library.  When we begin the books lie higgledy piggledy on the floor.  Now there would be many ways of sorting them and putting them in their places.

Now there would be many ways of sorting them and putting them in their places.  One would be to take the books one by one and put each on the shelf in its right place. 

On the other hand we might take up several books from the floor and put them in a row on a shelf, merely in order to indicate that these books ought to go together in this order.

In the course of arranging the library this whole row of books will have to change its place.  But it would be wrong to say that therefore putting them together on a shelf was no step towards the final result.  In this case, in fact, it is pretty obvious that having put together books which belong together was a definite achievement, even though the whole row of them had to be shifted.  But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. 

The onlooker who doesn’t know the difficulty of the task might well think that in such a case that nothing at all has been achieved. – The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.  E.g., to see that when we have put two books together in their right order we have not thereby put them in their final places.

When we think about the relation of the objects surrounding us to our personal experiences of them, we are sometimes tempted to say that these personal experiences are the material of which reality consists.”

If that sounds like a strange dish, well, Richard Rorty is a strange fellow, an Anglophone analytic philosopher of mind turned Deweyan pragmatist turned Heideggerian historicist. Now, if that sounds to you like a ridiculous combination—this is your fun fact for the post—consider that Rorty matriculated at the University of Chicago at age 14. Trained in the analytic school of Brandom, Quine, and Davidson, Rorty gradually became disillusioned with Western philosophy’s metaphysical and epistemological hubris; the first fruit borne by that frustration was Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), a meandering critique of the Lockean-Cartesian-Kantian tradition, which posits philosophy as a discipline “foundational in respect to the rest of culture because culture is the assemblage of claims to knowledge, and philosophy adjudicates such claims” (3, all citations from the 1979 edition).

At the headwaters of this project, Locke sought to provide “a ‘theory of knowledge’ based on an understanding of ‘mental processes’” (3), Descartes postulated an interior mind  “in which ‘processes’ occur,” (4) and Kant cast philosophy “as a tribunal of pure reason, upholding or denying the claims of the rest of culture” (4). Rorty positions analytic writers within this tradition “as an attempt to escape from history—an attempt to find nonhistorical conditions of any possible historical development” (9).

However, in the twentieth century, three philosophers—“Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey” (4)—questioned this quest for certainty in fundamental ways, though only, observes Rorty, after painful experiences in trying to refashion and recuperate its illusory certainties. Against philosophy’s flight from history, these three thinkers offered an “historicist” message, one which grounds philosophical pursuits and truth claims in the social and cultural developments of human societies: Heidegger’s historicism is most sweeping, relying on a vast revision of the “history of philosophy,” which “lets us see the beginning of the Cartesian imagery in the Greeks and the metamorphoses of this imagery during the last three centuries” (12). Wittgenstein showed how language could be conceived of as a “game” constructed for the achievement of social pursuits—in Philosophical Explorations, he wrote, “To imagine a language is to imagine a way of life” (§19). Each of these three, argues Rorty, “set aside metaphysics and epistemology as possible disciplines”: they do not so much debunk these realms, he suggests, as simply lose interest in them (4). For them, and for Rorty himself, “The notion of ‘accurate representation’ is simply an automatic and empty compliment which we pay to those beliefs which are successful in helping us do what we want to do” (10): “true statements” are socially functional statements.

This brings us to Rorty’s thesis, which bears a rather longer quotation:

The aim of this book is to undermine the reader’s confidence in ‘the mind’ as something about which one should have a ‘philosophical’ view, in ‘knowledge’ as something about which there ought to be a ‘theory’ and which has ‘foundations,’ and in ‘philosophy’ as it has been conceived since Kant (4).

Rorty understands himself as continuing the historicist project of his three heroes, though rather in the manner of a double agent, still operating within the stifled confines of analytic philosophy, and even stealing his “particular criticisms” of that tradition “from such systematic philosophers as Sellars, Quine, Davidson, Ryle, Malcolm, Kuhn, and Putnam” (7). 

I know enough about where this book is headed to be interested in the trip, though I expect to have many a disagreement with our brilliant guide along the way. On one hand (as my title suggests), his deployment of sources is idiosyncratic: each of these three is historicist in his own way, but (perhaps, nudges my instinct) not necessarily in compatible ways. At a superficial level, consider that Heidegger considered Christianity the (quite literally) apotheosis of the mechanization at the heart of Western metaphysics, while Wittgenstein experienced a profound conversion during World War I that left him with a deep-rooted Christian faith (though how orthodox or catholic that faith was is admittedly fuzzy for me). Further, it is far from self-evident that historicism is incompatible with a certain kind of discourse about being: I am thinking here of MacIntyre (who, interestingly, was himself an analytic philosopher “converted” to a sort of Wittgensteinian historicism, though in an Aristotelian and Thomist, rather than Heideggerian, key), and more emphatically, John Milbank. In fact (contra Heidegger, whose reading of Christian history I find unimaginative at best), the very logic of the Incarnation seems to imply that a fully Christian metaphysics must in some sense be historicist, for there is no other “image of the invisible God” except this Jewish man, born of a Virgin and crucified under Pontius Pilate—of course, here I go sounding all Barthian, when a sensible person would let the analogia entis question rest for another day. 

We will surely have occasion later to discuss whether—as Rorty seems to suggest here—viewing truth as socially-constructed need commit one to abandoning the possibility of the “Truth,” of reality as such. MacIntyre argued that it did not, envisioning the possibility of one discourse’s instigating an “epistemological crisis” within a rival; Milbank argues that it does not, because of the possibility of an ecclesial community whose aesthetic splendor would overwhelm all rivals.

Darwin: Origin of Species

…and why you should read them (or at least be familiar with them).

These are books that have had a deleterious affect on humanity (almost exclusively Western in their thinking).  Some of them had “good intentions”* but fell flat on their face with horrible unintended consequences.  The Christian has the responsibility to defend the truth of the Gospel.  One part of defending the truth is refuting all untruth.  We need to be reading primary sources of the things we are seeking to deconstruct – not summaries, the wikipedia article, or a blog post about it.

*1.  The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life by Charles Darwin
I do not think Darwin would agree with half of Neo-Darwinianism or macroevolution.  He makes massive concessions that geology and microbiology would need to corroborate his thesis.  He was a good scientist who followed the evidence, I think he would be in the intelligent design camp (perhaps this is a controversial statement, but read Origin for yourself).  I have listed this as #1 as this work was critical in pretty much all of the destructive thoughts of the past 150 years:  Eugenics, Scientific Naturalism, Nietzschean atheism, New Atheism, Liberal Protestantism, and Communism.

2.  Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant

This book is probably the most influential book in philosophy since the ancient Greeks.  Kant seeks to synthesize the great debate of the history of philosophy:  Being vs. Becoming aka Plato vs. Aristotle.  In the process, Kant comes to the conclusion that our minds cannot have knowledge of things that are not physical – ie. God and many other absolute truths.  In defense of Kant, his thinking did begin to change in his third work as he makes some wiggle room for faith as being a legitimate pathway for knowledge (but almost no one reads his third volume).

3.  The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

20,000,000 dead under Stalin, 6-8,000,000 dead under Lenin, 40,000,000 dead under Mao Zedong, 1,700,000 dead under Pol Pot… case and point.

4.  On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers by Friedrich Schleiermacher

This guy birthed liberal Protestantism.  His ideas split Protestantism and millions think they know Jesus when they don’t.

5.  Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche decries how humanity has killed God through our apathy.  He then espouses why humanity needs to move beyond God, morality, truth, and the good, in favor of embracing exerting power and control over the weak.

*6.  Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes

Descartes had every intention of proving through pure axiomatic reasoning that God existed.  In short, his arguments for God’s existence were awful and his arguments for doubting everything were excellent.  His legacy is solid argumentation for skepticism.  Epic Fail.

7.  Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

11-17,000,000 dead.  Hitler sees Judaism, capitalism, and communism as the three major threats to Germany.  The Final Solution means purging all associated with these things and the result is the Holocaust.  Awful.

8.  Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty

In my view, this is the most important book to be read today for the Christian.  For an explanation why, read my previous blog post on post-modern-pragmatism.

9.  The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli

In order to be successful in life you must exercise control through power and manipulation.  Morality hurts your ability to exert your will.

10.  Origins of the History of Christianity by Ernest Renan

The New Testament is essentially myth.  This revisionist history was seminal in classic liberalism and influential in the later Jesus Seminar.

11.  Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men by Jean Jacques Rousseau

Society is corrupt, man is good.

12.  The Pivot of Civilization by Margaret Sanger

Sanger promoted sexual liberation and then birth control, abortion, and eugenics.  39,000,000+ babies dead worldwide… this year from abortion.

13.  Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes

Humans are immoral, therefore only Leviathan is the solution… Leviathan is a strong and aggressive central government.

14.  The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig von Feuerbach

Christianity is superstition that will soon be replaced by humanism.

15.  The Future of an Illusion by Sigmund Freud

Humanity has invented God and this delusion is a kind of mental illness.

16.  Various Writings by Pelagius

Denial of the doctrine of original sin, denial of efficacious grace, and the denial of the sovereignty of God.  1600 years later his teachings still plague the church.

17.  Sexual Behavior in the Human Male by Alfred Kinsey

This was just painful to read (and I was unable to finish) and I am not endorsing actually getting a copy (hence no link).  Kinsey basically says that no sexual behavior or orientation is immoral.  All is permissible.

18.  The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

Some bit of gnosticism had to make this list.  I wrestled with what to choose here.  Pagels is your run of the mill critic who says that the gnostic “gospels” are the real story and history.  These ideas are ridiculous due to their pseudepigraphic nature, date of writing, and mutually exclusive theologies.

19.  Prolegomena to the History of Israel by Julius Wellhausen

Wellhausen espouses that the first five books of the Old Testament were not written by Moses but by editors from four schools of thought.  A flood of Bible criticism followed Wellhausen.

20.  Why I am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell

Russell is one of the few atheists other than Nietzsche that I respect.  His thoughts are well ordered and argued.  The New Atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens…) wish they could hold a candle to Russell.

21.  Process and Reality by A.N. Whitehead

Whitehead argues for Process Theology.  Read about Process Theology here.

22.  The Council of Trent

Justification by faith alone is anathematized.  Veneration of Mary and saints upheld.  Transubstantiation upheld.  I love my brothers and sisters who are Christians in the Catholic church despite the Catholic church.  Trent had the opportunity to listen to the Reformation and return to God’s Word for truth.  It did not and left in its wake countless eternal casualties.

23.  His Dark Materials Trilogy by Philip Pullman

Pullman sought to write the opposite of Milton’s Paradise Lost.  He seeks to commend humanism and ultimately atheism as the commendable life path.  His Dark Materials is aimed at young adults and has been recently popularized by the Golden Compass film.

24.  Protagoras by Plato

For clarity sake, these are sayings ascribed to Protagoras and not Platonic thoughts.  The famous quote is “Man is the measure of all things.”  Protagoras is the first person to espouse a kind of moral relativism.

25.  Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead

The logical consequences of naturalism and Darwinianism applied to anthropology and sociology.  What is primitive is good, therefore the sexual inhibition she evidenced in primitive Samoa ought to be writ large.

Some thinkers who nearly made this list:

Leon Trotsky, Mao Zedong, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Victor Gollancz, Lillian Hellman, Cyril Connolly, Norman Mailer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertolt Brecht, Johann Fichte, Georg Hegel, Arthur Schopenhauer, John Dewey, Joseph Smith, Percy Shelley, Henrik Ibsen, Edmund Wilson, James Baldwin, Kenneth Tynan, Jean-François Lyotard, Claude Levi-Strauss and Noam Chomsky.

What did I miss?

Jag vet aldrig vad jag ska svara när folk frågar mig om jag känner någon som “lider av Aspergers syndrom”. Visserligen känner jag många som har asperger, men jag brukar inte fråga dem om de lider av det. Själv lider jag i alla fall inte av min asperger.

Det har varit svårt för mig att veta hur jag ska prata om asperger på något annat sätt än i form av “syndromet”. Å ena sidan vet jag att människor har behov av stöd och insatser, och då måste man ha en diagnos – men å andra sidan är asperger i mångt och mycket snarare ett sätt att fungera på än något funktionshinder. Från vårdens sida har man försökt att bena ut det, och i det tredje diagnoskriteriet slår man fast:

“Störningen orsakar kliniskt signifikant nedsättning av funktionsförmågan i arbete, socialt eller i andra viktiga avseenden.”

Det är alltså så att om man passar in på alla kriterier i övrigt, men inte egentligen har någon “nedsättning av funktionsförmågan” så kvalificerar man inte för diagnosen Aspergers syndrom. Massor av människor har en aspergerpersonlighet, men inte några större svårigheter – och de människorna får alltså inte heller någon diagnos.

Det här var en av de sakerna som kom upp igår, när jag lyssnade på Torbjörn Anderssons fenomenala föreläsning om “Radikala perspektiv på asperger och högfungerande autism”. Torbjörn använder nämligen ordet asperger i en vidare bemärkelse, och inte som en förkortning för Aspergers syndrom. Det han menar är snarare det som man kanske borde kalla aspergerpersonlighet; människor som fungerar på ett visst sätt – oavsett om de har en diagnos eller inte, och oavsett om de uppfyller det tredje diagnoskriteriet eller inte.

Att se asperger som en personlighetstyp istället för en störning är grundförutsättningen för att verkligen kunna prata om positiva sidor, möjligheter och begåvningar. Det gör det också möjligt att kunna diskutera aspergerdrag hos kända personer som inte fått någon formell diagnos: Albert Einstein, James Joyce, Charles Darwin, H.C. Anderssen, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Isaac Newton och Emily Dickinson levde alla på den tid då ingen diagnos fanns att ställa, och många av dem hade kanske inte heller tillräckligt för att få en diagnos – men det faktum att så många av de stora vetenskapsmännen, författarna, konstnärerna och kompositörerna i historien hade autistiska drag är ändå något som är värt att fundera över.

Problemet med att se autismspektrum ur ett strikt medicinskt perspektiv – som något som ofelbart är en störning och helst borde gå att förebygga eller bota – är att man direkt diskvalificerar alla som är “för duktiga” för att räknas in. Därmed förstör man möjligheten att se bakåt och upptäcka den autistiska historien, och man hindras också från att läsa in autistiska drag – eller bokstavsdrag generellt – i framgångsrika människor som lever idag: De är ju inte störda, de har ju inget handikapp, de är ju lyckade. Det är inget fel på dem…

Att diskutera varför en känd person gör si eller så, och säga “hon fick ett DAMP-ryck och skrev mästerverket på tre dygn”, eller “hans förmåga att föreläsa är verkligen autistisk!” är inte självklart smickrande, hur mycket jag än önskar det. Men Torbjörn Andersson har verkligen en autistisk förmåga – inte savant, men autistisk på så sätt att han vet vad han pratar om och att det är det han brinner för. Asperger är förmodligen ett av hans specialintressen, och det märks.

Jag vill att det ska gå att prata om asperger och ADHD som något mer än diagnoser, utan att för den skull förminska betydelsen av den hjälp man kan behöva. Jag vill att det ska vara självklart att det inte är något negativt att ha autistiska drag. Jag vill att folk slutar vara rädda för att stämplas som psykiskt sjuka, som störda, som handikappade. Eller som jag precis upptäckte att min kompis Jörgen hade skrivit på min Facebook:

“Autisten är guld värd, ty Au är ju den kemiska beteckningen för just guld”

Läs även andra bloggares intressanta åsikter om autism, Aspergers syndrom, NPF, diagnoser, funktionshinder, sjukdomar, personlighet, kändisar, förebilder, historia, fördomar, normer, neuronormer, neuromångfald, autismspektrum, vård, stöd, psykologi, psykiatri, cripteori, Albert Einstein, James Joyce, Charles Darwin, H.C. Anderssen, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Isaac Newton, Emily Dickinson

Beth Mueller’s dissent from the Badger Herald Ed Board’s astonishingly sensible pro-pot-legalization editorial in today’s edition of the BH suggests two things, though I could be wrong on both: 1. Mueller has never smoked weed, and 2. she’s unfamiliar with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s final proposition in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (alright, not so important in this case).

Use of marijuana impairs the mind so as to prevent a person from rational thought. This harm is most significant. Use of this drug, like any other illegal drug, seeks only pleasure over the higher, transcendent goals of humanity, which are all products of reasoned thought.

[...] There’s nothing wrong with simple relaxation, which would be a motivation for many to use marijuana. But even the pursuit of rest shouldn’t settle into mere escapism or artificial warping of the mind to intellectually skip town. Imagine what a society we’d have if relaxation entailed a more honest release from the burden of work to be more aware, not less, of the beauty of people, the world, and even new ideas.

[...] True, drunkenness similarly harms a person by blocking the ability to think rationally. [...] Alcohol, however, remains justifiably legal because it can be used to an extent that does not impair reason.

Mueller has a very, very peculiar understanding of the effect that marijuana has on the mind. Intellectuals smoking pot: never happens, right? And what’s with this fetish for “reasoned” and “rational” thought? Also, the notion that alcohol can be consumed in moderation whereas marijuana cannot is particularly bizarre.

But yeah, I recommend reading both pieces in their entirety; some pretty ferkakt logic at work in the dissent, and I don’t mean that in a good way.

Märkusi Margit Sutropi “Mis on fiktsioon?” kohta

1996.aasta veebruarikuises Akadeemia numbris tutvustas Margit Sutrop Konstanzi Ülikooli juures kirjutatud doktoritöö Fiction and Imagination: The Anthropological Function of Literature projekti 12-leheküljelise artikliga, milles keskendutakse peaasjalikult analüütilise esteetika diskursuse refereerimisele.

Minu märkused on metoodiliselt superfitsistlikud ehk ei lähe sügavamale sellest tasandist, mida Margit Sutrop artikli kontekstis edastab kõnealuste autorite vaadetest.

Üldised märkused

Analüütilise filosoofia fundamentaalesteetilisest diskursuses pole paradoksaalselt lähtepunktiks tähenduslik ilus vs inetu eristus ehk elamus, vaid tõesemantika, s.o Fregest põlvnev tähenduse ja osutuse teooria. Kuivõrd fiktsionaalsetel tekstidel kas osutus puudub või on puudulik (ebapidev), siis tuleks sellest järeldada, et draama ja komöödia, proosa ja poeesia, muusika ja kujutava kunsti vormid on olemuslikult tühjad ehk mõttetud. Ehk kogu probleem kerkib analüütilisest tähistusteooriast, mille iseenesestmõistetavaks elemendina on nõutav osutus. Selle asemel, et modifitseerida Freget, kus ta ilmselgelt jääb lühinägelikuks – näiteks kuulub tema reaalsesse maailma aeg, millele ei ole sellegi poolest tema lähenemise alusel võimalik kuidagi osutada. Või pöörata ots ringi, mis võimaldab siiski analüütilise usutunnistuse raamidesse jääda, tuletades kaunite kunstide funktsiooni ja sisu mitte tähistusest vaid tähendusest (Sinn). Kõigepealt oleks võimalik modifitseerida tähistusteooriat märgi ja märgi suhtega, nimetagem seda kontekstuaalsuseks. Sellistel puhkudel on tekstid seostatavad teiste tekstidega, mis on osutatavad, kusjuures sellised suhted jaotuvad horisontaal- ja diagonaalsuheteks. Esimesed on lihtkonktekstuaalsed samasisuliste märkide vahel, teised seisnevad suhetes märkide üldisusmäärade (genus-species) vahel. Fiktsionaalne maja saab olla meie kujutluses tähenduslikuna seetõttu, et meie maailma, kogemuse tervikusse, kuuluvad osutuslikud märgikasutused, mis võimaldavad anda fiktsioonile tähenduse kontekstuaalselt, st meie kogemus on tekst, millega tekst, mida klassifitseeritakse fiktsioonina asub suhtesse (mh võrdlusse) ning sellisel puhul on tähistus kontekstuaalne.

Solomon Alexander Hart - An Early Reading of Shakespeare (1838)

Artikkel

Artikli esimene, teine ja kolmas lõik fiktsiooni-mõiste kasutustest, näib artikli plaani suhtes – anda ülevaade analüütilisest diskursusest fiktsiooni mõiste osas – olevat üleliigne.

Võrdluseks, teadusfilosoofia või loogika korral poleks kuigi otstarbekas alustada artiklit induktsiooni probleemist ülevaatega induktsiooni mõistest elektrodünaamikas.

Siiski on tähelepanuväärne teise lõigu osutus saksa tarvitusele:

“Teiseks tähistab fiktsioon seal teatud diskursust, milles mitte-tegelikke asjaolusid esitatakse sellisel viisil, et see sugereerib neid pidama tegelikeks.”

Sellesse määratlusse mahub samuti laimamine, võltsimine, moonutamine, valetamine ja eksitamine, s.o toimingud, milliste varal püütakse sugereerida mitte-tegelikke asju pidama tegelikeks. Samuti see, mida marksistid nimetavad ideoloogiaks. Kelmi ja draamakirjaniku ühele pulgale asetumine teeb kindlasti rõõmu esimesele, ent määrib ilmselt viimaste ausat vaeva.

Lk 293 on sõna diskursus järele lisatud sulgudes kõne, mis, mulle näib, ei ole akadeemilises kontekstis korrektne. Diskursus on arutlus või arutelu, mis ei seisne järjestikustes luulejate etteastetes kevadise kirsipuuaia ülistuseks, vaid seisukohtade vahetuses (proponent-oponent) – teesidele vastamises kummutamise, täiendamise või kommentaariga. Kui tudengid on vahest loengus küsinud, mida tähendab diskursus, siis olen neile ühelt poolt meelde tuletanud Rene Descartes’i Le Discours de la méthode (Arutlus meetodist), teiselt poolt lisanud, et diskursus kasutusega arutluse asemel rõhutatakse teatud akadeemilist protseduursust.

Järgnevalt seob Sutrop fiktsionaalsuse narratiivsuse ehk jutustamisega ja selgitab enda ülesannet:

“See ei ole küsimus sellest, kuidas teha vahet fiktsionaalsetel ja mittefiksionaalsetel narratiividel, vaid küsimus fiktsionaalse narratiivi olemusest.”

Seejärel asub seda piirjoon tõmbama, juhatades sisse traditsionaalse arvamuse fiktsioonist ja mitte-fiktsioonist: esimene hõlmab väljamõeldisi, teine tegelikkust. Selline liigituse äratoomine akadeemilises tekstis tekitab küsimuse religioossete tekstide staatuse osas, kuigi teiselt poolt võib arvata, et nõukogulik kirjandusteadus käsitas neid iseenesestmõistetavana hälbelise fiktsiooniliigina.

Sutrop osutab, et Aristoteles tunnistab “Poeetikas” reaalsus-väljamõeldis  jaotust, tõstes ometigi  poeesia ajaloost üle, kuivõrd esimene, kõnelemata reaalsest, on võimalikkuse edastajana üldisem kui viimase partikulaaride verifitseeritav reaalsus, seistes sellisel viisil lähemal teadustele ja filosoofiale. Kummalisel kombel sedastab Sutrop, et Hayden White “näikse jagavat” Aristotelese seisukohta, mis järgneb esmasest distinktsioonist fiktsioon-väljamõeldis ja mitte-fiktsioon-reaalsus, mille kohaselt ajaloolased piirduvad reaalsusega, kuna “loovad kirjanikud” tegelevad nii reaalse kui väljamõeldisega. Mulle näib, et antud puhul, mõttekäikude sekventsi ja pidevuse sisukohalt, ei olnud toodud distinktsioonil mingit tähtsust. Kui esimese kohaselt kui A, siis a ja kui B, siis b, siis Haydeni seisukohalt kui A, siis a ja kui B, siis a&b.

Gustave Dore - La Divina Commedia, Inferno, canto 7:118-119

Edasi, jõudnud läbi James Joyce Dublinlased seiskohani, et sisu varal ei ole võimalik fiktsiooni edukalt määratleda, läheb Sutrop lingvistiliste piiritluskatsete juurde. Paraku sellesse, arvatavalt, ülipõnevasse diskursusse ülevaate andja ei sukelda. Seetõttu pole ilmne kuidas ja miks on jõutud arusaamisele, et fiktsioonil ei ole ühtegi lingvistilist eritunnust.

Järgnevalt tutvustab Sutrop erinevaid seisukohti, mis puudutavad 1. autori erilisi toiminguid ja 2. lugeja erilist hoiakut.

70-80.aastatel üritati fiktsiooniteooriat arendada Austini kõneaktide teooria alusel. Kui fiktsioon kasutab assertiive, siis väidetakse millegi kohta midagi, ehk need peaksid olema verifitseeritavad. Kuivõrd seda ei ole võimalik teha, siis kirjamehed, järelikult, valetavad.  Selline seisukohta esineb selgelt ka antiikklassiku Platon’i Riigis:

402: poeedid ei tea ega oma õiget arusaamist

403: loovad sõltumata asjaoludest

405: luule toidab madalamat hingeosa, hävitab mõistusliku osa

407: lähtuvad valust ja naudingust.

Kindlasti ei nõua antud kontekst Sir Philip Sydney mõtteavaldust “juba” aastast 1595, et kuna luuletajad ei väida midagi, siis ei saa nad ka valetada. Vastav arutelu läheb tagasi antiiki (4.sajand eKr) ja ilmselt ei pea selleks olema üleüldsegi väljapaistev, et sellist tähelepanekut teha. Enamgi, selline mõttearendus satub suurtesse raskustesse Aisopose fiksionaalsete loomavalmide õpetlike sõnumite ja ka Platoni dialoogide valguses. Aisopos  ei ole pelgalt meelelahutus. Sellest lähtuva elutarkusega võib kohati vaielda, ent nendes valmides sisalduvate tähelepanekute terasus on ka moodsate aegade jaoks aktuaalne. Seega, need muinajutulise ilmega lood väidavad midagi reaalsuse kohta ning sellisel kombel on neid tõlgendatud vähemalt 2500 aastat. Ning on ilmne, et see ei lähtu mitte osutusest ega ka tähistusest (kui laiendatud kategooriast), vaid ainuüksi tähendusest.

Gustave Dore - La Divina Commedia, Inferno, canto 23:92-94

Richard Gale, Gottfried Gabriel ja John Searle püüd seletada fiktsionaalsust autori hoiakuga teeselda ehk pretense theory – autor teeskleb illokutiivsete aktide sooritamist – kohasem nimetus tundub olevat pigem näitleja näitlemise teooria. Lev Tolstoi kangelased on nemad ise ja ei tee mitte ainult näivalt assertiive, kuna vastasel korral kaotaks tekst jälgitavuse ja tähenduse.  Kas kirjaniku kunsti täiuslikkus seisneb teeskluse või ärapetmise täiuses? Kindlasti ütleks seda õnnestuja äpardunud rivaal. Sarnaneb mõnevõrra Platoni totalitaarse esitusega teosest Πολιτεία. Erinevalt moodsast diskursusest on toodavad põhjused teoloogilis-moraalsed.

Kuivõrd fregeliku logitsistliku vaate kohaselt peab mõttekuse jaoks lausetel olema osutus, ent fiksioonil need ilmselt puuduvad, siis tuleb mingil moel fenomenile, et inimesed kõigele vaatamata kalduvad fiksioonis peituvaid võimalusi hindama ja väärtuslikku aega sellele kulutama, seletus anda. Kui Austin kõneleb fiksiooni puhul illokutiivsete jõudude kängumisest, sobitudes kokku Ludwig Wittgenstein’i seisukohtadega keele tühikäigust, siis tema järgijad Monroe Beardsley ja Richard Ohmann leiavad, et fiktsioonil need puuduvad sootuks. Tagamõte on muidugi säilitada analüütiline tuumõpetus mõttekusest (Sinn) ja osutusest (Bedeutung), mis kõigele vaatamata pole imeleiutis ega taevast kukkunud, vaid Aristotelese loogikast lähtuv variatsioon ja selle tuletis. Sellegi poolest, teesid illokutiivsuse kängumisest ja selle puudumine erinevad teineteisest väga tugevalt. Seal, kus Austin pääseb, mässivad radikaalid end lootusetult sisse.

Kas etendusel “Pisuhänd” on illokutiivne jõud? Näiteks vana Vestmanni küsimusel “Mis on selle lurjuse nimi?”?  Näidendite illokutiivne jõud on vahendatud. Lugeja või vaataja asetseb anonüümselt, nähtamatult autori vastas, kõrvalvaatajana. Ometi, kui illokutiivsus puuduks, siis ei oleks võimalik näidendit vastavalt kas veenvaks või ebaveenvaks, haaravaks või tüütuks nimetada. Samuti poleks õigustatud hea esituse eristamine mannetust presentatsioonist ega nõuda näitlejatelt rolli nimel pingutamist. Veel vähem diskrimeerida ühte võimekaks ja teist andetuks.

Gerard Genette pakub, et fiktsioon on direktiivne kõneakt. Märkus: Margit Sutrop tõlgib seda käsuks, mis on ilmselt ekslik. Direktiiv võib olla käsk, ent pigem on juhis või suunis: lingvistilises võtmes sisaldub sellises lõdvas kasutuses konflikt, kuivõrd käsulisuse jaoks on teine termin – imperatiiv. Ülearunegi on seejuures mainida, et imperatiivil on pöördevorm, mida kohtab esimese lausena romaanides harva, enamgi, imperatiiviga on raske lugejat veenda, kuivõrd selle kasutaja asetab end retsipiendist kõrgemale.

Sutrop läheb edasi Kendall Walton’i vaate tutvustamisega, kelle arvetes fiktsiooni funktsioon on representatsioon ehk pakkuda usutavat mängu – games of make believe. Pakutaval psühhologistlikul seletusel on tugev seos arengupsühholoogilise teooriaga mängu rollist õppimisel ja kohanemisel.

Gustave Dore - La Divina Commedia, Inferno, canto 21:50-51

“Kujutlemine toimub alati esimeses isikus, pakub see meile suurt lõbu – egoistidena me naudime seda, kuidas meie kujutlused käivad meie endi kohta. Oma kujutlustes oleme ise peategelased..”

Selline tugev taandamine tekitab küsimuse, kellega samastab naine end etenduste puhul, kus peaosaline on mees ja vastupidi. Ajalooliste näidendite puhul suurkujudest kaasuks sellega ohtliku sõltuvuseni arenev nauding, mis oleks iseenesest mureaines esmajoones psühhiaatritele. Kas on võimalik, et pereema kujutleb Torquato Tasso Vabastatud Jeruusalemma lugedes end üllaks Tancrediks, kes tõuseb esimesena Püha Linna müüridele? Enamgi, kas Vladimir Nabokovi Lolita hindaja on latentne pedofiil ja markii de Sade’i lugeja kapisadist? Mulle näib, et suuremat osa inimesi ajendab nende teoste poole pöörduma uudishimu, ehk kaasaelamise asemele astub teadmisjanu rahuldamine. Seega, sellise definitsiooni puhul oleks ühiskondliku moraali seisukohalt kõige otstarbekam alustada Sophoklese Οἰδίπους Τύραννος ärakeelamisest, kui ohtlikust mustrist, mis kihutab inimesi nautima patritsiidi ja verepilastust. Ilmselgelt on antud definitsioon, mis pöördub retsipiendi intentsiooni poole, liiga kitsas.

“Fiktsiooniga on meil Waltoni arusaamist mööda tegemist siis, kui antud asja funktsiooniks on panna meid võtma tema suhtes teha-nagu-usuks-hoiakut. “

Mulle näib, et teha-nagu-usuks-hoiak iseloomustab alati ka kahtlemist kui otsustusprotsessi, enne kui langetatakse liisk, vastavalt jah või ei. Kuna eitava hoiaku võtmisel oleks raske õigustada aja kasutamist. Me võtame sarnase hoiaku kohtukõnede (tunnistajate ja süüaluse tunnistused), müügimeeste jutu (uued imelised ravimid, puhastusvahendid jne), kõmuajakirjanike paljastuste ja poliitikute etteastete (lubadused, kaunid tulevikuvisoonid) suhtes. Ometi pole need olemuslikult fiktsioonid.

Epifenomenaalse keha vaimuväline teooria

“Fiktsionaalne narratiiv on fiktsioon sellepärast, et jutustaja on seal fiktsionaalne entiteet, kes seetõttu ei saa sooritada tõelisi illokutiivseid akte”

Autor on “autor”. Sellise arusaama õiguslikuks aktiks vormistamine rõõmustab kindlasti kirjastajaid, kuivõrd autoritasu nõuavad tegelikult mingid kapriissed zombid, kelle puhul on õigustatud kanda ainult elementaarsed instrumentaarumi kulutused, kuna töö tehakse neis istuvate vaimude – genius’te või daimionite – poolt.

Võib veelgi vastuolulisemalt küsida: Kas fiktsioon on see, mille tegelikku autorit ei ole olemas või mille jutustaja ei ole tegelik autor?

Mulle näib, et selline vastu eeldab julget vaimufilosoofilist lahendust, mida võiks nimetada  epifenomenaalse keha vaimuväliseks teooriaks.

Kas fiktsionaalse jutustamise praktika näeb ette, et autor ei jutusta loo sündmustest mitte omaenda suu läbi, vaid oma väljamõeldud jutustaja suu läbi? Kuidas on Aispose ja Ivan Krõlovi (Иван Андреевич Крылов) valmidega? Ometi on need lühivormilised loomajutustused fiktsioonid!

Gustav Dore - La Divina Commedia, Inferno, canto 22:70

Lk 303: “Seejuures väljendab ta oma usku.”

On ebaõnnestunud lause antud kontekstis. Silmas peetakse ilmselt, et nende väidete juurde kuulub verifitseerimisprotseduur. Seega oleks sobilikum – Teeb propositsioone.

Lk 303: “Kirjutades fiktsionaalset narratiivi ei väljenda autor oma usku, vaid kujutlust.”

Võttes eelviimast lauset omaette, kontekstita, kerkib sarnane probleem. On selge, et hilistes Lev Tolstoi teostes väljendab autor just nimelt oma usku, ning omakorda, kui me tõlgendame seda kasutust veendumustena, siis Friedrich Nietzsche Also sprach Zarathustra poleks selleta mõistetav.

Lk 303: “Fiktsioon on autori kujutlusakti väljendus.”

Viimase lause osas – ka arhitektuurilised eskiisid, mehaanilised joonised, masinaehitusprojektid on autori loova kujutluse väljendused ehk kujutlusaktid, mis ei tee neist kaugeltki fiktsiooni, milleks need võivad osutuda alles siis, kui pole teostatavad. Seega antud definitsioon, mis vastab  ühtlasi artikli probleemile, on liiga lai.

Kirjandus

Dante Alighieri. La Divina Commedia. Inferno.

Sutrop, Margit. Mis on fiktsioon? ajakiri Akadeemia. nr 2. 1996. lk 292-303

Vilde, Eduard. Pisuhänd. ETV: telelavastus (eriti 83-84min)

We tend to take the speech of a Chinese for inarticulate gurgling. Someone who understands Chinese will recognise language in what he hears. Similarly I often cannot discern the humanity in a man.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 1914

In the UK, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills intends to assess “the benefits of postgraduate study for all relevant stakeholders” and “the evidence about the needs of employers for postgraduates.” Philosopher Simon Blackburn answered a request for faculty comments with a letter worth reading in full. A couple highlights:

(1) Our postgraduate philosophy education is primarily vital in ensuring the quality of the incoming stream of future teachers of philosophy. These provide the continuing educational resource for very acute and educated people to flow into very diverse channels of administration, business and other branches of employment, including what used to exist as and be known as “public service”, before that fell into the hands of people unable to conceive of it as anything other than a cornucopia of opportunities for corruption. If these last are your “stakeholders”, then we probably cannot convince them that we are of use to them, any more than music, art, literature or history could.

(2) Our future teachers will, in turn, educate philosophy graduates who can flourish in business: there have been many examples. But we don’t think that you should pay slavish attention to what business people, especially those who believe themselves fit to judge things about which they know nothing, say are their “needs” because we do not have any confidence that without more philosophy than most of them possess, they have the least idea what those needs are. We merely note that conceptions of need that have given us such outstanding examples of business expertise as British Leyland, Rover and RBS seem strange instruments with which to assess institutions that enabled such legacies as those left by Bacon, Locke, Hume and Wittgenstein. We are, to adapt one minister’s words, intensely relaxed about having assisted the country to this filthy rich legacy.

via Leiter Reports

Your Thoughts?

Uma página interativa, muito interessante e reveladora, sobre a vida e as ligações do filósofo austríaco Ludwig Wittgenstein (em inglês):

http://www.88constellations.net/88.html

El asombroso caso de Paul Wittgenstein no sólo inspiró sueños, sino que escribió este cuento...

Al despertar, Homper vio  en el espejo otra vez su imagen un hombre estupefacto. Qué había hecho él para merecer eso. Por qué  acababa de soñar lo que soñó.

Uno de los ingredientes del sueño, sin duda, era lo que había leído y escuchado a lo largo del día, y muy especialmente La familia Wittgenstein, una interesante biografía firmada por Alexander Waugh –nieto del autor de Retorno a Brideshead. Este libro además de recrear la torturada vida de esta familia y de su hijo más preclaro, Ludwig, ofrece un magnífico fresco social de un fracaso humano, del hundimiento del Imperio Austro Húngaro y de los espantos de la Gran Guerra, en la que combatieron el filósofo y sus dos hermanos varones.

La anécdota a veces se apodera de la categoría. O un drama individual puede impactar más que el catálogo de horrores que describe el autor sobre la primera Guerra Mundial. El caso es que a Homper le impresionó, sobre todo, la suerte de Paul Wittgenstein, pianista prometedor que pierde el brazo derecho en combate y que, con un espíritu admirable, consigue superar este mazazo del destino. Llegará a adquirir tal virtuosismo con la mano izquierda que hasta Ravel compuso su famoso Concierto para la mano izquierda pensando en él.

Las diabluras de la mano fantasma. Como todos los que han perdido un miembro, el pianista manco tiene que convivir por mucho tiempo con las sensaciones que le transmite la mano que ya no  tiene. Y así fue que, obsesionado por este martirio añadido  del pobre Paul, y quizás también por las noticias del día, fraguó la pesadilla del propio Homper. También él había soñado tiempo atrás en ser un gran pianista. En su pesadilla, no sólo lo era, sino que, como Paul Wittgenstein, pierde el brazo derecho  y sufre  los engaños de sus terminaciones nerviosas. Sus sensaciones táctiles son que la mano perdida sigue viva, y que además de tocar el piano como los ángeles, trinca dinero sucio como si fuera un político corrupto de los que persigue Garzón.

Naturalmente, el pobre Homper despertó a mitad de noche angustiado.

-No fastidies, Morfeo- se quejó ante el espejo del cuarto de baño como si su rostro descompuesto fuera el del dios de los sueños- ¿Por qué este dolor y el recochineo de la vergüenza?… ¡Arréglamelo, por favor!

Regresó a la cama, cerró los párpados. A su edad no es nada fácil reemprender el sueño interrumpido, pero lo consiguió. Y  la mano fantasma del pianista mutilado que creía ser le transmitió esta vez sensaciones distintas.

-Muchas gracias, amigo-le dijo al espejo antes de cumplir con el ritual mañanero de lavarse los dientes.

El Morfeo del espejo le sonrió. En la segunda parte del sueño, Homper no sólo había tocado  un milagroso arreglo para la mano izquierda de las Variaciones Goldberg. Sino que, entretanto,  el fantasma de la derecha recibía las caricias de aquel amor de juventud con el que hacía manitas en el cine,  y que nunca, nunca, podría olvidar.

Sloterdijks Buch behandelt die Anthropotechniken, die Übungserfahrungen der modernen Gesellschaften, heraufgeleitet von Buddha und Sokrates, den großen Alten. Ein Orchester, vollbesetzt mit Asketen, Artisten, allesamt verkleidet als Dichter wie Kafka oder Philosophen wie Nietzsche, und Wittgenstein musiziert eine prachtvolle Symphonie, deren Anfangs- und Schlussakkord beginnt und endet: Du musst dein Leben ändern.

Das wirft einen aus dem Schaukelstuhl. Es ist doch wahr: Heraus aus den selbst konstruierten Apparaturen der Routine im Denken und Handeln. Die Goiserer angezogen, und hinauf auf den Monte Improbable. Scharfer Wind, ungewisser Verlauf. Doch allein der Gedanke labt.

ÜBUNG (Für Peter Sloterdijk):
Wer das Unmögliche / Nicht will / Dem wird das Mögliche / Unmöglich. ■

/ Robert Schindel, Die Presse 29.8.

¿Es posible otra lógica diferente a la lógica matemática? ¿Es posible un discurso teórico válido como conocimiento y que no respete el principio de no contradicción? ¿Existen racionalidades diferentes a la racionalidad científica? Cuando criticamos la religión o determinados tipos de metafísica, las respuestas suelen ir en tres direcciones:

1. Atacar la racionalidad científica. Siempre se apela a Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, el Strong Program y demás escuelas de relativismo epistemológico. Lo que se dice es: “Sí, nuestro discurso es una castaña, pero es que el vuestro también”. Así, al final, siendo todo una castaña, llegamos al feyerabendiano “Todo vale” y la religión sale dañada pero viva (realmente no le pasa nada. Si su ya de por sí escasa carga racional sale dañada no le importa tener alguna menos y algo más de fe).

2. Ampliar la racionalidad científica. Se dice que la ciencia está genial pero se la acusa de reduccionismo, de situarse como testaferro único de la verdad excluyendo todo lo demás. Se afirma que existen más tipos de racionalidad (razón poética, valorativa, intuitiva, sintiente, dialéctica, dialógica…) e incluso se afirman otros tipos de contrastación empírica (experiencia religiosa, verificar a Dios en la vida cotidiana…). Lo gracioso de hacer esto es que se agranda tanto la racionalidad, “se abre tanto la caja de Pandora” para que los absurdos de la religión entren dentro de ella, que nos quedamos sin criterios para determinar si la afirmación “He visto un burro volando” debería considerarse como un enunciado aceptable racionalmente.

3. Separar los ámbitos de la racionalidad. Ciencia y religión son dos cosas diferentes y como tales no pueden medirse ni compararse. Suele apelarse una determinada interpretación del segundo Wittgenstein, afirmando que cada discurso cobra su sentido sólo en su contexto. Un científico no tiene nada que decir en una Iglesia y un sacerdote no pinta mucho en un laboratorio. La ciencia nos dice qué es el cielo y la religión como se va al cielo. Postura protestante, fideísta por antonomasia. La religión queda blindada ante cualquier crítica racional ya que no forma parte de su ámbito.

¿Qué camino escoger de los tres? NINGUNO. Refutemos las tres opciones:

1. La crítica a la racionalidad científica es exagerada y equívoca. Que el método científico no sea tan estricto como los miembros del Círculo de Viena quisieran pensar o que el contexto de justificación y el de descubrimiento sean, en ocasiones contadas, difíciles de diferenciar, no nos lleva al anarquismo epistemológico de Feyerabend. A todos los relativistas y escépticos radicales les invitamos gentilmente a que vayan a un chamán en vez de a un médico ante un ataque de apendicitis.

2. Los nuevos ámbitos de la racionalidad son tremendamente “cutres”. La dialéctica hegeliana, como ejemplo de lógica alternativa a la matemática, es, en palabras de Marvin Harris, “un montón de ruinas sin valor”. Aquí queda muy bien el dicho “Por sus obras lo conoceréis”. Metodologías alternativas al rigorismo formal y a la contrastación empírica como, por ejemplo, la fenomenología o la hermeneútica no han conseguido grandes logros… ¡No han conseguido ni siquiera una teoría más o menos sólida a lo largo del Siglo XX!

3. Si tienes contenido teórico, estás sujeto a la verificación. Las religiones o las teorías metafísicas, en cuanto a que tienen un corpus doctrinal o teórico, sus proposiciones están sujetas a ser mostradas como falsas. Por lo tanto, nada está blindado al análisis racional. Todo, en palabras kantianas, puede pasar por el gran tribunal de la razón. Los cristianos dicen que “Cristo resucitó”, enunciado declarativo y, por lo tanto, verificable.

¿Con esto eliminamos toda filosofía? No, pero la lógica matemática y la contrastación empírica nos deben llevar siempre de la mano. No está mal especular, pero una especulación alejada completamente de cualquier tipo de contacto con la experiencia acabará por ser ridícula (como el Universo geométrico del joven Kepler) mientras que un conjunto de datos empíricos sin interpretación será algo tosco y pobre.

(Copyright © 2009)

Enough words. Time for pictures. These are slides from the PowerPoint I showed on the last day of my adult ed class on consciousness at MDI High School in Bar Harbor. See for yourself.

Steve Perrin

It is worth pausing to make comparison with a similar moral antinomy, much discussed in the Scholastic period: Is it right to obey a mistaken conscience? On the one hand, obeying one’s conscious is, apparently by definition, something it is always right to do. On the other hand, a mistaken conscience is, again by definition, a conscience that instructs you to do the wrong thing. So doing what a mistaken conscience tells you is to do right and wrong at the same time. There is a lesson to be learned from the deft way Aquinas, confronting this paradox of “perplexity”, thrusts it aside. “One can withdraw from the error”, he tells us (Summa Theologiae II. 1.19 ad 3). Commentators have expressed bewilderment at this, for it is, of course, not an answer to the question, but an evasion. It does not tell us what to do when our conscience is mistaken; it tells us  not to have a mistaken conscience. Is Aquinas merely saying, “If that was where I wanted to go, I wouldn’t start from here” – always a bad answer to practical questions, since “here” is where all practical questions start from? No: he means that there is something that the framing of the question has left out of account; the alternative is wrongly posed. It beguiles us into imagining a helpless innocent pathetically trapped between the devil of dutiful wrongdoing and the deep blue sea of guilt-ridden right-doing. Moral reality is simply not like that.

– Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (2008), p.31

In this passage, profound Christian ethicist and theologian Oliver O’Donovan points out a little lesson in philosophy, which I always thought was given voice by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Pragmatists like John Dewey and William James. O’Donovan surprisingly points out that the same move can be seen in the work of the medieval theologian Aquinas (ca. 1225-1275). Perhaps proof that there is, after all, nothing new under the sun.

The lesson is: rejecting the question. A philosophical stance towards questions, or a least a philosophical stance informed by Wittgenstein, Pragmatism (and Aquinas!) holds that not every question is a good question. Questions can be loaded and so naturally push you towards one answer; questions can set up false dichotomy’s and distinctions and so obscure other relevant options or ideas; questions can be motivated not by the neutral task of pure inquiry but by mysterious and complex psychological and political reasons.

The difference between O’Donovan’s point as sourced via Aquinas, and this idea of scrutinizing questions (and indeed the very act of asking questions), is that Christians believe that there is an objective, concrete reality which can be obscured and manipulated by bad questions. O’Donovan concludes, ‘Moral reality is simply not like that’, a phrase Wittgenstein and the Pragmatists wouldn’t want to be caught saying. However I think this moral (and probably metaphysical) realism provides a greater incentive to reject bad questions, since they genuinely can hide features of an independent reality, they genuinely can fail to latch onto the way things are.

Wittgenstein was interested in what about the human psychology motivates people to ask philosophical questions, Pragmatists were worried about how allegedly neutral questions could be political and ethical questions in a Groucho Marx disguise. O’Donovan and Aquinas are concerned that certain questions simply fail to carve out reality at the joints, to capture the richness and complexity of reality.

… Ulf Stolterfoht kündigt Thomas Poiss in der FAZ vom 19.5. an. Sagt aber:

Stolterfoht ist durch seinen anschaulichen Sprachwitz jeder glatten Post-Postmoderne voraus. Wer wie er die neuesten Theorien nach Wittgenstein und Chomsky in poetischen Sätzen reflektiert, verkörpert und beim Wort nimmt und also weiß, wohin der Hase theoretisch läuft, der hat als Dichter gut reden.

Zu: Fachsprachen XIX – XXVII. Gedichte
Urs Engeler Verlag, Basel 2005
ISBN 3905591804
Kartoniert, 128 Seiten, 17,90 EUR