pongamos que creo en la fraternidad universal, me uno a otros que creen lo mismo en una asociación o un partido y finalmente nuestras creencias se imponen en la sociedad. si al lado existe un país belicoso que crea lo contrario, y entramos en guerra, necesito la bomba atómica para asegurar la victoria de la sociedad que yo considero correcta. pero eso no es muy fraternal, ¿no? si me dejo invadir porque carezco de armas, muere mi idea. si utilizo la fuerza y aplasto a mis hermanos, también.

pues vaya reflexión matutina. ¿te pongo un bol de cereales?

sí. es que ayer vi un documental sobre civilizaciones antiguas. los únicos que no eran nos perros de presa eran los minoicos, ¿y sabes qué les pasó?

no.

que se los tragó el mar.

¿y eso?

una ola gigante, después de la erupción de un volcán. decía el documental que de no ser por este hecho fortuito habría cambiado la historia, y hacía suponer que para mejor, porque era una sociedad muy avanzada, igualitaria y justa, pero no estoy de acuerdo en absoluto. estaban rodeados de imperios con ganas de guerrear. de no haber sucumbido al tsunami, lo hubieran hecho bajo el ejército que tocara. o habrían aprendido peores artes para defenderse de sus enemigos.

osea, que más vale comprar una pistola que un libro de filosofía.

exacto.

mejor Kalashnikov que Wittgenstein.

fesstivamente.

Renee Descartes is often credited with skepticism in its modern form. The Cartesian “doubt everything” skepticism has spawned four hundred years of philosophical work in metaphysics and epistemology. The philosophical skeptic always begins with doubt, whereas generalized and widespread metaphysical doubt is oft considered a view of the past, skepticism continues to prompt strong philosophical work in current epistemology. Writing in the 1940’s Wittgenstein declared the death of philosophy in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Metaphysics was already held in precarious regard prior to the Tractatus but received a fatal blow after the book’s publication. Wittgenstein’s proclamation that “Most propositions that have been written about philosophical matters are not false but senseless” destroyed many metaphysicians’ careers. However, Wittgenstein seems to have changed his mind between the publication of the Tractatus (1922) and his work published posthumously (he died in 1951). In On Certainty, Wittgenstein engages skepticism with ferocity, and the pithy yet unfinished work shows Wittgensteintrying to make sense of doubt, belief, and knowledge. It is generally accepted that Wittgenstein changed his views markedly during his life; but how much is still being debated. The corollaries between the Tractatus and his later work, specifically On Certainty and the Philosophical Investigations, are striking. “To all of them the logical structure is common” but the ultimate philosophical implications of the early work are much more final in scope. The maturation process and his philosophical activities changed Wittgenstein. He held fast to the idea that philosophy needed to be shown through processes and the final product was not a theory but the changes in thought while doing philosophy.
Wittgenstein’s theory of knowledge is revised significantly in On Certainty from the theories set forth in the Tractatus. I will argue that as Wittgenstein’s philosophy changed, his epistemology became much stronger as it became increasingly indeterminate. Contingent knowledge becomes the onus in Wittgenstein’s revised epistemology. He hints at and skirts the issue in On Certainty, but evidence from the Philosophical Investigations supports this claim of revision. The Tractatus is used as a reference point; exploring how much Wittgenstein changed his philosophy and the areas that were revised during his life after the publishing of the Tractatus is as important as the differences between the texts. Wittgenstein claimed, “Philosophy is not a theory but an activity” , if we examine the results of the philosophical activity, which are recorded in his posthumous work, we are then able to extrapolate meaning. Wittgenstein’s “activity” was the time after the Tractatus was written until his death in 1951.
On Certainty begins as a refutation of G. E. Moore’s paper: “Proof of the External World”. Moore claimed that because he has one hand and another hand that there was indeed an external world. Wittgenstein finds this unacceptable. Its unacceptability, however, is not based on idealism, he thinks that knowledge and belief are much more complicated than merely stating “This is my hand”. Wittgenstein’s argument begins with the subliminal ambiguities and complexities with the proposition “I know …”. Within the language game, “knowing” manifests itself in a multitude of situations, the proposition “I know the answer to the question” means something entirely different from “I know that my name is Gordon Speagle”. In the former, I might not know the answer to the question. If I am asked what the capital of Illinois is and I answer “Vandalia”, I was wrong in saying that “I knew” the answer. It seems that the “not knowing” of the first proposition is a mistaken belief, I did not have the knowledge, I only believed that I did. Wittgenstein asks if it is even possible to be wrong, (if I am of sound mind) about my name. No, it is not possible nor does it make any sense to ask if I am wrong. If someone asks me if I am “sure that my name is Gordon Speagle”, of course I am sure, the certainty is founded on something unavailable to the proposition “I know that the capital of Illinois is Vandalia”. I might have thought “I knew” the capital of Illinois, but it is absolutely senseless for me to entertain the thought “I think my name is Gordon Speagle”.
The language game is the structure that all doubts and knowledge take place within. Only within the language game are we able to have knowledge and the capacity to doubt. Knowledge presupposes the ability and the function of doubting. “If you tried to doubt everything you would not get so far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.” We can only doubt once we have knowledge, this is a major theme in On Certainty. What is the knowledge that is presupposed and consequently enabling the possibility to doubt? Doubt is subservient to knowledge. Universal doubt is epistemically incomprehnsible. It is not illogical to doubt everything, but applying it without a presupposition of foundational knowledge is incoherent. Wittgenstein asks “Can one say: where there is no doubt there is no knowledge?” . What are the implications if one does accept the proposition? The proposition changes the subservience of doubt into an equal relationship with knowledge. The knowledge/doubt relationship changes from conditional to bi-conditional. The implications hinge on the definition of knowledge and belief. It is impossible to accept the proposition. The proposition implies that knowledge is dependent on doubt as much as doubt is dependent on knowledge. We cannot doubt if we do not know.
Wittgenstein cannot reasonably determine why a proposition such as “My name is Gordon Speagle” is immune to doubt. It does not have the same indubitable properties that mathematical truths contain. “Property” is a vague term anyway. Can “2 +2 = 4” be said to consist of properties? But aside from the metaphysical questions about what it is to be a number, the mathematical proposition seems to be founded on knowledge that is much more certain than “My name is Gordon Speagle”, yet I will no more doubt my name than I will basic arithmetical propositions. Where is our certainty of knowledge acquired? Wittgenstein claims, “When a child learns language it learns at the same time what is to be investigated and what not” . This seems plausible, but it implies that certainty in knowledge is a wholly human construct, the language game is fraught with parameters that are explained when a child begins to participate. I cannot accept this unless there is a fissure in the definition of “certainty”; Wittgenstein seems to take issue with this as well. Is this problem to be resolved with Occham’s razor? Is the problem merely an inability of language to appropriately distinguish between types of certainty? It is extremely lazy to claim this dilemma is the result of vagueness in language. Austineans might proceed in that route, but I am unwilling to accept an Ordinary Language solution to the abstruseness intrinsic in certainty. We think and act with certainty; the “certainty” of my name is phenomenologically indistinguishable between my “certainty” that 2 + 2 = 4, yet the logic behind the mathematical proposition is infallible, my name is merely contingent, but the contingent certainty is no less valid to me than the logic underlying the mathematics.
The privative language argument in the Philosophical Investigations helps clarify what Wittgenstein means when he claims that fruitful investigations are taught. Wittgenstein argues for the impossibility of a private language; not the impossibility of having an internal dialogue or thoughts or cognitions in specific languages, but the inability to create and implement a language known only to the person who created it. He uses sensations, specifically pain, to clarify his stance. He uses a thought experiment in which no person in the world had any visible physical expression of pain; consequently there exists no specific word for pain. A certain man in this world decides to define the sensation he has (comparable to “pain” in our language game) with a sign each time he experiences the sensation. How would he use this sign? His definition is only ostensive; it serves absolutely no purpose. Wittgenstein uses a striking metaphor to explain his rejection of the idea of a privative language

Why can’t my right hand give my left hand money? […] When the left hand has taken the money from the right, etc. we shall ask: “Well, and what of it?” And the same could be asked if a person had given himself a private definition of a word; I mean if he has said the word to himself and at the same time has directed his attention to a sensation

How is the private language refutation applicable to the skepticism in On Certainty? The refutation reinforces his claim that children are taught what is appropriate for investigation and what is not. An investigation, philosophical or other, cannot exist outside the language game. Certain investigations are logically impossible; the privative language argument shows this. Without a communicative referential chain between the word and sensation, and also a common use of the word among speakers of the language, the word is meaningless. Without the language game there is no knowledge.
Wittgenstein is extremely ambivalent toward a concrete definition of certainty. The problematic area is between contingency and a prioricity. A priori is a loaded term, but seems appropriate when defining the nature of basic mathematics when compared to the contingency of my name being “Gordon Speagle”, Remarkably, though he spends the duration of On Certainty to showknowledge, certainty, and doubt, he gives an extremely concise definition of knowledge in Philosophical Investigations.: “And here “know” means the senselessness of uncertainty”.

The philosopher’s treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness

Examining an illness in its nascent stages is typically the most productive strategy for treatment. Unfortunately, as Wittgenstein notes, this is an impossibility in many philosophical questions; we must examine and “treat” the symptoms. How are we certain of anything? Certainty is presupposed by doubt, which is presupposed by knowledge. How are we to have access to knowledge, is it purely empirical? If knowledge were purely empirical, the language game would not begin in the first place. Noam Chomsky’s “poverty of stimulus” argument claims that humans are born with a predisposition to learn language and that there are certain grammatical and syntactical constructions that are consistent in all spoken languages. Though Chomsky’s argument is not without criticism, there is a vast body of evidence that supports it. It seems that we are preprogrammed to learn language. In what seems to be a concession of some sort, Wittgenstein writes

I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but not ratiocination. As a primitive creature in a primitive state. Any logic good enough for a primitive means of communication needs no apology from us. Language did not emerge from some kind of ratiocination.

I think Wittgenstein lays the foundation for an explanation as to why some seemingly metaphysically unjustified knowledge is certain. Animal instincts guide and direct action among all living species. The nestling and nursing instinct of infants is not based on whether or not the mother is present, they are born with such adaptations in order to ensure their survival. The development of language was naturally selected. Wittgenstein seems to acknowledge this, but in the Tractatus he writes, “The Darwinian Theory has no more to do with philosophy than has any other hypothesis of natural sciences” . He seems to have changed his mind. The link between psychology and evolution was in its nascent stages in the era of the Tractatus’ publication, but was his change of philosophical direction a product of the advancement of the natural sciences or a result of his years of thought and investigation? Does it matter?
Instincts are contingent; yet they were and are necessary for our survival. Instincts in species vary, but I will deal specifically with them in human beings and their role in our evolution. Instincts could have been different; they depend on the environmental circumstances and other factors that foment natural selection. In fact, the variety of species in the world is evidence that instincts are contingent. All life evolved from single celled organisms, yet different factors inculcated different instincts and the result after about 7 billion years is the plethora of life on the planet earth. Contingent properties are what separate an amoeba from a killer whale. Instinctual properties are present because of a long evolutionary history; species survive because of different mutations that ensure their fitness. Initially these properties were purely physiological, but as different species evolved and brains developed, behaviors became instinctual. Bird migration, predator/prey relationships, and eventually complex social environments in the primates are all examples of behavioral instincts. Instincts presuppose the logic of language. There is an innate logic to grammar and syntax that is impossible to think about illogically, but this type of ratiocination only developed after our instincts were firmly entrenched into our psychological constitution. We were only able to ask such questions that are contrary to our instincts [e.g. “Did the earth exist before I was born?”], after we had developed a language game that allows us to think about such questions. If primitive creatures had had the ability to think propositions that were contrary to their instincts, they would not have survived. If a bear wonders whether or not her cubs exist while she is out foraging in order to feed them, she wastes energy and time that will inevitably negatively impact the overall fitness of her species. The contingent nature of animal instincts is what allows us to question them now that we have developed a complex language game that allows such doubt.
Are instincts properties? Yes, it is impossible to consider a living creature without them. But they are not necessary. All our instincts could have been different. “A property is internal if it is unthinkable that its object does not possess it” “Objects” in the Tractatus are recursively explained. Wittgenstein gives numerous explanations on the nature and properties of objects, their “function” (for lack of a better word, he insinuates that they have no function, but using the word “purpose” implies too much agency as well as role, and the word “meaning” is essentially a linguistic property in the language game). Is it possible to use an interpretation of the Tractatus to consider human beings as objects? I am taking such a liberty, Wittgenstein seeks to redefine the world through propositions and logic, and it is impossible to remove human beings and their consequent thoughts from this picture of things. It is not “unthinkable” to consider a species with instincts that are different from what they have. Unless he is arguing for determinism, which he is not, then instincts are certainly contingent and therefore can be thought of as different. It is also impossible to consider a higher function species without instincts, it seems that instincts, whatever the function, are internal properties of objects. One might reply “But if you can think of a different property for an object, you are merely thinking of a different object” or “Instincts are types, different manifestations of instincts are just tokens, you are being too specific with semantic categorizations”. The potential refutations lack any practical application. My identity holds even though I have different physical characteristics from when I was 5 years old. I am not a different object because I have grown. If the token/type distinction is used in refutation, it becomes an infinite regress and egress, a never ending splitting of hairs. I can think of a mole without its instinct to burrow, this mole is destined for extinction, but it is not impossible to imagine. Single celled organisms, the progenitors of all higher functioning species, exist without any cognitive abilities; they are essential living things without instincts. Wittgenstein himself opened the door for an evolutionary application of doubt; he acknowledges that instincts are the properties of primitive animals and therefore allows for the possibility of an evolutionary explanation for contingent certainty.

It is as if “I know” did not tolerate metaphysical emphasis

In the latter half of On Certainty, the distinction between “I know” and “I believe” is “shewn”. As typical of Wittgenstein, he does not explicitly state a definition of either, he uses aphorism to elucidate the concepts. “Knowing” has much more epistemologically force than “believing”. “Believing” is vulnerable to doubt, and a contradiction between one’s beliefs and the facts does not carry with it the same detrimental effects that finding out that one is wrong in their knowledge. I believe that the tree I am looking act is not plastic. If upon further investigation I discover that it is indeed plastic, I do not think that all trees are plastic, I merely consider it a mistake in perception. The distinction between knowledge and belief is the potentiality of doubt and the degree of such. Knowledge is susceptible to deep epistemological doubt, and consequently the realization that our knowledge was flawed or entirely wrong separates philosophical skepticism from generalized skepticism. Doubt concerning our beliefs is not uncommon. Beliefs are inferred from knowledge. Without any knowledge, there is no belief. I “know” that my name is Gordon Speagle, belief is implied by knowledge. If I know something it is superfluous to declare that I believe it as well. But knowledge does not guarantee the truth-value of a belief. A theory of knowledge is required before the possibility of even discussing belief. But an error in the inference from knowledge can lead to false beliefs. It is illogical to have false knowledge. False knowledge is not knowledge; it is an ill-founded belief. Knowledge does not allow the possibility of error. Belief is distinct from knowledge insofar as beliefs can be wrong, and if so they are not grounded on knowledge. Knowledge does not allow for the possibility of falsity.
Contingent certainty is why I can say with the same assurance that “My name is Gordon Speagle” as I can say “2 + 2 = 4”. But how is the certain proposition of “My name is Gordon Speagle” related to our atavistic instincts, which allow for contingent certainty? As primitive creatures lacking ratiocination, we acted purely instinctually. As language and the scaffolding of the language games developed, instinctual behaviors began to manifest themselves in the language games. Why is it that children do not question their textbooks when they are told that all matter is made up of very small particles that are predominantly empty? Instinctually, human children have evolved to believe adults. This adaptation ensures the survival of the species. The primitive human children who did not mimic their parents or do as they were instructed were eradicated from the gene pool; they would have died prior to reproductive age. Many philosophers eschew reference or evidentiary data from the Natural Sciences in philosophical writing, especially when discussing a theory of knowledge. We have reached a point in the study of human thought and evolutionary biology where it is impossible not to intermingle evolution and philosophy, and it is anthropocentric to continue to hold that epistemology is immune to evolutionary explanations.
A priori knowledge is a controversial topic in epistemology. Since Quine’s article “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, many analytic philosophers have discounted the existence of any a priori knowledge, and it has been somewhat of a taboo term in philosophical circles. Quine argued in his essay, that since some knowledge thought to be a priori has since been revised, the notion of the a priori in general should be discarded. Quine uses the example of Euclidean geometry. In his axioms, Euclid laid the groundwork for classical geometry; all triangles add up to 180 degrees, two lines parallel to one another will never intersect. However, as our knowledge of the world increased, so did our understanding of pure and applied mathematics. Triangles on non-Euclidean planes, such as hyper curved surfaces, can add up to more than 180 degrees. Consequently, because Euclidean geometry was thought to be undeniably a priori for so long, the fact that it is not forces the entirety of what is considered a priori into a state of revision. Quine’s argument changed epistemology, and though I agree that the not all knowledge once thought to be a priori actually is, I am unconvinced that the notion should be abandoned all together. “An a priori true thought would be one whose possibility guaranteed its truth” I claim that “2 +2 =4” is just such a thought. Wittgenstein was a constructivist in his view of mathematics, but I don’t think that has any bearing on whether or not basic arithmetical operations are a priori. The certainty of such propositions, mathematical and logical is determined by their a prioricty.
Contingent certainty is based on adaptive instincts. Language developed long after our biological and psychological instincts were programmed into humans via Natural Selection. Our certainty that the world existed prior to our birth, my certainty that my name is Gordon Speagle, a person’s certainty that she had never been to Saturn, this type of certainty has the same force that an a priori logical proposition does, but the foundation of certainty in the contingent propositions is a byproduct of our biology. Wittgenstein grants that animal instincts play a major role in why we are certain of things, which for all intents and purposes should not be immune to doubt. Basic arithmetical propositions are immune to doubt. When I perform the calculation of 3 x 3, I do not doubt the certainty of the calculation when I determine that the answer is in fact 9. If one were to propose an answer different than 9, the doubt would not fall onto the validity of the calculus itself, but on the ability of the person to appropriately understand the calculus. Regardless of what a person thinks about the notion of a priori knowledge, the certainty corresponding to such knowledge is undeniably powerful. Contingent certainty, it seems, though logically perfectly available to incredulity, does not follow such logic. I am as certain of contingent knowledge as I am of a priori knowledge.

Luca Sofri dal suo blog:

Sai-che-scoperta

Elena Stancanelli ha scritto una piacevole e accurata recensione di Kindle, su Repubblica di oggi. Ma anche lei ritiene sia rilevante concludere che è diverso dai libri di carta.
È come se all’invenzione dell’automobile avessimo commentato che i cavalli erano un’altra cosa (qualcuno l’avrà fatto, certo).

L’unica cosa che dico e` che mentre l’automobile ha portato vantaggi enormi nei trasposti, Kindle non porta gli stessi vantaggi nella lettura, e` piu` che altro un vezzo. Saro` old fashoned ma leggermi guerra e pace su kindle mi viene da spararmi solo a pensarlo…

“¿Qué sé sobre Dios y la finalidad de la vida?”. Esta pregunta fue escrita el 11 de junio de 1916 en el frente, durante la primera guerra mundial, en el cuaderno de apuntes de un joven soldado de 27 años de nombre Ludwig Wittgenstein. Aquella pregunta expuesta bajo el sonido metálico de la artillería debería ser motivo de reflexión para el ateo más frívolo y para todo cristiano. “Bueno y malo dependen, de algún modo del sentido de la vida. Podemos llamar Dios al sentido de la vida, esto es, al sentido del mundo. Y conectar con ella la comparación de Dios con un padre. Pensar en el sentido de la vida es orar. Creer en Dios quiere decir comprender el sentido de la vida. Creer en Dios quiere decir ver que con los hechos del mundo no basta. Creer en Dios quiere decir ver que la vida tiene un sentido. Sea como fuere, de alguna manera y en cualquier caso somos dependientes, y aquello de lo que dependemos podemos llamarlo Dios…”.

Wittgenstein murió el 29 de abril de 1951 con el deseo último de recibir un funeral católico. Quién ha leído la obra de Wittgenstein sabe bien que el pensador austríaco nunca hablaba por hablar. Siempre decía que era preferible responder siempre con otra pregunta que con un juicio que pudiera ser, en algún momento, rebatido. Su deseo de morir cristianamente no responde al deseo febril de un doliente, sino al deseo de alguien que supo responder a ¿qué sé sobre Dios y la finalidad de la vida? Tras el Tractatus, único trabajo que quiso publicar en vida, dijo “mi trabajo consta de dos partes. La expuesta en él (Tractatus) más todo lo que no he escrito. Y es esta segunda parte precisamente la que es más importante”. Sólo mediante esta explicación se puede entender la raíz de la ética wittgensteiniana: el sentido de la vida.

Sobre el sentido de la vida – que en su primera etapa es denominada bajo el término de lo místico – ni la filosofía ni la ciencia, en tanto que discursos elaborados por el lenguaje humano – limitado – pueden pronunciarse con rigor. Lo bueno – la felicidad, que es el fin de la vida par Wittgenstein – no guarda ninguna relación con los hechos del mundo, y por tanto el lenguaje no puede orientarnos hacia el bien. Para poder hablar con más propiedad sobre el bien Wittgenstein se sirve de términos neotestamentarios para expresar cuál es la máxima concreción de lo ético. “Cuando algo es bueno, también es divino. Extrañamente sí se resume mi ética. Sólo lo sobrenatural puede expresar l Sobrenatural. Lo bueno es lo que Dios manda. Dios Hijo – o la palabra que procede de Dios – es lo ético”. En la teología cristiana el Hijo revela al Padre como lo ético expresa lo divino. De este modo, para comprender el sentido de la vida sólo nos queda vivir en concordancia con Dios-Hijo: realizar e bien que Él nos ha mostrado con su vida y su muerte en la cruz.  

Ludwig Wittgenstein tenía tendencias homosexuales. Durante su vida tuvo momentos de excesiva promiscuidad, aunque siempre intentó vivir la castidad. Por eso era una persona que amaba la soledad – incluso meditó la posibilidad de ser religioso –, para alejarse del contacto sexual fácil. Para él el cristianismo era “la descripción de algo que realmente tiene lugar en la vida humana. Porque la conciencia del pecado es un suceso real; y también lo son la desesperanza y la salvación a través de la fe”. “El cristianismo no se basa en una verdad histórica, sino que nos da una noticia histórica y dice: ¡ahora cree! Pero no cree esta noticia con la fe que corresponde a una noticia histórica, son cree sin más y esto sólo puedes hacerlo como resultado de una vida”.  

Wittgenstein era eminentemente místico, de ahí que no tuviera la necesidad de escribir sobre Dios ni sobre su experiencia espiritual: “la esencia de la religión no depende en absoluto de una teoría, ni de si las palabras son verdaderas, falsas o sin sentido”. Esta sentencia es similar a la del Maestro Eckhart: “¿Cómo debo entonces amar a Dios? No lo amarás tal y como es: no como un Dios, no como un espíritu, no como una persona, no como una imagen, sino como el uno absoluto y puro. Y en este uno nos hundiremos de la nada a la nada, y que Dios nos ayude”. Siguiendo el Tractatus Wittgenstein se ocupa de Dios al no describirlo ya que tiene claro de lo que es posible pensar y hablar de lo que no lo es.  

Que Wittgenstein era un hombre de profunda religiosidad lo demuestra una anécdota que recoge Drury en Algunas notas sobre conversaciones con Wittgenstein: “Me comentó que durante una época había comenzado cada día orando el Padre nuestro”. En Diarios secretos el propio filósofo austriaco dice: “Cierto es que el cristianismo representa la única vía hacia la felicidad” o “El Antiguo Testamento visto como el cuerpo sin cabeza; el Nuevo Testamento: la cabeza; las Epístolas de los apóstoles: la corona sobre la cabeza. Cuando pienso en la Biblia judía, el Antiguo Testamento solo, quisiera decir: a este cuerpo le falta (todavía) la cabeza. A este problema le falta la solución. A estas esperanzas, el cumplimiento”. También dice: “La fe religiosa y la superstición son muy diferentes. Una surge del temor y es una especie de falsa ciencia. La otra (la fe) es un confiar”.   

Rhees en Recuerdos de Wittgenstein señala que “una vez Wittgenstein recibió una carta de un viejo amigo de Austria, un sacerdote, quien le expresaba su deseo de que su trabajo marchara bien, ‘si Dios quiere’. Wittgenstein dijo: “Eso es todo lo que deseo; si Dios quiere. Bach escribió en la primera página de su Orgelbuchlein, ‘para la mayor gloria del Señor, y que mi prójimo pueda beneficiarse de esta obra’. Eso es lo que me hubiera gustado decir acerca de mi trabajo”.  

Bibliografía

Investigaciones filosóficas. Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Tractatus Lógico-philosophicus. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ed. Crítica

Diarios secretos. Ludwig Wittgenstein. Alianza Editorial.

Los textos fundamentales de Ludwig Wittgenstein. Greg Brand. Alianza Universidad.

Las variedades de la experiencia religiosa. William James. Ediciones Península.

Religión y relativismo en Wittgenstein. Joaquín Jareño. Ariel.

Lenguje, magia y metafísica (el otro Wittgenstein)” Librerías Prodhufi.

I was reading Wittgensteins’ Tractatus last night.  Ok,  even I wouldn’t actually pick it up and snuggle down by the fire–even if we had a fireplace–and curl up with the Tractatus for the evening. The fact (more about ‘facts’ in a sec), that the Tractatus has its own definite article preceding only the first part of the title belies the specialness of the text.  Calling it the Tractatus is worthy of an ironic chuckle…this is pure  ironic familiarity, kind of like calling Jean Paul Sartre ol’ Johnny.  You just have to know the power of this book to appreciate the irony.  Those of you unfamiliar with the Tractatus Logico Philosphicus,  check out a copy at the local library.

When you do, take heed of the proper awe the Tractatus inspires.  The correct treatment of this odd little wisp of a book is to slowly take it down from the shelf, open to its first pages, inhale deeply, close the book, and return it to its place on the shelf.

Beware, it’s power is awesome and strange. It will have you pondering the familiar:  Facts and Things.  How often do you, while, say, folding a load of laundry, stop to ponder how that act defines our immediate reality? What’s at issue here?  The towel before you, or the act of folding it.  I mean, really.  Here, I’ll show you what I mean.   Take a gander, (and this is only its opening few sentences):

The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts.

I was looking for one of my mom’s cookbooks when I found my old copy of the Tractatus from college.  I picked it up, nostalgic for the days when thoughts filled with more than the ideal order of cleaning: First, to vacuum or dust?  I read the above lines and they got me to thinking, if a fact being a irrefutable assertion about a thing…for example, “The table is flat,” is a fact, in that I am making a irrefutable assertion about the table — it IS flat.  Could the Tractatus relate to things culinary? Could one possibly make a similar statement about what we eat?  Kinda like this:

1 tbl olive oil

1 tbl of chili powder
1 tbl of McCormick’s hot Taco Seasoning –use mild if you don’t do hot food
1 16 ounce jar of Newman’s Own All Natural Salsa

6 Tortillas, shredded lettuce, chopped tomatoes, guacamole, shredded cheese…any toppings you normally put on your tacos.

• Put thighs in large pot, cover with water
• Add the salt, whole garlic cloves, quartered onions  and bayleaf to the water
• Bring to a boil and reduce to a medium simmer
• Simmer for a 2 hours (adding water if necessary)
• When the meat is falling off the bone, remove from heat
• Put the chcken, onions and garlic cloves in a bowl and refrigerate to cool enough to handle
• Drain the liquid, save about a cupful
• When cooled, use your hands and remove all the bones and the skin (I keep the skin on because it really imparts more flavor)
• Shred the meat and slice the onions and if necessary, smash the garlic cloves
• Heat a tbl of oil in a frying pan,  
• Add the garlic and onions to dry out–do not scorch 
• Add cumin, when  fragrant, add the chicken
• Cook on low to absorb most of the liquid
• When the meat looks pretty dry, add 1/2 of the jar of salsa and some of the reserved water
• Sprinkle the taco seasoning and continue to cook for about 5 mins or until the chicken is hot.
• Serve on warm tortillas with the toppings of your choice.

Enjoy!

You have to really be in love with an art movement to create a whole collection to it, but as I said in my last post, Ms. Holly Fulton has backed up my wearing your art on your dress trend with plausible reference.

Inspired by Scottish Sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi’s Wittgenstein, her Spring/Summer 2010 collection is architectural, British, and sharp. Cleans lines and colour intertwine with embellishments of sequins, plastic and prints. Most designers who steer along these lines are bordering ostentatious, but Holly’s collection is wearable. Oh how modern; but it’s true. When I had a look at the line, the first thing I thought was “I could actually see a 40-year-old woman wearing this to work” and I think that was the intention. Even though there are fashion-forward references, it’s not dated. As a matter of fact, because of the reference used that makes it classic. The Monochromatic colour schemes remains consistent throughout, and each look breezes through to the next.

I like this one.

“Does my telephone call to New York strengthen my conviction that the earth exists?”
-Wittgenstein

Living in New York (for now), this question puts me under a lot of pressure. To convince people calling me that the earth exists. If they called in a panic? To be an example of groundedness, and so testify to ground, earth, soil… To be so important to them that I make it exist? A source of support, and supported. (Wittgenstein’s point is that there are certain things we take for granted, and he stresses that, even lacking explicit guarantees, we manage to “go on”).
I used to think how insane cellphones were, the possibility of having a conversation while walking. Same with conversations in cars: there’s a movement to a conversation that seems so complicated to maintain if you’re moving through a real landscape too. (What relationship, if any, does this bear to the frustration of talking on a sofa, facing forward like driving? And for another time: Calle’s red phone on the bed (bed art! Rauschenberg etc…) cutting out the middleman between the jangle of the receiver and the lid of the heart when he calls. Also the time the phone at the cottage broke and I liked knowing that if I called it would ring in rhythm indefinitely).
Recently I’ve been thinking about phonecalls on trains; I’m on them (trains) so often lately. It seems important that we consider lengthy cell conversations so rude but don’t mind if friends are traveling together, talking. Why, though? Because we’re curious and want to hear the whole thing? Does the halfness aggravate us like a chord that we want resolved? (Against this, Marshall Mcluhan’s claim that one need only ever read one of two facing pages, that we’re able to deal with blindspots.) Or the unsettlement that s/he – the telephonist – gets to confirm for someone that the earth exists, the unsought voyeurism?

Parliamoci chiaro. Murdoch è vecchio e stanco. Prima ha detto che le notizie sarebbero state a pagamento su Internet. Ora apprendo sfogliando Wittgenstein che vuole togliere le notizie dei suoi media dalle indicizzazioni lanciando una campagna anti-Google. Giusto che davanti alle dichiarazioni dell’anziano magnate australiano ci sia sempre tanta attenzione. Ma le ultime uscite davvero a me sembrano il canto del cigno di uno stanco imprenditore conservatore.

Purtroppo per Murdoch lui non può, molto più semplicemente, bloccare gli investimenti innovativi più importanti di un paese. Come fa Silvio.

una cena con Wittgenstein e Turing..?

John L.Casti – i cinque di Cambridge

Questo libro non parla di Apple ma parla della filosofia del pensiero e siccome questa è alla base della visione Apple, ho pensato che fosse interessante..

Che cosa significa reamente pensare, parla, vivere e comunicare..? Se lo chiedono cinque tra i più brillanti pensatori liberi e folli del XX secolo nel corso una cena immaginaria offerta da Charles Percy Snow, fisico e romanziere, che per cercare di colmare la mancanza di comunicazione tra la cultura umanistica e quella scientifica organizza una serata di buona cucina e buona cultura in una conveniente cornice i cui convitati sono:

Ludwig Wittgenstein filosofo e logico austriaco i cui contributi nella filosofia del linguaggio avevano fornito indicazioni significative nonostante abbia elaborato due interpretazioni in contrasto tra di loro in due diversi momenti della sua vita rivendicando la libertà di evoluzione del proprio pensiero..

Alan Turing matematico, logico e crittanalista inglese considerato uno dei padri dell’informatica.. Genio e visionario, Turing fu determinante per l’esito della seconda guerra mondiale con la sua opera di decrittazione dei codici segreti nazisti e la creazione di codici sicuri per le comunicazioni alleate.. Alan Turing morì suicida nel 1954 imitando la favola di Biancaneve e mangiando una Mela da lui stesso avvelenata con cianuro di potassio..

Erwin Schrödinger fisico e matematico austriaco pioniere della meccanica quantistica a cui portò contrinuti tali da vincere il Premio Nobel per la Fisica nel 1933..

John Burdon Haldane, biologo e genetista inglese ed inventore di un metodo di studio delle popolazioni attraverso la statistica..

La discussione verte sulla possibilità di costruire una macchina che sia in grado di pensare come l’uomo ma a questo punto occorre dare una definizione di cosa significhi “pensare” e le eleganti esposizioni dei commensali si dipanano tra una portata e l’altra…

Prima di poter ipotizzare una intelligenza artificiale è necessario fissare il concetto stesso di intelligenza, ma se uomini tanto brillanti devono prodursi in acrobazie logiche, sarà poi possibile l’esistenza di una macchina che possa pensare come un uomo senza avere interagito con la società nel suo complesso..?

Le risposte sono molte, almeno più degli interrogativi quindi non vi resta che leggere il libro e cercare di dare la vostra insieme a questi campioni del Think Different..

I cinque di Cambridge
Casti John L.
Prezzo € 15,00
Dati 1998, 166 p.
Traduttore Zoletto D.
Editore Cortina Raffaello (collana Scienza e idee)

Il Libro è in vendita su Internet Bookshop Italia

- Älskar du mig?

- Ja. Jag älskar dig

- Hur mycket?

- Oändligt

- …. är du säker?

- Ja.

yesterday, i was schooled by my friend austin choi-fitzpatrick. apparently, email is dead. email is “so 2006.” according to choi-fitzpatrick (wtf? i’m citing him like he’s the fucking scholar he is), email had it’s heyday from 1996-2006. now, email is a dead form. for him, email is only his inbox: subject headings, nothing more. for him, it’s all about facebook, text messaging, etc. we, as humans, reduced to 140 characters or less as our mode of communication.

this morning, i read wittgenstein’s notes & lectures on aesthetics, psychology, & religion. wittgenstein argues that language is not universal; however, physical reactions are. he talks, at length, about the inadequacy of words such as “beautiful” or “lovely,” that “beautiful” comes to represent not what is beautiful but an interjection. he argues:

would it matter if instead of saying ‘this is lovely,’ i just said, ‘ah!’ & smiled, or just rubbed my stomach? as far as these primitive languages go, problems about what these words are about, what their real subject is, don’t come up at all.

whereas i get wittgenstein’s point–words like beautiful or lovely are at times empty, they come to mean much less than what we mean them to mean–i don’t think we could simply substitute a grunt or a physical action. and i agree that words like “beautiful” never conjure up the same thing to any two people, that does not make the word itself–or words in general–obsolete. after all, facial expressions, gestures, etc. can be just as misleading, if not more so, than words.

but this got me thinking about what austin had to say (see here how i’ve switched to calling him austin): what if we play wittgenstein out to his logical extreme? in this increasingly technologically fragmenting world, what if rather than communicate via facebook or text or even email, we just used emoticons, as our way of expressing emotion & feeling? rather than say, “i had a shitty day,” i could just put up a some frazzle faced grumpy tired face? here’s the thing, as austin pointed out, we can’t just have our 10-20 emoticons. we need combinatory abilities. then, we’ll create a new language, one with more capacity for miscommunication & confusion.

one of my colleagues, a philosopher, asked me, as i was thinking out loud about this earlier this morning, what does this reduction of experience into 140 characters do? i had my standard answer, nothing sophisticated or new: well, obviously, it breaks down communication, such that we’re nothing but quippy cleverness that generates as many “responses” as possible. real life people, we’re bound to disappoint, but on facebook, we’re clever.

this is particularly pertinent to these blogs popping up everywhere. i’m a fan of html giant, but what’s there is a lot of self-referential cleverness. is big other any different? is my blog any different? no! but you get a bunch of writers in a room together without booze, and what happens? i remember walking around awp, a freaked out zombie, unable to talk to people. i remember walking around &now, eyes racing from person to person, hiding & wanting to be seen. i’d like to blame technology for that, but it turns out i’ve just got social anxiety. but the thing is that everyone today has social anxiety, and that’s something for reals we can pin on technology. are you cooler than your facebook persona? that’s the real question.

and as for email, i love email. i have long email exchanges with many friends. it’s my preferred mode of communication. i mean, i’d love to sit & talk to most of these people, but email gives me time to think over things, ruminate, delete, cut & paste, etc etc etc. that, & i don’t actually have to leave my house.

da Wittgenstein

The (man in the) robe

A memory—no, really a flash/back— déjà vu—an event happened long ago yet probably never happened. I approach an intersection (walking up the street from the left (perhaps from the South)) and reach the intersection of (at least) five streets and turn left. Left. Walk up (down) the street looking in shop windows. A corner bar. A novelty shop set back from the street like the storefronts of 50s Scottsbluff. A corner bookstore I cannot enter. What differends does it make? At the end of the street immediately before it drops off into nothing (see Bailey’s Café) I turn left again down the same street. I know this one. Boylston. Brookline, MA. Or is it Broadway. Scottsbluff. NE. Yes, the broad way again and I turn around and come up (why up?) the street retracing my steps past the bookstore, the door set in from the street, display cases in the windows left and right, old wooden door, mostly glass, but when I get inside it’s a horror shop. I run. Frightened. Back up the street past several bars back to the five corners. And the flash/back is over. Over? Did it ever begin? Images: real. Situation: not. A dream? Who came from New York to Scottsbluff and needed Broad Way to feel at home. After fifty years the old Midwest Theater is the West Nebraska Arts Center. Once the home of The Robe, and Richard Burton so broody handsome and Victor Mature so hot. And a few years later Ben Hur and Charlton Heston so overblown and that jaw of his like a prosthetic, so frightening then and no wonder he loved guns you could see it in that goddam chariot race if you were looking. Give my junior high school memory to Richard Burton and Victor Mature any day. I have to decide which of five streets to continue and then I’m back down at the bottom of the street and walking past the shops which have all changed except the bar. But I manage to walk by. Bye. Bye.

            The differends between modernism and postmodernism show up when the modernists,  who are connected to history, the body, and the conscious mind, and the postmodernists,  who provisionally attach themselves to a kind of utopian future anterior, the psyche, and the unconscious mind, decide, if they are modernists, that bodies are real and take precedence over the language that names them, or, if they are postmodernists, that language, image, and technology map and give name to what we call “reality”: our bodies, our beliefs, and even our selves.**

Are bodies real that walk down the same haunted street time and time again (or is it a dream I remember or my rich fantasy life) “connected to history, the body, and the conscious mind” or do “language, image, and technology map and give name to what we call “reality”: our bodies, our beliefs, and even our selves.” Language, image, technology (words I use, images from my past—real, dream, or imagined—computer under my fingers, the screen vibrating in my face and no doubt causing seizures by the minute) map (draw pictures of, overlay the truth of with symbols and simulacra) and give names to it (Broadway, the broad way, the b(roadway), the (bro)ad-way, or the Main Street). 

Let’s leave the worlds of Scottsbluff Midwest Theater Victor Vitanza Cynthia Haynes Lisa Coleman Richard Burton Victor Mature (by all means that charlatan Heston) and wander back to the year of my birth (Wittgenstein’s writing and my life are perhaps coterminous? and which of the roads at the five corners shall we take?).   

The theater (in/of) my dreams

496. Grammar does not tell us how language must be constructed in order to fulfil its purpose, in order to have such-and-such an effect on human beings. It only describes and in no way explains the use of signs.
497. The rules of grammar may be called “arbitrary,” if, that is to mean that the aim of the grammar is nothing but that of the language. If someone says “If our language had not this grammar, it could not express these facts” –it should be asked what “could” means here.
499. To say “This combination of words makes no sense” excludes it from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason. . .the purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in or out…[it may] be part of a game and the players be supposed, say, to jump over the boundary; or it may shew where the property…ends …. So if I draw a boundary line that is not yet to say what I am drawing it for.
500.  When a sentence is called senseless, it is not as it were its sense that is senseless. But a combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation.” ***

496. The use of grammar in my writ(ing) is confusing only because you expect a certain construction that will, in itself qua grammar, explain what effect I want the symbols I am using (the words, the squiggles on the screen) to have. My words describe, they do not explain.
497. “Could” is the operative word, of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse, a horse.
499. What boundaries I draw with my words may well be my secret. Or, if I want you to play my game, I will have to ex(plain) the rules. Or you will have to in(vent) your own rules for my game, and we can work (toget)her (or (separate)ly) with/from the allowable parameters of the (bound)arie(s) I have drawn to decide what I drew them for (can one even draw bounds?).
500. When you call my writing “senseless”, it’s not what I mean that you call senseless. The boundaries I have drawn around my words do not, perhaps, have my desired effect because they only describe what I mean and do not explain to you what I mean.

The overlay of simulacra on my life begins with my walk down the street or my first seizure in second grade OR the seizure I’m having right now. Do my seizures seize my life, or does my brain seize my life and take it down streets it’s been down before but does not recognize, or do I seize my life away from my brain and let it go where it wants (needs) to go without my brain (thinking) to interfere. My seizures, in any event, “surround an area with a fence or a line or otherwise, the purpose may be to prevent someone from getting in or out; but it may also be part of a game” a game a game a game to which neither you nor I know the rules, and I can’t imagine why academics and rhetoricians and composition teachers [or even YOU] you could (what do we mean by “could”) imagine that “language, image, and technology map and give name to what we call “reality”: our bodies, our beliefs, and even our selves.” When there is no reality. All is differends, conflicts irresolvable “for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments.” ****

The (not so) broad way

When the academic rhetoricians have settled the question of “reality,” I want to know what they’ve found. And I don’t care if it’s modern, postmoderen, or post-postmodern.

**Coleman, Lisa, and Lorien Goodman. Introduction.
“Rhetoric/Composition:
Intersections/
Impasses/
Differends.”
Enculturation 5.1 (Fall 2003): http://enculturation.gmu.edu/5_1/intro.html 
*** Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, Third Ed. Trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958 (138-139).
**** Lyotard, Jean François. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute. Trans. George Van Den Abbeele. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. p. xi.

I must begin with a digression. I’m currently listening to Modest Mouse’s album ‘This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About‘and – I’ve got to say – goddamn(!), I wish I could write lines like Isaac Brock. Check this one out:

We kiss on the mouth, but still cough down our sleeves.

And that, my friends, is a piece of irony. One would expect that if you were willing to share our mouth germs (presumably with a loved one) through kissing, then you wouldn’t hesitate to cough in his or her presence. But sometimes humans don’t act logically. Goddamn. So much meaning in one tiny little line.

A second digression. Perhaps I ought to call it an ‘order of business’ (whatever that means). I need to start updating this fucking blog regularly. I hate looking at the visitation statistic-thingy and watching the number of readers each day go up and down like rollercoaster. So, gimme me some helpful commentary in the comments section: what days of the week are YOU most likely to sit down and read this blog? Don’t be shy.

Okay, subject of discussion for the day: the willing (and unwilling) suspension of disbelief. According to this Coleridge dude (the one who wrote that poem about killing an albatross), the reader’s suspension of disbelief is what makes fiction possible. Here’s sorta how it works – in my view.

Imagine: I pick up a yellow-wood pencil and tell you, “See this pencil. His name is Steve, and he’s really happy and content to be my pencil. He likes writing for me.” Further, we can imagine that I’ve drawn a little face on Steve, the pencil. So Steve has a little face. Then I pick up two smaller pencils with faces drawn on them and say “Here are Steve’s kids: Sally and John.” Then, abruptly, I break Steve into two pieces. You’re heart aches and you get tense. You feel bad for Steve … who is, of course, a pencil. The reason why you feel bad is because you were pretending that Steve was alive. You had – for the moment – forgotten that what I had in my hands was just a pencil: just wood and graphite.

Now here’s the kicker! Whenever you watch TV, you’re doing the same thing. You’re forgetting, for example, that no set of doctors are as good-looking as those that work for Dr. Gregory House. (At least during the first season.) In order to appreciate the show, you forget about the elements which are less than believable. You do it automatically! Without thinking about it.

The question we ought to ask ourselves: how much of our reality (not our fiction) have we invented by conveniently forgetting to look at the details that actually constitute physical reality? When you stop for a stop sign, is it always because you think that there are cops or cars waiting on the street perpendicular to you? Or do you feel almost as if their is an invisible net you’ll be breaking through if you weren’t to stop? Why is it that we get angry at our computers when they’re not working for us? When we see that little rainbow pinwheel spinning, doesn’t it feel as if the computer really is ‘thinking‘ – at least to some extent? When we think that way, what are we forgetting?

I sorta know the answer to this – and other, related – questions. I don’t think I could explain it to you, though. I think its one of those things you just come to understand, after thinking about it for long enough.

Fascist art is the unwanted child of expressionism and stringent rule following, pressed and molded under the boot heel of totalitarian propaganda.  Break the grip of one or the other on the imagination of the artist, and we can, finally, get back to the business of creating humanist art.

Let me elaborate.  Expressionism is concerned with the primacy of emotional expression in the creation and consumption of art.  It is not concerned with description as much as metaphysical prescription of what is valuable, and what it is to value.  It is not hard to see that unmoored from some sense of reality and allegiance to it, expressionism can be pressed into any shape whatsoever.  Consider: What is Jackson Pollock’s entire oeuvre, if not a tip o’ the hat to just such a proposition?

We are still friends; humanists, all, even now.  But add on rule following, that will not break its own apparatus of practice and we have a subtly mixed but no less-volatile compound.  Rules cannot recuse the follower from his obligation to forsake such and such a rule due to some other lexically prior right or obligation.  The rule, “traffic allowing, turn right on a red light” does not prescribe how long one should follow this rule or where one should follow it.  It is only the dogmatic lover of right turns and red lights who would follow that rule to the end of the world, the end of his days.  This man is, of course, the artist for whom expression is the only worthwhile value, and as a consequence, expressionism is his aesthetic.

Here and there, some Augustus will establish a totalitarian regime that attaches its instruments on the coerced bodies, and suspicious minds of the chosen many.  If for some artist the only value is expression and expressionism and it can be molded to fit any need, and rules are followed though lives be lost, is it not possible that Augustus himself could set upon this artist all the riches of the land to do what, for him, is his own good?  “Set about painting the social beneficnce of war and complete drawings that speak to the communal benefits of relenting during protest; I will give you your audience.  They are the people; they are you.”   Those people, their eyes pried open, gorge on so  much declamatory art, celebrating in signs and screed so little that is kind and humane.

Making higher order logic fun!

You know their names: Wittgenstein, Turing, Cantor, Gödel and Russell.  But do you know what they did? Or why their achievements (set theory, the incompleteness proof) are still important today?  Neither did I.  But unlike many of you, I work at an office where photos of Turing and Wittgenstein adorn the walls.  Ignorance was getting to be a greater liability than usual.  So when I saw favorable reviews for a new graphic novel called LogiComix (said to explain how this whole cast of characters are connected) I decided to order it.  The text is by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou.  Perhaps anachronistically, when it comes to philosophy, I have an instinctive trust for the Greeks.  This trust was not misplaced.

Maybe the book wouldn’t satisfy a specialist, but several hours in its company will likely increase your knowledge of logic and its history by several orders of magnitude, allow you to see connections you never noticed between intellectual figures you are only dimly aware of, and fill you with a sense of wonder at the kind of collaboration and competition that would eventually lead to computer theory and cybernetics.

The unlikely hero of LogiComix is Bertrand Russell, who, with Alfred North Whitehead, wrote the modestly titled Principia Mathematica in the pre-war years.  The co-authors were so obsessed with the project that they moved in together.  (This was convenient for Russell since he apparently had a thing for Mrs. Whitehead.)  The impetus for the project came after Russell exposed a major problem in logic and set theory—formalized as Russell’s paradox.  It was widely viewed as taking down the “naive set theory” associated with Frege and Cantor.  The paradox highlights the problem of self-reference with respect to sets.  Namely that naive set theory cannot handle the issue.

Russell’s Paradox in a Nutshell

There are many ways that the paradox can be made more intuitive (for non-specialists). Russell himself preferred the barber riddle, but let’s take a look at an example offered by LogiComix, since it makes the problem of self-reference more explicit.  First consider an “unproblematic” set.  Say, the set of all hand-tools (e.g hammer, screwdriver, etc).  You’ll likely agree that the set of all hand-tools is not itself a hand tool.  The set does not reference itself.   But this is not always the case.

Consider the following scenario:  say that you’re publishing a book that catalogues all books that do not refer to themselves.  You’ve excluded books like Sterne’s Tristam Shandy, Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions, LogiComix (its authors show up now and again to talk about how the book is coming along) and all autobiographies where the authors bemoan how long it’s taking them to write the damn thing.  Finally, you think you’ve got a complete list.  You give it to the editor and she notes…that there’s one book missing from the list: your book!

Without mentioning itself the book would not be complete—there would be one non self-referencing book missing.  But, if you include your book as an item, you would thereby introduce into “the set” a book that does reference itself.  You are stuck with the choice of having a set that is either incomplete or in contradiction.  This is Russell’s paradox in a nutshell.

As a paradox, it offers an example of undecideability.  And undecideability in mathematics is very bad, especially when your goal is to try to build an absolutely certain foundation for it.  Team Russell-Whitehead intended their Principia to correct the problem exposed by Russell’s Paradox, by making set theory less “naive.”  Incidentally, Principia does reference itself.

The Logic of the Quest

LogiComix will spare most of us the need of ever consulting this multi-volume tome.  Indeed hardly anyone has read the book.  But don’t let this prejudice you about the book’s influence.  It was said of the low-record selling Velvet Underground that hardly anyone bought a record, but all those who did started a band.  Similiarly, two prominent readers of Principia were Wittgenstein and (perhaps even more importantly) Kurt Gödel, who drew some of its most resonating consequences.

Like most successful graphic novels, LogiComix is essentially the story of a heroic quest—one that is surprisingly under-appreciated, given that this quest leads to the theory undergirding cybernetics and computing.  The early 20th century saw an explosion of interest and advances in the foundation of logic and mathematics unseen since Chryssipus was hanging out on the stoa (Gr. for porch, the Stoics philosophers’ namesake ).  Now the passion for firm foundations is a characteristically philosophical passion (think Descartes), and the discovery by a young Russell that mathematics rested on the epistemological equivalent of quicksand led him in a life-long search for Absolute Certainty.  Apparently this philosophical passion is almost indistinguishable from a certain kind of madness—which is another of the story’s threads.

As in all quests, the quixotic element is not missing here.  The search for absolute foundations (like the search for the smallest bit of matter) leads to the recognition of more (and deeper) hidden presuppositions.  Wittgenstein shows Russell that he assumes without warrant that mathematical objects exists “out there” in some objective way.  Gödel, at the end of the book, is depicted as puzzled as to why Russell allows himself to assume that all logical statements can in principle (that is, given enough time) be proven true or false. This hidden presupposition would prove fateful.

Gödel’s famous “Incompleteness Proofs” shows that any logical system capable of dealing with arithmetic (and therefore more complex mathematics) cannot be both consistent and complete. He demonstrated that it is possible to generate logical statements from within a system that cannot be proven without generating a contradiction. In particular, Gödel was demonstrating the necessary incompleteness of Russell’s Principia.  In doing so, he also shattered the first two pillars of David Hilbert’s “program” (which effectively organized all the activity of early 20th century logic).

Hilbert’s Program challenged logicians and mathematicians to create an axiomatic system (built on proven foundations) that could itself be demonstrated to be consistent (non contradictory), complete (no unproven element) and decidable (determinable by a decision procedure as True or False).  Gödel’s theory shows the system’s necessary incompleteness (to prove its completeness would involve a necessary contradiction).  Recognizing this, Von Neumann is widely quoted as declaring “it’s all over” at the end of the talk.  Well, not quite.

It was Turing who took out Hilbert’s last pillar—decideability—by showing that not every statement that could be formulated in a mathematical language could be decided upon (calculated).  His major contribution (as you can read in our post on Turing) was to show which types of statements were decideable.  This work is the foundation of computer theory.

End-Game

It took Russell and Whitehead over 300 pages to “prove” that 1+1=2, and the better part of a decade to write the Principia, only to see its proofs crumble under pressure from some of the 20th century’s greatest minds.  LogiComix asks its readers the non-negligible question of who is so in need of certainty that they would be willing to go through so much to prove what every child knows. It is finally a form of basic (if extreme) existential insecurity, the authors suggest, that motivated the momentous intellectual achievements of the previous century.

It might seem like this epic search for truth ended in failure (or logical rubble).  But, as is often the case with quests (and science), what you find is not the same thing as what you were looking for.  The “failures” of this foundational search laid the ground for nothing less than the technological infrastructure of modern life.

Inspired by the many comments on previous posts and their deferring visions (myself included) about systems, systems thinking and systems theory, I thought it was time for a post about these subjects. For now I will focus on systems thinking. We talked about whether organizations are systems or not, what systems are and are not, and if it helps to compare organizations with systems. Very precarious matter, it seemed. To me, it is precarious as well. To compare two things with each other is always tricky. Do we share the same vocabulary? Are we referring to the same? Are we oversimplifying the subject matter? Talking about organizations makes it even more trickier, because no organization is the same. The forms of organizations can differ, let alone the people who make up the conversation of organization. Think Wittgenstein here…

Like many people, I like to understand certain phenomena. If we do not understand, we tend to compare these phenomena with ones we do understand, or think we understand. That comparison should help us with understanding the more complex phenomena. While this can be a strategy that helps us, it can distract us from the important aspects of these phenomena as well. This is always a pitfall when comparing apples and oranges. However, systems thinking is not just an apple or an orange, it can make sense to make use of systems thinking to try to understand tiny parts of a larger unit, in relation to other parts.

Can’t we think of organizations as systems at all? It depends on the vocabulary we use and have in common. I think it can help to deduct to some smaller pieces present in organizations. Carter McNamara shares his view, and it contributes to my understanding. His statement on what a system is, shows the complexity of a system:

A pile of sand is not a system. If one removes a sand particle, you’ve still got a pile of sand. However, a functioning car is a system. Remove the carburetor and you’ve no longer got a working car.

The statement above is a somewhat simple example, that illustrates the complexity of a system. When you remove a lot of particles, the pile will collapse or even disappear. Translated to an organization, it becomes apparent what the problem with the comparison between systems and organizations is. Like with systems, every particle in an organization plays a role. It influences other parts. Maybe some particles can easily be removed, because they have little or no influence on other parts. The organization still works as expected, but we call it more efficient. Some particles are more difficult to replace, it has more influence on other parts and the organization will change as a result. Unlike with systems, there are no two particles alike when humans are involved. Therefore, the statement above doesn’t help me that much. The comparison is still a problem. What helps, is the statement of the same Carter McNamera when he explains why it is important to look at organizations as systems.

The effect of this systems theory in management is that writers, educators, consultants, etc. are helping managers to look at organizations from a broader perspective. Systems theory has brought a new perspective for managers to interpret patterns and events in their organizations. In the past, managers typically took one part and focused on that. Then they moved all attention to another part. The problem was that an organization could, e.g., have wonderful departments that operate well by themselves but don’t integrate well together. Consequently, the organization suffers as a whole.

This is helpful. Organizations are not systems, but it helps to look at an organization as if it were a system. Changing something in the organization always has influence on other areas in the organization. The comparison refers to complexity, both organizations as well as systems are complex. It can help to deal with the complexity of an organization. But then again, by looking at it as a system you should not make it a system, the processes that occur in organizations are not comparable to systems at all.

jag fick en tygkasse av min bror!