Essay 03

Essay 03

Instructions

Due to my inexcusable tardiness in posting this essay prompt, a hardcopy (typed, printed) essay will not be due in class until Thursday, 9/20. I do not mind students working on the essays in groups--it is, in fact, encouraged--but your answers must be your own. Be sure that each answer is as complete, well-expressed, clear, and precise as you can make it. If you have any question, puzzle, or require clarification, please do not hesitate to contact me (berkich@gmail.com; 3976, 944-2756). Finally, the following maximums and minimums must be scrupulously observed:

  • No less than 10pt font.
  • No less than 1.5 line spacing.
  • No less than 1 inch margins on all sides.
  • No more than 1 side of 1 page for this problem set.

Note that these are maximums and minimums only. You may, for instance, write less than one page or use greater than a 10pt font.

In light of these admittedly serious constraints on the space available for answers, it is extremely important that you excise any and all extraneous or redundant material. For example, the phrases "It can be argued that", "I claim that", "I think that", or their kin preceding a sentence add absolutely nothing to the sentence, take up valuable space, and are in fact wholly redundant. Of course it can be argued that, claimed that, or thought that, or you would never have written it!

Every word must count for answering the question. Philosophical writing is thus austere, but terribly precise. Such is its virtue. That said, writing philosophy can be jarring at first, especially for those who have labored and suffered under the delusional five-paragraph essay regime.

Please not that no quote from the text ever stands on its own, unexplained. Quoting should be judiciously, even cautiously done in light of the laughably short space you have in which to write.

For additional advice on writing philosophy, I encourage you to study some of the advice linked at the bottom of the resources page. Not all of the advice applies directly to these problem sets, as even in philosophy they are atypical. Nevertheless, there is much sound and helpful advice to be had about writing in general and writing philosophy in particular.

One final note of caution before getting to the question for this essay. It can be tempting to delve into the secondary literature on Wittgenstein in an attempt to get 'the right' answer. I invite you, though, to think not of getting the right answer--as if there could be one--and instead focus on getting the most comprehensive and defensible answer as you can conceive. It need not be 'right' to be a damn good answer, in short.

Question

Philosophy is never done in a vacuum. It is always part of a much broader conversation between philosophers. Studying one philosopher's contribution to that conversation is much like hearing only one side of a conversation. Some of what is said is likely to make little sense without grasping the whole conversation. A case in point is illustrated by the following passages from the Tractatus:

4.001) The totality of propositions is language.

4.002) Man possesses the ability to construct languages capable of expressing every sense, without having any idea how each word has meaning or what its meaning is—just as people speak without knowing how the individual sounds are produced. Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it.

It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is.

Language disguises thought. So much so, that from the outward form of the clothing it is impossible to infer the form of the thought beneath it, because the outward form of the clothing is not designed to reveal the form of the body, but for entirely different purposes.

The tacit conventions on which the understanding of everyday language depends are enormously complicated.

4.003) Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language.

(They belong to the same class as the question whether the good is more or less identical than the beautiful.)

And it is not surprising that the deepest problems are in fact not problems at all.

4.0031) All philosophy is a ‘critique of language’ (though not in Mauthner’s sense). It was Russell who performed the service of showing that the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one.

In 4.0031 Wittgenstein is nodding to Bertrand Russell's masterpiece, "On Denoting", mastery of which is the sine qua non for grasping the distinction between the 'apparent logical form of a proposition'--and the endless philosophical confusions arising from it--and its real logical form. (We might also describe this distinction as between a propositions logically analyzed structure and its surface grammar.

Following Russell's admonishment, that

A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.

let us consider the statement,

The present King of France is bald.

It is perhaps a mark of the philosophical mind to stumble, perplexed, on a proposition most would dismiss out of hand and without further thought. Russell tersely summarizes our aporia--to borrow the Ancient Greek for 'disconcerting feeling of perplexity, astonishment, or wonderment.'

By the law of the excluded middle, either 'A is B' or 'A is not B' must be true. Hence either 'the present King of France is bald' or 'the present King of France is not bald' must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig.

It wasn't just the hegelians deserving of Russell's ire. He is pointing to a problem that had philosophers from the continent to the UK to the States (the American Pragmatists being a particular case in point) frothing to resolve the resulting philosophical 'dispute'.

Consider:

The present King of France is bald.

is patently false. Hence, by the law of the excluded middle, it follows that

The present King of France is not bald.

must be true, at least insofar as the surface logic is concerned.

Yet that can't be right either, since there is no present King of France, bald or hirsute! So in what sense can it be true (what must be case in the world) that

The present King of France is not bald.

Perhaps an enriched metaphysics will serve us here: We can resolve this by pointing to, say, different modes of existence. So we have being (ordinary existence) and non-being (which is like existence, but not really, maybe more like subsistence because what can't be adequately explained by introducing new terminology!) Perhaps the most extravagant example of this strategy is the work of the Austrian philosopher Meinong (SEP entry).

Russell's insight was that the surface logic has deceived us into metaphysical extravagances. On careful analysis of the definite description 'the present King of France', we discover our merely logical foible.

On Russell's logical analysis,

The present King of France is bald.

is (in English)

There exists at least one and at most one King of France and that individual is bald.

that is to say, a uniqueness claim. Thus a definite description is making two claims, which we may render in logical form in two parts: at least one and at most one:

There is a thing that is a present King of France, and, anything that is the present King of France is identical to it.

It's easier to see in full symbolic dress, but not everyone has studied the First Order Predicate Calculus. For this who have, we render

The present King of France is bald.

as the PC-WFF

∃x((Kx ∧ ∀y(Ky → x = y)) ∧ Bx)

The point is that once we notice the embedded existential quantifier, we realize that both

The present King of France is bald.

and

The present King of France is not bald.

are simply false in virtue of there being no present King of France--the existential condition 'there exists an individual such that the individual is the present King of France' is never met.

Generalizing in youthful philosophical exuberance as the early Wittgenstein was prone to do, all philosophical puzzles will evaporate once we have a proper logical analysis. Poof!, there goes metaphysics! Poof!, there goes epistemology! Poof!, there goes ethics!

Well, let's not dismiss Wittgenstein. In keeping with Russell's advice that "it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science", let us take this opportunity to ponder long-standing, entrenched puzzles in philosophy with an eye towards testing Wittgenstein's thesis in the Tractatus. Specifically, in this essay I want you to explain at least three philosophical puzzles, making as clear as you can why they are puzzles, while pointing either to the philosophical debates they have spawned or philosophical positions that have been developed to solve them. Note that these puzzles can be from any of your classes--the whole history of philosophical inquiry is open to you on this essay.