10/19 Do you think Wittgenstein is a genius?

Do you think Wittgenstein is a genius? But, would you please stop if you're going to say the very ugly stupid rubbish thing starting with "Yes, he is one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century...", which only proves you're very ugly stupid usual rubbish.

Struggling with B. Russell's confusing explanation of "propositions and facts with more than one verb: beliefs, etc"(the title of lecture 4), I came to think it's not a straight line that the shortest distance between two points, and started searching the internet. And I found a Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell.

"I can now express my objection to your theory of judgment exactly: I believe it is obvious that, from the proposition ‘A judges that (say) a is in a relation R to b’, if correctly analysed, the proposition ‘aRb.∨.∼aRb’ must follow directly without the use of any other premiss. This condition is not fulfilled by your theory."

At the first glance I couldn't help admitting that he's worthwhile calling a genius. No more words needed. Just get down back to work.

10/18 Russell3

Reading "The philosophy of logical atomism" I come to think it's the must book that you should read to understand Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Russell explains very clearly what seems that he and Wittgenstein discussed about the nature of propositions, facts and so on (main topics of his book) behind the pages of the tractatus. Surprisingly to me he even says "A very great deal of what I am saying in this course of lectures consists of ideas which I derived from my friend Wittgenstein".

But these lectures had been given before the publishing of the tractatus. And I find it very enjoyable to trace the clues developed into the logically mystified book. For example. Russell says "In order to understand a name for a particular, the only thing necessary is to be acquainted with that particular". So, for example only through seeing a white spot on the wall we understand the proposition "This is white". But there happens to be someone arguing that it may be identical with "This and that have the same colour" or "This is identical in colour with that". Russell seems not take it seriously. But this consideration will lead us to think like this: In order to understand a name for a particular(little patch of colour, for example) we know colour in general. That is, if we don't know what colour is in general we don't know what white is. In another words we can say "When we see a colour we see it in the colour space", seemingly leading to Wittgenstein's logical space.

It seems very confusing. Because Russell insists that we understand only symbols(names, for example "white") and only so through being acquainted with particulars. But it will be not possible we are acquainted with, for example a white spot(a particular) unless we know the knowledge of colour, which is expressed in colour names. When you point your finger at a white spot and say "This is white", it's always possible that I response with "White? What do you mean by that?"

Anyway I am just in the middle of Russell's lectures and don't have the tractatus. I'm not sure if I got a point here or not and it doesn't matter for now.

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3. Atomic and molecular proposition

"Knowing a particular" merely means acquaintance with that particular and is presupposed in the understanding of any proposition in which that particular is mentioned.

The only thing you can really understand (in the strict sense of the word) is a symbol, and to understand a symbol is to know what it stands for.

Understanding a predicate is quite a different thing from understanding a name. To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name, and you must know that it is the name of that particular.

To understand "red" , for instance, is to understand what is meant by saying that a thing is red. You have to bring in the form of a proposition. You do not have to know, concerning any particular "this", that "This is red" but you have to know what is the meaning of saying that anything is red. When you understand "red" it means that you understand propositions of the form that "x is red". It is in the fact that a predicate can never occur except as a predicate(the theory of types).

Exactly the same applies to relations, and in fact all those things that are not particulars. Take, e.g., "before" in "x is before y": you understand "before" when you understand what that would mean if x and y were given.

If anyone is of the opinion that there is reason to try to get on without subject-predicate propositions, all that is necessary is to take some standard red thing and have a relation which one might call "colour-likeness", sameness of colour, which would be a direct relation, not consisting in having a certain colour. You can then define the things which are red, as all the things that have colour-likeness to this standard thing. You can perfectly well do in that way a formal reduction of predicates to relations. There is no objection to that either empirically or logically.

I define an atomic proposition as one which contains a single verb. Now there are two different lines of complication in proceeding from there to more complex propositions: Molecular propositions and one proposion containing two or more verbs.

When the truth or falsehood of the molecular proposition depends only on the truth or falsehood of the propositions that enter into, I call these things truth-functions of propositions.

I do not see any reason to suppose that there is a complexity in the facts corresponding to these molecular propositions, because the correspondence of a molecular proposition with facts is of a different sort from the correspondence of an atomic proposition with a fact.

Are there negative facts? Are there such facts as you might call the fact that "Socrates is not alive?" I have assumed that if you say "Socrates is alive", there is corresponding to that proposition in the real world the fact that Socrates is not alive.

Mr. Demos pointed out:
1). A negative proposition is not in any way dependent on a cognitive subject for its definition. When I say "Socrates is not alive", I am merely expressing disbelief in the proposition that Socrates is alive. You have got to find something or other in the real world to make this belief true, and the only question is what. To this I agree.

2). Negative proposition must not be taken at its face value. You cannot regard the statement "Socrates is not alive" as being an expression of a fact in the same sort of direct way in which "Socrates is human" would be an expression of a fact. His argument for that is soley that he cannot believe that there are negative facts in the world.

3). When the word "not" occurs, it cannot be taken as a qualification of the predicate. In all cases where a "not" comes in, the "not" has to be taken to apply to the whole proposition. "Not-p" is the proper formula. I do not entirely agree with it.

According to Mr. Demos we have come now to the question, how are we really to interpret "not-p", and below is his suggested definition:

"not-p" means "There is a proposition q which is true and is incompatible with q."

I find it very difficult to believe Mr. Demos' theory. Because incompatibility is not between facts but between propositions. I think you will find that it is simpler to take negative facts as facts, to assume that "Socrates is not alive" is really an objective fact in the same sense in which "Socrates is human" is a fact. Otherwise you will find it so difficult to say what it is that corresponds to  proposition. When you have a false positive proposition, say "Socrates is alive", it is false because of a fact in the real world.

Q: "Socraetes is dead" is a positive or a negative fact?
Mr. Russell: It is two statements rolled into one: "Socrates was alive" and "Socrates is not alive".

10/17 Russell2

When I decided to read philosophical books systemically my first choice was Russell. He is from Britain, easy to find and cheap. Reading systemically includes suppressing quick wit if you have any. You'll find that Russell is very open to criticisms and you feel like you are very clever criticising him. But it'll be the most meaningless thing you'll have ever done. All you have to do reading philosophical books is recognize the profoundness of the philosophical problems. If you can you will enjoy reading one of the most tedious kind of books.

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2. Particulars, Predicates, and Relations

"What sort of things shall we regard as prima facie complex? For example, suppose that you were to analyse what appears to be a fact about Piccadilly, such as: "Piccadilly is a pleasant street." If you analysis a statement of that sort correctly, you will find that the fact corresponding to your statement does not contain any constituent corresponding to the word "Piccadilly".

"Considerations of that sort seem to take us from such prima facie complex entities as we started with to others as being more stubborn and more deserving of analytical attention, namely facts." In this way, though "you may not know exactly what Socrates means, but it is quite clear that "Socrates is mortal" expresses a fact. There is clearly some valid meaning in saying that the fact expressed by "Socrates is mortal" is complex. The things in the world have various properties, and stand in various relations to each other. That they have these properties and relations are facts. The analysis of apparently complex things such as we started with can be reduced by various means, to the analysis of facts which are apparently about those things. Therefore it is with analysis of facts that one's consideration of the problem of complexity must begin, not with the analysis of apparently complex things."

"The complexity of a fact is evidenced, to begin with, by the circumstance that the proposition which asserts a fact consists of several words, each of which may occur in other contexts."

"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."

"The characteristic, that you can understand a proposition through the understanding of its component words, is absent from the component words when those words express something simple. For example, you cannot understand the meaning of the word "red" except through seeing red things. It is clear that if you define "red" as "The colour with the greatest wave-length", you are not giving the actual meaning of the word at all; you are simply giving a true description, which is quite a different thing and the propositions which result are different propositions from those in which the word "red" occurs. In that sense the word "red" cannot be defined."

"Some one who knows a lot about Picadilly may not know just the things one know when one is walking along it."

"The components of a <proposition> are the symbols we must understand in order to understand the proposition; The components of the <fact> which makes a proposition true or false, as the case may be, are the meanings of the symbols which we must understand in order to understand the proposition."

"These definitions are preliminary because they start from the complexity of the proposition, which they define psychologically, and proceed to the complexity of the fact, whereas it is quite clear that in an orderly, proper procedure it is the complexity of the fact that you would start from. It is also clear that the complexity of the fact cannot be something merely phychological. However, I doubt whether complexity, in that fundamental objective sense in which one starts from complexity of a fact, is definable at all."

"It might be suggested that complexity is essential to do with symbols, or that it is essentially psychological. But I do not think it would be possible seriously to maintain either of these views."

"In a logically correct symbolism there will always be a certain fundamental identity of structure between a fact and the symbol for it. The complexity of the symbol corresponds very closely with the complexity of the facts symbolized by it."

"In a logically perfect language the words in a proposition would correspond one by one with the components of the corresponding fact, with the exception of such words as "or", "not", "if", "then", which have a different function. In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple objects, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words. A language of that sort will be completely analytic, and will show at a glance the logical structure of the fact asserted or denied. A logically perfact language, if it could be constructed, would not only be intolerably prolix, but, as regards its vocabulary, would be very largely private to one speaker. That is to say, all the names that it wouls use would be private to that speaker and could not enter into the language of another speaker."

"The needs of logic are so extraordinarily different from the needs of daily life."

"The simplest imaginable facts are those which consist in the possession of a quality by some particular thing. Such facts, say, as "This is white." I do not want you think about the piece of chalk I am holding, but of what I see when you look at the chalk.

"In every atomic fact there is one componet which is naturally expressed by a verb(or, in the case of quality, it may be expressed by a predicate, by an adjective). This one component is a quality(monadic) or dyadic or triadic or tetradic... relation. In that case you can say that all atomic propositions assert relations of varying orders. Atomic facts contain, besides the relation, the terms of the relation - one term if it is a monadic relation so on. These terms which come into atomic facts I define as particulars.

Particulars = terms of relations in atomic facts. Df."

"The whole question of what particulars you actually find in the real world is a purely empirical one which does not interest the logician as such."

"The subject in a proposition will be the words expressing the terms of the relation which is expressed by the proposition. The only kind of word that is theoretically capable of standing for a particular is a proper name.

proper names = words for particulars.Df."

"The names that we commonly use, like "Socrates", are really abbreviations for descriptions; not only that, but what they describe are not particulars but complicated systems of classes or series. A name, in the narrow logical sense of a word whose meaning is a particular, can only be applied to a particular with which the speaker is acquainted. We are not acquainted with Socrates, and therefore cannot name him. When we use the word "Socrates", we are really using a description."

"The only words one does use as names in the logical sense are words like "this" or "that". One can use "this" as a name to stand for a particular with which one is acquainted at the moment. We say "This is white". If you agree that "This is white", meaning the "this" that you see, you are using "this" as a proper name. But if you try to apprehend the proposition that I am expressing when I say "This is white", you cannot do it."

"Particulars have this peculiarity that each of them stands entirely alone and is completely self-subsistent. That is to say, each particular that there is in the world does not in any way logically depend upon any other particular. Each one might happen to be the whole universe; it is a merely empirical fact that this is not the case. There is no reason why you should not have a universe consisting of one particular and nothing else. That is a peculiarity of particulars."

"When you are acquainted with that particular, you have a full, adequate, and complete understanding of the name, and no further information is required."

"I think it is perfectly possible to suppose that complex things are capable of analysis ad infinitum. But I do not think it is true."

"Mr. Neville: I do not feel clear that the proposition "This is white" is in any case a simpler proposition than the proposition "This and that have the same colour."
Mr. Russell: It may be the same as the proposition "This and that have the same colour." It may be that white is defined as the colour of "this", or rather that the proposition "This is white" means "This is identical in colour with that", the colour of "that" being, so to speak, the definition of white. That may be, but there is no special reason to think that it is.
Mr. Neville: Are there any monadic relations which would be better examples?"
Mr. Russell: I think not. It is perfectly obvious a priori that you can get rid of all monadic relations by that trick. You can get rid of dyadic and reduced to triadic, and so on. But there is no paricular reason to suppose that that is the way the world begins, that it begins with relations of order n instead of relations of order 1. You cannot reduce them downward, but you can reduce them upward."

10/15 Russell

I live in Britain. I'm reading "Moore: G.E. Moore and the cambridge Apostles" and "History of Western Philosophy"(by B. Russell). I'm studying "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism"(by B. Russell). I'm watching "The Hour" over and over again. Much to my disappointment my English won't be improved at all.

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<<The Philosophy of Logical Atomism>>, by B. Russell

1. Facts and Propositions

R's going to advocate the philosophy of logical atomism.
-atomic. "there are many separate things. The apparent multiplicity of the world isn't unreal divisions of a single indivisible reality"
-logical. "because atoms are the sort of last residue in logical analysis"
-atoms. "Some of them will be "particulars" - such things as little patches of colour or sounds, momentary things - and some of them will be predicates or relations and so on"

"The process of sound philosophizing, to my mind, consists mainly in passing from those obvious, vague, ambiguous things, that we feel quite sure of, to something precise, clear, definite, which by reflection and analysis we find is involved in the vague thing that we start from, and is, so to speak, the real truth of which that vague thing is a sort of shadow."

"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise, and everything precise is so remote from everything that we normally think, that you cannot for a moment suppose that is what we really mean when we say what we think."

"The sort of premiss that a logician will take for a science will not be the sort of thing which is first known or easiest known: it will be a proposition having great deductive power, great cogency, and exactitude, quite a different thing from the actual premiss that your knowledge started from."

"Decartes is right: you should set to work to doubt things and retain only what you cannot doubt because of its clearness and distinctness, not because you are sure not to be induced into error."

"The world contains facts, which are what they are whatever we may choose to think about them, and that there are also beliefs, which have reference to facts, and by reference to facts are either true or false."

"When I speak of a facts I mean the kind of thing that makes a proposition true or false. If I say "It is raining", what I say is true in a certain condition of weather and is false in other conditions of weather. The condition of weather that makes my statement true(or false), is what I should call a "fact".

"The outer world is not completely described by a lot of particulars, but you must also take account of theses things that I call facts, which are the sort of things that you express by a sentence, and these, just as much as particular chairs and tables, are part of real world."

"You cannot describe the world completely without having general facts as well as particular facts."

"Every word is a symbol, every sentence, and so forth. When I speak of a symbol I simply mean something that means something else."

"Propositions are not names for facts. The relation of proposition to fact is a totally different one from the relation of name to the thing named. For each fact there are two propositions, one true and one false. In the case of a name, there is only one relation that it can have to what it names. A name can just name a particular, or, if it does not, it is not a name at all, it is a noise. Just as a word may be a name or be not a name but just a meaningless noise, so a phrase which is apparently a proposition may be either true or false, or may be meaningless."

"The thing you can do with facts is to assert it, or deny it, or desire it, or will it, or question it, but all those are things involving the whole proposition."

"Q: In making a start, whether you start with the empirical or the a priori philosophy, do you make your statement just at the beginning and come back to prove it, or do you never come back to the proof of it?

R: No, you never come back. I should like a statement which would be rough and vague and have that sort of obviousness that belongs to things of which you never know what they mean, but I should never get back to that statement. Here is a thing. We will look at it inside and out until we have extracted something and can say, now that is true. It will not really be the same as the thing we started from because it will be so much more analytic and precise."

10/8 Whitehead

(from: http://www.journalventilo.fr/2011/09/14/collection-planque-l%E2%80%99exemple-de-cezanne-au-musee-granet/)

Yesterday I bought two secondhand books, "Essays in science and philosophy"(by Whitehead) and "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenace"(by Robert Prirsig), costing 17.5 pounds.

This morning reading some pages of Whitehead I met fascinating sentences like below:

"Of course anybody who has any sense who writes on philosophy knows, or ought to know, that the world is unfathomable in its complexity and that anything you put together must be open to criticism - ought to be open to criticism if it is any good at all. It should be a platform from which it is worth while to make criticisms. That is, to be reasonably successful as a philosopher is to provide a new platform; perhaps not a completely new platform, but a slight alteration of some older platfom from which it is worth while to make criticisms. And criticism is the motive power for the advance of thought. I am fond of pointing out to my pupils that to be refuted in every century after you have written is the acme of triumph. I always make that remark in connection with Zeno. No one has ever touched Zeno without refuting him, and every century thinks it worth while to refute him"

I have heard similar advice from Jean Duffet, an artist while I was travelling around Cezanne in Aix Provence. And I think I know what it needs. Patience and courage. No more words needed.