what the sferics said to Mondaugen

[Paul Murphy]

Joe Varo writes:
>This brings to mind another tid-bit by Wittgenstein, one of the final (if
>not the final) sentences of the Tractatus:  "that about which we cannot
>speak we must pass over in silence."

This is the final sentence, and it does have the effect of stifling
'metaphysical speculation', i.e., talk about states of affairs that don't
happily cohere with the dictates of formal logic.

I greatly appreciate Andrew's quick exegesis of LW -- my copy of the
_Tractatus_ is buried in a box somewhere, demonstrating my aversion to
anal-ytic philosophy. I agree that the central thrust of logical atomism
isn't so much the old fact / value distinction -- this has been hashed out
over centuries by luminaries like Hume and Kant. The revolutionary aspect
of l.atomism, as a philosophy of language with pretensions to 'first
philosophy', is the turn towards formal syntax, whose preeminence tends to
eviscerate semantic concerns -- Cf. Quine's battle with 'intention', and
his frightening ontological claim, 'to be is to be the object of a bound
variable' (or something like that).

Cheers,
Paul