NP Witt List (was something Pynchon-related at some point, maybe)

[andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk]

davemarc at panix.com writes:
> > From: andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk
> > Peter Giordano writes:

> > > But wouldn't Wittgenstein say that the rocks and soil and fawna were
> > > always there but the concept: America, New World, etc. was invented?

> > No, he wouldn't (despite strenuous efforts on the part of a few of his
> > early exponents to assure people that he would). What has always been
> > there is not rocks and is not soil and is not fauna. What is there is
> > rocks and soil and fauna because (and only in so far as) we recognise
> > it as such. It's all to do with recognition, not being. You might
> > perhaps read Gaddis on the same subject, or the Dharma.

> Gotta disagree with Andrew here.  Maybe--just maybe--LW would've said that
> sort of thing in the Tractatus, but by the time of Philosophical
> Investigations I think he'd recognize *both* the sense of Peter's
> proposition and the sense of Andrew's.

Rock, soil and fauna are concepts just as much as America, the New
World etc. The phenomena we classify under these concepts (to use a
Tractatus era phrasing) are something else. You agree with Peter and
allow this point for America or the New World, i.e. abstract concepts,
yet disagree with me and stop short when it comes to more concrete
concepts. Why so? Does the fact that a concept deals with phenomena
rather than other concepts imply that it is thereby immanent in the
things it conceptualizes? Cannot for the life of me see why you should
draw such a conclusion.

As to what Wittgenstein said I'll see if I can winkle out a paragraph
or two to justify my claim. The best explanation of it is to be found
in Gordon Baker's commentary on the PI with reference to the early
critics of his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.


Andrew Dinn
-----------
How do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of pleasure clos'd by your senses five