Tractatus vs. PI

[jolly]

Quote: " The Investigations, the far superior work, announce the failure of the Tractatus.  
Whereas the Tractatus was the culmination of logical positivism, the 
Investigations were the obituary. "
 
As some of you probably know,  Popper, Russell, and numerous other major analytical philosophers dismissed the PI, and asserted that ordinary language philosophy was overly concerned with trivial linguistic quibbles (the silly things that silly people say, as Russell reportedly said), and not about truth,  epistemology, logic,. etc.  Read McGee's Confessions of a Philosopher,  or Wittgenstein's Poker (Edmonds?) for criticism of the PI..   I think the PI is interesting (if overwhelming and obtuse),  but it is  closer to a sort of linguistic anthropology than it is to logic or epistemology; Ludwig went a bit native as some say, if not behaviorist.......there have been some experiments performed with monkeys which provide some support to the picture theory of truth /consciousness that was put forth in Tractatus.  There have been some scholars who deny a sharp break between the "two" Wittgensteins; for instance, in TLP there is a point about  logical syntax which functions without
 well-defined constituents, this is developed in the PI with the idea of the language game.  
 
I assert the "spirit" of Pynchon's writing is more Tractarian than it is PI-ish.   From V: 
 
Let P equal me
with my heart in command
Let Q equal You
with Tractatus in hand
 
(profane's ditty with mafia)
 

		
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