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Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

Conza88 — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:56:32 GMT

Excellent.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

E. R. Olovetto — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 20:29:34 GMT

That is just various file hosts and the PDF is in a ZIP file. I agree with whoever left this review on Amazon, that if you have to get one book on the Tractatus (I have this and a bunch of other things in PDF too), this is the one, Donald Peterson's Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy: Three Sides of the Mirror. I don't know why it lists only 1 new over $100. I bought it (seeming brand new) from the 3rd listed used seller's shop for like $15.

I don't know what to recommend for analysis of his later work though, besides things that are online. Toulmin and Janik's Wittgenstein's Vienna is a good historical background that I read first. Reading Long's paper on Wittgenstein again is toward the top of my list, so maybe I can make sense of the importance of his philosophy related to ours then.

I think that his major shift (sometime while writing what is known as The Brown Book IIRC) is to abandon the Picture Theory of Meaning. I'll quote a short passage from Peterson on this after one I just noticed on another translation of Sachverhalte:

Facts are, thankfully, referred to as 'facts' (Tatsachen), and the totality of these in the 'world' (die Welt). In the ontology facts are analyzed into constituent 'elementary facts' (Sachverhalte). Facts can be 'said'.

Wittgenstein later abandoned this view [The Picture Theory], arguing, essentially, that language describes the world through language-games, rather than through the metaphysical matching of the picture theory.And this lends something to the already easy task of finding fault with and dismissing the picture theory. But the picture theory has great value not because it is correct—which it is not—but because Wittgenstein articulated and developed the details and consequences of such theories of meaning. His work, and subsequent criticism, have made it plain what is the appeal and what are the faults of such a theory, and in particular, they have emphasized that a theory of this sort relies on an internal, and presumably structural, relation between elementary sentence and elementary fact. And in examining, for example, the conceptual basis of cognitive science, we find that, in theories of 'mental representation' inspired by the computer model of the mind, the picture theory and its internal relation are not dead.

I don't know if that is going to clear things up at all. Maybe "forms of life" came about because he goes from talking about how things are in our world to imaginary one's where things don't happen the same way, like with the "wood-sellers" cited in Long's paper. This is related to why you will see me harp on people for saying things like "non-enforceable obligations", because what does it mean "to be obliged/obligated"? These are the types of things Wittgenstein talks about in PI.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:24:33 GMT

E. R. Olovetto:
I'm going to check out Plauche's paper. I think that Plauche and Long reach some faulty conclusions at times regarding punishment. I just want to note too that when Reinach and others are talking about "state of affairs", this is Sachverhalt in German. In early Wittgenstein, "state of affairs" is used, but in later works the term "forms of life" is used.

Do you know why Wittgenstein changed the name? What accuracy may he have been striving for in such a change, for Wittgenstein, to necessarily have to take place?

Also is there a difference between Wittgenstein's early works compared to his later, generally speaking, and any pitfalls of his works that I may want to take heed of before reading his writings?

E. R. Olovetto:
This is his (later) Philosophical Investigations, if anyone is interested in reading it.

I'll see if I can download it. I noticed different mechanism to download and I don't know which one works for my computer. I'll trial and error it.

thanks.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

E. R. Olovetto — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:05:53 GMT

I'm going to check out Plauche's paper. I think that Plauche and Long reach some faulty conclusions at times regarding punishment. I just want to note too that when Reinach and others are talking about "state of affairs", this is Sachverhalt in German. In early Wittgenstein, "state of affairs" is used, but in later works the term "forms of life" is used. This is his (later) Philosophical Investigations, if anyone is interested in reading it.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 18:21:00 GMT

Here's a more recent paper by Geoffrey A. Plauche (2006) that covers this same material with further explanation. Example from Introduction:

Plauche:
Within the tradition of Austrian philosophy, this Aristotelian apriorism can be traced at least from Franz Brentano and his students to the realist phenomenology of the early Edmund Husserl, Husserl's student Adolf Reinach, and Johannes Daubert. Among the Austrian economists, Carl Menger can be seen as developing economics as an Aristotelian a priori discipline. Ludwig von Mises developed this apriorism into the formal method of praxeology, and though he appears to be a sort of Kantian realist in his theoretical self-interpretation, it has been argued that Mises was thoroughly Aristotelian in practice (Smith 1990:282). More recently, Murray Rothbard attempted to return Austrian economics and praxeology to an explicitly Aristotelian-Thomist foundation but he did not do so in any great detail. It will be with praxeology as an a priori discipline that this essay will primarily be concerned. I will argue that Rothbard did not go far enough in giving praxeology an Aristotelian foundation, an oversight that I will attempt to (at least begin to) remedy in this essay.

Justin Spahr-Summers,

Plauche mentions Rand and makes explicit what you did as well in this thread, but unfortunately this paper doesn't appear to have been updated to include a more thorough investigation as far as I have been able to find:

Plauche:
[IV. Ayn Rand, Objectivism, and Praxeology
It is fairly well-known among Objectivists and Austrians that Ayn Rand rejected Mises's method of praxeology. In this section, to be added later, I will seek to show that praxeology is not incompatible with the philosophy of Ayn Rand. I've already promised Chris Sciabarra that I would submit this paper to JARS when it's finished.]

Here's a similar thread that E.R. Olovetto posted for the sake of reference material convenience.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:23:48 GMT

Justin Spahr-Summers:
I unfortunately don't... it's just kind of aggregated knowledge from Ayn Rand's Marginalia and Goddess of the Market (which is an excellent read, by the way). Excerpts might be available around the 'net somewhere.

I don't know if you saw this post. The OP linked here brought up something similar to what this thread is about. The OP linked to a forum were Rand and Mises view were being vetted concerning, I believe, something near exact to what you brought up here. I read through some of the responses. I saw one of the posters brought up the idea about Menger being Aristotelian. Overall similar thought patterns in at least two posts in the forum I linked that I had presented here. Some of the other posts get bogged down in the subjectivist-objectivist semantics, which personally, I find these terms to be philosophically primitive when the subject is more elaborate than what those two terms solely make it out to be. The numerous posts that can develop in simply trying to explain what each person means by those two terms is evidence of what I mean.

I haven't read any Rand. I can't make an accurate comparison. The 6th poster down in that forum (a partial quote of this post below but not the Rand comparison which you can find through that link I provided) mentions Menger and Rand and compares them. The 13th poster (also quoted below) brought up Menger and a recent professor who I may check up on who had also held similar views. The 13th poster compared Menger and Mises and even brought up Kant being used by Mises. That same poster then went on to give a technical economic example, at least for me, on how they may be understood as to not having differences once a person gets to the meaning of their presented science. Meaning, not caught up in the jargon that each of them had excess to in order to present their science.

That posters case might be more in line with what might be developing as presented in my OP here in this thread though I strongly remind everybody that what I had presented in the OP can't be taken as any final authority. I didn't even readily come up with any conclusions but rather presented what appears to be a philosophical discussion and argument over the law of thought and law of reality case that Rothbard had introduced.

The terminology was different by Menger and Mises, etc... due to the access that each had to the various philosophers, Aristotle and Kant, and then changed the terminologies definitions to suit the meaningful insights each had, maybe? It's interesting and that definitely would effect the reading of either of their works.

Quote of post 13 in that other forum. This poster had actually responded to post 6 so both are quoted below:

partialquoteofpost6:
I actually think the original Austrian theory of value propounded by Carl Menger is very close to Rand's model of objective value. Consider Menger's definition of a good, from his Principles of Economics:

post13:
You're not the only one. Dr Beuchner noted this a while back, too, (1995 - Objective Value). He said he was very big on Menger as a result of that. He also noted that it was a tradgedy that other Austrians were translated to English long before Menger was, and that a large part of the idea that Austrian school is inherently subjectivist stems from that lack of translations of Menger.

Moreover, von Mises' subjectivism at the level of consumer goods is real subjectivism, not merely labelled as such by the intrinsicists. His view on subjective and objective value matches the view of subjective and objective concepts espoused by Kant: there are core concepts/values that are subjective, and all other values are objectively derived from those at the core. In von Mises, the latter then translates into objectivity in business practice but placed in the service of soverieng consumers whose desires are not to be questioned, and in whose service the entrepreneurs are but servants who make profits by better responding to consumer demands. The result of Misesan subjectivism in values is the conclusion that the entrepreneur is but a jumped up "chiselling arbitrageur" (in Salsman's words) - and after reading Israel Kirzner's book on entrepreneurialism, which expressly equates the entrepreneur with the arbitrageur, it is not just an aberration on von Mises' part or an unfounded slur on Salsman's part.

Edit: there is nothing inherently wrong with arbitrage, only that it is of secondary importance and that the entrepreneur is and does much more than that.

Anybody that knows economics better than I, if there is a critique of this to point out anything that is wrong, it would be nice if you could point that out.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:10:14 GMT

CrazyCoot:
Hobbes' ideas should be addressed more by libertarians; especially of the ancap, voluntaryist etc kind. People, whether they've read him or not, still tend to bring up at least a bastardized version of his ideas when arguing against a stateless society.

I admit I haven't read Hobbes' ideas. I always figured if I get qualitatively solid enough in my theorizing, then I would pick up some of the works that, at least for now, disagree with. This way I can critique them better. I have read some excerpts and paraphrasing of his works in other writings.

Could you provide one example of a usual "bastardized version"? I'm curious.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

Justin Spahr-Summers — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 03:14:47 GMT

wilderness:
Justin Spahr-Summers:
Of note is also that one of Rand's criticisms of Mises (whom she respected a great deal) was his use of a priori knowledge, Rand being rather empiricist herself—although not in the sense that pseudo-economists use the word. Rothbard's brief entanglement with Objectivism highlights their similar philosophical basis as well.

Do you have more on this? A link perhaps?

I unfortunately don't... it's just kind of aggregated knowledge from Ayn Rand's Marginalia and Goddess of the Market (which is an excellent read, by the way). Excerpts might be available around the 'net somewhere.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

CrazyCoot — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:49:55 GMT

Hobbes' ideas should be addressed more by libertarians; especially of the ancap, voluntaryist etc kind. People, whether they've read him or not, still tend to bring up at least a bastardized version of his ideas when arguing against a stateless society.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:04:28 GMT

Justin Spahr-Summers:
This is a lot to process, but it's very interesting.

Yes. There is a lot to process. There's more to this, I think, than I've yet to find out.

Justin Spahr-Summers:
Of note is also that one of Rand's criticisms of Mises (whom she respected a great deal) was his use of a priori knowledge, Rand being rather empiricist herself—although not in the sense that pseudo-economists use the word. Rothbard's brief entanglement with Objectivism highlights their similar philosophical basis as well.

Do you have more on this? A link perhaps?

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:01:51 GMT

I thought this blog provided an interesting thought that has to do with the OP in this thread. The blog was pasted in this thread earlier today.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 01:38:37 GMT

Jeremiah Dyke:
This is great!

thanks

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

wilderness — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 19:12:52 GMT

z1235:
wilderness:

z1235:
The only reality I can ever know is the one residing in my thoughts. The only thoughts I can ever have are the ones residing in reality. Thoughts are real, and reality (or whatever we perceive of it) is thoughts.

I think there is empirical data. And human action isn't strictly a thought. It is a "lived experience".

Or, so you think.

sure, but not strictly think. I walk. The walking is not the act of thinking.

z1235:
Any a priori (law of thought) starts with self-evident axioms. Where is this evidence collected if not from maps of reality residing in our thoughts?

another piece of evidence is breathing. Breathing is not a thought. It may involve thought, but breathing is the biological process that involves lungs and a mouth.

The reason the axiom is self-evident and not a verbal or worded proposition and neither is it a logical deduction, is due to the act (human action) not being able to be formulated into a subject, predicate, or class without act happening prior to propositional formulation and subsequent logical deductions.

Propositions, which differ from axioms by class, are prior to words. Axioms are also prior to words. Logical deductions are prior to words. The names, ie. words, simply label the axioms, propositions, and logical deductions. Writing, thinking, and/or verbalizing axioms, propositions, and logical deductions, at times, make it easier to analogize.

The human acting is the founding act of being able to self-reflect and formulate words upon there being such thing as an act to begin with.

I don't know if you are saying there is a difference between word and thought. I am.

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

z1235 — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:05:19 GMT

wilderness:

z1235:
The only reality I can ever know is the one residing in my thoughts. The only thoughts I can ever have are the ones residing in reality. Thoughts are real, and reality (or whatever we perceive of it) is thoughts.

I think there is empirical data. And human action isn't strictly a thought. It is a "lived experience".

Or, so you think. Any a priori (law of thought) starts with self-evident axioms. Where is this evidence collected if not from maps of reality residing in our thoughts?

Re: Long Post: law of thought and law of reality

Justin Spahr-Summers — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 03:46:50 GMT

This is a lot to process, but it's very interesting. Of note is also that one of Rand's criticisms of Mises (whom she respected a great deal) was his use of a priori knowledge, Rand being rather empiricist herself—although not in the sense that pseudo-economists use the word. Rothbard's brief entanglement with Objectivism highlights their similar philosophical basis as well.