Ludwig Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who contributed significantly in the fields of mathematics, logic, and language. The work he contributed throughout his life can be split into two parts, his earlier and later work. Arguably his greatest contribution came from his earlier works, mostly from the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”. According Biletzki, Wittgenstein “addresses the central problems of philosophy which deal with the world, thought and language, and presents a “solution” (as Wittgenstein terms it) of these problems which is grounded in logic and in the nature of representation”. Within the Tractatus Wittgenstein essentially sets out to define the world and how it can exist. Wittgenstein throughly and systematically discusses what exist in the world, or in logical space, also how it is possible for it exist. Wittgenstein thinks “the world is represented by thought, which is a proposition with sense, since they all—world, thought, and proposition—share the same logical form. Hence, the thought and the proposition can be pictures of the facts” (Biletzki).
Wittgenstein's first line in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus” states “1.The world is everything that is the case” (29) followed by “1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things” (29). Wittgenstein is trying to express that the world is not defined by all things within it. Rather that all the things in this world are created by facts, hence the world is a collection of facts rather than things. Furthermore he states “The facts in logical space are the world” (29). Reinforcing that the world is made up of facts. It is essential to a thing that it can be a constituent part of an atomic fact” (29). According to Wittgenstein atomic facts ar...
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Wittgenstein states in the Tractatus,“The logical picture of the facts is the thought” (35). If we are capable of thinking atomic facts, that means we are able to picture it within ourselves. The combination of all the thoughts within you make the world possible. Each thought has states of affairs, but when the thought is acted upon is becomes apart of reality. Wittgenstein says, “We cannot hink anything unlogical, for otherwise we should have to think unlogically” (35). Wittgenstein explains this in a simple manner. If you have a geometric shape and give a person co-ordinates within that shape, they will find it. If you had the same shape and give a person co-ordinates that are not in that space, how will they ever find it? They have no reference to go in. It is impossible (36). We must stay within the bounds of logic, it is impossible to cross the line.
...reas the various false views of language can be stated or lend themselves to assertion, the true view is something that has to be seen - it remains a view."(33) And so analogously, in aesthetics the true view is something that has to be seen, and so any analysis of the British Avant-Garde or any other movement ultimately must be seen. And so we might argue that this is one reason why the empirical or practice in aesthetics is so important because in order to see the true view in aesthetics or the true view with regard to particular works, we must actually see or hear aesthetic objects. We might emphasize Wittgenstein¡¦s advise that we must not theorize as to how a word functions or analogously as to how an art work functions, but to look at its use and learn from that, that we need to look at particular art objects in order to productively theorize about art.(34)
“We perceive things in three ways: through experience, through reasoning, and through a representation.” (Leibniz, Gottfried and Robert C. Sleigh, Jr. (Translator). Confessio Philosophi. 1671–1678). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz learned and taught by this principle. Known as the last “universal genius”, Leibniz made astounding leaps in fields of study such as mathematics, metaphysics, geology, logic and philosophy, along with many others. Leibniz was highly respected by many and even though their views did not coincide they could not help being amazed by his achievements. (Brandon C. Look, 2007) “When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.” (Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678).
In accordance with the ontological standpoint, there are also different meanings of reality: "the totality of phenomena connected according to necessary rules" (Kant); "the perfectly ordered whole" (Hegel); "the sum total of all its being and events now" (James); "the complete totality of things"; "a coherent or integrated system of systems such as the physical, the biological, the chemical and the social" (Bunge); "the all-embracing universe including mind as well as matter"; "the totality of objects and events"; "the system of natural existencies, forces, changes, and events", or "the entire material universe and its phenomena".
Simon Wiesenthal life and legends were extraordinary, he has expired people in many ways and was an iconic figure in modern Jewish history. Szyman Wiesenthal (was his real named and later named Simon) was born on December 31 in Buczacz, Galicia (which is now a part of Ukraine) in 1908. When Wiesenthal's father was killed in World War I, Mrs. Wiesenthal took her family to Vienna for a brief period, returning to Buczacz when she remarried. The young Wiesenthal graduated from the Humanistic Gymnasium (a high school) in 1928 and applied for admission to the Polytechnic Institute in Lvov. Turned away because of quota restrictions on Jewish students, he went instead to the Technical University
He claims that knowledge is the most essential mental state which therefore cannot be reduced to basic mental states such as belief and justification. This argument is supported by the idea that knowledge is the basis of what we perceive. This is validated by the fact that false knowledge cannot exist, whereas false belief can. Williamson provides an example of this through the idea of the Earth being flat. Those who believed the Earth was flat had believed falsely that they knew the Earth was flat. False knowledge cannot exist because it would require the Earth to be
Gregory Vlastos commented in his book Socrates: The Ironist and Moral Philosopher, “Such is his strangeness that you will search and search among those living now and among men of the past, and never come close to what he is himself and to the things he says.” (Vlastos). Gregory makes an important point; although studying Plato gives us a glimpse of Socrates, it only gives a glimpse of him through Plato’s eyes. We can study this text and others and never understand exactly who this man is. Even if we had writings of Socrates’s own hands it would be difficult to understand this complicated man. On the other hand the writings we do have, including the
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; G. E. M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (eds. and trans.). Philosophical Investigations. 4th edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
Titchener, who was a one student of Wundt, on the other hand, described his system as structuralism, which involves the analysis of the structure of the mind. Tichener broke down consciousness into elemental feelings and sensations. Wundt held the belief that consciousness was vital in scientific psychology, thus dependent on structuralism. He used introspection to study the functions of the mind occurring in active experience. It is however, imperative to note that Wundt’s introspection could not be used to establish higher functions of the mind. He divided the active experiences as feelings and sensations (Titchener, 1915).
I have been a firm believer of the anti-Cartesian argument that in order to join together one mind with one body Cartesians and anti-Cartesians are consider vital principles by Strawson, so one must think the mind as something dependent on someone, and not a separate entity altogether, as Descartes would argue.
However, having two, or more, substances, cannot explain why this number of substances exist, and so, Spinoza explains the world as having just one substance with infinite attributes, which avoids having to make this impossible explanation. Spinoza’s reasons his argument in proposition V by stating that ‘there cannot exist in the universe two or more substances having the same nature or attribute’ .
Atomic sentences have truth-values that evaluate the application of a concept to an object that is being referred. To find what the sentence refers to, the referent of the predicate must be applied to the referent of the subject. Connectives are vocabulary like “and”, “if”, and “not” that are functions from truth-values to truth tables. Each of these provide the basis for Frege’s language system such that we are able to speaking in our ordinary language, but still maintain the mathematical connection he attempts to establish early. Frege’s use of language and sentences being functions with variables is consistent with how he defines the basic constructs of what are needed in a human language.
Berkeley also argues that something is possible only if it can be imagined. He claimes that one cannot have a mental image of an unperceived object, so unperceived objects are impossible. He says that any mental image of an object would appear if one was to perceive it.
After reading Berkeley’s work on the Introduction of Principles of Human Knowledge, he explains that the mental ideas that we possess can only resemble other ideas and that the external world does not consist of physical form or reality but yet they are just ideas. Berkeley claimed abstract ideas as the source of philosophy perplexity and illusion. In the introduction of Principles of Human Knowledge,
Our words, only capable of expressing facts, cannot express anything of ethical value, or what Wittgenstein calls “absolute” value (Lecture 5). Hanna Pitkin explains, “all of art and esthetics, all of religion and ethics, all really of judgment, sensibility, and affect will have to be abandoned… Those things cannot be talked about, and if men continue to experience them they must do so in silence and therefore in isolation, in the wordless private world of dreams” (Pitkin 336-337). At this point, our first opportunity to advance a kind of ethic appears. Vera Fisogni writes in her essay “Ethics and Language in Wittgenstein,” that Wittgenstein’s ultimate claim in the Tractatus—that “[w]hat we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence”—is not just a claim about our capabilities (TLP 7). And Fisogni seems to be headed in a fruitful direction—to say that we are incapable of speaking about that which is ineffable is quite clearly tautological. Wittgenstein certainly knows this as well—the connection between logical form and language is rooted in the tautological (“The propositions of logic are tautologies” (TLP 6.1)). Yet Fisogni advances that Wittgenstein’s claim in point 7 of the Tractatus is an ethical one. She claims that his assertion that “we must” not speak of that which is ineffable is a direct claim about how we should act—that in order for a statement to be logical (and in this case, ethical), its
One of the most remarkable things about human existence is that there is a subject, an “I”, that experiences intellectual cognition of external things and is able to reflect on these experiences as a cognitive act in itself. How do things that exist outside of my mind come to exist inside of my mind so as to enable me to understand them? The goal of any theory of mind should be to answer questions such as this and, in evaluating the Gettier Problem as objectively as possible, we shall attempt to solve it to see whether it can withstand the single most piercing question we can ask of it: is it true that they are inescapable? In this essay I shall examine the paper of Gettier to answer the question of whether or not man can arrive at knowledge and, if so, how? I shall do this by recounting the problems posed by Gettier to the traditional understanding of knowledge as 'justified true belief', and then present critical responses to it to get to the truth of whether Gettier problems are inescapable, most notably by attempting to answer it with the 'Causal Theory', the 'Defeasibility Theory', and finally by considering knowledge as 'true belief with sufficient warrant'.