Wittgenstein and my Fly-Bottle
I have to admit to being a little upset at my most recent reading material. It's not that it wasn't genius or anything. Wittgenstein was nothing if not a genius. He was a crucial foundation for most contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of mathematics, which happen to be the cornerstone of modern philosophy. I read his first book, the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus a while back and I couldn't understand a word of it. Then I read that he presented it as his doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, and at the end of the interview clapped the adjudicators on the back (and they were Bertrand Russel and Alfred North Whitehead- not exactly dumb people) and said, "Don't worry, I know you'll never understand it."
I was fine with that. In fact, I used some of his ideas in my draft of what was going to be, eventually, after many hours and many revisions, a book. And then I read Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. These were never published during his lifetime; like Pascal's Pensees, they took a draft he essentially had on his desk and published that. You might think that this would be an inferior work, but I really like the style- as fragments, you can get a hold of a given idea better than you would if the same idea was presented as a chapter. It is more concise and more to the point.
But I have a problem with Wittgenstein. Check these sentences, they don't make sense out of context, but just read them:
"...if someone wished to say:"There is something common to all these constructions- namely the disjunction of their common properties"- then I should reply: Now you are only playing with words"
That sentence put my whole work (20,000+ words, constantly revised, days worth of work) on hiatus as I try desperately to come up with a way around his argument.
A Mini-Rant, but I'm not real mad.
I have a little bit to say about political arguments. I might have, in fact, mentioned them before, but now I have reason to mention why I don't engage in them. I've been asked by three different people in the past couple of days what my stance was on a certain issue, and I've had to politely respond that I couldn't give a fair opinion and that, indeed, no one could really give an accurate prediction of a given policy.
All political arguments have one essential flaw in them. They are all arguments with an implied Ceteris Paribus clause, which in latin means all things being equal. People argue that, all other things being equal, this change in policy will have this result. But that is not right at all, since the real world doesn't work with all things being equal; it works with things changing right when you expected them to stay the same, or with things having unintended consequences that come back to mess up the system.
In some settings, I love arguing over politics, but only when it is completely ensured that it is a hypothetical argument, such as in a polisci class or with friends who know me well enough to realize that I will just as easily argue the other side of the argument.
I have a calculus test in a few hours, and this is what I do. This isn't even a finals calc test! I have this test, dead week, and then the final on friday next!
And I can't even talk about my English paper. 12-15 pages...
Japanese Oral...
Japanese Written...
Stupid Japanese out-of-class assignments...
GGAAAh!!!!1
*twitching*
In other news, I have decided to become nocturnal for the summer. More on this later.
Yeah I know that every time I'm busy I give a poem. So sue me
Can't talk. Too busy. Sorry for short posts. Will stop with telegraph writing soon. Must eat- haven't all day. Have poem. Not mine: one of my professor's:
Metaphysic, with Bird
A window allows
that stories
seldom
translate, that the verb falters.
O that it falters. And rises
From mud again.
That this window
allows a cardinal in the yard
to flash across a stretch of glass
and vanish
into eye and ear and heart
that follow feathers and light
to dreams of perfect bird,
perfect cardinal
in the yard
with mud and a verb-
to flash to fly to be
to God. Verb falters
when the window allows.
And rises.
Cheers, Dr. Marshall
Frustrations...
There is much that we do not understand about the world. Trying to find out exactly what we can and cannot know has been a passion of mine for quite awhile. I have a long way to go- people have been trying to figure this stuff out for thousands of years.
But is it worth it if I cannot even start with what I know? How do I know what I am knowing this instant is what I knew five minutes ago? How do I know that I agree with you on what we are seeing?
Why is knowledge so important? Why am I always trapped by my perception of knowledge rather than actual knowledge?
Just a few things I'm working through.
Memories
I know I said that I would be getting back to those topics that I put up- but then life came up and bit me while I wasn't expecting it.
One of my friends, my classmate in the Honors Program, Ann Komadina, died Friday evening. It was a massive blow to all of us- we have all been in shock throughout the weekend and still feel very raw- and we will, for a long time to come.
I'm very sorry that you guys in Utah didn't get to know her- you would have gotten along splendidly. She was very quiet around most people- but if you put forth the effort to get to know her then you realized how many levels and how many facets she had. She was one of the kindest people I ever knew, and she had an absolutely sharp sense of humor at the right times. I got to know real well her little half smile that just invited me to ask- and I would always get hit with a zinger.
It's the little things that we remember.
So. I don't say this enough- I want to thank you guys for always being there for me, even a thousand miles away- I keep you in my heart and I hope you keep me, too.
A Quick Note
I have to run, but I wanted to quickly say a couple of things that I've been thinking about recently and want to consider in depth later:
1. The fact that fictional writing requires dialogue to make it interesting- it is the dialogue that creates the characters, even more than their actions. If novels are, as I suspect they are, paintings of propositional psyches- what does this say about human nature?
2. I really should stop being surprised by this, but when giving forth their opinions, people don't realize or consider how weak their premises usually are. Premises! It's all about premises!
