[Fwd: Re: book: wittgenstein's poker]

Charles Jannuzi jannuzi at edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp
Tue Oct 30 03:59:54 PST 2001


KH
>The Tractatus is concerned primarily with the >logical aspect of empiricism
and
>this is one of the reasons why the Tractatus >influenced both Russell's
>logical atomism and the logical positivists--->even though W was neither.
>Wittgenstein in his preface specifically singles >out Russell as a source
for
>some of his ideas by the way.

Yeah, for the most part I agree. The Tractatus bridges the simplistic but somewhat true 'British Empiricism vs. Continental Rationalism' post-Hegelian divide. In its concerns, it is not limited to a philosophy or logics of empirical science (which to most moderns means experimental science). This I think was the point of confusion in the current discussion.

As for the Tractatus's metaphysics, in that sense it is a self-swallowing, self-repudiating work. It is also an addition to and critique of Russell's (empiricist logical atomism) and Frege's (realist ) conceptualizations of logics. The necessary truths of logic are empty tautologies while metaphysical utterances are nonsense.

Gosh, this stuff is more interesting than TEFL.

Charles Jannuzi



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