Wittgenstein & Masturbation

Wittgenstein wrote- in Section 107 of the Philosophical Investigations-

The more narrowly we examine actual language,

like the actual language he is presenting here

the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.)

What this actually means, narrowly examined, is that if you require logical purity, then there is a conflict between how we normally decode a sentence in natural language and the method of logical analysis. At first blush, this seems a reasonable proposition. Logic is one thing. Linguistics is another. 

The problem here is that it is always possible to give an narrow 'interpretation' to intensions such that they have well defined extensions in which case logic can work its crystalline magic. 

Furthermore, linguistics is not enough when it comes to 'actual language'. You need to understand motives, strategies, and the possibility of error or 'noise'. Still, one may say, 'narrow examination' involves algorithmic grammar induction. Moreover, by a theorem by Anton Bernshteyn, some 'infinite' problems in descriptive set theory are 'algorithmically tame'. In other words, so far as we know, 'narrow examination', if done by systematically by smart people, can make continuous progress of the sort that occurs in other STEM subjects. Logic becomes more crystalline and pure while descriptions, simultaneously, become more precise and useful. There is no conflict. The thing is 'win-win'. 

Even for non-smart people- e.g. me & Witless- if there is a requirement to analyse a piece of actual knowledge in a logical manner, we merely distinguish cases where there are well defined extensions and thus valid logical operations from other cases where intensional paradoxes arise. 

Suppose we have a requirement to use chop sticks to eat our dinner. It is soup. We may say there is a conflict between using our chops sticks to satisfy a particular requirement of ours while also getting something to eat for dinner. But this conflict is easily resolved. Use the chopsticks to stir up the soup and then slurp it down from the bowl. True, if you were served egg fried rice instead, you would get more use out of your chopsticks. Your date will think you are cosmopolitan and sophisticated more particularly if you place the chopsticks up your nose and do your Dr. Fu Manchu impression. 

The conflict becomes intolerable;

It really doesn't. Witless had fought in the Great War. That conflict was pretty fucking intolerable.

the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty.

Nope. It is like the requirement to use chopsticks. Depending on what you are dealing with, you may get little use out of it.  

— We have got on to slippery ice,

How?  

where there is no friction,

Yes there is. Friction increases lubrication or 'slipperiness'.  Most people in colder countries can adjust their gait or change their shoes to deal with slippery surfaces. The thing really is no big deal.   

and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal;

for sliding around? Witless doesn't get that friction helps generate lubrication or slipperiness. 

but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk.

Fuck off! We still get to work even when there is slippery ice on the pavements.  

We want to walk: so we need friction.

Traction. But we can change our shoes or manner of walking.  

Back to the rough ground!

Rough trade, more like- you big sissy. 

108. We see that what we call "sentence" and "language" has not the formal unity that I imagined,

Both have 'formal unity' for different 'formal' purposes- e.g. that of contract law. They may not do so for informal purposes.  

but is the family of structures more or less related to one another.

People in a biological family tend to be related to each other or to have ancestors or descendants in common.  'Family of structures' is merely a figure of speech. Is it useful? No. But shitheads may not understand this. 

-- But what becomes of logic now?

Smart people develop it further. You don't.  

Its rigor seems to be giving way here.

It may 'seem' so to a shithead. The fact is mathematical logic made great strides in the Fifties and Sixties. This turned out to be very useful indeed.  

-- But in that case doesn't logic altogether disappear? -- For how can it lose its rigor?

A penis does not disappear even it becomes flaccid. The fact that you can't use chopsticks to drink water doesn't make the chopsticks disappear. It just means they aren't used for that particular operation. Where intensions have well defined extensions, Liebniz's laws apply and logic can be used. Where this is not the case, logic can point out that the 'intensional fallacy' is at work.  

Of course not by our bargaining any of its rigor out of it.

Rough trade wants to get paid. That involves bargaining.  

-- The preconceived idea of crystalline purity

is like the preconceived idea that your wife will suddenly become a virgin on the honeymoon night.  

can only be removed by turning our whole examination around.

If Wittless had married, he would soon have turned his wife around.  

(One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need.)

This merely changes the coordinate system, nothing else. A fixed point arises when there is a continuous function mapping a nonempty, compact, convex set to itself. 'Real needs' are discontinuous. Witless is talking in a mathsy manner, but what he is saying is nonsense. 

If we have a 'real need', then there is an 'objective function'. Mathematics may be usefully applied. 

The philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words in exactly the sense in which we speak of them in ordinary life when we say e.g. "Here is a Chinese sentence",

Nobody says that in ordinary life. You may say 'this is Chinese writing' but how the fuck would you know if it was a sentence or a phrase or a paragraph? A 

or "No, that only looks like writing; it is actually just an ornament" and so on.

So what? The philosophy of logic isn't itself logic.  

We are talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language,

You may have been talking when you said this. You aren't now. You are dead. That's one spatial and temporal phenomenon we can all be thankful for.  

not about some non -- spatial, non -- temporal phantasm.

Phantasms are still spatial and temporal. Was Witless capable of writing a single sentence which wasn't stupid, ignorant or self-contradictory? 

[Note in margin: Only it is possible to be interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways].

It is also possible that there is no such phenomenon.  

But we talk about it as we do about the pieces in chess when we are stating the rules of the game, not describing their physical properties.

No. We don't talk about words in the way we talk about chess pieces. When did anybody say 'horsie means 'little horse'. It is a word used by children. If you need to move this word around in a sentence be sure to only advance it two steps in one direction if you are advancing it one step in the orthogonal direction'.  

The question "What is a word really?" is analogous to "What is a piece in chess?"

No. It is analogous to 'what is a chess piece really?' The answer is- beneath the veils of false consciousness, both are really types of penis invented by Capitalist Patriarchs to ass-rape the Environment.  

121. One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy" there must be a second order philosophy.

Why? I may speak of myself. Nobody thinks there is a 'second order' me.  

But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others without then being second -- order.

Or like the case of Witless who would often talk about himself. But he was merely second rate. He wasn't 'second-order'.  

122. A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.

No. We fail to understand stuff coz we are stupid, lazy, ignorant or because it is simply not in our interest to do so.  

-- Our grammar is lacking in just this sort of perspicuity.

Not mine. I'm not a drooling imbecile.  

A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connections'.

No. 'Seeing connections' has to do with paranoia, drug use, or creative thinking. Witless's 'perspicuous representation' does not exist. There are no 'family resemblances' save where there are biological families, nor are there 'language games' as opposed to coordination or discoordination games.  

Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases.

Telling stupid lies.  

The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a 'Weltanschauung'?)

No. It is some shite Witless pulled out of his arse.  

123. A philosophical problem has the form: "I don't know my way around."

No. It has the form 'this is an open problem'. The meaning is that some other discipline hasn't yet closed the question.  

124. Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language, it can in the end only describe it.

Not as well as linguistics.  

For it cannot give it any foundation either.

Sure it can. But that foundation is likely to be shitty.  

It leaves everything as it is.

Unless it shits itself and people slip upon its turds.  

It also leaves mathematics as it is, and no mathematical discovery can advance it.

Math can close questions previously thought open and thus 'philosophical'.  

A "leading problem of mathematical logic" is for us a problem of mathematics like any other.

Because you have no interest in either subject. Why not say 'a leading problem for smart people' is, for us, like any other smart peeps get excited about but which we can't understand.  

125. It is the business of philosophy, not to resolve a contradiction by means of a mathematical or logico -mathematical discovery, but to make it possible for us to get a clear view of the state of mathematics that troubles us: the state of affairs before the contradiction is resolved. (And this does not mean that one is sidestepping a difficulty.)

In other words, the business of philosophy is Grievance Studies. I am deeply troubled by the state of mathematics due to nobody is giving me Fields Medals. Is it coz I iz bleck?  

The fundamental fact here is that we lay down rules, a technique, for a game, and that then when we follow the rules, things do not turn out as we had assumed.

Von Neumann helped elucidate in which types of games this was likely to happen. If you keep losing at noughts and crosses, chances are you are stupid. Do your PhD on Wittgenstein & Bhratrhari or some such shite.  

That we are therefore as it were entangled in our own rules.

only in the sense that we are sucking our own cock.  

This entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand (i.e. get a clear view of).

which is like getting a clear view of our fucking ourselves the way the Pope keeps urging us to do. I really think she ought to return to the Vatican. How long is she going to crash on the couch? Serves me right for attending an inter-faith dialogue hosted by a hobo. 

It throws light on our concept of meaning something.

The whole point of having a concept is you don't need any further light being thrown upon it.  

For in those cases things turn out otherwise than we had meant, foreseen.

Which is why, if the thing is consequential, we get better at expressing ourselves or foreseeing the outcome of our actions.  

That is just what we say when, for example, a contradiction appears: "I didn't mean it like that."

That's not a contradiction. It is a statement which may be true- your g.f. may tell you you have a tiny todger because she loves you- or which may be false. She wants to hurt your feelings.  

The civil status of a contradiction, or its status in civil life: there is the philosophical problem.

Why stop there? Why not say 'It isn't you. It's me.' is the foundational problem of philosophy.  

126. Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.

It really doesn't. I want a pizza. Will Philosophy put it before me? No.  Fuck you Philosophy! Fuck you very much!

-- Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.

Vaginas were of no interest to Witless.  

One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

One might also call it 'masturbation'. Witless used to think about math when wanking in the trenches during the Great War. Admittedly, that is one better than shitting yourself while in the trenches- which is what I would have done- but I do feel Witless might have been a better philosopher if he had thought about wanking while pretending to understand math.