Almost done with Wittgenstein. Despite learning much from his book, there is one thing I think he does wrong. He repeatedly brings up the fact that saying certain simplistic logic statements (atomic facts) is nonsensical. For example, if I said 'I know that is a tree', the person to whom I said it would not get much from it. He might think I was simple, or playing around. Wittegenstein dwells on this, and I think that it has no place in a book on logic and knowledge. The use of language in order to illustrate his points is unavoidable, but I think logic and knowledge can be investigated independently of language and semantics. Just because a language statement well be better or worse received does not make it more or less true. Semantics and language are completely subjective - whereas, in my opinion, logic and knowledge are not.
No comments:
Post a Comment