RE: ONT Re: Russell -- Philosophy Of Logical Atomism
Jon,
This is a learning experience for me. I appreciate both your work, and the
style with which it is presented.
Keep on backtracking, and I'll try to follow along, albeit occasionally
sniping from the sidelines every now and then. Or is the better metaphor
"keeping you on the straight and narrow"? I look forward to finding out.
Tom
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
[mailto:owner-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of Jon Awbrey
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 2:55 PM
To: Ontology
Subject: ONT Re: Russell -- Philosophy Of Logical Atomism
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Tom,
This is my usual sort of diagnostic procedure -- Back-Tractatus
Algorithm? --
I believe that something went wrong with mainstream 20th century analytic
philosophy somewhere, but I have not found their usual self-diagnostics
to be all that penetrating to the root of the problem. I made a first
approach to this particular complex of issues a couple of years ago:
01. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03289.html
02. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03290.html
03. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03296.html
04. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03297.html
05. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03303.html
06. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03304.html
07. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03306.html
But I need to go back and revisit it all,
a little less polemically and a lot less
scattered in my focus than I was then.
More broadly, a lot has happened in philosophy since Descartes,
and a whole lot more since Aristotle, and yet I find that some
approximations, assumptions, doctrines, and heuristics haven't
really changed all that much, in particular, some dicta about
the "theory of signs" that I call "Aristotle's Approximation":
01. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03284.html
02. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03316.html
03. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03317.html
04. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03324.html
05. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03327.html
06. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03328.html
07. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03332.html
http://www.chss.montclair.edu/inquiry/fall95/awbrey.html
http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journals/Details/issue/abstract/ab017772.html
http://members.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/awbrey/integrat.htm
Jon Awbrey
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Tom Johnston wrote:
>
> Jon,
>
> As you know, logical atomism is the philosophy of the Tractatus, which
Witt.
> himself rejected. It is a dead philosophical theory, and leads us down a
path
> which Quine and Sellars spent the better part of their careers helping us
retrace,
> back to more solid ground.
>
> Are you presenting this material as merely of historical interest, or do
you
> believe that, regardless of two generations of work in analytic
philosophy,
> and a concensus almost universally achieved, we "scientific ontologists"
> should use logical atomism as part of the foundation of our work?
> If so, I hope that what you hope to use, in logical atomism, is
> pragmatically innocent, consisting merely of some reassuring
> statements about how language is solidly grounded on
> incontrovertible fact (or the observations thereof).
>
> When taking a graduate seminar on the Tractatus, I did spend a semester
(or three)
> understanding how the world felt from that point of view. It is
attractive, but
> untrue historically (see Kuhn), psychologically (see Kohler) and
epistemologically
> (see Quine, Witt. II, Sellars, Feyerabend, Rorty, de Saussure, Heidegger,
Derrida,
> Eco, etc, etc.). Or so we all think!
>
> Tom
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
> [mailto:owner-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of Jon Awbrey
> Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2003 11:54 AM
> To: Inquiry; Ontology
> Subject: ONT Russell -- Philosophy Of Logical Atomism
>
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>
> POLA. Note 1
>
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>
> I am going to collect here a number of excerpts from the papers
> that Bertrand Russell wrote in the years 1910-1920, my interest
> being focused on the logical characters of belief and knowledge.
> I will take the liberty of breaking up some of Russell's longer
> paragraphs in whatever fashion serves to facilitate their study.
>
> | The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)
> |
> | The following [is the text] of a course of eight lectures delivered in
> | [Gordon Square] London, in the first months of 1918, [which] are very
> | largely concerned with explaining certain ideas which I learnt from
> | my friend and former pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein. I have had no
> | opportunity of knowing his views since August 1914, and I do
> | not even know whether he is alive or dead. He has therefore
> | no responsibility for what is said in these lectures beyond
> | that of having originally supplied many of the theories
> | contained in them.
> |
> | Russell, POLA, p. 35.
> |
> | Bertrand Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", pp. 35-155
> | in 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism', edited with an introduction
> | by David Pears, Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1985. First published 1918.
>
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