Before talking about the nature of arguments in my Intro to Logic class, I start off talking about inferential relationships between statements more generally. So I ask them to consider what else must be true , e.g., if “Todd is dead” is true and if “Bob loves Jill” is true. Two of the claims that people said followed from “Todd is dead” were: 1) There is at least one dead person. 2) There is a reason for Todd’s death. I…
I like a look of agony, Because I know it’s true; Men do not sham convulsion Nor simulate a throe. The eyes glaze once, and that is death. Impossible to feign The beads upon the forehead By homely anguish strung. (Emily Dickinson) An important part of seeing what Wittgenstein is up to is to recognize that his starting point when “doing philosophy” is that there are all of these phenomena of life: we talk meaningfully about dreams, the future, sensations,…
This is the review I wrote on Amazon.com: Even though Wittgenstein’s German is nothing like Kant’s, providing a good translation of his work is a challenge given all that one must bring into consideration. Anscombe’s original translation had its merits, but it also had a number of frustrating flaws. One of the many problems with Anscombe’s translation of PI, is her translation of both “hinweisende Erklärung” and “hinweisende Definition” as “ostensive definition,” where the former is more literally read as…