> So the resultant sentence, for example ‘I know I am in pain’, is nonsense
I found this amusing. It's definitely possible to not know one is in pain.
> And if that were so, it would be possible for me to make a mistake about whether I am in pain or not, and it would be possible for me to doubt whether I am in pain, but not to be sure. But none of these are genuine possibilities. So, this route is closed.
But they are, though. I think anyone who has suffered from chronic pain and/or dissociation has experienced these 'impossibilities'. I think this might be beside the point of the argument, that the author chose a naive working example that makes sense to him, but I need to further think about what it means to say "I was in pain" a while after asking myself "Am I in pain?" likewise "I wasn't in pain". It seems to me that the arguments laid out here rest on a transparency of language that doesn't actually exist.
> But it does not describe an impossibility either – for a logical or mathematical impossibility is not a possibility that is impossible. The sequence of words has been shown to have no sense – to be a nonsense.
Ok, but if something is nonsense, i.e. nothing, then it has no meaning. But the demonstration of an impossibility theorem in mathematics most definitely has non-trivial meaning. It is not obvious that you can't trisect the angle, and there is a minimally complex way to obtain the result which is certainly more complex than, say, the impossibility of 1 = 2 in the integers. But if they're both nonsense (i.e. nothing, as the author says), then I can't ascribe this complexity of proving their impossibility to them, for I would be able to make some sense of nonsense.
Now, even in most constructive logics there is no sense ascribed to a theorem of "A => 0", but this, in my opinion, should be considered a flaw in logic, the absurd does have meaning! No one thinks that Wiles proved that nonsense was nonsense, an immediately obvious statement. Nonsense can appear as sense for so long that you would never know it was any different.
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I think my rumination above as I read are very shallow (and I have spared y'all from many more), but I have been wanting to read Wittgenstein for quite some time now and I think this writing will motivate me to do it sooner. At the very least Wittgenstein is irresistible to engage with. I think one of my main problems is with the reliance on logical possibility as fully coherent.
I found this amusing. It's definitely possible to not know one is in pain.
> And if that were so, it would be possible for me to make a mistake about whether I am in pain or not, and it would be possible for me to doubt whether I am in pain, but not to be sure. But none of these are genuine possibilities. So, this route is closed.
But they are, though. I think anyone who has suffered from chronic pain and/or dissociation has experienced these 'impossibilities'. I think this might be beside the point of the argument, that the author chose a naive working example that makes sense to him, but I need to further think about what it means to say "I was in pain" a while after asking myself "Am I in pain?" likewise "I wasn't in pain". It seems to me that the arguments laid out here rest on a transparency of language that doesn't actually exist.
> But it does not describe an impossibility either – for a logical or mathematical impossibility is not a possibility that is impossible. The sequence of words has been shown to have no sense – to be a nonsense.
Ok, but if something is nonsense, i.e. nothing, then it has no meaning. But the demonstration of an impossibility theorem in mathematics most definitely has non-trivial meaning. It is not obvious that you can't trisect the angle, and there is a minimally complex way to obtain the result which is certainly more complex than, say, the impossibility of 1 = 2 in the integers. But if they're both nonsense (i.e. nothing, as the author says), then I can't ascribe this complexity of proving their impossibility to them, for I would be able to make some sense of nonsense.
Now, even in most constructive logics there is no sense ascribed to a theorem of "A => 0", but this, in my opinion, should be considered a flaw in logic, the absurd does have meaning! No one thinks that Wiles proved that nonsense was nonsense, an immediately obvious statement. Nonsense can appear as sense for so long that you would never know it was any different.
--
I think my rumination above as I read are very shallow (and I have spared y'all from many more), but I have been wanting to read Wittgenstein for quite some time now and I think this writing will motivate me to do it sooner. At the very least Wittgenstein is irresistible to engage with. I think one of my main problems is with the reliance on logical possibility as fully coherent.