Re: Anti-diagonalist page


> george wrote:
> > Wittgenstein was primarily about natural language.
> > He was NOT speaking then OR EVER as a logician.


Aatu Koskensilta wrote:
> Have you ever read Tractatus

Yes, but I was an undergrad (i.e. it was over 20 years ago).

> or the numerous posthumously published
> early notes by Wittgenstein?

No.

> For a non-logician he seems awfully
> interested in logical matters.

OK, my "or ever" was wrong.
But I seriously do tire of people cutting too
much. If you are going to rebut something with
"then" in it then you have to quote the antecedent
of "then", which was, in this case, "when he was
arguing against the diagonal argument". Since that
argument is a straighforward first-order proof, there
is no logical argument against it, so whatEVER W may
have been saying against it, he was NOT saying it
primarily from a logical point of view.

W's argument as re-presented HERE confirms that.
It is an argument alleging illegitimate re-definition,
which is a *semantic* kind of sin. The question of
whether the attempted re-definition Really IS legitimate
is NOT a logical question. More to the point, the fact
that W views the question as answered, as resolved,
implies that even he is exiling it from a philosophical realm.
That is just a bunch of early fumbling, frankly.

Anyone who wanted to could seriously attempt the development
of a transfinite theory of "size" after alleging that (e.g.)
there were MORE integers than even integers (or more even
integers than odd integers), i.e., after choosing the horn
of the "bifurcation" that W insists is the "original meaning"
(may Rehnquist&Roberts get their just desserts for THAT one),
in contrast to the il[in his opinion]legitimate neologism
of Dedekind and Cantor.

The fact that nobody has come up with a theory along those
lines that is seriously viewed AS legitimately competitive
SPEAKS FOR ITSELF. And against W here.

.

Loading