Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus

I think I'm finally beginning to understand some early Wittgenstein. He is such a cryptic jerk.
So its like this: I am interpreting him to be saying that The world is a truth-table. (Infinitely long, I assume)

Now I'm not sure if he means that its a truth-table like, thats all there is, or like the truth-table is all we can talk about. I am tending toward the latter. Because Wittgenstein does talk about 'simple objects'. Simple objects are what make up the propositions--propositions are statements about the relations between the simple objects. This is all speculative.
Well we can't speak about the simple objects, only about the relations; I guess.
But the thing is, Wittgenstein never really says what the simple objects are. Atoms? Sense-content? Who knows?

But then its also got this bizarre metaphysical thing going on, which Dr. Baumer pointed out. The world is made up of all possible propositions about the simple objects. (Thats where the truth-table thing came from.) But what the hell are these propositions? Thoughts?
The other bizarre metaphysics is that Wittgenstein talks about the simples as if they were the only possible simples. Every simple object in this Universe is necessary. There are no possible worlds in which any of the simple objects in this world are missing, or in which there are some other additional simple objects. So what these simple objects are is crucial to the whole grounding of his theory. But he never says anything about what these simples are! Atoms? Quarks? Objects? Experiences? Regardless of interpretation it seems bizarre. Not just bizarre, but extremely metaphysical, which goes against the entire positivist project.
So I'm not sure why the positivists worshipped him. Yeah, he wanted to reduce everything to atomic facts. But these atomic facts are so Platonic in nature that its mystical.

(This is most likely all mistaken anyway.)

By the way, the Tractatus is online: http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/tlph.html

Its fun to attempt to discover what it was Wittgenstein exactly was saying, but at the same time it really makes us philosophers look more like poets. Its like we all are seeking knowledge--if you have a grain of it why don't you explain it in plain language instead of being cryptic and sadistic to all of your readers?

7 - Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

An Entry Tom will Like.

I just read the news that the U.S. and Iraq are negotiating the long-term presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Now, I just read this, and as such, I haven't heard the liberal democrats' reaction. But as a liberal democrat, I just want to give my reaction.
One would seemingly think I would be outraged at the thought of long-term troop presence in Iraq. Why let our kids (like I'm old enough to say 'our kids') continue to die?
Well, I am not. I am/was for withdrawing from Iraq because Iraq citizens overwhelmingly want[ed] us out. They see us as contributing to the violence. Now don't get me wrong, I think the invasion was a bad and unprincipled move to begin with--but the point is, we are there, pulling out won't reverse that mistake. But what I am saying is that now that we are there, and we have a moral interest in ensuring the freedom and sovereignty of Iraq, we ought to do what they want (within limits, of course). Now it seemed to me, at least until now, that they wanted us to leave. And they may still want that, I'm not really sure. But if Iraq is taking steps toward democracy (which is debatable), we should help the process along by respecting their sovereignty. And that is why I have/had always said 'let's get the hell out of there', because the citizens of Iraq want[ed] us out. With this new story of Iraq wanting us to stay and provide security, I am not so sure. The real question at this point is whether the Iraqi government is representing their citizens' desires and interests. And I don't know that answer to that question. But if they are, and I were to be convinced that they were, I would reverse my position on the occupation and advocate us staying there, as long as we were welcome.
Now to respond to my fellow liberal democrats objection: "What about the families of the troops that are dying? Isn't this reason enough to be against the occupation?"
I respond: No. Its not. As controversial as this may be, American lives are not more valuable than Iraqi lives. If staying in Iraq provided decent security to millions of Iraqis, it would be worth it, even if a few thousand more American soldiers died. They wouldn't be dying in vain. They would be dying 'for freedom'. Just because its freedom in a different country doesn't make it any less valuable. That would be ethnocentric to assert otherwise.
I assume Republicans would disagree with my claim about Iraqi lives being equally as valuable as American lives, but it doesn't matter. The point is that we would conceivably hold the same position on the war, but for different reasons.

So there you have it. And I'll be watching my boy John Edwards on this one--his reaction could make or break my support for him.

A Crisis Averted...for Now

Last week I was depressed for a few days. I was pretty worried. I mean, I know its only depression if it lasts a couple weeks, but I didn't have the will to do anything.
Anyway, at the end of it all I realized that I am in a unique and frightening position. Let me briefly explain: I have a certain view of what philosophy is, what it is for, etc. I love science, don't get me wrong, but I think philosophy is a separate realm from science. Some philosophers do not, they are the radical empiricists.
Radical empiricists believe that philosophy is to be executed empirically, or scientifically.
To me, this wouldn't be, by definition, philosophy anymore. It would fall appropriately into the realms of cognitive science, neuroscience, and/or quantum physics.
So what does this mean? If I decided to become a radical empiricist, I wouldn't believe philosophy had a point anymore. So it seems I would have to drop out of school and go do something else with my life. And thus, when I read a really good paper by Hilary Kornblith (a radical empiricist) last week, I was depressed. Am I wasting two years of my life?
I got over that, but my point is, again, I am in a unique and frightening position, philosophically at least. If I change a certain philosophical view that I have, my life threatens to be superfluous. Its quite a bit of a leap of faith, I suppose.
Anyway, its finals next week. I have to get back to work.

two random notes

First of all, I just wanted to respond to those on the Christian Right who claim that the United States is a country which emphasizes the ideals of Judeo-Christian religion. This may have been true at the beginning, but it is most certainly not true today. What is my argument for this? Go read the Tenth Commandment. It is in direct opposition to our country's economic well-being. That is all I will say, as I have posted on this topic before.

Secondly, the revolutionary communists are on campus today! They are cute. Its funny because they are protesting the war...which I find humorous, if not ironic, because they advocate regime change at home, yet for some reason are opposed to it when it comes to another country which was probably more oppressive to communism than we are. Shouldn't they be for the war, but on different grounds? I don't know...I'm just saying...

Quick Question

I would have thought one fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats would be that Democrats see human rights as more important than national security, and Republicans feel the opposite.
Apparently I'm wrong.
Am I crazy? Didn't we invade Iraq because human rights are more important than national security? Don't we criticize Musharaff because human rights are more important than national security? Isn't the whole problem or fascism that it puts national security ahead of human rights?
Someone explain this to me, because I wouldn't feel comfortable voting for Clinton, Obama, or Edwards right now.

whoa...

So, now having read Kant, Carnap, Frege, Russell, third wave feminist epistemologists, and now Wittgenstein, I would say...how could it get any worse from here? This has to be the toughest (reading-wise) semester I have ever had. I read the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Judgment in their near entireties (not all of the appendices).
Brutal. But its awesome.
At the same time, I am wondering:
Does anyone fully understand some of these people?
I mean, Wittgenstein...does anyone get it? Or is he just revered because people assume anything that hard to read must be profound? I wonder.

Ideolocide

If Stephen Colbert can have 'truthiness', then I can have 'ideolocide'.
I invent the word 'ideolocide' at the risk of looking like a fool, because it seems to me there probably already is a word for what I am thinking of, but I just don't know what that word is.
'Ideolocide' shall be defined as the attempted destruction of an ideology--this is not to be confused with 'genocide', which could be broadly construed as the attempted destruction of a political group (though I think most of us traditionally think of it as a race or culture being destroyed).
So ideolocide is the attempted elimination of an idea, or group of ideas.
Ideolocide is seemingly what the 'war on terror' is attempting to do: Destroy the idea of religious fanatacism. I want to talk about this from two directions: 1. Is ideolocide possible? 2. Is ideolocide ethical?

1. Is ideolocide possible?
I'm not really sure if the possibility of ideolocide is a necessary precursor to an attempted ideolocide; after all, the Bush administration has suggested that the war on terror is unending. This is sort of strange--the idea of a war being, in principle, 'unwinnable'. (The logical positivists certainly would have argued it to be meaningless.) Nevertheless, it being strange certainly doesn't disqualify it.
So what would have to happen for an ideolocide to be a success? Well, for starters, we would have to eliminate the idea/ideology in its believer's heads. This could seemingly be done by killing and/or brainwashing all believers.
This isn't all, of course. To complete an ideolocide, we would also need to brainwash (or, rationally convince) anyone who would 'contemplate' believing the idea/ideology in the future. This would probably involve some sort of education program, which would have to be reinstated worldwide. Even if we were only attempting a national ideolocide, our education program would need to be worldwide--ideas can cross borders, regardless of how isolationist a nation may be.
This education program might not be quite as tough as it seems. All we would need to do is create a culture which would render the idea/ideology unthinkable. Certainly there have been cultures historically who have rendered certain ideologies unthinkable: In the middle ages, for example, atheism was considered so unthinkable that people actually considered atheism an impossible belief--they thought God's existence was so self-evident that anyone who denied it was delusional.
So, something like this is what we would need to put into place to make an ideolocide successful.
Also, let's not forget: we would need to eliminate any literature which spoke of the idea/ideology. We couldn't just eliminate literature which promoted or condoned the idea/ideology, but anything which could spark the idea in a critical reader's mind. Now I'm not sure this would be possible, at least for any ideas we find threatening. To eliminate religious fanatacism, we would have to eliminate all religious books! This seems impossible. We could burn millions of books, but chances are quite high that copies would remain, in hiding. Soviet Russia tried to do this, with minimal success--and that was just nationwide. A worldwide attempt at this would probably be impossible.
So it seems rather clear that what would have to be done for a successful ideolocide is impossible. For it is not just a matter of killing or brainwashing a group of people, but of killing or brainwashing anyone who would even critically examine an idea/ideology without rejecting it out of hand.

Nevertheless, it still may be argued that an attempted or partial ideolocide would be helpful, even if it could never be completed. So let us address our second question:
2. Is ideolocide ethical?
Ok, so I think it would be trivial to say ideolocide is unethical with respect to certain ideas/ideologies. That it not the question I have in mind. What I want to ask is, is ideolocide ever ethical? or, Is ideolocide unethical in principle?
I think the best way to ask this question is to look at a morally reprehensible idea, such as "The Aryan Race is the master race", and ask whether an attempted ideolocide of that is ethical.
I think it is clear to a Kantian that ideolocide is unethical, as it involves categorically unethical acts: Killing, Brainwashing (Taking away the free will of another rational being), destruction of knowledge (Because, after all, even if the idea/ideology itself was false, some of the things which don't promote the idea/ideology itself but still mention it would certainly contain valuable information.)
But hey, who is a Kantian anymore anyway?
What about to a utilitarian? Well, this seems like the best route to take for an ideolocide advocate. It basically reduces the question to this: Are there any circumstances in which the attempted destruction of an idea/ideology would create more pleasure/less pain than failing to destroy an idea/ideology would?
And it seems, at least to me, that there could be certain extreme situations in which the answer to this question would be 'Yes', and thus, ideolocide would not be wrong in principle.
But don't worry, hippies, this doesn't open up the floodgates. Because think about what would have to be taken into account when we do our utilitarian calculation:
1. Severely reduced freedom, worldwide, of education, religion, speech, press.
2. Imprisonment and 'reeducation' program to anyone who attempted to exercise freedoms. If this failed (or if there was risk their idea/ideology could be spread to others) it seems like death would be the only other solution.
3. Not only would you have to punish anyone who exercised freedoms of speech, but you would have to somehow destroy the idea from their heads. This couldn't even be a matter of convincing them not to hold the ideology--it would be a matter of eliminating the ideology completely and all traces of it.
4. A limitation of freedom would be a) fascism, and b) The suppression involved in the attempted ideolocide would drive people to develop negative ideologies toward the state, risking rebellion.
5. The risk of a slippery slope; resulting in the attempted ideolocide of any ideas/ideologies that disagreed with official state policy.

As we can see, this world resembles something close to Orwell's 1984. It is hard to imagine a situation which would necessitate ideolocide, short of threat of the genocide of the entire human race.
And, in terrorism, I fail to see this. Terrorists do want to kill people, but not everyone. And the amount of people we would have to kill to commit ideolocide of Islamic fascism would probably be around the same amount of people they would have to kill of ours to succeed. Not to mention, the fascism we would have to attempt would probably be just as bad as Islamic fascism, short of it being based in religion. So it doesn't seem like ideolocide in this situation fits the bill of 'ethical', even to a utilitarian. Stooping to the level of an enemy, or even to a level above that of an enemy that is still morally reprehensible, is not worth fighting an indestructible ideology. It seems the best thing to do is to attempt to protect ourselves, and attempt to show that our ideology is better than the Islamic fundamentalists'. Patience and self-protection. And yeah, we can protect those that are with us on this fight as well. But protection at the cost of giving up our ethics would be wrong, as is, in my opinion, the attempted ideolocide of religious fundamentalism.
Conservatives think that the free market should guide us as far as products, supply and demand, and economics goes. So why do they want the government to limit the marketplace of ideas? Certainly the threatening and unethical ones will be weeded out, right?

Ethicists and Morality

Are ethicists more ethical than non-ethicists?

Some philosopher is doing research on the topic, and so far the answer seems to be 'No.'
Its strange I stumbled across this, because this is something I've always been interested in. I have heard some stories of ethicists doing terrible things, but at the same time, why would you take an interest in something as a career which you didn't want to apply to your own life? It would be like a doctor who refused to take medicine.

Either way, I just thought I would share it in case anyone else was interested.


Also, in personal news, I read 120 pages of the Critique of Pure Reason by Kant in one day--needless to say, I am on the brink of insanity.