My recent discussions of Meillassoux and Thought-World-Correlationism has given rise to some discussion about the thinkable, unthinkable, meaningless and so on. I think these are very interesting questions, but in general I find the conception of "thought" which philosophy has tended to work with to be a fairly deceptive theoretical distortion. In this I follow Heidegger. If we look to how we make our way through the world on a day to day basis we find something rather different than the "thought" we find discussed in many areas of philosophy.
Here is a Wittgenstein quotation on the subject which may serve to change some of the recent tone of my blog. It is from his Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics and calls into question which it means for thought or inference to be constrained. We might take it to be a comment on what we mean by the thinkable and unthinkable:
"And thinking and inferring (like counting) is of course bounded for us, not by an arbitrary definition, but by natural limits corresponding to the body of what can be called the role of thinking and inferring in our life... And I say further that the line between what we include in 'thinking' and what we no longer include in 'thinking' is no more a hard and fast one than the line between what is still and what is no longer called 'regularity'. Nevertheless the laws of inference can be said to compel us; in the same sense, that is to say, as other laws in human society."
Showing posts with label Correlationism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Correlationism. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
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