From: zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Philosophical Influence & Husserl & Wittgenstein
Date: 18 Aug 92 03:56:38 GMT
Article-I.D.: husc3.1992Aug17.235639.14841
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal

In article <1992Aug18.004116.24086@panix.com> 
davidc@panix.com (David B. Chorlian) writes:

>In <1992Aug14.124501.14732@husc3.harvard.edu>
>zeleny@husc9.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:

MZ:
>>I find the question of the nature of meaning to be the second most
>>important classical philosophical question, the first being that of the
>>structure of reality.  The contributions of Frege, Russell, Cantor, Tarski,
>>Church, et al. to one or both of them, as the case may be, could hardly be
>>overestimated. 

DBC:
>You overestimate them.  The contributions of Husserl, Heidegger, and
>Wittgenstein to understanding the structure of the everday reality
>in which we live our lives is far more significant. (And not because
>they offer a coherent set of answers.)  Both Husserl and Wittgenstein
>were interested in logic and mathematics at the beginning of their
>philosophical careers, making significant contributions to the
>philosophy of logic and mathematics, and each turned from the model
>of formal logic as a controlling discipline to studies which rooted
>themselves in what they thought was the everyday experience of
>humankind.  In doing this they approached their work with the same
>degree of rigor as they had brought to their studies of formal
>logic.  Their results show that the world cannot be understood as
>the objective correlate of a system of formal logic, as a set of
>objects with properties, but as constituted by a range of human
>activities and practices which show a complicated and subtle
>"grammar".

A few remarks are in order.  Pro primo, I resent the grand way in which you
pronounce on "the everyday reality in which we live our lives".  This brief
exchange in no way entitles you to pontificate on the sort of reality in
which *I* live *my* life; please keep your conclusions confined to more
accessible subjects.  Pro secundo, the "significant contributions" of
Husserl and Wittgenstein to the philosophy of logic and mathematics are
altogether negligible, as may be ascertained by the vast majority of those
actively working in the field; as for the alleged rigor of later
Wittgenstein, it may be exemplified by the ludicrous discussion of the
semantics of `game', which is ostensibly ignorant not only of any
scholarship in that area (e.g. Huizinga), but even of the combinatorial
possibilities afforded by elementary sentential logic.  Pro tertio,
phenomenology and ordinary language philosophy has "results" to "show" the
ultimate constitution of the world only in the eyes of those wholly bereft
of critical intelligence.  If it tickles you to maintain that "the world
cannot be understood as the objective correlate of a system of formal logic,
as a set of objects with properties", by all means feel free to do so;
however please note that your claim that this proposition somehow transcends
in its significance a mere expression of your personal prejudice constitutes
its own refutation in virtue of its unquestionable absoluteness.

>David B. Chorlian
>Neurodyamics Lab
>SUNY/HSCB

cordially,
mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu
"Un de mes plus grands plaisirs est de jurer Dieu quand je bande."