>Date: Sat, 27 Jul 1996 23:34:59
>To: wittgestein@xxxxxxxxx
>From: "Thomas E. Bedwell" <spirit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Foundations
>
>
>
>Marhaba list -
>
>Bonus points for anyone who can tell me the dialect of that greeting.
>
>In the spirit of W., I am beginning a thread that attempts to say
everything about an issue in very few words. Here it goes:
>
>Is there a current within Wittgenstein's thought in which language
(rule-based) is viewed as the structural foundation of social reality? When
Wittgenstein proposes in the Tractatus, that
> In a certain sense we can talk about formal properties
> of objects and states of affairs, or, in the case of facts,
> about structural properties: and in the same sense about
> formal relations and structural relations, (4.122)
>is he very far from the position taken in Culture and Value in which
language is "an immense network" (18) that "we are engaged in a struggle
with" (11)?
>
>There are, of course, other ways to address the issue: Does language have
an ontological status that is cemented in the independent existence of
rules? When Wittgenstein says in Philosophical Investigations:
> It is not possible that there should have been only one
> occasion on which someone obeyed a rule. It is not
> possible that there should have been only one occasion
> on which a report was made, an order given or understood;
> and so on.--To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an
> order, to play a game of chess, are CUSTOMS (USES,
> INSTITUTIONS). (199 - caps added),
>is he not suggesting that the agency of human beings, as constituted
>through, and within the activity of rule-based language customs, is an
ontologically independent institution?
>
>The larger issue at stake here is whether or not the customary regularities
and rules associated with human interaction through language constitute the
foundation of society.
>
>I hope this thread goes somewhere.
>
>Tom
>
>To: wittgestein@xxxxxxxxx
>From: "Thomas E. Bedwell" <spirit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Foundations
>
>
>
>Marhaba list -
>
>Bonus points for anyone who can tell me the dialect of that greeting.
>
>In the spirit of W., I am beginning a thread that attempts to say
everything about an issue in very few words. Here it goes:
>
>Is there a current within Wittgenstein's thought in which language
(rule-based) is viewed as the structural foundation of social reality? When
Wittgenstein proposes in the Tractatus, that
> In a certain sense we can talk about formal properties
> of objects and states of affairs, or, in the case of facts,
> about structural properties: and in the same sense about
> formal relations and structural relations, (4.122)
>is he very far from the position taken in Culture and Value in which
language is "an immense network" (18) that "we are engaged in a struggle
with" (11)?
>
>There are, of course, other ways to address the issue: Does language have
an ontological status that is cemented in the independent existence of
rules? When Wittgenstein says in Philosophical Investigations:
> It is not possible that there should have been only one
> occasion on which someone obeyed a rule. It is not
> possible that there should have been only one occasion
> on which a report was made, an order given or understood;
> and so on.--To obey a rule, to make a report, to give an
> order, to play a game of chess, are CUSTOMS (USES,
> INSTITUTIONS). (199 - caps added),
>is he not suggesting that the agency of human beings, as constituted
>through, and within the activity of rule-based language customs, is an
ontologically independent institution?
>
>The larger issue at stake here is whether or not the customary regularities
and rules associated with human interaction through language constitute the
foundation of society.
>
>I hope this thread goes somewhere.
>
>Tom
>