Sunday, April 24, 2005
More German Practice
from On Certainty or Über Gewissheit
In the last year and a half of his life, Wittgenstein took a great interest in G.E. Moore's ideas about knowledge and how we know things. Unlike the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which Wittgenstein sought to explain all that could be explained, this work deals with the question of whether we can know anything at all.
Empiricism rested on the assumption that all we knew was the information from our sensory experiences. Hume suggested this wasn't much. Kant challenged this, arguing that the way we represent, process and understand our experiences reflects the existence of a priori cognition, knowledge about how to use our perceptions. And then comes the question, "What if our perceptions are wrong or inaccurate or incomplete?"
Eventually, some of our finer, though often lesser-known, philosophers started to wonder if the world existed at all, or if it was just a figment of their imagination. They had a point, though figments such as grocers and landlords still insisted on their regular payments, and those philosophers most resolute in their beliefs discovered that angry grocers and landlords provoked sensations, real or imagined, of hunger and homelessness.
Finally, the philosopher who had once explained it all sat down to hash out whether we could know what was real, and whether it really mattered if we couldn't stop ourselves from feeling reality's effects, however irreal it might be. Below are excerpts from Wittgenstein's notebooks, most of them drawing on the question of what it means to know. These provide an opportunity to investigate knowledge and practice a little German. Enjoy.
Text and numbering from On Certainty, by Anscombe and Wright. Translations are my own.
| 1. Wenn du weißt, daß hier eine Hand ist, so geben wir dir alles übrige zu. | 1. If you know, that here a Hand is, so give we give you all remaining (to). | 1. If you know that here is a hand, then we'll give you all the rest. |
| 2. Das es mir - oder Allen - so scheint, daraus folgt nicht, daß er so ist. | 2. That it to me - or to All - so seems, out of it follows not, that it so is. | 2. That it seems so to me - or to everyone - does not mean that it is so. |
| 7. Mein Leben zeigt, daß ich weiß, oder sicher bin, daß dort ein Sessel steht, eine Tür ist u.s.f. - Ich sage meinem Freunde z.B. "Nimm den Sessel dort," "Mach die Tür zu," etc. etc. | 7. My Life shows, that I know, or sure am, that there a Chair stands, a Door is, and so forth - I say to my Friend, e.g. "Take the chair there," "Make the door closed," etc. etc. | 7. My life shows that I know, or am sure, that over there there is a chair or a door, and so on - I say to my friend, "Take that chair," "Shut the door," etc. etc. |
| 42. Man kann sagen "Er glaubt es, aber es ist nicht so," nicht aber "Er weiß es, aber es ist nicht so." | 42. One can say "He believes it, but it is not so," not however "He knows it, but it is not so." | 42. One can say, "He believes it but it isn't so," but not "He knows it but it isn't so." |
| 90. "Ich weiß" hat eine primitive Bedeitung ähnlich und verwandt der von "Ich sehe" ("wissen," "videre"). Und "Ich wußte, daß er im Zimmer war, aber er war nicth im Zimmer" ist ähnlich wie "Ich sahe ihn im Zimmer, aber er war nicht da." | 90. "I know" has a primitive Meaning similar and related to that of "I see" (Ger. "wissen" - to know, Lat. "videre" - to see). And "I knew that he in the Room was, but he was not in the Room" is similar to "I saw him in the Room, but he was not there." | 90. "I know" has a primitive meaning similar and related to "I see" (Ger. "wissen", Lat. "videre"). And "I knew that he was in the room, but he wasn't in the room" is similar to "I saw him in the room, but he wasn't there." |
posted by gbarto at 5:12 PM