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Harish's Notebook - My notes... Lean, Cybernetics, Quality & Data Science. 
Thanks. Your contribution made me read Wittgenstein and his translation in Dutch again. The book has been translated by one of Netherlands’ most important writers, W.F. Hermans, and he added a few interesting – but as little as possible – comments.
For instance: the German text has been translated in English by C.K. Ogden and has been authorized by Wittgenstein. Yet it was published together with the German text (as it is in his Dutch translation), because – as Wittgenstein wrote – there are solutions to translating, but no methods to translate a text. In that time German was still the standard.
I suppose it’s the same with translating Wittgenstein into cybernetics: there are statements, propositions (to questions, problems), but no definitive methods. With cybernetics we produce models of reality as we think it is. However, cybernetics doesn’t produce methods; we do.
Hermans also stated, that his ideas may be unclear or proven untrue. That’s not the issue. It’s about their usefulness.
Wittgenstein denied we’re thinking in language. We’re thinking in psychic components, with the same relationships to reality as words. As in 4.01 “Der Satz ist ein model der Wirklichkeit, so wie wir sie uns denken”: The sentence is a model of reality as we think it is. So, I my view, the “systems” we’re thinking about are psychic components that relate to reality. Through structural coupling, these components prove their worth in their usefulness, but not necessarily in their truth. (yes, I’m also a pragmatist).
I think it’s also important that in the Tractatus he limits (4.11) the totality of true propositions – logic – to (natural) science, excluding philosophy – which he considered comments on propositions -, epistemology and psychology. Interestingly, this also excludes mathematics – which can be considered as inventions of the human mind (think about 0, square root of 2, irrational numbers,…) , as opposed to discoveries (“cases”, things).
The words “Fall”, “Tatsachen” and “Sachverhalten” – as “case”, “fact” and “state of affairs”. In his Dutch translation Hermans uses “geval” , which is closer with the German “Fall”, which has the connotation of “falling” and “happens to be”. Hermans comments that Wittgenstein considered sentences like: “the world exist” or “objects exist” as nonsense. He objected, as you cannot imagine not to exist the world or objects, and wouldn’t exist, if the world isn’t the case.
The German word “Tat-sachen”, also suggests “act-thing”, Tat being “deed”, and that a fact – like the Latin word seems to suggest too – is indeed – pun intentional – “made”. A fact exists as relationships with other facts (so, like my spouse always says, “relationship is a verb”). .
The German “verhalten” – a noun or a verb – can imply behaviour and also the way one relates to “facts”. Hermans uses the Dutch “connectie” for Sachverhalten, or connection in English. I would have preferred “relationships” as a translation too. More useful.
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Thank you for your excellent comment, Janlelie.
Some great points here.
-Harish
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You’re welcome.
Your contribution also made me read the book “Wittgenstein” by WF Hermans. As one of the best writers in The Netherlands, they’re well written and documented comments on Wittgenstein’s writing.
Hermans found evidence that Wittgenstein also developed a second “book”. Which he couldn’t publish, because it’s about “what one cannot say”. One of the things one cannot speak about is “ethics”, because you can only behave ethical. And it’s unethical to order somebody to live ethically.
One can only live ethical, so he gave away his inheritted fortune, to his siblings, because only rich people know how how to deal with large sums of money. He became a teacher in a small, local school, in which he failed, as he couldn’t stand gigling girls, stuborn parents and his fellow teachers. He insisted on paying for his own travel expenses, for meeting Russell in The Hague – this lead to the publication of Tractatus, as Russell offered to write a foreword -, he sold his furniture from Cambrigde, staying in the vegeterian hotel Pomona. He also had to find work to pay for a return ticket from a vacation stay on Norway to Austria … . In the end, he did return to writing.
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Hermans, by the way, is also known for his clever word games. One of his hardest – and most (in)famous – book he entitled, “De God Denkbaar, Denkbaar de God”, “The God Thinkable, Thinkable the God”. Off course, one should not speak about God (Wovon man nicht sprechen can…). A close reader discovered he had hidden – like a game of hide and seek -, his message in chapter 4 (the book has 16 chapters and 4 is the root of 16), which litteraly reads “strike out: which does not apply”. The reader concluded that one should strike out “which does not apply”, as it doesn’t apply, leaving one with “strike out”. So one should strike out, leaving “empty set”. Hermans never acknowledged this intended “meaning”.
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Fascinating information on Hermans. I should look him up. Heinz von Foerster was influenced by Wittgenstein’s ideas on ethics too.
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Reblogged this on Systems Community of Inquiry.
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And he was of course von Foerster’s uncle and by all accounts a huge influence on the young (hard to conceive) man.
Or, googling now (and resisting that rabbit-hole!) he may have just been a close family friend to whom he referred to as ‘uncle Wittgenstein’
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Von Foerster’s cousin Paul was Wittgenstein’s nephew. HvF talked about Uncle Ludwig in Part of the World and The Dream of Reality. I will message you.
Harish
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A smart idea to put the construction of an early Wittgenstein and the construction of a late Wittgenstein in the relation of first and second order observations.
However, in my opinion it leads to bending said constructions in such a way that they fit the smart idea.
The idea, for example, that one must pay attention to the use of the sign if one wants to know what it means, already comes from TLP (3.326), indeed, the famous paragraph 43 of PI is a qualification against it (for in this I agree with your observation about, TLP is dogmatic, PI is not):
“Man kann für eine große Klasse von Fällen der Benützung des Wortes ‘Bedeutung’ – wenn auch nicht für alle Fälle seiner Benützung – dieses Wort so erklären: Die Bedeutung eines Wortes ist sein Gebrauch in der Sprache.”
PU 43 is in fact not a short version of a theory of use of meaning, but a remark on the semantics of the word meaning: words, according to Wittgenstein, do not carry meaning around like a lady’s handbag, but we first give meaning to words in the language game “asking for meaning”, and the meaning is explained by giving examples of use – so we play the language game with the word meaning.
(One more small remark to TLP: the “simple objects” of the Tractatus are not enumerable things of our macrophysical world, thus certainly not tables chairs or floor lamps; but probably rather something like sense data, philosophically perhaps comparable to “pre-predicative experience” in Husserl.)
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