NationStates Jolt Archive

OK, slight problem, i'm writing an essay against moral subjectivism and i'm using Wittgenstein's view of "nonsense" ethics to help give a case for objectivism. But now
a) I think i might be talking shite
b) Did Wittgenstein favour Objectivism? He was a christian wasn't he?

Man, i'm more than slightly confused. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

OK, slight problem, i'm writing an essay against moral subjectivism and i'm using Wittgenstein's view of "nonsense" ethics to help give a case for objectivism. But now
a) I think i might be talking shite
b) Did Wittgenstein favour Objectivism? He was a christian wasn't he?
Wittgenstein could perhaps be characterized as an objectivist, although most of his work was related to language and how it structures, and is structured by, our concepts of the universe. He regarded ethics as transcending the limitations of human language, although not so much as "objective" in nature as being one of those areas where language is inadequate.

As to whether he was a Christian or not, I don't know, although he was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith even though his father was Jewish.

Wittgenstein could perhaps be characterized as an objectivist, although most of his work was related to language and how it structures, and is structured by, our concepts of the universe. He regarded ethics as transcending the limitations of human language, although not so much as "objective" in nature as being one of those areas where language is inadequate.

As to whether he was a Christian or not, I don't know, although he was baptized into the Roman Catholic faither even though his father was Jewish.
OK dokie, I argue that our language cannot deal with Absolute values but that we experience these values and they emerge (implicitly) in the language(facts) with which we use in the world. This "experience" is, in a way, objective "universal truths". Does that make sense?

As to whether he was a Christian or not, I don't know, although he was baptized into the Roman Catholic faith even though his father was Jewish.
Throughout the war, Wittgenstein kept notebooks in which he frequently wrote philosophical and religious reflections alongside personal remarks. The notebooks reflect a profound change in his religious life: a militant atheist during his stint at Cambridge (Monk [1990] 44), Wittgenstein discovered Leo Tolstoy's The Gospel in Brief at a bookshop in Galicia. He devoured Tolstoy's commentary and became an evangelist of sorts; he carried the book everywhere he went and recommended it to anyone in distress (to the point that he became known to his fellow soldiers as "the man with the gospels") (Monk [1990] 116). However, Monk also notes that he began to doubt at least by 1937 (Monk [1990] 382-384), and that by the end of his life he said he could not believe Christian doctrines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein

OK, slight problem, i'm writing an essay against moral subjectivism and i'm using Wittgenstein's view of "nonsense" ethics to help give a case for objectivism. But now
a) I think i might be talking shite
b) Did Wittgenstein favour Objectivism? He was a christian wasn't he?

Man, i'm more than slightly confused. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Deconstructionists tend to make heavy use of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, because his free-verse on what constituted a game made for the first example of non-essentialism. Modern subjectivists tend to make the same claim: just as there is no one essential feature of what makes a game a game, so to is there nothing essential about something like morality. I couldn't say any more about deconstructionism or Wittgenstein, because I've been trained in a heavily analytic program that simply didn't bother with the Continental stuff.

That being said, if I were going to make a point about language usage, I'd make the inductive point against subjectivism about their anti-realist committments. Put more clearly, subjectivists almost by definition have to have some kind of anti-realist commitment: whether because there is no external world, or because that world is constructed in such a way as to have no bearing on our experience, all we really do as beings is construct our own independent reality, or our own conception of what the world is and how it works.

The problem with this is that, as a philosopher by the name of Donald Davidson inadvertantly pointed out when he was using his Rabbit/Gavagai example, is that it would be odd to presume that two people can construct their worldviews completely independently of one another, having none of the same input, and yet still end up with a language about the world that is still similar enough to allow translation without assuming that they are getting their information from a common source (in this case, the external world). Yet most two people can in fact do so, and they succeed all the time. It's absolutely ridiculous to assume that billions of people would create mind-independent realities that are nevertheless similar enough to allow for translation of terms, yet this is nevertheless true.

As such, the translatability of language, or the fact that people can speak a common language at all, is a strong (albeit inductive) argument that they do so because they are referencing commonly-observed phenomena in a mind-independent external world. If that is the case, then subjectivism has no leg to stand on. Hit them in their anti-realist committments, and the rest of the project crumbles.

Of course, it would be better if you isolated a particular subjectivist, and worked off his theory. Nevertheless, I think it is fairly reasonable to say that at some level, every subjectivist ultimately falls prey to this kind of reasoning, and thus they also fall prey to the argument I just outlined.

Deconstructionists tend to make heavy use of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, because his free-verse on what constituted a game made for the first example of non-essentialism.

Clang! The notes on what constitutes a game occur in the Philosophical Investigations, not the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

OK, slight problem, i'm writing an essay against moral subjectivism and i'm using Wittgenstein's view of "nonsense" ethics to help give a case for objectivism.
Here's an objectivist argument for you:

How is it that morals can be subjective since the statement 'morals are subjective' is an absolute?

How is it that morals can be subjective since the statement 'morals are subjective' is an absolute?

Because that statement "morals are subjective" is simply stating a fact about morals and not saying that anything is right or wrong.

Because that statement "morals are subjective" is simply stating a fact about morals and not saying that anything is right or wrong.
It's still an absolute.

Of course, it would be better if you isolated a particular subjectivist, and worked off his theory.
I think ^this^ is probably really good advice; if it still properly meets the requirements of the assignment, it might be a really good idea to consider basing your essay around one particular subjectivist or one particular model of subjectivism.

What is the word limit?

It's still an absolute.
Don't believe absolutes absolutely. They're too subjective. :D

It's still an absolute.

But it's a positive statement. Most subjectivists only apply subjectivity to normative statements.

OK dokie, I argue that our language cannot deal with Absolute values but that we experience these values and they emerge (implicitly) in the language(facts) with which we use in the world. This "experience" is, in a way, objective "universal truths". Does that make sense?
The word is not the thing itself, but only a symbol of the thing. In a very real sense they are metaphor. Values can only be absolute when they refer to diety. Experience can only be instructive when it is universal. Since diety is not in any sense "universal," neither is the "experience of diety."

It's still an absolute.

You're confusing moral relativism with a more general relativism. You can believe one without believing the other.

Here's an objectivist argument for you:

How is it that morals can be subjective since the statement 'morals are subjective' is an absolute?
Different subject. The issue of morals is not the same as the issue about the subjectivity of morals. They are two different things.

OK dokie, I argue that our language cannot deal with Absolute values but that we experience these values and they emerge (implicitly) in the language(facts) with which we use in the world. This "experience" is, in a way, objective "universal truths". Does that make sense?
Our language does deal with absolute values everyday, the most obvious and forefront being 'existence' and 'truth'; things either are or they are not, and they are either true or they are not. There is no inbetween for those things.

We use this language in the world because we experience these things, and that is what makes them so.

I'm not entirely convinced that the arguments offered against subjectivism, address all possible 'forms' of subjectivism.

If someone asserts that because all human thoughts, perceptions, etc, are necessarily characterised by the quality 'subjective', it is not necessarily possible to 'objectively know', would this not be an example of 'subjectivism'?

I'm not entirely convinced that the arguments offered against subjectivism, address all possible 'forms' of subjectivism.

If someone asserts that because all human thoughts, perceptions, etc, are necessarily characterised by the quality 'subjective', it is not necessarily possible to 'objectively know', would this not be an example of 'subjectivism'?
Discussions about epistemology irritate and perplex me. ;)