John Wilkins wrote:
> George Dance <georgedance04@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > Jack Campin - bogus address wrote:
> > > >>>> "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen"
> > > >>>> - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
> > > >>> If it's worth quoting, is it worth translating?
> > > >> If you don't know what you're talking about keep your mouth shut.
> > > > But presumably, as a teacher, you don't believe that: you wouldn't
want
> > > > your students not to ask questions about something they don't
> > > > understand--unless I'm missing something.
> > >
> > > You are.
> > >
> > > He *did* translate it.
> >
> > Ullrich mistranslated. "man nicht sprechen kann" translates as "man
> > cannot speak" or "man cannot say", not as "man doesn't know what he's
> > talking about."
>
> I thought "man" usually meant "one", which is how it is translated in
> the Tractatus in English several times, the version of which I am most
> familiar with being "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be
> silent". In the Tractatus, though, one can speak about things only if
> they are logical atoms or some combination of them, and one can know
> only these propositions. So Ullrich paraphrased it, but in an acceptable
> manner.
Even on that straightforward Logical Positivist interpretation (which
I'd have to call the standard interpretation) of the /Tractatus, what
one 'can speak of' is not identical to what one 'knows.' Wittgenstein
did not rule out the possibility of Positive knowledge increasing, and
did not obviously rule out the linguistic tools (like speculation,
conjecture, questioning, and testing of assumptions and hypotheses) by
which that is accomplished; whereas David Ullrich's paraphrase has W.
doing just that.
> --
> John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Biohumanities Project
> University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
> "He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
> bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
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