THE ANNOTATED ANTI-WITTGENSTEIN
1. The world is more than everything that is the case.Here, we have set the stage for considering higher-order interactions of lower-level phenomena. As things interact and stand in relation to one another, including the relationships of scientist to subject, principles and behaviors emerge that are neither totally contained nor explicitly defined by their parts. Proposition 1 is a holistic assertion that the world consists of very real attributes and principles that cannot be deduced from a strictly reductionistic inventory and study of its parts.
1.1 The world is the totality of relationships of things.
This proposition stands in contradistinction to the classic reductionist view. Reductionism asserts that the whole can be known by the behavior of its parts, and, further, that the whole is the sum of its parts. The behavior of isolated segments of the world, in the contextualist view, however, may or may not bear pertinence of the role of those segments in the interacting whole. What is a prime candidate for central study in a contextual science is therefore the relationships among things, the strands of conditional relation, rather than an extracted set of characteristics of things per se.
1.11 The world is determined by the relationships of things, and by these relationships creating and constituting observable attributes.
Contra Kant, there are no immutable noumena (unknowable, absolute forms or entities) in the world; all is mutual dependency; such applies also to our perceptions of the world and of each other. Relationship of quality, extendedness, and mutability determine the characteristics of things. Simply put, "reality" (der. from Latin realis, "things") is a product of no less than three factors: (i) the transient but temporarily identifiable attributes of that which is perceived ("intrinsic" characteristics of things, the "noumena" of Kant's philosophy), (ii) the equally volatile but self-identifiable characteristics of oneself (including one's physical attributes and personality, and one's own personal biases, history, culture, and theories), and (iii) the "emergent" characteristics that arise as one participates in the relationship with the observed.
Traditional science, on the other hand, is founded on the mechanist or reductionist view. In this view, the first element of the relational triad - intrinsic characteristics of things - is what Kant termed "noumena" and is what the classic scientific view saw as the imperturbable object, as would be studied in isolation from the observer by "objective" thinking. The second element - the qualities and characteristics of the observer or scientist per se - bore no relevance to the observations. Indeed, it was the intent of scientific and technical training, in classical science, to attempt to eliminate individual biases and differences and to homogenize thinking. The third element - the relation between observer and observed - was not considered at all, but has recently come to the forefront in high-energy particle physics as a factor to be understood and accounted for.
1.12 The totality of relationships, contexts, and perspectives determines what is the case, all that is not the case, and also all which potentially may be the case.
The totality of relationships - the entirety of all interactions of perceivers and perceived - constitutes the full truth of the world. Understanding the full ranges and depths of all actual or potential relationships, contexts, and perspectives provides full understanding of the totality, unity, and truth of the world; this also provides understanding into what is not part of the current totality. Herein lies the link to a more context-constrained, deterministic scientific view of the world; when one understands the contexts and perspectives (personal history, theories, and educational and cultural biases) of a particular reductionistic-scientific view of the world, one can then understand what characteristics or rule-like events are not included in the realm of feasibility or possibility.
1.13 The relations in contextual space-time are the world.
Communication about the world may be achieved when different understandings of the world overlap or conjoin.
1.2 The world integrates into relationships.
The way the world works is not from a compilation of entities bearing separable attributes. Rather, the world works from its entire set of interacting parts, from the integration of all the strands of relation among things.
The integrity of the world or of a participant therein implies having integration, or, more specifically, being integrated, or integrating, a dynamic process of being and coaction. To maintain the integrity of the world means not to manipulate it for particular ends (e.g., for economic return), nor for its own sake/integrity, but rather for the integration of humans with each other and the community of nature.
1.21 One must participate in the conjoining of things in order for one to exist, and to exist one must necessarily take part in and alter the utterable characteristics of one's environment.
To exist (der. from the Latin existere, "to stand out"), one must communicate with their surroundings in a variety of ways (such as through ingestion of food, scientific experimentation, social intercourse, etc.). To exist, to stand out into the perceptual ranges of others, is to take part in determining the characteristics of things and others; such characteristics may be utterable, that is, one may be able to describe these characteristics in some pedestrian, scientific, artistic, or religious fashion.
2. What is the case, the fact, is the conditional existence of lower-level facts on higher-order phenomena.
In the New Wave view, the lower-level observables, Wittgenstein's "atomic facts," are conditional upon contexts of understanding and of behavior. The New Wave, Weltanschauungen ("World View") approach asserts that facts bear some relation to "truth" only insofar as they stand in relation to theory or hypothesis. There is no universally true fact. Also, specific behaviors of systems are conditional upon the larger system in which they reside.
2.1 We determine facts through how we relate with the world.
The specific attributes of our own personal histories, of our cultural "filters," and of the theories and guiding concepts we carry with us strongly sway what we see and how we interpret what we see. Further, knowing the world consists of acting upon what we wish to know as well as being acted upon by it. True essence, such as the characteristics of an event or entity that we intuit from the entirety of the world, exists insofar as we interact with things and are affected by them. We determine what demands our attention.
In a contextualist or relational science, there are no absolute scientific verities, only shades of pertinence and persistence.
2.2 The relation between self and world is dynamic, integrative, mutually-determining, and includes but is not limited to logical representation.
Forms and sources of knowledge other than the traditional mechanism of scientific understanding are valid ways of knowing. Religious, poetic, artistic, and intuitive means of knowing are especially valid, in that they entail strong relational ties.
Polanyi (1962,1967) noted that the observer participates in and, in part, determines the characteristics of that being observed: "it brings home to us that it is not by looking at things, but by dwelling in them, that we understand their joint meaning" (Polanyi 1967, p.18).
3. The logical picture of the facts is the interplay of thought, conditional existence, and relation with other things.
Here, logic takes on new power. New Wave logic is the lens through which observation, theory, and context come into focus and meaning. The meaning and utility of facts stand in relation to how that fact was gathered, who gathered it, and to what it will be applied. New Wave logic, in its most general form, thus is capable of and responsible for showing the relation between observer and observed. It also shows the relation of that fact to other facts or of the characteristics of things to those of other things.
3.1 In the relation of things with things, thought is expressed explicitly through the senses and tacitly through attitude.
The senses provide the vehicle for garnering and transmitting ideas about things, whereas one's attitude - emotional as well as intellectual - determines in part the qualities of things.
3.2 In explicitly represented relations, thoughts can be so expressed that the concepts of the thoughts are consistent with experience.
Such a statement as Proposition 3.2 should seem childishly self-evident in the traditional world view of scientific reductionism; of course, one must argue that concepts may be consistent with experience, otherwise there would be no mutual understanding of experience! However, the contextual experience allows for inconsistencies and ambiguities in explicit representations of experience. Each experience, each relational strand joining a scientist with their world, is uniquely conceived and perceived. In fact, the central aim of a contextual science would be to formulate the means by which mutual understanding of differently perceived relations would be possible. Such a means would entail explicitly relaying the environmental conditions of the experience (what was the environment within which the scientist conducted observations?) and the personal contexts of the experience (what guiding theories and perceptual lenses did the scientist use in defining what to observe and how to interpret the observations?).
3.3 Only the context in which a proposition lies has sense; only in the context of ubeity of function and concept has a proposition meaning.
Scientific propositions - be they stated as universal law, encompassing theory, or tentative hypothesis or conjecture - hold usefulness ("truth" in the traditional world view) only when they are related to specific contexts of nature. How a proposition operates is equally vital as what it attempts to describe.
A proposition is accepted as knowledge, as a scientific verity, according to the perspectives and the mutual consensus of the those involved in its discovery and explication. Adequate description of reality and acceptability by the current consensus were Brown's (1977) two criteria for a proposition to be true. Rorty's (1979) pragmatist approach to knowledge also admitted of justification being an important element in determining truth.
3.4 The proposition is determined by experiential, logical, and empirical context: the existence of this context is guaranteed by the relationship of things with things, and by the existence of the thinker among and within such relationships.
Contra Plato, there is no immutable cosmic memory bank of absolute facts and things from which we slowly gain further understanding about the world. Qualities of the world are as much a function of - and the responsibility of! - the scientist's attitude and background of theory, culture, and understanding, as they are a function of the intrinsic qualities of things per se. Scientific propositions are perceptions of the world that are held in common agreement among a body of thinkers who strive to create a mutual way of seeing. The relations among thinkers thus are important determinants of the "truth" or usefulness of particular scientific propositions. Especially in a contextual science, the inherent "truth" of a particular scientific proposition may have less to do with its acceptance into a particular circle of scientific ideas than does mutual agreement of its "truth-content" (usefulness).
In the contextualist theory of knowledge, there is some concordance between our ways of understanding and the objects of our understanding (i.e., that that is being understood). Piaget's theory of the biological development of knowledge has it that partial isomorphisms (concordances) exist between organic and logical structures. These similarities are partial and are thus open to fresh interpretations.
4. The propositional sign is one formulation of the thought, and the thought is one formulation of relationship.
That language both constrains and guides is an ambiguity allowed by a relational framework. Language, and its propositional signs (be they scientific, logic, or semantic), limit what we can distinguish, characterize, and understand. But at the same time, language guides such understanding through its richness of metaphor, allegory, parallel, simile, and isomorphic structure. Some things observed or felt share common classes of behavior or attributes, although the things may be utterly different in outward characteristics. Explicit representation of thought - i.e., propositional signs - is always bound by language and its inherently guiding role of total experience. Signs are but one manifestation of thought. Further, thought is but one formulation of the relationship of things, bound by dicta of cultural and personal ethics and beliefs. "Man need not bend to linguistic circumstance but may easily bend language to his needs" (Joshua Whatmough).
4.1 A proposition presents the continuity of the relationships among things and the conditional and partial truths of things within those relationships.
When is a proposition useful? In the traditional world view, a proposition is "truthful" when it denotes some agreed-upon quantities or qualities of events or entities. For example, the scientific proposition is true when it describes the characteristics or behavior of some natural phenomenon, and others may similarly observe and interpret the phenomenon. However, the contextual scientist is rarely presented by such discrete and unambiguous attributes of nature. Instead, he or she devises a proposition that in some sense captures the essence of the relational attributes of things; relational attributes may be unvarying under some environmental or perceptual contexts, or greatly varying in some understandable fashion under other contexts. The contexts that define the arena of understandability are never entirely complete to allow total predictability or absolute, deterministic understanding; some relational strands "hang off" the edge into other contexts. To understand those wider contexts, one must broaden the scope of the scientific observations or pursuit, ad nauseum until one arrives at the totality of the Whole. At that point, propositions cease being scientific in nature and take on more global forms of philosophic, religious, or artistic understanding.
4.2 The sense of a proposition is its consistency and inconsistency with the possibilities of the relationships among things and the truths of those relationships.
A scientific proposition makes sense when it is consistent with other propositions and observations (theory or law), with other potential propositions and observations (hypothesis), or when it aids in our use of other propositions (ancillary hypotheses or techniques).
4.3 The truth-possibilities of percepta mean the possibilities of the relational totality and ubeity of things.
What may be observed and found useful for furthering understanding is nothing less than the full set of relational strands among things.
4.4 A proposition is the expression or intention of consistency and inconsistency with the truth-possibilities of the relational totality.
Contextual scientific understanding deals with observed or possible relationships among things. The scientific proposition is an utterance of those real or potential relationships.
4.5 Now it appears obvious that no general form of proposition is possible; i.e., no one formulation of the proposition can describe all truth-possibilities, and no one symbol or set of names can describe relational totalities.
What is essential for describing the general form of proposition are the specific, context-dependent forms of relations among things in any specific instance.
That there is no general form is provided by the fact that there is always an emergent proposition whose form could not have been foreseen or constructed. Such and such may be the case or may not be the case, depending upon the context of all interacting things within the contextual whole.
5. Propositions are part of the total, emergent truth of all propositions.
No one proposition can be evaluated for truth content without reference to the larger set of propositions in which it is embedded. The truth content of an isolated, elementary proposition has no meaning in and of itself (no utility, no relation to any theory).
One of Piaget's (1971) central themes in his structuralist philosophy was that knowledge always proceeds in terms of the previously known. He wrote that "no form of knowledge, not even perceptual knowledge, constitutes a simple copy of reality, because it always includes a process of assimilation to previous structures" (p. 4).
5.1 The truth-functions are founded upon contextual conjunctions.
That is the foundation of a contextual theory of logic.Traditional logic deals with the truth-content of isolated statements, such as "X or Y". For example, "X or Y" may be true or false, as in "The genetic code is determined solely by (1) the sequence of polypeptides in the DNA molecule or (2) by the interaction of RNA during the replication sequence."
Another, simpler example is "It is raining or It is cloudy". A contextual logic does not recognize any inherent, invariant truth in such propositions. Instead, contextual conjunctions determine when particular propositions are applicable. The elemental statements in a proposition, such as "it is raining" or "it is cloudy", therefore must have some explicitly defined relation to each other, as well as to a fuller set of higher-level propositions in which they are embedded.
Knowledge resides in the relationships between subject and object. For example, Piaget (1971, p. 28) wrote that "knowledge does not start in the subject ... or in the object ... but rather in interactions between subject and object..." This was also Grene's (1974) central thesis.
5.2 The elements of propositions stand to one another in contextual conjunctions.
The statements "X or Y" or "It is raining or It is cloudy" requires, as do all scientific propositions in a contextual logic, an explications of the relationship of its elements. Does "It is raining" have anything to do with "It is cloudy"? In this simplistic example, assuredly so, although the two elements are not symmetric in their cause-effect relationship (it may be cloudy without rain, but typically the reverse is not so). One may express contextual conjunctions symbolically by "X /r/ Y", where X and Y are elemental propositions and /r/ means "is related to" (in a causal, correlational, or conceptual fashion). The /r/ relation function may be assessed in narrative fashion, in the context of the observation or experiment at hand. It can also be assessed quantitatively, as in partial correlation coefficients in classical statistics.
Further, the entirety of a scientific proposition must be described in terms of its relation to a conceptual context. Why is the proposition pertinent, useful, or interesting? What aspects of the relations among things in this particular investigation does it help us understand? What role does it play in overall theory or technique? The relation function /r/ now takes on deeper implications.
Propositions 5.3-5.6 further describe some of the attributes of the relation function /r/.
5.3 All propositions are results of contextual conjunctions.
The contextual conjunction of statements A and B -- represented by A /r/ B -- is the criterion from which to assess truth-relations.
If A and B are not conjoined in context, then they are not related and cannot be assessed for truth-relation.
Every proposition is the result of truth-operations on conjoined, elementary propositions, including the elementary propositions themselves.
5.4 All is relation within relation; truth-relation within conjunction; conjunction within context.
5.5 No truth-function can be derived from elementary propositions held in isolation from their contexts.
Application of truth-operations in one contextual whole may or may not yield the same results in another contextual whole.
Every contextual whole has its own set of truth-functions, which are dependent upon the properties of all elements in that whole, upon the conjunctions of all elements within the whole, and upon the property of the whole as a whole.
5.6 The limits of my language mean the limits of my perspectives.
6. The general form of the truth-function is: t = f(t).
This tenet asserts that a relative truth is definable recursively, that it, in terms of its own properties. More explicitly, using the paradigm of general systems theory, whereby systems contain subsystems in hierarchies of organization, systems are composed of sub-systems whose levels describe the boundary conditions of the overall system. This notion is inherent in the bootstrap philosophy of physics, that a system is self-automated once it reaches a critical mass or chaotic state (Prigogine 1984). Thereafter, the system spontaneously emerges into a greater complexity. Piaget (1971, p. 139) wrote that "a structure contains ... certain unifying elements and connections, but these elements cannot be singled out or defined independently of the connections involved." Each element and connection in the structure participates in characterizing the attributes of the system as a whole.
Take a natural biological system as an example. Let A = an ecosystem (consisting of n biological communities); X, Y, etc. = components of the ecosystem, such as communities (with n' populations); and a, b, etc. = components of the communities, such as populations (with n'' individuals). A matrix representation of these levels shows, first, how at any given level in the (artificially designated) hierarchy, the relation of one component (such as a community in the ecosystem) is a function of its own properties as well as of the emergent properties of its level in toto; and second, the properties of any given element in a level (such as a community in an ecosystem) are themselves derived from a similar function one level lower (e.g., the properties of a given population in a community is a function of its own properties plus those of the community in toto). In matrix notation, where d stands for the partial derivative,d X1 d X2 d Xn
---- ---- . . . ----
dA dA dA
d Y1 d Y2 d Yn
A = ---- ---- . . . ----
dA dA dA
. . .
. . .
. . .
d Z1 d Z2 d Zn
---- ---- . . . ----
dA dA dA
where
d a1 d a2 d an'
---- ---- . . . ----
dX dX dX
d b1 d b2 d bn'
---- ---- . . . ----
X = dX dX dX
. . .
. . .
. . .
d z1 d z2 d zn'
---- ---- . . . ----
dX dX dX
and so forth for successively lower levels of organization.
6.1 The propositions of truth (relational totality) are unutterable.
At the highest level of relation, all things are inextricably bound in mutually-determining correlational and causal relationships. At this level, scientific understanding gives way to other forms of knowing. The scientific proposition, being itself bound in relational ties of context, pertinence, and applicability, fails to capture the essence of the relational totality.
6.2 Conditional logic is a relativistic method.
The forms of conditional logic are context-contingent, and therefore are propositions of a particular relational totality, but not of all possible relational totalities.The relation function X /r/ Y is contingent upon the specific context of the proposition and the particular relation of its elements. The relation function /r/, and any logical or scientific propositions, cannot be more than itself and cannot express the totality of all existing, historic, or possible relations.
6.3 Conditional logical research means the investigation of specific regularity within a particular relational whole. And outside conditional logic all is continua and process.
In order to gain scientific understanding of nature and things, we extract subsets of things and relations from the total world set, and study the attributes of those subsets. Studying a subset means finding some regularity to the characteristics of things or relations among things. The subset must be well-specified to be amenable to such study. The full world set -- the relational totality or whole -- is undifferentiated process.
6.4 Propositions in the conditional logic are of unequal value, depending on their utility and pertinence.
What makes one proposition more desirable than another is its usefulness and pertinence to a problem at hand. This, however, does not conjure a solely utilitarian epistemology for a contextual science, for the relation function among propositions, observations, and concepts demands a depth of rigor and agreement by the scientific community. One is not simply free in a contextual science to assert propositions that may be useful to one's own understanding without rigorous evaluation and peer review. Simply put, a relational science may be a subjective science, but it is not an arbitrary science.
6.5 For an answer which cannot be expressed the question is being phrased from the wrong perspective, and can be rephrased with greater meaning or relevance from another perspective.
The riddle inextricably exists with differing perspectives.
If a question can be put at all, then its answer may or may not lie within the perspective from which it was framed.
7. When one cannot speak, one must shift perspectives.
- b g marcot