Wednesday 25th November, 1914: In his private diary, LW records that since yesterday afternoon they have been in the harbor, because the planned evacuation of the ship was blocked. And, he adds, ‘you must walk to a half-open latrine. It is very cold. This way of life is becoming unbearable. Just get out of here!’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, he records that he didn’t do a lot of (philosophical) work (GT2, SS.28-9). Continuing yesterday’s thoughts about negative propositions, LW notes that the negative state of affairs that serves as a sign can perfectly well exist without a proposition that expresses it. He then remarks that ‘in investigating these problems it’s constantly as if they were already solved’, but that this is an illusion arising from the fact that the problems often disappear from our view. The question here, he notes, is whether the positive fact is primary, the negative one being secondary, or whether they are on the same level. If so, how is it with facts such as pvq, p⊃q? Aren’t they on the same level as ∼p? If so, *all* facts must be on the same level. The question he decides, is really whether there are facts besides the positive ones (it being difficult not to confuse what isn’t the case with what *is* the case instead of it). All the ab-functions (truth-functions) are only so many different methods for measuring reality. But the methods of measurement by means of p and ∼p have some special advantage over the others. LW notes that it is the dualism of positive and negative facts that gives him no peace, for there cannot be such a dualism. He asks himself how to get away from it. (See Potter, pp.144, 217). This would all be solved, if we understood the nature of the proposition (NB, pp.32-33).
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 08:41:19 +0000
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