'For the person or persons that hold dominion, can no more combine with the keeping up of majesty the running with harlots drunk or naked about the streets, or the performances of a stage player, or the open violation or contempt of laws passed by themselves than they can combine existence with non-existence'.

- Benedict de Spinoza. Political Treatise. 1677.




Monday, October 26, 2009

on certainty 141


141.When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.)



says who?

Wittgenstein –

look – anyone can say –

that a particular proposition –

entails – whatever –

whatever it suits them to assume –

follows –

and yes you can call that –

‘a whole system’ –

if that’s what suits your purpose

the fact of it is though –

what follows from what –

logically speaking –

is uncertain –

arguments get advanced –

propositional constructions –

get  proposed –

and so on –

and the light dawns gradually –

that what you are dealing with –

is rhetoric


© greg t. charlton. 2009.