Revelation, Nonsense and Paradox

Remarks on Wittgenstein, art, epistemology, pain and value

Deductive and Inductive Reason

In the instruction into formal logic, you learn the basic rules of the game: contradictions means the logical formula is invalid. Identify a contradiction, you nullify the argument. Make a contradiction, and you lose. That is the basic formulation of the language game of logic.

The simplicity of this game has made it universally adaptable, but has also lead to a great deal of Metaphysical confusion, and the history of western philosophy.

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is the strictest possible articulation of this game, these rules: contradiction means you lose. Famously, “What can be said can be said clearly, what cannot be said [is nonsense]”.

This has been taken generally to be a confrontation with metaphysics, and read as an argument for total deductive supremacy, logical formalist supremacy. “only that which is rendered into tautological form exists”. But this is a misreading. The Tractatus itself is in contradiction - but in a very deliberate, specific way. If what cannot be said “cannot be said”, then it is impossible to say that it cannot be said, because the “it” in that sentence, cannot be said.

To even understand the final line, to even be able to decipher it as “language”, in the same way as we recognize the difference between music and noise - you, the reader, are “adding to it”. What he has created is a paradox. The Tractatus is bulletproof logic, proof of logic, in defense of logic, describing the limitations of logic. And it all builds to and culminates in a sentence which concludes the entire point of the whole thing, which is simultaneously a counterexample of the general thesis, and it is both these things, totally, and simultaneously.

Wittgenstein himself describes the text as a ladder to be “put away once you’ve climbed it”. This is what that means. He recognizes the paradox. So whats the point? if it’s all one big self-refutation, then it’s nonsense, and as we just learned that what is nonsense we must simply ignore. But if we ignore nonsense then we ignore the text that taught us to ignore nonsense. It’s playful. It’s the most elaborate joke in the history of mankind. “That which cannot be said cannot be said” - A formal tautology, and yet? It is a provocation, because the next step is to take a step, to take action, to do something non-deductive, which cannot be expressed within the rules of logic. You cannot argue someone into taking action. But it says something, “between the lines”, it says something “more” than what is “said”. And then? The phrase is tense.

Induction is a bad word in philosophy. It is unfashionable - it simply “isn’t done”. Because only deductive reasoning is “scientific”. Which is entirely putting the cart before the horse, because the modern concept of “scientific” is "according to deductive reasoning” - something that in large part came out of people misreading the Tractatus.

That which we cannot say: You are inducting all the time, whether you like it or not. The idea of logical formalist supremacy is a kind of self-denial.

Induction is formulating a general rule of a arbitrary set. All math is tautological, once finished. Until then you are inducting. To draw a simple geometric form, a simple straight line between two points - the line is self contained, tautology, once you are done and you've written the proof. But the process, the action, the doing, the physical act of literally connecting the two spots with a line of ink on the paper, is inductive. It must be, by definition, it cannot be deductive.

Induction is assigning an arbitrary role to a set. A generalized conclusion from a dataset. Induction is drawing - inferring or projecting - deciding - a straight line from two points.

All creative acts are inductive. If you play a musical instrument, you will learn this process intimately. It is not the case that you “learn music theory” and “apply it” and act on the instrument logically according to this set of rules you have learned. It is a continuous projection of your will onto the instrument, in which you define the boundaries of a arbitrary set.

The human brain and consciousness is a constant paradox, in which half the brain is constantly operating on deductive reason, and the other half is operating inductively.

The inductive movement is defining a rule for an arbitrary set. The human Will is inductive - it is not arbitrary, but it’s content is. To impose your Will and impose order on a random set, this action cannot itself be ordered.

“Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward” is not just some dumb self-improvement self-hypnosis flattery, as so much of the self-improvement cargo cultism we see today. It is a very accurate statement about psychology, reason and the Will.

The problem the mainstream cultural mind has with approaching Religion today, is that God cannot be reduced to a tautology and comprehended mathematically, because HE IS the generative principle. To understand, to "know" God, in this sense, is nonsense: you are trying to apply a lesser principle to cover the greater one. In the brain metaphor: when you are trying to comprehend God, you are only letting him into half your brain - when you try to "Know” God, you are actively keeping him out of half of your being.

The “mind-body” problem so popular today is a misnomer. Technically, it is a “half-wit” problem - the issue is not the connection between mind (=brain) and “body”. The issue is only using half the brain. Knowledge in the post-enlightenment paradigm is theory-testing, the scientific “method” - and this cannot account for how we have access to the world. But this should be ringing alarm bells, this is nonsense. Brain in a jar epistemology is nonsensical. “How do we access the world”? With inductive reason. It is already the case that you are in the world and have authentic experience.

The term “Knowing” today is used to mean “theory-testing”. But there are counter-examples to the epistemology of theory-testing. To steal an example: “The headache is revealed knowledge”. But you can generalize it even further, to pain itself: Pain is revealed knowledge. You don't articulate a hypothesis that you are in pain, and then test it, and then make a conclusion based on your gathered data set and how well it fits to your theory. It is simply revealed to you. Pain is self evident, it explains itself, it justifies itself. No one ever told you what pain was, and yet you knew it the first moment you felt it. Pain is neither a priori nor a posteriori, because it is neither a self contained logical proposition, nor based on external data. It totally justifies itself: It simply is, and you know it by revelation.

The case here is only to provide an example of revelation as a possible form of knowledge, the pain is itself not important right at this moment. But I think there is an important artistic meaning in the idea that God (the generative principle) suffers to let himself be revealed to man, in the figure of Jesus Christ and it is this idea - paradoxical image - that is core of the christian project.

The purpose is not to argue for “faith” or induction, that itself would be nonsense. I am trying to show you that you are already inducting, whether you want to or not, and that it is impossible not to.

Trying to argue “for” Inductive reason is nonsense. Religion is the business of paradox.

This is not an argument that one ought to believe - because the will is not subservient to tautologies and reason - but an argument to convince you that you already believe.

The headache proves the possibility of revelation. What could be a bigger headache than theology? Maybe women.

Nonsense and Paradox

Nonsense is meaningless, devoid of linguistic content. Paradox is meaning^squared. Too much meaning, meaning that overfloweth our container for it, the rational mind. Nonsense is less than nothing, paradox is more than everything.

All good art is paradoxical, because this is how you create something that has this felt potency, like it's coming apart at the seams with meaning. This applies to language as well as visual arts, music and painting. The content of art is paradox.

Modern art is nonsense, which is made out to be paradoxes: this is what Tractatus is really about. Not Metaphysics and “science”, but how to make good art and poetry, how to have meaningful language.

The self referential intentional ugliness of the duchambs of the world insists on its own artistic value, but it is utterly void of true paradox. The supposed paradoxes of modern art are these stale superficial linguistic contradictions, not real ones. Legalistic, without spirit. The difference between a well structured joke, and a groaning “dad joke”, a bad pun.

A legalistic fake paradox: “being “moral” makes you feel good, because you are a social animal, so therefore it is self serving, and therefore it is not moral”. That is nonsense masquerading as paradox. There is no tension in that phrasing.

Torture is pain without meaning - an total inversion of the principles of “revelation”. A man can withstand any torture, if he has a purpose, but pain without purpose is what breaks the mind and spirit, what true torture really is. A man can withstand any pain so long as it is meaningful. But arbitrary pain breaks everyone.

You can also say that pain without purpose is an inversion of how God reveals himself into being, and as such is the ultimate perversion.