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4th December 2007
Convenor: Iman Poernomo Iman Poernomo is a Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, King's College London and team leader of the Predictable Assembly Laboratory (PALab). Iman completed his Ph.D. in Computational Logic at Monash University, following a BSc. (Honours) in Pure Maths and a BA in Philosophy from the same place.
Agenda: Finish off the last bit of the Tractatus, this is to include Wittgenstein's thoughts on transcendence. Below is a brief explaination of the "Later" Wittgenstein's revised philosophy, where he renounced much of the foundational approach of the Tractatus. If you want to read his later philosophy, it's all in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.
There is no required reading for this session but there is some required looking and thinking though.
You are required to look at these two pictures by the American artist Rauchenberg, Factum I and Factum II:
The MoMA site writes: Factum II looks almost identical to Factum I, hanging next to it, but what this pair of works shows is actually the uniqueness of any given work of art. Just as the days evoked by the calendar pages glued to the canvas may follow each other but are never the same, two brushmarks may look alike but are always different. Discussion
Homework for this session is to think about these two points:
1) Factum I is a collage of pictures of things in the artist’s world: President Eisenhower, a tree, a calendar, the letter T. Factum I’s randomness and contingency makes it a very nice visual representation of Wittgenstein’s idea of a logical proposition (each thing in the picture may or may not be the case). From the perspective of the Tractatus, Factum I is a relational structure, an picture of the world, a logical proposition, a contingent thought.
Looking at Factum I gives us a nice sense of Wittgenstein’s equating of meaning in the world, representation and (contingent) logical propositions. Factum I in isolation seems to be presenting us with a very Wittgensteinian view of Meaning.
2) So why did Rauchenberg paint a second Factum? It’s almost exactly the same, but the brushwork and sticking is a bit different. What, if anything, does the repetition of the image say about Meaning?
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