Monday, December 03, 2007

6.374 Even if all that we wished happened, then this would still only, so to speak, be a gift of fate, since there is no logical connection between will and world that would guarantee this, and the assumed physical connection itself we could surely not in turn will.

I.e. we might want it, but we couldn’t bring about by willing the power of our will to bring things about. So it must be a kind of accident if things in the world turn out how I want them to be, even in cases such as my leg getting scratched when I want to (and therefore do) scratch it. Something wrong here? See Anscombe, e.g., on causation in her essay on the reality of the past. If something is wrong, did Wittgenstein know it?

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