EPTPhilosophers: Arguments against Wittgenstein? - Page 2
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D10
Brazil3409 Posts
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bulldyke
Australia28 Posts
On June 14 2011 14:13 zizou21 wrote: This is some pretty deep shit I, for one, fail to see the substance in this thread. | ||
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Brotkrumen
Germany193 Posts
On June 14 2011 14:43 Jerubaal wrote: Don't allow yourself to become a slave to the argumentation. Think about the conclusions and ramifications of the arguments and ask yourself if that's what you think is correct. So you are saying that I should see if the logical conclusion of an argument suits me in order to decide whether I should dismiss the premises? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I check whether the premises are true and accept whatever follows from them? Otherwise I will say "God exists" and any argument with a conclusion to the contrary will be dismissed along with its premises. On June 14 2011 14:43 Jerubaal wrote: If he denies that language can be used to communicate about abstract things in any meaningful fashion, because it's impossible to know how disparate the definitions are, then.. 1)He's essentially banished these concepts. How can you enforce virtue when you're not sure that you're even talking about the same thing. 2) He's established a solipsism, and communication no longer matters because anything external can be regarded at best as useful stimuli. All in all, I find that position a bit silly. I have no idea if what you think is blue is the same as what I think is blue, but if I point to a blue carpet, you will most likely agree with me that it's blue. As a political theorist, it's so amusing to me to watch people try to sweep the world under the rug in one fell swoop. Does he really think that there are no serious controversies (for lack of a better word) to be had in philosophy? That it's all just one big misunderstanding? I didn't read him like that. I always understood him and the ordinary language school like this: If we ask what "virtue" is, we are talking at a too abstract level. We should rather see what "virtue" is defined as: A bundle of morally good behaviors/intentions/effects and then ask "Is murder wrong?" "Is homosexuality wrong?". After we have concluded what is "good" we can package all that together into virtue. The other way around, to argue what virtue is and draw conclusions about whether murder is good or bad is twisting things around and will lead to disputes that are none. On June 14 2011 14:43 Jerubaal wrote: I hope that helped a little bit. I prefer using simple arguments like a battering ram.  And remember, when in doubt, make a meta-argument out of it!!! P.S. There's a semi-famous book, called Wittgenstein's Poker, about an encounter he had with Popper. I spit on Popper's name, but there might be some interesting stuff in there. What is a meta-argument? An argument about an argument? Why would you spit on Popper? The guy that brought you falsification to science, "discovered" what a good scientific theory must have and said that philosophy must be understandable for everyone? | ||
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Brotkrumen
Germany193 Posts
On June 14 2011 16:01 VoiceOfDecember wrote:+ Show Spoiler + I've never heard of Wittgenstein but I do like phlosophy and all that. I recently did an assignment for uni where we were asked in the situation I was researching "What ought to happen?" and looked into philosophy. I looked up David Hume with his "is-ought" problem he came up with in the 1700's. The is-ought problem in my eyes is pretty much that you have no ethical standing to assert what ought to happen in a situation from what is happening. It's like an ethical dilema, there is an issue and there are 2 sides saying what ought to happen which are both in complete conflict, who's ought should you go with? Hume's is-ought problem swoops in and says in theory noone is right. Ever. But this cant be? We should be able to know what ought to happen right? Of course. I argued that the use of science can be applied to circumnavigate this issue. If we know what our values are or what we value we can use science to achieve it. Science is a tool that we use to get what we want. Internet is the best way to communicate over long distances. Giving someone a smile is what you ought to do in a social setting to make someone comfortable and gain trust instead of flipping them the bird etc. We observe what is good, productive, what works and then choose avenues to get what we want or outcomes we want. Good = properity, happiness. Bad = counter productive, harmful. Philosophy is so deep and so general it's not applicable in real life. In terms that are useful to you and I when approaching an issue. You have to assess things in a real setting. Like the statement "rape is bad". To a normal person, obviously this is true. It hurts people mentally and physically. We observe this pain and suffering and determine that it is a bad thing because of this. It's harmfull and counterproductive. If rape made people feel good and there was a need to increase the human population you could say rape is good because its not hurting anyone and helps the cause of human population etc. But you could be all like "what is rape", "what is language", "how do we actually know what we know" and conclude that we can never know what rape is or if it is intrisically good or bad. Science. The process of observing and understanding reality helps us make decisions morally in the real world. And to combat humes is-ought problem, its not that you can determine an ought from an is. It's you cant get an is without choosing certain oughts. We decide what oughts are good and bad and we have damn good reason why we choose these. Because who would argue in the real world that WW3 nuclear war should happen, it's counter productive to our prosperity and is bad in terms that are useful. Ummm i kinda went on a rant there, not entirley thought out or complete but I hope it makes sense I only had a 20min break from work to think and write this up lol oh well back to work...You are overstating Hume's argument. The is-ought fallacy only wishes to say that "just because it is, does not mean that it is ought to be". It shows the divide between a normative argument, what should be, and a descriptive argument, what is. Less abstract: Just because the world was green, does not mean that a green world is good. At the same time: Just because people have always murdered each other, does not mean that murder is good. That is what the is-ought fallacy is. Now, when you say WW3 is bad because it creates suffering, then you are combining a descriptive argument "War creates suffering" with a normative argument "suffering is bad". The divide here is, that we could have another normative framework, another moral system, that told us that suffering makes us better people. In their moral system it would be "WW3 is good, because it creates suffering". See? We can describe what is and we can develop a normative or moral system, but one can never be concluded from the other. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On June 14 2011 15:42 summerloud wrote: just counter by saying hes gay, and that the theories he made up later in his life completely contradicted everything hey said before, yet he still remained that arrogant im-100%-sure-im-right guy arguing that every philosophical problem emanates out of misunderstood semantics is so counter-intuitive it shouldnt even need arguing against. there are concepts that might be understood differently by different people in different times or of different ethnicity, but there was always a broad enough base of people using language to discuss problems about fundamental stuff, sharing the same meaning for the words they used. to argue that all metaphysical problems arise out of semantics and dont really exist is like dennett arguing that there is no mind you are only imagining that you exist. its so stupid it shouldnt need arguing against, its just people using semantics to try to trick you, in wittgenstein's case, trick you into thinking that every problem is just a semantic one if you like this kind of books, try this, it also has wittgenstein, its a very easy pleasurable read: http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Quintet-Scientific-Speculation-Helix/dp/0738201383/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1308034039&sr=8-1 Yeah that's it more or less (except for the "he is gay" part). I remember Deleuze saying that Wittgenstein "feel" like new while it is, in fact, a big backstep in the past. I think Wittgenstein's argument about language is good to describe a certain pathological philosophy (for exemple, the french pseudo philosophy represented by Bernard Henry Levi nowadays), but one should not read wittgenstein too close. For exemple, Becker said in some book, that he did not care about the big picture of Wittgenstein's theory, but he was more concerned, when he read, about what he could use for his own work. That's how I read wittgenstein myself. | ||
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Severedevil
United States4839 Posts
On June 14 2011 17:27 Brotkrumen wrote: So you are saying that I should see if the logical conclusion of an argument suits me in order to decide whether I should dismiss the premises? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I check whether the premises are true and accept whatever follows from them? Otherwise I will say "God exists" and any argument with a conclusion to the contrary will be dismissed along with its premises. Why change your opinion when you can rationalize the one you already have? | ||
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Kurfyrst
Denmark3 Posts
Ok, here we go: "You can't extract these words [(virtue, knowledge, etc.)] from their context and make them mean something." The operative word here being, of course, 'context'. There's a kernel of truth to this, which can't be denied. Many philosophical discussions (prior to Kant) operated in an obscurantist fashion, "philosophizing" on some arcane concept like "virtue", without any consideration of its transcendental justification. However, "taking words out of context and throwing them around" is not a very accurate description of modern philosophy. Puzzlement may be the beginning stage of philosophy, but it is only the beginning stage. Indeed, this is what separates philosophy from theology. So let's try to overcome our puzzlement: - Wittgenstein says that we can only understand words in the context of proper sentences (we label this contextualism). - If contextualism is only meant a proposition about the nature of language, then it is trivial (true). - If we, however, draw an anti-essentialist conclusion about the nature of reality as such, it is something else entirely. ("This [puzzlement] is because Wittgenstein says there is no such thing in reality that corresponds to what we think of as "an essence" of Virtue, or Knowledge (What Plato would call Forms)"). Clearly, you are dealing with two very different propositions - one trivial and one radical. And you even seem to get at this yourself: "In short, we are mistaken to think abstracted words have meaning and that there there is some sort of fundamental link between language and reality, etc." Simply put, my criticism of your position is the following: language may well be contextual in nature, and it may well be that we form our understanding of reality through language. But surely language originates in reality, not the other way around. The pre-condition for understanding anything at all, however minimally, must be that concepts refer to something real. If you want to expand your thinking on this, you could read some of the philosophers (from Kant onwards) that try to investigate what this something is, and what the conditions for gaining knowledge on it are. I recommend at random: Kant, Hegel (although he is nails) and Husserl. | ||
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WhiteDog
France8650 Posts
On June 14 2011 19:01 Kurfyrst wrote: First of all, a disclaimer: I'm not a Wittgenstein-scholar, and I'm not a so-called "analytical" philosopher, so I will focus on the argument as presented by the OP. Ok, here we go: "You can't extract these words [(virtue, knowledge, etc.)] from their context and make them mean something." The operative word here being, of course, 'context'. There's a kernel of truth to this, which can't be denied. Many philosophical discussions (prior to Kant) operated in an obscurantist fashion, "philosophizing" on some arcane concept like "virtue", without any consideration of its transcendental justification. However, "taking words out of context and throwing them around" is not a very accurate description of modern philosophy. Puzzlement may be the beginning stage of philosophy, but it is only the beginning stage. Indeed, this is what separates philosophy from theology. So let's try to overcome our puzzlement: - Wittgenstein says that we can only understand words in the context of proper sentences (we label this contextualism). - If contextualism is only meant a proposition about the nature of language, then it is trivial (true). - If we, however, draw an anti-essentialist conclusion about the nature of reality as such, it is something else entirely. ("This [puzzlement] is because Wittgenstein says there is no such thing in reality that corresponds to what we think of as "an essence" of Virtue, or Knowledge (What Plato would call Forms)"). Clearly, you are dealing with two very different propositions - one trivial and one radical. And you even seem to get at this yourself: "In short, we are mistaken to think abstracted words have meaning and that there there is some sort of fundamental link between language and reality, etc." Simply put, my criticism of your position is the following: language may well be contextual in nature, and it may well be that we form our understanding of reality through language. But surely language originates in reality, not the other way around. The pre-condition for understanding anything at all, however minimally, must be that concepts refer to something real. If you want to expand your thinking on this, you could read some of the philosophers (from Kant onwards) that try to investigate what this something is, and what the conditions for gaining knowledge on it are. I recommend at random: Kant, Hegel (although he is nails) and Husserl. The way you explained your own view is really clear, and I learned from it so I wanted to say how thankful I am. You're great. I see a direct link with my own work on ideology, where ideologies are defined by some as the contrary of practice (the young marx) and, on the other side, other sees it as a some kind of outcome from practice. Marx said himself that ideology was "the language of culture". That's interesting, well at least for me. | ||
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Brotkrumen
Germany193 Posts
On June 14 2011 19:01 Kurfyrst wrote: Many philosophical discussions (prior to Kant) operated in an obscurantist fashion, "philosophizing" on some arcane concept like "virtue", without any consideration of its transcendental justification. [...] "In short, we are mistaken to think abstracted words have meaning and that there there is some sort of fundamental link between language and reality, etc." Simply put, my criticism of your position is the following: language may well be contextual in nature, and it may well be that we form our understanding of reality through language. But surely language originates in reality, not the other way around. The pre-condition for understanding anything at all, however minimally, must be that concepts refer to something real. First, the majority of obscuratism is, according to analytical philosophers, being practiced by rather modern philosophers such as almost everyone in the Hegelian tradition, from Hegel over Derrida to Butler. Even Kant has been criticized as being intentionally obscure, but he just may be enormously complex. To your second point, the key word is probably "abstract". Things like virtue, knowledge, logic are aggregate concepts. They include various phenomena and patterns we can experience. The limited Wittgenstein argument here would be that the aggregates, the abstract concepts themselves do not exist as a singular entity but only their constituent phenomena do. | ||
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KnowNothing
69 Posts
On June 14 2011 20:52 Brotkrumen wrote: To your second point, the key word is probably "abstract". Things like virtue, knowledge, logic are aggregate concepts. They include various phenomena and patterns we can experience. The limited Wittgenstein argument here would be that the aggregates, the abstract concepts themselves do not exist as a singular entity but only their constituent phenomena do. (See bold) This isn't so clear to me. What is significant about the idea that we can experience these phenomena? Can we, as a matter of fact? I would argue that whatever one thinks one observes or experiences is related to one's own interpretation of it, even if it is a fundamental interpretation done at a subconscious level. The same is true of what you call the aggregate concepts, although such concepts seem to involve a "higher order" interpretation. | ||
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BlueSpace
Germany2182 Posts
It seems to me that a lot of philosophers have just pushed him to the side and kept going on about their business. Do they have good arguments for dismissing what he is saying? Wittgenstein is very influential until today. It depends of course on the philosophical school that you are looking at. But inside the whole mind/body debate his work is still quite important. Regarding him being brushed aside, I would say that mostly refers to his earlier work (Tractatus). But that more or less accounts for the whole school of logical positivism. Try to find a course on Carnap "The Logical Structure of the World". When discussing the book it should become quite clear why logical positivism is being disregarded nowadays. What I was wondering is how do you read him in English? I'm German which might also be the reason that he was discussed a lot in university but still the style in which he is writing is very unique and I find it difficult to imagine who one would translate it. I had a literature course on the Tractatus and half of the time we spend discussing wording choices and dissecting his sentences. For people that are not aware of how Wittgenstein was writing, one should know that he would "distill" his texts. Meaning that he would write a long manuscript and then start to reduce it to what he perceived are the core sentences of the text. The result is that most of his texts can almost be considered poetic. Understanding it though becomes quite an ordeal because you need to very carefully take apart every sentence in order to recover the "full" meaning. It also means that you usually use a ton of auxiliary literature. | ||
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Jombozeus
China1014 Posts
Just seems like a bunch of high-class people with tophats trying to intelligently discuss common sense. | ||
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MozzarellaL
United States822 Posts
On June 14 2011 22:03 Jombozeus wrote: I don't know too much about philosophy, but please enlighten me why this stuff is "genius"? It doesn't take a genius to realize that most debates end up being separated by the meaning of the word and the language. An average highschooler knows that :\ Just seems like a bunch of high-class people with tophats trying to intelligently discuss common sense. It's genius because they managed to write 400 pg treatises on the subject and get paid to do it. How many high schoolers do you see accomplishing the same feat? | ||
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Brotkrumen
Germany193 Posts
On June 14 2011 21:37 KnowNothing wrote: (See bold) This isn't so clear to me. What is significant about the idea that we can experience these phenomena? Can we, as a matter of fact? I would argue that whatever one thinks one observes or experiences is related to one's own interpretation of it, even if it is a fundamental interpretation done at a subconscious level. The same is true of what you call the aggregate concepts, although such concepts seem to involve a "higher order" interpretation. I think you are saying that we cannot experience objective reality, right? That all experience is subjective and we cannot infer objective reality from experience. First, "can experience" is used rather lax. It implies, that there is a causal chain between what we experience in our mind and what happens in reality. Even subjective reality proponents usually do not have a problem with that, except those that claim that there is no objective reality outside us whatsoever. How do we interact with objective reality? Let's take touch for example: Our mind tells our arm to move forward, our finger to extend and to touch an object. When the contact happens, two material objects have made contact: our finger and the object. This happened in objective reality, no matter how we experienced it. Most subjective reality proponents won't have a problem with this either, but in the next step, the opinions diverge: Now the nerves send a signal back to our brain and we "experience" the object in our mind subjectively. We form a picture or model of this, we form a model of us touching the object etc. However you want to describe it, a mental state is formed that corresponds to us touching the object. Here subjective reality proponents claim that your experience of the object may completely differ from mine. What I experience as rough, you might experience as smooth. When I jump into your body, I would experience the object as soft, whereas in my body I experienced the object as hard. At this point, nobody can disprove that. It doesn't really matter though. When we touch the same object and we talk about it, we agree on a name for the attribute we experienced. We will call the surface as "rough", no matter how we subjectively experienced it. This basically would move the meaning of "rough" away from it's meaning of "roughness", but would mean "the attribute this surface has". Less abstract: The sentence in our mind "The surface is rough" would when spoken to another person mean "The surface has attribute X", X being whatever the person experiences. Now we have saved our language at least. Whenever we talk about something to another person, we are referring to the actually existing attribute in reality. Having said this, how can I say that "we can experience objective reality"? First, Okham's Razor. To be able to claim that we experience everything subjectively we have to assume that there is an interpretative disconnect between what exists and what we experience. It also is a little circular. Secondly, subjective reality would assumes a mind-body dualism. Me being a materialist, would say that as the mind is only the product of it's material, another mind will have the exact same experiences to the exact same objects if it is built the same way. Our current understanding of neuro-science heavily implies that our brains do not differ in such a way as to allow for great differences in experiences. This might be disproven in the future though. So in conclusion, even if we would know that all experiences are subjective, we would still act as if they were an exact match to objective reality. The success of this action would make our theory of subjective reality irrelevant. Secondly, if we agree that mind-body dualism, is false, we cannot but say that our experiences match objective reality. | ||
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Jombozeus
China1014 Posts
On June 14 2011 22:25 MozzarellaL wrote: It's genius because they managed to write 400 pg treatises on the subject and get paid to do it. How many high schoolers do you see accomplishing the same feat? So how does that make it genius? They can write a million pages about philosophy on this, and in the end it does nothing, its still common sense that everybody already knows. Thats like saying Bush is a genius because he got paid to destroy countries including his own. | ||
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Brotkrumen
Germany193 Posts
On June 14 2011 22:03 Jombozeus wrote: I don't know too much about philosophy, but please enlighten me why this stuff is "genius"? It doesn't take a genius to realize that most debates end up being separated by the meaning of the word and the language. An average highschooler knows that :\ Just seems like a bunch of high-class people with tophats trying to intelligently discuss common sense. Well, break down the opposing views of the washington consensus and the chinese model to it's core definitions and show that they are similar. The point is, it's not obvious. We feel that our contradicting views are diametrically opposed when in fact we just refer to the same thing with different words. That's quite a feat. To then say that *all* controversies are a matter of differing definitions is either genius or crazy. On June 14 2011 22:29 Jombozeus wrote: So how does that make it genius? They can write a million pages about philosophy on this, and in the end it does nothing, its still common sense that everybody already knows. Thats like saying Bush is a genius because he got paid to destroy countries including his own. Well then do it. You will be as revered as Derrida. | ||
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BlueSpace
Germany2182 Posts
On June 14 2011 22:03 Jombozeus wrote: I don't know too much about philosophy, but please enlighten me why this stuff is "genius"? It doesn't take a genius to realize that most debates end up being separated by the meaning of the word and the language. An average highschooler knows that :\ Just seems like a bunch of high-class people with tophats trying to intelligently discuss common sense. This is so cute in my opinion and perfectly shows how influential Wittgenstein was and is. What you are referring to as common sense is something that in philosophy is referred to as Linguistic turn. Or to be more precise the reason that you think some of the basic ideas of Wittgenstein are common sense is based on the fact that there was a mayor paradigm shift in the western philosophy in the 20th century that is referred to as Linguistic turn. Or as someone already mentioned... lets just call you Derrida  | ||
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Jombozeus
China1014 Posts
On June 14 2011 22:34 Brotkrumen wrote: Well, break down the opposing views of the washington consensus and the chinese model to it's core definitions and show that they are similar. The point is, it's not obvious. We feel that our contradicting views are diametrically opposed when in fact we just refer to the same thing with different words. That's quite a feat. To then say that *all* controversies are a matter of differing definitions is either genius or crazy. Well then do it. You will be as revered as Derrida. Sure thing. For the countries that followed/follows the Washington consensus, privatization of the market and moving towards a free market was the main strategy in order to achieve economic development. For the Chinese government, its the same damn thing, except they just don't say it. Nothing is different in the economic sense of the two words. The only difference is that in the Chinese culture, people want to save face and they wont admit that they are moving towards capitalism while everyone already knows it. The Chinese culture condones the Chinese governments actions while the Western culture will not. In essence they are doing the same thing, and that is maximizing their ability to gain economic development without their government being overthrown (either by being voted out or rebellion). In this sense, the Chinese simply has much more leeway to lie about what they are doing to their people. According to this dude Wittgenstein (and common sense), we are simply talking about the same thing from different angles. Easy. EDIT: To Bluespace: I am Chinese, and I have little to do with Western philosophies, so don't make these assumptions. Lets take my grandfather as an example, he was born before Mr. Wittgenstein wrote his theories in 1953. He told me how he felt about language dictating arguments was something he learned when he was young. Given a few decades of buffer time before Western philosophies reaching my society, its easy to conclude that he knew about it with no influence from Wittgenstein. Or put simply, other people have thought of this before him, he is only a purported "genius" because he wrote it down in pretty words. | ||
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radscorpion9
Canada2252 Posts
From what I understand he was trying to explain that you can't simplify things, words to formal concepts because they are necessarily defined by their contexts, so to some extent he views earlier attempts at solving philosophical problems as futile exercises because they start on a wrong premise. Its quite interesting | ||
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forthwith
United States23 Posts
Take the Gettier Case for example, which challenged millenia-long holdings on what it meant to "know" something, i.e. it shows that "justified true belief" is not enough to constitute knowledge, as was the consensus up 'till his publishing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_case) The problem is, some people still stand on the side that says the Gettier Case does show an example of knowledge. This happened in my own epistemology class, to which my professor, a critic of the old, thought-experiment-oriented analytic philosophy, said, "If I were a responsible epistemologist, I'd beat those intuitions out of you." And this is what it comes down to: we have certain intuitions about what these words are supposed to mean, and only use those intuitions to assess the "true meaning" of the words presented in the case. In their paper, "Normativity And Epistemic Intuitions," Weinberg, Nichols and Stich define these intuitions such: "As we use the notion, an epistemic intuition is simply a spontaneous judgment about the epistemic properties of some specific case – a judgment for which the person making the judgment may be able to offer no plausible justification." Later on in the same paper, the trio give some evidence showing that there is a huge variance in these epistemic intuitions. And not only that there is variance, but the variance is systematic, and can be traced to cultural norms. For a brief example, someone in East Asia would be more likely to call something an account of knowledge when the rest of his town, or a council of elders, had already called it such. So to the OP, even though Wittgenstein is a bit outdated now, there's a lot of empirical evidence cropping up supporting the idea that discussing these claims is pointless, because there really is no consensus on them. I'd point you to the paper I quoted above, "Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions": found here. Of course, there are people who try to defend these intuitions, like Ernest Sosa in his "A Defense of the Use of Intuitions in Philosophy." Essentially, he says that despite WNS's findings, when people within a culture have intuitions that are about in harmony, and we actually are able to talk about things like "knowledge" or "justice" or whatnot. Sosa's heart is in the right place, but the problem is, he defends a view of epistemology that seems to be in the minority: that we don't need a normative system to tell us how to reason, and is only looking at a positive account, which describes simply how we reason. So this may not be well connected to those lofty ethical arguments, but it points in the same direction. | ||
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