On June 14 2011 14:19 sermokala wrote: word are simply representations of a greater idea. to see words like free and will and death and rape and mearly words makes them all the same. One must know and understand the difference between what one person is trying to communicate to even philosophi.
I made that up on the spot how do you think?
aka words arn't just words they mean something and that meaning is what you debate.
The problem is that people have a hard time agreeing on their meaning.
Rape has several clerical definitions. Free will? If you ask Joe what it is, he'll say one thing. If you ask Bob, he'll say another. Get the two of them to talk about it, and they'll spend four hours arguing semantics.
There is no linguistic disagreement on free will vs determinism. It is a simple, concise, precisely defined debate. As such, OP's arguments regarding that are irrelevant. For what its worth, free will means action, choice, preference, the praxeological system of describing human behavior. The reason free will is misunderstood is only because of lack of insight to praxeology. And determinism is neurobiology, behaviorism, etc. All well understood concepts.
It is true that the classical debate questions in the OP are impossible to define universally, but that is not because of some grand language barrier, no. It is only because of category error made in the use of those concepts - virtue, value, goodness, are praxeological concepts, and hence must be analyised in that framework. Now Wittgenstein, not having studied this, comes to alternative explanations and makes the same fallacies as many other philosophers due to lack of interdisciplinary open mind.
Continental philosophy and analytical philosophy really can't argue against each other because they are completely different fields. It's like asking a geologist to argue about whether a slightly different-coloured bird is a new species or not.
Realistically we have both limited free will and limited determinism, to say otherwise I strongly believe is nothing more than mental masturbation that ignores how we all live are lives. The great debate over the two always acts as if it must be one extreme or the other, when simple life experience tells us otherwise. Simple example: I was able to choose what I wanted to eat for breakfast, but I can't choose to float to the sun, or eat the sun for breakfast. There are very real constraints on our existence that are seemingly random and definitely out of our control while we are able to make choices within these constraints.
On June 14 2011 23:01 Jombozeus wrote: 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.
Mr. Wittgenstein was dead in 1953. I guess you looked up when Philosophical Investigations was published and missed the word posthumously somewhere.
You are asking me not to make any assumptions but you cite your grandfather that claims to have had these thoughts in his youth. I know neither your age nor that of your grandfather I will therefore have to assume quite a lot if I would want to figure out when your grandfather got these ideas.
Also I would have to make an assumption on whether or not your grandfather came up with this on his own or maybe someone taught him?
As I have little interest to talk about your grandfather I will just reiterate the core of what I was saying. Maybe there is a Chinese philosopher that had similar ideas earlier or in parallel. The point is that sometimes a profound idea might seem trivial after someone tells you about it. That does not make the idea trivial.
For example a wheel once you've seen it is an extremely trivial things. Still it took humanity forever to make one. So can you really claim that the ideas we are discussing here would seem trivial to you if your grandfather or someone else would have never talked with you about them?
Many linguists have a somewhat simple base view on meaning of words which is: Words mean what people are trying to express when they use them. It might seem stupid for people that think they learned to speak from a dictionary or whatever but it's based on that words are created when we have a use for them not the other way around and that languages generally evolve quite rapidly.
This view is not uncommon in philosophy but it doesn't answer all related philosophical questions for obvious reasons. But having in mind that the order is usually meaning --> word and not word --> meaning can make some philosophical discussions easier.
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.
so words have the meaning you give them. Write down the common understanding of it in a dictionary to fixate that meaning and your problem is solved until the word changes its meaning and you have to change the entry accordingly.
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.
so words have the meaning you give them. Write down the common understanding of it in a dictionary to fixate that meaning and your problem is solved until the word changes its meaning and you have to change the entry accordingly. + Show Spoiler +
True, most of us here have argued for the standpoint that the meaning of words is negotiated.
You are missing the other important point of Wittgenstein and his followers though: Words influence what can be thought.
Say you want to invent something for which you do not have the words for. How do you think about it? Also, supposedly the meaning of words create their own dynamic which steers an argument on its own. Something like that it is inherent of an apple to fall down and we cannot think of an apple to fall up, which is problematic insofar that we could learn alot about reality if we thought about apples falling up. But we have no words for that (this is a metaphor for "something we do not have words for". Obviously we have the words for apples falling up, but how do you explain a concept that you dont have the words for?)
Most modern philosophy is in some way in a response to Wittgenstein's Investigations and the main arguments in it (private language/beetle in a box/no theory of meaning per se) and such. I think simply looking for arguments against him isn't really the best way to approach the problem. He wasn't someone like Descartes who had clearly outlined metaphysical positions would could be attacked in a similar way.
I think it's much better to say "What can I get out of Wittgenstein?" much in the same way I think it's better to say "What can I get out of Plato?". Ignore the good old rant about the continental philosophy vs analyitic, it's mostly hyperbole. Ignore most of all your intuitions and predispositions towards certain ideas and arguments, this problem holds more people back than anything else. Many of Wittgenstein's arguments seem counter-intuitive and sometimes down right crazy, but you really need to put in effort to see why it is important. In a similar way that Kant's Transcendental Idealism seems absolutely bonkers when you first read it. Get rid of the temptation to see philosophy as a bunch of people trying to prove their right and instead enjoy the ideas on offer.
Though if you are looking for the total opposite of the later Wittgenstein I recommend reading Chomsky's first book on Generative Grammar. It's not as dense as some of the other texts people have suggested. Then there other philosophers that are highly influenced by Wittgenstein that disagree with him on certain major issues (Daniel Denett, Wilfred Sellars, Kripke, Hilary Putnam) of those Daniel Denette is probably the easiest read by far, as you're going to need a Masters in philosophy to really understand Sellars and Kripke (I know I don't)
On the other side of things you have the philosophers that really do agree with Wittgenstein and advocate a kind of Philosophical Quietism (dissolving rather than solving arguments) people like Richard Rorty and John McDowell. Out of them I recommend reading Rorty's 'Contingency, Irony and Solidarity' while it is incredibly wacky and post-modern it gives you a sense of how far you can take certain viewpoints.
TL:DR Get a good book on Wittgenstein (from early to later) really try and ignore you intuition to call him crazy, and get a good grasp of what's saying. Also take a quick look into the early history of analyitic philosophy from Kant to Russell to see just what has upset him about the nature of philosophical argument. Then check out some modern philosophers like Donaldson, Putnam or Searle and see why some philosophers continue to do philosophy after Wittgenstein.
Edit: good introductory video despite Searle's slight bias against him on some issues
I won't answer myself because I know nothing about analytic philosophy (a priori, not really interested)
If by any chance you understand French or Spanish, Deleuze opinion on Wittgenstein in his Abecedaire. It's such a demolition that it's comical. He says Wittgenstein is basically an assassin of philosophy.
Summary in English:
Parnet says, let's move on to W, and Deleuze says, there's nothing in W, and Parnet says, yes, there's Wittgenstein. She knows he's nothing for Deleuze, but it's only a word. Deleuze says, he doesn't like to talk about that... It's a philosophical catastrophe. It's the very type of a "school", a regression of all philosophy, a massive regression. Deleuze considers the Wittgenstein matter to be quite sad. They imposed <ils ont foutu> a system of terror in which, under the pretext of doing something new, it's poverty introduced as grandeur. Deleuze says there isn't a word to express this kind of danger, but that this danger is one that recurs, that it's not the first time that it has arrived. It's serious especially since he considers the Wittgensteinians to be nasty <méchants> and destructive <ils cassent tout>. So in this, there could be an assassination of philosophy, Deleuze says, they are assassins of philosophy, and because of that, one must remain very vigilant. <Deleuze laughs>
I don't have an opinion, although I love Deleuze, who is one of the main figure of contemporary philosophy; maybe the main figure from a certain perspective.
Continental vs analytic philosophers are like cats and dogs, they will never really like each others, I guess.
As someone who is not educated on the topic but has done a fair amount of independent thought and research into it. Wittgenstein is right. Words describing abstract concepts are irreconcilable outside of their context because those things don't actually exist.
Although, one could extend the argument that all things are just arbitrary classifications used for ease of communication. What is a dog? at what point on the evolutionary tree does something stop being a weird rodent thing and start being a canine? We have to arbitrarily make these judgements, and there is no 'truth' to them, they just help us to communicate.
We humans have a nasty habit of searching for 'truth' and 'meaning' in things as if something established what was true and what the meaning of things was before we came along and arbitrarily made it all up.
Therefore best counter argument to Wittgenstein is theism. It's a bit of a jump, but I make it for brevity. For abstract concepts to have a 'true' meaning it would have to be established somehow, how better to establish it then while creating the universe? I personally am non theistic and agree with the arguments presented in the OP.
Just my own opinion on free will. Reality is clearly deterministic, at least in normal conditions (I am no master of physics), this is not compatible with free will. At what point can we change the momentum of the chemical and electrical reactions that govern out behaviour? We can't, but it is convenient for us to think we can and so we have evolved to think that way.
Brotkrumen Germany. June 15 2011 00:14. Posts 98 "...but how do you explain a concept that you dont have the words for?"
You describe it until someone makes up a word for it. It's like a child learning some new word, you have to use words that are already known to the child to explain the new one. Words you already know indeed influence your thinking, that's what they are made for. A completely new word however will make you interested in finding out what it means at best. Either way, looking them up solves these problems. Even if there are no words to even begin to describe the new stuff (which is kinda hard to imagine) you can always rely on pictures to describe something.
The whole thing about 'what is virtue', 'if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to witness it, does it make any sound?' is just about us making stuff up and discussing it. There is no real end to this as it is purely based on opinion.
This is of course old news to people in this thread so the whole discussion exists primarily for the sake of discussing. And now i'm ranting as well...
Doesn't Wittgenstein his own thesis on this destroy said thesis as well as its arguments at the same time. Afterall he is immediately runs into the same problems when he has to communicate this idea.
On June 14 2011 14:13 zizou21 wrote: This 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).
I am not a philosopher by trade, but can we say such a thing with certainty? Certainly nothing we know of would make us believe in the existence of "forms" but this is still just an assumption without proof. How would it affect the argument if there was such an essence?
I'm really just curious. It's impossible to prove an existential negative, I know that, but is this a vital part of his argument? I assume many people who believe in God would claim that God was the ultimate essence and source for many of these concepts (Virtue, Knowledge, Beauty, etc) and I don't really know anything about Wittgenstein's arguments. Do they depend on there being no such absolute source/reference for abstract concepts?
On June 15 2011 01:10 DisneylandSC wrote: Doesn't Wittgenstein his own thesis on this destroy said thesis as well as its arguments at the same time. Afterall he is immediately runs into the same problems when he has to communicate this idea.
No. Wittgenstein doesn't claim that it is impossible to communicate with each other. He just says that philosophical problems arise due to "communication problems". By solving the communication problem, you solve the philosophical problem.
This is also where the criticism comes in. Or as was shown earlier some philosophers go so far as to call him an terrorist because the underlying claim is that all of philosophy is just a giant misunderstanding that can be solved by a "good dictionary". (very oversimplified)
This relates now to his earlier work and as was pointed out, he distanced himself in his later work from this idea.
On June 15 2011 01:10 DisneylandSC wrote: Doesn't Wittgenstein his own thesis on this destroy said thesis as well as its arguments at the same time. Afterall he is immediately runs into the same problems when he has to communicate this idea.
No. Wittgenstein doesn't claim that it is impossible to communicate with each other. He just says that philosophical problems arise due to "communication problems". By solving the communication problem, you solve the philosophical problem.
This is also where the criticism comes in. Or as was shown earlier some philosophers go so far as to call him an terrorist because the underlying claim is that all of philosophy is just a giant misunderstanding that can be solved by a "good dictionary". (very oversimplified)
This relates now to his earlier work and as was pointed out, he distanced himself in his later work from this idea.
Being a mathematician myself I must say I never had this problem. : D
Ugh. I have a love/hate relationship with philosophy. There are so many pseudo-philosophers that just make baseless claims, suffer from logical failures, and shoddy assumptions. Despite this, they spew pages upon pages of intellectual masturbation on the page, as if they are thinking out loud, rather than SAYING SOMETHING. This thread is a perfect example. I made it to the end of page one before I had to stop for my own mental health. It was the same way in my philosophy classes in university. Someone begins an argument "well since computers can't learn they could never...". Well, computers can learn, so I can effectively tune out for the next 15 minutes of your rambling.
Wittgenstein is right, in my opinion, about nearly everything, but I think you confuse having a "family of meanings" with "no meaning". These "essences" you refer to have been approximated by averaging a wide range of connotation and experience. We have a powerful ability to recognize patterns. Absolutely, philosophy suffers because of barriers in language. However, I would argue that this is the mark of a poor philosopher. A good philosopher defines his terms explicitly. When he makes an argument, he says something like "For the sake of this argument, I define consciousness as the sense that one is in control". On complex subjects, one must define sub-terms, too.
In regards to absolute truth... If we all had perfect information and perfect logic we would all agree. So saying that philosophy is about clarification is not at all incorrect.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2fVqD.gif)
