Thanks for the post, Posty. I'm always interested in hearing how others interpret or use Wittgenstein's philosophy.

Could you provide an example?

:up:

Let me know if you care to criticise it or what have you.

Could you provide an example? — Dfpolis

Depression, anxiety, OCD, self-identity, death.

All of these influence what conclusions we arrive at. Reason itself is limited by what the emotive aspect of our beings tells us about a situation or issue. That's not to say that self-realization is impossible; but, it's hard. I still think we can change our minds about things; but, that's limited by the ability to satisfy our needs from wants.

Depression, anxiety, OCD, self-identity, death.

All of these influence what conclusions we arrive at. Reason itself is limited by what the emotive aspect of our beings tells us about a situation or issue. — Posty McPostface

While I agree that our emotional state can affect what we look at our admit is real, I don't see that this has much to do with the philosophy of language.

And yes -- self realization is hard.

While I agree that our emotional state can affect what we look at our admit is real, I don't see that this has much to do with the philosophy of language. — Dfpolis

Well, if you adopt a therapeutic stance towards speech and philosophical problems, then yes it is pertinent to the philosophy of language.

Well, if you adopt a therapeutic stance towards speech and philosophical problems, then yes it is pertinent to the philosophy of language. — Posty McPostface

I did not mean to challenge your insight, I just do not appreciate the connection.

Surely, we use language to direct attention in ways that will result in desirable emotional states. But does one have to be steeped in the philosophy of language to do that?

I am one of those who have read some Wittgenstein and was not unduly impressed. I take responsibility for that. As a student of Aristotle, who is also a genius and often difficult to grasp, I appreciate the need to study a philosopher in depth to fully appreciate his/her genius. So, as I see it, it is a matter of resource allocation. We have limited time, and so we have to judge, after minimal exposure, where to spend it.

One way to overcome this barrier is to have someone show you an instance of the philosopher's genius. — Dfpolis

Your right, it's very difficult to make time to study some of this material, especially since there is just so much to study. All I have time for is a very limited area of philosophy, there is just too much.

His genius is seen in the Tractatus, even if you disagree with it. It's seen in his transition from his early to his later philosophy. I see his genius in his final notes (On Certainty). I've also seen his genius in what he did outside of philosophy. One example was his work during WW2 at Guys Hospital in England...

“Wittgenstein’s job as a porter was to deliver medicines from the dispensary to the wards, where, according to John Ryle’s wife, Miriam, he advised the patients not to take them. His boss at the pharmacy was Mr. S F. Izzard. When asked later if he remembered Wittgenstein as a porter, Izzard replied, ‘Yes, very well. He came and worked here and after working here three weeks he came and explained how we should be running the place. You see, he was a man who was used to thinking.’ After a short while, he was switched to the job of pharmacy technician in the manufacturing laboratory, where one of his duties was to prepare Lassar’s ointment for the dermatological department. When Drury visited Wittgenstein at Guy’s, he was told by a member of the staff that no one before had produced Lassar’s ointment of such high quality. “

Was taken from the following link: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrs-blog/2009/12/12/wittgenstein-labors-at-guys-during-wwii.html

I just do not appreciate the connection. — Dfpolis

What do you mean?

Surely, we use language to direct attention in ways that will result in desirable emotional states. — Dfpolis

Yes; but, it can lead us down the wrong path of neuroticism, self-reinforcing concepts of depression, anxiety, or what have you. So, those have to addressed first.

But does one have to be steeped in the philosophy of language to do that? — Dfpolis

Quite the contrary, Wittgenstein valued ordinary life above that which philosophy ever hopes to describe. This is the self-defeating aspect of philosophy, which Wittgenstein instilled in many generations to come. Hence, the need to apply philosophy as therapy, in his mind, I think.

Thank you for your response.

I've come to the conclusion, as did Wittgenstein, that the problems of philosophy are psychological or have their root in the psychology of the speaker. — Posty McPostface

If you want to know what I would disagree with, it would be the above statement. There are many psychological ramifications of what Wittgenstein said, there is no doubt about that, but he would not say that the problems of philosophy have their root in the psychology of the speaker. However, to be fair, Posty you may have something in mind that I'm missing.

Thank you for your response. — Dfpolis

:up:

See here. What do you think?

I still do not see the connection between Wittgenstein and therapy.

For a while, I was involved in the philosophical counseling movement, and have an article published in a collection on the subject. I was able to help a few people with severe problems by directing their attention to things that gave them self worth. Without going into detail, the result was transformative. Clearly, this did not depend on my knowledge of Wittgenstein, which is minimal at best.

Without going into detail, the result was transformative. Clearly, this did not depend on my knowledge of Wittgenstein, which is minimal at best. — Dfpolis

I think this is the point that Wittgenstein was trying to get across. That of ethics to be found in the ordinary deed done out of kindness or charity in everyday life.

Thank you.

Is this a quote of Wittgenstein's - "Philosophy is only descriptive, its purpose therapeutic. The only problem to be solved is that of the human psychology." I'm interested in the source.

I think this is the point that Wittgenstein was trying to get across. That of ethics to be found in the ordinary deed done out of charity in every day life. — Posty McPostface

This sounds like something Wittgenstein would say, viz., that ethics is to be found in the deed.

Is this a quote of Wittgenstein's - "Philosophy is only descriptive, its purpose therapeutic. The only problem to be solved is that of the human psychology." I'm interested in the source. — Sam26

It was a comment posted by an unnamed author of this forum. I find it hard to disagree with either way, but, it's important to realize that it doesn't all come down to a brute realization of wants and needs. Wittgenstein "spoke" staunchly about the mystical (ethics) in the Tractatus. E.g the seventh proposition of the Tractatus.

I don't follow this, specifically, "it belongs to a wider set of practices and capacities which must also be grasped in their specificity." — Sam26

I simply mean that language is a practice like any other: playing football, walking a dog, brushing teeth; to use language is to do something. And 'doings' are not specifically linguistic. Moreover they can only be made sense of in wider contexts that might involve everything from economics to power relations to biology and so on. Language is embedded in a world, and to understand language we must understand the world. Witty would capture this in his recourse to his reference to the form-of-life in which language-games operate.

I share the positivist view that there is something 'wrong' with philosophy, that the questions it asks are somehow confused. Philosophy therefore can't be addressed on philosophical terms, any more than you can cure schizophrenia by arguing with the schizophrenic about the nature of the voices they hear. Phil. of language is an appealing entry point into this view, but I don't think it's had much success beyond specific cases.

A sociological and historical understanding needs to be brought to bear, that doesn't take for granted philosophy's own (IMO delusional) assumptions about itself, but addresses the rise of philosophy, and the reason for its defectiveness, non-philosophically. In the Western tradition specifically, this must be done with an understanding of how philosophy and sophistry are historically linked, and how Socratic philosophy began over puzzlement in strange ways of employing language, especially in response to the sophists' deliberately using language to conjure fallacies.

The idea that any of this could have been resolved through supplying an appropriate definition, or impeded forever by supplying inappropriate definitions, is really far off the mark. It was mostly worked through by people hashing it out, and was enabled by the civil rights movements for people of colour and women. Political problems don't arise or go away through the analysis of language, they arise and go away through targeted change of social systems and behavioural change on a large scale. — fdrake

I don't know if you intended to address this point to me or Sam, but, given your range of "philosophical" problems not tied up with language problems, I'm guessing this is supposed to serve as an example?

The problem for me is that you seem to a) have a very wide definition of Philosophy, and b) have mostly picked examples from the very fuzzy edge of that definition.

From a sociological perspective, all that happened with the sub-groups of feminism achieving some of their goals was that they found a means of presenting their issues in a form which made those currently in power positions consider it expedient to their own agenda to resolve them (or stand aside and allow them to be resolved). It's a political game. Psychology, maybe; Game Theory, almost certainly (although probably not consciously so), but Philosophy? I don't see the function it served other than post-hoc rationalisation of that which was going to happen anyway as a result of the shifting power balance within the groups.

The question, lest we lose track of it, is how linguistic analysis will resolve my difference with a determinist? — Dfpolis

It won't. What it might do is get you to see that there is nothing further to be resolved. It's like one person describing the field as 'emerald green' and another describing is as 'like a sea of grass' and then you arguing with them assuming they therefore think the grass is blue. Both of you are describing grass, you're just picking out different aspects of it in your language.

You and the determinist are both describing the same experience of life. The determinist is not suggesting that it 'feels like' they are being controlled by the pre-determined forces of nature, neither is the non-determinist (of whatever persuasion) claiming that one's environment or history has no influence.

The point they disagree on is exactly the point at which actual experience ceases to provide any further data. It 'feels like' we have choices, but that's as far as we can examine it by self-reflection. The rest is just a more or less complex story of how we think that feeling might be generated by 'the way the world really is'. Like any story, different people will pick out different aspects, and like any description it is contained entirely in language, and is entirely a social act to communicate to another.

The point in highlighting the circularity of definition was not to undermine the concept of defining a word at all, but to emphasise how blunt a tool it is. The more synonyms you add to your definition, the more focus you bring to the concept, but you very quickly run out of words, the most you can do is take a vague concept and make it slightly less vague. The insight from Wittgenstein, for me, is to recognise the bluntness of language. It's not to throw out the whole project of trying to understand one another, it's to know when to stop.

As ever with these threads the debate gets quickly moved to people's pet issues and I realise I haven’t actually answered your question.

I was involved for a while in social psychology, mostly environmental ethics and child development, and it was at that time that I read PI. What I took from it was what I later found out to be the 'therapeutic' interpretation (I know, a psychologist reading a book and presuming therapy, who'd have thought it?). The way it influenced my thinking was to see a whole different way of looking at discussions between opposing views. Instead of seeing them as processes designed to reach some idealistic end goal, I started to think of them as stone masons trying to carve likenesses of their ideas but all they have is sledgehammers. You can definatly rough out something usefully resembling a concept, but you have to know when to stop otherwise all you end up with is a pile of rubble.

Its particularly true of child development issues. You have to know when to stop asking the child to further define their issues, and simply accept the rough sketch. In my experience, it usually much earlier than many psychologists seem to think.

My introduction to Philosophy of Language was Austin and Searle, followed by Davidson. My knowledge of Wittgenstein at that stage was tertiary. Years later I had the time to read Wittgenstein in detail, mostly with an eye on the tension between his language as use and Davidson's language as interpretation; and between natural language and formal language.

The great joy I had from PI was due to reading it as a set of tools more than for the content. Consider, for instance, "Don't think, but look" from ⎰66. It's just brilliant - as in, it illuminates what goes wrong in so much philosophical thinking.

The vast majority of philosophical problems derive from grammatical muddles; here I am using "grammar" in the broad sense of the structure of language and language games. Indeed I am tempted to say if it's not a grammatical problem, it's not a philosophical problem - it belongs to some other field.; That is, it is tempting to posit that philosophy is exactly the study of confusions of language.

Philosophy of time: presentism, block universes etc.
Metaphysics of science: emergence, character of natural law
Political philosophy: the vast majority of issues in it. 'Are Marx's classes of proletariat and bourgeoise still present in capital? Have they changed over time?'
Logic: foundations of mathematics (eg, we used to think set theory was the only way to axiomatise things, now we have topos theory!), properties of formal systems.
Meta-ethics: cognitivism, non-cognitivism (Frege-Geach for a specific debate)
Ethics: real world ethical issues - environmental conservation, overpopulation, morality of torture, relationship of ethics and legal systems.
Philosophy of language/linguistics: performativity and speech act theory, pragmatics vs formalism.
Epistemology: epistemic dependence — fdrake

What is philosophical in each of these issues is cleaning up and setting out what is being asked or claimed in each case. After that they reduce to physics, politics, economics or some other area of study; or to differences of opinion.

But I might be wrong about this; hence

I am tempted to say... — Banno

Indeed; Philosophy of Language is, in the end, the whole of philosophy.

The vast majority of philosophical problems derive from grammatical muddles; here I am using "grammar" in the broad sense of the structure of language and language games. Indeed I am tempted to say if it's not a grammatical problem, it's not a philosophical problem - it belongs to some other field.; That is, it is tempting to posit that philosophy is exactly the study of confusions of language — Banno

Well-said, but I'd put it slightly differently: philosophy isn't the study of such confusions, but the participation in / performance of such confusions.

Well-said, but I'd put it slightly differently: philosophy isn't the study of such confusions, but the participation in / performance of such confusions. — Snakes Alive

I say this to emphasize that to get away from these issues, we must genuinely apostatize from philosophy. Wittgenstein, whatever his merits, was still a philosopher, and as a personality extremely ill-suited to the abandonment of the field. He is, if you like, a struggling Christian in various stages of retreat and denial. What is needed is a new generation to think about philosophy without being philosophers, in the way that we have scholars of religious texts who are themselves in no way religious. Philosophy is a field of linguistic error not to be engaged with on its own terms, but externally, from an understanding of language that itself owes nothing to the games that philosophers attempt, and fail, to play with language.

In this way, in the vein of David Stoves's 'neo-positivism,' philosophy itself offers us not a field to engage with, but an empirical laboratory for such confusions and errors – we see them forming, as case studies and as a broader social phenomenon, in real time.

I simply mean that language is a practice like any other: playing football, walking a dog, brushing teeth; to use language is to do something. And 'doings' are not specifically linguistic. Moreover they can only be made sense of in wider contexts that might involve everything from economics to power relations to biology and so on. Language is embedded in a world, and to understand language we must understand the world. Witty would capture this in his recourse to his reference to the form-of-life in which language-games operate. — StreetlightX

Yes, I would definitely agree with this.