Your and my opinions about Wittgenstein's utterances has only one difference, which is an interpretive difference: I see them as stupid, worthless and useless, and you see the same thing as works of a genius, valuable and making sense. — god must be atheist

:up:

Yeah I think Witt is a strong philosopher, one among many others. At this point I'm trying to draw all of their insights together.

Yeah I think Witt is a strong philosopher, one among many others. At this point I'm trying to draw all of their insights together. — j0e

Thanks, that's great.

"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'." — PI

The passage above my immediately prevous post, would be an excellent one to tackle, and I am glad you provided it. However, it is attributed to PI. Not to Wittgenstein. Please clarify before I would proceed to respond to it.

I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius.

Once you can supply the evidence that your POV is valid, I will consider it. — god must be atheist

Welcome to the joys of interpretation! While I don't want anyone to miss out on what I consider good philosophy, it's not on me defend his reputation anymore than it is to defend Einstein's. Lots of smart people find him worth talking about and weaving in their worldviews/philosophies. Your view seems to imply that all of these smart people are duped while you are not. In your shoes, I'd be wary of how self-flattering such a view is. Because philosophy has such an indirect utility for most people in their daily lives, most people can afford to believe whatever they want to believe, because mostly nobody cares, as long as they punch the timeclock and not their wives.

My old man didn't like me reading philosophy books. He said he had his 'own' philosophy. What he didn't realize is that it was a mashup of stuff he saw on TV. We all mostly synthesize.

:smile:

The passage above my immediately prevous post, would be an excellent one to tackle, and I am glad you provided it. However, it is attributed to PI. Not to Wittgenstein. Please clarify before I would proceed to respond to it. — god must be atheist

PI with OC are two great texts of the 'later' Wittgenstein (his views evolved from the TLP, his young-man's work, interesting in its own right.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius. — god must be atheist

Honestly I think you are projecting here. While I agree that young men tend to take such thinkers as heroes and gurus, I ain't so young anymore. Like you, I have often wanted to dismiss difficult thinkers as over-rated charlatans, to save me the trouble of the cognitive dissonance in assimilating and criticizing their work.

In my book (no offense intended), arrogant disregard is the same kind of thing as hero worship...another form of bias that distorts interpretation. This is discussed in the posts above about Herder, a precursor to Witt in many ways.

. Lots of smart people find him worth talking about and weaving in their worldviews/philosophies. — j0e

Sorry... this is an ad hominem fallacy. I make specific points about the quotes; you can challenge me by showing how my points are irrelevant or wrong or illogical, but you can't say I'm wrong because some smart people said so totally elsewhere without reading my points.

Your view seems to imply that all of these smart people are duped while you are not. — j0e

That, J0e, is PRECISELY what my point is. I am shouting about the emperor's new clothes. You rely on valuing the genius of Wittgenstein on the opinion of a lot of smart people. I rely on disvaluing the genius Wittgenstein by analyzing of what he says.

In your shows, I'd be wary of how self-flattering such a view is. — j0e

If that is a value point in undertaking the understanding of my opinion, that is a big mistake. And I can see all over this forum and the posts and comments, that that's how most people see me. They IMMEDIATELY dismiss my opinions due to this effect.

In fact, I do take pride in my opinions, but I do have (someone told me a long time ago, in a different setting) this provocative attitude in my style. It destroys the effect. I come across as an egotist, not as a thinker. My ego, it seems, overshadows the value of the statements I make.

I wish I could change my style, because it really hurts my cause. My cause is to state my opinions and to defend them. But people dismiss my opinions not on their inherent worth, but because how they are stated.

I wish I could change my style, because it really hurts my cause. My cause is to state my opinions and to defend them. But people dismiss my opinions not on their inherent worth, but because how they are stated. — god must be atheist

FWIW, I see a certain 'arrogance' at times in thinkers I respect. It's not a deal-breaker.

Consider what you said:

until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius. — god must be atheist

I was responding to your psychoanalyzing of my view. No offense taken. Just pointing it out.

Honestly I think you are projecting here. While I agree that young men tend to take such thinkers as heroes and gurus, I ain't so young anymore. Like you, I have often wanted to dismiss difficult thinkers as over-rated charlatans, to save me the trouble of the cognitive dissonance in assimilating and criticizing their work. — j0e

I may be projecting, or I may be creating theories to explain what I see. I have to explain to myself how and with what means does Wittgenstein create the effect he does. Because to this point, you have not convinced me that I am wrong. I asked for a quote that links your opinion to W's world view as expressed by him; there is (supposedly) none. So your biggest defense to shield W from my criticism is non-existent (maybe). I asked myself: how can this be? I had to explain it somehow.

It came out as a projecting. Yes. But what would you have done in my position?

No offense taken. Just pointing it out. — j0e

Thanks for your magnanimity.

I asked for a quote that links your opinion to W's world view as expressed by him; there is (supposedly) none. — god must be atheist

Well the texts are publicly available. I can't justify/defend my interpretation with any single quote taken out of context. That's part of the charm of W. He doesn't make grand statements for the most part. He gives us fragments and we put them together. I'm happy to keep showing them to you until a cumulative effect is or is not achieved.

Consider that I mostly dwell on this stuff over hundreds of posts.

Thanks for your magnanimity. — god must be atheist

Yours too.

He doesn't make grand statements for the most part. He gives us fragments and we put them together. — j0e

... and someone along the way came and decided arbitrarily and because of his style that he is a genius.

Much like due to my style I come across as contrarian.

Style is everything.

Yours too. — j0e

:up:

I asked myself: how can this be? I had to explain it somehow.

It came out as a porjecting. Yes. But what would you have done in my position? — god must be atheist

Hey, I think we all use folk-psychology in dealing with one another. So it's only a matter of using it on ourselves as well. As Gadamer says, interpretation is basically us revising our projections again and again until we stop needing to. That's yours of me, mine of you, and both of ours of Wittgenstein.... This is talked about earlier in the thread, btw.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf — j0e

Okay. So I take that the quotes are from W. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now I'll read them, and reply in kind.

... and someone along the way came and decided arbitrarily and because of his style that he is a genius.

Much like due to my style I come across as contrarian.

Style is everything. — god must be atheist

Style is fucking huge. I'm with you there. But not quite everything. I'm a contrarian too, not given to the admiration of others just because they are famous. No, ol' Wittgenstein had to impress me.

Wittgenstein didn't want to fuck up and make bold statements. It's more like he pops ten thousand balloons until you get the drift.

Okay. So I take that the quotes are from W. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now I'll read them, and reply in kind. — god must be atheist

Correct. They are from Wittgenstein.

"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'. — PI (Supposedly Wittgenstein)

He assumes something that is a falsehood to prove his point, Wittgenstein does. There ARE outward sings of pain, produced by the individual and produced by those the individual sees. This is not a matter that can be ignored, and W forces us to ignore it.

Please let me offer an analogy: "You must assume that straight-line segments don't exist. Therefore to build a square in two dimensions you could not do. SQUARES THEREFORE DON'T EXIST."

Wittgenstein proposes to drop off a feature of reality, and he can only prove his point this way. HE IS AN IDIOT, A FOOL FIT TO BE TIED. I am actually getting angry at how people are fooled by this nincompoop. He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it.

Gees, I must stop here before I get another heart-attack due to anger I can't release from my system.

Hey... it's just a thought experiment to make a point. No big deal.

The point is that 'pain' has a public function. It's caught up in the ways we interact. If someone tells me they have a 'headache,' then I give them an aspirin. Or a doctor might check for 'headaches' in an attempt to diagnose. The 'meaning' of 'headache' is the stuff we do interactively with words and deeds. 'Headache' cannot be anchored to private experience, because such experience, being private, is totally useless for explaining the social fact of language. Note that we don't have to assume 'private experience.' We just take the foggy concept and show that it fails on its own terms to do the job it's being asked to do, which is found meaning.

If you need to quit, do so. But if not, here's more.

The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. What am I to say about the word "red"?—that it means something 'confronting us all' and that everyone should really have another word, besides this one, to mean his own sensation of red? Or is it like this: the word "red" means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each person, it means something known only to him? (Or perhaps rather: it refers to something known only to him.) Of course, saying that the word "red" "refers to" instead of "means" something private does not help us in the least to grasp its function; but it is the more psychologically apt expression for a particular experience in doing philosophy. It is as if when I uttered the word I cast a sidelong glance at the private sensation, as it were in order to say to myself: I know all right what I mean by it.


Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself "How blue the sky is!"—When you do it spontaneously—without philosophical intentions—the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of colour belongs only to you. And you have no hesitation in exclaiming that to someone else. And if you point at anything as you say the words you point at the sky. I am saying: you have not the feeling of pointing-into-yourself, which often accompanies 'naming the sensation' when one is thinking about 'private language'. Nor do you think that really you ought not to point to the colour with your hand, but with your attention. But don't we at least mean something quite definite when we look at a colour and name our colour-impression? It is as if we detached the colout-impression from the object, like a membrane. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.) But how is even possible for us to be tempted to think that we use a word to mean at one time the colour known to everyone—and at another the 'visual impression' which I am getting now"? How can there be so much as a temptation here? — PI

HE IS AN IDIOT, A FOOL FIT TO BE TIED. I am actually getting angry at how people are fooled by this nincompoop. He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it. — god must be atheist

:starstruck:

That's me, fooled happily by the charlatan.

There ARE outward sings of pain, produced by the individual and produced by those the individual sees. This is not a matter that can be ignored, and W forces us to ignore it. — god must be atheist

No, man, he's saying the meaning is out there in those signs (to put it crudely.)

He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it. — god must be atheist

Whence this power? It's not the average guy in the bar who knows about him, talks about him. It's skeptical, critical, egotistic, pugnacious foolosophers who grudgingly admire the slippery fucker.

:eyes: :death: :eyes: