Here specifically with regard to Wittgenstein while others are spared. — Fooloso4
In my opinion he should not. An author does not maintain control over how his words are understood or used by others. — Fooloso4
I think the beliefs of someone who is an adherent of a philosopher will be indebted to that philosopher, and therefore the philosopher will be to some extent responsible for those beliefs. — Leontiskos
many of the ‘analyticals’ are really pretty rigid in their concentration on ‘language games’ and the like and they often use the famous last words of the Tractatus to stifle discussion of what I consider significant philosophical questions. — Wayfarer
Wittgenstein provides himself with no way to account for the knowing subject along with their intentions and locutions. Language becomes a fact, a given, which must be parsed according to "common use" and cannot be parsed vis-a-vis the intentions of individual subjects — Leontiskos
…the idea of a world or environment with extrinsic, pregiven features that are recovered through a process of representation. In some ways cognitivism is the strongest statement yet of the representational view of the mind inaugurated by Descartes and Locke. Indeed, Jerry Fodor, one of cognitivism's leading and most eloquent exponents, goes so far as to say that the only respect in which cognitivism is a major advance over eighteenth- and nineteenth-century representationism is in its use of the computer as a model of mind.
I do sense the fact that many of the ‘analyticals’ are really pretty rigid in their concentration on ‘language games’ and the like and they often use the famous last words of the Tractatus to stifle discussion of what I consider significant philosophical questions. But, you know, c’est la vie. One moves on to another thread — Wayfarer
How many times can one philosopher have the glory of being saved by Appeal to Misunderstanding? — schopenhauer1
I always imagined that the point of philosophy for many was to dismiss or pillory another's reading and then go on to demonstrate why one's own reading is superior. Is't that inherent in the activity? — Tom Storm
Scientism takes many forms. In the humanities, it takes the form of pretending that philosophy, literature, history, music and art can be studied as if they were sciences, with "researchers" compelled to spell out their "methodologies"—a pretence which has led to huge quantities of bad academic writing, characterised by bogus theorising, spurious specialisation and the development of pseudo-technical vocabularies. — Ray Monk
Philosophy, he writes, "is not a theory but an activity." It strives, not after scientific truth, but after conceptual clarity. In the Tractatus, this clarity is achieved through a correct understanding of the logical form of language, which, once achieved, was destined to remain inexpressible, leading Wittgenstein to compare his own philosophical propositions with a ladder, which is thrown away once it has been used to climb up on.
This makes Wittgenstein sound like a neutral figure regarding how to use language, but it is clear he favored (in Tractatus) empirical claims to "Facts of the world" over language that he thought could (SHOULD) not be expressed (nonsense).. — schopenhauer1
The declared aim of the Vienna Circle was to make philosophy either subservient to or somehow akin to the natural sciences. As Ray Monk says in his superb biography Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990), “the anti-metaphysical stance that united them [was] the basis for a kind of manifesto which was published under the title The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna Circle.” Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all” (6.52); “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (6.522). None of these sayings could possibly be interpreted as the views of a man who had renounced metaphysics. The Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle had got Wittgenstein wrong, and in so doing had discredited themselves.
6.4.1 The meaning of the world must lie outside of it. In the world everything is as it is and everything happens as it happens; there is no value in it - and if there were, it would have no value.
If there is a value that has value, it must lie outside everything that happens and is. Because everything that happens and exists is accidental.
What makes it non-random cannot be in the world, otherwise it would be random again.
It must be outside the world.
The correct method of philosophy would actually be this: to say nothing other than what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science - something that has nothing to do with philosophy - and then whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to prove it to him that he gave no meaning to certain characters in his sentences. This method would be unsatisfactory for the other person - he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy - but it would be the only strictly correct one.
I don't have much patience for people who pretend to know what they don't know. What I mean is this, if you haven't seriously studied a subject, then you shouldn't be dogmatic about your views on the subject. If you are, then that seems to be more about one's ego than getting at the truth. I don't know about the rest of you, but my observation has been that most people in here are more interested in winning their argument, at any cost, than trying to ascertain what's true. — Sam26
I don't have much patience for people who pretend to know what they don't know. What I mean is this, if you haven't seriously studied a subject, then you shouldn't be dogmatic about your views on the subject. — Sam26
I do not think that Plato, for example, is responsible for the varied and contradictory ways is which he has been read over the centuries. — Fooloso4
Why is it that Wittgenstein can have a pass to riff off his own thoughts, but others cannot in relation to Wittgenstein? Odd. Being how ahistorical Wittgenstein was, I would think even the reading of Wittgenstein would invite more caprice than that of a more systemic philosopher. — schopenhauer1
I tend to agree. Of course there is some interpretation involved in what counts as 'serious study' of a subject. it seems to me that most members here autodidacts and hobbyist philosophers. — Tom Storm
The declared aim of the Vienna Circle was to make philosophy either subservient to or somehow akin to the natural sciences. As Ray Monk says in his superb biography Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (1990), “the anti-metaphysical stance that united them [was] the basis for a kind of manifesto which was published under the title The Scientific View of the World: The Vienna Circle.” Yet as Wittgenstein himself protested again and again in the Tractatus, the propositions of natural science “have nothing to do with philosophy” (6.53); “Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences” (4.111); “It is not problems of natural science which have to be solved” (6.4312); “even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all” (6.52); “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical” (6.522). None of these sayings could possibly be interpreted as the views of a man who had renounced metaphysics. The Logical Positivists of the Vienna Circle had got Wittgenstein wrong, and in so doing had discredited themselves.
The book deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I
believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language. Its whole meaning could be
summed up somewhat as follows: What can be said at all can be said
clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.
The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rathernot to
thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit
to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit
(we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought).
The limit can, therefore, only be drawn in language and what lies on
the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense. — TLP Intro
Whether or not that is the case, instead of wasting time telling me that so and so is misunderstanding him, let’s reveal the difference in underlying metaphysical commitments that separate your reading from mine. — Joshs
I think it might be fair to say of the "anti-metaphysical movement," more broadly that it was the most dogmatic since late scholasticism, or at least that it had the greatest combination of ability and desire to enforce its dogma. People weren't put on trial for heresy, but people in the natural sciences were hounded out of their careers or threatened with this fate for violating the established orthodoxy. You see this in the history of quantum foundations up through the late 1990s and you still see it today with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis controversy in biology. — Count Timothy von Icarus
can Witt be wrong, even just in principle? Because the way you describe it, he can’t be wrong, because he’s not making claims.. — schopenhauer1
What enactivists find valuable about Wittgenstein is his recognition that linguistic meaning and intentionality cannot be fully understood via models that begin from the idea thatmentation is a matter of rational representation of a world performed inside a brain. — Joshs
People weren't put on trial for heresy, but people in the natural sciences were hounded out of their careers or threatened with this fate for violating the established orthodoxy. — Count Timothy von Icarus
What can be said at all can be said
clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. — TLP Intro
Then the wanderer Vacchagotta went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, exchanged courteous greetings with him. After an exchange of friendly greetings & courtesies, he sat to one side. As he was sitting there he asked the Blessed One: "Now then, Venerable Gotama, is there a self?"
When this was said, the Blessed One was silent.
"Then is there no self?"
A second time, the Blessed One was silent.
Then Vacchagotta the wanderer got up from his seat and left.
The book will, therefore, draw a limit to thinking, or rather not to
thinking, but to the expression of thoughts; for, in order to draw a limit
to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of this limit
(we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought). — TLP Intro
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