A philosophical dialogue on the nature of art.
What Can Regular Words Do?
Question: What do Ludwig Wittgenstein, this sentence, and shooting your neighbor’s donkey have in common? Well, not much really—unless you listen to In Our Time’s excellent (not PEL-excellent, but pretty close) introduction to Ordinary Language Philosophy.
Wittgenstein’s Tractatus for Not School
Hello Hello! It’s the beginning of the new month already. This is Hillary, continuing leader for the Not School Intro Philosophy Readings group. For those of you who have been following the Tao Te Ching discussion, hold on to your hats, because we’re drifting a one eighty and dropping into Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. For those of you who haven’t, you missed Continue Reading …
Philosophy as Conceptual Border Patrol
Peter Hacker does not abide nonsense. In his January article “Why Philosophy” Hacker puts in his cross-hairs ideas taken seriously by politicians, scientists, and the intelligentsia in general. Let’s get to the specifics in a minute – the general outline is relevant to anyone hoping to grok the never-ending attempt to define philosophy. Perhaps this attempt never ends because there’s Continue Reading …
Daniel Little (UnderstandingSociety) on “Marketing Wittgenstein”
A good new-to-me web find today is The UnderstandingSociety blog from U. of Michigan-Dearborn’s Daniel Little, who writes about philsoophy from a sociological perspective. This is very relevant to our recent discussion of fame among philosophers on our Lucy Lawless episode, and in this article, Little reflects on why it might be that Wittgenstein is so famous, given, as I’ve Continue Reading …
Logicomix on Not School
As mentioned on the Quine episode, I’m proposing a Not School reading group on Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Christos H. Papadimitriou, Apostolos Doxiadis, and some fine illustrators, which is about Russell and Wittgenstein, with some cameos by Frege, Gödel, and other names dropped during our analytic episodes. It’s a graphic novel, running 300+ pages, and seems comfortably Continue Reading …
Meaning and Context
(Painting by Robert McCall) In his book Wittgenstein and William James,Russell Goodman makes a case that James influenced Wittgenstein’s thought and he does so by detailing their shared commitment to concrete experience and actual practice over intellect. (Wittgenstein was also positively influenced by James’s view of religion, especially by The Varieties of Religious Experience, but that’s another can of worms.) Continue Reading …
Ignorance, Arrogance, and Competence
It’s been a while since we had a post using some of our negative feedback to reflect on our project and methods. On the US iTunes store, one reviewer who had admittedly only listened to our two recent Wittgenstein episodes and nothing else, said that we were “A) woefully ignorant of the material at hand and B) too arrogant to Continue Reading …
Badiou: Wittgenstein and Nietzsche as Anti-Philosophy
Listening to the guys and Philosophy Bro on the last episode, I want to interject that actually I see Wittgenstein as a bridge between analytic and continental philosophy for reasons beyond his being Austrian. What he brackets out and why is crucial to his project, which does become “anti-philosophical” in a broad sense. Anti-philosophy is defined by both Alain Badiou Continue Reading …
Sean Wilson’s Wittgenstein Forum
At some point after our Tractatus episodes came out, Sean Wilson, a political science professor at Wright State University, contacted me to find out when we’d be doing the Investigations so as to coordinate something between us and his discussion group. Some years later now, I’ve checked out his forum: “Wittgenstein’s Aftermath: Life in the Post-Analytic World, Given by the Continue Reading …
My Own Private Language?
Would it be reasonable to take Wittgenstein’s case against private language as his case in favor of public language? Or is that too simple? As I was listening to episode 56, a quote from William James from Pragmatismcame to mind: All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and borrow verifications, get them from one another by means Continue Reading …
Do Phenomenal Concepts Negate Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument?
Watch on Vimeo In the video above, Prof. David Papineau compares different “naturalist” theories of consciousness to propose that phenomenal concepts pose a problem for Wittgenstein’s private language argument. (A version of this issue was briefly raised during the second episode discussing Philosophical Investigations.) Hint: If you’re not yet familar with the “Mary’s Room” thought experiment, it would be helpful to Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 56: More Wittgenstein on Language
Continuing discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360. With guest Philosophy Bro. On “family resemlances” in concepts, dismissing philosophical puzzles as grammatical mistakes, and the private language argument.
Episode 56: More Wittgenstein on Language (Citizens Only)
Continuing discussion of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360. With guest Philosophy Bro. On “family resemlances” in concepts, dismissing philosophical puzzles as grammatical mistakes, and the private language argument. Learn more.
End song: “Not a Woman,” by Mark Lint and the Fake from So Whaddaya Think? (2000).
John Searle on Ludwig Wittgenstein
I enjoy listening to philosophers I respect talk about the life and thought of other philosophers. Below is a discussion between the popularizer of philosophy Bryan Magee and the great John Searle. Watch on YouTube. Magee is an under-appreciated philosopher. His books The Philosophy of Schopenhauerand Confessions of a Philosopherhave always impressed me with their lucidity and originality. Also, his Continue Reading …
PREVIEW-Episode 55: Wittgenstein on Language
On Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360 (written around 1946). What is linguistic meaning? Wittgenstein argues that it’s not some mysterious entity in the mind, but that it is a public matter: you understand a word if you can use it appropriately, and you know the context in which it’s appropriate to use it and how to react when you hear it in that context. W. calls such a context a “language game,” and sees language as big heap of these games, spanning a wide range of human activity. With guest Philosophy Bro.
Episode 55: Wittgenstein on Language (Citizens Only)
On Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Part I, sections 1-33 and 191-360 (written around 1946). What is linguistic meaning? Wittgenstein argues that it’s not some mysterious entity in the mind, but that it is a public matter: you understand a word if you can use it appropriately, and you know the context in which it’s appropriate to use it and how to react when you hear it in that context. W. calls such a context a “language game,” and sees language as big heap of these games, spanning a wide range of human activity. With guest Philosophy Bro. Learn more.
End song: “Kite,” by New People from The Easy Thing (2009). Download the album.
Topic for #55/#56: Wittgenstein on Language
Over two episodes, we discussed Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations,Part I, sections 1-133 and 191-360. Here’s a version from the web. The full crew was present along with Philosophy Bro for episode 55, and that group minus Seth (who went to Portugal) was there for #56. The Investigations was published posthumously in 1953; book one was originally ready for publication in Continue Reading …
Hattiangadi on Meaning in Language
Oughts and Thoughts: Scepticism and the Normativity of Meaningis a 2007 book by Oxford philosophy professor Anandi Hattiangadi that develops a response to Saul Kripke’s skepticism about whether there is a fact of meaning in a person’s use of language. In Kripke’s 1984 book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language,he argued, via a controversial interpretation of Wittgenstein, that there is Continue Reading …
David Foster Wallace on Wittgenstein
Slate Magazine recently posted a great article on the recently-departed author and essayist David Foster Wallace, focusing on how Wallace (correctly?) interpreted Wittgenstein’s early and late philosophy to cope with his allegedly crushing sense of solipsistic dread. I’m not sure I buy this thesis, but Wallace’s suicide implies something was clearly bothering him. Even so, I’d ascribe a more clinical Continue Reading …