Subscribe to get both parts of this episode ad free, plus a supporter exclusive PEL Nightcap discussion. Concluding our discussion of On Certainty, with guest Chris Heath. Listen to part one first. We spend more time with quotes from the book and try once again to figure out what Wittgenstein's philosophy of science is. We finally fill out Wes' take on conspiracy Continue Reading …
Ep. 310: Wittgenstein On World-Pictures (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free. We continue picking at Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty (written 1951), with Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth now supplemented by guest Chris Heath, who is a guy who's very into philosophy of science who runs a Discord philosophy server. This is really the fourth discussion in this series; we recommend you start with ep. Continue Reading …
Ep. 310: Wittgenstein On World-Pictures (Part Two for Supporters)
Concluding our discussion of On Certainty, with guest Chris Heath. Listen to part one first. We spend more time with quotes from the book and try once again to figure out what Wittgenstein's philosophy of science is. We finally fill out Wes' take on conspiracy theories and how they relate to this text. How do people actually get convinced to change their minds about their Continue Reading …
Ep. 310: Wittgenstein On World-Pictures (Part One for Supporters)
We continue picking at Ludwig Wittgenstein's On Certainty (written 1951), with Mark, Wes, Dylan and Seth now supplemented by guest Chris Heath, who is a guy who's very into philosophy of science who runs a Discord philosophy server. This is really the fourth discussion in this series; we recommend you start with ep. 307 on G.E. Moore, or at least ep. 309 where we started Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part Two)
Subscribe to get both parts of this episode ad free, plus a supporter exclusive PEL Nightcap discussion. Continuing our discussion from part one of On Certainty (1951), we do some close reading of the text. How does he actually respond to Moore's argument about his hand? How does he extend his account to talk about mathematical and scientific statements? Is Wittgenstein a Continue Reading …
PEL Nightcap January 2023
Recorded on 1/12/13, Mark, Wes, and Dylan first talk about our upcoming Dostyevsky live show (April 15 in NYC; we hope to have tickets on sale soon, and supporters will get first crack at them) and talk about our debate over translations of The Brothers Karamazov, as inspired by this article and this one. Here's the reddit page that actually pulls passages from both Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part One)
Subscribe to get parts 1 and 2 of this now, ad-free. Discussing the notes Ludwig Wittgenstein made at the end of his life in 1951 that were published as On Certainty in 1969, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. These were in direct response to the essays by G.E. Moore that we discussed in episodes 307 and 308, so we talk about the status of so-called "Moorean Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part Two for Supporters)
Continuing our discussion from part one of On Certainty (1951), we do some close reading of the text. How does he actually respond to Moore's argument about his hand? How does he extend his account to talk about mathematical and scientific statements? Is Wittgenstein a pragmatist? You may want to review our episode on William James' pragmatist definition of truth. We Continue Reading …
Ep. 309: Wittgenstein On Certainty (Part One for Supporters)
Discussing the notes Ludwig Wittgenstein made at the end of his life in 1951 that were published as On Certainty in 1969, featuring Mark, Wes, Dylan, and Seth. These were in direct response to the essays by G.E. Moore that we discussed in episodes 307 and 308, so we talk about the status of so-called "Moorean propositions" like "physical objects exist," "the world is more Continue Reading …
The Walk to Kallipolis
Preface Inspired by Cicero’s dialogues and the letters of Seneca, I have sought to compare the ideas of Alasdair MacIntyre, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Friedrich Nietzsche in a speculative chat on the relationship between ethics and aesthetics, and how both relate to the process of judgment in both spheres. Although this piece is an attempt to be humorous, I treat these very Continue Reading …
What Can Regular Words Do?
[From David Crohn, Friend of the Podcast] Question: How are Ludwig Wittgenstein, this sentence, and shooting your neighbor’s donkey related? I had no idea—until I listened to In Our Time's excellent (not PEL-excellent, but pretty close) introduction to Ordinary Language Philosophy. OLP was the effort on behalf of a group of post-Wittgenstein philosophers to clarify the Continue Reading …
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 something 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 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 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 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 even begin to acknowledge that they might just be 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 and 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 of social intercourse. Continue Reading …