Any Wittgenstein freaks here? I read ten books by Wittgenstein, and still haven't fully grasped his arguments, but hope that I have joined "the league of the raised eyebrow"...
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Re: Wittgenstein
Fri, July 1, 2005 - 4:04 PMI've read some Wittgenstein, and taken several classes involving or revolving around his philosophys.
Quite honetsly, he has no arguments. He makes that claim some place (though i'm at a loss at the moment where, i'll have to post that at another time). He makes 'asserations' (which some would claim are arguments), but when reading through his books the flow and style do not lend themselves to arguments in any traditional sense of the word.
Wittgenstein himself, from what little i've read on the man and have disscussed in classes, would detest the claim that he has formed arguments in his writings.
I also cannot claim to have fully grasped his 'points' and 'assertions', though there are some broad ideas that can be grasped.
The first is the idea that language is a requirement for higher thought. The second is: that it is language itself, and it's misuse is the primary causes of many philosophical quagmires and dilemnas. And third: philosophy is something to be used as a tool. Once we are able to move beyond the need for the tool, we should cast it off. -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Fri, July 1, 2005 - 5:30 PMHere is where philosophy becomes interesting. Why is it that philosophically we will say "I don't full grasp so and so's ideas." In real life or every day conversation or debate, we are will to say "I don't agree."
Do we not grasp the idea because we cannot comprehend or intellectualize it's meaning, or because we just see no darn purpose for it ? -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Sat, July 9, 2005 - 9:36 PMMaybe we just don't see an idea because it is not for us to see in our purpose for life. If we are all individuals each here with a different purpose, I think it may just be possible in order to fullfill our purpose we don't grasp all ideas.
And to disagree with a theory or in conversation, we grasp the concept of the idea behind whats being said, and therefore have the ability to either agree or disagree with it.
Just phillisophically saying.
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Re: Wittgenstein
Tue, January 3, 2006 - 4:26 PMInteresting. Isn't there some idea that philosophy is on equal terms with fiction as far as proving anything? That the point of each is that you buy into it, either provisionally to follow the story (argument), but that becoming convinced is a matter of the ideas themselves seeping into you and possibly taking hold. If they don't, one can always construct suitable rebuttals, and if they do, why bother? I associate that idea with Giles Delueze.
It does sound like Wittgenstein, to judge from very brief reading during a survey course on his ideas on intelligibility being hit-and-miss rather than a corespondance system, your words matching standard meanings in my brain.
I'm a shallow student, forgive (but point out) any inadvertent stupidity.
--Vincent
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Re: Wittgenstein
Sat, July 2, 2005 - 6:01 PMAlthough Wittgenstein would disavow his interpretation, you should read Kripke's "Wittgenstein: On Rules and Private Language". There are also interesting recent articles by Paul Bogghosian on Wittgenstein and his use-theory of meaning. -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Wed, July 6, 2005 - 3:44 PMHey thanks for the referal. I'm goin to have to check out Kripke's book.
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Re: Wittgenstein
Wed, July 20, 2005 - 6:11 AMI took a class on philosophical linguistics and wrote an essay concerning the Private Language Argument vs. Jerry Fodor's view. I follow Chomsky. I seem to be a Cartesian, but however, I am also a Psych major that has studied Cognition. Much of Chomsky's old outlook, as seen in his Universal Grammar, is outdated now, due to empirical science.
I went off on my own tangent about visual imagery in the essay, my professor allowed me to do this, and didn't choose either Fodor or Wittgenstein. I feel that it is a combination of both the innate ability in the mind to have language, as well as learned behavior. But there is also how someone comprehends language, and the cognitive science efforts that are going on in Psychology now that answer a few more questions and unravel the mystery.
My professor and I were going to work on an independent study situation, (Professor Hanna at the University of Utah, an incredibly fascinating and intelligent woman, who is the best lecturer that I have ever had, she is the reason that I chose Philosophy as a minor). Working on Jerry Fodor and I was going to include some cognitive material as well as philosophical readings. But I decided to take the summer off. It was probably a bad choice, getting to work with her in Independent studies is an opportunity I will never have again. We were going to have some other things too, I have a reading list that we were going to work on, some of it she hadn't worked on yet. One of her specialities is Linguistics. She worked with the language dept. As well as the mathematics department as well. If anyone is interested in the book list, I have it somewhere, I believe in my E-mails, or on my own mailing list. I wish I could post the essay I wrote about Private Language argument, but I don't believe there is any way to do that on tribes, and it is MUCH too long to post in an E-mail.
Tamara Wright -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Wed, July 20, 2005 - 5:43 PM"Maybe we just don't see an idea because it is not for us to see in our purpose for life. If we are all individuals each here with a different purpose, I think it may just be possible in order to fullfill our purpose we don't grasp all ideas."
That asserts that we are all pre-programmed in our grasping a concept or idea. Consequently, is it a forgone conclusion that we will not sully our philosophical path with unrelated tangents ? It's an interesting thought, but then it blands our existing. Is it possible for me to reach my philosophical potential regardless of my effort ?
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Re: Wittgenstein
Sun, January 8, 2006 - 7:56 PMCan anyone explain his private language argument to me? -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Mon, January 9, 2006 - 11:22 AMI'm not really qualified and could have it wrong but it was communicated to me that the notion that words carry the some meanings to everyone is rather flimsy, that idiosyncratic meanings are more common than we realize. Even married couples use to same words differently to each other for years without realizing it.
Witt. said, I think, that usually this doesn't matter much in daily living and we don't even realized our failures to communicate.
I am a poet and the more I probe meanings of even simple words the more I agree with this. Communicating thus has more in common with theater. We negotiate or paint a picture, with little reasonable expectation of complete mind to mind transmission.
I believe Chomsky picked up on a similar idea, and it is in vogue among linguists these days.
--V -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Mon, January 9, 2006 - 11:33 AMVincent, I totally agree that words do not have the same meanings to everyone.
Thomas Kuhn makes a big deal of this phenomenon with respect to the history of science. The fact the same word can have different meanings within different paradigms (like the meaning of "mass" in classical mechanics vs. the meaning of "mass" in relativistic physics) is one of the factors that makes straight-forward comparison between theroies problematic.
On network theories of meaning, a word gets its meaning in part from the other words we associate with it. And since everybody's associative net is a little different... -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Tue, January 10, 2006 - 8:39 AMInteresting. I've been thinking about Kuhn again.
Could you tell me more about network theories of meaning and associative nets? Are these linguistic terms. Do they come from computer science? Are these something I can google?
I've been gathering sources for an article on social software, like tribe.net
I'm getting a few poems published. Its never the ones I like best (the mysterious ones) that get published, its always the ones with the clearest public references, the ones with cliches and a few stereotypes. Same with my nonfiction. Maybe I'm not working hard enough to get understood, but put a few stock phrases in there and things seem to take off.
VR -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Tue, January 10, 2006 - 10:15 AMVincent, I'm disappointed that I can't find more info online on network theories of meaning. I learned about it in a philosophy of science class, so there isn't much I can point you toward. I tried googling "network theory of meaning" and didn't find much, but you might give it a shot.
This article www.tlainc.com/articl49.htm says a little about it. "Another complexity was the realisation that observation statements on their own tell us very little about the empirical world, as they too are always embedded in a much wider network of statements, many of which have no direct connection with our senses. Thus, it is whole theories that are the basic units of meaning, and this is referred to as the network theory of meaning (Churchland, P.S., 1992, pp. 266-267)."
That doesn't say much about what the network theory is. As I understand network theories of meaning, the basic idea is that the meaning of a word is not totally autonomous--it is in part context-dependent, and partially determined by interaction with other words that we associate with it. As an analogy, think of neurons in a neural network, each neuron is an entity unto itself, but from a functional standpoint, what that neuron does cannot be understood apart from an understanding of the contribution it makes to the whole network. Network theories of meaning and neural network theories of mind complement each other naturally.
Here is an example of a network theory of meaning in action: The term "bile," as used by practitioners of the medieval 4 humors theory of medicine was connected to a very different network of concepts than that word is connected by today's medical practitioners. For the old school, bile meant one of the basic 4 bodily fluids that influenced personality. It also connected to theories of the 4 seasons, the 4 elements (fire, air, water, earth), and theories of how foods interact with the 4 humors. It seems fair to say that "bile" meant something pretty different to our ancestors than it does to us.
I think similar points can be made about the central terms in most theories. What those terms mean must be understood within a theory, and 2 theories will often disagree on what a term means. Kuhn was certainly good at making that point! -
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Re: Wittgenstein
Fri, January 13, 2006 - 4:43 PMThank you, “God-friend”; This is actually very useful to me, if only as a spur. I'm not particularly learned (makes me want to go back to school, though) but I'm writing an article about online communities and social networks (like tribe) and also about writers and thinking to expand to include the concept of authorship and audience and privileged or contextual viewpoints of both. I had about run out of steam covering the basics. Perhaps I'll read what little you found and it may prove fertile for writing about authorship and communities.
'Bile' is an excellent example, referring to alchemy and an entire quadrant of correspondances. Many concepts reverberated with meaning the ancients. A doorway was more than an appliance for going in and out, it was an idea of harnessed opposite forces that together provide strength with resiliency; there were also all kinds of associations from temples to threshing to funeral tombs, thus 'liminal' refers to margins but also sacrifice, marriage, beginnings, endings, etc. Trees, poles, snakes, hair--all had greater meaning in taboos and oral legends. We moderns tend to imagine such things mere objects, think the ancients simple-minded fools and and miss the point of much classical interchange with such 'coded' forms.
Vincent
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Re: Wittgenstein
Fri, January 13, 2006 - 5:32 PM<"We moderns tend to imagine such things mere objects, think the ancients simple-minded fools and and miss the point of much classical interchange with such 'coded' forms.">
Yes! So many moderns (even ones I respect intellectually) want to view alchemy as a half-assed bungling pre-chemistry. This completely ignores the contextual poetic, mythological, symbolic, esoteric, practical, and sexual aspects of alchemy. Sometimes hindsight is far from 20/20!
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Re: Wittgenstein
Wed, January 11, 2006 - 2:42 PMagreed. And then there is the whole world of semiotics...
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Re: Wittgenstein
Mon, July 24, 2006 - 10:00 PMWittgenstein had a lot to say on this matter. He suggests that what a person says, their words, gestures and expression are uttered within a context a ‘language game,’ and a culture, or ‘form of life.’ These utterances have no objective meaning, only a meaning to someone in a context – there are no meta-languages. Our internal images, mental states or propositions are interpreted through a shared set of signs and concepts. These signs or words have a shared/agreed correspondence or relevance in response to certain things, this is what makes communication possible. It is important that we agree nearly all the time on what words are referring to – otherwise it would not entail communication. There is regularity in the use of concepts and collusion in the utilization and application of language. So for Wittgenstein ‘forms of life’ or context and ‘language games’ are interdependent – different concepts are more useful and pertinent in different contexts. So understanding others involves empathy which involves a similarity of experience or life world and language. When we learn to express pain as a child it becomes associated with, it corresponds to and inseparable from, a shared set of words and gestures that are learnt and become inextricably associated as signs of pain. “There are not meanings going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions; the language is itself the vehicle of thought”. These ‘rules’ or ‘regularities’ of expression must be shared there must be an agreement through conditioning and education that is essential for communication to be communication. I do not know their pain by hearing them utter as such, but I do know, through sharing the same life world as this other person, that he is in pain which makes me respond accordingly – the purpose of these signs is to communicate this internal state.
However, Wittgenstein points out that there is much confusion in the use of language, that language is not immutable – meanings and the use of terms can change. Moreover, he notes that many philosophical problems are “[m]isunderstandings concerning the use of words, caused, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of language.” For the later Wittgenstein, many philosophical conundrums are dissolved by having a clear understanding of the inner workings of the language used, related to its pertinent context, and arranging the information and knowledge accessible to us in different patterns perspectives. So, certain philosophical propositions are simply a misuse of language out of its context and the limits of its meaning, often not actually problems at all when framed differently. So, “Language sets everyone the same traps; it is an immense network of easily accessible wrong turnings.”
Furthermore, for Wittgenstein there are also limits to descriptions through language, the inexpressible that lies beyond propositional sense. But this does not stop language from conveying or communicating as this is its primary objective, if not, then it is not a language game at all. There are also blurred or fuzzy concepts that are accepted in ordinary language which do not have an exactness, conceptual similarities that referred to concepts that have a ‘family resemblance’ or have common features. These ambiguous notions are helpful tools that refer to things that would otherwise resist being nailed down precisely – which, more to the point, would thereby no longer be helpful. This is not miscommunication but a tool to communicate things that would otherwise defy the logical limits of language – we nonetheless have a shared or agreed acceptance of these notions that fall under a ‘family resemblance’ an ambiguously abstracted similarity that narrows down what we are referring to which makes it possible to refer to such things in communication. Ambiguity in language is not a problem all the time, rather a necessary requirement for us to refer to things that would otherwise be outside or transcend the parameters of language without such fuzziness.
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Re: Wittgenstein
Tue, July 25, 2006 - 1:33 PMThe only thing Wittgenstein wrote intending to be read by the academic community at large was his Tractatus. Everything else published by Wittgenstein was written in provate journals. His favored students have gained legal control over those journals and release excerpts from them when and how they deem fit.
The only thing he wrote that I find interesting (even though it is very poorly written) is his point on how do you define ostensive definitions? See his "talks" about "how do you know which way a finger or arrow points" for this topic.
