I am a student of Wittgenstein's philosophy because I think that Wittgenstein has something very important to contribute to the way in which philosophy is done. To be honest, I probably disagree with much of what passes as Wittgenstein's thoughts on this site, and on other sites. Much of what he has said continues to baffle those who read his notes, including many professional philosophers. However, that is not to say, that there are not professional philosophers that have a good grasp of Wittgenstein, because there are - I just think that there are few of them.

As I think more and more about what Wittgenstein was trying to convey from the Tractatus to On Certainty, (and by the way, there is a continuity in Wittgenstein's philosophy from beginning to end) I realize that philosophers for the most part, are still making the same mistakes. I find myself still making the same mistakes in the way I analyze philosophical problems. Ramsey in his 1929 paper 'Philosophy' makes reference to some of these problems, he says, "The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and wooliness, is scholasticism, the essence of which is treating what is vague as if it were precise and trying to fit it into a precise logical category." To this day philosophers are making these same mistakes, they look for precise definitions for the words knowledge, truth, reality, etc, etc; and for the most part there are none, so round-and-round we go. The problem, it seems to me, is that we do not have a good grasp of the nature of meaning.

Ramsey says, and I think I agree, that not only should we think about the facts, but we should think about the way in which we think about the facts. He thinks that we should regain a self-consciousness in philosophy, that is, that we should pay close attention to the 'epistemic or subjective side.'

As I have been working on a epistemological foundation based on hinge propositions, I have found that I have to be careful in saying that this IS the foundation, as if I have found what I and others have been looking for. The problem is that the foundation is very complex and multi-faceted, and although I may have discovered what I believe to be an essential part of the foundation, it is not the complete picture; and this is true with other theories in philosophy and in science. In fact, it seems to me that all theories, or most theories, break down at some point, and although an important question may have been answered, we find that the quest continues. We can see this even in Einsteins great theories. The more we learn in physics, the more Einstein's theories are put to the test, and we find that at some points his theories begin to break down. Hence, we find that we have to re-evaluate how we define things, or how we describe things. The problem seems to be, that we want to simplify things, and this seems to lead to dogmatism; and although I think there are some absolutes that we can be dogmatic about, they are far and few between.

Part of the problem can be seen in Wittgenstein's idea of language-games. For example, when we create a use for a particular word, its use is done for a particular reason, and in a particular context. Problems develop when we take words out of their original home or context, and then use them in ways that violate that use or context. This seems to suggest that language does not grow; however, that is not the case, it is not a matter here of growth, but of going beyond the normal development and growth of language, and literally breaking language. It is as though we are forcing language into an unnatural state of growth, and thus causing philosophical problems. Even this idea, cannot be taken dogmatically, because while it may be true generally, it is not always true - again we have to watch with vigilance how we use language to convey something philosophically.

My question is the following: How many philosophical problems exist simply because we are looking at them from within a particular language-game with its own set of rules, that is, rules that do not fit the language-game of another? I wonder if this was why Wittgenstein was against applying philosophical arguments in religious contexts. He seemed to view religion as a form or life that is neither argued for or against - it simply was - it was simply a way for man to reach beyond the limits of language, and religion speak carries with it a language-game of its own. However, this seems to raise another important question - language-games cannot be simply a subjective endeavor without rules, that is, one cannot simply create language-games willy-nilly without creating other problems. Moreover, there has to be overlap between language-games, otherwise we would not understand what others using differing language-games are saying. In fact, that seems to be what some of the problems consist in, words within language-games that do no fit their original meanings or contexts. A careful analysis is needed to understand the original home of the words in question.

Many philosophical and religious problems seem to arise when we use one set of rules from one game to analyze another set of rules from another game (as I said above). It is like using the rules of checkers to analyze chess. Obviously that is an exaggeration, but you get the gist of it.

Any comments...

I have only read the tractatus so I can't really say.

But check this out I left this post on an internet forum 2 and a half years ago

Proposition 5.12

In particular, the truth of a proposition 'p' follows from the truth of another proposition 'q' if all the truth-grounds of the latter are truth grounds of the former.

Let p = there is a cat and a dog
Let q = there is a cat

Truth grounds of p = there is a cat; there is a dog
truth grounds of q = there is a cat
evidently all the truth grounds of q are conatined in the truth grounds of p.
yet p does not follow from q, no? but visa versa! how on earth can it be said that there being a cat it follows that there is a cat and a dog :-?

bad translation; or have i misunderstood?

thanks


edit obviously he means latter as in the one that follows. just chatting i guess: weird that he wrote it like that is what i meant...

hey lem, I think that 5.12 is pretty simple really: it's logical that if p then q. The whole truth-grounds way of putting it is connected to Wittgensteins idea at the time that language and the world must in the case of completely analysed true propositions, mirror each other; share the same logic.. He thought that this was essential for it to be possible for a proposition to be a description of the world at all..

Sam26, you raise a lot of issues there amigo. If Wittgenstein's life work may be said to have a continuous thread running through it, you might put it like this: when philosophy is successful the philosophical problems disappear. When he'd finished the Tractatus he wrote "whereof we cannot speak we must pass over in silence", then suggested that really it's the stuff you can't speak about that matters most, and gave up philosophy to do something else. It was only when the problems started bugging him again that he went back to Cambridge and devised a new way of putting them to sleep. For instance: you write that:

"To this day philosophers are making these same mistakes, they look for precise definitions for the words knowledge, truth, reality, etc, etc; and for the most part there are none, so round-and-round we go"

I think his answer would be: well okay but you still have to give me a definition of "precise" here. If you look in the long Oxford English Dictionary you'll find some very precise definitions of these words. But of course you don't mean that sort of precise, you mean a definition that is airtight, that can leave no room for any misunderstanding, especially the kind of misunderstanding a philosopher encounters when he sits and asks earnestly asks himself what "knowledge" really is. Can we imagine a language game which is everywhere circumscribed by rules? Can we not imagine needing rules about the application of rules and further rules about their application and so on.. Wittgenstein would say that this is like a wheel spinning that is not connected to any part of the rest of the engine, or perhaps that the language-game "giving a precise definition" has gone on holiday.

I'm just paraphrasing the Philosophical Investigations here. They are actually pretty simple too, for the most part. It seems very difficult sometimes because we are inclined to try to find something in there that is not there at all, like a theory of language or somesuch.. And that is because his central thesis is so difficult to accept. Namely: when understood correctly the philosophical problems will disappear. Not that they will be solved, but that they will cease to be problems. We may even find it difficult to remember what made us think that they were problems in the first place.

thank you for the reply fergus.

i rejected wittengenstein's philosophy for two reasons.
1. his arguments are not apodeictic and there's so many of them that one can legitimately just say "hang on. no."

2. his religious finale is not psychotic enough.

i think maybe i could reassess but doesn't he reject his earlier work and what is his real contemporary relevance? in fact the glorification of the aesthetic in philosophy - of separate works that are not enmeshed in the dialectic of philosophy departments schools and papers, is IMHO highly over-rated. i would go as far as to say that i am more interested in Putnam and Nagel than being a Wittgensteinian...

now incidentally what i hate most about philosophy is how it reduces me to having nothing to converse with others interested in it, more than being a cheerleader of this or that philosopher. all other discourse with my peers seems locked in other, worse, discussion about values. maybe this is my arguing for meditation, i don't know.

lem wrote:
thank you for the reply fergus.

i rejected wittengenstein's philosophy for two reasons.
1. his arguments are not apodeictic and there's so many of them that one can legitimately just say "hang on. no."

2. his religious finale is not psychotic enough.

i think maybe i could reassess but doesn't he reject his earlier work and what is his real contemporary relevance? in fact the glorification of the aesthetic in philosophy - of separate works that are not enmeshed in the dialectic of philosophy departments schools and papers, is IMHO highly over-rated. i would go as far as to say that i am more interested in Putnam and Nagel than being a Wittgensteinian...

now incidentally what i hate most about philosophy is how it reduces me to having nothing to converse with others interested in it, more than being a cheerleader of this or that philosopher. all other discourse with my peers seems locked in other, worse, discussion about values. maybe this is my arguing for meditation, i don't know.

I am not sure what this has to do with what I was asking at the beginning of the thread.

First, you say that Wittgenstein's arguments are not apodeictic or apodictic, which is to say that his arguments are not necessarily the case, or that they are impossible. Why anyone would make such a claim, or even think that Wittgenstein's earlier or later philosophy needs to be apodictic is beyond me.

Second, you say his religious finale is not psychotic enough - whatever that means. Maybe your telling jokes here. After all, one could do philosophy by simply telling jokes.

Finally, studying Wittgenstein (at least for me) is not about being a Wittgensteinian. I could care less about being the follower of any philosopher or scientist for that matter. For me, it has to do with whether the person (philosopher or scientist) has something important to say. If they do have something important to say, then it behooves us to try and understand it. Furthermore, I think that it is clear that Wittgenstein has something important to contribute.

Ramsey in his 1929 paper 'Philosophy' makes reference to some of these problems, he says, "The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and wooliness, is scholasticism, the essence of which is treating what is vague as if it were precise and trying to fit it into a precise logical category."


I think that's a brilliant little insight.
There are subtle types of fallacies that crawl into argumentation
beyond the obvious. I keep seeing chains of causality being used
in "series inference" to strengthen arguments, for example, when any
vagueness (that is, not 100% causal guarantee) actually tells of
a weakening. That's just one area. I keep wondering how strict
logic can be applied to imprecise knowledge. And the forced
epistemology seems like the self-deceptive outcome....often.
You have probably seen me harp on "sacrificial mimesis" in
morality (that is, some imprecision and/or disproportionate
taking must happen to uphold an ideal...to keep a moral simple
and therefore strong). I think that only scratches the surface.

If we talk about a world of imperfection, in perception and
causality (at least, as we know it), there are ways to deal with
that. For example, switching from a plain if-then view to
probabilities. As another example, expanding the view to
an 'environment', all the players in a system. As for discoveries
of fact, they should be strictly independent of the arguments,
and if there is hedging of the unclear, it should be dealt with honestly.



I think you are saying....just to clarify...what's the use of sharpening
the language itself, when what it describes cannot be contained as
precisely as the language assumes? Dealing with this problem seems
to demand not just a different take on language, but on the epistemology.
It isn't easy, but if we can live our lives every day with imprecision,
Philosophy should be able to as well. Setting conventions is OK, as
long as the definitions and assumptions are not recklessly pushed
outside of the convention's assumptions.