Searle is the almost unchallenged when it comes explaining intricate concepts and ideas in a straigthforward, well structured, straight to the point kind of way, while also managing to not over-simplify the matter.
+axlrosea675 I won't disagree that he's basically saying the same stuff he did in the 80's or 70's, but I don't think much else in contemporary philosophy is worth talking about. Contemporary philosophy seems to be in a state of refining pre-existing arguments now that all the best arguments, in their most general forms at least, have already been given.
I had a wonderful philosophy teacher in NYC called Steven Ross. I get reminded of Ross' clarity and measured engagement when I listen to Searle, whom I wouldn't mind listen to and discuss with for quite a few semesters. Phenomenal pedagogue!
Wonderful accents on both of them, and I am reminded of the Fry & Laurie skit where they play two linguists discussing language, also sitting on a sofa like that.
I would argue that, to the extent that this is true, it has always been the case. This point, in fact, is a central part of Wittgenstein's devastating critique of philosophy. Philosophers have only thought they were "trying to make sense of the world," when in fact, they were only ever making nonsense of it, only ever playing the language game, only ever trading in established doctrines and dogmas that could never be substantiated. . So I don't know who Fry and Laurie were, or what they intended to lampoon, but if they were deliberately making a distinction between critical theory and philosophy proper, than from a Wittgensteinian perspective anyway, such a distinction cannot be maintained.
Not sure that is an accurate assessment of that brand of philosophy that goes under the label of postmodernism here in the states, but I understand what you mean.
The continental philosophical tradition certainly does not privilage clarity and precision to the extent that the analytic tradition does. There is certainly a playful, rhetorical and perhaps even poetic dimension to their writing. But the idea that they wrote the way they did to shield themselves from their American critics (who weren't paying attention to them anyway) is absurd. There are distinct ideas, many of them insightful, to be discerned in those writings, if we take them time to read them.
I think if you read them well you would think different. Foucault writes in a fairly straight forward, very readable style, though like the rest favoring the occasional poetic phrasing, so I don't see how this argument would apply to him. And while Derrida is very difficult to read, there is a clear argument in all of his texts. His difficulty lies mostly in the fact that a. he's very hard to translate, b. he likes to play around with language, c. he presupposes a whole lot of background knowledge from the reader. But it would be one thing if the informed reader could not get a clear thought out of these texts, but that just isn't true. If he was difficult with no substance behind it that would be 1 thing, but that's not the case. Though Lacan sometimes I actually do get that feeling with him, so I kind of agree with you there. But even he's readable, it's just sometimes he seems like..he's difficult just for the sake of it. As for modern feminism, not an expert on it but what I have read has been very easy stuff to read and understand (aside from Judith Butler), so idk why you're including it in that list.
what is the last work that Searle mentions at 40:20? Im interested in that idea, is very similar to ideas related to quantum mechanics foundations, the non-existence of mechanism behind experience (see Qbism, Wheeler)
It is this one: On Certainty, edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1979).
I will read it and then comment deeply. But for what Searle says the connections is that in QBism (in fact, in quantum mechanics) some things just "are" , we are agents and our actions and the resulting experience are not backed up by a mechanism, there's not structure behind our agency and experience.
Wittgenstein, like so many that came after Kant, was in some way disturbed by Kant's late works, like Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement. In fact, post Kant, philosophers tended to be pro Kant or anti-Kant. Wittgenstein, to deny anything above and before language, went the utilitarian route with both his major books. I don't think that route, so popular since about 1950, gets around Kant. Kant's claim was that we have rules of Reasoning in place when born and those rules construct our spatio-temporal conscious picture of the world and language is slaved to those rules for the most part. That society is in agreement on so much is not because we have socially constructed or enforced agreement/submission but because the rule set we are born with assures agreement on so much.
Incidentally, there are many who view Wittgenstein and Kant as similar-minded in some aspects. Some think that Wittgenstein's private language arguments, for instance, could be reconstrued as transcendental arguments for the social aspect of language.
they start off saying that games do not have an essence and then use the term repeatedly to describe language.if the word does not have an essence it cannot be applied to a range of dissimilar phenomena without becoming utterly meaningless
Symbols point to other concatenations of symbols. Positing a semantics, a system of meanings, takes many forms -- writing a poem; devising a formula that describes the law of gravity. How "perception" mediates on these possibilities, what we mean by "a world of things" and a "world of thought ", is of little concern. For the uninitiated, if curious: What matters most is the anthropomorphic segment of the sensorial "spectrum" according to or within which we have our collective being. There is far less to reality than we can imagine -- but without it there is only nothing. Philosophy is lately dispensing with talk of "theory"; its roots are in literature. No less a student of philosophy than T. S. Eliot drew the incisive conclusion (paraphrasing): If there is no good reason to accept a theory, there is no good reason for rejecting it. Language "games" or otherwise: Theory remains elusive.
What I don't get: Wittgenstein thinks philosophy is a disease, asking the wrong questions, the neurotic attempt to define essences instead of watching the language game. But isn't philosophy a language game on it's own? Imagine somebody standing on the street scraming: What exactly is time and why do we die? It does not seem inappropriate. We would understand his existential anguish, and could talk with him in this existential language game. Philosophy is more also than just raising problems. "Misunderstanding" the language game might sometimes actually refusing to play to its rules or changing them. Like Diogenes physically challenged societies rules by living in a barrel, he also challenged their language game with his articulated philosophy. Perfect and adequate thing to do. So I don't get Ludwigs hate for philosophy. If i only look at how we use a term in the language game do i not limit myself? Is all the wisdom already contained in how we do it now? I think not.
@@WakeRunSleep You'd have to read him to find your angle. As he says in On Certainty, 287. The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. And no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions.
When and where does Wittgenstein say that the most important part of the Tractatus are the parts that aren't in it? Thanks in advance (and afterwards) to anyone who can show this me the answer to this question :)
+Legomies fin Thanks man, I appreciate this. I knew it wasn't in the Tractatus but since it wasn't in the Investigations or Culture and Value I had no idea where to look.
I understand why post-structuralists may be attracted to wittgenstein and try to claim him. But can anyone explain the essential difference between the two?
Hmmmm. Well, which Wittgenstein? Early Wittgenstein very opposite of post-structuralism. Later W though, really not any essential difference aside from the tradition they were working within. I mean right off the bat, The P-S were so different even from themselves it's hard to know where to start. So let's start with Derrida since I think he's the closest analogue to Wittgenstein. They are so similar in fact that secondary lit on Derrida often contains long digressions on Wittgenstein, and W's work has been called deconstructive by some commentators, which is to say, that to understand one is in some ways to understand the other. They were both critiquing metaphysics/essentialism/foundationalism/philosophy as positive science on the basis of an investigation of the relation between philosophical questions and the language in which they are posed, and the way that language is determined by contexts of interpretation and language usage in particular forms of life. So both prioritize rhetoric/discourse/social practice over logic/epistemology. And this is also true of other post-structuralists, who inherit this from Heidegger. Because all post-structuralists were basically Heideggerian, and he was so similar to the later Wittgenstein, it's easy to see how W can easily fit into their their way of thinking. So W is a weird philosopher in this sense, standing as he did in between two traditions. Early W is closer to Frege, Russel, and the positivists. Later W is closer to Heidegger and the post-structuralists. But to return to Derrida, though their projects are essentially two very different ways of doing the same thing, the end goal was not the same. While W wanted to resolve or dissolve philosophical questions, D was more interested in opening them up. While W engaged in his critique in order to close the book on metaphysics, D did so in order to reopen it, by getting us to read old books in new ways. And this attitude can to some extent be generalized to others in his tradition and demarcate something like an essential difference. For where W is serious and negative, the PS are playful and positive. The death of philosophy for W meant the silencing, repression, and subordination of philosophy to the sciences. For the PS, it meant we should find new, creative ways of doing philosophy which did not see philosophy as a way of obtaining certain knowledge or absolute Truth. They are just two separate ways of approaching the same problem, one which W himself helped us to realize was a problem (along with Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and Heidegger, which explains their fascination with those thinkers as well).
@@dx7tnt especially water. There should be book about water consumption versus alcohol and high in sugar drinks. Class division in compare to access to good quality water in modern times. It can also show toxicity of water around the world and language as a tool of propaganda against some communities.
Not 100% sure what it is a change of metaphors gets Wittgenstein. So language is seen as an instrument where in the Tractatus it had been some picture something or another kind of whatzit?! Big deal, except in poetic terms, obviously not what he was aiming at.
Langauge has different levels; the lowest the picturial representation of the world: you can picture an "apple". The next level is methaphorial representation: "apple of my eye", one cannot see this but can understand its meaning due to methaphor and simily. The next level is the abstract level: "society", "invasion", etc. One cannot picture these, but can understand their meanings in context. Later Wittgenstein philosophy was to move from the first level to the next. Big deal? you decide.
My humble opinion: big, very big, because he is pointing out the subjectivity in semantics; the reason why not only so many of the alleged problems in philosophy inherited from Classical times, are not problems at all; but to make sure we frame the precised intended meaning of meaningful terms in the remaining real problems. Thanks very much for the uploads! They are great!
32:30 Bryan Magee says some of Wittgenstein's aphorisms stay in your head for the rest of your life. John Searle not comfortingly corrects him, "forever". As if once in, it's almost impossible getting away out of the language game forever. Literally you must already be forever present in it. And there is even no way into it...
And then there are those facets of being, art,ethics, and other things we cannot talk about....What a cop-out....He creates his own private game and private language, and includes and excludes his own whims ......perfect.....Wittgenstein is ....get rid of him!!!
All of his philosophizing seems like a complete waste of time. It’s like he’s just reviewing the fact that some words are ambiguous and some aren’t. Like, we already knew that, so what’s the point of arguing about it?
This lost me unfortunately when Searle casually mentioned that you can't find a common element in games. That's just intellectual laziness. The common element of a game is that a person makes an input and receives a corresponding payoff. Game theorists solved that one some time ago. The fact that you might need to look at something from several angles to see how this applies does not mean that it doesn't apply. It does.
Your weak definition of a game allows other things to be defined as games that we would have never considered. Things like eating or typing on a keyboard.
boobbbers Eating can be a game. If you attach a certain payoff to it. Like for example, competitive eating. Likewise for typing contests. Your understanding of what I said seems to be weak.
Another common element of a game is that humans make it. But that's trivial. If you understand the issue that Wittgenstein had with the idea of games, you wouldn't be talking about just "common elements" that games and other things have (nor would you be taking Searle's words so literal). What Wittgenstein was trying to do talk about the common element that all games and ONLY games had, which in other words, is the definition of games. Not only that, your definition of a game means that if you played a game, lost, and received no payoff, then what you played was not a game.
You're still struggling. *I* told you what a common element was because the claim was that you can't find one, not that you couldn't make-up a definition. Definitions are semantics, common elements are logic. Secondly, you don't HAVE to receive a payoff for something to be a game. 0 is a potential option. There just has to be a potential payoff. This element is not the same as the definition, so you trying to assert or argue as though I did is further confusion.
Wittgenstein was and is overrated. Wittgenstein is mostly nonsense. Most of his conclusions are inaccurate and therefore wrong. Actually, one should not spend too much time with his writings. If you don’t get paid for it, it’s a waste of time. It’s simply not worth it. I studied aesthetics and mathematics in Vienna.
Searle is the almost unchallenged when it comes explaining intricate concepts and ideas in a straigthforward, well structured, straight to the point kind of way, while also managing to not over-simplify the matter.
Back in the good days when John Searle was a real intellectual with sharp language skills.Right on the spot as far as the Wittgenstein analysis.
+axlrosea675 agreed; he is just repeating himself for the past 25 years...
mehranshargh totally. it's really annoying. plus he's somehow turned into a cowboy.
***** pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/188809542/athome.jpg :))
mehranshargh lol
+axlrosea675 I won't disagree that he's basically saying the same stuff he did in the 80's or 70's, but I don't think much else in contemporary philosophy is worth talking about. Contemporary philosophy seems to be in a state of refining pre-existing arguments now that all the best arguments, in their most general forms at least, have already been given.
I had a wonderful philosophy teacher in NYC called Steven Ross. I get reminded of Ross' clarity and measured engagement when I listen to Searle, whom I wouldn't mind listen to and discuss with for quite a few semesters. Phenomenal pedagogue!
Were his lectures recorded? If they were, are any of them freely available on the internet?
Wonderful accents on both of them, and I am reminded of the Fry & Laurie skit where they play two linguists discussing language, also sitting on a sofa like that.
I would argue that, to the extent that this is true, it has always been the case. This point, in fact, is a central part of Wittgenstein's devastating critique of philosophy. Philosophers have only thought they were "trying to make sense of the world," when in fact, they were only ever making nonsense of it, only ever playing the language game, only ever trading in established doctrines and dogmas that could never be substantiated. . So I don't know who Fry and Laurie were, or what they intended to lampoon, but if they were deliberately making a distinction between critical theory and philosophy proper, than from a Wittgensteinian perspective anyway, such a distinction cannot be maintained.
Not sure that is an accurate assessment of that brand of philosophy that goes under the label of postmodernism here in the states, but I understand what you mean.
The continental philosophical tradition certainly does not privilage clarity and precision to the extent that the analytic tradition does. There is certainly a playful, rhetorical and perhaps even poetic dimension to their writing. But the idea that they wrote the way they did to shield themselves from their American critics (who weren't paying attention to them anyway) is absurd. There are distinct ideas, many of them insightful, to be discerned in those writings, if we take them time to read them.
31 Savage Cite the philosophers that you are speaking about that are in the continental philosophical tradition.
I think if you read them well you would think different. Foucault writes in a fairly straight forward, very readable style, though like the rest favoring the occasional poetic phrasing, so I don't see how this argument would apply to him. And while Derrida is very difficult to read, there is a clear argument in all of his texts. His difficulty lies mostly in the fact that a. he's very hard to translate, b. he likes to play around with language, c. he presupposes a whole lot of background knowledge from the reader. But it would be one thing if the informed reader could not get a clear thought out of these texts, but that just isn't true. If he was difficult with no substance behind it that would be 1 thing, but that's not the case. Though Lacan sometimes I actually do get that feeling with him, so I kind of agree with you there. But even he's readable, it's just sometimes he seems like..he's difficult just for the sake of it.
As for modern feminism, not an expert on it but what I have read has been very easy stuff to read and understand (aside from Judith Butler), so idk why you're including it in that list.
This was beautiful to listen to, thank you for the upload!
Magee published extended transcripts of these programs in book form, and they can also be found online.
Where can i find this please?!
Did someone found it?
@@bigdougbarkz There are two books called Talking Philosophy and The Great Philosophers. Can't find them for free online though.
Sapir Whorf Hypothesis and Wittgenstein's Thought ... Any inter-relationships ?
what is the last work that Searle mentions at 40:20? Im interested in that idea, is very similar to ideas related to quantum mechanics foundations, the non-existence of mechanism behind experience (see Qbism, Wheeler)
It is this one:
On Certainty, edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, translated by Denis Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1979).
thank you!!! I found it online: prawfsblawg.blogs.com/files/wittgenstein-on-certainty.pdf
Thanks! please share with us later your idea of the relation between Qbism and this work!
I will read it and then comment deeply. But for what Searle says the connections is that in QBism (in fact, in quantum mechanics) some things just "are" , we are agents and our actions and the resulting experience are not backed up by a mechanism, there's not structure behind our agency and experience.
How is the tool analysis of language at all different from Heidegger's theory of the referential totality of significance?
Well, Wittgenstein is philosophy. Heidegger is bullshit. That's your difference
@@anon-rf5sx Yes, maybe the most influential western thinker since Kant is ‘bullshit’ because he challenged traditional notions of subjectivity
John Searle was my philosophy professor at Berkeley...
philosophy of language: analytics, synthetics. Implicit meaning vs literal or precise meaning. Syntax and lexis.
Thank you. Very excellent description of circumlocution
Wittgenstein, like so many that came after Kant, was in some way disturbed by Kant's late works, like Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgement. In fact, post Kant, philosophers tended to be pro Kant or anti-Kant.
Wittgenstein, to deny anything above and before language, went the utilitarian route with both his major books. I don't think that route, so popular since about 1950, gets around Kant. Kant's claim was that we have rules of Reasoning in place when born and those rules construct our spatio-temporal conscious picture of the world and language is slaved to those rules for the most part. That society is in agreement on so much is not because we have socially constructed or enforced agreement/submission but because the rule set we are born with assures agreement on so much.
Incidentally, there are many who view Wittgenstein and Kant as similar-minded in some aspects. Some think that Wittgenstein's private language arguments, for instance, could be reconstrued as transcendental arguments for the social aspect of language.
they start off saying that games do not have an essence and then use the term repeatedly to describe language.if the word does not have an essence it cannot be applied to a range of dissimilar phenomena without becoming utterly meaningless
So it’s similar to what Lacan says?
Excellent overview
Symbols point to other concatenations of symbols.
Positing a semantics, a system of meanings, takes many forms -- writing a poem; devising a formula that describes the law of gravity.
How "perception" mediates on these possibilities, what we mean by "a world of things" and a "world of thought ", is of little concern.
For the uninitiated, if curious: What matters most is the anthropomorphic segment of the sensorial "spectrum" according to or within which we have our collective being.
There is far less to reality than we can imagine -- but without it there is only nothing.
Philosophy is lately dispensing with talk of "theory"; its roots are in literature.
No less a student of philosophy than T. S. Eliot drew the incisive conclusion (paraphrasing): If there is no good reason to accept a theory, there is no good reason for rejecting it.
Language "games" or otherwise: Theory remains elusive.
thx great audio signature also adds to leibniz selection see table of content law language calculus ethics
31:50 “that he hadn’t said what he meant.” But with view of language as a game, how is there a fixed interpretation, or any meaning?
There isn't !
What I don't get: Wittgenstein thinks philosophy is a disease, asking the wrong questions, the neurotic attempt to define essences instead of watching the language game.
But isn't philosophy a language game on it's own?
Imagine somebody standing on the street scraming: What exactly is time and why do we die?
It does not seem inappropriate. We would understand his existential anguish, and could talk with him in this existential language game.
Philosophy is more also than just raising problems. "Misunderstanding" the language game might sometimes actually refusing to play to its rules or changing them. Like Diogenes physically challenged societies rules by living in a barrel, he also challenged their language game with his articulated philosophy.
Perfect and adequate thing to do.
So I don't get Ludwigs hate for philosophy.
If i only look at how we use a term in the language game do i not limit myself? Is all the wisdom already contained in how we do it now? I think not.
Exactly what problem was Ludwig trying to solve?
All of them
@@dx7tnt how does it address the problem of induction?
@@WakeRunSleep You'd have to read him to find your angle. As he says in On Certainty, 287. The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. And no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions.
When and where does Wittgenstein say that the most important part of the Tractatus are the parts that aren't in it?
Thanks in advance (and afterwards) to anyone who can show this me the answer to this question :)
He doesn't say it in Tractatus. He mentiones it in his letter to Ludvig von Ficht.
+Legomies fin Thanks man, I appreciate this. I knew it wasn't in the Tractatus but since it wasn't in the Investigations or Culture and Value I had no idea where to look.
+Legomies fin i thank you on behalf of the rest of the people who also find this useful
I understand why post-structuralists may be attracted to wittgenstein and try to claim him. But can anyone explain the essential difference between the two?
Hmmmm. Well, which Wittgenstein? Early Wittgenstein very opposite of post-structuralism. Later W though, really not any essential difference aside from the tradition they were working within.
I mean right off the bat, The P-S were so different even from themselves it's hard to know where to start. So let's start with Derrida since I think he's the closest analogue to Wittgenstein. They are so similar in fact that secondary lit on Derrida often contains long digressions on Wittgenstein, and W's work has been called deconstructive by some commentators, which is to say, that to understand one is in some ways to understand the other. They were both critiquing metaphysics/essentialism/foundationalism/philosophy as positive science on the basis of an investigation of the relation between philosophical questions and the language in which they are posed, and the way that language is determined by contexts of interpretation and language usage in particular forms of life. So both prioritize rhetoric/discourse/social practice over logic/epistemology. And this is also true of other post-structuralists, who inherit this from Heidegger. Because all post-structuralists were basically Heideggerian, and he was so similar to the later Wittgenstein, it's easy to see how W can easily fit into their their way of thinking. So W is a weird philosopher in this sense, standing as he did in between two traditions. Early W is closer to Frege, Russel, and the positivists. Later W is closer to Heidegger and the post-structuralists.
But to return to Derrida, though their projects are essentially two very different ways of doing the same thing, the end goal was not the same. While W wanted to resolve or dissolve philosophical questions, D was more interested in opening them up. While W engaged in his critique in order to close the book on metaphysics, D did so in order to reopen it, by getting us to read old books in new ways. And this attitude can to some extent be generalized to others in his tradition and demarcate something like an essential difference. For where W is serious and negative, the PS are playful and positive. The death of philosophy for W meant the silencing, repression, and subordination of philosophy to the sciences. For the PS, it meant we should find new, creative ways of doing philosophy which did not see philosophy as a way of obtaining certain knowledge or absolute Truth. They are just two separate ways of approaching the same problem, one which W himself helped us to realize was a problem (along with Nietzsche, Marx, Freud and Heidegger, which explains their fascination with those thinkers as well).
So nicely stated. Well done!
These guys do not say much about Wittgenstein's anti-mentalism and antidualism. It is a discussion that does not go deep into his ideas.
right, they only delve into his contribution to the philosophy of language.
They are both still alive and kicking today.
As a son of industrial capitalist, he produced a theory capitalizing of language.
Co masz przez to na myśli?
@@pierremcarsky język jako narzędzie/language as a tool.
When your only tool is Marx, everything looks like class analysis.
@@dx7tnt especially water. There should be book about water consumption versus alcohol and high in sugar drinks. Class division in compare to access to good quality water in modern times. It can also show toxicity of water around the world and language as a tool of propaganda against some communities.
Searle is like the polar opposite of Wittgenstein
32:00 What if one realized what Wittgenstein was trying to point to?
Not 100% sure what it is a change of metaphors gets Wittgenstein. So language is seen as an instrument where in the Tractatus it had been some picture something or another kind of whatzit?! Big deal, except in poetic terms, obviously not what he was aiming at.
Langauge has different levels; the lowest the picturial representation of the world: you can picture an "apple". The next level is methaphorial representation: "apple of my eye", one cannot see this but can understand its meaning due to methaphor and simily. The next level is the abstract level: "society", "invasion", etc. One cannot picture these, but can understand their meanings in context.
Later Wittgenstein philosophy was to move from the first level to the next. Big deal? you decide.
My humble opinion: big, very big, because he is pointing out the subjectivity in semantics; the reason why not only so many of the alleged problems in philosophy inherited from Classical times, are not problems at all; but to make sure we frame the precised intended meaning of meaningful terms in the remaining real problems. Thanks very much for the uploads! They are great!
32:30 Bryan Magee says some of Wittgenstein's aphorisms stay in your head for the rest of your life. John Searle not comfortingly corrects him, "forever". As if once in, it's almost impossible getting away out of the language game forever. Literally you must already be forever present in it. And there is even no way into it...
They don’t make tv like they used to 👍
40:10 - The refutation of implicit theories causing behavior. We are instead primitively conditioned to just act.
Nice
games have rules in common (pattern to replicate)
Rules are not unique to games. Organizations, grammar, even individuals have rules.
"unsayable" don't you mean ineffable? haha that's no big deal anyway the poets and writers have struggled to say the ineffable since time began
What about the effable?
And then there are those facets of being, art,ethics, and other things we cannot talk about....What a cop-out....He creates his own private game and private language, and includes and excludes his own whims ......perfect.....Wittgenstein is ....get rid of him!!!
Why don't you try reading some before insisting we get rid of him?
Забавно, как он все время перебивает ведущего. Но это хороший признак: значит, владеет предметом))
So John...how did that general theory thinghy go? lol
THAT music remind me tom and jerry
Thank you for this comment, I laughed
John 'anxious to insist' Searle
DO NOT MOT 9-30-19
All of his philosophizing seems like a complete waste of time. It’s like he’s just reviewing the fact that some words are ambiguous and some aren’t. Like, we already knew that, so what’s the point of arguing about it?
An engineer. No wonder he despised metaphysical hooey.
This lost me unfortunately when Searle casually mentioned that you can't find a common element in games. That's just intellectual laziness. The common element of a game is that a person makes an input and receives a corresponding payoff. Game theorists solved that one some time ago. The fact that you might need to look at something from several angles to see how this applies does not mean that it doesn't apply. It does.
Your weak definition of a game allows other things to be defined as games that we would have never considered. Things like eating or typing on a keyboard.
boobbbers
Eating can be a game. If you attach a certain payoff to it. Like for example, competitive eating. Likewise for typing contests. Your understanding of what I said seems to be weak.
And just to help you out, I didn't say the definition of a game. I said the common element. Try to make your brain work.
Another common element of a game is that humans make it. But that's trivial. If you understand the issue that Wittgenstein had with the idea of games, you wouldn't be talking about just "common elements" that games and other things have (nor would you be taking Searle's words so literal). What Wittgenstein was trying to do talk about the common element that all games and ONLY games had, which in other words, is the definition of games.
Not only that, your definition of a game means that if you played a game, lost, and received no payoff, then what you played was not a game.
You're still struggling. *I* told you what a common element was because the claim was that you can't find one, not that you couldn't make-up a definition. Definitions are semantics, common elements are logic.
Secondly, you don't HAVE to receive a payoff for something to be a game. 0 is a potential option. There just has to be a potential payoff. This element is not the same as the definition, so you trying to assert or argue as though I did is further confusion.
Wittgenstein was and is overrated. Wittgenstein is mostly nonsense. Most of his conclusions are inaccurate and therefore wrong. Actually, one should not spend too much time with his writings. If you don’t get paid for it, it’s a waste of time. It’s simply not worth it. I studied aesthetics and mathematics in Vienna.
What do you get paid to do?