Wittgenstein: Philosophical discussion in Cambridge - Part 1
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- Опубліковано 4 тра 2007
- A scene from Derek Jarman's film 'Wittgenstein' (1989) upon the thought behind a word or a sentence like "This is a very pleasant pineapple."
- Фільми й анімація
its uncanny how much he actutally looks like wittgenstein
I’m really attracted to LWs intensity of thinking or more specifically how he engages us with the processes of thought and how we can catch ourselves not really concentrating. I was put off when I first read the Tractatus decades ago because I didn’t or couldn’t grasp the mathematical symbols etc but I loved and felt extremely grateful (to him) for The Philosophical Investigations. He died relatively young (62) and I always wonder what else he might have written late in life.
He died at 54
Excellent! I recognised in this a funny conversation I had with a friend a couple weeks ago when we started asking questions along the lines of, "what would a monkey be able to communicate? What limits this communication? His culture? Language? Or are these limits simply a reflection of the dearth of abstract concepts produced by a limited mind? What then is human communication and thought limited by?"
Nice! :)
I'm loving this conversation!
I've discovered him an hour ago and he's in my top 5.
I think you are fundamentally right. Signs/symbols are not for things, but the purpose of language is communication. We can stop here. Philosophy is superfluous. Here it tries to clarify how language works. It doesn't change anything, unlike science. I think it is fun. Wittgenstein said in the Preface of his "Tractatus": "Its objective will be attained if there will be one person who reads it with understanding and to whom it affords pleasure". Mission accomplished as far as I am concerned.
Johnson is great in this. I've had actor friends and they often drove me nuts with their actor ways. but this is a terrific reconstruction of a person. it's what actors ought to be good at and sometimes are.
Wittgenstein cannot lie. This is a very pleasant video.
Actually he can lie.
Are you sure about that? You don't doubt that for a second?
This is a god-tier profile picture on a Wittgenstein video, wishing mine was Piero Sraffa after seeing this.
He does have a point. Lot's of historical philosophical problem are very much about misunderstanding language.
do you have any examples?
@@Kos-288 may be controversial to some, and unknown to others, but the "Chalcedon Split" really arose from a critical misunderstanding of each other's opinions. If you don't know, this is what caused the Chism between the "Catholic Church" (not Roman Catholic but the Catholic as in Katholikos- universal) and what would later become known as the Oriental Orthodox Church. Even though in principle they agreed, the language made each other seem like heretics. If that sorta history interests you, there's a bunch of work on the topic.
It hits different when u get to know that there were people who had had similar ideas to yours.
Why are two of them dressed as Ali G?
you are right. this clip rather resumes thoughts of the early wittgenstein as written down in the tractatus and the philosophical works between tractatus and philosophical investigations.
W's point, I think: Pretty much all human problems, philosophical or otherwise, arise from misunderstanding language: either in the specific instance of mistranslation or mis-signification, or in the more general problemics of language, per se. Without language, there really are no "problems." Hence the dog/lion/pineapple.
This is really quite astonishingly good.
so much of our conversation/discussion/argument can be trivialised/simplified as a misunderstanding of one another's language
"If we cant speak of doubt here, we cant speak of knowledge either!!" simple and beautiful.. :)
And what, that the lion knows, is mirrored by doubt?
@@principal_optimism knowledge leads to a higher goal - fact. And to get to fact we must eliminate all possible outcomes. A lion might know something without doubt, but that doesn’t make it a fact.
"It's not difficult, Manuel. This is not a proposition from Wittgenstein'' xD
@Grawpify It what way is it a step down?
why did Wittgenstein say we wouldn't be able to understand what a lion is saying if it can speak (im assuming to be able to speak human language)? was he assuming that the lion wouldn't be able to make a proper sentence that follow linguistic rules like tenses and grammar? or that the lion wouldn't be able to create sentence with "abstract" ideas like walk, time, digest, etc?
***** i see what you did there
+Gram T It would of course not speak human language, it would speak lion language. The thought is that language is a form of life. As Wittgenstein wrote: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt (the limits/boundaries of my language are the limits/boundaries of my world). If lions would have developped a form of language, it would arise out of their thoughts, their habits, their form of life. And as their form of life is completely and utterly different from ours we wouldn't understand them, even if we made the effort of learning the language. That's of course just speculation and I'm not sure if I agree with it in the strong sense which would also mean that understanding different (human) cultures would be nearly impossible, but I think there's at least some truth to it. There are limits to our understanding and if there are some sentient beings with an entirely different form of experience and entirely different thought processes, we would probably not be able to understand them very well. Stanislav Lem touched on this issue in his novel "Solaris", which I highly recommend.
+Hans Mahr lions already have a form of language. They can make clear they are angry, want to mate, are hungry, etc. They just don't need the sophistication we use, they don't need to think about how their life will be like in 2 years. So their language is a lot simpler.
@@dekippiesip But do the lions KNOW that they have a language, as we do? How to find out? That’s why W says that an interpreter would be useless: there are two irreconcilable worlds
Awsome. I cannot find that video to buy, except at amazon. It is only VHS and costs about $56 dlls. Do you have it?
That's quite clear, clarify language. Now we must try to see the practical approaches it can have ,for example, as a therapy philosophers could talk to people and identify if some of their "existential problems" are not consecuences of contradictions in their concepts. Or also as a therapy use some philosophical systems, for example, I have a friend who does that with Nietzsche.
I laughed.
I smashed my head on the table.
Is the dog saying something to me?!
Wittgenstein was known for his short temper.
His theories were very advanced for his tim. the guy was a fustrated fellow. If one knows a little background of Wittgenstein's life you could see that he had very different philosophies from when he was younger and older. The man was constantly answering problems which fustrated him hence forcing him to develope a fustrated character
i think, when language is a form of life, a practical way of living, then language is a form of culture. and when the cultures are too different, there will be lots of difficulties in understanding each other.
some good sampling matirial. techno tune here we come
well, from my (and not directly wittgenstein's) point of view there are some anthropological or (Kantian) transcendental conditions (sine qua non) that should be common to all human beings. these (universal human)conditions determine the grammar of language, communication and thinking, and so there is hope for understanding and dialogue between each other beyond experiences of missunderstanding.
12 years late mate, but this comment really deserved a like (or more).
Lol
A wonderful aspect of science is how its discoveries allow us to debunk myths, including the myth that animals cannot "lie." Today we know that at least some can do it, they can even complain when an exchange of goods with another animal is not fair.
Thanks for posting this. I am starting to post some "philosophical" videos.
The very last bit was great. Wasn't too keen on the idea of trying to recreate Wittgenstein though xP
is the guy at 0.56 Russell Bertrand ?
no, i got it from a library and made a copy with the philosophically most relevant scenes. so they are here.
lol wow that was great at the end! i was kinda like wtf for a min ha
@elmasloco15 Wittgenstein is not hard to understand?
Love it
Wow! What i wouldn't give to be in that class to ask him a few questions!
How very profound! One of my favourite philosophers as well as Bertrand Russell. His postulation that there are no philosophical questions would seem to be a very astute observation. While we stumble with the inadequacies of language to convey our thoughts much is lost in the translation from our experience to our vocal representation of them. Using sayings such as; "it's kinda like" or "tastes like chicken" never does truly capture the taste of Frogs legs! As an example....
What a delirium!
Can you give an example of mysticism in the philosophical investigations?
When you bite into your lamb chop, shake your head and say...mm...delicious, you are speaking the lion's language.
I get the feeling thats a reference to something would you mind explaining?
Part 5
That is, it seems conceivable to not know that you WERE in pain, so it is not incoherent. So that the opposite - to know that you WERE in pain - is meaningful. Yet outsiders could not know this, apart from behavioral cues, whereas the subject could have a kind of special knowledge in the form of past qualia.
This has been bugging me for some time now. I'm certain that I'm wrong about this (indeed, I hope that I am). Any critical input would be welcome.
Sorry for the long-ass posts
Yo Dude, are you still alive? it's been 12 years I see. But I may have some answers for your worries. Charles Travis posted a paper on his academia page titled "The Room in a View". You may want to take a look at it if what I say here seems perhaps too foreign to you. Anyway here it is:
There is a large class of speech acts that Wittgenstein thinks we classify in the wrong categories. I am thinking of cases like "I don't know what I think", "I don't know what I feel" etc. Those, according to him, are certainly not expressions of ignorance, but of indecision. This is very important. The notions I want to put at work here are these: There is, once the world has nothing more to say on the truth of a statement, still statements (avowals is better) to be made. For example, if you say, "I see this as a dog", there may be nothing for the world to bear on the truth of your statement. If this is the case, the you are performing what Charles Travis calls executive authority. Those statements are similar to "you are now husband and wife", declared during a wedding ceremony by the priest. This is linked to Wittgenstein's philosophy of action. If you state reasons, you are not, so to speak, speaking of a cause for your actions. Rather, you are acting on a premise. That premise is what you are prepared to be held responsible for in acting as you did. If you decide to throw away your roommate's action figurines because they are childish and take too much space in the flat, then that reason is what you are prepared to face condemnations or approval towards, but they are certainly not a cause for you acting.
Similarly, if you say, "I do not know whether I am jealous or angry", or as you said "I do not know whether I was in pain" this is not an expression of ignorance, but of indecision. It is now up to you to exercise executive authority over that case. And, if you abuse it, you may be held responsible for the damage you've caused (you roommate, who only tickled you, got persecuted after you went crying to your neighbor). To end this little explanation, there is something neither Frege nor Wittgenstein will concede. Sensations are HAD, not perceived, and they are therefore not eligible to stand in a relations of representing something as being so and so. They simply cannot fit that role. They cannot fit the bill a judgement is asking for, in making truth turn on how things are. In the case of a sensation, stating truly that a sensation was S would be to act upon a rule which simply cannot have any other criteria of correctness than you thinking it was S. But thinking one is acting according to a rule is not acting according to a rule. So there cannot be any use established for your word S. You can also look at it like this: there cannot be made a distinction between you following the rule or defining it all over again for the use of S. Now this doesn't mean that as a whole there are not things you, in saying that you were in pain, may be held responsible for towards truth. So it is not an emotivist account. But if truth turns on anything, it cannot be turning on your sensation being S or not. There can be not such concept usable for us. But we are not denying that you did have a pain, a pain which was not simply a behavior. Only those statements do not function in the usual referent-word relation. A pain is, in many cases, expressed, in crying or saying that you are in pain. In doing this there may be things for truth to matter. What those are will depend on the cases (think of this: you are at the bottom of a mountain, and you say: I'm already scared of standing at the summit.) But truth will never turn on your sensation being a specific S. So it is also anti-realist, anti-behaviorist. It's a mix of all, as usual with our Austrian maniac.
In a fight against the skeptic Witt wrote that he'd completely accept someone dismissing the skeptics remarks as "rubbish", but he would nevertheless not accept that person to defend themselves by saying that "obviously I know that p etc." That's another interesting case. You don't know that you are sitting on a chair. Doubt that and nothing is intelligible anymore, your current system of language needs to change, and that would require a certain change in form of life. There can be no doubts, so there can be no knowledge either. I think this passage illustrates the best what he meant by that.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" (Wittgenstein).
This is a scene from Wittgenstein 1993 movie.
Nowhere can I find any moving images of Wittgenstein. He died in 1951, there must be something out there?!
Well, I can only speak for myself, but _I_ find what images we have of him very moving. ;)
I never found any myself. I think it's kinda obvious, being the type of person he was, that avoiding the spotlight was something he always cared about
Wittgenstein wrongly thought that just because human beings tend to live together, it must mean that they experience the same things. But as you said, the vast majority of human beings aren't even very conscious, so there's bound to be confusion and misunderstanding.
There's words in every language that do not translate directly. It is within that cultural subtext that a certain word is used, even if it has similar meanings, it will never mean the same thing. Slang is also a great example of what W was trying to convey.
It is a common big misconception that of seeing Wittgenstein as clarifying the use of language for regular use in human communication. His therapeutical work is directed specifically to philosophers who "muddy the waters" giving and searching for hidden meanings and functions that language doesn't have , never had, and is not supposed to have. He treats a philosophical disease and philosophers are the only patients, with questions like "what is love?". Have they forgotten?, asks Wittgenstein.
“nothing is hidden, everything is open to view” - could have been Lacan
Open to the sensory activities.
But mind is never open.
What we don't know
We cannot talk about
What he meant by the pineapple thing was that he was hot for his student. When he didn't get the innuendo, he stormed out.
@nima8410 Yes, brilliant. From everything I've read of Wittgenstein, this actor seems to embody him, he even looks remarkably like him!
@manwaring Yeah, I thought that too, he should be discussing the Investigations if it is while he was lecturing in Cambridge.
Yes i was in a rush so i didn't put much thought in it :P
the whole movie is on youtube in parts i watched it, it is a little weird but very fascinating and very good
What is with the whole deckchair thing?
1000th like!
I love Wittgenstein so much. In the Philosophy of Mind, Language, and Culture he is crucial. Just found this quote by him that perfectly describes his method, and its in his own words:
"What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it."
SystemFreaKk13 Wittgenstein was pro-war, was a racist, and was a child abuser.
First of all, there *is* such a thing as "just war." Its an ideal, and you could argue about its effective implementation, but still. Look up John Rawls for his take on it. Second, do you have some example of his racism? I've never heard such a claim. Third, his abuse of the children he taut haunted him for his entire life. He was very aware of the disturbing ethical implications of allowing himself to strike and abuse his students when he became frustrated with them, and he never forgave himself. He was a vehemently self-loathing individual. And finally, what interests me most about him is his philosophy and his method, little else. Generally in the discipline your ideas and their reasoning is all that matters, most of the time the personal and political details of a philosopher's life are not used to undermine or buttress their ideals (that's bad logic). That's why the philosophy and writings of Heidegger (a Nazi) is still taught around the world, because his ideas survived as distinct from his political stain.
First of all, there IS such a thing as the "theory" of the "just war". Its an ideal, and you would argue for its effective implementation, but still. Look up a guy named Bertrand Russell. He was arrested for protesting World War I while Ludwig left England as quickly as he could to defend his Empire. I'm glad to hear he felt bad for having smacked those kids around, I just wish I had been there to kick his scrawny ass. His racist remarks are well documented by two BBC journalists in their excellent study, Wittgenstein's Poker. Some argue that Karl Popper laid Ludwig to waste in that 10 minutes of debate before Ludwig stormed out of the room, disgraced with himself. But Popper was not familiar with the later unpublished work. The best refutation of that comes from the linguist Noam Chomsky in his book Rules and Representations. The cool thing about Chomsky is years before he had already refuted behaviorism, which is the philosophy of the 'mature' [sic] Wittgenstein, in Chomsky's 1957 review of Skinner. What I like best though is how a life-long fan of Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, has recently shown how the later Wittgenstein is just the voice of 20th century capitalism. Heidegger and Wittgenstein were both pro-war and both have had an unfortunately large influence on philosophy. But, so did Ayn Rand, so did Martin Luther and more importantly, so did other folks whose philosophies have not yet been refuted or falsified. It is to these superior philosophers whom I think it is worth studying, though studies on the history of philosophy must take account of these stumbling blocks who had their time.
john smith Nice of you to mimic my structure at the beginning there... I bet you think it undermines me or my ideas in some vague, ambiguous fashion... but its really just immature and makes you look foolish.
I'd be interested in Chomsky's refutation, though Wittgenstein himself emphasized that his was not a behavioristic picture of language, and to that end that he would be publicly misunderstood and misconstrued long after his death. He tended to despise the psychology of his time in general, including Skinner and Freud. His framework was tool-based if anything, emphasizing "meaning as use." "The meaning of a word is its use in a language," and usage has to be fixed publicly and socially. Language-games are rule-governed behaviors, and to understand a rule is to be able to detect when it has been broken; that sort of thing.
I've also never heard that later-Wittgenstein has anything to do with capitalism... I don't know how a philosophy of language or mind would even attempt to make such a bizarre connection. What does determining the fundamentals of language and mind have to do with a politico-economic institution? Political considerations in these fields are largely distractions from conceptual analysis, which any effective philosopher is mostly interested in pursuing as distinct from political motivations. You're also quite arrogant, and mistaken, to call Wittgenstein a "stumbling block." Alongside Russell, he practically single-handedly brought down 400 years of philosophical assumptions since Ancient Greece, reducing whole schools of metaphysics to conceptual rubble. He harkened a revolution within philosophy of language that brought the entire field to a standstill, and still influences it today. Donald Davidson's philosophy likely wouldn't have arose without Wittgenstein's ideas to precede it. Even if there have been successful refutations (none of which, that I've seen, have done so in any satisfying way), as you claim, he was no passing glory for the field. He was a forefather.
Thank you for response. I didn't realize you were a genuine philosopher, thank you for your patience with me, I have a lot to learn. May I ask what the assumptions were that he took down? And which schools did you mean when you wrote that he reduced whole schools of metaphysics to conceptual rubble?
What is this from?
thought it was Wittgenstein himself when i looked at the thumbnail
In a way. What W was getting at was that the referent of the word 'pain' is a linguistic entity, therefore public not private. It connects to other words but not to the extrra-lingual experience which is cognitively inaccessible. The world that we live and move in floats on the rest of our experience.
@WhiteLens, yeah some parallels can be drown. Al-Ghazali was using philosophical discourse to denounce all of the philosophy, and Wittgenstein did the same in order to suggest a new type of philosophy, Philosophy that analyses the language in the Tractatus and the philosophy of the Ordinary language in the Investigations. The point is that both considered that philosophy comes from some kind of misunderstanding.
except that... dogs actually lie : it's common to a domestic dog to "act like"
Agree. Wolf example.
Wolves lying to/deceiving bears by playing out a mock charge. Acting like they want to hunt a young bear, but their intention was to draw the larger bears away from a carcass. ua-cam.com/video/vV6EdigQtM8/v-deo.html
The dog saying bow wout wouv wow!!!..
Yeah, we may need it, but I still do not reach that metaphysical level in which I can claim "Language is (was and will be) perfect", which is the way I understood your comment, though I may have misunterstood it. I think we, the philosophers, can take part on some issues concerning language.
@elmasloco15 Agreed. I enjoyed learning about their work during my undergrad.
Part2
If, as he say sin PI, meaning is the use (and expected use) in a language game, it seems like one could easily imagine a scenario wherein a dog makes motions and sounds in anticipation of a specific response from the owner. If said dog ran around in an excited manner, barked energetically, and repeatedly picked up his tennis ball, it doesn't take a linguist to tell that he wants to play. I don't see how this differs from "let's play catch" - both are actions to get a specific response
@KevinSolway what I'm saying is that if indeed the same thing(for example the quantity of 1) is experienced, then the experience is exactly the same to the degree that it is the experience of the same thing. The differences in personality, language, clarity, etc. are simply other things which are also experienced, and wrongly defined by deluded people like Wittgenstein as being just one big experience.
This one is funnier after you've actually read and understood Wittgenstein.
wow you must be so smart
The pain of that slap must have been nothing compared to the pain of being shredded by Wittgenstein a second later.
This is an interesting clip from WITTGENSTEIN. It's unfortunate that the film is scarcely available.
Philosophy is just The By product of Misunderstanding of languages.
-❤️
And 1 more: I didn't say Plato muddies waters as if it were my opinion that he did, I was just reusing the comment to which I replied which accused all philosophers of muddying waters and saying that although such proves otiose quite often that muddy waters (exploration beyond the grain of the obvious) is where progress comes from.
@jupta00 No, he even compares each person's pain or sensations in Philosophical Investigations to each person having a tiny box that only the owner can see into but can't show anyone else. He understood that we don't experience the exact same experiences. He also understood that there is something going on when we think, read and talk, but he was trying to get at how we actually use words. Wittgenstein is right that at least some philosophical problems are invented by misuse of language.
can someone explain to me what the hell he was talking about? I don't even kind of get it. Especially when he says there are no secrets and everything is in plain view.
It is a reference to this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_language_argument
Great piece of phylosophy there!
BRAVO PROFESSOR
I kinda fancy the "discussion" on this comments section. Wittgenstein represents to myself a very humane part of humanity in terms of Linguistics. The cinematic endeavor to acquaint Wittgenstein's philosophy with a quite wide audience is rather harsh.
Is this a movie?
((Why isn't there more Wittgenstein on the Internet? He was an undefined word.))
i really dont know what he was on about but i enjoyed it
Wittgenstein got so angry because he did not know that he was a genius and he "could"not understand why most people "could" not understand him (and still "can" not, which implies that I think I "can", of course)
The
This man fuckin' rocked.
"Oh dear...he can't bear disagreement, can he?"
A bit of an understatement, really...but perhaps I have simply misunderstood the picture he was attempting to represent with that arbitrary linguistic sign?
;)
@PhilosophyScience Though you are right to an extent, the key distinction between the two is the priority of empiricism. While philosophy works with empirical findings as a source of information, science is concerned primarily with the gathering of empirical data.
However the act of interpreting empirical findings into a workable theory and deciding on where to search for empirical findings in AND HOW TO DO SO is an act of conceptual analysis.
anyone played the entire "left 4 dead 2" maps? I think is the best "this is a very pleasant pinapple" game ever! :P
he wants to teach even the students that mock him
It's a good film and the subject of it just as. I wish it was a bit longer though. If you liked this you should check out "The Ister" too.
@cheesylovesong23 I think you will find that the meaning of a word is its use - we define a word by how we use it. Or rather, a word is defined by how the language using community that use it, use it.
Just because you learn to fly doesn't mean you abandon walking for practical purposes
Thanks milo
You are quite right. I stand corrected.
So according to Wittgenstein I can look up the meaning of my own words in a dictionary? I don't think so!
Or perhaps I just misunderstood Wittgenstein's words.
in a way true, but In russels autobiography, this criticism part was written in a positive light, in that Russel realized the depth in Wittgensteins thinking and also of his limitations in doing original phiolosphical research,. he ranks this incident one of the sgnificant moment in his life..I think that either wittgenstein is one of the most prfound geniuses ever lived or an very intelligent trickster(after reading Wittgensteins viva report this could be clear)
Wow, what a physical resemblance
The actor playing Wittgenstein is Karl Johnson - wonder if he, as a person, sympathasises with the man he portrays??
yes, it is the same derek jarman with tilda swinton, like in eduard II.
Philosophy is a playground for thought. And thought is random, because Imagination is endless. Hence, one can never truly define Language as it most likely contains no pure definition. Merely, it is probably similar to infinity in both sense that words can be conjured and meaning is a slave to it.
Actually what claimed was that Philosophical problems were a confusion of language attempting to step outside itself in the Investigations. In the Tractatus he claimed that language had a specific logic, and only things within this logical format would count as important.
this is one of the last wittgenstein videos on my stumbleupon account that wasnt erased from youtube. Sad, because they were really good. stupid copyrights...
Agreed...
I think I almost agree with Wittgenstein about language and philosophy:
watch?v=oSjRRp_3SSI
Except I use to communicate very well with my dog because of the dog's body language. My dog always managed to tell me when he wanted a walk (he'd grab his leash and lay it in my lap) and when he wanted to eat he'd bring his empty bowl. We lived in the same world and how I acted in his world was important.
To me it seems that what he said is that a dog cannot avoid to be sincere.
'The dog cannot lie' is what he said.
@sefjaguar its G.E Moore not Russell
u say it is wrong because i put Russell before Bertrand ???? O_o wtf ???