/lit/ - Literature

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>>5694748
Start with the Greeks.

>people thinking good advice is just a meme, forcing us to repeat it, making it seem more like a meme, etc.

"Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius" by Ray Monk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNaBRR-XeAs

Here's a succinct (albeit superficial) intro to his entire thought, both early and later. PRetty surface level, but Wes Cecil is a great speaker and fun to listen to. Other than that I don't know any lectures about Wittgestein that are good. There's an ungodly amount of secondary literature to choose from. Just search and read reviews on amazon to find what you want. The IEP and SEP have great bibliographies for secondary sources as well in their articles on Wittgenstein.

Ray Monk's bio is fucking excellent as well.

>>5694748
just read the philosophical investigations

>>5694928
>he was the son of the largest fortune of europe
>think of bill gates' son
>he only published one book in his life time, because of his exacting standards.

I've read the Tractatus (it's pretty short, tbh).
STEM majors like to fap to Wittgentstein because he was trained in maths (iirc) and basically hated philosophers, or was a skeptic, which is ~ the same.
I'm not surprised he was the son of "Bill Gates".
Typical of someone who has nothing to say, because he's never had anything to fight for. It gave him all room for his autism.

He was considered promising (a genius kid), and he wrote his skeptical Tractatus, based on his understanding of the Logicians of his time, esp. his teachers (Frege?).

The Tractatus is a sort of mystical Bible, full of cryptic statements.
~"Any proposition that states anything about anything is not valid".

"Most influential philosopher of the XXth century"? Sigh.
The best thing is that Wittgenstein himself disowned his teen Tractatus when he grew up. He realized that Logics didn't mean that you couldn't say anything about anything.

Sketpticism (logicism) is certainly the ideology of priviledge. I'm sure few homeless men are hardore Skeptics.

But thanks for this Wes Cecil link. He seems like a funny prof. And I'm interested in the later work by Wittgenstein, when he quit the "holier than thou" attitude.

>>5695089
there are some very silly statements in this post

>>5694748
skim his wiki entry, read a few blog posts by undergraduates about him, decide that philosophy is dead, post ad nauseum on an image board about how was was the greatest philosopher ever and killed philosopher and so on even though you've never read him, change your major from philosophy to finance, and get on with life.

at least that's how i did it

>>5695089
I don't even know where to begin. >>5695126 is spot on.

-Yes, he was the son of a rich family but he separated himself nearly entirely from his family/wealth and lived in near poverty from age ~20 onwards.
-I don't know how/why you are conflating logicism with skepticism but I think you should look up what those two words mean.
-We could debate his holier-than-thou attitude but I never got that impression. He explicitly denies the sense of his own work through his work (last and second-to-last sentences of the Tractatus).
-mystical aspects to the Tractatus are there, not where you've pointed to though. I don't even know what your paraphrase is supposed to mean/represent.

I dunno. I think it's time to re-read the Tractatus.

>>5695126
>>5695164

Thanks for your concern, but I think I know what I'm talking about. I just read it yesterday. It's so short I finished it in about 2 hours. Honestly it's not worth reading except for the "culture" (so you can understand what other people are saying when they reference / name-drop early Wittgenstein). The work is childish and misguided, and, like I said, skepticism (logicism) is the ideology of privileged. If you two want to live in your ivory tower and wank over Wittgenstein, that's fine by me, but I prefer realer, more down to earth philosophy.

>>5695183
What? You've put forward a position without defending it and it seems to be based solely on ad hominem. At least substantiate your claim.

How does enjoying a book conflate to ivory tower wankery? I just enjoy the book, hell I don't even find it to be correct, it's just interesting to me.

But ah well. I can't imagine I'll get a response. You don't seem keen on discussion.

>>5694928
Good lecture, thanks for posting

1.1.1 Objects are based on logic
1.1.1.21 But source is also logic
1.2.1 Time, space and actions are equal
1.2.2.1 Where all the boi-pussy at ?

>>5694748
seconding this post

>>5695183
You

are a retard

>>5695183
>I think I know what I'm talking about, I just read it yesterday

Read Tractatus -- a lot of people like to poopoo on this; but, it's important to see where he starts off; then move on to Philosophical Investigations to see what changes he's made and what his new thinking is.

Then, if you're so inclined, read The Brown & Blue Books and On Certainty.

Also, read Monk's bio on him; fantastic book.

>>5695200
>But ah well. I can't imagine I'll get a response.
You replied to two different people, thinking it was the same person.
Nice impersonation >>5695183, btw. I especially lol'd at the copypasta of my "skepticism (logicism)". Glorious!

>You don't seem keen on discussion.
I don't know about the other guy, but as for me, I was listening to the YT by Cecil.
He's very funny, maybe he should be a humorist, because honestly, you don't learn much about logics.
But he's also saying fascinating stuff that I ignored about Wittgenstein's life, and his later work (which I *did* say I was interested in).

It almost brought me to tears, tbh.
Reminded me of the film "A Beautiful Mind", and of Rimbaud, who chose a life of action instead of a life in books.
But it's also the story of most solitary geniuses.

Still, you have to admit that all my points were true (I was clearly only refering to the young Wittgenstein). I was even spot-on when I talked about STEM, as I learned in the video that his first choice in college was engineering (Cecil says he worked on a plane engine). That would explain the cult following of STEM majors.

I jotted down a few things, in frog, which I de-re-translate, so it may be far from the original :
- the only way to prove that we mean what we say, is to act.
- most often, we just pretend we don't understand what the other means. We often know all-too well what he means, but we play games.

this is very deep, esp. in context.

Despite all that he did in his life, and though I admire free-lance philosophers, and though I only read the TLP and heard the Cecil lecture, I get the feeling that the guy remained a bit arrogant all his life. It seems like he thinks he reinvented Kant and Hegel, for example. But I suppose you read Hegel's Logic, of course.

Goethe and Schopenhauer also worked on the perception of color, btw. Genius is the art of hiding your sources (Einstein).

>>5695126
smug/10

>>5695164
>-I don't know how/why you are conflating logicism with skepticism but I think you should look up what those two words mean.
you're the one being silly.
Wittgenstein himself recognized that his logicism went too far in his Tractatus. And I call it skepticism.
But I didn't know about/remember the story of the last page of the TLP that he wrote a few months later than the rest.
Sorry for implying that logicism=skepticism (which is not exactly what I wrote anyway). I know logicians are not all as hardcore as young Wittgenstein.

>>5695383
I concur.

>>5695495
Your point about STEM is just bizarre. I've never heard of any STEM people that were into Wittgenstein. I could see how they could like Logical Positivism but reading early Wittgenstein as a Logical Positivist is a very shallow and lazy interpretation, especially nowadays since that's exactly what the Vienna Circle did and were disliked by Wittgenstein himself because of it.

With regard to his arrogance, of course he was. All geniuses are. But the man and the work are separate things.

>>5695522
Are you sure you know what those words mean? Logicism is a theory of mathematics and has absolutely nothing to do with skepticism

>>5695542
>Logicism is a theory of mathematics

>>5695549
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logicism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logicism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/

>>5695533
>Your point about STEM is just bizarre.
STEM people hate us.
They started it.
If they knew what God thinks about money...

jessis christo can;t you goys just agreefor once so i can have the exact orderi n which to readwittgenstein and the exact order in which i can eread secondary literature?

>>5695602
Wow, chill

>>5694748
Just read his works. He's very accessible.

>>5695089
Is this some sort of meme troller who posts retarded shit about philosophers as a joke?

>>5695150
Wittgenstein + Hume, didn't kill philosophy, but are it's kingpins.

Did Wittgenstein read/write about Nietzsche?

>>5695651
he's clearly drunk

>>5695833
you're rightr. still, id't like some help

>>5695828
he served in the first world war and germany gave its soldiers thus spoke zarathustra so
but
he read tolstoys gospel instead religiously
full tolstoy he was

>>5695839
Do you actually want to read a richboy who was a literal faggot?

Or do you want to acheive the peace of mind that all philosophy subconsciously desires?

Because I can only help you with the second, sir.

>>5694928
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNaBRR-XeAs
>15 minutes in
>guy starts ranting about how ADHD doesn't really exist
>"That's pretty much what Wittgenstein is all about!"
>what the fuck am i watching

>>5695828
Yes, and he liked him, more or less, and his criticism of Christianity gave him pause for thought, but he disagreed with it

Has anybody read Wittgenstein's Mistress?

>>5695854
I want the peace pls

>>5697232
More like mister

>>5695495

I'm a STEM faggot and I like continental philosophy

Your argument is invalid

>>5697232
I read it last week.
It's an interesting book, wth lots of references to various artists, writers, and philosophers.

>>5694928
ty for posting! thats why i am on /lit:
to get some stuff that i could find myself but never would have thought of looking for

For starters, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/ will give you an idea.

Then you have http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2009/08/19/episode-7-wittgensteins-tractatus-what-is-there-and-can-we-talk-about-it/ and http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2012/05/02/episode-55-wittgenstein-on-language/ for an easily accessible, and generally fun discussion of what early and late Wittgenstein are respectively trying to tell you.

You can just jump into the Tractatus too, if you have the perseverance. Just don't worry about getting the fancy, outdated mathematical logical parts. Investigations is much more accessible, meanwhile. All you need is the patience to carefully read it.

I can also just give you my version of Wittgenstein. Basically there is an EARLY and LATE WITTGENSTEIN which are connected to his books Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and Philosophical Investigations respectively. There are some less remarkable brown and blue books too, or something like that, from his confused middle period also.

Early Wittgenstein jumps into the history of philosophy when especially the British are starting to reject the romanticism of the 19th century. For instance, according to Hegel, the entire world and everything within it is one great spirit, God, realizing itself, and lots of mystical shit like that. But Wittgenstein's teacher Bertrand Russell is like, "Fuck no! Of course there is an objective reality," but isn't able to argue this coherently. The math doesn't add up.

In comes Wittgenstein who attempts to set the rules for language, the way we relate to objective reality, the same way they are set for mathematics, with facts derived from simple, obvious axioms. This is the Tractatus. He claims the world is a collection of relationships between concepts. These concepts adhere to things in the world. If you are able to discover all the relationships without any contradictions, you know everything there is to know. What's probably most fascinating is that it means that the rules of language do not allow you to discuss anything non-empirical, any concept that does not adhere to something clear in the world, in a sensible way. Which means discussing ethics etc. is practically nonsense. Like trying to do multiplication with letters. So "Philosophy is a disease of which one must be cured," and "What one cannot speak of, one must be silent of." Regardless to say, STEMs love the fuck out of this.

>>5697843

After his death, Philosophical Investigations is published, a refutation of the Tractatus. Let's say you're a kid, and I'm your parent, teaching you to talk. I point at a cup, and say, "This is a cup." Is the color of the cup "cup"? Its form? The object itself? My finger? In Investigations, Wittgenstein seems to argue there is nothing logical about how we use language. It's something we get a feel for, like a game. Whether something is right depends on the context it is used within. We enter into all kinds of "language games". For example, when talking to your parents, different ideas and ways of saying things are valid than when talking with your stoner friends, or being in church. Russell's project has failed. There is ONE thing Wittgenstein won't allow though, and it's the philosopher's own game. Since these games are created when people interact with each other, one person sitting down, and trying to figure out everything is nonsense. Regardless to say, postmodernists should love the fuck out of this, minus the last part. Noam Chomsky also loves the fuck out of this because the idea that language isn't logical supports his idea of us being born with innate brain features that facilitate communication so that perhaps an alien trying to learn English would never be able to, no matter how much she tried.

>>5697847

BONUS: This is basically the same thing Heidegger comes to realize coming from a different direction at about the same time. In his exploration of what the "am", "to be" is, perhaps heard first in Descartes, "I think, therefore I am," he comes to realize existence is shaped by social reality. So if you're living in the 1940s in Germany, you should be a nazi. I've no idea why he couldn't just put it like that though, and had to write a book about it up there with Hegel when it comes to incomprehensibility ...

>>5697843
>"Philosophy is a disease of which one must be cured," and "What one cannot speak of, one must be silent of." Regardless to say, STEMs love the fuck out of this.

And what's funny about that, is they don't seem to notice that in around section 5 onward Witty gets mystical as fuck. In fact Wittgenstein himself explains that the Tractatus is a failed project at the outset, since it is him attempting to speak of what he himself says is unspeakable.

Only the feeble and vain write books, said Wittgeinstein. He was the philosophy of our condition insofar as our condition is that we don't know enough for speech but know too much for silence.

Try the W british society and the W bergen archive. Both have a good deal of online symposiums about lots of topics concerning his philosophy. Of course this is not a good introduction but it is a nice complement to the reading after you have done the basics.

>>5698001

That's true. The Tractatus breaks its own rules. "You have to throw away the ladder once you have climbed it," and all that shit. And little attention is paid to the fact that Wittgy was known as "the crazy guy with the Bible" when he was on the front, and that he wasted parts of his fortune printing up Kierkegaard works no one was interested in. Most probably he saw his task as clearing room for faith, but ended up inspiring logical-positivism, etc.

>>5697881
you should probably read it again before trying to distill the contents into a 4chan post

>>5698025
that is true only concerning philosophy, which is something wittgenstein cannot be reduce to. if he indeed praised a form of philosophical quietism, to call it somehow, he did not think life is reduced to philosophy, therefore speech is, not to be absolutely proscribed, but placed in its right place.

>Read the Tractatus in one sitting
>Read Philosophical Investigations
>Read On Certainty
>Read The Broom of the System
>Move on to Hegel
>Apprehend the Absolute

>>5698035

What do you think I got wrong?

>>5697232
Yes. I liked it a lot but the references bugged me a lot.

So... is there anything anyone got out of reading the Tractatus other than it being an extensive reductio ad absurdum of the reductionism it portraits?

>>5698353
No because the stuff that it does actually talk about is, more or less, correct. It's just wrong in saying that we can't talk about the other stuff.

>>5698353

I think precisely because he makes reasonable something so unheard of, basically that it's not ad absurdum, that it is an interesting text. Today he's obviously incorrect though, as he himself came to agree, but his unusual way of thinking could be the way to go to something completely different, possibly correct, and it is a great work of art as well. I had goosebumps the last few pages!

>>5698417
How is he obviously incorrect and how is it not a reductio ad absurdum? I thought, what he does is, he accepts the proposition that everything can be expressed in a certain logical notation, expresses everything in that notation that can be expressed in it and comes to conclude that it stays deficient when it comes to expressing everything there is.

>>5695495
Wittgenstein's work on color was actually in conversation with Goethe's directly.

>>5698483

Well, "today" he's obviously incorrect, though on the condition you have specialist knowledge, and accept psychology and linguistic sciences. No one has such a strong faith in language anymore, for example trusting that words "reach out" to objects as perfectly and formally as young Wittgenstein would need them to for his theory to pass.

Oh well, that's one way to read it, but that's not what Wittgenstein means. The ending is supposed to be a cleansing, spiritualist moment, when you come to realize that the most important things in the world cannot be captured by logic. This is the reason STEMs loving Wittgenstein is kind of ironic.

>>5698519
Calling the ending a cleansing seems to be exaggerated. There certainly are those important things that could not be grasped in this way, but it is not a spiritualist moment. In a sense, the reader went through the method and transcended it, but not in opposition to it, but because he understands how it is an error of category to try to apply it to everything. It has a limited scope but showing that is saying that which can not be said in a way.

>>5697330

>>5698598
Different anon.
>6.522: There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.
>but it is not a spiritualist moment.
Wittgenstein aspired to religiousness. If you don't think the Tractatus is at least a little bit spiritual, you're missing a large part of the point.

I think of the book as being an ontology that tries not to get metaphysical, but allows room for other people to get metaphysical within the space he's revealed.

STEMs love Witty because he was an engineer. Actually, his philosophy was influenced by his engineering studies
-> http://wittgensteinrepository.org/agora-ontos/article/viewFile/1956/2436

>>5698683
>Scepticism is the end game in philosophy
Someone hasn't read anything past the 19th century.

>>5698776
please explain plz

>>5698776
PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT HAPPENED IN THE 19TH CENTURY TO CHANGE THE FACT THAT SKEPTICISM AND QUIETISM ARE THE ANSWER

>>5699116
>skepticism and quietism
Those aren't the same things. Skepticism isn't an answer, it's a problem (and solved by Wittgenstein, imo)

>>5699141
They are the same thing, because when you accept you don't know what the fuck is going on in this world and can't figure it out, you go with the flow. You become at ease with the way things are.

>>5699219
Neither skepticism nor quietism could be described as "going with the flow". In fact, skepticism does the exact opposite, it refuses to believe anything because it withholds claims to knowledge. Quietism, on the other hand, tries to achieve conceptual perspicuity.

>>5699230
shh shh
be quiet and dont get upset baby

Is Wittgenstein a good last philosopher to read? I'm getting fed up with this shit.

>>5699315
There is only one final teacher.

>>5699320
pure ideology

>>5699315
Yes.

>work through 2500 years of philosophy
>plagued by anxiety and ennui over lofty questions
>reach Wittgenstein
>realize philosophy is mostly vacuous mental masturbation or rambling dementia put to paper
>tfw finally free

Thank you based Witty.

>>5699401
Which approach to studying him did you take, dear Anon?

>>5699413
If you're mainly interested in his quietism then it's only really his late work that need concern you, and in addition I'd recommend Ordinary Language Philosophy in general. Some good figures in this tradition are Wittgenstein (obviously), JL Austin, Gilbert Ryle, Stanley Cavell, Richard Rorty, Cora Diamond, James Conant, Bernard Williams. All of these guys avoid putting forth theories or positive theses and spend their time just B-ingTFO of everyone else.

>>5699486
Thank you. Which particular work would you recommend that I start with?

>>5695567
you' really a fucking cretin.
you want a link to my degree in logics, linkman?

>Logicism is a theory of mathematics
just plain false.

>>5701282
He's 3 sources up on you

>>5699673
Philosophical Investigations. And if you need help from secondary literature Ray Monk's "How to Read Wittgenstein" is very easy to read and very good. There's a family of interpretations of Wittgenstein called the "resolute readers" or the "new Wittgenstein" who really emphasise that quietest thing, and the big names in this are Cora Diamond and James Conant, so their writing on Witt. are good. Someone like Gilbert Ryle exemplifies how this method of philosophy can be put to use on philosophical problems, and his book "The Concept of Mind" does just that to the mind-body problem, and shows that it's not a problem at all but arises from conceptual confusion. JL Austin also does the same sort of thing in some of his essays, and his "How to do Things With Words" is a seminal text in this tradition. It's disputable whether Bernard Williams is an ordinary language philosopher but he is certainly influences by it, but he approaches ethics from a non-theoretical standpoint and basically just sets shit straight. His main book is "Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy". Rorty is kind of the big man at the moment, and he combines linguistic philosophy with pragmatism. his book "Contingency, Irony, Solidarity" basically says that we'll never have complete unassailable knowledge of everything so lets just get on with living.

I should add that all of these guys, with the exception of Wittgenstein and maybe Williams, are extremely easy to read as far as philosophy goes, because they're hostile to philosophical theories and jargony shit.

>>5697847

So much stupid condensed into one post.

>>5697626
see
>>5695577
I never claimed that ALL Wittgenstein fanbois hate us, just most of the ones I've seen here, so your point is moot.

>>5695567
ok, my bad. >>5701282 (if anyone's still here 2 days later, I thought the discussion was going nowhere, but I had left the tab open)
I studied Logics in Frog, I falsely thought I could translate word for word.
So yeah, I used "logicism" mistakenly.

>logicism (skepticism)
when I said "logicism", I (mistakenly) refered to the ideas of the Tractatus (minus last two propositions).
I should have said "wittgentsteinism" or "youngwittgensteinism"

so let me try again >>5695089
my point is :
> young-logico-wittgensteinism = skepticism
> logicalism = skepticism

I meant to say that the Tractatus = LOGICALISM (DON'T look it up and DON'T link because I just made it up and WILL define it now)
logicalism = sketpicism, as in : the Tractatus tried to push logics too far.
If you push logics too far, you do end up in skepticism and a Holier than thou attitude. Older Wittgenstein realized this, so I don't see where's the debate. I too could laugh hearing how later Wittgenstein started writing about the importance of the FEELS, the emotions, and pretended to reinvent the theory of color (and got heavily into FREUD, claiming he loved it because "Freud has no method, this is what I like!").
In both cases, he was too arrogant.
1) I'll revolutionize Logics by being more logical than logicians
2) I'll revolutionize Logics by pointing out that they forgot the FEELS, the intention, and the fucking Freud.

In both cases, did he really respect the opponent? Or did he always fall in external critique? (sweeping generalizations = refusal to do a fair point by point rebuttal). Is it why he was a loner and never taught?

I thought "Logicism" was a pejorative word to refer to people who try to push logics too far, and don't understand Hegel 101, i.e. that logics can never be more than a tautology, the Spirit admiring itself. That's why I equated excessive logics (=) to skepticism.

If you guys are ready for fair debate, the debate I proposed was :
>Is the Tractatus anything more than Skepticism?
(and let's forget the last 2 propositions, if they deny the whole things (as in "you can't invalidate the Tractatus, because the Tractatus already did that to itself! "MUH Wittgenstein is invincible!")

>Logicism is one of the schools of thought in the philosophy of mathematics, putting forth the theory that mathematics is an extension of logic and therefore some or all mathematics is reducible to logic.
ok. I mistakenly used this word, but at least I was right remembering it was a pejorative word.

Now, let ME be holier than thou :
Fact : Logicism is the claim that maths are empty because maths = logics.

I claim that young Wittgensteinian Logic itself is empty.
= skepticism.

now prove me wrong, autists.
one-liners, links, mockery and all external critique will be discarded.

>>5701456
gtfo, cancer.

>>5699315
Then just stop reading philosophy. People who feel they need a "philosophy solver" like Witty or Hume to stop concerning themselves with philosophy are merely people who aren't into the thing, but think they should be for fear of otherwise perceiving themselves as plebs.

Concern yourself with philosophy if you like it, don't if you don't. Studying philosophy texts is exactly as wrothwhile and as interesting as studying and practicing chess.

>>5701461
I'll prove you wrong with a quote from young-Wittgenstein himself in the Tractatus

6.51 Skepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise
doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can only exist where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.

He's basically lol'ing at skepticism.
There's also this:

5.64 Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it.

>>5701484
now we're going somewhere.
see you in two days!

>>5701461
are you actually autistic?

>>5701484
>Skepticism is not irrefutable
wut?

>6.51
I don't see how this is a rebuttal of my claim that the Tractatus (minus end) = skepticism.
When the Tractatus refutes sketpicism, it doesn't give it any content (I'm refering to Kant's "un minimum d'empiricité", a minimum of empiricity', a minimum of content)
There are many traditional ways of refuting skepticism. (for example : skepticism is contradicting itself, because they claim that "nothing can be true" is true)
I think that Wittgenstein's way (in the Tractatus) is a skeptic way of refuting skepticism.
so my claim that the Tractatus (minus ending) is skepticism still holds.
I add : the Tractatus (including ending) is contradicting itself.

>>5701504
can you understand humor?
now, humor always has a grain of truth...
I'm just looking for an equilibrium.
>Mother, Father, always you wrestle in my head. Always you will.
Tree of Life

>>5701504

>>5701538
>I add : the Tractatus (including ending) is contradicting itself.
Duh. He admits this. Read the second last proposition. I'm getting the impression that you just skimmed the book.

I'm not really interested in proving to you that Wittgenstein wasn't a skeptic because your argument that he is one is ridiculous and all over the place. The fact that he says explicitly that "skepticism is nonsense" is enough for me. Also there's the fact that no Wittgenstein scholar interprets him as a skeptic, go up to any of them and say so and watch them laugh in your face. So I'm gonna go with Wittgenstein himself on this and literally every distinguished interpreter of him, rather than give over to your cockamamie "argument"

What do Wittgenstein fags think of DFW's Broom of the System?

>>5701610
>Duh. He admits this. Read the second last proposition.
I'm not interested in someone who contradicts himself.
Enjoy your Wittgenstein, Freud and Nietzsche.

>>5701484
>a question only where an answer exists

That's wrong unless you take "there's no answer to this question" for an answer. In which case you agree with skepticism.

>>5701769
I will, faggot

>>5701783
You definitely have not read the Tractatus

>>5701438
thanks again m8

Can someone summarize Wittgenstein's resolution to skepticism? And what was his belief on what the end of philosophy was?

>>5702977
bump

What even is the skepticism you guys are talking about?

>>5702977
Skepticism is predicated on the assumption that we start with an inner reality that we know for certain and then argue to the outside world. This outside world is easy to doubt because we cannot know it with the same certainty that we know our own inner sensations and thoughts. Wittgenstein argues against this assumption in a variety of ways throughout his career, in the Tractatus, Investigations, and most especially On Certainty. I don't really have time to explain each one, but the quickest and most influential is the private language argument, so look that up. Interestingly, Stanley Cavell talks about skepticism a lot, but he argues that skepticism is a problem of ethics, not epistemology. That being skeptical of other people's feelings and honesty is always possible, but if you wanna go around believing you're the only one who exists, then good luck.

>And what was his belief on what the end of philosophy was?
Wittgenstein was very hostile to the idea of "theory". Theories are great in science, but don't belong anywhere else. This involves ethics, aesthetics, religion, and in his opinion philosophy. Philosophy for Wittgenstein should not offer a positive thesis or theory - it should not EXPLAIN things. Rather, it should DESCRIBE. And the purpose of this description is to cure us of philosophical entanglement that we, as fallible humans, inevitably run into. "Philosophical problems" are merely conceptual confusions. We should SOLVE them but rather DISSOLVE them, by paying close attention to language usage, describing it, and getting a clear and accurate picture of these linguistic practices we engage in (language games). Furthermore the kind of understanding we get from philosophy is (or should be) the same kind of understanding we have of a work of art, or of a person, i.e. strictly non-theoretical and non-scientific.

This is a very brief summary. If you have questions I can answer them. This article here is very accessible and talks about the same thing I'm talking about here: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/regulars/ray-monk-wittgenstein
Wittgenstein basically devoted himself to opposing scientism

>>5703168
When I say skepticism I mean sort of looking on all things impartially. Like I don't know what the smallest particles are, I don't know what is wrong or right, I don't know the way things "should" be, I don't know if there is a meaning to life, I don't even know what life really is.

With this comes the 'quietism' that I can't really answer anything, even what I am, or if I am really a thing. Therefore I would no longer be in the grasp of mental distress because I would walk through life the way a child walks through a garden and just observes everything, just going with it. They don't know if a flower should be this way or that, but they just enjoy the beauty and play in the whole thing.

So it seems Wittgenstein's main "doctrine" is that language and our misconceptions about things are the cause of our philosophical problems. I feel this is reconcilable with my view that I know nothing so who am I to say that this should be that, that should be this, this is actually that, and that is actually this?

ya feel me?

>>5703220
I can't really give a complete answer to this is one post on 4chan. All I can say is to read Wittgenstein. You seem hung on the idea that things and the world IS a certain way, and we try to find it, but it's hard/impossible. Like you say how you don't know if there is a meaning to life. As dumb as it sounds, the answer to the question "what is the meaning of life?" for Wittgenstein would be something like "it depends on what you mean". Sometimes, in fact in the majority of cases, the problem is in the questions themselves. "The answer to the riddle of life is the disappearance of the question", he writes in the Tractatus. Through doing philosophy as Wittgenstein advocated it (quietism) we seek conceptual clarity in that our deepest questions and philosophical concerns, simply evaporate.

As for "doctrine", Wittgenstein said explicitly that philosophy is not a doctrine, but an activity.

>>5703220
>who am I to say that this should be that, that should be this, this is actually that, and that is actually this?
Yes, you're right. Witt. often talks about seeing things a certain WAY. Seeing things AS a certain way, as opposed to seeing THAT things are a certain way. Pic related. Is it a duck or a rabbit? The answer is that you can see it as either.

>>5703273
Didn't he take back a lot of what he said in his early work when he was older?

>>5703310
that is clearly a duck :P

>>5703369
See the beak of the duck as the ears of the rabbit. The rabbit is looking up

>Didn't he take back a lot of what he said in his early work when he was older?
He contradicted a lot of the technical stuff but his driving motive (his mystical concerns, perhaps you could say) has always been the same

>>5703382
You seem very knowledgeable on him and philosophical ideas. Who would you say are roughly the top 10? When it comes to easing the mind with understanding and acceptance instead of blanketing things with religion? Personally, I feel the teachings of Heraclitus, Epictetus, Gautama, Zhuangzi, and Laozi lead to the most enjoyable of lives!

>casually says he's resolved Russell's paradox
>mocks Frege's ideas about propositions
>didn't believe the incompleteness theorem and seemed to have seriously misunderstood it

Thoughts on his dismissive attitude towards logic? I know Gödel thought he was pretending just to piss him off, but, Gödel being a paranoid schizophrenic, I don't give that much thrift.

>>5703400
this is to
>>5703168
>>5703273
>>5703310
as well. I don't know how many of you guys there are.

>>5703411
>>5703400
Yeah that's all me. I'm doing a Masters degree and writing my thesis on Wittgenstein.

If it hasen't been made clear already, I dislike theory, and "systems" etc. And I'm partial to the idea that the deepest truths are unsayable. So I like Wittgenstein, Linguistic philosophy (Austin, Ryle, Cavell), Neopragmatism (Rorty), Romanticism (I'd include Nietzsche and Kierkegaard in this), and eastern religions like you

>>5703446
Not the guy you're responding to, but:
1. How would you recommend I into OLP?
2. Are you the guy who made that Wittgenstein order chart and ran the reading group last year?

>>5703513
Not that anon, but here's a post in here about how to into OLP
>>5699486

>>5703513
>>5703516
Yeah that. Late Wittgenstein is the heart of it, provided you interpret him the right way.

Also here's a podcast that you can listen to right now!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ggc19

>>5701788
Only parts of it. But "you have not read it" is a lazy retort, if you're interested in defending Witty, quote him on why my post is mislead. I will try to do it for you: it's not skepticism because the question is meaningless, so even suspending judgement, that would be recognizing that the question exists as a question even if we can't answer it, isn't appropriate. In that sense skeptics are thinking it's a question with an answer we can't have access to with, when it should be said that such a thing isn't be a question. That's taking "question" in a very autistic sense but I can see why Wittgenstein would think it that way.

No, if you can be bothered to answer by yourself, is that cogent with the Tractatus ?

>>5703446
So I'm curious as to what Witty's respones/solutions/thoughts on some things were

>Nihilism
>Free will
>Abrahamic Religions/God
>Gautama Buddha
>What happens after death
>The Greeks he most identified with

Any and all responses are welcome C:

>>5703558
I'm not lazy, I just know I'd be wasting my time with you because you are evidently so underqualified to be talking about this. A geologist doesn't debate a creationist. Why don't you just read the rest of the damn book?

>>5694928
All of wes cecil's lectures are informative for people who wanna get into their subject matter's

>>5703406
Wittgenstein was notoriously harsh in his relationships and closed to external input (Keynes for instance feared him in debate precisely for that reason), and he was prone to thinking he had solved every problem when he had solved what he was interested in. So it's perhaps just a matter of other's ideas not penetrating a lot in him. Which is fitting with his "no theoretical bullshit" policy.

We just finished up a second Wittgenstein reading group. We read through On Certainty.

I have read about 12 of Wittgenstein's published books lectures and essays, some of which I have read multiple times. I have read some secondary sources and listened to a few lectures. Unfortunately most of that material is misleading (I think), and that there really isnt a substitute for reading Wittgenstein directly.

>>5703588
Don't act like you're Wittgenstein 2.0 because you have read a few books (and yes, a thousand is still a few if you can only be smug about it). If you can't even give at least a begining of answer that simple question in 3000 or 5000 characters, you're probably unqualified as a specialist of wittgenstein (or whatever you take yourself to be qualified as). I made a suggestion of answer to my own criticism in my precedent post, apparently you didn't bother to read the whole four lines of it, so why do you pretend you're a learned man discussing high topic on 4chan, if you only behave like all the other wankers ?

>>5703605
Really? Fuck, I've been out of it. I lurked for the first one but didn't participate much, but I've been mostly /lit/ cold turkey for a while. Is another one happening? Is it the same IRC?

>>5703574
>Nihilism
He never addressed it but it doesn't come into his philosophy. Indeed if you're Wittgensteinian nihilism isn't an issue
>Free will
Again he never talked about it but he would have been a compatibilist, as that seeks to dissolve the problem itself by paying attention to what we mean by words like "free will" (rather than solve it). Schopenhauer was also a compatibilist and WIttgenstein like him
>Abrahamic Religions/God
Religion is a very complicated matter for Wittgenstein. He explicitly rejected the atheist/theist distinction because even that is saying too much. Others have labeled him agnostic but I wouldn't agree with that. He saw religion as its own area of discourse, its own language game, that serves a purpose that nothing else can. He didn't practice any religion but he really liked Catholicism, though he couldn't bring himself to believe some of the wacky stuff. He was kind of a "non-realist" about religion. The language it uses are like metaphors, but they don't stand for anything. Their meaning is what they do. He called religion "running up against the limits of language" and deeply respected it. If you're interested in this try to get a hold of his "Lecture on Ethics". Very easy to read and is a great introduction to his ethics and religion
>Gautama Buddha
Never talked about him though scholars have said that his thoughts had a very eastern flavour to them, particularly Buddhism
>What happens after death
He talks about it a bit in the Tractatus. He basically just says that if there is an afterlife. and we experience it the same way we experience this world (time and space), then nothing is solved, and the "riddle" of life still exists. This supports his other quote about how the riddle of life is in the disappearance of the question
>The Greeks he most identified with
He wasn't really into the Greeks. His thoughts are very anti-Platonic, and he used to brag to people that he never read Aristotle (he was quite arrogant), which is a pity because I think he would have liked him. I think some people have talked about him in relation to stoicism but I don't know much about that

>>5703558
Not him, but...
> "you have not read it" is a lazy retort
True, but it's hardly a cardinal sin not to want to debate someone on 4chan over a book they haven't read.

>It almost brought me to tears, tbh.
Reminded me of the film "A Beautiful Mind", and of Rimbaud, who chose a life of action instead of a life in books.
You might like "Bartleby & Co." It amounts (in some ways) to a meditation on the sort of bipolar attitudes of some writers toward writing.

>>5703574
Im >>5703605

Wittgenstein really avoided addressing -isms and predefined theses. In the tractatus he only references Russell, Moore, and Frege, who were people he knew personally (for example, he got in trouble for having no citations in the Tractatus). I can recall some exceptions, but it would be misleading to say he commented on these things, but rather mentioned them in making a separate point.

>Nihilism
I have no recollection of him mentioning Nihilism

>Free Will
You could roughly say Wittgenstein was a determinist.

>Abrahamic Religions
He seemed to respect them in his personal life, though he never commented on them in philosophical writing. I recall hearing that he was giving out some christian text from Tolstoy during his time in WWI.

>Life after death
No comment that I am aware of, but I heard he talks about death in Notebooks (one of the few books from Wittgenstein I havent read).

>Greeks
I recall him only mentioning Socrates once in his writing, and it was just to criticize a single comment.

>>5703642

I wasnt a part of the first one. The one we finished was in irc.freenode #4chanWittgenstein.

>>5703657

>Again he never talked about [free will]

He most certainly talked about it.

>>5703674
source

>>5703667
>>5703574
>>5703657
>What happens after death

>Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience it. If we take 'eternal life' to mean not infinite duration but timelessness, then eternal life is his who lives in the present.

>>5703697

I dont have books or page numbers. But I do recall:

0. Wittgenstein giving an example of a man following blowing leaves around, and asking if the direction he is running at all determined, or if he is deciding his direction. Anscombe mentions it in 'Intention'.

1. Multiple times at least, Wittgenstein remarks that 'it must end somewhere'. I recall him mentioning memory, and logical deductions being like that. That one is simply at the mercy of these 'bottoms'.

This seems to be the Wittgenstein general so I'll ask here: anyone here read The Big Typescript? Worth it? Seems like a huge conglomeration of the 'middle period' of his work in a very informal/notebooky way so my interest is piqued. I've read all of his major works if that makes a difference.

Normally I'd say fuck it and buy it but it's like $45.

>>5703715
That's more to do with action theory than the problem of free will; determinism vs free will. In that regard I think Wittgenstein would have been a compatibilist. Besides, if you're interested in action you must believe in free will in SOME respect. The question is just: what is it? A flat out determinist would just say "there isn't any". To me that's the kind of reductionism that Wittgenstein loathed

>>5703743

I have a PDF of the big typescript if youd like it. I havent read it myself, but I have read other books translated from the same source material.

Middle period Wittgenstein is my favorite. I recall the SEP of Wittgenstein's philosophy of Math quoting Wittgenstein saying that his philosophy of mathematics was his greatest contribution. I basically agree.

>>5703751

Whatever. It doesnt matter.

>>5703772
Oh yeah dude, if you have a link to it that'd be great. I hate reading long books on the computer, but at least this'll give me a way to preview it before I drop that much money on it.

>>5703783

Its on libgen dot org. The PDF I have is pretty slick. If you dont have any luck with libgen, email me and Ill give you a dropbox link.

>>5703772
what are his views on the philosophy of mathematics?

>>5703793
Found it no problem. Thanks for the heads up on that site! I've never heard of it before.

>>5703808
Uh, I dont know. Thats a tough one. Its never a good idea to try and summarize Wittgenstein. With regards to Mathematics, he just kind of works through particular questions and topics slowly and thoroughly. I think Wittgenstein is famous for writing like that, but with regarding to mathematics he takes it to a whole new level.

>>5703809

Yeah sure.