So now we can expect Wittgenstein fan-fic?
What is Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language if not this?
All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
21–30 of 65 posts
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#22I've heard that Wittgenstein is one of the few philosophers to actually make people optimistic. Does anyone here feel that way?
“People” for “definitely not women” in this case. Nor his brothers.
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#23You also need to know Austrian to understand Frankenstein
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#24Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#25No book influenced my attitude toward philosophy more than Wittgenstein's Blue Book. Here are a couple gems: > The questions, "What is length?", "What is meaning?", "What is the number one?" etc., produce in us a mental cramp. We feel that we can't point to anything in reply to them and yet ought to point to something. (We are up against one of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: we try to find a substan…
I love his attitude that people talk in the same kind of compulsive way that a squirrel stores nuts for the winter. Not to say it is mindless but that it isn’t rooted in philosophical consistency. Asking again and again “why” like Socrates doesn’t get to the truth it just gets us caught in circles.
Another unrelated Wittgenstein-ian point that I found enlightening in college is that in PL design you can’t design a language that stops people from writing incorrect programs. Statements can’t be correct as an inherent quality of their structure, they can only be correct in context of a goal.
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#26So now we can expect Wittgenstein fan-fic?
Now we can make money on our Wittgenstein fanfic.
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is one hand, And here is another. There are at least two external objects in the world. Therefore, an external world exists. As if there would not be hands in a simulated world!
My thought on this, what's the difference to an agent between a real world an a simulated one? Why aren't all worlds effectively simulated?
There is no difference. It would only matter if you could wake up from the simulated one. Everything in this world seems real, and since I have not waken up to confirm that this is not even real, I might as well just consider it real and go on with my life.
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
More context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_is_one_hand TL;DR: Descartes (and others): We can't know for certain that the external world exists. GE Moore: "Here is one hand, and here is another. There are at least two external objects in the world." Wittgenstein was pointing out that this doesn't address any of the actual claims. (I think "agree" is a confusing word to use in the translation. "Know" would work b…
Here is one hand, And here is another. There are at least two external objects in the world. Therefore, an external world exists. As if there would not be hands in a simulated world!
The point isn't about the external world. It's about deduction vs induction, the point is about axioms. Axioms are arbitrary, thus deductive reasoning is ultimately arbitrary.
If there is a hand then everything else falls out deductively. Using induction, it's trivially true that there is a hand.
Using deductive reasoning to prove an inductive proposition is ultimately a waste of time, using inductive reasoning to create a correct framework for deductive reasoning is ultimately unknowable. Both of these together is how we live our lives and create our standard model, which is ultimately imprecise at best, and wrong at second best.
This is Moore's point, that we are wasting our time trying to deductively prove the existence of an external world when it's trivially provable. We may not get accurate axiomatic framework, but we can never get that anyway.
Much of the point of philosophy is properly delineating between these two methods of reasoning. Much of analytic philosophy is finding areas where language blurs the two.
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#29Not quite all public domain. (in English) [0] (maybe? gray area)
I'd highly recommend checking out his work on (and coining of the term) "language games" [1] I'm not sure I agree with all of the thinking behind them, but it's a fascinating concept that has useful nuggets whether or not you agree with everything Wittgenstein says about them. They are explored pretty fully in his work "Philosophical Investigations" [2] This work pretty much set aside a fair amount of his thinking in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which is still an interesting work in its own right. I think that even a cursory ELI5 treatment of this material in a standard college course would be very useful in arming students with tools needed to dissect language. I've used it (in brief) when teaching a course on Informal Logic in relation to propaganda.
[0] It seems copyright on the English translation might still be in effect, or at least a gray area of determination. Since it's a common text use in college courses I'm guessing the copyright owners may fight public domain release. The issue will be whether or not the translation was a work for hire or if it can be considered sufficiently different to constitute an original work. The English translation by Anscombe, Hacker, and Schulte occured posthumously, and so might not be considered work for hire. Hopefully it will resolve in favor of public domain. For a shorter consideration of "language games" check out Blue Book.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Investigations-Ludwig-W...
Re: All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
#30He said that someday philosophers would forget him and he would be discovered by others who would finally figure out what he was truly trying to say. May this be the start of that era.