11–20 of 42 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure if you are cheap-shotting Dennet and Wittgenstein or philosophy as a whole. I think if you were to genuinely throw away the last 100 years of philosophy, you would not find yourself in an intellectually better place.
I definitely wouldn't want to throw away a century of philosophy, but I don't think we'd miss much if we threw away a century of philosophers.
http://www.amazon.com/Wittgenstein-Flies-Kite-Story-Models/d...
Wittgenstein was a terrible person who hit children, hard, on the head: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein > His severe disciplinary methods (often involving corporal punishment, not unusual at the time)—as well as a general suspicion amongst the villagers that he was somewhat mad—led to a long series of bitter disagreements with some of his students' parents, and eventually culminated in April 1926 in…
Ad hominem is not automatically a logical fallacy. I think it's important to note that there was something seriously off about Wittgeinstein's character.
Wittgenstein was a terrible person who hit children, hard, on the head: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein > His severe disciplinary methods (often involving corporal punishment, not unusual at the time)—as well as a general suspicion amongst the villagers that he was somewhat mad—led to a long series of bitter disagreements with some of his students' parents, and eventually culminated in April 1926 in…
Daniel Dennett, himself a contemporary caricature of a philosopher, opens by asking whether a philosopher would be happier to become so successful as to strike down philosophy completely, or rather to become popular and read forever. Wittgenstein, says Dennet, aimed for the former, but achieved the latter. To my mind, though, Wittgenstein did, in fact, succeeded in shooting down philosophy as we knew it. He did so by…
Why should anyone bother to continue reading your comment after that poisoning of the well?
This just in: Daniel Dennett cites Ludwig Wittgenstein as one of the 100 most important people of the century. And coming up later on the 11:00 news: Heisenberg admits, "I never could have done it without Bohr."
Wittgenstein was a terrible person who hit children, hard, on the head: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein > His severe disciplinary methods (often involving corporal punishment, not unusual at the time)—as well as a general suspicion amongst the villagers that he was somewhat mad—led to a long series of bitter disagreements with some of his students' parents, and eventually culminated in April 1926 in…
All of which has nothing to do with the value of the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations. Your arguments are ad hominem and circumstantial.
As to Tractatus, if you want to discuss it more can you give a quote from the book that you consider to have value? Or want to cite a fruitful philosophical problem Wittgenstein did have, to contradict my view?
Daniel Dennett, himself a contemporary caricature of a philosopher, opens by asking whether a philosopher would be happier to become so successful as to strike down philosophy completely, or rather to become popular and read forever. Wittgenstein, says Dennet, aimed for the former, but achieved the latter. To my mind, though, Wittgenstein did, in fact, succeeded in shooting down philosophy as we knew it. He did so by…
The German philosophers before Wittgenstein (Hegel especially) created a philosophical atmosphere in which it was acceptable to create large metaphysical constructions such as the proletarian state or the third Reich. Popper among the other liberal thinkers devoted significant part of their academic work to show that communism and fascism were founded on metaphysical constructions that could not deliver the dream they promised.
This article, I submit, is the Time Magazine definition of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Read at your own peril.
(Peter Hacker is the only academic I know who really seems to get Wittgenstein. You're probably best off ignoring the secondary sources on Wittgenstein altogether, but if you must, I recommend you read Hacker---please not Daniel Dennet.)