@Wayfarer my favorite Wittgenstein produced joke comes from Culture and Value:

"When I came home I expected a surprise and there was no surprise for me, so of course, I was surprised."

delightfully apophatic. :lol:

5. On Science and Philosophy – Wittgenstein was skeptical of the way philosophy borrowed the prestige of science. Once, when someone said that philosophers should learn more science, he responded:
“That’s like saying that architects should learn more about bricklaying.”

My favourite is the bricklayer one. — Wayfarer

Despite working within an increasingly industrialized building industry, Sigurd Lewerentz did in fact learn more about bricklaying, and as a result he produced some of the greatest architecture of the 1900s. :cool:

Wittgenstein's joke might refer to an unwarranted use of science in philosophy, but bricklaying is not necessarily unwarranted in architecture.

I don't mind any talk of the AI agents in this thread.

They always said you learn something every day. Especially on the Internet.

Wittgenstein's joke might refer to an unwarranted use of science in philosophy, but bricklaying is not necessarily unwarranted in architecture. — jkop

That was my thought also. But it also seems likely that some of the jokes ChatGPT (which model?) attributed to Wittgenstein may have been made up. Open ended requests to find references to scattered pieces of knowledge on the basis of a weakly constraining task and small context can trigger hallucinations (or confabulations) in LLMs. I didn't find a reference to the alleged bricklaying joke through Google searches. I asked GPT-4o about it and my request for references triggered more confabulations even after it searched the web.

I don't mind any talk of the AI agents in this thread. — Sam26

Thanks, but I also feared discussions about this nerdy bloke, Wittgenstein, might bore you :wink:

I thought I was burned out on Witt but even though I'm not writing in this forum, I'm still writing in other spaces. I get in these moods that tend to change like the wind. I can't stop doing philosophy, my mind naturally goes in that direction. :gasp:

I've just now had a most illuminating and insightful conversation with ChatGPT 4 which started with the distinction between noumena and the ding an sich in Kant, and wended its way through the real meaning of noumena and whether Kant understood noesis, then touching on phenomenology and recent critiques of Kant.

I've just now had a most illuminating and insightful conversation with ChatGPT 4 — Wayfarer

Awesome conversation!

Using models like GPT-4o for philosophical inquiries is like stepping into the old Bodleian Library. You can find that one dusty book on Kantian metaphysics and not just read it but begin questioning it about its content. Not only does the book immediately answer your questions, it also calls upon its best informed friends to join the conversation.

(Yes, I know, I know... Check their references.)

My thoughts exactly. Surprised and delighted by the quality and the conversational style. (Right now I'm using ChatGPT to re-learn basic web scripting skills and GitHub, which I've done before but then forgotten. Don't know how I did it first time around! Oh, and I visited Oxford in 2022 - high point of our European tour - although we weren't allowed into the Bodleian itself, apparently a high privilege.)

Oh, and I visited Oxford in 2022 - high point of our European tour - although we weren't allowed into the Bodleian itself, apparently a high privilege.) — Wayfarer

Nice! I never went, but I visited the Hogwarts Library. Similar vibe.