Wittgenstein himself warns in the preface that PI isn't a very good book and not the book he intended to write — sime
“…a philosophy is creatively grasped at the earliest 100 years after it arises. We Germans are now precisely beginning to prepare ourselves to grasp Leibniz.”
how are we to interpret [“Wittgenstein’s language” (terms)] without recourse to the categories of intention and knowing subjects? — Leontiskos
But he is also forcing you through the wringer because (for some) it must be like an epiphany to see that although we, obviously, can not know (be certain) about another, we do not, because of that fact, fall back onto opinion, or other well-worn lessor ideas of knowledge, like: belief, or emotion, or “subjectivity”, or, with respect Joshs, theoretical interpersonal gymnastics (perhaps including “knowing subjects” with “intentions”). We cannot know other minds because our relation to others is not knowledge, but how we treat them, our “attitude” in relation to them, in its sense of: position “towards”. I treat you as if you have a soul. His claim is that is how our relation to others works; that is the categorical transcendental mechanics of it.
Now that’s saying more than something; it’s a revolution in terms, perspective, and frameworks, going back to Plato. And of course he could be wrong. But the disagreement is between two (or more) totally different ways of picturing philosophy and the human condition. Someone just “saying” (stating, telling) something of that nature is going to sound incomprehensible to the other. So, if you want to fight from your own turf, you will feel like he isn’t playing fair. But with any philosopher (worth their salt), if you don’t try to understand them on their terms, your “disagreement” will just be a dismissal without hitting the actual target (thus perhaps the feeling of frustration). — Antony Nickles
emphasis addedHowever, if I provide numerous details for a premise I do not make, that is not so much a bad argument, as a bad faith argument. For the adherent to demand then, that you really don't"know" what he's doing, it's "radically different" and "playing on a different turf", then we are already not playing the game. — schopenhauer1
…he's playing with different rules and it is somehow UP TO US, to understand his rules. Why?” — schopenhauer1
Wittgenstein's very point in PI is that we must understand the language of the game in order to understand how to use language. — schopenhauer1
I can only say that he is writing to a particular audience (certain philosophers), as embodied by the Tractatus’ (his previous) rigid, imposed requirement for judging whether we are saying anything. Given this fixated intransigence, he is now (in the PI) resorting to any means necessary to break that death-grip hold for knowledge (certainty) to take our place (the “picture that holds us captive” PI, #115). Thus the questions without answers, the foil of the interlocutor, the riddles, the… indirectness. He is doing this because he feels that philosophy needs to be radically revolutionized, and so his style, as Cavell puts it, “wishes to prevent understanding which is unaccompanied by inner change”, i.e., change from the position we are in (philosophy has been in), our “attitude” (see above), how we judge (our “method”). — Antony Nickles
Thus the questions without answers, the foil of the interlocutor, the riddles, the… indirectness. He is doing this because he feels that philosophy needs to be radically revolutionized, and so his style, as Cavell puts it, “wishes to prevent understanding which is unaccompanied by inner change”, i.e., change from the position we are in (philosophy has been in), our “attitude” (see above), how we judge (our “method”). — Antony Nickles
I do think we are circling the gist of the grievance, but you frame it as: “Wittgenstein is either saying something or else he is not.” First, wanting him to just “say something” misses the reason that about half of PI is questions; as I said, questions for you to work out, to change you. — Antony Nickles
Wittgenstein's monologues — Leontiskos
Wittgenstein possesses no authority to try to change us ... — Leontiskos
It took me years of struggling to interpret him to change my mind. — Fooloso4
What is the meaning of a word?
Let us attack this question by asking, first, what is an explanation of the meaning of a word; what does the explanation of a word look like?
The way this question helps us is analogous to the way the question "how do we measure a length?" helps us to understand the problem "what is length?"
Wittgenstein was hampered by his own need to appeal to the linguistic turn, thus relating everything to either "sense" vs. "nonsense" — schopenhauer1
"forms of life" — schopenhauer1
When the front door is shut tight, do you just look for bigger and bigger things to hit it with? — Srap Tasmaner
(Culture and Value)A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Forms of life have more to do with might be called his anthropological turn than with linguistics. — Fooloso4
In the Tractatus he follows what others said regarding facts and propositions, but by doing so he left open and guarded rather then forced closed the problems of life, beauty, and what is higher. — Fooloso4
What does this even "mean"? — schopenhauer1
What does language need protecting from? — schopenhauer1
Yeah, and so I look to anthropology for those answers — schopenhauer1
It is not a matter of what language needing protection from but of what is off limits when language is restricted to facts. In the Tractatus Wittgenstein holds to this restriction, but this means that ethics and aesthetics are not propositional problems. They are experiential not linguistic. — Fooloso4
Stuff relating to language — schopenhauer1
By what authority can you limit sense versus nonsense? What standards... — schopenhauer1
His writings are not monologues. There is often if not always an interlocutor, even when the interlocutor is silent. — Fooloso4
Having been deeply influenced by Plato, my first impression of Wittgenstein was similar to yours. It took me years of struggling to interpret him to change my mind. As with Plato it is a matter of participation, of engagement with the texts, of questioning and challenging, of sorting things one way or another. — Fooloso4
This already draws from a more shallow pool, or at least tethers one to a more shallow pool, and it leads to pedantic pointing out of how language can lead to confusion, which I am not sure was not pointing out what was obvious for the common reader.. It seems more transformative if you drank the analytic kool-aid beforehand, but then that also makes the readership more shallow, and less relevant. — schopenhauer1
...but by doing so he left open and guarded rather then forced closed the problems of life, beauty, and what is higher. — Fooloso4
A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.
Propositions, as he uses the term — Fooloso4
re about the facts of the world, the facts of natural science. — Fooloso4
They are either true or false. If something cannot be determined to be either true or false, as he thinks is the case with ethics/aesthetics, then it does no good and potentially much harm to treat it as if it were a linguistic or propositional problem. — Fooloso4
I am by no means an expert on Wittgenstein, but given the attitude of his adherents this strikes me as doubtful. — Leontiskos
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