It is admirable that Prof brings discussion from Nyaya and Buddhist philosophies into a discussion on Wittgenstein.. Wittgenstein has close parallels to Indian philosophies of language
"The answer is: There is no question." - And no one to propose either. ;-) Thank you so much for this beautiful summary of Wittgenstein's treatise. You have a wonderful style of presentation. Very captivating!
By the way I see you strain to include the students. I get the impression they are a pampered lot but I admire your effort and I think you are an excellent lecturer. I studied philosophy and wish I had a lecturer with your determination drive and motivation.
Wittgenstein had written his early work "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" during his participation in the first WW as a young man and completed its writing in 1918. A decade later in Cambridge Wittgenstein became a member of the apostels and received his PhD with his early work. But only few years later he distanced himself from his early work ... but kept his PhD ... ;-)
That kid talking about the University and whether or not it would still be “the university of Texas” without some parts should look into the difference between an “essence” and form. Also, a great addition would be “Matters of Fact” : and “Relations of Ideas”. Thanks for sharing!
It’s an interesting question as to whether there are ‘negative facts’, such as there is no X in this room. If so, the number of negative facts is infinite, compared to ‘positive facts’ (there is an X in this room) which I assume are finite.
I think the part where Wittgenstein has a rule in which he insists that these be all the facts... is designed to avoid negative facts. I hope so, since infinite things tend to be irrational (impossible to reason about).
By pictures I took it as a model as such. I am 70, lol, but I have been reading the Tractatus slowly reading it once a week. I read other things. I know that W abandoned this direction and moved to his other ideas. He was moving toward a fundamental reality, structure etc. But it is theoretical. There is no essence say, of a cat. Ironically W moves toward an abstraction of a cat. Also, ultimately he moves away from the possibility of certainty (as as with Derrida language is the essential problem that makes certainty of mathematics or anything impossible [depending on how rigorous one wants to apply restrictions on epistemological questions. But I got caught in his truth tables which I had seen but didn't recognise....
I really like the concept that not one part of you defines you (i.e. the "can take away your hand and still be you" concept generalized for all body parts) so how can we say that a composition of all those body parts is us? My response to that is that I really think it's not about "what" we are comprised of, but "how" is comprises us. The same stuff that exists in a star exists in us yet we do not say we are stars. Similarly, a two songs could share the same exact notes but sound completely different depending on where the notes are placed (rhythm). If you take the concept of feng shui, a house feels different depending on how the furniture is arranged. And what more are we than how we feel? Maybe it's not that we are WHAT we are, but we are HOW we change.
@@michaelfern4079yes definetely! Professor if you’re reading this, we would love a full series! I’m really struggling with 2.0211 and 2.0212 (that’s why I came here, though in the end it wasn’t explained). Thank you for your intro!
More confused now. But a good lecture! Also, this lecture series is excellent, have been checking out a few different lectures out of sequence, and it's exactly the kind of stuff I'm looking for. I'm a madman trying to self-teach philosophy at a university level. This is much more difficult than I thought it would be.
Read "History on Western Philosophy" By Russell, will at least give you some good structure to go off of and then branch off on certain subjects as you please.
@@seanburke6282 hahahah I am a bit late to the party, but to anyone who sees this be cautious of taking the history of western philosophy as your starting point as it's famously quite a biased book.
@@seanburke6282 So I haven't read a great deal of books about philosophy that aren't written for philosophers, so i'll admit I wont be able to give the best suggestions. But Raymond Geuss' book 'Changing the Subject' is very good and Geuss is a brilliant scholar. I haven't read these but I've heard that both Simon Blackburn's and Nigel Warburton's popular philosophy books are very good. For a more serious overview that is a highly idiosyncratic interesting take on the history of philosophy I'd recommend Robert Brandom's Tales of the Mighty Dead. Much harder than the previous ones but also much better. As a rule of thumb any COMPLETE history of philosophy is never going to be particularly good because there's simply too much to cover to do it well. Overviews on specific movement, thinkers (or like Geuss' book) themes are going to be much better.
@@BENICEBLACK Self-learner here, too. For anyone still following this thread, I'll follow up with the order in which I read some western philosophy books: Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. This is a fiction book that loosely covers the history of philosophy. Actually pretty neat but don't expect a fantastic plot, for it actually reads more like a history book. Bertrand Russell's History. You are correct in it being biased, and I had figured that out while I was working my way through it. Calls a lot of stuff "stupid" which is kind of off putting, but it serves as a very rough sketch. Frederick Copleston's History. By far the best resource. Comes in one book or eleven volumes, and splits the history up into traditional categories (empiricists, rationalists, Ancient Greek, etc). Fantastic series, does a VERY good job at explaining ideas. I found them all on Amazon and read then in order. Full disclosure I'm not an expert and I can't pretend I fully understand all the ideas presented. But these are definitely I think some intro level texts anybody can pick up to start their journey if you put in some effort!
The lecture as expected : is of course marvellous : always to the point relevant and helps a lot to make easy for us the complicated ideas : what I concerned with why this noise pollution of chairs or whatever causes it: very pathetic unwanted : how come the loader of the videos doesn’t know/ aware of it : it’s not in this particular but all throughout the series of lectures : we can donate raise money for : to change the chairs repair it r throw away : replace with: whatever causes this abominable noise ..!!
Hey, I’m writing something about Wittgenstein and I tell you something: you hit there target. It’s a great allusion. I saw the movie ten years ago and I still remember the shock it caused to me. Indeed I think that’s the key between what Wittgenstein proposes and what he can not reach.
Interesting that in Alfred Korzybskis 1933 book ‘Science & Sanity: An Introduction To General Semantics and Non-Aristotelian Systems’, he dedicates his book to a page full of major influences, one of which was Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jodorowsky has said General Semantics taught him how to think clearly. You might find that interesting. 🙂
Marjorie Perloff wrote an interesting book on poetics called "Wittgenstein's Ladder". She is good in that but over estimates his method of leaving gaps. W does have a logical "ladder". But what this guy does here is interesting.... Wittgenstein remains an enigma inside a deep conundrum....He was reading Black Beauty as he lay dying. A writer on Montaigne speculated he might have been, like Montaigne, interested in ideas of animals, whether they too have thoughts and so on.... Montaigne has more similarity to W than some might think. W is fascinating to people of all disciplines and interests....Some dislike him. He is somewhere between logical positivism and postructuralism but he stands somewhere on his own terms...
The first page is now readable thanks to your spirited lecture brother. A quick question about what was presented around minute 22 or so: Why do we need talk about "state of affairs" 's existence prior to talking of "facts"? As in why don't we simply say a "fact" exists or doesn't? Is it to stress that "facts" aren't ontological categories that can be or not be, but only are descriptive categories or something that we assign to "state of affairs" (which are the ontological ones)? I feel like i am thinking/talking nonsense and missing out on some sense.
I just have a question relating to 1.21, it might be that I'm not listening 'clearly' to something you said about dependency on facts (you gave an example of people being absent in class) but I wanted to hear your opinion. What I'm reading from Witt, it seems that he thinks of change of something that's already within objects (proposition 2.12). It would seem, then, that he thinks that, in Logic, change is already embodied in the object and, thus, giving an answer of how change is possible. Change is something that must be already within the object and not outside of it, it is impossible to think it otherwise, is my interpretation.
i read this book during study hall today and i honesty thought it was kinda sad how it ended. it was almost like a story, where a man slowly descends into madness because of his contemplation on language and philosophy. i didnt understand most of the book.
In my translation of _Tractatus_ § 2 reads: _"2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts."_ So, are "atomic facts" just another translation of "states of affairs" [Sachverhalten]? The two translations sure sound different.
Ogden has it as you quote it, following Russell's lead; Pears and McGuinness have "What is the case-a fact-is the existence of states of affairs." The German is, "Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten." 'Sachverhalt' means fact, circumstance, situation. So 'state of affairs' is reasonable. Russell and Ogden may be right that Wittgenstein intends 'atomic fact'-Russell did, after all, discuss all this with Wittgenstein-but Wittgenstein thought Russell misunderstood his view, so I'm not sure, myself, which is more faithful to W's intentions.
@@PhiloofAlexandria Yes, as a German-speaker myself, I agree: "Sachverhalt" translates to "case circumstance" => "state of affair", so this is closer, at least linguistically. Anyway, thank you so much for replying, Daniel! I just graduated in anthropology myself, and I am now following this entire 2017 course almost full time. Looking forward to finally understanding Kripke and hopefully using it for something in social science
" This is for the real adepts in madness, who have gone beyond all psychiatry, psychoanalysis, who are unhelpable. This third book is again the work of a German, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Just listen to its title: TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. We will just call it TRACTATUS. It is one of the most difficult books in existence. Even a man like G.E.Moore, a great English philosopher, and Bertrand Russell, another great philosopher - not only English but a philosopher of the whole world - both agreed that this man Wittgenstein was far superior to them both. Ludwig Wittgenstein was really a lovable man. I don't hate him, but I don't dislike him. I like him and I love him, but not his book. His book is only gymnastics. Only once in a while after pages and pages you may come across a sentence which is luminous. For example: That which cannot be spoken should not be spoken; one should be silent about it. Now this is a beautiful statement. Even saints, mystics, poets, can learn much from this sentence. That which cannot be spoken must not be spoken of. Wittgenstein writes in a mathematical way, small sentences, not even paragraphs - sutras. But for the very advanced insane man this book can be of immense help. It can hit him exactly in his soul, not only in the head. Just like a nail it can penetrate into his very being. That may wake him from his nightmare. Ludwig Wittgenstein was a lovable man. He was offered one of the most cherished chairs of philosophy at Oxford. He declined. That's what I love in him. He went to become a farmer and fisherman. This is lovable in the man. This is more existential than Jean-Paul Sartre, although Wittgenstein never talked of existentialism. Existentialism, by the way, cannot be talked about; you have to live it, there is no other way. This book was written when Wittgenstein was studying under G.E.Moore and Bertrand Russell. Two great philosophers of Britain, and a German... it was enough to create TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. Translated it means Wittgenstein, Moore and Russell. I, on my part, would rather have seen Wittgenstein sitting at the feet of Gurdjieff than studying with Moore and Russell. That was the right place for him, but he missed. Perhaps next time, I mean next life... for him, not for me. For me this is enough, this is the last. But for him, at least once he needs to be in the company of a man like Gurdjieff or Chuang Tzu, Bodhidharma - but not Moore, Russell, not Whitehead. He was associating with these people, the wrong people. A right man in the company of wrong people, that's what destroyed him. My experience is, in the right company even a wrong person becomes right, and vice-versa: in a wrong company, even a right person becomes wrong. But this only applies to unenlightened men, right or wrong, both. An enlightened person cannot be influenced. He can associate with anyone - Jesus with Magdalena, a prostitute; Buddha with a murderer, a murderer who had killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people. He had taken a vow to kill one thousand people, and he was going to kill Buddha too; that's how he came into contact with Buddha. The murderer's name is not known. The name people gave to him was Angulimala, which means 'the man who wears a garland of fingers'. That was his way. He would kill a man, cut off his fingers and put them on his garland, just to keep count of the number of people he had killed. Only ten fingers were missing to make up the thousand; in other words only one man more.... Then Buddha appeared. He was just moving on that road from one village to another. Angulimala shouted, "Stop!" Buddha said, "Great. That's what I have been telling people: Stop! But, my friend, who listens?" Angulimala looked amazed: Is this man insane? And Buddha continued walking towards Angulimala. Angulimala again shouted, "Stop! It seems you don't know that I am a murderer, and I have taken a vow to kill one thousand people. Even my own mother has stopped seeing me, because only one person is missing.... I will kill you... but you look so beautiful that if you stop and turn back I may not kill you." Buddha said, "Forget about it. I have never turned back in my life, and as far as stopping is concerned, I stopped forty years ago; since then there is nobody left to move. And as far as killing me is concerned, you can do it anyway. Everything born is going to die." Angulimala saw the man, fell at his feet, and was transformed. Angulimala could not change Buddha, Buddha changed Angulimala. Magdalena the prostitute could not change Jesus, but Jesus changed the woman. So what I said is only applicable to so-called ordinary humanity, it is not applicable to those who are awakened. Wittgenstein can become awakened; he could have become awakened even in this life. Alas, he associated with wrong company. But his book can be of great help to those who are really third-degree insane. If they can make any sense out of it, they will come back to sanity."
Regarding the 'elephant in the room' absence. We know how large elephants are. And regardless of the size of the room I am in, I can observe all of the POSSIBLE places where an elephant could possibly BE, and conclude that there is no elephant in any of those separate places. And then I can go on to conclude that there is no elephant in the whole room. Sure, there could be a small toy elephant in the drawer of the desk that I didn't open up. But is that REALLY what I was looking for? Is that really an 'elephant' or a 'toy elephant'? Are toy elephants REALLY elephants? Or perhaps there's a book with the word 'elephant' in it. Does that word 'elephant' count as 'an elephant in the room'? I think the issue here is one of specificity. It seems like a Sophist trick to claim that a toy elephant or the text of the word 'elephant' actually are elephants in the intended meaning of the original investigation into whether or not there is an elephant in the room. Language makes it easier and more efficient to think, because the concepts/precepts are already there in our brains with a corresponding word associated with it. It seems obviously wrong to think that without the word, the concept/precept doesn't exist at all and therefore we are unable to think without it. To me, that's just clearly and obviously wrong. And it's demonstrated by the creation of new words upon the realization that we have a concept in our heads FOR WHICH a word does not yet exist. As language is pretty much social, most of us do not get the honor of creating new words for the rest of us. But we can still rummage around in our minds to approximate a definition -- not unlike what's found in dictionaries for words that do exist. Those dictionary definitions clearly don't contain the word they're defining. Poets often get the honor of creating new words for the rest of us to use. Those words are not being handed to the Poet by some god. For example, Poe created the word 'tintinnabulation'.
Didn't Ramsey say that Wittgenstein was like the child at the table who claims they can't say 'breakfast, but does just that in their denial. Kicking the ladder away must mean that the ladder was useful up until a point?
So, in the Tractatus, Wittgenstein says that we determine the truth or falsity of a proposition by comparing it to reality, but how is that possible, if as he also says, "We make to ourselves pictures of facts.", and also that the manner of representation can't itself be represented? Doesn't that mean that we would have to find the truth or falsity of the proposition be comparing it to another proposition?
It depends on your company. If you put the carrier with the dog in it on a table and tell someone to pass you the cat carrier (and they can see the dog), they may not understand it to be a cat carrier. In that case, it would be a dog carrier. If they instead push it towards you, then it was a cat carrier all along.
lol when I stare at a wall, my sense data is not stabilised. I experience something akin to HPPD, which means even the 'still' world appears animate and living. Even when I turn out the lights, or close my eyes, I experience colours and shapes appearing in the darkness. so yeah, I guess I'm an outlier to the whole abstaining from sense data thing he brought up.
another possibility is that you are not an outlier and people in general are, in fact, expecting movements and changes in their environment. If these do in fact not occur, they simply make them up. This is why harsh solitary confinement combined with sensual deprivation is torture.
"Wittgenstein was a, uh, very peculiar sort of person," you say? Um yeah. But in the Next Universe, which I am now designing, Goedel commits suicide by hitting himself over the head with a poker and Wittgenstein attacks Russell by going on a hunger strike until Russell knuckles under. I think we have to keep these peculiarities reasonable, don't you?
Wittgenstein got pissed off philosophy then left it. Ten years later he wrote the Philosophical investigations which argued against the first Tractatus. He was a loner. Language for him wasn't shared it was just a communication of facts of states of affairs.
He may be the only Trump supporter to grasp the logic of the Tractatus. But, hey, we need more intellectually curious conservatives in these colleges, so perhaps we have found the protagonist for such missionary work. my comments from Bonevac's Fox interview: "What a horrid interviewer. We did not learn much about this guy, his motivation for supporting Trump, or more insight into the mass appeal of higher education to liberal young people. I would also like to know his religious identity. I'd conjecture off of the top of my head that he is among the 84% of nominal Christians who essentially partition their brains to - on one account, devote their lives to Christ, while concomitantly rallying behind Herod the Great [i.e. Trump]. if this is not the case, and he is not an evangelical, I am at a loss. I mean, he is an educator in Logic and other sub-fields within philosophy and he finds Trump to be logically persuasive....WTF? A logician who was duped into backing a charlatan..... It makes no sense - ethically, logically, certainly pedagogically...I am scratching my head eternally over this quandary. Strange dude, this Bonevac fella."
Update: Yes, I think I have cracked the case: he is an evangelical. Wow! Like I said, a logician who loves fallacious thinkers. Heck, after all, just as firefighters need fire, so too do logicians need fallacious thinkers and sophists. But, how often is a firefighter caught starting fires to scrape up work...once in a while. Here we have a logician who seems to have a begrudging admiration for the logicians antithesis - the logically fallacious, i.e. Trump, at the moment. Religion is really the only occasion for this binary cognitive bromance to find reconciliation. Opposites do attract; so, Bonevac [heart] Trump, just as Herod [heart] Jesus, I suppose. Strange days indeed... STRANGE PEOPLE indeed...
Yes sir, you raise interesting questions and answers. My explanation would also include reference to desperation concerning political situation in us and throughout the west generally. Trump, indeed a charlatqn, and bernie sanders are long shots or hail mary tries in a landscape which offers only a wilderness of clintons, obamas, bushs and countless other frauds in a toxic environment. You say trump is a charlatan but which of them is not a fraud at the end of the day? Which is your poison for the rest of us to laugh at? #dontvote it just encourages them.
Namelessness do you understand the way of which you think? As in the way you process information before and during conscious thought, also how that information may be processed incorrectly before it becomes conscious.
Hello professor ! Could you respond please to this question regarding your reference to the classroom world being a sub space. Prior to that notion, in the video the discussion was at the point of discussing fact detail as the world as the whole of factual embodiment. So if the classroom is a sub space heresy prior to the illustrations of the elephant in the room. What if the room had a shadow as well like from a TV stand, or bookshelf, the sun, window blinds...what would that indicate in the sub space? According to wittgenstein philosophy?
29:00 Somebody looking at that cat carrier who does not know what it is, would not call that 'state of affairs' an 'empty cat carrier'. They would call it 'a medium size basket' or whatever. Therefore the existence of 'states of affairs' is dependent on the subject that thinks them. Autrement dit, 'states of affairs' are thoughts about things.
Schrödinger's cat. maybe the cat exist in one carrier at 2:00 and maybe the cat never arrives by what you told us. Fact becomes disillusion, sounds like chaotic mathematics. Predictions of fact that sound logical to make us feel less alone.
You take a fingerprint, no two are alike, in this known world.. you look at yours and nobody has that, multiply that by a mind that is trillion times more complex, but you say, fact, we should act and think alike. If everything was that simple we would all be happy "fact"
Facts are a point of view. and only given merritt when those who proposition it realize that what they know as facts may be false reality. Going back to reality , the brain that is endless.... anything can become facts or fiction given the perception of the eye of the beholder.
Maybe someone can assist me here; how are we to know that all the facts are cardinal, that for all facts, an integer can be assigned to each one? I say this because he's drawing an analogy to mathematical induction. There is however a way to know all facts, and that is by making some kind of rules or function where if we have a condition, then we can know a fact..
@@metatron4890 Yeah. It says in the tractatus that "Any one[atomic facts] can either be the case or not be the case, and everything else remain the same"(Line 1.21). I was just wondering that if the fact "There exist atomic facts" is itself an atomic fact. If so, then wouldn't the other atomic facts be dependent on it making line 1.21 false?
@@crazyspace3913 "There exist atomic facts" is a statement about atomic facts, does not make it an atomic fact. That is, the existence of atomic facts are not dependent upon the statement/fact that they exist. That is where the *possibility* of the existence of atomic facts being internal to the facts that Wittgenstein proposes comes in handy with tackling the argument.
@@PhiloofAlexandria I too am waiting for the full story. I've seen the videos of hordes of people breaking into the Capitol and beating down on Capitol Police and paramilitary groups casing the joint beforehand, motivated by a political myth of a stolen election. I've seen the videos of President Trump's daughter and attorney general admitting there was no fraud in the election. I've noticed the conspicuous lack of any empiric evidence of voter fraud. But I fear that I am using reason to maintain my own group's hegemony over a group that is culturally oppressed and dispossessed (Trump voters).
"wittgenstein wrote nothing between the tractatus and the philosophical investigation" yeesh! He held the chair at cambridge. the TLP is a reference to gen 1:1-7. He worshipped Jesus.
@@DiegoJPinto 1 The world is everything that is the case. * 2 What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. 3 The logical picture of the facts is the thought. 4 The thought is the significant proposition. 5 Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) 6 The general form of truth-function is: [ p-bar , xi-bar , N( xi-bar )]. This is the general form of proposition. 7 Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. 6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. From Ludwig's foreword: This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it -- or similar thoughts. it is therefore not a text-book. Its object would be attained if it afforded pleasure to one who read it with understanding. i am the one who read the book with understanding. Its kinda obvious in hindsight. The 'rest' on proposition #7 should have be a clue. That is the story of creation.
@@DiegoJPinto lol i am. i was baptised by God when i figured out this book with seven seals. LW literally writes that the TLP wont attain its objective until 1 person understood it. This shit was foretold in the bible 2000 years ago by some dude named John who was a pain in the neck to godless people. I dunno what to tell you. Professor Jeff Epstein is dead. If you need instruction wrt mathematics, I can do a lot better than than dead antichrist. Ive done plenty of research on leibniz, cs peirce, wittgenstein, and other logicians. But if you want to insist on taking math lessons from Jeff Epstein instead of me... go fuck yourself. Here, I split negation into two parts: 10100000=>0101 You should be celebrating me, my wife, and the death of jeff epstein. But ou just a salty bitch. Like everyone else. REPENT!
@@johnoconner706 what kind of God condones people like you to call others bi*ches and to tell them go f*ck themselves? Sounds like a terrible person, much less a God
Wittgenstein was and is overrated. Wittgenstein is mostly nonsense. Most of his conclusions are inaccurate and therefore wrong. Actually, one should not spend too much time with his writings. If you don’t get paid for it, it’s a waste of time. It’s simply not worth it. I studied aesthetics and mathematics in Vienna.
Hey professor! Random undergrad here from Rutgers, just wanted to say thank you for your videos. They are very helpful for my semantic research project on the philosophy of meaning
