Lecture 11, Wittgenstein's Tractatus, of UGS 303, Ideas of the Twentieth Century, at the University of Texas at Austin, Fall 2013. This class is part of a section of the course on ideas of the 1920s. @PhiloofAlexandria
This professor is such a treat. Enthusiasm for his material, a desire to convey it to his students, an interest in his students’ questions, and a lively sense of humor. What else could one ask for from one’s education ?
That dude who keeps saying 'yes...' 'mmhmm...' knowingly after the prof. mentions any kind of opinion about Wittgenstein or his work... Anyone who has ever registered for a liberal arts class is familiar with that dude. I thought I had escaped him forever. I was wrong.
Professor Bonevac, your lectures are art. While some professors stifle life in a lecture hall, you are creating beautiful wonderful amazing stimulating pieces of life and humanity. Your students better be grateful for being able to experience your gift in person. Your joy of life is contagious and the best gift you can offer anyone. Thank you for sharing it. Keep the videos coming!
I’d love to see his picture of the cat drinking water. It’s so cute the way Professor Bonevac talks about having studied art in college. He is an absolute treasure. So intelligent, patient, enthusiastic, learned and good natured.
Thank you so much for putting all of this material on RU-vid. I have learnt so much from watching your presentations. Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you and Godspeed,
It would be great if you could connect a short range microphone to you shirt so it passes only your voice and not the sound of the students. Great Lecture and thanks very much!
Keep them coming, I have watched a number of your lectures and I find them extremely stimulating. Material demands didn't allow me to study philosophy at university level it has always been a purely personal endeavour and your lectures are very helpful, thanks for sharing
@33:45 "What can't be said can't be hinted at either." That's a very simplistic response which likely came from a simplistic interpretation. Let's look at is this way. The world is hinting itself at us; it does not tell us facts about its metaphysical essence: it only presents itself. It's like we're staring at a cracked door our whole lives, so that we know that there is something behind it, but we'll never know the true essence of what lies beyond
I enjoyed this presentation. As a general introduction to the philosophy of Wittgenstein it works pretty well. That said, if you read the notes taken by Friedrich Waismann during Wittgenstein's talk to the Vienna Circle its obvious that he was recycling his 1929 Lecture on Ethics - the text of which I read a few times a year just to keep myself honest. Its hard to imagine Wittgenstein being more transparent about his ultimate aims. I read Wittgenstein and David Hume for the "pure research" as it were. I read Darwin for the "applied science". My guilty pleasure (there... you dragged it out of me), is reading Rudolf Carnap and taking his assertions at face value. My sense is that those of us who enjoy Wittgenstein each latch on to some point or other and spend years taking a deep dive into its more profound implications. For me that would be his definition of logical space, "logischen Raum " (C.K. Ogden). Well done Professor Bonevac! Your lecture is impactful and provocative.
Kurt Gödel despised Wittgenstein, by the way. I like a lot your introduction, I remember how I got enthralled with Wittgenstein after reading he was such a strange man! Excellent video!
Thank you for sharing this. I've only just discovered Wittgenstein and I'm trying to get to grips with it. This is very helpful (and I think you deserve better attention from the people talking off camera).. You say at 25:15 that what the fans are cheering is not likely to be a description of the world; but are the singular and collective responses not descriptive? If I hear crowd responses on the TV from another room, I know that SOMETHING significant is going on, even if the detail is lacking. One certainly knows when a goal has been scored, but also when one has almost been scored, and so on. I think this would come under 'phatic' expressions, as opposed to 'emphatic', the substructure of language which we share with other primates. I'm guessing Wittgenstein was primarily concerned with written language, rather than phatic expression, but I need not guess that you understood what I just wrote because: 1. we share cultures with team sports and fans and 2. we are equally likely to have heard the equivalent sounds made by Chimps and Bonobos. Even if that were not so, we might equally agree [on other grounds like the study of Darwin or the study of our pets] that our common ancestry has wired us with both the expression and the understanding of the phatic. I watched another video on Wittgenstein in which he claimed that he could not know the mind of a dog. Did he change his mind on that subject?
the blanket cannot be comfortable, that is outside of what is knowable. So thw claim is meaningless. The blanket seems comfortable to me, is knowable. So the problem is syntax abuse with the verb is.
Thank you very much. As for the question of weather the blanket is comfortable, cant we say that the notion of comfort is a human one so that it is false. and by figuring similar notions we exclude unnecessary notions to think?
23:27 If I'm not mistaken, that girl used to play in Bergen, Norway. Probably around 10 years ago. She travelled around with her father. I think they were American and she went on one of the talent TV shows at one point.
a description of the world is like a 2nd order reaction to the world, or a reaction with extra steps, emotions and other such sentiments and experiences are more direct intuitive reactions to the world, which simply reacts to different inputs or something like that. don't think it's that different, but the experience of reasoning feels less reactive at least.
As a physicist, I am pretty sure I have thoughts about things that are not yet in language. It typically takes a bit of time to convert such ideas into language. How does this fit in? Am I just working in an internal language that requires translation in Wittgenstein's model? What sort of object is this internal language?
Thank you. Most commentators I have seen contrast early and late Wittgenstein as different periods with different ideas. The latter, of course, are the ones that won and inspired cognitive linguistics. But now I wonder if the Tractatus can be seen as a _don't tell, show_ to burn the underbrush of objectivist realism to pave the way for a better view. It seems like the sort of stunt a guy who read poetry rather than do what he's told might pull, albeit with a lot more words and time than usual. A kind of setup and punchline writ large.
I like this lecture better than the Spring 2017. From proposition 1, by proposition 1.13, 'the facts in logical space are the world.', it seems to me that Wittgenstein has signaled to the reader that they hold a work of fiction in their hand... I think this idea is supported by proposition 1.1, 'the world is a totality of facts, not of things.'
Interesting , but the whole tractus can de dissembled by introducing subjective words like feeling - feeling comfortable, or angry. The long and short of it is that Wittgenstein was insane
i can sit here all day and not cough once... all week for that matter.., but whoever daniel is teaching, individuals in the group seem to be coughing every minute or so...which means there are about 40 coughs in thsi short video... CAN PEOPLE NOT JUST SIT STILL AND SHUT UP FOR A WHILE..or do they constantly need mothering?
It seems that Wittgenstein has defined a very small part of existence as his area of analysis and has decided to ignore the vast sea of human knowledge and experience.
Don't understand why nobody gets him, the ladder is clearly there, everyone seems staring at the ladder and don't know what to do. He took Western philosophy to a new heights, this is the gate of more complex philosophy or simpler philosophy, 60 years ago, he did it, so far, no one appears did anything beyond his tractates, in a way, he's winning by standing up there so far.
How about mathematics? Does known mathematics exist in the world? Does undiscovered mathematics exist in the world? Does this suggest there is no limit to language?
There is merit to what you say, there isn't really any detail on either of Wittgensteins' 2 works yet this is a 3rd year level course. It is fine for a pop science lecture but not really a preparatory level lecture for post graduate study.
Why would he - especially in this context? PI constitute a radically different philosophical mode of work and its posthumous release qualified the Wittgenstein of both periods as a major philosopher, effectively giving us two Wittgensteins. The prof’s digestible version of the Tractatus for a general audience is fine, yet is largely a thankless task, hence PI queries. lol Why not ask him politely for a PI video.
As much as I'm in awe of Wittgenstein, I'm really surprised that he never alluded to the fact that a cat doesn't know it's cat. As absurd as that might sound it's very pertinent, The glass of water has no knowledge of it's own existence therefore we can assume that's a fact. But a cat ????
WHat's a "fact" ? What's "reality" ? Words... first. Indexing and giving a context to each term in 'space-time' helps us to stay mentally sane. "Words and what they do to you"...General semantics (Korzybski) is still a great help to understand a part of the fact that "to be is to be related". Grammar leads to logics, logics leads to semantics, semantics lead to neuro-semantics. Mathematics are (or should be) the only sane connection between brain and universe (innern, organic, or external environment). Ordinary historical languages are full of emotional negative patterns and lead often to insane conclusions, as we see in politics or symbolic manipulations. No objects. Waves, vibrations. Facts without context don't exist...:-)
Professor Bonevac, the goal of education is to place the seed of curiosity in the minds of people, so they become fascinated by the subjects being presented to them. The content being presented must become their own, and students need to incorporate it as if they were discovering it on their own. The format you use is very much of a spectacle trying to keep the attention of the students. This is problematic in the sense that yes, you keep students engaged, but not engaged in the foundational interest in the content.. They're engaged in the humor you try to demonstrate to the newly installed camera. Think of a piano recital. Some pianists choose very difficult pieces, and their body language transpires of someone trying to look like a prodigy, trying to make the focus of the event on them. The focus of the event is instead how the music can reach the audience. You have to completely erase yourself, and find ways to be a mere catalyst for the music to reach people's heart. There definitely is a way to "erase yourself" without being boring and keeping people engaged. I encourage you to get interested in the philosophy of pedagogy, and how it could help you gain a deeper understanding of human cognition.
Alas, the professor fails to sufficiently provide the context of the problem which Wittgenstein wrote the Tractatus to solve. Further, the professor at points appears to misrepresent the Tractatus. And most seriously, this lecture might give the impression that Wittgenstein is esteemed chiefly because of the Tractatus, where it was his rejection of the picture theory of language in his later work ("the second Wittgenstein") which seems to have been more significant. don't find a second lecture on the later Wittgenstein by this professor; if such exists, I apologize. Perhaps a better, more accurate and fuller introduction to Wittgenstein, both his early and later phases, can be found here, with Brian Mcgee interviewing John Searle: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-g2JVMOkoDo8.html
This was part of the 1920s section of this course. That's why it focuses solely on the Tractatus, and why it emphasizes certain aspects of the Tractatus that relate nicely to other trends of that era at the expense of other aspects of the work. A broader view of the Tractatus is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aNO4rEFN8LE.html And videos on Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gC3m9QTY9tM.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aNO4rEFN8LE.html
The student sitting by the camera should shut his mouth. He’s providing a very annoying soundtrack by confirming what the professor says, as if to impose his agreement on others. Very very very annoying!
Thank you for this. I have heard a lot about Wittgenstein from the likes of Austin, Cavell, Lakoff, and Monty Python but nothing of his own. This is dangerous; consider Nietzsche and Heidegger. From what you say, it seems Wittgenstein could have benefitted a lot from Saussure, Peirce, Fontenelle, Humboldt, and of course Nietzsche. As a cross disciplinary kind of guy, I am ever flummoxed by all the idiocy in the literal Heraclitus sense of idios kosmos, and it seems that this is inimical to saying anything about the ding an sich in the first place.
I really do not understand what is so special about Wittgenstein's thoughts. I was already seeing the world like this when I was a little boy. What makes him very special? Relating words and the facts? Who doesn't do that? What is so genius about it? He says "About what one can not speak, one must remain silent". Well is this something no one knew? If you tell this to a taxi driver, he wouldn't be surprised. To me Wittgenstein is overrated. Just saying what common sense says. Please enlighten me if what is so new in his thoughts comparing to an ordinary mind? I don't want to be arrogant just curious..
Wittgenstein sounds like a fool to me. Knowledge is easy to define: Facts are untestable, theories are testable. TYou use untestable facts to test testable theories.
