Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus

Wittgenstein would tell you not to get too caught up in one definition of the word "life". Don't get "bewitched" by our language. Just because we can ask "what is life" doesn't make it a meaningful question, what it certainly does not do is make it a question with a singular meaning.
If that sounds relativistic to you, it is - to a degree.
He'd also say something like "We know what life is", you know the many uses of the word and you can identify them individually - don't be bewitched, don't think you can have a unified Platonic, Atomistic (see now how he disagrees with Russell) definition simply because you use one word whose uses possess a "family resemblance"
Yeah, if you're talking about quotes they can do, but sadly Karl Marx is more popular.
I like to use "Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent" but that's only a smart way of telling stupid people to shut up.
But honestly not as many people know about Witty as they should
cont.

pls be in london?

the way i see it, cause and effect in nature is continuous, the movement or change of objects from one state to another state is an infinitely long process which can't be broken down into a series of causes and effects.

I hope you keep answering all the questions ill gild you xD

It wasn't about ethics until the last proposition. A proposition so radically different from the previous 4 that Richard Rorty ( a big fan of early Witty) basically says ignore it. But you shouldn't because it's basically a preamble to the Investigations (his better, truer, work)
Basically Witty uses the metaphor of a crystalline world with no friction, no application, to describe the Tractatus - it creates a world where everything is derived from pictures but these pictures have no substance.
It doesn't work and he's wrong (For 2 main reasons, one: If I put my middle finger up to you that doesn't conjure an image but it still has meaning and, 2: because practically speaking when we use a word that has two meanings we couldn't possibly understand what we meant if we only had one picture of its meaning to which to refer. It seems too obvious but here's an example: "I'm feeling blue" vs "The sky is blue" same word, different meaning, but that means we can't share a reference.
I've gone off on a tangent but perhaps you can parse a deeper answer out of that. Early Tractatus isn't about ethics Prop 5 all the way through to the Investigations are about forms of life, living, and being attentive. You can decide when you read it how ethical it is.
No, the UK

wtf did he mean by the whole duckrabbit passage?

also was he a behaviorist or did he just think that language can't describe the mind at all?

Don't start with the Tractatus, you'll burn out. Listen to Bryan Mcgee and a few Youtube lectures and documentaries. I swear that understanding Witty's eccentricities are a key to understanding his philosophy. (not the AC Grayling vid though)
After a listen or two, read the Investigations but not in one go, literally have a think about it cos that's also one of the main points of Witty's philosophy.
Bristol
give me a second

Good work, brother. Carry on my work.

He means that one thing can have multiple meanings depending on your perspective or "form of life" see As for your other question:
That's a damn good question and it's what I wrote my dissertation about. He really does look like a Luddite doesn't he? I'm brushing the dust off my old diss so I can answer you better

so basically he got really assmad about equivocations and semantic debates

he just meant that there is no such thing as the true definitions of words

yeah but if you understand the context of the time (where philosophy was ALL Frege and Russell and Ayer and Moore) you'd be like Don't be so semantic
NO NO NO
They're all true!
You just fell into the first trap of Wittgensteinian philosophy.
What do you mean "true definition of a word" A WORD'S not "true" there's no "picture" or even a "correct picture" to which is refers.
There's only USE. The meaning of a word is it's use in the language game!!!
What you said is still betwitched with the Plationic arrogance Witty despised

let me clarify: Saying "there's no true definition" is wrong but saying "there is not necessarily one singular definition" is better.

>what did wittgenstein want philosophy to be?

In a word? Honest.
(that's actually a wittgensteinian joke I just made up, but it's true)
But to give you some context (context is a very big thing when it comes to language) there are two schools on Wittgenstein:
The Pyrrhonian school which argues that Wittgenstein wants to get rid of ALL philosophy (he's not this imo)
and the Non-Pyrrhonian school which argues that Wittgenstein is proposes a radical new kind of philosophising - but not destroying the old one.
The main point to take away from that is that Wittgenstein writes so opaquely at times that even professionals aren't certain what he means.
cont.

>NO NO NO
>proceeds to agree with what i said
am i being memed right now

witty bro, are you familiar with the continental side of the 20th century? the more i study of witty and heidegger the more i realize they're just doing fundamentally the same thing. even more, the 20th century seems to be a time of radical criticism of the western canon, perhaps summarized best by: asking "what is truth/true?" is the wrong question

You were a bit memed, I got over excited and wanted to roleplay being Wittgenstein. Let me explain:
Let's use the duckrabbit as an example.
Someone sees a rabbit, someone a duck another the duck rabbit.
All of these definitions could be true, in Wittgenstein's eyes. - It all depends on how you define definition and whether truth is something that can be applied to something so subjective.
(And when you read about forms of life things get a little bit weirder - because to him a word's legitimacy comes from it's use in a language game - we don't call a duckrabbit a rabbit and it wouldn't make sense to, but you can imagine a form of life that does, for any number of reasons)
They're right to say "That's a rabbit" and use duckrabbit as their definition - and it is a completely true definition from that tribe's perspective (i'm using the word tribe to mean a strange people other that ourselves)
We couldn't do it, because its not the true definition for us. We KNOW what a rabbit is.
Perhaps see this

had to ctrl-f my diss for "beetle"
Yeah, Hilary Putnam went along with the idea that Witty was a behaviourist out-and-out. Modern Putnam (rip) thinks we can use machines to look at qualia.
In my diss I suggested the Investigations prematurely limited the scope of our technological developments (which is a common theme when Witty is employed btw: Dreyfus, early Putnam, Gaita)
Yeh and he had a limited view of science as well (which he probably inherited from ppl like Russell desu) - he imagined it to be all reductionist and, again, he didn't predict a lot of things.

In my mind

the virgin continental philosopher and the chad analytical philosopher

>implying it's not the other way around

hold on so does witty entirely reject the notion that definitions can have a truth value(are they propositions?), or does he say they're all true but he has an unorthodox definition of "truth" which means "useful for communications", so truth becomes contextual and relativistic
>the virgin continental philosopher and the chad analytical philosopher
based

That was a joke. With that said I'm not overly familiar with Heidegger. I know that Dreyfus employs both of them in his writings but I find Dreyfus to be a danger to mankind.
I also find Continental philosophers worrying, Wittgenstein definitely straddles the line between them and he's as European as I'm willing to get. I genuinely think Western society shouldn't stop to question the search for truth, I'm with Nick Bostrom in that we basically don't have the time - but that's political and personal, Wittgenstein would've probably pulled my ears and hit me with a poker for saying that.
Witty isn't dogmatic enough, and you need Dogma for science -
Therapy, perhaps?
You'll have to read watch a few youtube videos and then read the book. If you get it right you'll be doing yourself a big favour.

-

Unrelated: Here's something funny I say comparing Russell to Wittgenstein

Principia Mathematica > Tractatus Jail for war protest > shooting Tommies Pugwash Conference > slapping kids
Banging loads of chicks > sucking dicks
Organised arguments > oracular assertions.
High society > cartoons and pork pies
-

Thanks dude

neither??

read on certainty

i think you cannot ignore the works of derrida who i think, truly leaves no room left for any notions of 'truth', at least, i haven't read any criticisms of him that aren't ideological in nature. of course, you then return to the whole misinformed discussion around nietzsche of relative "truth" and one realizes that what we're really talking about is ethics, which is why i think late witty slides on over into that wholly. it's why jordan peterson became such a fascination on Veeky Forums i feel: he offered a community (and i'm being reductivist here) that is essentially in the modus of camus' l'etranger a contemporary belief system of realistic capitalism, grounded in an areligious protestantism. really, we all know that what we mean by "the search for truth" is really to prevent existential entropy.

i think for you, my friend, you shouldn't find continental philosophers worrying. you should, and everyone for that matter, be worried about the billion dollar tech tycoons out of touch with reality.

>he has an unorthodox definition of "truth" which means "useful for communications"
... within a language game.
Definitely much closer to this.

Remember though, even the word "truth" can mean something different depending on the language game you're playing.
Think about someone moving a king to c2... during a basketball game. That's an illegitimate move.

Wittgenstein says "I am not aiming at the same target as the scientists and my way of thinking is different from theirs"

This could mean a number of things, 2 come to mind:
1 Scientists do your thing, I'm focused on being as clear as possible
2 Fuck you Analytic philosophers, we are NOT just handmaidens of science

Though it could mean more, or less, or a combination of those things.

again I'll clarify with a quote:
in "a large class of cases - though not for all - in which we employ the word "meaning" ... the meaning of a word is in its use in language"

Well the fact is there IS a beetle, whether you can see it or not. So there's a truth there.
I'm a moral realist and an atheist because I believe happiness, pleasurable experiences, and pain and/or unpleasant experiences are incontrovertibly Good and Bad in-and-of-themselves. This truth is as evident to me as my own consciousness and thoughts. As such, I am a moral absolutist Utilitarian. I don't need Peterson's meaning, or a God and cannot believe in no notion of truth when many are presented for me in so blatant a fashion
Literally: look inside yourself: The philosophy of meaning and ethics

...

if your notion of truth is that the material reality exists, so be it. but if we replace "beetle" with "god", then really, the fact doesn't matter. it's more about what it means for us in how we live.

your post is just more evidence for my consideration that, in someway, humans must ritualize or steep within mysticism some aspect of their lives, i.e. borrowing what barthes called "poetizing" -- to give fundamental, irreducible meaning.

i hope moral absolutist utilitarian works for you, but i gotta be honest, i've tried most of them and i think catholicism beats em all.

>I believe happiness, pleasurable experiences, and pain and/or unpleasant experiences are incontrovertibly Good and Bad in-and-of-themselves.

The meaning of an experience is its meaning in the meaning game. But that meaning depends on when the game ends -- when's the final tally, the judgment? When we die? Or afterwards?

Are you *sure*, senpai?

What you're quoting has no relation to Wittgenstein I'm afraid. Wittgenstein is talking about semantic meaning, neither of us are talking about absolute meaning.
Furthermore it doesn't follow, neither in Wittgenstein's language game argument, nor my moral argument that the "meaning depends on when the game ends"
Some games have no end, some games only have meaning wen they're played, some games include the scores during the game and tallying doesn't need to occur at the end at all.

Moving completely away from Wittgenstein and focusing on my own argument:
It doesn't matter that there's no tally, every pleasurable experience is good in-and-of-itself, the point is scored and it's permanency is irrelevant.
I see no reason to score or calculate at any other time. The meaning is there.

>The meaning is there.

A meaning is there in the moment. Another meaning may be possible.

1. I don't deny any number of meanings are possible. But to my recollection none have been as certain as the Goodness of Pleasure and the Evilness of Pain.
2. Let's not stray too far into the general argument of skepticism. I mean, you can if you want, but if you expect me to start doubting my reality, causation, continuation etc then the conversation is over. Not because I disagree, but because it's pointless.

No, I'm not pressing any kind of skepticism. I'm just flowing off your explanation of Witty. And it seems to me that the ultimate meaning of pleasure and pain is sometimes dependent on a larger context. Thus the pain of childbirth may be unpleasant, but it is not evil in any absolute sense. And so on with let us say the pleasure of dissipation which may lead to the evil of dissoluteness. And so the Goodness of Pleasure and the Evilness of Pain is not necessarily certain. It may depend on the context. And what is the ultimate context. Which can be looked at in a horizontal sense, so to speak (no man is an island). Or a vertical one, if you will (is death the end?).

Again, Wittgenstein and my morality as probably separate. As far as I'm concerned everything I've said about utility i s solely my own philosophical position.
I don't want to confuse matters my invoking him, or acknowledging overlaps between the three of our positions. There may be overlaps, but I'm not representing him.

I understand what you're saying, but you must consider the pleasure by itself first.
Then you can contextualise it and see if it was worth it. But even then, the only way you see if it was worth it is by comparing the pleasure against the pain overall.
Let's take pain of childbirth. The pain: Bad in itself, it would be Good to take it away.
Enduring the pain in order to live a lifetime with a child? This will generate more Pleasure in the long-run. It was good to give birth overall in-spite of the Evil of pain.
Eating a cake generates pleasure. Getting fat generates pain. You calculate whether it will generate more pleasure than pain (or if it will reduce more pain at the cost of some pleasure) and then act on that.
No deeper, more real axiom or context is needed for my morality to function.
I can accept that Pain is absolutely evil and yet still allow it if it reduces more Pain in the long-run or generates more pleasure in the long-run.

>beats up kids
I never heard about this, lmao what.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident

Is Wittgenstein an eliminative materialist?

in particular, he says somewhere to the effect that the difference between the objective world and sense impressions are a language game. WHat did he mean by this?

Okay. Cheers.

>Haidbauer_incident
Yeah everyone goes on about the poker incident with Karl Popper (which almost certainly didn't happen) but there's this much juicier story right here. Tragic.
If you found the quote (and the book, because his position on various things shifts over time see) I might be able to tell you.

Taken from Wikipedia:
>Eliminative materialism is the claim that people's common-sense understanding of the mind is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. It is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Some supporters of eliminativism argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level. Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.

I wouldn't say that the philosophy of the mind was Wittgenstein's forte, where he has infringed on the subject he seems to have been something of a Luddite - his beetle in the box analogy doesn't seem to stand up to the existence of modern MRI scans, or even an AI's neural network.
Now with that said Wittgenstein probably would've thought that these biological ways of looking at the mind were too reductionist, and we shouldn't necessarily expect a biological approach to the mind to be the singular one we should use. Far from it in fact.
His beetle in the box analogy goes as follows:
Imagine we live in a world where everyone has their own box, nobody can open it, or look inside. To Wittgenstein, it doesn't matter what's inside what matters is the way we look at it and interact with other people when it comes to the box. The beetle is the mind.
He may have said that our folk psychology is really all many people have - and it's a perfectly legitimate way of talking about the mind. But remember, Wittgenstein lived in a world where philosophy was Analytical, something many nowadays dismiss as semantic. I said earlier that Wittgenstein didn't infringe on the philosophy of the mind, and that he seems a Luddite. I believe that's because it simply wasn't his purview. His was clarity and attentiveness.
With that said he was also fiercely opposed to the reductionism of science and the Analytics like Russell. So he probably wouldn't have liked eliminative materialism at all.
He certainly wouldn't have said it was the ONLY way of looking at the mind.

Sorry I wasn't as engaged as you would've liked me to be. I'm fighting a war about this very topic on three different threads atm. Wish you the best

>Sorry I wasn't as engaged as you would've liked me to be.

No worries, didn't mean to sound curt. I enjoyed the colloquy, and pressed the point, a rather modest one, as far as it warranted pressing, I think.

>the poker incident with Karl Popper (which almost certainly didn't happen)
backstory?

It seems, sadly, to be apocryphal but here's the explanation from Wikipedia:

>On 25 October 1946, Popper, was invited to present a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Moral Sciences Club, which was chaired by Wittgenstein. The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper's, and the popular account, Wittgenstein used a fireplace poker to emphasize his points, gesturing with it as the argument grew more heated. When challenged by Wittgenstein to state an example of a moral rule, Popper (later) claimed to have replied "Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers", upon which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out.

Now, Popper was a bastard and an egotist (and a genius, his argument of falsification along with Kuhn's verification would do wonders for the sorry state of liberal academia today) and this event probably didn't happen. Some say it sums up their differences, perhaps it does.

Am I too retarded to read Wittgenstein?

Maybe!
But Wittgenstein writes retardedly, he even admits it in the preface to the Investigations - he says it's not finished, but we've gotta make do cos I'm going to die :(
Listen to some videos on him first, Bryan McGee is a really good starting point - then read the Investigations, it's well worth understanding him.
But not necessarily agreeing with him wholeheartedly

Can pain in no way be good? Is pain not good? For without pain, you do not know pleasure, and without evil, you shall not know good. They are opposites, and yet one and the same.

Well if I was born staring at a white room, with only a white wall to look at my entire life, would I know the colour white?
Yes, yes I would. That thing I've been looking at my whole life would be white. I could compare it to other colours if I saw them, I could remember the colour white.
And perhaps I could see a momentary rainbow, maybe once every 6 months to make me more attentive of the white.

Even if pain's necessary to comprehend pleasure we don't need this much of it.
If we did need a little pain to comprehend pleasure we'd just get a little drip every now and again.

Also, what you're saying is unknown. We can't imagine whether we need pain or pleasure or whether we can comprehend good without evil. This is further reinforced by the differing views on what is and isn't evil and good in the first place.

If there were so clear cut opposites which suddenly enabled a new understanding then we'd be able to parse out a science of morality by now.

Also your own statement admits the the existence of evil. It's illogical to say "Pain is not evil because we need pain to recognise it's opposite which is pleasure, and since pleasure is worth knowing then its opposite must not be worth knowing, and since its opposite it pain then it must not be worth knowing and is therefore evil."

>Yes, yes I would. That thing I've been looking at my whole life would be white. I could compare it to other colours if I saw them, I could remember the colour white.
but you would have no concept of white and no propositional thoughts, so it's not knowledge in the orthodox sense of the word but more like impression or memor-AHHH FUCK I'M BEWITCHED AGAIN

no no don't worry you're probably not bewitched because we're operating within the same language game.
and besides Wittgenstein doesn't really think we can talk about moral ineffable truths (at least not in the Tractatus)
Speaking as someone who is well-versed in Wittgensteinian lore I still really do not like mixing Wittgenstein with ethics.

Usually being bewitched is holding the idea that there is one singular definition from which our words derive and that we can derive some deeper meaning if we just find that one single definition.

So in this instance, to avoid being bewitched we could be attentive and ask ourselves (maybe) "Is having an impression a good enough kind of knowledge?"
Because we know it isn't orthodox knowledge.

But is it good enough. And we can talk, within that arena, about why and if memories or impressions are a good enough way of knowing something. Perhaps we could talk about how memories effect us or how we have unfamiliar implacable sensations.

And if that seems to light, too easy a conversation, you might be right:
from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

>It is through analyzing language’s illusive power that the philosopher can expose the traps of meaningless philosophical formulations. This means that what was formerly thought of as a philosophical problem may now dissolve “and this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear”

You would not know the colour white, no, and you could not even know colour : you would know space, believing it to be the wall, and only the wall. Knowing no other colours, you would not need 'white', and knowing nothing else than the wall, you would not even know it to be a wall, needing only knowledge of space. In such a scenario, there is not even a need for time, no need for causality and no need for anything but a concept of space. And even then would there be such a need?
One who experiences nothing but pleasure and things deemed good, from birth until death, would know Existence, believing it to be the only existence, but as such would know not it to be good or bad, would not know good or evil, pleasure or pain.
Experiencing only one thing makes knowing it impossible, for its experience remains unconscious. Causality precedes experience, and without it (if there is no change, there is no considering of cause nor of effect), there is no intuition or intuitive experience. If there is no intuitive experience, there can then be no rational experience : no birth of concepts. The world is what it is.

The differing views on what is and isn't evil do not confirm that one can go without the other, or infirm that one cannot go without the other, only show that the definitions or representations of the concepts vary. Whatever good or evil may be, none conceives them independently.

Yes, my statement admits the existence of evil, and also the existence of good, but also their identity. Pain is evil, and yet because it is so, you can know good, therefore, it is good.

now all we need is to swallow the absurdism pill and realize that all philosophical problems and just psychological problems disguised by and expressed through language! truth is valued because it promotes ataraxia, not the other way around! the greeks had it right all along!!! I'M FINALLY FREE FROM PHILOSOPHY YES!

>*Suddenly your reality crumbles until nothing but a void surrounds you*
>*White shapes form in front of you, a enormous wall of text*
>*LEVEL TWO*

Well I can accept that you need a little bad for there to be good. That perhaps I set up a cheeky false dichotomy of opposites.
I can even accept your definition of knowledge, although I don't think you're giving me the most generous interpretation.
Because we only need a little pain, I reckon, a little bit of the alternative, to contextualise (and therefore appreciate) the Good of Pleasure, bliss and happiness - and freedom from pain, ataraxia

I'm rereading my mess of a post, glad somehting can come from it ahaha

Now what if I told you ataraxia and pleasure are incompatible, and ataraxia can only be achieved through asceticism?

This. Analytic philosophers would start counting cunt hairs once they got down there like spazzy losers while sexy, swarthy poetic continental philosophers like Derrida would talk of vulgar writing and logocentrism in obfuscatory ways until the panties drop.

I'd say that medical science will one day allow us the luxury of both.
I'd say it its likely dependent on the individual's life experiences and biochemistry.
I'd say it's a popular belief, I haven't tried it myself. I find my life to be a consistent 6.5/10 which I'm happy with.
I'd more interested in your proving it to me, or you opinion about it in general, but if you're going to get Sartrian on me cushion the blow with a bit more context this time

Mostly bits of misinterpreted Heraclitus and Schopenhauer so far, and its probably going to stay that way.
'Pleasure' is a negative : in any case it is the satisfaction of an emerged, whether conscious or unconscious, desire, a positive (in a void state, desire appeared and satisfaction only put an end to this desire). Desiring is suffering : it is testifying of something that is lacking, that is missing, that is unsatisfactory or insufficient. When one thinks he or she is not desiring, not suffering, or believes he has ceased desiring because his wishes have been fulfilled, he becomes struck with boredom : thus appears the desire to desire, to escape from boredom, and suffering follows suit. It is frightening, as well, to realize that one never truly desires : whether your determinism is Marx's, Freud's, neurosciences', etc. desire is something out of your control. You do not desire, something desires for you. The only solution to this problem, if one desires to achieve ataraxia, is to stop desiring, and thus, also, abandon fulfillment or pleasure : thus, abstinence ans asceticism.

I know it's paradoxical and etc.
I'm out for tonight

aiight, good night

do you think nick land has ever had sex?

to be fair though the term continental philosopher is an oxymoron
>they spend more time ready to hand that getting a handy
>they are more concerned with finding the thing in itself than finding their thing in a woman
>they're more concerned with being and nothingness than flicking the bean into nothingness
>forget No Exit its more like No Entrance

Doesn't he have a chink wife and kids?

jew wife but they live in china

is he really married to that other CCRU member

this her?

shanghai.nyu.edu/academics/faculty/directory/anna-greenspan

>her?
indeed

What edition should I get of Tractatus and of Investigations? What is On Certainty and should I get a copy of this, as well?

Big if true