So is he actually right or is he wrong in the end...

Well the irony is that you are contributing less than me. So it's as if you haven't even read as much as I have.

Just go read it you faggot, read it all until you can make your own assumptions and until then lurk moar

I can't really disagree with this post so fine, I will. Pretty rood that nobody answer though.

You did get an answer, but instead chose to feed the trolls: and I'm not even that guy.

And if you want an even clearer answer: he states you can't use language to go beyond linguistic issues; likewise, you can't explain things that are not physical unless they are contained in physics. If these statements seem at least 50% true to you, then you definitely should read Wittgenstein (look at me, I just said "you should do this"!).

Mathematicians have more or less the same feud with modern quantum theory physicists, because they use mathematics as a railgun to throw at literally anything, with no regards to things like consistency or, you know, actually making sure their problems lie inside the domain of our particular mathematics (it isn't). Wittgenstein "ended" philosophy insofar as he attempted to set the upper limits of where we should stop pretending to do "philosophy" and realize we were just playing cute language-games (such as in aesthetics).

If you read a lot of current writings in free will, it's pretty obvious it's all just bullshit semantics

It's all "free will exists because I define free will as something that exists" or "free will doesn't exist because I define free will as something that doesn't exist"

So effectively, language cannot be used for philosophy because language is stuck in the confines of language? And philosophy is stuck in the confines of philosophy?

Source on quantum mechanics somehow being outside of the domain of the mathematics that are used to describe it?

pic related

I'm not him but it's a bad idea to get into quantum mechanics since that whole field is misunderstood by the public, they just like to flash fun facts around and pretend that they understand the details. No one here could do quantum mechanics. All you will get is very basic and vague answers that might even be incorrect.

I read an intro quantum mechanics textbook once. It's not terribly hard if you have a solid background in math and you don't try to actually understand it

>And because of this, he thinks that saying "you should do this" is a meaningless statement because "should" has no real meaning.

Neither early nor late witty were getting at this. It sounds like you're either thinking about arguments about how words are non connotative or arguments about how modality is fucked.

>absurdist
What the fuck? Nigga you need to actually read the shit you're talking about. Learn how simple quantified modal logic works, look up frege's puzzle, look up the important tractatus lines if you aren't going to read the whole thing, look at what carnap and the positivists do with that, read "The Two Dogmas of Empiricism" by Quine, THEN go read late witty.

Nigger, the Tractatus is really a book about Ethics.

>Of course I haven't read it. I read a little bit of the first one and I watched a short summary of the second one which is how I got here.

bait we cannot take we must pass over in silence

>reading king, steinbeck or hemingway

To : is pretty much correct in assessing we would not be able to hold a discussion of this level in here. I can however link to a very good essay on the historical debate of rigor VS pragmatism on quantum mechanics (plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-nvd/) that most here can more or less follow through.

The basic point to be made is that contemporary Quantum Theory breaks down (we break it down on purpose) its rigor when it becomes empirical. This particular part I can talk about because I work with condensed matter physics. What we tend to do is assume systems can be approximated to what they would be if no "external things" to the system existed. From this assumption we use empirical data to derive functions that describe the very particular situations we are trying to describe (in my case we base ourselves in something called the Kohn-Sham equations). Problem is, even this approximation is a "formal operation" that does not actually hold any consistency within mathematics in spite of agreeing with experiment with as many decimal places as we want. Quoting from the link I gave:

"Mathematically rigorous formulations of QFT, such as Wightman's axiomatic QFT and algebraic QFT, provide clear conceptual frameworks within which precise questions and answers to interpretational issues can be formulated. However, they are sorely lacking with regards to facilitating the derivation of empirical consequences." - I concede though, I don't really know about the foundations of quantum mechanics, I only use the parts of it (that I know) are not rigorous.

>Tractatus
>mostly filler

Fucking hell.

Person you responded to here:
I'm a physicist. Please only speak for yourself when it comes to peoples competence on certain matters...
I see. I took the the orignal () post as somehow implying that the mathematical formalism behind QM is faulty in and of itself. That there are many problems when it comes to joining the empirical aspects of QM with the theory is something completely different. Thanks for clarifying!

no

>he states you can't use language to go beyond linguistic issues;
What were some examples?

>to tackle issues we have no point of reference for dealing with

What were some examples, how did he have reference to be certain about this claim?

>What were some examples?
Consciousness, internal mental states, and so on

Just read the "beetle in the box" section of PI

This is gigabait

can electrons be created and destroyed?

Is the EM field actually 'somethingness' that actually exists at all points in space?

I think it might clear some things up for you if you actually read the fucking books

>consciousness, internal mental states
So basically, words can never 1:1 equal feelings, experience, sensation?
Like a blind from birth man being described the color red.

but did he suggest how much we might approach doing so?

(there is always that knee jerk 'how do you know we see the same colors, or taste the same'... isn't there pretty good evidence of a standard of approaching similarity of at least base experiences?) (any more specific examples of his that are real hang ups?)

How about people that have discuss the topic by summarizing the concept simply and easily as it can be done, im not going to read an entire book when there is particular interesting tid bits that are potentially controversial and that I can potentially discuss and successfully elucidate and dismiss without reading the entire book

Why dont you read the book? If you did you could provide me with a single interesting example of worthiness, of profundity, of intrigue

Not that guy, but I asked a major Wittgensteinian scholar about this once, about whether Wittgenstein could be reunited with a superior transcendental philosophy after having escaped its overreaching contemporary forms, and he said he wasn't really sure, that Wittgenstein's fragmentary writing on psychology is ambiguous

Consider the verbs to run, to write, to sing, to break, to think. The last one doesn't correspond to an actual action the way the others do, and there's hardly anything to describe it. It's something we know we're doing and know how to do but we run into the problem of what it is and where it comes from. Saying it's "in the head" is as exact as pointing west and saying "China's over there." The difference is we can measure the distance to China instead of giving an answer that is pragmatic metaphor or nonsense. Can we measure thinking? Even in the advances of neuroscience since Witty's time all we can do is see nodes light up on a scanner which doesn't correspond at all with what we consider "thinking."

>How dare you not spoonfeed me wikipedia summaries of things I'm too lazy to actually explore on my own beyond literal wikipedia summaries
>How dare you assume I should get a baseline standard of knowledge in the topics I'm attempting to discuss
>How dare you suggest I read on a literature board

ok as a first general vague attempt to continue the discussion to hear your response I will try to provide a satisfactory answer to your 'think' suggestion:

There are things, there are different things. You are familiar with the world, shapes, substances, motions (yeah maybe its all an illusion, maybe its not, lets assume for sake, there are some aspects about reality that are possesable), trees, rocks, boats, homes, people, places, things:

Information (said to be via light), details, of these things, are sent into our body (said to be via eyes) and somehow leave impressions (said to be called memory), we are familiar with things like computer memory, photos, videos, information, details of things imprinted, captured in a medium for storage:

When the word 'think' is used, it is generally referring to the accessing of inner images/videos of details about the world, right or wrong, comparing and contrasting, connecting, inventing/drawing.

Can we measure thinking? Of what do you want a measurement of? Thoughts per second? The size of thoughts? What is your goal here? Or this is all about what thoughts look like? Partly the whole deal with Art, trying to externalize thoughts, express the subtlety and beauty of the inner world, imagination.

So is the main aspect of this particular inquiry to suggest: the hard problem of consciousness is hard?

Give me an example for discussion, one intriguing, controversial, debatable, node of wittgenstein contention, I dont need to read his book to discuss any of those topics, im looking for discussion with people, right now, and I can do so on any of the topics in his book, prove me wrong by providing one.

he abused children for not being autistic.

Stop fucking posting and go read the book you stupid nigger.

Give me an example for discussion, one intriguing, controversial, debatable, node of wittgenstein contention, I dont need to read his book to discuss any of those topics, im looking for discussion with people, right now, and I can do so on any of the topics in his book, prove me wrong by providing one.

this is the correct answer. everything else is just highfalutin intellectual posturing

uhm, how about language fucking games you internet drolltard?

go raed a book.

Wittgenstein isn't the kind of person you can just throw around in a convo with normies, ESPECIALLY if you haven't read his work

Holy fuck next you're going to ask us to summarize Hegel for you

and I dont have to give you an example. |I don't have to do anything you tell me. this is a disursive environment for intellectual discussion ensconced in the presupposition that all the constituent members have actually, and not particularly unparsimoniously contra tempora, READ MORE THAN ONE FUCKING BOOK.

You and everyone replying to you without saging should kill themselves.

the term 'normies' isn't just a term you can throw around in a conversation with people who realize that anyone who unironically uses the term 'normies' ultimately suffers from the same deficiency the latter group are perceived to suffer from by the former group—namely, a completely lack of individuality or originality in expression of thought—ESPECIALLY if you are going to follow it up with namedropping a bag of Hegels.

dude i eat dick for breakfast

come at me

no offense but you kind of seem like youre too much of a brainlet to understand wittgenstein

just give up

I understand everything wittgenstein wrote about better than he did.

What is one aspect of his writing you found interesting, anything profound or important, controversial, debatable; anything you think he wrote that is true that others can possibly object to?

Wittgenstein would scoff at this subcutaneously puerile excuse of a 'response,' as I do now.

You've provided me with zero evidence for your claim, presumably expecting me to simply accept your assertion on 100% faith instead. And even if you were to provide convincing evidence to ramshackly support your claim, it would never stand—like a house of cards built without glue of any kind in a category 3 hurricane—due to the pure shoddiness anent the fundament of the claim itself à la the status on my neocortex viz a viz comprehending old man Lud. Also your grammar is whack af.

>Wittgenstein would scoff at this subcutaneously puerile excuse of a 'response,' as I do now.
No he wouldn't

He literally told Bertrand Russell that he was too much of a brainlet to understand him

He prefaced the tractatus with a quote saying something like "you probably won't get this but here goes anyways..."

Why would I read his book/s if I am speaking to people who supposedly read his book/s and they can't offer me a single interesting conceptual, profound, important, discussable, debatable, nugget of content?

>broo, broo, because just read it!! just do it! hehehe

The only value of wittgenstein is as a merit badge stitched on your girl scout sash

>I understand everything wittgenstein wrote about better than he did.

>I am every slave, rape victim, blind man, Polio survivor, triple amputee Iraqi war vet, pregnant and obese 12 year old Ukrainian orphan, alcoholic sufferer of gingivitis who killed his kids while driving drunk, Rwandan genocide survivor, North Korean insurgent, terminal rabies patient, early human struggling for survival in the Pleistocene era, girl tortured by Denis Rader, Jesus Christ, Ghandi, and Copernicus who ever lived. Know my pain.

Here's my evidence:
>you don't know what the fuck you're talking about
>you're trying to tackle one of the most complex philosophers of all time without reading any of his work
>you're trying to get quick and easy answers to problems that people that have dedicated their lives to understanding wittgenstein haven't been able to give
>you repeatedly misunderstand the clearest possible explanations anyone can give of his work

The problem with Witty, like all anti-philosophers, is that it's impossible to show the impossibility of philosophy from within philosophy, since that is a contradiction. Technically, everything he said was totally irrelevant to philosophical inquiry (unless you read it differently than he intended or appropriate some of his ideas for philosophy). You can look at his work and decide to stop doing philosophy, but this can never be a philosophically justified decision. It would just be an act of will, or an act based on some non-philosophical criterion. The Ends of Philosophy by Cahoone addresses this.

>Why would I read his book/s if I am speaking to people who supposedly read his book/s and they can't offer me a single interesting conceptual, profound, important, discussable, debatable, nugget of content?
1) we have
2) if you actually read his work you'd know how much of a tall order this is
3) all of his propositions build on each other in really complex ways
4) the only way we can satisfy what you want is by directly copy+pasting his entire bibliography onto a fucking imageboard
5) in this case, you can just look at the pdf's online and stop being such a lazy demanding fuck

>The only value of wittgenstein is as a merit badge stitched on your girl scout sash
He has a TON of interesting ideas, but the whole point of his ideas is that they're averse to quick and easy summarizing. It's like asking some random guy on the internet to tell you a easily understandable nugget of content about quantum physics - there's no real way it's possible without giving an absurdly wrong explanation

this is why you get told to >start with the greeks

People dramatically look way too far into his "antiphilosophy" side. Literally why would he write 4 more books on philosophy if he thought it was so dumb?

It's more likely that he didn't want to end philosophy as much as that he wanted to end whatever the fuck Russell and Frege were doing

You're asking why?

Instead of answering your question, let me refer you to a common grade school professorial adage: there is no such thing as a stupid question. See, this is bullshit. Unadulterated, unrefined, incomprehensibly insane and inane bullshit. There are stupid questions, and they get asked all the time. Here's a short list:

Is God real?
How are you?
What is pineapple called if it's painted blue?
Could there possibly be a chance that my celebrity crush and I will marry some day if I fly to Hollywood for her?
Why would I read his book/s if I am speaking to people who supposedly read his book/s and they can't offer me a single interesting conceptual, profound, important, discussable, debatable, nugget of content?

you're so stupid I hate you so much

>1) we have
I will read the rest of your post after I write this: you saw me ask multiple times, so can you show me where you 1), where you have? Someone gave me a 'think' example of contention and mystery and uncertainty and elucidation, and I provided my response, and I dont think they responded to my response, but just incoherently fagged out (I guess wittg was right!!! it wasnt that he incoherently fagged out, it was just his private language game and we can never understand each other!!! how profound).

100% this guy has only watched school of life videos and thinks he knows all about philosophy

My mind is so deep and dark and powerful that it cant be described in words, mom, dad, you all will never understand. When I touch cold water, its hot. When I jump up, im jumping down, when I am happy, I am sad.

>The Ends of Philosophy by Cahoone
intredestingh, thanks

>you don't know what the fuck you're talking about
Aforementioned opinion restated falsely as evidence for itself. Jesus you're a dum-dum: the worst flavor, too.
>you're trying to tackle one of the most complex philosophers of all time without reading any of his work
I've read the following: Culture & Value, Tractatus, and On Certainty.
>>you're trying to get quick and easy answers to problems that people that have dedicated their lives to understanding wittgenstein haven't been able to give
Another opinion falsely provided as evidence. You sure you understand what 'evidence' means there, Dragnet?
>you repeatedly misunderstand the clearest possible explanations anyone can give of his work
I'm gonna need to see this in tabular form.

Here's my evidence that you're a dum-dum:
>Could not provide even an accurate example of evidence to defend claim.
>Ostensibly does not know the definition of "evidence"
>Will respond to this post

Alright, here's the easiest Wittgenstein nugget to digest:

Try to answer this question: Have the king and queen in chess been married for long?

You're talking about me like I'm not even in the chatroom.

>implying I didn't want you to see this

>I've read the following: Culture & Value, Tractatus, and On Certainty.
1) You didn't
2) If you did, you skimmed them
3) If you didn't skim them, you didn't understand them

1) I did.
2) I did not. I like my milk whole.
3) {citation required}

my sides

>implying I was implying that

I really shouldn't have to exply what has already overtly been implained

dog there is NO SUCH THING AS FILLER in philosophy

If you miss a word in a work like the Critique of Pure Reason you won't understand any of it

same goes for Wittgenstein

Read this comic. It sums it up neatly.
existentialcomics.com/philosopher/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

>If you miss a word in a work like the Critique of Pure Reason you won't understand any of it

"I'll take basic cognitive abilities for $800."

"Ok. Hvng ths ablt llws n t rd ths, nd ls prvs yr nt cmpltly rtrdd."

"What is inference?"

*ding ding ding*

So the argument is conscious intelligent A not being B, therefore A cannot understand the experience of B an appropriate percent of 'comprehending existence, experience, views, feelings, choices, thought process', which would then after that is argued shift the argument to, what is the percentage closer to, are there rare or any cases and what would it standardly be, 1%, 5%, 20%, 50%, 70%, etc.

stop trying

I get the feeling that you won't like Wittgenstein anyways

There's plenty of other philosophers out there

Wittgenstein is based OP, if you dont understand Tractatus read his Blue and Brown book

Wittgensteins fame lies in recognizing that all the symbols that we use to communicate, whether its text, phonetic, maths, etc are all lacking in their ability to describe anything *with 100% certainty*

If i were to ask you to describe what bridge means, you would return me with a series of words attempting to describe bridge

Now instead of knowing what one word means, id have to know what all these other words mean. So then id say describe to me what all these words that you used to describe bridge mean

And youd return even more separate distinct words, and we could do this all day (meanwhile confusing me even further as to what bridge means)

Witty’s point was that symbols never are the things themselves; when i say bridge, im referencing the bridge, but the word bridge is not the bridge itself.

The symbol is not the thing

Witty said philosophy then is a game of semantical tricks; and this problem is always unavoidable. You can never be 100% certain of the meaning of any symbol, long or short.

When a philosopher asks what is the meaning of life, or any question, everyone even the philosopher is unsure what he is asking

The key to Wittgenstein is the emphasis on certainty. Yes we have crude pragmatic assumptions as to what we mean when we say cat or bridge, yet it is important to recognize we can never be 100% certain as to what cat or bridge means

This isnt to say that philosophy or any search for meaning is doomed or not worth ones time

Witty just emphasizes the incredible need for clarity as to the “implied” meaning of a symbol.

(After all since we cannot have any objective concrete 100% certain meaning of any symbol, we must assume meaning, believe in it.)

This is controversial: to me this applies to mathematics as well. So the value of zero is arbitrarily assigned, and believed to be true.

This means that the age old proof that 1+1=2 could be false if you assumed the value of 2 is equivalent to 4.

“But it isn’t equal to 4! Its equal to 2!”

Its assumed to be equal to 2 and 2 only in the math system we use yes; yet one could easily create a mathematical system whose value of 2 is equal to 4, and not 1+1.

Of course someone who worships foundational “scientifical” structures would never use such heretical nonsense like a belief. /s

>Here I am, a one-time professor of philosophy who has never read a word of Aristotle!

>Is God real?
>How are you?
>What is pineapple called if it's painted blue?
>Could there possibly be a chance that my celebrity crush and I will marry some day if I fly to Hollywood for her?

I think there is some interesting information accessible if those topics are discussed. There are truths in relation. It is possible God is real. It is possible there is meaning and discussion and understanding and theorizing about the meaning of the potentials of 'how are you', what that can refer to, how it can be answered, the potential powers of it, likes and dislikes.

Someone can make up, whoever is charge with creating official words and dictionaries, or maybe even on urban dictionary, can make up a word for what a pineapple is called if painted blue: what is the point of this inquiry, and particular question topic?

Ok, there are stupid questions, but it is possible to understand the prof might use such an exaggeration as to make his students feel comfortable enough to ask any question as if the profs statement were true, can figures of speech not be understood, could the meaning of metaphors?

A lot of this I guess surrounds the word 'understanding', how to determine what percent each person is what percentage certain they understand each specific metaphor.

"Better than" is not an appropriate percent.

>stop trying
Start trying, to answer my questions

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand the Philosophical Investigations. The philosophy is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of the limits of human communication most of the concepts will go over a typical reader’s head. There’s also Wittgensteins's quietist outlook, which is deftly woven into his maxims- his personal philosophy draws heavily from obscure Pyrrhonian texts, for instance. The readers understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these adages, to realise that they are just nonsense- they can't say anything deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Wittgenstein truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Wittgenstein's existential catchphrase “Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen” which itself is a cryptic reference to the Frege's Sense and Reference. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Wittgenstein's genius wit unfolds itself on their Kindle screens. What fools.. how I pity them.

And yes, by the way, i DO have a duckrabbit tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid.

Witty is just the ultimate refinement of the anti-philosopher. Nietzsche says a lot of rather Witty things in TGS in particular and his epistemology is actually quite similar to what we find in late Wittgenstein.

Rrrrrriiiiiccccckkkkk....eeaaaassssyyyyy oooooonnnnn tttttthhhhheeeee Wwwwwiiiiittttyyyyy

>Try to answer this question: Have the king and queen in chess been married for long?

If there is no law against non conscious objects being considered married (besides stories), then bringing a chess set to a priest to be given a license of marriage. What do you consider 'for long' to be?

It's like you've brought a palette knife to an archery competition.

Also, just to fill you in, lexicographers employed by the OED officiate the induction of new words into the English language. They rarely actually create the words, however. Neologism themselves are either demonstrably coined by an individual (such as 'meme' by Richard Dawkins) or organically enter into the lexicon through popular use, usually in the form of slang or abbreviation (such as 'froyo,' short for frozen yogurt). While the origin of a young word—whether it be scientific or cultural—is often traceable, more often than not, and esp. with the ever increasing use of the internet, the birthplace remains a mystery. Such mysteries keep the modern etymology alive!

>yet it is important to recognize we can never be 100% certain as to what_____means

This is then interesting to me. How can it be known 'something/concept' can not be 100% known? How do you know it is impossible? What would it mean for it to be possible (to 100% know something)? Criteria, how would you know you knew all the criteria?

>"Better than" is not an appropriate percent.
What do you mean? In what context do you say this? What are we talking about appropriate percent? What is an appropriate percent? Can you not know anything >0%? You can never know if you know 0.000001% about anything? You dont know if there is such a thing as 'knowing anything'?

>Also, just to fill you in
ok, one of the things you asked me was about 'what is a _______ called', there are multiple things it can be called, using existing words in phrases, and also you just provided the explanation that it can be called something else, under those conditions

to

>In what context do you say this?
In the context of the conversation we're having using the terminology you've provided.

>Can you not know anything >0%?
Yes, apparently, as you've clearly demonstrated, you can not know anything greater than nothing.

>You dont know if there is such a thing as 'knowing anything'?
For this, and any other epistemological inquiries you may have, I refer you to your local rabbi.

I dont know with 100% certainty that its impossible

Your question, if i understand it correctly, is “how can i know with certainty is false or true?”

To me you cannot know with 100% certainty, simply because you can never verify precisely what means; you assume it to be true; how you convince yourself to believe it to be true is of no concern to me

Why should I assume it to be true? Because any definition or symbol I use seems to not be the thing; it is merely a representation of the thing.

Im not here to persuade others that I am objectively correct, I dont believe in an inherent objective reality. Rather to me these are subjective lenses to apply to the world that help clarify why semantical problems happen when discussing anything

>what would it mean to 100% know something

your knowledge of what is true about it must be always true on any scale of time, whether it is millions of years or 2 seconds or infinity. Of course, since we can never test the truth of something across infinity, we can never know for certain it is always true. 100% certainty is a belief in objective truth, which I reject.

Do you know that a circle is said to be round?

Do you know 100% that a circle is said to be round?

Do you know that round is a word used to describe the curve of a circle, another word is arc? And we can point to a circle, and a straight line and see the difference.

I believe 100% that a circle is rounded rather than a straight line

For this problem i will ignore pragmatic issues, specifically the problem of identifying/measuring all the particles that make up a circle in the world. If we were to actually attempt to measure our circular object with 100% certainty, we would never get consistent results due to quantum mechanics

A circle is an abstract geometric shape whose circumference can be found by the equation (circumference)=(pi)(radius)

Even if we were to be able to find the length of the radius (in my view you cant with 100% certainty simply because of the pragmatic quantum issue i mentioned above), you still have to find pi (which we all know is irrational)

My point is simple, the abstract idea of a circle is unfinished, incomplete. And I say the same of any geometrical shape

Lets take a triangle, whose reliable a[squared]=b[squared]+c[squared] always proves it is a triangle

What if we enter all possible values up to infinity for b?

Impossible, i suggest, simply because infinity never stops. We dont know if the pythagorean theorem is always true, even if it is true 99.99999999999999~% of the time

My point isnt that abstractions of shapes arent useful (to me they are), i just dont see them as eternally true

>Of course I haven't read it
Veeky Forums

Uhh that's not what a circle is, circle is the locus of points in a 2d plane equidistant from a specified point. Pi is a consequence of that, pi is defined as the ratio of diameter to circumference.

I would disagree with the assertion that the abstract idea of a circle is incomplete. The theoretical perfect shape never will exist in anything but mathematics, but that doesn't matter I don't think for the concept of a circle.