Intro to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

Lecture for my philosophy of langusage class, Dickinson College.

[julianbaskys]

Thank you for this video! Helps me with my presentation for class a great deal!

[pillmuncher]

In my understdanding the slab-game shows that meaning can't be determined by what is observable. I say "slab!" and my assistant brings me a slab. Refers "Slab!" to the thing? Or to the action of bringing me the slab? It seems, meaning is underdetermined by publicly observable behavior. Quine's "gavagai" comes to mind, BTW.

After that Wittgenstein talks about rule-following. Can there be an internal rule that I follow? How would I decide if I have followed the rule correctly? Some people have understood Wittgenstein to say that memory is unreliable and therefor can't be trusted, but his argument is much stronger: there can't exist a criterion to decide if I followed an internal rule correctly, because remembering is itself rule-following. To determine if I followed a rule correctly, I have to remember how to apply the rule, which means, I must follow the internal rule of applying a rule to determine if I followed the other rule correctly. Did I follow correctly this time? We land in an infinite regress. So, no, such a thing - an internal rule - is impossible. The Private Language Argument is just another illustration of that. At least, that is how I understood it when I read it twenty years ago.

Wittgenstein would probably hate me for characterizing it that way, but, oh well.

The Philosophical Investigations is one of my favorite books, BTW. Another one is Fact, Fiction, and Forecast by Nelson Goodman. As Kripke pointed out, both are quite similar in some respects.

[tabishshibli]

Thank you so much for this video. Cheers.

[santacruzman]

Witty, entertaining and deep comprehensive knowledge of Wittgenstein...brilliant combo and a pleasure to learn from you. Is William Macy your long lost brother?

[notreal]

Also I like how your description says "langusage", I can't tell if that's a mistake or not.

[marcpadilla]

To be or not to be the philospical genius of the day is to.deliver ideas relative to the times in question. The hunger pangs for more meaning.after the fact is the difference between logic, abstraction, and interpretation. Leaving the subject with more, not less, curiosity.

[comarpe]

Besides the brown and blue books, he published some remarks of logical form.

[marcpadilla]

Paradoxes arent enough to meet our apetite for logic and context. It may be thats the extent of, limit, of words to express an idea. Interpretation becomes the essence or cypher of the subject.

[derekruairc]

I commend your style. Ty. I saw the other vid with Kaufmann. I believe Wittgenstein's point(s) is/are vital. I also believe that a deconstrucrive methodology is vital too. For me, the idea is within the social and since that has been constructed on a material basis with necessary spiritual unknowingness that has legitimate claims to knowledge, language is already a medium of prejudiced thought. Ty for the vid.

[kvartlapp]

Hanging out by the fjords is a pretty neat experience though, just saying. Would have done the same if I thought I had solved philosophy x)

[notreal]

I think it's cool that Wittgenstein had read Marx and was called a Stalinist.