The Two Philosophies of Wittgenstein - Anthony Quinton & Bryan Magee (1977)

In this program, Anthony Quinton discusses the early and late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein with Bryan Magee. This is from a 1977 series on Modern Philosophy called Men of Ideas.

#Philosophy #Wittgenstein #BryanMagee

[PP]

Brilliant. Even as Lord Quinton confuses himself. Simply brilliant. Wittgenstein is really something extra.

[michaelcollins]

What a fascinating conversation between these two English scholars and gentlemen.

[Silvercardinal]

This really was an excellent summary of theories that are generally very hard to grasp.

[theodoreconstantini]

I always found his difficult to clearly grasp but this video is very effective in explaining things, for me.

[Wittgen_stein]

This is the best we can get so far if we wanna know about Wittgensteint.I watched John Searle's, but didn't feel like this one.Thank you Lord Quinton'

[AB-wfek]

I don't know why anyone hasn't drawn a connection between Wittgenstein's work and Large Language Models yet.

It's tempting to say that LLMs "understand" language, but you wouldn't say a calculator understands arithmetic. Perhaps it's semantically better to say LLMs do language in the same way calculators do arithmetic.

From my understanding, LLMs might connect the ideas from Wittgenstein's early and later work.

Through the architecture of deep neural networks, LLMs are a mapping of the relationship between all points within a dataset. So in this sense, I think LLMs demonstrate that meaning itself, is a mapping of the distance between any given word and every other word within a language.

In otherwords, the meaning of the word "dog" can be defined by its proximity to every other word in the English language.

This concept also addresses the later ideas presented in the video.

Because LLMs are based upon a conglomeration of a very wide set of human output, it's a mapping of the common use and understanding of any particular word. It's a polling or sampling of how we as a collective use any particular word, i.e. the common meaning of a word.

[lucianopavarotti]

I'm sometimes reminded of the Laurel and Hardy film "Chumps at Oxford", in which a blow on the head returns Stan to his real persona of the brilliantly donnish Lord Paddington, . At one point, Lord Paddington receives a note from Albert Einstein, asking to have his own theory of relativity explained back to him, as it has gotten Einstein himself confused.

[ingridfong-daley]

The form of Philosophical Investigations is part of what got me into W. Its efficiency appealed to me, for as many disparate elements as it contains, it's still comfortably approachable and leaves a wide berth around each concept for further reflection, discouraging the habit of simply rushing thru all willy-nilly, speed-reader-y just to 'get the gist'. It's not meant to be skimmed or crammed, more "considered, " like scripture maybe. Or sculpture.
I think there are a few reasons he doesn't draw conclusions (or offer further commentary on big statements), but ultimately i think he didn't feel qualified to accurately make those conclusions--or perhaps he understood perfectly and his whole agony in life was that he couldn't find the "precisely correct" way to state it to make sure his grand conclusive statements wouldn't be misunderstood. Whereof one cannot speak... but that doesn't mean one doesn't KNOW.

[jamesnaughton]

Some of the episodes of this programme are unhelpfully technical, with the professional philosopher getting bogged down in explanation that you only understand if you already understand it. This episode, though, is a model of sophisticated but accessible explanation for the general viewer, along with Bernard Williams on Descartes, Myles Burneat on Plato and a few others.

[jacquelinewhittaker]

Thankyou. It was a discussion that lit fires, rather than stamped out fire. I was amazed that the words grammar, noun and verb. .. didn't put in an appearance. Those were the building blocks when I learned a second and third European language. It was satisfying to start making sentences of my own, once I'd learned some blocks. It was a game. More recently, learning 8th and 9th European, I enjoy Michel X's method where complex verb structures are 'parroted', as babies and children do in acquiring their first language. The nouns are easily found in a pocket dictionary and can be slotted in at a later date. Help me out someone ....what was the linguist Michel's surname? I want to say Quoist, but that's wrong.

[psychologixselfmastery]

A discussion this intelligent and non confrontational would not be entertained on modern TV. More's the pity!

[robilotte]

just out of curiosity, where do you get these from?

[ingridfong-daley]

They talk about "language play" like it has no purpose, as though language is devalued through the 'activity of languaging' if it's not brought to a concrete end in every instance. Just as artists draft and sketch, so do songwriters, wordsmiths... and scientists and mathematicians. Play is exercise for the brain to explore possibilities and define/push boundaries of usage and meaning.
I feel like a lot of Wittgenstein's suffering could've been alleviated by simply recognising that music and language are exactly the same thing; 2 parts of a larger category of communication that includes math and visual art. Taking them as aspects of a larger whole removes much of the needless conflict that kept him up at night.

[lorenzbroll]

Wonder if Quinton had been on the bottle again - thank goodness for Bryan giving an account at least!

[ranomukherjee]

Hoping for another delightful discussion on Ferdinand de Saussure & Wittgenstein...

[SelfReflective]

@04:28: "This is a unique phenomenon in the whole history of philosophy; a philosopher of genius producing two different and incompatible philosophies, each of which decisively influenced a whole generation." - doesn't say a lot for philosophy. No wonder Samuel Johnson called it a "labyrinth", and I wonder if Wittgenstein would not have been happier and more useful to society by becoming a mechanical engineer.

[jacquelinewhittaker]

Second comment one could make so many ...it was such a creative discussion. I first studied for a maths degree, and that helps me understand Wittgenstein ....including his paragraph naming practice....the stuff of a thousand boring maths text books. Then I studied European languages as a hobby for the rest of my life. And finally I studied THEOLOGY, which disgusted me. The words and arrangements of theology were death dealing rather than light and life engancing. Oscar Wilde's quote from the Ballad of Reading Gaol, gives a fair description of theologians, for me, " each man kills the thing he loves'.

[jamesbrodrickmusic]

Two masters of the English language. “naïve pristine fundamentalness” - wow

[willieluncheonette]

"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."

[kodfkdleepd]

It's called category theory and was worked out in the 50's.