Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophy - John Searle & Bryan Magee (1987)

00:00 Introduction
03:37 Picture Theory of Meaning
08:56 Meaning as Use
11:09 Family Resemblance
15:44 Language Games
20:35 Religious Language
23:03 Philosophical Puzzlement
24:12 Private Language
29:27 Writing Style
32:28 Influence Outside Philosophy
34:16 Searle's Evaluation

#philosophy #wittgenstein #bryanmagee

[Philosophy_Overdose]

Note, this is a reupload. I preferred the audio of this version, so that's the main reason I decided to reupload it. I’ll still leave the previous video up as unlisted, so as to not break any external links with it. Sorry about any inconvenience!

[mikaelthesleff]

Without a doubt the clearest summary of Wittgensteins thought that I’ve come across. Kudos for making a very difficult philosopher understandable to a wider audience !

[jakecarlo]

Tremendous. For me the peak of this program. Thank you PO, really.

[neoepicurean]

This is a really good discussion of Wittgenstein.

[ThesBoy]

Fascinating and insightful. Thank you for the upload.

John Searle, dil felsefesinin "Büyük Açıklayıcısı" olarak görülmeli. Çok güzel ve sade bir şekilde Wittgenstein, Schlick ve bütün Viyana Çevresini anlatabiliyor.

[entropy]

Brilliant YouTube, thank you for posting ❤

Drawing from the metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta, LW's first work seems to be about using language to describe "All This".

His second work seems to be a negation similar to the Sanskrit term: neti neti.

Perhaps, his third work might have been the inexpressible reality which grounds all that is. Again using Sanskrit the term is: Iti Iti.

[patricksullivan]

Enjoyed the perspective on the transition from learning about a reality that dictates language and the evolution of a sometime non-reality expressed in language.👍🤓

[nowhereman]

It is incredibly self-affirming to independently come up with a philosophical idea and then learn that someone widely viewed as being smart came up with the same idea already.

[vaccaphd]

Language is a form of adaption. What matters is that it works. " A cup of coffee, please."

[iart]

Buddhist philosophy is to use meditation to experience BEING without language, practicing this skill is transformative

[edmi]

Why can't it be both?
In a conversation, discern the language game the other is using and attempt to find what picture they are trying to convey?

[tryharder]

Maybe i'll understand LW's mission before I die, maybe not. This helps

[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."

[CasperLCat]

This McGee fellow is wonderfully clear and organized in his facilitation of these programs. Searle is pretty clear, as well. I wish the “great” thinkers were as clear. Isn’t philosophy supposed to be about clarity ?

[chinmaybhat]

John Searle[42:11] - "I think Wittgenstein only scratched the surface." Why did John Searle thinks Wittgenstein only scratched the surface?

[hermanhale]

They might as well be talking about what color shoes do the mice wear on Mars?, to me.

[canastraroyal]

29:27 I think Searle left out the fundamental reason for Wittgenstein's writing style: coherence.

While attacking philosophical nonsense, he could never express himself with (what he deemed as) philosophical nonsense. There is actually a great deal of research as to whether his 'jargon' (language game, grammar, form of life, rule-following etc.) is used in a theoretical new way, like a jargon per se, or in its ordinary meaning.

Also, if the approach was to be therapeutical, rather than theoretical, of course he wouldn't resort to definitions and deductions or whatever — but to questions and comparisons.

Maybe he just couldn't do what P.M.S. Hacker did with his ideas (to translate them to philosophical general jargon and make them into a theory of sorts), maybe it would be just too painstaking and not as effective in drawing attention, but maybe he would find a great deal of problems in Hacker's writing style and general stance, and would've prefered Anscombe's style as representative of his legacy.

[dr.mikeybee]

Of course, today we have the notion of a context signature or vectorized representation. So it isn't a word that matters, it's the context. Just as letters make words, words make meaning. Doesn't Wittgenstein say something like I know a word by the words around it? This is behind the idea that is fueling current advances in large language models of artificial intelligence.

[sonarbangla]

It seems to me that Wittgenstein could in some capacity is meaningless.