Hes not terribly signifigant in the context of real philosophy. I believe he was popularized by non philosohper scientists of various disciplines, because he argued basically that philosophy was useless. Scientists tend to want to lock out philosophers, or just people outside their discipline in general (where the philosopher is the most competent to do so- someone who doesn't share their biases but is smart enough to know how to value their claims) from being seen as competent to comment on their work. His arguments are very weak, and it's basically a bunch of bull.
LOL What???!!! And here I thought EFOC was responsible for all the ridiculously uninformed and stupid posts here. Wittgenstein is arguably the most significant contributor to 20th century philosophy, being responsible for the entirety of contemporary analytic philosophy, postmodernist thought, as well as game-theoretic approaches and AI thought. Hit the books some time kriminal.
Any contributions he made to other disciplines have nothing to do with philosophy. The guy set us back greatly. Everything he said had the ulterior motive of trying to give credibility to scientists that they do not deserve. Give me any argument of his and I will destroy it. Lets start with one already posted: "Wherof one cannot speak, one must be silent" No subject is brought to the attention of any person without them investigating it or coming across it themselves, OR someone else presenting it to them. If someone comes to you and says X is true, then until he proves otherwise he is speaking when he doesn't know what he is talking about. And part of him convincing you of otherwise is you questioning him about all alternatives to his claim until you are satisfied that there is no information that could contradict what he believes. After all KNOWLEDGE IS THE ABSCENCE OF DISSENTING INFORMATION, not blind faith in what a scientist tries to force down your throat based on his potentially biased experimental results combined with what might be his poor reasoning skills. Or how about this one against visual definitions: Q: If someone points to a book on a table and says book, how could you tell whether the sound of the word book was to be connected to the book or the table? A: Easy, your mind keeps record of that experience as well as the next time it hears the word book when the only thing similar in view is the book and the table is nowhere to be seen. Then it compares the two and now has some grouped information that looks like: (Sound of word book) U (Image of book) x2 Where U means coincidently, and x2 means its happened twice so far. As for the book being viewed from different angles, knowledge of what rotation performed on any object looks like (and therefore the ability to recognize an object from any angle as long as there was some connection to the angle you saw it at before) is probably one of the first thigns any consiousness with visual input let alone person ever learns. This would be realized by isolating certain aspects of what you saw, ie basic geometric shapes (line, curve, maybe more complicated ones as a whole like rectangle etc) and then memorizing how they transformed when rotated, then realizing all objects are composed of them. Please someone give me a useful argument of witt's in the realm of philosophy that I cannot blow out of the water, and I will stop thinking of him as useless. I won't argue with the statement that he might be the most signifigant contributer to recent philosophy. To the recent ignorance of real philosophy that is.
Surely you jest. None of your points whatsoever have had the effect of 'blowing' Wittgenstein's out of the water. In fact, your methodology alone serves to support Wittgenstein's contributions: moreso than any philosopher before him, Wittgenstein drew our attention to the importance of word selection, and definition in our arguments. You may not like him, and that's fine, but realize this: the fact that any of us can use logic beyong the simple syllogistic, is entirely due to Wittgenstein.
Are you going to give examples or are you just going to stick to ad hominem? And how exactly has our reasoning ability changed from before witt?
? There was no ad hominem in my response. Reasoning doesn't take place via 'examples', so I'm not sure as to what you're looking for. Our reasoning has changed irrevocably due to Wittgenstein. It was his insight that brought about the downfall of the sanctity of the a priori, and almost all deductive logic (outside of purely formal investigations). This caused a massive shift in how we developed arguments, in particular with respect to certainty and probability. Without Wittgenstein, there would be no 'analytical engines', no incompleteness theorem, no "Principia Mathematica", no game-theoretic approaches, et cetera.
Ok. If I simply post immediately after you, A) Everything you said with not before it B) Just anything which contradicts what you said but added nothing new to argument What purpose does that serve? Absolutely nothing. All your statements basically boil down to that. What is an argument, a claim etc that witt made in any of those fields if you wish, that made him signifigant? Simply saying he is signifigant doesn't make him so... But by the way your statements are absurd... You claim witt invented things that have been used in basic form since ancient times... Simply counting on your fingers is an example of an analytic engine... People do what benefits them... NAH REALLY? Next are you going to tell me that he invented math? Godel's incompleteness theorem basically boils down to Leyr's response to global skeptisism which says that the only knowledge a person is capable of having is the abscence of dissenting information, and that will have to be good enough.
Godel's incompleteness theorem is a logical proof that shows that some questions that can be asked using a representational system can never be answered using that system. Not by never finding the answer, which is not proof at all, but by showing the possible answers will contradict. It doesn't talk about lack of information, and next best things to knowledge.
Huh? I don't understand what you're saying here. Again, I don't know what you're referring to. An argument is a series of propositions and a conclusion that is validly drawn from them. Absurd? Not at all. That would imply that there was a contradiction. Again, you're wrong. Counting on your fingers is simple enumeration; there is no algorithm involved. And, as I said, without Wittgenstein's criticism of the revered status of deductive logic, these developments would not have been possible.
I have to read more Wittgenstein, you can say a lot about him, but not that he lacked style. "Allright, chaps, I just finished up philosophy. The end guy isn't all that hard once you know how to beat him. I'll be heading off to do some gardening now, ta ta" Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Also, he did make the system that we still use nowadays for sentential logic (or at least that's what I think it's called) and he properly introduced the concept of "nonsense" to philosophy, which I think he deserves some credit for Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You guys are only making ad hominem arguments so this is a pretty pointless discussion. But I might as well respond in kind. Wittgenstein was narrowminded fool. We who still uses his logic? They still teach it in philosophy of language classes... Go down the hall and learn a totally different kind of logic. Or just about any other class. Make a computer program, or make up your own logic for your needs like most mathematicians have. I don't think you understand exactly what an analytic machine is. I can make a computer out of a water mill. There is nothing signifigant about analytic machines, they are just mechanical devices, and wittgenstein is certainly not repsonsible for them. Nonsense? His arguments about philosophical matters were arguments from ignorance. If you don't understand something, you are in no position to claim it is nonsensical. His claim that words only meant what they were used as and therefore philosophical questions like "What is time?" are meaningless completely missed the point. What did he think philosophers were asking when they asked a question like that? I might know that I have to be somewhere at a certain time, but that doesn't encompass the entire concept of time. Tommorow I will use it a completely different way. Somewhere in our heads there is a general meaning of time that allows us to know when and how to use it. And unless our minds are infinite, there is some sort of pattern or algorithm that allows us to determine this. Such algorithms are what philosophers have been interested in all along whether they realized it or not.
You obviously haven't studided too much formal logic. Up until this point, there has been no ad hominem. I guess that's why he's one of the top ten studied philosophical thinkers then..... You might want to let all contemporary thinkers in linguistics know about this then; apparently they've been on the wrong track for the past 50 years or so.
No ad hominem? Thank you for clearly demonstrating the problem with your thinking. Since the dawn of argument, ad hominem arguments have been used and people have been criticized others for using them. Just because someone gave it a name recently, or wrote down what it is and why it is wrong doesn't mean he invented it! The whole concept of intellectual property seems to have brought about this misconception that people who come up with this stuff are either 1) The first person to think about it 2) The first person to communicate it or write it down 3) Some how responsible for the nature of the world that makes their ideas relevant and valid (meaning at the very best all they did was discover the worlds truths which would have been discovered by someone else later and probably already has been discovered by people in the past that just haven't been recognized for it) None of which are usually the case, and the third is of course never the case. Assuming your statement about how much Witt is studied is even true, just what do you think the signifigance of that is? He is studied for political reasons. Is there a vote on curriculum anywhere? No... Its just arbitrated by people sharing certain biases... to whom the concept of a philosopher who tells everyone to not think so much (and in the absence of any percieved superior course of action be more likely to do as they are told) is appealing. Anyone who refers to the number of people who agree with a viewpoint is definitely NOT a philosopher and is woefully unqualified to be commenting on anything related to philosophy. How much debating does it take someone to learn that A) People agree out of social pressure not because they come to the same conclusion after subjecting the subject to the same degree of scrutiny the founder of a viewpoint and having the same understanding or better B) Your trying to exert social pressure on your opponent to agree which proves A... But anyways its your comment is probably nonsensical anyways, unless these linguistic scholars work is directly tied to wittgensteins claim about the types of questions philosophers ask. Not to mention your use of ALL, which is of course a lie especially considering that I am at least one example of someone who disagrees. In reality, if anyone the ones who agree with witt's viewpoints are simply the ones chosen to be more recognized which means that this reflects not the number who agree with witt but the viewpoints of certain people who share the same biases. The fact is, people already knew long before the existence of wittgenstein that some combinations of words had no meaning. People did not walk around saying tall short person, or impotent superpower etc. Questions like what is time could not be set aside as nonsensical BECAUSE they were not nonsensical.
- You accused... someone of using an ad hominem, he pointed out that he didn't see any ad hominems. You should pay attention before you open your mouth or place your fingers on the keyboard, especially when you're using the kind of rhetoric you are Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Also, in philosophy there is a lot of value placed on clearly phrasing out important concepts, even if we all really knew them allready. That's why there was a big debate on how exactly we should define knowledge recently. We all sort of knew it all along, but it's good to have a clear definition to refer to. - Dude, when it comes to discussing importance of a viewpoint, the number of people who agree with it is pretty damn relevant - regardless of whether you're a philosopher, sociologist or a purple banana from Mars.
If you're going to go around throwing out philosophical terminology, you should do some studying first: ad hominem The rest of your comments don't deserve remark.
