Sunday, April 02, 2006
Notes for Tuesday, April 4.
Read to p. 339. Logical Positivism: Wittgenstein.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Born in Vienna, Austria of wealthy parents. Gave away his entire inheritance. Studied in England in 1911, a protégé of Bertrand Russell; returned to native country to fight in WWI, was taken prisoner in Italy, during which time he wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, barely 100 pages long, analytically organized around 7 propositions. First interpreted by the Vienna Circle in positivistic terms, certain propositions were nonetheless troubling. E.g. (6.4312) "The solution to the enigma of life in space and time lies outside space and time." It was becoming apparent that there was a mystic dimension to Wittgenstein's thought.
Wittgenstein drops out of philosophy to become a rural primary schoolteacher in the Austrian Alps, then returns to Cambridge at the instance of Russell, who arranges for Wittgenstein's tractatus to be accepted as his doctoral thesis. He replaces the retiring G. E. Moore. He is secretive about his new ideas, and bids his students be so, too. But copies of notes circulated, and were published posthumously as Philosophical Investigations. His later thought was language-dominated. "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." (Already in the Tractatus.) Wittgenstein's new view of language was that "the meaning of a word is its use in the language." (Philosophical Investigations). The rules of the (language) game(s). Language "gone on holiday." Wittgenstein questions the feasiblity of isolating "the simplest constituents of reality," or what he himself once called "atomic facts." He no longer thought the job of the philosopher was to reveal what was "behind" language, but to reveal the implicit logic of ordinary language.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Born in Vienna, Austria of wealthy parents. Gave away his entire inheritance. Studied in England in 1911, a protégé of Bertrand Russell; returned to native country to fight in WWI, was taken prisoner in Italy, during which time he wrote the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, barely 100 pages long, analytically organized around 7 propositions. First interpreted by the Vienna Circle in positivistic terms, certain propositions were nonetheless troubling. E.g. (6.4312) "The solution to the enigma of life in space and time lies outside space and time." It was becoming apparent that there was a mystic dimension to Wittgenstein's thought.
Wittgenstein drops out of philosophy to become a rural primary schoolteacher in the Austrian Alps, then returns to Cambridge at the instance of Russell, who arranges for Wittgenstein's tractatus to be accepted as his doctoral thesis. He replaces the retiring G. E. Moore. He is secretive about his new ideas, and bids his students be so, too. But copies of notes circulated, and were published posthumously as Philosophical Investigations. His later thought was language-dominated. "The limits of my language are the limits of my world." (Already in the Tractatus.) Wittgenstein's new view of language was that "the meaning of a word is its use in the language." (Philosophical Investigations). The rules of the (language) game(s). Language "gone on holiday." Wittgenstein questions the feasiblity of isolating "the simplest constituents of reality," or what he himself once called "atomic facts." He no longer thought the job of the philosopher was to reveal what was "behind" language, but to reveal the implicit logic of ordinary language.
# posted by Michael @ 2:15 PM 
