Wittgenstein 's Language-games made easy
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 พ.ค. 2024
- WITTGENSTEIN’S Language-games are not spookey or magical. I make it easy for you to understand though to be fair this is not one of my usual proper to the line cited video- It’s just meant as supplement to another series that you don’t have to watch if you don’t want to. Sorry also forgive me if it’s not my usual standard of audio or visual. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas presented here come from his Philosophical Investigations and his On Certainty. Wittgenstein is definitely my favourite philosopher, and his philosophy I think I can help explain in a much easier than most do try to, but that doesn’t I completely agree with Wittgenstein in all cases. But this video won’t present my criticism, again it’s more about these points to be explained.
1 What is a language-game / life-form
2 Why you can’t mix language-games
3 Why there is no super language-game
4 Why I disagree with O’Grady’s presentation in Chapter 1 of his book
5 Why it is difficult to explain Wittgenstein while trying to be faithful to him
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Maybe the reason wittgenstein was so difficult to understand is because he was disproving the pursuit of a supreme logical language game - the very thing his mentor Russell and other predecessors were pursuing. He needed people to figure it out on their own because if he said it outright people would try harder to dissmiss it.
Fabulous work...very lucidly described. Easily understandable.
Great video, really happy I found this channel
Maybe language and its rules do prescribe our representations.
I would suggest that what we do with our languages is cut out certain domains and patterns within those domains that seem to repeat themselves within those domains. I suggest that actually the domains are arbitrary and that they in themselves are a form of cutting off portions of an otherwise uniform stream of experience in reality.
As a concrete example think of viewing the night sky on a clear night. This sky is strewn with random light points over our filed of view. In an attempt to mentally grasp or organize what was appearing or happening in the clear night sky, the Greeks arbitrarily cut up the collections of light points into constellations. By doing so they were able to see that the night sky is rotating and that it completes a full rotation in one year's time. Furthermore, by essentially dividing that sky into recognizable figures, we could also delineate and thereby predict the arrival and passing of seasons which anticipated the cyclic weather patterns attendant with the seasons.
But note that the choice of how to "organize" the night sky with various "figures" or constellations is completely arbitrary. However, later when we talk about these constellations, we impose the rules or conventions of our language onto these arbitrary definitions and come to talk about Orion the hunter is moving across the sky. In this sense our language is prescribing our mental picture of what is happening and in so doing is isolating us from the true circumstance which is that there appears to be a uniform light point strewn field "moving" (it would be more correct to say "changing') above us. So in some sense our language and its rules are prescribing how we conceive the world.
When my uncle asked me what entropy was and I explained that if you don't put more energy into something it increases in chaos over time. Example, sand castle melted down by rain becoming an undifferentiated pile of sand, he said "that seems pretty ordered to me." Example of mismatching language games. Order in one context means not messy-looking, in another it means that lots of parts have this complicated differentiated structure. Being a hippie new ager (those types are super annoying) he also mixes up the magical idea of energy with the scientific one, he likewise hears a word like "poison" basically if somebody says chemical. I think this concept of language games as it relates to science is very important to spread far and wide to the public at large.
He once asked me what I thought the meaning of life was. Those kinds of questions are really annoying because without an established language game they mean absolutely nothing. A question like that, without some sort of context is completely meaningless. It might have a meaning if you're asking an 18-year-old what he wants to do with his life. Just blurted out randomly when someone's sitting down it has exactly no meaning.
Thank. Nice an focused video!
Really nicely explained! Good videos on wittgenstein are hard to come by on youtube. Any chance you are planning to make a video on davidson's take on incommensurability and conceptual schemes? Just crossed my mind when watching.
Keep up the good work!
Sorry I am taking so long to reply. Seems I get real spooked nowindays. Thank you for your kind comments. This video is actually part of a Series, sort of, covering Paul O'Grady who does in fact challenge Davidson with a more softer position. But unfortunately I left out the O'Grady vs Davidson discussion from the series for brevity, but also to be fair I am rather attracted to Davidson's arguments, so I would like see him more closely and directly before comparing it to O'Grady's position. So I would love to, but I don't know when I'll be able to do that :(
And about Wittgenstein, certainly Young Witt would probably be able to deal with earlier examples given in PI -- but latter Witt seems to be having more of slow progress in conversation so. Excalibur probably could be more easily dealt with, I have no reason to challenge you on that for sure, but I think it leads to the pegasus example and that's where young Witt might run into a little more difficulty. But that's just my opinion. Anyway thanks again for your support. :)
Excellent. Loved your work.
It was wonderful explanation.
However, got some questions.
1. If LW is not gonna back up his own stance because it will in turn make an objective point of view, which he opposes in the first place (because that attempt is a mix up of language game) (please, correct me if my assumption is not correct), and become a "Quiet-ist",
WHY taking the perspective of "Quiet-ist" should not be considered as an objective/birds eye perspective on this matter?
In other words, what I meant to ask, WHY that eternal tension between "making an objective stance which comes with the flaw of mixup language game" and "not making objective stance because independent language game exists, therefore phenomenons are becoming incommensurable, thus reality becoming unknowable/opaque" becomes the new objective/new truth/ new birds eye view, whatever ? WHY the indecision will NOT be considered as the new decision?
Seems a lot like Russels "self reference" problem from set theory.
(Am I doing a mixup in language game!)
2. How we should or how LW would react to Heidegaars phenomenological view of "Dasign", that is existence is premise of all (to comment on "I think, therefore I am", Heidegaar would say, in order to think, you have to BE first.) OR Kantian stance "Existence is not a predicate" OR to the idea, "One can not be a cosmic observer (at least) unless surrendering to the existence of his capabilities of observation in the first place"?
ur literally saving me in my phil classes
Holy jesus! I can't believe that you don't have more subscribers!
15:47 OMG i've literally been thinking about this ALL DAY
But as a counter-point, maybe Wittgenstein's philosophy doesn't allow transference of concepts. Taleb talks about this concept 'anti-fragility' that he observed in finance that has analogs in other domains.
Thank you.It was really very helpful 😀
Nice video thx❤
Great Video. Watching from Mexico
super helpful!
Thanks, this helped me understand this idea better.
Fantastic work
Great piece of work. Will you to do something along similar lines for Hiedegger. I am convinced, if I have the chronology right, that Heidegger had a missive affect on Wittgenstein. Hiedegger says we are not primarily entities (beings), we are more a process (Being). This seems also applicable to your analogy of the chess knight.
Watched multiple times, will watch more thx.
Continue the good work.
You should start a patrion! Makes it easier to support you. Thank you so much for this great video:)
Great explanation of highly complex ideas. Tanx
Hey man, this channel is extremely under rated. Would you do a video on Kurt Gudel?
Hey thanks! Yeah totally, I can (and will) do one, but it will take a while, to fit it one in to the story line on my character here. So I hope you don't mind the wait. He will come in, when I do series on the logical positivists - then we can talk about some of the awesome stuff when it comes to the Philosophy of math! I hope that's okay, and Thanks for your comment! :)
@@PhilosophyBattle I also wanted to say I think you may find the paper (the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences by Eugene Wigner) very useful in your investigation of the philosophy of mathematics. Can I ask what your formal education consists of? You are a very good communicator of these ideas to the layman like myself.
"The direction of the induced electric current due to the changing magnetic field is such that the magnetic field created by the induced current opposes changes in the initial magnetic field"
Lenz's Law
😄😄
I'm feeling I'm your weird basketball teammate.
thank god i have u
These ideas are closely related to ordinary language philosophy. A single word can have multiple context dependent meanings.
A family resemblance. A horse in the equestrian world has a physical similarity to the one used by the gymnast. But there is nothing essential common to each of them. But a gymnast talks about a horse in a manner that would have no relevance to the equine world. Philosophers believe there is something essential common to both cases. But what about a clothes horse?
Wittgenstein contradicts himself by stating the the rules of grammar represent the language game, but grammar too is a language game. Plus, humans switch, nest and mix language games all the time without issue. Hypothetically, a pair of siblings play basketball, and the older stronger brother slows down for the younger and he sees that. There are 2 language games at play: Basketball and the sibling relationship game.
This gets to the rule following paradox. Look up Kripkestein. Taking language as a form of life kinda solves this paradox. I find language-games a fantastic pragmatic view of life.
"Not in the balls please"
When somebody is going to put syrup on your icecream.
Versus
When somebody is about to kick you.
What is so nobel about language meaning different things in different contexts?
Was this really a big contribution of Wittgenstein to humanity?
Well I have not seen the whole video; I shall continue.
Isn't there a language game among language games in which there is objective truth, from which it is allowed to assert truth and falsehoods? Within that language game it is perfectly valid to assert truths and falsehoods about other languages. If you don't want to play there you don't need to, but you have to if you want to be taken seriously by others who play that game. Objective facts are part of the grammar of that game. Relativists try to be absolutists, by ascribing their own relativism and not allow for absolutist language games. Relativism doesn't allow in its own rules for criticism of absolutism, because in its own rules absolutism is a valid language game among others.
You see there is no problem anymore of reconciling relativism and absolutism. The relativists play a language game of their own, but their rules are not accepted by the absolutists. They are disengenous when they try to prescribe to the absolutist game what their rules are or are not allowed to be. Relativists cannot criticize the absolutists, because in order to do so they must accept the absolutist rules and by doing so eave their own game.
I noticed that in discussions. There are people in discussions who do not care about truth at all. What they are doing is playing another game in which the truth of an assertion is less important than their own opinion. I tend to get upset, but when I recognize that they are not playing the same game I want to play, but are playing the game of asserting opinions instead of discovering truth, there is really no need or reason for getting upset at all. You can just let them know that you do not want to play their game and leave the game.
Regular people call it context, Ludwig.
Are you NoHo Hank?
You say to-may-to, i say to-mah-to, wittgenstein's over here like both are utterly useless because there's no way to know what either truly signifies beyond this incongruous use.
32:45 wait, would it oppose the message he is trying to teach us, or constitute a refutation of that message. (does it have a referential paradox to it? The statement on the other side of this card is true: other side: the statement on the other side of this card is false: Only looking at one statement APPEARS to be meaningful, but is actually not)
I am probably accidentally about to engage in the very thing that this video is pointing out the problems with, but...
The response about the 'grab boards' not being literally correct, and the friend who gave the 'well, akkkshullly' about the piece of wood, while being examples of game switching, I find without a more pervasive intrusion on the 'game' they're butting into, there isn't a problem with either.
The former, if this is not an example of someone on the spectrum, incapable of not being literal, then we have an obnoxious Captain Obvious, and if he engages like this regularly, people will tune him out and the problem fixes itself.
The 'friend', while arguably being an ass, has merely related factual, though not relevant in the context, information. And I can not accept that it is inherently problematic to do so. Otherwise there is an awful lot of language exchanges, as part of our many different interactions, that would be considered potentially problematic.
If in the above scenario the friend was insistent that the guy with the blocks accept that nothing is actually solid and was pushing him to affirm his acceptance of using only this view for all matter, all the time. In short, alter his entire understanding of 'solid' henceforth, then that is problematic.
To *grossly* over simplify, it all comes down to context - More specifically, what is it you're supposed to understand from the language used? Does the language convey that accurately within the context it's given?
Most importantly, I think. Once you're in receipt of the conveyed language, what is the consequence of understanding, or failing to understand it? What are the consequences/ implications from accepting or rejecting any claims or assertions it contains within the context it's given?
Does that extend to other contexts?
I think there are many example instances where swapping games is a serious issue, that we readily recognize, and ultimately they all share one thing in common - The goal of getting people to accept either outright lies, or intellectually dishonest assertions and claims, that can not be demonstrated to be justified.
No matter where you find such individuals, you will invariably also find people who, for one or more well understood reasons, fail to catch the sleight of hand style deceptive definition sophistry being used, and will themselves perpetuate that same contextual conflation when forwarding the information to others. - This has multiple consequences for those individuals and the communities/societies they reside within. It's very problematic
I know you're not trying to argue against any type of correspondence theory here, but the author of the tractatus certainly wouldn't have been impressed by the excalibur-part (i do know these are wittgenstein's own examples). If the sentence 'excalibur lies under my bed' makes sense even though the sword is shattered, the names that this sentence ultimately consists of do not include excalibur, but more 'fundamental' stuff that does exist, even if excalibur doesn't (he would lean towards sense data, but afaik never was totally convinced).
I was hoping for philosophy but instead got silly cartoons.
I hate bloody Philosophy!
Religion is a different language game, in no way differently than any other area of human culture.
I think your idea of 'language' is a bit narrow.