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I have a suggestion: Since most of the citations for this entry are just section numbers to the text, perhaps we should just put them in parentheses next to the quote and so on. It's kind of ridiculous to have a bunch of footnotes that only have section numbers. Although, it does keep with the standard style of having the citations footnoted in a "Notes" section. Any thoughts? - Jaymay 22:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Agreed especially for the claim that Wittgenstein was sure duck-rabbit was due to external, not cognitive, changes. Sounds like BS meant to discredit Wittgenstein. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.105.144.8 ( talk) 10:33, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I have an old copy of Investigations (1983 reprint), and it is possible that my pagination is different from the 2001 version. But the Lion quote in mine occurs on page 223, not on page 190, as cited here. Could someone verify that the page is correct? Banno 21:33, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Also, my text reads ""If a lion could talk, we could not understand him" - which differs from the text in the article. Which is correct? Banno 21:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
The following:
In the second part of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein moves outward from human language behavior and towards an examination of more general psychological issues.
seems to me to be not quite true. Much of the last part of part I is concerned with psychological phenomena; much of the second part is concerned with meaning. Removed. Any objections? Banno 23:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Maths
The opening para claims that the PI deals with the foundations of mathematics. I think this is pretty misleading - there are a few (very) passing comments on maths (eg, paras 67-68) but not nearly enough to justify the text's claim.
In fact LW at one time envisioned his book containing a whole section on the foundation of mathematics but chose instead to concentrate on psychological concepts.
The role of philosophy
I think the article needs a section on LW's account of the role of philosophy as described in the PI (paras 89-133). His notion of philosophy as being akin to therapy is not only one of his most original contributions to the subject but also goes some way towards explaining why the book is written as it is.
-- Attlee 11:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. I recently made some copyedit changes to the article. Hope I'm not imposing--just trying to help Wikiproject Philosophy. Here are a few things I tried to do, but may have still missed some things:
That's about it. Although, I think that more could be done to improve this article, including adding more that's covered in the Investigations; there's lots of good and important stuff in there. - Jaymay 23:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I made some recent edits (again). Here are few of the things I did:
-- Jaymay 22:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Wittgenstein's "Private Language" argument should be discussed, as well as his "beetle-in-the-box" thought-experiment, as those are recurring issues in philosophy. -- Wikiwikifast
I suggest reverting to my Private Language description (of December 20) at least until the existing text is overhauled. This section does a great disservice to the casual reader.
I also suggest leaving the link to http://www.thebluesmokeband.com/philosophy/prop.php as it directly addresses deep concerns about the role of "meaning" in PI. And I suggest that Mr. Norman choose more charitable words than "especially when replacements are inferior", unless well prepared to level such accusations.
This contentious issue has to be handled with care. The recent changes are for the most part for the better. However, I have changed one line. The previous version read as follows:
Wittgenstein also ponders the possibility of a language, the subject of which is only known to the user...
This was written paraphrasing PI 243, specifically: "The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations". This was done - perhaps unsuccessfully - to counter the common misunderstanding that a private language is one spoken by a single individual; the mistaken view that, for instance, the last speaker of a dying language would be speaking a private language. this is not so. A private language is not just one spoken by a single individual, but one that speaks about items which cannot in principle be understood by any other individual.
This has been replaced by:
Wittgenstein also ponders the possibility of a language that is only able to be understood by a single individual, a language that is necessarily private...
But
Hence my variation. I am not especially enamoured with it, however, so other suggestions are welcome. Banno 11:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
An article called Private language argument was created on 6 October 2005 but it is not linked to/from Philosophical Investigations. The content that was added to Wikipedia was copied from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. -- JWSchmidt 00:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
It would be useful to explain in depth Language games, Family resemblance.
It would also be good to talk a little about the history of the PI. All I remember off the top of my head is: W worked on it for many years, but it was only published after W's death. And it was translated into english at W's request by to G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe -- who eventually took over W's chair at Cambridge. -- Mark Christensen
Anyway, if you don't want to do it, I can find someone from a mailing list or newsgroup who can discuss this further. --LMS
If you are going to get some W person involved, I actually think the text on the PI page is worth fixing (it's quick but not really loose like the text on ambiguity was), but I really think this is't worth taking time over. Though I do think that eventually some reference to a criteque of the "negative" view of ambiguity the article expresses is in order. By negative view, I mean the common practice of treating ambiguity as though it is something to be stomped out when possible. And though I think precision is usually extreemly valuable, I do think it can sometimes be a problem.
The meaning and definition section has a statement without proof: "And a definition of the word 'game' that focuses on rules will fall on similar difficulties." Examples were given for other situations but not this one, which is disappointing as in doing the thought experiment it is easy to come up with a definition involving 'rules'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.224.181.246 ( talk) 01:20, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
"the private language argument" link at the bottom is dead
(Copied from the biography page). In the article there is nothing said about the problem with the philosophical investigations and the understanding of the later works structure which is crucial for understanding. The current editor of the Nachlass "On his death, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) left behind a philosophical Nachlass of some 20,000 pages", http://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm. The style of writing is so important that it should be considered as a new form of philosophical inquiry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.60.105.148 ( talk) 15:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
In the section, "Relation to the Tractatus," we find:
Wittgenstein provided examples of sentences or expressions that can be interpreted in more than one way. One of the most famous is, "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language", which could mean either one of the following:
* philosophers use language to combat bewitchments, or * philosophers battle bewitchments caused by language itself.
This ambiguity can only be resolved in context, showing that language cannot be broken down into self-contained units of meaning.
Is it not apparent that this ambiguity is merely the result of failure to use commas? I submit, the first and second meanings above, respectively, are adequately differentiated thus:
"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence, by means of language."
"Philosophy is a battle, against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.252.108.164 ( talk) 03:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Isn't this whole article original research? It pretty much only references Wittgenstein himself, and there is a lot of debate about how he should be interpreted. Full credit to the authors of this page, but it seems like it should contain more references to the numerous books and articles that have been written about Wittgenstein rather than just presenting what is basically an OR conception of his views. 86.8.176.85 ( talk) 22:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
The section Method and presentation doesn't succeed to describe the style and method of the book very well. Firstly: the text sample is from the introduction, and it's one of the more unclear paragraphs, most are much clearer, and foremost: the paragraphs refers back to other paragraphs, making a coherent discourse. I'll report more later, when I've read farther into the book. Rursus dixit. ( mbork3!) 15:13, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is probably, along with Being and Time (or perhaps Naming and Necessity), the most important work of philosophy of the 20th century. The article, however, has many flaws. The reason I'm starting this discussion is to get insight of how we can better create a lead section. Any insight on from experts on writing wiki entries is appreciated. One suggestion I have is moving the Augustine quote out and putting it in the section on ostensive definition. My thoughts is that if the entry or Bernard Williams can become a featured article than so can this entry given the importance of the work in philosophy. I will contribute all I can and again I welcome insights from all you experts. TL ( talk) 00:11, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
Two years after Lorick7's accurate entry above, the article is still a mess. With the exception of Lorick7's contributions from 2019 and SlimVirgin's r.i.p. from 2010, nearly everything else is a pile of original research, consisting of the opinions of Wikipedia editors, and sourced to the book that is the topic of the article itself. (Including the contribution by Larry Sanger, all completely original research and sourced to the book, if at all; possibly forgivable given his contrib date of September 2001 before WP:Verifiability and sourcing was respected or really even developed at Wikipedia!)
I'm tempted to slash and burn, but WP:TNT should be seriously considered, since aside from the exceptions noted above, there is little worth saving, imho. Starting from scratch and building up may simply be easier and faster, than trying to tear it down brick by brick to find a good kernel to build back from. I'm probably not the right person to lead an effort to do that, but I'd certainly support the effort in any way I can. If regular contributors believe something can be salvaged from the current article, by all means, please do. TNT is an extreme tool which should be rarely used, but this may be the rare case where it is the best route to improving the article, and editors should not be afraid of using it here, if it is the right tool for the job. Mathglot ( talk) 04:37, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Secondary sources from rev.
1067442157 of the article
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I've done a rough restructure, deleting some material along the way, as a sugested begining to a wide-ranging revision. The structure suggested is:
Banno ( talk) 01:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
I've removed much of the waffle, in the process reducing this to a stump. I left the Sraffa mention here as a hint that more might be said about the development of Wittgenstien's thought leading up to the Investigations. Please, enlarge. Banno ( talk) 22:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
In the section on Editions, only the 50th Anniversary edition was stated to include the original German. I have the 4th edition, which also has the German, so I added that fact. I suspect that every English translation has the German, but I cannot confirm that. If someone can, then the section should note that fact, and need not state it for each edition separately. I also deleted the footnote's redundant mention of the 4th edition and fixed the ISBN # for the 4th edition. And I moved the footnote about the 4th edition to after the listing of the 4th edition. Maurice Magnus ( talk) 12:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
The article very badly needs a section on Wittgenstein's philosophical methodology and his views of the purpose of his philosophy. There is a very lengthy series of sections in PI dealing with this (roughly 89-133) which pretty much frame the whole book. The section would need to include the following points:
This
level-5 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I have a suggestion: Since most of the citations for this entry are just section numbers to the text, perhaps we should just put them in parentheses next to the quote and so on. It's kind of ridiculous to have a bunch of footnotes that only have section numbers. Although, it does keep with the standard style of having the citations footnoted in a "Notes" section. Any thoughts? - Jaymay 22:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Agreed especially for the claim that Wittgenstein was sure duck-rabbit was due to external, not cognitive, changes. Sounds like BS meant to discredit Wittgenstein. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.105.144.8 ( talk) 10:33, 8 November 2016 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I have an old copy of Investigations (1983 reprint), and it is possible that my pagination is different from the 2001 version. But the Lion quote in mine occurs on page 223, not on page 190, as cited here. Could someone verify that the page is correct? Banno 21:33, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Also, my text reads ""If a lion could talk, we could not understand him" - which differs from the text in the article. Which is correct? Banno 21:40, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
The following:
In the second part of Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein moves outward from human language behavior and towards an examination of more general psychological issues.
seems to me to be not quite true. Much of the last part of part I is concerned with psychological phenomena; much of the second part is concerned with meaning. Removed. Any objections? Banno 23:07, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Maths
The opening para claims that the PI deals with the foundations of mathematics. I think this is pretty misleading - there are a few (very) passing comments on maths (eg, paras 67-68) but not nearly enough to justify the text's claim.
In fact LW at one time envisioned his book containing a whole section on the foundation of mathematics but chose instead to concentrate on psychological concepts.
The role of philosophy
I think the article needs a section on LW's account of the role of philosophy as described in the PI (paras 89-133). His notion of philosophy as being akin to therapy is not only one of his most original contributions to the subject but also goes some way towards explaining why the book is written as it is.
-- Attlee 11:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
Hi all. I recently made some copyedit changes to the article. Hope I'm not imposing--just trying to help Wikiproject Philosophy. Here are a few things I tried to do, but may have still missed some things:
That's about it. Although, I think that more could be done to improve this article, including adding more that's covered in the Investigations; there's lots of good and important stuff in there. - Jaymay 23:02, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
I made some recent edits (again). Here are few of the things I did:
-- Jaymay 22:13, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
Wittgenstein's "Private Language" argument should be discussed, as well as his "beetle-in-the-box" thought-experiment, as those are recurring issues in philosophy. -- Wikiwikifast
I suggest reverting to my Private Language description (of December 20) at least until the existing text is overhauled. This section does a great disservice to the casual reader.
I also suggest leaving the link to http://www.thebluesmokeband.com/philosophy/prop.php as it directly addresses deep concerns about the role of "meaning" in PI. And I suggest that Mr. Norman choose more charitable words than "especially when replacements are inferior", unless well prepared to level such accusations.
This contentious issue has to be handled with care. The recent changes are for the most part for the better. However, I have changed one line. The previous version read as follows:
Wittgenstein also ponders the possibility of a language, the subject of which is only known to the user...
This was written paraphrasing PI 243, specifically: "The individual words of this language are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations". This was done - perhaps unsuccessfully - to counter the common misunderstanding that a private language is one spoken by a single individual; the mistaken view that, for instance, the last speaker of a dying language would be speaking a private language. this is not so. A private language is not just one spoken by a single individual, but one that speaks about items which cannot in principle be understood by any other individual.
This has been replaced by:
Wittgenstein also ponders the possibility of a language that is only able to be understood by a single individual, a language that is necessarily private...
But
Hence my variation. I am not especially enamoured with it, however, so other suggestions are welcome. Banno 11:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
An article called Private language argument was created on 6 October 2005 but it is not linked to/from Philosophical Investigations. The content that was added to Wikipedia was copied from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. -- JWSchmidt 00:59, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
It would be useful to explain in depth Language games, Family resemblance.
It would also be good to talk a little about the history of the PI. All I remember off the top of my head is: W worked on it for many years, but it was only published after W's death. And it was translated into english at W's request by to G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe -- who eventually took over W's chair at Cambridge. -- Mark Christensen
Anyway, if you don't want to do it, I can find someone from a mailing list or newsgroup who can discuss this further. --LMS
If you are going to get some W person involved, I actually think the text on the PI page is worth fixing (it's quick but not really loose like the text on ambiguity was), but I really think this is't worth taking time over. Though I do think that eventually some reference to a criteque of the "negative" view of ambiguity the article expresses is in order. By negative view, I mean the common practice of treating ambiguity as though it is something to be stomped out when possible. And though I think precision is usually extreemly valuable, I do think it can sometimes be a problem.
The meaning and definition section has a statement without proof: "And a definition of the word 'game' that focuses on rules will fall on similar difficulties." Examples were given for other situations but not this one, which is disappointing as in doing the thought experiment it is easy to come up with a definition involving 'rules'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.224.181.246 ( talk) 01:20, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
"the private language argument" link at the bottom is dead
(Copied from the biography page). In the article there is nothing said about the problem with the philosophical investigations and the understanding of the later works structure which is crucial for understanding. The current editor of the Nachlass "On his death, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) left behind a philosophical Nachlass of some 20,000 pages", http://www.inst.at/trans/10Nr/pichler10.htm. The style of writing is so important that it should be considered as a new form of philosophical inquiry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.60.105.148 ( talk) 15:16, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
In the section, "Relation to the Tractatus," we find:
Wittgenstein provided examples of sentences or expressions that can be interpreted in more than one way. One of the most famous is, "Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language", which could mean either one of the following:
* philosophers use language to combat bewitchments, or * philosophers battle bewitchments caused by language itself.
This ambiguity can only be resolved in context, showing that language cannot be broken down into self-contained units of meaning.
Is it not apparent that this ambiguity is merely the result of failure to use commas? I submit, the first and second meanings above, respectively, are adequately differentiated thus:
"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence, by means of language."
"Philosophy is a battle, against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.252.108.164 ( talk) 03:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)
Isn't this whole article original research? It pretty much only references Wittgenstein himself, and there is a lot of debate about how he should be interpreted. Full credit to the authors of this page, but it seems like it should contain more references to the numerous books and articles that have been written about Wittgenstein rather than just presenting what is basically an OR conception of his views. 86.8.176.85 ( talk) 22:28, 22 February 2009 (UTC)
The section Method and presentation doesn't succeed to describe the style and method of the book very well. Firstly: the text sample is from the introduction, and it's one of the more unclear paragraphs, most are much clearer, and foremost: the paragraphs refers back to other paragraphs, making a coherent discourse. I'll report more later, when I've read farther into the book. Rursus dixit. ( mbork3!) 15:13, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is probably, along with Being and Time (or perhaps Naming and Necessity), the most important work of philosophy of the 20th century. The article, however, has many flaws. The reason I'm starting this discussion is to get insight of how we can better create a lead section. Any insight on from experts on writing wiki entries is appreciated. One suggestion I have is moving the Augustine quote out and putting it in the section on ostensive definition. My thoughts is that if the entry or Bernard Williams can become a featured article than so can this entry given the importance of the work in philosophy. I will contribute all I can and again I welcome insights from all you experts. TL ( talk) 00:11, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
Two years after Lorick7's accurate entry above, the article is still a mess. With the exception of Lorick7's contributions from 2019 and SlimVirgin's r.i.p. from 2010, nearly everything else is a pile of original research, consisting of the opinions of Wikipedia editors, and sourced to the book that is the topic of the article itself. (Including the contribution by Larry Sanger, all completely original research and sourced to the book, if at all; possibly forgivable given his contrib date of September 2001 before WP:Verifiability and sourcing was respected or really even developed at Wikipedia!)
I'm tempted to slash and burn, but WP:TNT should be seriously considered, since aside from the exceptions noted above, there is little worth saving, imho. Starting from scratch and building up may simply be easier and faster, than trying to tear it down brick by brick to find a good kernel to build back from. I'm probably not the right person to lead an effort to do that, but I'd certainly support the effort in any way I can. If regular contributors believe something can be salvaged from the current article, by all means, please do. TNT is an extreme tool which should be rarely used, but this may be the rare case where it is the best route to improving the article, and editors should not be afraid of using it here, if it is the right tool for the job. Mathglot ( talk) 04:37, 24 January 2022 (UTC)
Secondary sources from rev.
1067442157 of the article
|
---|
|
I've done a rough restructure, deleting some material along the way, as a sugested begining to a wide-ranging revision. The structure suggested is:
Banno ( talk) 01:58, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
I've removed much of the waffle, in the process reducing this to a stump. I left the Sraffa mention here as a hint that more might be said about the development of Wittgenstien's thought leading up to the Investigations. Please, enlarge. Banno ( talk) 22:53, 29 January 2022 (UTC)
In the section on Editions, only the 50th Anniversary edition was stated to include the original German. I have the 4th edition, which also has the German, so I added that fact. I suspect that every English translation has the German, but I cannot confirm that. If someone can, then the section should note that fact, and need not state it for each edition separately. I also deleted the footnote's redundant mention of the 4th edition and fixed the ISBN # for the 4th edition. And I moved the footnote about the 4th edition to after the listing of the 4th edition. Maurice Magnus ( talk) 12:15, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
The article very badly needs a section on Wittgenstein's philosophical methodology and his views of the purpose of his philosophy. There is a very lengthy series of sections in PI dealing with this (roughly 89-133) which pretty much frame the whole book. The section would need to include the following points: