57
votes
Accepted
Is "This sentence is written in English" nonsense?
"This sentence" is an indexical term. An indexical is a term like "I", "today", or "this city" where the reference of the term depends on the context of the ...
- 7,598
14
votes
Is "This sentence is written in English" nonsense?
This sentence is written in english.
Cette phrase est écrite en anglais.
These are different sentences; they have different words to each other. An accurate translation of the first sentence into ...
- 2,037
12
votes
Accepted
Do Wittgenstein and Quine give the same criticisms of semantics?
Yes and no. They both criticize a certain approach to semantic theory that can be called realism about meaning. Roughly, realists see meanings as some kind of entities, although there is a wide range ...
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11
votes
Accepted
Why does Wittgenstein have a problem with writing “f(a, b). a = b"?
Because he reads a and b occurring in the atomic proposition f(a,b) (e.g. "a is to the left of b") as referring to two different objects.
According to Wittgenstein, the only legitimate use ...
- 36.2k
10
votes
Is Wittgenstein right when he criticises recursion theory in the Tractatus 3.333?
It is not a criticism of recursion theory and recursive definitions [by the way, recursion theory originated in the 1930s while the Tractatus was written during the first world war and was first ...
- 36.2k
10
votes
Accepted
What sentence convinced Russell that Wittgenstein was not a "complete idiot"?
Welcome TCP
Russell doesn't so far as I'm aware tell us what the subject was of the 'something' he asked or invited Wittgenstein to write - perhaps he left the topic entirely to Wittenstein. Nor does ...
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8
votes
Accepted
How long is the standard meter?
There has been a fair bit of discussion of this statement from Wittgenstein. Kripke in Naming and Necessity famously disagrees entirely and offers "the standard metre in Paris is 1 metre long" as an ...
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8
votes
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Where did Carnap express his disagreement with Wittgenstein's Tractatus?
The second OP quote (footnote about the mystical streak) refers to a meeting with Wittgenstein by Anscombe herself. For an account of Wittgenstein's relation to the Vienna circle philosophy see Stern'...
- 42.5k
8
votes
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Why was Russell discontent with Wittgenstein's view on "logic as tautologies"?
Wittgenstein was reviving Kant's old view that logical deduction only brings out what is implicitly thought in the premises. Of course, Kant had in mind Aristotle's term logic, which is roughly ...
- 42.5k
7
votes
Accepted
Did Frege criticize the style of the Tractatus?
Regarding the twenty-one cards and letters from Frege to Wittgenstein discovered in 1988 [None of the letters from Wittgenstein to Frege are thought to have survived the bombing of the Munster library ...
- 36.2k
7
votes
Accepted
On Wittgenstein's family resemblance and machine learning
The answers to your questions are not going to be completely settled because they rely on specific theories of philosophy of language and language's relation to philosophy of mind. One very ...
- 2,841
7
votes
Why was Russell discontent with Wittgenstein's view on "logic as tautologies"?
As a matter of terminology, some logicians use 'tautology' as a synonym for a logical truth, while others restrict it to logical truths of the propositional calculus. I shall use the more general term ...
- 22.9k
6
votes
Accepted
Exactly what was Wittgenstein's argument against identity?
It seems to me that it is a sort of blunder from Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein criticizes the logical rules for identity already in 5.434, becuase they are not expressed with a "correct logical notation"...
- 36.2k
6
votes
Accepted
What did Wittgenstein (mean to) achieve in the Tractatus?
There is a heated controversy as to what Wittgenstein tried to achieve in the Tractatus and whether he achieved it.
Wittgenstein's own retrospect of the book is rather ambivalent, see Kuusela's ...
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6
votes
Accepted
In Wittgenstein's Picture theory, why is self-awareness (e.g. Cogito ergo sum in Descartes) not an a priori true atomic thought?
The thing is, that for the early Wittgenstein the Cogito Ergo Sum was just not true. So the Cogito could not be true a priori for him.
Like David Hume, Wittgenstein believed that the Cartesian Ego, ...
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6
votes
Accepted
Where does Bertrand Russell discuss mysticism?
From Russel's Mysticism and Logic
Introduction
Metaphysics has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, ...
- 1,368
6
votes
Why was Russell discontent with Wittgenstein's view on "logic as tautologies"?
This scene seems to imply that Russell didn't view logic as tautologies.
Correct. Wittgenstein's view about "logic=tautologies" was grounded on propositional logic and truth table. ...
- 36.2k
6
votes
Accepted
Neo-liberalism, language and freedom?
This is a very well thought-out question. You invoke Noam Chomsky's contributions to the philosophy of mind with his proposals regarding innate properties which he puts forward in his ideas regarding ...
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5
votes
Accepted
Why does Wittgenstein say Schopenhauer has a crude mind?
He is calling Schopenhauer dumb.
One could call Schopenhauer a quite crude mind. I.e., he does have refinement, but at a certain level this suddenly comes to an end & he is as crude as the ...
- 803
5
votes
Is it possible to use Wittgenstein's family resemblance approach to universals to separate high art from commercial art?
It is natural to use it, both aim at the problem of vagueness in predicates. The Sorites paradox is as ancient as the Liar, and much more pervasive, as a list of nicknames suggests: paradox of the ...
- 42.5k
5
votes
How does Wittgenstein's argument against recognizing private sensations work?
Wittgenstein is not denying that the correlation is useful, he acknowledges as much in the first passage. What he means is that the correlation is established in a way that does not allow for any ...
- 42.5k
5
votes
Accepted
What are the objections to Wittgenstein's argument that semantics and syntax are the same?
The most compelling argument against Wittgenstein's view is surely that given by Gödel in his famous theorems of Mathematical Logic.
What Gödel proved was that mathematical truth cannot in principle ...
- 3,515
5
votes
On Wittgenstein's family resemblance and machine learning
They can easily separate two types of photos because they employ approaches explicitly inspired by our brain function, in other words they repeat, in a simplified form, what we originally did in ...
- 42.5k
5
votes
Making 'sense' of Wittgenstein's senselessness / nonsense distinction in the Tractatus
See :
5.4733 Frege says: Every legitimately constructed proposition must
have a sense.
Thus, we may equate nonsense [unsinn] with an illegitimate grammatical combinations of words, something ...
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5
votes
Can someone explain this Wittgenstein joke?
The quote comes from Littlewood's Miscellany.
Edward Bardeau, in More Fallacies, Flaws, and Flimflam, gives the following account:
The point is simply that, if we assume that an equation has a ...
- 3,515
5
votes
Is Ludwig Wittgenstein connected to post-structuralism?
In a very broad sense both Wittgenstein and post-structuralists might agree that
'the meaning of the language is determined by the cultural context'. But Wittgenstein's point (which I am not sure I ...
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5
votes
Are propositions of logic for the tractarian Wittgenstein "sinnlos satze"?
For the early Wittgenstein, logical propositions (tautologies/contradictions) are senseless, but not nonsense. He says this explicitly in the Tractatus:
4.461 Propositions show what they say: ...
- 6,466
5
votes
How did Wittgenstein become interested in the philosophy of language?
There were not "conversion" at all, but a progressive involvment with logic and language.
For historical evidence, see e.g. Letter to B.Russell [Nov.1913], with refernce to Bedeutung [reference] (a ...
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5
votes
What criticisms of Wittgenstein's philosophy of language have been offered?
Colin McGinn, in his book The Philosophy of Language, discusses at least four criticisms of Davidson's theory.
Is it enough to say that knowledge of meaning is knowledge of truth conditions - ...
- 3,515
5
votes
Accepted
What are the problems with Tractatus?
Your recap of some aspects of the Tractatus is pretty nicely written. We might reasonably suppose that there is something deep still left for the individual to find the in the Tractatus. However, ...
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