/lit/ - Literature

>ruined
You mean "completed"

>>4508523
well yeah, you can say that.

>>4508523

Good post, sir. Good post.

A lot of Wittgenstein's work is a reaction to overly narrow, academic, theory-based and reductionist philosophy.

It brings it back from high-flying academic theorizing and long-German-string-words, back to things about "buying five red apples."

>>4508592
You sound like you don’t agree to that thing that he completed philosophy right?

>>4508592
That's my favorite language game too. Carry on.

>>4508636
Well, it's not so much that he completed philosophy, anyway..
It's more like, he provided a New Method by which it could be completed in the future, for an individual.

Philosophy becomes an individual struggle, not a group doctrine at all. The focus isn't on achieving some truth, but on a return to absolute clarity, and the working through of philosophical problems.

And a hell of a lot of his work is focused on leading the reader through the steps needed to overcome certain common philosophical confusions (for example, a tendency towards dualistic thinking.)

>>4508636

Heh, as if Wittgenstein himself even believed that.

>>4508727

Don't get in the way of a fangirl when they're having a nice fellatio session. It isn't nice.

The "Game" concept is groundbreaking, it changed my life.

>>4508666
nice satanic trips

his stuff on primitivistic reactions in on certainty is pretty great too though

>>4509247
that was the idea about language, right? how we don't need to define a word for it to have meaning?

He tried to finish philosophy with his Tractatus. He failed, but nobody else had the nerve to do that.

>>4509247
Mind advising me some reading for that?

I've never heard of it

>>4511576
Ehh?

What caused this feeling, exactly? He made monumental contributions to both logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy.

>>4511576
PI 1- 70

I don't get this guy.
I started his Tractatus one day and it felt like nonsense, so I stopped. What am I supposed to read about him? Should I just keep reading it?

Fun fact: It was rumoured that he might probably had considered trying male prostitution.

>>4512928
>It was rumoured

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

>>4512610
He tries to talk about that which cannot be talked about. His conclusion also implied that the whole book was useless even his conclusion about the book.

>>4512944
>He tries to talk about that which cannot be talked about.

This is the complete opposite of what he's trying to do. Also

>useless

He surely said somewhere that what's the very merit of the book lies beyond it, not that it's useless.

>>4512944
>His conclusion also implied that the whole book was useless even his conclusion about the book.

No more than the Tao Te Ching implies that it is a waste of time to read it because it opens with the line, "The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao".

It's "useless" only in the sense that Buddhist texts are "useless" to achieve Enlightenment--because it is true that studying the texts don't guarantee Enlightenment. Merely, they help one visualize and grasp the concept. It's like Buddha's raft in the "Diamond Sutra":

>"When the Buddha explains these things using such concepts and ideas, people should remember the unreality of all such concepts and ideas. They should recall that in teaching spiritual truths the Buddha always uses these concepts and ideas in the way that a raft is used to cross a river. Once the river has been crossed over, the raft is of no more use, and should be discarded. These arbitrary concepts and ideas about spiritual things need to be explained to us as we seek to attain Enlightenment. However, ultimately these arbitrary conceptions can be discarded. Think Subhuti, isn't it even more obvious that we should also give up our conceptions of non-existent things?"

>>4512963
I agree Wittgenstein was speaking like an obscurantist mystic.

>>4512971
Go to bed Russel

>>4508517
He showed that philosophy was just mere word games.

>Philosopher muddy up the water to make it seem deep.

>>4514053
Sort of, but don't treat that as an act of spite or dishonesty. Wittgenstein's own waters were muddy enough.

It's also really entertaining to read about him. Cocky geniuses are always fun.

The Tractatus is a bit hard to read but his second period is easier. Also, try reading a bit of Russel and Frege at the same time.

>>4512963
Thanks for the quote. I think this theme also pops up in the Stoics and some of the presocratics as well.

>"There are a million threads about him a day!"
>Doesn't go to a library to pick up a book about it
>Doesn't use wikipedia or other pages found on google

Just die, op.

Just die.

He had an interesting personality, that's why. Lit isn't interested in actual philosophy.

he didnt ruin philosophy as such, he just ruined it the modern way..i.e. he reoriented it as what it should be.

Is the reading group still up?

>>4514682

Oh God this.

Do you guys think Wittgenstein would have made a good psychiatrist (he considered becoming one).

he escaped the primitive problem of the logical positivsts which assumed that all language needs signification to have meaning, when this is not the case at all and the meaning of terms are in how they are used, which means they are ephemeral and language is constantly growing. the reason that he solved (or rather dissolved) a lot of philosophical problems is because prior to wittgenstein, a lot of philosophical struggle was due to confusing all of terms with signifying a an object, when language has many different kinds of uses. in essence, people thought all language referred to a thing, and that the claim could be verified as true if you verify the thing being spoken of, but language not only signifies things but is also used for the sake of use, and understanding this helps create a dichotomy between use and signification to avoid problems of terms without signification (like god)

>>4519483
Fuck no, he definitely wasn't a people person
>>4519849
Between this, dismissing ethics as picture preference, the (admittedly debatable) underlying perspectivism in his discussion of language-games, and attribution of most human action to instinct rather than conscious rational decisions all undermine key assumptions in traditional philosophy and leave little room to expand further. Witt himself tried to change the direction of philosophy to his therapeutic method which focused primarily on clarifying philosophical problems, somewhat ironically because he's pretty fucking obscure himself and sounds half-mystical at his worst

I don't think anything he said in his later period is wrong though, so he may have ended philosophy

All I have read of Wittgenstein is the Blue and Brown books, which I hated. It just seemed so... Obvious. Is there something else by him I should be looking into?

>>4521213
Philosophical investigations

>>4521213


Can you give some examples of things which seemed 'obvious' to you?

Am I stupid when I can't understand why would I read philosophy at all

I dont need a guy to tell me that I exist.

>>4521228

>Am I stupid

Probably. Philosophy doesn't ever attempt to convince you that you exist.

>inb4 some noob brings up Descartes

Read first him and then attempt that

>>4521213
Are you crazy?

>>4521224
>LOL WHAT'S RED
>DEFINE '1' x3

>>4521512
Yeah ... you're gonna have to read his other work

>>4521520
Will do.

>tfw i reached somewhat the same conclusion as Witt completely alone, without having read almost anything on philosophy.
>tfw afterwards getting slightly into philosophy to check myself, i looked down on philosophers as if they were children playing with stupid ideas.
Someone mentioned that i sound like Witt, so i looked up on him, his whole philosophy is just a simpler and more shallow version of mine.
My philosophy is much more expansive, mindbown-esque, ultimate, isn't limited to petty words.

>inb4 delusional, troll etc
No pal, you overestimate philosophers and/or underestimate non-academic philosophers.

>>4521658
post what makes yours different

>>4521658
I'm glad we have this obscure and unrecognized revolutionary philosopher posting on 4chan.

>>4521658
still waiting

>>4521661
It's literally too complex and i am afraid of someone plagiarizing me.
It isn't complex in the classical sense, by nature, the whole concept of explanation and meaning is so fundamentally changed, it would be impossible to explain anything in a post.

I know i sound like a "genius" author faggot who posted some days ago refusing to post his work, i hate those guys but this isn't some kind of sample "prose" whereas he or anyone can just write something new, if i give up the structure of the philosophy (which transcends "philosophy") then i'd be left with nothing.

My 'discovery' is analogous to a theory of everything in physics.
If i give up the theory then i can still do 'science' with stuff within the theory and discover new stuff but the greatest joy and achievement is the grand theory itself.

Problem is that it is the last philosophy, it models all possible philosophies and states of anything in existence, it predicts everything imaginable, once you get into it you'll find yourself unable to 'top' it because it wouldn't make sense.

Currently am grooming myself to write the grand book, need to acquire linguistic ability of an author as i do not hold any skill yet in that area.

>>4521685
holy fuck 0/10
you wouldn't even comprehend the logical stuff of his tractatus

>>4521685
the delusional optimism of teenagers is one of life's underappreciated tragedies.

>>4521685
i'll believe it when i read it
how can we identify it if you ever publish "the end of philosophy"?
i wanna know if i can mock you or if i should apologize.

>>4512610
>felt like nonsense

Translations of German works tend to suffer from this much more than the romantic philosophical languages of English, French or Latin.
Koine Greek is the best.

>>4521685
I bet you convinced yourself that "most geniuses are not understood by their contemporaries, mistaken for fools", when you are mocked, and that your clever stance didn't quite make the effect you expected on your classmates at that party where Vanessa didn't suck your dick.

Shit, see what you made me do? Your condescendance lead me to an ad hominem, you philistin swine.

>>4521694
I am actually 25.
I was semi-paranoid about being delusional myself, until i researched all the intellectual spectrum, i was disappointed and relieved.

>>4521696
I could offer bits and piece, if and when i publish you'll know it.

>>4521711
Tbh i cringe when i see anyone thinking like a misunderstood genius, there are so plenty out there.
I don't think i am misunderstood, i just haven't explained anything yet.

>>4521694
the real tragedy is the jaded internet cynic who feels compelled to drag the optimist down.

>>4521685
>i am afraid of someone plagiarizing me
>My 'discovery' is analogous to a theory of everything in physics.

imagine that you send it to a publishing house hoping that they will print it, and their malicious clerk read your magnum opus, send you rejection letter and later publish it by his (or her, it's even worse if ur mysoginist) name

oh terror

So, how many geniuses are on /lit/ right now?

>>4521685
You sound sincere, if hopelessly naive. I understand that nebulous feeling of having it all figured out. It's so coherent in your mind but you simply can't describe it in words accurately or succinctly. I used have those feels during my time in grad school. However, the moment you realize you're thoroughly well read in philosophy, you'll also discover how obviously ignorant you still are of many concepts. Knowing what you don't yet know is infinitely helpful, though, if a bit distressing.

>>4521735
Nasser Hudin reporting in.

Don't tell anyone, but I am currently composing a treatise, several years in the making, that will destroy the foundations of Philosophy as we know them wholesale, and this includes xx's book. Also I'm 17, but I've been trained secretively in a government facility dedicated to testing the limits of human logic and reason, since the age of 12. They've trained me to be the ultimate human ratiocinator, and I am about to come 'on the scene', so to speak.

>>4521744

No my dear child, you knew alot of things, you understand more than you can realize, all those fleeting moments of insight are a blink in a constellation of images, you'll have to train to keep your eye open.
Thinking is what is clouding your mind.

The above sound purposefully new-agy pretentious, just for the kick of it, but none the less factual.

I have written several pages on that exact phenomenon of the re-branching of ideas on conscious effort on a neural basis.
I can expand on this and explain the phenomenon if you like.

>>4521791
go for it

>>4521791
>phenomenon

That's some pseudo science right there.

>>4521791
>none the less factual
>assumptions

Sorry brother, but you don't know the first thing about my intellectual landscape. It's by no means vast, but my inner cartographer knows the elevations and boundaries. In all seriousness, I bet we'd be fast friends irl.

>>4521818
It doesn't matter how one considers it.
Regardless, phenomena are what they are, they might not manifest as one might expect, leading them to be 'false', but they are being perceived nonetheless, that's why they're called phenomenon.

>>4521805
I'll go for something very short and we'll see from there:

There is a phenomenon everyone has experienced, the 'feeling' that somehow you know alot of things about something but in an attempt to put those ideas down you come to realize that it was just emotions lumped with arbitrary ideas connected in some weird way, meaning that if you in the first place understood something you wouldn't have this mystical hazy 'enlightenment', you'd be sober about them.
Or so the legend says.
And this holds true in many cases but not for all.
In short, the wide heuristic re-cognition of possible interconnections is 'felt' rather than understood, when you pull your pen to write down, you or rather your brain narrows it down to one most statistically allocation-able neural group, which is usually something you already know, thus you end up not knowing the possible novel routes, which creates the phenomenon of "assumed false insight" or however one might wanna call it.
I admit this is too dense and too sloppy, it might make some sense if you're into some kind of neuroscience but otherwise you'd have to read several pages to get the picture clearly.

>>4521832
How about "factual assumptions", sounds pretty.

>>4521257
this is the gayest thing on /lit/ so far

>>4521870
Not the guy you are talking to, but I see what you're saying. Sounds just like intuition to me.

>>4521694
Agreed.

>>4521892
The said thingy occurs because of intuition, it's not intuition itself.
There is a good reason why i refrain using the word intuition in an "intuition-heavy" topic.

>>4521906
how old are you?

>>4521870
>factual assumptions

It happens, sure. Not in this case, sadly. Also, you're description of the phenomenon is fairly apt. That's pretty much the concept I meant to reference when I said "nebulous." However, if you systematically analyze your conclusive revelation on a particular subject, I think you'll find you can work out a logical progression and consolidation of arguments that lead to it. I don't know if you've checked out any systems of symbolic logic Aristotlelian or otherwise, but it might help with formulating a rational progression of ideas for writing and publishing if nothing else. I don't doubt your understanding of your theory, though, bro. Ignore the haters if you know you're authentic.

>>4521870
>>4521927
I feel I should mention that I'm drinking heavily right now. Feel free to disregard my arguments.

philosophy phd popping in. just a quick heads up: if you haven't read frege and russell in excruciating detail, you /don't get wittgenstein/.

>>4521658
>>4521658
>>4521658
Have you actually read any Witty or did you just skim wikipedia? The intricacies of his work goes pretty deep and is very logic heavy. And his ideas are of the kind that only sound trivial when diluted and not studied properly

>>4521927
http://asm.sagepub.com/content/3/3/225.short
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/per.471/abstract

god you're arrogant, you make me want to puke. I was just testing you. I made an outrageous claim about your intelligence to see if you would defend yourself and you did. On the internet. Funny/interesting.

If you had higher reasoning skills, I'd expect you to have spotted that, but the game is now over. I would like to play chess with you sometime genius.

Also, score one point for not understanding the context of my multiple choice comment. I didn't mean that multiple choice was fatuous. I only meant that MBTI is and I included the fact that it uses multiple choice. Anyway...

>>4521967
Aw, and here I was trying to be nice. Oh well. I thought that, just maybe,your ideas could overcome your inability to write a coherent sentence. Enjoy never being published.

>>4521947
Philosophy Phd?

19 year old here. Give me advice, what should I read first, etc.

EVERYTHOONG

>>4521926
25

>>4521927
I also have written alot about rationalization of many kinds, including the one you're describing about leading logical progression to ones favor.
Don't wanna sound cheesy but i know exactly what you think about me even before you think it, all the conscious and semi and unconscious background emotion, intent and pretense are too obvious too me.
This is not to intimidate, far from it, the exact opposite, make you speak more freely.
I know that partially because i criticized myself more than anyone, because most people get in philosophy with the wrong foot.
I don't care about publishing, just writing the book.

>>4521950
Most deep theories if not all, sound trivial on the surface, that's not the case.

>>4521980
>>4521967
I am not the animus guy btw, amusing as he is.
Don't worry about sounding rude, as i said i know exactly how you feel about me and am very aware of the broken structure of my sentences to say the least, not a native speaker, it just takes more time to write so i just type.
And not this isn't passive aggressiveness, not my thing, just waiting till you get the agenda buffer out of you.

>>4508517
To get further in philosophy, you have to abandon the common diseas of begnners: scepticism. Abandon it with 'about certainty' by Wittgenstein. Than, there are too incompete pictures of language which he developes in two books. The logical-otensive view and the practical-common-language view (first being Tractatus, second PI). In my opinion, Tractatus is a lot better and more fun to read.

Tl;dr: If you want to think about what language is actually, there is no way without reading Wittgenstein.

>>4521927
How old are you?

>>4521870

>when you pull your pen to write down, you or rather your brain narrows it down to one most statistically allocation-able neural group...

Here we are friend, you've begun to project.

You're the genius that has everything worked out in the head, but has difficulty writing down 100% coherently his thoughts when push comes to shove.

So, naturally, what is a central theme to his philosophy? Well, it's /why/ he has this difficulty. You're expanding upon ideas that may or may not apply to everyone or anyone but yourself, and claiming them as great insight.

As usual, the philosophy is just a portrait of the philosopher.

But in all honesty, if you really do have the ideas up there that you claim to have, I can only wish you the best in putting them onto paper. Just remember that what is great philosophical truth to you may just be some armchair psychology into yourself.

>>4522018
Got it, sorry about the misunderstanding with the whole coherent sentence thing and confusing you with that other guy. Like I said, I've been drinking.

Anyway,
>i know exactly what you think about me even before you think it
I know and assume nothing about your true personality or thoughts as I'm only drunk posting in a /lit/ thread with a paragraph of text. Text without agency, friend; at least as far as I care.

>Wittgenstein

>>4522130
I am not sure if that's the proper usage of term you're looking for, regardless i know what you mean although that's a cop-out since it can be lazily ignore a lot of things.

One of the fundamental problems i was talking about, in order to discuss anything within my theory everything must crumble, what you mean by 'coherency' and 'worked out in the head' etc changes dramatically.
You'd notice how often i use quotations, you'd better assume that everything i write is in quotes.

It's impossible to discuss because i'd have to teach a whole alot of things before i would make sense.
All criticism done so far are already been worked and were expected as responses, i'm still looking for something that might change/break/finalize my theory as i am always worried about bias and 'projections' and any kind of self-delusion.

Do you think it's impossible to create a theory that describes everything?

>>4522259
So how do you measure yourself in the philosophical scale?

If 1/100 is the plebiest tool in a society, 5/100 is the average person, 50/100 is decent philosopher and 80/100 is Witt, what about you?

>>4522269
In terms of seeing through reality i'd say 92/100, if we assume there are like a dozen people in 92-95 and none above.

>>4522282

>>4522288
don't make me raise that number.

>>4522001

take it very seriously. wikipedia is next to worthless. read the original texts. read for the arguments. for every claim you read, ask yourself why someone might want to believe, and why it might be defensible. it's not possible to do or appreciate philosophy without spending a considerable amount of effort reading science, logic, and math. don't expect to find answers; expect only to gain an enriched and deeper understanding of how difficult it is to understand the complexity of things.

start with descartes, then read hume, then read kant. that's the foundation. they're hard and historical, so read them with a guide book of some kind. then read frege.

>>4522292
Do nothing of that.

>>4522290
Did anyone else who can see through reality know he'd say this?

Re the person claiming to have thought about Wittgenstein's stuff before reading TLP ... I can definitely understand people claiming to understand the broad ideas W presents because they have in a way permeated this board and our society. And when you take college courses it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between your thoughts and the thoughts of others, so to speak. It's really unlikely that the guy came up with every argument inside of it, but who knows, maybe the next Wittgenstein is lurking on /lit/? Remember, Wittgenstein was a pretty big douche too :).

>>4522418
Ofc, but it's more fun

>>4522432
The first line of Wittgenstein's TLP btw is "This book will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it -- or similar thoughts."

>>4521870
>>4522018
>>4522259
I think you might be the manifested shadow of /lit/'s tendency to dismiss content on the basis of efficacy of categorization, which is shown in the use of terms like "plebian", "genre fiction", "edgy" etc. Your project seems more comparable to /lit/'s longing for the transfiguring power of "literary fiction", which reveals the most profound through the undifferentiated, than that of the physicist for a theory of everything.

>>4522506
Could be.

>>4522464
Yes. Excellent point. It's also interesting how a lot of philosophical/mathematical concepts were independently discovered like calculus (Liebniz, Newton), the solution of the cubic (*really* interesting history ... would advise people to look into it). I really like Tolstoy's analogy comparing history to differential calculus.

Sorry for all of the science lingo.

>>4522506
Continued off topic ramblings:

Is the longing for increasingly general theory anything more than a longing for the elegant?
Elegance as brevity, smallness: Is this desire a desire to master? Is an alternate history of knowledge intelligible? One in which the theory of everything could be understood immediately but its more specific and limited children required extensive work and exploration into abstraction?

The tendency to decadence in the development of this world suggests the possibility that it itself is the shadow of another, more vivacious world. The word which becomes a book over time is surer proof of enduring vitality, the founding of a lineage, than the opposite development in which centuries of work are reduced to a phrase which can be denied and negated with an equally brief turn of phrase. In this way a simple fool can undo the work of a genius with the simple inversion of his victim's phrase, having found that the main work in developing a meaningful phrase has already been accomplished and need not be redone.

Does anyone think that if Wittgenstein had been born into a middle/lower-class American family he would now be browsing /lit/ while collecting schizoidbux?

>>4522292
thanks
>>4522305
something better?

>>4522821
Yeah, don't get stuck in philosophy, have an interdisciplinary knowledge and try to connect them.

>>4522282

>>4522282
>>4522282
How do you know if you haven't read much philosophy?

You're probably just delusional m8

>>4522832
I'm assuming your knowledge of maths and science is all beautifully a priori as well, huh?

>>4522832
Been reading up on your posts. Been having some ideas of my own. Essentially, my idea is that some people have different levels of awareness. Some people have meta-meta-cognition for instance and they are like the Hamlets, the David Foster Wallaces, the Dostoyevskys. Others are more simpler. They don't analyze the world as much. And this relates back to how we view the world. I've already written some of my own work. But essentially some people feel like they are in a hall of mirrors, the ones who are "hyper-aware/hyper conscious" that is. Here is what I mean. This something I wrote. I'm thinking about dividing people's awareness into different categories. Will post something else if interesting. It's just some rambling thoughts and I have not even spell checked yet.

>read the wikipedia articles for derrida, lacan, heidegger, etc.
>criticism is mostly that they are bullshit artists

>>4522849
more

>>4522857

>>4522859

>>4522863
last one.

>Thoughts.odt

>>4522849
Yeah, this is how everyone feels, thinks and reasons. You aren't some special, hyper-aware being.

>>4522887
Never said I was. Dafuq? just trying to analyze human-thinking.

>>4522849
>I feel like, feel like, feel like, feel like

>>4522897
read more. Its been kind of random lately. That was a work of fiction.>>4522887

>>4522849
>>4522894
>"I don't even feel human anymore"
>"Like meta-cognition on a massive scale"
>"To speak in a more abstract way..."
>"Except I feel like I'm both the puppeteer and the puppet".

A little self doubt does not a hyper-aware, philosophically adept ubermensch make, pal. In fact, you posting this entire thing and describing how incredibly self-aware you are: is that not desperately trying to create an impression of yourself in other people? Are you sure you just haven't romanticized the idea of being self-aware to the point where you've convinced yourself you are, picking and choosing particular instances in your life that might resemble minor self-awareness?

>>4522960
eh it was just some fiction. Read the other things to get an understanding of what I'm talking about. You judge too quickly.

>>4522749
No, he wouldn't be.

>philosophers
AHHAHAHAHHHAHAHA
Philosophy is dead.

>>4521870
Sounds like Bergson

>>4524948

I sand laik oyer mem


>>4522749
Many subcultures like to exalt their circle, like metalheads say Vivaldi was born today he'd play metal and so on.
Does not necessarily make it false but kinda icky to dwell on that.

>>4522847
That amount of assumption could feed 3/4 of people in africa

>>4522560
Aesthetic intellectualism is the prime crime of modern psychology.
I have a friend like that, what is even funnier is that he has about 5 followers from his uni, they gather often and have a sort of philosophic cult.
It's eerie, a shame.

>>4522849
you're a flat out fucking retard