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I've noticed Wittgenstein is mentioned quite a lot on HN threads about philosophy. I suspect he's a favorite of engineer types because his conceptions nullify large swaths of philosophical activity and thinking. This conclusion allows the untrained student to feel as if they've entered a cheat code to reach the end of the discourse -- it's all a language game, so I need not waste my time with further inquiry.

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Strongly disagree. Wittgenstein clears the way for traditional philosophy topics (ethics, aesthetics, etc.) to be taken seriously.

'Engineer types' may react to ethical discussions by pointing out that you can't define right and wrong, and may then wrongly conclude that they don't exist. But Wittgenstein shows that this is an isolated demand for rigor.

You can't define right or wrong? Tell that to an Aristotelian. You can most certainly define it and ground a natural law theory in it.

I hope that's not true. Wittgenstein certainly led me deeper into the subject, not away from it.

"It's all a language game so why bother" is about as intellectually barren (and misinformed) as saying, "Well, Turing demonstrated that all programming languages are 'equivalent,' so it doesn't really matter."

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