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Comment by klik99 | Hacker News Reader

My rule of thumb summary of Wittgenstein: If you can spend an entire book on the meaning of a concept (IE Truth-with-a-capital-T, The meaning of life) then you may be confusing an artifact of grammar and language with something that exists in actual reality.

In other words, just because you can construct a correct sentence with a word doesn't mean it actually makes sense. Statements can be true or false, but can a heart be true? My understanding is the Tractatus was meant to "end philosophy" by implying that most of philosophy arises from the confusion between these grammatical artifacts and reality.

I read a lot of philosophy in my 20s, but I think only Marcus Aurelius and Wittgenstein actual made me into a better, happier person.

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In a nutshell, Wittgenstein showed (or, attempted to show) that much like we can't gain information from logic, we can't gain transcendental meaning (das Mystische) from logic – even, if (or, more precisely, provided that) we discard any meaningless propositions. (Mind that this is in sharp contrast to Kant, who engaged in his Critique of Pure Reason in order to address pure ethics.)

It's a bit like "Gödel for transcendentals". But this has been mostly ignored, while the tools used by Wittgenstein have been an inspiration to many.

Interesting way to put it: "Gödel for transcendentals" - probably only able to put it that way with the benefit of time.

The relationship between the Russell/Gödel camp and Wittgenstein is complicated - In some ways at odds (as they grew apart Russell thought Wittgenstein was dedicating his life to not thinking) but I think they were concerned with the same questions.

Gödel and Wittgenstein would probably both agree that you can't describe the system from within the system. Gödel was more interested pulling the threads and exploring the edges of that, whereas Wittgenstein took that to mean philosophy (at least as it pertains to living) was a lost cause and distraction from reality. In other words, I feel they were on the same page but had completely different ultimate interests.

And ultimately, the Russell camp won - a modern echo of that is the search for the one equation that will describe all of reality, or at least a belief that even if we never find it there is still one out there. Wittgenstein would probably believe that no man made system could fundamentally describe reality.

It's largely been ignored, yes, because where do you go from there? Someone who believes in Wittgenstein is probably more likely to join the army or become an architect than become a philosopher, which guarantees that it will be ignored. Evolutionarily it's an idea that doesn't fit into the ecosystem.

You may say that Wittgenstein in his later phase (W II) was more interested in pulling the threads, when he explored concepts like pain as a stand-in for internal evidence (or, as W I put it: the mystical). However, this was also on an entirely different page, as in comprehending the subject as a social process.

Mind that I do not mean to suggest any kind of parallelism in a strict sense (hence the emoticon.)

Regarding the lost cause as a distraction, I'm not so sure about that. I guess, Wittgenstein would have insisted on this being about all, which was important to us, but nevertheless being out of reach of any kind of theory in the strict sense.

(And this is, because – according to Wittgenstein – it is essentially outside of any reality, which is accessibly to us. On the other hand, it may have still reality beyond this, "The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole." [6.45], "Die Anschauung der Welt sub specie aeterni ist ihre Anschauung als-begrenztes-Ganzes." However, there are no legitimate question that may be actually posed regarding this limited whole, which is reflected just as a feeling from the inside; hence, the proposed riddle – which is really about existence – doesn't exist on any level of disciplined discourse.)

Regarding evolutionary fitness, there may have been a niche: According to the Tractatus, the mystical arises, which might have been further explored by some theory of emergence. But this developed only much later and – as far as I know it — a connection was never made.

Yeah, what I meant was Godel was poking at the edges of the logical systems, eventually logically proving that we can't know everything about them, but even afterwards he was still into (simplifying it a bit here) logic-for-it's-own-sake, even though he was exploring how logic is inherently incomplete (not in the Godel sense of incomplete, I just couldn't think of a better word....)

Whereas W II does get more specific and deeply explores the real-world implications, partly as a rejection of W I's tendency to speak in abstract, high-level ideas. But W II doesn't dwell on the implications of the inherent fallacy of logic as Godel does, just uses that as a rung in the ladder to somewhere else.

And I didn't take it as you making a direct like to Godel, but it's interesting to think about because they were all part of the same zeitgeist which is still strongly echoing in our culture. They didn't see eye-to-eye in their life despite some common threads, and it got me thinking about WHY that was.

Kant's critiqe of pure reason was what the title suggests actually, he also argued that logic (i.e pure reason), cannot hammer out ethics (what one ought to do) nor metaphysics (what ultimately is). It's only practical reason which can determine morality, i.e. his point of departure for his ethical theory is the acting being, not pure logic.

And you could even say that Wittgenstein took a somewhat similar route, when he shifted his interest from the unanswerable riddle of existence and its implications to the exploration of meaningful existence as a human being, which is inevitably involved in a social process. (Mind that this is not suggesting any substantial similarities beyond this.)

Or, if you like it this way, the Halteproblem for transcendental reasoning is universal. There are no computable propositions regarding the mystical. ;-)

I wonder if it affects the theory of computation in any way. Is it an argument against the church Turing thesis? Is it reason to believe in the existence of computational oracle TM such as a halting oracle TM? To me these questions are related to strong AI. Are creative inputs to normal algorithms fundamentally more effective than normal inputs to creative algorithms? Is there a high degree of intricacy of information such that inputs to the algorithm is somehow more powerful than any algorithm?

Not really, as it is on an entirely different level. According to the Tractatus, any transcendental questions are really about existence. As this is outside of what is graspable inside the world (and only accessible as a concept by the impossible position from looking at the world from outside), it is simply beyond theoretical reach. As any propositions about the real, factual world belong to the natural sciences, this leaves no genuine propositions to philosophy. The subject of these philosophical questions just arises, but can't be argued about – at least, not in a meaningful way in the strict sense. So computation doesn't promise any meaningful answers, nor do these questions lend themselves to computation. Even more so, as nothing genuinely arises from logic (but logic structure).

(While some of this may remind of Kant's thing in itself, it is comes from an entirely different direction, namely, a proposed teleology of philosophy, while Kant addresses this from the fundamentals of perception.)

Buddhist philosophy also has a strong focus on showing that arbitrary conventions shouldn't be taken too seriously, and that a great deal of suffering arises as a result of believing too strongly in useful fictions.

Nāgārjuna is one particularly impressive philosopher of the Madhyamaka school, a school which he set the groundwork for in his book Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Madhyamaka means middle way, a kārikā is a work composed of verses that concisely formulate some doctrine). There's a great translation and explanation by Mark Siderits and Shōryū Katsura if anyone is interested.

I think there are a lot of parallels with Wittgenstein's philosophy, and it speaks to Wittgenstein's genius that he was able to conceive of a similar philosophy largely independently.

I read a lot of philosophy in my 20s, but I think only Marcus Aurelius and Wittgenstein actual made me into a better, happier person.

My advisor at university, a philosophy professor, said the same thing about Wittgenstein. During the initial part of his graduate studies, philosophy left him empty, and depressed. Discovering, and focusing on, Wittgenstein, changed his life.

Wittgenstein has a reputation for being a "therapeutic philosopher", in the same vein as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, etc.

There is a fantastic book that I recommend along these lines: https://www.amazon.com/American-Philosophy-Story-John-Kaag/d...

I also enjoyed Kaag's "Hiking with Nietzsche: On Becoming Who You Are"

Agreed, I actually read that one first. I was bummed to find out that he recently divorced his second wife who he talks about so highly in both his books.

I had no idea. :(

Wittgenstein had this effect on me too. But not the Tractatus. What calmed me down was the Philosophical Investigations and Kripkes Naming and Necessity.

This was the case with my advisor as well. In his course on Wittgenstein, we read the Tractatus, but the focus was on The Philsophical Investigations as response to the Tractatus.

A not so small portion of philosophy can come down to defining words and bits of grammar in robust ways or at least coming to an agreement how terms are used differently by different people. Importantly, much philosophy fails to point this out and gets a bit lost failing to accept that all words are made up and can have arbitrary meanings - picking meanings shouldn’t be so contentious sometimes.

So let’s say we pick the meanings for consciousness. Will that settle the debate over the nature of consciousness? Would David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett agree on qualia? Evidence is that they would not. Both are quite capable of understanding and using each other’s terms. But yet they fundamentally disagree, as do many others.

This suggests, as Chalmers has pointed out, that the disagreement is not semantic. It’s rather a substantial philosophical issue. No linguistic analysis will resolve the debate. Science might someday, if the matter can be settled empirically.

Consciousness being one of the fundamental hard problems of course, it is not just a matter of coming to terms. My point was not that philosophical issues don’t exist and of course one of the biggest philosophical issues isn’t just definitions :)

In this case it comes to something also very common in philosophy, discussions that can be questioned as “are we discussing terms or philosophy or both at the same time?” and often the case is “both” making it very hard to have a philosophical discussion when opposing sides disagree both on the terminology and the philosophy and don’t separate the two disagreements very well.

I've seen that disagreement all the time online with philosophical discussions where opposing sides use different definitions and refuse to accept the same terminology. I wonder though if professional philosophers are more careful and exact. My interpretation of most online philosophical argument is that semantic disputes are somewhat intentional, because people do not want to give the other side any ground to stand on. Agreeing to terms could mean the arguments based on those terms have some merit.

> My understanding is the Tractatus was meant to "end philosophy" by implying that most of philosophy arises from the confusion between these grammatical artifacts and reality.

Apologies in advance as I haven't read any Wittgenstein myself, but am I wrong in thinking this is what the Philosophical Investigations was about (as opposed to the Tractatus)?

The relationship between the arguments in Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations (PI) is quite complex and, while there is some disagreement over the the degree of his renunciation, it's generally understood that by the time of his writing much of the notebooks that ended up as PI Wittgenstein had altered his understanding of philosophy and language quite a bit.

Both had a sort of "end philosophy" ambition, to a degree. The Tractatus, with its ambition to address the ways that language touches the world in a picture theory, was more akin to the idea of "solving" philosophy in a sense. In PI, he makes a change in his view of philosophy towards anthropology and remarks on language that is rooted in behavior and use. PI "ends philosophy" more in the sense of dissolving philosophical issues, by revealing the conceptual underpinnings of a number of philosophical debates as nonsense. Philosophy's job, thus, becomes conceptual clarification.

So to answer your question, yes, though there is some overlap.

Well put, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." is a call to cut through the crap of philosophy, rather than to end it. Whatever differences there may or may not have been, no one can deny they were both incredibly ambitious.

In Investigations Wittgenstein realized that he went perhaps too far in Tractatus, and that words can be meaningful also “by consensus” not only “from first principles”.

Tractatus was written when Wittgenstein was still suffering from the "disease" of philosophy. When he still pursued the positivist program of reducing all reality to logical statements. It was after he had left philosophy for a bit and came back to it again that he realized his old ambitions were wrongheaded abuse of meaning. That second phase of his thinking, where he begins thinking in terms of Language Games, is found in Philosophical Investigations.

Yeah, people say that, but Tractatus clearly contains those ideas, though he talks about them mostly in the high-level, abstract, general form.

"2.12: The picture is a model of reality", "3: The logical picture of the facts is the thought.", "4: The thought is the significant proposition.", "4.001: The totality of propositions is the language.", "4.002: Language disguises the thought", "4.003: Most propositions and questions, that have been written about philosophical matters, are not false, but senseless. We cannot, therefore, answer questions of this kind at all, but only state their senselessness. Most questions and propositions of the philosophers result from the fact that we do not understand the logic of our language."

The problem he had with Tractatus was the absurdity of trying logically construct an argument against logic - Tractatus was strongly influenced by Russell. But he wasn't trying to define a universal logic system like Russell or poking at the limits of one like Godel. He makes that clear at the end:

"6.54: My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.", "7: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

The difference between "early Wittgenstein" and "late Wittgenstein" is mostly (though not entirely) about form, he's just much clearer about and does deeper dives into his ideas in Philosophical Investigations and other later writing. He started hating the whole idea of writing a "general, abstract form", but doesn't shift the fundamental thrust of his worldview.

Of course, the Tractatus is pretty dense and there's a lot of disagreement about interpretation, this is just my opinion on it. It's a really wonderful book if you spend time with it, the structure is very fascinating, it feels like a puzzle. I assume anyone on HN trends nerdy, and though it might be more difficult that Investigations, I think Tractatus appeals more to my nerdy side.

> I read a lot of philosophy in my 20s, but I think only Marcus Aurelius and Wittgenstein actual made me into a better, happier person.

How about Epicurus?

I'm not at all in the philosophy realm, so I don't know who is revered or reviled. Maybe he's not noteworthy enough, too idealistic or just plain wrong? Perhaps he's passed over for some other reason.

The few things I've read about his philosophies seem like they're focused on finding basic happiness. Am I just oversimplifying?

One problem with reading Epicurus is that there is not so much surviving Epicurus to read. The second-hand story from Lucretius is about as good as you can get.

Ah, I suppose that makes sense then.

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