
Overrated: Ludwig Wittgenstein - ordiblah
https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/september-october-2019/overrated-ludwig-wittgenstein/
======
stakhanov
Stupid people should strive to become smarter. They should not proclaim
themselves to be the norm for being stupid and smart people to be somehow
inferior for failure to conform with that norm and for failure to communicate
the complex thoughts they have to people who are incapable of taking in
complex thoughts.

It's a type of transaction that I bet takes place every single day in every
single tech-sector business between a smart-guy code monkey and a dimwit
pointy-haired boss and, for some reason, it's always the pointy-haired boss
who walks away with his overconfidence in tact and the code monkey that walks
away having been made to feel bad about themselves, when it _should_ be the
other way around.

It's a cultural norm that may exist in the tech world today, but it's
certainly not a cultural norm that existed at Cambridge back in Wittgenstein's
and Russel's day. -- It's one of the many cultural attitudes that are working
together to create the post-truth society we live in today.

It is true about pretty much any philosopher of note that they are thought of
as being hard to understand (just think of Kierkegaard). That's not because
those philosophers are altogether so very overrated. It's because the
readership is mostly comprised of people who are not as smart as those
philosophers. That's true by construction. Because the reason you read is
because you start out stupid and want to end up smart.

~~~
dr_dshiv
I actually disagree with the idea that incomprehensible philosophy comes from
philosophers so smart that their readership can't understand them. Smarter
philosophers could say things that would permit more people to gain greater
understanding, wouldn't you say? Assuming of course that philosophers are
trying to say things that support understanding.

Further,I think philosophical quality ultimately has to do with its ability to
produce positive outcomes. Plato is not definitive -- but reflecting on Plato
is deeply enriching. Incomprehensible and miserable philosophy is just that
and only that.

~~~
Guthur
It's not simple thing to explain non simple things in a way that it's
comprehensible to a layman.

I think this video is a very good illustration of this fact

[https://youtu.be/36GT2zI8lVA](https://youtu.be/36GT2zI8lVA)

~~~
dddw
gotta love that man

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ineedasername
The article starts with a hit against Philosophical Investigations, which is
actually some of his most approachable and interesting work. His concept of
language-games is both fascinating & insightful. [0] The systematic way he
laid out the contextual nature of meaning in language was groundbreaking at
the time, demonstrating that meaning was neither atomic nor discrete, with
interlocking contingencies that span multiple words and sentences. In fact
this understanding of meaning in many ways probably laid the ground work for
aspects of computational linguistics like word-sense disambiguation.

I don't know if he fomented conflict among his "disciples" or if they came to
it among themselves, and I'm sure not all of his work was equally insightful,
but this article is far from an even-handed assessment of his work.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_\(philosophy\))

~~~
idoubtit
> demonstrating that meaning was neither atomic nor discrete, with
> interlocking contingencies that span multiple words and sentences.

How is that original? Of course, the exact meaning of a word and a sentence
depends on the context.

If I remember correctly my studies about Mesopotamia, in one the oldest
bilingual dictionaries of the world there was a word with two translations,
which mean the author knew that there was two distinct meanings for the same
word. Centuries later, many of the various authors of the Bible were fond of
playing with words. Their writings are full of double-entendre and of reusing
the same word in a different context to change its meaning. Aristophanes wrote
parodies of the classical Greek tragedies, and he certainly knew how to
instill comedy into plain or epic words. It's hard to imagine none of these
processes were conscious. More recently, Littré's dictionary at the end of the
19th century had a stress on the context: most definitions include many
examples of use across time and places, to show the intrinsic complexity of
words.

~~~
ivalm
Here atomic means that objects can be denoted with a finite set of predicates
all of whose objects exist (ie you have proximal relationship with) [0]. This
is as opposed to objects that subsist (eg everything that is abstract) [1]

Symbols (words) can point to different objects depending on context (what you
call words having multiple meanings), this has nothing to do with logical
atomism. The point of logical atomism (and as it turns out this is not a
complete picture) was that a particular meaning of the word can be described
unambiguously (in the sense of using entirely existing objects).

This discussion is largely language agnostic (in a sense that I think every
natural human language supports it).

[0] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-
atomism/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-atomism/)

[1] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/possible-
objects/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/possible-objects/)

------
eindiran
Because that's what the world needs more of: Pitchfork Over/Under-styled hot
takes about dense philosophy.

Perhaps there are things that are worth trying to understand, even if they are
difficult to comprehend. You can miss out on a lot if you're in the habit of
dismissing things out-of-hand.

~~~
freyr
And yet you're guilty of exactly that which the article admonishes against:
celebrating the cult of Wittgenstein on the basis of its inscrutability, not
its merit.

Just because something is written in a clear and approachable way, it
shouldn't be dismissed out-of-hand.

~~~
eindiran
I don't really see how you drew the conclusion from my comment that I'm
"celebrating the cult of Wittgenstein". I just take issue with this article,
which amounts to a justification of a one-word hot take. I don't object to
people having an issue with Wittgenstein -- I'm more disparaging of
Wittgenstein than most -- I just want people to be thoughtful about it.

I certainly don't think something should be dismissed because it's written in
an approachable way: that's a virtue that all writing should strive for. My
point is that some ideas are inherently difficult to write about (and some
people aren't very good at writing in a clear way), but we shouldn't be quick
to dismiss either because of their difficulty.

------
dvt
I'm also of the opinion that Wittgenstein is the most overrated philosopher of
the 20th century (if not ever). I'm honestly not sure why he still has entire
undergraduate courses dedicated to him (but Godel, Moore, Russell, etc.,
don't). Virtually none of his ideas made it into any serious philosophical
works (sans a bit of philosophy of language). I have a feeling that his work
panders to the "obtuseness of ideas" that so many academics crave.

To put him on the same level as G.E. Moore (and his brilliant naturalistic
fallacy) and Bertrand Russell (and his [and Whitehead's] brilliant _Principia
Mathematica_ ) is deeply misguided.

~~~
sgt101
> brilliant Principia Mathematica

Hang on : Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und
verwandter Systeme I !!! You can be as brilliant as you like, but if you are
fundamentally wrong (which Russell and Whitehead were) then you get knocked
off your perch. Still, I guess that they were in good company.

Bertrand Russell was a wonderful man, but I still smile when I think of the
Principia and the essay he wrote nine years after Godel blew it up :"Why Mr.
Hitler will not invade Russia"

I think that reason that Wittgenstein is still taught is that there are ideas
in there that have not been successfully extended or refuted, except sometimes
by Wittgenstein, and even then... Debatably! Also his "approach" is still used
by many people.

If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida
and the other French lunatics; if you want to see where philosophy (and
politics and literature) were crippled Paris in the 60's and Yale & Irvine in
the 70's would be good places to start. One of it's legacies is the constant
and ongoing attack on science - I blame Derrida for climate change denial!*

* I know - this is an act of pure spite, but old people need their fun, and he's dead, and anyway, his friends would just deconstruct my sentence to show that in fact I'm not blaming anyone, blame is not a real concept, things cannot be denied, there is no climate and things can't change.

~~~
dvt
> Bertrand Russell was a wonderful man, but I still smile when I think of the
> Principia and the essay he wrote nine years after Godel blew it up

I purposefully put them both up there! Russell was wrong (and, on a personal
level, his atheistic slant profoundly annoys me), but he had a coherent and
laudable plan -- he was the logical positivists' spearhead. Godel, of course,
blew that whole plan up, but it was a plan nonetheless.

> If the GP thinks Wittgenstein is a vandal I wonder what he makes of Derrida
> and the other French lunatics;

In line with the analytic tradition, I wasn't much exposed to the "French
lunatics" (thankfully). Nietzsche was bad enough†.

† I actually quite like some of Nietzsche, but the prose is atrocious.

------
barce
The article never explains why Wittgenstein is overrated. I've read it twice.
All I can gather is that Moore felt he didn't really understand W's
philosophical method enough to use it, and that Russell felt that after W, he
couldn't do philosophy.

------
ncmncm
In case anyone wondered, they also maintain a list of underrated thinkers like
Bolzano, Spengler, and the Duke of Wellington.

It is generally a better use of time to brush up on the underrated.

Whatever virtues Wittgenstein might have concealed, comprehensibility wasn't
among them. If he was right about anything, we can never know, so needn't
bother wondering.

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missingrib
I do not feel like this article is engaging with Wittgenstein's arguments or
any philosophy in general. I'm extremely tired of these clickbait 5-minute-
read articles that somehow attempt to discredit entire lifetimes worth of
respected works through ad hominem

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dr_dshiv
I actually like a lot of Kant's arguments (free play and harmony) but he
started/amplified the intellectual trend of obtuse writing as a social status
marker. And today, philosophy departments-- and philosophy journals -- are
very uninspired places.

Philosophy _matters._ Look at how the lack of it affects politics and
individual wellbeing.

------
timwaagh
If there were someone who would make the argument that 'all philosophy is
nonsense' and the person who makes it was respected by a lot of philosophy
professors, I would be pretty interested in what he had to say, especially
because I have a firm distrust myself of anything that comes out of that
discipline.

------
aswanson
I hear a lot about his genius but not straightforward, demonstrable examples
thereof.

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marknadal
Even Wittgenstein admitted his earlier work was wrong.

~~~
segfaultbuserr
But this article also attacks Late Wittgenstein...

~~~
disconcision
Early Wittgenstein admitted his later work was wrong.

~~~
sova
Plato's shapes are made of clay! The world is impermanent!

------
graycat
I have zip, zilch, and zero first hand knowledge of Wittgenstein, but I will
report on what two of my college profs said:

In college, as a math/physics major, I relented and signed up for a course
Philosophy of Science. The course was taught in the philosophy department by a
guy from the Bible Department -- the Presbyterian church chipped in some money
for the college which however had a good physics department (with some USAF
money) and a quite good math department.

So, the course got to Wittgenstein. The prof was traveling or some such so
asked a math prof to give the class on Wittgenstein.

As the class started, the math prof winced, hesitated, and said: "I read the
Wittgenstein. Uh, let's f'get about Wittgenstein."

That was enough Wittgenstein for me!

The reaction of the Chair of the physics department was "Get your Ph.D. first
and philosophize later."

For me, now is "later", and I conclude that his advice was good: Just how
math, physics, and the rest of science do or do not work is not simple, and
even a first level understanding needs quite a lot of experience, at least
observation, of what does or does not work.

Sorry, Ludwig, buddy. Go sign up for a math/physics major, get a Ph.D. in one
of those, get experience for some decades, and then see if you can formulate a
clean, simple, solid _philosophy_ for how it all should work! My guess is,
even with all the background, you can't do it! Sorry 'bout that!

~~~
speedplane
> Go sign up for a math/physics major, get a Ph.D. in one of those, get
> experience for some decades, and then see if you can formulate a clean,
> simple, solid philosophy for how it all should work! My guess is, even with
> all the background, you can't do it!

This is pretty laughable. Math/physics and philosophy may both involve logic,
but they are so different. It's neither necessary nor sufficient to be good in
one to do well in the other. I'm sorry you had a bad experience in your own
philosophy classes, but I've found that understanding some of the basics of
philosophy (utilitarianism, natural rights, etc.), have vastly helped me
understand why people in the STEM fields are motivated to work on one project
versus another.

~~~
graycat
As I wrote, the class was

Philosophy of Science

The course prof suggested that a math prof teach the class.

That was ALL right there in my original post.

Again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, just for you, as in
my post and as here, the class was

Philosophy of Science

Understand now????

So, a local community college may be able to give you a remedial course in
reading comprehension.

I'm sorry you are having so much trouble with simple reading.

Your response, ignoring

Philosophy of Science

is "laughable". You have insulted me and humiliated yourself.

I was torqued. I had big justification in being torqued: I was trying, trying
to learn math, physics, and in general science. So, hearing about the course
in

Philosophy of Science

I took a chance, signed up, spent the time and the MONEY, tried, and the
result was that a math prof's view was "f'get about Wittgenstein" and a
physics prof said to philosophize after a Ph.D. So, the course and
Wittgenstein ripped me off, wasted my time and money. I was ripped off, had
good justification to be torqued, and was.

Again, here I'm reporting what two of my profs said.

~~~
speedplane
> I had big justification in being torqued: I was trying, trying to learn
> math, physics, and in general science. So, hearing about the course in
> Philosophy of Science I took a chance, signed up, spent the time and the
> MONEY, tried, and the result was [... not good].

If you want to learn math or physics, take a math or physics class. A
"Philosophy of Science" class will not teach you that. Philosophy studies how
people think, how they perceive things, how they organize their motivations
... i.e., why people do what they do. In a "Philosophy of Science" class, I'd
expect to learn about why so many people think science is important, why many
people feel a desire to learn or have curiosity, and the repercussions of this
on the individual and society.

Again, I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but it seems like you were trying
to get something out of a class that it was never intended to give you.

