Philosophy and Literature Blog

I haven't really studied Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics. I read the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on this subject, which I highly recommend. This does NOT qualify me as anywhere near an expert on this subject, but since I've studied math in my life it was interesting to read, whether I completely agree, or even understand, or not. My own experience of math has had moments where I felt like I was entering a Platonic realm. But, according to what I read, Wittgenstein will have none of this! If you're like me, and you've experienced an other worldly sensation sometimes in math -- something unexpected suddenly makes sense, like coming over a hill and seeing an awesome view, a space that you can't help but believe somehow existed before you got there -- then you might not like his philosophy. The Encyclopedia says Wittgenstein insisted that math was invented, not discovered. It is a language game that involves truth. He famously rej...

If this post title doesn't bring in readers... "The way to solve the problem you see in life is to live in a way that will make the problematic disappear.      The fact that life is problematic shows that the shape of your life does not fit into life's mould. So you must change the way you live and, once your life does fit into the mould, what is problematic will disappear.      But don't we have the feeling that someone who sees no problem in life is blind to something important, even to the most important thing of all?"(CV 27e) Seems to me we have two things going on here: 1. Your problem is a lack of alignment with life. The problem is to get in alignment. 2. The problem is something important about life itself. Does 1 contradict 2? Wittgenstein goes on to say that if you see the problem correctly it isn't a sorrow but a joy. So the problem exists, but is a good thing? Well, what to make of that? A little later we get: "In the cour...

Wittgenstein writes in Culture and Value: "It strikes me that religious belief could only be something like a passionate commitment to a system of reference. Hence, although it's about belief, it's really about a way of living, or a way of assessing life."(CV 64e) So, what is a 'system of reference'? Let's see, I suppose words are supposed to refer to things and if you have a system of those you have locutions, games, patterns of speech. So, the word God, while not referring to something empirical, has its use in the center of a religious system of reference that has empirical consequences. These consequences involve how one spends their time, their money, how one evaluates life situations, talks themselves into various emotional states, copes with life's stresses, thinks about the future, in many cases provides a community. A religious system of reference can accomplish all of these things. He further says in 64e: "It would be as though s...

Quoting from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy quoting from Culture and Value : "Rules of life are dressed up in pictures. And these pictures can only serve to describe what we are to do, not justify it. Because they could provide a justification only if they held good in other respects as well. I can say: "Thank these bees for their honey as though they were kind people who have prepared it for you"; that is intelligible and describes how I should like you to conduct yourself. But I cannot say: "Thank them because, look, how kind they are!"--since the next moment they may sting you." p. 29e While this is not directly a religious statement, I think for Wittgenstein ethics and religion both involve language games that exceed what I'll call the "Logical Positivists' theory the of Legitimate Use of Language"(LPL for short). But for Wittgenstein it seems, the most important things are beyond LPL. And it is difficult for m...

I've been reading, here and there, parts of Culture and Value , and just got another book on Wittgenstein's lectures and conversations on a variety of topics. I thought I would focus my thinking on some of his remarks on religion. I come to it with the thought that Wittgenstein, kind of a mystic, would not apply standard empirical blahblahblah to religious thinking, but would focus on parts of religious practice, language games, and emotions. One remark that has me thinking is when he wrote that when a believer in God asks "where did it all come from" s/he is NOT asking for a causal explanation, but is expressing an attitude toward ALL explanations. I think he is on to something here. In my religious periods I would have agreed with that. This suggests that a Wittgensteinian gloss on religious talk is that there are language games that practitioners engage in, the features of those games are different than other types of games; but, and this is what I would add an...