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As this is HN: Wittgenstein was the guy who invented truth tables. He is my personal favorite philosopher along with Quine. Wittgenstein is IMO underappreciate
by mulle_nat 7y ago
As this is HN: Wittgenstein was the guy who invented truth tables.
He is my personal favorite philosopher along with Quine. Wittgenstein is IMO underappreciated. First he kind of described what is possible with philosophy with regard to the physical world in the Tractatus. And then he explored the "virtual world" in his writings about games. To me his writing style is a bit of a hindrance to get to his concepts. But I think I know, what he is getting at (prove me wrong).
More "mystic" philosophers were obviously pissed and have been bad-mouthing him ever since.
- keiferski 7y agoMystic is probably a misleading word to use, because Wittgenstein is considered to be something of a mystic himself, especially when it came to things like aesthetics and ethics. The philosophical/religious definition of mysticism is a bit different than the everyday one. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/was-wittgenstein-a-mystic/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/was-wittgen... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism
- mulle_nat 7y agoI put it in quotes, because I couldn't come up with a better word. What would it be ?
- HillRat 7y agoIf you’re the later Wittgenstein, you might just call them “philosophers.” (Rorty certainly might argue for that!)
- 8bitsrule 7y agoThe post we're commenting on sez that: "he had once told Russell he was interested in becoming a saint ... Wittgenstein’s siblings knew what his detractors apparently did not: that he was referringl ... to a favourite theme from one of his favourite books: William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience." VRE is a decent read by a great mind, and reading it can only illuminate what W. was getting at. And yes, it's far from the 'everyday'.
- dang 7y agoBach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbüchlein: "To the glory of the most high God, and that my neighbour may be benefited thereby." That is what I would have liked to say about my work. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
- NOGDP 7y agoA quick look at wikipedia says truth tables were first devised by Charles Sanders Peirce. Though truth tables probably weren't much of an invention - it's just a layout that is fairly equivalent to a record keeping notation used much earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table#History
- brudgers 7y agoI’ve always heard Peirce’s pragmatic maxim in the hum of Philosophical Investigations.
- Zuider 7y agoI have seen what looks very much like a truth table written in George Boole's spidery handwriting in an exhibition dedicated to him in the University where he taught, Queen's College, Cork, now University College Cork. Instead of '1' and '0', or 'T' and 'F', he had written out the whole words, 'true' and 'false'.
- HillRat 7y agoI think Wittgenstein (like most philosophers who aren’t named Plato or Aristotle) is less “underappreciated” and more “completely unknown” once you get outside philosophy. Within that discipline, he’s unquestionably the most important thinker of the 20th century and, most would argue, the most important single philosopher since Kant; the entire linguistic turn in philosophy is due to PI. (One can argue, with more controversy, that the “other greatest philosopher” of the 20th century is Quine — it’s hard to imagine the neopragmatic renaissance without him!)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]