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All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
- jancsika 5y agoVery strange-- it took me straight to the articles but I never logged in or even signed up. Also-- right-click Copy isn't suppressed and there's no email list modal popping up when I scroll. Did this site get hacked or something?
- chrischapman 5y agoNope. You probably just had JavaScript disabled (which would be the sensible thing to do). Or maybe they haven't got round to it yet and in a few weeks all of what you mention will be implemented along with 48 tracking cookies, 4MB of JavaScript downloads (of which only 16KB is ever used) and an incomprehensible cookie banner referencing 641 privacy policies which no one will ever read! The things we do, eh? I wonder what Wittgenstein would have made of it all.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoSo now we can expect Wittgenstein fan-fic?
- gerikson 5y agoMore we can expect Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus fanfic. Maybe some hot theorem-on-theorem action with stuff from Principia Mathematica.
- raphlinus 5y agoI started something along those lines: https://levien.com/tmp/tractatus.html https://levien.com/tmp/tractatus.html
- kragen 5y agoThis is wonderful in simultaneously helping to explicate Wittgenstein, Rust, and 2-D graphics. Thank you.
- mercer 5y agoMaybe it's time to have 'the talk'... https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nathias 5y agoanalytic philosophy has been a thing for quite some time ...
- morelisp 5y agoWhat is Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language if not this?
- loevborg 5y ago"Wittgenstein's philosophy as it struck Kripke"
- Mezzie 5y agoNow we can make money on our Wittgenstein fanfic.
- bdowling 5y agoTractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Zombies
- schoen 5y agoOf course, all of the zombies will be philosophical zombies.
- johnhowardstein 5y ago
- andybak 5y agoPretty sure Borges wrote some.
- belfalas 5y ago"If you agree that there is a hand, we will grant you all the rest..." From the tiny book "On Certainty" by Wittgenstein. Really interesting and thought-provoking.
- lkbm 5y agoMore context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_is_one_hand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_is_one_hand TL;DR: Descartes (and others): We can't know for certain that the external world exists. GE Moore: "Here is one hand, and here is another. There are at least two external objects in the world." Wittgenstein was pointing out that this doesn't address any of the actual claims. (I think "agree" is a confusing word to use in the translation. "Know" would work better.) EDIT: I'd also like to throw this Moorean SMBC sub-comic because I love it and it's relevant: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100512after.gif https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100512after.gif -- from https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1879 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1879
- johnisgood 5y agoHere is one hand, And here is another. There are at least two external objects in the world. Therefore, an external world exists. As if there would not be hands in a simulated world!
- HEmanZ 5y agoMy thought on this, what's the difference to an agent between a real world an a simulated one? Why aren't all worlds effectively simulated?
- number6 5y agoAt least simulated by our brain. Most would say filtered but what is the difference?
- johnisgood 5y agoThere is no difference. It would only matter if you could wake up from the simulated one. Everything in this world seems real, and since I have not waken up to confirm that this is not even real, I might as well just consider it real and go on with my life.
- augustzf 5y agoI clicked because I read "all of Wolfenstein is now public domain". How embarrassing.
- pwdisswordfish9 5y agoWittgenstein: Enemy Territory would make for a great game, actually.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agowhat do we mean when we say 'lebensgefahr'
- bediger4000 5y agoDo we know what Wittgenstein himself would have thought of this? Did he have opinions on "intellectual property" regimes? Did the "intellectual property" regime contemporaneous with him writing encourage or discourage his output? I mean, there's some thought that Giuseppe Verdi reduced his output when copyright was introduced: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1336802 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1336802
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pavlov 5y agoWittgenstein’s father was one of the richest men in the world. He inherited an enormous fortune and renounced it. That would suggest he felt property was an inhibition to his thinking and writing rather than an encouragement.
- rackjack 5y agoI've heard that Wittgenstein is one of the few philosophers to actually make people optimistic. Does anyone here feel that way?
- onion2k 5y agoMy main take from reading Wittgenstein was that no one agrees on the meaning of words so there's barely any point arguing about things. I suppose that's sort of positive.
- OJFord 5y agoMy main take from arguing about things is that it being founded on a mutually disagreed word meaning doesn't end the argument! A somewhat related experience I had recently and found very strange was having two parties who each knew me meet, and relate stories about me or things that I'd supposedly said, in a way which made clear that at best my meaning was misunderstood even if the words were correct. What of all the other dialogue that didn't happen to come up? What percentage of what we say is understood as we intend, even if it seems so at the time?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- KarlKemp 5y ago“People” for “definitely not women” in this case. Nor his brothers.
- ralfd 5y agoCan you explain that jab/reference?
- dlkf 5y agoNo book influenced my attitude toward philosophy more than Wittgenstein's Blue Book. Here are a couple gems: > The questions, "What is length?", "What is meaning?", "What is the number one?" etc., produce in us a mental cramp. We feel that we can't point to anything in reply to them and yet ought to point to something. (We are up against one of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: we try to find a substance for a substantive.) > The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to find the common element in all its applications, has shackled philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him to understand the usage of the general term. When Socrates asks the question, “what is knowledge?” he does not even regard it as a preliminary answer to enumerate cases of knowledge. If I wished to find out what sort of thing arithmetic is, I should be very content indeed to have investigated the case of a finite cardinal arithmetic. For: (a) this would lead me on to all the more complicated cases, (b) a finite cardinal arithmetic is not incomplete, it has no gaps which are then filled in by the rest of arithmetic. > Now I don't say that this is not possible. Only, putting it in this way immediately shows you that it need not happen. This, by the way, illustrates the method of philosophy.
- zwkrt 5y agoI love his attitude that people talk in the same kind of compulsive way that a squirrel stores nuts for the winter. Not to say it is mindless but that it isn’t rooted in philosophical consistency. Asking again and again “why” like Socrates doesn’t get to the truth it just gets us caught in circles. Another unrelated Wittgenstein-ian point that I found enlightening in college is that in PL design you can’t design a language that stops people from writing incorrect programs. Statements can’t be correct as an inherent quality of their structure, they can only be correct in context of a goal.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bangkoksbest 5y agoThat was Socrates' point. He was asking questions to expose how brittle the claims of knowledge and certainty were. I do find it strange that Wittgenstein—a man who considered Kierkegaard (who wrote an entire book on irony and Socrates) as one of his favorite thinkers—seems not to have realized that Socrates' quest for a certain, clear meaning of a team was ironically intended to always finish unresolved. It makes me a bit curious what he took from Kierkegaard, who was every bit as much of an ironist, if Plato's rather blunt representations of Socratic irony alluded him. Of course the irony is that Wittgenstein asks "why?" again and again like Socrates and for very much the same purpose (to show that it gets us caught in circles), thus representing even more ironic loops than the previous circles. Wittgenstein turns to philosophy to repudiate it and show as much to his students (show the fly out of the bottle), but in so doing he affirms a central Socratic lesson, but with far less irony. And I would say irony wins out: rather than quiet philosophy into therapy, Wittgenstein became the most influential 20th century philosopher who attracts by far the most published academic and popular commentary.
- Lamad123 5y agoYou also need to know Austrian to understand Frankenstein
- ineedasername 5y agoNot quite all public domain. (in English) [0] (maybe? gray area) I'd highly recommend checking out his work on (and coining of the term) "language games" [1] I'm not sure I agree with all of the thinking behind them, but it's a fascinating concept that has useful nuggets whether or not you agree with everything Wittgenstein says about them. They are explored pretty fully in his work "Philosophical Investigations" [2] This work pretty much set aside a fair amount of his thinking in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which is still an interesting work in its own right. I think that even a cursory ELI5 treatment of this material in a standard college course would be very useful in arming students with tools needed to dissect language. I've used it (in brief) when teaching a course on Informal Logic in relation to propaganda. [0] It seems copyright on the English translation might still be in effect, or at least a gray area of determination. Since it's a common text use in college courses I'm guessing the copyright owners may fight public domain release. The issue will be whether or not the translation was a work for hire or if it can be considered sufficiently different to constitute an original work. The English translation by Anscombe, Hacker, and Schulte occured posthumously, and so might not be considered work for hire. Hopefully it will resolve in favor of public domain. For a shorter consideration of "language games" check out Blue Book. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy) [2] https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Investigations-Ludwig-Wittgenstein/dp/1405159286/ https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Investigations-Ludwig-W...
- kingkawn 5y agoHe said that someday philosophers would forget him and he would be discovered by others who would finally figure out what he was truly trying to say. May this be the start of that era.
- sideshowb 5y agoPublic domain? I thought it was private language
- lmilcin 5y agoTranslations have their own copyright. And so does the publisher for the design of the printed book. So don't get too cocky copying books unless you understand the current status of various other possible copyrights you might be violating.
- fghorow 5y agoObMontyPythonReference[1] "And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel." [1]https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Bruces%27_Philosophers_Song_(Bruces%27_Song) https://montypython.fandom.com/wiki/Bruces%27_Philosophers_S...
- bshepard 5y ago"If we think of the world's future, we always mean the place it will get to if it keeps going as we see it going now and it doesn't occur to us that it is not going in a straight line but in a curve & that its direction is constantly changing." (Wittgenstein, from Culture and Value)
- lsiebert 5y agoI really appreciate Wittgenstein's idea of family resemblance concepts, that things we group together may not be in fact grouped by a shared trait, but instead my consist of a bunch of different sets of overlapping traits, such that no one trait is common to all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
- Schiphol 5y agoAn explanation of why some texts by W are still missing from the OP: https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Project:Why_are_some_of_Wittgenstein%E2%80%99s_texts_missing_from_this_website%3F https://www.wittgensteinproject.org/w/index.php?title=Projec... TL;DR: substantial editorial input
- jjgreen 5y agoWittgenstein in a lecture once asked his audience to imagine coming across a man who is saying “...5, 1, 4, 1, 3 — finished!”, and, when asked what he has been doing, replies that he has just finished reciting the complete decimal expansion of π backwards. A. W. Moore, The Infinite, Routledge, 1990
- hkc 5y agoI recommend this Side-by-Side-by-Side Edition of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: http://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/ http://people.umass.edu/klement/tlp/