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I remember studying Naming And Necessity in my undergrad and being blown away by the clarity of his arguments. It is an amazing skill to express oneself so conc

I remember studying Naming And Necessity in my undergrad and being blown away by the clarity of his arguments. It is an amazing skill to express oneself so concisely, and many of his arguments/thought experiments have a 'commonsense' quality to them that make them very persuasive.. By contrast other great philosophers of language like Wittgenstein had the insight but somewhat struggled to express it.

pavlov 4y ago
“Wittgenstein somewhat struggled to express his insights” is a bit like “Kafka had certain reservations about society”.
- hprotagonist 4y ago
  how much clearer can you be than a nicely numbered list? :D
  - eternalban 4y ago
    "You will need a 64bit processor to run this program"
  - archduck 4y ago
    While writing the Tractatus in the trenches, even. Most people would be satisfied with a stream-of-consciousness brain dump, hoping that enough insights are contained within to justify one's work. Wittgenstein cooked it down to just seven terse statements and further terse sub-statements. And numbered them nicely. Who does that?
- archduck 4y ago
  His teaching at Cambridge often had minutes-long silences, in which the class just had to wait for him to conclude his thoughts and resume teaching. It was apparently agonizing for some of his students. Especially since you probably didn't want to step on his toes by breaking the silence while he still held the floor - he was, after all, forced to retire from schoolteaching after beating one of his slower math students unconscious.
  - Wistar 4y ago
    "The Haidbauer incident, known in Austria as der Vorfall Haidbauer, took place in April 1926 when Josef Haidbauer, an 11-year-old schoolboy in Otterthal, Austria, reportedly collapsed unconscious after being hit on the head during class by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident
beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
I don't entirely agree with some elements of Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein (I'm more partial to the Baker and Hacker position), but he was so important to keeping Witty in the discussion that it's hard to not give him enormous credit. As an aside, it is very interesting how many writers on Wittgenstein, and working in what we might broadly call Ordinary Language philosophy, achieve such a startling clarity. An early example (even before Wittgenstein) is also RG Collingwood. His writing is straightforward and clear as day, eschewing jargon for the language we use day to day, for that was ultimately their focus. They wanted to dissolve philosophical problems.
- lukeasrodgers 4y ago
  Readers may enjoy the portmanteau that came from Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Private_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Priv...
- aildours 4y ago
  The bit about RG Collingwood sounds very interesting. Could you provide some examples?
  - beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
    His book The Principles of Art from 1938 is probably the best example. He offers a definition of art arrived at through ordinary language philosophy, and, along the way, also develops a theory of imagination, language, and anti-copyright.
    - aildours 4y ago
      Thanks!
- daviddaviddavid 4y ago
  I would add HP Grice to the list of startlingly clear ordinary language philosophers. His 1957 essay "Meaning" has this definition: "A means something by x" is equivalent to "A intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention". It may seem less than clear taken out of context, but there is a wonderful argument working toward the definition and once he finally presents it, it's a bit of a mic drop moment. Also, he is one of the few philosophers whose work proved to be foundational in linguistics. Any book/course in pragmatics will talk about Grice's work on implicature and background knowledge.

pavlov 4y ago

“Wittgenstein somewhat struggled to express his insights” is a bit like “Kafka had certain reservations about society”.

hprotagonist 4y ago
how much clearer can you be than a nicely numbered list? :D
- eternalban 4y ago
  "You will need a 64bit processor to run this program"
- archduck 4y ago
  While writing the Tractatus in the trenches, even. Most people would be satisfied with a stream-of-consciousness brain dump, hoping that enough insights are contained within to justify one's work. Wittgenstein cooked it down to just seven terse statements and further terse sub-statements. And numbered them nicely. Who does that?
archduck 4y ago
His teaching at Cambridge often had minutes-long silences, in which the class just had to wait for him to conclude his thoughts and resume teaching. It was apparently agonizing for some of his students. Especially since you probably didn't want to step on his toes by breaking the silence while he still held the floor - he was, after all, forced to retire from schoolteaching after beating one of his slower math students unconscious.
- Wistar 4y ago
  "The Haidbauer incident, known in Austria as der Vorfall Haidbauer, took place in April 1926 when Josef Haidbauer, an 11-year-old schoolboy in Otterthal, Austria, reportedly collapsed unconscious after being hit on the head during class by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haidbauer_incident

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago

I don't entirely agree with some elements of Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein (I'm more partial to the Baker and Hacker position), but he was so important to keeping Witty in the discussion that it's hard to not give him enormous credit. As an aside, it is very interesting how many writers on Wittgenstein, and working in what we might broadly call Ordinary Language philosophy, achieve such a startling clarity. An early example (even before Wittgenstein) is also RG Collingwood. His writing is straightforward and clear as day, eschewing jargon for the language we use day to day, for that was ultimately their focus. They wanted to dissolve philosophical problems.

lukeasrodgers 4y ago
Readers may enjoy the portmanteau that came from Kripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Private_Language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittgenstein_on_Rules_and_Priv...
aildours 4y ago
The bit about RG Collingwood sounds very interesting. Could you provide some examples?
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  His book The Principles of Art from 1938 is probably the best example. He offers a definition of art arrived at through ordinary language philosophy, and, along the way, also develops a theory of imagination, language, and anti-copyright.
  - aildours 4y ago
    Thanks!
daviddaviddavid 4y ago
I would add HP Grice to the list of startlingly clear ordinary language philosophers. His 1957 essay "Meaning" has this definition: "A means something by x" is equivalent to "A intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention". It may seem less than clear taken out of context, but there is a wonderful argument working toward the definition and once he finally presents it, it's a bit of a mic drop moment. Also, he is one of the few philosophers whose work proved to be foundational in linguistics. Any book/course in pragmatics will talk about Grice's work on implicature and background knowledge.