Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations book commentary

Nah just saying transcendentalism is hella masturbatory and Iā€™m attacked cuz I love it

sure. language being contained in the brain does not limit analysis of language to analysis of the brain itself. apparently there are higher level structures that can be studied directly. i classify the study of that linguistics. and the neurological perspective may be able to inform the study of linguistics. and conversely, language is very important to humans, so understanding language better might also inform our understandings of human cognition as a whole. all of this follows easily and the significance of language is not undermined by my physical reduction.

what i am criticizing is the kind of analysis that looks for the "real meaning" of a word, or asks where "the meaning of a word comes from", or otherwise invokes all that ontological or metaphysical hullaballo. we can talk linguistics. we can make abstractions. we can observe, empirically, how language works, and our intent and invoked effect when words are used. theres a lot of depth there, and the depth is plenty accessible without leaving the physical reduction. but if you make statements like "understanding the true definition of a king in chess presupposes understanding of a board game", i think you are barking up the wrong tree. there is no true definition of a king in chess. there are young children who have some idea of what a king is, possibly different from yours. the definition is not philosophically pure, it is a property of the human brain. when your theoretical abstractions conflict with reality, reality wins.

actually, it seems we misunderstood each other. i dont like the stupid wordgames any more than you do. and yes it is in large part my fault for using idiosyncratic definitions, because i dont know the canonical ones.

well imma just reject any philosophy that literally thinks there is a god outright.

i wanted to better understand what this thing ewiz calls metaphysical/ontological is. words and language are about as real to me as gods. they dont "technically exist", but as an abstraction they matter. a lot. language moreso than gods.

to make a stronger statement, i claim philosophy is setting back our understanding of psychology and linguistics because the very smart philosopher-linguists have their concepts confused, and arent separating their theoretical model of language with actual language. and when faced with contradictions some people keep chugging along in the theoretical model claiming it is metaphysically significant, or something. who knows, it might even be significant! just stop pretending its real.

Do you not know what linguistics is?

if linguistics is concerned with "the real meaning of words in a metaphysical sense" then i reject linguistics and i think people should be doing hbotzlinguistics where instead people investigate "the practical meaning of words in an empirical sense".

No. This always introduces a problem of interpretation. See: debate on languages that allegedly don't confront to universal grammar

Yes there is

Actually nonsense

Then you can't use empiricism to investigate them.

Yes they are.

You clearly don't know what metaphysics is

You realize that modern linguistics and philosophy doesn't conceive of language as static in meaning, right?

i think you are wrong and confused, and your confusion sets back actual progress with practical implications.

You literally don't know what the fuck you're talking about. You are once again making sweeping claims about a variety of fields that you admit you've never read anything about

language is obviously not static in meaning. people change.

Then why the fuck do you think philosophy and linguistics treats it like it is?

because its the current best abstraction. this doesnt preclude better abstractions that help to understand the real thing better.

and also, because the philosophers and linguists are confused. language feels like its static to an individual, so its very easy to suppose it is actually static. its an easy mistake to make.

okay. then the linguists and philosophers have found a better abstraction. thats progress.

Thanks for flagging my post @theGreatWingdingi

Respect the Sunday truce

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They created these concepts long before you were born. Do you see now why you shouldn't fucking talk about these things before you do any even cursory reading on them?

You didn't, as Nyte pointed out

okay lets try something else. you think metaphysical concept space as real. you classify "real" language as a thing/entity/collection/structure floating in metaphysical space. you think you can study metaphysical objects though philosophical methods. you think the empirical effects of language in practice follow from the metaphysics.

is this accurate at all?