Wittgenstein's PI in 5 minutes

[Junkdrawer]

Introduction:

From time-to-time, I’ve posted this image with a caption like "Deep Water"....



If you’re like most who’ve taken that dive, you’ve probably had a reaction similar to what I said to a friend of mine at the time:

“Those are clearly English words, strung together in what appears to be simple, grammatically correct sentences. The largest vocabulary word I’ve encountered is “supercilious”. But I read the paragraphs over and over again and IT JUST MAKES NO SENSE!”

It’s dense. It’s chewy. It’s obscure in many places page after page. I think the Philosophical Investigations (PI from here forward) comes across like that for two main reasons:

1.) The questions he’s attacking were very well known to the audience he was addressing. Most of the time, we’re not so lucky. And, as we’ll see, without knowing those questions, of course it will be hard to follow.

2.) Wittgenstein (LW from here forward) is showing us his problem solving process. He’s teaching us how to attack questions of this magnitude.

Hopefully, this short essay, approaching the same landscape painted over and over again in the PI, but this time with a simple evolutionary view, will help you with 1.), but for 2.), nothing replaces cracking the PI’s spine and doing the work. Let’s begin.

The Usual Model:

If you ask a modern, educated, Western person how the Brain, the Mind, Ideas, and Language are related, most often you would get something like this:

Ideas originate in the Mind. The Mind is an epiphenomenon of the organic Brain. We communicate Ideas with an agreed upon Language.

Looking about after reading the PI: Nope. Nature wouldn’t do that. Nature didn’t do that. Too many fiddly bits. Consider the other species with which we share this planet.

Very often, individuals within a species group together to hunt for food, or for their mutual defense. So we have ant hills, bee hives, rabbit warrens, wolf packs, etc. etc. To be effective, the actions within said groups must be coordinated. Pheromones, waggle dances, foot thumps, and barks/yowls are among the methods of communication used.

Now, it would be exceptionally silly to say that ants or bees, or even rabbits hold group meetings where they work out the meanings of the pheromones, waggle dances, or even foot thumps. We just expect that these communication methods co-evolved with the insect’s and probably, to the largest extent, the rabbit’s nervous systems. Dogs and other predatory mammals represent a more complex case.

Get a small litter of, say, six week old puppies, give them a chew toy and watch them play. Often two puppies will approach each other and get into that “I could go left or right quickly” front paws forward crouch. Another puppy will grab the chew toy and play “catch me if you can”. When one of the puppies catches the current holder of the chew toy, play bites are given until the chew toy is surrendered. Various yelps and growls are heard, often seeming to say “Hey, too rough”. (BTW: I suspect that the biter is learning, not only the limits of play, but also “Oh, so that’s what my brother ‘Smelly Butt’ sounds like when in trouble.”)

Clearly, in the case of the puppies, there is some learning going on, but it’s not so much the invention of new games but, as it were (a contagious turn of phrase you’ll encounter often in the PI), a tuning process. What does that particular puppy’s “hey, too hard” yelp sound like, etc. etc. Better to get these things right in play rather than during a hunt.

By the time we get to human beings, the barks, growls, chirps, squeaks and squawks become clearly enunciated words. Words having widely varying uses within increasingly intricate games. Soon, the number and complexity of these language games veritably explodes. Somewhere along the way from the proto-mammals that survived the Chicxulub dinosour killing asteriod event to the modern human, individuals became capable of playing these language games with themselves, not only talking to themselves, but also listening to themselves; perhaps this is the origin of what we call consciousness. One intriguing clue: today, all placental mammals have their brain hemispheres connected with a corpus callosum. Do dogs and cats have an internal dialog? Not sure – they seem to be keeping mum about that (tongue planted firmly in cheek).

Inevitably, we come to that most controversial of language games, Philosophy. And when people came to ask themselves what Language was, their answer was probably as inevitable and naturally egocentric as observing the Sun rise and set and concluding that Old Sol circles the earth:

Ideas originate in the Mind. The Mind is an epiphenomenon of the organic Brain. We communicate Ideas with an agreed upon Language.

So now, when you crack open the PI (and nothing, but nothing, replaces reading the PI), I think you’ll see LW analyzing this model by asking: “If that’s true, how did we come about to agree on the Language?” And as he proceeds with his oh-so-careful analysis, he comes to some startling conclusions that are almost never stated explicitly, but stand there staring you in the face. Seems the expression of an Idea may be the Idea itself. Seems we’re not the rugged, self -contained individuals the Usual Model would have you believe we are. Seems our bodies may be Individual, but our Minds are more essentially Social than we ever imagined.

So tell me about Social Darwinism again. (Considered opinion is that Charles Darwin rotates exactly 1 ¾ turns in his grave every time that phrase is used. He never said that, Herbert Spencer did. Hard to beat J.K. Galbraith’s “The Manners and Morals of High Capitalism” found " target="_blank">here. If you have never read On the Origin of Species, it can found here and elsewhere online free, both in print and audiobook. Accessible to the modestly educated reader, I, for one, was pleasantly surprised with what was and was NOT in there.)

Say, how is Smelly Butt these days? Hope he’s not in too much pain.

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. K&R...very well done

[Junkdrawer]

2. Took 2 days to pound out...

Writing is hard for me.

[htuttle]

3. Thanks, I'm going to go back and read Wittgenstein again

His work isn't one of those that I've tried and failed (repeatedly) to make it through. That honor is solely reserved for "Finnegan's Wake." (I've come to the conclusion that Finnegan's Wake only makes sense when read out loud with an Irish accent...).

I've just never really read Wittgenstein in the first place. I scanned over him in a college philosophy class, but he didn't get much time that semester, and I saw no reason to read him on my own. I think I'll give it a read, though. Thanks.

[planetc]

4. I don't know whether this adquately represents Wittgenstein's thought, but

...it makes sense, is clearly explained, and convinces me that I could try to read LW myself. After all, I got through 'Middlemarch" one summer, and I have run into people who are convinced of LW's genius.

But why did LW "never state explicitly" what his conclusions were?

[Junkdrawer]

5. Frankly, I think conclusions like that turn things so up-side-down...

he shows everyone EXACTLY where he was, how he got there and hopes they see what he sees.

BTW: Yeah, I know. It's more of an invitation to read or re-read the PI with hopefully a running start.

[Junkdrawer]

6. PS: I had a friend who did computer work for CMU's Cognitive Psych dept. ...

When he told me what they were doing and what they were finding, I asked if the PI was on bookshelves.

He said "yeah." I said "thought so."

[Junkdrawer]

7. PPS. He had already published the Tractatus...

thought he was fairly certain...hauled on the shoulders of the Vienna Circle...and then came to realize he was wrong.

I'm going to guess a guy like that will work and rework his final statement right up to the day he dies, publishing posthumously.

And he would have been the FIRST to rake me over the coals.

From my own MUCH more humble experience like that, I think I know how he felt.

[scarletwoman]

8. K&R. (nt)