The Spell of Linguistic Philosophy - Bernard Williams & Bryan Magee (1977)

In this program, Bernard Williams discusses the spell of linguistic philosophy (i.e. ordinary language philosophy) with Bryan Magee. This is from a 1977 series on Modern Philosophy called Men of Ideas.
You can find one of the best and most influential works of linguistic philosophy, Gilbert Ryle's "The Concept of Mind", here: archive.org/details/conceptof...
#Philosophy #BryanMagee #BernardWilliams

[@stephensharp3033]

This conversation and the others in the series were published in a book which I loaned to a journalist who never gave it back.

[@pectenmaximus231]

Bernard is so pleasant/charming. Wish I could travel back in time to meet him.

[@divertissementmonas]

I know... And being one of Isaiah Berlin's pupils, he was lucky too.

[@jeffryphillipsburns]

His accent and verbal mannerisms seem to me to be continually veering into Eric Idle territory.

[@buddhabillybob]

His essays and books KILL! Why isn't he more famous? It's as if he took the best aspects of linguistic philosophy and moved on to a related but slightly differently set of questions.

[@rationalsceptic7634]

He is but is also fierce in debate!!

[@garrett9945]

How do you know that? Where can I find his debates? I would like to find them.

[@neil6477]

This is the type of programme the BBC used to show - when it was taken seriously. Now it's all about cookery, buying and fixing old rubbish, inane quizzies or documentaries clearly aimed at the brain dead!

[@yvonneheald6456]

That statement Neil made me laugh out loud. I agree wholeheartedly with your definition of current bbc programmes being aimed at the brain dead😂

[@Profmillar]

Bernard looks like a mixture of Bertrand Russell and Richard Feynman.

[@maaaaaaaaarcel]

I thought Eric Idle and Feynman 😄But then, Idle looks much like Russell...

[@Erasmuserynngaard]

That statement stands verified.

[@donaldist7321]

he is only 48 in that video. He was an admirable teacher - better at teaching than at theorising.

[@wjrs5]

Outstanding.

[@mediatestcentre90]

a hilarious interview, philosophy can be fun !

[@ReynaSingh]

Insightful conversation. Will be coming back to this one

[@BrightAgeBeyond]

Great, thanks for the upload.

[@firstal3799]

Great conversation

[@gplunk]

One of the more lucid and cogent of the interviewees....

[@RAPPERScantSPELL]

Take a double-shot of dry gin every time someone says ‘as it were’, and chug an entire 12 oz lager every time Magee asks a confirmative question within his question, e.g.: ‘isn’t it?, aren’t they? , didn’t he? etc.

[@gplunk]

'hammered' would be the unequivocal result; I dare say....

[@ianhowe1449]

After 7 minutes, I would be, as it were, dead from alcohol poisoning.

[@angelseye7492]

*me pouring my whiskey

[@waldwassermann]

I did and I think it’s all good.

[@MS-fg8qo]

Magee likes to show off. Still an amazing interviewer. Williams, as it were, is incredibly erudite though.

[@wanderslostify]

Magee seems more, not hostile, but maybe more pressing in this one. I don't think he is being unfair. But it does seem like a departure from his usual style.

[@markantrobus6794]

There is an implicit occult theory in Wittgenstein's late work. And it is from Tractatus: the subject (the philosophical I) is the limit of the world (not part of it). Das Mystische.

[@lefthand84]

I wonder if Williams still had that green shirt in 1986?

[@lokeshparihar7672]

27:38 which five philosophical revolutions is he talking about?

[@markantrobus6794]

Wittgenstein is a Zen kōan going right over the head of the fragmented western way of seeing. His foundation is monist, so to speak. His starting point is the essentials of Tractatus. His motive was enlightenment, self realisation. Bernard Williams has the last word and a right one at that.

[@Smurrexola]

😊

[@paololuckyluke2854]

Some philosophers seem to be very intelligent because it’s so difficult for us mere mortals to grasp what they are saying, like Hegel, some make philosophy seem easy, like Ayer, and some exude intelligence despite being crystal clear, like BW.

[@Thinkingbeingone]

Bernard Williams is a moral philosopher. Linguistic philosophy is not particularly his field of expertise. And yet he gives a better understanding of linguistic philosophy than I think a linguistic philosopher could give. I guess it is because he lived through that era ever though it wasn't his particular field of expertise.

[@albertcamus7807]

At 7:56, Williams explains that linguistic philosophy is not a field but a method.

[@johnleake5657]

The result, surely, of teaching philosophy in Cambridge in the 1960s and '70s? Your teachers were linguistic philosophers and your syllabus profoundly coloured by linguistic philosophy.

[@user-vg7zv5us5r]

Feynman of linguistic)

[@ryam4632]

So, the linguistic analysts objected to abstraction and integration in philosophy and called it "the love of clarity." I see.

[@austinterrymusic]

Sheldon Cooper

[@user-tl6iu3ee3f]

the philosophy in the past it was related to all the sciencein réalité she give all the sceince we know : about askeing the the question : answor and askeing this the basique to all sceince and the way to studey the human inside we have the psycholoy physicoloy and outside the sociology and chemistry and medical and mathematics but all this sceince they strated to make them specific space in sceinceand to related linguistic with philosophy it related with the language this language with her to face language spoken and the language of the body it different frome personality to outhres the philosophy presented the linguistic and inverse like some of the philosophro said :I don't meaning someone's this just sentences : the human is animale spoken : all the respect this just philosophy the language it important to this human and fro the intelligente of the perception we have all the human have specific intelligent and this frome the Majste Allah جل جلاله.all the respect for this speech in philosophy all the respect.

[@alfonso8843]

I love verything about this. We never question where our ideas of justice, creator, authority, and free will come from. Scrates and Plato were wealthy men that loved to idealized and romantize morality. They didn't have as much skeptical wherewithal to see throught their own bs as Neitzshe. Hopefully once we realize our flaws we can begin dealing with the core of our problems as a people.

[@VisiblyJacked]

We will collectively realise our flaws and self-correct? Who is being the romantic here?

[@darillus1]

@@VisiblyJacked 🤣

[@LethalBubbles]

linguistic philosophy is a diaster. "what is [xxxx]" is precisely TO get past the vagueness of the words and obvious surface level meanings. Now that it's been flipped on it head people don't ask the big questions anymore. Surface level orthodoxies have just combined this and behaviorism to disenfranchise people's opinions on themselves and society.

[@nononouh]

26 37

[@Wamsyllib]

You can’t explain understanding Wittgenstein. It’s like a mechanism that helps phenomena of universal language not being disguised

[@henriquecardoso45]

English professors and their habits to put hands on their foreheads when thinking.

[@JS-dt1tn]

a gathering of pompus asses.

[@pschurchland]

Such utter crap. Why cannot Williams say something non-fluffy and non cow-towing to oxford?

[@deanedge5988]

He lacks your gift for expression.

[@albertusmagnus5829]

Not quite sure what you mean by the term 'fluffy' - perhaps a synonym is 'polysyllabic'?

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

Thinking, in any form, be it in words or images, is an illusion. Consciousness is an illusion, because the self does not exist. Cogito ergo non sum.

[@nigelralphmurphy2852]

but the computer or cell phone you used to write that message actually exists? The 'self' is a trick created by living creatures in order to survive. sight, sound, taste, touch, vocalisation, all measures of detecting the positives and negatives of the "not me" "out there" in order to live and survive. Detecting hot, cold in the outside of the body that is the living creature and the pains or pleasures inside the body of the boundaries of the living creature require to be made sense of. A sense of 'me' and 'nor me' are not luxuries, they are essentials for the 'me' to live and survive. ALL sentient beings have a sense of 'self' of the 'me' and 'not me' and of threat to 'self' or 'personal space' of being drive by essential physical needs such as food, warmth, safety, and the imperative to reproduce. It just makes evolutionary sense that any autonomous living creature requires a sense of danger and a sense of 'self-me-not-me.' Even a one celled bacteria will move away from danger and toward something that is 'good' for it. That requirement for a perceptual centre is overwhelmingly evolutionarily imperative. It's an illusion but a real illusion. In other words the illusion is real. Would you agree with that to a certain extent? The illusion of self is as real as the 'outside' world. If the outside world is also an illusion then it is an illusion that can hurt and even kill you, which seems rather real. 'WE' are real inasmuch that we are a physical thing in the world of physical things and when our time-limited animated physicality ceases then the "me" that was created by 'our' physical body also ceases, as the one is the same as and the outcome of the other.

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

@@nigelralphmurphy2852 I don't know how to respond to your comment. Consciousness is an illusion. I just contradicted myself.

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

@@ShannonFreng indeed you understand me as no thing. Being and nothing are the same.

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

@@ShannonFreng think of being, let's say the universe, in absolute space with no limit. Then the universe is the opposite of the eternal space. It becomes its own negative eternity. If you manage to abstract your own being and see the creation as it really is, then it is not. The same is true of our thinking mind. At some point I shall be dead, that is no more. The same is true in your case. I am nothing with nothing. ..you. It is called solepsism. It is all nothing. A is the opposite of B, then B is the opposite of A, so A and B are the same. In the opposition they are the same. Tertium comparationis, the I think, imagine etc. is the illusion.

[@jakkritphanomchit]

Quite a radical statement no?

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

The so-called linguistic philosophers of Oxford and Cambridge have not read Plato; or if they have, they have failed to understand the Divine Thinker.

[@borischum5733]

They should read the Bible as well, or should read again

[@samharper5881]

They've read and understood Plato much better than you do.

[@JSwift-jq3wn]

@@samharper5881 no, you are wrong. Read first.

[@jeffryphillipsburns]

I’d never heard of this “Devine Thinker”, so I looked him up: George Devine turns out to have been an English theatrical director who lived approximately in the first half of the twentieth century. I’m not sure what that has to do with Plato though..

[@simonstuddert-kennedy8854]

Any professional philosopher has read Plato. Your comment is a silly and foolish one. Moreover, any one of these philosophers is almost certainly much smarter and better educated than you are. Try to be modest and humble, and refrain from vacuous criticisms of your betters.