Wittgenstein's Games (A. C. Grayling)

Professor A. C. Grayling discusses the thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the intellectual context surrounding his life and work. Note, the audio has been slightly improved. I increased the volume and tried to reduce some of the cell phone interference that occasionally shows up. In any case, the talk was given by professor A. C. Grayling in 2016 at the University of Cambridge.
More Wittgenstein: • Wittgenstein
#philosophy #wittgenstein

[@jon780249]

Extremely lucid, eloquent and illuminating lecture. While I understood the significance of later Wittgenstein, I had struggled with understanding why the Tractatus was important until i listened to this lecture, which succinctly clarifies so much.

[@languagegame410]

more A.C. GRAYLING lectures too, please... i very much enjoy listening to this speaker thusly... indeed.

[@michaelcollins7192]

Brilliant! A tour de force through the complexities of Wittgenstein, thank you.

[@charlesgrimshaw5204]

Thank you so much - very very helpful for me in understanding this brilliant thinker!

[@Anabsurdsuggestion]

Brilliant upload. Superb lecture!

[@hanaainir]

Thank you for the videooo

[@tristanreynolds]

Is it just me or did he not really talk about the rule following paradox? It's like he mentions it and then never finishes

[@anthonystrefwick2209]

Ontological slums perhaps are result of being able to say ( by mathematical convention) "...quantify over X - subs- i ,for each index "i"..." . Which runs to infinity in a very precise way without the discipline of identifying any indexed object - qua-referent .But the ideas of defined sets ,counting and cardinality won't go away even if they need to be regarded as auxilliaries or theoretical background, indeed for their value alone as instruments or objects of pure knowledge ?.For what little my own views are worth I suggest that Wittgenstein broke of into his unique effusions of free thinking not only in view of the foregoing , but to avoid driving into the morass of formalized thinking education and work practices which we in fact have done...

[@CarlDietz]

Do you ever see yourself as a poet when you talk like that?

[@anthonystrefwick2209]

@@CarlDietz First reaction is yes and is in line with my comment .The poetry seems to come out of the elusive but highly ordered structure of the compelling mathematical content which is to say at least an embellishment (and seemingly like poetic art) of the almost inscrutable and intractable empirical world. Thankyou for following up my comment , i've been missing the active study of philosophy now for a number of years.

[@ludwigwittgenstein5054]

44:10 "...and at that time homosexuality wasn't wildly appreciated" What an extraordinary and insightful statement. Ha, ha, ha....lmbo 😀😀😀

[@Three-Chord-Trick]

Can someone explain why everyone thinks Wittgenstein was so bleedin' clever? 😲 I've always thought he was doing, in his later phase, no more than paraphrasing Protagoras and the other Sophists (or even Berkeley). And in his first phase he was reviving the enterprise of the early Socrates/Plato. 🤔 What do "all" rivers have in common? Or flames? Or human beings?

[@languagegame410]

more WITTGENSTEIN, pleaszzze... gimmegimmemoremore.

[@evinnra2779]

That was an excellent presentation, clear and concise to the extent that now I can pinpoint where exactly did XXth century philosophy 'run off the tracks'. The claim that meaning exists only and exclusively as the outcome of language games is just wrong. The same way how concepts can form in the mind even without language, the concept of meaning can and does emerge as well. Babies form concepts of good, bad, light, dark, etc. way before they use or even silently understand words. Of course this is not to say that language has no influence on concept use later but initially concepts must be formed without language. If our goal is to be precise about how the human epistemological progress works, we can not build our understanding on purely what is accessible for scientific scrutiny yet only half true.

[@evinnra2779]

P.s. Also, to be clear where this comes from; there are substrates ontologically prior to 'sayables', hence concepts have contribution to the epistemological progress towards knowing even before they form a sayable in the mind, IMHO.

[@kvaka009]

@@evinnra2779 what do you mean by "concept"? Why not say that snails understand unsayable concepts as well?

[@evinnra2779]

@@kvaka009 I don't know what goes on in the 'minds' of snails or plants or even if they have something resembling minds. What I mean by concept, I'll get back to you on this point , shortly.

[@Gabriel-pt3ci]

Sorry, but I think this is a misunderstanding. What Wittgenstein was after in his later philosophy was an account of the meaning of linguistic entities. His great discovery is that contrary to what one might think there is not necessarily a coherent whole of characteristics that made all and only those stuffs in the world that go by the same name. Hence the meaning of a term cannot be something external to the language game (in the sense of linguistic practice or use) that you can assemble into a definition. In fact, his example of game is chosen because there isn't anything common to all games that come to mind. If you think entertainment is part of the definition of game, then I can cite you the Russian roulette, if you say it involves more than one player, my rebuttal is the solitary card game, etc. Whatever feature that comes to mind has an exception in the universe of instances that can be meant by the use of the word 'game'. Therefore, there is probably not a complete definition of what a game is but a list of correct uses of that word. I suggest you the video in this same channel on Socrates, Wittgenstein and definitions. The issue you raise in connection to the example of the baby is related to meaning but it is not typically refer to it by that term. That is case of pre-linguistic Intentionality or aboutness, the property of some states of mind of being about something. Here I suggest John Searle's lectures on the topic of Intentionality. Bryan Maggee interviews on Wittgenstein (there are two) and The Philosophy of Language (not linguistic philosophy) can be also pretty useful.

[@kvaka009]

@@Gabriel-pt3ci yea, what you said. People seem to think that aboutness entails concepts and since one can have aboutness without language, therefore one can also have concepts without language. And since concepts are meaningful, it is possible to have meaning without language. It's a confused mess.

[@kodfkdleepd2876]

Mathematicians have had a solid structure of language and just about anything else since the 50's.

[@markantrobus8782]

Philosophers give the appearance of dealing with abstruse matters when in fact they are quite simple things couched in difficult language. The language is difficult because the subject matter refuses to yield that easily to the type of seeing and thinking in such an approach. Wittgenstein was in a sense a parody of this while underneath he was a pure mystic.

[@misterprogressive8730]

Its too long. It could have been shortened to 15 minutes.

[@tristanreynolds]

Boo hoo mister progressive

[@Anabsurdsuggestion]

Stick to cereal packets for your entertainment

[@damianbylightning6823]

KZbin censors so much and that is distressing. KZbin doesn't censor this video and that is also distressing. I will say that Professor Grayling does have great hair - but he is a lousy public intellectual. Sadly most PIs are pathetic now. They ache to conform and want us all to conform too. We're breeding a strange bunch of intellectuals now.

[@Anabsurdsuggestion]

Stick to GB news

[@damianbylightning6823]

@@Anabsurdsuggestion Why do dopey lefties always pick on news that doesn't conform? GB news isn't perfect , but it's more diverse than the £5bn a year BBC.