[HN Gopher] All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
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All of Wittgenstein is now public domain
Author : Schiphol
Score : 165 points
Date : 2022-01-01 17:49 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wittgensteinproject.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wittgensteinproject.org)
| ineedasername wrote:
| Not quite all public domain. (in English) [0] (maybe? gray area)
|
| I'd highly recommend checking out his work on (and coining of the
| term) "language games" [1] I'm not sure I agree with all of the
| thinking behind them, but it's a fascinating concept that has
| useful nuggets whether or not you agree with everything
| Wittgenstein says about them. They are explored pretty fully in
| his work _" Philosophical Investigations"_ [2] This work pretty
| much set aside a fair amount of his thinking in _Tractatus
| Logico-Philosophicus_ , which is still an interesting work in its
| own right. I think that even a cursory ELI5 treatment of this
| material in a standard college course would be very useful in
| arming students with tools needed to dissect language. I've used
| it (in brief) when teaching a course on _Informal Logic_ in
| relation to propaganda.
|
| [0] It seems copyright on the English translation might still be
| in effect, or at least a gray area of determination. Since it's a
| common text use in college courses I'm guessing the copyright
| owners may fight public domain release. The issue will be whether
| or not the translation was a work for hire or if it can be
| considered sufficiently different to constitute an original work.
| The English translation by Anscombe, Hacker, and Schulte occured
| posthumously, and so might not be considered work for hire.
| Hopefully it will resolve in favor of public domain. For a
| shorter consideration of "language games" check out Blue Book.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_game_(philosophy)
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/Philosophical-Investigations-
| Ludwig-W...
| rackjack wrote:
| I've heard that Wittgenstein is one of the few philosophers to
| actually make people optimistic. Does anyone here feel that way?
| KarlKemp wrote:
| "People" for "definitely not women" in this case. Nor his
| brothers.
| onion2k wrote:
| My main take from reading Wittgenstein was that no one agrees
| on the meaning of words so there's barely any point arguing
| about things. I suppose that's sort of positive.
| OJFord wrote:
| My main take from arguing about things is that it being
| founded on a mutually disagreed word meaning doesn't end the
| argument!
| belfalas wrote:
| "If you agree that there is a hand, we will grant you all the
| rest..."
|
| From the tiny book "On Certainty" by Wittgenstein. Really
| interesting and thought-provoking.
| lkbm wrote:
| More context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_is_one_hand
|
| TL;DR:
|
| Descartes (and others): We can't know for certain that the
| external world exists.
|
| GE Moore: "Here is one hand, and here is another. There are at
| least two external objects in the world."
|
| Wittgenstein was pointing out that this doesn't address any of
| the actual claims. (I think "agree" is a confusing word to use
| in the translation. "Know" would work better.)
|
| EDIT: I'd also like to throw this Moorean SMBC sub-comic
| because I love it and it's relevant: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comics/20100512after.gif -- from https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/?id=1879
| johnisgood wrote:
| Here is one hand, And here is another. There are
| at least two external objects in the world. Therefore,
| an external world exists.
|
| As if there would not be hands in a simulated world!
| HEmanZ wrote:
| My thought on this, what's the difference to an agent
| between a real world an a simulated one? Why aren't all
| worlds effectively simulated?
| johnisgood wrote:
| There is no difference. It would only matter if you could
| wake up from the simulated one. Everything in this world
| seems real, and since I have not waken up to confirm that
| this is not even real, I might as well just consider it
| real and go on with my life.
| number6 wrote:
| At least simulated by our brain. Most would say filtered
| but what is the difference?
| dlkf wrote:
| The Cartesian begins with a hidden assumption - let's call
| it the internalist assumption - that in order for me to
| know that "here is one hand," there needs to be no
| possibility that we are in a simulated world (for if it's
| possible I'm in a simulated world, then I don't _really_
| know that here is one hand).
|
| Moore's point is: why is the internalist assumption any
| better than the assumption that here is one hand?
| scoofy wrote:
| The point isn't about the external world. It's about
| deduction vs induction, the point is about axioms. Axioms
| are arbitrary, thus deductive reasoning is ultimately
| arbitrary.
|
| _If there is a hand_ then everything else falls out
| deductively. Using induction, it 's trivially true that
| there is a hand.
|
| Using deductive reasoning to prove an inductive proposition
| is ultimately a waste of time, using inductive reasoning to
| create a correct framework for deductive reasoning is
| ultimately unknowable. Both of these together is how we
| live our lives and create our standard model, which is
| ultimately imprecise at best, and wrong at second best.
|
| This is Moore's point, that we are wasting our time trying
| to deductively prove the existence of an external world
| when it's trivially provable. We may not get _accurate_
| axiomatic framework, but we can never get that anyway.
|
| Much of the point of philosophy is properly delineating
| between these two methods of reasoning. Much of analytic
| philosophy is finding areas where language blurs the two.
| Lamad123 wrote:
| You also need to know Austrian to understand Frankenstein
| kingkawn wrote:
| He said that someday philosophers would forget him and he would
| be discovered by others who would finally figure out what he was
| truly trying to say. May this be the start of that era.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| So now we can expect Wittgenstein fan-fic?
| morelisp wrote:
| What is _Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language_ if not
| this?
| loevborg wrote:
| "Wittgenstein's philosophy as it struck Kripke"
| [deleted]
| gerikson wrote:
| More we can expect Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus fanfic. Maybe
| some hot theorem-on-theorem action with stuff from Principia
| Mathematica.
| raphlinus wrote:
| I started something along those lines:
| https://levien.com/tmp/tractatus.html
| kragen wrote:
| This is wonderful in simultaneously helping to explicate
| Wittgenstein, Rust, and 2-D graphics. Thank you.
| nathias wrote:
| analytic philosophy has been a thing for quite some time ...
| Mezzie wrote:
| Now we can make money on our Wittgenstein fanfic.
| sideshowb wrote:
| Public domain? I thought it was private language
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Do we know what Wittgenstein himself would have thought of this?
| Did he have opinions on "intellectual property" regimes?
|
| Did the "intellectual property" regime contemporaneous with him
| writing encourage or discourage his output?
|
| I mean, there's some thought that Giuseppe Verdi reduced his
| output when copyright was introduced:
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1336802
| [deleted]
| augustzf wrote:
| I clicked because I read "all of Wolfenstein is now public
| domain". How embarrassing.
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| _Wittgenstein: Enemy Territory_ would make for a great game,
| actually.
| dlkf wrote:
| No book influenced my attitude toward philosophy more than
| Wittgenstein's Blue Book. Here are a couple gems:
|
| > The questions, "What is length?", "What is meaning?", "What is
| the number one?" etc., produce in us a mental cramp. We feel that
| we can't point to anything in reply to them and yet ought to
| point to something. (We are up against one of the great sources
| of philosophical bewilderment: we try to find a substance for a
| substantive.)
|
| > The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a
| general term one had to find the common element in all its
| applications, has shackled philosophical investigation; for it
| has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher
| dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have
| helped him to understand the usage of the general term. When
| Socrates asks the question, "what is knowledge?" he does not even
| regard it as a preliminary answer to enumerate cases of
| knowledge. If I wished to find out what sort of thing arithmetic
| is, I should be very content indeed to have investigated the case
| of a finite cardinal arithmetic. For: (a) this would lead me on
| to all the more complicated cases, (b) a finite cardinal
| arithmetic is not incomplete, it has no gaps which are then
| filled in by the rest of arithmetic.
|
| > Now I don't say that this is not possible. Only, putting it in
| this way immediately shows you that it need not happen. This, by
| the way, illustrates the method of philosophy.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| This is just like non-euclidean geometry. There are some
| fundamental postulates that you choose, in any kind of
| descriptive language, which is just convenient and doesn't
| really come from an empirical observation or is subject to
| constant improvement or change. They just are.
|
| I really love how this subject is approached in the Zen and the
| Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
| zwkrt wrote:
| I love his attitude that people talk in the same kind of
| compulsive way that a squirrel stores nuts for the winter. Not
| to say it is mindless but that it isn't rooted in philosophical
| consistency. Asking again and again "why" like Socrates doesn't
| get to the truth it just gets us caught in circles.
|
| Another unrelated Wittgenstein-ian point that I found
| enlightening in college is that in PL design you can't design a
| language that stops people from writing incorrect programs.
| Statements can't be correct as an inherent quality of their
| structure, they can only be correct in context of a goal.
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