WITTGENSTEIN: Interview with Prof. Michael Potter
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- čas přidán 5. 08. 2024
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I interview Michael Potter, Cambridge Professor and Wittgenstein expert, all about Ludwig Wittgenstein. We cover Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations along with his other works. We also discuss his philosophical allure, method of writing, biographical details, and his thought on various topics. This is a long-form uncut interview. Shorter clips on contained topics also available on the channel.
NOTE: Apologies for the distortion on my mic (at times). I'll reduce the recorded input volume for the next video.
Michael Potter's books are available here:
www.amazon.com/s?k=michael+po...
#Wittgenstein #Interview #MichaelPotter
--------- Video Contents ---------
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:08 - Why is Wittgenstein alluring?
00:06:03 - Was Wittgenstein post-modern?
00:07:45 - Are Wittgenstein's writings mysterious?
00:09:50 - Wittgenstein's (and Russell's) interest in religion.
00:13:48 - Wittgenstein's biography and its relation to his works and writing method.
00:34:50 - Philosophy of language and metaphysics in Wittgenstein's Tractatus.
01:07:44 - Saying-showing distinction and the inexpressible in Wittgenstein's Tractatus
01:29:45 - Solipsism in Wittgenstein's Tractatus
01:46:38 - Wittgenstein's Tractatus versus Philosophical Investigations
01:50:51 - Wittgenstein's private language argument
02:00:34 - What is certain in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations? OR Wittgenstein against the cogito.
02:14:15 - Wittgenstein's language games and forms of life in Philosophical Investigations
02:28:45 - Wittgenstein on religion and ethics
02:44:54 - Wittgenstein's view of philosophy and its impact on analytic metaphysics
--------- Channel Details ---------
This channel features videos about big ideas in philosophy, explained as simply as I can. The focus is on late 19th and early 20th century thought, with a particular emphasis on the British Idealists (e.g. F. H. Bradley, J. M. E. McTaggart) and early analytic philosophers (Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Frank Ramsey). Welcome to the channel!
--------- My Details---------
I am a PhD student and Gates Scholar at Cambridge having submitted a thesis on Frege's views on Truth. I have lectured at Cambridge on Frank Ramsey and Bertrand Russell, regularly taught undergraduate logic classes, and have also supervised students in metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophical logic, epistemology, and early analytic philosophy. But I have a keen interest in the British Idealists that I hope to pursue by making videos about what I'm reading, so much of the content of this channel will be an outlet for that interest.
What a fascinating and insightful discussion! Thank you both for this.
thanks for this its hard to get all this historical detail without the help of an expert or huge amount of research
Very enlightening! Listening to this interview really helped me to better understand the Investigations, which I had supposedly studied!
I know how you feel! I did an undergraduate paper in _Investigations_ but it only scratched the surface. Thanks for the compliment.
Thanks for making these videos! This was excellent.
And thank you for this comment!
Thank you, both. Thank Prof Potter, thank you Judith for pointing me to this. Joy.
And thanks for your comment!
Excellent discussion and interview
Excellent video.
Thank you, Sir.
great interview on a work of a genius philosopher.
wittgenstein seems to me to have laid groundwork for future generations into the inspection of language and its relations. Produced language roads, lit up by his self-conscious tendencies. i am the furthest from an expert on his thought and work, but i also get the impression that his writings seem to constantly orbit the essence of tautology. but i can see this could be a distortion. although i can also see why some might think his work in places lacks the kind of substance and concretness expected in the end. decent video to me so far that im watching it. have you read his stuff on colour?
What?!?! "...laid groundwork for future generations into the inspection of language and its relations." Who are you, inspector Gadget? There is nothing to inspect, Wittgenstein ended the subject by concluding that language has no rules of logic or any other patterns of predictability that we can discover. And maybe it's better this way that he didn't discover any mechanical truth which is what he really was searching for.
I really enjoyed this interview. The statement I found most interesting was the idea that some of the moves Wittgenstein was making was to close off the way to transcendental idealism. Would be interested in this being elaborated.
Glad you enjoyed it. What time was that comment?
@@AbsolutePhilosophy It is mentioned at 2:20:40 in the context of the Investigations and I think at another point in the context of the Tractatus
Maybe you can help me. What was the first sentence of Wittgenstein's essay presented first time to Bertrand Russell so he could determine is the author is a complete idiot? : czcams.com/video/cFXWKEc84ew/video.html
The best definition of Philosophy I've ever heard: "A thousand page menu - and no food".
That quote is specifically about metaphysics, no?
One page menu placed before a cat is the analogy of a human who doesn't Philosophies
wittgenstein my favourite :)
Because?
Thanks for this interview, really enjoyed it. I'm currently reading Monk's Bio of Wittgenstein, enjoying that too. I'm not an expert on Philosophy by any stretch, so was wondering what impact, if any, Wittgenstein's work on Language may have had on computer languages (Java, Python, C++ eg.)? Also, what editions of Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' and his 'Philosophical Investigations' would you (or anyone here) recommend I read? Thanks again for your channel, enjoying it immensely. Thanks again man.
I have the Wiley-Blackwell version of Philosophical Investigations, and the Routledge version of Tractatus translated by Pears and McGuinness. This is the Tractatus version used on the Cambridge syllabus.
Oh and you might like the Anthony Kenny book on Wittgenstein too. I remember enjoying that one.
Hey Nathan, thanks for this content, it is awesome! At 1:38:30 Professor Potter said that he has written about Wittgenstein's conception of solipsism and its influence on Russell; do you know which text of his this is? Greetings from Brazil!
Sorry, I don't. But there is a discussion of Solipsism in _Rise of Analytic Philosophy_ so you could try there if you can get a copy.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks!
Michael Potter looks so happy talking a out this stuff
*about
It's his happy place :).
Starting at 41:12 There is a significant slip of the tongue by Prof. Potter. He says "What enables a proposition to say something true or false about the world...is that the bits of the proposition fit together in exactly the way that the bits of the real world fit together if the proposition is true."
I'm sure this was nothing more than, as I said, a slip of the tongue, but it would be very misleading if taken literally.
Obviously, a proposition does not need to be true in order to mirror the world.
That's not a slip of tongue. Typically truth is thought to be a matter of correspondence to the world. So if a proposition is true it corresponds to the world. That was Wittgenstein's view too.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy I'm afraid there has been a slip of the tongue, and it's potentially very confusing. Allow me to explain why I think that.
Taken at face value, Prof. Potter's slip makes truth a prerequisite...a necessary condition...for meaning.
As you know, one of the motivating forces in the development of the picture theory was the need to separate meaning from truth.
The old Greek question: "How is it possible to say something both meaningful and false?" required an answer. This question, of course, motivated Frege and Russell too.
Now, meaning in the picture theory is indeed effected by correspondence with the world. However meaning is not truth and the meaning of a proposition is not dependent upon its truth value.
2.22 What a picture represents it represents independently of its truth or falsity...
Meaning in the picture theory is most definitely NOT the correspondence between the proposition and pertaining states of affairs.
It most definitely is not correspondence in the way that notion is used in theories of truth.
The correspondence required is between combinatorial possibilities: logical form.
To reiterate, according to the picture theory, meaning doesn't require truth. It requires that the combinatorial possibilities of language are the same as the combinatorial possibilities of the world.
In other words, a proposition can be meaningful without being true.
Prof. Potter's slip elides meaning and truth.
Has anyone written about parallels with Wittgenstein on language and Godel's incompleteness theorem?
Not sure. What parallels?
Unwatchable due to constant interruption for ads.
Ah..didums … nasty ads frightened you… never mind… mummy will look after you…
If Wittgenstein could not explain his reasoning, then why is he famous?
9:51 - one of Wittgenstein's students, the great Derek Prince, said that he certainly was not a Christian. You say you don't see any respect for religion from Russel - but the largest segment of his History is devoted to Catholicism...
He had a Catholic burial but he probably wouldn't have called himself a Christian. He lived a "religious" life, but I cannot find if he requested for this burial or if his friends did it.
I'm not suggesting Witt was a Christian, only that he was sympathetic to religion and religious conviction. Russell was certainly not a Christian. He wrote a book explaining why he wasn't, _Why I am not a Christian_ , and said in it that religion is an obstacle to moral progress.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy yes - indeed it is precisely that book which made Prof John Lennox become more convinced of Christianity as the only true belief.
" This is for the real adepts in madness, who have gone beyond all psychiatry, psychoanalysis, who are unhelpable. This third book is again the work of a German, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Just listen to its title: TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. We will just call it TRACTATUS. It is one of the most difficult books in existence. Even a man like G.E.Moore, a great English philosopher, and
Bertrand Russell, another great philosopher - not only English but a philosopher of the whole world - both agreed that this man Wittgenstein was far superior to them both.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was really a lovable man. I don't hate him, but I don't dislike him. I like him and I love him, but not his book. His book is only gymnastics. Only once in a while after pages and pages you may come across a sentence which is luminous. For example: That which cannot be spoken should not be spoken; one should be silent about it. Now this is a beautiful statement. Even saints, mystics, poets, can learn much from this sentence. That which cannot be spoken must not be spoken of.
Wittgenstein writes in a mathematical way, small sentences, not even paragraphs - sutras. But for the very advanced insane man this book can be of immense help. It can hit him exactly in his soul, not only in the head. Just like a nail it can penetrate into his very being. That may wake him from his nightmare.
Ludwig Wittgenstein was a lovable man. He was offered one of the most cherished chairs of philosophy at Oxford. He declined. That's what I love in him. He went to become a farmer and fisherman. This is lovable in the man. This is more existential than Jean-Paul Sartre, although Wittgenstein never talked of existentialism. Existentialism, by the way, cannot be talked about; you have to live it, there is no other way.
This book was written when Wittgenstein was studying under G.E.Moore and Bertrand Russell.
Two great philosophers of Britain, and a German... it was enough to create TRACTATUS LOGICO PHILOSOPHICUS. Translated it means Wittgenstein, Moore and Russell. I, on my part, would rather have seen Wittgenstein sitting at the feet of Gurdjieff than studying with Moore and Russell. That was the right place for him, but he missed. Perhaps next time, I mean next life... for him, not for me. For me this is enough, this is the last. But for him, at least once he needs to be in the company of a man like Gurdjieff or Chuang Tzu, Bodhidharma - but not Moore, Russell, not Whitehead. He was associating with these people, the wrong people. A right man in the company of wrong people, that's what destroyed him.
My experience is, in the right company even a wrong person becomes right, and vice-versa: in a wrong company, even a right person becomes wrong. But this only applies to unenlightened men, right or wrong, both. An enlightened person cannot be influenced. He can associate with anyone - Jesus with Magdalena, a prostitute; Buddha with a murderer, a murderer who had killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people. He had taken a vow to kill one thousand people, and he was going to kill Buddha too; that's how he came into contact with Buddha.
The murderer's name is not known. The name people gave to him was Angulimala, which means 'the man who wears a garland of fingers'. That was his way. He would kill a man, cut off his fingers and put them on his garland, just to keep count of the number of people he had killed. Only ten fingers were missing to make up the thousand; in other words only one man more.... Then Buddha appeared. He was just moving on that road from one village to another. Angulimala shouted, "Stop!"
Buddha said, "Great. That's what I have been telling people: Stop! But, my friend, who listens?"
Angulimala looked amazed: Is this man insane? And Buddha continued walking towards Angulimala. Angulimala again shouted, "Stop! It seems you don't know that I am a murderer,
and I have taken a vow to kill one thousand people. Even my own mother has stopped seeing me, because only one person is missing.... I will kill you... but you look so beautiful that if you stop and turn back I may not kill you."
Buddha said, "Forget about it. I have never turned back in my life, and as far as stopping is concerned, I stopped forty years ago; since then there is nobody left to move. And as far as killing me is concerned, you can do it anyway. Everything born is going to die."
Angulimala saw the man, fell at his feet, and was transformed. Angulimala could not change Buddha, Buddha changed Angulimala. Magdalena the prostitute could not change Jesus, but Jesus changed the woman.
So what I said is only applicable to so-called ordinary humanity, it is not applicable to those who are awakened. Wittgenstein can become awakened; he could have become awakened even in this life.
Alas, he associated with wrong company. But his book can be of great help to those who are really third-degree insane. If they can make any sense out of it, they will come back to sanity."
Great philosopher worthy of study. If the child makes you mad, just attack him physically. I tend to favor the philisophy of a certain movie character by the name of Tony Montana, who gave up everything in order to save the lives of 2 kids. In Tony's words, "you are all a bunch of fucking assholes. You know why? Because you dont have the guts to be who you want to be".
YT keeps shifting me away from this and other videos 😢
Meanies!
Goedel interessiert sich in 3 Seiten Brief an Wittgenstein zum Prototractatus
Ich halte die Wahrheitstafeln von L. W. wie Russell als Schwachsinn und falsch und Wittgenstein als ein Dilettant.
An amazing amount of energy spent on finding meaning in what is admittedly gibberish, nonsense
Defining Wittgenstein as an "analytic philosopher"?? Has the interviewer read 'Philosophical Investigations'? He had a road to Damascus and recanted his early work.
Is Professor Michale on shrooms? Why those weird eyes?
13.42 in and I haven't learned a thing about Wittgenstein's philosophy. I'm outta here
that private language argument was explained so badly... lots of stuttering circle argumentation, with a pinch of actual explanation.. this interview does not really deserve the praise it gets in the comments.. this is at best a 6 or 7 out of 10.........
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" games have in common? Well... what do all rivers have in common? What do all flames have in common? Describe the aroma of coffee? Well... describe the colour yellow. Describe the aroma of a week-worn pair of underpants. 😄 I'm not joking.
There are those who think the Greeks said it all and the rest is commentary. I don't know enough about ancient philosophy to comment on that. But it seems to me that even if the big ideas were in place at that time, the details needed working out, and every generation needs to say it again in the context in which they find themselves. Wittgenstein certainly had some insight! (And I don't think he was looking for what all games had in common, he was critiquing that as the way in which a concept such as 'a game' works.)
In a poll carried out in 1999 with professional philosophers working in the USA, Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations was voted the most important work of the 20th.c., but you wouldn't know this just by listening to this conversation, which I found grindingly dull. It lacked any reference to Wittgenstein's spirit and deep, ethical commitment.
Sorry you didn't enjoy it. Having worked on what was one of the most important works of the 19th century (Frege's Begriffsschrift) I can say that importance does not entail excitement. At least, not until you understand the often technical aspects at play and realise quite how groundbreaking the work is in terms of rethinking in its historical context. We did speak about his ethics and religious views near the end. But perhaps you didn't last that long
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Thanks for your response. I never put forward the idea that importance must equate with excitement. That's your misunderstanding. I'm not the excitable type, but do value importance, which is indicated by my reference to the poll of 1999 that did judge Philosophical Investigations to be the most 'important' philosophical work of the 20th c.
Best wishes.
Please let the Professor Talk
And stop giggling
This is unfair. I thought the interview was very well conducted.
@@chienperdu7256I completely agree. All of the interviewer's questions and remarks were helpful and moved the conversation forward. It's not always healthy or useful to simply sit in reverence in front of someone with more credentials. Particularly it you've read the material being discussed.
The interviewer did a great job. His remarks were not out of place and helped to steer the conversation and make it more engaging.
Any way to cut down, or stop, all the excessive hand waving of the guest in future videos? Unfortunately, this constant gesturing, and rapid motioning of the hands in such a limited visual frame makes for a very distracting and difficult to watch presentation.
Incoherent
Bullish-t thumbnail to make unwary people think it's a lost 'interview' with Wittgenstein, the way it is deliberately written.
No ethics in this video maker. No honor. Crap. Unsub. LW would not approve of that clickbait deceit tactic. Inconsiderate.
No deception intended. If you look at the thumbnails and titles of videos where I interview an academic on a philosopher's total thought they are all the same.
Ludwig contributed NOTHING of value to the field of philosophy.
Prove me wrong.
Well I'm not sure if I can prove it, but the fact that so many philosophers have dedicated a lot of time to studying, interpreting, and understanding his work would suggests there is something of value there. And he was well regarded in his time by both the Cantabridgians and the Vienna circle.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy, let me know when you can think of a single valuable contribution he made, then. ;)
philosophy:
the love of wisdom, normally encapsulated within a formal academic discipline. Wisdom is the soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, insight, and good judgment. Wisdom may also be described as the body of knowledge and principles that develops within a specified society or period. E.g. “The wisdom of the Tibetan lamas.” Cf. “wisdom”.
Unfortunately, in most cases in which this term is used, particularly outside India, it tacitly or implicitly refers to ideas and ideologies that are quite far-removed from genuine wisdom. For instance, the typical academic philosopher, especially in the Western tradition, is not a lover of actual wisdom, but a believer in, or at least a practitioner of, adharma, which is the ANTITHESIS of genuine wisdom. Many Western academic (so-called) “philosophers” are notorious for using laborious sophistry, abstruse semantics, gobbledygook, and pseudo-intellectual word-play, in an attempt to justify their blatantly-immoral ideologies and practices, and in many cases, fooling the ignorant layman into accepting the most horrendous crimes as not only normal and natural, but holy and righteous!
An ideal philosopher, on the other hand, is one who is sufficiently intelligent to understand that morality is, of necessity, based on the law of non-violence (“ahiṃsā”, in Sanskrit), and sufficiently wise to live his or her life in such a harmless manner. Cf. “dharma”.
One of the greatest misconceptions of modern times is the belief that philosophers (and psychologists, especially) are, effectively, the substitutes for the priesthood of old. It is perhaps understandable that this misconception has taken place, because the typical priest/monk/rabbi/mullah seems to be an uneducated buffoon compared with those highly-educated gentlemen who have attained doctorates in philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. However, as mentioned in more than a few places in this book, it is imperative to understand that only a miniscule percentage of all those who claim to be spiritual teachers are ACTUAL “brāhmaṇa” (as defined in Chapter 20). Therefore, the wisest philosophers of the present age are still those exceptionally rare members of the Holy Priesthood!
At the very moment these words of mine are being typed on my laptop computer, there are probably hundreds of essay papers, as well as books and articles, being composed by professional philosophers and theologians, both within and without academia. None of these papers, and almost none of the papers written in the past, will have any noticeable impact on human society, at least not in the realm of morals and ethics, which is obviously the most vital component of civilization. And, as mentioned in a previous paragraph, since such “lovers-of-wisdom” are almost exclusively adharmic (irreligious and corrupt) it is indeed FORTUITOUS that this is the case. The only (so-called) philosophers who seem to have any perceptible influence in the public arena are “pop” or “armchair” philosophers, such as Mrs. Alisa “Alice” O’Connor (known more popularly by her pen name, Ayn Rand), almost definitely due to the fact that they have published well-liked books and/or promulgate their ideas in the mass media, especially on the World Wide Web.
@@TheVeganVicar yet not a single word in this text employed with using laborious sophistry, abstruse semantics, gobbledygook, and pseudo-intellectual word-play, in an attempt to justify how not Wittgeinstein did make contribution to Philosophy 😂 If you actually read him you will know how unpretentious his work is, moreover, Wittgenstein hims is very much against the idea that philosophy to say/ babble something that is mystical. So what you wrote about is somehow what he also against. Next time when you criticize someone, actually read them before doing so!
@@maybefreeoneday906, kindly repeat that in ENGLISH, Miss.☝️
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
take your careless dismissal elsewhere. you're not needed here.
"Most of the propositions in the book are nonsense" Yet, he still dedicated a good part of his professional life to studying, interpreting and promoting this book of nonsense, which according to the author himself should be thrown away. This is why people hate and belittle the study of modern philosophy. Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Popper, Becker, all would be a better use of time than this "gibberish."
Thanks for the comment. I don't think you've understood the idea here though. The 'nonsense' Wittgenstein alludes to here is that which doesn't distinguish how the world is from how it could be. In that sense, saying 2+2=4 is nonsense as it is a tautology, I.e. necessarily true. And although he suggests we throw the book away, that is only because it has already been used as a ladder for us reach a new vantage point and we no longer need it.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy Nathan, i appreciate your attempt to clarify Professor Potter's investigation of Wittgenstein's ideas. However, "2+2=4 is nonsense as it is a tautology" does nothing to clarify, "that which doesn't distinguish how the world is from how it could be." If the goal is to keep the philosophical discussion amongst PhDs, then by all means continue discussing Wittgenstein's thoughts on language. If the goal is to engage the public with the power of philosophy, how it consciously and subconsciously affects our lives, our communities, our governance, then perhaps it's time to get past semantics.
@@avkvoice7713 Sure. The idea is that we might imagine all the different ways the world could be, i.e. (for Witt) all the different ways the basic logical atoms that make up the world could have been arranged. The meaning of a claim is the set of worlds that it says are possible and those that are not, i.e. the meaning divides the possible worlds into two groups, and the actual world is said to be in one of those two groups. For example (crudely) if I say 'the cat is on the mat' its meaning is the way it splits the worlds into two groups. One group has all the possibilities where the cat is on the mat, and the other all the worlds where the cat in not on the mat. So its meaning tells you something about the way the actual world is arranged, by saying it is in the first group of worlds. The reason a claim like '2 + 2 = 4' is 'nonsense' is because it doesn't rule out any way the world could have been. It puts all worlds into one group and says the actual world is one of those. But then, all tautologies do the same thing, since they rule no possibility out as they are necessarily true, i.e. true in all possibilities. To put it as I did above, tautologies don't rule our any possibility, so they don't "distinguish how the world is from how it could be", and so are meaningless. This is the point Wittgenstein is pushed to by his logical atomism and theory of meaning.
@@AbsolutePhilosophy ... or not.
Yes, your elaboration will definitely clear things up for the layman. 😉. As a former high school teacher, and a current communication advisor, i can't help but advocate for clarity and accessibility in the discussion of philosophical thought. That said, i truly appreciate the time and thought you put into your channel and your responses.
czcams.com/video/-4O4hUwcpDw/video.htmlsi=NxNSj8xzsEflbP50
I wonder if the distinction and argument between subjectivity and objectivity evolved from the same philosophical studies within the context of language and if they existed before the 20th century or at least were the distinctions as difficult as they are now.
I think if not all but a lot of us who have had traditional education beyond a certain level, recognize that the instability of objectivity is something that none of us start with as a child but we arrive at it at a later stage.
Within the context of language, you can define it as the result of it being a dual-use tool; one is for communication that we learn first in its more basic form but then it develops into a thinking tool (as proposed by Chomsky) in the form of the inner voice.
If we agree on the dual use of language then we can understand the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity as an emergent and divergent property of growing up.
It is something of serious consideration because It does have serious implications such as growing isolation which explains why children find it so easy to make friends when it becomes increasingly difficult as we age.
The question is whether this is something to be discouraged or encouraged which leads to the idea of freedom of independent thinking versus manufactured consensus in society. Even if there is a favorable boundary between the two, it is extremely difficult to define because the act of determining such a boundary falls into the same traps, philosophically and politically.
As you can see the implications become more and more serious and far-reaching leading to the kind of crisis we are witnessing today in every aspect of human activity.
What I find interesting is that contrary to the starting point by Wittgenstein and his immediate predecessor this dynamic is independent of language except that it has acted as a catalyst in concept only. If we choose to give it a name then it can only be labeled as the language of ideas which includes logical and mathematical languages rendering the Age of Enlightenment doomed from its beginning. That is to the chagrin of our so-called elite still nostalgic about that era and moaning about post-modernism.