Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein and general semantics
On twentieth century, the Anglo-American thought was influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is a strong relationship between the thinking of Wittgenstein and Korzybski although Korzybski had only few references about the Wittgenstein’s tractatus Logico-Philosopicus.
Berman, the author thinks that Korzybski considered that some of the tractatus were meaningless or ambiguous. “An analysis of Wittgenstein’s philosophy should be interest to the general semanticist.
According to Wittgenstein, philosophy is the “Critique of language”; philosophy is not a natural science. The logical clarification of thoughts is the object of philosophy, philosophy is not a theory based on empirical investigation, and it is just a language clarifying activity.
Wittgenstein said philosophy is the pursuit of sense and meaning, not of truth. The philosophers have the task of see that all discourse complies with these two conditions:
“Contain only the terms which have unique and ambiguous meaning being assigned by explicit definitions of by pointing”
“Its prepositions be constructed according to the rules of our language to make determinate sense”
Philosophers have the duty of see these conditions are being complied with all actual uses of the language; for example is daily life, in science.
The pursuit of truth, for Wittgenstein is the activities of everyday life and its refined extension. The only business of philosophy is to see that we understand the terms and prepositions we use.
According to Wittgenstein if we face any problem one of these two things are possible:
We understand the problem.
We do not understand it.
If we understand the problem there is no need of any philosophy, and the problem could be solved by scientific methods.
If we do not understand the problem, we have to investigate the statement of the problem. Here we have these results:
“The problem after clarification becomes a genuine or real problem”
On twentieth century, the Anglo-American thought was influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein. There is a strong relationship between the thinking of Wittgenstein and Korzybski although Korzybski had only few references about the Wittgenstein’s tractatus Logico-Philosopicus.
Berman, the author thinks that Korzybski considered that some of the tractatus were meaningless or ambiguous. “An analysis of Wittgenstein’s philosophy should be interest to the general semanticist.
According to Wittgenstein, philosophy is the “Critique of language”; philosophy is not a natural science. The logical clarification of thoughts is the object of philosophy, philosophy is not a theory based on empirical investigation, and it is just a language clarifying activity.
Wittgenstein said philosophy is the pursuit of sense and meaning, not of truth. The philosophers have the task of see that all discourse complies with these two conditions:
“Contain only the terms which have unique and ambiguous meaning being assigned by explicit definitions of by pointing”
“Its prepositions be constructed according to the rules of our language to make determinate sense”
Philosophers have the duty of see these conditions are being complied with all actual uses of the language; for example is daily life, in science.
The pursuit of truth, for Wittgenstein is the activities of everyday life and its refined extension. The only business of philosophy is to see that we understand the terms and prepositions we use.
According to Wittgenstein if we face any problem one of these two things are possible:
We understand the problem.
We do not understand it.
If we understand the problem there is no need of any philosophy, and the problem could be solved by scientific methods.
If we do not understand the problem, we have to investigate the statement of the problem. Here we have these results:
“The problem after clarification becomes a genuine or real problem”