Wittgenstein - Essay Example

Lecturer: Wittgenstein Introduction Ludwig Wittgenstein is an Australian-British scholar who was raised in a famous Viennese dynasty. He was born in the year1889 and passed away in 1951. Wittgenstein is among the famous thinkers of the 20th era. His earlier profession was an effect of Arthur and his mentor Russell Bertrand. His earlier profession was terminated in the Tractatus, which is based on the notion of rational problems that contributed to arguments of the logical language. His work tries to show the logic in philosophy and theoretical investigations. This is through revealing the logic and language used in philosophy as well as the technical approach of philosophical issues. The work of Wittgenstein on a rule of private language is still taken into considerations and his philosophical work as influenced varied field outside the work of philosophy. Therefore, the discussions within the research analysis provide different ways of understanding diverged philosophical writings of Wittgenstein. The Philosophical Features of Wittgenstein Wittgenstein’ logical concept is anti-theoretical; thus, it is not easy to classify them in the classical ideas. He focused on philosophical logic and language of philosophy, which a theory demonstrating his own meaning of philosophical ideas. He used a philosophical paradox of explaining the logic and language used in philosophical work, which he borrowed from the Greek sceptic (Pojman and Vaughn 192). He avoided the logic and language theory in 1929; thus started explaining ideas rather than describing them. Therefore, his work stood among the classical work because western philosophy mainly was conceived as the search for a new way of explaining ideas rather than describing them. Another feature is that Wittgenstein was non-sceptic because he believed that it was wrong for philosophers to use philosophical theorizing of ideas. This is one of the main reasons that made him abandon the philosophical method of theorizing ideas. This is because he taught that it was a risky way and liable to error. The philosophical theory was a method, which was commonly used by Emmanuel Kant, but the critique upon Kant’s way of theorizing ideas contributed to varied forms of human experience. Wittgenstein never used the same way Kant was working, but his method in philosophical work led to the philosophical theory back to its origin. For instance, the way people construe or interpret feelings from objects that are not dependent and connect them to the physical world is one way that attributes Wittgenstein’s work. Ordinary Language Philosophy Wittgenstein encountered varied issues in placing ideas; thus, nearly all of his writing styles were almost the psychopathic quality. Therefore, he used an ordinary language that views traditional philosophical issues as deep-rooted in misunderstandings. This philosophy is built upon distorting what words actually imply in the daily use. The language philosophical approach that Wittgenstein used avoided philosophical theories. The ordinary language, which is sometimes referred as the Oxford philosophy, was linked with the work of Oxford professors in the 20th century (Pojman and Vaughn 192). The central point of rational words that Wittgenstein used in the common language tripped over the words that many scholars took in abstraction. Abstraction is the method through which principles are employed from classification and utilization of literal ideas. This method of abstraction was used in philosophy in order to enable philosophers to recognize some set of ordinary features in people. However, Wittgenstein was criticized for being totally misguided, and he has no general solutions to the philosophical problems. Philosophers are obliged to abstract the ordinary definition of words, but Wittgenstein extracted words in reverse. He could describe a theory in every situation, and he used imagery to reveal the problem structure under scrutiny. This reveals why many people have read and appreciated most of his philosophical work. However, his later philosophical work of explaining theories is not just a style of writing, but also taken one back to the philosophical tradition of antiquity (Pojman and Vaughn 192). His philosophical work about language has varied rhetorical aspects. He treats dialect as a mechanism for abstract thinking a bit comparable to language of numbers, but it requires accuracy. Moreover, most of his role in language philosophy was to advance on the language vagueness; thus solving philosophical problems. His aim was to counterpoise the picture of language from different sets of objects; thus revealing the functions of varied objects. The language game is among the notable figure of speech that he used to represent the fragmented glimpse of language. Much of his work was on descriptive that became the main topic in discourse analytical work. Therefore, Wittgenstein‘s Philosophical views emphasized on two issues one of them being the reference used in open-ended nature. This is where he made an attempt of providing ostensive definition of a person by taking the definition of color, race and compass point. The second emphasized on description, not from repetition of abstracted words but the range of activities. Mental Language and Discursive Psychology This nature of philosophy assumes numerous mentality terms as part of the epistemological arguments. Therefore, one needs to sort out psychological perspectives from philosophical issues. Wittgenstein focused his philosophical work as a therapy kind of work, which dissolves in varied central problems. This is through revealing the language role especially the role of mental terms in psychology. Although, his greatest work was on philosophy, he was not impressed with the empirical psychology during his epoch. This is because he saw empirical psychology as the experimental combination method with conceptual confusion. The discussion of mind was his way for attacking private language. Therefore, he later developed varied criticism against meaning of words residing against the psychological space. He instead stressed on conventional nature of language use that followed a variety of discourse analytical work such as discursive, rhetoric and ethno-methodology psychology. Mathematics philosophy The philosophy or mathematics is the advancement of the general idea, which was founded on the basic constructions of ideas that are intellectually indefensible. Wittgenstein claims that when a person counts, he or she feel that he or she are using footholds curved in a stone like actuality. He discloses that counting is a method applied in the daily survival of mankind for most various operations. This is the reason behind learning the way to count as people continue to endless practice in their daily lives ((Pojman and Vaughn 397). The idea of mathematical application has been approved less significant in the philosophical language than any of his philosophical ideas. This is because of the gap between the superstructure and the projected method employed in Wittgenstein’s case. Philosophical Realism and Anti-Realism The debating issues about Wittgenstein’s realism and anti-realism is appealing one, and it emphasizes on language, activities and behaviors of human beings. Many critics have accused Wittgenstein of language optimism, the notion that language is the ultimate realism. The anti-realist skepticism in logical concept, metaphysics and moral code has justified entirely accepted in the philosophical writings of Wittgenstein. Furthermore, Wittgenstein’s doctrine of realism and anti-realism principles denies the recommendation of philosophical principles. The anti-realism focuses the form of language game, but the concern is about what makes sense to people. Therefore, in case realism is illogical, therefore, anti-realism is opposite. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus This philosophical view is literary style that contains argumentative ideas, but with declarative statements, which are numbered hierarchically. They are similar to mathematical analysis, but they elaborate on the declarative statements. Wittgenstein reveals that Tractatus consist of two significant issues one of them being the thoughts expressed in a logical way. This indicates the way one can use logical means to solve the problems. The problem in this case is the theoretical or philosophical issues. Thus, the prepositions contain in the Tractatus consists of varied numbered prepositions in various sets. Many observers ignore this philosophy work and argue that they are meaningless. However, Tractatus are nonsensical ideas that construct a theoretical picture and meaning of other theory. The task of explaining the logic and use of ordinary language in the philosophical work is meant to solve critical problems. It also aims to present the way people takes significant problems that they are certainly not problem whatsoever. Therefore, Tractatus presents the foremost ways of solving logical issues that are highly technical. Conclusion The discussions within the research analysis provide different ways of understanding diverged philosophical writings of Wittgenstein. His philosophy is anti-theoretical; thus, it is difficult to place them in the historical ideas. Most of his writing styles were almost the psychotic quality; hence, he used an ordinary language that views traditional philosophical issues. Wittgenstein focused on varied issues including language philosophy, mathematics, mental language and discursive psychology. He also emphasized on Tractatus logical issues, realism and ant-realism philosophy through focusing on issues such as language and human behaviors. Work Cited Pojman, Louis, and Lewis Vaughn. Classics of Philosophy, 3rd edition. New York, N.Y. [etc: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print. Read More