The linguistic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein

A peculiar confluence of circumstances led to me giving a talk at http://jrubyconf.eu about linguistic and logical philosophy. Here are the slides.

Transcript

1. The Linguistic Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein Tom Stuart Thursday, August 15, 13 The year is 1909.
2. Gottlob Frege Numbers are concepts Words refer to concepts Numbers defined in terms of set theory Thursday, August 15, 13 In Jena ... If this seems strange to you, that’s ok. It means you’re still sane.
3. Bertrand Russell What about the set of all sets which are not members of themselves? Theory of types Thursday, August 15, 13 Who’s heard of Russell’s paradox? ... If this seems strange to you, that’s ok. It means you’re still sane. ... Haskell programmer
4. Ludwig Wittgenstein Studied mechanical engineering IN BERLIN In Manchester, working on jet engines Reads Principia Mathematica Thursday, August 15, 13 What’s Wittgenstein up to? ... It probably was.
5. Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus Usingus Latinus suffixas makeos youus lookus clevererus Solves all of the problems. Thursday, August 15, 13 The year is 1918. containing his solutions
6. Tractatus The world is that which is the case Logic is tautology Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. Thursday, August 15, 13 The world consists only new understanding
7. Philosophy: Tractatus approach What is truth? What is the meaning of a word? What is the nature of God? Thursday, August 15, 13 Why does Wittgenstein think For a number of years
8. Kurt Gödel No non-trivial system capable of doing arithmetic can prove all statements about numbers Had awesome glasses Thursday, August 15, 13 But there was a problem. Philosophical Investigations
9. Philosophical Investigations No latin suffixes :( Meaning as use Solves all the problems? Thursday, August 15, 13 Here, he gives us critique of the Tractatus
10. Philsophical Investigations Tractatus ‘picture theory’ is flawed Words don’t derive meaning from objects Words derive meaning from rules in language-games “Linguistic therapy” Thursday, August 15, 13 The Tractatus Doomed to failure
11. Philosophy: Later Wittgenstein approach What is truth? “What is the object to which ‘truth’ refers?” “What do true sentences have in common?” “What does it mean for a sentence to be true?” Thursday, August 15, 13 Wittgenstein goes further customer requirements
12. Buy this Book Thursday, August 15, 13 OK, so thanks Ray Monk
13. @mortice See you at Eurucamp? All photos Public Domain, except Later Wittgenstein, CC-BY- SA Christian Tonnis http://www.flickr.com/photos/christiaan_tonnis/2983983740/ in/photostream/ Duty of Genius cover image © Amazon (but I doubt they’d mind) Thursday, August 15, 13