Talk:Philosophical Investigations

It would be useful to explain in depth /Language games, /Family resemblance.

It would also be good to talk a little about the history of the PI. All I remember off the top of my head is: W worked on it for many years, but it was only published after W's death. And it was translated into english at W's request by to G. E. M. (Elizabeth) Anscombe -- who eventually took over W's chair at Cambridge. -- Mark Christensen

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Mark, since I think I'm the only philosopher here on Wikipedia at present who can work through these issues with you, and because I'm really busy, can I request that you perhaps go to a newsgroup or mailing list with the text and have others comment on it? This would have two great effects, viz. it would help improve the text and it might get new philosophers on board Wikipedia. I know you're going to be miffed that I removed your text and that you're going to want to debate about it with me, but I can't right now. --LMS

I won't be miffed. I wouldn't set myself up as a proponent of the view I describe (well not exactly) but I think an extensive reading of the blue and brown books, the PI, as well as notes by Norman Malcolm (one of W's students), is entirely compatible with my view that W intended in his latter work to defend natural language practices against the supposedly "imperialistic tendencies" of philosophers. If I'm right about this, I think one of the things W is doing is presenting a defense of ambiguity (in one of its multiple possible senses) in the face of philosophers who want a language which can be wielded with total precision and zero ambiguity. I particularly think that Malcolm's notes about a W lecture on aesthetics point in the direction of the analysis I posted of W's ideas about "art", but I can't find those notes right now so I am trusting a several year old set of memories on the subject.

Anyway, I don't really care too much about W's view on "art." My only point was to an opinion which was presented on the main ambiguity page, in order to recognize the simple fact that though that opinion is dominant amongst analytic philosophers (and is an opinion to which I am largely sympathetic), it has been critiqued by a wide number of philosophers both within and outside the analytic tradition. And I thought some portion of that critique ought at least be mentioned. So, I picked W as a respectable representative of this group, and posted a comment about my understanding of his view on the /talk page. After I posted that comment, you responded with the following – "just change the article." And so I did (though I didn't do it for several weeks…I've been out of town and only spending small amounts of time on my laptop, and I myself didn’t think the comment was "up to snuff").

I have no huge investment in this, so I'm not willing to go through the work it would take to convince you that I've done my homework on W and do actually know what I am talking about. But, I do slightly resent the "help you work through this," which has a slightly haughty tone. I don't believe I'm out of line, and I think that a perfectly valid argument can be made that family resemblances are in fact connected with a certain kind of ambiguity and that this connection is both implicit in lots of W's later work and explicit in a few key places. I don't care too much about the issue though, except insofar as it reveals an interesting wikipedia dynamic insofar as I'd never do something like this to one of your texts, yet you are perfectly comfortable deleting the text, and critiquing both it and me. MRC

P.S. If you have a strong feeling that I do not understand W, you may want to hack apart the Philosophical Investigations page, which I largely re-wrote several weeks ago... (Upon a quick re-reading, the last paragraph is just bad and will have to be fixed, so don't take me to task over that one -- I was trying vainly to come to some kind of stopping point, and got far, far ahead of myself.)

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Mark, I thought the text was wrong, both in point of interpretation of what family resemblance concepts are and in point of Wittgenstein interpretation, and that's why I deleted it. If you were to find anything of mine that you could show is wrong (I'm sure that exists! :-) ), I would not feel within my rights to complain that it were deleted.

I did not intend to critique you--I'm very sorry if it came across that way.

It seems the point you want to make is that Wittgenstein's famous account of 'game' and family resemblance is an important criticism of the analytic tradition's practice of trying to analyze concepts. With that I totally agree. I don't think it belongs on the ambiguity page, though.

Anyway, if you don't want to do it, I can find someone from a mailing list or newsgroup who can discuss this further. --LMS