Can you step in the same river twice? Wittgenstein vs. Heraclitus

'I am not a religious man,' the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said to a friend, 'but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view.' These problems that he claims to see from a religious point of view tend to be technical matters of logic and language. Wittgenstein trained as an engineer before he turned to philosophy, and he draws on mundane metaphors of gears, levers and machinery. Where you find the word 'transcendent' in Wittgenstein's writings, you'll likely find ...
Tags: Psychology, Religion, Innovation, Philosophy, Mind, Debate, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Heraclitus, Wittgenstein, Meister Eckhart, Ancient World, Parmenides, David EganThis

13 books everyone should read and why—as voted by you

We asked BigThink's readers and staff for their recommendations on books everyone should read. A collection of fiction and non-fiction works from around the world spanning millennia, these books will expand your horizons.Many of these books are long out of copyright, and can be read for free. Do you ever want to read more but find yourself unsure of what to read? Lots of people have the same problem. To help, we're adding to the collection of "books everyone should read" lists. For this one, we ...
Tags: Books, Science Fiction, New York Post, England, Science, Minnesota, California, Washington Post, India, Religion, Race, America, Society, Earth, Radiohead, United States

Denmark’s Utopian Garden City Built Entirely in Circles: See Astounding Aerial Views of Brøndby Haveby

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Henry Do (@henry_do) on Aug 21, 2019 at 9:02am PDT This unusual form, more of which you can see in Do’s drone photos at Lonely Planet, suits the long-established Danish cabin culture, according to which every city-dwelling Dane with the means buys a smaller second home in the countryside as a retreat. (Though the houses in Brøndby Haveby are owned, the gardens a...
Tags: Google, Facebook, Dane, Design, College, Architecture, Ikea, Denmark, Norway, Copenhagen, Seoul, Lonely Planet, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Facebook Twitter, Michael Booth

G.E.M. Anscombe on the evil of demanding unconditional surrender in war

During military conflict, what are the constraints on the things that a warring nation may do to achieve their objectives? And what constraints are there on the objectives that such a nation should have in the first place?A traditional answer to the first of these questions draws a sharp line at the deliberate killing of noncombatants. Though it has been affirmed by many great philosophers and theologians, this restriction was violated repeatedly during the Second World War, most notably in the ...
Tags: Books, Featured, Germany, Iraq, US, Oxford, Philosophy, Nazi, University of Oxford, Hitler, Harry Truman, Hiroshima, Stalin, Potm, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Atomic Bomb

How G. E. M. Anscombe revolutionised 20th-century western philosophy

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919-d. 2001) was an important figure and gave significant contributions to the field of analytic philosophy, philosophy of mind, and moral and religious philosophy. Born in Limerick in March 1919 to Allen Anscombe and Gertrude Anscombe (nee Thomas), the family returned to England when her father returned from the British Army to teach as a schoolmaster. With an impressive academic career, Anscombe attended St. Hugh’s College at the University of Oxford, ...
Tags: Books, England, Featured, Oxford, British Army, Cambridge, Philosophy, University of Oxford, Cambridge University, Limerick, Nagasaki, Aristotle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Truman, Anscombe, Thomas Aquinas

What is the place of human beings in the world

Philosophers disagree on what philosophy is supposed to do, but one popular candidate for what is part of the philosophical project is to try to understand the place of human beings in the world. What is our significance in the world as whole? What place do human beings have in the universe and in all of reality? These questions are not merely about how we are different from other creatures, or whether we are special in the sense that we are the best or worst at something. We might be the best a...
Tags: Books, Featured, Universe, Philosophy, God, Mind, Reality, Human Beings, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Idealism, Arts & Humanities, Thomas Hofweber, Mind.j, Lucas Wesney

The remarkable life of philosopher Frank Ramsey

Frank Ramsey, the great Cambridge philosopher, economist, and mathematician, was a superstar in all three disciplines, despite dying at the age of 26 in 1930. One way to glimpse the sheer genius of this extraordinary young man is by looking at some of the things that bear his name. My favourite was coined by Donald Davidson: the Ramsey Effect is the phenomenon of discovering that your exciting and apparently original philosophical discovery has been already presented, and presented more elegantl...
Tags: Books, Cambridge, Oxford University, Canterbury, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ramsey, John Maynard Keynes, Richards, Wittgenstein, Donald Davidson, Frank Ramsey, Frances Marshall, Economic Journal, Frank Ramsey Ramsey, Ramsey Cass Koopmans, Keynes Ramsey

Hilary Putnam on mind and meanings – Philosopher of the Month

Hilary Putnam was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century and had an impact on philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics. Along with Richard Rorty, he was also a key figure in the revival of Pragmatism and was influenced by the philosophies of John Dewey, William James, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. As a philosopher, he tended to hold a middle and liberal position and was famous for changing his views.Putnam was born in Chicago in 1...
Tags: Books, Featured, France, Chicago, Harvard, Philosophy, Journals, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Aristotle, Potm, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Samuel, Riva, Putnam

Why the singular “They” is Merriam-Webster's word of the year

Merriam-Webster has announced "they" as the word of the year.The selection was based on a marked increase in traffic to the online dictionary page. Runners up included "quid pro quo" and "crawdad."You've heard of the Person of the Year, but did you know that Merriam-Webster announces a word of the year? Each year, they select a word notable for having been subject to a spike in online definition searches. The fact that "They," as common a pronoun as any, saw a 313% increase in searches this year...
Tags: Gender, News, Language, New York Times, Innovation, Philosophy, Shakespeare, Social Change, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Merriam Webster, American Psychological Association, Sokolowski, Peter Sokolowski

Philosopher of the Month – A 2019 Review

As 2019 draws to a close, we look back at the philosophers who have featured in our monthly Philosopher of the Month posts and their significant contribution to philosophy and the history of intellectual thought.Discover more about these philosophers, their works, and schools of thought by clicking on the links below, and let us know who your favourite philosophers are in the comment box beneath the post.William James (1842–1910) was an American psychologist and philosopher, a brother of Henry J...
Tags: Books, Featured, Roundup, Harvard, Oxford, Philosophy, Oxford University, Resistance, Albert Camus, Year In Review, Henry James, James, Potm, Ludwig Wittgenstein, William James, Plato

Thought for the day, April 26, 2019

Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1947. (Photo by Ben Richards/public domain) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher “If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly ever occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.” (collected personal notes gathered into “Culture and Value” by Georg Henrik von Wright, 1977) April 26, 1889-April 29, 1951 Related Articles ...
Tags: Sport, Soccer, Local News, Ludwig Wittgenstein, San Fernando Valley, Ben Richards, Thought For The Day, Georg Henrik von Wright

Celebrating notable women in philosophy: Philippa Foot

This March, in honour of Women’s History Month, and in celebration of the achievements and contributions of women to the field of philosophy, the OUP philosophy team honours Philippa Foot (1920–2010) as its Philosopher of the Month. Philippa Foot is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive and influential moral philosophers of the twentieth-century.  She is best-known for contributing to the revival of the Aristotelian virtue ethics, the theory of ethics developed by Plato and Aristotle th...
Tags: Books, Featured, Literature, Philosophy, University of Oxford, Oxford University, Multimedia, Aristotle, Potm, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Plato, Anscombe, Wikimedia Commons, Philippa Foot, David Hume, Philippa

Thought for the day, Feb. 17, 2019

Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1930. (Photo by Moritz Nahr/public domain) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-English philosopher “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end just the way in which our visual field has no limits.” (1922) April 26, 1889-April 29, 1951 Related Articles Thought for the day, Feb....
Tags: Sport, Soccer, Local News, Ludwig Wittgenstein, San Fernando Valley, Thought For The Day, Moritz Nahr

Nine underrated tools to help you achieve Financial Independence

This is a guest post by David Sawyer, author of the UK-focused financial freedom book: RESET: How to Restart Your Life and Get F.U. Money. (You can also read his previous post on Monevator!) A lthough RESET stresses that hard work and good habits are the key to success in life, I’m all for cutting a few corners. The road to financial independence is not an easy one. Anything that saves me time and makes my life easier, I embrace. This short post profiles nine under-rated tools/shortcuts – all...
Tags: Google, Amazon, Tools, UK, Wordpress, Marketing, US, David, Atlantic, United Nations, Asda, Glasgow, Fidelity, Index, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Lewis

AIs as Substitute Decision Makers

Ian Kerr For the Symposium on The Law And Policy Of AI, Robotics, and Telemedicine In Health Care. “Why, would it be unthinkable that I should stay in the  saddle  however much the  facts  bucked?” -  Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty We are witnessing an interesting juxtaposition in medical decision-making. Heading in one direction, patients’ decision-making capacity is increasing , thanks to an encouraging shift in patient treatment. Health providers are moving away fro...
Tags: Canada, Ibm Watson, Jack, Blackstone, Branding, Guest Blogger, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Richards, University of Ottawa, Canada Research Chair, Fuller, Stanley Milgram, Astra Taylor, Milgram, Ryan Calo, Ian Kerr

A Data Visualization of Modern Philosophy, 1950-2018

Those of us who think of ourselves as philosophy enthusiasts remain free to read and think about whatever we like, no matter how obscure, marginal, or out-of-fashion the ideas. But the academy presents a different picture, one fraught with political maneuvering, funding issues, and fretting about tenure. Does professionalization do philosophy a disservice by codifying the kinds of problems we should be thinking and writing about? Or do we need professional philosophy for exactly this reason? It...
Tags: Google, College, Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Facebook Twitter, Josh Jones, Baruch Spinoza, Durham NC Follow, Modern University, Justin Weinberg, Maximilian Noichl, Noichl, Clarivate Analytics Web of Science

Thought for the day, Sept. 16, 2018

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Photo by Ben Richards, 1947/public domain) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-British philosopher “Raisins may be the best part of a cake; but a bag of raisins is not better than a cake, and someone who is in a position to give us a bag full of raisins still cannot bake a cake with them, let alone do something better. I am thinking of Karl Kraus (an Austrian journalist and writer) and his aphorisms, but of myself too and my philosophical remarks. A cake is not as it were: ...
Tags: Sport, Soccer, Local News, Ludwig Wittgenstein, San Fernando Valley, Ben Richards, Wittgenstein, Thought For The Day, Karl Kraus

Let's explore ADHD with owls.

David Sedaris has a book title, "Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls." The book has nothing to do with diabetes, but there is a chapter titled "Understanding Understanding Owls," which is about a book called "Understanding Owls," which he owns because his partner Hugh (a painter) needed reference photographs of owls. Sedaris and Hugh found the book title so funny that they had a routine, something like...“You know,” I’ll say. “There’s something about nocturnal birds of prey that I just don’t get. I...
Tags: Eyes, Law, Brain, Birds, Bob Dylan, Npr, Bad Science, Baltimore, Gloves, Johns Hopkins, Paying Attention, Jones, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Dylan, David Sedaris, Hugh

Billy Goats, Trademark Twins, and the Descriptive Limits of Language

I’ve been thinking about the nature of language lately, ever since I listened to a podcast about various philosophers who devoted their study to language. For example, Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century, is famous for his work on the logic of language. A fundamental premise to his philosophy is that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” In other words, language, although purposed on painting a picture of reality, is fundament...
Tags: Apple, Food, Advertising, Articles, Infringement, Industry, Chicago, Fox, Language, Words, Chips, St Louis, Twins, Trademark, Chicago Cubs, Branding

Bizarre CCTV footage of gas station shoplifters

&lquo;What we cannot talk about clearly must be passed over in silence.&rquo; — Ludwig Wittgenstein Update: Here is the story: a card declined, a suspicious clerk, a prompt policeman, and all hell breaking loose. On Monday afternoon, a 29-year-old woman fell through the ceiling of the King Street Reddi Mart and into the store below while trying to escape police. She was arrested without further incident. She was with a 28-year-old man who was Tasered and then wrestled to the ground by ...
Tags: Video, Crime, News, Mistakes, Edmonton, Ludwig Wittgenstein, RCMP, King Street Reddi Mart

"How much apes really do resemble us in their emotional range and mental capacity will probably remain a mystery for longer than many of us will live."

"But when it comes to Koko, that may not really matter. Our response to a creature at once so like us and so different was to seek out the similarities — to experience empathy and to trust that Koko experienced it, too. It didn’t matter that she didn’t speak English the way we did, or even that she wasn’t human the way we were. What mattered was that somewhere in Koko’s eyes, we saw ourselves."From "How Koko the gorilla spoke to us" (WaPo). Koko died this week, at the age of 46.Here's something ...
Tags: Law, America, Language, Donald Trump, Apes, Nipples, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Koko, Mardi Gras, Wittgenstein, Ann Althouse, WaPo Koko

Thomas Kuhn and the T. S. Kuhn Archives at MIT

After I completed a book on Thomas Kuhn, the author of Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I thought I knew a lot about him. In my book, I argue that Kuhn’s recent, less frequently read work is key to understanding his views. Then I began to look in detail at Kuhn’s past and the influence his early work had in fields other than philosophy of science. I came across an intriguing and unexpected remark by Thomas Walker, a political scientist, in Perspectives on Politics. Walker reports that “while...
Tags: Books, Featured, Mit, Harvard, Cambridge, Philosophy, Archives, Princeton, Frank, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Walker, Popper, Kuhn, CC BY SA, Thomas Kuhn

Hiking in Ireland: The West Coast Experience

I traveled to western Ireland in late April as a guest of Wilderness Ireland to do six days of peak bagging in Connemara and the Mayo region. It’s an area that’s famous for its mountains, bog wilderness, big views and savage beauty – and one where it’s surprisingly easy to get lost, especially if the weather heads south. And while I had traveled through much of this region before on a bike, I had never hiked these mountains. I was keen to do so, especially early in the season when hiking is diff...
Tags: Travel, Europe, Hiking, Georgia, Karen, Canada, Atlantic, Ireland, South America, Alberta, Galway, Brits, Rockies, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Keith, PAUL

Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the great 20th-century philosophers. He also invented the emoji

Eighty years ago, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein had a brainwave. No, not when he claimed he’d solved all great philosophical questions at just 29 years old (that was in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, completed in 1918 and published in 1921.) Nor was it when he realized the Tractatus was wrong, and professed to have re-solved philosophy all over…
Tags: Science, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus

Thought for the Day, April 26, 2018

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Photo by Ben Richards, 1947/public domain) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian philosopher “If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.” (from “Culture and Value”) April 26, 1889-April 29, 1951
Tags: Sport, Soccer, Local-news, Ludwig Wittgenstein, San Fernando Valley, Ben Richards

Eminent Philosophers Name the 43 Most Important Philosophy Books Written Between 1950-2000: Wittgenstein, Foucault, Rawls & More

Image by Austrian National Library, via Wikimedia Commons Faced with the question, “who are the most important philosophers of the 20th century?,” I might find myself compelled to ask in turn, “in respect to what?” Ethics? Political philosophy? Philosophy of language, mind, science, religion, race, gender, sexuality? Phenomenology, Feminism, Critical theory? The domains of philosophy have so multiplied (and some might say siloed), that a number of prominent authors, including eminent philosophy...
Tags: Google, Books, Greece, Law, College, Brazil, Philosophy, Ucla, Ludwig Wittgenstein, University Of Miami, Daniel, Facebook Twitter, Chen, Solomon, Josh Jones, University of Texas Austin

Hear a 19-Hour Playlist of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Favorite Music: Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and… Yvette Guilbert

Among his many varied interests—which, in addition to philosophy, included aeronautical engineering and architecture—Ludwig Wittgenstein was also a great lover of music. Given his well-deserved reputation for intellectual austerity, we might assume his musical tastes would tend toward minimalist composers of the early 20th century like fellow Austrian Arnold Schoenberg. The “orderly serialism,” of Schoenberg’s atonal music “does seem an obvious complement to Wittgenstein’s philosophy,” w...
Tags: Google, Music, Labor, College, Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, PAUL, Facebook Twitter, Wagner, Mahler, Haydn, Brahms, Georges Bizet, Josh Jones, Mendelssohn, Schoenberg

Hear a 19-Hour Playlist of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Favorite Music: Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, and… Yvette Guibert

Among his many varied interests—which, in addition to philosophy, included aeronautical engineering and architecture—Ludwig Wittgenstein was also a great lover of music. Given his well-deserved reputation for intellectual austerity, we might assume his musical tastes would tend toward minimalist composers of the early 20th century like fellow Austrian Arnold Schoenberg. The “orderly serialism,” of Schoenberg’s atonal music “does seem an obvious complement to Wittgenstein’s philosophy,” w...
Tags: Google, Music, Labor, College, Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, PAUL, Facebook Twitter, Wagner, Mahler, Haydn, Brahms, Georges Bizet, Josh Jones, Mendelssohn, Schoenberg

On our craving for generality

Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Blue Book, chastised philosophers for what he called “our craving for generality.” Philosophers (including the earlier Wittgenstein of the Tractatus) certainly have exhibited this craving, and despite his admonishment, we continue to do so. Philosophers seek general accounts of the nature of propositions, properties, virtues, mental states–you name it. Wittgenstein portrays the craving for generality as a kind of philosophical sin, but it is not that. First, it is har...
Tags: Books, Featured, Philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hume, Mendel, Wittgenstein, Arts & Humanities, Blue Book, Craving For Generality, Humean puzzle, Logical Empiricism, Philosophical Sin, Principle Of Induction, Stuart Glennan, The New Mechanical Philosophy

Thought for the Day, Feb. 17, 2018

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Photo by Ben Richards, 1947) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-English philosopher “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.” (1922) April 26, 1889-April 29, 1951  
Tags: Sport, Soccer, Local News, Ludwig Wittgenstein, San Fernando Valley, Ben Richards, Top Stories LADN