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Stuart W. Mirsky
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Stuart W. Mirsky (Stuart W. Mirsky is the principal author of this blog).
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Ludwig Wittgenstein:

The Legacy of Antonin Scalia
 For me, Scalia was a terrible judge. And he was terrible because his decisions relied upon intellectual behaviors that were dominant in history at least one century prior to his time on the bench. He used an a-priori format, syllogistic reasoning, formalism, and took positions about ...
Was Wittgenstein Right (Horwich)?
... pretty good stuff here. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein-right/?_r=1 But here is my only complaint. Characterizing Wittgenstein's negative attitudes about the field of philosophy, Horwich writes: " There are no startling discoveries to be made ... 'from the armchair' through some blend of intuition, pure reason and ...
Nordic Wittgenstein Review: Forms of Life
... open access special edition published. Looks promising. Anna Boncompagni is one of the authors.
Wittgenstein on Moral Philosophy
This looks interesting. The way they have framed the issue looks very good. The question is whether the idea of connoisseurship will even enter the picture at all (as it should). The book I am working on now will expand upon this idea. Why do I ...
Seeking Feedback on a New Book Proposal
I am seeking feedback on the enclosed proposal. I wonder if people think it looks like a viable project? Would the thesis of such a book interest you? Basically, the book is a bit personal: it's based upon an intellectual transformation that I went through and ...
Wittgenstein On Philosophy
... new set of lectures was posted today. It's on Wittgenstein and Philosophy. Will have the final set of lectures, called Wittgenstein on Intelligence, up tomorrow (hopefully). Moore & His Hands Form of Life False Problems Example: Free Will Senses of Knowledge On Definitions Gettier & Banality Alternative Lexicons On ...
How Wittgensteinians Approach Language
... a lecture containing Wittgensteinian approaches to language. Specifically covers precision-talking, names, jargon, family resemblance, senses of talking -- you name it, it's there. http://ludwig.squarespace.com/cond6/
The New Wittgenstein Emerges
In this lecture, we see Wittgenstein shed the Tractarian orientation and adopt something that he would later call "the new thinking." http://ludwig.squarespace.com/cond5/
Replacing Sense/Reference With Sense/Family
Your browser does not support the video tag.
How the Tractatus Crumbled: The Piero Sraffa Gesture
Italian economist Piero Sraffa is credited with causing Wittgenstein to adopt an "anthropological perspective" toward language. One of conversations between the two involved Sraffa's using a "Neapolitan gesture." This video shows how gestures of this sort lack a picture-reality correspondence, which caused Wittgenstein to abandon the ...
Wittgenstein and Giving Up Wealth
Not enough attention is given to Wittgenstein shunning his immense inheritance. What is interesting is that he did this as a young man and showed no indication throughout life to have ever regretted it. It would be one thing to see someone in their later years ...
Wittgenstein in Transition
... new lecture uploaded on Wittgenstein in transition. Has some clips from A.J. Ayer on Logical Positivism. But, overall, nothing too special here: just a hand-waiving lecture. http://ludwig.squarespace.com/cond4/2014/2/20/01-logical-positivism.html
Wittgenstein and Philosophy of Scholarship
Wittgenstein's example of philosophical scholarship shews an arrogant and radical ideology hiding inside. Wittgenstein wasn't a worker bee slaving for a literature community. He wasn't a member of the "club." He understood that a "company man" could never be a great thinker. Today, however, the academy ...
Good Resource for the Tractatus
... just finished putting my newest version of the Tractatus lecture online. Some audio clips are old, however, because my batteries died in the middle of one session. Still, it is pieced together (reconstructed) accurately. http://ludwig.squarespace.com/cond3/2014/1/29/01-the-genesis-of.html
Pictures, Propositions and the World (Tractatus Studies)
"The world is the totality of facts, not of things," Wittgenstein proclaims in the Tractatus. In this video, this idea is explained. Specifically, the idea of a thought being a picture of a possible state of affairs, for which the proposition claims to be true or ...
Wittgenstein, God & Jesus
There is an old thread on this subject which has been revived on Duncan Richter's blog. You might want to have a look: http://languagegoesonholiday.blogspot.com/2012/11/did-wittgenstein-believe-in-god.html
Rare Picture of Wittgenstein?
I've never seen this before. I wonder if anyone can comment on when it was taken? Or the circumstances? He sort of reminds me of Elvis in this one. Click the picture to see where it came from.
Russell, the Analytics & Early Wittgenstein
A lecture that looks at Bertrand Russell, the analytic movement that he and Gottlob Frege nurtured, and the role that early Ludwig Wittgenstein played. The lecture takes us from Wittgenstein's first year at Cambridge, when he was captured by Russell's analytic patriotism, through to his departure ...
Teaching Mathematics Differently?
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/11/the-stereotypes-about-math-that-hold-americans-back/281303/ ... article seems to support the idea that traditional and formalistic approaches to mathematics were themselves an unnecessary dressing. If true, an interesting idea: one that has resonance with the notion that meaning is more important than analysis and that "getting it" is something different ...
Explaining Language Games and Grammar
(sent to analytic re: whether misplaying in a "language game" is a matter of breaching an implied customary rule for communication. Here's the quick answer: the idea is too anthropologic and needs something ideational) ... I am so happy you brought this up. Because this is exactly what ...
    
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Duncan Richter's Blog:

Analytic Philosophy: An Interpretive History reviewed by NDPR
The review is here. Thankfully, even though it does mention me, it doesn't say anything bad about my contribution. (Perhaps tactfully, it says almost nothing at all about it.) Here's a taste of the review: This volume is a valuable addition to this growing literature, with a lucid ...
War and Peace and Wittgenstein
These are all just coincidences, I suppose, but there are some striking similarities between some of Wittgenstein's acts and ideas and elements of War and Peace. Here are three. The Tractatus contains seven main propositions, which are to be overcome in order to see the ...
Malcolm Pryce on dreams, reality, and fiction
One of my favorite authors on why fiction is not a distraction from reality. Here's a taste: The night time dream is chaotic and can be genuinely frightening. The dream we call life is filled with joy and suffering, but for many people a lot more ...
Does writing exist?
It seems paradoxical to write the question, "Does writing exist?" but what I mean is: is there some thing called writing that someone can be good or bad at, teach, or simply do? According to John Warner, we know how to teach writing. But what is ...
Bureaucrats
This Guardian essay on neoliberalism is frustrating in some ways (too cloudy at key points, and too prone to ad hominem insults), but it's interesting, and brings out the importance of Friedrich von Hayek, whose work probably ought to be engaged with more just because it ...
Charlottesville
Moving to this country was the the first time I ever flew in a plane. I landed in Charlottesville, where I lived for five years. I still live just over an hour's drive from there, and go there quite often to eat a meal, do some ...
New online Wittgenstein book by Kristóf Nyíri
This looks interesting, in terms of both content and the decision to publish free and online. The title is Pictorial Truth: Essays on Wittgenstein, Realism, and Conservatism, and it's by Kristóf Nyíri. He writes: I am really curious how the scholarly world will react e.g. to ...
Beyond bullshit?
My friend Chris Gavaler has co-written a piece with Nathaniel Goldberg on Trump and bullshit for Philosophy Now. If you're interested in this subject then, obviously, you might want to read it. Their conclusion is that a sample of Trump's speech is "beyond bullshit." Here's ...
Mulhall's magic
I talked a bit about Stephen Mulhall's The Great Riddle here and here. This is the last post I intend to write about it, and it's about the part of the book I like the most. Near the end, Mulhall refers to "the sheer wild particularity ...
Seeing the world aright
[What follows is little more than a bunch of quotes strung together. But they are good quotes.] The desirability of seeing what is under our noses and thereby becoming free is a bit of a theme in 19th century European thought. Here's Father ...
Minimum wage
Perhaps this isn't worth a blog post, but it's not as if I've been posting much otherwise. Sometimes it's better to have low standards. So here goes. Two things strike me as not just true but obviously true about any increase in the legal minimum ...
Winch on understanding other people
This paper needs quite a bit of work, but for anyone interested here is an only very slightly (so far) revised version of the paper I presented at the conference on Peter Winch last weekend in London.
Witchcraft among the Azande
If you're interested in Peter Winch on understanding others, you might be interested in this documentary. Perhaps it's well known, but I only just found it: And here's one on Evans-Pritchard: I haven't watched either one yet, so can't guarantee their quality.
Nordic Wittgenstein Review
A new issue (Vol 6 No 1 (2017)) is available here.
Mulhall's riddle
Some questions that you might want to ask Stephen Mulhall when you read his new book: if talk about God is nonsense, why bother?if talk about God has a use, mustn't it thereby have a meaning after all?if you accept that nonsense is nonsense, that there ...
Wittgenstein and the value of clarity again
Just in case anyone's interested, I've revised this paper. The new version is here.
Songs about film directors
Are there any bad ones? These are the best, and only, three I know: "Woody Allen" by Allo Darlin', "What's Yr Take on Cassavetes" by Le Tigre, and "Roman P" by Psychic TV. The videos aren't very exciting, but the performances are ...
Deviant philosophy
This site looks great. It is designed to be a teaching resource for people who teach philosophy but want to diverge from the usual texts and topics taught. So if you want to teach some Asian philosophy, for instance, this site will (it is not yet complete) ...
More nonsense
I'm enjoying Stephen Mulhall's The Great Riddle very much. Here he is on religious language: ...insofar as God is the source of all that is, possessing in his being all the perfections he causes, then everything in creation is a potential source of imagery for the ...
Stop making sense
Matthew Yglesias has an interesting essay on Trump and bullshit at Vox, but I think he goes too far in his attempt to explain what's going on. Here's an example: When Trump says something like he’s just learned that Barack Obama ordered his phones wiretapped, he’s ...
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. . . . Russell’s effort to remake language in purely logical terms by creating an "ideal language" that would squeeze the ambiguities out of natural language and so provide the sciences with a better tool for doing their work, failed to grasp language as a phenomenon of human life in its fullest and richest sense and to give us a basis for explicating the human tendency to believe without warrant—or when the warrants on offer are insufficient. . . .


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