How Wittgenstein Can Make Discussion More Sophisticated
When I founded this group, it was because I had come to learn something quite revealing about discussion fora. Over and over again, certain rituals occur. One is that a person will bring out a dictionary and quote a definition in an effort to tell another person what he or she had just said. Or they will argue as though a word is a picture in the world or as though it must have a fixed set of properties. Still others will be unable to navigate a person's lexicon -- unable, as it were, to "conjugate" grammar.
To understand Wittgenstein, one must have two basic abilities: extreme patience with the delivery of the "medicine," and an especially-refined ability to synthesize and relate ideas. This is as much of a cognitive aptitude as is excelling in mathematics or having a strong memory. As a professor, I have seen students who can absorb and transform ideas as though their minds were specifically built for this sort of cognition. Unfortunately, they are the minority. More often, students have minds that want to store something in memory and simply report it. Struggling to read Wittgenstein (and becoming successful at it) can have an effect on the mind similar to what going to the gym has upon the body. One’s capacity to navigate an idea or an assertion becomes significantly pronounced. It's almost like the very act of intelligence is now seen as something different.
In this sense, people who properly understand Wittgenstein have proven themselves more insightful in certain respects, just by virtue of Wittgenstein's ideas being so remarkable. But they also gain something else directly relevant to discourse. They obtain what might be called "Ludwig's technique." In many ways, Wittgenstein offered us no great theory or prescription -- he offered, instead, a new kind of craft. It is almost like he found a new way home for people who had for years been walking the long way around. And that craft is the ability to conjugate expression so that apparent problems dissolve themselves. Black-belt Wittgensteinians do not engage in the ordinary rituals of "debate." Instead, they "untie knots." They show where traffic accidents arise in language. The result is not truth, but peace -- therapy rather than argumentation.
Not all who appreciate Wittgenstein can do this equally. I liken the Wittgenstein-inspired to a karate school. Some are black-belt Wittgensteinians, some are still in training. But in either case, discussion is much better served than if one had no appreciation at all for what a language game is, what grammar is (and so forth). And what is interesting about this realization is that IT IS NOT LIMITED TO PHILOSOPHY. Indeed, every discipline would benefit from having a Wittgensteinian in the department. There is no field which is immune from Ludwig's insights and techniques.
And so, here we are: the Wittgenstein-learned and appreciative. Our goal is to simply have insightful discussion. The topic can be anything intellectual (research ideas, recent books). It can be about Wittgenstein or not. Hopefully, if enough Wittgenstein-inspired scholars and thinkers join, it will be very special indeed.