Reddit mentions of Philosophical Investigations

Wittgenstein.
He had the strength of character to admit his own early works were unsatisfactory, and in doing so changed the direction of C20th philosophy.

Key texts:

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (early logical positivism)

Philosophical Investigations

EDIT: A post about the Philosophical Investigations wouldn't really be complete without also mentioning the Baker and Hacker commentary. Worth pursuing if you want to read PI in any depth (also pulls you out of the mist when it descends!).

William Lycan's Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction is very helpful and comprehensive as an overview.

As for really famous primary works in the field, you might want to check these out:


Truth and Meaning

Tarski's The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics

Quine's Two Dogma's of Empiricism

Davidson's Truth and Meaning

Pragmatics

Austin's How to Do Things with Words

Grice's Logic and Conversation


Reference

Donellen's Reference and Definite Descriptions

Kripke's Naming and Necessity

Wittgenstein

Primary Lit:

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations and Tractatus (obviously)

Secondary Lit (I'm only well versed on the secondary lit for the later Wittgenstein, so I'll give you that):

Marie McGinn's Routledge Guide

John McDowell's Wittgenstein on Following a Rule

Meredith Williams' Wittgenstein, Mind, and Meaning

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Hope that helps!

EDIT: Added a lot

First thing to do would be to consult Lyotard's "La Condition Postmoderne - report sur le savoir" from '79, which formally announces the 'postmodern condition'. He draws on Wittgensteinian language-games to underpin his 'small narratives', so you should also check up on his "Philosophical Investigations" (alternatively, start off with these introductory articles). There are a few thinkers (and even fewer philosophers) who file themselves under the postmodern label, and it's hard to get a grasp of where the dog sleeps when it finally does lie. Jean Baudrillard is a popular one, though he's mainly a sociologist. Philosophers like Foucault, Derrida and Rorty are typically dubbed postmodernists, though they themselves (and many, many of us) would and did deny such classification.

Apart from that, I'd recommend you also check out Jürgen Habermas, as he was one of the very few philosophers through the rage of postmodernism who actually took the time to take it seriously - he constitutes one of the major (and more well articulated) standpoints against it.

EDIT: This is just a personal peeve of mine, which anyone is totally validated in criticizing me for (i.e.: personal opinion alert); please, do engage in the study of postmodernism, as it was (and perhaps, to some extent still is) a resonant occurrence in Western culture and humanities. However - please, please, please don't start thinking that there's actually anything to it.

> Hahaha, very amusing as I was just thinking the same thought to myself! "I don't think I quite meant that sentence like I stated it, perhaps I need to re-evaluate what I actually mean." It's more like, we've given certain words too much power? I feel the thought in my head, I'm just struggling to articulate it exactly. Because if you asked me "Do words have power" my answer would be "yes." This is a contradiction, seemingly. I suppose what I'm saying is that we give specific words too much energy or power, or perhaps it's even deeper on a language level? Some are trying to change our language into something that I feel is less useful to us? Or that sometimes I feel that our language is being hijacked in order to serve a specific agenda, and force dialogue into certain channels? I shall keep pondering what I actually mean...

Ok, that made sense, and I would agree. Certain words and ideas hold more power than they "should." That's a very interesting, very complex topic. I'm not sure what I mean by should, but for example, screaming terrorist on Sept 12 2011 probably held a different meaning that day, and for many days following. I don't mean that it actually "had a different meaning;" it would be more accurate to call it a different effect.

> Back to that peculiar situation we sometimes find ourselves in, where there are two truth's in opposition to one another. The reason I'm beginning to see isn't that it's necessarily the universe that holds the two truths in opposition, but our own language that defines things rigidly, that makes things seem in opposition to one another, but in reality are part of a greater whole.

Yes. 2x yes.

I've mentioned Wittgenstein a couple times here before, but if you want to make headway on language and its usage, you should try reading his two works Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations.

I've been eyeing the Tractatus in my pile of books, but honestly my mind is not yet advanced enough to understand it to the degree I feel it deserves. But maybe you might find it worth the read regarding language and its usage. He was huge on word games - not playing them, well maybe, but I think he had a truly holistic understanding of language.

EDIT: And while we're on the topic of language, since I cannot seem to escape the Being-Becoming duality, I instead attempt to embrace it to the extent that it furthers my understanding of the world.

Let's take the sentence "I don't know that yet." The most important takeaway from that sentence is that it does not read "I don't know that." The expectation of future understanding exists when you include the word, sure, but does expectation of future understanding not exist if you exclude the word 'yet'? The answer must be no, and it's quite easy to prove so, but to leave it at that would be folly. Does not including the word 'yet' have an implication regarding a trajectory of the mind and body? Why did that person not say the word yet? Do they not think understanding may come in the future? The man that says 'yet' is already thinking with energy into the future, and as such, I tentatively argue that the inclusion of the word yet, its mere inclusion, has consequences on whether or not you will achieve whatever came before 'yet'. Alternatively, the man that considers future understanding and excludes the word 'yet', purposefully or not, must in some manner be limiting himself.

So, does the man that says 'yet' and attains that future understanding exist as the man who was going to know, always going to know, or does that same man exist as the man that knows because he said 'yet'?

Ultimately, I see man as trying to separate himself from language, but that is an ignorant perspective. Ignorant of the vast interconnectivity of EVERYTHING. Oh there is so much to say about language... I would say other than trying to answer why there is something and not nothing, language might be the most complex and befuddling topic in existence.

I highly, HIGHLY recommend that you find yourself a copy of Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. I personally have found it to be the best attempt at grappling with the difficulties of forming a coherent conception of how one thinks.

>I have not used "chose" or "choose" at any point in my last comment.
My bad, I thought I saw it... but still, the ad-thing is very vague and unconvincing, how is a decision not involved?

What I'm trying to say is that when we are talking about determinism(which IS in my opinion meaningless if we're not allowed to step outside of the universe, which in turn shoudln't even be possible at all, it's as ridiculous as the idea of a dog outrunning his own tail), it's on a whole another level as talking about morality. Morality is inside the world, inside our experiences, determinism and the opposite is completely outside, either answer wouldn't have a perceptible for us effect at all.


I don't view morality as something always objectively decidable, rather it's in acting in accord with one's best feelings about what's right, which seems as a circular logic, but that would be true only if I tried to define something. What I'm trying to do instead is to point you in the right direction so you can understand it yourself, without needing to express it. This isn't only hard to explain, it's impossible by its nature, just as you can't communicate your subjective experience of the colour 'red' to a blind person who has never perceived it.

Where there are no feelings, there can be no morality. Ask yourself, give me a counter example if you can.
The degree of something being moral or not is often up to debate, and that's because one can't fully see into the other person, you can't fully know (or rather feel) the situation from his/her perspective. Furthermore, morality isn't something that can be defined, the only things that can be precisely defined are parts of closed systems such as logic etc. Real ("natural") language is fuzzy and can't be analyzed in ways people like computer scientists tend to think. It's precisely this, the need to put everything in brackets, that causes debates, not realizing that our everyday language is ultimately closer to music as it is to computer programs. Also, I'm a programmer.

>So you're basically saying complete anarchy for everyone all the time is the most moral state of being? People have generally defined moral acts to be those that make humanity better off and anarchy doesn't really do that afaik, so again, that's not a good definition because it flies in the face of what people are trying to accomplish when discussing whether acts are moral or not.



As to anarchy, isn't it here already? Realize this: Any anarchy would still be bound by persistent effects of genetic, physical, cultural moral etc. predispositions and laws. Full anarchy is only nothingness, chaos, chasm, which is everything and nothing at the same time, therefore not very useful in this conversation. Even the religious people say morality is 'inside'

Really, get this if you're interested in ways language can work.

edit: clarified a point

edit: further clarifications

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1405159286/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492570839&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=Philosophical+Investigations&dpPl=1&dpID=413SkBxJZBL&ref=plSrch suggested reading