No needless props, no whizzing slides, no flashy TED pretentiousness - just the pure distillation of knowledge.

The other day just by pure coincidence, I happen to find Professor Sugrue's lectures. What a treasure! There are no words describe how immensely emotional I get when I hear this man speak. I learn so much and realize the extend of my ignorance. I give thanks to God in giving me the honor and opportunity to listen to him.

Wittgenstein's brief career as a primary schoolteacher offers the most interesting insight into his thought.

Has anyone ever heard someone summarise philosophers ideas better than this guy? Genuine question.

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language." That made me reconsider Philosophy as a whole and how I view it's purpose. Excellent lecture, as always.

Ridiculously good summary of the Later W. I have read and watched dozens and also completed half my PhD on the topic and this is the best I've found. Just as W brought common sense back to many of these issues you've brought common sense back to the understanding of the man's ideas.

Pure Gold! The only person on the internet who succeeded in demystifying the intricate world of Wittgenstein's works

I have been reading Wittgenstein since the 1980s. This is a tremendous introduction to his thought. At last, an accessible yet uncompromising synopsis!

I think the most profound thought that Wittgenstein produced was that there are certain things in life- the realm of the emotions, the meaning of music and art, psychological states of mind- that are inexpressible irreducible very real and beyond the reach of the power of language.

_The Tractatis_ - Solving all philosophical problems A theory of what can be put in a proposition Mathematical Rigor 2:14 “The World is All That Is The Case.” 3:36 “What we cannot speak about we must Passover in silence.” 4:36 Thought needs Language, hard to have a thought without proper sentences 7:12 Enjoy adornment? No Writes a book📕 self-critiques it himself 9:03 Print = finality, philosophy feels like a process 9:17 _The Logical Investigations_ Trying to uncloud our understanding 11:37 Language is a Picture of The World • X is X, This is This Elegant, Overly Simple 13:15 Language Game, no 1 unification 14:12 14:48 15:07 How is a word learned? How do you teach a word? How is a word used? Use tells Meaning. 16:16 What is a Game? 16:59 What’s the definition of definition? What is Justice? What is Beauty? What is Love? What is Virtue? 18:23 No one can tell the universal form. 19:01 We can’t do the impossible What does Game O have in common with Game C? 20:43 No Johnny, a pencil is not a game. Essential Definition - Socrates, boil it down to its essence Extensive Definition - Wittgenstein, use it in a sentence 23:33 What makes Beauty Beauty? Is that a reasonable demand? 25:24 Uncertainty at the edges of definitions, examples 26:30 Stop Demanding Absolutes 27:28 Talk comes before Logic Beauty of ____ 28:46 What Holds Our World Together? 29:16 Family Resemblance Chair Family Sharing something enough to group them Categorizing “It depends on what game you are playing.” “Sort-of like…” 32:35 Stand There -> Where exactly? -> There 33:23 _If I can use the term you use in the way you use it,_ I understand you. (You do what you Know) (You say what you Think) 36:22 I’ve done addition in my head, I know Swedish but I don’t use it If you cannot show what you know You might not actually know 38:19 Language is quirky, odd, ASK FOR THE USE, NOT THE MEANING 43:09 Self-Critique Unflattering Concious misgiving

Brilliant. I never thought I'd come close to even vaguely understand great philosophers. I didn't even know I wanted to.

I am vehemently blown away by your presentation and deliverance. Very powerful and I’m left wanting more at the end. 😊

One can clearly see how much Wittgenstein has impressed Prof Sugrue.

I'm absolutely fascinated to listen to this lecture in the age of AI.

向Sugrue博士致敬！货真价实的哲学家、教授、演讲者！聆听您的讲座是一种享受。谢谢教诲！

Really opened my eyes! I wish I could get them all on DVD so that when everything is gone from the internet i can still watch it.

This a wonderful to watch. He really goes directly to the heart of the questions. “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language!” “If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” (Don’t even try to fix it!!!). But why the reservations against behaviourism? If you want to know what I know, watch what I do!! But This is just first class. Never seen better.

I read Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations 1985 and it blew me away. He's had the greatest influence on my intellectual development.

One of best lectures I have listened about late Wittgenstein thoughts. His concept of learning by example look a lot about how computer scientists are trying to create machine learning.

Thanks ! A Man with a beatiful mind

Thank you Dr. Sugrue! This is one of my favorite lectures so far based solely on content. Wittgenstein is a man after my own heart. In IT, we call the level of precision of an algorithm "granularity". The level needed is based on what the algorithm needs to do and the characteristics of the information upon which it acts. I love language and especially simple, accurate definitions, however the precision should indeed be scaled for practical usage. I've asked a couple of mathematicians for a single concise definition of mathematics that embraced all levels from arithmetic to calculous. At least one of them had a PhD and none of them could do it. I told them it was "the study of quantities". They both thought about it and agreed it was a correct definition, but they didn't see any use for it. I told them that the need for the simple definition was to teach mathematics to children so they know what they are learning. Many people don't actually know what math is and think it's much more difficult than it is. Furthermore, each new level of math simply adds another dimension. Arithmetic produces a single value, zero dimensions. Algebra produces a line, one dimension, Geometry, 2 dimensions, etc. If these simple definitions were shared with students as they embarked on each new level of math, it would make a great deal more sense to them and would be easier to learn. Furthermore, confusion is caused by the wrong level of precision in language. If a philosopher's language confuses others, it doesn't mean the philosopher is smarter, just that his communication failed. Ditto with art. If the artist has to explain the work, it failed to communicate.

23:32 Sugrue's pursing of his lips after he say "a scholar, who has spent his entire life -". its like yep, that's me

Thanks Professor Sugrue!

I learned a lot about Wittgenstein and pikabu, what a great day.

Thanks again professor...It's simply awesome to keep hearing you teach again anda again..!

Thank you, Prof Sugrue, for a great lecture.

This is the eternal Form of the Professor. I use it as an example to satisfy both Socrates and Wittgenstein.

Outstanding. Triumph of a lecture. Thank you.

Amazing, fast and concise history and description of Wittgenstein’s philosophies. Very nice job.

Discovered your lectures recently. They are a feast for the mind.

Simply remarkable, I read the tractatus and although I doubt I am among the few able to make full sense of it as Mr. Sugrue said , I was able to understand enough to recognize the genius of Wittgenstein and to listen to the lecture of a true expert is just marvelous 👌🏾👌🏾👌🏾.

Magnificent. Gracias. You have made an art of philosophy!

There is this divine flow in you Sir

Wittgenstein believed that philosophy is an activity which is incoportated in language. So without language there will be no philosophy. He also wrote "in logic there isnt any coincidence" because logic is a construct that stands on certain principles. These principles are described in the tractatus. Later in his philosophical investigation he denounced his previous statement that philosophy is only incorporated in language but also in impressions, intuition, and emotion. However it is still an activity but in his mind now this activity is focused on solving philosphical problems as if they are sickness, thus it is like a therapy.

These lectures make me happy

I am filled with respect, even awe, for this exposition of Wittgenstein.

What a brilliant, outstanding lecture.

Thanks for posting these brilliant lectures

So, the proper use of language as the basis of a philosophical understanding... I'm starting to understand. Thank you for sharing this information....

Thank you for these great posts!!! 👍

This lesson is absolutely wonderful

One of the best lectures I have seen in my entire life. This particular lecture is truly remarkable. I am at awe and moved by the passion of Professor Michael Sugrue for philosophy.

These never disappoint me, what an amazing lecture once again

Only 11k subscribers? This is buried treasure!

What a terrific lecture!

Fantastic lecture! This was one of the most clear, no-nonsense expositions of Wittgenstein’s thought I have yet to hear. I especially liked his Juxtaposition of it to Platonism. That really made things very clear.

AMAZING LECTURE THANK YOU SO MUCH

It's my favourite lecture. Philosophy is a flow of thoughts and ideas. Wittgenstein contracted plato/spinoza but he read them and was influenced by them. How beautiful and marvelous it that.

Brilliant entertainment and display of a great mind in total command.

Wittgenstein was the most remarkable man of philosophy .He gave away his father's fortune and volunteered for dangerous missions in W.W. 1 and taught children before going to England and transforming philosophical thought. How can a man such as that exist, I often wondered.

I read the Tractatus, thought it was very pretentious, and then I was glad to find out Wittgenstein was critical of it himself. Philosophical Investigations is amazingly interesting to read, but you get the gist of it in just the first 50-100 pages. Everything is a game. Language is fluid. So logically, that means philosophy is fluid as well. Analytical philosophy, therefor, isn't philosophy. It is pure science, and even in some sense, antisocial. I was also reminded of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance while watching this lecture. It is a great novel on a man who tried to define "Quality", and got mad doing so. The story is told in a flash back narrative while he's on a road trip to re-acquaint with his son after undergoing electro-shock therapy. He calls his old self, the Philosophy teacher who tried to define Quality, Phaedrus, an obvious nod to Socrates' dialogues, but he also uses games to describe his friends as being "romantic", because they don't care about how motorcycles work, while he calls himself "classical", because he obviously does care and maintains his own motorcycle. He uses this as the first argument on how some people don't care about being authentically engaged with the world and even perform poorly at their jobs, which kinda segways into the story of his great quest to define Quality. After watching these lectures, it became obvious to me that this character had his head buried way too deep into the philosophical sands. He rehashes all kinds of ideas (Kierkegaard's Either/Or, Plato's dialogues, Kant's a priori, Wittgenstein) to make himself look somewhat superior, or worthy of telling you a story, taking you on this trip where he will reveal to you what is the stuff that makes up Quality, but as you probably guessed the great value lies in discovery; in the pleasure of reading how well he handles the motorcycle, the American vistas they interact with both on and off the bike, the people they interact with down the road, how a psychologically unstable man tries to inflate his flawed ego through philosophical investigation, and in turn tries to control his environment by defining it through language instead of experience.

Wittegenstein: "Stand roughly there." Me: "Soooo what direction should I look? I'm so confused."

Obsessed thank you

sugrue is an unsung hero

Uao. Absolutely BRILLIANT again. 🌹

KZfaq recommendations can potentially tells everything about your personality and behaviour. That's the reason why we are here.

While I was watching this. Karl Popper came to my mind because he proclaimed himself as the nemesis of Wittgenstein saying that his philosophy is only a trivial matter talking about language.. I hope Dr. Sugrue would make a video regarding philosophers of science especially my favorite one Thomas Kuhn.

Professor hit Star Power around 40:00

The wig, the glasses, the catchphrase... Brilliant!

Thanks for these.

Wittgenstein was the destroyer of analytic philosophy. Based

Brilliant!

chatgpt puts it well in the style of Robbie Burns! Ludwig said, "A game is like a language, ye ken, A set of rules and symbols that we all comprehend. We play by the rules, but we can change them, it's true, And the meaning of the game is what we construe." A game, ye see, is a social affair, Wherein we all participate and share. It's not just the rules, it's the players, too, And the meanings we create as we pursue. Wittgenstein argued that we create the game, And its meaning depends on who's playing the same. A game can be a battle, a joke, or a test, And its meaning can vary, depending on the contest. So, Robbie Burns, ye see, Wittgenstein's theory is grand, For it shows us that we create the world we understand. We shape our language and games, and they shape us, And that's the key to the meaning we discuss.

It takes no Wittgenstein to realize that most words are inherently fuzzy. Often their meaning is only (ormore, clear in context. Thank God most words are not precisely defined, as mathematical entities are. Words like beauty, good, honest, fair, freedom, greed, god, rational, emotional, intelligence, moral, humor, friendship, love and so many others. Popper realized this when he was just 15 [his book Unended Quest).

Less eloquent summary: It is what it is, y'know? Worth a watch. You can tell this guy's passion. You can tell that at a party this guy brings a casserole and a joke you can cry laughing about on an existential level.

Games are contracts. Game theory and mind games. Resisting the enchantment with our intellect. Really love this lecture despite my not sureness.

Thank You!

Sugrue - the Guru's Guru

Wittgenstein was a student of William of Occam.

Impressive guy this Wittgenstein. How he critiqued himself. So humbly wanting to aid our thinking and add meaning to our language, accepting a degree of language ambiguity is needed in order to reduce that which we should remain silent about.

Brilliant.

@39:00 , the discussion of solving questions to the human condition by reworking language reminds me a lot of Heidegger...

Thank you

I wonder what Wittgenstein would say about quantum physics uncertainty principle in light of his logical positivism.

Thanks!

Summary of this lecture, don’t worry about anything, just keep going..

The failure to do does not conclude the impossibility of something. We struggle with finding the common meaning but that doesnt mean there isnt one. Game and chair can be defined in a clear and stable manner.

Brilliant

"Beware the man of one book"- St.Thomas Aquinas "As I was going up the stair/I met a man who wasn't there/ He wasn't there again today/ I wish, I wish he'd go away"-Anonymous Until now, I deliberately avoided Wittgenstein. From the little I had read, there seemed to be a skull and crossbones on the bottle. Then tonight, this lecture turned up in my KZfaq recommendations. Professor Sugrue continues the process I highly admire, trying in each lecture to try and explain the philosopher in question's train of thought, rather than his own. Still, I am puzzled. An early statement, something like "Then it's not philosophy or logic, but poetry or religion or other nonsense." This idea , sad to say, is quite common among physicists, mathematicians, and those specializing in logic. Which begs the question of how Aristotle, who created logic as we know it, describes Friendship as the ultimate human happiness, and is interested enough in the subject to do a thesis on Poetics. Also, the idea that Plato was only after strict reasoning- if we look at Socrates' speech in Symposium, then Love, Beauty and Truth may revolve around the same fulcrum, but I do not believe Socrates went home that night knowing he had spoken the last words on love, or given the ultimate definition of the word. To toot my own horn, more than one person has asked me "Colleen, why are you so smart?" And my reply of reading the Bible, King James Version, many times, complete; everything Shakespeare wrote- all 37 plays, plus poems; and doing a healthy amount of reading Plato- this gave me a great foundation for understanding otherwise difficult reading material of other authors. I will try to end without "throwing stones." Reading literature, including Poetry, Novels and Plays- opened a window on how other people think that is unavailable through strict reasoning and logic. Literature helped me understand the outlook and view of the world inhabited by those in historical periods I never lived in. The world of Homer, or Tolstoy, or F Scott Fitzgerald I experience by reading them that can't be through the writings of Historians alone. I speak this even with a degree in History, Summa Cum Laude. And for a post note, there is the word eneffable. Why did God keep sending prophets to Ancient Israel, warning them to stop sinning, when God knew The Carrying Away into Babylon was in the future? That's where the word eneffable comes into play.

Amazing resemblance to David Koresh

I think Wittgenstein is showing a preference for connotation over denotation, which is odd since both are necessary. While it may be generally useful for daily use to just know the connotation of the word game, it is important to elucidate a certain meaning to it so we can have serious discussion rather than a potentially confused one with mistaken understandings of meaning.

“Pointing at the pencil ‘this is a game’”😂

Not a pro philosopher here, but this gave me a notion of the connection between Wittgenstein and Heidegger here.

Thanks

I would love to know your take on Russell's disagreement with Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein is new to me and after the video I can't see how anyone can disagree with his ideas. This is probably due to your crystal clear explanation and convincing presentation and my lack of knowledge. Thanks for another great video.

Do you have a lecture on Schopenhauer?

Wow! Just…wow.

"Don't ask for the meaning, ask for the use"-utilitarian approach to logos.

Cool Adam

Professor Sugrues passing is a tragedy. I feel now that the world has become a lesser place.

Thank you so much for your amazing lectures Dr. Sugrue. I wonder what Wittgenstein would think of Husserl's extreme phenomenology. It makes me wonder what is science without philosophy, and therefore philosophy without science. What did Wittgenstein think of Zoroaster's logicism. What would it have been like if Wittgenstein never equated the meaning of life with verbiage. Is logicism just a phenomenological attitude --- What if Wittgenstein's Tractatus was cryptographically analyzed. Did Wittgenstein believe the purest abstracta could transcend language. Is the language of thought a Platonic Form, and can it be analyzed according to Tegmark's pluriverse model. Does the Tractatus correspond to the language of Kosmogony. Are language games essential to all branches of philosophy. Is a language game merely an algorithm of mereology, or mereotopology. Is virtue essential to the foundation of language games, and why is that the case. Finally, I ask, what is the instantiation of instantiation, and why is the instantiation of language essential for Beinghood, or Embodiment in the Lebensworld --- to overlap Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein. Is the set of all sets a linguistic attitude, and are all objects in the pluriverse language games, ultimately.

24:18 they all have in common a high value in aesthetic quality

Game; to play with rule/s. What we cannot say we can pass over in silence and/or provide some other stimuli inducing method. Symbol for breaking down understanding, greys and ranges for covering scope.

1:10 - the theory of the declarative sentence. The limits of our language are the limits of our knowledge. What we cannot speak about, we must pass over in silence. 5:30 - positivist philosophy as "physics uber alis" - the "physics over everything." Sort of like Hawking's idea of the Theory of Everything. 11:50 - two kinds of facts in the Tractatus: deductive and inductive. Deductive facts are logically deduced from a priori propositions, are either true or false, and are all tautologies (in the sense that 2 + 2 = 4 is a tautology). Inductive facts are inferred patterns from a set of examples, tell us about individual facts about the world, and describe contingencies of the world, not tautologies. 13:20 - language not as a picture, but as a game. cf. Piaget and the Socratic dialogues. The idea that you can be able play a game and act out its rules without being able to articulate the rules - and that you in fact learn the rules by playing the game. 15:50 - figuring out a word's meaning by analyzing how it is used. Connected to the idea of discovering whether a word is "good" by investigating what it is good for - which implies that there are multiple circumstances in which a word may or may not be useful, and therefore multiple interpretive lenses of the world in which a word may be meaningful or not. Connected to my idea of the different paradigms of what makes a good law: the "Pragmatic" (is it feasible), the "Utilitarian" (is it beneficial), and the "Just" (is it right) - as well as my different paradigms of thought: the Phenomenological (things merely as they appear to us), the Empirical (things as they can be physically observed and experimented on) and the Philosophical (things as they can be reached through reason). 18:50 - there are some things that cannot be described with absolute mathematical precision and certainty. Perhaps Socrates is playing intellectual sleight-of-hand by asking for such a thing in his dialogues? And further, is this sleight-of-hand conscious or unconscious - or perhaps somewhere in between? 21:10 - essential definition vs. extensive definition. Essential definitions describe the essence of a thing and are exhaustive. Extensive definitions provide examples of a thing and are open-ended. 23:00 - the "revival of common sense." Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by language. (32:58) 23:35 - the analogy of the scholar trying to discover the principle of beauty, the thing that makes beautiful things beautiful. But perhaps there is no observable singular quality that is common to all the examples. Perhaps the problem is not with the intrinsic ambiguity of our language, but that the demand for absolute logical precision is in this situation itself an illogical ask. Imagine two different Venn diagrams: one has multiple circles that have one spot on which they all converge, while another has no spot where they all converge. It may have some circles that overlap with several others, it may have some that overlap with only one, it may have some that overlap with none - perhaps even they all connect in a looped chain, pointing to some unseen center of the circle. The fact remains that there is no spot that all overlap on - no observable common essence. 26:10 - is a blurry photograph a photograph? In some sense, yes. Is it an adequate photograph? It depends on what you're using it for. Goes back to the previous idea of analyzing a word according to its use to determine its meaning. The question then becomes, is there a way to integrate all the interpretations of a word at once, or do we have to hold onto some and discard others according to the situation? And if so, is that even feasible? And even if it is, is it right? Seems to come dangerously close to 1984's doublethink. cf. also the Noble Lie in the Republic. 26:35 - "there is no such thing as the essence of chair-ness . . . there's an intrinsic ambiguity in our definitions along those lines that's exactly like the ambiguity of a fuzzy photograph." This observation helps us see the usefulness and aptitude of Aristotle's categorization of causes into Matter, Form, Efficient, and Final. In a theoretical sense, a chair is a rigid piece of furniture with a seat, four legs, and a back (matter and form). But in a practical sense, a chair is Something To Sit Down On (final). Theseus' boat problem, and so and so forth. 26:50 - ". . . if we need more resolution, we can add that resolution as it's necessary in the language games we are engaged in. . . but we don't need an a priori essential definition of all the words in our language in order to talk." Perhaps the pithiest, most pertinent, and most salient observation of the lecture. Gets around the problem of inaction inherent with consciousness (cf. Underground Man). 29:15 - the idea of "family resemblance." 30:25 - when learning or teaching a language, we don't start with the most obscure examples, but the most clear ones. We go from the more known to the less known. 37:45 - the problem of only accepting behavior as a subject of analysis is that it locks us within our own psyches. 39:45 - the idea that the process of philosophy is never-ending. Lines up with Gadamer's conception of the hermeneutic circle as an unending dialectical process. Perfect knowledge is an asymptote that we approach but never reach. And remember: "Language is intrinsically a social enterprise." (Wittgenstein) In order to philosophize properly, we need a social group to philosophize with. Perhaps cf. Gerard Manley Hopkins' conception of the world (the wonder and incomprehensibility of everyday objects)?

Amazing talk. Re: 35:50, another question could be that if knowing how to do addition amounts to performing actual additions, does a calculator knows how to do addition?

I write my interpretations to help others understand and also to see if I understood anything. I also expect and encourage someone pointing out my potential mistakes. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. When you can't fix what's broken, you go insane. But if nothing is broken, then why do you go insane? Just as tautology limits our knowledge about the world in terms of our knowledge about ourselves, or the way we use language to describe the world, the drive to universals we all feel again tells us only something about ourselves. Wittgenstein posits that we are demanding unreasonable precision in our knowledge, ie, that our ontological thirst is misplaced, because our drives can only be accounted by our behaviors. The earlier Wittgenstein is the culmination of the logical positivism, which is essentially (if I may use this word when talking about logical positivists) skeptical and materialistic. Unsatisfied with his own conclusions, he latter viewed language as a set of games: what things mean really depends upon the games we play, that is, 1. the set of rules we impose on the function of the words we use, and 2. the actual consequences or expectations we can, with relatively safety, predict. In other words, the meaning of things comes first from their relevance to our desires (we learn how they can be used), but essentially from their relations with other words, as we really learn with many examples, we internalize them, then we act accordingly. We successfully manage one particular game, living and playing as we go, ie we first get thrown into the world, then we start to get acquainted with the infinitude of games. This strongly resembles Piaget's theory, a game inside a game inside a game, and so on. One difference between the earlier and the latter Wittgenstein is that the latter “betrays” the other logical positivists by positing that there is an ego/self, which goes against the anti-realism - although we cannot access it, there is an ontological correspondent to ourselves: only I really know what I mean when I use some word. Ayers posited that the self was just another posit with practical usage. Wittgenstein, therefore, not only leaves the metaphysical door open, but he opens the Pandora's box of metaphysics open, as when he acknowledges that there is something outside the material realm - which can't be reduced to what logical positivists would assume as truth - he resembles Gadamer's hermeneutics and even Heidegger posits, expressed by his theory of language-games, to which his previous conclusions of the Tractatus were merely another mode of interpretation, aka another game. That said, whenever I get the feel that I don't want to have to learn the rules until I die, ie I want to know a universal set of rules that will safely get me through all the games I may encounter, Wittgenstein would say I'm not being reasonable, that the problem is not that the world has an infinite array of games, and also not that I could do fairly well focusing on my particular set of games; the problem is that I really don't want to play, at least not by these rules (lato sensu), whenever I search for universals. In a way, whenever the logical positivists assure their own dogmatic dominance over any array of possible knowledge, it is really just a form of reduction to methodological approach, which does not convey the “whole” truth, that can't ever be propositionally contained. Philosophy didn't end - as being reduced to a subset of logic, unable to ever bore new knowledge by itself - and it will never end, as it is the means to articulate (not really solve) problems that language can't solve by itself.

I believe Wittgenstein gave some credit to his correspondences with F. P. Ramsey for the development of his views expounded in PI.

Wonderful.what year is this lecture?

This man knows it all!

Thank you, Prof. Im speak from Brazil! I am a master's student in political science and I would like to know how I get in touch with you to clear up some doubts, if possible and, who knows, do some work togheter. I hope it is not strange, but I have become a huge fan of your work since a good time. As colleagues have already mentioned, you remember Jordan Peterson a lot, but for me, with an even greater didactic and depth, which in itself is incredible. Anyway, thanks for sharing these talks.