Ludwig Wittgenstein

An Austrian philosopher, 1889-1951.

Downtown(1)

“Language has no downtown.” / “Language is a motley” - A view attributed to Wittgenstein by Brandom.

It’s all suburbs. There’s no part of it such that everything else is is arrayed around it as a suburb of it. Sellars disagrees: thinks the downtown is giving and asking for reasons.

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Quotes(2)
What is(2)

From [1]:

The questions: - “What is length?” - “What is meaning?” - “What is the number one?” - etc.

produce in us a mental cramp. We feel that we can’t point to anything in reply to them and yet ought to point to something.

(We are up against one of the great sources of philosophical bewilderment: we try to find a substance for a substantive.)

Bibliography
[1]
L. Wittgenstein, “The blue and brown books,” 1958.