Satire on Wittgenstein’s Investigations available here. Here is a delightful sample:
18. Imagine a tribe which could masturbate only in a group. And so it never occurred to them that anyone might do it alone and they had no word for this either. And now, imagine this tribe in the dark. If no one says anything or touches anyone, do they know they’re masturbating? Suddenly someone turns on the light. At what moment would it be correct to say, ‘Hey! We’re a bunch of wankers!’?
19. Imagine everything just as it is, only DIFFERENT, instead of the same. What would it mean to want to say that, at a quite particular point in a chess game–just before you lose your queen, let us say–, we came to recognize that we lacked a special facial gesture for expressing precisely THIS kind of difference?
20. I want to say: AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!
21. Philosophical puzzles take the form: a one-legged Indian in a butt-kicking contest on thin ice.
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October 16, 2007 at 8:09 pm
dprice218
LOL
Wow, I had to share this with my gf, who knows nothing of philosophy (she’s a chemist) but nonetheless found it rather hilarious.
Its both sad and delightful that Wittgenstein’s method can be emulated in such “trivial” –but not disinteresting–ways.
I think the “I want to say, ARRRGGGGGHH” example sheds a lot of light on what the reader feels when reading Wittgenstein. Of course, the internalization of “ARRRRGGGGHHH” can be as exciting and motivating as it is an ‘expression of frustration’.
October 16, 2007 at 8:21 pm
LOL@ “Philosophical Tribulations” « Language Games
[...] on October 16th, 2007 Simon, over at Wittgensteinforum.wordpress.com, just posted a link to a hilarious application of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. Here’s my response to it, available here (as in ‘below’) and here: [...]
October 17, 2007 at 5:29 am
Simon van Rysewyk
ARRRGGGGGHH! – yes, a common experience in those who read Wittgenstein. We often feel like slaves…