Quote:
Originally Posted by Letum
I would have expected Wittgenstein to say "When you do philosophy, you run
into lingual problems.", which is why I don't get on with him very well.
It seams clear to be that meaning precedes language, but there are one or
two people on this forum that seam to agree with Wittgenstein, much to my annoyance.
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Sorry if I should annoy you.
The meaning of the phrase is indeed more like the variation you gave, as Wittgenstein vehemently denied the existence of any real philosophical problems. But I would not describe him as saying that philosophy is only a semantic problem or a matter of hopeless work with definitions, where one should do science instead. It's more like you come to and are drawn into problems in language in another way than with a scientific problem, therefore the solution is not like in science or scientific.
The idea with the original quote is more like, if you do philosophy as if it was a kind of science, you will certainly run into philosophical problems, as they only exist in that form with this attitude to philosophy. You will then often try to solve them as a scientific problem with theories and systems, and then fail or at least find yourself less than satisfied.
Popper famously said to Wittgenstein that there got to be at least one real philosophical problem, and that is if there are real philosophical problems or not. Needless to say their discussion didn't go much further after that!
I'm not sure what to make of the idea that meaning precedes language, but I think that might need a new thread with its own topic!