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Dave Sabados
Apprentice
48 Posts |
 Posted - Mar 04 2004 : 11:34:28 AM
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I recently saw an episode of Star Trek that made me think of Wittgenstein. I was wondering about people's thoughts on this:
Brief Synopsis:
Crew finds an alien species that they cannot communicate with. They say seemingly incomprehensible things like "Timber, with arms open" and "when the walls fell."
Picard later realizes that they speak in metaphor (the term they used -- I find reference more appropriate).
Essentially, if I wanted to express an idea of youthful romance, I would not say anything about that explicitly, but rather say something like "Juliet on the Balcony"
Rather than say I was confused, I would say something like "PHIL 495 reading the Tractatus."
In this way, all communication is done with reference to well-known historical events.
The philosophy (so to speak):
What would language be if we communicated like this? I wonder what this does to ideas of language acquision, private language, and all the other philosophy of language stuff we discuss?
If this was actually possible (However counter-intuitive it is to our ideas about language), what would this do to people like Wittgenstein?
Alright, I'm a big dork, but I really thought this was interesting in terms of Wittgenstein's ideas when I saw it.
Any thoughts?
--Dave |
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Dave Sabados
Apprentice
48 Posts |
Posted - Apr 08 2004 : 8:41:59 PM
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| Damn. No other star trek and Wittgenstein fans in the crowd. Oh well. |
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Rachael Bowers
Newcomer
1 Posts |
Posted - Apr 22 2004 : 11:03:58 AM
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Dave,
If it makes you feel better, I was required to watch that particular episode of Star Trek for my first philosophy class. Dr. David Williams found it to be very relevant to philosophical discussion. He also had us read a book called Metaphors We Live By that was very interesting. |
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Dave Sabados
Apprentice
48 Posts |
Posted - Apr 23 2004 : 3:26:41 PM
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Thanks Rachael,
I feel better knowing that someone else believes that there was philosophical importance there. Any thoughts on it?
--Dave |
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Better Living through Star Trek (and Wittgenstein)
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