Ludwig Wittgenstein
Logic, Language and the Limits of our Understanding
Intro
Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. There were few philosophical fields left untouched by the British-Austrian genius; he worked with logic, mathematics, ethics, the mind, and most notably, revolutionized the way that we understand language. He only published one book during his lifetime, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in which he challenged how we think of language and logic, suggesting that the function of language is to allow us to picture things.1 This is known as the picture-theory and it drove the logical positivism movement that defined philosophy up and into the 1960s.2
Bold claims made Ludwig Wittgenstein a controversial character, fluctuating in the eyes of his peers and students between a madman and a genius. He himself acknowledged that he had outlandish views and philosophies, once claiming “if people never did anything stupid, nothing intelligent would ever get done”.2 Regardless of his personal character, the work that Wittgenstein began in the 20th century started major conversations about metaphysics, logic, and language that continue to be discussed today. He always questioned what could be said about the world, causing him to even debunk some of his own notable theories after further reflection. Some of his work that was posthumously published in a book titled Philosophical Investigations actually contradicted much of what he had stated about language in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Ludwig Wittgenstein had an amazing thirst for knowledge and was never afraid to admit his own mistakes. His insights have had a powerful impact on not only the topics that philosophy undertakes but also on the way that we understand the purpose of philosophy.
The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have known since long.3
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
