Not a new concept, but a very interesting NYT piece by Andy Martin. (Thanks to Steve Peterson on MD for the link).
Thank you, gentlemen, for raising the issue of understanding here. The fact is, I don’t expect people in general to understand what I have written. And it is not just because I have written something, in places, particularly cryptic and elliptical and therefore hard to understand, or even because it is largely a meta-discourse and therefore senseless, but rather because, in my view, it is not given to us to achieve full understanding of what another person says. Therefore I don’t expect you to understand this problem of misunderstanding either. (Paraphrase of Wittgenstein).
Having read The Philosophical Investigations as well as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I have no doubt Wittgenstein knew what he was doing in his earlier work aimed primarily at inveterate logician Bertrand Russell.
I therefore believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems [of philosophy]. And if I am not mistaken in this belief … it shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved.
Wittgenstein and the Art of Car Maintenance.
Love it. Wittgenstein and the Allusion to Robert Pirsig.
Priceless comment also, from Alan Lamb in the comment thread, hilarious, hopefully tongue firmly in cheek:
Autism as a topic is an interesting launching pad for a discussion of philosphical questioning as you have introduced it but your thesis is certainly not either necessary nor sufficient to conclude that current medical theory explains philosophy away.
Hofstadter would love the strange loop. (And the comment thread is full of people defending Wittgenstein and those with autism … talk about missing the point, being autistic.)
(And thanks to JC also on MD for this link to LogiComix – comic book story of the life of Russell and the failure of logic.)