Episode #231 ... The Late Work of Wittgenstein - Language Games

Stephen West· Host0:00

Hello, everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!. Patreon.com/philosophizethis. Philosophical writing on Substack at philosophizethis on there as well. I hope you love the show today. So there's a tactic that's become pretty popular in what some people would call the debate space of the internet these days. There's a trick someone'll do where at the very beginning of the conversation, they'll ask the other person to define the exact thing that they're gonna be talking about that day. It'll sound kinda like this: "Uh, just to start out today, uh, can you please give me your definition of God?" "Can you give me a definition of abortion or insurrection or justice?" Whatever it is that day. And then the other person will usually take the bait. They try to give their take on it. Maybe they'll say, "An insurrection is when a group of people try to overthrow some form of authority out there." Then the other person will say back to that, "Well, based on your definition, is a prison riot an insurrection then? That's people overthrowing an authority. If a union fires a manager that's harassing employees, is that an insurrection? How about if my two kids both kick me in the shins at the exact same time, is that an insurrection? I mean, if you can't even define what it is we're supposed to be talking about today, are you even qualified to be here?" All the while, this person's usually winning points with the crowd that's watching the debate. I mean, if the other side can't get to the essence of what we're talking about, then what are we even talking about? This scene actually isn't too far away from something a lot of you will be familiar with from the history of philosophy. There's a guy that used to do something like this, although he did it in good faith and was trying to avoid rhetoric