Some truly fascinating ideas are presented here regarding meaning and signs in language and thought. The Blue Book, in particular, catches one's attention. However, while I had hoped to have a greater affinity for these books, my actual experience was somewhat different.

Wittgenstein's central thesis seems to be that language is simply a collection of signs that are intertwined with our activities in the world. The meanings of these signs can only be determined by their usage within the context and the various associations within a language. He then proceeds to thoroughly examine this premise through dozens of language games, delving into the problems that arise when considering language as a set of representative signs.

Without a doubt, these works are worth reading. Nevertheless, I can't help but continuously think that a number of these insights were explored with greater significance by Wittgenstein's contemporary, Heidegger. Heidegger's approach perhaps offers a more profound and in-depth understanding of similar concepts, adding another layer of complexity and nuance to the discussion.

Overall, while Wittgenstein's ideas are valuable and thought-provoking, it is interesting to consider how they compare and contrast with those of Heidegger and other contemporaries in the field of philosophy of language and thought.

I've always been deeply interested in linguistics and the profound meaning of words that extends far beyond the boundaries of mere grammar and vocabulary.

Wittgenstein, in particular, is one of those individuals whose often seemingly random musings manage to make a certain kind of convoluted sense to me. Although his writing style might not be the most elegant or straightforward, there is an undeniable allure to his ideas.

As I read his works, I can sense a touch of desperation within him as he grapples with the concept that perhaps we can never truly communicate with complete clarity. It's a fascinating and somewhat humbling thought.

I am certain that I will return to his writings one day and reread them, hoping to gain even deeper insights into the complex world of language and communication.

Each time I engage with his ideas, it's like embarking on a new intellectual journey, filled with surprises and challenges that force me to reevaluate my own understanding of how we use words to convey meaning.

Wittgenstein's work serves as a reminder that language is a rich and mysterious tool, and there is always more to discover and explore within its depths.

These two books pose a challenge to read primarily due to Wittgenstein's unsystematic approach in his exploration.

He is striving towards a form of functionalism, yet he lacks the necessary conception or language to vividly describe the structures he is aiming for.

For instance, he introduces various cuts with the anticipation that meaning would be stabilized along specific expressions. However, he then shows that meaning has no ontological necessity. In fact, he emphasizes different modalities where the sense of what is expressed remains the same even when the units of expression vary. This way, he confounds himself when he can demonstrate that there is no ontological connection between the units of expression and the resulting functional meaning.

Once we recognize that he is leaning towards a functionalist view, these books become hard to evaluate. We have advanced beyond Wittgenstein without truly comprehending him. Similarly, Kant and Hegel are difficult to read as they attempt to convey ideas we have already grasped but lack the language and concepts to express them in a readily understandable manner. I think Wittgenstein is a genius in that he can identify new cuts of meaning and new dimensions of how meaning can be constructed, considered, and disseminated. Nevertheless, Wittgenstein is not a genius in the sense that he is unable to formulate/build a new modality to incorporate his observations, partly because he expects meaning to be stabilized in some sort of correlation between what is expressed and the specific units of expression.

In this regard, Deleuze is right to describe Wittgenstein and his followers as "assassins of philosophy" since Wittgenstein ultimately explores different angles and rejects any meaning that doesn't possess some kind of ontological consistency.

As a work of hard philosophy, this truly stands out.

It is particularly accessible due to LW's presentation of relatively simple examples of complex linguistic phenomena.

Perhaps it is more of a 3.5 rather than a 4.

This is because it is essentially a collection of notes and, for the most part, lacks a clear and completed project.

However, I am always inclined to review a star higher than a star lower.

This work, despite its flaws, offers valuable insights into the complex world of philosophy and language.

The simple examples provided by LW make it easier for readers to understand and engage with the difficult concepts presented.

While it may not be a fully polished and completed work, it still has the potential to inspire further research and discussion in the field.

Overall, it is a worthwhile read for those interested in philosophy and language.

I must be honest and say I did not finish this tome.

However, I firmly believe that any serious student of philosophy should commence their journey with this book.

The reason being that it delves into the core issues of the language that we are compelled to use in any philosophical discourse.

Moreover, it highlights how effortlessly we can be led astray by our choice of words.

At least, this was the perception I had some 40 years ago.

Since then, my understanding of philosophy and language has evolved, but the significance of this book in laying the foundation for philosophical inquiries remains undiminished.

It serves as a reminder that the words we choose can have a profound impact on the way we think and communicate our ideas in the realm of philosophy.

Even if one does not complete the entire book, the insights gained from the initial chapters can prove to be invaluable in shaping one's philosophical perspective.

Therefore, I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is serious about exploring the depths of philosophy and understanding the role of language in philosophical thought.

I firmly believe that this is very likely Wittgenstein's finest work. It is clear and, to a certain extent, to the point. There is significantly less of the sort of bombastic and convoluted language that one might find in his other works.

This particular piece stands out for its simplicity and directness. The ideas are presented in a way that is易于理解 and accessible, even to those who may not be well-versed in the complex world of philosophy.

Wittgenstein's ability to cut through the clutter and present his thoughts in a concise and clear manner is truly remarkable. It makes this work a pleasure to read and study, and it offers valuable insights into his philosophical perspective.

Overall, I highly recommend this work to anyone interested in philosophy or in gaining a deeper understanding of Wittgenstein's ideas. It is a must-read for anyone looking to explore the profound and thought-provoking world of philosophy.

Wittgenstein is the most terrifying author I have ever read. His works are filled with complex and profound ideas that can be difficult to understand. His writing style is often dense and requires careful study and analysis.

However, despite the challenges, reading Wittgenstein can be a deeply rewarding experience. His ideas have had a significant impact on philosophy, logic, and language. By engaging with his work, we can gain a deeper understanding of these fields and of ourselves.

Overall, while Wittgenstein may be a terrifying author, he is also one of the most important and influential. His works continue to inspire and challenge readers today, and will likely do so for many years to come.

This was an excellent recommendation from Alex Temple.

I never managed to finish it, but what I did read, I completely adored.

It has the remarkable ability to make you think about thinking in an amazingly precise manner.

It felt as if I was privy to the thoughts of a mathematician, which for me is the highest form of praise.

The way it presents ideas and concepts forces you to analyze and dissect your own thought processes.

It's like a mental exercise that sharpens your mind and makes you more aware of how you approach different problems and situations.

Even though I didn't complete the entire work, the part that I read left a lasting impression on me.

I would highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in exploring the depths of their own thinking and wants to gain a new perspective on the world around them.

This is quite a remarkable book. It's truly challenging to precisely determine what to make of it. Right from the start, it was evident to me that Ludwig Wittgenstein was an extremely bright individual. And even after completing it, I still hold this view. This is the only work of his that I have read, so my perception of the man is fully shaped by The Blue and Brown Books.

These books explore philosophy in a manner I've never witnessed before. Given the nature of philosophy and the fundamental problems of understanding anything we claim to understand, this approach seems crucial. Wittgenstein delves into the philosophy of language, language games, the philosophy of mind, and I struggle to classify the remaining aspects. But it's all captivating, rigorous, and comprehensive. He examines how we communicate, what we mean when we use specific expressions, how we should think about knowledge, the different forms of understanding, our sensations of pain and what we imply when we discuss it, how we make sense of the information we see when it takes on various forms (such as color, shape, and how we interpret scribbles as random or as representing certain images, ideas, or words), and much more. It's a dense study, with a plethora of topics to discuss.

The Blue book and the Brown book were regarded as preliminary studies for his work that later culminated in the Philosophical Investigations. That is a work I haven't yet read. However, as they stand, the Blue and Brown Books feel incomplete. In many ways, this is a remarkable piece of work, filled with a wealth of penetrating thoughts. But at times, it feels like a stream of consciousness, despite clearly having required a significant amount of effort and organization to assemble. These books are based on lectures Wittgenstein gave to a small group of students, and as such, they are not as polished or coherent as they could be.
On several occasions, especially early in the Blue Book, Wittgenstein states that he will return to a point or topic to further develop it, but he never does. The footnotes even note that he never resumes this thread. And at other times, he repeats himself, covering ideas he has already explored, although in such cases, he might approach it from a slightly different perspective. Both books end up seeming very intelligent but really disorganized and poorly explained. It's not entirely clear what kind of use one is supposed to derive from this.
This is ultimately where it falls short: Wittgenstein is undoubtedly an intelligent and serious philosopher. But he is not proficient at communicating his philosophy in a way that makes it appealing or connects it to ideas that we would find beneficial from the philosophy. He seems to leave that as an exercise for the reader. And as a reader, I came away with numerous ideas about how his way of thinking could be applied to our understanding of, or interaction with, the world around us. But it wasn't always a sensible or useful application to make. I ultimately couldn't figure out the "why" behind much of Wittgenstein's philosophy, and he doesn't attempt to delve into it. As I mentioned, it is very incomplete. Since these books constitute his "preliminary studies" that led to what I assume is a more comprehensive work, it's not surprising that they feel incomplete. The ideas here are developed abstractly, theoretically, and applied to basic examples for illustration, but without their author having a clear purpose for them. Perhaps that purpose becomes evident in the Philosophical Investigations.
The Brown book introduces dozens of thought experiments regarding language, thoughts, impressions, knowledge, and interpretations, which he calls Language Games. But they are still thought experiments, simply directed at philosophical questions and investigations.
In his discussions about how we identify a leaf based on our understanding of what a leaf looks like, informed by having seen a variety of different leaves, it occurred to me that Wittgenstein's work in philosophy could, in a sense, be considered foundational to artificial intelligence. He revisits these concepts later, regarding pencils, and how we would identify a pencil and what features an object would need for us to classify it as one. The same goes for the leaf: If you've seen a thousand different kinds of leaves, how does your mind determine that object 1001 is also a leaf? What commonality is it identifying? Shape? Color? This is the type of question we must ask in image analysis and artificial intelligence, and then we must find an answer.
These concepts are further expanded upon in discussions of pictures that are entirely different except for one blotch of color. If we had to depict the similarity between these images, what would we draw? How would we define the similarity? Or if we look at dark blue and light blue, if we used different words for these colors, would we still say they have anything in common, and that the commonality is the color blue? He uses music and mathematics as examples throughout the work, such as asking what it means for someone to be able to know the next few notes in a melody, or how we could explain numbers to a tribe that has never counted beyond a certain point. Or how could we describe music without whistling it and without evoking some kind of common understanding?
He points out the misconceptions about music being defined by its ability to evoke certain emotions in us, as if the feeling of those emotions is the purpose and the defining characteristic of music, something exclusive to music - which is not the case. Despite making these astute observations nearly a century ago, the associated misconceptions still persist. The implications of these various explorations turn out to be almost infinite, and you can easily find yourself getting lost in these paths of thought.
These are just simple examples of the types of studies Wittgenstein is leading us into. Many of them become much more involved, complex, and interesting, such as how we interpret the differences in drawn facial expressions, and what makes us agree that the expressions are different even if the drawings themselves have hardly any differences, or vice versa, with two drawn faces having significantly different arrangements of lines and scribbles but the expressions appearing generally the same, or the games one can play with language or thought, and what we mean when we use certain phrases or words to convey sensations, experiences, or ideas. He is probing concepts in ways I don't think they had ever been probed before, and often it's truly captivating, even if it can be sloppy and frustratingly obtuse.
In addition to artificial intelligence, it seems clear that Wittgenstein's philosophy has a place in the study of linguistics and neuroscience, and it would be fascinating to see how this work has been integrated or expanded upon (or rejected) by these fields.
It wasn't always clear to me what Wittgenstein was aiming for with his continuous barrage of ideas, even though they were easy to follow. I discovered that the introduction to this collection actually provided a great deal of clarity that Wittgenstein himself was unable to offer, and so these were invaluable 16 pages that anyone hoping to make sense of the work as a whole should definitely read. And as a whole, this body of work seems to me to have some analogues or applications to scientific thinking, in the strictest sense. This is where I see its value. I don't mean simply in application to scientific problems, but in application to any philosophical or intellectual problem, enabling one to think more like a scientist or a rigorous philosopher in the process.
On the surface, many of the questions, language games, thought experiments, and the philosophy of mind that Wittgenstein explores might seem frivolous, pedantic, or useless, and the unwavering way in which he persists, driving the point home and making one penetrating insight after another into the non-obvious questions, can seem exhausting to someone not interested in this level of interrogation. For the most part, I found it compelling and fascinating, even when I thought it was a little bit useless.
Sometimes he would introduce ideas that I wasn't entirely sure I understood the point of, but as I continued reading, I would make projections based on the idea and come up with my own thought experiments or examples. A few paragraphs or pages later, Wittgenstein would then explicitly discuss these. This led me to believe that I wasn't lost or missing anything, and that sometimes my boredom with the discussion was instead due to not seeing any value in it. This wasn't always the case, as many times (such as in the application to artificial intelligence or to scientific thinking) I saw some immediate and practical value in the philosophy, as well as general intellectual value. But there were many times when he pursued an idea to the extreme without really making its purpose known. Even when I could come up with a purpose, it was clear that the idea would require a great deal more development before it could be applied to anything.
In the end, this is a nifty book, densely filled with profoundly thought-provoking material from one of the most renowned philosophers of the last century. It doesn't always read smoothly, it doesn't always seem relevant, it's surprisingly messy, but for the abundance of fundamental insights it provides, the intellectual journeys it forces you to undertake, and the thoughtful extrapolations it allows you to make, it is undeniably important and beneficial for serious cognitive development. I might like to reread it again in a few years, perhaps if I ever get around to reading the Philosophical Investigations.

Perhaps I should have read Philosophical Investigations before reading this. However, I was following the advice that Blue Book would offer more profound insights into Wittgenstein's thought processes. I initially found Wittgenstein's struggle with language moderately interesting. But as I delved deeper, it seemed ultimately fruitless, rather like witnessing a man attempting to use a drill press as a stapler. Wittgenstein was indeed opposed to the typical analytic philosophy word games with language. He made an effort to focus on language as it was actually used in real life. Nevertheless, he still appeared to be employing the wrong set of tools. At its core, language is a form of human behavior, perhaps even the most essential human behavior. And philosophy, at best, is an incomplete study of mankind. If he had incorporated the social sciences into his toolkit, even considering the state of those fields of study during his time, I firmly believe he could have been much clearer and more decisive. The only social scientist he even mentions is William James, who was also a philosopher. In my opinion, he was rather inexperienced with the scientific method. Additionally, he might have benefited from some understanding of how babies and pre-school-age children acquire speech, especially given what he learned from observing school-age children mastering language. Still, Wittgenstein is refreshingly honest and reluctant to make assumptions, which holds great value.

The preface in the edition I read, by R. R. (probably Rush Rhees), seems to only wish to consider the Blue and Brown books within the context of PI. However, at least in the case of the Blue Book, this seems somewhat questionable, as it had its own independent significance.

Una exploración, or perhaps more accurately a leisurely stroll among the alleys and lower neighborhoods of the metaphysics of language, or as Wittgenstein himself calls his exercise, a "philosophizing about understanding."

Fortunately, Wittgenstein (or at least the Spanish translation) does not get lost among neologisms or overly contrived abstractions. And while at times it may seem a bit repetitive in its linguistic meticulousness, in the end one seems to understand that all of it harbors within the idea that it is experience and the social environment that make us give the meanings we give to words, to phrases, to the way of reading or listening, of observing, to the manner in which we read and interact with reality.

This exploration delves deep into the heart of how language functions and how our understanding is shaped. It shows that language is not a static entity but a dynamic one that is constantly evolving and being influenced by our surroundings.

By examining the various aspects of language use, Wittgenstein helps us to see that our understanding is not simply a matter of individual perception but is also deeply rooted in the social and cultural context in which we live.

In conclusion, this exploration of the metaphysics of language offers valuable insights into the complex relationship between language, understanding, and reality.

Meaning as use is indeed one of the most profound and useful philosophical concepts I've ever come across.

It challenges the traditional view that meaning is something fixed and inherent in words or concepts. Instead, it emphasizes that the meaning of a word or expression is determined by how it is used in a particular context.

This concept has significant implications for various fields, such as linguistics, philosophy of language, and even everyday communication.

By understanding that meaning is use, we can better appreciate the complexity and flexibility of language. We can also avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations by paying attention to the context in which words are used.

Moreover, this concept encourages us to be more aware of our own language use and how it can shape our thoughts and actions. Overall, meaning as use is a powerful and thought-provoking concept that has the potential to transform our understanding of language and communication.