Learning. The brain. Language. Consciousness. It can all get very complicated if you sit down and try and think about it. Who knows where it all begins and ends.
The Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein thought and wrote about an awful lot of things, particularly language and the mind. This BBC animated video on Wittgenstein's Beetle in the Box provides an insightful take on consciousness:
The meaning of any word is a matter of what we do with our language, according to Wittgenstein, not something tucked away inside anyone's brain. This is not neuroscience bashing but rather an attempt to draw a line between science and philosophy.
Wittgenstein was well-schooled in the sciences but claimed that neuroscience is irrelevant to the resolution of philosophical problems, particularly philosophy of the mind:
“It is thus perfectly possible that certain psychological phenomena cannot be investigated physiologically, because physiologically nothing corresponds to them."
(1967, remark 609)
“The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.”
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein
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