Philosophical Remarks Quotes

“That it doesn’t strike us at all when we look around us, move about in space, feel our own bodies, etc. etc., shows how natural these things are to us. We do not notice that we see space perspectivally or that our visual field is in some sense blurred towards the edges. It doesn’t strike us and never can strike us because it is the way we perceive. We never give it a thought and it’s impossible we should, since there is nothing that contrasts with the form of our world.What I wanted to say is it’s strange that those who ascribe reality only to things and not to our ideas move about so unquestioningly in the world as idea and never long to escape from it.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks

“Brouwer is right when he says that the properties of his Pendelzahl [pendulum number] are incompatible with the law of the excluded middle. But, saying this doesn’t reveal a peculiarity of propositions about infinite aggregates. Rather, it is based on the fact that logic presupposes that it cannot be a priori—i.e. logically—impossible to tell whether a proposition is true or false. For, if the question of the truth or falsity of a proposition is a priori undecidable, the consequence is that the proposition loses its sense, and the consequence of this is precisely that the propositions of logic lose their validity for it.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks

“This book is written for such men as are in sympathy with its spirit. This spirit is different from the one which informs the vast stream of European and American civilization in which all of us stand. The spirit expresses itself in an onwards movement, building ever larger and more complicated structures; the other in striving after clarity and perspicuity in no matter what structure. The first tries to grasp the world by way of its periphery — in its variety; the second at its center — in its essence. And so the first adds one construction to another, moving on and up, as it were, from one stage to the next, while the other remains where it is and what it tries to grasp is always the same.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks

“No investigation of concepts can tell us that 3 + 2 = 5.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Remarks