For Wittgenstein words don't so much express things in themselves, but are deeply integrated in nonspoken contexts and impressions. It's hard enough to really /get/ somebody from a different cultural context, whereas a lion lives in a massively different lifeworld, with a very different body.
What does a word like "hungry" mean to you, when your diet is gorging yourself on freshly killed meat every couple of weeks? What does feeling "tired" mean, when you're the size of a bus and sleeping is done in increments of 10 minutes because you must constantly wake and resurface to breathe through a hole in your back? You can use language to gesture at these experiences, but that's different from really knowing what we are talking about.
Not that I understand Wittgenstein very well at all, even though it seems like it should be easier than understanding whales and lions ;)
> It's hard enough to really /get/ somebody from a different cultural context
This is such an eye roll statement. The world “really” is the one which does all the work in it. One would say “nah, communication is actually amazing, and through listening to people / reading their words and being attentive one can understand many different cultural contexts”. And whoever wrote the original sentence can always come back and ask “but did you really really understand them”?
> What does a word like "hungry" mean to you, when your diet is gorging yourself on freshly killed meat every couple of weeks?
I don’t understand the problem here. “Hunger” is the feeling which make you seek out food. If your normal is to gorge yourself full and don’t eat anything for weeks then you are not hungry for most of those weeks and then when you start feeling hungry that is when you start preparing for a new hunt, chasing a herd and so on.
We already and in our everyday life understand such differe ces. We know for example that newborns need feeding a lot more frequently than adults, so when they become fussy we ask “is he hungry maybe?” Despite the fact that our own hunger works on a different schedule. We also undestand that when a holocaust survivor describes the deep hunger they suffered from in the camp that is a different feeling than the one you feel 2 hours after lunch when you start thinking about opening a pack of chips. Somehow we “get it”. But do we “realy” get it? Yeah i mean we know that the baby will become more and more fussy the longer it is not fed, and will die eventually. We know that the lion on the hunt will eat us if we look easy enough prey. We understand that people in the camps turned to eat things they would have considered inedible before, and the experience left lasting psychological scars on many of them. And we understand that the person thinking about opening a pack of chips will stop thinking about it if something distracts him/her for a minute. “But do we really really really understand them?” Idk. You tell me what you consider “really really really” understanding anything. Because one can play this game forever.
> What does feeling "tired" mean, when you're the size of a bus and sleeping is done in increments of 10 minutes because you must constantly wake and resurface to breathe through a hole in your back?
If that is normal for that being then they wouldn’t describe that state of being as tired. It is just their normal. But if something (illness, activity, noises) disturbs their normal which make them seek out more sleep they would call that being tired.
>And whoever wrote the original sentence can always come back and ask “but did you really really understand them”?
Asking questions that are very difficult to answer precisely and well, and then trying to do so, is kind of the whole deal with philosophy. How /do/ you know the things that you think you know? You can roll your eyes at it and choose not to investigate further, or you can try to get super granular about sussing out an answer. Philosophers generally try to do the latter.
If your answer to "what does it mean to know things" or "how do we actually use words to navigate meaning" or "how well can we understand other living things" is "I don't care, that's nerd shit" then I highly recommend that you don't read Wittgenstein, because you're gonna get real bored real fast.
> highly recommend that you don't read Wittgenstein,
I did read Wittgenstein. I still hold contempt in my heart to those aping his thoughts mindlessly.
> Asking questions that are very difficult to answer precisely and well, and then trying to do so, is kind of the whole deal with philosophy.
Yes. And declaring that things are impossible is not that. "If a lion could talk, we wouldn’t be able to understand it." is a feel. It's not the conclusion of a reasoned argument. (I'm talking about the sentence in the context it is found in the Philosophical Investigations of Wittgenstein)
> If your answer to "what does it mean to know things" or "how do we actually use words to navigate meaning" or "how well can we understand other living things" is "I don't care, that's nerd shit"
No. Those are all very interesting questions. But if you start with "understanding is impossible" then I hope you get a hug from a loved one. That stuff is hurt speaking. It is not a usefull starting point to answer any of those questions.
I don't think anybody here is upholding Wittgenstein as an exemplar of an emotionally well-adjusted person. I'm not proselytizing for him, just explaining his take to the best of my ability.
I don't disagree with this criticism of his position either, for what it's worth - Personally I think Wittgenstein ignores empathy as a transfer of embodied nonspoken knowledge, for one.
It'd be one thing if his example were of something very radically different (IE space aliens), but social mammals like lions and whales and humans all learn to navigate the world through the presence of others first and foremost. Long before you have any awareness of language, even long before birth, you will have an awareness of closeness. You will primarily learn to navigate the world by way of your relationships to others. That goes whether you're a lion cub or a human baby.
What does a word like "hungry" mean to you, when your diet is gorging yourself on freshly killed meat every couple of weeks? What does feeling "tired" mean, when you're the size of a bus and sleeping is done in increments of 10 minutes because you must constantly wake and resurface to breathe through a hole in your back? You can use language to gesture at these experiences, but that's different from really knowing what we are talking about.
Not that I understand Wittgenstein very well at all, even though it seems like it should be easier than understanding whales and lions ;)