Philosophical performance

Whether we like it or not – and whether we like to admit it or not – we all too often find ourselves on a communicational battlefield where the performance of bewilderment, contempt and nausea combine with other forms of shaming and ostracism to play a major role in determining who prevails.

My latest piece at The Electric Agora, Wittgenstein's Antics, is about some of the non-verbal methods which people use to promote themselves and their ideas and get their way. The focus is on philosophical head-clutching and similar antics which not just Ludwig Wittgenstein but many other philosophers have been prone to. [That's Karl Popper in the photograph.] The topic is amusing, sure, but serious questions can be asked about the causes, the functions and the consequences of these general patterns of behaviour.

And, by the way, an interesting discussion developed in the latter part of the comment thread on the extent to which thought is necessarily language-based.