LimitsOfLanguage Archives — LIRNEasia


Before we dive into natural language understanding, the theory, and its applications–it is important from a pedagogical perspective that we understand the historical trajectory of the ideas that led us there. While it would be interesting to go as far as back to Aristotle, we will skip ahead to what is considered the most important flashpoint in modern philosophy & science–referred to as the ‘linguistic turn’. It begins with our Wittgenstein, inspired by Gottlob Frege: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. […]” While this line is almost used to the point it has become a cliche in modern NLP research papers, Indeed Wittgenstein himself would go on later to re-write and almost rethink all of the ideas he posited in the original Tractatus–which is why the irony is sweet when you see his famous quote plastered on the beginning of most modern research papers; but it is undeniable that Wittgenstein’s first posit changed the face of philosophical debate, effectively ending the practice of continental philosophy, and the birth of the more ‘logical’ analytic philosophy. In our rush to understand reality, we had lost sight of the tool we were bound by during our examination and […]