Cheryl Misak on Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy Bites

Nigel Warburton

Education, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cheryl Misak has recently published a biography of F.P. Ramsey, the great Cambridge thinker who died at the age of only 26, but who nevertheless made a significant impact in several different fields including philosophy, mathematics, and economics. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast she discusses Ramsey's interactions with Wittgenstein. The two thinkers had very different personal styles and their philosophies reflect this.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is philosophy bites with me Nigel Warburton and me David Edmonds.
0:07.0	Philosophy bites is unfunded.
0:09.0	Please help us keep it going by subscribing or donating at
0:12.0	www philosophy bites.com or you can become a
0:16.6	patron at Patreon. Frank Ramsey died in 1930. Outside academia few have heard of him. That's a mystery given his achievements.
0:26.0	Perhaps it's because he was too benign a character to fit our stereotype of a genius.
0:31.0	Perhaps it's because his life was cut tragically short.
0:34.0	Ramsey was a contemporary and a friend of a philosopher, even non-philosophors have heard of,
0:39.4	Ludwig Wittgenstein.
0:41.0	Cheryl Miesack has written a fascinating biography of Ramsey. It details
0:45.5	Ramsey's complex relationship with Wittgenstein.
0:48.1	Cheryl Misak, welcome to Philosophy Bites. Thank you very much. The topic we're going to talk about is Frank Ramsey and Ludwig
0:54.9	Wittgenstein. Most people have heard of Wittgenstein, but not everybody listening to
0:59.6	this will have heard of Frank Ramsey. Who was he? Frank Ramsey was a friend of Vickenstein's.
1:05.0	He died in 1930 at the shock in the young age of 26
1:10.0	after being a real superstar in no less than five disciplines.
1:15.0	Strict combinatoric mathematics, probability theory, economics, philosophy,
1:21.8	subjective utility theory, he was really an amazing thinker.
1:25.0	And he was an interesting man as well, he wasn't just a swat as they were.
1:30.0	No, he wasn't just a swat.
1:31.0	He came up to Cambridge as a mathematics undergraduate just
1:34.5	after the Great War. He was part of Bloomsbury, part of the Apostles, the
	...

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