Wittgenstein's Blue & Brown Books [Open Discussion]

[quote=Blue Book]
The word "I" does not mean the same as "L. W." even if I am L. W., nor does it mean the same as the expression "the person who is now speaking". But that doesn't mean: that "L. W." and "I" mean different things. All it means is that these words are different instruments in our language.
Think of words as instruments characterized by their use, and then think of the use of a hammer, the use of a chisel, the use of a square, of a glue pot, and of the glue. (Also, all that we say here can be understood only if one understands that a great variety of games is played with the sentences of our language: Giving and obeying orders; asking questions and answering them; describing an event; telling a fictitious story; telling a joke; describing an immediate experience; making conjectures about events in the physical world; making scientific hypotheses and theories; greeting someone, etc., etc.) The mouth which says "I" or the hand which is raised to indicate that it is I who wish to speak, or I who have toothache, does not thereby point to anything. If, on the other hand, I wish to indicate the place of my pain, I point. And here again remember the difference between pointing to the painful spot without being led by the eye and on the other hand pointing to a scar on my body after looking for it. ("That's where I was vaccinated".) -- The man who cries out with pain, or says that he has pain, doesn't choose the mouth which says it.
All this comes to saying that the person of whom we say "he has pain" is, by the rules of the game, the person who cries, contorts his face, etc. The place of the pain -- as we have said -- may be in another person's body. If, in saying "I", I point to my own body, I model the use of the word "I" on that of the demonstrative "this person" or "he".
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Here's his clever demonstration that 'I' might have my pain in someone else's body.

[quote=Blue Book]
Another such trouble, closely akin, is expressed in the sentence: "I can only know that I have personal experiences, not that anyone else has". -- Shall we then call it an unnecessary hypothesis that anyone else has personal experiences? -- But is it an hypothesis at all? For how can I even make the hypothesis if it transcends all possible experience? How could such a hypothesis be backed by meaning? (Is it not like paper money, not backed by gold?) -- It doesn't help if anyone tells us that, though we don't know whether the other person has pains, we certainly believe it when, for instance, we pity him. Certainly we shouldn't pity him if we didn't believe that he had pains; but is this a philosophical, a metaphysical belief? Does a realist pity me more than an idealist or a solipsist? -- In fact the solipsist asks: "How can we believe that the other has pain; what does it mean to believe this? How can the expression of such a supposition make sense?"

Now the answer of the common-sense philosopher -- and that, n.b., is not the common-sense man, who is as far from realism as from idealism -- the answer of the common-sense philosopher is that surely there is no difficulty in the idea of supposing, thinking, imagining that someone else has what I have. But the trouble with the realist is always that he does not solve but skip the difficulties which his adversaries see, though they too don't succeed in solving them. The realist answer, for us, just brings out the difficulty; for who argues like this overlooks the difference between different usages of the words "to have", "to imagine". "A has a gold tooth" means that the tooth is in A's mouth. This may account for the fact that I am not able to see it. Now the case of his toothache, of which I say that I am not able to feel it because it is in his mouth, is not analogous to the case of the gold tooth. It is the apparent analogy, and again the lack of analogy, between these cases which causes our trouble. And it is this troublesome feature in our grammar which the realist does not notice. It is conceivable that I feel pain in a tooth in another man's mouth; and the man who says that he cannot feel the other's toothache is not denying this. The grammatical difficulty which we are in we shall only see clearly if we get familiar with the idea of feeling pain in another person's body. For otherwise, in puzzling about this problem, we shall be liable to confuse our metaphysical proposition "I can't feel his pain" with the experiential proposition, "We can't have (haven't as a rule) pains in another person's tooth". In this proposition the word "can't" is used in the same way as in the proposition "An iron nail can't scratch glass". (We could write this in the form "experience teaches that an iron nail doesn't scratch glass", thus doing away with the "can't".) In order to see that it is conceivable that one person should have pain in another person's body, one must examine what sort of facts we call criteria for a pain being in a certain place. It is easy to imagine the following case: When I see my hands I am not always aware of their connection with the rest of my body. That is to say, I often see my hand moving but don't see the arm which connects it to my torso. Nor do I necessarily, at the time, check up on the arm's existence in any other way. Therefore the hand may, for all I know, be connected to the body of a man standing beside me (or, of course, not to a human body at all). Suppose I feel a pain which on the evidence of the pain alone, e.g., with closed eyes, I should call a pain in my left hand. Someone asks me to touch the painful spot with my right hand. I do so and looking round perceive that I am touching my neighbour's hand (meaning the hand connected to my neighbour's torso).
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I like W's distinction between the man of common sense and the common sense philosopher. Peirce talked about his philosophy as a kind of common-sense-ism in one essay. The 'gold tooth' is another clever image in his work, along with the ladders and bottles.

[quote=Blue Book]
The man who is philosophically puzzled sees a law in the way a word is used, and, trying to apply this law consistently, comes up against cases where it leads to paradoxical results. Very often the way the discussion of such a puzzle runs is this: First the question is asked "What is time?" This question makes it appear that what we want is a definition. We mistakenly think that a definition is what will remove the trouble (as in certain states of indigestion we feel a kind of hunger which cannot be removed by eating); The question is then answered by a wrong definition; say: "Time is the motion of the celestial bodies". The next step is to see that this definition is unsatisfactory. But this only means that we don't use the word "time" synonymously with "motion of the celestial bodies". However in saying that the first definition is wrong, we are now tempted to think that we must replace it by a different one, the correct one.

Compare with this the case of the definition of number. Here the explanation that a number is the same thing as a numeral satisfies that first craving for a definition. And it is very difficult not to ask: "Well, if it isn't the numeral, what is it?"

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.
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This was written somewhere in 1933-1934. The 'kind of hunger which cannot be removed be eating' is a great phrase. The definition issue is relevant. The idea that words have some sharp meaning or a small set of sharp meanings, that we can peel the onion and find some perfectly intuitively satisfying semantic atoms....The idea that we ever know exactly what we are talking about...

[quote=Blue Book]
Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language games is the study of primitive forms of language or languages. If we want to study the problems of truth and falsehood, of the agreement and disagreement of propositions with reality, of the nature of assertion, assumption, and question, we shall with great advantage look at primitive forms of language in which these forms of thinking appear without the confusing background of highly complicated processes of thought. When we look at such simple forms of language the mental mist which seems to enshroud our ordinary use of language disappears. We see activities, reactions, which are clear-cut and transparent. On the other hand we recognize in these simple processes forms of language not separated by a break from our more complicated ones. We see that we can build up the complicated forms from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms.

Now what makes us it difficult for us to take this line of investigation is our craving for generality.

This craving for generality is the resultant of a number of tendencies connected with particular philosophical confusions. There is --
(a) The tendency to look for something in common to all the entities which we commonly subsume under a general term. -- We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for applying the general term "game" to the various games; whereas games form a family the members of which have family likeness. Some of them have the same nose, others the same eyebrows and others again the same way of walking; and these likeness overlap. The idea of a general concept being a common property of its particular instances connects up with other primitive, too simple, ideas of the structure of language. It is comparable to the idea that properties are ingredients of the things which have the properties; e.g. that beauty is an ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine, and that we therefore could have pure beauty, unadulterated by anything that is beautiful.

(b) There is a tendency rooted in our usual forms of expression, to think that the man who has learnt to understand a general term, say, the term "leaf", has thereby come to possess a kind of general picture of a leaf, as opposed to pictures of particular leaves. He was shown different leaves when he learnt the meaning of the word "leaf"; and showing him the particular leaves was only a means to the end of producing 'in him' an idea which we imagine to be some kind of general image. We say that he sees what is in common to all these leaves; and this is true if we mean that he can on being asked tell us certain features or properties which they have in common. But we are inclined to think that the general idea of a leaf is something like a visual image, but one which only contains what is common to all leaves. (Galtonian composite photograph.) This again is connected with the idea that the meaning of a word is an image, or a thing correlated to the word. (This roughly means, we are looking at words as though they all were proper names, and we then confuse the bearer of name with the meaning of the name.)

(c) Again, the idea we have of what happens when we get hold of the general idea 'leaf', 'plant', etc. etc., is connected with the confusion between a mental state, meaning a state of a hypothetical mental mechanism, and a mental state meaning a state of consciousness (toothache, etc.).

(d) Our craving for generality has another main source; our preoccupation with the method of science. I mean the method of reducing the explanation of natural phenomena to the smallest possible number of primitive natural laws; and, in mathematics, of unifying the treatment of different topics by using a generalization. Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything, or to explain anything. Philosophy really is 'purely descriptive'. (Think of such questions as "Are there sense data?" and ask: What method is there of determining this? Introspection?)

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I include long quotes like this so that those new to Wittgenstein can get a taste and still jump into the conversation. Also there's a nice, affordable paperback that includes both the Blue & Brown books.

Note the confusing 'property = ingredient' metaphor which W makes visible as quietly governing the confusion. There's also the general idea of the leaf as a image, which another poster has noted as especially apt. The Ideas/Forms are images.

[quote=Blue Book]
Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign.
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The replacement of the 'mental image' with some painted, external image is simple but brilliant.

If the 'occult' meaning that gives signs life is use, then naturally use is social, 'extimate,' out there, or rather between rather than inside us. The holist point is also made that the sentence lives in an entire language. This language-as-system reminds me of Saussure (Culler's brief book is great.)

I wanted to lay out some themes and quotes. Hopefully others will join and bring more, as well as react to those presented.

Reply to j0e These are interesting points, good job.

Reply to Sam26
Thanks!

Please share more if you feel like it.

Reply to j0e I'm working on another thread, analyzing On Certainty.

I'm hoping others will jump in, but I'll proceed in the meantime with a detour through Nietzsche, with a focus on the dominant habit of talking as if the one person per skull were necessary rather than contingent.

[quote=link]
As early as 1873, Nietzsche described metaphor as the originary process of what the intellect presents as "truth." "The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, develops its chief power in dissimulation." "A nerve-stimulus, first transcribed [iibertragen] into an image [Bild] ! First metaphor! The image again copied into a sound! Second metaphor! And each time he (the creator of language] leaps completely out of one sphere right into the midst of an entirely different one." In its simplest outline, Nietzsche's definition of metaphor seems to be the establishing of an identity between dissimilar things. Nietzsche's phrase is "Gleich machen" ( make equal ), calling to mind the German word "Gleichnis"-image, simile, similitude, comparison, allegory, parable-an unmistakable pointer to figurative practice in general. "Every idea originates through equating the unequal." "What, therefore, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonymies, anthropomorphisms; ... truths are illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions, ... coins which have their obverse effaced and now are no longer of account as coins but merely as metal." I hold on here to the notions of a process of figuration and a process of forgetfulness. In this early text, Nietzsche describes the figurative drive as "that impulse towards the formation of metaphors, that fundamental impulse of man, which we cannot reason away for one moment-for thereby we should reason away man himself . . .. Later he will give this drive the name "will to power." Our so-called will to truth is a will to power because "the so-called drive for knowledge can be traced back to a drive to appropriate and conquer."21 Nietzsche's sense of the inevitable forcing of the issue, of exercising power, comes through in his italics: " 'Thinking' in primitive conditions (preorganic) is the crystallization of forms . . .. In our thought, the essential feature is fitting new material into old schemas, ... making equal what is new."22 The human being has nothing more to go on than a collection of nerve stimuli. And, because he or she must be secure in the knowledge of, and therefore power over, the "world" (inside or outside), the nerve stimuli are explained and described through the categories of figuration that masquerade as the categories of "truth." These explanations and descriptions are "interpretations" and reflect a human inability to tolerate undescribed chaos-"that the collective character [Gesamtcharakter] of the world ... is in all eternity chaos-in the sense not of a lack of necessity but of a lack of order, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whatever other names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms [human weaknesses-Menschlichkeiten] ." As Nietzsche suggests, this need for power through anthropomorphic defining compels humanity to create an unending proliferation of interpretations whose only "origin," that shudder in the nerve strings, being a direct sign of nothing, leads to no primary signified. As Derrida writes, Nietzsche provides an "entire thematics of active interpretations, which substitutes an incessant deciphering for the disclosure of truth as a presentation of the thing itself."
....
The "subject" is a unified concept and therefore the result of "interpretation." Nietzsche often stresses that it is a specifically linguistic figurative habit of immemorial standing : "that when it is thought [wenn gedacht wird] there must be something 'that thinks' is simply a formulation of our grammatical custom that adds a doer to every deed." The "insertion of a subject" is "fictitious." The will to power as the subject's metaphorizing or figurating, or introduction of meaning, must therefore be questioned. And Nietzsche accordingly asks, pondering on the "making equal" of proximate sensations, a propos of how "images . . . then words, . .. finally concepts arise in the spirit": "Thus confusion of two sensations that are close neighbors, as we take note of these sensations; but who is taking note?" Nietzsche accordingly entertains the notion of the will to power as an abstract and unlocalized figurative (interpretative) process: "One may not ask : 'who then interprets?' for the interpretation itself is a form of the will to power, exists (but not as a 'being' but as a process, a becoming ) as an affect." Sometimes Nietzsche places this abstract will to power, an incessant figuration, not under the control of any knowing subject, but rather underground, in the unconscious. The Nietzschean unconscious is that vast arena of the mind of which the so-called "subject" knows nothing. As Derrida remarks: "both [Freud and Nietzsche] ... often in a very similar way, questioned the self-assured certitude of consciousness. . . . For Nietzsche 'the important main activity is unconscious.' '' If, however, we want to hold onto "the important main activity" we have to go further than the unconscious, we have to reach the body, the organism.
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Is it fair to say that 'one person per skull' is an interpretation that's hardened into a (fragile) fact for us in our pre-philosophical mode?

Another key point is this 'entire thematics of active interpretations, which substitutes an incessant deciphering for the disclosure of truth as a presentation of the thing itself.' This is reminiscent of Brandom's Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit.

[quote=Brandom]

A characteristic distinguishing feature of linguistic practices is their protean character, their plasticity and malleability, the way in which language constantly overflows itself, so that any established pattern of usage is immediately built on, developed, and transformed. The very act of using linguistic expressions or applying concepts transforms the content of those expressions or concepts. The way in which discursive norms incorporate and are transformed by novel contingencies arising from their usage is not itself a contingent, but a necessary feature of the practices in which they are implicit. It is easy to see why one would see the whole enterprise of semantic theorizing as wrong–headed if one thinks that, insofar as language has an essence, that essence consists in its restless self–transformation (not coincidentally reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “self–overcoming”). Any theoretical postulation of common meanings associated with expression types that has the goal of systematically deriving all the various proprieties of the use of those expressions according to uniform principles will be seen as itself inevitably doomed to immediate obsolescence as the elusive target practices overflow and evolve beyond those captured by what can only be a still, dead snapshot of a living, growing, moving process. It is an appreciation of this distinctive feature of discursive practice that should be seen as standing behind Wittgenstein’s pessimism about the feasibility and advisability of philosophers engaging in semantic theorizing…

…
[T]he idea that the most basic linguistic know–how is not mastery of proprieties of use that can be expressed once and for all in a fixed set of rules, but the capacity to stay afloat and find and make one’s way on the surface of the raging white–water river of discursive communal practice that we always find ourselves having been thrown into (Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit) is itself a pragmatist insight. It is one that Dewey endorses and applauds. And it is a pragmatist thought that owes more to Hegel than it does to Kant. For Hegel builds his metaphysics and logic around the notion of determinate negation because he takes the normative obligation to do something to resolve the conflict that occurs when the result of our properly applying the concepts we have to new situations is that we (he thinks, inevitably) find ourselves with materially incompatible commitments to be the motor that drives the unceasing further determination and evolution of our concepts and their contents. The process of applying conceptual norms in judgment and intentional action is the very same process that institutes, determines, and transforms those conceptual norms.

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Finally, we see the connection of (preconscious or unconscious) organism and incessant interpretation in know-how or skill as opposed to know-that or (explicit) method. This requires extending the concept of interpretation to include something like an enacted taking-as that's only incidentally and perhaps secondarily made explicit, if indeed it can in general be made explicit in the first place. As I understand it, none of this is new, but I like throwing these horse-shoes, getting a better grip on them.

Here's a Carnap quote that might be worth talking about:

[quote=link]
From the internal questions we must clearly distinguish external questions, i.e., philosophical questions concerning the existence or reality of the total system of the new entities. Many philosophers regard a question of this kind as an ontological question which must be raised and answered before the introduction of the new language forms. The latter introduction, they believe, is legitimate only if it can be justified by an ontological insight supplying an affirmative answer to the question of reality. In contrast to this view, we take the position that the introduction of the new ways of speaking does not need any theoretical justification because it does not imply any assertion of reality. We may still speak (and have done so) of the "acceptance of the new entities" since this form of speech is customary; but one must keep in mind that this phrase does not mean for us anything more than acceptance of the new framework, i.e., of the new linguistic forms. Above all, it must not be interpreted as referring to an assumption, belief, or assertion of "the reality of the entities." There is no such assertion. An alleged statement of the reality of the system of entities is a pseudo-statement without cognitive content. To be sure, we have to face at this point an important question; but it is a practical, not a theoretical question; it is the question of whether or not to accept the new linguistic forms. The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended. Judgments of this kind supply the motivation for the decision of accepting or rejecting the kind of entities.

Thus it is clear that the acceptance of a linguistic framework must not be regarded as implying a metaphysical doctrine concerning the reality of the entities in question. It seems to me due to a neglect of this important distinction that some contemporary nominalists label the admission of variables of abstract types as "Platonism." This is, to say the least, an extremely misleading terminology. It leads to the absurd consequence, that the position of everybody who accepts the language of physics with its real number variables (as a language of communication, not merely as a calculus) would be called Platonistic, even if he is a strict empiricist who rejects Platonic metaphysics.

A brief historical remark may here be inserted. The non-cognitive character of the questions which we have called here external questions was recognized and emphasized already by the Vienna Circle under the leadership of Moritz Schlick, the group from which the movement of logical empiricism originated. Influenced by ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the Circle rejected both the thesis of the reality of the external world and the thesis of its irreality as pseudo-statements;6 the same was the case for both the thesis of the reality of universals (abstract entities, in our present terminology) and the nominalistic thesis that they are not real and that their alleged names are not names of anything but merely flatus vocis. (It is obvious that the apparent negation of a pseudo-statement must also be a pseudo-statement.) It is therefore not correct to classify the members of the Vienna Circle as nominalists, as is sometimes done. However, if we look at the basic anti-metaphysical and pro-scientific attitude of most nominalists (and the same holds for many materialists and realists in the modern sense), disregarding their occasional pseudo-theoretical formulations, then it is, of course, true to say that the Vienna Circle was much closer to those philosophers than to their opponents.

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http://www.ditext.com/carnap/carnap.html

To talk about the system as a whole is without content. Everything is X is not informative, useless. 'It's all mind.' 'It's all matter.' 'What difference does it make? Who cares and why?'


The acceptance cannot be judged as being either true or false because it is not an assertion. It can only be judged as being more or less expedient, fruitful, conducive to the aim for which the language is intended.

The calculus as a whole is not true or false but merely useful or not. Internally it may contain true or false propositions.

Notably, the Preface to the BB is addressed to Russell to look over with "so many points ... just hinted at". I read that as a modest plea for additions and corrections from a slightly but not too different perspective.

Blue Book:were Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde two persons or were they the same person who merely changed? We can say whichever we like. We are not forced to talk of a double personality.

Quoting j0e

One has one mind in one's skull.

At a time, according to W above

Blue Book:these words are different instruments in our language.

but then

Blue Book:the answer of the common-sense philosopher is that surely there is no difficulty in the idea of supposing, thinking, imagining that someone else has what I have. But the trouble with the realist is always that he does not solve but skip the difficulties which his adversaries see, though they too don't succeed in solving them. The realist answer, for us, just brings out the difficulty; for who argues like this overlooks the difference between different usages of the words

The correct answer was skirted in

Blue Book:Shall we then call it an unnecessary hypothesis that anyone else has personal experiences? -- ... is this a philosophical, a metaphysical belief? Does a realist pity me more than an idealist or a solipsist? -- In fact the solipsist asks: "How can we believe that the other has pain; what does it mean to believe this? How can the expression of such a supposition make sense?"

A solipsist's philosophy denies 'others', therefore, since there are no others, only "I" can have pain. The solipsist's experience is purely internal without an outside world. Can a solipsist possibly agree to W's insistence of language making sense publicly? Absolutely not, and my fish in its aquarium agrees with that thinking too.

First...welcome to the thread!

Quoting magritte

Can a solipsist possibly agree to W's insistence of language making sense publicly? Absolutely not, and my fish in its aquarium agrees with that thinking too.

I agree that 'meaning is public' clashes with solipsism. For me the 'one mind per skull' theme is interesting because it shows that quasi-Cartesian attempts to start from nothing are confused. They assume --- without justification ---the framework of a single mind in possession of (or composed from) private meanings.

Quoting magritte

I read that as a modest plea for additions and corrections from a slightly but not too different perspective.

:up:

[quote=Kant]
...it always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us (from which we after all get the whole matter for our cognitions, even for our inner sense) should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof...
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https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendental-arguments/

[quote=link]
Heidegger sees skepticism about the external world as a “sham” problem (GA 20: 218), one that one comes to pose only by having embraced a confused ontology. “Starting with the construct of the isolated subject,” one does indeed come to wonder how this “fantastically conceived,” “denatured” entity “comes out of its inner ‘sphere’ into one which is ‘other and external’” (206, 60, GA 20: 223, emphasis added). To refute the skeptical worry that it can’t would indeed “call… for a theory and metaphysical hypotheses” (GA 20: 223). But Being and Time famously insists that we must not answer that call: Kant calls it “a scandal of philosophy and of human reason in general” that there is no cogent proof of [“the existence of things outside us”] which will do away with any scepticism… [But the] “scandal of philosophy” is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.
[/quote]
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290534185_Heidegger_on_skepticism_truth_and_falsehood

Who is a proof of the external world for? I suppose it could be a decoration. 'We already know that we all exist in the same world, but it sure would be nice to have a proof...' Or are we to imagine a thinker in genuine angst, haunted by the possibility that only he is actually 'conscious'? Perhaps he's desperate for a proof, and once he has it he can breath a sigh of relief and love his wife in a new way.

But why isn't a proof needed that there's a solitary voice in a box that may be lost in a dream? That a starting point of methodological solipsism is appropriate is apparently accepted without proof. The anti-skeptic criticizes the skeptic not only for practical irrelevance but for not being skeptical enough, for failing in terms of his own playful project.

[quote=PI]
But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved. It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation.
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https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

In the context of 'my' skill-focused interpretation, I'd expand on this. 'Meaning' is 'fuzzy,' fuzzier in some places than others. It's a matter of skill to know when to quit, to read between the lines. As another poster has said, logic is a gentleman's agreement. I don't mean symbolic logic, which is relatively quite exact. I mean living logic, talking with others in the world and being understood. The 'gentleman' (who can be man, woman, both, neither) is the 'reasonable person.' I can imagine objections to the fuzziness of this concept, but I suggest that that's how things are. Invent exact languages if you want, but I think it has to be done in the fuzzy metalanguage according to the gentleman's agreement. The impish or confused student can always raise objections, refuse to understand, but life goes on. In fact, at some point we just disregard certain objections as mad or insincere. The ground (shared skill) is in this sense an abyss...or perhaps a fog that obscures the bottom of the castle of meanings.

[quote=PI]
"But still, it isn't a game, if there is some vagueness in the rules".—But does this prevent its being a game?—"Perhaps you'll call it a game, but at any rate it certainly isn't a perfect game." This means: it has impurities, and what I am interested in at present is the pure article.—But I want to say: we misunderstand the role of the ideal in our language. That is to say: we too should call it a game, only we are dazzled by the ideal and therefore fail to see the actual use of the word "game" clearly. 101. We want to say that there can't be any vagueness in logic. The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal 'must' be found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this "must". We think it must be in reality; for we think we already see it there. 102. The strict and clear rules of the logical structure of propositions appear to us as something in the background—hidden in the medium of the understanding. I already see them (even though through a medium): for I understand the propositional sign, I use it to say something. 103. The ideal, as we think of it, is unshakable. You can never get outside it; you must always turn back. There is no outside; outside you cannot breathe.—Where does this idea come from? It is like a pair of glasses on our nose through which we see whatever we look at. It never occurs to us to take them off.
[/quote]

I have a very basic question: how readable is Wittgenstein? I am familiar with his ideas from various summaries I've read and Great Courses lectures I've bought, but never read him outside short excerpts that lack context.

I have a backlog of very dense reading to get through. I didn't know if it would be like adding more Hegel to that backlog, or if it'd be more straight forward (I find Plato and Aristotle fairly straight forward for example, even if the ideas are very complex and require mulling over).

Blue Book:The idea of a general concept being a common property of its particular instances connects up with other primitive, too simple, ideas of the structure of language. It is comparable to the idea that properties are ingredients of the things which have the properties; e.g. that beauty is an ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine, and that we therefore could have pure beauty, unadulterated by anything that is beautiful.

(b) There is a tendency rooted in our usual forms of expression, to think that the man who has learnt to understand a general term, say, the term "leaf", has thereby come to possess a kind of general picture of a leaf, as opposed to pictures of particular leaves.

Quoting j0e

The Ideas/Forms are images.

In some ways, they must be.

W brings in both abstract generalizations like beauty and more concrete generalizations like leaf. Both are expressed by word, yet there is distinction between showing some leaves to a child and then some beautiful objects or scenes. A child can easily generalize from one or two leaves. This is not so easy for beautiful clouds or beautiful ideas.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I have a very basic question: how readable is Wittgenstein? I am familiar with his ideas from various summaries I've read and Great Courses lectures I've bought, but never read him outside short excerpts that lack context.

IMO, one of his great charms is that thinkers don't get more readable than Witt. His thought is chunked into little sections but often these sections flow together. I've read some secondary sources that were good, but personally I think W is such a good writer that it's hard to improve the original.

Quoting magritte

W brings in both abstract generalizations like beauty and more concrete generalizations like leaf. Both are expressed by word, yet there is distinction between showing some leaves to a child and then some beautiful objects or scenes.

I think that W would say something like 'we shouldn't take this image metaphor too seriously.' Contrast this with Plato or someone who sees that we generalize and invents entities to make sense of it. And these aren't tentatively-held pragmatic entities but (for such thinkers) metaphysical bedrock.

[quote=W]
The idea of a general concept being a common property of its particular instances connects up with other primitive, too simple, ideas of the structure of language. It is comparable to the idea that properties are ingredients of the things which have the properties; e.g. that beauty is an ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine, and that we therefore could have pure beauty, unadulterated by anything that is beautiful.
[/quote]

Lakoff's theories seem to fit in here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lakoff

Beauty is to beautiful things as alcohol is to alcoholic beverages. This metaphor doesn't work upon close investigation, but it's tempting. Family resemblance is an alternative, more flexible conception.

Also, on pictures/images/metaphors:

[quote=link]
Metaphor has been seen within the Western scientific tradition as a purely linguistic construction. The essential thrust of Lakoff's work has been the argument that metaphors are a primarily conceptual construction and are in fact central to the development of thought.

In his words:

"Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature."
According to Lakoff, non-metaphorical thought is possible only when we talk about purely physical reality; the greater the level of abstraction, the more layers of metaphor are required to express it. People do not notice these metaphors for various reasons, including that some metaphors become 'dead' in the sense that we no longer recognize their origin. Another reason is that we just don't "see" what is "going on".
[/quote]

@j0e beautiful bouquet of passages. I really like the archipelago-vibe - a series of loosely connected passages - loose enough (like the resemblance between games) to allow fortuitous connections, but tight enough to have a discernible throughline.

I'm going to come in a little heavy-handed, and focus on one theme - hopefully I can add to that whole, while not unduly gravitizing one part.

Picking out one flower:

Brandom:[T]he idea that the most basic linguistic know–how is not mastery of proprieties of use that can be expressed once and for all in a fixed set of rules, but the capacity to stay afloat and find and make one’s way on the surface of the raging white–water river of discursive communal practice that we always find ourselves having been thrown into (Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit) is itself a pragmatist insight. It is one that Dewey endorses and applauds. And it is a pragmatist thought that owes more to Hegel than it does to Kant. .

(i)Brandom's 'raging white-water river' image is fantastic, and honestly (having read only a little of him) a nice surprise. He has felt dry to me in the past - this is a living, breathing, apt, image.

(ii) While I was reading the earlier posts, pre-Brandom - the posts with Wittgenstein talking about generality and the indigestive hunger for explanation, I kept thinking 'Hegel, this is Hegel.'

At first blush, tha's counter-intuitive because Hegel, in our collective imagination, is the arch-everything-has-its-specific-place guy - but if you read his Phenomenology, there is a long, insightful discussion of the connection between reason & explanation.

There is also an early discussion of 'mystery traditions' that leads him to the nothingness at the heart of revelation.If he means literally the mystery traditions, this is reductive and missing-the-point, but I don't think that's what he's about. I think he's foreshadowing something that comes into play more explicitly a bit later on. What do we get we get to the explanatory center?

Explanation is a human activity. It takes one level, x, the explanandum - and links it to another level, y, the explanans. in context, in the proper language games, this is a super useful tool! Science makes use of it all the time, and we have rockets and penicillin and VR etc. But when it's taken out of those contexts - when the indigestive hunger is looking to be satisfied - then (here's where Hegel really breaks it down) what is explanation? Metaphysically it can't satisfy. It can only link descriptions between different levels. Maybe you say x is the expression of y. Or maybe you say y causes x. But the indigestive, metaphysical, hunger expects]explanation to supply - offer the substantial heft - of the final satisfying thing - when all it can do - all its constructed to do - is establish linkages between levels.Wittgenstein breaks his spade to show the bedrock, and Hegel posits a 'inverted world' to show there's only so far you can go.

Just a digression from the main course of the posts, hopefully legible.

Reply to csalisbury
Great post! I wanted to get that out before composing a response.

Quoting csalisbury

(i)Brandom's 'raging white-water river' image is fantastic, and honestly (having read only a little of him) a nice surprise. He has felt dry to me in the past - this is a living, breathing, apt, image.

I've never owned one of his books, but I'm curious about A Spirit of Trust, which seems to be an assimilation of Hegel, finally, in the analytic tradition.

I adore the 'raging white-water river' metaphor. It was like something I was looking for without knowing it. This anti-theoretical and anti-philosophical notion of skill...I think Heidegger can be read as 'dasein is (primarily)skill.' Nice that we have a monosyllabic English word. Better than know-how in that words and deeds live together, no exact boundary between them.

Quoting csalisbury

Explanation is a human activity. It takes one level, x, the explanandum - and links it to another level, y, the explanans. in context, in the proper language games, this is a super useful tool! Science makes use of it all the time, and we have rockets and penicillin and VR etc. But when it's taken out of those contexts - when the indigestive hunger is looking to be satisfied - then (here's where Hegel really breaks it down) what is explanation? Metaphysically it can't satisfy. It can only link descriptions between different levels. Maybe you say x is the expression of y. Or maybe you say y causes x. But the indigestive, metaphysical, hunger expects]explanation to supply - offer the substantial heft - of the final satisfying thing - when all it can do - all its constructed to do - is establish linkages between levels.Wittgenstein breaks his spade to show the bedrock, and Hegel posits a 'inverted world' to show there's only so far you can go.

I really like this and agree. What is it that people hunger for? Some kind of impossible explanation of the whole deal, even though an explanation of the whole deal does not make sense, since explanation only links things intrasystematically. Long ago, before I really knew what I meant, I wrote 'Wittgenstein is the cube root of Hegel.' I went from Kojeve/Hegel to the TLP, favorite book of the moment to the next one and felt some kind of connection that I couldn't make explicit. You make me want to look into certain parts of Hegel's Phen. I have always only focused on certain passages and themes (most the types of people stuff.)

Quoting j0e

This anti-theoretical and anti-philosophical notion of skill...I think Heidegger can be read as 'dasein is (primarily)skill.' Nice that we have a monosyllabic English word. Better than know-how in that words and deeds live together, no exact boundary between them.

Yes! And the thing of skill or art or mastery is its not reducible - you know it when you see it, and if you loose all the accumulated scales-over-the-eyes of growing up, you can look back at childhood, go over memories, and see clearly (when you were a kid, witnessing grown-ups) who had it -for this, or for that - and who didn't. I think that test (if a child witnessed me doing this, or that now, what would they think?) is a primary one. Of course it's not all that - a kid might be impressed, even though you fuck up the pottery. But it's a good mental-jiggle to slot out of the fake stuff, and recalibrate with the real. Recognition among craftsmen is as important, but also if there's nothing in your life you can do that you can't explain and show to a child , delighting them- you're probably on the wrong path.

All a little digressive- but at the same time - skill, childhood, mastery - it all ties back into the 'I' and "we" from the beginning. (I add, because i can feel myself tending gravitationally, narrowing to a point, even though I'm talking about levitational things on my way to that gravitational narrowing) Up! The world we of skill we grow into and live within is always floating over some deep well/chasm you can't learn better by falling in.

Quoting csalisbury

Recognition among craftsmen is as important, but also if there's nothing in your life you can do that you can't explain and show to a child , delighting them- you're probably on the wrong path.

I like the introduction of the childhood theme. Think of adolescent concerns, being funny, dressing well, sports, cheerleading. All quite embodied, not compressible in a textbook.

Then there's a grown-up version that we're doing here with words (being funny, being cool, dressing well in words.) The whole 'logic is a gentleman's agreement' fits in here. I don't think there's a manual for being rational, being funny, being decent. Or rather we're all scribbling in a book that'll never be finished. Philosophy is something like the game of writing that book of rules, except (as Brandom/Hegel notes) we change the game as we comment on it. There's always a drift, often toward more complexity.

Quoting csalisbury

The world we of skill we grow into and live within is always floating over some deep well/chasm you can't learn better by falling in.

I'm with you on this floating metaphor. The ground is an abyss, an ocean whose bottom is lost in darkness. I'm not sure I'm reading the last part right. Are you saying that falling in does no good? That one has to (or might as well) float at a kind of distance? Or is there a word left out?

Quoting csalisbury

beautiful bouquet of passages. I really like the archipelago-vibe - a series of loosely connected passages - loose enough (like the resemblance between games) to allow fortuitous connections, but tight enough to have a discernible throughline.

Thanks for this too ! They all fit together for me. I just yanked out my favorites. I like the idea that we fill up the spaces between these fragments.

Seems to me that Witt is doing a kind of negative metaphysics. Philosophieren ist: falsche Argumente zurückweisen. We can trust our blind skill enough to be as far out (actually more far out) as the typical skeptic.

A mistaken cartoon of Witt and OLP is that he/it is desperately normal. There's wicked fun in solipsism and skepticism. It's bad boy stuff. And no one wants boring dad to call it all nonsense. But I don't think (and don't think dad thinks) it's nonsense. We can follow certain metaphors way out with sufficient concentration. 'Bad' metaphysics is proof of this, and it's not meaningless. Wherever 2 or 3 are gathered in my game.... And it's a game (or family of games) that players can get more skillful at. So it's a matter of prioritizing. Who are we to be?

Is the stubborn sceptic a bricked-in narcissist ? Fending off the reality ? Is there a comfort in an atomic theory of the self as a little island that can doubt away reality? castrate the father? But the sceptic can also be a anarchist, a freedom fight, keeping us open. I think W is a benevolent mutation of the skeptic.

[quote=Freud]
The charm of a child lies to a great extent in his narcissism, his self-contentment and inaccessibility, just as does the charm of certain animals which seem not to concern themselves about us, such as cats and the large beasts of prey. Indeed, even great criminals and humorists, as they are represented in literature, compel our interest by the narcissistic consistency with which they manage to keep away from their ego anything that would diminish it. It is as if we envied them for maintaining a blissful state of mind—an unassailable libidinal position which we ourselves have since abandoned.

The primary narcissism of children which we have assumed and which forms one of the postulates of our theories of the libido, is less easy to grasp by direct observation than to confirm by inference from elsewhere. If we look at the attitude of affectionate parents towards their children, we have to recognize that it is a revival and reproduction of their own narcissism, which they have long since abandoned. The trustworthy pointer constituted by overvaluation, which we have already recognized as a narcissistic stigma in the case of objectchoice, dominates, as we all know, their emotional attitude. Thus they are under a compulsion to ascribe every perfection to the child—which sober observation would find no occasion to do—and to conceal and forget all his shortcomings. (Incidentally, the denial of sexuality in children is connected with this.) Moreover, they are inclined to suspend in the child's favour the operation of all the cultural acquisitions which their own narcissism has been forced to respect, and to renew on his behalf the claims to privileges which were long ago given up by themselves. The child shall have a better time than his parents; he shall not be subject to the necessities which they have recognized as paramount in life. Illness, death, renunciation of enjoyment, restrictions on his own will, shall not touch him; the laws of nature and of society shall be abrogated in his favour; he shall once more really be the centre and core of creation—‘His Majesty the Baby’, as we once fancied ourselves. The child shall fulfil those wishful dreams of the parents which they never carried out—the boy shall become a great man and a hero in his father's place, and the girl shall marry a prince as a tardy compensation for her mother. At the most touchy point in the narcissistic system, the immortality of the ego, which is so hard pressed by reality, security is achieved by taking refuge in the child. Parental love, which is so moving and at bottom so childish, is nothing but the parents' narcissism born again, which, transformed into object-love, unmistakably reveals its former nature.
[/quote]

Not presenting Freud as an authority here but rather I'm yanking him into philosophy, listening to an old man who spent his life talking to people about their secrets and problems. Personally I think something like the 'ego ideal' is central to philosophy, because it's central to life. How do we see ourselves in relation to the tribe? What role does the philosopher specifically play? A crust-cutting rhetorical stuntman? A knowledge referee?


[quote=Freud]

We have learnt that libidinal instinctual impulses undergo the vicissitude of pathogenic repression if they come into conflict with the subject's cultural and ethical ideas. By this we never mean that the individual in question has a merely intellectual knowledge of the existence of such ideas; we always mean that he recognizes them as a standard for himself and submits to the claims they make on him. Repression, we have said, proceeds from the ego; we might say with greater precision that it proceeds from the self-respect of the ego. The same impressions, experiences, impulses and desires that one man indulges or at least works over consciously will be rejected with the utmost indignation by another, or even stifled before they enter consciousness. The difference between the two, which contains the conditioning factor of repression, can easily be expressed in terms which enable it to be explained by the libido theory. We can say that the one man has set up an ideal in himself by which he measures his actual ego, while the other has formed no such ideal. For the ego the formation of an ideal would be the conditioning factor of repression. This ideal ego is now the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego. The subject's narcissism makes its appearance displaced on to this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, finds itself possessed of every perfection that is of value. As always where the libido is concerned, man has here again shown himself incapable of giving up a satisfaction he had once enjoyed. He is not willing to forgo the narcissistic perfection of his childhood; and when, as he grows up, he is disturbed by the admonitions of others and by the awakening of his own critical judgement, so that he can no longer retain that perfection, he seeks to recover it in the new form of an ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal.
[/quote]
https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_SE_On_Narcissism_complete.pdf

This Freud digression isn't obviously justified, but I like the question: who did Wittgenstein want to be? What kind of man? Or, more practically important, how can or how does philosophy make us better people? What are the ego-ideals operating in philosophy?

I suggest that the gentleman's agreement (logic) is an overlapping of ego ideals, a shared ego ideal, that of rationality, sanity, decency.

[quote=W]
What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.
...
The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up to now has intangibly weighed down upon our consciousness.
...
What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.
[/quote]
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

Let's not forget:

[quote=W]
Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they are brilliant) perform a disservice.
(Now any ass has these pictures available to use in "explaining" symptoms of an illness.
[/quote]

Wittgenstein:Work on philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more work on oneself. On one's own conception. On how one sees things. (And what one expects of them.) (CV, 24)

Quoting j0e

Seems to me that Witt is doing a kind of negative metaphysics. Philosophieren ist: falsche Argumente zurückweisen.

"Philosophy is: to reject false arguments -- Witt Big Typescript"

Insistent negative philosophy is a hallmark of W's analytic (analogous to Kant's 'critical') middle or transitional work. As discovered in David Stern's wonderful Wittgenstein on Mind and Language, (Intro available: academia.edu or google books)

By the time the PI was written, Witt had moved on to seeing that one is to understand a language one needs to be a player to be a participant in that particular language game.

None of us are in position to call other philosophies 'nonsense' until we understand what is sense in that philosophy. (I'm pointing at myself)

Quoting magritte

Witt had moved on to seeing that one is to understand a language one needs to be a player to be a participant in that particular language game.

:up: :up: :up:

Quoting magritte

None of us are in position to call other philosophies 'nonsense' until we understand what is sense in that philosophy. (I'm pointing at myself)

:up: :up: :up:

I think even the later Witt (in PI) is still swatting down prejudices about language that get in the way of our everyday knowhow or skill. It's as if a certain kind of philosopher is blinded by an alluring theory so that he forget his ordinary chops in the game.

Reply to Fooloso4
:up:

In this post I'll try to link Wittgenstein to other thinkers.

[quote=link]
Herder argues that human perception, thought, and action depend on language. And language, in his view, is fundamentally social:

Go into the age, into the clime, the whole history, feel yourself into everything—only now are you on the way towards understanding the word. (Herder 1774; also see Herder 1769 & 1772)

Like his predecessors, Herder argues that cultures possess characters, affecting how the cultures act overall, but in Herder’s view, historical explanation requires treating societies as unified entities, and regarding individuals as products of society.
...
To be a self, according to Hegel, involves self-consciousness. And this is not something that an individual can possess independently of others. Instead, self-consciousness depends on our having a sense of ourselves as individuals as distinct from others, which in turn depends on our interacting with other people (i.e., recognizing other people and being recognized by them)
...
Hegel’s universal spirit is sometimes used as an example of “ontological holism”—i.e., the claim that social entities are fundamental, independent, or autonomous entities, as opposed to being derived from individuals or non-social entities (Taylor 1975, Rosen 1984).
...
As an alternative to ‘compact’ or ‘agreement,’ the legal theorist Samuel Pufendorf, in De Officio Hominis et Civis of 1673, uses the term ‘convention’ as the basis for law and language. He argues that conventions do not need be explicitly formed or agreed to. Instead, we can have tacit conventions—i.e., conventions that we may not even be aware we have.

Pufendorf also differs from his predecessors when it comes to what conventions accomplish. He does not merely speak of a convention as an agreement to cooperate or act in some way. Instead, by putting conventions in place, we create new features of the social world. For instance, Pufendorf holds that one kind of property ownership has its source in tacit convention. We have the tacit convention that the first person to occupy a piece of virgin soil becomes its owner. Without the convention, the first person to occupy a piece of virgin soil is no more than an occupant. The convention, however, generates new social institution: a form of ownership according to which being first occupant suffices to make a person an owner (De Officio, XII, 2).
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-ontology/history.html

Continuing as before to branch out from W to similar thinkers:
[quote=link]
In Brandom’s view, it is Hegel who (in contrast to Kant) “brings things back to earth” by treating the transcendental structure of our “cognitive and practical doings” as being “functionally conferred on what, otherwise described, are the responses of merely natural creatures, by their role in inferentially articulated, implicitly normative social practices” .... Our practice of language-use is not merely the application of concepts but simultaneously the institution of the conceptual norms governing the correct use of our linguistic expressions; it is our actual use of language itself that settles the meanings of our expressions.
...
Heidegger himself saw pragmatism as one element of the technologically oriented, scientistic and naturalistic philosophical tradition that was destroying our original relation to Being. However, Brandom – together with some other pragmatist interpreters– describes Heidegger’s basic project in Sein und Zeit as a pragmatist one of grounding Vorhandensein in Zuhandensein: a necessary (transcendental?) background for understanding how it is possible for us to judge, state, or represent how things are from a disinterested perspective is found in “our practical nonconceptual dealings with things”; thus, “knowing that” is to be explained in terms of “knowing how”, and the possibility of conceptually explicit contents is to be explained in terms of what is implicit in nonconceptual practices. Brandom explicitly regards Heidegger’s strategy for explaining how the vorhanden “rests on” the zuhanden as “pragmatism about the relation between practices or processes and objective representation”. He explicates this as “pragmatism concerning authority”: matters of (particularly epistemic) authority are matters of social practice, not simply objective factual matters; the distinctions between ontological categories such as Zuhandensein and Vorhandensein (and indeed Dasein itself) are social.Heidegger is also explained as maintaining a normative pragmatism (cf. section 2 above), in which norms implicit in practice are taken as primitive and explicit rules or principles are defined in terms of them.63 Brandom in effect takes Heidegger’s normative pragmatism to be the combination of two theses: (1) the factual is to be understood in terms of the normative; and (2) propositionally statable rules, explicit norms, are to be understood in terms of implicit norms, viz., “skillful practical discriminations of appropriate and inappropriate performances”. Social normativity, then, is irreducibly present in the very project of ontology. What is zuhanden, “ready-to-hand”, that is, “equipment”, is (Brandom notes) characterized by Heidegger himself as pragmata, “that which one has to do with in one’s concernful dealings”.65 Pragmatism, for Brandom’s Heidegger, is not simply semantic, conceptual, or normative, but also ontological:

Heidegger sees social behaviour as generating both the category of equipment ready-to-hand within a world, and the category of objectively present-at-hand things responded to as independent of the practical concerns of any community. In virtue of the social genesis of criterial authority (the self-adjudication of the social, given pragmatism about authority), fundamental ontology (the study of the origin and nature of the fundamental categories of things) is the study of the nature of social Being – social practices and practitioners.

[/quote]
https://lenguajeyconocimiento.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/sobre-brandom.pdf

These things which are "independent of the practical concerns of any community" seems to me like points at infinity. We care about them, we appeal to them, we use them. But we use them because of their apparent, relative independence from our concerns. I think of a knife that doesn't lose its edge. Or it's the (supposedly or in-the-limit) part of our culture that transcends that culture, a part treated as universal. 'Even aliens will recognize the primes. '

[quote=Quine]
The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience. A conflict with experience at the periphery occasions readjustments in the interior of the field. Truth values have to be redistributed over some of our statements. Re-evaluation of some statements entails re-evaluation of others, because of their logical interconnections -- the logical laws being in turn simply certain further statements of the system, certain further elements of the field. Having re-evaluated one statement we must re-evaluate some others, whether they be statements logically connected with the first or whether they be the statements of logical connections themselves. But the total field is so undetermined by its boundary conditions, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to re-evaluate in the light of any single contrary experience. No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.

If this view is right, it is misleading to speak of the empirical content of an individual statement -- especially if it be a statement at all remote from the experiential periphery of the field. Furthermore it becomes folly to seek a boundary between synthetic statements, which hold contingently on experience, and analytic statements which hold come what may. Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. Even a statement very close to the periphery can be held true in the face of recalcitrant experience by pleading hallucination or by amending certain statements of the kind called logical laws. Conversely, by the same token, no statement is immune to revision. Revision even of the logical law of the excluded middle has been proposed as a means of simplifying quantum mechanics; and what difference is there in principle between such a shift and the shift whereby Kepler superseded Ptolemy, or Einstein Newton, or Darwin Aristotle?

For vividness I have been speaking in terms of varying distances from a sensory periphery. Let me try now to clarify this notion without metaphor. Certain statements, though about physical objects and not sense experience, seem peculiarly germane to sense experience -- and in a selective way: some statements to some experiences, others to others. Such statements, especially germane to particular experiences, I picture as near the periphery. But in this relation of "germaneness" I envisage nothing more than a loose association reflecting the relative likelihood, in practice, of our choosing one statement rather than another for revision in the event of recalcitrant experience. For example, we can imagine recalcitrant experiences to which we would surely be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are brick houses on Elm Street, together with related statements on the same topic. We can imagine other recalcitrant experiences to which we would be inclined to accommodate our system by re-evaluating just the statement that there are no centaurs, along with kindred statements. A recalcitrant experience can, I have already urged, bc accommodated by any of various alternative re-evaluations in various alternative quarters of the total system; but, in the cases which we are now imagining, our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific statements concerning brick houses or centaurs. These statements are felt, therefore, to have a sharper empirical reference than highly theoretical statements of physics or logic or ontology. The latter statements may be thought of as relatively centrally located within the total network, meaning merely that little preferential connection with any particular sense data obtrudes itself.

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries -- not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
[/quote]
http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/Quine/TwoDogmasofEmpiricism.htm

This passage came to mind as I was thinking about controversial thinkers like Derrida and in general about accusations of meaninglessness. It might be that only a small group chatters in a certain lingo, yet this small group is part of the social system, and such ideas finally have an affect at the periphery.

One last post for the night, which I think addresses the 'relativism' of OC and 'form of life' in general.

[quote=link]
Awareness of the historically effected character of understanding is, according to Gadamer, identical with an awareness of the hermeneutical situation and he also refers to that situation by means of the phenomenological concept of ‘horizon’ (Horizont)—understanding and interpretation thus always occurs from within a particular ‘horizon’ that is determined by our historically-determined situatedness. Understanding is not, however, imprisoned within the horizon of its situation—indeed, the horizon of understanding is neither static nor unchanging (it is, after all, always subject to the effects of history). Just as our prejudices are themselves brought into question in the process of understanding, so, in the encounter with another, is the horizon of our own understanding susceptible to change.

Gadamer views understanding as a matter of negotiation between oneself and one’s partner in the hermeneutical dialogue such that the process of understanding can be seen as a matter of coming to an ‘agreement’ about the matter at issue. Coming to such an agreement means establishing a common framework or ‘horizon’ and Gadamer thus takes understanding to be a process of the ‘fusion of horizons’ (Horizontverschmelzung). In phenomenology, the ‘horizon’ is, in general terms, that larger context of meaning in which any particular meaningful presentation is situated. Inasmuch as understanding is taken to involve a ‘fusion of horizons’, then so it always involves the formation of a new context of meaning that enables integration of what is otherwise unfamiliar, strange or anomalous. In this respect, all understanding involves a process of mediation and dialogue between what is familiar and what is alien in which neither remains unaffected. This process of horizonal engagement is an ongoing one that never achieves any final completion or complete elucidation—moreover, inasmuch as our own history and tradition is itself constitutive of our own hermeneutic situation as well as being itself constantly taken up in the process of understanding, so our historical and hermeneutic situation can never be made completely transparent to us.
[/quote]

I've bumped into John Wisdom for the first time in an anthology of analytic philosophy. Good stuff! Online texts are sparse, but...

[quote=link]
The whole difficulty [in philosophy] arises like difficulty in a neurotic; the forces are conflicting but nearly equal. The philosopher remains in a state of confused tension unless he makes the [therapeutic] effort necessary to bring them all out by speaking of them and to make them fight it out by speaking of them together. It isn’t that people can’t resolve philosophical difficulties but that they won’t. In philosophy it is not a matter of making sure that one has got hold of the right theory but of making sure that one has got hold of them all. Like psychoanalysis it is not a matter of selecting from all our inclinations some which are right, but of bringing them all to light by mentioning them and in this process creating some which are right for this individual in these circumstances.
...
… oscillation in deciding between philosophical doctrines goes hopelessly on until one gives up suppressing conflicting voices and lets them all speak their fill. Only then we can modify and reconcile them.
[/quote]
https://iep.utm.edu/wisdom/

I'll put this beside some W quotes.
[quote=W]
Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.

It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself..

You can't be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

The philosopher strives to find the liberating word, that is, the word that finally permits us to grasp what up to now has intangibly weighed down upon our consciousness.
[/quote]
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein

I think our common-sense selves know this. We see others trapped in loops, which makes us worry about whether we are trapped on our own little loops (and we probably always are.) Perhaps it's a matter of finding bigger and better loops to be trapped in, stretching the transparent bottle (now a soap bubble?) in which we fly.

Quoting j0e

the 'relativism' of OC and 'form of life' in general.

Name calling of 'relativism', being unfamiliar to simple-minded readers (that's everyone) has been the traditional way of spitting on the work of dead philosophers to strengthen one's pretense to divergent views. The Church, fearing dismissal or opposition to its dogma of absolute morality, has done much to cause relative morality and more simply the idea of relativism in general, to be both feared and hated. But with difficulties, logic and science has made small inroads into marshaled academia to the point where relativism is becoming progressive and even cool.

Does 'form of life' imply 'relativism'? Unfortunately, not quite.

Wittgenstein: ... Gadamer views understanding as a matter of negotiation between oneself and one’s partner in the hermeneutical dialogue such that the process of understanding can be seen as a matter of coming to an ‘agreement’ about the matter at issue. ... This process of horizontal engagement is an ongoing one that never achieves any final completion or complete elucidation

If both 'partners' are in the same fly bottle then their hermeneutical dialogue can only be because of different understanding of the same language. This can be corrected or negotiated. This is dogmatism.

To get to semantic pluralism we need two fly bottles with flies of two different species speaking in at least some logically distinct terms. This sort of disagreement isn't logically open to correction or rapprochement. This is pluralism.

To get to relativism, one more giant logical (not semantic) step is needed. What does membership in each fly bottle depend on? In my example above, it's their species of flyhood.

Quoting magritte

Name calling of 'relativism' ... has been the traditional way of spitting on the work of dead philosophers

I call it one of the two basic ways, given that...

Quoting magritte

logic and science has made small inroads into marshaled academia to the point where relativism is becoming progressive and even cool.

The other way is calling X dogmatic, oppressive, etc.

Quoting magritte

Does 'form of life' imply 'relativism'? Unfortunately, not quite.

To me that's a tricky one.

Reply to magritte
A little more on relativism (indirectly) and what not...
[quote=SEP]
Hegel discusses human culture as the “world of self-alienated spirit”. The idea seems to be that humans in society not only interact, but that they collectively create relatively enduring cultural products (repeatable stories, stageable dramas, and so forth) within which members of that society can recognise patterns of their own communal life as so reflected. We might find intelligible the metaphor that such products “hold up a mirror to society” within which “the society can regard itself”, without thinking we are thereby committed to some supra-individual unitary mind achieving self-consciousness. Furthermore, such cultural products themselves provide conditions allowing individuals to adopt particular cognitive attitudes by appropriating their resources. Thus, for example, the capacity to adopt the type of objective viewpoint demanded by Kantian morality (discussed in the final section of Spirit)—the capacity to see things, as it were, from a detached or universal point of view—might be enabled by engaging with spirit’s “alienations” such as the myths and rituals of a religion professing a universal scope.
[/quote]

I think we can include the inherited language itself as part of this 'self-alienated spirit,' as something like the ashes left behind by those who came before us. Or, we can reverse the metaphor. We are the candles and the 'spirit' (language at the basic level of 'cat' and 'dog' up to Hegelian metaphysics and beyond) is the flame that's passed from one to another. This prioritizes softwhere over hardwear, emphasizing us as profoundly social/cultural beings.

That's the set up. This is more to the point.

[quote=SEP]
Revisionists, on the other hand, tend to see Hegel as furthering the Kantian critique into the very coherence of a conception of an in-itself reality that is beyond the limits of our theoretical (but not practical) cognition. Rather than understand absolute knowing as the achievement of some ultimate God’s-eye view of everything, the philosophical analogue to the connection with God sought in religion, post-Kantian revisionists see it as the accession to a mode of self-critical thought that has finally abandoned all non-questionable mythical givens, and which will only countenance reason-giving argument as justification.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/

I see a connection to On Certainty here. 'Absolute knowledge' is the recognition of groundlessness, 'abandonment of the mythical givens' or unquestionable buck-stops-here foundations. The 'system' (the culture as a whole) can criticize itself but only in terms of the part of itself that it's taking for granted, which seems to apply to individuals as well, little microcosms of less complexity. 'Reason-giving argument' appeals to something, leans on something, starting perhaps with the intelligibility of its signs, enacting that trust by speaking up.

[quote=Nuerath]
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.
[/quote]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurath%27s_boat

On the relativism issue, we can think of different cultures or just different individuals in the same culture trying to build some bridge-language between them. I doubt any two English speakers speak it exactly the same, so perhaps all communication involves 'bridge building' that's more or less difficult. Philosophers (good ones?) strive to sharpen the shared meaning space thru talking, hammering out some compromise in which all participants are recognized (ideally, if possible, which it's often not on a small scale.)

Herder seems relevant & perhaps close to W.

[quote=link]
Herder began advancing three fundamental theses in this area:

Thought is essentially dependent on, and bounded in scope by, language—i.e., one can only think if one has a language, and one can only think what one can express linguistically.

Meanings or concepts are—not the sorts of things, in principle autonomous of language, with which much of the philosophical tradition has equated them, e.g., the referents involved (Augustine), Platonic forms, or subjective mental ideas à la Locke or Hume, but instead—usages of words.

Conceptualization is intimately bound up with (perceptual and affective) sensation. More precisely, Herder develops a quasi-empiricist theory of concepts that holds that sensation is the source and basis of all our concepts, but that we are able to achieve non-empirical concepts by means of metaphorical extensions from the empirical ones—so that all of our concepts ultimately depend on sensation in one way or another.
[/quote]

Pretty rad for 1764.

[quote=link]
Herder’s theories of interpretation and translation both rest on a certain epoch-making insight of his: Whereas such eminent Enlightenment philosopher-historians as Hume and Voltaire had normally still held that, as Hume put it, “mankind are so much the same in all times and places that history informs us of nothing new or strange” (1748: section VIII, part I, 65), Herder discovered, or at least saw more clearly than anyone before him, that this was false, that peoples from different historical periods and cultures vary tremendously in their concepts, beliefs, values, (perceptual and affective) sensations, and so forth. He also recognized that similar, albeit usually less dramatic, variations occur even between individuals within a single period and culture.
...
It is an implication of his thesis that all thought is essentially dependent on and bounded by language that an interpreted subject’s language is in a certain sense bound to be a reliable indicator of the nature of his thought, so that the interpreter at least need not worry that the interpreted subject might be entertaining ineffable thoughts or thoughts whose character is systematically distorted by his expression of them in language. It is an implication of Herder’s thesis that meaning consists in word-usage that interpretation essentially and fundamentally requires pinning down an interpreted subject’s word-usages, and thereby his meanings. Finally, it is an implication of Herder’s quasi-empiricist thesis concerning concepts that an interpreter’s understanding of an interpreted subject’s concepts must include some sort of recapturing of their basis in the interpreted subject’s sensations.
[/quote]
I think we can/should include feelings as part of or along with 'sensations.'

[quote=link]
Herder proposes (prominently in This Too a Philosophy of History, for instance) that the way to bridge radical mental difference when interpreting is through Einfühlung, “feeling one’s way in”. This proposal has often been thought (for example, by Friedrich Meinecke) to mean that the interpreter should perform some sort of psychological self-projection onto texts. However, that is not Herder’s main idea here—for making it so would amount to advocating just the sort of distorting assimilation of the thought in a text to one’s own that he is above all concerned to avoid. As can be seen from This Too a Philosophy of History, what he mainly has in mind is instead an arduous process of historical-philological inquiry. .... (4) It also implies (This Too a Philosophy of History again shows) that hostility in an interpreter toward the people whom he interprets will generally distort his interpretation, and should therefore be avoided. (Herder is equally opposed to excessive identification with them for the same reason.) (5) Finally, it also implies that the interpreter should strive to develop his grasp of linguistic usage, contextual facts, and relevant sensations to the point where it achieves something like the same immediacy and automaticness that it had for a text’s original author and audience when they understood the text in light of such factors (so that it acquires for him, as it had for them, the phenomenology more of a feeling than a cognition).

In addition, Herder insists (for example, in the Critical Forests) on a principle of holism in interpretation.
[/quote]
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/herder/#PhilLangLangThouMean

Wittgenstein:Work on philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more work on oneself. On one's own conception. On how one sees things. (And what one expects of them.) (CV, 24)

Wittgenstein again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Wittgenstein was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.

In a way he reminds me of Depak Chopra, inasmuch as both prove that humans are fooled by their own creation, language, and they value (involuntarily, or rather, inadvertently) glib over content.

[quote=Utaker]

Linguistic form has nothing to do with representation. What is at stake is the specific organization of a linguistic sequence operating upon its auditive materiality. For Saussure, this means something that is determined by the fact that we speak within a temporality which makes our words possible. Linguistic form is the grammar of linguistic temporality, words following each others, rhythms, repetitions, pauses; the gestalt of what we hear displayed through the dimension of time. In short, something comparable to music.

Wittgenstein's notion of language as a technique makes perfect sense in this context. We have a form related to a sign-technique that must be regarded as a process; starting, going on, ending, making discourses or poems. But this is only possible through the ear of the other. This does not only mean that a linguistic occurence is something understood by the other. It also means that it must be related to comparable occurences in such a way that this relationship makes what we call a word something essentially repeated. A linguistic item in a sequence is a linguistic item if it can be repeated in other sequences. This is essentially because the existence of – let us say a word – is a relational existence in the sense that it gets its identity from the web of linguistic sequences and from its repetitions within them. This means that what is repeated is not an indentity – the same word. Every speaker says a word in slightly different ways and this implies that we have only variations and nothing but variation. Therefore, it is the variations that make the identity of a word and not an invariant or constant that the variations are supposed to manifest in the indvidual speech. To use Wittgenstein's term we can say that the variations hold family-resemblances to each other. The links between them are – so to say horizontal and comparative which means that these links are not explained by an identity on another level. Instead we have relations between variations – lines of variations. And this makes up the form of a language – the form being the systematicity of the variations. If we accept this, there is no essential difference between the individuality of my phrase the fact that I'm saying it – and the fact that it is understood by the other. For the individuation of what makes the words in what I say is at the same time the relations – the form – that makes us hear it as a linguistic sequence: The individualization of my utterance is at the same time what gives it its linguistic identity. Differences and variations are not parasitic to a language, do not threaten language. On the contrary, it is just what makes language possible. To say the opposite, would presuppose a code or an invariant which can explain variants and so called deviations; a standard or a normal language. But this is a political entity, not a linguistic entity. As Saussure has stressed, a language in this sense is a construction; there are only dialects and variations between dialects.

According to this point of view, a language cannot but change. Change and thereby history is not something external to it. A language cannot but be spoken in different ways and that means that it will also change because here there is no identity that is repeated or presupposed. This means, that with respect to language a form or a system cannot but change. But this change is a change without origin and without finality. The traditional opposition between system and history can therefore only be dissolved if we give up the metaphysics of history on the one hand and the metaphysics of the system on the other (the system being an universal atemporal order). This means that grammar is arbitrary – a grammar does change, but it does'nt have to change in a definite direction. Chance and order are two sides of the same coin. So the patterns of our language change, otherwise there would have been no language or a created artificial language. And they change because our words are not things and not something that can copy a model of some super-linguistic kind. But the word is not a nothing either; it consists in those auditive differences and variations forming the patterns of our language.

It is essential for such a pattern to be linked to time – time being just what makes a linguistic sequence possible. If you still beleive in a referent making the word what it is, this might be difficult to see. What is, then, the pattern of such a time-sequence? It is not causal in the sense that a word is an effect of the word preceeding it. It is not intentional in being linked to an intention in the speaking subject. It is not logical in the sense of giving the form of an inference. What we have is what I have tried to speak about – difficult as it is – grammatical or linguistic form. But here I cannot give you a clear-cut theory or a method that can formalize what I have called "form in language". Maybe such a form can only be shown in the use of language and that those who try to formalize it are trying to write down what can only be shown in what we say. So let me say the last sentence that I wrote in my abstract: What we hear we cannot write about in the same manner as we hear it.
[/quote]
http://wab.uib.no/agora/tools/wab/collection-2-issue-1-article-8.annotate

A couple comments. For Saussure there's the sigifier (the 'sound image') and the signified (concept). I find it fascinating that the sound image is ideal. As Utaker says, we don't say the 'same' word in the same way. Even a single individual never pronounces the 'same' word the same way twice. But we do have in written language the same word ('cat' is 'cat' is 'cat') which of course will differ in its meaning effect in different contexts. Perhaps we use 'cat' to name what we conceive of as an equivalence class, which should be thought of here as having no center, no prototype.

Utaker doesn't come out and say it, but I think he dances around one of my favorite ideas, which is something like: living words are 'all surface.' Wee donut meow what we are barking about. We trade signs as if they encoded a meaning or plaintext that for us is infinitely intimate. 'You hear only the code that I am forced to use, but I gaze on pure 'intention' or crystalline meaning-stuff.' In other words, the speaker is supposed (under normal or at least ideal conditions) to understand exactly what he means. Perhaps we find this plausible because we can usually offer a replacement expression that does the same-enough job. 'It's raining.' 'Little drops of water are falling from the sky.' Clearly 'meaning' is a useful as a word here. Those sentences (roughly) have the same 'meaning.' But some are tempted to leap from this useful equivalence class (as something like a meaning) to a mysterious something that both sentences encode.

Let's call this a mostly tacit default ontology. Because it's tacit, we don't think to examine it. It's obvious in some vague way that there's this stuff called meaning, as if meaning were a musical score and the speech act a performance (so we say, trapped by a picture, a metaphor.)
This is like thinking that 1/2 and 4/8 both encode the same inexpressible something, simply because they are in the same equivalence class. To be sure, language is messier than Q, and 'equivalence class' is already an imperfect metaphor when applied to it, tho I do think it's one rung up at least from 'hidden essence.'

I'm thinking in terms of a 'meaningful materiality' that can only falsely (if conveniently) be split into an arbitrary token/signifier and a concept/signified This is not my idea. It's already in Saussure. The image is two sides of the same page or two faces of the same coin. A useful lie?

Quoting god must be atheist

Wittgenstein again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel.

The common wheel took a genius to discover, some cultures never did. To dig under what ought to be obvious but isn't is one important purpose of philosophy. What more would you expect?
http://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/perloff/witt_intro.html

This is an old but good point that may inspire some comments.

[quote=link]
...if you don’t know English, and want to know what a cow is, you would have to look up “cow” in the dictionary. But under the entry “cow,” instead of finding a meaning that would satisfy your search for a meaning, since you don’t know English, you would only find a bunch of other sounds: Cow, The mature female of domestic cattle, or of other animals, as the whale, elephant, etc.

But in order to know the meaning of the sounds “cattle”, “whale”, and “elephant”, you would have to look up their meanings, their signifieds, but you would find only more lists of signifiers, more sounds! A whale is a large mammal that lives in the sea, but then what is a mammal, what is a sea….? ... Because every potential meaning turns out to be just another sound, searching for yet another potential meaning, one never reaches meaning—there is only an endless chain of sounds.
[/quote]
https://newderrida.wordpress.com/category/derrida-and-saussure/

This simple point gestures toward the 'abyss' that this system of ('meaningful') sounds 'hovers' over. It makes sense to me to think of a (vague) 'core' of the language, which we might call a 'soft' foundation.

The movement from one word to another in search of a final meaning can be thought of in terms of being put off, delayed, deferred. There's an analogous delay as we read a sentence and wait for its meaning to come into focus before its period. Saussure saw that speech is 'linear' (one sound after another in a chain) and 'in' time. I think of Kant's 'Time is the a priori formal condition of all appearances in general.' Or Eliot's " Words move, music moves / Only in time ." We might say 'consciousness is time,' ignoring what's still wrong in that. (As far as I can tell, it's all wrong. I mean it's all just blowing the horn about blowing the horn and striving hopelessly but fascinated against the limits of this instrument. )

In-the-way, the music of our mouthhorn (our foolosophical saxofoam) is 'meaningful' or has a 'dimension' that the saxophone doesn't. This metaphorical extra dimension seems to be (most importantly anyway) metaphor itself ('analogy as the core of cognition.')

Pardon the miss.

Quoting magritte

To dig under what ought to be obvious but isn't is one important purpose of philosophy.

:up:
It's not so easy to take off glasses we don't know we are wearing. Gotta thank those who point it out. Ever seen Pleasantville? An optimistic reading is that philosophers are seeing in more colors than us, because we are stuck in B&W glasses we don't know we can take off, because we don't know we have them on the first place. (The contingent is mistaken for the necessary...or there's just knowledge too close, too tacit, to touch. Till they do. Then we can.)

Quoting magritte

The common wheel took a genius to discover, some cultures never did. To dig under what ought to be obvious but isn't is one important purpose of philosophy. What more would you expect?

Yes, the invention was genius. Or an accident. Either way.

But to rename the wheel, after it had been invented thousands of years ago, and has been in constant use, and to explain how it works in language that reveals nothing new about the wheel, and yet it sounds creative; and to take credit for the explanation requires no genius. It is genius to explain the obvious that has not been explained before; but to explain the known obvious in different terms adding nothing new, and for which people worship the explainer, is not very ingenious -- neither on the part of the explainer, nor on the part of those who think the explainer is a genius.

Reply to god must be atheist

I think we shouldn't spend too much time on the wheel analogy. So far you have made only very general comments about Wittgenstein that could be aimed at pretty much anyone.


[i]Descartes again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Descartes was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.

Hume again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Hume was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.

Kant again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Kant was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.

Hegel again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Hegel was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.[/i]


Can you provide some more insight about Wittgenstein that suggests some familiarity with his work? Would you mind summarizing him (a challenge, I know)?

One of the noteworthy charms of Wittgenstein's work is that he gets us out of the methodological solipsism that runs from Descartes to Hegel. Actually Hegel does too on some interpretations, but Wittgenstein does it without any systematic baggage. In some ways his work is a set of counterexamples, evidence against various systems and perhaps the possibility of a crystalline system.

Quoting j0e

So far you have made only very general comments about Wittgenstein that could be aimed at pretty much anyone.

No. My opinion of Wittgenstein could not be aimed at pretty much anyone. This is a complete misrepresentation of what I am saying, and a complete misinformative dismissal of it.

What I am saying about Wittgenstein IS very pertinent, and it is very pointed aimed at Wittgenstein and at Wittgenstein only.

Quoting god must be atheist

What I am saying about Wittgenstein IS very pertinent, and it is very pointed aimed at Wittgenstein and at Wittgenstein only.

I believe you, but I don't think you made a case. As I see it, most people don't find Wittgenstein's points obvious. You called him a 'worthless two penny' thinker...which seems to imply that all the scholars of his work are misguided one penny thinkers. That comes off as arrogant.

The only kind of criticism that seems worth taking seriously is serious criticism, engagement with the details. I think we should give intellectual 'heroes' hell. Reputation doesn't earn a free pass.

Quoting j0e

As I see it, most people don't find Wittgenstein's points obvious.

I am reeling in the bewilderment how they can miss that in any and all of W's utterances.

Quoting j0e

The only kind of criticism that seems worth taking seriously is serious criticism, engagement with the details.

This is absolutely agreeable. I ask you to give me any of Wittgenstein's quotes, and I show you how my GENERAL opinion of his utterances applies.

I admit I only know Wittgenstein's teachings in the scope of what is quoted and attributed to him ON THIS FORUM. I never read him. I can't read text, that is my folly. It is a developmental inadequacy and disaster that I can't read. I got my undergrad degree by listening to lectures in class, without ever opening a textbook. I never even took notes. I just listened. I did not get good grades, I think my grade point average amounted to a C+, whatever that is in numbers (I think 65-69 percent out of 100) over the four years of my course of study. But then again, if I were able to read, my life would be completely different from what it is now.

Quoting god must be atheist

I never read him. I can't read text, that is my folly.

That's a tough situation. I'm sorry you've had to deal with it. I appreciate your honesty.

Quoting god must be atheist

I ask you to give me any of Wittgenstein's quotes, and I show you how my GENERAL opinion of his utterances applies.

This is a good one. It touches on some of the stuff I'm focusing on in the Saussure thread. I think Wittgenstein is looking at 'social facts.'

[quote=W]
Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign.
[/quote]

link:...if you don’t know English, and want to know what a cow is, you would have to look up “cow” in the dictionary. But under the entry “cow,” instead of finding a meaning that would satisfy your search for a meaning, since you don’t know English, you would only find a bunch of other sounds: Cow, The mature female of domestic cattle, or of other animals, as the whale, elephant, etc.

But in order to know the meaning of the sounds “cattle”, “whale”, and “elephant”, you would have to look up their meanings, their signifieds, but you would find only more lists of signifiers, more sounds! A whale is a large mammal that lives in the sea, but then what is a mammal, what is a sea….? ... Because every potential meaning turns out to be just another sound, searching for yet another potential meaning, one never reaches meaning

I hope this is a quote by Wittgenstein. (W.)

1. He uses the obvious concept that words are part of a language.
2. He uses the obvious concept that meaning can be explained.
3. He uses the obvious concept that meaning can't be explained to a person in a language which the particular person has no knowledge in, whatsoever -- not even knowledge of the meaning of just one wrod.
4. He concludes that knowledge of a language can't be obtained by a person who has no knowledge of meaning of any words in the language.
5. He introduces the concept and names it "signifieds" to empower his worthless discovery be able to make people to swoon over W's intellect and "insight".
6. He finishes by another blindingly obvious (and wrong) conclusion that meaning is just a different sound.

This argument and its conclusion is based on a number of incredibly obvious details, such as discovering that each word that is different from others, is different from others. He fails to realize that there is a primary understanding one needs to apply to language, and which language applies to the person who understands it, and that is that a direct relationship exists between, say, a camel and and the word "camel". He ignores this fact very conveniently, and because of this, he sounds like a genius. He sounds as if he made a proof that language in and by itself is meaningless, because if you don't know the meaning ab ovo of the components of a language, it can't be made to make sense. That is true if and only if entry or bridging between the components of the language and associated meaning is denied. Which is not denied. Hence, he is an idiot, by claiming the obvious as an insight, that lacking the connection of meaning to words and/or to other components of a language makes the language meaningless.

W:As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign.

W simply can't get over the hurdle that language is a symbolic representation of thought, which is a complex system of experiences linked to symbolic expressions of the experience. To W it is a an "occult" or supernatural, and at any rate miraculous could one say? event that words have meanings. He again expresses his pet theory in the passage you quoted, that he sees scribbles, and he can't understand how scribbles can mean anything to anyone without the scribbles given special meaning. He then proceeds that meaning to scribbles is given by adding other scribbles. HE COMPLETELY MISSES that there is a bridge there somewhere, that connects scribbles, in one form of another, to experience of a sentient being. He is stuck in the mud with his scribbles, scratching his head, how they can have meaning. And he massages his own un-understanding in such formative detail, in such refined language and bringing up such sophisticated associations, that his basic message, stupidity, does not get through to most readers. His basic stupidity lies, as mentioned, in the inadequacy to see that language is symbolic, human language is, and there has to be some sort of primary association between expressions of the symbolic language, and experience.

You will find it in any of his writings, this naivite, this bewildered incredulity of his not understanding how a symbolic language can have meaning. In fact, I yet have to see a lecture segment, or else any topic of discussion by W, that deals with a different subject.

Reply to god must be atheist
That's not a quote from Witt. I quote lots of other folks too when I talk about a thinker, reeling in what seems illuminating.

But let's talk about your talk about it.

Quoting god must be atheist

He fails to realize that there is a primary understanding one needs to apply to language, and which language applies to the person who understands it, and that is that a direct relationship exists between, say, a camel and and the word "camel".

For the most part, language is not a nomenclature. I don't deny that 'camel' can summon up the image of a camel (in some vague sense), but as the beetle-in-the-box argument shows, what happens in the individual mind is useless where the study of social facts and public meaning are concerned.

[quote=Witt]
"When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires."

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.——In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word.If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair", "bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself.

That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours. Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with buildingstones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words "block", "pillar", "slab", "beam". A calls them out;—B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call.——Conceive this as a complete primitive language. 3. Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in many cases where the question arises "Is this an appropriate description or not?" The answer is: "Yes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were claiming to describe." It is as if someone were to say: "A game consists in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules . . ."—and we replied: You seem to be thinking of board games, but there are others. You can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those games. 4. Imagine a script in which the letters were used to stand for sounds, and also as signs of emphasis and punctuation. (A script can be conceived as a language for describing sound-patterns.)

Now imagine someone interpreting that script as if there were simply a correspondence of letters to sounds and as if the letters had not also completely different functions. Augustine's conception of language is like such an over-simple conception of the script.. If we look at the example in §i, we may perhaps get an inkling how much this general notion of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible.
[/quote]
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf


Quoting god must be atheist

He finishes by another blindingly obvious (and wrong) conclusion that meaning is just a different sound.

I think the correct way to go here is not the reduction of meaning to sound but the recognition that meaningful sound is systematic, that meaning is (primarily) in the differences in the sounds and the different ways that such sounds are used in our lives. Very roughly...meaning is use is a social fact. It's not 'in here' but 'out there.' (Yes we have something like consciousness and feeling but these can't play the role that we think they can. They are private & ineffable by definition. As Ryle notes, they lead to epistemic apocalypse.)

Quoting god must be atheist

He then proceeds that meaning to scribbles is given by adding other scribbles. HE COMPLETELY MISSES that there is a bridge there somewhere, that connects scribbles, in one form of another, to experience of a sentient being. He is stuck in the mud with his scribbles, scratching his head, how they can have meaning. And he massages his own un-understanding in such formative detail, in such refined language and bringing up such sophisticated associations, that his basic message, stupidity, does not get through to most readers. His basic stupidity lies, as mentioned, in the inadequacy to see that language is symbolic, human language is, and there has to be some sort of primary association between expressions of the symbolic language, and experience.

From my POV, you are completely missing the point that Wittgenstein is pointing out how mistaken that admittedly intuitive-automatic view is.

[quote=W]
If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.
[/quote]

It's cool that you disagree with him. I think Wittgenstein is offensive to common sense, because he challenges it. He's revolutionary because so many philosophers just accept this 'common sense' and try to build on it, only to get their wheels stuck in the same mud.Your objections seem to be based on the intuition that meaning is 'really' in the private consciousness. You take what I'd call a methodological solipsism for granted. You inherit this Cartesian baggage as a truth, when it's only a useful but misleading fiction.

Note that you seemed to have switched from Wittgenstein is obviously right and boring to Wittgenstein is obviously wrong and stupid. Isn't that noteworthy?

Dear @J0e, I totally agree with you in interpreting what a language is, and what it does. It is said that language is purely a product of society, not of the individual; language would be impossible to create without sentient individuals living in a social setting.

I totally agree.

I am adamant, however, that Wittgenstein has ever had the insight of seeing how symbolic language relates to reality. He is stuck in the representation of language, and he makes a bridge between representation of language and language, but he fails to see the bridge between language (or its representation) and meaning.

In fact, all his quotes I've ever seen by him deal with this issue.

He is focussed on one single solitary insight, a false and limping one, and he expounds on it ad infinitum.

------------------

More quotes by Wittgenstein that you can supply to me on this forum, about the same length each that you already have, will be a nice challenge for me to show you that what I say here actually sticks.

Quoting god must be atheist

but he fails to see the bridge between language (or its representation) and meaning.

He sees that bridge and blows it up. Consider that 'I' or 'ego' itself is caught up in the play of signs. He's not saying that signs are meaningless. He's showing us that we've been looking for the 'life' of the signs in the wrong place.

I will look for some good quotes for you to tackle.

Quoting j0e

I think Wittgenstein is offensive to common sense, because he challenges it.

I beg to differ, but that's already known, so why keep stating the obvious over and over again, eh? If I say "Humans are all atomic bombs shaped like a six-sided dice", that also challenges common sense, and is stupid. Your and my opinions about Wittgenstein's utterances has only one difference from mine, which is an interpretive difference: I see them as stupid, worthless and useless, and you see the same thing as works of a genius, valuable and making sense.

We, you and I, are trying to iron out the differences between these two interpretive opinions.

This can only be done by studying in detail the utterances of Wittgenstein.

I can only devote a finite amount of time to this, I am sorry.

Reply to god must be atheist
Here's another good one.
[quote=PI]
"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'."—Well, let's assume the child is a genius and itself invents a name for the sensation! —But then, of course, he couldn't make himself understood when he used the word.—So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone?—But what does it mean to say that he has 'named his pain'?—How has he done this naming of pain?! And whatever he did, what was its purpose?—When one says "He gave a name to his sensation" one forgets that a great deal of stagesetting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense. And when we speak of someone's having given a name to pain, what is presupposed is the existence of the grammar of the word "pain"; it shews the post where the new word is stationed. 258. Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation.——I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.—But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.—How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation—and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.—But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.—Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation.—But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connexion right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'. Are the rules of the private language impressions of rules?— The balance on which impressions are weighed is not the impression of a balance.. "Well, I believe that this is the sensation S again."
...
What reason have we for calling "S" the sign for a sensation? For "sensation" is a word of our common language, not of one intelligible to me alone. So the use of this word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands.—And it would not help either to say that it need not be a sensation; that when he writes "S", he has something—and that is all that can be said. "Has" and "something" also belong to our common language.—So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.—But such a sound is an expression only as it occurs in a particular language-game, which should now be described.
[/quote]

Quoting j0e

From my POV, you are completely missing the point that Wittgenstein is pointing out how mistaken that admittedly intuitive-automatic view is.

This is your point of view. However, I don't see it justified by only reading the quote by Wittgenstein (W). He makes no allusion whatsoever to what you call your point of view here. Your interpretation is not spelled out, and not alluded to by W, in the quote. Either the quote is truncated, or else your POV is not a part of it; your POV may not be a part of any of the writings of W. I must ask you to please supply the reference that makes your POV valid, and that reference what I am looking for is essentially W stating the same as you have here.

I think your interpretation, or POV, is fantasy. I say that because I LACK in seeing any supportive evidence of it. I somehow sense that your POV is a validation of your opinion of W's views; there may be evidence of it, and I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius.

Once you can supply the evidence that your POV is valid, I will consider it.

Quoting god must be atheist

Your and my opinions about Wittgenstein's utterances has only one difference, which is an interpretive difference: I see them as stupid, worthless and useless, and you see the same thing as works of a genius, valuable and making sense.

:up:

Yeah I think Witt is a strong philosopher, one among many others. At this point I'm trying to draw all of their insights together.

Quoting j0e

Yeah I think Witt is a strong philosopher, one among many others. At this point I'm trying to draw all of their insights together.

Thanks, that's great.

PI:"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'."

The passage above my immediately prevous post, would be an excellent one to tackle, and I am glad you provided it. However, it is attributed to PI. Not to Wittgenstein. Please clarify before I would proceed to respond to it.

Quoting god must be atheist

I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius.

Once you can supply the evidence that your POV is valid, I will consider it.

Welcome to the joys of interpretation! While I don't want anyone to miss out on what I consider good philosophy, it's not on me defend his reputation anymore than it is to defend Einstein's. Lots of smart people find him worth talking about and weaving in their worldviews/philosophies. Your view seems to imply that all of these smart people are duped while you are not. In your shoes, I'd be wary of how self-flattering such a view is. Because philosophy has such an indirect utility for most people in their daily lives, most people can afford to believe whatever they want to believe, because mostly nobody cares, as long as they punch the timeclock and not their wives.

My old man didn't like me reading philosophy books. He said he had his 'own' philosophy. What he didn't realize is that it was a mashup of stuff he saw on TV. We all mostly synthesize.

:smile:

Quoting god must be atheist

The passage above my immediately prevous post, would be an excellent one to tackle, and I am glad you provided it. However, it is attributed to PI. Not to Wittgenstein. Please clarify before I would proceed to respond to it.

PI with OC are two great texts of the 'later' Wittgenstein (his views evolved from the TLP, his young-man's work, interesting in its own right.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

Quoting god must be atheist

I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius.

Honestly I think you are projecting here. While I agree that young men tend to take such thinkers as heroes and gurus, I ain't so young anymore. Like you, I have often wanted to dismiss difficult thinkers as over-rated charlatans, to save me the trouble of the cognitive dissonance in assimilating and criticizing their work.

In my book (no offense intended), arrogant disregard is the same kind of thing as hero worship...another form of bias that distorts interpretation. This is discussed in the posts above about Herder, a precursor to Witt in many ways.

Quoting j0e

. Lots of smart people find him worth talking about and weaving in their worldviews/philosophies.

Sorry... this is an ad hominem fallacy. I make specific points about the quotes; you can challenge me by showing how my points are irrelevant or wrong or illogical, but you can't say I'm wrong because some smart people said so totally elsewhere without reading my points.

Quoting j0e

Your view seems to imply that all of these smart people are duped while you are not.

That, J0e, is PRECISELY what my point is. I am shouting about the emperor's new clothes. You rely on valuing the genius of Wittgenstein on the opinion of a lot of smart people. I rely on disvaluing the genius Wittgenstein by analyzing of what he says.

Quoting j0e

In your shows, I'd be wary of how self-flattering such a view is.

If that is a value point in undertaking the understanding of my opinion, that is a big mistake. And I can see all over this forum and the posts and comments, that that's how most people see me. They IMMEDIATELY dismiss my opinions due to this effect.

In fact, I do take pride in my opinions, but I do have (someone told me a long time ago, in a different setting) this provocative attitude in my style. It destroys the effect. I come across as an egotist, not as a thinker. My ego, it seems, overshadows the value of the statements I make.

I wish I could change my style, because it really hurts my cause. My cause is to state my opinions and to defend them. But people dismiss my opinions not on their inherent worth, but because how they are stated.

Quoting god must be atheist

I wish I could change my style, because it really hurts my cause. My cause is to state my opinions and to defend them. But people dismiss my opinions not on their inherent worth, but because how they are stated.

FWIW, I see a certain 'arrogance' at times in thinkers I respect. It's not a deal-breaker.

Consider what you said:
Quoting god must be atheist

until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius.

I was responding to your psychoanalyzing of my view. No offense taken. Just pointing it out.

Quoting j0e

Honestly I think you are projecting here. While I agree that young men tend to take such thinkers as heroes and gurus, I ain't so young anymore. Like you, I have often wanted to dismiss difficult thinkers as over-rated charlatans, to save me the trouble of the cognitive dissonance in assimilating and criticizing their work.

I may be projecting, or I may be creating theories to explain what I see. I have to explain to myself how and with what means does Wittgenstein create the effect he does. Because to this point, you have not convinced me that I am wrong. I asked for a quote that links your opinion to W's world view as expressed by him; there is (supposedly) none. So your biggest defense to shield W from my criticism is non-existent (maybe). I asked myself: how can this be? I had to explain it somehow.

It came out as a projecting. Yes. But what would you have done in my position?

Quoting j0e

No offense taken. Just pointing it out.

Thanks for your magnanimity.

Quoting god must be atheist

I asked for a quote that links your opinion to W's world view as expressed by him; there is (supposedly) none.

Well the texts are publicly available. I can't justify/defend my interpretation with any single quote taken out of context. That's part of the charm of W. He doesn't make grand statements for the most part. He gives us fragments and we put them together. I'm happy to keep showing them to you until a cumulative effect is or is not achieved.

Consider that I mostly dwell on this stuff over hundreds of posts.

Quoting god must be atheist

Thanks for your magnanimity.

Yours too.

Quoting j0e

He doesn't make grand statements for the most part. He gives us fragments and we put them together.

... and someone along the way came and decided arbitrarily and because of his style that he is a genius.

Much like due to my style I come across as contrarian.

Style is everything.

Quoting j0e

Yours too.

:up:

Quoting god must be atheist

I asked myself: how can this be? I had to explain it somehow.

It came out as a porjecting. Yes. But what would you have done in my position?

Hey, I think we all use folk-psychology in dealing with one another. So it's only a matter of using it on ourselves as well. As Gadamer says, interpretation is basically us revising our projections again and again until we stop needing to. That's yours of me, mine of you, and both of ours of Wittgenstein.... This is talked about earlier in the thread, btw.

Quoting j0e

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

Okay. So I take that the quotes are from W. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now I'll read them, and reply in kind.

Quoting god must be atheist

... and someone along the way came and decided arbitrarily and because of his style that he is a genius.

Much like due to my style I come across as contrarian.

Style is everything.

Style is fucking huge. I'm with you there. But not quite everything. I'm a contrarian too, not given to the admiration of others just because they are famous. No, ol' Wittgenstein had to impress me.

Wittgenstein didn't want to fuck up and make bold statements. It's more like he pops ten thousand balloons until you get the drift.

Quoting god must be atheist

Okay. So I take that the quotes are from W. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now I'll read them, and reply in kind.

Correct. They are from Wittgenstein.

PI (Supposedly Wittgenstein):"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'.

He assumes something that is a falsehood to prove his point, Wittgenstein does. There ARE outward sings of pain, produced by the individual and produced by those the individual sees. This is not a matter that can be ignored, and W forces us to ignore it.

Please let me offer an analogy: "You must assume that straight-line segments don't exist. Therefore to build a square in two dimensions you could not do. SQUARES THEREFORE DON'T EXIST."

Wittgenstein proposes to drop off a feature of reality, and he can only prove his point this way. HE IS AN IDIOT, A FOOL FIT TO BE TIED. I am actually getting angry at how people are fooled by this nincompoop. He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it.

Gees, I must stop here before I get another heart-attack due to anger I can't release from my system.

Reply to god must be atheist

Hey... it's just a thought experiment to make a point. No big deal.

The point is that 'pain' has a public function. It's caught up in the ways we interact. If someone tells me they have a 'headache,' then I give them an aspirin. Or a doctor might check for 'headaches' in an attempt to diagnose. The 'meaning' of 'headache' is the stuff we do interactively with words and deeds. 'Headache' cannot be anchored to private experience, because such experience, being private, is totally useless for explaining the social fact of language. Note that we don't have to assume 'private experience.' We just take the foggy concept and show that it fails on its own terms to do the job it's being asked to do, which is found meaning.

If you need to quit, do so. But if not, here's more.

[quote=PI]
The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. What am I to say about the word "red"?—that it means something 'confronting us all' and that everyone should really have another word, besides this one, to mean his own sensation of red? Or is it like this: the word "red" means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each person, it means something known only to him? (Or perhaps rather: it refers to something known only to him.) Of course, saying that the word "red" "refers to" instead of "means" something private does not help us in the least to grasp its function; but it is the more psychologically apt expression for a particular experience in doing philosophy. It is as if when I uttered the word I cast a sidelong glance at the private sensation, as it were in order to say to myself: I know all right what I mean by it.


Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself "How blue the sky is!"—When you do it spontaneously—without philosophical intentions—the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of colour belongs only to you. And you have no hesitation in exclaiming that to someone else. And if you point at anything as you say the words you point at the sky. I am saying: you have not the feeling of pointing-into-yourself, which often accompanies 'naming the sensation' when one is thinking about 'private language'. Nor do you think that really you ought not to point to the colour with your hand, but with your attention. But don't we at least mean something quite definite when we look at a colour and name our colour-impression? It is as if we detached the colout-impression from the object, like a membrane. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.) But how is even possible for us to be tempted to think that we use a word to mean at one time the colour known to everyone—and at another the 'visual impression' which I am getting now"? How can there be so much as a temptation here?
[/quote]

Quoting god must be atheist

HE IS AN IDIOT, A FOOL FIT TO BE TIED. I am actually getting angry at how people are fooled by this nincompoop. He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it.

:starstruck:

That's me, fooled happily by the charlatan.

Quoting god must be atheist

There ARE outward sings of pain, produced by the individual and produced by those the individual sees. This is not a matter that can be ignored, and W forces us to ignore it.

No, man, he's saying the meaning is out there in those signs (to put it crudely.)

Quoting god must be atheist

He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it.

Whence this power? It's not the average guy in the bar who knows about him, talks about him. It's skeptical, critical, egotistic, pugnacious foolosophers who grudgingly admire the slippery fucker.

:eyes: :death: :eyes: