A Wittgenstein Commentary
I'm glad I made a copy of the thread I wrote from the other forum. I'm not sure if there is enough interest to post some of that here. Maybe I could post it for people to read and comment on. What do you people think?
Comments (1242)
How is anything “external”?
As I said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
What do you mean by "external"? I mean public, open to view, available for others to verify, not limited to one person's private experiences.
Others are verifying…right so no it goes to others verifying. Now, when they verify, is it their own representation of what’s right or wrong, or do they have access to something outside their own representation?
P1: I say yes
P2: I see this and say yes
P3: me too!
Persons 1-3 are an entity unto itself or is each one verifying by judging with their own representation?
I've already answered this. They have access to something outside their own representation:
Quoting Luke
How is this outside their own representation? What can that mean?
Whence rules etc… outside of one’s representation
You can only go to incredulity (common sense etc)
If the practice called "following the rule" wasn't outside of one's own representation, then there would be no difference between thinking one was following a rule and following it.
I'm not going to keep going around in circles on this.
How can one claim one was following it? Verifying by another representation. There’s no getting outside representation.
Practice isn’t a magic word
A second ago you were asking about getting outside of one's own representation. Now you are asking about getting outside of everyone's representations. Which is it?
It's our practices, our rules, our games, our language. Calling all of these "our representations" makes them seem like some communal, shared idea, rather than our practices and actions in the world. I don't see the benefit or truth in calling them all "representations".
Oh I wasnt meaning to say “our representation” but rather “my representation”, however that applies
Well, I've answered that. I'll leave you to your private language.
You cannot prove beyond “my representation” without foundation.
Is this the position of Antirealism?
IE, if someone says "bring me the slab", are you saying:
1) the state of affairs that there is a slab in the world is made by using the word "slab" in language. IE, the sentence "bring me a slab" creates a slab in the world.
2) the state of affairs that there is a slab in the world is presupposed when using the word "slab" in language. IE, there must be a slab in the world before being able to say "bring me a slab".
Don’t you know Witt, can’t be categorized silly. His philosophy just is…,
I’d only add that I don’t even get the arbitrary stopping at private. If there’s no foundational criteria, public cases cannot truly be “corrected” either. Or perhaps put differently, correction itself is not an indicator of right/valid/true. The correction can always be wrong etc.
Just using Wittgenstein against himself perhaps, what if every person in the community had an idea wrong such that every correction was actually never correct. How would you know any differently than the private sensation case? Diving in further in skepticism, how do you know that every supposedly public correction is not distorted by one’s own view? At some point you can keep drilling downward and you start getting to Decartes Demon again. Using public or practice or community as a way out doesn’t suffice.
As the IEP article Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889—1951) writes:
Both Realism and Anti-Realism, though, are theories, or schools of theories, and Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the advocacy of theories in philosophy. This does not prove that he practised what he preached, but it should give us pause.
Though the famous PI 43 does very much sound like a theory:
For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer.
Schrodinger’s theory perhaps? It is both a theory and not a theory. It is immune to all categorization. It is above all such attempts. It is special and unique, you can’t contain it in such crass terms. Read that with eye rolling.
Plotinus article on the One:
Yes, the phrase "the meaning of a word is its use in the language" is more a theory encompassed in a metaphor, as is "“theory of evolution by natural selection.”
As the National Library of Medicine in the USA wrote:
Metaphors in biology and ecology are so ubiquitous that we have to some extent become blind to their existence. We are inundated with metaphorical language, such as genetic “blueprints,” ecological “footprints,” “invasive” species, “agents” of infectious disease, “superbugs,” “food chains,” “missing links,” and so on.
Wittgenstein may be read the same way, metaphorically rather than literally.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/841611
In the Tractatus the proposition is a picture of a state of affairs, not something between a state of affairs and the proposition.
What the later Wittgenstein rejects is the logical connection between the picture and reality, not that we form pictures of how things are:
Here he is not rejecting pictures but this picture.
Pictures continue to have an important place in the later Wittgenstein, in both a positive and negative way.
What is at issue here is not the picture but the application:
Consider the following:
In Zettel Wittgenstein we find the following:
Despite significant changes the Tractarian theme of seeing and saying are still at work. It is sometimes the case that a proposition stands in the way of seeing things.
Critiquing Wittgenstein's Investigations:
The public language is founded on private languages
From the position of Nominalism, if all the individuals within a community disappeared, no community would remain. With the disappearance of the community, language, thought, meaning and rules would also disappear.
From the position of Platonic Realism, if all the individuals within a community disappeared, there would still be a community, and there would still be language, thought, meaning and rules. Personally I find the idea of Platonic Realism incomprehensible, unless someone can justify it as a possibility.
As a Nominalist, language, thought, meaning and rules are not external to the individuals who make up the community, but are internal to the individuals who make up the community.
Therefore language within a community can only exist within the individuals who make up the community.
Therefore any public language must have been created by the individuals who make up the community.
But for an individual to be able to take part in creating a public language, they must first have the ability to be able to manipulate language within themselves.
The ability of an individual to be able to manipulate language within themselves independently of a community can be called a private language.
IE, without a private language a public language would not exist
Therefore any public language within a community must have been founded on the private languages of the individuals within the community.
An individual may be corrected by a public language, but recognising that such a public language has previously been collectively corrected by the individuals who make up the community.
Yes, without the foundation of private languages, a public language cannot be corrected.
Writing "S" in one's diary when experiencing the sensation of S
PI 258 is not how one names personal sensations. If I want to name my toothache, I don't point at my inner sensation of a toothache and write "T" in my diary. I point at my outward pain behaviour, such as wincing, rubbing my face with my hand, refusing to drink anything cold, putting a hot water bottle on the affected part, etc, all behaviours distinct to having a toothache.
This outward pain behaviour is visible to not only me but others, and can be given the name "toothache".
Note that the name "toothache" doesn't directly refer to the inner sensation, but to the outward visible behaviour. As humans naturally assume that an effect must have had a cause, they naturally assume that a particular visible behaviour has had a particular cause, which is unknown in this case. As humans also conflate the name of the cause with the name of the effect, and although the toothache pain behaviour has been named "toothache", this also becomes the name for the unknown cause. IE the word "toothache" refers to not only the visible toothache pain behaviour but also the unknown cause.
It is a public language that has the memory of the connection between toothache pain behaviour and the name "toothache", both things that physically exist in the world.
A child can then learn the word "toothache" by being pointed at the connection between toothache pain behaviour and the name "toothache"
Note that the child cannot learn such a connection from a single example, but only from many examples, where every example is different but all share a family resemblance.
How can you call what is happening privately “language” ? Your assurance that you are using it the same way as the language you learned in the public realm? If you agree to this characterization, I would say you face a similar problems as describe in this scenario:
Imagine I produce a bunch of what appears to you as random symbols. And I proceed to tell you that this is a language. If you ask, “how do you use these symbols”, and I reply, “I cannot tell you how to use them, but rest assure I know how to use them in similar ways as how you use your language, and thus it is a language.” I believe you can rightfully say that I have no idea what I am trying to say or express. This also goes for these claims of judging private activities within the mind.
So just a few things here:
1) I am not representing my own view of language. This is purely a hypothetical view designed to show that Witt's idea of use can be critiqued for not having some sort of foundation to the language.
Rather, if one purport's that the measure is "use", by "what" basis can use able to be founded?
2) If you purport that it's founded on "community" (Form of Life), this is what has to be adequatly accounted for other than "don't you see!" and then scoff at any further explanation. No, demonstration won't just do here. Rather, you need to account for "what" this is, otherwise, it can be critiqued as an assertion.
Here's a real basic analogy. If we had no inclination for theorizing, we might say that common sense says "the sun revolves around the earth". But wait, a man named Aristarchus came up with a heliocentric theory based on less obvious things like the position of the constellations. The common man says, "What! It's "common sense" that the sun revolves around the earth. Don't you see!"
Well, Witt here might be like that common man. Because he is against theorizing about certainty (of things like language), he resorts to a kind of "common sense". Now, he may be right in his idea, but since he is committed to a sort of theory-skepticism, he cannot just resort to an idea (but not a theory!) and then claim that it is just kind of "common sense" or "what else can it be?". That would then have to be explained.
Thus community must have a basis outside of each individual's version of it, otherwise he is back to solipsism. How can he purport that community is anything more (in HIS philosophy) than a "useful fiction"? He can't. Another philosopher might start with the idea of "information" as "real", or justify how it is that social facts are real. But then, isn't this getting into epistemology and metaphysics proper- something he is adamantly opposing?
In summary, what I'm trying to convey is a hypothetical perspective that questions Wittgenstein's notion of language use. I'm not putting forth my own belief about language; rather, I'm presenting this hypothetical scenario to critique Wittgenstein's idea that language use is sufficient as a foundation. The main point is to stress the necessity of a robust foundation for language, especially if we claim it's rooted in community or "Form of Life." Drawing on an analogy involving Aristarchus's heliocentric theory, I aim to highlight the importance of substantiating claims beyond what might seem like "common sense." The argument underscores the need for a clear explanation and justification of the basis for community in language. Simply accepting it as a given or "common sense" doesn't provide this basis, but is just "what else can it be?" or "don't you see??", which rejects elaborate theorizing and absolute certainty. Wittgenstein's critique undermines his basis for a positive claim. He would need a deeper exploration of the philosophical basis of social facts and language to avoid falling into solipsism and to truly understand the essence of communal language use.
So far all of this is trivially true..
Quoting RussellA
Yes trivially true, yes. In this case, I don't need a philosopher to point this out, but I guess if Augustine and others had bad theories, he is pointing this out for those confused individuals.
I don't think this gets past this critique:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Hmm. That does not count against the point, so far as I see.
and
Here he is taking on a representational theory of meaning - the picture theory.The Indian mathematician shows that a picture can be seen - used - in different ways.
The picture can be seen in different ways, and so does not, as it where, give the meaning of what is pictured. That is found in what is done with the picture.
But perhaps saying the picture theory is being rejected is too strong. He is still making use of pictures, and it seems to me that hereabouts he is attempting to see how his previous representational approach fits in with meaning as use.
Certainly not all propositions are pictures, but at the least, propositions of the form aRb (4.012).
Reiterating, Tracatatus Wittgenstein had presented a theory of meaning as referential, using the picture theory of meaning. In the latter PI he is hinting that the way a picture is to be understood is in terms of what one does with it, rather than what it represents.
The alternative seems to be that he still harbours a referential picture theory, somehow sitting under his theory of meaning as use.
Quoting RussellA
Look at this with care. I do not see how it follows from your argument. Why must language exist within the individuals - why not between them? Then, if they disappear, so does language.
Consider an electric current as an analogy. It only exists between the atoms of a wire, not within them. Remove all the atoms and the current stops. But there can be no current if there is only one atom. The current does not exist within one individual.
As fos "S", consider
One can play chess by oneself, but the game is set up to be played communally.
Depends on your flavour of antirealism. But the label is not important, so much as the content.
(3) the world is such that we can treat part of it as a slab, allowing us to talk about them and move them around.
We don't "create" the slab – that's the idealist error. Nor are there no slabs until we start to talk about them – the nominalist error.
Searle might say that this sort of thing counts as a slab; that sort of thing counts as a block. The assistant gets to recognise the difference not by any internal, private process, but by getting a clip around the ear when they bring the wrong one. Of course, that does not mean that there are no internal processes. Just that "slab" is public.
I don't believe it would be a picture theory per se, since now "we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place." (PI 109)
However, I think the question is whether or not Wittgenstein considered pictures as having different applications in the Tractatus, or whether he viewed them as having only a single application. Without having given it much investigation, I would assume it was the latter.
In the Tractatus, we picture facts to ourselves (2.1) and a picture is a model of reality (2.12) [and a model of reality as we imagine it (4.01)]. Also, the metaphysical subject or philosophical self is considered to be "the limit of the world - not a part of it." (5.641) Since a picture is a model of reality and since the metaphysical subject is not part of reality, then the metaphysical subject is not something that is pictured (in the Tractatus). It is interesting to question whether Wittgenstein also carries this view over to the PI.
At PI 300, he appears to indicate that our pictures of pain are not limited to pain-behaviour:
In his exegesis of PI 300, Peter Hacker offers the following clarifying remarks:
Therefore, at least on Hacker's view, a picture is an object of comparison which must be capable of a method of projection or which can be "laid alongside reality" for comparison (by anyone).
The moral here could be that a picture is in the mind but cannot be of the mind, as there is no possibility of comparison.
W follows this with PI 301:
In his exegesis of 301, Hacker states:
However, confusingly, at PPF 10 (Part II), W states:
On the face of it, this appears to contradict PI 301. Perhaps W's comment at 301 is limited only to the context of pain, or perhaps this comment includes imagining everything but pain.
Wittgenstein also distinguishes a mental image from a picture at 389:
I also found an interesting overview of W's mention of "picture" throughout his works here.
In the PI? I think that's right. It's delicate. Consider:
This has ramifications for your discussion with @schopenhauer1, who is seems is in the thrall of a certain picture.
So "picture" is being used diversely. Yes, Hacker's comparison of the use of red and pain – that we can have no paradigm of pain– is enlightening.
Nice.
The fact that I have my own language does not mean that I can of necessity understand another's language. For example, Egyptian scripts couldn't be translated until the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone was written in 196 BC in Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic, Ancient Egyptian Demotic Script and Ancient Greek It was found in Egypt in 1799 by a French Officer during the Napoleonic campaign, and taken to London in 1801. The Greek text was translated in 1803, enabling a translation of the Egyptian scripts in 1822.
Yes, the philosophy of the common man, which was, it seems to me, Wittgenstein's goal in the Investigations.
Wittgenstein writes that the meaning of a word is its use in language:
PI 43 the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
Language has a use in the world:
PI 1 Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"
But Wittgenstein in the Investigations doesn't say where this world exists, in the world of Realism outside language or in the world of Anti realism inside language.
As @Banno wrote: Wittgenstein to a large extent set up the discussion of realism/anti realism in the nineties and noughties.
As the IEP article on Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) wrote: Both Realism and Anti-Realism, though, are theories, or schools of theories, and Wittgenstein explicitly rejects the advocacy of theories in philosophy.
Therefore, if you want a theory explaining the true foundation to language, the Investigations is not the place to look.
You quote PI 424, but that is not about a theory of pictures. Making mental pictures is something we do.
Quoting Banno
Right, as I said:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Banno
It is not that the picture can be seen in different ways, but that what is pictured can be seen in different ways. That is, we can form different pictures, and thus see something in different ways. Looking at the theorem in this way, the proof becomes evident. That is, it can be seen that the theorem is true.
Quoting Banno
This is far too narrow a picture. There is in the PI a greater focus on ways of seeing - seeing aspects, seeing as. And this leads to what Wittgenstein says about the imagination:
The imagination is not to be taken as an excursion away from reality, but the way in which we begin to see things in new ways.
(CV 18)
(CV42)
There is a connection here with 90:
To clarify, you think it's right that it's not a picture theory in the PI?
Quoting Banno
I think I understand Hacker's exegesis now as simply saying that we should not confuse mental images with pictures; that a mental image can be pictured but is not itself a picture. I think I got myself confused earlier into thinking he was saying that a mental image could not be pictured.
Quoting Banno
It seemed to me he had used "picture" in a singular way in both the Tractatus and PI. What are the different uses of "picture" you find in PI?
I think that both a picture and what is pictured can be seen in different ways. Consider the duck-rabbit, for example.
Consider the sentence "bring me a slab". Where does it exist?
If there were no individuals, then it couldn't exist. We know it could exist if there were only two individuals.
The question is, if there are only two individuals, where does the sentence "bring me a slab" exist ?
It cannot exist in the space between the two individuals as some kind of Platonic entity independently of either individual, but can only exist in the minds of the two individuals.
I assume that we don't believe in telepathy, such that each mind exists independently of the other.
Therefore:
1) We know that the sentence exists in the mind of the first individual and it exists in the mind of the second individual
2) These two minds are independent of each other
3) Therefore a sentence can exist in one mind independently of any other mind
4) If a sentence can exist within the mind of an individual, then also can a language, as a sentence is a very short language.
IE, a language must be able to exist within the mind of an individual in order for a community of individuals be able to share this language.
From Tarski and Davidson "the snow is white" is true IFF the snow is white. Using the inverted commas in a similar way, "there is a slab in the world" and there is a slab in the world.
I am curious as to your take as regards Anti realism. If "the slab" is considered as a concept that exists in the mind, does the slab exist as a particular, existing "in itself", or as a universal, existing "in" something else? (Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy)
Quoting Banno
On a building site are millions of objects, such as workbenches, trucks, chairs, sandwiches, mugs of tea, slabs blocks, cranes, doors, windows, etc. The Foreman says to the assistant "bring me a slab".
If the assistant can only learn what a slab is by taking random things to the Foreman in order to see the Foreman's reaction, then learning what a slab is will take an inordinate amount of time. Presumably, once the assistant has learnt what a slab is, the next time the Foreman says "bring me a slab", the assistant will be able to take a slab to the foreman the first time asked.
I prefer the pointing method, where the foreman points out several examples of slabs to the assistant until the assistant has learnt the concept of "slab". Then as soon as the foremen says "bring me a slab", the assistant is able to take a slab to the foreman the first time.
In neither case, the clip over the ear method or pointing method, does the assistant learn the meaning of "slab" by using the slab. In the first method, the assistant doesn't know they are taking a slab to the Foreman. In the second method, the assistant learns the meaning of slab before using it.
When the picture itself is an object I agree, but not all pictures are objects.
When Wittgenstein says at PI 1:
he is talking about a mental image, not an object. Another example:
(73)
When he says:
he is talking about a mental image, a way in which something is conceived to be.
Quoting Luke
The confusion evaporates when one considers that the term 'picture' is used in different ways.
When he says at 301:
This should not be thought of as a general statement about pictures, as something that holds true for all pictures. He is talking specifically about how pain is imagined. Pain in the imagination is about what pain feels like, not about how we might picture it. See 302:
Quoting RussellA
I'd suggest that language can exist in different physical forms with no need to appeal to Platonic entities.
It can exist in the way a proposition is represented in your brain, as variations in air pressure that the assistant recognizes as "Slab!", as a pattern of ink on paper, as the absence of stone resulting from carving in the case of the Rosetta stone...
If everyone who had used the language disappeared from existence, and all that was left were patterns of ink on paper, would these patterns of ink on paper still be a language if there was no one who knew what these patterns of ink on paper meant?
Were the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone still a physical instantiation of a language before the Rosetta stone was found and used to learn to interpret hieroglyphics?
Or suppose humanity has gone extinct and extraterrestrials come to Earth and examine the physical artifacts left behind. Should we suppose that the ETs could not possibly learn to understand human languages on the basis of such artifacts alone?
I think the history of events surrounding the Rosetta Stone shows hieroglyphics to have been language even when no one in the world understood the interpretation of the language.
On your reading, a picture can be synonymous with a mental image. Your reading therefore seems inconsistent with Hacker's reading (who warns against conceiving of mental images as pictures) and with PI 389, which states: "it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else." I think we both agree that a picture (such as the duck-rabbit) can be seen in more than one way. However, I don't believe Wittgenstein would agree that a mental image "picture" can be seen in more than one way.
My mental image may be at one time of a duck and at another time of a rabbit, but when my mental image is of a duck I cannot see it in any way other than as a duck (i.e. how I see it at the time), and the same for when my mental image is of a rabbit.
Quoting Fooloso4
It is worth noting that your example at PI 1 is "a particular picture" (my emphasis), and it is presumably also a particular picture at PI 115 that held us captive. We might infer, then, that a particular picture, or a particular way of seeing a picture, may be synonymous with a mental image (which can only be seen in one way), whereas a picture more generally speaking can be seen in more than one way.
Quoting Fooloso4
Perhaps what is in the imagination is not a picture because what is in the imagination (a mental image) can only be seen in one way, unlike a picture which can be seen in more than one way.
In case my reading is correct such that pictures and mental images differ in the number of ways they can be seen, then maybe PI 301 should be viewed as a general statement about pictures. The fact it was given its own number lends credence to it being a more general statement not necessarily related to PI 300.
As you point out, the common factor is a mind.
The patterns of ink on paper in the form - b r i n g m e t h e s l a b - can exist independently of any individual, and could still exist even after every individual had disappeared from existence.
However, language requires a mind, whereby a particular pattern, such as - s l a b - represents something else, such as a large, thick, flat piece of stone or concrete, typically square or rectangular in shape.
For example, I could see a stick on the ground, but we wouldn't say that this was a language. However, if I thought of the stick as representing the straightness of the path that I should be taking, then in becoming a symbol it becomes part of language.
I don't think that a pattern in itself can be a language. Only when a mind turns the patterns into representations of something else can the patterns become part of a language.
You get so close, then jump sideways to the wrong conclusion.
The "common factor" is what is done with the utterance.
And that is public, open for us to see.
The builder could call "Slab" all day, while nothing changes, the assistant moving slabs and blocks haphazardly. Meaning enters were the two act together. it's in moving slabs to the right place, not in the content of their heads.
Quoting RussellA
Obviously not.
I'm okay with that.
Quoting Luke
It is Wittgenstein's imagined interlocutor who makes this claim in the quotations. W.'s response is:
One might regard a mental image in this way but a mental image is not a superlikeness. One's mental image can be quite unreliable.
Quoting Luke
I agree that we cannot at the same time see it as both a duck and as a rabbit. But Wittgenstein was quite taken by the fact that it can flip from one to other. He discusses this in the Tractatus as well, with regard to a picture of a cube.
Quoting Luke
I can form different mental images of the same thing even though I cannot hold different mental images of the same thing at the same time. An image may change over time based on new experiences or the unreliability of memory.
, , here's a neat synopsis of the Tractatus, focused on the picture theory. Pictures and Nonsense
Quoting Mark Jago
I hope we agree on at least the description in the first two sections. In the Tractatus, the meaning of a sentence is what it pictures. In the investigations, the meaning of a sentence is it's use.
The question in hand here is, what happens with the picture theory as Wittgenstein moves on to the Investigations?
Who can give a simple, direct answer to that?
The slab does not exist only in the mind, nor only in the world. You seem stuck on this false dichotomy.
Wittgenstein defines a mental image at 367:
This indicates that a mental image is what one imagines at a particular time, and the description will describe what one imagines at the time.
Quoting Fooloso4
What Wittgenstein criticises is that the interlocutor "might come to regard a mental image as a superlikeness" with an object. However, this need not imply that Wittgenstein rejects the interlocutor's statement that "it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else". What I see W as rejecting here is the supposed superlikeness of the mental image with its object, not the fact that a picture may still be of something else, or that a mental image may not.
For what it's worth, Hacker tells us that a mental image is "not a likeness [to its object] at all" since its being a mental image of X "is not determined by its likeness to X". He says that "...it neither looks like nor fails to look like its object. It is not a picture at all. How does one know that one’s image is of X and not Y (which looks like X)? One does not know, nor can one be mistaken. One says so, without grounds, as one says what one means or what one thinks."
Quoting Fooloso4
How would you know that it changes? In other words, why think of it as a single (or as the same) image that undergoes change instead of as different images?
I don't know what you are looking for. The picture theory is abandoned. Wittgenstein had come to reject the idea that there is a logical structure that underlies both the world and its representation
I was looking for that: Quoting Fooloso4
which chimes with this:
Quoting Banno
...which you appeared to be rejecting, here: ; especially: Quoting Fooloso4 which it seems I had misunderstood...
All by way of clarification; thanks.
I wish I could talk to Witt about neuroscience and his thinking. From my point of view, the different ways we perceive Necker cubes makes perfect sense, and with a bit of practice I developed the ability to see a Necker cube as a 2-D image, although it requires defocusing my vision to overide the usual visual processing that tends to result in perceiving one of the 3-D interpretations.
As a bit of a tangent... Is it widely known that there is speculation that Witt was on the autism spectrum? And if so, what do people tend to think of such speculation?
I agree that a word wouldn't be in language in the first place if it didn't have a use, An almost infinite number of words could be created, but only about 170,000 of these possible words have been found to have a use to the users of the language.
So it is true that only words that have a use to the users of the language mean anything to the users of the language. As Wittgenstein wrote: PI 43: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
As only those words that have a use to the users of the language are included within language in the first place, even though every word has a meaning, ie, it has a use, to say that a word has a meaning becomes redundant. As Wittgenstein wrote in PI 246:"It can't be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean—except perhaps that I am in pain?".
As you wrote: "As if our words all have meanings apart from what we do with them."
However, there is a difference between a word having a potential use and a word having an actual use. I can learn the meaning of words to which I don't have an actual use for. For example, I may know the meaning of "transmission", as "acts as the medium that transmits power generated by the engine to the wheels via a mechanical system of gears and gear trains.", even if I never use such knowledge.
Every word in language has a potential use, otherwise it wouldn't be in language in the first place, but to any particular individual, even though they may know the meaning of these words, only some of these words ever have an actual use.
Quoting Banno
I wrote "These two minds are independent of each other". If two minds are not independent of each other, is telepathy a possibility one should consider?
Quoting Banno
I think a large part of the philosophical problem is that any word can have more than one meaning, and it is not always clear from the context which particular meaning is intended.
For example, the word "slab" in the sentence "The slab does not exist only in the mind, nor only in the world."
Using inverted commas as used by Davison "snow is white" is true iff snow is white, where a word in inverted commas refers to language and without inverted commas refers to the world (ignoring the question of where the world actually exists, whether inside language or outside language).
For example, "slab" could refer to:
i) the concept "slab" that exists in the mind to a Conceptualist
ii) a slab that exists in the world as a particular to the Nominalist who accepts the ontology of relations
iii) a slab that exists in the world as a particular to the Nominalist who doesn't accept the ontology of relations
iv) a slab that exists in the world as a universal to the Platonist
v) a slab that exists in the world because it exists in the mind to an Anti realist
vi) a slab that exists in the world to a Direct Realist
vii) a slab that exists in the world as a representation in the mind to an Indirect Realist
As the Britannica article on Relation between mental and physical events wrote
For the later Wittgenstein and many philosophers influenced by him, the proper role of philosophy is not, as it was for Russell, to develop theories in answer to philosophical problems but to clear up the conceptual confusions through which philosophical problems arise in the first place. These confusions invariably come about through misunderstandings of the complicated ways in which terms with philosophical import—such as know, believe, desire, intend, and think—are used in everyday life.
The question is, which slab is being referred to?
I agree.
Quoting Luke
I don't agree. Many things can influence our mental images. Two different events can get blurred in the mind.
Quoting Luke
How is it that he might come to regard it in this way? As I read it, because he assumes that a mental image must be more like its object than any picture. I think just the opposite is true. My mental picture of the house I used to live differs from photographs of it. I trust the photo to be more like the house.
Quoting Luke
Now I remember why I balk when Hacker is mentioned.
That would be interesting.
Then the mental image would be an image of the two blurred events and of nothing else. The mental image would be singular even if it was of two blurred events. See the definition at PI 367.
Quoting Fooloso4
I take it he comes to regard it this way for the reasons given at PI 389, namely: "however similar I make the picture to what it is supposed to represent, it may still be the picture of something else. But it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else."
Your reading - where you trust the picture to be like its object more than you trust the mental image to be like its object - could explain how the interlocutor comes to regard a mental image as a sub-likeness instead of a super-likeness. It might make more sense to you to trust the picture over the mental image, but it is not consistent with the text.
It may make more sense if you bear in mind that Wittgenstein is criticising the interlocutor for thinking that there can be a superlikeness, or even a likeness; for thinking that a mental image can be used as an object of comparison, or compared with an object in the same way that a picture can.
Incidentally, I think there is a similarity here to PI 253 (despite its being about pain). Consider:
It is the immediate experience of pain or qualia described here ("THIS pain!") that I think is relevant or similar to the idea of a superlikeness (compare: "a mental image...is an image of this and of nothing else" at PI 389). I guess the similarity is simply that it cannot be of anything else, but also that it is private.
Quoting Fooloso4
I'll try to limit my references to his exegesis then.
The mental image of this refers to the one object it is an image of. Two blurred objects or events is a counterexample.
Quoting Luke
Right.
Quoting Luke
The interlocutor comes to regard it as a super-likeness because he assumes that it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this object and of nothing else. I think the interlocutor is wrong and I gave some reasons why. You think Wittgenstein agrees with the interlocutor's assumption, I don't.
I believe brains are the foundation, if I am understanding you correctly. Brains are complicated dynamical systems with self-organizing behaviour. Networks of brains (i.e. social systems) that communicate are also complicated dynamical systems with self-organizing behaviour. You're not going to get some form of justification because its just how Brains happen to behave determined by the physical context in which they exist; being "correct" is irrelevant and it is trivially the case that people are wrong about things all the time. Nonetheless, this is an objective explanation for how language is learned, used, "corrected". You being not "correct" isn't enough to stop the wheels of the universe turning and neuronal messaging being transmitted and societies going on their daily business.
Nope, but since humans are deliberative animals (as in, behaviors are often chosen with degrees of freedom), knowing what is more "correct" leads to outcomes that would only be done by instinct, chemical markers, or more associative type learning in other animals.
That's more an aside from my point that you quoted though. My point with Witt particularly is he wants to demolish overarching theory whilst sneaking in an overarching theory (use), while he "gets to do so" because it's merely a case of "What else can it be?" through a series of proclamations rather than justification.
You as the audience get to sit back in satisfied head nodding that this is a legitimate move because he has already set the tone against notions of "certainty". It rings true for amateur pragmatists, and so confirmation bias in favor this deflationary view of theory (whilst still getting to promote a theory, nonetheless).
You can compare this style to his also suspect Tractatus which was all theory but without good explanation such as the nature of objects (the very root of how the "picture theory" hangs!). He has contempt for anything "beyond" language, and it shows in both works. It takes a dull philosophy to say "bUt YU CaNT get BYOND LNgAGe!!"
And what becomes a weakness is the very thing that he's supposed to have as a strength. Because there is no metaphysical underpinnings to his work, it's all him talking "inside politics of language use", there are no overarching theories of what "community" or "forms of life" are. How it subsists other than the obvious. But if it is obvious he should have stopped before he started his work. But I do know that PI was posthumously published.
Perhaps it was really meant as an inside sentiment to send to philosophers like Russell and his former self. So perhaps it is the audience who reads too much into it and expects too much of it. That is on the audience, not him then.
But pretending this was meant to be published at some point, because he is against certainty (the way he defines that word of having a sort of overarching theory of grounding), things like "Forms of Life" are themselves grounded in nothing. I mean that in the metaphysical sense of not having a theory of "what that is" other than our individual perceptions of what we think others think (a sort of linguistic solipsism). Is it "emergent"? What is emergence then? Is it epiphenomenal? What is that then? What does it mean for there to be social facts? Is it loss of pride, resources, status, self-esteem, survival that one knows that one is following them versus other kinds of "facts"? Are all facts really social facts? etc. etc.
This is like saying a photo of X is not a likeness of X at all since it being a photo of X is not determined by its likeness to X.
A photo of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X. So too, our mental images of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X.
Cool, let me know when the philosophy begins then. Otherwise, I am on the wrong forum.
Let me know if you want me to help you put the toys back in the pram.
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Just so you know, that last comment was aimed at Witt not your commentary.
“By the middle 1960’s two separate but related intellectual forces were taking root in American social sciences and humanities. Both were a response to the positivism that had dominated the professions in the period immediately following the Second World War. The appeal of that positivism was wide-spread – in social science, in philosophy, in the New literary Criticism – and was itself in great part a reaction to what appeared to have been an extremely dangerous subjectivism and irrationalism in the 1930’s. Both of these reactions had the effect of breaking the intellectual hold -- or were at least taken to have broken the hold – of the positivist understandings of the social world and of how one should go about trying to understand that world.
Central to positivism had been three claims. The first was that there was a clear-cut conceptual separation between facts and values and that, in consequence, values were subjective, not of the world, and could be kept apart from ones analysis of social reality. This was not a denial that values were “important” but it was a denial that values were objects of knowledge.
The second claim was parent to the first. It was a claim that propositions about the world could and should be made to speak for themselves – thus that propositions about the world should have a validity independent of he or she who advanced them. One could and should clearly separate the speaker from the spoken, for if one did one’s work right not just empirical claims about the world but concepts themselves would stand independently of the speaker. In its simplest form, the claim was that a statement like “mass equals force times acceleration” was true independently of who said it and of when and where it was said.
The third claim derived from the first two. It held that certain forms of discourse (claims to knowledge) were responsible and responsive to the real world in ways that other forms (one might think of them as emotive, or expressive) were not. In the first form honesty towards the world required something of the thinker; in the second anything (apparently) went.
Into this vision of the world came a critique that came to carry the shorthand name of “Kuhn.” Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that claims about the world carried with them participation in a broader understanding – to some degree social and historical in nature -- without which those claims would not be possible. Kuhn called these broader understandings “paradigms.” Kuhn, in other words, appeared to question the distinction between the two forms of speech or knowledge, between the expressed and the un-or inexpressible.
Soon, everyone was citing Kuhn. Crudely, what most people took him to have done -- whether or not they approved of it – was to have brought “values” or cultural commitments back in scientific discourse. It is important to realize that in this reading of Kuhn, however, “values” were still understood precisely in the terms that positivism had cast them in. They were, in other words, the unexpressed, the non-cognitive and so forth. That facts, as one learned to say, were “theory [or value] laden,” and “embedded” in “webs of meaning” did not seem to join culture, value or meaning any more tightly to the world, nor make knowledge of these things any more shareable. The emphasis was rather in the other direction – loosening the grip of facts on the world, introducing a scrim of “values” before everywhere we might look for the former.
This terrain was fertile enough to foster a second development. Pretty soon those who read Kuhn in this manner – whether favorably or not – were reading Wittgenstein and allowing themselves free passage between paradigms, pictures, forms of life and language-games. Central here was the claim taken from Wittgenstein that language, or certain linguistic conventions, so shape our understanding of the world that we do not see around their corners. Wittgenstein’s apothegm that “a picture held us captive” came to stand for a peculiar kind of blindness forced on one through language itself. For those who were favorable to this so-called “linguistic turn,” however, Wittgenstein’s proposition about imprisonment became a slogan of liberation. For if what seemed to constrain our thought was merely a picture, then it would certainly seem one could get out of it, or at least change pictures, -- or so it appeared. The irony here is that Wittgenstein’s passage expresses a disappointment with knowledge. Wittgenstein continues: “And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” The irony is compounded in that two disappointments are captured here simultaneously: the initial one, a disappointment with the failure of knowledge to satisfy its own inveterate demands (in the Investigations this appears as the demand for a crystalline pure ideal of language), and the succeeding one, a disappointment with this initial disappointment -- a finding of the latter to be in effect empty, a disappointment with success. It is this second disappointment that drives Wittgenstein to his famous turning around of the axis of his investigation (PI 108). We shall have more to say about such turnings below.
In the social sciences, however, it was not long before some were proclaiming that “what you see depends on where you sit.” Kuhn’s paradigms – already carried from scientific practice into society itself – were now radicalized by being located in the plurality of “language games” that were suddenly found to mark the differences among everything from academic disciplines to political projects. Ironically, since Wittgenstein’s earlier work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, had been a central document in the rise of positivism (whether properly understood or not), his later work, the Philosophical Investigations, acquired its prestige in part as a recantation of an earlier “positivism.”
We shall not be concerned here directly with the status and importance of Kuhn’s work for the social sciences. However, leaving aside the question of whether or not those who read Kuhn got him right – and the answer to that would have to be for the most part “no” – it is important to realize that Kuhn’s work drew heavily on certain developments in philosophy which have were associated with the designation “ordinary language philosophy,” a practice of philosophy variously associated with the work of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Its most prominent contemporary American practitioner is Stanley Cavell, who has extended Austin and Wittgenstein beyond any point that might have seemed obvious. We shall focus here on the importance and implications of this practice of philosophy for political theory and political science.
II. Sources and Resources
…Wittgenstein has been, for the philosophical community, a difficult person to place. Three broad approaches to domestication seem to have developed. First, to some he appears as a Humean (or “mitigated”) skeptic. In this reading, the central part of Wittgenstein’s achievement is to have shown that philosophically we can always raise questions, but that these questions will, however, have little to do with our ordinary life. This view places great weight on passages such as “Justification comes to an end” (PI 194) and “My life consists in being able to accept many things.” (PI 44). In this reading, the task of philosophy is to keep itself in its own, proper, corner and not to pretend to be part of life as we live it. This view is held in different ways by Richard Rorty and Saul Kripke.
A second reading holds that Wittgenstein is a kind of empiricist justificationist. The Investigations are taken to be a justification of cultural common sense. Hence: “Our mistake is to look for an explanation.. where we ought to have said ‘This language game is played’.” (PI 654). This view derives ultimately from G. E. Moore for whom philosophical problems can and should be eliminated by reinforcing what all people know unproblematically. A contemporary exponent of this understanding of Wittgenstein would be the late Peter Winch.
A third view is a kind of Kantian justificationism. Kant, as is commonly known, tried to determine those categories of the understanding which delineated the realm in which reason was possible. David Pears, for instance, refers to Wittgenstein as a “linguistic Kantian.” In readings such as this, Wittgenstein wants to show the limits of human reason by reestablishing the boundaries between the phenomenal and the noumenal realms. Thus: “Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.” (PI 373). Grammar, in this reading, becomes the equivalent of the synthetic a priori; however, it is understood as conventionally based.
It is important to realize that all three of these readings see Wittgenstein as concerned centrally with the justification of knowledge. Thus to the degree that any one of these views would be correct, Wittgenstein’s thought will not be of much use in political theory. There is also a danger when addressing these questions – more present in Wittgenstein and Cavell than with Austin -- of falling into one of three interpretive modes. The first is that of the valorization of ineffability – these authors are taken to point at the power of what cannot be said, at a realm of mystery lying beyond language and to which language is inadequate. A second mode is to hold that these authors are not talking about philosophy at all but rather about that which is pre- or non-philosophical, a kind of anthropology. Here the expectation is that these readers desire to keep philosophy in its proper place. The last mode is to think that these men are attempting to turn philosophy into literature – a kind of edifying discourse that since it makes no real claims to the truth need not bother about being “right.” Here they are read into a particular version of continental thought, with its emphasis on reading as opposed to (in Anglo-American analytic thought) argument. Gerald Bruns may be thought to hold this position.” TELLING THE DANCER FROM THE DANCE: ON THE RELEVANCE OF THE ORDINARY FOR POLITICAL THOUGHT (has appeared in Andrew Norris, ed. The Claim to Community) Joseph Lima and Tracy B. Strong
Sorry about quoting the whole thing instead of attaching it but I didn’t want people to get confused by the rest of the article, which is beyond the OP here.
Thanks!
I don't see why the mental image must correspond to any object. As I understand it, the mental image is just whatever its content is; whatever the image is. I don't see that it needs to be of any singular thing in particular. To repeat the definition given at PI 367:
Your requirement that the mental image must be of one object presupposes that it can correspond or be compared to some object.
Like the private timetable at PI 265, the mental image cannot be tested for correctness. There is no method of projection (PI 366) from the mental image to the object. There are no rules for verifying that the mental image corresponds to its object.
On the other hand, the description of the mental image is a kind of picture and can be compared or correspond to some object, but the description (of the mental image) is not the mental image.
At least, that's how I read it, and how I see it tying in to the rest of the text. I don't see how your reading relates to the rest of the text.
Quoting Fooloso4
Your takeaway from PI 389, as I understand it, is that the interlocutor has it backwards; that a picture better represents its object than a mental image does. Also, that the interlocutor is incorrect to assume that a mental image can only represent one thing. Do you therefore think it follows that a picture has a superlikeness to its object, or is the idea of a "superlikeness" irrelevant to Wittgenstein's point here? Is his point simply that there is no distinction between a picture and a mental image?
On my reading, a mental image is unlike a picture because a mental image can only be "the image of this and of nothing else", whereas a picture may still represent something else. Consequently, the interlocutor may mistakenly come to regard a mental image as a superlikeness with its object - because a mental image cannot represent anything else, whereas a picture can. I view Wittgenstein as being critical of the interlocutor's inference that the mental image is any sort of likeness; that there can be any correspondence between a private (undescribed) mental image and its object.
Quoting Fooloso4
Only if you take a photo to be no different to a mental image. A photo is a picture; a mental image is not.
Quoting Fooloso4
If you were to describe your mental image, then maybe we could compare it to the object and find out how closely it resembles its object, but a mental image cannot be compared to its object; only a description of the mental image can.
Quoting Luke
In general a mental image need not correspond to any object, but we are discussing PI 389:
Quoting Luke
This is not my requirement. This is the interlocutor's claim:
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
No. As I said:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Luke
His point, in part, is to reject the idea of a "superlikeness". He traces that idea back to the interlocutor's assumptions.
Quoting Luke
Of course not!
Quoting Luke
What does "" refer to?
Quoting Luke
Why can't my mental image be a likeness to the object it is an image of? I do not have to describe that image to myself, I see it.
Quoting Luke
A mental image is the way I picture something to myself.
Quoting Luke
I talk to someone on the phone who I have never met. I imagine what this person looks like. I form a mental image of them. Later I meet this person and they are very different from my mental image.
Could you please scan the following for anything you think is not logical:
As shown by PI 293, it seems that it is not only private beliefs about private sensations such as pain that fall out of consideration in language but also private beliefs about public objects such as slabs
Language is grounded on the ability of the animal (and human) mind to perceive family resemblances in several different physical things in the world. It is the family resemblance that is named, not one particular example of it. For example a family resemblance of slabness can be named "slab", a family resemblance of wincing behaviours can be named "wincing behaviour", which in practice can be replaced by the figure of speech "pain". The Platonist would say the family resemblance exists in the world independent of the mind. The Nominalist would say that the family resemblance exists in the mind as a concept and is projected onto things that exist in the world.
The Investigations discusses family resemblances, but doesn't discuss why there are family resemblances. IE, the Investigations doesn't ground language.
PI 293 proposes that the private belief in private sensations such as pain drops out of consideration in language. One can extrapolate this and propose that private beliefs in public objects such as slabs also drop out of consideration in language
PI 293 - 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
It is a fact that individuals with different private beliefs are able to successfully communicate using one language. For example when the foreman says to the assistant "bring me a slab" and the assistant brings a slab, this is regardless of whether either the Foreman or assistant are :
i) a Berkelian Idealist - where a slab is an idea in a mind
ii) A conceptualist - where the slab exists as a concept in the mind
iii) A Nominalist who accepts the ontology of relations - where a slab exists as a momentary set of atoms related to each other
iv) A Nominalist who doesn't accept the ontology of relations - where a slab exists as a momentary set of atoms independent of each other
v) A Platonist - where a slab that exists in the world as a universal
vi) An Anti realist - where a slab that exists in the world because it exists in the mind
vii) A Direct Realist - where a slab that exists in the world
viii) An Indirect Realist - where a slab exists in the world as a representation in the mind
Therefore, the meaning of the word "slab" in the sentence "bring me the slab" cannot be the private belief of either the foreman or the assistant, but can only exist in the language itself, as language is agnostic about the private beliefs of the users of the language .
In fact, for the foreman, a "slab" could mean a blue Martian with purple ears and for the assistant a "slab" could mean a giraffe with orange legs, but as private beliefs of private sensations and private beliefs about public objects drop out of consideration in the language game, when the foremen says "bring me a slab", the assistant will bring a slab.
Therefore the meaning of the word "slab" doesn't exist in any user of the language but exists within the language itself, as Wittgenstein wrote
PI 43 - the meaning of a word is its use in language
This doesn't mean that language exists as a Platonic Form independently of its users, as the language was created by its users. But it does mean that language is independent of the private beliefs of its users. Language is grounded in the ability of the mind to discover family resemblances in different physical things in the world. These different things can then be given a public name by one or more individuals within the language community. One should note that it is the family resemblance that is being named, which for the Nominalist is a concept in the mind, not any particular physical thing in the world.
I will read and comment in that thread.
I was thinking that Wittgenstein meant the content of the thought (like your Martian example) more than belief about the nature of the content, but I still liked your list of metaphysical theories that can be believed.
Quoting RussellA
I would say this is accurate though Witt doesn't seem to discuss "ability of the mind", which makes it as I said mainly about "inside politics of language use" rather than a theory proper. That family resemblances exist, as I see how he is presenting it, is not a positive theory for epistemology, but rather a negative theory of opposing a certain view that words correspond to exactly one kind of meaning. Meaning becomes a sort of emergent phenomenon (he doesn't use that word I don't think), by way of the community's acceptance of the word as being referred to that. So I see it as more about consensus than the individual.
So if you drank from the coffee cup and said, "I am doing a game", someone might look at you funny. But you tried to justify yourself by saying, "Yes, every time I pick up the coffee cup and put it to my mouth, I call that "game"", someone would just say you are crazy. They would tell, you, "Just say "sip" or "drink"!. In other words, you should be using a different set of family resemblances (to drink, sip, imbibe, ingest, partake in, guzzle, gulp, etc.) than the set we usually employ when we say "game". These have historical precedents in the language community and thus these are the proper words to use. If before you sipped from the coffee mug you looked around suspiciously, then stated, "I am getting myself a drink", then winked at me, I might infer "drink" to mean you spiked your coffee. It is all kind of related in a web of notions because of the community's use. So community "grounds" words (i.e. Form of Life), and as far as I see, context grounds how the words are employed (language games). And by "ground" I don't mean metaphysical, but one can say as a some sort of "error checker" for permitted or non-traditional use of words.
But all this being said, my particular critique is that Witt insufficiently posits his theory because it is very common sensical. Communities form language games and their use in context grounds the meaning. But I believe, any anthropologist could have told you that even by his time, so what else is he saying? And that's where I fail to see anything of interest. There are a ton of questions that can arise from this view (common sensical as is it is). For example, how does Wittgenstein explain how it is that social facts exist outside of some sort of linguistic solipsism? There are beliefs that prima facie are not facts of the world, but interpretations we have. So what is a "community" outside a set of individual points of view interpreting information? So you see, there has to be a greater theory for how something like "community" obtains outside of individual perceptions if one doesn't want to maintain solipsism. How does this get beyond the Cartesian Demon? And if you say we can't, we shouldn't, or we shan't try, okay, then it's not that interesting to me as it is essentially just more explicitly coming up with ways we use language that don't correspond to a direct "truth correspondence theory of logical positivism, which is just tedious to me as someone who never cared for logical positivism to begin with.
-You have empiricists (Hume, Locke, Berkeley, etc.) and
-you have rationalists (Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, etc.).
-You have Kant trying to combine the two, making a sort of new paradigm about internal and external. He wanted to make the analytic-synthetic distinction clear, and then combine the two for certain judgements.
-You have Idealists (mainly German and French like Schopenhauer, Hegel, Fichte, Shelling, etc.), that were captivated by the Thing in Itself notion.
-From the Idealists you get the phenomenologists (still focus on the internal like Brentano, Husserl)
-From the phenomenologists you get the existentialists (still focus on the internal but not structural as much as "being" itself as a subject.. Heidegger, Sartre, Camus.)
**Nietzsche can be considered a perspectivist- a subjectivist.. so a sort of phenomenologist..
-From the empiricist tradition, you have Frege forgoing the internal or "psychologicism" for the empirical and what can be stated accurately in logical puzzles (beginning of logical positivism)
-You have Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Ayer, Carnap, and a bunch of the Vienna Circle, Mach (from a physics perspective who early on cared more about verification than theory behind it ... didn't even believe in "atoms")..
-Logical positivism, the idea that verification is what makes a statement meaningful, was hostile to psychologicism..
So you get people like Freud who split the mind into three parts and pleasure principle etc... This is clearly some sort of rationalist camp... How can you ever prove such a thing? This isn't falsifiable or observable. This is one of the last major holdovers that sort of posited internal a priori notions whilst claiming "science".
So the logical positivists would have scoffed at Freud. Wittgenstein would have too.. However, Later Wittgenstein, could then say, "Is Freud useful to a language community"? He started a Form of Life he called "psychoanalysis", and then people participate in the language community and play his language games. Some of these people find a relief to their issues.. Can one say that Freud was "wrong"? In a pragmatic sense, he was "useful" no? Doesn't that matter?
When you are building a building, you don't care if the slab is real or not. You need to survive, so you "get shit done" (use).
But of course, that is just grounding an "is" with an "ought". That is to say, because we need to "get shit done to survive", thus all our inquiry stops about what grounds reality. But Wittgenstein might turn that around again and say, "There is no problem with inquiry, as long as it is "useful" for the game you want to play called "philosophy"". And I'm afraid that's all you're going to get as far as Wittgenstein and philosophy's value, perhaps.
There may be a problem if thought and content of thought are separated. I have the thought "I am in pain". If the content of the thought is "I am in pain", this leads to PI 246 It can't be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean—except perhaps that I am in pain?
If the thought and content of the thought are separate, this leads to infinite regression, in that if the content is "I am in pain", then what is thinking "I am in pain" .
Perhaps in order to avoid infinite regression it is best to say that the thought IS the content.
This is similar to when @Banno wrote: The picture can be seen in different ways, and so does not, as it where, give the meaning of what is pictured. That is found in what is done with the picture.
Perhaps it is not the case that the picture gives a meaning to what is pictured, but rather the picture IS the meaning.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, he is describing something that depends on the mind but avoids talking how the mind works. A little bit of science would have helped.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I look out of the window and see a "tree", but no two trees on Earth are identical. Every tree is different in some way to every other tree.
In one sense "tree" has a single meaning as a concept, yet in another sense has many different meanings, an Oak Tree, a Yew Tree, an old tree, a short tree, a green tree in the summer, etc.
There seems to be an ability of the brain to discover family resemblances in things in the world that are different yet have something in common. It is because of this ability we have concepts.
I can only see this ability as a positive thing. Why would Wittgenstein see it as a negative thing?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, being born into a community where the word "tree" has an accepted meaning, I have to follow convention if I want to fit in with society. The individual generally has to comply with the wishes of the majority.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, my belief is that every paragraph of Investigations should be read from a common sense point of point, as I am sure that is what Wittgenstein intended,.
The problem is the inherent ambiguities in language , where one word can have several meanings and the context is often unclear. There is always more than one way to read a paragraph
I'm not sure we should take the advice as regards Wittgenstein of Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley who argued in their essay "The Intentional Fallacy" that "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art".
I think when interpreting one of Wittgenstein's' paragraphs we should always look for the simplest, most straightforward and most common sense reading, in other words what Wittgenstein calls the "good philosopher" rather than the "bad" philosopher who creates problems out of nothing.
Yes, I meant it like that. What I was referring to with "belief" was the list you had (Platonism, nominialism, etc.). That is what I meant by he was not referring to "nature of thought" but the content.
Quoting RussellA
My main problem with it..
Quoting RussellA
You are building a theory. Wittgenstein I don't see as doing what you are doing. He is pointing to a way of meaning but not really giving it an explanation except, "Don't you see!". You are explicitly saying, "Brain discovers X.. " He is just saying what he thinks we do. And this seems to be to counter other theories like his ones in Tractatus. By negative, I simply mean he is critiquing, not positing a full blown theory of mind, or theory of meaning. He is demonstrating some things about how language is derived from community and context, but without really explicitly theorizing about it either.
Quoting RussellA
Cool.. Maybe one day there will be a book of schopenhauer1 and people can read it all sorts of things from it. I-Ching is another I hear is good for that. The Bible is another.
Maybe the point to take away then is that we don't need an overarching theory of meaning. If you want to know how language and words work and how information is communicated between brains.. we have psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology etc.
Indeed, and I would go to these subjects to answer questions about how humans developed and use language. I would perhaps philosophize rather on the nature of mind, ethics, and the like. Some hypothesizing is necessary, but at some point, experiments, comparative animal studies, and the like, would get us closer, and thus why Philosophy of Language is kind of a dead end for me. Insofar as it is covertly used to apply to metaphysics or epistemology due to its deflation to various forms of logical constructions (e.g. modal logic somehow getting us any closer to essences, things such as this), I rather just go straight to talking it out in the open. This mid-ground is tedious though. I'm against the propositional project on one hand (i.e. logical construction somehow gets us anywhere other than formalization itself), and I'm against armchair anthropology (i.e. hipster Wittgensteinism).
Yes, but you provided a counterexample to this:
Quoting Fooloso4
Therefore, I take it you disagree with the interlocutor's statement that "A mental image must be more like its object than any picture".
Quoting Fooloso4
You appear to agree that a mental image can correspond or be compared to some object, even though you disagree that the mental image must be of one object.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, you also said:
Quoting Fooloso4
So, your position is that mental images and pictures/photos can both correspond or be compared to some object.
Quoting Fooloso4
What do you take to be his point at PI 389?
Quoting Fooloso4
I was quoting PI 389.
Quoting Fooloso4
I think Wittgenstein might take issue with your use of "see" here. You don't really see or look at your mental image; it is what you imagine.
Quoting Fooloso4
That's an obvious assumption to make (just like the assumption of a private language), but how does it relate to the text or to what Wittgenstein says at PI 389?
As you say, first we come up with a few questions (which the Investigations does do), then we hypothesise a theory or two (which the Investigations doesn't do) and then we test out our hypotheses by comparing them to what happens in the world (which the Investigations doesn't do).
Extreme Relativism
Taken to its extreme, in Extreme Relativism, in Cognitive Relativism, each language game is autonomous, and in Kuhn's terms incommensurable. Not only can the user of one language game not be able to judge a different language game, but also the user of one language game would not be able to contemplate any meta-language game. The user of a scientific language game would not be able to judge the religious language game, and the user of the philosopher's language game would not be able to judge the language game of the ordinary man. Such would be exemplified by the instance of showing Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea to either a dog or cat, who would not even recognize that there was a different language game to the one they know. As Wittgenstein wrote: If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
Moderate Relativism.
But in practice, there is Moderate Relativism, a Cultural Relativism, where individuals often have different roles within their community. Sometimes a chef, sometimes a builder, sometimes the ordinary man and sometimes the philosopher. As a chef, "slab" means a cake, as a builder "slab" means a block of concrete, as the ordinary man "slab" means slow, loud and bangin and as the philosopher, "slab" means a section of critical text. The meaning of a word then depends on which particular role the individual is playing at the time: PI 156 The use of this word in the ordinary circumstances of our life is of course extremely familiar to us.
The Investigations must be Moderate Relativism
The Investigations must be that of Moderate Relativism, in that different human language games are referred to, such as those of builder, the teacher, philosopher, the shopkeeper and ordinary man. As different language games are referred to, this cannot be the position of Extreme Relativism where the user of one language game would not be aware of the existence of a different language game. Wittgenstein refers to these different language games when he wrote: PI 116 What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.
Within Moderate Relativism, there are many language games. Each Language Game has its own Form of Life, each language game has its own set of grammatical rules, each language game has its own truth, and the meaning of a word depends on its context within its language game . Each language game has a foundation that cannot be justified but must be accepted, and are, in effect, hinge propositions
PI 217 If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."
The Investigations in moving between Language Games must be that of Moderate Relativism, whereby all Forms of Life are cognitively accessible. The problem is, of course, is that we don't know what we don't know, as was the case with the dog or cat when presented with a copy of a Hemingway novel, in that there may well be a language game outside of ours whose existence we cannot even contemplate.
Right, but you said:
Quoting Luke
At PI 389 "this" refers to the mental image of a particular object. If you disagree with the interlocutor then we are in agreement.
But you also said:
Quoting Luke
He does reject it. He rejects it for the same reason you now seem to be rejecting it.
Quoting Luke
Take the example @Banno discusses from Zettel 14 here
"Say a picture of him suddenly floated before me."
He does not simply imagine or produce an image he sees it.
Quoting Luke
I am well aware that they may not look like this. It is just an image in my mind, a picture that occurs to me.
The claim made at PI 389 is that:
The point of my example is that it shows that this is not true. A photo of the person [added: I only talked to on the phone] is more like that person than my mental image of that person.
I like this summation.
Quoting RussellA
While I agree to an extent on Kuhn's idea of a shift in how language is used in scientific revolutions, I don't know if incommensurability is quite as you are describing. I think of incommensurability as the inability to describe the world in an older framework because there weren't even ideas for the new findings. The geocentric world had epicycles and fixed points of light. The heliocentric had elliptical motions and such. This doesn't mean that the incommensurability was between understanding of the different worldviews, just the use of them to describe the natural world. In a world without relativity, there cannot be an understanding of gravitational distortions of space-time, or even space-time at all. It is just Newtonian three-dimensional space, etc. Light is not seen as carried by a packet of energy, etc.
Quoting RussellA
This kind of incommensurability makes more sense for I think what you are saying with extreme relativism. I think you are trying to convey the theory that there are some language games impossible for people to penetrate unless they are already in that community (by birth or enculturation, one would assume).
Quoting RussellA
I would agree. I don't think Witt was posing any kind of failure to learn and perform language games, though this may break down for various participants in various contexts (people who are not academically trained in theoretical mathematics might not understand much from a theoretical math lecture aimed at mathematics professors, for example).
Quoting RussellA
That's fine, it's usually historically contingent as to how it happened. It just takes a generation or two of users of the language game to make it an informal rule of that game.
My point about hinge propositions was that language itself can be studied further as to why we have language games, how it developed, what part of the brain is involved, how it evolved differently from other animals, what its evolutionary use was, etc. It is those ideas that I am more interested in regards to language. These are a combination of theory, observation, and experimentation to find the right model that seems to fit. Michael Tomasello's intentional theory of language is a good candidate for example.
Presumably, things like tool use, hunting, understanding the social standing of others was an evolutionary pressure and an effect of having the ability to be able to collaborate in a space of shared intentionality. It is this shared intentionality that is one of the main pre-linguistic frameworks for language. Now, if this can be proven to connect with not only behavior and child development, but also the regions of the brain that were necessary to evolve this cognitive trait, THEN you have a holistic theory of language.
You first have to define what the parameters for a working theory are, and then provide evidence that the model fits. For example, animals like dogs have a great capacity for associative learning. Is associative learning a substrate for linguistic learning, or is it another mechanism? That is an example of discerning where the boundaries of the parameter lies.
Apes can make tools, but it dies out in a generation. They don't have shared intentionality, so tool-use may be a substrate of language, but it may just be an effect of the substrate, or a dead-end in terms of its necessity for how language evolved.
Children learn words sometimes one at a time, but at a certain point, gain a greater context for word meaning without explicit instruction. There seems to be something akin to a grammar module in the brain (i.e. Chomsky's Universal Grammar module). Is this akin to the broca's and wernike's region interacting with the hippocampus for episodic memory formation? Were these regions developed in homo sapiens, homo erectus, homo habilis, etc? Why would they form in one and not the other? What were the evolutionary pressures causing the difference?
If the model is "shared intention", and we know that broca's region is involved in syntax formation let's say, are these ideas commensurate or do they have nothing to do with each other? If not, then how does the theory of shared attention account for the broca's region? Etc. etc. etc....
And speaking of use. Is there some sort of connection with motor functions. Did verbs come first, or nouns? Pointing to something or perhaps drawing attention to what one is doing (gathering, making tools, hunting technique, etc.). Did these words come together all at once or were they piecemeal? We do know that pigeons can turn into creoles, but that's after the capacity for language evolved.
Allow me to be more clear. I will number the sentences of PI 389 and state which I think Wittgenstein agrees and disagrees with:
389.
1. A mental image must be more like its object than any picture.
2. For however similar I make the picture to what it is supposed to represent, it may still be the picture of something else.
3. But it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else.”
4. That is how one might come to regard a mental image as a superlikeness.
Firstly, I don’t read there as being any necessary correspondence with an object in sentence 3. “The image of this” is just whatever is the content of one’s mental image.
I believe Wittgenstein disagrees with sentences 1 and 4 but agrees with sentences 2 and 3. Sentence 4 seems little more than a restatement of sentence 1. Sentence 1 (together with 3) could be a definition of “superlikeness”. Incidentally, Hacker relates this concept to the terms “super-order” and “super-concepts” mentioned at PI 97.
I think PI 380-388 (especially 380 and 382) supports my reading and does not support your reading (where you take the point of PI 389 to be that a picture can equally or more closely resemble an object than does a mental image). I also believe these passages support my position against your assumption/reading that a mental image (like a picture) can be compared with an object for the purpose of determining the image’s resemblance or correspondence to that object.
Take PI 380 for example:
Or PI 382:
Or this excerpt from PI 386:
I believe this context shows that the point of PI 389 is not what you seem to think. You read W as saying that a mental image can be compared to an object in order to determine its resemblance to that object, just like a picture can. I see W as attacking this assumption.
The position of the Investigations is clearly that of Moderate Relativism, as Wittgenstein discusses different types of language games, such as that of the philosopher and that of the ordinary man.
But Wittgenstein seems to wilfully ignore what the ordinary man knows. When the ordinary man says "I know your pain", Wittgenstein treats this as a literal belief on the part of the ordinary man, yet even the ordinary man knows that he is using this as a figure of speech in place of "I believe you are in pain". The ordinary man knows that when I see you behaving in a particular way, and as I behave in the same way when I am in pain, I thereby infer that you are also in pain. Even my grandmother who left school at 14 knows that the expression "I know you are in pain" is being used figuratively. Yet Wittgenstein seems to take it as literal when said by the ordinary man.
Even the ordinary man knows that one word can have different meanings, in that that slab can mean cake in a bakery and concrete on a building site. The ordinary man knows to use the word appropriately in different situations. It is more the case that these so-called language games dissolve into one, and within this one language game an individual word may have more than one meaning.
Perhaps Wittgenstein should also have tried to come up with a few answers to his questions in order to make a more rounded case. For example, the nature of cause and effect. If I observe someone behaving in a particular way, this is presumably the effect of a cause, and even though the cause may be unknown, we know that there must have been one. Even an unknown cause can be named, in that the name "pain" is not the name of something that is inherently unknowable, but is the name of an effect that is directly knowable.
But this is not something Wittgenstein does, making his work incomplete and thereby ultimately unsatisfactory.
Willfully ignore, or be autistically oblivious to?
Exactly.
Sentence 1 is the interlocutor's claim - the mental image is more like its object than any picture.
Sentence 2 provides his support for this claim.
Sentence 3 is provides further support.
These three sentences are enclosed in quotation marks.
Sentence 4 is Wittgenstein's response to this chain of reasoning leading to the claim of a superlikeness. If we reject the claim of a superlikeness we should reject the whole argument chain. When the interlocutor claims that it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else, he is referring to the object it is a mental image of.
Quoting Luke
The point of PI 389 is to reject claims 1 -3 and thus a superlikeness.
Quoting Luke
It is, as you quoted in sentence 1, the interlocutor who makes the comparison and concludes that a mental image must be more like its object than any picture. You, I, and Wittgenstein all reject that claim.
Once again, our disagreement is over sentence 3. If not the object then what is it the mental image an image of?
:smirk:
Feel free to elaborate.
True, even though Einstein's theory may be incommensurable with Newton's theory, Einstein would be able to understand Newton's theory. However, Newton would not be able to understand Einstein's theory, not because he was intellectually incapable of doing so, but because he was not aware of Einstein's theory in the first place. One cannot know what is unknown.
As Wittgenstein wrote: If a lion could talk, we could not understand him. The incommensurability is in the alien nature of a being whose particular thoughts and feelings are more than likely incomprehensible to us.
Quoting schopenhauer1
The Investigations discusses human language, and because of the similarity between humans - all descended form the same Mitochondrial Eve - even though human language may vary, any difference may be explained within Moderate Relativism.
However between species, between humans and dogs, between humans and Martians, differences between languages are probably so great that they can only be explained by Extreme Relativism.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, when someone says "here is one hand", the hidden rule is that this is a hinge definition not a description, and as a definition is founding the language of which it is a part.
Quoting schopenhauer1
There are two main theories as to how language evolved, either i) as an evolutionary adaptation or ii) a by-product of evolution and not a specific adaptation. As feathers were an evolutionary adaptation helping to keep the birds warm, once evolved, they could be used for flight. Thereby, a by-product of evolution rather than a specific adaptation.
Similarly for language, the development of language is relatively recent, between 30,000 and 1000,000 years ago. As the first animals emerged about 750 million years ago, this suggests that language is a by-product of evolution rather than an evolutionary adaptation.
As with Kuhn's paradigms, evolution can be rapid. For example, even though it may have taken 100 million years for feathers to have evolved in order to keep the animal warm, it could only take a week for the animal to discover that it can use these feathers for flight.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, Language can only be understood by knowing not only what it is but also why it is as it is. The Investigations may have asked questions about what it is, but would have been more rounded if it had asked questions about why it is as it is.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Personally, I believe associative learning is at the foundation of language. In other words, Hume's theory of constant conjunction. This is the relationship between two events, where one event is invariably followed by the other: if the occurrence of A is always followed by B, A and B are said to be constantly conjoined. As described by the Lancaster University article on Hume, our belief in causality is a projection onto the world of a habit of our minds.
In the case of language, I see many different particular examples of things in the world and discover a family resemblance between them. I can then name this family resemblance "slab", but noting that it is not the case that any particular example has been named "slab", but rather the family resemblance between them has been named "slab". In other words, a constant conjunction that originates in the mind when observing two seemingly different events occurring in the world.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Yes, language is crucial in sharing knowledge between different individuals. Even though Caesar died more than 2,000 years ago, I still have knowledge of him through the medium of language. I can have intentionality about something by description about which I have no knowledge by acquaintance.
Quoting schopenhauer1
By looking at many examples of physical things or physical events that exist in the world , when we discover a family resemblance between them, we can give this family resemblance a name such as "slab" or "running". The same principle applies to both, things that exist at one moment of time such as the object slab or things that exist through time such as the event "running".
Both verbs and nouns exist in the form of physical things, regardless of whether they exist at one moment in time or through time.
Quoting schopenhauer1
One feature of evolution is the human propensity to form into groups or tribes. This is an understandable evolutionary trait allowing us to maximise our co-equal co-ordination. But as Tomasello points out, human evolution has not caught up with the sheer number of humans on the planet, such that the actual number of humans today is more than what any individual has been evolutionary programmed to cope with. This must inevitably lead to strife between these tribes, not as a result of deliberate intention on the part of the individuals but because it is in their evolutionary makeup.
According to www.grizzalan.com: Ludwig Wittgenstein was almost certainly autistic. Several notable psychiatrists, such as Christopher Gillberg in A Guide to Asperger Syndrome, have written extensively about the evidence backing this assertion.
As Wittgenstein writes in the Preface to the Investigations: After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed.
Wittgenstein refers many times to the ordinary use of a word: But do I parade the meanings of the words before my mind when I make the ordinary use of them?
In the Investigations, Wittgenstein seems to suggest that the ordinary man is only able to use words in the literal sense. Such that when the ordinary man says something like "I know your pain", the ordinary man is not aware that this is a figure of speech. It is then the philosopher who comes along and complicates matters by asking "how can I know another person's pain".
But it is surely the case that the ordinary man is well aware that some of the words they use are figures of speech, possibly metaphors and can only be understood in the context they are spoken. They don't need a philosopher to explain this to them.
In the Investigations, Wittgenstein seems to be making a distinction between the language of the ordinary man and the language of the philosopher, but surely he knew that this distinction didn't exist in practice in the ordinary people he came across in his daily life.
So am I to assume that you would agree with my characterization that I must trust your personal testimony that whatever you are doing in the hidden recesses of your mind, it is a language and all sort of judgments are occurring. This sounds more like a philosophical mystic preaching his Word from Divine revelations, then serious philosophical discourse.
To address the "past critique", which I must confess, I don't see its relevance to my point, I will say the following:
1. I think this example may be hiding your philosophical assumption. Is this community going around using words, using them to act on, and seeing and judging that it is being used correctly, but somehow never using it correctly. But how is this "never using it correctly" being presented here. That there is a correct use that is established outside the community and if they could just tap into this method of determination they would see that even though there public use is correct, they would come to see it is incorrect. But how? Thru private introspection of "meaning" of words?
I think two Wittgenstein quotes would be useful here from "On Certainty":
204. "Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; - but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game."
613. "If I now say "I know that the water in the kettle on the gas flame will not boil", I seem to be justified in this "I know" as I am in any. 'If I know anything I know this".-Or do I know with still greater certainty that the person opposite me is my old friend so-and-so? And how does that compare with the proposition that I am seeing with two eyes and see see them if I look in the glass?-I don't know confidently what I am to answer here.-But still there is a difference between cases. If the water over the gas freezes, of course I shall be astonished as can be, but I shall assume some factor I don't know of, and perhaps leave the matter to physicists to judge. But what could make me doubt whether this person here is N.N., whom I known for years? Here doubt would seems to drag everything with it and plunge it into chaos."
Having spent much of his time correcting philosophers he surely did know that they are not using terms in the ordinary sense. This is a mistake he attempts to correct by pointing to the ordinary use of terms such as 'know'. If they did not make these inordinate demands on language the problems that arise as a result would dissolve.
Sentence 2 states:
Quoting Luke
This tells us that there is not a necessary correspondence between a picture and its object (or “what it is supposed to represent”). If W rejects this, as you say, then it is W’s position that there is a necessary correspondence between a picture and its object. To what object does the picture of the duck-rabbit necessarily correspond?
What is also interesting i find, is that the kind of very very very basic description of hebbian learning / spike timing dependent plasticity in the brain actually mirrors Hume's talk about causality quite well in terms of learning due to conjunctions and one event having to precede the other, things like that.
It does not follow from a) the fact that there is not a necessary correspondence between a picture and what it is supposed to represent, that b) there is a necessary connection between a mental image and what it is an image of. It does not follow that a mental image must be more like its object than any picture.
It is a tautology to say that a mental image of X is an image of X. But this does not mean that my mental image of X is anything like X. If I describe my mental image of X it may become clear that the image as described is nothing like X. It may be that it is an image of something else.
I agree. That’s not what I said.
I said it follows from the rejection of a) the fact that there is not a necessary correspondence between a picture and what it is supposed to represent, that b) there is a necessary correspondence between a picture and what it is supposed to represent.
If W rejects sentence 2 of PI 389, as you suggest, then his position is that b) there is a necessary correspondence between a picture and what it is supposed to represent.
I don’t believe that is W’s position. Therefore, I don’t believe he does reject sentences 1-3 as you say. (At least, not sentences 2 and 3.)
Quoting Fooloso4
That’s right. That may explain W’s definition of a mental image at PI 367.
I think Tomasello is developing important models and is rigorous in his methods. You turned me on to him last year (or so).
You acknowledge that such work is theoretical in a way that Wittgenstein's is not. Tomasello's work does not seem to cancel Wittgenstein's observations as other views might. Is your objection to Wittgenstein to say there is no such thing as a "non-theoretical" approach?
Would you accept that such a question is, at least, "meta-theoretical?"
:up:
Quoting Paine
Wittgenstein is armchair philosophizing, of course it's not going to be the same kind of theorizing.
I have a few issues:
1) Wittgenstein engages in armchair anthropology and linguistics, primarily relying on contemplation rather than empirical evidence. If Wittgenstein's contemplations alone are considered valid, it would negate the necessity of disciplines such as anthropology, linguistic neuroscience, or cognitive psychology related to linguistics. Essentially, he suggests that we can think our way to answers that are observable and suitable for rigorous empirical study. I have no doubt that Tomasello drew inspiration from Wittgenstein, considering you can't avoid him when delving into the study of language. However, Tomasello's empirical approach to understanding how humans are evolutionarily grounded in their cognitive abilities holds more value.
2) Many individuals on this forum hold Wittgenstein in very high regard, bordering on reverence. Such strong admiration raises my natural skepticism. While we typically analyze and critique philosophers' ideas, comparing them with others or our own perspectives, the approach with Wittgenstein seems to be more of a desire to interpret him "correctly". There's a strong emphasis on precise interpretation of Wittgenstein's somewhat loosely connected philosophical expressions, almost as if accessing an absolute Truth. Few question or critique his ideas here, and I find this lack of critical examination reminiscent of disciples following a prophet.
3) Also, Wittgenstein's approach, characterized by presenting language errors and usage cases without explicit theory, can be seen as overly simplistic and aligned with common sense. It lacks the weightiness of a comprehensive theory and remains non-committal, catering to a specific personality type. It's as if there's an inherent depth that readers ascribe to it beyond what the author originally intended, akin to interpreting an I-Ching. People seem inclined to extract more significance from it than what the author has actually provided.
Some refer to this concept as an "exaptation" rather than a specific adaptation. Chomsky supports this notion, suggesting that language's emergence was somewhat accidental in the way the brain evolved—a unique event not necessarily specifically favored through natural selection.
It could be a combination of both perspectives. Just as some dinosaurs potentially developed feathers primarily for warmth, later finding an advantage in their aerodynamic properties for intermediate stages of flight (with wings evolving from arms), language (or more likely a "proto-language" or basic aspects of language) might have initially emerged for a different purpose and then later gained significance and complexity through various evolutionary pressures.
So remember, this was specifically a critique of the Private Language argument. Wittgenstein's contention is that the foundation of language is communal, but this doesn't exclude the potential for internal reflection. Nonetheless, if we accept that meaning in language comes from communal understanding and practice, a misinformed or mistaken community could indeed perpetuate misconceptions and faulty language use indefinitely, mirroring the scenario where each individual might harbor a private language incapable of self-correction.
This skepticism illustrates how doubts about the accuracy of corrections can lead to an unsettling spiral of skepticism, that cannot get out of the solipsism of Descartes' doubt.
In other words, the communal theory of meaning doesn't overcome the same critiques as a private one.
In a way, I see a tie in with the Kripke thread about quus and plus. What happens if a whole community came across a book that said that "use" of plus was actually quus or whatnot?
See here:
Then you will inevitably snort and retort that this doesn't matter about accuracy. That is Witt's point, that correction, even on wrong use, is still a use, even if corrected wrongly.
My response would be that then, the person not being able to self-correct their private language would be no worse (or better) off.
It is right to point out when someone misuses a word, whether a philosopher or an ordinary man, because that is when problems arise.
But there is no one ordinary use of a word. A word can have a range of meanings, but such a range cannot be prescribed. The boundaries of the acceptable use of a word can be fuzzy. In effect, there is a family resemblance of different meanings about the same word. This family resemblance is impossible to be determined within a public language, but can only be determined in the minds of the individual users of the language. It is also the case that where each individual places the fuzzy boundary of meaning of a particular word is unique to that particular individual.
There is no ordinary sense of any word, something that is known to both the philosopher and ordinary man, as illustrated by Homer Simpson's remark that “Donuts. Is there anything they can’t do?”
This is precisely to point of the private language argument.
What is rejected is not that the picture could be of something else. What is rejected is that it follows
from the fact that it could be an picture of something else that a mental image must be more like its object than any picture.
Quoting Luke
Here's the problem. I describe my mental image of an object, a summer house by the lake. When I am finished by brother tells me that my mental image is not the same as his mental image of that house. We talk to my sister and dig out some old photos. It becomes clear to me that my mental image was not of image of this house and of nothing else, it was a composite image of different houses we stayed in over the years.
The same tautological claim about a mental image of X being an image of X can be made about a picture of X. A picture of X is an image of X. For the same reason that we should not conclude from this that it is an intrinsic feature of a picture that it is a picture of this and of nothing else, we should not conclude that a mental image is an image of this and nothing else.
Suppose I give you a description of my mental image of X. "It looks like this 'Y' " Someone else chimes in and describes her mental image of X: "It looks like this 'Z'". In each case the mental image of the same object is different. It is then not an intrinsic feature of a mental image of X that it is the image of this (X) and of nothing else. The mental images are both an image of X but it turns out that my mental image is actually an image of Y and her's of Z.
It is not a matter of a misuse of a word but of a misguided demand being made on the concept "know" which leads to a denial that we know the things we know.
Right, but earlier you said:
Quoting Fooloso4
Now you are saying that claim 2 is not rejected.
Quoting Fooloso4
And, as I said earlier:
Quoting Luke
So I agree with what you say here; that he rejects sentence 4. But I believe he also rejects sentence 1. I believe he does not reject sentence 2 and 3, but that they are misunderstood by the interlocutor to reach the conclusion of sentence 4.
Quoting Fooloso4
It's not your mental image that your brother tells you is different to his mental image. It's your description of your mental image that your brother tells you is different to his mental image. You might ask him how his mental image is different and he would then describe his mental image. The point is that one's mental image is not part of the language game; only a description of one's mental image is. The description is like a picture that you can use as an object of comparison - to compare against your actual house(s), for example; the mental image is just the (private) mental image.
Quoting Fooloso4
I assume you mean mental image, but if that were true, then sentences 2 and 3 of PI 389 would contradict each other, and I don't think that's the point.
Quoting Fooloso4
A reminder of PI 389:
Quoting Luke
Sentence 3 would be a tautology if it said 'a mental image of X is a mental image of X', but that's not what it says.
If, as you claim, sentence 3 tells us that a mental image is the image of object X and of nothing else, then I don't see how it's any different to sentence 1. The interlocutor would just be repeating himself.
This is how I read it:
1. A mental image must be more like its object (X) than any picture.
2. A picture can be of something else.
3. A mental image cannot be of anything else (but itself).
4. This is how one might come to regard a mental image as most like object (X).
I take it you don't wish (sentence 3) to say that it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of object X and of nothing else, because then all mental images would be of object X. Otherwise, Wittgenstein could have limited sentence 3 to say "it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of its object and of nothing else." But I don't believe it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it must be the image of a particular object.
It is more the ordinary user than the philosopher who puts demands on our use of the word "know" when, according to the Evening Standard, they might say things like:
"I know that Aliens exist and have deal with Donald Trump’ claims ex-Israeli space official. They don’t want to start mass hysteria. They want to first make us sane and understand. The UFOs have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet."
When the interlocutor says at the start of 2: "For ..." the claim is that because a picture may be a picture of something else, the mental image is more like its object than any picture. This is not the same as simply saying a picture may be a picture of something else. Something specific is supposed to follow from the interlocutors claim that need not follow from the observation that a picture may be a picture of something other than what it is supposed to represent.
Quoting Luke
And what follows from this?
Quoting Luke
No, I mean a picture, a painting or photograph.
Quoting Luke
The interlocutor's claim is not a mental image is a mental image of a mental image. It is an image of the object it is an image of.
Quoting Luke
1 makes no claims about an intrinsic feature of a mental images.
Quoting Luke
A mental image is not a mental image of a mental image.
Quoting Luke
???
Quoting Luke
Good. Then we are in agreement on that point, but then we are back to your questionable interpretation of 3.
Does the ordinary user make this claim about aliens and Trump? There is nothing ordinary about that claim.
It is the ordinary user of the language rather than the philosopher who puts demands on the words they use, for example, making extraordinary claims about aliens and Trump.
Assuming that we are both ordinary users of the language, you did write that "The problem is that the Trumpsters do not want to preserve democracy.", and many would say that this is also an extraordinary claim about democracy and Trump.
IE, it is the ordinary user rather than the philosopher who puts demands on our use of words such as "know".
But there is more to language, consider PI 242: "If language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments. This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so.-It is one thing to describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain and state results of measurement. But what we call "measuring" is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement."
I believe you are describing a scenario where we are not talking about a language at all. Will there be mistakes in use, according to the community, of course. Could some mistakes remain hidden, at times, and perpetuated, of course. But to say, if it becomes all encompassing, as the skeptic would, is not to describe an inaccurate language, but to not describe a language at all. And that is similar to the problems with a private language as well, notions of "judging", "mistakes", "accuracy" lose their sense when applied to the private realm. So why even call this a language at all.
The interlocutor might come to believe sentence 1 based (partly) on sentence 2, but I still don't consider PI 389 to be a rejection of sentence 2. It's a non sequitir wherein sentences 2 and 3 are true (and W thinks them true) but the conclusion at sentence 1 does not follow from them.
Quoting Fooloso4
For one thing, it follows that a mental image is not a picture.
Many of the surrounding passages of PI 389 are discussing undescribed or unexpressed mental images and questioning how (or whether) these relate to our linguistic abilities. He is trying to steer us away from "an inner ostensive explanation" (PI 380). The distinction between a mental image held only in the mind and a mental image expressed via action or description is crucial to this.
Quoting Fooloso4
Wittgenstein maintains a distinction between mental images and pictures at PI 389. On what grounds do you collapse this distinction? Wittgenstein may argue that a mental image does not have a superlikeness to its object, but how do you infer that there is no distinction betweem a mental image and a picture?
Quoting Fooloso4
I may have expressed that poorly. It is the interlocutor's claim that the mental image is not representative of anything and that it is simply what it is: the image of this.
I can see how you might read it as: the mental image is a representation of the represented particular object. That is, a mental image is a representation of the object that the mental image is of.
To offer an analogy (while trying not to say that pictures are identical to mental images) what is a Jackson Pollock painting the image of; or what does it represent? If I had only the mental image of a Jackson Pollock painting, what would it represent? You can say that the mental image of a horse is of a horse, but what does the mental image of a Jackson Pollock painting represent? My point is that I don't consider it intrinsic to a mental image that it must be of some particular object in the world. I believe that a mental image can also be of something not in the world; that a mental image need not represent anything or be of anything other than what it is: this.
However, I would more readily side with you on this point re: sentence 3 than I would agree with you that a picture is no different to a mental image. That is, I would not agree that a picture is no different to an unexpressed or undescribed mental image.
At PI 10 he says:
Quoting Luke
Right, we cannot appeal to a mental image of red. This is discussed at PI 50 and the use of samples and paradigms. At PI 388 he asks:
If we cannot appeal to a mental image of a color then, with regard to color, we cannot determine that the mental image of a red object is more like the object than a physical picture of the red object.
Quoting Luke
The term picture is used in different ways. At PI 389 he is referring to a physical picture, something that others can see. But we can also picture things to ourselves as in PI 10. These pictures are mental images.
Quoting Luke
He says that 1) a mental image must be more like its object than any picture. This is because 2) a picture may be of something other than what it is supposed to represent. But 3) a mental image can only be an image of this. "This" does not mean an image of itself, an image of an image. It is an image of the object that he claims a picture may fail to represent.
Quoting Luke
I don't know. Perhaps it is not of any thing and does not represent any thing.
Quoting Luke
A Jackson Pollock painting.
Quoting Luke
The mental image of a horse is not a horse, it is an image of a horse.
Quoting Luke
A mental image need not represent anything or be of anything, but this does not mean it represents itself or is of itself. It presents itself, it does not re-present itself.
Quoting Luke
I would say that a mental picture is a mental image, but a physical picture is different. My claim that this animal is a horse cannot be settled by appeal to my mental picture of a horse. But a clear physical picture (contrary to 2) can settle the issue. The picture serves as a sample or paradigm.
This is consistent with his defintion of a mental image at PI 367:
Note that he distinguishes between a mental image and its description at PI 367. So, there is such a thing as an undescribed mental image. When he speaks of "the content of the experience of imagining" at PI 10, I consider this to be the same as "the image which is described" at PI 367. In other words, the (physical) "picture, or a description" at PI 10 is the described mental image, not the undescribed mental image. Otherwise, why would he include "or a description" at PI 10? The content of the mental image can be physically represented by a picture or description.
Quoting Fooloso4
Weren't you making these same appeals to a mental image with your examples of the person on the telephone and your siblings' summer house? You claimed that the person on the telephone and the summer house were both unlike your mental images of them. One wonders how you and your siblings were able to show your mental images to each other in order to compare them.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't agree that he is using "picture" as a verb at PI 10. Again, the addition of "or a description" is at odds with that reading.
Quoting Fooloso4
Maybe you're right. I'll try this reading on for size.
Quoting Fooloso4
I said that the image was of a horse.
Quoting Fooloso4
To make a last gasp argument for my reading, perhaps another way of saying this could be that it is an image of this. Similarly, if someone were to ask what the Mona Lisa is a picture of, one could respond by pointing at it and saying "it's a picture of this".
It is worth noting, however, that a major difference between a mental image and a picture is that, unlike a picture, one cannot point at a mental image. Neither can one point at this object that one is looking at and compare it to one's mental image of the object (that one is having while looking at the object). This is the faulty assumption behind the idea of "superlikeness".
A Fragment".
Quoting Fooloso4
How else could the question be answered? More below.
Quoting Luke
Right, a description and what it describes are not the same.
Quoting Luke
The question is whether a description can be the content of the experience of imagining. Imagining how someone might come to regard a mental image as a superlikeness is to give a description of the steps taken. Isn't that what we are doing when we are figuring out how to respond to each other, imagining how this or that description might be persuasive? Imagining how this or that description might get the other person to see it differently?
If I say: "This is just as I pictured it would be" I am saying that my mental image is consistent with the thing pictured in that image.
Quoting Luke
Yes.
Quoting Luke
We didn't show them we described them. But I can compare my mental picture to the thing pictured.
Quoting Luke
In response to the question of the mental content I might say: "I had a picture in my mind of a man on a horse". This description can be put in the form of a public or physical picture, but a mental picture and a physical picture of that mental picture are two different things.
Quoting Luke
The same question: an image of what? What is "this"?
Quoting Luke
What are you pointing to? The painting? Surely it is not a picture of the painting.
The painting is named Mona Lisa. It is believed to be a picture of Madam Lisa Giocondo. If you are pointing to the woman with that famous enigmatic smile then yes it is a picture of her. But given the smile it might be there is more to the story of what it is a picture of.
It seems to me that you are putting the two views into competition with one another in a way that was not intended by Wittgenstein. When I asked whether: "there is no such thing as a "non-theoretical" approach?", I was also asking if only the scientific method has value for you and whether the attempt, by various philosophers to place such efforts into a larger context was a mistake.
As a point of reference, consider Bridgman's call for 'operational' definitions where the possible meanings of terms in models should be delimited at the outset of an investigation in order to avoid being sabotaged by meanings outside of the project. That approach has had a problem from the model building side as well as claiming we could proceed with certain kinds of explanation without comparing them to each other. Trying to find a way to talk about it is as much the beginning of 'metaphysics' as the speculation it encouraged.
Quoting schopenhauer1
After several years participating in this forum, I have observed countless challenges and critical examination of the writings. To ascribe all the challenges to those challenges as hewing to settled doctrine runs afoul of your complaint that no firm general proposition has been provided.
It does seem likely that some have joined together in camps. It would be very campy to insist everyone has done so. There is a half-playful interview with Deleuze that illustrates both sides of the dynamic:
Quoting Interview with Deleuze
I came upon all this sort of thing later in my life and am better read in the Ancients than the new-fangled stuff. I am torn between the optimism of Aristotle that we can get a handle on our existence through careful methods and the skepticism of Plato that focuses upon what is difficult to begin. I read Wittgenstein as being troubled in the vernacular of Plato more than confident in the way of Aristotle. Does that put me in a camp?
In any case, Deleuze's complaint is not the same as yours. What is "over-explained" compared to "underexplained?"
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't understand how "common sense" is a given in the text. Many of the examples treat what is given as commonly understood as odd when looked at as general reference. That is the opposite approach of establishing there is a baseline of assured propositions.
Wittgenstein is confident in the Investigations, in the way of Aristotle, that the role of the philosopher is to bring clarity to the ordinary use of language, rather than investigating the nature of reality.
As language is only capable of doing certain things, it is inevitable that outside what language can do there will be mysteries.
PI 38 For philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.
For Wittgenstein, the role of philosophy is to be able to think clearly and clear up confusions about words such as know, believe, desire, intend, think as they are ordinarily used, not about the nature of reality, not about the validity of Realism or Anti realism .
PI 126 Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.—Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.
For Wittgenstein, the philosopher starts with language as it is ordinarily used, where the meaning of a word is its agreed use, and where language is grounded in common sense.
PI 122 A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words
It is true that he does give many examples, such as imaging people around me as automata, that are much discussed within philosophy, but is making the point that, as there are limits to what language is capable of, such discussions, being outside what language is capable of, become meaningless.
PI 420 But can't I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack consciousness, even though they behave in the same way as usual?................But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of your ordinary intercourse with others, in the street, say!............And you will either find these words becoming quite meaningless; or you will produce in yourself some kind of uncanny feeling, or something of the sort.
For Wittgenstein, problems arise when the philosopher tries to use language beyond what it is inherently capable of, and beyond the common sense use of language as it is used in the everyday.
PI 133 For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.
This is a reading of Aristotle I am not familiar with. From what I have gathered, not only was Aristotle an advocate for using "theory" in way that Wittgenstein questioned but Aristotle considered himself able to distinguish the inquiries by kind. That endeavor is far removed from the criticism of 'scientism' put forward by Wittgenstein. And it is the matter of 'science' distinguished from philosophy that I directed my comments toward .
I'm not questioning whether the content of the experience of imagining can be a description. On my view, as stated in my previous post, what Wittgenstein means by this "content" is a public picture or public description of what is privately imagined.
It is your position that the mental image itself can be a picture or description. If a mental image were itself a description, then a description of that mental image (such as per the definition in PI 367) would be a description of a description. Likewise, if the mental image were a picture, then the public version would be a picture of a picture.
At PPF 133, W states:
I note that the SEP article on Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics states (my emphasis):
Quoting SEP article on Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Mathematics
The implication is that the inner picture is the outer picture. If there can be any private use of pictures and descriptions as mental images, then such use follows public rules; it treats pictures and descriptions as public objects. There are not two separate descriptions or pictures where one is inner and one is outer; there is only the one description or one picture used for both inner and outer.
Then how is it that we agree that a mental image is not its description?
Perhaps a solution can be found if we agree that a picture or a description is intrinsically public (i.e. derives its meaning/use publicly), but that one can use these public instruments privately, such that one can imagine descriptions or pictures (using their public meanings).
Another way of looking at it could be that I have my private mental image (which is a private picture or description) which I then describe in our public language (or e.g. in a painting, etc). One could worry that something might get lost in translation from the private image to the public description. However, it could also be argued that nothing could possibly get lost because the mental image itself can only be publicly expressed as well as it can be privately imagined. If my private description (e.g. of directions to somewhere) is poor, then so, too, will be my public description. If the picture I imagine is hazy or indistinct, then my public description (or painting, etc) of what I imagine can only be as hazy or indistinct.
This way, a mental image is not a private picture or description (an idea I was keen to reject) and neither do we require two different versions of each picture and description: the public and the private versions (which thus avoids the need for pictures of pictures or descriptions of descriptions).
PI 280 is relevant here:
Quoting Fooloso4
I guess that the mental and physical pictures both have the same content, though? In that case, yes, I see what you are saying.
Quoting Fooloso4
What I've been trying to say, and how I read sentence 3, is that the content of the mental image can only be this (i.e. whatever one imagines at a particular time) and nothing else. As he is inclined to say at PI 523, "A picture tells me itself".
As I argued earlier, I see no reason why a mental image must represent anything, or be of anything in particular. Maybe the interlocutor errs by thinking sentence 3 is true (when it is false), as you suggest, but I think this reading would make more sense if sentence 2 of PI 389 was also false.
However, I believe that Wittgenstein makes a case for sentence 2 of PI 389 - "For however similar I make the picture to what it is supposed to represent, it may still be the picture of something else" - in sections PI 139-141.
The Investigations is not the work of a sceptic, but that of someone confidently expounding the theory that the meaning of a word is its use in the language. An approach more that of common sense than the metaphysical.
As Wikipedia in its article Philophical Investigations wrote:
The Investigations deal largely with the difficulties of language and meaning. Wittgenstein viewed the tools of language as being fundamentally simple, and he believed that philosophers had obscured this simplicity by misusing language and by asking meaningless questions. He attempted in the Investigations to make things clear: "Der Fliege den Ausweg aus dem Fliegenglas zeigen"—to show the fly the way out of the fly bottle.
The content of the experience of imagining is what is imagined. The experience itself is a picture or description that occurs in the mind. In order to answer the question of what that is I can draw a picture or describe the content.
Quoting Luke
PPF 133 should be read together with:
PPF
The mental image is not a picture hanging on the wall of my mind. The two uses of the term 'picture' belong to different categories.
I take PI 280 to be denying that the picture has a double function. The picture he paints to show how he imagines the stage set does not also inform him. It does not tell him what he imagined.
Quoting Luke
Rather than repeat myself, and you repeating yourself, I am going to leave this as unresolved between us.
What the Wikipedia article writer fails to understand is that 'ordinary' uses of language do not become 'simple' elements from which models may be built upon. Such a presupposition ignores paragraphs like the following:
The complexity of 'philosophical' questions, that perhaps could be "shooed out of the bottle" is not the same as recognizing the complexity of the 'ordinary.'
This element involves the question about science that prompted my initial remarks. I don't think the effort to compare reports about 'physics' and 'psychology' were made to make science easier.
An important point! Despite what Wittgenstein says about the ordinary it is often an overlooked aspect of his philosophy. All the focus remains on the same few linguistic tangles.
What says you @Luke?
Quoting Fooloso4
I was referring to the content of the experience. Do you agree that the content of the picture/description is the same regardless of whether it is a public object or whether it is privately imagined?
Quoting Fooloso4
Can you explain how it is different? I note that a moment ago you said:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
Could you please explain the two different uses of the term 'picture'?
It seems to me that W is using 'picture' as a noun at PPF 133 and that he is using 'drawing' as a noun at PPF 134. It also seems that the content of both an imagined picture and a physical picture are the same, even though the "medium" of the pictures is not. Other than that one is imagined and the other is physical, I don't see what different meaning the word "picture" has when used to refer to an imagined picture compared to a physical picture. And I don't see Wittgenstein using the word as a verb here, either, such as "picture this...".
Quoting Fooloso4
I also take it this way. But do you consider there to be a single picture here or two different pictures? There is the (physical) picture that was painted but also the (imagined) picture of the stage set in his mind before he painted it. You appeared to be siding with the latter when you said:
Quoting Fooloso4
As I noted earlier, this begets a picture of a picture or a description of a description. This is the view that W appears to reject at PI 280.
EDIT: Also, did you have any comment to make about our disagreement over sentence 2?
Quoting Luke
As regards the Investigations, I read it more as an attack on "bad" philosophy than scientism.
I see the key to the Investigations as PI 43: the meaning of a word is its use in the language, and this is what the Investigations considers.
Scientism is a pejorative word. Scientism is an overconfidence in the power of science, trying to explain all experiences in mechanical terms rather than accepting them as part of the inexplicable wonder and mystery of life. I am sure that the majority of scientists are also opposed to scientism. Though if anti-scientism was taken too far, beliefs such as astrology, witchcraft and aliens in Mexico would be excluded from scientific investigation and blindly accepted as fact by the un-philosophical.
When someone says "I know your pain", Wittgenstein is not attacking the scientist for wanting to carry out experiments on the brains of the speaker and listener, but rather is attacking the "bad" philosopher for questioning such an expression in the first place. A "bad" philosopher being someone who attempts to discoverer something using language that exists outside of language, and is therefore logically outside of the ability of language to discover.
For Wittgenstein the meaning of "I know your pain" in our common sense and ordinary language is given within the context of the language game being used, and cannot be explained other than being part of its language game. In science it will be an axiom of a theory. In On Certainty it will be a hinge proposition, As he wrote in OC 501: 'Am I not getting closer and closer to saying that in the end logic cannot be described? You must look at the practice of language, then you will see it' . In the Investigations it will be what founds language. As he writes in PI 217 If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do.". These are not concessions to the scepticism of the "bad" philosopher, but are acknowledgements that most of our actions are normative.
In my terms, words such as "know" are figures of speech used in a non-literal sense. They can only be explained by understanding the wider context of the language game existing within a particular form of life. As "the language game" is a figure of speech, the "form of life" is a figure of speech, then also "know" is a figure of speech.
Not necessarily. As I imagine something can change.
Quoting Luke
One is physical and can be made public, the other cannot. One remains relatively stable and unchanging the other may not. We can use one an item of comparison, the other only by the one whose mental image it is.
Quoting Luke
The first few examples of many:
Quoting Luke
What he rejects is that:
it is not:
Quoting Luke
I don't see where Wittgenstein makes the case for 2.
I believe is right. However, the problem here is that you are talking about a different thing: the difference between an object that exists in the physical universe and that object as you yourself peceived it, i.e. as it exists in your mind. This is not however what @Luke says.
Suppose neuroscientists were able to give you access to my mental picture and render a public physical picture so that everyone can see what the content of my mental picture is. It does not matter whether the mental picture is of some object that exists in the world or not. My mental picture X rendered public at T1 may differ from my mental picture X rendered public at T2. My mental image is not immutable. There are lots of things that can influence and change it. The physical image, however, does not change.
I might say that ever since I was a child I have had this image in my mind. If you asked me whether that image has changed over time I cannot give a definitive answer. I have no way of comparing that image as it was then to how it is now.
I did not intend to argue otherwise. The questions I am asking concern where philosophy ends and science begins. That is where I objected to this statement you quoted from wikipedia:
Quoting RussellA
I don't think this view is supported by the text. The complaints coming from Wittgenstein regarding the excesses of science as culture is expressed as an overindulgence in generalizations. No limits upon what science could actually produce were promulgated therein.
You mean, project images from my mind on a screen? You don't know how many times I've thought how amazing that would be! :smile:
Quoting Fooloso4
Indeed. But this doesn't change anything. Everyone has different mental pictures of a same object in the environment. (BTW, I can't see why you call it "public"? Never heard of such a descrition.)
Quoting Fooloso4
That image has certainly changed, not over time in general, but --strictly speaking-- from one second to another. Thinking is a process producing a kind of energy, which is flowing, like a hologram, and the images that we see in our mind are changing on constant basis. Of course, this does not prevent us from saying, in a figurative way, "I have always this same image in my mind ".
This appears inconsistent with what you quoted and said earlier:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
Doesn't "picture" mean the same here? If you are saying that the mental image or imagined picture might change, then in what sense is it a "picture"?
As I questioned several posts ago, why does the picture have to change? We could think of it instead as a series of different (inner) pictures. For example, there could be a picture which is a (physically rendered) snapshot of your inner picture at t1 and then another picture which is a snapshot of your inner picture at t2. Instead of thinking of it in terms of a single picture that changes between t1 and t2, we could think of it as two different pictures; one at t1 and another at t2. In the same way that a movie reel represents change via static pictures, for example. Then there wouldn't be two different senses of the word "picture". Anyhow, I don't believe there exists a sense of the word as you believe W is using it - as a single image that changes over time. Unless you mean a movie? However, I don't believe W is using "picture" as a synonym for "movie" at PPF 10.
Quoting Fooloso4
These are examples of the use of the word "imagine", not examples of the use of the word "picture".
Quoting Fooloso4
Isn't this precisely what you are claiming when you say that your private picture can change? That your private impression of the (changing) picture tells you what you imagined?
W's rejection here is consistent with the assertion that the content of a public picture and the content of a private picture are, or can be, the same. But you reject this assertion because you "imagine something can change"?
The Wikipedia article is about the Investigations. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein writes that whilst logic lies at the bottom of science, this is not the case for language and thought. IE, science and language/thought are different.
Where in the Investigations does he write about the excesses of science?
Be careful what you wish for!
Quoting Alkis Piskas
In response to your comment:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
I gave an example where an object that exists the environment need not play a role.
Quoting Fooloso4
The image I have in my mind since I was a child need not be a mental picture of some object. It could be my own creation that no one else has a mental picture of.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
In order to distinguish a mental picture, which is not public or accessible to anyone else, and a picture we can all see.
Quoting Alkis Piskas
Then aren't you agreeing with me and rejecting the claim that?
Quoting Alkis Piskas
If the content of the images in our mind are changing on a constant basis how could that content be the same as that of a public object that is not constantly changing?
I don't see any inconsistency.
Quoting Luke
This shows how a picture hanging on the wall differs from a mental picture.
Quoting Luke
How do you reconcile this with PI 389?
Quoting Luke
They are at t1 and t2 my inner picture of X. My inner picture of X has changed. It should be noted
that I may not even be aware that it has changed.
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
No. Why would I need a private impression of the picture I imagined to tell me what I imagined?
Quoting Luke
They might be but they need not be the same.
Quoting Luke
No. I reject it because things are not always as we imagine them to be.
I don't see any problem or disagree with anything you said, except that my initial comment regarding Lukes questio/statement still applies. That is, you didn't explain --or I couldn't see-- why you doubted about Luke's statement that "the content of the picture/description is the same regardless of whether it is a public object or whether it is privately imagined", by saying "Not necessarily so." And since the truth of the statement is very obvious to me, I am interested to know why it is not for you. I mean exactly about that statement. You can just summarize it, if you wish, into a single sentence. I won't complain! :smile:
If, as you say:
Quoting Alkis Piskas
how can that image be the same a physical picture which remains relatively unchanged?
Didn't get that, sorry. So, maybe I do miss something ...
Let's drop Luke's "picture/description" example and use a simple object in the enviroment: a vase. Isn't this object the same regardless of whether and how you and I perceive it?
A vase remains the same.
OK. Thanks.
I initially asked whether you agreed that "the content of the picture/description is the same regardless of whether it is a public object or whether it is privately imagined". You replied: "Not necessarily. As I imagine something can change."
However, you also quoted Wittgenstein's PPF 10 which tells us that "the content of the experience of imagining" is a picture or a description. Do you believe that this picture or description (at PPF 10) is relatively unstable and subject to the same change as your imagination?
You also said:
Quoting Fooloso4
Regarding the picture or description that W mentions at PPF 10:
Do you think he is referring to "the picture or description that occurs in the mind" or to your drawn (physical) picture or description of that content?
If you were to draw a picture of that content or describe that content, like you say in the quote above, then is the content of the physical picture/description the same as the content of the imagined picture/description at the time that you draw/describe it? If not, then why do you suggest that you are able to "answer the question" of what the imagined content is by drawing a picture or by describing that content? If so, then when does the content between the two change?
Quoting Fooloso4
Does a mental description differ from a physical description in the same manner? If not, why not? If so, how does the mental description change? Is the content of the mental and physical descriptions the same at the time that the physical description is made of the mental description?
I see no reason to think that Wittgenstein is using two different meanings of "picture" here, where one is used for an internal "picture" that may contain different information from the external picture. This is just what PI 280 rejects.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't see there as being any internal pictures at PI 389, or in the PI at all. I believe this is something that Wittgenstein rejects. I don't see him using the word "picture" in a different sense for internal pictures than for external, public pictures. There simply are no internal pictures (which are not also external pictures). This is why I said originally that a mental image is not a picture. If what we imagine/visualise is a picture of any sort, then it is a regular sort of (in principle) public picture, or can at least be made into one. We can think to ourselves using public pictures in the same way we can think to ourselves using public language.
At PI 389, I believe Wittgenstein is referring to a public (i.e. static, unchanging) picture. He contrasts a picture with a mental image at PI 389, so how do you reconcile your view of mental pictures, mental images and public pictures? When he refers to a picture at PI 389, do you read it as being a mental picture or a public picture? Do you consider there to be any difference between a mental image and a mental picture?
Quoting Fooloso4
But you can draw or describe it at t1 and you can also draw or describe it at t2, right? Wouldn't you then notice it has changed?
Quoting Fooloso4
It is not the point of PI 280 that you don't need the picture to tell you what you imagined. The point is that there is no information missing between the physical picture and what you imagined. The point is also that it's not a picture of a picture, or that the physical picture is not "the picture of his image, as it can't be for anyone else".
However, this is the opposite of your reading with its relatively static external pictures and relatively changing internal pictures.
Quoting Fooloso4
If they are not the same, then it would contradict PI 280 and PPF 10, which both indicate that a public picture and a private picture have the same content.
Quoting Fooloso4
Whatever picture we draw or description we make (of things) will reflect how we imagine things to be (at the time of drawing/imagining).
The picture or description is what is imagined.
Quoting Luke
The former, but to answer the question I could draw a picture or describe that content.
Quoting Luke
Suppose I draw a picture of or describe a picture I saw at an art show. Is that picture or description of what I saw the same as what I saw, that is, the picture? My picture might embellish or omit certain things. It is still a picture of this, that is, the picture I saw at an art show, but the pictures will not be the same.
Quoting Luke
What PI 280 rejects is that:
If I paint a picture of the stage set I imagine, that painting does not tell me what I imagined. It is not as if I was unaware of what I imagined until I painted it. As you go on to say:
Quoting Luke
I don't need the picture to tell me what I pictured in my mind. Although the painting might be a way of working out the details.
Quoting Luke
In addition to the possibility that the painting includes details missing from what was imagined, there may be, on the other hand, a great deal missing from the painting of the stage set. As I imagined it there may be actors on the set and action taking place but I did not include them because they are not part of the set, but they are part of what I imagined when I imagined the set.
Quoting Luke
It is not. If we are to build the stage set we consult the painting not my mental image.
Added: I think it is time to move on. There are different uses of the term 'picture', but you seem to want to restrict that usage.
Thanks for clarifying. Is this also how he is using “picture” at PI 389? If not, how can you tell? And how can you tell he means a mental picture or description at PPF 10?
Quoting Fooloso4
So it is possible for the content of the physical picture/description to match the content of the mental picture/description?
Quoting Fooloso4
It’s not a question of whether the content of your physical picture/description matches reality; it’s a question of whether the content of your physical picture/description matches your mental picture/description.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, and what he also rejects is that (my emphasis):
This is not saying that he doesn’t need to paint the picture in order to know what he imagined. This is saying that the picture does not serve a double function for the set painter, because it is not both a picture of the stage set as well as a picture of his mental image. It is not “for him…the picture of his image, as it can’t be for anyone else.”
You are claiming that his private impression of the picture does tell him what he imagined in a sense in which the picture can’t do this for others, because you claim that there is a private mental picture that he can compare his painting to in order to see whether their content matches.
As you noted earlier, that mental picture might change, so how could you establish whether or not the physical painting matches it? This is similar to the private language argument, where the private diarist cannot rely only on their memory to establish the meaning/use of ‘S’.
My point here is that it’s incorrect to call the mental image a “picture”, because a mental image does not inform others “as pictures or words do” (PI 280).
I would expect that in painting the picture he'd likely recognize inaccuracies to the way the painting represents the mental image and recognize that the painting is not the mental image.
I don’t disagree, but I think it’s a mistake to call the mental image a picture. The mental image is not a representation and it cannot inform others.
Why not approximately inform others? I guess I wouldn't expect a painting to be anything other than an approximation of the painter's mental image.
I have said this more than once.
Quoting Luke
The interlocutor uses it as a physical picture.
Quoting Luke
Because he contrasts the mental picture to the picture.
Quoting Luke
We still have an interpretive disagreement here. This is how I read it:
Wittgenstein poses the question: What is the content of the experience of imagining? And answer it:
The answer is a picture, or a description.
He is not asking about how that picture can be represented or communicated.
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
How can I tell? I can't compare them unless two conditions are met: 1) I could call up the mental picture and 2) that it will remain unchanged each time I call it to mind. I do not think those conditions can be met.
I do, however, think the physical picture/description can to a greater of lesser degree, in one way or another resemble the mental picture/description.
But we're not talking analogue here.
This:
Quoting Luke
and this:
are not the same. He does not reject the former but does reject the latter. It informs those who build the set.
Quoting Luke
I claim neither of those things. I have said many times that the mental image may not be stable or unchanging. When he paints it he is satisfied enough not to do it again. Suppose the painting goes missing. Eventually they start building the set based on what they remember. He sees what they have been doing and tells them that it does not match his mental image. He paints another picture. The first picture is then found. Do the two paintings match?
Quoting Luke
You take one use of the term and demand that it be the only one. Look at what people say.
How does your mental image inform others of anything?
Quoting wonderer1
Why only an approximation? In PI 280 is it a painting of the painter’s mental image or of the stage set or of both?
He contrasts the picture to the mental image. He does not call it a mental picture.
Quoting Fooloso4
His question is about the content of the experience of imagining. If his question was about the experience of imagining and he answered that the experience was a picture or a description then I would agree with you. Do you deny that a mental image and a (physical) picture can have the same content? If not, then there is no reason to assume that his answer is or must be a mental picture or description.
Quoting Fooloso4
You don’t think that a mental image and a (physical) picture can have the same content? Then the set stage painter cannot paint a picture which shows how he imagined the stage set.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, I agree. He rejects that the painting (i.e. a picture) has another function besides informing others of how the painter imagines the stage set. Unlike a picture or words, one’s mental image (alone) cannot inform others. Therefore one’s mental image is neither a picture nor words, although its content may be that of a picture or words.
By stimulating the other to develop their own mental image which is approximate to mine.
Only an approximation, because I can't create pictures with anywhere near the complexity of my mental imagery. However, approximations can easily get the message across, to someone with a mind prepared to flesh out the approximation well. Scribbles will often do well enough, under the right circumstances.
Quoting Luke
I haven't read that far yet, so this is only my response and not any sort of claim about Witt's view...
I'm inclined to say that there is some degree of isomorphism between the stage set, the mental image and the picture. Seeing the stage set caused the painter to develop a mental image. That mental image played a causal role in the painter painting what he painted. I'd think this describes what it means for a painting to be "of the stage set". I'd be inclined to say it was a painting of both, but in different senses.
But how do others access your mental image?
The don't access my mental image. Their brain creates their own mental image in response to perceiving my picture.
Right but your mental image is not a picture, because others cannot access your mental image like they can access a picture. Your mental image does not inform others like a picture can. This is why a mental image does not even approximately inform others.
This might be clearer once you have read through the PI.
Perhaps.
I acknowledge that Wittgenstien uses the phrase "a picture (of X) before/in one's mind" synonymously with a mental image here.
However, when I asked you earlier to explain the two different uses of "picture" you were reading into the text, you responded:
Quoting Fooloso4
How do these "pictures before the mind" in the early passages you cite meet your criteria of a mental picture, viz.:
Can these mental pictures not be made public (e.g. via a sketch or description)? Do they change immediately upon hearing the word/name? I imagine that the picture must at least remain stable enough for it to come before a person's mind when they hear the word/name or while they are having the idea of the shape of a leaf.
I note that Wittgenstein is using these examples to undermine the (then) common view that such mental images are necessary to the meaning of a word.
Wittgenstein makes a clear distinction between pictures (or descriptions) and mental images in the later passages we have been discussing, especially at PI 389, PI 280, etc.
Perhaps we can agree that their content is the same while maintaining this distinction between them, as I believe he does at PPF 10?
The sketch or description is not the mental picture. It is a representation of it.
Quoting Luke
The mental picture may or may not stay relatively stable, but there is nothing to compare it to in order to determine that. One's memory of it may be more or less reliable.
Quoting Luke
Was that in dispute in our discussion?
Quoting Luke
The distinction made is between an image in the mind and a physical image. But a mental image and a physical image are are both pictures.
Quoting Luke
The distinction at PPF 10 is between a meaning and a mental image, not a mental image and a physical image. The content of the experience of imagining can be a picture or a description, but he does not know how to answer the question of the experience of a meaning.
In order for you to read Wittgenstein as saying that a mental image is a picture before one's mind at PI 6, PI 37 and PI 73, you must acknowledge that it can be a picture of X (before one's mind) only while it is a mental image of X. If the mental image is of Y instead of X, then the picture before one's mind must be of Y. If a mental picture changes, then it's a different picture compared to the original picture. Therefore, I don't follow your argument of relative stability with its implication that the (single) picture is potentially changing. The mental image is the picture before the mind at a given time, whatever its content may be.
Therefore, I don't see why you would assume that it's the same picture at time 2 which has changed since time 1, instead of saying that they are just two different pictures. Furthermore, how can you compare the two mental images at different times? And doesn't your argument - that the memory of mental images is unreliable - make this impossible comparison between mental images even more difficult?
Quoting Fooloso4
It is neither a picture of a mental picture nor a description of a mental description.
Quoting Fooloso4
Doesn't this imply that the meaning of "picture" is the same in both cases? Granted, one picture is mental and the other is physical. But this singular meaning of "picture" may be why we can say they both have the same content. Apart from the mental/physical distinction - which you maintain here - is there any other significant difference in the meaning of the word "picture"?
Wittgenstein may use "picture before the mind" (or a minor variant) as a synonym for a mental image at PI 6, PI 37 and PI 73, but he does not use "picture" (alone) as a synonym for a mental image.
Quoting Fooloso4
I wanted to draw attention to the fact that he introduces the notion of a "picture before the mind" only to later reject it as a source of meaning or the source of a rule. I think this is important to the reading of PI 280 and PI 389, which are both still related to the private language argument on my reading.
If a mental picture and physical picture have the same content, then what is the point of PI 389 on your view? Is the point simply that it's wrong to assume mental pictures and physical pictures don't have the same content?
Do you think people often make the false assumption that an intrinsic feature of a mental image is that it's more like its object than a picture is? Do you consider this false assumption to be unrelated to the private language argument and of no philosophical interest?
If I mistake X for Y my mental image of X is a picture of Y.
Quoting Luke
Yes, but even though it changes, my mental picture of Zeus is still my mental picture of Zeus.
Quoting Luke
Have you changed your mind? In the prior post you asked:
Quoting Luke
Was your answer no they cannot be made public?
Quoting Luke
No. The word is used in various ways. If you ask me to show you the picture in one case I can but in other I can't. If I remember correctly this was why you were reluctant to call the mental picture a picture.
Quoting Luke
They are the same only is so far as they are pictures of the same thing. My mental picture of you may be very different than a photo or portrait of you. If I see that picture I might say: "You are much more handsome than I pictured".
Quoting Luke
I don't think so.
Quoting Luke
Mental images exist. Private languages do not.
I think Wittgenstein was very much interested in mental images.
My position is that W is using “picture” (as a noun) with a consistent meaning throughout the text.
As I said earlier, I acknowledge that, in the early passages you cited, W is using “mental image” synonymously with “picture before one’s mind”. Therefore, if a mental image is of X, then the picture before one’s mind must also be of X, only because “mental image” means the same as “picture before one’s mind”.
This is tautological and has nothing to do with a correspondence or resemblance to some object.
Anyhow, I don’t see that what you say follows. If you mistake your hat for a sandwich, then your mental image of a hat is a picture of a sandwich? If your mental image is of X then the picture before your mind is of nothing but X.
Quoting Fooloso4
How has it changed?
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, we can distinguish between a mental image (picture before the mind) and a physical picture, but how is the word “picture” being used differently here?
Quoting Fooloso4
I clarified earlier that I had made some concessions to your reading. However, this is consistent with my reading that mental and physical pictures can both have the same content and that “picture” has the same meaning in either case, except for the difference given by the distinction that one is physical and one is mental. But that’s why W qualifies the latter with “picture before the mind”.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don’t disagree that “picture” when used as a verb (e.g. to picture) has a different meaning to “picture” when used as a noun (e.g. a picture). If that’s the extent of our disagreement then we can leave it there. But none of the passages we have been discussing or have quoted uses “picture” as a verb.
What follows from this tautology? We covered that pages ago.
Quoting Luke
I don't know. I would say that that this raises a problem. Wouldn't we say that if someone's mental image of a hat was a sandwich she would be mistaken?
Quoting Luke
It might change in various ways. Some features may become more prominent. Something left out or added. I think it might help to think of this in terms of memory. Our memory of things change.
Quoting Luke
If I say: "I was this picture" you might think I mean movie or photo or painting but would it cross your mind that I meant a mental image?
Quoting Luke
Someone might do the research to see if he does.
You said that if you mistake X for Y then your mental image of X is a picture of Y.
I don’t understand what it means for someone to mistake their mental image of a hat for a sandwich, or even for a picture of a sandwich. I don’t see how we could verify whether a mistake had been made.
Quoting Fooloso4
Maybe. Who’s to say? Can you give a specific example of how your mental picture of Zeus might have changed? What exactly has changed?
Quoting Fooloso4
No, I wouldn’t think you meant a mental image. That’s why W qualifies the use of “picture” when referring to a mental image with the “picture before one’s mind” or something similar. Otherwise, he does not use “picture” and speaks only of a “mental image” instead. I don’t believe he uses the word “picture” (unqualified) to refer to a mental image. Instead, he clearly distinguishes between a picture and a mental image. Otherwise, he speaks of a picture or description as being the content of a mental image.
Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat might be of interest.
Quoting Luke
If this person tried to eat a hat and we asked him why, we would know a mistake had been made.
Quoting Luke
Yes, that is the point!
Quoting Luke
Do you mean he qualifies the mental picture by saying it is a mental picture?
Except that you changed your original statement from 'if you mistake X for Y then your mental image of X is a picture of Y' to 'if you mistake X for Y then your mental image of X is a Y'.
You keep wanting to change the discussion to talk about resemblance to an object, but that's not what I'm talking about. I don't know what you meant when you said in your last post: "What follows from this tautology? We covered that pages ago."
Your argument was that the meaning of "picture" is different between a mental picture and a physical picture because a mental picture might change whereas a physical picture remains relatively stable. I responded that a mental image of X is equivalent to a picture ("before the mind") of X (because the terms "mental image" and "picture before the mind" are synonymous). It might have been clearer if I had said instead - and what I meant was - that mental image 'X' is equivalent to mental picture ("before the mind") 'X'. Whatever is the content of the mental image is equivalent to the content of the "picture before the mind". There is no question of resemblance to some object here; we are simply naming an image, or different images. My point was that the "picture" aspect of a mental picture is no different to the "picture" aspect of a physical picture. W's use of "picture" does not change when he talks about a mental picture or a physical picture, because if it was mental picture 'Y' instead of mental picture 'X', then this would be no different than if it was physical picture 'Y' instead of physical picture 'X'. Therefore, saying that your mental image might change is not an argument for a different meaning of "picture" between mental and physical pictures.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't see what this has to do with his mental image. How do we verify that?
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes.
If I remember correctly, this discussion began with PI 389 and you have returned to it more than once. PI 389 is about the likeness of mental image vs a picture to an object.
When you say a mental image of X, X is the object that a mental image is an image of. When you say a mental image of ... there is something that it is an image of.
When you gave the example of mistaking a hat for a sandwich both a hat and a sandwich are objects.
Quoting Luke
Have I made that argument?
Quoting Luke
Again, when you say a mental image of X there is some X that it is a mental image of.
Quoting Luke
I can't follow this argument.
Quoting Luke
You draw or describe your mental image and what you draw or describe looks like or sounds like a sandwich. Based on this representation of your mental image they will tell you that you are mistaken, it is not a hat its a sandwich. You might protest and say "I know it's a hat because its my mental image of a hat". If you are then asked to get a hat and put it on will you put a sandwich on your head?
Quoting Luke
Isn't that because a mental picture is not a physical picture?
Yes, although we disagree over our reading of the third sentence of PI 389 in particular.
Quoting Fooloso4
You stated earlier:
Quoting Fooloso4
I am interested in why you think the interlocutor might endorse sentence 3 of PI 389, viz.:
If the correct reading is that "X is the object that a mental image is an image of", then you and the interlocutor both appear to consider sentence 3 as true. So why do you view W as rejecting claim 3?
Also, if we accept that "X is the object that a mental image is an image of", it could follow from sentence 3 that "it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of [object X] and of nothing else." That is, it is an intrinsic feature of one's mental image that it can only ever be of X (where "X" refers to this particular object), and of no other object. But I can't imagine that anyone would hold such an absurd belief which limits all of their possible mental images to only one object, or why W would want to refute such an absurd view.
Quoting Fooloso4
I never gave that example; you did.
Quoting Fooloso4
You have made that argument:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
Apologies, I wasn't very clear. I was not making any reference to PI 389 with this comment. I was arguing against your claim that the meaning of "picture" is different between a mental picture and a physical picture due to the fact that:
Quoting Fooloso4
My argument was that the phrases "mental image" and "picture before the mind" are synonymous. Therefore, if I have this mental image, called image X, then I must also have this mental picture, called picture X (because these terms are synonymous). My argument was that if I had another mental image instead of image X, say image Y, then it would be no different if we were talking about a physical picture instead of a mental picture/image. I could equally have another physical picture instead of picture X, say picture Y.
Their relative stability or change relates only to whether they are mental or physical, but is not relevant to whether they are both pictures, or to whether the word "picture" is being used differently in each case.
Quoting Fooloso4
What you describe is not a verification of his mental image, but a verification of his description or drawing of his mental image. This is not about verifying his mental image, but about his correct or incorrect use of words such as "hat" or "sandwich".
Quoting Fooloso4
Of course a mental picture is not a physical picture. Neither is a physical horse an imaginary horse, but that doesn't mean that the word "horse" has a different meaning in each case.
As I have said, the three claims are part of the same argument. You can separate them as part of an analysis but you need to put them back together.
The claim at three is that it is an image of this. "This" is the object it is an image of. We cannot ignore the question of resemblance.
Quoting Luke
I should have been clearer. The picture and what it means are not the same. Whatever it might mean need not change if the picture is a mental rather than physical picture. If, however, I am talking about a picture, you might ask whether I mean a mental or a physical picture. Here the meaning of picture is different.
In order for your assertion to be true, the point of PI 389 must be to reject claims 1, 2 and 3. If it can be shown that W does not reject one of these sentences, then your assertion that "the point of PI 389 is to reject claims 1-3" is false.
Also, as I said earlier, I disagree that he rejects sentences 2 or 3.
There is no parity here. In the first case, the picture I draw of X may look to you like something else, but in the second, it cannot look to you like something else because you cannot see it.
In that case, sentence 2 is true. Why do you say W rejects it?
Quoting Fooloso4
Cannot see what?—Something else? That would make sentence 3 true. Why do you say W rejects it?
If I draw a picture or take a photograph of X, it is not a picture of anything else. Whether someone thinks it is a picture of something else makes no difference. It is a picture of X.
Quoting Luke
The mental image.
A second person in involved in 2 but no one else can be involved in my mental image. If 2 and 3 are to be compared on an equal bases then a second person should not enter into the comparison.
Quoting Luke
a) The picture I draw of X it is an image of X. I know because I drew it.
b) My mental image of X is an image of X.
What is the difference between a and b with regard to being an image of X?
It does make a difference, because you could be wrong. You might think you've taken a photo of the Eiffel Tower when you've actually taken a photo of the Arc de Triomphe. You might think you've drawn a picture of Kanye West but everyone else says it looks just like Adam Sandler. Likewise:
Quoting Fooloso4
OC 13: "...from his utterance "I know..." it does not follow that he does know it."
Quoting Fooloso4
Are these remarks intended to support a rejection of sentence 3? If so, how?
If you want to compare 2 and 3 "on an equal basis" then, in order to remain faithful to the rest of the text, this should be done from a public perspective, not from a private one.
From a public perspective, and in accordance with my argument above, this would make sentence 2 true:
If you were satisfied (or if you "knew") that the picture represented what it was supposed to represent, and if it were only up to you to decide what the picture was supposed to represent, then it would not be possible for the picture to be "of something else". But it isn't only up to you, and others may interpret it as something other than what it is "supposed to represent".
Regardless, I don't see why sentences 2 and 3 should be compared "on an equal basis". You seem to read sentence 2 as being from the private perspective and sentence 3 as being from the public perspective, whereas I take the opposite view. I read sentence 2 as being from the public perspective and sentence 3 as being from the private perspective:
Only I can see that my mental image is the image of this and of nothing else. From the public perspective, as you note, the mental image cannot be seen. How can sentence 3 make any sense from the public perspective where a mental image cannot be seen by anyone?
Quoting Fooloso4
The difference, I suppose, is that one image is mental and the other is physical? I can see how your "a)" contradicts or rejects sentence 2, but how does your "b)" contradict or reject sentence 3?
The same can be said of a mental picture. I might think my mental image is of the Eiffel Tower when it is actually a mental image of the Arc de Triomphe.
Quoting Luke
But that is the point. It cannot be done from a public perspective.
Quoting Luke
It doesn't. If a group of people are standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, they will agree that it is the Statue of Liberty. If I take a photo of it it will be a photo of the Statue of Liberty. If someone sees that photo and thinks it is a photo of something else they would be wrong.
Quoting Luke
This is why the comparison between a mental image and a physical image is misguided.
Quoting Luke
What is being compared is the likeness of the image to the object. In 2 that comparison can be made. In 3 it cannot.
In the case of 2 the image "I make" may be seen by others as a picture of something else. In the case of 3 no such ambiguity arises because no one else can see the image. If they could, the same ambiguity might arise. The mental image is not a superlikeness.
Quoting Luke
No!
Quoting Luke
Now you are catching on.
I don't see how this relates to the idea of a superlikeness, or to sentence 3 in particular. If I mistakenly think that my mental image is of the Eiffel Tower, what does that have to do with a superlikeness?
On my reading, I think that my mental image is of this (imagined or real) object before my mind and of nothing else. I cannot possibly mistake the content of this mental image, as I am seeing or imagining it now, for anything else. That's why I make the erroneous inference that my mental image is a better representation than any physical picture, because unlike a mental picture, a physical picture is open to (mis)interpretation.
My (or the interlocutor's) inference is erroneous because the mental image is not a representation of the object. The mental image cannot be compared to the object for likeness or resemblance, and so the mental image cannot be said to "look like" or to resemble the object.
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't see that as being the point of PI 389.
Quoting Fooloso4
How does the conclusion follow?
It shows that the mental image need not be more like the object than a physical picture.
Quoting Luke
The mental image is not of the object before your mind. The mental object is the object before your mind. The mental object is an image of the same object that the picture is. The claim is that the mental image is more like this object than the physical picture is.
Quoting Luke
Of course it is! Both the mental image and the physical image are images of the same object. The interlocutor is claiming that the mental image is more like that object than the physical image is.
Was a comparison able to be made between the mental image and the Eiffel Tower? Or how was the mistake discovered?
Quoting Fooloso4
I find the introduction of "mental object" confusing.
Let's say I imagine a teapot. Are you saying the mental object is a teapot but that my mental image is not of a teapot? But surely it is.
Quoting Fooloso4
But you said that the mental image is not of the object?
Quoting Fooloso4
How do you demonstrate that it isn't? You can't see their mental image. No comparison can be made between their mental image and the object that their mental image is of.
I am saying that the mental object is not a teapot. It is an image of a teapot. The mental object and mental image are the same thing.
Quoting Luke
It is not of the object if:
Quoting Luke
Quoting Luke
They can make the comparison. We can't. If they have this mental image of what they think is an image of the Eiffel Tower and then visit the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe they might realize their mistake.
You said earlier that:
Quoting Fooloso4
Now you have made the qualification that the mental image is of the object except where the mental image is not of the object, or when the mental image does not represent the object, or when the person has made a mistake.
What does it mean to say that the mental image does not represent the object?
If I am looking at an object and aware of it before me, then isn't my mental image of that object? If so, then the mistake is not a mismatch between my mental image and the object in front of me. So, what is the nature of the mistake?
Quoting Fooloso4
Again (assuming normal mental functioning), there will not be any mismatch between their mental image and the object they see in front of them, so what is the mistake?
The point of the example is that the mistake is corrected when the objects are in front of them. Before seeing them the mental image of the Eiffel Tower is a stone arch.
[Added: Years ago I visited my elementary school. It was much smaller than my mental image of it. I would have to kneel if I wanted to drink from the water fountain instead of having to stand on tip toes. The principle's office was just steps away from the first grade class, not the long endless walk it was when I was sent to the principle's office.]
When they stand before the Eiffel Tower their mental image is of the Eiffel Tower, and when they stand before the Arc de Triomphe their mental image is of the Arc de Triomphe. If they visit the stone arch they might think "Wow, so this is the Eiffel Tower". And if they visit they Eiffel Tower, they might think "This impressive monument seems familiar."
They've compared the mental images to the objects in front of them but may still be none the wiser. So why do you say "the mistake is corrected when the objects are in front of them"?
And they would be mistaken. It is not the Eiffel Tower. The mistake can be corrected when the two objects are correctly identified.
Do you mean that when they see the Eiffel Tower they are actually seeing a mental image of the Eiffel Tower?
You said earlier: "The point of the example is that the mistake is corrected when the objects are in front of them".
The point of my last post was that this is not the case: they can be standing in front of the Arc de Triomphe having a mental image of the Arc de Triomphe and yet still think that it's the Eiffel Tower. Therefore, the objects are not correctly identified by comparing one's mental image to the object.
No.
A misnomer can be corrected by linking the correct name to the object. If I am told that this object I am standing in front of is the Eiffel Tower then I can see that my mental image was not what I thought it was. What I was picturing was not the Eiffel Tower.
Wittgenstein's interlocutor says:
Your example shows why this is not true.
This correction is not made by comparing or associating a mental image with an object, but by comparing or associating a name with an object.
Quoting Fooloso4
Sentence 3 does not mention any names. Sentence 3 only makes an ostensive reference to this.
That is what I said:
Quoting Fooloso4
But what is at issue in not simply the name of the object. What is at issue is whether the mental image must be an image of "this".
Quoting Luke
"This" refers to some object. At PI 389 there is only one object. There is no need to name it. The point of the example of the Eiffel Tower is not that the names are mixed up, but that the mental image I have is actually an image of something else, the Arc de Triomphe.
My mental image is not like its object. It is not an image of "this", that is, the Eiffel Tower.
Then why do you say the correction is made by linking the correct name to the object, instead of saying the correction is made by linking the correct mental image to the object?
Quoting Fooloso4
If the correction is made by linking the correct name to the object, then there is a need to name the object. If the object is not named, then one can stand in front of the Arc de Triomphe and think it's the Eiffel Tower and yet sentence 3 still remains true: it is an intrinsic feature of their mental image that it is an image of this (stone arch, in this case) and of nothing else. Therefore, the Eiffel Tower example does not show that sentence 3 is false, because sentence 3 does not name the object.
How is the correction between the mental image and the object to be made? In the example of the Eiffel Tower I need to become aware that the mental image I have is the image of something else. Pointing to the object my mental image is an image of I might say: "See, this is the Eiffel Tower and my mental image looks just like it". Comparing my mental image to what I mistakenly think is the Eiffel Tower does not correct the problem.
Quoting Luke
In the example of the Eiffel Tower there is, but at PI 389 there is no confusion as to what object is being referred to, and so, no need to name it.
Quoting Luke
It is not an intrinsic feature of my mental image of the Eiffel Tower that it is the image of "this" (the Eiffel Tower) and of nothing else.
Are you correcting yourself? If such a "correction" cannot be verified by others, then how can we be sure that it is a correction? You might tell me that your mental image looks just like the Eiffel Tower, but I have no way of verifying it. For example, it is possible that you are still in error (e.g. you are again not standing before the Eiffel Tower). Or, the Eiffel Tower may be slightly different to how you imagined it, but you say it's exactly how you imagined it.
Moreover, why suppose that a mental image is required in order to use the name "Eiffel Tower" correctly, or that having a particular mental image is required in order to pick out the Eiffel Tower? Consider PI 151 and the different ways that the pupil may be able to continue the series of numbers. The correct result can be produced via various different associated mental images or thought processes; or there may be no thought process associated at all.
Quoting Fooloso4
You seem to be suggesting that you can "correct the problem" by comparing your mental image to (what you correctly think is) the Eiffel Tower. But this can't be done without (also) knowing that the name of the landmark is the "Eiffel Tower".
You said earlier that:
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't believe that you can "correct the problem" without using any names and only by comparing your mental image to the (unnamed) landmark before you. However, we can dispense with mental images here and speak only of (the name of) the landmark, and whether or not you correctly used the name.
Quoting Fooloso4
What object is being referred to at PI 389? PI 389 makes only general statements regarding pictures and mental images and does not refer to any specific object.
Quoting Fooloso4
Sentence 3 of PI 389 does not mention the Eiffel Tower. It is a general statement about any mental image. It is not a statement about a particular mental image. "It is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that..." To use a particular example, if the mental image is of the Eiffel Tower, then it is the image of the Eiffel Tower and of nothing else. And the same goes for any other mental image (M) that one has; it is the image of (M) and of nothing else.
My point was, that would be a mistake. My mental image of the Eiffel Tower need not be an image of the Eiffel Tower.
Quoting Luke
You seem to have lost track of the argument. It is not required. The question is whether the mental image must of the Eiffel Tower and nothing else. You supported the claim that it must. I have been trying to provide examples of why that need not be the case.
Quoting Luke
Why would you think I am suggesting that when I said the opposite?
Quoting Luke
According to the interlocutor (and you(?)), whatever object the mental image is of is what the object is.
Quoting Luke
If M is the mental image then M is not the image of M. It is not a mental image of itself. It is not a mental image of a mental image.
If I have a mental image of N then it is my mental image of N. But this does not mean that my mental image of N, whatever N is, must be more similar to N than any picture.
We have been over all this before. Repeating the same points is getting us nowhere.
As I have said before, saying that a mental image of X is an image of X and nothing else, says no more than saying a physical image of X is an image of X and nothing else.
Of course your mental image could be of anything and is not restricted to being an image of the Eiffel Tower.
However, in order to rightly be called a “mental image of the Eiffel Tower”, then it must be an image of the Eiffel Tower. You are saying that your mental image of the Eiffel Tower need not be a mental image of the Eiffel Tower, which is contradictory.
Quoting Fooloso4
My point was about use of the the name. There are no names mentioned in sentence 3 if PI 389. Sentence 3 can be true and yet still play no part in the determination of linguistic meaning. Mental images are similar to pains in this respect: they enter into our language games only via their outward expression/behaviours.
Quoting Fooloso4
You did not say the opposite.
Quoting Fooloso4
Considering that Sentence 3 does not involve the use of any names, yes. The mental image cannot be correctly associated with any object without the use of language. As we have noted, one might think that some landmark has a different name than it actually does, but there can be no errors or corrections without the use of names.
Quoting Fooloso4
Right, but it’s difficult to distinguish a mental image from its content.
Another way to describe Sentence 3 could be:
It is an intrinsic feature of a mental image (M) that it has this content (C) which represents this object (O) and nothing else. To be true, (C) and (O) must be the same, or (C) can only represent (O). In order for that to be true, the object must be identical to whatever the content of the mental image is. You can’t say that some object is not identical to (C) because no object is named at Sentence 3.
I would go further and say that the 'ordinary' is precisely what is not given. This is expressed in terms of distance from understanding. From paragraph 194:
This is not the sound of knowing language as a set of facts. The statement: "closer than that of a picture to its subject'; for it can be doubted whether a picture is the picture of this thing or that" suggests that the role of 'representation' is being presented against the background of other activities we do not understand.
PI 194 begins:
and ends, as you quoted:
Between them we find:
Rather than give a false philosophical interpretation he is thinking like an engineer:
PI 193:
But it is not just the engineer who know such possibilities. The ordinary person familiar with machines knows this. Rather than the philosopher's ideal picture of a machine as something rigid, the ordinary picture of a machine is of something that will require maintenance and repair in order to move in the ways it was designed to.
[Although I am not prepared to pursue this line of inquiry, the picture of the universe as a machine supports the idea that the universe is deterministic. If, however, the universe is not an "ideally rigid machine" then we should not rule out chance.]
When you setup a straw man, you can paint anything in any way you want and use aphorisms to knock it down like you’re the anti-hero messiah :roll:. There’s an audience for all criticisms.
Yes, you can.
Wittgenstein, however, is not attaching straw men. He is addressing problems that arose in his discussions with students and colleagues.
Then point them out and don’t just generalize “philosophers” writ large. At least outline the specific schools of thought.
What is at issue here is not who said what. The philosophical issue is how we are to think about possibilities.
I stand by my original response to this. Don’t say “philosophers”, pick out what school of thought you are referencing, quote them or at least charitably paraphrase what they stated, and then provide a rebuttal based on this.
I figure that saying: "When we do philosophy" includes all the efforts Wittgenstein is making as much as it includes views he is resisting. Stating: "so it is not an empirical fact that this possibility is the possibility of precisely this movement" is a philosophical remark.
The aspect of the engineering language is prominent in the paragraph. Does that supply what Wittgenstein is claiming to be missing in some accounts? Does it get closer to the "civilized men" being imagined here?
It seems like the wide variance of interpretations are a function of how that gets answered.
I agree.
Criticizing from the inside is different from criticizing as an outsider.
Quoting Paine
Cryptic. Can you elaborate?
Guilty as charged.
I will try to put forward a more cogent version next week.
I have looked into Hacker and company, and they have an interesting method. I am reluctant to respond to very particular readings of Wittgenstein passages without access to the work as a whole. It is very expensive by what I have seen. I am a simple caveman stonemason on a very limited budget.
I agree with many of the remarks of the preface I could preview. But they also raise other questions.
Is there an inexpensive way to see the writing upon a larger scale?
This might be a good place to start. What quickly becomes evident is that his interpretation of Wittgenstein is grounded on the problems and analysis of propositions, as can be seen in such claims as:
(43)
(45)
There are other aspects of Wittgenstein's philosophy, such as seeing aspects, that are not propositional. It is here that we can see continuity between the Tractatus and his later work. It is also here that the limits of Hacker's interpretation of Wittgenstein can be seen.
It seems reasonable to ask how far Wittgenstein thinks he has closed the distance between the two groups imagined here:
The 'civilized' people are the ones using language. With all the deference paid to them, it is not like their activity is the resolution of the investigation. The crude savages carry on outside of the perimeter. The questions about meaning are uncomfortable.
That thought leads me to wonder how much the work is a version of Kant's Prolegomena of Any Future Metaphysics, establishing the ground of future discussion, or a step back from such ambition.
In continuance of asking the question of solving problems for all times, I wonder if aiming to dissolve problems does not create others. And that gets close to the role of aporia in classical philosophy.
Does the project to dissolve as many problems as possible actually do that?
Since the primitive people interpret what they hear, the difference is that one uses language and the other does not. There is, however, a difference in their form of life. More specifically, the way of life of philosophers (savages) and that of ordinary language users. The gap would be closed by philosophers not imbuing language with metaphysical meaning.
Quoting Paine
I don't think so. The assumption is that philosophical problems are grammatical problems. In some cases they are, but by treating language as the key it would seem that Wittgenstein is among the savages.
That image of operating outside the boundaries can be found in a sibling remark to 195:
Quoting Philosophical Investigations, 251
Both 195 and 251 question what we learn through experience. But is the comparison between 'pictures' and 'possibility' in 195 equivalent to the question of what is an "empirical" proposition in 251? To say so looks like two means of negation masquerading as a positive. And that observation of 251 is germane in the part of the text where "identity" comes under interrogation.
In any case, the theme of being on the outside is continued nearby in:
Not what you want to hear riding the gurney.
I don't know, sorry.
I don't find evidence in the linked paper that Hacker limits his interpretation of Wittgenstein to propositions. His interpretation might be grounded on the problems and analysis of language, more generally, or of concepts, but I don't believe he limits it to propositions. This would be consistent with passages such as:
Quoting Fooloso4
Not propositional, but still conceptual. I read those passages as relevant to his remarks on private language. Regarding their conceptual nature, consider PPF 160, 183, 191, 221, 222.
Quoting Fooloso4
I agree insofar as any putatitve non-conceptual parts of our private experience must be passed over in silence.
I heard this lecture as a podcast yesterday.
I think it gives a good basic understanding of Wittgenstein's philosophy. Some of the earlier posters in the discussion who expressed skepticism towards W's philosophy might find some value in it. It might also help to answer @Banno's earlier question succinctly, when he asked:
Quoting Banno
At around 13:00, the video states that in his later work, instead of treating language as a picture, [Wittgenstein] wants to treat language as a game.
I'm not sure if this tells us what happened to the picture theory, but it is at least a succinct account of Wittgenstein's different approach in his later work.
Does Hacker discuss Wittgenstein on what might be called conceptual seeing - seeing as, seeing aspects, seeing connections?
Compare this to 133:
Physician heel thyself.
I wasn’t talking about Hacker here. You said:
Quoting Fooloso4
I’m saying that those aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy are not propositional but still conceptual. This is even evident in some of the sections you quoted, e.g. “A conceptual investigation”.
Sorry, I did not catch that you were shifting gears. The passages you cited are helpful in making the case for conceptual seeing. It cuts across the neat division between seeing and saying in the Tractatus.
I would appreciate it if someone could explain to me what David Pears means in that paragraph.
In addition, Pears says: The difficult thing is to understand the status of Wittgenstein's conclusion, and the argument which was supposed to establish it. The problem raised by the argument is that he treats every step in it, including its conclusions, as absolutely necessary, without treating them as empty tautologies.
Why does David see empty tautologies as a problem in an argument?
4.46
Among the possible groups of truth conditions there are two extreme cases.
In one of these cases the proposition is true for all the truth-possibilities of the elementary
propositions. We say that the truth-conditions are tautological.
In the second case the proposition is false for all the truth-possibilities: the truth-conditions
are contradictory.
In the first case we call the proposition a tautology; in the second, a contradiction.
4.461
Propositions show what they say: tautologies and contradictions show that they say nothing.
A tautology has no truth-conditions, since it is unconditionally true: and a contradiction is
true on no condition.
Tautologies and contradictions lack sense.
(Like a point from which two arrows go out in opposite directions to one another.)
(For example, I know nothing about the weather when I know that it is either raining
or not raining.)
4.462
Tautologies and contradictions are not pictures of reality. They do not represent any possible situations. For the former admit all possible situations, and latter none.
In a tautology the conditions of agreement with the world—the representational relations—cancel one another, so that it does not stand in any representational relation to reality.
Thanks @Fooloso4. It is now clear to me what tautology is about.
Quoting Fooloso4
OK. But why does David Pears states that those tautologies are empty? Because it seems to me that the problem with Pears is the emptiness of a tautology and not the nature of this condition itself. This is why I was wondering what an empty tautology actually means.
For me, when something is empty it means that have zero substantial significance.
Because they do not tell us what is the case. They do not tell us anything about the world. It has no factual content.
Quoting javi2541997
It has been a long time since I read Pears. I don't know specifically what argument he is referring to, but in general I think he is getting at the following. From the Tractatus:
In other words, propositions about the world are contingent. They are not necessarily true or false. The problem is that if a proposition is not empty, that is, if it tells us something about the world, how can it be absolutely necessary?
Added:
Perhaps he is referring to the formal or logical structure that underlies the world that makes it possible to say anything about it. The one to one correspondence between simple elementary names and simple elementary objects.
Quoting javi2541997
A proposition is a statement about the world; it tells you how things are or could be. They have content that describes a possible state of affairs.
Consider:
"It is raining"
"This filament has conductive properties"
"The car is black"
A tautology, however, has no content because it doesn't tell you anything about the world.
Consider:
"It's either raining or it's not raining"
Etc
This is empty of content, as it tells you nothing about the world.
Clear and good example. I am starting to understand the role of tautologies better. I can conclude that tautology can't help me to achieve the truth in a philosophical analysis and this is why it is rejected by logicians and critical thinkers, generally. By the way, thanks for commenting and helping me out with the understanding of tautologies.
Tautologies aren't so much "rejected", as they have their place. A statement is a tautology if it's always true. It tells you what's the case in every "possible world".
Consider:
"The ball is either red or not red"
But, a sound deductive argument is also a tautology.
Consider:
1) "All humans are mortal"
2) "Socrates is a human"
3) "Socrates is mortal"
Or more specifically, why did Pears argue that 'Tractatus' had empty tautologies, negatively? Following the chapter of his book, around pages 58 to 64, he even states that Wittgenstein never realised that his philosophical analysis on factual language holds some empty tautologies...
Quoting 013zen
I agree, but Pears says:
Maybe it is me, but I think that David Pears sees empty tautologies as a weak statement in an argument.
The proposition has no factual content, meaning it tells you nothing about the world or how it could exist. A fact describes a possible state of affairs.
"Material object" is a tautology insofar as an "object" is only ever material; the concept of material is contained within the concept "object" in the same way "mortal" is contained in the concept "human".
Pears is calling attention to the fact that Wittgenstein uses tautologies, which he himself refers to as "sense less" in that they lack "sense", which is a possible state of affairs. They should therefore say nothing, and yet Wittgenstein seems to take them to be saying something. This is a common issue in the tractatus. How to make sense of the fact that Wittgenstein uses statements which he himself takes as lacking sense.
Until then. Nice to meet you and welcome to TPF! :up:
I'm glad that I could help, even a little! But, for sure; let's think through it together. ??
Put differently, what is important for Wittgenstein in the Tractatus is not what we say, but how we say it.
This sheds light on the following:
Tautologies lack sense. They do not represent any one possible situation because they admit all possible situations.
This may leave us wondering why as part of the the symbolism they are not nonsense. Circling back:
3.3421
And what is this essence? The logical structure that underlies both the world and language. The logical grammar or syntax he advocates is not then simply a matter of saying things in a way so as to avoid error, it is the logic of the world that makes possible saying anything about the world at all.
Hello again, folks. Keeping on the book by David Pears. Chapter three is called 'pictures and logic', and I would like to share some thinking and points with you. Pears states: 'One more step is needed to complete Wittgenstein's task. If the limit of language is to include all factual proposition, the thesis of extensionality must be applied to elementary propositions. For if he applied it to non-elementary propositions, he would leave out some of the possible thruth-functions, because the base to which it was applied would be incompletely analysed. However, it is not this neutrality which proves that he was not a positivist of destruction type.
Thoughts?
Pears also states: Language would be then any language, the metaphysical subject would be the spirit, and Idealism would lie on the route from Solipsism to Realism. Z came from Russell, and X came from Frege. What was the origin of Y, the so-called picture theory of prepositions? Wittgenstein's explanation of logical neccesity, which depends on Y, still to be given.
What does Y is about? To present truths in logical space? Or does David Pears refers to X and Y logical structure?
Without having Pears' book in front of me, there is too little here for me to comment.
Finishing today's chapter, David Pears concludes with something pretty interesting. He states: It may seem surprising that logic should reveal the essential structure of reality if the prepositions of logic are tautologies, and lack factual sense. How can something which is empty have content? But Wittgenstein does not suggest that tautologies say anything about reality. He suggests that when certain factual propositions are combined, a tautology is produced.
It reminds me of when you explained to me that tautolgies have their place, and they are not rejected at all. At least Wittgenstein shows respect for this analytical position, but let's see what he thought when he changed his idea after the Tractatus.
Glad to help. If you have questions about Wittgenstein rather than Pears I will try to help.
You've touched on a lot and I can't answer it all concisely especially not in regards to Pears, but I can talk a little about this point and see if it helps.
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein gives a picture theory of language. But, picture theories were not original to Wittgenstein. During the late 1800 early 1900 there was serious debate in science and philosophy regarding what exactly we are up to when we develop a theory, and more importantly to what extent science can give us knowledge about the world.
Do our theories tell us anything about the world, or are they simply useful tools we invent that prove useful (pragmatic).
See, Hume stated we can only have understanding of the world by couching that knowledge on our experiences. I literally can't understand something that is totally unlike anything I've experienced before. The more something resembles past experience, the more I can understand it by developing a theory which explains it.
Consider this:
You have a bag with a random assortment of colored balls.
If I asked what color ball do you think you'll pick out next?
You wouldn't know.
You reach in and take a ball out one at a time, noting the color:
Red, red, red, blue, red, red, blue
Now, if I asked, what would you say?
Perhaps red? Maybe you say about 70% chance red 30% blue?
Hume said we can only describe reality, though and our theories merely call many facts under a single header (like Newton did with gravity). From Hume, Comte developed positivism, which basically said we scientific theories can only describe positive facts about the world, that is those based on experience alone. Any theories using "hidden forces" are to be discard.
This ultimately lead to Ostwald and Mach to deny the existence of Atoms because there was no experience proving their existence. Fictions like Atoms that make up reality might be useful on paper but they don't belong in science.
This lead thinkers like Boltzmann and Hertz to develop a different concept a theory. The picture theory which essentially states that theories are pictures we invent that are based on both experience and logic which are ultimately accepted or rejected based on how successful they are.
Logic determines their validity just as much as experience.
Ultimately these pictures are only one of many ways we can represent reality, as opposed to being constrained by experience.
This flexibility allowed Boltzmann to further develop and utilize the theory of Atoms for explaining the expansion of gasses. But, many scientists rejected the idea because they were positivists.
Wittgenstein develops his own picture theory, but starts from a positivist beginning which he got from Russell and Russell got from Mach. But then he shows how you can introduce logic and arrive at theories like Boltzmann and Hertz.
But, because of the beginning many early thinkers took Wittgenstein to be a positivist. Really he was a picture theory sympathizer. He believed like Boltzmann and Mach that our pictures can always change as more elements are added. And logic coupled with reality leads the way.
"I don't believe I have ever invented a line of thinking, I have always taken one over from someone else. I have simply straightaway seized on it with enthusiasm for my work of clarification. That is how Boltzmann, Hertz, Schopenhauer, Frege, Russell, Kraus, Loos, Weininger, Spengler, Sraffa have influenced me."
-Wittgenstein
Sorry if this was unhelpful or not clear.
It was very helpful and pleasant to read. You explain yourself correctly.
I now understand why some states that Wittgenstein was a sympathiser of positivism. You quoted some other authors who appeared in David Pears' book as well. Before joining this thread, I was completely lost. I think that one of the main 'issues' about Wittgenstein and his disciples is how they express themselves. They use a complex vocabulary which seems to only be sent to their 'Vienna' group. They make premises and arguments which are interesting, but nonetheless are difficult to follow if someone - like me - is not used to logical language.
On the other hand, I don't consider Wittgenstein 'senseless' (I read this adjective about him a lot) but complex to follow.
This is where I miss Austin a bit... and his 'ordinary language'
Thanks to you and your example, I can understand what is about his 'pictures and logic'
It's difficult because there is a difference between "nonsense" and "senseless" in Wittgenstein.
Consider:
"Purple vocabulary is very car"
Vs
"A triangle is either a right triangle or not"
The first has no context in which it's meaningful. It's totally meaningless. The second is always true (tautology) and it's simply unclear when you'd utter it.
Wittgenstein calls his own work senseless because he is borrowing Frege's concept of "elucidations".
Frege determined that propositions can feature words which are in the wrong "logical position" but nonetheless aren't totally meaningless.
Consider:
The dog is black
And
The concept horse is a concept that's easily understood
The first example Frege says is an object "dog" connected with a concept "black". Object and concept therefore play different logical roles. An object cannot be used as a concept and a concept cannot be used as an object.
But, in the second example is seems we're using a concept as an object... "The concept horse". Frege says, in fact, "the concept horse" cannot logically be a concept, and must be being used in a different way logically than say:
"Tom understands the concept horse"
Language obfuscates the logical structure. Making it seem like a concept is being used as an object.
Frege thought you could only show this not say it. Just like I've tried to show using different examples. These kinds of examples are elucidations which show how a word is being used even if the proposition itself is incapable of exact analysis.
Frege thought elucidations were a way we could come to understand one another, but ultimately are to be discarded as incorrect.
Like how we explain electricity via water analogy.
Consider:
Watts = Amps x Volts
What's an Amp? What about a volt? A watt??
Well it's like water in a tube:
Amps is like the the rate at which the water flows through the tube
Volts is like the pressure of the water in the tube
Watts is like how much water is passed through the pipe over an hour.
Now, electricity isn't water. What I just said is properly speaking incorrect and not true, but it helps you understand the words "amp" "watt" "volt", and once you understand them you can discard with the elucidations I provided. They only serve the role of acquainting you with the words being used. Ultimately elucidations are to be discarded.
Hence the final lines of the tractatus.
Look! Continuing with the reading of Pears, another type of tautology emerges, referred to as 'deep.' David Pears states,'What is reflected in the mirror of language is reflected in the mirror of language,' or more simply, 'there is what there is.' These are deep tautologies because there is something underlying them, attempting to emerge and find a different expression.
It is fascinating; language may be defined or investigated empirically, and according to Pears, the former is a necessary truth, and the latter is a contingent truth.
Before ending this chapter, I would like to quote a beautiful phrase of Wittgenstein:
Enough of tautologies! :grin:
In his notebooks, Wittgenstein referred to a song as "... A kind of tautology, it is complete in itself; it satisfies itself".
This shows that Wittgenstein had a very particular understanding of tautologies. That there could be different kinds. In language and logic, tautologies may have no content, they don't "say" anything, rather they "show" it. They show how symbols an words are to be used (their internal structure), and they show they are complete without relying on any facts to determine them.
But, a beautiful song is itself complete in a way. When you listen to it, it shows itself to be beautiful without any recourse to the facts. I think this is why Wittgenstein compared logical propositions to those of ethical ones. The former is formed of tautologies as we typically refer to them, but Wittgenstein seemed to hold the latter was it's own kind of tautology. That something is important to us shows itself in how we view it, talk about it, regard it without recourse to any facts in the same way a tautology in language and logic does. This is why the happy man can see the same world in a different light than the unhappy man. Just how I can be moved to tears by a song, and regard it as perfectly constructed needing no improvement, while another finds it less than ideal. Ethics and aesthetics are one. And while senseless these are the deepest problems we know.