Wittgenstein's Toolbox
Wittgenstein’s Toolbox is my way of talking about how Wittgenstein does philosophy in his later thinking. He isn’t trying to build grand theories. Instead, he’s offering practical tools for clearing up the confusions that keep showing up in our philosophy. This doesn’t mean his thinking is never theoretical. He’s very aware of the urge to explain things by inventing a theory, and he’ll sometimes sketch a simple model to show what’s tempting about a particular theoretical move, but he’ll test it against how we actually use our words in everyday life. There’s a continuity with the Tractatus i.e., philosophy should aim for clarity, and that many philosophical headaches come from statements that look like plain statements of fact but don’t really work the way we think. However, his later work shifts the focus. He isn’t saying every philosophical problem is just language in the sense that we're doing wordplay. He’s saying many problems are really problems about our concepts, and you can spot the trouble by paying close attention to how our words function in real situations. In On Certainty he pushes this further by arguing that doubt and inquiry only make sense against a backdrop of things we take for granted, the hinges that hold our practices in place. In this thread I’m going to lay out what I think are the main tools in that toolbox and explain what each is for.
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When a philosophical question starts to feel deep, Wittgenstein’s first move is often to stop, and look at how the words are actually used in ordinary situations. Instead of guessing that there must be some hidden thing the word refers to, he'll point out what we already know how to do with it.
What it’s for, it’s for breaking the spell of abstract pictures. A lot of philosophy starts when we take a word that works perfectly well in our everyday life, remove it from its normal setting, and then demand an explanation of what it really is.
Think about the word game. Most people assume that a concept must have a strict definition. So, they ask, what is the essence of a game? But if you actually look, you find board games, card games, Olympic games, children’s games, solitaire, chess, tag, etc. There isn’t one feature shared by every case, and that discovery isn’t a defect. It’s a reminder that our concepts don’t always work by strict definitions, they often work by overlapping similarities (family resemblances).
Take the philosophical example, “What is meaning?” It can sound like we’re asking for a hidden object, a mental item, or a thing attached to a word. Wittgenstein’s move is to say, don’t posit anything yet. Instead look at what we call meaning in real life. We explain a word, we correct someone’s misuse, we translate, we follow an instruction, we misunderstand and then get it right, we use a word in a new context and people either accept it or reject it. The meaning isn’t a ghostly extra. It shows itself in the role the expression plays in our shared practices (forms of life).
If you want a quick test for whether “look and see” is needed, try the following: when you ask your question, do you immediately feel pulled toward a hidden mechanism or a deep entity that must be behind the scenes? If you do, you’re probably in Wittgenstein’s territory. The next tool, the grammar check, is what he uses to say exactly where the question goes off the rails.
You take a philosophical statement, and ask, what kind of sentence is this supposed to be? Is it reporting a fact, giving a rule, expressing a commitment, giving a standard, drawing an inference, or doing something else? Sometimes philosophical trouble comes from treating one kind of sentence as if it were another.
It’s for spotting when a statement only looks like it’s saying something, when it’s really the result of our words getting detached from the contexts or settings that give them their point. You can also think of it as a way of asking, what would count as understanding this claim? What would we do with it?
For example, suppose someone says, “I’ve got a pain in my foot.” That’s not something you normally verify by looking for evidence in the same way you’d verify “there’s a nail in my shoe.” You might ask where it hurts, or whether it’s sharp or dull, or you might offer help. Imagine someone says, “I know I’m in pain because I observed it.” Such a sentence has the wrong grammar. It treats pain like an object discovered by inner observation, and it makes the person’s relation to their pain look like the relation to something external. You can feel the temptation, but the sentence is already sliding into a picture that isn’t expressing how we actually talk and respond.
Consider a philosophical example, “I know the external world exists.” It looks like an ordinary knowledge claim, like “I know there’s a tree in the yard.” But if you run a grammar check, you’ll ask, what would count as checking it, what would count as correcting it, what would count as evidence for or against it, and what would it mean to doubt it in the ordinary ways we doubt things? This is exactly where On Certainty starts to bite. Wittgenstein’s point isn’t that the proposition is false. It’s that in many contexts it doesn’t behave like a normal empirical claim at all. It’s closer to something that stands fast in the background of inquiry, the kind of thing you don’t typically confirm because it’s part of what makes confirmation possible.
A grammar check asks whether we’re trying to do philosophy with a statement/proposition that’s outside it's normal use. It looks like a straightforward statement of fact, but it’s functioning more like a rule, or a framework commitment, or a hinge. And once you see that, much of the philosophical pressure is dissipates.
A language game is the use of words inside a practice, viz., asking, answering, commanding, measuring, accusing, thanking, joking, praying, bargaining, teaching a child, doing math, doing science. The point isn’t that language is a literal game. It's that meaning lives in use, and use lives in activities with rules, training, and standards of correction.
It’s for resisting the idea that words get their meaning by pointing to hidden objects, inner items, or metaphysical entities. It helps with a very common philosophical error, i.e., taking a word out of one setting or context where it works perfectly well, then forcing it into another setting or context, and getting a mystery as the result.
For example, think about the word know. In one language game, “I know” is basically a way of saying, “I’m sure (like a conviction),” or “stop worrying,” or “I’ve got this.” In another game, “I know” is a claim that you can back up with good reasons or evidence, “How do you know?” Mixing these games can cause confusion. A person might say, “I know my spouse loves me,” and if you treat that as if it’s the same kind of claim as “I know there’s a cafe on that corner,” you’ll start demanding the wrong kind of evidence and acting as if intimacy is an empirical hypothesis. The trouble isn’t with love; it’s with forcing the sentence into the wrong game.
A skeptic says, “How do you know you’re not dreaming right now?” That question can be asked in some special contexts, like waking up disoriented, or in a movie, or as a thought experiment. But global skepticism tries to make the question applicable everywhere. Wittgenstein’s reply isn’t “here’s the proof that you’re not dreaming.” His reply is, what language game are you playing when you raise that doubt? What would count as settling it? What would it look like to live with that doubt as a genuine doubt? In On Certainty the punchline is that radical doubt isn’t the purest form of inquiry, it’s often a sign that the words doubt, know, and certain have been pulled from the very practices that give them their sense.
This is also where you see why “it’s all about language” is misleading. Language games aren’t just words. They’re words plus action, viz., training, correction, agreement in judgment, shared reactions, the whole backdrop of human life in which our expressions make sense.
Here's the test, when you feel a philosophical problem coming on, ask yourself, “What would people actually do with this sentence in real life?” If the answer is "nothing," or “I can’t picture it,” that’s a red flag. You may be looking at a propostion that’s been detached from any workable language game.
A criterion isn’t just evidence. It’s what we count as settling, or at least strongly supporting, a claim in a given context. Criteria are built into how we use words. They are seen in what we count as a justified assertion, what we count as a misunderstanding, and what we count as a correction.
Criteria helps to avoid two extremes that generate philosophical problems. One extreme treats everything as a private inner thing that only the subject can access. The other extreme treats everything as if it must be checked by scientific measurement. Wittgenstein’s point is that our everyday concepts already have standards of application, and those standards aren’t mysterious. They’re seen in how we teach, learn, correct, and respond.
For example, take “He’s angry.” How do you know? You don’t usually run a brain scan. You point to tone, posture, what he says, what he does, the context, how he reacts when challenged. Those are the criteria in the language game. Notice the philosophical temptation, “But how do you know he’s really angry inside?” The criteria tool helps you see the problem. The concept angry isn’t mainly a label for a hidden object in an inner theater. It’s a concept with public criteria that we’ve learned to apply in everyday life. That doesn’t deny our inner life, it keeps the concept anchored to the practices that give it its use.
Another example, other minds. “How do you know anyone else is conscious?” Philosophers sometimes treat consciousness as a private object that can only be directly inspected by the subject. Then everyone else becomes an inference from behavior, and the whole thing starts to feel fragile. Wittgenstein’s criteria move isn’t to deny the inner life. It’s to remind us that the grammar of our mental concepts is tied to criteria in our shared practices. If you strip the criteria, the words stop having a stable use.
Now connect that to On Certainty. Skeptical doubt often asks for a kind of certainty that our everyday knowledge claims aren’t designed to deliver. Sometimes it demands absolute certainty, certainty in the sense of logical or moral necessity. Sometimes it demands an unrealistic epistemic certainty, certainty that would have to be defeater proof in every imaginable context. Wittgenstein’s point is that ordinary inquiry doesn’t run on that standard. More importantly, the background that makes inquiry possible isn’t usually a set of super claims that have been proven to the highest degree. It’s what I’d call hinge certainty, the arational bedrock that stands fast so that doubt and justification can get traction. If you try to doubt everything at once, you don’t achieve a purer form of inquiry, you undermine the very criteria that make doubt, check, and justify intelligible.
A quick question you can use whenever things get a bit abstract is: “What would count as settling this philosophical problem in this context?” If no answer is forthcoming then the question is probably detached from any practice, that’s a sign you’re not facing some deep metaphysical puzzle. You’re facing a concept being asked to do work it can’t do.
Thank you for your new Thread.
A thought that I have had for a while about Wittgenstein.
If a person said “I am in xyz” and did nothing, the word “xyz” would be meaningless to any observer of that person. In practice, the word only has a use within a language game if that word “xyz” refers to what they objectively do, not what they are subjectively thinking.
However, there is a danger in Wittgenstein's practical approach which dismisses any attempt at a deeper philosophical understanding. It could be called “Cargo Cult Thinking”, where an observed behaviour is imitated rather than trying to make any attempt to understand the cause of such behaviour, difficult that might be.
Cargo Cult Thinking, because when a person says “I am in xyz”, for Wittgenstein, the word “xyz” refers to what they objectively do, it does not refer to the cause of why they said “I am in xyz” in the first place.
I do have a question: How does the grammer check relate to the language game. My intuition is to say you need to identify the language game before you ran the grammar check - or differently put: isn't the grammar just the structure of the language game? (I'll admit I find it confusing that he chose the term grammar.)
Language can be philosophically misleading as language uses figures of speech which within philosophical investigation should not be taken literally. For example, the expression “I see your pain” is a figure of speech which does not literally mean that I am literally able to see your pain.
Language uses figures of speech, and philosophy must be able to distinguish when an expression is being used as a figure of speech or literally.
As the expression “I’ve got a pain in my foot” suggests that pain is an object external to “I”, it is being used as a figure of speech rather than literally. A more literal expression would be “I am the pain in my foot”
As you say, the philosopher must also determine whether an expression is being used as an empirical observation or as a performative utterance, as described by JL Austin. For example, if I say “the postbox is red”, am I making an empirical observation that the postbox is red rather than blue, or am I making a performative utterance that the postbox, regardless of its true nature, is red. It may be that the true nature of the postbox is purple, but even so, within the language game It shall henceforth be called “red”. This is the question as to how names are initially attached to objects. Is the colour of the postbox red, rouge or rot?
When I make the statement that “the external world exists”, is this an empirical observation or a performative utterance that establishes the framework, the bedrock, on which everything else I say about the external world is founded. Once I have made the performative utterance that the external world exists, then I can talk about the mountains, elephants and oceans that reside within this external world.
Philosophy must distinguish between figures of speech such as “I’ve got a pain in my foot” and the more literal expression “ I am the pain in my foot”.
Philosophy must also distinguish between empirical expressions such as “the postbox is red” and performative utterances such as “the postbox is red”.
In this sense, as regards grammar, what Wittgenstein is pointing out is common sense.
Errors will always occur in understanding, and the meaning is use model works by continued interaction within a community with error correction and even changes within words over time. That is expected. That is to say, Wittgenstein is not suggesting that every time people speak, the word usage is consistent, but instead that it is an ongoing process.
Even assuming the meaning is use model is completely flawed and that we instead gain meaning from reference to mental states, you still have errors, where the Cargo Cult would still be going about things in the wrong way. That is to say, under no model is it suggested that people always get meaning correct.
The question then becomes how do we go about our correction? Per Wittgenstein, use is the standard of correctness, and this use will define meaning. What you have pointed out is a mismatch in usage of terms, but that is the result of lack of correction within the community. It remains possible that this mismatch will be corrected, although your example seperated the communities of users and left each community with differing meaning of words, which would mean at this point they have differing langauges. The point though is potential of correction through usage.
Per a mental reference model, where meaning is attached to what mental images were within the solidier's mind, there would be no correction through comparisons of mental processes. The soldiers could not correct the islander's meaning of the terms by opening their brains and comparing them to the brains of the islanders to show them that they were wrong. The point is the lack of potential correction by reliance upon this model.
One issue that I think comes up very often in these discussions is the thought that Wittgenstein is trying to deny the mental states. He's not. The question regarding them is whether they underwrite the meaning to the terms and whether they offer explanatory power in terms of what is meant.
This is the critical line and hundreds of posts have centered around this confusion. This comment is often read to mean "there is no ghostly extra," asserting a metaphysical claim about what might exist in one's mind. That then results in accusations that the internal state is denied and that we are all p-zombies speaking in the Chinese Room. The point is that meaning does not rely upon the ghostly extra, but that is not to suggest anyone is saying anything about what that ghostly extra might be or not be. The point is that it's ghostly, offers no explanatory value, and cannot be meaningfully discussed. It's beyond what philosophy can treat as explanatory for meaning.
You're welcome.
Thanks for your thoughts and the pushback. I think you’re right to be concerned about “just copying the surface,” but I don’t think that’s what Wittgenstein is recommending, and I also don’t think it’s right to say that a word only has use if it “refers to what they objectively do” as opposed to what they’re thinking.
First, if someone says, “I am in xyz” and there’s no shared life around xyz, no training, no examples, no circumstances where we’d say, “this is when you use that word,” then yes, it’s meaningless. But that’s not because nothing inner matters. It’s because there are no criteria for the word’s use. In most real cases the utterance itself is already part of the language game. “I’m in pain,” “I’m anxious,” “I’m confused,” “I’m remembering something,” can be perfectly intelligible even if the person is sitting still and doing very little. We might doubt sincerity in certtain contexts, but we still understand what they’re saying, because we’ve learned how those words function across a wide range of situations.
Now the cargo cult worry. Here’s the key point Wittgenstein is trying to keep us from blurring: criteria versus causes.
Criteria answer: “What would count as correctly applying this word here?”
Causes answer: “What produced this state or this behavior?”
Wittgenstein’s methods are mostly about the first question. He’s saying: don’t treat a conceptual question as if it were already a causal one. That’s not a dismissal of deeper understanding; it’s a refusal to do pseudo-science in the armchair. If you want causes, psychology, neuroscience, medicine, and ordinary explanation are exactly where you should go. Nothing in Wittgenstein forbids that. He simply resists the move where we take a word, imagine it must name a hidden inner object, then demand a deeper explanation, which is just a picture we’ve smuggled in.
And notice, if anything, the cargo cult story is a warning about mixing up criteria and causes. The islanders copied what looked like the criteria for planes arriving, towers, headphones, rituals, but they mistook those things for the cause. Wittgenstein’s point is closer to don’t confuse the signs and rules that make a practice intelligible with the mechanisms that produce certain outcomes.
I would say that Wittgenstein isn’t telling us to imitate behavior instead of understanding it. He’s telling us to get clear on what we mean first, what would count as using the word correctly, and only then go looking for causes where causes are the right question. That’s not shallow. It’s often the difference between a real inquiry and a philosophical mirage.
Quoting RussellA
You’re interpreting what Wittgenstein is doing as a behaviorist reduction, which treats outward regularities as suffficient and ignores inner causes. You’re assuming that unless we can point to a hidden causal mechanism behind language use, we’ve settled for a shallow imitation of understanding. But Wittgenstein rejects both the idea of hidden causes and behaviorism.
For Wittgenstein, ‘Xyz” doesn’t refer to a behavior, and it doesn’t refer to a cause. The intelligibility of “xyz” as a mood, a stance, a rule, or a commitment doesnt depend on a single episode of observable behavior, but on its place in a web of possible moves: what counts as evidence for being in xyz, what counts as pretending, what counts as withdrawing the claim, what follows from it, what licenses it. Someone can intelligibly say “I am in pain” or “I am in love” while lying motionless, because the grammar of those expressions doesnt require bodily movement.
Analyzing “I am in xyz” at a psychological or neurological level wont tell you what “xyz” means. It presupposes that you already grasp the concept. A brain scan might explain why someone reports pain, but it doesnt teach you what pain is, or how the word “pain” functions in our lives. To think otherwise is to confuse an explanation within a practice with an explanation of the practice.
Thanks.
Excellent question, and I think your intuition is basically right, with a minor adjustment.
In practice, grammar check and language game don't refer to a fixed order. They’re two angles on the same problem, andoften we bounce back and forth between them.
The language game question is, what human activity is this expression part of? What’s going on here, asking, warning, promising, measuring, doubting, joking, praying, reporting, teaching, etc.
As for the grammar check question, given that activity, what role does this statement have, and what counts as a sensible move with it? What would count as evidence, correction, a challenge, a misuse.
So yes, you can say that grammar is the structure of the language game, in the sense that it’s the rules of use that make the game the game. But grammar check is the method of testing whether we’ve assigned the sentence the right role, or whether we’re placing it into the wrong game.
To see the difference, take the sentence, “I know I’m in pain.”
If we treat it as an ordinary knowledge claim, we’ll start asking for evidence or some verification. That’s one language game, and the grammar of know there are checks and defeaters.
But when “I’m in pain” is used as an avowal, or a cry, or a call for help, it’s a different language game. The grammar isn’t “I inspected an inner object and concluded,” it’s closer to “this is how we express pain, and this is how others respond.”
The language game helps you locate the setting. The grammar check helps you see whether the sentence is being shoved into a different kind of sentence than it really is. That’s why Wittgenstein can start from either end: sometimes you identify the game first, sometimes you notice a grammatical problem first and then realize you’ve got the wrong game.
On the term grammar, I agree it’s confusing at first. He uses it because he’s talking about rules of use, not about inner meanings or hidden entities. He could’ve called it “the logic of our concepts” or “the rules of the practice,” but “grammar” keeps reminding you that the norms are public in the sense that they’re learnable, teachable, and correctable within a practice, not private mental objects.
If I had to compress it into one line for the thread, I'd say language games are the activities, grammar is the rulebook, and the grammar check is how you catch yourself when you’re using the incorrect rulebook.
Quoting Sam26
But is this absence of criteria for a word ever a thing for Wittgenstein except when we look for causes and explanations? Are criteria a precondition that must be in place before meaningful use can occur, as though criteria were a kind of background rulebook we consult? Do criteria hover behind use, or are they articulated and stabilized in and through use itself? Is there a moment when we first check whether criteria exist and then allow the word to mean something?
Is the mistake the Islanders made that they mistook criteria for causes, or does the mistake lies in assuming that what needs explaining is why the practice works at all, as if intelligibility itself required a causal foundation? Do inner states and causes have meaning once we see how they are governed by criteria, or is Wittgenstein trying to show us that pursuing inner causes’ , even when preceded by establishing criteria, leaves meaning behind?
Yes, I’d agree with most of that, but I’d add bit more, so it doesn’t overreach.
I agree with the central point, i.e., people hear “there’s no ghostly extra” as a metaphysical denial of inner experience, and that’s a mistake. A better interpretation is methodological and grammatical, viz., whatever those inner things are (probably consciousness itself), they aren’t what gives the word its meaning and they can’t serve as the meaning fixing item we were tempted to posit. So, Wittgenstein isn’t trying to turn us into p-zombies. He’s trying to stop us from treating meaning as if it were an object in our own private theater.
I also agree with the claim that the “ghostly extra” provides no explanatory value for meaning. If you say, “The word means X because I have a private inner item that guarantees it,” then you haven’t explained anything, because you’ve introduced something that doesn’t have public criteria of correctness. You can’t distinguish “seems right to me” from “is right,” and that’s exactly where the philosophical mirage begins.
The one part I’d adjust is the phrase “cannot be meaningfully discussed.” Wittgenstein does talk about inner life, sensations, intentions, imagining, and so on. He’s not banning discussion of the inner. What he’s saying is more specific, viz., inner accompaniments can’t play the role philosophers sometimes assign them, the role of a private object that fixes meaning all by itself, independent of use, criteria, and practice. In that sense, yes, it’s beyond what philosophy can treat as an explanation of meaning.
I’d endorse the comment with a small refinement, it’s not “don’t talk about inner states,” it’s “don’t treat inner states as the foundation that makes meaning possible.” That keeps the point sharp, and it avoids the zombie/Chinese Room detour.
The builder says to the assistant “bring me a slab”, which is part of a Language Game and whose meaning is in a particular Form of Life. On a construction site, “slab” refers to a concrete block, whereas in a bakery, “slab” may refer to a chocolate cake.
On this construction site, I look at a slab that has been named within the language game “slab”, and in my mind I have the thought of both a slab and its name “slab”. Even though I cannot look into the builder’s mind, I assume that when he looks at the same slab in his mind is also the thought of the slab and its name “slab”.
As you say, Wittgenstein does not deny mental states of the builder, because if there were no mental states then clearly there would be no language. This means that language must be underwritten by mental states. It is inconceivable that there could be “slabs” in language in the absence of any thought of slabs. I see a slab, think of slabs and think of its name “slab”.
Language by itself has no causal power, in that the mere fact of the builder saying “bring me a slab” does not by itself cause the assistant to bring the builder a slab. In the same way that my saying to my bank manager “give me £1m” cannot cause the bank manager to give me £1m. The same problem with the Cargo Cult Thinking. The airstrip is not the cause of the planes landing, the cause is the General who wants the planes to land and needs to build an airstrip in order to do so
So what causes the assistant to bring the builder a slab if language by itself has no causal power. One can imagine the scenario where the builder says to the assistant “bring me a slab”. The assistant does nothing, upon which the builder gives him a cuff around the ear. As you say “continued interaction within a community with error correction”, and the assistant quickly learns that in order to avoid physical discomfort on hearing “bring me a slab” he must take to the builder a slab. Therefore, what does “bring me the slab” mean to the assistant? It means that in order to avoid physical discomfort he must take a slab to the builder.
As regards “meaning is use”, it is true that language by itself is meaningless and only gains meaning when being used within a Form of Life, but it is also true that the meaning of words is underpinned by the mental states of those using the language.
When I see a slab, I think of a slab and I think of its name “slab”. I know what “slab” means because I can think of a slab.
When the assistant hears “bring me a slab”, he thinks about the expression “bring me a slab” and thinks about the physical consequences if he does not take the builder a slab. The assistant knows what “bring me a slab” means because he can think about the physical consequences of not taking a slab to the builder.
Instead of assuming that a concept must be defined by one essence in all cases, Wittgenstein tells you to look at the actual cases and note how they overlap. You’ll often find similarities, crisscrossing connections, partial overlaps, and clear differences. The concept holds together, not because every case shares one core property, but because the cases resemble each other in multiple intersecting ways.
It’s for stopping the slide from “this word is important” to “this word must name one special thing.” A lot of philosophical puzzles start when we force a concept into an essence shape it wasn’t meant to fit. If we do that, we either invent a mysterious entity to serve as the essence, or we declare that ordinary use is sloppy and needs to be replaced. Wittgenstein’s wants us not to rush. Survey the different uses. Let the concept show you its structure.
Game is Wittgenstein's classic case. Board games, card games, children’s games, sports, video games, solitary games, competitive games, cooperative games. Some have winners and losers, some don’t. Some require skill, some are luck heavy. Some are played for fun, some for money, some as ritual. There’s no one trait that every game has. But there’s also no confusion in ordinary life. We learn the concept by learning a family of activities and how the word is used in each context or case.
Philosophers often confuse thiings by asking questions like, “What is the essence of knowledge?” and then they expect a definition that covers every case with strict necessity. Wittgenstein’s approach loosens that grip. Look at how know functions across uses: “I know the way home,” “I know French,” “I know he’s trustworthy,” “I know the results are significant,” “I know I left the keys on the table.” These don’t all work the same way. The criteria differ, the checks differ, and the kind of confidence involved differs. Some uses lean heavily on evidence and verification, some on competence and training, some on trust and track record. If you force them all under one essence, you’ll either flatten important differences or invent something abstract that doesn’t match how we use the word in everyday life.
This is also where my four senses of certainty matter. A philosopher may demand absolute certainty as if every “I know” is supposed to carry that weight and then conclude that knowledge is impossible. But many everyday knowledge claims aim at epistemic certainty, defeater resistant enough for the practice at hand, not invulnerable in every imaginable scenario. And in the background, there’s hinge certainty, what stands fast so that any checking and doubting can even get started. Once you see that knowledge and certainty don’t form a single uniform category, a lot of skeptical arguments lose their force, because they depend on treating all cases as if they had to meet the same standard.
A good diagnostic question here is: “Am I assuming this word must have one essence, and is that assumption doing the damage?” If yes, the family resemblance tool is usually the release.
I touch a hot stove, flinch and say “I am in pain”
There is the hidden cause, an unobservable mental state, being in pain and there is observable behaviour, flinching,
There is the Language Game “I am in pain”.
If Wittgenstein rejects both hidden causes and behaviourism, what is his foundation for the Language Game?
He doesn’t offer a “foundation” in the sense of a hidden cause or a behaviorist reduction. The language game “I’m in pain” is grounded in the practice itself, viz., how we’re trained to use it, what responses it calls for, and the public criteria that distinguish real cases from pretense or misuse within a shared form of life. Causal stories and inner experiences can be real, but they aren’t what fix the meaning.
If people had no inner feelings, then there would be no language games.
It follows that we have language games because we have inner feelings.
Therefore, if I did not have the inner feeling of xyz, there would be no language game of “I feel xyz”
Therefore, “I feel xyz” in the language game must be referring to my inner feeling of xyz.
The meaning of "I feel xyz" in the language game must be referring to my inner feeling of xyz.
We have to be careful here, because whether or not language-games are intepreted to be open or closed distinguishes two very different readings of language-games that perpetually divide Wittgenstein readers into two camps.
In open games, the choices of individuals are unconstrained and primary, such that shared rule following is the result of emergent behaviour. Many spontaneous children's games are of this sort in which the rules, if any, are made up and perpetually modified after play has proceeded. By contrast closed games are well-established institutional practices that are considered to direct or constrain individual choices in accordance with a closed rule set under the juristiction of a central authority (Chess, Tennis, Golf, etc).
The "community view" is the closed interpretation of language-games, according to which language, meaning, and rule-following are taken to be a closed set of socially normative practices that require a community of users to make sense of, and hence to sanction what is considered to be a language-game, as opposed to the isolated thoughts and actions of any given individual.
By contrast, an open interpretation of language-games sees the role of the community as being secondary and downstream from, the free and unpredicatable thoughts and actions of individuals. In which case, recognizable social practices are regarded as being descriptive of steady-state epiphenomena, rather than being the prescriptive ground for what does and does not count as a language-game.
I understand the argument, but it slides from a harmless point to a stronger conclusion that doesn’t follow. Yes, if we had no inner life, we wouldn’t have our sensation and emotion language games. But it doesn’t follow that the meaning of “I feel xyz” is fixed by a private inner object called xyz.
Two points are at work. First, dependence isn’t the same as meaning, and pain talk depends on the fact that humans feel pain, but what fixes the meaning is the expression’s role in a shared practice, when it’s appropriate to say it, what counts as sincerity or pretense, what responses it calls for, how it’s learned and corrected. Second, reference isn’t private pointing, i.e., if meaning depended on an inner ostensive definition, “this sensation is xyz,” there’d be no standard for correct use, only “it seems right to me,” and that can’t mark the difference between right and wrong application, which Witt points out.
And there’s more to the story than “inner vs behavior.” “I’m in pain” in the first person present usually functions as an avowal or expression, not as a report based on evidence, whereas “he’s in pain” is where checking and criteria show up more clearly. Those criteria aren’t just one bit of behavior either, they’re a whole pattern of life, context, history, what follows, what helps, what counts as exaggeration. So inner feelings matter, they’re part of the background, but they don’t supply the rulebook that makes the words meaningful.
And yes if there were no inner life at all, language itself would be impossible. A language game isn’t just noises plus outward motion, it presupposes creatures for whom things matter, who can be trained, who can respond, who can mean and be meant. But that point is about the conditions under which language exists, not about what gives meaning to particular expressions. Inner life makes language possible, while the meaning of our words is stabilized by their public grammar, the shared practices of use, correction, and uptake that give those words their place in our shared language life.
Quoting Sam26
I'm not at all sure that this tool is the simplest, but I agree that it is probably the most important. It seems simple, because it suggests that all we have to do is to sit back and the truth will reveal itself. But Wittgenstein also talks about the mental cramp that results when you go over the same points over and over again, thinking that you are testing an argument for flaws. But you may just be practicing a kind of self-hypnosis that prevents you from seeing properly. You need to look around you, at the context of your thought; you need to look at it from a variety of perspectives; above all, perhaps you need to avoid simplified (purified, ideal) concepts that seem to give clarity and certainty, but only do so because they are remote from the rough and tumble of actual life.
Quoting Sam26
Yes, that's what he says. But this is a case where grammar (standard sense) presents a format that makes it hard to see the grammatical (W's sense) of the two forms. It makes it very hard to take on board the difference between first and third person uses. The two pronouns often herald different use patterns, but the point is seldom noticed.
As to the accusation of behaviourism, he protests somewhere that there could not be a greater difference between pain-behaviour without pain and pain-behaviour with pain. However, sadly, mimicry, deception, exaggeration and repression are also part of the language-game - it is necessary to understand them in order to take part in the game.
Quoting Sam26
"Inner feelings" are part of the games here. We learn how to play them. Suppression of behaviours is a necessary part of social life - even non-language using animals practice it.
I wouldn’t separate these into “preliminary clarification” versus “the deeper thing,” as if clarity were just stage one and then the real philosophy starts. In Wittgenstein the “deeper” work often is the clarification, once we see that clarification isn’t tidying up definitions, it’s reorganizing our view of the field. PI 122 is a perfect statement of this, i.e., the aim is a clearer overview that lets us see connections. That’s not a mere preface to understanding, that is what understanding amounts to in many cases.
And the “primeval chaos” remark fits that too. It’s not chaos as mystical darkness, it’s the pre theoretical mess of our actual practices and reactions, the place where our pictures lose their grip and we have to find our way without a single master key. Part II’s discussion of aspect blindness is a good example, it’s a conceptual investigation into what it would be like to lack a certain capacity, and why that capacity matters for meaning, which shows that seeing here is not just passive reception, it’s bound up with our concepts and our ability to take something as something.
So yes, Wittgenstein is doing more than removing confusions. He’s changing how we look, by moving us from a theory driven picture to an overview of what's possible with our concepts, and that often involves aspect change, imagination, and a new way of seeing connections. But that “change of view” isn’t separate from the method, its Witt's method reaching its goal.
I believe that this is a complex point, which should probably be looked at more closely. When someone says "I'm in pain", often they have inspected their inner feeling and conclude "pain" is the appropriate word. However, there are other ways that we respond to pain, reflexive recoil, "ow!", etc.. Notice that there is a difference, and Wittgenstein points this out.
The further issue is how others respond to the expression. "Pain" is a simple example, one does not need to shout "I'm in pain!", the "ow!" serves the same purpose. But the expression of many other feelings won't have the same sort of response from others, being less obvious. So this is why people tend to believe that "concepts" are at play here. They think there is specific criteria that a person applies when saying "I feel happy", or "I feel angry", so the person employs a concept before making that statement. This I believe is what Wittgenstein takes exception to.
I think that what he is pointing to is that in all of our expressions of feelings, we learn in the same way that we learn to say "ow!". Instead of analyzing the exact feeling, and deciding on the word which applies, we simply respond to the circumstances with the word that we've learned for that type of situation. And we learn by watching others. If something good happens, I say "I am happy", I don't analyze how I'm feeling, and decide that happy is the right word. When something bad happens I say I am said. Analyzing your feelings to apply a concept is what you learn from a psychologist.
Quoting Sam26
The point here is that there is no "concept" of game. And the larger point is that the idea of "concepts" is generally misleading. It's not a real description of how language works. A word gets a broad family of usage, but the word cannot be said to have a concept. However, we might attempt to create a concept by applying boundaries to usage. So the important point is that concepts are not a natural part of our language, serving to guide our word usage, they are something we attempt to create artificially by applying boundaries, rules of usage, criteria etc..
This points to the dichotomy indicated by @sime. The application of boundaries and rules, creates concepts, but this is not the natural way of language evolution. Thinking of "rules' in this way, as some top-down authority which the community holds over the individual, can be very misleading.
Look at the example above, of how we learn the expressions for feelings, like "ow!". By watching others, we learn how to express our feelings in specific situations. And we mimic what we've seen. You might call this 'learning a rule', but at the basic level, it's not a matter of community authority. Instead, it's a matter of choosing to behave in a way similar to others. That will, or desire to behave like the others, provides the "natural" base. Then, the training in boundaries, grammar, rules, and the formal education of '"concepts", is capable of taking advantage of this fundamental attitude, the desire to behave like the others.
You also say Wittgenstein rejects concepts, but that only works if concept means a private mental thing we consult before we speak. That isn’t Wittgenstein’s view. He relies on concepts in the public sense, the grammar of a word, what counts as using it correctly, what counts as a mistake, and what follows from it. If you deny concepts in that sense, you’re denying the very thing he’s investigating.
The same point shows up in the game example. Wittgenstein isn’t saying there is no concept of game. He’s saying there’s no single essence of game. He uses game to point out that a concept can be held together by family resemblance rather than a strict definition. Saying “there is no concept” disregards his point and replaces it with something he never claims.
Finally, your picture collapses normativity into imitation. “Choosing to behave like others” explains copying, not rule following. Rule following requires the distinction between what seems right and what is right, between correct and incorrect moves. That distinction shows itself in training and correction.
So, the point is simple. Inner feelings make these language games possible, but they don’t fix meaning. Concept isn’t some spooky inner tool, it’s the public grammar of use. And rules aren’t authoritarian commands; they’re the norms of what makes correctness and mistake intelligible. If you want to disagree with Wittgenstein, disagree with that, not with behaviorism or private mental classification, because those aren’t his positions.
As you say, both Criteria and Cause are important
I agree that if a person is motionless and says “I am in pain”, we can often assume the Cause, their inner hidden feeling, even if there is no Criteria, such as flinching or moaning.
Quoting Sam26
This is a problem.
How can we use a word correctly if we don’t know the cause of why we are using the word in the first place. For example, how can a person know whether it is correct to say “I am in pain” or “I am not in pain” if they don't know whether they are in pain or not? First they must know whether they are in pain or not and then they can correctly say whether “I am in pain” or “I am not in pain”.
If we felt no xyz, pain, hunger, thirst, fear or love, then there would be no need for a language.
In language, we say things such as “I feel xyz”, “I feel pain”, “I am hungry”, “I am thirsty”, “I am in fear” and “I am in love”.
It seems highly likely that there is a consistency between what we feel and what we say, in that the language game would be unworkable if when feeling pain one day I said “I feel pain” and the next day I said “I feel hungry”.
I agree that on the next day I could be lying, but the language game can only work on the assumption that people are generally truthful.
The language game can only work if when a person feels pain they generally say “I feel pain”.
In general, the language game can only work if when a person feels xyz they say “I feel xyz”.
=======================================================================
Quoting Sam26
It is true that it would be pointless for a person in an empty room to say “I feel pain”. It would only be useful to say “I feel pain” if another person knowing the same language game hears them. But the meaning of “I feel pain” does not change when someone hears it, in that “I feel pain” does not mean one thing when spoken in an empty room and means a different thing when spoken in a crowded room.
It may be a waste of time to say “I feel pain” in an empty room, but it does not follow that the expression “I feel pain” has no meaning when spoken in an empty room.
=================================================
Quoting Sam26
The language game is only workable if there is a general consistency, in that, if a person feels in pain, they don’t one day say “I feel pain” and the next day say “I feel hungry”.
The language game is founded on the rulebook that says there is a general consistency between what the person feels and what the person says.
===================================
Quoting Sam26
There is a contradiction here.
Without inner feelings there would be no language game, but you say that the meaning of “I feel pain” is determined by the language game, not inner feelings.
This raises the question, if the language game is independent of feelings, of what use is a language game that can exist independently of the feelings of the people who are actually using it?
I am sure that somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy there is a species who have their own language game, but of what relevance is that language game to us If it exists independently of any human thoughts, emotions, desires or feelings?
The difficulty is that our inner feelings are not simply given, but are conditioned by our environment, including the language games we learn to participate in.
I think you are right, that language is not self-sufficient; it requires a context in which it can develop. But, for Wittgenstein, the ultimate foundation is not "inner feelings", which are a language game in themselves, but "form of life" or "way of life".
Without inner feelings there would be no Form of Life. There would be no social activities such as playing football, no cultural events such as going to the theatre, no language game, no financial systems, no production, distribution and trade of goods and services, no Philosophy Forum.
As our Form of Life would literally not exist without our inner feelings, in this sense, it seems that the ultimate foundation can only be “inner feelings”.
I think we're actually very close to being in complete agreement here. We both place the inner feelings as prior, as "what make these language games possible", but there is some inconsistency between us as to how we interpret Wittgenstein's representation of "the concept". In the end, we seem to agree that concepts are not a part of the inner, but we both get there in slightly different ways.
The key to understanding the difference between us, I believe is to separate "inner" from "object". The inner is very real, but there is no such thing as an inner object for Wittgenstein. So, when "concept" is understood as abstract "object" it cannot be something inner.
Quoting Sam26
This is what Wittgenstein does, he puts the inner at the centre. His point though is that the inner is incorrectly portrayed as "object". This is what he demonstrates when he does the little thought experiment where he labels "a sensation" as "S", and ,marks in his journal every time that he feels "S". He is demonstrating that the recurrence of the inner sensation is not the recurrence of an object which can be named, as we name an external object. In this way he takes "object" out of the picture, but he leaves "the inner" as still central, but consisting of something other than objects.
Quoting Sam26
What I said is that he rejects concepts as primary, fundamental, or natural. He describes the reality of concepts as a practise of applying boundaries for a purpose. So concepts are constructed with the use of language, the application of rules, formal logic, etc.. They are not something which underlie language use as its base.
Notice that "what counts as a mistake", requires rules, in the sense that it is an action contrary to a rule. But a "rule" under Wittgenstein's usage requires language for its existence. He is very clear on this. And "mistake" can only be judged as what is not consistent with conceptual rules.
However, the majority of natural language use (such as your example of "game") is not bound by these rules. Therefore the concept of "mistake" does not even apply to natural language use under Wittgenstein's description. When a person uses slang for example, using a word in a very unorthodox way, this is not a mistake. Neither is any new or innovative use of a word, a "mistake", because the person is not acting within a conceptual structure of "rules" concerning the words used. The person is creating one's own use within one's own mind, where rules do not apply.
Quoting Sam26
Saying "there is no single essence of game" has the same effect as saying "there is no concept of game". To produce a concept of "game" requires rules which stipulate necessary criteria, an essence. Accordingly, there might be numerous concepts of "game" which people would produce for a variety of different reasons, but this is not saying that there is a concept of "game", it is saying that there is a multitude of concepts of "game".
I believe that his point is not to show "that a concept can be held together by family resemblance" it is to show a distinction between "concept" and "family resemblance". The natural way that meaning exists is as described by the family resemblance analogy. The concept however, is created by applying rules, boundaries which are applied for specific purposes. So the family resemblance usage of words may provide the basis for a multitude of different concepts of "game" ("game" as defined for this purpose and that purpose), produced from those different natural ways of using the word, but this is not a holding "the concept" together, it is a multitude of distinct concepts, each with its distinct set of rules. Following one set of rules would be making a mistake by another, and the same word, "game" supports distinct concepts. Notice specifically, that intentional ambiguity may be natural, and not a case of breaking any rules.
Quoting Sam26
The point is, that rule following must be willful. We cannot force people to follow rules of language. So even training and correction require that underlying desire. Therefore "choosing to behave like others" does explain rule following. The fundamental desire for communion, to be a part of the group, is what enables rule following. Force does not enable rule following.
Quoting Sam26
See, you are in complete agreement with me at the basic level, "Inner feelings make these language games possible. The "inner" is at the base of language. Where we disagree is with our understanding of "concept". What I'm saying is that Wittgenstein separates "concept", as we generally understand this word as an "abstract object", out from this "inner" which is at the base of language. But as you also agree, the "concept" is something dependent on community and language, therefore it is better described in that way, as a property of the public and its rules, rather than as something inner. So the point is that the inner is still prior and fundamental, as you agree, but "the concept" is not something inner, which you also agree to.
This is how we get to understand Wittgenstein's distinction between "what seems right and what is right". What is right is what is dictated by the rules and can only be judged in a public way. That is a grounding in justification. But, despite the fact that a person can learn and understand rules, and even apply them to oneself, the judgement will always be "what seems right" due to the influence of the inner, which cannot be rules, therefore never a proper "what is right".
You’re right the language game like “I’m in pain” only works against a background where people are generally sincere and where there’s regularity between pain and pain expressions. If today “I’m in pain” and tomorrow “I’m hungry” were random noises with no stable pattern, the practice would collapse. But that point is about the conditions under which the practice is usable, not about the meaning being fixed by a private inner object. The regularity that keeps the practice going is part of the public grammar: it’s exactly what shows up in training, correction, and in what we count as misusing the words.
On the “empty room” point, I agree, the sentence doesn’t change meaning depending on audience size. If I say “I’m in pain” alone, it’s often pointless, but it isn’t meaningless. The meaning is still what it is because the expression belongs to a language I already speak. Wittgenstein’s claim isn’t “no audience, no meaning.” It’s “no practice, no meaning.” The empty room e.g. presupposes the practice is already in place.
Where your argument goes off is when you say the language game is founded on a rulebook that asserts a consistency between feeling and saying. That “rulebook” isn’t an extra layer behind the practice. It just is the practice as it’s lived, i.e., we treat “I’m hungry” said in pain as a mistake, a joke, a lie, confusion, or a special case, and those distinctions make sense because the language already has standards of correct application.
So, the relationship is the following: inner life is necessary for these language games to exist at all, but inner life doesn’t fix meaning privately, by itself. Meaning is stabilized publicly, by the norms of use that make it possible to distinguish correct use, misuse, pretense, and error. That’s why your Andromeda example doesn’t land. A language game isn’t some free-floating abstract structure that exists independently of beings who live it. It’s inseparable from our form of life. Our language games are relevant to us precisely because they are woven into human needs, feelings, and responses, and that’s where Wittgenstein is working.
Thanks. It took me a while to figure out what I was missing, but I get it now. If there's a new language game in town, you'll discover the grammar first. As so often, the blindspot is obvious once you see it. Sometimes you get hung-up on the wrong lines. For example here:
Quoting Sam26
This sort of slotted neatly in my preconceptions: I thought, well, that's not starting from the other end, that's just misidentifying the language game, right? Thinking like this blocked me from seeing what I've been missing. Your post was quite helpful. Thanks.
All those years I've never quite grasped what Wittgenstein meant by language games. I'm not sure I'm quite there yet, but I'm certainly closer than ever before.
Yes, without inner life there’d be no human form of life, that's obvious. No hunger, fear, joy, pain, interest, boredom, no motives to act, no point to practices. I’m not disputing that. But it doesn’t follow that inner feelings are the ultimate foundation in the sense of what fixes meaning, normativity, or rule following.
Inner feelings are part of the background that makes our practices possible. The foundation Wittgenstein is talking about, when he talks about bedrock or what stands fast, isn’t a hidden inner item that guarantees correctness. It’s the public practice itself, viz., training, shared responses, correction, agreement in judgement, the whole web in which “right and wrong use” has a place. If you try to make inner feelings the foundation in the stronger sense, you collapse correctness into “whatever seems right to me,” and you lose the very distinction between seeming and being correct that rule following requires.
I’ll grant the first claim, no inner life, no human world. But the conclusion doesn’t follow, viz., inner life doesn’t function as the rulebook or meaning fixer. It’s a condition for having language games, not what determines the grammar of the moves within them.
Example: Two people feel the same inner feeling: a tight chest, racing heart, sweaty palms.
One says, “I’m excited.” The other says, “I’m anxious.”
Their inner feeling might be identical, but the meaning of “excited” vs “anxious” isn’t fixed by that inner feeling. It’s fixed by the public grammar, again what counts as appropriate use, what follows from it, what kinds of reasons support it, what responses you might get, what counts as correction (“No, you’re not excited, you’re worried”), and how we learn the words.
So inner life is the condition that makes this whole region of talk possible, but it doesn’t act as a private rulebook that determines which word is correct. So, the grammar lives in the practice.
Wittgenstein’s focus was on how we understand each other through language , and how we then use that language when we are alone with our thoughts. Phenomenologists focus on how perception is felt bodily. For both Wittgenstein and the phenomenologists, feelings are not inner data but world-directed engagements.
Although the grammar is important I think there is something more fundamental and important that informs grammar and can become obscured by a focus on language. If, however, you do not think it is outside the scope of your thread I can re-post it.
Quoting Sam26
I agree that it is not a matter of stages. It is, rather, a question of what one is working toward:
(CV, 24)
Quoting Sam26
I interpret it somewhat differently. It is the pre-theoretical state of the world that is obscured from us by our scientific attitude. For the early Wittgenstein it is the world seen aright when one transcends propositions, (Tractatus 6.54) For the later Wittgenstein it is a rejection of scientism:
(Blue Book, p. 18).
(CV 5).
Wittgenstein isn’t mainly explaining “how we understand each other,” and he isn’t doing an inside to outside story from public talk to private thought. He’s doing grammar, how our words for feeling, meaning, and understanding actually function, what counts as correct use, and what pictures mislead us. And while some phenomenologists do emphasize embodied, world-involving experience, that doesn’t capture Wittgenstein’s point. He doesn’t need to say feelings are “world-directed engagements” to reject the inner data picture, his point is that inner feelings aren’t private objects that fix meaning.
What it looks like in practice is simple. We say meaning must be the thing that accompanies a word, a rule must be soemthing that forces the next step, an inner feeling must be an object that guarantees the correct label, the mind must be a private theatre, certainty must be absolute, knowledge must be proof. None of these are argued for at first. They feel obvious because the picture is doing the work.
Wittgenstein’s move isn’t to refute the picture with a counter theory. He puts it on the table, then asks: how does this picture fit with our actual language games? What do we count as understanding here, what counts as a mistake, what counts as correction, what would it look like to apply this picture across cases? Often the picture collapses under that pressure, not because it’s false, but because it isn’t actually guiding our use, it’s distorting our use.
A quick example is the picture of an inner label. The temptation is, I have a private inner thing, I inspect it, and that inspection fixes the meaning. Wittgenstein’s reply is to show that the picture can’t supply standards of correctness, because any “inner pointing” still needs a rule for what counts as the same again. Once you see that, the urge to treat meaning as a private object loses its grip. The word’s meaning doesn’t float behind the scenes, it shows itself in the role the word plays in a practice.
So, find the picture, name it, and then test it by returning to ordinary use and to the differences between cases. When the picture stops looking compulsory, the philosophical pressure often disappears with it.
The “captive picture”
People think: “Meaning is a thing in my head. I understand a word because I’m focusing on that inner thing.”
Wittgenstein’s move
He says: stop guessing. Look at what we call “understanding” in real life.
Put 5 everyday cases side by side
Ask: what shows that someone understands?
Instruction: “Bring me a red book.”
They bring a red book. If they bring a blue one, we say they didn’t understand.
Word use: “Use the word ‘promise’ in a sentence.”
They use it correctly. They can explain the difference between a promise and a prediction.
Joke: “Get this joke.”
They laugh at the right spot, or can explain why it’s funny.
Directions: “Do you understand how to get to the station?”
They can get there, or give the route to someone else.
Math rule: “Continue: 2, 4, 6, 8…”
They write 10, 12, 14… If they write 2, 4, 6, 8, 16… we correct them.
What you notice
In all these cases, we don’t check for an inner object. We look at what they do, how they go on, and whether they can be corrected.
The point
Once you see these cases together, the “meaning is a thing in the head” picture stops feeling necessary. Meaning shows up in the use and the standards of the practice, not in a private inner item.
That’s what an overview is: you line up the examples until the tempting picture loses its grip on you.
Quoting RussellA
I'm not clear what the difference is between a foundation and an ultimate foundation. But I don't see how inner feelings can be the only essential condition for language. They are necessary, perhaps, but not sufficient. If we were not social beings, there would be no language. Our form of life would be unrecognizable without inner feelings, social living, and language.
Are you saying that inner feelings exist independently of language? In an sense, that may well be true, but then social life can also exist independently of language.
But language is not something that is grafted on to our inner feelings or our social lives - an optional extra, available to human beings, but not other similar creatures. On the contrary, language transforms both our social lives and our inner feelings - so much so that I don't think we can really understand what either might be without language. To be sure, we can recognize parts of our form of life in animals and children who have not yet learned language, but how far those similarities go is a moot point.
Wittgenstein is asking how all this "thinking" got started:
Philosophical Investigations explores what "talking to oneself" involves (and not) during the discussion of the possibility of private language but it does not bring the "privacy" into question. The following is an example:
With the different goals and challenges he gives to himself and the reader, I don't think the dimension of the personal gets easier. In the Preface to the PI, he speaks of the work as a response to what he questions in his Tractatus. A few sentences later:
The comparisons to the Tractatus give a starting place for the method to be used There is the multiplicity of language games versus pure logic in Section 23. And this returned to again later:
What does not seem to be abandoned from the Tractatus is the solitary element:
The move from "general explanations" in PI does not seem to have weakened Wittgenstein's view of the limited role of the "psychological" or "scientism" while looking at thought and language.
I think this is an interesting way to put it. The necessary condition may not be sufficient, likewise though, the sufficient conditions may not be necessary. So "social being" turned out to be the sufficient condition for language development, but language could have developed under different sufficient conditions. Then the language which developed would not be the same as that which did develop, but would still be language anyway. "Sufficient conditions" may be tricky and difficult.
So for example, "social being" may be the result of language development rather than a primary condition for it. For example, it could be the case that when language first started to develop it was under sufficient conditions other than social being. Then, as language developed the condition of social being took priority and became the primary condition. I am not arguing that this is the case, only that "sufficient conditions" lack the necessity required to draw certain conclusions.
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, it's quite likely that feelings are prior to what we consider to be "language", and this would allow us to say that they would exist independently. However, by the difference between "necessary" and "sufficient" we cannot turn this around as you propose. What is apprehended as a "sufficient" condition is not necessarily prior, and can arise simultaneously.
Quoting Sam26
The relationship between Wittgenstein and phenomenology isn’t one-way, as though his grammatical approach is a corrective to their methods. Phenomenology of perception deals with aspects of experience Wittgenstein fails to address, pre-linguistic embodied sense-making. Both Wittgenstein and phenomenologists reject the inner data picture, but from different vantages and within different contexts.
I think we might be getting a little religious about Wittgenstein in this thread. His arguments are only as good as their premises, some of which have been proven to be incorrect.
I'll go further than that. The tragedy of Wittgenstein is what was missing from his toolbox.
For instance, an awful lot of Wittgenstein's puzzling over rules and grammar cries out for the sort of game-theoretic analysis David Lewis does later — but Wittgenstein didn't have game theory.
A lot of what he says about concepts and seeing as, the whole midcentury recognition of theory-laden observation and the repudiation of the myth of the given — he's not unique in that, and all of it is stumbling toward what only becomes clear in the Bayesian framework, that evidence is the basis upon which a prior belief is updated, but it is not the basis of belief as such. Ramsey would have gotten there, as "Truth and Probability" shows, but whether he could have dragged Wittgenstein along, who knows?
Wittgenstein turns away from certain old ways of doing philosophy, and he seems to point—so tantalizingly!—toward a destination he never really gets near. It's why he is undeniably vague, inconclusive, difficult to interpret, why he goes over the same issues in subtly different ways for years on end. Having cut loose from the mainland of existing philosophy, he was at sea, and never made landfall. Heroic, in his own way, but tragic.
Pretty sure I'm the only one around here who thinks this.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
My question is what you think about Kant, Hegel, Schelling, hermeneutics, phenomenology, enactivism and post-structuralism, because you won’t be able to do much with Wittgenstein without an adequate background in those areas. If David Lewis represents the cutting edge of your thinking then it doesnt look promising. Lewis belongs to a Humean tradition within philosophy. I tend to take a subsuming developmental view of the history of philosophy, and I like to make lists. So here’s my subjective list of philosophers ranked according to a developmental order, with the least advanced on the bottom and the most advanced on the top. Make of it what you will. You’ll notice Lewis and Wittgenstein are light years apart.
Wittgenstein
Gendlin
Joseph Rouse
Karen Barad
Nancy
Merleau-Ponty
De Jaegher
Varela
Gallagher
Thompson
Ratcliffe
Scharff
Donna Haraway
John Shotter
T. Fuchs
Slaby
Zahavi
Alva Noe
Colombetti
Vicky Kirby
Henry
Rorty
Gergen
Feyerabend
Gadamer
Bitbol
Kuhn
Dilthey
Lyotard
Bataille
Connolly
Massumi
Stiegler
Protevi
Zizek
Laclau
Butler
Lacan
Fanon
Sartre
Levinas
Braver
Caputo
Dewey
William James
Charles Taylor
Hannah Arendt
Kierkegaard
Alisdair McIntyre
Piaget
Vervaeke
Delanda
Stuart Kauffman
Adorno
Badiou
Schopenhauer
Byung-Chul Han
Whitehead
Schelling
Peirce
Dreyfus
Terrence Deacon
Althusser
Marx
Hegel
Habermas
McDowell
Ian Hacking
Chalmers
Nagel
P.F. Strawson
Freud
Kant
Darwin
Popper
Dennett
Jesse Prinz
Metzinger
Damasio
Hutto
Mark L Johnson
Lakoff
Andy Clark
Tegmark
Kastrup
Smolin
Searle
David Lewis
Hume
Read Schopenhauer, then read the Tractatus. It will become obvious that he's talking directly to Schop.
Quoting frank
Who is he talking to in the Philosophical Investigations?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Chuckles are more useful if I know what you’re chuckling about. Pay careful attention to the family resemblances within each cluster, then run it through A.I. to highlight the vantage from which each group critiques a previous group.
You're on a roll tonight.
Himself
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
What does your list look like?
I thought he was addressing the analytics. He had grown discontent towards this movement.
He was also talking to those he was more positively inclined toward, such as Kierkegaard and James.
I'd have to spend some time on Baseball Reference to give a good answer, but my first pick would probably be Greg Maddux. He's currently only #28 on the all-time leaderboard, but I love the way he pitched.
Okay. :up:
Philosophy is usually a response to an opposing idea, or an attempt at synthesis. Philosophers don't usually write at length to express agreement.
Wittgenstein's and the Phenomenologist’s approaches are quite different.
For Wittgenstein, he starts from the viewpoint of a public community and asks the question, how can a community communicate private subjective experiences whilst at the same time “bracketing” any understanding of a private internal world.
For the Phenomenologists, they start from the viewpoint of the individual and ask the question, how can an individual make sense of their private subjective experiences whilst at the same time “bracketing” any understanding of a public external world.
Whilst Wittgenstein is concerned with what is happening in the public external world, the Phenomenologists are concerned with what is happening in the private internal world.
Lewis style game theory and Bayesian updating are tools for modeling coordination and belief revision, but Wittgenstein isn’t trying to build a better model. He’s trying to dissolve conceptual tangles that arise when we misuse words like rule, meaning, and evidence assuming that they've got some single theoretical support that explains them.
I’d flip the dependence. Game theory and Bayes don’t get off the ground unless we already know what counts as following a rule, what counts as evidence, what counts as the same claim, and what it even means to “update.” Those are grammar questions in Wittgenstein’s sense. Bayesian methods only work if Wittgenstein's conceptual clarity is in place.
I don’t buy the “tragic, lost at sea” line at all. The repetition is part of the method; he keeps returning to cases until the grip of a picture loosens and you can see for yourself. He looks inconclusive only if you expect theses/theories and some final destination. He isn’t steering toward Bayesianism, he’s steering back toward ordinary use, where many philosophical problems dissolve.
I should probably start a thread on where I part ways with Witt, because some people assume that if I cite him (and I do a lot), I’m signing on to everything he ever said.
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We can only understand language extra-linguistically. When someone tells me “bring me a xyz”, how do I know what action I should take?
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No one knows what another person is thinking or feeling. No one knows another person’s private language, but even so people are able to communicate using a public language.
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The meaning of a proposition cannot be understood within language itself.
The meaning of “bring me a xyz” within the language game cannot be understood by the language game itself, but can only be discovered extra-linguistically. For example, by observing a person’s behaviour, using bedrock hinge propositions, saying “xyz” and pointing to an xyz, using a meta-language or understanding the logical framework of the language game within which are contained propositions.
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There is the private self and the public language game. Solipsism is the theory that we can only know the self. But the public language game only exists because the self exists, in that the public language game is a creation of the self.
The public language game allows one user to communicate to another user that they are in pain by saying “I am in pain” even though no one user knows the private pain of another user. If the self consists of thoughts, ideas and feelings, such as that of pain, the language game may be able to refer to some one’s private pain, but is not able to describe, define or explain that private pain.
This is because language is a system of representation which can only represent a person’s private pain using the symbol “pain”. Language cannot describe, define or explain that pain.
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Quoting Paine
As science is founded on axioms, self-evident or universally recognized truths, language is founded on hinge propositions, statements that serve as foundational beliefs, or in JL Austin’s terms, performative utterances.
There are inner feelings, language and social life.
But we would not have any language if we did not have inner feelings and we would not have any social life if we did not have inner feelings. Both language and a social life are creations of our inner feelings.
I agree that there can be feedback between language and inner feelings and social life and inner feelings. "Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause and effect that forms a circuit or loop" (Wikipedia).
As inner feelings created both language and social life, and there can be feedback between them, inner feelings can be both necessary and sufficient to both language and social life.
As I see it, your approach leads into the problem of circularity, whereby the meaning of the statement “I am in pain” is fixed by the language game, and the language game is fixed by the statement “I am in pain”.
There is the question of what makes language possible, what makes the statement “I am in pain” have meaning within the language game and there is the question of what fixes the meaning of the statement “I am in pain”.
A circular solution would be that the meaning of the statement “I am in pain” is fixed by it having a meaning within the language game.
Such a circularity is avoided if the meaning of the statement “I am in pain” is fixed by the extra-linguistic being in pain.
This is the same problem of circularity with the rules of language, where you say that the rules of language are built into the language itself. But we know that the rules of language cannot be internal to the language, they must be external. This is why words such as “pain” cannot be defined within the language itself. This is why Wittgenstein proposes the extra-linguistic hinge proposition, in other words, a performative utterance as described by JL Austin or axioms in science.
This is also the same problem with the Form of Life, whereby an inner life is necessary for there to be a Form of Life, and it is the Form of Life that determines one’s inner life.
There needs to be a way out of this circularity. One way is that statement such as “I am in pain” is fixed by the extra-linguistic being in pain rather than being fixed by a language game that already includes the statement “I am in pain”.
I think it may be that some circularity is unavoidable. On the one hand, language may influence the way we think. So as a child's brain is developing, patterns of thought that are prevalent in the culture might become cemented in the language comprehension areas if the brain.
On the other, it may be that some aspects of the way we think are innate so that pattern recognition isn't starting from a blank slate.
So maybe the idea of pain is innate, but whether it belongs to a psychological interior or is part of the world around me is something I learn from my culture. The basic building blocks would be innate, but the arrangement comes from thousands of years of cultural evolution.
In our Form of Life is going to the theatre, but we only go because of our inner feelings, not because other people are going to the theatre, or because someone says “you must go to the theatre”.
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Quoting Sam26
Wittgenstein talks about the bedrock, about hinge propositions, which found a language.
For example, if I say “I know a hot stove causes pain”, this can be a hinge proposition, a performative utterance and not an empirical observation. We can then talk about “I was in pain yesterday”, “avoid hot stoves if you don’t like pain” and “they ought not manufacture hot stoves”.
I am saying that I say “a hot stove causes pain” because a hot stove causes the inner feeling of pain. You are saying that “a hot stove causes pain” because it is part of a coherent set of linguistic statements.
Yet there can be an enormous number of sets of coherent statements, none of which may relate to the human condition. However, in order for a coherent set of statements to be part of a language game they must relate to the human condition, and they can only relate to the human condition because when I say “a hot stove causes pain” I feel pain when touching a hot stove.
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Quoting Sam26
One person says “I’m anxious”. Another says “Je suis anxieuse” and yet another says “Ich bin ängstlich”.
I agree that within a particular language game, certain words are appropriate and some are not. What is appropriate is something we have to learn about correct usage, but that does not take away from the fact that the words anxious, anxieuse and ängstlich mean the same thing, which is an inner feeling.
In Frege’s terms, they have the same sense, the same referent and the same truth value.
In Tarski’s terms, who also requires a metalanguage, the truth values of the T-sentences are the same. “I’m anxious” is true in the English language IFF I’m anxious. “Je suis anxieuse” is true in the French language IFF I’m anxious. “Ich bin ängstlich” is true in the German language iFF I’m anxious.
Truth is determined within the metalanguage of inner feelings, it cannot be determined within the language itself as you suggest.
Circularity isn't a problem, you’re treating Witt as if he’s offering a foundation argument, as if meaning is a theorem is grounded in axioms. But a lot of what you’re calling circularity isn’t an argument at all. People hear circularity and assume fallacious argument, but unless someone is trying to prove a conclusion by smuggling it into the premises, there’s nothing automatically wrong. You see it in this forum all the time. For example, people will often accuse someone of the ad hominem fallacy merely because they say something that attacks them personally. However, unless it's part of the argument itself, it's not a fallacy.
First, the claim “the language game is fixed by the statement ‘I’m in pain’” isn’t right. A language game isn’t defined by one statement. It’s a practice with many moves, learning the word, using it, responding to it, correcting misuse, withdrawing claims, giving help, etc. “I’m in pain” is one move inside a wider pattern. So, there’s no tight circle where “this sentence fixes the game, and the game fixes the sentence.” The sentence has meaning because it belongs to a practice that already exists, and the practice exists because it’s lived and taught across time, not because a single sentence generates it.
Second, “fixing meaning by extra-linguistic being in pain” doesn’t actually solve what you want it to solve. Pain can be the occasion for saying “I’m in pain,” but it can’t be itself the standard for correct use. We still need to know what counts as applying pain rather than itch, numbness, panic, or metaphorical uses, and that’s exactly what the grammar of the practice gives us. Extra-linguistic facts don’t automatically generate normativity.
Third, the idea that “rules must be external” is too quick. Wittgenstein’s point is that rules aren’t hidden rails behind language, and they aren’t external foundations either. They’re exhibited in how we go on, in training, correction, and settled practice. That’s why definitions eventually run out and we reach bedrock, not as a set of axioms that ground a system, but as what stands fast in our doing. Hinges in On Certainty aren’t Austinian performatives, and they aren’t scientific axioms. They’re the background hinge certainties that show up in how inquiry and doubt operate.
I’d put it like the followoing: there’s no vicious circle to escape, because Wittgenstein isn’t trying to ground language in something outside it. He’s describing how meaning is shaped in a form of life. Pain matters, of course, but it doesn’t replace the role of Witt's grammar. It’s part of the human background that makes the language game possible, while the norms of use are what make “I’m in pain” intelligible.
That is how I see it. Part of our thinking is innate and part of our thinking derives from language and society, meaning that some circularity is unavoidable.
But what I am against is the idea that some interpret Wittgenstein's “meaning is use” as being that 100% of our thinking derives from language and society.
As Wittgenstein pointed out, I am also against the idea that 100% of our thinking derives from innateness.
The expression “meaning is use” should not be taken literally.
For Wittgenstein, as stated in PI, rules are necessarily external. This is 'the essence of a rule' and it provides the basis for the distinction between "what seems right and what is right". It's a key premise to the so-called private language argument. If you allow the premise that a person could have a private internal rule, and judge oneself to be following that rule, the entire explanatory system of PI would be demolished.
In fact, I would say that this characterization of "rule" is a principal "tool" of Wittgenstein's. This is the means by which concepts, which are constructed with rules, are described as external instead of internal.
Your point isn't right, and I think it smuggles in exactly the picture Wittgenstein is trying to undo.
Wittgenstein doesn't say that rules are “necessarily external” in the sense of being outside a practice, outside a speaker, or imposed from above. What he denies is that a rule can be a private, inner object that fixes what counts as following a rule. The contrast isn’t “internal rule versus external rule.” The contrast, is a rule that has standards of right and wrong versus a rule that collapses into “whatever seems right to me.” And those standards aren’t “external” in the sense of a law hovering over us. They’re internal to the practice, exhibited in training, correction, agreement in judgment, and the ability to distinguish correct use from incorrect use.
That’s also why the private language doesn’t need the premise “rules are external.” It needs the point that correctness requires more than a private impression of correctness. If you allow a “private rule” that has no criteria for correct reapplication, you haven’t saved rule following, you’ve emptied it. You can’t even make sense of “I’m following the rule” versus “I only think I am,” because there is no difference.
And the claim that “concepts are constructed with rules, therefore external” is too rigid. Language is full of normativity without explicit rules, and many concepts have family resemblance structure with flexibility. There are rules in the sense that some moves are correct and others aren’t, but that doesn’t mean the concept is a construction laid down by an external authority. The normativity is carried by the practice itself.
If you want to call “rule” a tool in his toolbox, fine, but say it accurately. Wittgenstein’s tool is to block the fantasy that rules are private inner things/objects that determine their own application. He relocates rule following into the lived practice where “right and wrong” has a home, not into an “external” rulebook.
That's true. I shows how language games are not in separate compartments, but interact. Indeed, I'm sometimes inclinced to think that Wittgenstein did not think of language games as actual distinct structures in language, but a thought experiment designed to high-light and focus on specific uses to enable a clearer view.
For example, how can a person know whether it is correct to say “I am in pain". First they must know whether they are in pain or not and then they can correctly say whether “I am in pain” or “I am not in pain”.[/quote]
This is not quite right. It is an important part of language that when we are in pain, we do not - and do not need to - apply the usual processes of deciding on the truth of "I am in pain". As Wittgenstein says, what seems to me to be so, is so. It is only when pain is seen in the public world - that is, in the context of p;ublic language - that we can separate truth from appearance. That's why I think that "I am in pain" is not exactly synonymous with "Ouch!".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm inclined to think that Wittgenstein was not concerned to refute the specific idea that pain is an object. He was concerned with the idea that a (logically) private rule was an incoherent idea. What kind of objects sensations are. His arguments apply whether pain is seen as an event or process or whatever.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I was impressed by the thought that if language is a system of communication, it is hard to see how it could not presuppose the existence of some sort of social relationship. So, at most, I was suggesting that a social context was a necessary condition for language. It obviously isn't a sufficient condition, since there are societies of non-language using creatures. On the other, people do think of the various communication systems used by those societies as a language, so it is not entirely clear what is going on.
Quoting RussellA
I don't see how "inner feelings" could create anything unless they interact with outer facts. It seems to me obvious that neither human motivations not society could create language on their own. It's the interaction that makes things happen.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, people too often think of language and society as fixed, complete structures. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are elastic, capable of being adapted to new situations and new applications.
P1 - “The meaning of a word is its use in the language”
P2 - Language is a set of words having meanings.
C1 - The meaning of a word is its use in a set of words having meanings.
This still seems a fallacious circular argument.
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Quoting Sam26
I agree. A language game is a complex and coherent set of words and expressions.
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Quoting Sam26
I agree that pain can be the occasion for saying “I am in pain”, but being in pain does not tell us anything about the correct use of language.
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Quoting Sam26
I agree that I may go to the theatre because of my inner feelings, and the experience may then change my inner feelings.
But it cannot be the case that having no inner feelings I decide to go to the theatre, and the experience then gives inner feelings within me.
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Quoting Sam26
There are innumerable possible coherent language games each with their own hinge propositions. For example, in language game A the hinge proposition could be “god does not exist” and in language game B the hinge proposition could be “god exists”.
Within each language game there can be innumerable statements logically connected to the hinge proposition. For example, in language game A, “humans have to develop their own ethical system”, “souls don’t exist”, “morality is determined by mutual agreement”, etc.
It would be possible to develop a coherent language game independent of all inner feelings. For example, “here is one xyz”, “and here is another”, “there are at least two xyz in abc”, “therefore, abc exists”. Such a coherent language game fulfils many requirements, including each statement within it has been correctly used and it has a hinge proposition, “here is one xyz”. But even so, each statement is meaningless.
Something else is needed to give each statement a meaning. If meaning does not of necessity come from the language game itself, then it must come from outside the language game, extra-linguistically.
It is the case that if there were no inner feelings then there would be no language games, meaning that each statement within a language game must take into account inner feelings. Inner feelings are extra-linguistic to the language game, but give each statement meaning. For example, “here is one hand” is true IFF here is one hand. Meaning comes from a correspondence between language and the world.
It is true that a statement must be used correctly within its language game, but even if used correctly, the statement may still be meaningless. A language game cannot give itself meaning. Only something extra-linguistic to the language game can give the statements within it any meaning.
That “P1, P2, C1” framing is manufacturing a proof where Witt isn’t offering one, and it also smuggles in a bad premise.
First, P2 is not Wittgenstein’s view. “Language is a set of words having meanings” treats meaning as something already attached to words prior to use, and then you get your circle for free. Witt’s point is closer to the reverse, what we call meaning is shown in use, in explaining, correcting, applying, learning, and so forth.
Second, P1 isn’t a premise in any Wittgensteinian argument, it’s a grammatical reminder. It’s not meant to be combined with a metaphysical definition of language to yield a conclusion. It’s like saying “don’t look for a hidden essence, look at how the word works.”
If you want a non-circular way to put it, drop the “language = set of words with meanings” picture and replace it with something closer to what we actually do, i.e., language is a practice of using signs as part of activities where some moves are treated as correct and others as mistakes. We say a word has meaning insofar as it can be learned, applied, explained, corrected, and understood. That’s not a fallacious proof; it’s a description of how the notion of meaning functions in our lives.
We must ask why he thinks he will not be understood. He certainly is not wrong, as is evident today with the proliferation of incompatible interpretations.
We might start by addressing a couple of assumptions. The first is that he is referring to the state of professional philosophy. The second is that we have emerged from this darkness.
Is his pessimism about being understood simply due to the poverty of his work and the darkness of the time make it impossible? There are some hints in the preface to suggest that this is not the case. He says he is unable to produce a whole that moves from one subject to another in a natural, smooth sequence. The attempt to do so, he says, goes against the "natural inclination" of his thoughts. This suggests that this is something more than him being a poor draftsman. His thinking does not follow an orderly process that moves from point to point, from premise to conclusion. This is not simply a biographical comment. It is part of a way of doing philosophy:
(PI 122)
Making these connections is not a limited activity that produces a limited closed whole. It continually expands as new connections are made. But it is not only about the connections he makes, philosophy is about the activity of making of connections.
Another hint might be his mention of his discussions with Frank Ramsey and Piero Sraffa. He cited their influence but says nothing here about what was said. Wittgenstein's written philosophy is imitative of dialogue. It is not always clear who the interlocutor might be someone else, but as Paine points out , thinking can be the activity of talking to one self.
Quoting Paine
I agree. It's true that you have to pay attention to intentions and context of utterance to discern what command is being given or what proposition is being asserted.
But trying to have a theory of meaning that deletes out the vast contents of the psyche, conscious, subconscious, and unconscious, is silly.
That appears to be the mistake made by Frank and Russell, and others. They are still working with meaning.
Inside a practice, or a speaker would be internal to the mind of the person who performs the act. But the rule is something external to this, by Wittgenstein's definition. That is his very important "tool", this specific conception of "rule". The rule is external to the mind of the speaker, not something internal which the speaker follows in one's mind.
You basically say the same thing as me when you say " What he denies is that a rule can be a private, inner object that fixes what counts as following a rule". Therefore the rule must be external to the mind.
Quoting Sam26
I cannot see the difference.
Quoting Sam26
That's exactly the point, and why rules are necessarily external, for Wittgenstein. If the rule was internal to the mind of the person, there would be nothing but "a private impression of correctness". Then there would be no difference between "the person is following the rule", and "the person believes that they are following the rule".
So this specific definition of what it means to follow a rule, positions the rule as external to the mind of the person speaking, and this move is a very important tool for Wittgenstein.
Quoting Sam26
Family resemblances are not concepts, they are a variety of different games. They evolve from free, unruly individual expressions, so they are not rule based. That's the point I made already. There is no rule as to what "game" means, no real concept of "game". However, Wittgenstein explains how one can apply boundaries for a specific purpose. To apply boundaries is to apply rules, and this creates a concept. Unruly, free evolution with family resemblances is clearly very different from concepts which are created by applying rules.
Quoting Sam26
So why would you deny that it is essential to Wittgenstein's position, a very important "tool", the proposition that rules are not inner things, but external to human minds?
Quoting Ludwig V
In the book, right before he provided the example, with the symbol "S" to signify a sensation, he asked what would qualify as a criterion of identity for an internal sensation. And he used a chair as an example of an object with an identity.
Quoting Ludwig V
We can assume, and take for granted, that "language is a system of communication", but Wittgenstein was questioning whether this assumption is justified. That's why he proposed the possibility of a private language. If it is the case that language is dependent on rules, in the way that he defines rule following, then language is a system of communication. However, the family resemblances analogy shows that language might not be dependent on rules. That is why he had to go further in his analysis.
I guess this utterance is being used to do something. Not sure what.
I agree with your suggestion, look at what words are being used to do, and don’t treat meaning as a ghostly extra. That’s been the point of my “use/grammar/criteria” emphasis. I wouldn’t say that talk of meaning is a mistake. Wittgenstein still asks, “what is the meaning of this word?” and then answers by looking at its use. The mistake isn’t using the term meaning, it’s picturing meaning as something over and above the public role it has in our practices. If Frank and Russell are treating meaning as an inner object or a foundation that must be supplied first, then yes, that’s the confusion. But the cure isn’t to forbid meaning, it’s to relocate it where Wittgenstein locates it, viz., in what the words do in the language game.
Sorry, but your comment is just a confusion. Read what's being said with more care. Don't just give an opinion.
What's confusing about it?
I agree that when we are in pain we do not need to decide the truth of the statement “I am in pain”.
Being in pain can cause the behaviour of grimacing. I can say “I am in pain” if I am in pain. I can say “ouch” if I grimace.
“I am in pain” refers to being in hidden inner pain, whilst “ouch” refers to the behaviour of outward observable grimacing. In this sense, as they refer to different things, they are not synonyms.
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Quoting Ludwig V
You are assuming we can directly interact with outer facts. A Direct Realist would agree, but an Indirect Realist would disagree. An Indirect Realist would say that we are directly interacting with an appearance of what we assume to be outer facts.
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Quoting Ludwig V
:100:
The dissolving of conceptual tangles that you describe here is the first stage of any analysis, prior to formalization. I also think this is likely the point of Bertrand Russell's criticism of the later Wittgenstein whom Russell judged to have given up serious thinking. Russell wasn't criticising the later Wittgenstein's ideas or even his remarks, rather he was judging Wittgenstein's ordinary language methodology as amounting to the usual informal preliminary investigation that precedes the real work of any publication in mathematics and analytic philosophy: namely formalization to clarify and test the underlying ideas and their implications.
Building alternative models is a necessary part of clarifying and criticising an earlier model.
Quoting Sam26
Think of Mathematics and logic as an inseparable extension of natural language, rather than thinking of them as separate and independent language games situated above or below natural language. For both natural cognition (human) and artificial cognition (LLMs) do not compartmentalize their understanding of mathematics, logic and natural language.
It is true that whenever we are learning a new language, whether formal or natural, we initially think of the new language as an object language in relation to our existing language that we use as a meta-language. But after mastering the object language, the object-meta distinction disappears. The semantic interdependence between mathematics, logic and natural language is also needed to expain the coevolution of mathematics and natural language.
P2 was intended to be Wittgenstein’s view, but I can reword:
P2 Language is a set of words having meanings, where the meaning of a word is its use in language
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Quoting Sam26
From PI 43
I would have thought that P1 “The meaning of a word is its use in the language” is quite central to Wittgenstein’s argument.
=======================
Wittgenstein's view seems to be:
P1 The meaning of a word is its use in language
P2 Language is a set of words having meanings, where the meaning of a word is its use in language
C1 The meaning of a word is its use in a set of words having meanings, where the meaning of a word is its use in language
This still seems a fallacious circular argument.
There is a problem here with language, similar to Cargo Cult Thinking, where a person might mimic the usage of a word without understanding the underlying concept.
I can learn that a quark is “any of a class of six fundamental fermions” without it having any meaning to me.
An AI when asked can apply the expression “a quark is any of a class of six fundamental fermions” without knowing what it means’
I can explain that “a quark is any of a class of six fundamental fermions” without knowing what it means.
I can correct someone when they say that “a quark is any of a class of two fundamental fermions” without knowing what it means.
I can understand that “a quark is any of a class of six fundamental fermions” without knowing what it means.
It is a more general epistemological problem. How do we know what “quark” means?
If someone says to you “niletee ubamba”, how do you know If you are meant to act, and if you know you are meant to act, how do you act?
Because I know that “niletee ubamba” means “bring me a slab", I know exactly what to do, take them a slab.
But what exactly is the mechanism for you knowing what to do if the meaning of the utterance “niletee ubamba” is irrelevant?
(Edit) If you don't know what "niletee ubamba" means, then how do you know what to do?
That’s why he uses reminders and ordinary examples. The aim is a clearer view of our concepts, an overview that lets the pressure disappear. The classic image is the fly-bottle, philosophy traps us in a bottle made out of our own language, and the job is to show the way out, not to smash the bottle with a theory.
Example: “How do I know other people have minds? I only see bodies.”
Witt’s therapy is to show the misleading picture that's creating the problem, viz., that mind is something hidden and knowledge must be an inference to some unseen object. In ordinary life we don’t treat “he’s in pain” as a hypothesis about an internal object. We learn and use words within our linguistic practices, what counts as pain and pretending, etc. Once you understand, then the demand for a proof stops looking necessary, the problem dissolves rather than being solved by a theory.
I'm not surer why you're forcing Witt into a theory-shaped proof, then calling it circular. PI 43 isn’t an axiom, it’s a reminder, and he hedges it, “for a large class of cases, though not for all.” That’s not how premises are written.
The problem is the picture behind your P2. “Language is a set of words with meanings” treats meanings as already attached to words and then collected into language. Witt’s move is the reverse, language is a practice, a way of using signs in activities with teaching, correction, and going on, and in that practice, we speak of words/concepts as having meanings, often just their use.
So, the “circularity” only appears after you impose the wrong frame. And even if you call it circular, it’s not a fallacy unless it’s being offered as a proof.
If some says to you “niletee ubamba", how do you use that statement, act on that statement, if you don’t know what it means?
Can you give a practical example of how you use the utterance “niletee ubamba” without knowing what it means?
I think you ought to consider that "use" has two principal meanings, one referring to the universal, the other the particular. So in the "use" of a tool like a hammer for example, there might be a universal rule, "a hammer is used for pounding nails", but this does not describe the particular instance of use, where it may be the case that "the hammer was used to crush a walnut". Wittgenstein recognizes these two very different and often conflicting aspects of meaning, what is given by the universal rule of "a practice", and what is given by the particular circumstances of practise. The former involves a sort of inductive reasoning, and the latter isn't necessarily consistent.
I see what you mean.
There is the universal aspect, in that the function (meaning) of a word is to be used in a language game and there is the particular aspect, in that the meaning of a word is its use in the language game.
Suppose someone says to you “niletee ubamba".
There is the universal aspect, in that the function (meaning) of the expression is to be used in a language game. I assume there is agreement about this.
The problem is the particular aspect. The problem is, how can you respond to an utterance if you don’t know what the utterance means. You must know what the utterance means before being able to respond to it.
The language game would not work if we did not know what utterances meant prior to being able to respond to them.
For if meaning is identified with usage, then the philosophy of language loses its normative status, because the use of every expression must be seen as self-justifying with respect to the immediate context that precipitated the use of the expression.
Wittgenstein therapeutic conception of philosophy does at times hint towards acceptance of this trivialist corollary, and yet Witty was a highly strung individual who never practiced such descriptivism.
(Lewis Carroll had already examined this idea as the character Humpty Dumpty in Through the Looking Glass; when a self-satisfied Humpty speaks apparent gibberish, the person who needs therapy is Alice, not Humpty).
Thus the mainstream interpretation of Wittgenstein is contradictory. On the one hand, it insists that "Private language arguments" prove the necessity of inter-subjective truth-criteria for speaking intelligibly, and yet on the other it insists that meaning is use. These two hypotheses are in direct opposition to one another.
Quoting sime
What specific philosophical traditions (it would be helpful if you could name some names) are you drawing from in arriving at these conclusions? I’m asking because your critique targets entire schools of philosophy which intersect Wittgenstein.
If I don’t know what “niletee ubamba” means, then I can't use it as a meaningful sentence. I treat it as a sound that, “this person is trying to do something with me,” so I to try to figure out what's going on. “Sorry, I don’t understand,” plus pointing, guessing from context, or asking for translation. If they’re holding out an empty cup, I might offer water and watch for their response. That’s not “using the sentence with its meaning,” it’s using the situation to learn what it’s doing.
This is exactly how meaning comes in, the way children learn words. A child doesn’t first grasp a private definition of milk and then apply it. They’re trained into a practice, you say milk while handing it to them, they reach, you correct (“no, that’s water”), you repeat. Over time they learn what counts as the right move, what counts as a mistake, and how to go on in other contexts. “Niletee ubamba” would be learned the same way. Your objection assumes you need meaning first and then use, but the actual learning process runs the other way, you enter the use through training, and that’s what we later call “knowing the meaning.”
This confuses “meaning is use” with “anything goes.” Witt isn’t saying every utterance is self-justifying. For him, use includes the entire practice, viz., training, correction, agreement in judgment, what counts as a mistake, etc. That’s why he can criticize, he’s pointing out slips between language games and pictures that distort our ordinary criteria.
The “trivialist corollary” doesn’t follow. Norms aren’t abolished, they’re located where they actually live, inside the practice. And there’s no contradiction with his private language point. If meaning is use, then a purely private “I’ll mean whatever I like” move can’t secure correctness, because it destroys the difference between right and wrong. The two ideas fit together, so meaning is stabilized by shareable ways of going on, where misunderstanding and correction get their sense.
I find that many disagreements with Witt are just misunderstandings of what he's saying or doing.
That is true, there needs to be a learning process in order to learn what an utterance means.
On the first day, the builder says “niletee ubamba” to the assistant. The assistant does not know what this utterance means, it is only a sound. The builder then physically brings a slab and again says “niletree ubamba”. The assistant guesses that the builder wants him to bring a slab, and so the assistant brings a slab to the builder.
The next day, when the assistant hears the builder say “niletree ubamba”, the assistant already knows what it means, and immediately brings a slab to the builder.
Once the assistant knows that the utterance “niletree ubamba” means bring a slab, the assistant knows that the utterance is being used to bring a slab.
We learn the meaning of an utterance by comparing the utterance to observed behaviours, and once we have learnt the meaning of the utterance, as you rightly say, we are “knowing the meaning”.
Once the assistant knows the meaning of the utterance “niletree ubamba”, rather than just being a sound, this ensures that language now has a use.
When you know that the water in this tub is 36° Celsius, then that knowledge has no influence at all on the temperature.
When you know the word "beetle" means [beetle] (square bracket for the private meaning that - according to Wittgenstein - drops out - if I'm not mistaken), then you use the word "beetle" to mean {beetle} (squiggly brackets for a token in a language game). The meaning of [beetle] is what's in your head. The meaning of {beetle} is what's in every language-game participant's heads, all mashed together. It's an abstraction. Everyone who uses "beetle" has [beetle] in their head and contributes to {beetle}. So how do we deal with this?
There are those what-if-my-red-is-your-green questions. These frame meaning in terms of similarity: my [beetle] = your [beetle]. "Language is use" by-passes that. {Beetle} is not some avarage of everybody's [beetle]. {Beetle} is an assumption based on successful reciprocity in interaction. It's about my [beetle] and your [beetle] being compatible, rather than similar. We can go on, each of us, thinking [beetle] as long we don't run into trouble.
So, yes, the meaning of "beetle" preceeds you, and you learn it, and then you know it, and based on that knowledge you use it. But from the perspective of someone still learning you're part of what sets that meaning. And even for yourself, maybe, you re-assure yourself that all is right and you can go on with your usuage "like that". You're not learning some unshakable fact about the world, you're smack-dab in the middle of "use". A lot of overlapping learning-knowing-using, but no direct comparisons between private meanings - just the more or less successful completion of a language game.
@Sam26 can tell me if I made a mistake here. I'm hardly an expert on Wittgenstein. But that's how I always saw it.
P.S.: I originally used "cat", but then I thought square brackets look kinda like a box, so why not - to honour Wittgenstein - "beetle"?
(PI 133d)
It might seem as though Wittgenstein is saying that the solution to philosophical problems is to not philosophize. That is, of course, not a satisfactory solution. In fact, his concern is just the opposite. The problem occurs when philosophy itself is called into question. When the activity turns on itself and comes to be seen as pointless. When the whole enterprise seems to become meaningless.
At 309 Wittgenstein asks:
And answers:
Wittgenstein does not ask what the aim of philosophy is but rather what the interlocutor's aim is. The interlocutor could be anyone engaged in philosophy, including both the reader and Wittgenstein himself.
This exchange follows 308:
The paragraph ends:
He does not deny that there are mental processes but does not attempt to explain them. He regards such explanations to be the purview of science not philosophy. Rather than being tormented by the problem of mental states the philosopher should simply accept them as given.
Work on oneself, on one's own conception, on how one sees things and expects of them may require escaping grammatical tangles but such necessary work is preliminary.
We might ask what one does when he or she has escaped the fly-bottle.
Where I would disagree, is, saying a philosopher should “simply accept mental processes as given,” it risks making Wittgenstein sound like he’s handing the topic to science. He isn’t denying mental life, but he also isn’t just leaving it untouched. His move is grammatical, he shows how the problem arises from the way we talk, the expectations we bring to words like process, state, inner, etc. The work is not to replace philosophy with science, but to untangle the conceptual knot so we stop demanding the wrong explanation.
I’d also be careful with the word “preliminary.” The work on oneself, on one’s conception, on how one sees things, isn’t merely stage one before the “real” philosophy begins. For Wittgenstein that reorientation is often the philosophical achievement. The therapy is not a preface; it is the result in many cases.
And lastly, the question “what do we do after escaping the fly-bottle?” can reintroduce the picture Wittgenstein was trying to dissolve, as if there must be a single goal once the therapy is achieved. There isn’t. Once the knot is dissolved, sometimes you return to ordinary inquiry, and sometimes you keep doing philosophy, but without the demand for a hidden foundation. The point is that the trouble was local, and so is the therapy.
He says, for example:
(PI 154)
He does not deny that there are mental processes involved in understanding, but he does not address those processes. He takes them as given. It seems to me that he sidesteps the question of what those processes are by making a grammatical distinction and denying that understanding is a mental process. While it may be that when I say I understand something I don't mean and I'm referring to a mental process, but cognitive scientists do attempt to address the process. And in doing so may help us to understand what it means to understand.
True. If you really believe meaning is use, you wouldn't complain that other people don't understand that. You'd just try to read the use in their utterances.
If meaning is use, then it is regardless of whether you believe it. Thinking meaning is use wouldn't change how you obtain meaning or change how you act.
I'm picking up what you're laying down, there.
Quoting Wittgenstein, Blue Book, page 8 (in the linked edition)
Quoting ibid. page 10
Probably the most over looked conclusion of PI, PI 307 “‘Are you not really a behaviorist in disguise? Aren’t you at bottom really saying that everything except human behavior is a fiction?’-If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.”
Not that philosophers should simply accept them as given, but that there are limits on what we can express in language, and once one accepts these limits these philosophical problems should not arise.
That's very true. I occasionally find myself thinking about scenes from Charlie Kaufman movies, my mind will just revolve around them endlessly.
Today I was thinking about the scene in Synecdoche where the main character is talking to his adult daughter. She has blood poisoning from a tattoo, and she can only speak German. She's lost the ability to speak English for some reason. She demands that the main character ask for forgiveness, and after trying and failing you understand for what, he does ask. Then she cries and tells him she can't forgive him in return.
It's all dreamlike, and the feelings associated with it are a blend of grief and confusion. It's like we're watching the main character dive into the realm of femininity where he can't get things to add up, and he reaches, but fails to grasp.
This is a truth that wouldn't be created by trying to say it straight out, but Kaufman does it in his own genius way.
What do you take to be the conclusion? The question of whether he is a behaviorist is not answered. He does not affirm or deny that everything except human behavior is a fiction. He says on
[This was accidentally posted before completing it. When I attempted to continue working on it all that I wrote was deleted and I could not retrieve it. For now I will say only that we do not know what Wittgenstein meant by the term behaviorism, what he may have affirmed or denied regarding the term.]
What I had in mind was more like the difference between the dictionary definition of a word, and what the word actually means in any particular set of circumstances (context). So the dictionary definition states how the word is commonly used, in a general way, with a universal statement. But in any particular instance of usage, the context adds something, so that the use of the word is not exactly like what is described by the dictionary.
This indicates two very distinct interpretations of "meaning is use". One is to interpret that the meaning of the word is the universal, inductive conclusion of how the word is generally used, as outlined by a dictionary. The other is to interpret that the meaning is specific to each instance of use, and somewhat unique according to the peculiarities of the circumstances. The latter is the way that words are actually used. The former is very weak inductive reasoning.
Some parts of communication are hardwired, like the general framework. I think a lot of the things we take to be abstract objects have their reality in expectations.
Pre-linguistically, we humans can do alright.
If I understand:
My concept of “slab” must be similar to yours, but cannot be the same as yours, because we have experienced different Forms of Life.
Because we have learnt our concepts of “slab” through an extensive personal Form of Life, our concepts are too complex to be defined.
Our concepts of “slab” probably generally overlap, but it is unavoidable that sometimes my concept of “slab” will be different to yours.
Or post-limguistically
Yes, people too often assume that language is about communication and has no other uses. That's not true.
Quoting RussellA
"Ouch!" isn't part of language, so it can't refer to anything. You should think of it alongside grimacing. Both are, one might say, expressions of pain. "
If "I am in pain" refers to hidden inner pain, then, surely, it is not hidden. "I am in pain" is like "ouch" and grimacing in many ways, which is why Wittgenstein insists that it is an expression of pain. The complication, which, I think he does not deal with because it is not relevant to his focus in that discussion, is that it is also like "S is in pain"; it plays into the standard structures that usually apply when se speak of knowledge.
Quoting RussellA
I am not assuming any particular theory about perception or facts. All I am assuming is that there are such things, and that, one way or another, we interact with them. I feel that direct and indirect realism might be regarded as off-topic on this thread.
Person A sees a beetle in the world which causes a thought in their mind of a beetle. It may be that when they see a beetle in the world they also see alongside it in the world the name “beetle”. They can then begin to associate their private thought of a beetle with the public name “beetle”.
Person B sees the same beetle in the world which causes a thought in their mind of a beetle. It may be that when they see a beetle in the world they also see alongside it in the world the name “beetle”. They can then begin to associate their private thought of a beetle with the public name “beetle”.
Person A can then say “I saw a beetle” to person B, who will then know what person A means.
It may well be that my-red-is-your-green, and the beetle in person A’s mind is different to the beetle in person B’s mind, but as regards language this doesn't matter because the common factor is the beetle in the world, which is the same for both persons A and B.
Language is not communicating the private thought of person A to person B, because their private thoughts may be different, but is communicating the knowledge to person B that person A is thinking of the same observable, empirical fact in the world.
Language can be used to communicate knowledge between people because public facts have private meanings.
==========================================================
Quoting Dawnstorm
If there is a beetle in the world, this is a public fact, independent of private thoughts.
=================================================================
Quoting Dawnstorm
On the one hand the private beetle drops out of the language game, but on the other hand the private beetle cannot drop out altogether otherwise the mind would be an empty blankness, and there would not be any language game at all.
I would not use the word "concept" here. I think concepts are logical structures with formal rules. Instead, we both know how to use the word, though our particular instances of use will vary. Where we all overlap in usage, we have what is required to make a generalization (inductive conclusion) which may serve as a dictionary definition. What I think, is that if someone states particular criteria, or rules governing the use of the word, for the purpose of a logical procedure, then we have what is required for a "concept". Notice though, that I am stipulating such rules in this case, proposing a restriction to the way that you use the word "concept".
It is possible to refer to hidden things. For example, if I see a broken window, I can say that something caused it to break. What caused the window to break may be unknown, but I can still refer to this unknown something.
=================================
Quoting Ludwig V
I agree that uttering ouch is not part of language, but saying “ouch!” must be part of language. As it is the nature of language that every expression must refer to something, “ouch!” must also refer to something.
==============================================================
Quoting Ludwig V
As regards language, there is form and content. How does language work?
The form of language, the symbols used, is as much a physical thing in the world as grimacing, and both are empirically observable. The form of language is as empirically observable in the world as a person’s behaviour, such as grimacing. It is the form that gives clues to the content, in that observing someone grimace gives clues to their being in pain. If, when I feel pain, I instinctively grimace, then when I observe someone also grimacing, it is a reasonable assumption that they also are in pain.
As the form of grimacing gives clues to the inner feeling of being in pain, the form of the linguistic statement “I am in pain” must also gives clues to the inner feeling of being in pain.
This suggests that is the form of the linguistic expression “I am in pain” that gives us clues about the speaker’s inner feelings rather than the content of the linguistic expression “I am in pain”.
From Wikipedia - Concept
I have never thought of a concept as a logical structure with formal rules. For example, if I think of the concept of a slab, there is no logical structure to my thoughts of slabs and there are no rules limiting my thoughts of slabs.
I was going to say that as well. But you already knew that.
Returning to this after last nights technical difficulties.
Ordinarily when we see pain behavior we do not question whether the person is in pain. We do not regard the pain as fictional because we cannot observe the pain itself. What we say and do in response to pain behavior is treat the pain as real. It may turn out in some cases that the person is faking, but the term 'pain' becomes meaningless if the pain is regarded as a fiction because we can't observe it.
Once it's pictured this way, you generate a slew of puzzles. For e.g., how does an inner process connect to the rule rather than merely accompany it, how does it work in future applications, how could it ever be more than some private experience, how could it carry normativity? Wittgenstein’s point is that these puzzles are not solved by discovering the inner mechanism, they are produced by a misuse of our concepts.
Your quotation makes exactly that point:
“Just for once, don’t think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ at all! … Instead, ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say ‘Now I know how to go on’?” (PI 154)
He is not denying that there are mental processes (like some people think in this thread), images, feelings, neural activity, whatever you like. He concedes the ordinary point that there are processes “characteristic of understanding.” But then he adds the grammatical correction: in that sense, understanding is not itself a mental process. That is, understanding is not the name of an inner item whose occurrence constitutes correctness. It's a word whose use is anchored in criteria in our practices, in being able to go on correctly.
So, I suspect Witt would say, cognitive science is entitled to investigate the causal and psychological things that typically accompany, enable, or disrupt our ability to go on. What it can't do, by its own methods, is answer what's grammatical, namely, what makes a move count as following the rule rather than merely seeming to. What it means to count as is not an extra inner process waiting to be found, it is part of our public grammar.
That's why I resist the phrasing “simply accept mental processes as given,” especially if it mean, “leave the topic untouched and let science do the work.” Wittgenstein’s move is not to abandon the mental, it is to stop trying to make words like understanding function as names for occult inner objects. He untangles the knot so we stop demanding the wrong explanation, and then both philosophy and science can do their work without talking past each other.
Not sure, but maybe this helps to explain what I was referring to.
Witt’s point is that doubt only works against a background (the background is layered) of things you don’t doubt. If you try to doubt everything, you wouldn't get a more rigorous inquiry, you'd lose the very standards that make inquiry possible. In any real investigation there are propositions that function like hinges on a door, they aren’t usually the result of inquiry, they’re part of what makes inquiry and checking possible.
For e.g., “There’s an external world,” “Other people exist,” “I have a body,” “The world didn’t begin five minutes ago,” “My memory is generally reliable,” “This is how counting works.” In ordinary life, we don’t treat these as hypotheses we keep retesting, we treat them as what stands fast while we test other things. That’s what Witt calls a kind of certainty, but it’s hinge certainty, not epistemic certainty. It isn’t a conclusion from evidence, and it isn’t subjective certainty either, a feeling of conviction. It’s the background role the claim plays in our practices.
This also explains why prove it can be misplaced. If someone demands evidence for the hinges themselves, they’re asking for the justification that only makes sense within a system of checking that presupposes those hinges. The result isn’t a refutation, it’s a diagnosis, i.e., the request pulls the words like doubt, know, or evidence out of the language game where they do their work.
Think of it like chess. If you don’t know chess, you can’t use the move castling. You can treat it as something happening in the game, ask what it is, watch, imitate, get corrected, and finely learn. The meaning of castling just is its role in the game, but you only grasp that role by learning the game.
Same with “niletee ubamba.” At first it’s just a sound. Then you learn what to do with it by examples, context, and correction. The fact that you can’t act on it before you learn it doesn’t refute meaning as use, it’s exactly what meaning as use predicts.
Do you accept the possibility that shared meaning might be an illusion, such that meaning is bound to perspective and actual usage, in a way that cannot be represented in terms of social conventions?
Secondly, how can meaning-as-actual-use be anything other than as described in the former paragraph?
If we also allow meaning to refer to potential uses and to a normative ideal standard, then aren't we reintroducing something speculative that is hidden from view?
From the quote from the Blue Book I gave above, the difference between science and the investigation Wittgenstein is doing involves the use of models. To see the contrast, we can look at those who study linguistics as a science. Consider a remark by Noam Chomsky on behaviorism:
The matter of causes is directly addressed by Wittgenstein:
Quoting ibid. page 10
This why the comparison of language games is not an explanation to replace another explanation.
I definitely don’t believe shared meaning is an illusion, at least not globally. The fact that we successfully correct each other, teach children, translate, argue, etc, shows that there’s something real here. It’s not perfect uniformity, and it’s not a hidden essence, but it’s also not merely “my perspective.” If it were, the distinction between misunderstanding and mere difference would collapse, and it obviously doesn’t.
On “meaning as actual use,” yes, meaning is bound up with how expressions are used. But actual use isn’t just each person’s private usage. It includes consistency across speakers and time, and it includes the practice’s standards of correction. That’s what makes it shared.
And no, talking about potential uses or normative standards doesn’t reintroduce something hidden. “Potential use” just means competence, viz, what a trained speaker does with the expression in new cases. That’s not hidden, it’s displayed in the ability to go on, and to correct. Likewise, the norm isn’t a speculative thing hovering behind our practices, it’s the publicly observable difference between using a word correctly and using it incorrectly within our lives. You can call that “normative,” but it’s not metaphysical. It’s built into what it is to have a learnable practice at all.
That underscores for me the stated goal of Wittgenstein to distance himself from the generality of the Tractatus.
I mostly agree, but I’d clarify couple of points. I think Chomsky’s critique is about what an empirical science should count as its object, whereas Wittgenstein isn’t offering a rival scientific model of language or mind at all. What he’s doing is conceptual therapy, clearing up the temptations that make us demand a model in the first place.
And yes, comparing language games isn’t a replacement explanation, it’s a grammatical clarification. The point is to show when we’ve slid into some false explanation, treating thinking as a medium or mechanism. Once the grammar is understood, the urge for this kind of explanation seems to disappear.
The question is prejudiced by framing it in terms of occult inner objects. Rather than objects in the brain it is the development of neural pathways. They are not occult in the sense of supernatural. Advances in brain imaging render whatever is going on less hidden and better understood.
Quoting Sam26
Without the establishment of neural connections understanding would not occur. The inner process is what makes the connection between the rule and how to follow it. This may involve training or trial and error. But all the training in the world may not enable a particular person to understand if those neural connections are not made.
Yes, and the generality of modern practice of philosophy as well.
Wittgenstein is not questioning whether someone is in pain if they are were just hit by a car and displaying typical pain behavior. What is a grammatical fiction is our understanding the sensation of pain divorce of expression, behavior, and context. When little Johnny bumps his head and starts crying, we don't expect him to attach a name to private sensation to later identify if experienced. He is consoled and possibly taught another form of expression like “Ouch that hurt!” When Johnny learns the difference between using the concept “tickle” and an “itch”, he is not applying identity criteria that differentiates the sensation of an itch and a sensation of a tickle. But learning a tickle is associated with laughter, location of the body, others demeanor while an itch is associated with scratching and possible skin changes.
But don't fret, if calling all of this grammatical fictions still does not sit well with you, John Searle attempts to clarify everything. Pain, itches, tickles are ontological subjective modes of existence, they exist when a human experiences them. But they can be investigated because they are epistemologically objective.
In PI 43, Wittgenstein wrote “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” We could apply this to chess and say “the meaning of the rule of castling is its use in the game of chess”
When playing chess, there are two stages a person goes through. First as a beginner learning castling and then as an expert using castling.
You support the idea of “meaning as use”.
To simplify matters for the moment, I will only look at a chess player who already knows the rules of chess.
One of the rules of chess is castling. There are two aspects to castling, what it does and what it is.
What something does is different to what something is. For example, a hammer does jobs such as knock nails into wood but is a mass of metal at the end of a handle. What a hammer is is prior to what a hammer does. The hammer did not become a mass of metal at the end of a handle because it was used to knock nails into wood, the hammer was a mass of metal at the end of a handle before it was used to knock nails into wood.
What something is is prior to what it does.
What castling does is external to castling. Castling has a use in the game of chess, it has a role in the game of chess and is one of the rules of the game of chess. Castling has a meaning within the game of chess because it has a use within the game of chess.
What castling is is internal to castling. Castling means moving the king two squares towards a rook and then moving that rook to the square the king crossed over. But the rule of castling exists within the game of chess even if never used within a game. The rule of castling exists prior to any use.
What castling does is different from what it is. It is true that as regards what it does, it has a meaning because of how it is used in the game of chess. But as regards what it is, castling has a meaning even if never used within a game of chess.
That's clear enough, I think. But I'm a bit bothered by the fact that we often don't bother to state criteria but use a term without such a framework. In those cases, we are relying on skills that we have picked up informally, perhaps by imitation, certainly by participation. If someone can use terms like "tree" or "table" without that formal framwork, it seems a bit odd to deny that they have the relevant concepts. That does not exclude the possiibility of adding the framework later - as in the case, perhaps, of "tree". But then, it might turn out to be a different, even if a clearer, concept.
Quoting RussellA
Yes, of course you can. But you can then discover the rock that caused the damage, show it to you, lodge it as evidence, as so forth. There is nothing that you can do with pain that is equivalent to that.
Quoting RussellA
I see what you are getting at - roughly. Let's suppose someone utters "ouch" and someone asks me what he said; I might reply "ouch". I'm imitating his utterance, but that doesn't make "ouch" a part of language. I don't even agree that every expression ("part of language") must refer to something. What does "plus" as in "2+2=4" refer to? What does "the present king of France" refer to? What does "nothing" refer to?
Quoting RussellA
I don't see what form vs content has to do with this. Grimacing and "I am in pain" are connected to pain, and provide me with grounds for saying that "S is in pain". I wouldn't say they are clues exactly, because the connection is not empirical - can't be empirical, because we can't demonstrate the connection with pain as we can demonstrate the connection between rain and rainbows.
Quoting Fooloso4
I agree that we can't observe pain in the way that one can observe a wound. But I would prefer to insist that observing someone who has been wounded writhing and screaming is observing pain.
Quoting Sam26
I am a bit confused by this. Your last sentence suggests that hinge propositions are always true, like a priori propositions. I thought being a hinge proposition was not a class or kind of proposition, but a role that could be played, from time to time, by a wide variety of propositions. Examples of hinge propositions are, I suppose, methodological decisions or heuristic principles. The point about these is that although they are held fast in debates, they can be changed, though not, of course, in the process of debate.
Your remarks that "they aren’t usually the result of inquiry" and "That’s what Witt calls a kind of certainty, but it’s hinge certainty, not epistemic certainty" deepen the mystery for me.
When Wittgenstein warns against “occult” or “mysterious” inner items, he’s not talking about the supernatural. He means a theoretical position that’s treated as if it explains meaning or rule-following but does no explanatory work. It’s “occult” in the sense of being hidden or idle, not supernatural. You were joking, right?
You’re right to raise the question, viz., that hinges are “always true” or a priori in the traditional sense. That’s not what I meant. A hinge isn’t a special metaphysical kind of proposition (they're really not propositions in the traditional sense) with a magic truth status. It’s their role that gives them special status, and that role is quite separate from epistemology.
“Hinge certainty” also isn’t “epistemic certainty.” It doesn’t mean “proved beyond doubt.” It means that in a given practice, this is what stands fast and makes checking, doubting, and evidential talk possible at all. That’s why “prove it” can be misplaced, not because the hinge is infallible, but because the demand for proof is being made in a way that presupposes the very background it is trying to put on trial. I have no idea why people are having such a difficult time with this idea. It seems obvious that you would need bedrock certainties in order to have any certainty. Maybe I'm not seeing your point.
In your examples some hinges do look like methodological commitments or heuristics in a debate, and they can change, but typically not by the ordinary give and take of reasons inside the system. The change is more like a reorientation, a shift (the shift isn't with what's bedrock, but what's just above bedrock) in what we take for granted, often driven by new practices, or a new framework. The point isn’t “hinges are eternally true,” it’s “hinges are what make truth assessment and doubt possible in the first place, in that context.” Sorry, but I keep repeating myself to make the point.
Perhaps I didn't explain properly. I don't have any difficulty with the idea of hinge propositions. I think it is very useful in understanding some debates where it is not clear what the issue is. I certainly get the idea that something is needed to articulate what proof and certainty are - how they work - in specific contexts. It seems just obvious that they are not always the same, although some people seem to think of them in that way.
Quoting Sam26
Yes, I get that point. It seems to follow that when they change, they do not change within the system - though perhaps if they do, the system may change - sometimes in quite radical ways. The idea of causation is, perhaps an example. I was wondering if you had more to say on the changes and how they happen.
Quoting Sam26
Yes. I notice the idea of layers of bedrock, and was thinking of it in the context of hinges. Can we have layers of hinge? Do we think of this as something like a paradigm change, for example?
Quoting RussellA
An axe is also a mass of metal at the end of a handle, so is a mace (as used in battle). All these objects were constructed so that they could be used in certain ways. The fact that one could use a spanner or a rock as a hammer does not contradict that. What something is and what it does are intertwined and not usually separable in the way you suggest.
Not the supernatural. Not some realm beyond our own, but rather something that does not have a natural, that is, scientific explanation.
My objection is not just to the term 'occult' but to an 'object'.
Quoting Richard B
We are in agreement.
Quoting Richard B
??
What is less than clear is what the fiction the behaviorist is referring to is. You say:
Quoting Richard B
Quoting Fooloso4
It is a grammatical fiction because:
Quoting Fooloso4
Doesn't, "an abstract idea that serves as a foundation for more concrete principles", say to you, "logical structure with formal rules"? What else, other than a logical structure with formal rules, could serve as a foundation for concrete principles?
Quoting Ludwig V
I don't agree with this. People will readily understand, and know how to use words like "tree", and "table", and if you ask then to tell you what the concept of tree or table is, they cannot give you an answer. This is because they do not have such "concepts" when they learn how to use those words. That is the point Wittgenstein made with "game", we all use the word without having any specific concept of game. I believe he takes this idea further in On Certainty. Knowing how to use a word doesn't indicate that the person using it has a concept of the word.
Let the concrete principle be “don’t touch a hot stove” and the abstract concept be “touching a hot stove causes pain”. A logical structure can be thought of as synonymous with formal rules.
Where are the formal rules in the abstract concept that touching a hot stove causes pain?
On the one hand, a rock can hammer in a nail, such that what a rock is is different to what a rock can do.
On the other hand, as you point out, a hammer was designed for a purpose, and it is true that what a hammer is is as a result of what a hammer does.
But even though what a hammer is as a result of what a hammer does, once the hammer has been created, the hammer exists as it is independently of any use, of what it can do.
For example, once the hammer has been created, it can be used in many different ways, of which knocking a nail into wood is only one. What the hammer is is not limited by one particular use, is not limited by only one thing that it can do.
Wittgenstein is saying the same thing, in that the meaning of a word such as “slab” depends on its context. Wittgenstein in PI is saying that what a word is not fixed by one thing it can do.
That there is a rock lying on the floor is not proof that the rock caused the window to break. It may be evidence, but not conclusive evidence.
That someone grimaces is not proof that they are in pain. It may be evidence, but not conclusive evidence.
These seem quite equivalent.
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Quoting Ludwig V
The fact that “ouch” is in quotation marks shows that it is part of language.
“2+2=4” refers to 2+2=4
“The present king of France” refers to the present king of France
“Nothing” refers to nothing.
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Quoting Ludwig V
I agree that grimacing and "I am in pain" are connected to pain, and provide me with grounds for saying that "S is in pain"”
As you say, the connection is not empirical, as is the connection between rain and rainbows.
But seeing a dog writhing on the floor in what seems to be in pain, no one would not try to help the dog. Few would say that because there is no empirical connection between the dog’s behaviour and its inner feeling, one may as well walk on by.
Frege believed that sense - the mode of presentation of a referent, is metaphysically objective, static, timeless, universally graspable. Hence he concluded that sense cannot be psychological, because psychology is perspective dependent and mental states are too erratic and vague to model the precise normative standards of communication that relies on senses. But since Frege was a metaphysical realist about sense, he could not identify sense with the mere pragmatics of successful communication; more generally, Frege could not ground sense in the contigent dynamics of the physical world. Hence Frege proposed a "third realm".
Wittgenstein's remarks on private language in PI were partly in relation to Frege's private language arguments, and part of the later Wittgenstein's attempt to reduce Frege's third realm of sense to an interaction between the psychological realm (Frege's second realm) and the physical realm (Frege's first realm).
Wittgenstein definitely didn't adhere to the dogmatic community view (social platonism) that considers meaning to be necessarily social - for "Wittgenstein's manometer" example makes it clear that a diarist's private use of "S" might be turn out to be correlated to rising blood-pressure - a hidden cause of the diarist's behaviour that might be unknown to both the diarist who feels the urge to write "S" and to his community. (Wittgenstein even calls the appearance of a mistake an illusion). Hence Wittgenstein does indeed hint at what i previously called "self-justifying" verbal behaviour - namely verbal behavior that a community considers to be "private" because 1) the behaviour doesn't follow a recognizable existing convention, and 2) the behaviour has no presently known causal explanation.
Tourette's syndrome is a reasonable example; we no longer consider the verbal behaviour of a sufferer to be offensive, because we now recognize that his use of curse words expresses a neurological condition rather than a desire to offend. This is a concrete example of verbal behaviour that is initially misinterpreted to be an offensive conventional use of public language, that is later reclassified as something closer to a private language in that it is now accepted to have partially understood hidden causes that fall outside of the communicative assumptions of mainstream social convention.
I’m curious how Wittgenstein can reduce the third realm of sense (presumably language) to an interaction between the second realm of psychology (presumably inner feelings) and the first realm of the physical (presumably the world)?
On the one hand, the second realm of inner feelings drops out of language (the analogy of the beetle) and on the other hand the first realm, any correspondence with the world, also drops out of language (as the meaning of a linguistic expression is its use in language).
You're example does not make sense to me at all. If the concrete principle is “don’t touch a hot stove”, then the principal concept involved is "do not touch", and that itself looks to me like a formal rule. The "a hot stove" is less formal, because criteria is required. I don't see how you even draw a relation between this and "causes pain". this is a common problem with ethical rules, the lack of relation between is and ought.
Quoting sime
Could you please explain to me how Frege's "third realm", "sense", is related to this? What would be the sense of Wittgenstein's "S" in this example? The following is how I would interpret this.
From what you've explained, I take "sense" to be a sort of meaning-giving context. If that's the case, then for the public observer, the sense of "S" would appear to be the rising monometer (notice I say manometer, not blood-pressure, because that is what is evident to the observer). For the diarist, the sense would appear to be the inner feeling. Is the true "third realm" then, the blood-pressure itself? For the diarist, the inner feeling is a representation of that presentation (rising blood pressure), and for the observer, the manometer is a representation of that presentation.
From this perspective, we have two opposing, or inverse approaches to "the appearance of a mistake". If both, the outward representation, the manometer, and the inward representation, the feeling, are representations of an intermediary presentation, then we need to allow for the possibility of mistake in either directions of representation.
Suppose we assume that "sense" is the intermediary between speaker and hearer, in this way. To avoid the possibility of mistake, we might designate the true intermediary as the spoken words themselves. This implies that the sense is the words themselves, and that would leave the blood pressure as irrelevant, no longer qualifying as the intermediary. Then the public compares the spoken "S", with the manometer But I think that this would misrepresent the intent of the diarist, who's use of "S" is not as a public presentation, rather it's a private record. Now there is an issue of whether the spoken words (or written) are intended to be an intermediary, or not, and this is an issue in relation to whether the words can actually be the "sense".
I agree that some concepts can be rules, such as “do not touch”, but some concepts are not rules, such as freedom, tree, happiness, colour or more/less.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is a difference between what a concept is and what a concept does.
I agree that as regards what a concept does, it can be a rule or not be a rule, but as regards what a concept is, I don’t see that a concept is something with a logical structure or formal rules.
One of Wittgenstein’s most useful tools is noticing when a word has stepped out of its ordinary work. We're using the word, but it’s no longer doing the job it normally does, and this is when language goes on holiday to Bermuda. :grin:
You can see it when a conversation starts producing deep puzzles that never cash out into anything you could actually use, check, learn, correct, or dispute in any concrete way. We keep using familiar words, meaning, rule, proof, evidence, doubt, true, but what give those words traction has disappeared. This results in a kind of philosophical spinning of the wheels. This happens with the majority of discussions in this and other forums.
A simple example from this thread is when someone (sorry @RussellA) takes PI 43, meaning is use, and turns it into a premise in a formal proof, then objects that it’s circular. That move treats meaning as if it must be a detachable item attached to a word, and treats Witt’s reminder as if it were an axiom. The words are still there, but they’re no longer doing their clarifying work, they’re playing a different game while pretending they’re not.
Another example is prove it aimed at hinges. In ordinary inquiry, prove it has a role, it requests reasons inside a system of justification. But when the demand is aimed at what the justification itself depends on, the demand has pulled prove, evidence, and doubt out of the setting where they function.
So, the tool is used when a dispute starts to feel metaphysically impossible, ask what work the key words are supposed to be doing. What would count as a correction, a check, a settled disagreement, a mistake? If there’s no answer, the language has likely gone on a Bermuda holiday, and the right move is to bring it back to where it actually works, viz., everyday use.
When I say everyday use, I don’t mean “whatever the man on the street happens to say.” That’s true in one sense, and false in another.
Witt wants us to start from the words as they live in our actual practices, buying, promising, apologizing, measuring, calculating, arguing, teaching, etc. Not from a philosopher’s purified theory driven version of the word. So yes, he’s pulling us back from abstraction to ordinary life.
But it’s false if you hear “everyday use” as “the average person’s current opinions or sloppy speech is the standard.” Witt isn’t taking a poll. Use includes the practice’s norms, how words are taught, corrected, and applied. Ordinary use includes skilled and technical language games too, medicine, law, mathematics, because those are also ordinary human practices with standards.
So “everyday use” means: the role the word actually plays in our forms of life, including the criteria that make right and wrong intelligible, not “whatever someone says on the street at 2pm.”
It is not a grammatical fiction because you cannot observe it. It is grammatical fiction because we misleadingly talk about pain as if we are talking about apples, tree, or tables. It is grammatical fiction because we imagine a private world full of private experiences that can be identified and named that supposedly we can shared with a private language. It is about the limits of language and what we can express with it.
The term “pain” is not meaningless, it serves as a term of expression, or gives us a term to describe the behavior of humans in particular situations.
The term 'bedrock' as it is used at PI 217 is not about certainties. It is rather about the limits of justification when it comes to one's reasons for following a rule:
The spade is turned not because one has arrived at some kind of certainty but rather because he cannot dig further in order to uncover something more that will justify what one does in following the rule.
It may turn out that what one simply does is in some cases wrong. One is not following the rule.
Not a problem, I am appreciating the opportunity to learn more about Wittgenstein.
On the one hand is the Augustinian view of ostensive definition, whereby each word corresponds to an object that is its meaning and on the other hand is the Philosophical Investigation (PI) view, whereby the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
I don’t think either is sufficient in itself, although both are necessary.
The Augustinian view cannot cope with fiction and figures of speech.
The PI view cannot cope with an unavoidable circularity. For example, in the expression “this slab is heavy”, the meaning of slab is understood within the context of being heavy, and the meaning of heavy is understood within the context of being a slab. I don’t see how PI gets around this problem.
It seems to me that the Augustinian view is necessary for the meaning of certain core individual words and the PI view is necessary for the combinations of these core words into meaningful propositions.
Concepts are logical structure and have formal rules. A human is not a cup. Consciousness is not unconsciousness. A fool is not wise. Socrates is mortal. etc.
Right. Quoting Richard B
It is rendered meaningless if one assumes, as the behaviorist at PI 307 does, that everything except human behavior is a fiction. If everything except human behavior is a fiction then pain is a fiction because pain is not a behavior. The behavior is an expression of the pain.
A concept is not just a word, but it has meanings. When the meaning is stated, it presents the formal rules and logical structure of the concept.
As there is a difference between what a rock is and what a rock does, there is a difference between what a concept is and what a concept does.
I agree that the concept “Socrates is mortal” has a logical structure, but this is what the concept does.
Another question is, does a concept, in the sense of what it is, have a logical structure.
Concept doesn't do anything. Humans do things - use concepts in thoughts and statements. Stone is heavier than water. - The concept of stone has the inherent meaning what stone is, which implies and states the clear logic and formal rule.
Yes. One can actually use the hammer in various ways that are not what it was designed for. I just wanted to point out that sometimes what something does is intertwined with our idea of what it is.
Quoting RussellA
There are important ways in which they are quite different.
You said the rock was hidden, but, assuming that it did break the window, it can be revealed. There is nothing that would count as revealing the hidden pain.
There could be evidence that the rock broke the window and it may be beyond reasonable doubt, even if it is not conclusive.
Quoting RussellA
Applying the word "evidence" glosses over the fact that the evidence for the rock breaking the window is of a different kind from the grimace as evidence of pain. I can show you the splinters of glass and the rock beside each other. I cannot show you the grimace and the pain next to each other. On the contrary, showing you the grimace is showing you the pain. But I grant you that the grimace is defeasible.
Quoting RussellA
Lewis Carroll wrote "'Twas slithy and the mome raths outgrabe". Does the fact that they are in quotation marks show that they are part of language or does the fact that they are meaningless show that they are not? Even if you think that "ouch" is part of language, the fact that it is in quotation marks shows that it is mentioned, not used.
Quoting RussellA
What I actually asked is 'What does "plus" as in "2+2=4" refer to?'
Quoting RussellA
There is no king of France, so it refers to no-one - that is does not refer to anyone.
Quoting RussellA
Quite. So not all words refer.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, I had the impression that Wittgenstein's point about "game" was that there could not be a single definition (formal rule) that would be the basis of a concept. "Game" is applied to a very wide range of games, but he explains his meaning by means of the metaphor. There is no single thread that runs through the whole of a rope; its strength is made by a number of distinct threads which interweave and overlap. Better known, perhaps, is his metaphor of "family likenesses" which connect member of a family. Similarly, there is no single likeness that connects all games; but there are a number of different likenesses that interweave and overlap to connect them.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think we understand that we use the word differently; there doesn't seem to be any point about that. I think, though, that people mostly assume that if you can use a word competently, you can articulate a definition of it - and vice versa. But those are different skills.
You’re right about the PI 217 passage, bedrock there is about the end of justification, my spade is turned because justificatory digging ended, not because I’ve reached epistemic certainty or anything like absolute certainty.
But when I said “bedrock certainties,” I wasn’t claiming PI 217 is literally a passage about “certainties.” I was using my own terminology, I’m equating bedrock certainties with hinge certainty, viz., what stands fast and what makes doubt, checking, and justification possible. Structurally, PI 217 is marking the same kind of stopping point that On Certainty later treats as hinge certainty, even if the emphasis and vocabulary differ.
Of course it can turn out that “this is simply what I do” is wrong in the sense that I’m not following the intended rule. But this presupposes a practice with standards of correct and incorrect. My claim isn’t “bedrock guarantees I’m right.” It’s that some things have to stand fast in the practice for the distinction between seems right and is right to be intelligible, and that’s what I mean by bedrock certainties / hinge certainty.
One more clarification: I’m not always trying to give a perfectly “pure” Wittgenstein exegesis. I do aim to be faithful where it matters, but I’m also extending some of his insights into my own thinking on epistemology, especially with my four senses of certainty. If a term or connection doesn’t line up one to one with Wittgenstein’s phrasing, that’s sometimes deliberate. The question is whether the extension is illuminating and coherent, not whether it matches every textual contour.
Just to be clear I use certainty in the following 4 ways: Subjective certainty, epistemic certainty, hinge certainty, and absolute certainty.
I think we agree the Augustinian picture captures something, and Witt grants that. Words are sometimes taught by pointing. The mistake is to treat “word = object” as the general model, as if every word were a name and understanding were always just pairing a sound with a thing.
On your circularity example, I don’t think PI is stuck. “This slab is heavy” isn’t learned by defining slab through heavy and heavy through slab. It’s learned in practice, i.e., you’re shown slabs, you handle them, you hear slab, you learn “heavy” by contrasts (heavy/light), you’re corrected, and you go on. The words don’t get their meaning from mutual definition inside the sentence, they get it from the training and the roles they play.
I wouldn’t split it into “core words need Augustinian meaning, then PI handles propositions.” Ostension is one way of teaching, but it only works within a wider practice, and that wider use is what stabilizes meaning.
“Form of life” is Witt’s name for the shared human background that makes language possible. It’s not a theory, and it’s not a spooky foundation. It’s the fact that we’re creatures who react, act, train, and correct in very similar ways; we learn by imitation and instruction, we respond to pain with concern, we count, measure, promise, doubt, argue, etc. Language isn’t built on private meanings; it grows inside these activities.
This helps with a recurring confusion in Wittgenstein discussions, viz., form of life is not “whatever the community votes for,” and it’s not a central authority that legislates meanings. It’s the lived practice that makes right and wrong use intelligible in the first place. The norms are not outside the practice, but they’re not some mere whim either. We observe them in training, correction, agreement in judgment, and in what counts as going on in the right way.
When Wittgenstein says that explanations come to an end, he isn’t saying, “anything goes.” He’s saying that at some point our justifications bottom out in what we do, how we’re trained, what we count as a correction, what stands fast. That is the form of life. And it’s why philosophical demands for a deeper foundation often misfire; they’re asking for a kind of justification that only makes sense once the background is in place.
If you want a simplification, forms of life are the shared human activities that give our language games their home, and make meaning, rule following, and correction possible.
I still don't understand what you could mean by "concept". Sure we can all use words such as those of your examples, "freedom, tree, happiness, colour or more/less" but unless there are definite rules of usage, how can you assume that there is any concept involved with these words?
Take "freedom" for example. We can all use the word in a variety of contexts, each context having a different meaning. Why would you think that being able to use the word implies that there is such a thing as a concept of freedom. On the other hand, if we stipulated well defined rules of usage, like we do with mathematical concepts, then we'd have the basis for the claim that this constitutes a concept of freedom.
Quoting Ludwig V
So doesn't that indicate to you that there is no concept of game? There is the single word, like the single rope, but that is composed of may different fibres, ways of usage. There is no single meaning therefore no single concept. Overlapping, distinct but similar uses, which are analogous to "family likenesses" does not constitute what we commonly understand as "a concept".
However, he then goes on to explain how one could dictate boundaries of usage, for a specific purpose.
This, applying rules to limit usage, boundaries, I conclude is the production of a concept. For example, the concept of "triangle" is the explicit rule of plane figure with three sides and angles.
Quoting Ludwig V
How could you say that there is a "concept" involved if we each use the word differently? Doesn't the very essence of what it means to be "a concept" indicate that the word must be used in the same way? If someone was calling a round plane figure a triangle, and someone else called a rectangular plane figure a triangle, how could we claim that there is a concept of "triangle"?
How would rules conjure a concept? It's probably that both rules and concepts are elements of post hoc analysis of language.
Yes, no, and maybe.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The difference between us seems to be that I am interested in how we use a word and am content if it is a part of our practice. You are more interested in the formulation of a rule that articulates the use (in the case of words in general use without a formal rule (dictionaries)) or dictates the use (in the case of concepts that are created for specific purposes). Both use in practice and formulation of a rule are aspects of concepts. You emphasize one and I emphasize the other.
Suppose someone said that all games involve winners and losers; so "games" that don't are really games. Suppose someone said that games are always played for fun, so professionals are no long playing a game - they are working. You could say that there are two different, but related, concepts here, or you could say that there are sufficient similarities between the two to justify calling them one. Again, there are several varieties of football - different concepts of it if you like, since there are formal books of rules. It isn't a usually a problem. I don't see the point of arguing about it.
On the other hand, I might ask how the formal rule restricts or guides use of a word. Here, his argument about rule-following kicks in. In the end, the application of a rule comes down to our agreement about how it should be applied. So, in my view, the use of the word in practice is more important that whether an explicitly formulated rule is being followed.
"Agreement" here is not quite the right word. Sometimes we do disagree, but when we do, we can recognize the fact, discuss it, and (perhaps) come to an agreement - even if it is only to disagree.
It depends what rules you are referring to.
I agree that we have the concept of “stone” and there are rules as to how the word “stone” is correctly used in language (rules as to what the concept does). But there are no rules as to why we have the concept in the first place (rules as to what the concept is)
I agree that we have the concept of “freedom” and there are rules as to how the word “freedom” is correctly used in language (rules as to what the concept does).
But there are no rules as to why we have the concept “freedom” in the first place (rules as to what the concept is)
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
How could you use the word “freedom” in a sentence if you did not know what freedom meant, did not know the concept of freedom.
I agree that it is sometimes possible to know the cause of a broken window, in that someone may have filmed it, but it is impossible to know the inner cause of someone grimacing.
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Quoting Ludwig V
Something can be part of a language even if it is meaningless to me.
For example, the fact that I may not know what “Je veux deux pommes” means does not mean that it is not part of a language
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Quoting Ludwig V
In the world, there are a total of four things if two things are alongside another two things.
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Quoting Ludwig V
There are no unicorns, but the word “unicorn” still refers to something
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Quoting Ludwig V
Does “nothing” refer to nothing. This is the problem of referring to non-existent entities.
The Merriam Webster dictionary accepts that we refer to nonexistent things
Betrand Russell distinguished between phrases that refer to non-existent entities and those that refer to actual objects. For instance, "the present King of France" refers to a non-existent entity, while "the present King of England" refers to a specific, existing individual. (Wikipedia) So we can refer to both existent and non-existent things.
Fair enough on your point. But it seems that no rule is necessary for why concepts have rules and logic in them. We could only say some concepts are a priori, and some are a posteriori. We know by instinct pleasure is good, pain is bad. We know by experience stone is heavier than water, and if you throw a stone to the window, the window will break.
Without the rules and logic in concepts, we wouldn't be able to build sensible statements or propositions. And all logical and rational thinking will fall apart, because we think and communicate with concepts in language and speech. Without concepts, there is no language and no speech.
This is debatable. It's problematic for a couple of reasons.
1. It doesn't appear that language acquisition in childhood could be explained by rule following. It happens too fast to be explained in that way. It appears to be more likely that there is a strong innate aspect to language capabilities.
2. By way of Kripke's insights, the Private Language argument itself gives us reason to doubt that you're discerning rules when you look out at human communication. There's no objective fact about what rules you yourself have been following up to now.
So it may be that we have to look elsewhere for the real basis of meaning. We are capable of following rules, but it doesn't look like rules are the best explanation.
Quoting Sam26
I agree that ostension is one aspect of language.
As I wrote:
However I disagree that Augustinian ostension may be totally ignored by language, as inferred by Wittgenstein's “the meaning of a word is its use in the language.” (PI 43)
I may have misunderstood you when you wrote:
Quoting Sam26
Ostension cannot work alone because it cannot cope with fiction and figures of speech, and Wittgensteinian meaning as use cannot work alone because of its circularity. Only a combination of the two can work.
It seems to me that there are two aspects regarding concepts and rules.
I agree that there are rules as to how a concept should be used in language (what a concept does)
However, I don't see that there are rules that determine our concepts. In other words, what rules determines our concept of freedom (what a concept is).
But as you say, where is the rule that says we should use rules.
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Quoting Corvus
:100:
But when they are learning language, are they not also learning the rules i.e. how to use the words? When child learns words, it will be by experience of seeing objects and hearing the words for the objects. I am not sure child language acquisition is 100% innate ability.
Quoting frank
I am not familiar with Kripke, but again when you are using your own private language, doesn't it presuppose rules for its origin of the words in the private language? If you and your wife agree to mean "frog" for "cup" just between you too, then you will have your personal reason why you decided and agreed to call "frog" to mean "cup". Something like, you have many cups with frog images on them or whatever. Or it could have been randomly chosen too. But the rule doesn't need explain why it was set. The crucial point of of a rule is that it had been set. You have been following it.
The rule of random determination? Can't randomness be considered as a rule?
Not as a rule.
According to Chomsky's research, they learn too fast for it to be accounted for by learning rules. I'm guessing it's like with birds. They just come out peeping, there's a genetic potential for sound to figure in social interaction. Humans are just more psychologically complex, and that's partly genetic and partly thousands of years of cultural evolution.
Quoting Corvus
I agree, it takes exposure to language use. We have a number of features that would remain latent without exposure to the stress that induces development. We aren't blank slates physically or mentally.
Quoting Corvus
The problem with using your own private language is that there wouldn't be a way to confirm rules. That same issue shows up if you ask yourself what rules you've been following up till now. There's no fact of the matter.
In other words, the Private Language argument ultimately undermines the very notion that meaning is rule-based. Maybe it's partly genetic, maybe there's an empathetic component. It's not primarily rule following, though.
Quoting Corvus
There's nothing that precludes your ability to follow a rule if you want to. It's just that here, you're working from a state where you already know what "cup" means. That knowledge is not rule based.
The difference between prescriptive rules (how one ought to behave), and descriptive rules (post hoc inductive statements about behaviour) is very important. I understand a dictionary definition as principally a post hoc inductive statement. However, in educational institutions we are taught to use certain words according to strict rules of application, like my example of "triangle". In this case the rules are prescriptive, and this is what I've argued is constitutive of "concepts".
Quoting Ludwig V
I agree that both are aspects of concepts, but I also argue that what you call use of words in practice extends far beyond the use concepts. So "use in practice" is a very large category, and the majority of it does not involve concepts. And, I argue that this is a very important point to understand if we want a proper representation of "use in practice". If we assume that all "use in practice" involves concepts, then we'll end up saying that all communication, even that done by other animals involves concepts. Therefore I think we need some rules as to what exactly "a concept" is, and we need to adhere to those rules in discussions like this.
Quoting Ludwig V
The point is that you cannot call two distinct sets of rules for using a specific word "one concept", without allowing for the possibility of contradiction inhering within that concept. So in your example of distinct uses of "game", things which one person would qualify as "a game" would be disallowed by the other, so you'd end up having contradictory uses of "game" being allowed for by "the same concept". This means that your proposition for "concept" allows for a violation of the law of noncontradiction.
Quoting Ludwig V
It is a problem for anyone who claims that the different varieties are "the same game", though having different sets of rules. if two different teams want to play the same game, "football" and they each have different sets of rules, that's a very real problem. They have to hammer out their differences and decide on one game to play. They can't each be playing a different game, and insist that it is the same because they both have the same name. Likewise with concepts, if we want to have a logical discussion, we can't each be proceeding with different rules of usage for the same word, and insist that it is the same concept. That's a fallacy known as equivocation.
Quoting Ludwig V
For logical procedures following explicitly formulated rules is of primary importance. I agree that use of the word in practice may sometimes serve as a guideline for creation of those rules, especially if common practice already follows from a field of discipline (rule guided). But in many cases, the principle of "use of the word in practice", just serves to deliver equivocation, therefore it must be curbed for philosophy and logical procedures.
Quoting RussellA
I don't agree with any of this. I don't believe we have a concept of "freedom". It's just a word that's used commonly, and in a vast variety of different ways, without any real restrictions on usage. One could not locate, or isolate a commonly accepted "concept of freedom".
Quoting RussellA
That's simple, you just follow the examples set by others. It's a form of copying, mimicking. This provides one with the basis for acceptable usage without learning any concepts.
In language there is the word “freedom”, and although it is commonly used, I agree that it has no publicly accepted meaning, concept or definition.
As regards copying, person A sees person B say “freedom” and be given a sailing boat. Person A wants a sailing boat and therefore also says “freedom” on the expectation that they are given a sailing boat.
Person A copies person B’s behaviour saying “freedom” because they have the prior concept of wanting a sailing boat. Person A would remain motionless if they had no prior concept of wanting a sailing boat. Person A only speaks because they have a prior concept.
Person A may want the sailing boat in order to sail across the Atlantic, and person B may want the sailing boat in order to sail at the weekends. It could be that every member of the linguistic community has a different meaning or concept of “freedom”.
I agree that “freedom” is a word commonly used in a vast variety of different ways.
The expression “freedom” has a meaning in language because it is associated with observable, empirical behaviour, even if everyone’s meaning or concept of “freedom” is different.
Can you not make up your own rules for own private language, confirm and agree with the other member who uses the private language too?
Yes, it is a point to mull over as you indicated. Will get back for further thoughts on the point, if crops up.
There seem many things operating under the rule of random selection or random events. Consider the lottery jackpot numbers drawn from 50 numbers plus 12 lucky star numbers. The winning jackpot numbers consists of 5 numbers and 2 lucky star numbers randomly chosen. No one can predict or say why those numbers came out. But they do.
Another example, consider your own birth. Was there a rule for you having been born as yourself?
Can you explain why you were born as RussellA? Nope. I guess not. It was a pure random event. But there you are.
Many things happen and exist without explanation why. That is the truth of reality. Is it not?
Chess has rules and society has laws that are consciously made by humans
They say that we are living in a rule-governed universe that operates according to the laws of nature, meaning that there are rules and laws operating independently of humans.
Because humans are a part of the Universe, and our concepts are part of us, it may well be that our concepts are rule-governed operating according to the laws of nature. I don’t know.
Quoting RussellA
Not sure about the universe - how large it is and how it began. One thing seems to be clear is that concepts are made by man. Western chess has its rules, but the Chinese chess has it own rules, and Japanese chess called "Go" has its own rules too, which are all different and specific on how they work.
On the concept of freedom, you could write a dissertation on its origin of the word, analysis of the meaning and uses of the concept, if needed.
We can make up any rules on anything, and as long as we agree to follow, that would be the rule. And in some cases, there is no rule for something such as random events and operations, and that is a rule too.
Suppose we make any rule, which we agree to follow. But we need another rule that we agree to follow the rules. But we need another rule that we agree to follow the rule that we agree to follow the rules.
Ultimately, rules are no more than social agreements.
I don’t think that’s right, and the regress you set up is a good way to see why.
If rules were “nothing but social agreements,” then you really would need an extra rule that says “now follow the rules,” and then another, and so on. But in real life we don’t add an continuous stack of meta-rules. We get trained into a practice where “following the rule” is already part of the technique, shown in what counts as going on correctly, what's a correction, what's a mistake. It's not a separate agreement; it’s built into what we do.
Also, agreement isn’t enough. A group can agree on a rule and still misunderstand it, misapply it, or disagree in cases about what counts as following it. That’s why rule following isn’t just a vote, it’s a practice with standards that show themselves in use, training, and correction.
I’d say it like this, rules aren’t private rails, but they also aren’t social contracts. They’re norms embodied in shared practices, and that’s why the regress stops in “this is how we go on,” not in a further agreement to agree.
As you are probably aware, hinges are central to what some call the "third Wittgenstein". Although you do not make that claim here, I wonder whether hinges are given undue attention and importance.
If hinges are a tool then what is their function beyond being a corrective to radical skepticism? Surely even a philosopher can see that there are many things what we accept without question. But it is questionable whether everything we accept without question is a hinge. What turns on the claims that there’s an external world,” that “Other people exist,” that “I have a body,” and “The world didn’t begin five minutes ago”?
On the other hand the fact that we do not question some things is not in itself a good reason not to question them.
Unfortunately, Wittgenstein does not tell us what does or does not count as a hinge. The only example he gives us is the mathematical proposition (655).
It is not clear whether Wittgenstein intended to restrict the use of the term hinge so as to exclude pre-linguistic practices and activities, but it is questionable whether everything that is not doubted is a hinge. The term hinge is used three times. The first is explicitly about propositions (OC 341). The second refers to investigations and assumptions. (OC 343)
Between these two statements about hinges and connecting them he says:
( OC 342)
The third, as already mentioned is about mathematical propositions. (655)
It may be that his use of the term 'hinge' does not refer to human forms of life but rather to specific forms of life shaped and informed by science.
It's difficult to express the point clearly. "the inner cause of someone grimacing" could be taken to refer to the sensation of pain. But the private language argument shows that there's no such thing. So we need to explain that if we are to be quite clear.
Quoting RussellA
True. But lots of people do know what it means. No-one knows what "slithy" means, because it doesn't mean anything. It is just a noise. Lewis Carroll was having fun writing something that sounded like language but wasn't.
Quoting RussellA
But it is part of a language. So lots of people know what it means.
Quoting RussellA
Yes but the sign "+" does not refer to that fact. It is, in effect an instruction to do something, so it can't refer to anything.
Quoting RussellA
But it does not refer to some thing. Unicorns are mythical creatures, so they do not exist, so "unicorn" cannot refer to them. You could, I suppose say that "unicorn" refers to the myths in which the stories occur, but that is a very different kind of reference from the one you seemed to have in mind.
Quoting RussellA
No, Russell's point, as I understood it that propositions that appear to refer to non-existent entities can be assigned a truth value by interpreting "The present king of France is bald" by analysing it as consisting of two claims - 1) that there is a king of France and 2) that he is bald. A conjunction of two sentences is true iff both conjuncts are true. In this case one of the conjuncts is false, because the reference fails, so the entire sentence is false. No non-existent entities required.
You seem to have a generous soul. Your concept of language is generous. So is your concept of reference.
Quoting Sam26
Sometimes we stretch meanings or apply them in new ways, but it is not always going on holiday. Sometimes it is putting words to work in new ways. Perhaps I'm being picky, but I think it would be wrong to think that a new use is always, as one might say, the engine idling.
Quoting Sam26
There are different registers of language, appropriate to specific kinds of occasion. Informal usage is one thing, formal usage somewhat different. One register for the law courts, another for a late night in the pub, and so on. Yet it is true that our approach in philosophy does assume a common understanding of correctness in language which might not always be appropriate. This was more or less taken for granted until somewhere in the 'sixties. Less so now. It could be very difficult, but seems to work well enough on the whole.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is not unjustified. The only enforcement pressure for the "rules" of language is not being understood or being misunderstood. But that is seriously undermined by our ability to understand what people mean to say even if they say it in a way that breaks the rules.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't see why we should not allow that animals have concepts. It would be hard to understand them if we did not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The trouble is that you and I can recommend, but we have absolutely no power to enforce anything.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That's right. But they can decide to play either game, or play one the first week, the other the second and so on. It's only a problem if they try to play both games at the same time.
I think this seriously understates what hinges are doing in OC, and it also makes two points that don’t hold up.
First, hinges aren’t just a “corrective to radical skepticism.” They’re Witt’s way of describing the grammar of doubt and inquiry. Doubt is not a free-floating attitude you can apply to anything. For doubt to be intelligible, some things have to stand fast, not because we’ve proved them, but because they are part of what makes checking, testing, and correction possible. That’s a conceptual point about how doubt, evidence, and investigation function, not a special attack against skeptics.
Second, “not questioning isn’t a good reason not to question” misses the target. Hinges aren’t defended by “we happen not to doubt them.” The point is that certain doubts don’t amount to a hill of beans, they don’t connect to any practice of checking. If you say, “Maybe I don’t have a body” or “Maybe the world began five minutes ago,” what would count as testing that? What would count as evidence either way? If there’s no answer, then the doubt isn’t courageous, it’s idle, it pulls the word doubt out of any meaningful role.
Third, you ask “what turns on” claims like “there is an external world” or “other people exist.” The answer is everything ordinary. Testimony, memory, perception, measurement, correction, surprise, learning. The whole business of “we checked,” “we found out,” “we were mistaken,” “the instrument was misreading,” already presupposes a stable background in which those activities make sense. That’s what “turns on” them.
Fourth, the “Witt doesn’t tell us what counts as a hinge” complaint sets the wrong expectation. Different propositions can function as hinges in different contexts, and many hinges are not even voiced as propositions most of the time. That’s why he talks of propositions, assumptions, and the “logic of our investigations.” He’s mapping a function, not compiling some list.
Finally, the idea that hinges might be restricted to science is too narrow. He says “it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations,” yes, but the point generalizes about inquiry of almost any kind, viz., it depends on what stands fast. Science is just an especially clear case because it makes “testing” and “error” explicit. The underlying structure is part of our broader form of life, not something created by science. Moreover, any belief system that can function as a system of assessment, correction, and inference will have something that stands fast for it. You can’t evaluate, test, or justify everything at once, because justification and testing always operate against a background. So, every workable system has hinge certainties / bedrock certainties of some kind.
Again, hinges aren’t “everything we accept without question,” and they aren’t a mere anti-skeptic patch. They show the background conditions that make doubt, evidence, and investigation intelligible.
I agree with most of that. Different registers, legal, technical, pub talk, all have their own standards, and Witt’s “use” point fits that well. There isn’t one absolute or global yardstick of correctness that floats above all contexts, correctness is internal to the specific language game and the context.
Where I’d adjust what you say is the following: philosophy doesn’t assume a single standard of correctness across all registers. Wit’s method is often to stop philosophers from importing the standards of one register into another, like treating everyday “know” as if it must behave like courtroom proof or treating psychological talk as if it's like physics. A lot of philosophical confusion comes from exactly that cross-register mix up.
Witt’s point isn’t “anything goes.” Even informal talk has standards, you can misuse words, you can be corrected, you can be asked “what do you mean?” The standards are just local, practical, and often implicit, which is why philosophy needs careful overviews rather than a theory of “correctness in general.”
This is not true. Have you never watched a child learn to speak? It is not true that a person "only speaks because they have a prior concept". Your example is not even making sense to me.
Quoting RussellA
So you are saying that there are as many concepts of "freedom" as there are people who use that word? Wouldn't this amount to us each having one's own private language? And isn't this exactly the type of conclusion which Wittgenstein is trying to avoid? There is no beetle in the box, no concept of freedom in the mind. That's what the beetle analogy is meant to show, this is a faulty way of looking at things.
Quoting Ludwig V
That's right, that's why I said "a dictionary definition as principally a post hoc inductive statement". It's just a generalization making an inductive statement about how the word is commonly used. It is a descriptive rule rather than prescriptive. There is no "enforcement pressure", not even an implied ought.
Quoting Ludwig V
You are not making sense any more Ludwig. Why does understanding something require that the thing which is understood has concepts? We can understand through behavioural patterns. The sun rises in the morning, and sets in the evening on a very regular basis, and this allow us to understand the solar system. Would you say that we couldn't understand the solar system if it doesn't have concepts?
Quoting Ludwig V
Yes, that's the point, it would be two distinct concepts of "football", not one concept. And if we tried to insist that there is one concept of football we'd have to acknowledge internal contradiction within the concept.
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Are you arguing that without prescriptive rules for word usage, the concept wouldn't exist? What about the smaller concepts that make up a triangle, like 3 and polygon. Do those also reduce to prescriptive rules?
Aspect seeing is Witt’s tool for showing that a picture can be seen as different descriptions/things, it's a shift in how we’re seeing what’s there. Think of the duck rabbit or seeing the same drawing now as a cube facing one way, then another. Nothing in the lines changes, but what you see changes.
It matters philosophically because it exposes a common temptation. We often think there must be one forced description, one correct “what's really there,” and that competing descriptions must be competing hypotheses. Aspect seeing demonstrates that in many cases the argument is not about hidden facts, but about how we are seeing the thing, what concept/s we are bringing to the picture, or what role the picture plays. Our psychology (especially ego, we don't want to lose the argument) often plays a role in the way we picture things.
This is where Wittgenstein makes the connection between seeing and understanding. “Now I see it” can mean “Now I get it.” You were staring at the same words, the same proof, the same remark, but you couldn’t find your way. Then an intermediate link clicks into place and you suddenly see the connections. That shift is not a private mental thing, it shows itself in how we go on, explain, apply, correct, and anticipate objections.
Aspect seeing is also a therapy tool. When a philosophical debate is stuck, Wittgenstein tries to get you to see it by shifting your aspect. Not to win by force, but to loosen the grip of a picture that has made one way of talking feel compulsory. The aim is not relativism, but flexibility, learning when a description is doing real work and when it’s just holding us captive. You can see it going on in this thread, people have a difficult time shifting their frame of reference. They get stuck into a way of seeing reality. This is true of all of us; we all do it.
I see it even when I play chess.
This makes sense within a Form of Life, but the philosophical problem is how do we choose between different Forms of Life.
Within a Form of Life
For a language game to have meaning it must have rules. As you say, “That’s why rule following isn’t just a vote, it’s a practice with standards that show themselves in use, training, and correction”. Following the rule is part of our training within a Form of Life and are norms within shared practices. Meaning is use within this Form of Life (PI 43).
Wittgenstein raises the rule following paradox in PI 201, where no course of action could be determined by a rule as every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule, but dismisses it. He dismisses it because this is what it means to be a Form of Life. He writes in PI 219 "when I obey a rule I do not choose. I obey it blindly" and in PI 198 “I have a custom”. Within the Form of Life we have been trained, customs underpin meaning and we are embedded in a community of language users.
Kripke in his 1982 book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language gives his own example of the rule following paradox. Does the symbol “+” mean we follow the rule of addition or the rule of quaddition. For example, both may give the same result for numbers under 1,000 but may give different examples for numbers over 1,000 (@AtticPhilosophy, Wittgenstein and the Rule Following Paradox)
It makes sense that within a Form of Life there are in effect hinge rules that establish the framework of the language Game, such as “god exists”, which as hinge propositions are exempt from doubt.
Hinge propositions
Within a Language Game within a Form of Life, some propositions are exempt from doubt. They are not beliefs, not objects of knowledge, not subject to evaluation, not open to rational evaluation. They are ungrounded presuppositions, immune to enquiry, absent of evidence, objective certainties, not truth-apt and to reject them would be to reject all our knowledge. They are part of the framework of the Language Game, not part of the content of the Language Game, pre-rational certainties. Moore’s mistake was to say “I know there is a hand” rather than “there is a hand” (IEP, Wittgenstein: Epistemology)
The role of philosophy
Kripke was criticised because his is a philosophical solution, whereas Wittgenstein sets philosophy aside. Wittgenstein makes sense as to meaning within a Language Game within its own Form of Life, but avoids the philosophical problem of how do we know which Form of Life we should choose. Should we be part of the Form of Life that “god exists” or part of the Form of Life that “god does not exists”, should we be part of the Form of Life that “Direct Realism” describes reality or “Indirect Realism” describes reality and should we be part of the Form of Life that “democracy is the best form of government” or “an autocracy is the best for of government”.
As you say “That’s why rule following isn’t just a vote, it’s a practice with standards that show themselves in use, training, and correction”. This is true within a particular Form of Life having its own Language Game, but the philosophical question, which Wittgenstein avoids, is why should we choose one set of hinge rules over a different set of hinge rules. Why should we choose the hinge rule that “god exists” rather than the hinge rule that “god does not exist”, for example.
Any enforcement pressure comes from other people, and our reaction to what they say and do. I also apply pressure to other people. Like jostling in a queue.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There's not really anything to argue about here. Of course, there are two different games (concepts). I practice, though, we have chosen to recognize a common element or at least a common origin for these games. That why we call them "Rugby football", "Australian rules", "American", "Association". All of them derive, as I understand the history, from a common (entirely informal) ancestor.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that we need to understand the sun in terms of its own concepts. I shouldn't generalize about animals here, because they are very different. But some animals are sufficiently like us that we need to apply some of the concepts to them as we apply to each other. That's all. I have a feeling however, that you would draw the line in a different place from me. We would, I think, agree that bacteria fall outside the scope of this and, most likely, that plants do as well (though some people do contest that). Perhaps most fish. Whales and dolphins?? You get the picture, I'm sure.
Quoting frank
It seems to me that you are making a case for the fundamental and inescapable importance of ordinary life. It seems to echo Ryle's distinction between technical and untechnical concepts. (That's a good thing, BTW)
Quoting Sam26
I'm glad we agree on so much. My concern is that Wittgenstein, (and those who write about him) seem very often to think that "going on holiday" or "cross-register confusion" are easy to identify and categorize - and file in the appropriate place. So, I find myself thinking here that sometimes cross-register mixes are appropriate and need to be worked through, not dismissed. (See, for example, my post above about animals.)
A child hears their parent say “toy” and sees them pick up a toy. Already the child has a concept of “toy”, because they have heard "toy" and seen a toy.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Wittgenstein is not saying that there is no beetle in the box. He is saying that because no one can see into anyone else’s box, each person’s beetle could be different.
Despite this, people can still use “beetle” in conversation.
The beetle could be pain. Wittgenstein is not saying that people don’t have inner feelings
A public language allows communication about inner feelings, not directly, in that no one can know another’s pain, but indirectly, on the assumption that inner feelings are linked to outward behaviour. For example, grimacing, which is empirically observable, thereby enabling public conversations about “ pain”.
The meaning of the word “pain” in a public language is directly determined by empirically observable outward behaviour, and only indirectly by an assumed inner feeling.
On the one hand it is true that meaning in language is directly determined by public and observable objective criteria, but on the other hand, there is the assumption within language that outward behaviour has been caused by inner feelings.
It is therefore true that a public language cannot be based on inner feelings alone.
Wittgenstein never said that we had no inner feelings.
PI 257 What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc)?
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Quoting Ludwig V
If I hear someone say “it is hot today”, I know it refers to it being hot today. There is no instruction for me to do anything.
If I hear someone say “2+2=4”, I know it refers to two objects being alongside another two objects. There is no instruction for me to do anything.
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Quoting Ludwig V
“Unicorn” refers to a mythical creature.
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Quoting Ludwig V
Russell’s definite descriptions allow us to refer to and discuss non-existent entities because we can reduce expressions, such as “the present king of France is bald”, into constituent truth-apt propositions.
I am not sure if rules are being made on everything. Some are made, but some are inherent.
And not every rules are social agreements. There are private rules between individuals.
From my understanding, rules of concepts are the meanings. How you use concepts in sentences are the grammatical rules.
All concepts comes with its own meanings, and meanings imply the logic and rules how they should be used.
If you say "Pass me over the cup." in the restaurant, they will know what you mean and a cup will be brought to you, which is the use of the concept of cup in social settings and rules.
But if you say "Pass me over the frog.", then they will not know what you mean, even if you meant the cup. But your wife will know what you mean, because you two have the private agreement that frog means cup.
Therefore the rules of concepts can be social, private and also inherent.
Yes, the meaning of a word depends on its context. In a zoo, “frog” means “a short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates”, but with one’s wife it could mean “cup”.
And there are rules how a word should be used in a sentence, in that “over pass frog me the” would not be correct English
Japanese and Korean language say in the order of "Frog to me pass over." They have different order of saying words in sentences, i.e. the different rules.
Yes, each language game needs its own rules
Yes, I believe that concepts like 3 and polygon exist as individuals following prescriptive rules, doing what they ought to do. It is discipline. Plato described our apprehension of concepts as dependent on "the good". "The good" according to Plato in The Republic, is what makes intelligible objects intelligible, in a way analogous with how the sun makes visible objects visible. So the urge to do what is good is what drives us to obey the prescriptive rules, and obeyance provides for the existence of intelligible objects (concepts).
Quoting RussellA
i don't agree, and I think that this proposal is untenable.
Quoting RussellA
That's right, and as such the beetles are insufficient as analogous of "a concept". Each person's concept of "beetle" would be private and unique, so there would be no such thing as "the concept of beetle", only a multitude of distinct concepts.
Quoting RussellA
You argue two inconsistent, or even opposing things. First, you argue that if a person simply observes the use of a word, they must have an inner concept of that word. Now, you ague that the meaning of the word is dependent on the person' use of the word. The latter denies the possibility of the former. The person could not have a concept for the word, prior to demonstrating "empirically observable outward behaviour" of such, unless you are saying that the person could have a concept of the word without the word having any meaning for the person.
So what is going on when the waiter adds up the bill (whether by pushing buttons on a machinie or the old-fashioned way)?
Quoting RussellA
So is it false to say that unicorns don't exist?
Quoting RussellA
That's right. He shows how to talk about non-existent entities without referring to them.
Quoting RussellA
No, indeed, he did not. Much depends, however, on what you say next - I mean, how you conceive of inner feelings. One way of expressing this is to ask whether the outward signs of pain are connected to the inner feelings on the basis of an empirical inference - that is, whether there are two events here, one outer and visible, and one inner and invisible to anyone except the patient. If you say yes, I shall ask how you connect the outward signs to the inner feelings if you have no access to them.
Forms of life and “choosing between them.”
Witt’s “form of life” is usually the shared human backdrop of practices that makes language, rule following, correction, and inquiry possible. It’s not typically “theism versus atheism,” “direct versus indirect realism,” or “democracy versus autocracy.” Those are competing doctrines, theories, and political commitments inside a more basic form of life where we already count, measure, infer, correct, argue, and so on. The “philosophical problem of choosing between forms of life” is not the problem. We do make choices, shift commitments, and so on, but we’re rarely choosing between forms of life from some meta or neutral standpoint.
PI 201, PI 219, and “obeying blindly.”
Witt’s reply to the rule following question/anxiety isn’t “custom makes it fine, end of story,” and it isn’t “we vote on correctness.” The point is that interpretation isn't the whole story, because interpretations also need a way of being applied. At some point you master of a technique, you go on without consulting a further interpretation. That’s the sense of “blind.” It doesn’t mean “irrational” and it doesn’t mean “infallible.” You can still be wrong, but the very notion of being wrong only makes sense within a practice where there are correct or incorrect standards.
Kripke’s quaddition.
Kripke’s is helpful as a stress test, but it gets its force by removing the training and the settled mathematical practice that fixes what “+” is in our lives. In actual arithmetic, “+” is not fixed by a private mental episode, and not by agreement either. It’s fixed by a teachable technique with correction, proofs, applications, and convergence across our practices. Quaddition is bit of a trick, but it’s not a real candidate inside a practice unless you explicitly introduce a new rule and add a practice around it.
Hinges are not “whatever we don’t question.”
I agree not everything we accept without question is a hinge. A hinge is a role, not a list. It’s what stands fast so that inquiry, doubt, checking, and error detection can get traction. That’s why I also don’t like descriptions that make hinges “not truth apt” across the board. They can be true or false in principle, but while they function as hinges, they aren’t generally what we put on trial, because they are part of what makes the testing possible.
This is where my terminology matters. When I say hinge certainty, or bedrock certainties, I do not mean epistemic certainty, and I definitely don’t mean absolute certainty. I’m marking a functional role, what stands fast in our practices.
Moore.
Yes, Moore’s mistake is largely grammatical. The oddness is not primarily the content “Here is a hand,” but how he uses “I know” in a place where the language game of giving reasons, checking, and defeating doubts has no grouding.
“God exists” as a hinge.
This is where I disagree. “God exists” can be treated as nonnegotiable within a religious community, but that doesn’t automatically make it a hinge in Witt’s sense. For most ordinary language games, “God exists” is not part of the scaffolding that makes checking and correction possible. It’s a metaphysical or doctrinal commitment that people argue about, even within the community. So, I’d classify it closer to a worldview commitment, often backed by subjective certainty (conviction), sometimes defended as knowledge, but not typically functioning as hinge certainty in the same way as “there are physical objects,” “other people exist,” or “this is how counting works” does.
Does Witt “avoid” the real question?
I don’t think so. He rejects a picture of the question that assumes there must be a neutral standpoint from which we justify our framework. Where hinges really diverge, reasons eventually bottom out, not because nothing matters, but because argument needs shared bedrock or foundational support. What remains is how we actually handle error, correction, and inquiry, including persuasion and reorientation. That’s not a dodge, it’s a diagnosis of the limits of “proof” when the background itself is what’s in dispute. This is true even in mathematics.
I want to speak to something that keeps happening in this thread, because it's a good example of the very confusion Witt's tools are meant to address.
Several responses keep making the same argument but in different forms. For e.g., without inner feelings there'd be no language games, therefore language games exist because of inner feelings, therefore when we say "I feel xyz" the meaning of that is my inner feeling of xyz.
The first part is okay, but the conclusion doesn't follow.
Without oxygen there'd be no fires. From that statement it doesn't follow that "fire" means oxygen, or that oxygen is what gives meaning to fire talk. Oxygen is a condition for fires existing. It isn't what makes our fire concepts work. When a firefighter says, "the fire is spreading to the second floor," the meaning of that is fixed by the role it plays, what counts as checking it, etc. Oxygen is presupposed, but it's not doing the semantic work.
It's the same with inner life and meaning. Without any inner life we wouldn't have our language games, whcih is a point about the conditions under which language exists. It's not a point about what gives particular expressions their meaning. Those are two different questions, and confusing them is what forces me to keep making the same clarification.
This isn't just a technicality. If meaning were fixed by private inner objects, you'd need a way to pin the right word to the right inner item privately, with no public check, which is crucial. Wittgenstein shows that this move destroys the thing it's supposed to explain. You can't distinguish "I'm using the word correctly" from "it just seems right to me," because there's no independent standard. That's the private language argument in miniature, and it's not a denial that you have feelings. It's showing that feelings alone can't do the work required.
What drives the misreading is the assumption that meaning must work by a word pointing at some thing, and if outer objects are ruled out, then an inner object is all we're left with. That assumption is exactly what Wittgenstein is trying to dislodge. Meaning doesn't need a hidden referent, inner or outer. It needs a practice, i.e., training, use, correction, context, the possibility of getting it right or wrong in ways others can recognize (no one has access to your inner processes, so there's no way to standardize them). That's not behaviorism, because it doesn't reduce meaning to bodily movement. And it's not mentalism, because it doesn't put meaning in a private theater. It's a third option, and the difficulty people keep having is the difficulty of seeing that this third option is even there.
When I say "inner states don't fix meaning," I'm not saying they don't exist or don't matter. I'm saying they can't play the specific role that keeps being assigned to them, the role of a private foundation that makes meaning possible by itself, apart from any shared practice. Once that's understood, most of the objections in this thread disappear, because they all depend on pushing Witt back into a choice between behaviorism and mentalism, which is something he refused.
Exactly, my concept of “beetle” must be different to yours because we have lived different lives in different countries and have had different experiences.
There is no one dictionary definition of “beetle”, only a multitude of distinct concepts.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There is the stage of learning the meaning of a word and the stage of knowing a word.
In the learning stage, a child can play with a toy without knowing its name. They gain a concept of the object when they play with the object, ie, use the object. The child then hears their parent say “toy” when the parent picks up the toy. The child can learn to associate the name “toy” with the object toy and their concept of toy.
Subsequent to the learning stage, a person knows the concept of toy and knows its name “toy”, and as when a child are able to use the toy.
A person can have an inner concept of an object prior to knowing the name of the object.
Yes, that is when someone says “add 2+2”. That is different to someone saying "2+2=4".
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Quoting Ludwig V
Unicorns exist in fiction.
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Quoting Ludwig V
It is impossible to talk about something without referring to it.
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Quoting Ludwig V
By inference. If when I feel pain I grimace, when I see someone else grimace I infer that they also are feeling pain.
I agree that a hinge is not the same kind of thing as a form of life, but the hinge is crucial to there being a form of life in the first place.
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Quoting Sam26
Are theism and atheism different forms of life in Wittgenstein’s terms?
I would say that they are. Wittgenstein's "form of life" refers to the shared cultural practices, activities, and ways of living that provide the context for language and meaning (Wikipedia), and theism and atheism have many practices, activities and ways of living that are not shared.
One’s language is closely linked to one’s form of life, and the more diverse one’s language the more diverse one’s form of life. The theist and atheist certainly have different language games.
I am not saying the situation is black and white, In that there are degrees of difference. For example the form of life of a theist is different to the form of life of an atheist, but not as different as the form of life of a human and the form of life of a lion.
However, that the language game of a theist is different to the language game of an atheist, then so must be their form of life.
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Quoting Sam26
This is the point I am making. The Wittgensteinian man in the street rarely chooses between forms of life from a meta or neutral standpoint, but this is the role of the philosopher. The philosopher should be trying to choose between forms of life from a meta or neutral standpoint
It is the role of the philosopher, sidetracked by Wittgenstein, to stand outside our language games, forms of life, hinge propositions and rules accepted by custom in order to attempt to understand the bigger picture.
It is the role of the philosopher to break the atheist out of their atheistic language game and the theist out of their theistic language game to arrive at a better understanding of the reality of the world.
In PI 201 talks about the rule-making paradox, and as you say, grasping a rule is not an interpretation and it is not custom that makes a rule. However, it is more fundamental than mastering a technique.
As with the hinge proposition, the rule is part of the framework of the form of life, within which is the language game. Customs, interpretations and techniques are part of the content of the framework, and as such have no control over the rules to which they are subject to.
Grasping a rule is living within a framework that is exempt from doubt, not an object of knowledge, not open to rational evaluation and an objective certainty.
One should not say “I know how to use the language game”, but should say “I use the language game”.
Philosophy is the fundamental and inescapable activity of creating, analyzing, and assessing belief systems, whether religious, political, scientific, ethical, etc., using a broad range of tools that extend beyond formal logic including sensory experience, language, testimony, and other sources of knowledge. It is not limited to any single discipline or institution but permeates every domain of serious inquiry, because any domain concerned with truth necessarily engages in a philosophical activity. Even very granular philosophical work on specific concepts like causation, knowledge, or identity operates within this broader framework of belief assessment, deriving its significance from its implications for how we understand reality. Philosophy is therefore not a specialized academic enterprise and more a fundamental dimension of thought itself, one that cannot be escaped, since even the attempt to dismiss or define it is itself a philosophical act. What distinguishes philosophy is not a narrow method but an orientation, viz., the continuous, reflective commitment to analyzing what we believe, how we come to believe it, and whether those beliefs are justified, wherever that inquiry takes us.
Of course. A part of something is not the whole of it. The question I asked is:
Quoting Fooloso4
Part of the difficulty we are having is that, as you say:
Quoting Sam26
I have no issue with that. It is a common practice, but the first question raised in my post is about:
Quoting Fooloso4
You say:
Quoting Sam26
Whether it matters depends on one's goals. If your goal is extend concept of hinges beyond Wittgenstein use then it matters less that you means something different than him then if the goal is to understand what he means by hinges. The attempt to extend an insight can be at odds with determining what that insight might be.
Quoting Sam26
It goes even further than that. For anything to be intelligible some things have to stand fast. This is an ancient problem that goes back at least to Parmenides and Heraclitus. It is both an epistemological and ontological problem. Wittgenstein touches on this at OC 96-97, even using Heraclitus' metaphor of the river. The concept of flux is a hinge belonging to our system of scientific investigations.
Quoting Sam26
There is nothing ordinary about these claims. In what situation might this claim be made? Someone who seriously doubts them or thinks there is need to make them is in need of psychological therapy not philosophical therapy.
Quoting Sam26
It is not about Wittgenstein giving a list of hinges, but about claims that are made by others about Wittgenstein and hinges. To what extent are they faithful to the concept as used by him? In order to consider this we must piece together the few things he says.
Hinges are not simply things you don't doubt, they are things that are exempt from doubt. There are many things we do not doubt that are not exempt from doubt. The fact that we do not doubt them does not mean that they are indubitable.
This is followed by:
His concern is not the plurality of things said and done that some commentators claim are hinges. Hinges are propositions that belong to our scientific investigations.
Followed by:
While it is true that we can't investigate everything, it is not as if one assumption is as good as another. Science does not simply rest content with assumptions. It tests them and alters them when necessary. In some cases the change is minor adjustment to the system propositions, but in some other cases we are forced to make changes to our fundamental orientation as was the case with the Copernican revolution. Hinges had to be replaced with new ones.
This is pretty straight forward, but he follows it by saying:
Both the propositions of mathematics and the proposition that "I am called" or 'such and such people have calculated a problem correctly' are said to be incontrovertible but but unlike the propositions of mathematics they are not explicitly identified as hinges. What is the distinguishing difference? The proposition "I am called '' and the claim that people calculate correctly may be incontrovertible but they do not belong to our system of scientific investigations. Nothing related to our investigations hangs or turns them.
I’d go along with this, as long as we’re careful not to treat as a division of labor the fact that cognitive science “is entitled to investigate the causal and psychological things that typically accompany, enable, or disrupt our ability to go on,” while philosophy handles what “makes a move count as following the rule.” Grammar isn’t a kind of normative layer sitting atop empirical psychology, with philosophy policing the boundary. We dont want to say science studies causes, philosophy studies norms, because we are not dealing with a stable dichotomy but attempting to dissolve that kind of thinking.
I'm not sure what you need to be "worried" about. I've been consistent that the point isn't to establish separate jurisdictions. When I say cognitive science is entitled to investigate causal and psychological accompaniments, I'm not parceling out a territory, I'm saying Wittgenstein's grammatical work doesn't shut down our empirical inquiry. That's not a division of labor; it's just not making the mistake of thinking one kind of investigation negates the other.
If the concern is that someone might read me as reinstating a dichotomy, fine, but that's a misreading. The statement "I'm worried that..." has a way of suggesting the other person hasn't thought something through, when in fact the very point being "worried" about is one I've already addressed. It's a rhetorical move that positions the other person as needing correction before they've actually made the error being attributed to them.
But look, I don't want to get hung up on tone. The substantive point stands, Wittgenstein dissolves the knot, he doesn't leave us with two tidy halves. I've said that. If we agree on that, then we agree.
I like that.
I am doing the same. I believe the points that I am making are correct, even if no one else agrees. But what else can one do? At the very least I am improving my own understanding. If someone accepts my arguments, then that is a bonus.
As long as you are making progress and I am making progress, perhaps that is sufficient, even though our progress is different, even though our language games are different.
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EDIT - I have deleted the rest of the post as it did not add much.
A useful post
I will give my solution to meaning in language, and try to show it answers all of your questions.
My solution to meaning in language
As in PI 258, I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of my sensation of sadness. Therefore, every time I have the sensation of sadness, which causes me to cry, I record my crying in my calendar by writing the sign “S”.
The sign “S” cannot point to the private sensation of sadness, which is hidden, but can point to the public behaviour of crying, which is not hidden.
There is no criteria for correctness between the sign "S" and the private sensation of sadness, but there is a criteria of correctness between the sign “S” and public behaviour of crying.
The sign “S” is an ostensive definition that points at the public behaviour of crying, not the private sensation of sadness.
I know that if I feel sadness then I cry, so when I see someone else cry I can infer that they too also feel sadness. I can never know that someone else feels sadness, but I can infer that they do from their behaviour.
For example, if you saw a cat with all the behaviours of being in pain, would you walk on past saying “I don’t know that this cat is in pain” or would you say “I infer that the cat is in pain from its behaviour” and take the cat to the vets?
Therefore, the sign “S” refers to and means the behaviour of crying, from which it can be inferred that the person is experiencing sadness.
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Quoting Sam26
Without the sensation of sadness there would be no sign “S”.
You are correct that the sign “S” does not mean the sensation of sadness. The sign “S” means the behaviour of crying, from which the sensation of sadness is inferred.
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Quoting Sam26
You are right that there is no criteria of correctness between the sign “S” and the private inner sensation. The criteria of correctness is between the sign “S” and the public behaviour of crying.
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Quoting Sam26
Meaning must work by pointing at something, and it is not the case that outer objects are ruled out, as it is the outer object of crying that is being pointed at.
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Quoting Sam26
You are correct that language would not work if the referents of the words were hidden. Language works because the referent of behaviour is not hidden.
Even when the meaning of a word is the referent of behaviour, you are correct that this still needs practice, training, use, correction, context and right or wrong.
It is true that the behaviour of crying may have different causes, such as sadness of losing a family pet or watching a particularly funny comedian, and this is where other factors such as context are needed. Is the person crying looking at an empty dog kennel or looking at someone on a stage.
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Quoting Sam26
Wittgenstein agreed in PI 304 that there are inner feelings
You are correct that inner feelings cannot make meaning in language possible by itself, because it is the behaviour caused by inner feelings that makes meaning in language possible.
:up:
This does not sound very Wittgensteinian, who accepted hinge propositions rather than assess them.
Meno's paradox.
I believe Plato resolved Meno's paradox in The Republic, by positioning "the good" as outside of knowledge.
Meno's paradox is supposed to support past lives. It just as well supports the idea that much of our knowledge arises from an innate framework.
That is the solution posed in The Meno. But I think it is actually posed as obviously unacceptable.
Quoting frank
What Plato does in The Republic is place "the good" (and this would be the grounding for correctness as well), as outside of knowledge. That is similar to what Kant did with "noumenon". Notice that for Kant the a priori intuitions of space and time provide for your "innate framework". But Kant produced a grounding for empiricism, and Plato was a skeptic in relation to sense experience. Plato's skepticism would doubt the intuitions of space and time. For Plato, the senses often mislead us, as evidenced by pleasure leading us away from what we know is good. This means that the "innate framework" which would support "the good", or correctness, must extend beyond, or prior to even sensation. It must be prior to any form of knowledge whatsoever. That's why Plato argued that virtue cannot be a form of knowledge.
In relation to this thread, Wittgenstein judged such extreme skepticism of sense experience, as fundamentally irrational. So he proposed hinges or bedrock as a foundation which would be irrational to doubt. However, I believe that this position is based in some unjustifiable assumptions about the nature of doubt. We can take a look at what Sam26 says:
Quoting Sam26
The basic mistake made by Wittgenstein here, is the assumption that doubt ought to be intelligible. This is a mischaracterization of doubt. Doubt does not arise from within any intelligible system, it always comes from a source which is external to whatever it is which is supposed to be intelligible. That is fundamental to doubt. We may have a system of explanation (intelligibility), which is mostly closed around itself, as a closed system, but it necessarily must have openings where it relates to, and interacts with the world which it explains. Doubt enters at these openings, as what appears to be unintelligible from the precepts of the intelligible system. The important point, doubt cannot come from within the system, as the system is modeled as closed to the inside. Doubt must come from outside
So Wittgenstein makes a fundamental mistake by casting doubt as something rational, then putting a boundary where doubt would be irrational. "Doubt" is in its basic nature irrational because "rational" is a judgement or determination based on the rules enforced by the system, which doubt is opposed to. Therefore doubt must be classed as fundamentally irrational.
When we put this into relation with what is exposed by Meno's inquisition, we see that doubt must be prior to all knowledge, and is in some sense the source of knowledge. As Socrates said, philosophy is sourced in wonder. This means that a proper understanding requires that we invert the relation between knowledge and doubt, from that described by Wittgenstein. Instead of portraying doubt as something which inheres within knowledge, like Wittgenstein does, (doubt is rational), we need to portray knowledge as a culture which propagates within an environment of doubt.
The "innate framework" referred to by @frank is a framework of doubt. The cultures of certitude which pop up within that framework are illusions of certainty, produced from empiricism and the notion that the senses are infallible. Meno's paradox is resolved by revealing that it is produced from a faulty representation of knowledge, that it is constituted with infallible principles. This faulty representation of knowledge is also exposed in The Theaetetus. Once we realize that knowledge is classed as becoming, rather than being, seeking knowledge is not portrayed as seeking the correct principles.
Quoting Sam26
I think I have been reasonably clear in setting out my understanding where Wittgenstein is correct, incorrect or vague.
Understanding has two aspects. First there is understanding what Wittgenstein wrote about meaning in language, and second there is understanding whether Wittgenstein was correct, incorrect or vague about what he wrote about meaning in language. The first aspect is the role of the historian, the second aspect is the role of the philosopher.
As you say “Philosophy is the fundamental and inescapable activity of creating, analyzing, and assessing belief systems”, but it should be noted that first one must create a belief system in order to be able to analyze and assess other belief systems.
Therefore, I needed to set out my own belief system as regards meaning in language, which I think was reasonably clear, prior to being able to judge Wittgenstein’s belief system for correctness, incorrectness and vagueness.
The first step in avoiding philosophical confusion is in creating one’s own belief system, against which other belief systems may be judged for correctness, incorrectness and vagueness.
At the risk of repeating myself I will repeat what Wittgenstein actually says about hinges: They are propositions that belong to our scientific investigations. As such they are epistemological in the traditional sense. He does not simply accept them, he concludes that they are incontrovertible. (OC 657)
There is not textual support or evidence that Wittgenstein uses the term 'hinge' to mean anything other than these incontrovertible propositions that belong to scientific investigations.
You’re overreading Witt when you say he “concludes hinges are incontrovertible” and that hinges “belong to scientific investigations” which makes them similar or like traditional epistemology.
Ya, Witt says things like “it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted” (OC 342), and he uses “hinge” talk around there. But he’s not defining hinges as “scientific propositions” or giving an epistemological assessment that hinge propositions are “incontrovertible” in the strong sense. He’s describing a role that some propositions play, viz., as what stands fast so that doubt, evidence, checking, and inquiry can operate at all. Science is one clear instance where this structure shows up sharply, but it definitely isn’t the whole story.
Also, “incontrovertible” in OC shouldn’t be read as “a priori, guaranteed true, immune to revision.” Witt’s own river-bed imagery is an e.g., of what stands fast can harden and later shift. The point is grammatical, within a practice, some things are not treated as things to be tested, they are part of the framework that makes testing possible. That's not “epistemological in the traditional sense,” it’s closer to demonstrating what gives epistemic assessment its sense in the first place.
Finally, limiting hinges to the three times he uses the word “hinge” is just bad method in OC. The same thought is developed throughout OC, for e.g., “what stands fast,” “framework,” “world-picture,” and the contrast between propositions we test and propositions that function as the background of testing. It’s not that there’s “no textual support” for a wider reading; the wider reading is exactly what the text is mostly doing.
So RussellA’s caution is fair, not everything undoubted is a hinge. But your reply goes too far in the other direction by shrinking hinges into a scientific subclass and turning “incontrovertible” into a strong epistemic point. That’s not Wittgenstein’s point.
Not what I understood from my reading. He mentions method, sure, but his examples are quite varied and not all of them mere science. Many are from mathematics, but also included are things as prosaic as "So-and-so was with me this morning and told me such-and-such" and "I am called....".
Quoting Fooloso4
I call bullshit.
He says that both mathematical hinges and "I am called ..." are incontrovertible (657) but you cannot say of the latter that it is an unmovable hinge. (656)
Quoting Sam26
It is not just" talk around there". The statements are connected. He begins both "341" and "342" with the statement "that is to say". To say that "some propositions are exempt from doubt are as it were like hinges on which those turn" is to say " it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted".
This leaves open the possibility that some propositions are exempt from doubt that do not belong to our scientific investigations. He does say that there are some propositions that are incontrovertible and backed by overwhelming evidence such as "I am called ..." but he goes on to say that we cannot about them what we say about them mathematical proposition:
The mathematical proposition has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of incontestability. I.e.: "Dispute about other things; this is immovable-it is a hinge on which your dispute can turn." (655 -657)
What we cannot say about them is that they are immovable hinges. (656-657)
Quoting Sam26
Of course not! Scientific investigations are not a priori.
Quoting Sam26
Quite the opposite. If our interpretive method aims at understanding an author on his own terms then this requires us to attend to what he says and not extend terms beyond the way they are being used.
I am glad that you challenged my claim, but just calling bullshit is not to give textual support. Please provide some of the varied examples of hinges.
Quoting Banno
He explicitly denies that this is a hinge. See my response to Sam.
It's not posed as unacceptable, though it may well be unacceptable to you. Any solution is going to end up arguing that some knowledge must be innate, whether we explain that as anamnesis, Kantian categories, hinges, or what have you.
Notice the italic I and the bit after the "but..." where he says that it can be regarded as incontrovertible. What's a hinge and what isn't, isn't fixed, but is an aspect of the game being played.
If you are not careful I'll use a Chess analogy on you... :wink:
"And so we have here a buttress similar to the one that makes the propositions of mathematics incontrovertible."
What other classes of investigation is he considering with regard to hinges?
I selected the three parts that explicitly refer to hinges. This was not done to suit my perspective. My perspective is shaped by what he says and does not say. Again, if there are other parts that address hinges once again please point to them.
Quoting Banno
This is good advise.
Note that he says "our scientific investigations" (342) He does not mean simply what scientists do. He is talking about us, about our worldview. This is a theme that runs throughout his work.
Yes, I discussed this above. He says the mathematical propositions is a hinge but one cannot say that about the proposition "I am called ...". It being incontrovertible is not sufficient for it to be a hinge. Why not? What is missing?
There's no point to this line of discussion. "Hinge" is not well defined, and as I explained above, this approach is nothing but a Wittgensteinian mistake anyway. The proposal of "hinges" is not real, a false proposition, derived from a misunderstanding of doubt and skepticism. There are no such hinges. So attempting to determine what qualifies as a hinge will be fruitless.
:meh:
Most of the text is to do with other examples, as per Sam's Tool 1. Look and see.
Yes, OC 341-342 are connected, and Witt uses scientific investigation as a clear case, i.e., inquiry works only against a background of things that aren’t doubted. But it doesn't follow that hinges are only propositions “belonging to scientific investigations.” That’s your restriction, not Witt. OC develops the same structure far beyond science under other labels, what stands fast, framework, world-picture, river-bed, and the contrast between what we test and what makes testing possible; and as I said, science is one sharp illustration of the structure, not the whole domain.
On “incontrovertible,” your own citations work against the way you’re using the word. Witt distinguishes between propositions like “I am called …,” which can be practically beyond dispute, and mathematical propositions that are “officially” stamped as immovable hinges (OC 655–657). So “incontrovertible” does not equal “hinge,” and it doesn’t define the class. It marks specific roles in different contexts, and Witt is careful about those differences.
And your “of course not, science isn’t a priori” reply misses the point. Nobody is claiming hinges are a priori truths. The real issue isn’t a priori vs empirical, it’s role. A hinge can be empirical in content and still function as what stands fast in a practice. “Incontrovertible” in this context means “not up for doubt within this practice, here,” not “guaranteed true forever.” That’s exactly why Witt uses the river-bed e.g., what stands fast can harden and later shift.
Finally, “read him on his own terms” doesn’t mean treating “hinge” as a technical term whose meaning is exhausted by three examples. Wittgenstein’s method in OC is to show the function across cases, not to provide you a tidy definition. Your restriction to a scientific subclass is exactly the kind of point that the text resists.
Seems your thread must deal with both hinges and the unhinged. :wink:
Have another look at OC §470 through §475. In part, his puzzlement here is addressed by later work on constitutive utterances. "L.W." counts as a reference to Wittgenstein, and that it does so does not "emerge from some kind of ratiocination", it's in the doing...
How is look and see a hinge? It is a good policy to follow but even under Sam's description it is not a hinge. The policy may hold fast but it tells us nothing about things that hold fast.
Quoting On Certainty
By this reasoning, Heidegger's treatment of Nietzsche's notebook Will to Power is equal to Nietzsche's published works. This sort of thing does not clarify the intent of the author.
What?
Seems to be a comprehension problem here. On several levels.
Here’s how I read it, for what it's worth:
OC 470: “Why is there no doubt that I am called L. W.?”
Witt is showing us a simple picture, if something is “beyond doubt,” we must have established it beyond doubt by some super evidence. But our names aren’t like that. It’s not “indubitable” because we demonstrated it through a proof, it’s indubitable because doubting it doesn’t normally gain a foothold in our everyday lives. It’s a hinge-like case, but definitely not because it’s “scientific.” It’s because it has a place in the background of ordinary uses.
OC 472–473: training is what fixes what’s up for doubting or investigation
This answers the “science-only” reading. The child learns language and at the same time learns what counts as worth checking and what doesn’t. The cupboard example makes this very plain; we don't teach a child to treat “is this a real cupboard or a stage set?” as what we normally accept. We teach stability as the norm first, and only later do we learn the cases where instability/doubting becomes relevant. That’s a form-of-life point, not a scientific-epistemology point.
OC 474: “worth” is not “ground”
This one is lethal to the move “it works; therefore it’s justified.” Witt grants that the practice’s success may explain why it survives, but he denies that this success is the justification or “ground” of it. This fits what I've saying, don’t turn these remarks into a proof, treat them as a description of how our [b]checking practices sit on something that isn’t itself grounded/justified by further checking.[/b]
OC 475: the anti-rationalist origin story
Here Witt says, don’t picture language as something that came out of some prior philosophical theory, a prior reasoning, or a prior epistemology. Think of the human being as an animal with instinct and training, and you’ll stop trying to find an “ultimate rational foundation” for the most basic linguistic moves. That’s exactly the opposite of reading hinges as “traditional epistemology.” It’s a reminder that the bedrock is practical and learned, not a set of scientific theses.
How this lands in our hinge dispute
OC 470–475 supports my main point against Fooloso4, i.e., Witt is not defining hinges as a special scientific subclass. He’s showing how “not doubting” is woven into training and practice before science even gets going. Science is a clear case where the structure is visible (OC 342), but these remarks show the structure is already there in ordinary life and child learning.
If we wanted one sentence for the thread, OC 470–475 shifts the axis from “which propositions are proven incontrovertible?” to “how are we trained into a practice where some things are treated as the background of inquiry rather than things within it?”
These passages fit nicely within the thread. Thanks.
It is a description and the only one that he provides. That is not to say that there are other things that might count as a description but you argue against the attempt to identify them.
Quoting Sam26
I have not claimed that it is an epistemic point. It is something that is characteristic of hinges, but not everything that is incontrovertible is a hinge.
Quoting Sam26
These are not things beyond science. The framework of our lives is scientific. This is not the case, for example, with primitive societies. Both our world-picture and the river-beds are scientific. Magic plays no role.
Quoting Sam26
And for us both what we test and what is tested are governed by science rather than magic or superstition.
Quoting Sam26
Right. That is my point. As I ask Banno:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Sam26
It is because nobody asking that claim that I said of course not. And yet you thought it necessary to say:
Quoting Sam26
Quoting Sam26
Once again you raise objections to things I did not say.
Quoting Sam26
Again, not something I said.
Quoting Sam26
And once again not something I said.
The question is what we are warranted to claim is a hinge? We are on solid ground when we attend to what Wittgenstein actually says. Beyond that is conjecture and needs textual support.
Well I am glad to see that you are attempting to give textual support, but unfortunately it fails from the get go. He is clear that "I am called L. W." As I quoted above he explicitly denies that it is a hinge.
475 actually supports my point. We grant instinct not only to man but to animals. Do you want to grant hinges to animals as well? I must admit that they look and see, but they do not look to see Quoting Sam26
Pearls...
In my terminology, there are bedrock certainties that are fixed for ordinary life, what stands fast so doubt and inquiry can get traction at all, and there are more local hinges that are treated as “not doubted” within a practice but can shift when the practice shifts. That’s why “I am called L. W.” can be beyond doubt in ordinary identification without being “officially stamped” as immovable the way a mathematical proposition is.
This is why @Banno said "Look and see."
It's as if we wandered into a mixed forest and you, finding an Oak, concluded that the whole forest consists of oaks; And when Sam points out an elm, you say "but look, that one over there is an oak". Yes, it is, but that does not make the forrest a forrest of only oaks.
Look and see.
See §657, in which he says, of "I am called L.W", "And so we have here a buttress similar to the one that makes the propositions of mathematics incontrovertible".
It's not a treatise, it's a workshop.
Wittgenstein says it is indubitable because:
(657) But again, he says that this is not a hinge. See above.
Quoting Sam26
What is the hinge at 472? Wittgenstein says the child
Why would it doubt it? There is no reason to doubt it. The problem of doubt does not arise Are you claiming that hinges are the absence of doubt? Soon we will not be able to even open the door because of all the hinges.
The same goes for 673.
474 - The game is played because there is some worth in playing it. It would be worthless if things changed suddenly.
475 see above
For Wittgenstein, even mathematical propositions derive their special status from their role in our practices. They are rules of grammar within certain language-games. Their certainty is not a higher-order metaphysical immovability but a function of their use. So the difference between “I am called L. W.” and a mathematical truth is not that one is contingently undoubted and the other metaphysically fixed; rather, they occupy different grammatical roles in different practices.
It there are things that are hinges and things that are not then there must be distinguishing characteristics. This is not to say that all things that are hinges must have a specific feature in common. You can use a hammer to drive in a screw but it will do a poor job of it.
Rather than me excluding things you want to include many things or everything that has any of the features Wittgenstein identifies, even if he denies that that thing is a hinge.
I think a large part of the problem is that Wittgenstein uses the term science in a much wider way than you allow. You underestimate the role it plays in our form of life. Scientific investigations are not limited to the specialized work of scientists. If we assume that things have a natural explanation and we soi seek to find them then our inquiry is scientific. Our world view is inextricable scientific. Unless that is understood and unless you understand why this is of great concern to Wittgenstein you are bound to misunderstand him.
It's not just cheese makers, it's dairy producers of all kinds. :up:
For Wittgenstein, part of Moore’s mistake is in saying “I know here is one hand” rather than “here is one hand”.
These hinges are not limited to science, but apply to our complete Form of Life. They form part of the framework of rational enquiry, and as such are not objects of knowledge but are exempt from doubt and not subject to evaluation. In this sense they are incontrovertible.
You should follow your own advice. Look at what he says and maybe you will see. But only if you get the picture you have in mind out of your view:
What he says is that I am called L.W is not a hinge.
It might be helpful to consider why not?
I think at one point Wittgenstein implies that true "hinges" would have to actually be prelinguistic, and would be granted to animals other than human.
Quoting Banno
This is the point I am making. He proposes "hinges" as that which would be necessary for grounding knowledge in certainty. So he figures if there are hinges we should be able to identify them individually. He tries, but demonstrates that he cannot identify them.
He doesn't make any conclusion, but leaves the drawing of a conclusion to the reader. That is the way that Plato wrote, he stated the proposition, laid out the evidence, and allowed the reader to draw the conclusion. The conclusion which we ought to draw in this case, is that the proposal of "hinges" is a false proposition. The talk of hinges is idle talk. Wittgenstein has demonstrated that knowledge is not grounded in certainty. Knowledge is grounded in the skeptic's doubt, and certainty is an illusion which we produce to make ourselves feel better (therapy).
“I have been getting pushback on the claim that hinges have their place in our scientific investigations. Our scientific investigations form a system. It is within this system that hinges have a role.”
I’m not pushing back on system. I’m pushing back on the slide from “system” to “scientific investigations,” because your OC passages don’t support your claim.
Here's what you quoted:
OC 141: “When we first begin to believe anything… it is a whole system of propositions.”
OC 144: “The child learns to believe a host of things… Bit by bit there forms a system… some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift.”
OC 279: “This system is something that a human being acquires by means of observation and instruction. I intentionally do not say ‘learns’.”
That's not “scientific investigation.” That's training into what is meant by going on, and Witt is explicit that the system forms gradually and includes the things that stand fast and the things that shift. Science enters later, but the system he’s describing is already in place before science.
You also cite:
OC 247: “What would it be like to doubt now whether I have two hands?… I have no system at all within which this doubt might exist.”
That is an everyday case, not a scientific hypothesis. It shows exactly what I’ve been saying, viz., some doubts have no foothold because they don’t connect with any practice of checking inside the system.
And you also quote:
OC 105: “All testing… takes place already within a system… it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument.”
Again, “argument” and “testing” here are general. If you restrict that to “scientific investigations,” you’re limiting Witt’s point.
Now, OC 108 (the moon example) does show that within our present system, physics can rule out certain claims. Fine. But that doesn’t make the whole framework “scientific.” It shows that within a system, some propositions are treated as fixed or foundational. This is the hinge point. Science is one clear region where you can see it clearly.
Finally, you quote:
OC 286: “If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far.”
This line only makes sense if Witt thinks there are different systems, some not “scientific.” So, the system talk can’t be identical with “scientific investigation.”
I'll state my position as clearly as I can. Hinges have their role within a system, and our scientific investigations are one part of that overall system. But hinge structure itself, what stands fast and what shifts, is already there in the child e.g., in ordinary doubt, in instruction, and in the background of how we verify. Your citations make this point unavoidable.
These remarks in On Certainty seem to follow the distinctions made in Philosophical Investigations between natural science and the comparison of languages:
Let the language games begin. The grammatical considerations of the rules are distinguished from the doubt that arises in experience:
Earlier on this thread, I quoted the Blue Book that cites the need for a model to explain the causes of what is hidden in nature.
The remarks in On Certainty look at the grammatical structures that give us confidence in our models.
A mathematical proposition like 12x12=144 is a hinge in the strongest sense (my bedrock sense) because its internal to the system. Once you're inside arithmetic, you can't doubt it without ceasing to do arithmetic. It doesn't rest on evidence. Nobody checks whether 12x12 still equals 144. The proposition has been given what Witt calls the "official stamp of incontestability" because of the way it functions as a rule within the system. Doubting it doesn't produce a question of value, it produces a breakdown of the practice.
"I am called L.W." is different. It stands fast because of the sheer weight of everything in our life. i.e., documents, people using the name, memories, responses, institutional records. The evidence is overwhelming, and Witt says exactly that. But it's still evidence. You can imagine, however remotely, a scenario where it turns out to be wrong, an elaborate deception, a bureaucratic mix-up, amnesia, something. However, you can't imagine a scenario where 12x12 stops equaling 144. So "I am called L.W." stands fast within ordinary life with a certainty that's practically unshakable, but it stands fast because of how the world happens to be, not because of the grammar of a system.
That's the distinction I think Witt is making, I believe, at 655-657. The mathematical proposition is a hinge because it functions as a rule, a piece of the framework that makes calculation possible. "I am called L.W." is incontrovertible but doesn't have that rule-like character. It's more like a proposition that has hardened into the riverbed because of the accumulated weight of life, not because it was always part of the bed.
Here's my key point, and this is where I think you and I actually disagree. That distinction doesn't mean "I am called L.W." plays no hinge-like role. It does. In everyday identification, in how I navigate the world, in how others address me, it functions as what stands fast. Doubting it in ordinary circumstances wouldn't be a proper inquiry, it would be a sign that something is amiss with the person doing the doubting. But it plays the role differently than a mathematical proposition does, and Witt is careful about the difference.
So, what's missing when Witt says you can't say of "I am called L.W." what you can say of 12x12=144? What's missing is the rule-governed, system-internal character. The math hinge holds its place by the grammar of the practice. The personal hinge holds its place by the weight of life. Both stand fast. But the way they stand fast, and the conditions under which they could shift, are different. That's why Witt withholds the "official stamp" from one and not the other, and that's why I think reading hinges as one uniform class with one set of credentials misses what OC is saying.
Our system is inextricably scientific.
Quoting Sam26
The child is not doing a scientific investigation. It begins to believe a whole system of propositions.(141) It is that system of propositions that is for us based on science. See 140:
Our system of judgments is based on science. This is why at the time of his writing we rejected the idea that anyone had ever been on the moon.
Quoting Sam26
Right, it is not a scientific hypothesis. Moore's argument is empirical and attempts to provide proof.
Quoting Sam26
What system? Wittgenstein says:
(298)
That does not mean that we our community is bound together by the practice of making hypotheses or whatever it is you imagine scientists do. Science is a body of knowledge that shapes our world view.
Quoting Sam26
Again, what system? The answer is a system of a community bound by science and education.
Quoting Sam26
Yes, he is comparing our system of belief and knowledge with some other.
Hinges are not free floating. They have their place and function within a system. In order to understand how a hinge functions we must have some understanding of the system. Without that understanding we cannot understand how a proposition functions and so cannot determine whether or not it is a hinge.
Yes. I agree.
Quoting Sam26
Is it a hinge or "Quoting Sam26?
It is in certain respects like a hinge but it is not a hinge. That is because it is personal. If it turns out that no one is called L.W. this does not disrupt our system of propositions or way of seeing the world. For the most part things still hold fast.
You left out the italicises "I", and ignore that he immediately qualifies that comment.
Quoting Fooloso4
No you haven't. You have been getting pushback for claiming that hinges are only about scientific investigations. For thinking the forest is only oaks. has explained this.
The "system" includes all language, the many games we play and things we do with it; from reading a train timetable to traveling to the moon in a dream, from calling for a block to multiplying 12 by 12.
Quoting Paine
Sure. And...?
OC is perhaps more like a ball game:
Perhaps in the OC L.W. is making up the rules as he goes along... And isn't this sometimes worth doing?
Your stance in this thread has been read Witt on his own terms, don't extend his concepts beyond how he uses them, pay attention what he says. You've held me to that standard over and over. Every time I point to the wider functional role that OC is describing, you try to pull me back to the three passages where "hinge" literally appears and say I'm overreading.
But look at what you're doing with "scientific investigations."
Witt says at OC 342, "it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted." That's a remark about the logic of investigation, the activity of testing, checking, verifying, revising. It's not a remark about culture, worldview, or the general shape of modern life.
You've taken that phrase and expanded it into our system is inextricably scientific, our framework is scientific, our world-picture is scientific, our judgments are based on science, and our community is bound by science. You've turned Witt's remark about how inquiry works into an overarching claim about the character of our entire form of life. And you did it while citing OC 298, which says we're bound together by "science and education," as if that settles the question. But 298 doesn't say our system is scientific. It says science and education bind the community. Education is right there in the sentence. Are you going to say our system is "inextricably educational" too? The sentence is describing what holds a community together, not defining the nature of every proposition in the system.
Now think about what your position. You've taken a term Witt uses in a specific context, removed it, expanded it to cover far more than the original passage warrants, and then insisted the text supports your broader reading. That's exactly what you accuse me of doing with "hinge." Exactly. The only difference is that when I do it, you call it bad method, and when you do it, you call it reading Witt on his own terms.
Let's look at your citations again.
OC 141: "When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions." Nothing about science. A system of propositions.
OC 144: "The child learns to believe a host of things… bit by bit there forms a system… some things stand unshakably fast and some are more or less liable to shift." Nothing about science. A child acquiring a system through training. The hinge structure is already there, things standing fast while others shift, before any scientific content enters the picture.
OC 279: "It is quite sure that motor cars don't grow out of the earth. We feel as sure of it as of anything that we could know. But this is 'something that a human being acquires by means of observation and instruction.' I intentionally do not say 'learns.'" Observation and instruction. Not scientific investigation. And Witt deliberately avoids the word "learns" to mark that it isn't the acquisition of knowledge through inquiry. It's something more basic.
OC 247: "What would it be like to doubt now whether I have two hands? Why can't I imagine this at all? What would I believe if I didn't believe that? So far I have no system at all within which this doubt might exist." An everyday certainty. No science. The system here is whatever makes it unintelligible to doubt that I have two hands.
These are your citations, and not one of them say what you need them to say. They describe a system that forms through training, observation, instruction, and living. Science is part of what eventually fills that system, but the system's structure, its hinge structure, isn't itself scientific.
And OC 286, which you passed by quickly, "If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far." If the system just is science, then a society without science has no system. But Witt says they do have one. It's poorer, but it's a system. Which means "system" is not identical with "scientific." There are systems, and ours happens to be heavily shaped by science, and theirs by something else. The hinge structure belongs to the system as such, not to the scientific content.
Finally, you've applied a strict standard to my reading of hinges, viz., don't go beyond what Witt explicitly says. And you've applied a loose standard to your own reading of "scientific investigations" and inflated it to cover the entire framework. That's not a consistent method. If you want to hold me to the text, hold yourself to the text. And if you read the text honestly, it doesn't support the claim that hinges belong exclusively to scientific investigations. It supports the claim I've been making, hinges are what stand fast within a system so that doubt and inquiry can function, and the structure shows up everywhere, in science, in everyday certainty, in training, in the things a child absorbs before it ever hears the word "science."
In the e-copy I am using it is not italicized, but even if it were what difference does it make?
Quoting Banno
I left it out because it is not relevant to the point that it is not a hinge.
Quoting Banno
I made the connection between:
and
How do you understanding what he means when he uses the phrase "that is to say' in both cases?
As I understand it the second statement clarifies the first. They are making the same point in different words. When he says certain propositions that are exempt from doubt are like hinges he is saying that these propositions belong to our scientific investigations.
Quoting Banno
The problem is more like this: someone points to a tree and says that it is an oak and you point to some other trees and call them oak. After all they all have certain characteristics in common.
Quoting Banno
When he says:
He is not talking about knowledge of train schedules or dreams or calling for blocks.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, he is. Look and see.
You're right that "I am called L.W." is personal. If it turns out nobody is called L.W., arithmetic still works, physics still holds. I'll drop "hinge-like" because it muddied my point.
But here's the real point again. OC isn't only about what holds fast for the system as a whole. It's also about what holds fast for each of us within a form of life. "If someone said to me that he doubted whether he had a body I should take him to be a half-wit (OC 257)." That's not a proposition belonging to scientific investigations. It's a proposition where doubt signals a breakdown in the person, not a gap in the system. And Witt treats these cases with the same seriousness as the ones you want to call hinges.
if "I am called L.W." isn't a hinge, and "I have a body" isn't a hinge, and all the cases where doubt has no foothold in ordinary life aren't hinges, then what is most of OC about? You've narrowed "hinge" to where the bulk of the book falls somewhere outside OC. I don't think that's a well thought through reading of a text whose central point is precisely the structure of what stands fast and what doesn't.
Science is not only about certain activities such as testing. Science forms a body of knowledge. It is from within that body of knowledge that the logic of our investigations functions. It is also from within that body of knowledge that we make judgments. The judgments we make today are different from the judgments societies made in the past and judgment made by societies that are not scientifically advanced.
Quoting Sam26
I am taking what Wittgenstein said in his writings from the early Notebooks to On Certainty and others. It is not piecemeal or statements taken out of context. It is the background against which I understand what he is saying in the passages under discussions.
Quoting Sam26
In so far as science is critical part of our education, yes.
Quoting Sam26
There is a major difference. The meaning of the term 'hinge' is contested by scholars. The same level of controversy does not occur with regard to the term science.
Quoting Sam26
You beg the question. You assign a central role to hinges, but there is little or no agreement about this.
Quoting Sam26
I have not claimed that the system is just science.
Quoting Sam26
I agree.
Quoting Sam26
The following might give you some idea of the scope of what Wittgenstein means by scientific investigations:
(Culture and Value)
It is not just that our scientific investigations make progress, but that progress is the form of our civilization. Its structure becomes more and more complicated
Another nuanced argument by Banno.
One again, Wittgenstein identifies things that are indubitable but are not hinges. The importance of some things not being doubted has a long history going back at least to Plato. We find it in the divided line from the Republic. The Greek term is 'pistis'. There is no single word for word translation but trust comes close. It has both an epistemological and an ontological dimension.
Thank you. One responds appropriately to one's interlocutors. How one might read On Certainty and not notice Wittgenstein's quite intentionally wide ranging choice of examples, in accord with his own exhortation, is beyond my keen.
Quoting Fooloso4
Arguably, yes, and this is were I may to some degree differ in interpretation from @Sam26. The sequence for me looks something like a beginning with Moore’s claim and epistemic classification, then a consideration of hinge propositions before moving on to rules, world-picture, and animal certainty before more or less settling back to use and practice.
What I take issue with is your
Quoting Fooloso4
Which is just plain wrong, as any who read the text will see. The use of "hinge", as Sam has so patiently been explaining, is a part of a wider discussion of various indubitable propositions in various contexts.
So sure,
yes; but not only to our scientific investigations, but also to our use of "This is a hand", “My name is L. W.”, “That is a tree”, “I am sitting at a table writing” and so on.
May as well let this rest.
This doesn't really make sense to me. If 12x12=144 is a hinge, then isn't 10x10=100 a hinge, and 2x2=4 a hinge, and any other equation? So, wouldn't any, and every, mathematical statement internal to the system, be a hinge? And if every mathematical statement is a hinge, then "hinge" serves no purpose in this context of mathematics.
Or is it the case that mathematics itself is the hinge, in its entirety as a hinge discipline, or something like that? The problem with this perspective is that some parts actually change over time. And it's not a matter of just some fringe parts changing, the very fundamentals (what you might think would be hinges) like what qualifies as a number, change.
So in reference to the discussion on scientific investigations, I'll refer you to Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts. If this theory is true, then the idea of hinge propositions is faulty. The entire system must be equally doubted by the skeptic, because the entire system ties together as a cohesive unit. It is not the case that some propositions of a system are doubtable and others ought not be doubted. The skeptic cannot distinguish what is doubtable from what is not doubtable, without doubting them.
The idea is that human endeavors are game-like. You embrace certain rules, certain standards, certain word usage, etc. when you embrace a game.
Yes, you can doubt that the knight really has to move in a little L shaped path. You can even throw the knight out the window, but at that point, you're no longer playing the game.
You are a little queen, looking ahead at an impending knight fork, wondering if this is all there is to you. You say:
"To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, [F: poore]
The pangs of despised Love, the law’s delay, [F: dispriz’d]
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear, [F: these Fardels]
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o'er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment, [F: pith]
With this regard their Currents turn awry, [F: away]
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remember'd.
Yes, "you're no longer playing the game". That's the point. At this point, your humanly endeavour (throwing the knight out the window) is not game-like at all, it's anti-game-like. Then the proposition "human endeavors are game-like" is not a valid inductive generalization, because some people are always throwing the knight out the window. Such is the skeptic. But Wittgenstein tries to squeeze the square peg into the round hole, and portray the anti-gamer as a gamer, maybe just playing a different game.
Don't you get cold living under that bridge?
It's a good question, but at any given moment, the proposition 12x12=144 is either functioning as a hinge or it's not. When we're checking a calculation and we rely on 12x12=144 without questioning it, then it's functioning as a hinge. When no one's relying on it as such, then it's not a hinge, it's just another mathematical proposition. Could many mathematical propositions serve that role? Sure. But that doesn't make the term useless.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
First, mathematics as a whole isn't "a hinge." A hinge is a proposition holding fast so that some inquiry can proceed. The fact that mathematics changes over time doesn't undermine the idea. Witt's river-bed image (OC 96-97) says that what stands fast can harden and later shift. That's not a flaw in the concept; it's just the nature of some hinges.
Second, Kuhn doesn't defeat hinges, he illustrates them. A paradigm is a set of commitments that hold fast so that normal science can proceed. When a shift happens, some of what stood fast gives way and new things take its place. Witt practically describes this at OC 96: "fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid."
Third, the skeptic point gets Witt backwards. The whole thrust of OC is that you can't doubt everything at once. Doubt requires a foundational background (a hinge background) in order to function. The skeptic who says "I must doubt everything equally" hasn't achieved some deep point of inquiry, they've destroyed the conditions that make doubting intelligible. It's my understanding that Kuhn confirms this, but I'm definitely not a Kuhn expert, that's for sure.
Mathematical propositions are hinges.
The personal propositions “I am here” (OC 10) and “the existence of the external world” (OC 20) are hinges, because they are exempt from doubt.
The personal proposition “I am called……….” plays the role of a hinge because of overwhelming evidence and is regarded as incontrovertible.
Ultimately, logically and grammatically, something that plays the role of a hinge cannot be a hinge.
It's not being under the bridge that's cold, it's the truth that's cold and hard.
Quoting Sam26
Well then anything which one learns, and employs in an habitual way would be functioning as a hinge. Anything we've come to rely on we use without questioning it. Once we learn how to use something, we employ it without questioning it, it becomes a part of the toolbox. We generally don't question the tool when we pull it out, unless we're thinking of using it in an unorthodox way. This would mean that the vast majority of common language use would consist of hinges, words spoken without deliberation. We rely on them without questioning them.
We could portray anything reliable as a "hinge", but this does not support the claim that it would be unreasonable to doubt hinges. Surely, even after we've come to rely on a specific process it makes sense to question whether there might be a more efficient way, or even a better end.
So this points to an important distinction, the difference between things which we do not doubt, and things which we ought not doubt. If hinges simply consist of things which we do not doubt, they cannot serve as the basis for what the skeptic ought not doubt.
Quoting Sam26
You are clearly reducing "hinges" to propositions which we do not doubt in practise. That's fine to portray hinges in this way, but then the hinge provides no defense against skepticism, of any sort. If the river-bed, or paradigm will shift, and the shift will likely lead to a better system, then the skeptic ought to doubt the hinges and work toward producing that shift. If "hinges" are portrayed in this way, then it is unreasonable for anyone to say that it is unreasonable for a skeptic to doubt the hinges.
Quoting Sam26
This is what I assert is the false representation of doubt. "Doubt", skepticism, is to refuse judgement, suspend judgement. Judgement is what requires a foundational, hinge background. But doubt is to oppose judgement, altogether, and this enables opposition to any hinge background which supports any judgement, and the activity associated with that judgement. In meditation, contemplation, and similar practises we can doubt anything and everything which comes to mind. Doubt itself, is just a matter of refusing judgement so it doesn't require any supporting hinges. As soon as it's time to act though, we must make judgements and put an end to any radical skepticism.
So if we portray "doubt" as opposing a particular judgement, then doubt is understood as a contrary judgement. The contrary judgement of course, requires a hinge background. But if we portray doubt as it truly is, the refusal to make any judgement, this frees us from the necessity of a hinge background. Being freed from the necessity of a hinge background is what allows the skeptic to choose principles. To employ the game analogy, consider that the doubter, while doubting, is refusing to play any game. This allows the doubter to select the game of choice.
There is an argument which can be made against radical skepticism, which claims that thinking itself is an activity. This activity itself must be derived from some sort of prior judgement, requiring some sort of hinges. The problem with this approach is that it puts judgement as prior to thinking, and this would reduce the capacity of thinking to guide our judgements, producing the conclusion that we couldn't prevent activities which we were inclined to make, but thought to be wrong. So it's better to allow that judgement is the product of thinking, and skepticism can extend to all thought.
I suggest you take a look at the scholarly literature. The claims made about hinges are varied and interpretations mutually exclusive. What your regard as:
Quoting Banno
begs the question. Are they examples of hinges? You have a picture in mind of what a hinge is and see his wide ranging discussion of various things as examples of hinges. It is as if your toolbox only contains a hammer and so everything is seen as a nail.
It is like the religious person who looks around and proclaims that everything she sees is evidence of God.
Quoting Banno
In the Preface the editors tell us:
That is to say, these notes are more wide ranging than a discussion of indubitable propositions:
That is to say, his investigation is an epistemological one.
The fact that certain propositions stand fast is a condition for knowledge but that does not mean that they function as hinges. In order to be hinges they not only have to stand fast, other things must pivot around them, Moore's propositions do not play a pivotal role in our system of knowledge. They are simply things that we have no reason to doubt.
However, some propositions which exist within this framework are more open to doubt than others, but all can be doubted.
I just finished re-reading the book and found out how much is based upon the "reasonable" person. This person inherits a system of facts:
Much of the book is devoted to how a child learns language games. Doubting happens afterwards:
Quoting OC, 474
The pursuit of the ground seems to be the sense given by many in this discussion to the use of "hinge." But finding what is "reasonable" is finding what stands fast:
This is the inverse of building up from an unmoving ground. We do, however, justify our beliefs through arguments:
Quoting OC, 105
It is when we attempt to assemble proof that the arrangement of propositions come to the fore:
Quoting OC 295 to 297
I have some familiarity. I did indeed do a search for any support there might be for your contention that hinges are restricted only to scientific investigation. Michael Williams and Crispin Wright came up, but that's a stretch. The view is too narrow to be much countenanced. Apart from your posts here, there is no serious, textually grounded reading restricts hinges to scientific investigation only.
Yes, he is considering more than just hinge propositions. And again, §341 does say that “They are propositions which belong to our scientific investigations”, and indeed they are, but this does not restrict them to scientific investigation alone. In the surrounding text he examines hinges in various other examples.
Cheers.
The point of the search was to show that there is no consensus as to what a hinge is.
Where did I say that hinges are restricted only to scientific investigations? If there are hinges that do not belong to the logic of our scientific investigations we must examine them in order to determine whether they are in fact hinges or just have one or more of the features of a hinge but not all of them.
Quoting Banno
You cited several examples of what you claimed hinges - from animal instinct to “My name is L. W.”. As I have pointed out to you more than once, he explicitly denies that propositions such as “My name is L. W.” is a hinge. You conflate what is not doubted with hinges.Although some scholars, perhaps most notably Danièle Moyal-Sharrock do claim that animal instinct is a hinge, this is problematic.
That an animal does this or that has nothing to do with that behavior being exempt from doubt or the animal concluding that it is. Doubt does not enter the picture. Neither is 475 an example of a hinge. It is about the origins of language.
You give the following examples of other things that you regard as hinges: “that is a tree”, “I am sitting at a table writing”. If they are hinges they must play a pivotal role in our system of knowledge. What is their the pivotal role? That tree may serve as an example of a tree but an example is not pivotal. And what role does the information that you are sitting a writing table play in our system?
So what are the criteria for something to be a hinge?: It must have the following distinguishing characteristics:
It are exempt from doubt
It stand fast while other things turn around them
It is part of our system of knowledge
It makes no sense to claim that something is a hinge if it does not meet this criteria.
Here:
Quoting Fooloso4
and here:
Quoting Fooloso4
and, if you were repeating yourself, elsewhere as well. And also in the various replies to Sam and I.
This conversation is very odd. But if you now wish to say that hinges are not restricted to scientific investigations, we'll just leave it at that.
Quoting Sam26
Yep. He's just plain wrong.
So when Wittgenstein says:
He doesn't mean only propositions of science, but when I say, as you quote:
Quoting Fooloso4
It means only the propositions of science?
I have repeatedly asked for supporting evidence but everything you and Sam have provided falls short. If you cannot provide clear examples then what I am saying stands.
Quoting Banno
I would gladly say that they are not restricted to scientific investigations if you could provide examples that do not fall apart under examination. But Sam has given up rather than satisfactorily defending even one. I am waiting to see if you can. Until then ...
OC uses the tools Sam lists here in a reflection on "Here is a hand", and is not a complete work.
OC begins with Moore's lecture, then moves on to other considerations, as it investigates various certainties, chiefly those of statements. Hinges are one of the considerations, along with rule-following, forms of life, animal certainty and use. For my money the resolution is found in PI§ 201, again, in that there are ways of following a rule that are shown, not said. It's down to our practise.
This is at variance with Danièle Moyal-Sharrock's view in not settling down to animal certainties and that we remaining certain of our beliefs. It is also somewhat different to @Sam26's emphasis on hinges; I rather take hinges as one example among others of indubitable propositions; but I think Sam and I agree that being indubitable is not a property of a proposition as much as a role it takes in some language game.
We are not responsible for your lack of comprehension...
Quoting Banno
See the bolded bit.
I am reminded of this:
457
Right, and that system of facts does not include Sam and Banno's alleged hinges such as "Here is a hand" or "I know that I am a human being". We must ask what this system of facts consists of.
Quoting Paine
Yes, although Sam calls it something like groundless grounds. And won't call hinge propositions propositions. The reason is, at least in part because he maintains that instincts are hinges and instincts are not propositions.
Quoting Paine
This is part of Wittgenstein's anti-foundationalism. That is to say, his rejection of the pursuit of grounds.
Quoting OC 295 to 297
Empirical foundation. experiments, conclusions from experiments. Sure sounds a lot like science.But Banno and Sam assure us that there is more. Except they don't seem to be able to find it.
Evasiveness is not good philosophical practice. With each example you and Sam have provided I have said why it falls short. If there is a lack of comprehension it is not on my part.
Quoting Banno
You seem to have lost track. The question is whether these things - "This is a hand", “My name is L. W.”, “That is a tree”, “I am sitting at a table writing” count as hinges. I have given you reasons why they don't. And not because they do not belong to our scientific investigations, but because nothing in our system of knowledge turns on them.
I'm not being evasive. The text is there before you, but you seem to not be able to follow it. To say nothing turns on "here is a hand" in this context is extraordinary, since the whole of OC turns on it.
Fine.
Having recently read his philosophy of math, I'd say he would scoff at the notion of a "system of knowledge.". Too abstract.
Would it not be fair to point out that Witt often makes the same or similar point(s) several times in different ways. The private language argument comes to mind as an example.
Quoting Banno
I think it is probably the result of his determination not to get trapped in a set doctrine or dogma.
Quoting Sam26
It seems to me that part of the importance of Kuhn's idea is that he includes in the paradigm a social context and the associated technology. A paradigm is more than a set of commitments - it's more like a practice, part of a way of life, therefore not just linguistic or intellectual.
However, the proposition “here are no hands” must also be a hinge within a different coherent language game of which it is a part, otherwise its language game will fall apart.
Therefore, a proposition is a hinge within a coherent language game if without the hinge its language game will fall apart.
But there can be different coherent language games each with their own hinge propositions.
In fact, there can be innumerable different coherent language games, and innumerable hinge propositions.
But each language game is an expression of the Form of Life within which it exists.
Therefore, if there are innumerable different coherent language games there must be innumerable different Forms of Life.
Each individual has a choice as to which language game they play, which hinge propositions are for them without doubt and which Form of Life they exist within.
Should I be a theist or an atheist, a Realist or an Idealist, a democrat or an authoritarian?
For each choice, hinge propositions are available.
You are confusing facts and propositions. It is a fact that we have hands and this plays an important role in our lives. What turns on the proposition "here is a hand"? Moore's point is that we cannot doubt it, but we do not normally doubt it.
If "here is a hand" a hinge proposition then is "here is a tree"? How about "here is a blade of grass" and "here is an ant" and so on with everything in the world?
Exactly. I made this point years ago.
Every proposition within a coherent language game is in a sense a hinge proposition beyond doubt.
First, it is clear that at least some hinge propositions belong to our scientific investigations. The question is: are there other hinges that do not belong to our scientific investigations? Look and see. The examples you cited turn out not to be hinge propositions. I have taken them one by one and they are either propositions that belong to science, that is to say, the natural world or they are problematic in one way or another.
Second, it seems that you do not see this because you think that hinges are not propositional despite what Wittgenstein says. And so all kinds of innumerable things become hinges.
That is the opposite of my point. Not everything we point to is a hinge proposition.
Maybe we agree that there is no difference between “here is one hand” and “here is one tree”.
Either i) if “here is one hand” is a hinge then why isn’t “here is one tree” also a hinge?
Or ii) if “here is one tree” is not a hinge then why should “here is one hand” be a hinge?
Tractatus
What belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations is the totality of true propositions. That is to say, the whole of natural science. Hinge propositions have a particular function but, like all other propositions, they represent states of affairs. What distinguishes them is that they regarded as true and free from doubt.
Philosophical Investigations
“A”.)
Compare with OC 98:
The editors note the connection to the Tractatus.
Philosophical considerations must not be scientific ones. There are not philosophical propositions.
ii
Hinges are not an inventory of what we find in the world.
I don't want to turn this thread into a referendum on hinges. The thread is much wider in its scope.
Two things:
First, you say my examples "turn out not to be hinge propositions" and that you've taken them one by one and shown they either belong to science or are problematic. But what you've actually done in each of my cases is either absorb them into your expanded sense of scientific (which, as I've argued, stretches that term well beyond what Witt means by it), or dismiss them because they don't match the mathematical case at OC 655. Neither move shows they aren't functioning as what stands fast. It just shows they don't fit your definition. And that's the disagreement. Your definition is to narrow. I'm saying the text gives us a much broader picture.
Second, you're right that I don't think hinges are propositions in the ordinary sense, and I don't think that's a weakness in my understanding of OC. I think it's Witt's point. Look at what he actually says. "Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end; but the end is not certain propositions striking us immediately as 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 (OC 204)." Acting isn't propositional. Next, "But that means I want to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal (OC 359)." Something animal, not propositional in any standard sense. Also, "...believe certain things definitely, whether they express this belief or not (OC 284)." Belief without expression. These are commitments revealed in what we do, in how we go on, in the trust a child shows before it can say a word.
When Witt puts these things into propositional form, he's articulating something that already operates before and beneath propositions. The propositional form is how we talk about what stands fast, it's not what makes it stand fast. A child who reaches for objects without doubting their permanence is already relying on something hinge-like, and it would be bizarre to say that doesn't count because the child hasn't formulated a proposition about object permanence.
So, when you say "all kinds of innumerable things become hinges" as if that's a reductio of my view, I'd turn this around. Yes, the structure of standing fast runs deep through human life. That's not an embarrassment for my reading. That's what OC is about. The alternative you're offering, where hinges are a small class of propositions explicitly within scientific investigations, leaves most of OC without a subject.
As I see it, JL Austin’s performative utterance is “I name this ship Queen Elizabeth”. Subsequently we can say “here is the ship Queen Elizabeth”, where the proposition “here is the ship Queen Elizabeth" is beyond doubt, because a performative utterance, and as such is a hinge proposition which we can find in the world.
This hinge proposition then allows us to carry on our language game by saying things like: “the ship Queen Elizabeth was built in 1938, provided a weekly transatlantic service between Southampton and New York City and was built at Clydebank”
If the proposition “here is the ship Queen Elizabeth" was in any doubt, this would throw the rest of our language game into a mess.
A coherent language game requires certain propositions to be beyond doubt in order to establish a bedrock for the language.
Quoting Fooloso4
This post actually helps my case, not @Fooloso4, and I don't think he's able or willing see it.
His quote, "The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (T 4.11)." Then you say, "What belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations is the totality of true propositions. That is to say, the whole of natural science."
But that's the Tractatus. The early Witt. The later Witt explicitly rejects the idea that the totality of meaningful propositions is exhausted by natural science. That's what PI 109 is saying, the passage he quoted, "It was correct that our considerations must not be scientific ones." And "These are, of course, not empirical problems." Philosophy isn't in the business of producing propositions that belong to natural science. You can't import the Tractatus picture of propositions into a reading of OC as if nothing changed between 1921 and 1951.
And here's the deeper problem. He quotes OC 98, "the same proposition may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing." That's Witt describing exactly the hinge structure I've been pointing to. A proposition shifts between being something we test and something we test with. That shift isn't confined to scientific investigations. It happens everywhere, in ordinary life, in training, in the child's acquisition of a system of beliefs. When a child learns that fire burns, that proposition moves from something discovered to something relied upon. It becomes part of the background. That's the hinge function, and there's nothing specifically scientific about it.
Now look at what you've done with your citations. PI 109 says philosophy is not science and doesn't produce scientific propositions. OC 98 says propositions can shift between testable claims and rules of testing. The Tractatus says the totality of true propositions is natural science, but the later Witt abandons that picture. Put them together and you get the opposite of what @Fooloso4 is arguing. The later Witt has moved away from the idea that all meaningful propositions belong to natural science, and OC is exploring what holds fast in our practices generally, not just within scientific investigation.
@Fooloso4 ends by saying "there are no philosophical propositions." Agreed. That's Witt's point. Philosophy clarifies, it doesn't add to the stock of propositions. But that has nothing to do with whether hinges are limited to scientific investigations. If anything, it reinforces the idea that what OC is doing is clarifying the structure of how propositions function in our lives, scientific or not, and showing that some of them play the role of standing fast (bedrock or some other foundational role). That role is the hinge, and it isn't owned by science.
To my mind, the critical issue is not how far to employ a particular figure of speech but how to express what is wrong with Moore's argument. Wittgenstein turns to a number of different approaches and is not completely happy with them. But his opposition draws from all his work on language games.
The following series shows that not all language games are created equal:
Quoting OC 400 to 408
The unmoving part of Moore's language game does not provide a foundation for hypotheses.
OC 401, propositions of the form of empirical propositions form the foundation of "all operating with thoughts." All operating with thoughts. Not just scientific investigations.
OC 402, these propositions "do not serve as foundations in the same way as hypotheses which, if they turn out to be false, are replaced by others." They're not scientific claims waiting to be tested and replaced.
OC 403, "It is the truth only inasmuch as it is an unmoving foundation of his language-games." His language-games. Not his scientific investigations.
OC 404, "perfect certainty is only a matter of their attitude." Not evidence, not verification. Attitude.
This whole sequence shows Witt describing propositions that look empirical but function as what stands fast, as the unmoving foundation of language-games generally, not as hypotheses within scientific investigation. That's the structure I've been pointing to throughout this thread, and it's difficult to square with the claim that hinges belong exclusively to science.
I do not hear the sequence to be saying that the propositions in question only "look" empirical. The objection to Moore in 402 is directed toward using "material objects" without recourse to the hypothetical.
How would you characterize Wittgenstein's objection to Moore's argument?
I think of it this way. Moore says, "I know I have two hands" and treats it as an empirical knowledge claim, as if he's reporting a finding that proves the external world exists. Witt's objection is that Moore has misidentified what kind of proposition "I know I have two hands" is. The proposition is empirical in form; it looks like any ordinary statement about a material object. But it isn't functioning as a hypothesis or a discovery. It's functioning as part of the framework against which claims, evidence, and hypotheses operate. Moore thinks he's proving something. Witt is saying there's nothing to prove here because the proposition was never in doubt in any way that a proof could address.
That's the force of OC 403, viz., it's the truth "only inasmuch as it is an unmoving foundation of his language-games." Moore's mistake isn't getting the facts wrong. His mistake is treating a foundation as a finding. He takes something that holds fast in the background and drags it into the epistemic foreground as if it were a piece of evidence, and the moment he does that, the words stop doing what he thinks they're doing. That's why Witt says at 407 that he wants to reply, "you don't know anything!" Not because Moore is wrong about having hands, but because "know" doesn't do what Moore needs it to do in that context. You can't know what was never in question.
So, on the "look empirical" point, I'll concede the phrasing was loose. They are empirical in content. They are about material objects. But they don't function the way ordinary empirical claims function. That's the whole problem Witt is wrestling with in this sequence, and why at 402 he says his own expression is "thoroughly bad." He's struggling to name what these propositions are, because they don't fit neatly into the categories we have. They're empirical in content but foundational in role, and that combination is exactly what makes them hard to talk about and easy to mishandle, which is what Moore does. And frankly it's what people keep trying to do.
This in consistent with the Tractatus. He is maintaining the distinction between philosophical and scientific investigations. The PI is about philosophical investigations not scientific investigations.
Quoting Sam26
I agree. Hinge propositions are not philosophical propositions. That is why he says that it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted. Our scientific investigations not our philosophical investigations.
Quoting Sam26
He is talking about empirical propositions :
94.
95 .
96.
Quoting Sam26
And if the child does not belief what she is told she reaches for the flame.
Quoting Sam26
He makes significant changes to his understanding of language but he maintains the distinction between the propositions of science and the activity of philosophy.
@Fooloso4 ends by saying "there are no philosophical propositions." Agreed.
If there are no philosophical propositions then how are we to understand these statements:
OC 341
OC 655
Quoting Sam26
That is a gross misrepresentation of what I have said. I have no idea what it might mean for "the hinge" to be owned by science.
Witt said, "some propositions are as it were like hinges" and "the mathematical proposition is a hinge" aren't philosophical propositions in the sense he's rejecting. They're clarifications of how propositions function. That's exactly what PI 109 says philosophy does, i.e., it doesn't produce propositions of its own (his view), it clarifies how existing propositions work. When Witt calls something a hinge, he's describing the role a proposition plays within a practice, not advancing a thesis about the world. That's the difference between a philosophical proposition and a philosophical clarification.
I'll rephrase. When I said, "the hinge isn't owned by science," I wasn't attributing a claim to you that science literally possesses hinges. I was summarizing the disagreement. You've argued that hinges have their place within our scientific investigations and that our system is inextricably scientific. I've been arguing that the hinge function, what stands fast so that inquiry can proceed, shows up across our practices, not just within science. That's all I meant. If the phrasing was clumsy, fair enough, but the substance of the disagreement is the same.
This is why I cited his use of the term science in the Tractatus, PI., and OC. He uses it consistently. They are statements about the natural world and things in it.
Quoting Sam26
Of course not! Part of what it means to be a hinge is to stand fast. I have said this and have not said anything to the contrary.
Quoting Sam26
Right. It is not about giving grounds or justification. Those are things that the troubled philosopher introduces.
Quoting Sam26
"It" refers to certainty.
If this foot is my foot is a hinge, then so is my other foot, and my nose, and every other part of my body that involves my acting in one way or another. That is a lot of hinges! Rather than introducing the concept of hinges here, it is simply pointing out that we act without first questioning it. I walk or kick someone in their hinge, I mean ass.
Quoting Sam26
I agree that animal behavior is not based on propositions. What I am claiming is that you are introducing the concept of hinges where it has no role.
Quoting Sam26
Here is where it is important to attend to what Wittgenstein says and not try to wave it away by claiming scientific investigations are a only part of what is at issue or are not really propositions. A scientific investigation involves propositions. The propositional form is not how we talk about what stands fast. The proposition is what is talked about - the earth or moon or foot. What he is pointing to is how certain propositions, namely hinge propositions, function. Not something that lies hidden beyond them that Wittgenstein discloses.
Quoting Sam26
Then why does he call them propositions? He is, after all, usually careful with what he says. You make us into inarticulate beasts who somewhere along the way have managed to pick up language.
Quoting Sam26
As he says, beliefs based on experience.
Quoting Sam26
As I pointed out to Banno:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Sam26
I have not said it is. We act on a hinge proposition without question or doubt. This leaves open the question of what those propositions are.
Quoting Sam26
Then why does he call the propositions? He is, after all, usually careful with what he says.
I agree that Wittgenstein is attempting to express what is wrong with Moore's argument.
Quoting OC 400 to 408
Thanks That supports my interpretation. Although some might erroneously claim empirical propositions do not belong to science.
Yes, he is describing the role a proposition plays. That is why we need to attend to which propositions function as hinges.
Right, he is not advancing a thesis about the world, but that might be what the proposition is doing.
402 says that you cannot have questions without the hypothetical:
Quoting OC 400 to 408
Having questions and doubts takes place in the context of acceptance:
Quoting OC 341 to 344
The acceptance is different from "resting content with assumptions" because proceeding with assumptions is done in the context of doubts. What does not move in Moore's language game does not provide a pivot for other propositions to move around. Or, to repeat myself:
Quoting Paine
But certainty and doubt do not only happen on the basis of this kind of acceptance:
Quoting OC 657
See §402.
And §409.
From what I have gleaned from the text, the plural of propositions is the essential ingredient here. The analogy requires a collection of propositions.
The points I have been making about 402 come down to recognizing that not all language games accept hinges.
For this reason, it would be a mistake to apply acceptance of such collections as a component in all language games.
Once again, fevered accusations without substantive support.
In this remark refers to a particular expression. I would ask what remark he is referring but it is likely you will provide a condescending response and delude yourself in thinking you are engaging in philosophical argument.
He does not say the expression "propositions of the form of empirical propositions" is itself thoroughly bad ...
In fact he repeats the expression "propositions of the form of empirical propositions" several times:
[/quote]
At 83 he said:
.
At 96:
and at 167, 213, 273, 308, 319, and 651.
Now you might think he changed his mind but 651 occurs after 402. He is still using the expression.
He goes on to explain why the remark is thoroughly bad:
The statements in question, statements about material objects, are not the expression: "propositions of the form of empirical propositions".
that is, not to the objects
And:
If it turns out that what we say about a material object is false, we replace claim with some other. They are not foundations. We determine whether they are false from within the frame of reference, that is, from within the form of empirical propositions.
[Added: I think I have to revise this last part. It is the hypotheses that must be replaced.
I, of course, agree.
Again, this is wrong:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Fooloso4
(The conclusion of this post disappeared in editing. I'll not rewrite it. Brandolini's Law applies here; Sam has made a valiant effort to explain some of the complexities here to you, but you will have to work through this stuff yourself. You are probably honest enough to eventually see what's going on...)
Quoting Fooloso4
Read OC again. And then look to his other works, and to the secondary material. This is not how he treats propositions.
You seem to see what you want rather than what he says. He clearly states that propositions belong to our scientific investigations. The question then is whether they also belong to anything else. That is a good question. It has guided what I have been saying from the beginning. You think the do but like Sam, any example you give turns out to be wrong, Rather than respond the problems I raise you move on or simply say I'm wrong.
Perhaps I am, but you have not given a substantive argument to back up the claim. As you are probably aware, examples are of central importance to Wittgenstein. Again, I am still waiting.
Folk which only a cursory reading of the material thinking that they have understood the whole; that they know what was said, together with the the bullshit asymmetry principle.
"Folk" was not the first word I chose.
Hinges are not solely to do with scientific language. That's evident in the text, which ranges over a large variety of examples.
Quoting Fooloso4
How do you get from there to the accusation that I want to exclusively talk about hinges?
I have tried to correct your misunderstanding of what Wittgenstein means by 'science'.
Quoting Fooloso4
Of course an any point you could have ended the discussion, but you kept attempting to prove me wrong. Toward that end you frequently misread and misrepresented what I said. In addition, and more importantly, you frequently misread and misrepresented Wittgenstein, and not only with regard to hinges.
I don't usually disclose personal information because I want the argument to stand on its own merits without undue influence one way of another. But I feel that in this case I must.
I have a PhD in philosophy. My dissertation was on Wittgenstein. My reading of him is not cursory. I successfully defended my work.
What is your terminal degree? On what subject and in which department?
Sam I'll ask you the same questions?
One benefit of an advanced education is that you have competent professors critically evaluating your work and giving you feedback, This gives you a measure of your work that you won't get sitting in front of a computer screen.
.
I continue to find the apparent misreading extraordinary. I wasn't able to find anything in the literature that came near to your idea that hinges apply only to scientific propositions. I stand by what I've said.
A Masters, since you asked, in philosophical approaches to education and organisational administration. But though yours is bigger than mine, it still appears somewhat misshaped. :wink:
Can you point to any literature that supports your specific claim concerning hinges? Or will we back away from it, and return to the other tools that form the basis of this thread?
Probably. Time to move on.
Oh my God, the "I have a PhD argument." This is what it's really about, you've mentioned this before (a year or two ago). You couldn't possibly admit you're wrong to someone with a lesser degree in philosophy. In another post you mention that I'm trying "to prove [you] wrong," that says it all, you've made it personal.
The fact that I've been writing (including a finished book and some papers) and studying Witt since 1979, especially in the last 20+ years means nothing, I guess. Your PhD means you're right and we're wrong. Many people with PhD's are flat out wrong about a lot of things, especially in philosophy. Besides, I can't find anything in the literature that argues for your interpretation, maybe there is, but I haven't found it.
My guess would have been a BS in bluster.
Quoting Banno
Peyronie's disease
Quoting Banno
Since retiring I no longer have access to academic journals, but that is not to say whether I will find collaboration or not. The subject of hinges is not something that interests me very much. Besides I have been at this long enough to know that most articles are "follow the leader"and who the leader is changes.
With that agreement, the next question should be about the separation between "logic" and "experience" as depicted in Philosophical Investigations.
You really do have a reading comprehension problem. I said that in response to the claim that my reading of Wittgenstein is cursory.
Quoting Sam26
As I said, I don't bring up degrees, I prefer to let the argument stand on its own merits.
Yes, I could possibly be wrong, but you have not given me any reason to think I am in this case.
Quoting Sam26
It is not personal. The point was made in response to the ongoing discussion of hinges. You have played a central role in that.
Quoting Sam26
The problem is that the practice is insular.
Quoting Sam26
Nope. It means that, as I said:
One benefit of an advanced education is that you have competent professors critically evaluating your work and giving you feedback,
Quoting Sam26
That is true. I have encountered my share of them over the years. Another reason why I don't usually bring up my degree.
I am sorry my friend. My recent return to the forum reminded me of why I left in the first place. Too many dogs pissing on everything to mark their territory. I might feel different tomorrow but I am probably done.
We will keep in touch.
Ah, that explains it. My own ailments tend to respond to Proctosydl.
So a few points on which we might find agreement. Being indubitable is a role taken on by a proposition in a language game, and not a property of that proposition. (Hence we can set aside 's muddle). Hinges are one of several guises for the indubitable that Wittgenstein considers over the course of the document. Some of these are hinges, held firm so that other things may be questioned. The proposition that "I am called L.W." is not fossilised in the way mathematical propositions are (§657); despite that, it may form "a buttress similar to the one that makes the propositions of mathematics incontrovertible." The sorts of objections one can throw at "I am called L.W." are not so far from those we might throw at "12 x 12 = 144" (§657 &c. )
I'm going to presume that your "There is not textual support or evidence that Wittgenstein uses the term 'hinge' to mean anything other than these incontrovertible propositions that belong to scientific investigations" was, after consideration, stronger than you intended.
The place will be less from your absence.
What are these narrowest and broadest readings?
Presumably, "broad" is @Sam26 and I, who take hinges to apply widely, and "narrow" is @Fooloso4's view that hinges are specifically propositions that belong to the logic of our scientific investigations...?
Even if not all language games accept hinges, for each language game is there something taken as indubitable, as granted in order for the game to function?
I'm incline to cite the Principle of Charity here, that we make maximal sense of the words or actions of others if we presume that we overwhelmingly agree as to what is the case...
I've long believed these two are the same person. There are too many similarities that are unique and eccentric.
You put this is a question, I'm sure that any language game will rely on presuppositions at different levels, so there is unlikely to be just one thing that any of them presuppose. On the contrary, I assume that there are many varieties of language game and the variety of presuppositions will match that - they are games, after all. But I doubt if Wittgenstein would be much interested in such general remarks. It may be unfair, to you and others, but I want to insert here a comment on the general conception of language games as they appear (to me, at least) in philosophical discussion.
Two selected quotations.
Language games, it would seem, are not, or not necessarily, actual structures in language. We can, we are expected to, make them up to suit the investigation we are conducting - specifically, to break loose from the forms of language that seem inevitable to us. It seems plausible to suppose that he would not want to replace those with a different inevitable form of language.
Here, it seems clear to me that the hinge (here "pivot") is an entirely pragmatic concept, "rooted in our real needs" at the time, designed to break up the vision of "crystalline purity". "Hinge" is a role, not a classification.
On the annoying variety of expression that Wittgenstein almost invariably uses, which causes so much difficulty for orthodox philosophical discussion, it is a maxim of traditional rhetoric to employ variety of expression. So this tendency is not a mark of intellectual confusion, but of a decision not to follow the precepts of orthodox philosophical analysis. I would love to insert a quotation here from Quintilian or some similar author, but I don't know enough to do that. But I can offer the following from, I think, ChatGPT.
In other words, it is not a bug, but a feature.
In addition, I've already remarked that it also helps to evade the pressure to over-specify one's ideas. Orthodox philosophy thinks that this helps clarity, but one might argue that it does not. All it does is set up a target for endless analysis and confusion.
Where did I say that a hinge proposition has the property of being indubitable rather than the role of being indubitable?
Quoting RussellA
Where did I say that “here is one hand” is truth-apt?
Where is the muddle in the following:
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
Duncan Pritchard, probably the most prominent figure in hinge epistemology today, treats hinge commitments as arational (something I also say) commitments underlying all rational evaluation, not just scientific investigation. In Epistemic Angst (2016) his examples include everyday commitments like having parents, one's name being such-and-such, speaking English, having hands. He calls these terms an "über hinge commitment," a fundamental arational certainty that we are not radically in error. None of this is restricted to science. Moreover, I've actually talked with Duncan Pritchard about my interpretation, and it generally lines up with how many philosophers look at hinges. I say this because Fooloso4 made a comment about my research being done in isolation.
Danièle Moyal-Sharrock has also arrived at the same general conclusion I have. In Understanding Wittgenstein's On Certainty (2004) and in other papers, she argues hinges are nonpropositional, nonepistemic, and animal. Her examples include "I exist," "there exist people other than myself," "the world has existed for a very long time," "human beings have bodies and need nourishment." She provides a large example of hinges covering linguistic, personal, local, and universal varieties. She calls OC Wittgenstein's "third masterpiece" precisely because of how radically it reconceives foundational certainty as enacted and animal rather than propositional and scientific. This is also my reading too.
Annalisa Coliva takes a different approach from both Pritchard and Moyal-Sharrock on whether hinges are rational or arational, but she also reads them more broadly. On her framework reading, hinges are conditions of possibility for meaningful epistemic practice. She doesn't restrict them to scientific investigations. I can't find anyone who takes Fooloso4 side of the issue.
Crispin Wright uses the term "cornerstone propositions" for essentially the same concept and treats them as heavyweight assumptions like "there is an external world" that underwrite whole domains of discourse, not just science.
Michael Williams reads OC as showing that propositions have no fixed epistemic status independent of context, which again implies hinges operate across all practices.
The claim that hinges are limited to propositions belonging to scientific investigations and that the term should be restricted to Foolsos4 interpretation in OC is not, as far as I can tell, a position held by any philosopher in the field. Every serious reading of OC treats the hinge concept as applying broadly across human practices.
I mention this not to settle the argument by authority. The text should do that, and I think it does. But since credentials and scholarly standing have been raised in this thread, it's worth knowing that the broad reading of hinges isn't some amateur overreach. It's the mainstream of the field.
I appreciate the effort to find agreement
Quoting Banno
I hope we can find a way to disagree without being disagreeable. As I see it, not everything that is indubitable are a Hinge, but every hinge is indubitable.
Quoting Banno
My attitude is skeptical in the sense of remaining open to evidence and argument. I think that Wittgenstein uses the term scientific in a broad sense that distinguishes it from his use of the term philosophical investigations. I do not think that facts are hinges since the question of doubt and justification d not arise. The same goes for instinct or "animal behavior". As far as human behavior, we too often act without doubt or question. In these cases the question why finds no rational answer. "This is just what I do" is not a hinge. Hinges involve not just a system in which we think and act, but a conceptually constructed system.
One pivotal difference in our disagreement comes down to how we are to understand Wittgenstein's use of the term 'science'. Science, as opposed to philosophy, is epistemic, theoretical, explanatory, rational, propositional, evidential.
Another difference is I understand hinge propositions to be propositional in the ordinary sense. Coliva, quoted below agrees. This rules out there being behavioral hinges.
The following is from Chispin Wright's "Hinge Propositions and the Serenity Prayer"
(296)
. (297)
"In Quest of a Wittgensteinian Hinge Epistemology"
Annalisa Coliva
It is worth stressing that even though, for Wittgenstein, the origin of hinges lies in our
shared practices, hinges do play a regulative and normative role in guiding us in the practice of acquiring and assessing evidence for or against ordinary (mostly) empirical propositions, thus rendering the latter justified, or unjustified, known or doubtful. Thus, as we might put it, they are constitutive elements of epistemic rationality. (3)
(footnore 3)Yet, they are propositions (OC 95-99, 309, 318-21 cf. PI 65)3 This point has been vigorously denied by Moyal-Sharrock 2005, but it is fair to say that her extreme view, according to which hinges are not propositions, since they aren’t bipolar, has not been met by consensus, not even among supporters of a framework reading of On Certainty
A practice within a form of life may be pre-linguistic, but is more than animal instinct. Practices within a form of life may inform propositions within language.
The indubitable fact that the ground beneath a church is compressed because of the weight of the church is contingent rather than necessary, and therefore not a hinge.
That “theism is true” is indubitable for a theist, is not a fact as it is non-epistemic, and as neither contingent nor necessary, is a hinge.
Every aspect of a theistic form of life for a theist, both enacted, such as going to church, and propositional, such as “theism is true” will be indubitable, and as such hinges. Some hinge beliefs may be actions and some propositions.
In this sense, a hinge is not the role a proposition plays within a practice, but rather the role a practice and proposition play within a Form of Life.
I don't think Paine will mind my revealing our secrets - we are Siamese twins who share one head
Seriously, I think the similarities are due in large part to having similar educations focusing on reading and struggling to interpret primary texts rather survey courses (not to be mistaken for courses on , surveying) or courses on problems in philosophy - ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, etc. I think Fooloso4, whoops I mean Paine, would agree that the result at the end of a semester would be a sense that we had just scratched the surface.
It would be dishonorable if that was the case. It would require considerable skill to hide such a deception from the site administrators. It is difficult to hear your charge as more than an ad hominem attempt to belittle us before others.
You agree with Banno frequently. I have no difficulty in separating your voices.
Over the years, Fooloso4 and I have had many disagreements. Sometimes we ended up accepting one side or the other. In other cases, the dispute ended in an unresolved standoff. According to your theory, those differences are part of the deception. For us, those differences are still alive.
As noted, we do share the experience of an education based upon careful reading of texts. But our lives have been spent very differently. I did not work in academia but in the construction trade for forty years. My writing style is built from those years of explanation. My most recent exposition uses the logic of a progress report rather than a classification between different opinions. It is my style.
Sometimes I am of two minds. Does that make three of us?
And we see in On certainty his wrestling with the various ways in which we are certain about our utterances. Hence the variety of expressions that he uses is indeed a feature. While the expository disposition would have us go in to minute detail as to his use of "hinge", that very act serves to reduce the diversity of his considerations. This is the reason I'm so adamant in my resistance of restricting "hinge" to scientific hypotheses alone.
But I said I'd move on.
If we agree it is a role and not a property, then all is good.
The challenge I would pose is this:
Show me a philosophical problem that's resolved by Wittgenstein, and I'll show you why it's not resolved after all.
That is easy. All the problems he said he solved in the Tractatus, he showed how this was a misunderstanding of how language works. Stop looking at hidden sensations and other worldly essences, and look at how words are used in the stream of life.
If so, then I suggest we start a new thread there to discuss a taxonomy of the indubitable. Moving on from Sam's tools, and past previous unpleasantness.
Pick a particular problem. Show how it's resolved by looking at language use.
To some extent, philosophical problems come from psychological issues that are related to culture and identity. This is true for both analytic and continental philosophy.
Solve the superficial problem and the deeper psychic war lives on.
Or maybe not.
If I found one person that his philosophy helped resolve the many philosophical problems that had tormented their soul, would that satisfy you?
Most therapies only work for some people not all.
No. I have not decided whether I will.
Quoting Banno
Why? I don't see how it might resolve the question of whether hinges belongs to things other than the logic of our scientific investigations.for the simple reason that there is not a one to one correspondence between what is indubitable and what is a hinge.
You and Sam asked me:
Quoting Banno
I did this morning:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1041566
so far neither of you responded.
...using an AI in order to overcome Brandolini's law...
Claude:
I can list more.
...because it's a neat topic, somewhat tangential to this particular thread, and may be of interest to others.
You are not obligated to join in. I'll have a go at drafting an OP later.
I was kind of looking for someone who would take the challenge in good faith. I could do it myself, but then I'd just be talking to myself.
You and Banno have ignored my post providing literature that supports my claims about hinges. Why is that?
You said:
Quoting Sam26
All of this after you had decided it was time to move on.
A few hours later I provided my response. My guess is you wanted to leave things where it appeared as if there was no support for my position. Ironically, the support I provided came from two of the authors you provided.
I will leave it here, but that makes it look as if you are unable or unwilling to admit you were wrong. This is not to say that my claim is right but it does show that it does have mainstream academic support.
[It also shows that you are not interested in open and honest philosophic argument but only in presenting your own opinions.]
Then name one.
Hope you join.
Quoting Fooloso4
I didn't recognise it at as such, and it wasn't addressed to me. I'll look into it.
That is a good question to ask about the treatment of games in Philosophical Investigations
Whether right or wrong, the following of rules is separated from the doubts encountered in experience.
The argument militates against having confidence on the basis of "what cannot be doubted."
It's a challenge to explore whether Witt's wisdom really solves philosophical problems. I think he struggled with that question himself.
Instead of hand waving, walk through an actual problem. I feel I'm being called back to reddit. My homebase there is the Nietzsche sub. Drop by sometime.
Quoting frank
Sound advice.
If you had the courage of your convictions you might start your own thread and see what happens.
:meh: You continue to expect others to do the work.
I'm off to read Homer's Contest.
I'll leave the adolescent philosophy to you. :grin:
Show me a philosophical problem that been solved by anyone, and .......
Quoting Banno
I like the definition of science as organized common sense.
There is no alternative but to accept “here is one hand" as indubitable by making it a hinge proposition within a language game.
If “here is one hand” can be a hinge, then also “here is one tree” can be a hinge. In a language game there can be many hinges. Other hinges may be “a hand has five fingers”. This allows the logical conclusion that within this coherent language game “here are five fingers”.
Another coherent language could be created using the hinge propositions:
“Here is one Walrus”, “Here is one Carpenter”, “Here is sand”, “Here is an animal that can walk”, “Here is an animal that can talk”.
These hinge propositions can then be logically connected to create the passage
“The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
‘If this were only cleared away,’
They said, ‘it would be grand!”
It is possible to create innumerable coherent language games, each with their own hinge propositions and each with their own Form of Life.
The question is, how do we know which of the innumerable language games we should be using?
You can wave it, or grab a cup with the hand? You cannot deny the fact that you have a hand by that time?
Well, as you have just demonstrated, we can invent as many language games as we like, and then amalgamate them. So, for sure, they are innumerable because they are uncountable partly because they are not necessarily clearly distinguished from each other. So it is up to you decide what criterion you would like to use.
Quoting RussellA
That's a bit odd. You seem on one hand to be making language-games up and also claiming that there is no alternative.
I may be mistaken, but I had the impression that Wittgenstein did not actually accept Moore's argument. He seems to allow that, under suitable circumstances, in an appropriate context, "here is a hand" could be called into question. Perhaps a lecturer putting a picture of a hand on a screen and then saying "here is a hand" would count. IMO.
Quoting RussellA
Moore does not justify what he sees by justifying each proposition individually, but by demonstrating that he can see things in general. Which he does by his behaviour, verbal and non-verbal.
And yet you didn't.
On page 12 you said:
Quoting Sam26
As far as you can tell does not not even extend to reading some of the philosophers on your list.
One of those philosophers on that list says:
.
It turns out that, according to your source, it is your view, which follows that of Moyal-Sharrock, not mine that is extreme.
And yes, I want to be right! Don't we all? Except I don't want to be right at the cost of abandoning my integrity.
Yes, by all means hurry, it is time for you to move on.
Good. Here's the link again:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1041566
It's true that he doesn't accept the natural and conventional idea of what solving a philosophical problem is. That's the point of his practice of dissolving, rather than solving, problems. It's also the reason he thinks of philosophy as therapy.
So his not solving philosophical problems is not a failure, but a recognition that a solution is not required and indeed not possible. One might disagree with that, of course.
Good point. One of the key differences he makes between philosophical investigations and scientific investigations is that science can solve problems and yield answers.
(Culture and Value)
An Indirect Realist and an Idealist would deny the fact that in a mind-independent world there is a hand.
2 questions.
1) Do they also deny the fact that their own body exists in a mind-independent world?
2) Whose mind are they talking about here?
I tried to track down some of the scholars mentioned by you and Sam. I was surprised to learn that there are different readings that one book called: Framework, Transcendental, Epistemic, and Therapeutic.
The academic sources are expensive for an old stone mason with aching knees. Do any of them give a leg up from simply comparing what is written by Wittgenstein in different places?
I googled the names and found the articles I cited free online.
Wright
Coliva
What do you think? Do they offer support for my reading of Wittgenstein?
Wittgenstein does not subscribe to metaphysical behaviorism; he does not say that our "internal" feelings or pains are unreal; the sensation is not a "nothing."
However, Wittgenstein is a grammatical behaviorist and our "inner life" is a grammatical fiction. His claim is not that our feelings don't exist (metaphysically). Instead, he argues that they have no bearing on how the meaning of our words is determined.
This is apparent in many of the tools @Sam26 has already mentioned in this post, such as "look and see", "meaning is use", and language games, which all rely on examining the behaviours associated with language use.
This grammatical behaviourism is perhaps most evident in Wittgenstein's beetle: "If we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and name' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." The object, here, is one's private sensation, which plays no role in the meaning of the word (e.g. "pain"). If the object is private, it "cancels out" and leaves us only with the public use of the word.
@Sam26: very good discussion. I agree with much of what you've said here.
There is a quandary
On the one hand, Wittgenstein is effectively saying that hinges are part of the framework of our language, our language game within our Form of Life, and are as such non-epistemic, indubitable.
But on the other hand, Wittgenstein can only talk about hinges if they are epistemic, and thereby doubtable.
The quandary is, how can Wittgenstein talk about things that he agrees cannot be talked about?
===================================================================== Quoting Ludwig V
Wittgenstein disagreed with Morre effectively saying “I know that here is one hand because I can see it”
Moore is saying that the evidence for knowing that I have one hand is because I can see one hand.
Wittgenstein points out the logical regression, and asks where is the evidence that Moore can see one hand.
For Wittgenstein, the only way out of this regression is for Moore to say “Here is one hand”.
1) Yes
2) Their own
How does Wittgenstein overcome the problem that the expression “I am in pain” would be meaningless if the speaker never had the inner feeling of pain.
I know the speaker could pretend that they are in pain, but if every expression in language is based on a pretence about inner feelings, then again, language would be meaningless.
I think the point of the Tractatus is that philosophical problems are (usually) a misuse of language, in the sense that language is meaningful to the extent that it's about events within the world we live in. Asking questions about the world as if you're outside it will create nonsense. Btw, Plato makes this same point in Crito.
With the PI, the focus is on how language gains meaning in social interaction. Trying to find some exalted meaning is mistaken.
In both cases, he's wrong because he's neglecting to account for the way philosophical problems are a veil for cultural and psychological issues.
Quoting RussellA
1) The fact that they deny the fact proves they do exist. One cannot deny something without existing. When their body exists, naturally their hand exist too. Therefore the IRist and Idealist didn't understand the hand exists?
2) One's own mind can always fall into illusion and misunderstanding. The above not only proves, but also confirms that they were under misunderstanding and illusion about the world and existence of their hand?
Quoting Corvus
I can deny that ghosts exist.
=====================================
Quoting Corvus
Moore says that he knows that here is one hand because he can see one hand.
But as you say:
Quoting Corvus
Just because he sees one hand, it that proof that there is one hand?
You just proved you exist.
Quoting RussellA
Yes.
Unless you can prove you were in the state of illusion, delusion, hallucination or dream during your visual perception, if you see X, then X exists.
Suppose you think you see a cup. How can you prove that you are not hallucinating a cup?
You just make coffee in the cup, and drink it. If the cup was hallucinatory, then coffee will spill onto the table. If it holds coffee, and you cant drink the coffee out of it, then it is the real cup.
While drinking the coffee out of the cup, you can make a statement. "Here is a cup, and it is the real cup. Because I see it, made coffee in it, and drinking the coffee out of it."
If a blind person were to say "What a beautiful sunset", it would not make the phrase meaningless. Everyone else could still use the phrase meaningfully. Even the blind person could use it meaningfully. The blind person might be e.g. saying it as a joke, or in a self-deprecating way, or responding to someone else's story about a sunset, or in any number of ways.
The point is that no individual's inner experience determines linguistic meaning.
How can you prove that you are not hallucinating drinking a cup of coffee?
Suppose a blind person said “what a beautiful sunset”, which is a possible scenario, even though they have never seen a sunset.
Yes, they could be saying it ironically, acknowledging that they have never seen a sunset.
If the word “sunset” means for the blind person “something I have never seen”, then “sunset” does have an inner meaning to the blind person, ie, something they have never seen.
Similarly, I could say “what a beautiful xyz”, even if I don’t know what “xyz” refers to.
I can successfully use “xyz” in a linguistic expression even if I don't know what “xyz” means.
Even though “xyz” can be successfully used within a language game, if no one within the linguistic community knows what “xyz” means, then “what a beautiful xyz” becomes a meaningless expression.
“What a beautiful xyz” doesn’t gain a meaning because it can be successfully used within a language game.
“What a beautiful xyz” only gains meaning if at least one of the linguistic community knows what “xyz” refers to, i.e. knows what it means.
At this point, we can only assume and conclude that the questioner is engaging in "Argument by Refusal, Stubbornness or Denial", which means that the questioner refuses accept the rational logical conclusion from the evidence provided by the real events in the real world.
There is an aspect to this problem that is untouched by grammar. Real problems, not fictions, having to do with both behavior and feelings.
Notebooks 1914-1916
Lecture on Ethics
Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics
Culture and Value
I'm trying hard to think of a reason why the blind person would understand the particular word "sunset" to mean "something I have never seen", but I cannot imagine such a scenario. Blind people can learn to speak English.
Quoting RussellA
How do you measure or determine a "successful use" of "xyz" here? How could "xyz" be used correctly or incorrectly in this example? I don't doubt that you could say or use the string of letters "xyz", but what does it mean?
Quoting RussellA
It is a meaningless expression. You introduced the string "xyz" and stated that you don't know what it means. You are intentionally using it as an example of a meaningless symbol/word.
Quoting RussellA
What counts as a "successful" use of "xyz"?
I was offering my 2 cents on PI 307 and W's remark about behaviourism there. I may need you to explain how your quotes relate to that.
What you say leads into a circular argument.
You are assuming there are real events in a real world, from which we discover evidence that there are real events in a real world.
Exactly, when hearing “what a beautiful xyz”, our first reaction is to ask what “xyz” means. If we don’t know what “xyz” means the expression is meaningless.
If there were no inner experiences, then where does the meaning of “sunset” come from?
The meaning of “xyz” cannot come from the language itself, otherwise we would know what “xyz” meant.
The quotes were intended to address the interlocutor's question of whether everything except human behavior is a fiction. The point is to show that the scope of Wittgenstein's concerns go beyond grammatical analysis.
I don't think Wittgenstein agrees that our inner life is a grammatical fiction. In rejecting the claim that the meaning of a word is determined by our inner life, he is not denying that we have an inner life.
That inner life involves more than having feelings or sensations.
In addition to linguistic meaning there is the meaning experienced in living. A meaningful life is not one that has untangled our grammatical confusion, although that may be involved. It can't be denied that his work centered around this problem, but as quoted:
Philosophical therapy, as opposed the the psychological therapy of the behaviorist, aims at
The evidence was submitted to support the event in the real world as true statements which had taken place in the real world. It is an independent verification statement for the conclusion, not a circular argument.
The series discussing "grammatical" behaviorism does end with:
The different formulations of privacy are found wanting but not toward the goal of cancelling it. There are numerous characterizations such as:
References to "subject" appear in related contexts at PI 398, 571, and 618.
In PI part 2, there is a lot of discussion of deception in our statements. In section X, we can hide from others and maybe even ourselves:
I will end by pointing at the discussion of sincerity in section XI. Here are two slices:
Most fluent English speakers know what "sunset" means. The blind person I introduced to our discussion is an English speaker.
Your original argument was that a certain phrase (or word) would be meaningless if the speaker did not have (or had never had) a particular private experience. All you've said here is that "xyz" is meaningless, so we cannot know what "xyz" means. You've said nothing here about a speaker's private experience.
To clarify your argument, is the word "sunset" meaningless for everyone (else) because some people have never seen one? Or, is the word only meaningful for those who have seen one? Can a blind person never understand what others mean by the word, even if you explain to them what it means?
Quoting RussellA
Nobody has ever experienced a dragon before, or infinity before, either. Where does the meaning of these concepts come from? We could not have these concepts, and nobody could know their meanings, if they were to come from a person's private experiences, as you claim.
Quoting RussellA
I'm not arguing that the meaning of a word "comes from the language itself". My argument - which is my interpretation of Wittgenstein's argument - is only that the meaning of a word does not come from any person's individual, private experience.
In my original post, I distinguished between our inner life as a metaphysical fiction (denying that we have inner experiences) vs. a grammatical fiction (denying that the meaning of a word is determined by our inner experiences). You are conflating the two here. But, otherwise, it seems we are in agreement.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, but I don't think that's what he is referring to in PI 307.
Yes, exactly.
I think we are in agreement.
BTW, I note that in the other thread linked to by @Banno above, you requested links to Daniele Moyal-Sharrock's work. I don't know which particular work is mentioned in that thread, but you can find at least some of her articles here:
https://herts.academia.edu/DanieleMoyalSharrock
https://herts.academia.edu/DMoyalSharrock
I get your careful "thinking we are in agreement."
Thank you for the links. I am not accustomed to these debates between commentators.
Are you joining the new site?
:up:
Quoting Paine
I didn't realise it was a new site. Are we all moving there? Anyhow, I've just joined. Thanks.
We differ as to what the grammatical fiction is. The behaviorist is not talking about the meaning of words. The behaviorist claims that the only thing we can know is behavior. 307 is part of an extended discussion that centers on such things as pain and pain behavior. According to the behaviorist we cannot even say that there is pain, only pain behavior. However, he cannot even talk about pain behavior if we cannot talk about pain. The grammatical fiction is in denying that the pain is something.[Added: that is not to say that it an pain is an object].
Quoting Luke
I agree. So what did I bring it up? At the forum is about to close I wanted to point to something other than grammar as central to Wittgenstein's philosophical concerns.
What's grammatical about that? It sounds metaphysical.
Wittgenstein doesn’t reject the reality of inner experience, but he does reject the idea that these private sensations are what give our language its meaning.
How can seeing a cup be evidence that a cup exists in the world, when your seeing may be an illusion or an hallucination?
Because you cannot prove seeing a cup is an illusion or hallucination. Can you prove your seeing a cup is an illusion or hallucination?
An interesting question. Where does infinity get its meaning from if no one has ever had the private experience of infinity.
================================================
Quoting Luke
If a blind person has never seen a sunset, they can only know its meaning by description, such as “the disappearance of the Sun at the end of the Sun path, below the horizon of the Earth due to its rotation”
Some of these words the blind person will know the meaning of by direct experience, such as “disappearance, end, path, below, rotation.”
Some of these words the blind person will not know the meaning of by direct experience, such as “Sun”.
If a blind person has never seen the Sun, they can only know its meaning by description, such as “a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma”.
As before, the blind person will know some of these words by direct experience, such as “massive” but not others, such as “plasma”.
The problem is, there are no absolute definition of any word, no complete description. Therefore, any description to the blind person must sooner or later contain words that the blind person has never directly experienced.
But it remains true that infinity means something to us even if we have never directly experienced it and sunset means something to a blind person if they never directly experience it.
As you say:
Quoting Luke
I agree that there are some words in the language game, such as infinity and sunset to a blind person, whose meaning cannot come from a person’s individual private experience.
But the meaning of the words cannot come from the language game either, as no word can be completely defined or described within the language game.
The meaning of these words cannot come from use outside language either, as we cannot use “infinity” as we can use a “hammer” to knock in a nail. So it cannot be the case of “meaning as use”.
Summarising, the meaning of a word “infinity” cannot come from i) private experience ii) description within the language game iii) use outside the language game.
So, where does the meaning of “infinity” come from?
We see a cup.
I cannot prove it is an illusion or hallucination. You cannot prove it is not an illusion or hallucination.
Perhaps scepticism is the only solution.
No, it is not.
Quoting RussellA
Quoting RussellA
That is the proof the cup exists.
Quoting RussellA
I don't need a proof, because I know it is not an illusion or hallucination.
Seeing a cup is not proof that the cup exists in the outer world. The cup may only exist in the inner mind.
That people see a mirage in the desert is not proof of the existence of water.
============================================================
Quoting Corvus
There are many Persian sayings about illusions, including “The neighbour's chicken is a goose".
So? We can still learn how to speak a language and use words.
Quoting RussellA
Why not?
We can use a “hammer” to knock in a nail because we can pick up a hammer, but have you ever picked up an infinity and been able to use it for anything?
Oh I see. I was talking about the word "infinity", whereas you are talking about the referent of the word "infinity".
Anyhow, this was the point of my examples of dragon and infinity: that we have not experienced any dragons or infinity and yet "dragon" and "infinity" are not meaningless concepts. This goes against your argument that a word is meaningless if a speaker has never experienced its referent.
The behaviorist claims that there is pain behavior, but what could that mean if pain is a fiction? It is the language of the behaviorist that is not grammatical.
We agree that the meaning of the word “infinity” cannot come from private experience.
====================================================================Quoting Luke
The meaning of the word “infinity” cannot come from any definition or description within language, as definitions and descriptions will be never ending.
The meaning of the word “infinity” cannot come from any use of infinity outside language.
The meaning of the word “infinity” cannot come from how it is used in language. As you said:
Quoting Luke
How does one know the meaning of the expression “the number of numbers is xyz” without knowing the meaning of “xyz”?
Yet the word “infinity” does have a meaning to us.
The question is, where does “infinity” get its meaning?
You can deny seeing a cup, but you cannot deny you are seeing something which looks like a cup. You are not denying that you are seeing something, which looks like a cup.
Therefore you must define what a real cup is, before you can deny what you are seeing is a fake cup.
Please define a real cup, and a fake cup you are seeing. What are they, and what is the difference between real cup and fake cup?
At PI 307, W is accused of being a behaviourist in disguise who is "basically saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction." W replies: "If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction."
PI 307 isn't an argument against the behaviourist's grammar so much as a clarification of his own. W does not deny that we have sensations (unlike the behaviourist), but he does deny that private sensations are objects to be named (unlike the mentalist).
The "grammatical fiction" that W rejects is precisely this model of "object and name". This model is presupposed by both the behaviourist and the mentalist.
Are you asking how we learn the language or learn the meaning of a word? Most often from other people.
The behaviorist does not construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and name’. The behaviorist is an empiricist. He deals with what can be observed. Pain cannot be observed, only pain behavior.
If I don’t know the meaning of “infinity” I could ask another person. Suppose this other person knows the meaning of “infinity”. How did this other person learn the meaning of infinity?
The meaning of the word “infinity” cannot have come from i) a person’s individual, private experience, ii) any definition or description of “infinity” in language, iii) any use of infinity outside language, iv) any use of “infinity” within language.
Then how did this other person learn the meaning of infinity?
================================================
Very cryptic. What does this mean?
I agree that I must know the difference between a real cup and a fake cup if I say “I see a fake cup”.
But I am not doing that. I am saying “I see a cup and I don’t know whether it is real or fake”
You just confirmed that you know what you don't know. Therefore, you just proved the fact that you are not hallucinating.
The behaviourist rejects the existence of private sensations because they are not empirical; because the behaviourist cannot see them. Wittgenstein does not reject the existence of private sensations; he only rejects the mentalist view that sensation language is a description of some inner object. Both the behaviorist and the mentalist base their views upon the existence or non-existence of an inner object. This is the 'name and object' model that Wittgenstein rejects.
Wittgenstein accuses himself of being a potential behaviourist because his grammar is based only on behaviours, only on the expression of sensations; but he does not deny that we have private sensations. This is why he speaks only of a grammatical fiction. He agrees with the behaviourist that private sensations are a fiction, but only in the grammatical sense, not in the metaphysical sense. The behaviorist says the box is empty; Wittgenstein says the contents of the box are irrelevant to the grammar of the word "beetle". The view that sensation words get their meaning by naming a private object is the fiction, not the sensation itself.
This is where we do not agree. The behaviorist rejects the idea of mental states, but on what basis do you conclude that this is as the result of the name and object model?
The behaviorist might grant that if there are mental states but we do not know anything about them. In that case both "there are mental states" and "there are not mental states" would be a fiction. To say anything about something we can know nothing about would be a fiction.
That sounds like a case of mistaken identity for chicken as a goose. At least they weren't denying the existence of what they were seeing.
Your knowledge must be based mainly on what you are seeing and hearing through your sense organs. If you deny or doubt on what you see and hear with no reasonable ground, then it implies that you have no knowledge about anything, which sounds really odd.
at
306.
When I say "I remember" that does not mean that I have a particular mental process going on. That is a grammatical fiction. The grammar of "I remember" is not about some mental process. But that does not mean that the mental process of remembering is a fiction.
I believe this would mean they were no longer a behaviorist. Maybe we have different definitions. You said earlier that a behaviourist is an empiricist who deals (only?) with what can be observed.
I believe it does. Otherwise, why would you say it?
Quoting Fooloso4
The grammatical fiction is the assumption that the word “remember” gets its meaning from a description of the particular mental process rather than from its expression; that the grammar of sensation language is based on a description of private mental/sensation objects instead of being based on the public expression of those sensations.
Quoting Fooloso4
Agreed.
The Moyal-Sharrock essay, Wittgenstein's Razor: The Cutting Edge of Enactivism (thanks Luke for the link) has a good quote about behaviorism:
Quoting Wittgenstein's Razor: The Cutting Edge of Enactivism
Chomsky made similar points. The reduction makes the subject disappear.
As a behaviorist they would deal only with the science of behavior. They reject talk about mental states and mental processes because these are not observable or knowable. What we say about them, including whether or not they exist is a fiction. Some behaviorists might take a hard line and deny mental processes others might dismiss the question of whether they exist.
In the context of PI 307:
“Are you not really a behaviourist in disguise? Aren't you at bottom really saying that everything except human behaviour is a fiction?”
Wittgenstein takes your “hard line” wrt behaviourists.
Because I remember.
Let me phrase this more carefully:
When I say "I remember" I do not mean that I have a particular mental process going on.
Quoting Luke
Agreed.
It sounds like you are not remembering. It’s like saying: ‘when I say “ouch” it does not mean I have a particular pain sensation.’ Then why do you say “ouch”?
Edit: maybe the word “particular” is causing confusion between us. I only mean that there is some sensation occurring (a particular one each time), not that the word describes the same particular sensation every time (e.g the same memory or the same pain)
You are right, the behaviorist would not grant that there are mental states. But it could be argued that:
Quoting Fooloso4
If you were to ask me, "Do I mean there has just taken place in me the mental process of remembering? I would say no, I mean I just remembered.
We can drop the talk of the mental processes. That is not the way we speak and talk of the mental process does not add to the meaning. I do not mean the mental process but rather that I remember.
“To deny the mental process would mean to deny the remembering” - PI 306
Since Wittgenstein does not make any distinctions between behaviorists, I thought it best to stick to what is in the text.
But I don't deny it. If I say I ate dinner I don't mean the process of mastication and digestion.
If you agree to this then it’s no longer clear to me where you think our disagreement lies.
My reading: Wittgenstein rejects the behaviourist idea that everything except human behaviour is a fiction (i.e. he does not deny that we have private experiences). He accepts the behaviourist idea only with regard to the determination of grammar and meaning. That is, he considers any account of the determination of grammar other than human behaviour to be fictional.
This seems to me the most straightforward reading of 307 and what he means by “grammatical fiction”.
Your account that the grammatical fiction refers to saying something about which we know nothing seems less straightforward and possibly wrong.
Taking another look at this I must have overlooked the second part. Remembering gets its meaning from the experience of remembering.
Quoting Luke
I do not think he accepts the behaviorist's idea about the determination of grammar and meaning. As I read it, the behaviorist's account is a grammatical fiction. If pain is a fiction then pain behavior is a grammatical fiction. Nothing would distinguish pain behavior from any other kind of behavior. There would only be behavior.
Quoting Luke
It is not an account of the grammatical fiction. It is a logical argument against the claim that everything but behavior is a fiction.
:up:
Quoting Fooloso4
It is not the behaviourist's account that Wittgenstein calls a grammatical fiction at PI 307, it is his own. Wittgenstein says that he is the one who speaks of a grammatical fiction, not the behaviourist.
Also, everything besides behaviour is a fiction for the behaviourist. However, Wittgenstein distinguishes between "a fiction" and "a grammatical fiction" at PI 307. Your view does not explain this distinction between fiction and grammatical fiction.
The behaviourist believes that everything except behaviour is a fiction. yet you interpret W to say that pain behaviour is a (grammatical) fiction? I understand that Wittgenstein includes behaviour within grammar, but why would a behaviourist regard pain behaviour as a fiction (albeit a grammatical one)?
Also:
Quoting Fooloso4
What does distinguish pain behaviour from other kinds of behaviour for the behaviourist? For the behaviourist, there is only behaviour.
No. Once again, if pain is a fiction then pain behavior is a grammatical fiction. [Added -Wittgenstein does not say that pain is a fiction. The behaviorist does.]
Suppose there is an isolated tribe where no one felt pain. There would be no talk of pain behavior because pain would not exist.
Quoting Luke
Nothing That is the point. If pain is denied there would be nothing to distinguish it.
Is it Wittgenstein or the behaviorist who says that pain behaviour is a grammatical fiction? How is behaviour a fiction for either of them?
Quoting Fooloso4
But the behaviourist does deny pain and calls it a fiction. So there is nothing to distinguish pain behaviour anyway?
It is Wittgenstein who says this in response to the behaviorist's claim.
Quoting Luke
Behavior is not a fiction for either of them.The behaviorist's claim that there is pain behavior but not pain is a grammatical fiction. The former without the latter makes no sense.
If the 'grammatical fiction' is the behaviorist's error (as you say), then why does Wittgenstein use the word 'I' at 307? He says: 'If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction.' He is defining his own method, not labeling the behaviourist’s mistake. He is saying: 'In my investigation, I don't call the inner 'nothing' (as the behaviourist does); I call the way we talk about the inner a 'grammatical fiction'.’
His interlocutor asks him if he is saying that everything but human behavior is a fiction. His response is that is he speaks of a fiction it is a grammatical fiction.
Quoting Luke
No, Why would he call the inner a grammatical fiction? Does he say anywhere else that the inner is a grammatical fiction?
Does that make sense to you, though? I mean, we probably wouldn't have discussions about the taste of coffee if there was no such taste. Is the taste the basis of the meaning of the word?
Meaning implies communication of some sort, so the notion of meaning without a social context is peculiar, and I think relates to previous attempts at logicism by Frege and Russell. It isn't a common sense notion that Wittgenstein is denying. It's the philosophical oddity of logicism.
Yes, he rejects the 'name and object' model that he mentions at PI 293 with regard to the Beetle in the Box. Behaviourists and mentalists both make the same mistake of presupposing this 'name and object' model by treating a sensation like pain as a substantive (outer) object such as a rock or a table. Mentalists view pains as objects like rocks and tables. And, while behaviourists reject the substantive object, they still accept the 'name and object' model in order to do so.
Wittgenstein wants us to reject the 'name and object' model altogether wrt sensations. The meaning of sensation words like 'pain' are not based on a description of a private object; they are instead based on public expressions of pain. The presupposed inner object drops out of consideration in the language game as irrelevant, as Wittgenstein notes. "The thing in the box doesn’t belong to the language-game at all," It's not a something (contra the mentalist), but it's not a nothing either (contra the behaviourist).
Your claim that Wittgenstein considers pain behaviour to be a grammatical fiction is in direct opposition to Wittgenstein's view that public behaviours are the real basis of grammar, not inner objects.
Quoting Luke
The meaning of pain is not the expression of pain. Nor is it an inner object. If no one ever felt pain the word would not exist.
Quoting Luke
I think we are done here. How many times must I repeat myself? I did not say that Wittgenstein considers pain behaviour to be a grammatical fiction. One last time: if pain is a fiction then pain behavior is a grammatical fiction. But unlike the behaviorist, Wittgenstein does not think that pain is a fiction.
If you look back, I never said he rejected the inner. I said (new emphasis):
Quoting Luke
The "way we talk about the inner" is/was by presupposing the name and object model.
Quoting Fooloso4
I didn't say it was. I said the meaning was based on the expression of pain.
Quoting Fooloso4
He says “If I speak of a fiction, then it is a grammatical fiction”. He does not say that if the behaviourist speaks of a fiction then pain behaviour is a grammatical fiction.
Quoting Banno
Wittgenstein does not deny that we have mental processes or private experiences. His argument is that we do not have a private language to describe a private inner world of facts in the same way that we make reports about the physical world.
He offers several reasons for the lack of a private language or private inner world of facts, including:
At PI 308, he alludes to the illusion of thinking we may be able to conduct science experiments within, or to explore and report on, this inner world. To presuppose that there are inner objects or processes that we can describe and report on is to mistakenly adopt the inner "name and object" model—the first step in the philosophical problem that altogether escapes notice. It is to assume that because nouns refer to objects in the physical outer world, the private inner world must work the same way.
Wittgenstein's rejection of this view raises the question (at PI 307) of whether he is a behaviorist in disguise. But a behaviorist denies we have private experiences, whereas Wittgenstein does not. Wittgenstein denies only that we have a private language that can be used to describe those experiences. This is why he speaks only of a grammatical fiction. Furthermore, he argues that all seeming "reports" about sensations made in public language are actually expressions of sensations, not descriptions of them.