Philosophical Investigations, reading group?
After starting my topic on the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus I was wondering if anyone would be interested in a reading group on the Philosophical Investigations? We already have a lot of content from @Sam26 on the topic and I suppose I can ask @Banno to help us with this thread on the Investigations.
Thoughts, comments, ideas welcome.
Thoughts, comments, ideas welcome.
Comments (154)
Sam26 has done an excellent job but he just left the forum. I am slowly reading that thread.
I guess my first question is why you want to start over.
Did he leave for good? Oh dear, this is news to me. What a loss if it is permanent. I know he's busy writing a book and all; but, I do hope he can visit us once in a blue moon.
Quoting Valentinus
I think just to get a better grasp on the book. I was unsure if I should skip it after my Ongoing Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus thread and delve into Naming and Necessity by Kripke.
What do you think?
I read Philosophical Investigations before I even knew about or had read the Tractatus. So my engagement with the work is not concerned with completing a project or something like a replacement to other systems. The charm in PI, if you will allow me the expression, is the possibility that we need not be captive to certain problems.
In saying that, I am not dismissing Tractatus. I am not interested in establishing a circle of the only things that can be said.
The idea that we can stop repeating certain arguments is attractive.
Hit the nail on the head with this comment. Philosophy was never the same after the PI.
Do you have any recommendations for a companion to use alongside the PI?
That is a great challenge. I need to think about that.
Okay. I have someone in mind. Like PMS Hacker. I also think something from Routledge might be appropriate with the audience. In fact, I'm recommending something simple, as the book is long and can be a challenge. (I doubt we'll get through the whole thing, for the matter.)
If I can pop in, I am reading Groundless Grounds right now. It concentrates on what Wittgenstein and Heidegger have in common. It's written by Lee Braver, whose two favorite philosophers are...Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Beyond that it's just very good so far.
So I'd say it's worth considering. (And I am interested in looking at PI again and joining the thread..)
Interesting recommendation. I might have to pick up that book myself, heh.
Quoting macrosoft
Awesome to have you on board.
I don't know if you've checked out Heidegger, but it's probably a great way in for a Wittgenstein fan.
Quoting Posty McPostface
Thanks!
The ambiguity of what he writes about has scared me from treating him seriously. I value preciseness in meaning and clarity in thought above all else.
Quoting macrosoft
:up:
Do you have any good philosophies out there that you might recommend to a beginner like me?
Well, you're in the right place. I hope to begin this reading group in two days when this thread dies down. Friday we'll be starting. Personally, I would recommend Bertrand Russell. Others will differ obviously.
He'll be back. Might be a while.
By astutetly following a companion on the topic.
Oh, okay. Hope all goes well.
I relate to the quest for clarity and precision --as much as can be had without betraying the object being investigated. If, however, the object itself does not exist as a crystalline structure, the demand for clarity no longer makes sense. Or rather we can ask that the thinker/writer make it easy to follow their investigation but not that her results be simple to digest --especially if those results themselves offend our taste for the crystalline and unambiguous. I think this is the case with PI. It's a hard pill to swallow.
I think Witt hammers us with examples, so that we generalize some theses. Heidegger (among other things) really does try to present his results abstractly, with few examples. Yet (to some degree) they seem to be pointing out the same kind of sub-theoretical background that makes the theoretical foreground possible. Maybe it's like a foundation of 'animal [s]thinking[/s]' which is mostly automatic. Then our bright-light theory can't see its own legs and gets into trouble trying to invent artificial legs, walking all the time on its living legs to do so without wanting to see it.
I just ordered On Certainty. When I first read that book (many years ago, and lost my used yellow copy who knows when), I thought it somewhat boring. Now I think I know what he was after, so I'm looking forward to reading it in a new light. I think the idea is (sorta-kinda) that our practice is far more complex and inexplicit than we can grasp with an explicit theory. Language is a primary example. The fantasy is that we can capture what is 'infinite' in listening and speaking in a finite set of propositions. This dark infinity of the space from which we listen is a mundane infinity, though. It's too close and not too far away to see well.
Oh dear. That book is impenetrably dense.
Not a fan?
A “companion” meaning what?
Meaning, a reading guide to the PI. We would follow one chapter or less at a time.
No, just haven't made it through the book. It's a difficult book by my standards. I mean, nobody discusses the philosophy of mathematics by Wittgenstein either due to the gravity of the material.
I like his philosophy of mathematics. It's weird and piecemeal, but illuminating. Braver considers some of it among his best work.
What is that? I'm interested in your input on the matter.
Oh, great. Now, we have the jokester on board too. :)
Anyone up for the job?
It's hard to sum up. It fits in with the later Wittgenstein as I remember it. One example was his idea that the 'paradise' of Cantor's set theory wasn't really that exciting (demystifying tendency.) He had intuitionist , finitist, and formalist leanings at different times.
I must say that math is a rich territory for philosophy. It is the ideal language in some ways and yet no one is quite sure what it is talking about. Given the form of the TLP, you can imagine why Witt would have thought about it. (Turing was one of his students, btw.)
Doesn't it talk about reality? Here's me hovering around Platonism.
Yes, I can see why you would say so. But care to expand?
Lots of debate about math involves infinity. How does infinity exists? It is certainly a symbol in the calculus. Can we apply the LEM to infinite sets? Is math eternal? Or does it actually get constructed a bit at a time. Are mathematical statements true or false? Or is there a third state not of unknown but rather not-yet-created-either-way. Does the system of real numbers capture our intuition of the continuum? Is logic really the heart of math? Or does logic follow behind a separate mathematical intuition? Can real numbers be truly real if 'most' of them contain an infinite amount of information (cannot be compressed into a algorithm that generates them to arbitrary precision)?
The machine of math can get along fine without answers to such questions. It is more or less grounded in the consensus about what constitutes a proof. As a rough approximation, I'd say that Wittgenstein would approve of any calculus as a calculus, but he is skeptical about the addition of mental entities and would ground math more in practice and applications. Have you seen the diagonal proof of uncountable infinity? It's fairly short for such an exciting result. And the idea can be repeated an infinite number of times, giving rise to a sequence of richer and richer infinities. I like to obsess over the set of all infinite sequences of bits (closely related to the real numbers and also thinkable as the set of all infinitely long files.) For instance, 10101010101... would be (correspond to a ) rational. But most possible sequences have no compressible pattern. We could of course never write them out or even find a finite description of them. In what way do such sequences exists? We can grasp them to some degree. Such sequences (an ungraspable background that takes up most of the space on the line) are my metaphor for what the later Wittgenstein is trying to point at. Whatever can be said can be said clearly is clearly wrong, IMV.
All actual calculation uses a finite alphabet (is discrete.) Even the proofs about infinities are just strings of symbols that satisfy certain rules epistemologically. So the question is 'what are these proofs about'? Some thinkers just say that math is the science of such systems of rules. On the other end, we have intuitive access to some kind of timeless realm that the rules are like the shadow of. In my opinion, there is indeed some kind of shared meaning space, but we can't make it explicit except through 'mechanical' rules if we want reliable consensus about progress. To say that this meaning space is 'here' or 'there' (just human or some Heavenly stuff) is beside the point. What matters is how these things exist for us --and that seems to be largely a personal matter, since math is economically grounded in applications.
This is maybe a good taste:
Yeah, as I said. Heavy stuff to talk about. I don't have much to comment otherwise.
It's of more interest to someone with training in math, but it's of general interest as a critique of the one uncontroversial metaphysics we have: math. Especially in this highly normalized discourse the problem of meaning or being emerges. This teaches us something about the metaphysical dream. We can line up our concepts very nicely and build spiderwebs of eternal truth. At the same time, we don't know what we are talking about, and we mostly don't know that we don't know what we are talking about. Epistemology dominates ontology. The mystery of meaning sleeps.
Ah, known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Interesting stuff.
Yes. IMV both WIttgenstein and Heidegger are pointing at an unknown known, the actual ground of our doings and believings which is inconspicuous for the atomizing theoretical gaze obsessed with clear and distinct ideas and objects with rock-like constant presence. This ground is not clear and distinct, and yet it makes the quest for a clear and distinct description of experience possible. I don't know that I have hands. 'Know' is the wrong word here.
Philosophy almost exclusively deals with known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I think go about this issue epistemologically is the only way forward. Once known unknowns and unknown unknowns become known then the issue is settled through dialogue or in a dialectical manner, and hopefully Rogerian agreement. Am I sounding pragmatic?
For me the question is right there in what it means to 'become known.' What is it for something to become known? Before we can plug a thesis into the argument machine, it has to born in someone's mind. And then the argument machine can't just be a dead machine operating on syntax. So how does what we argue about exist for us? How we can argue about the 'same thing' from different skulls. What I have in mind in the mystery of language, the 'house of being.' We tend to obsess over building the right machine, a sort of god surrogate as method. That's fine, but it's mostly politics in disguise, a play for authority and utility.
I am steeped in pragmatism, but I think there is something in humans that is not so interested in utility or consensus. We are the 'animals' that throw our lives away for causes, etc. What does it mean that we can commit suicide in cold blood? How does this complicate utility? Even if we explain it away in genetic terms, there is still the issue of how being human exists for us, from the inside. A predictive model is not what we are looking for inasmuch as we don't just want utility.
So, your talking about understanding, having a mind, and intention here? Have you heard of the Chinese Room Argument?
Yes, and Yes, I like it.
I have been told that the concept of having a "mind" in philosophy, generates more problems than it solves. What's your take on the Chinese Room Argument?
I feel the same way but for whatever reason the book, which is taken very seriously by epistemologists, seems to be totally ignored by mainstream philosophy of language. I guess it's just not "technical" enough for those folks?
Hi John Doe. Do you recommend any particular companion to use for this reading group of the Investigations. Your last suggestion in the Tractatus reading group was very helpful.
Sorry to bother otherwise.
There is a tendency, though, to break the PI up into chunks according to what Wittgenstein had in his notes / as the book gets sectioned off in The Big Typescript. So the "metaphilosophy" section, the "rule-following" section, etc. So one thing you might think about doing is reading the seminal works which correspond to these sections. For example, Stanley Cavell has a lot to say on the opening aphorisms (1-89). You could do Kripke versus McDowell on rule-following. Etc. But you would definitely need someone smarter than me to organize that sort of chaotic approach.
Yeah so this is something I've been wondering about for a long time, though. It strikes me as pretty bizarre that the current experts on Wittgenstein's primary topic of interest have so little interest in him. And I can't figure out if it's because there genuinely are a lot of highly problematic ideas in his writings that I fail to pick up on due to lack of specific expertise or - this being the default theory that all of us dismissive continental types are quick to grab hold of - it's just typical old pedantic formalists unable to engage with any living creature whose mind happens to be more creative than boiler-plate academic paper-writing. Of course, none of this would affect my deep admiration for L.W.
Shucks, and here I was hoping Bitter Crank would lead the reading group. :)
I'm still unsure which reading guide to pick. Once some consensus on what reading guide should we use I'll upload it to be shared by other participants in the reading group.
That doesn't really matter. Ive skimmed the book but haven't read it cover to cover. Preferably if someone had already read it, they might do a better job at managing this reading group.
I think I will. Any pointers? Is it available also for free?
I think Searle is just pointing at meaning. Such meaning generates problems because the fantasy is that one can create a explicit system that does not break down. We are trying to capture our capturing itself. We are tying to trap a mist in a spiderweb. This mist is trying to trap itself in a spiderweb. This spiderweb is a small set of words ripped out of their living context and somewhat naively interpreted as little containers of exact meaning with which we can do 'math.' We can't say exactly what we mean by 'meaning,' but we 'are' this meaning and live in this meaning. We [s]know[/s] that others live in this meaning in the same that we [s]know[/s] that we have legs when we are walking. It is sub-knowledge, pre-knowledge, ur-knowledge, just like our [s]knowledge[/s] that there is a world. This 'world' that we have ur-knowledge of is not explicit for theory. Every explicit account of it simultaneously depends on it and fails to capture it, hence the endless debate, since each account trips on its own atomic approach in relation to other atomic approaches. Theory speaks from a dark place that dimly assumes this world in which others are listening. The others too are not fundamentally explicit. 'I think therefore I am' is spoken from a dark place that 'primordially' under-stands itself to be hear-able. What is this 'I'? Does it not point at the dark place from which we speak and listen?
How can I prove such assertions? If they are true, you and anyone else must already have access to this [s]knowledge[/s]. Just as we ignore our feet as we are walking across the street to meet a girl we are thinking about, so we mostly ignore our ur-knowledge, especially if we demand that experience fit an erotically charged method that assumes the real must exist sharply, as the output of an argument.
*I don't think it is impossible that a computer could somehow be made to experience meaning, but I think that humans doing so would be their most spectacular and eerie achievement. Lesser forms of AI (and I work with some) are really 'just' complex computable functions. A much more complex alien might say the same thing about us, but we can't sincerely do so, IMV. We have would to mean something in the saying of it.
What's wrong with this pursuit? There's no other way to address the issue, then treating it explicitly.
There's nothing wrong with it. Indeed, I myself am trying to make the inexplicit more explicit --in its very resistance to being made explicit. I'm pretty sure this is what Witt was getting at in On Certainty, but I'll need to reread it to check my memory against what I didn't understand at the time.
It's not that different from Hegel's realization that thoughts tend to contain internal contradictions. Basically the same kind of thing is tried hundreds of ways (squaring the circle) until someone figures out why this is impossible. Even after that proof was available (that squaring the circle was indeed impossible), many kept trying, some mistakenly thinking they had done so. As I see it, W and H have truly advanced philosophy.
Also I think you are missing out on something. I'm guessing all this [s]knowing[/s] business is not making sense. But that's at the center. I won't make sense to you unless you grasp the basic idea --or rather phenomenon point at by the idea.
What do you mean by that?
When you starting this?
I don't want to keep saying this, and I've mostly tried not to, because I hate harping on the same thing all the time, but pretty much anything you write, at least when it's more than 30-40 words or whatever, is something where the more I read it, the more I really haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about or "trying to say." I don't expect you to change your style because of this, but if the goal is to convey any ideas, to get folks to think in different ways, etc., it might be worth noting that at least for some of us, your approach isn't at all working.
I'm thinking today maybe. I still don't have a companion to use, so I might put it off until tomorrow or later.
Thanks for the help. I will pay for any potential guidebook out of my own pocket. No need to waste money.
Well, I understand him. I feel we're being a tad bit judgemental here. Sure, macrosoft can maybe engage in more atomistic approaches to language; but, it's an online forum, so no need to get pissy.
Thanks a bunch. Will do!
John, thanks for the download but really thanks for the website.
I feel like a kid in front of a pile of leaves.
Not trying to be pissy, just honest. Whether it has any value as feedback is another issue, but it's an honest reaction.
Still looking for a guide? A few words of advice, don't ask of the blind for a volunteer to lead the blind.
Well as long as it's constructive criticism, then criticise away.
Hmm, then I'm blind too. I don't have the qualifications of leading this reading group given the complexity of the material. Care to join us??
I've noticed that you don't really get where I am coming from. I really am trying to find the words. But you say you don't like Wittgenstein. And I don't know if you like Heidegger. And you are turned off by Hegel. Do you like Nietzsche? How about Feuerbach? I love German philosophy. The whole enterprise is haunted by organ music. It tries to grasp the whole situation. It tries to grab that grasping itself. If none of them speak to you, then I might just have no chance with you. I'm pretty much paraphrasing/synthesizing what I've learned from them. I will keep trying to find better words.
We're all blind, and Wittgenstein ensures that we proceed in this way, providing us with nothing in particular which we might see. So I'll follow, but I won't even pretend to lead because that would be the position of a fool.
Thanks for the kind words, Posty. I really don't mind TS's honesty, since it wasn't rude.
I must correct you on one point. My approach is anti-atomistic to the extreme. Semantic holism is my jam.
I think you'll need to outline the main tenants of that philosophy of language for Terrapin Station to understand what you mean by that.
Nice.
I'm just difficult. Even my favorite philosophers I disagree with more than 50% of the time.
Re continentalism, I really, really hate continental philosophers' style(s) of writing/approach to expressing their views--starting with Kant, at least. I don't always disagree with their views, but I just can't stand the way they write.
I like the analytic style a lot. So even when I don't agree with analytic philosophers (which is quite often if even my favorites have averages that look like MLB batting averages), I enjoy reading them much more than continental authors.
Metaphysicians can't lead reading groups on Wittgenstein anyhow, it would blow their cover.
My suggestion is that if you have someone lead the managerial aspects then you're good to go. It's better to take an egalitarian approach to interpreting Wittgenstein.
Quoting macrosoft
I'm saying (in other words) : Meanings exist systematically. The semantic unit is not the individual word but rather the entire language which is mostly not present for consciousness as we use it. The 'spiderwebs' are theories of the subject and the object, for instance. They are theories about what it is for something to be true or for something to exist. Most accounts capture something about what it is to be true or for something to exist. But they tend to unravel as we zoom in on this or that term and find a weak point in the system. To make the system explicit and clear, we have to ignore that language is a living system of meaning.
We especially have to ignore the phenomenon of 'ur-knowledge.' This is what Wittgenstein is trying to talk about in OC. I don't know that I have hands when I reach for my coffee. I don't need to ask myself if I have hands. I am my hands. I also don't need to ask if anyone is really out there. I [s]know[/s] this. Language is already in a pre-notion of the world. It is already directed at a pre-notion of the others who can understand me. Such phenomena are what explicit accounts of the subject, object, meaning, truth, and existence aim at. But explicit accounts often ignore these inconspicuous pre-notions, presupposing that only what is explicit is real. We might call approach this a visual, object-inspired approach. That which is real is like medium-sized dry goods. So we ourselves, if we are real, must be like rocks to which thinking is 'stapled on.' Meaning is air-gapped, somehow jumping through space to other brains. Reality is junk on which we must somehow project value. This approach does make sense if we try to zoom in from an atoms-and-void perspective, at least initially. But it is far from being problem-free or the only approach...
I respect that. I concur.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I hate lots of it. I have never really liked the more recent French philosophers in this regard. But late Wittgenstein is very clear, though he is saying something strange. Nietzsche is beautifully translated, IMO. Same with Feuerbach, the proto-Nietzsche.
Hegel can be clear at times. Heidegger becomes clear (and is very clear and thorough in his lectures.)
Quoting Terrapin Station
I don't know AP all that well. Does Rorty count? He is clear like Hume. Hume is another favorite.
So this, for example, I think is obviously incorrect, especially the "not present for consciousness as we use it" part.
As soon as you get here, by the way:
Quoting macrosoft
I'm already wondering what you're talking about, because it seems to have little to do with your first sentence.
It makes sense that you're using a spiderweb metaphor, but it makes no sense to me that you seem to all of a sudden jumping to "theories of the subject and the object," not to mention that I wonder, "What 'theories' are you talking about," part of which is me wondering if you're using the term "theories" in anything at all resembling the sense of an overarching account intended to broadly explain some phenomenon, or if you're using that term as simply a "less boring/more 'poetic'" way to refer to something like a simple distinction of subjective/objective.
Quoting macrosoft
And then this seems to be another non-sequiturish jump to me, because truth theories and basic ontology are two different things that don't have a necessary connection to a subjective/objective distinction, which didn't have any clear connection to a general philosophy of language focusing on semiotics and semantics.
. . . and so on.
Have you looked into phenomenology? Grasping a phenomenon is just paying close attention to what experience is really like for you. It is trying to look 'around' the theories you already have about what it 'must' be. For instance, early Heidegger examines how we experience time and finds that physics time (which is modeled on space) doesn't fit with our experience. He is trying to make us aware of what we do almost automatically, of what we do without noticing we are doing. As far as I can tell, he invented 'deconstruction,' which is just trying to dismantle the stuff we think we know that gets in the way of a fresh look at what was there all along, even as we demanded proof for it.
One example is the 'solipsist' who visits this forum to tell us about his solipsism. He [s]knows[/s] there are others as he tries to prove to them that maybe they aren't there. Or we can imagine the person who is trying to tell us there is no such thing as objective truth. They appeal to a pre-theoretical sense of 'objective truth' (some kind of vague truth-for-us) as they deny its possibility. What such arguments miss is the inexplicit 'knowledge' that makes them intelligible or worth pursuing.
Wittgenstein isn't exactly a continentalist, though. I agree that he's a weird fit for the analytic "school," but he makes much more sense to lump in with the analytics than the continentalists, especially given his association with the Vienna Circle (and Russell, etc.), which is hardcore analytic philosophy.
That's a good point. I guess I am lumping him with the continentals because of Groundless Grounds. He is making very Heideggerian points (and the reverse) at times. He does it all in a demystifying tone, like he is swatting a fly. Heidegger is grand and still believes in philosophy. But they are both pointing at a kind of ur-knowledge that can't be made perfectly explicit. To demystify this a bit, it's like the 'animal' foundation of thinking. We are mostly on auto-pilot, reacting to signs in the environment. We just 'do' understand language without and before giving an account of this. It's only when the flow is stopped by the theoretical gaze to question a single word that things get complicated.
I am saying something pretty safe here, I think. Is your ability to use English there as a whole in your RAM? Can you survey all of this linguistic know-how instantaneously in consciousness? I presume you roughly understood that last sentence. It was automatic.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Such a distinction would only have meaning within a system of distinctions. Your view on the subject and the object is going to be entangled with related views. For instance, if we are air-gapped subjects, then meaning cannot be shared. Value cannot be 'somewhat' objective. We strive for coherent accounts. We can't do much at the atomic level.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Hmm. I'm surprised you say that, because I think such connections are clear. What is the subject? How does it exist? And what do we mean by this or that explication of the subject, or of truth? I am perhaps blind to my own semantic holism. It's obvious to me (at this point), which may lead me to present does-not-follows for your perspective. Ontology and epistemology are meaningful and therefore also involve semantics. A good 'spiderweb' is coherent and meaningful. We fix them up when they are not, so that we have to extend them. They are still not quite right. So we mess with them some more. What is this process?
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think of Wittgenstein as challenging both approaches. There is an impatience with playing dumb about calling for certain explanations and then saying "ah ha!, quid erat demonstratum" that appeals to me. Fool me once, etcetera.....
Differences in taste about kinds of explanations can be substantial barriers to dialogue.
Slab!
What's funny here is that 'meanings' continue to be talked about. The objects are that 'meanings' are shared and stable. I understand what is meant, but this still misses half of the point. The words don't have fixed, stable meanings apart from their living context. 'Meaning is one.' Roughly, the same words take on millions of so-called atomic meanings in millions of different contexts. Our semi-automatic ability to speak and hear is staggeringly sophisticated, just like a living cat. To miss this is to be blind to anything I am trying to say. Our theories of meaning are like the crayola sketches of a cat. Our 'use' or 'immersion' in meaning is like an actual cat in comparison.
Explicit accounts are like a 10-year old boy trying to make strong A.I. with a 9-volt, some wires ripped out of a toy truck, and a few Christmas-tree lights. I'm not saying that we shouldn't try. (I am trying in my own way to light up the question and task.) I am just saying look at the cat.
Yes, I have. I like Husserl a lot. He got me into phenomenology. There's so much ambiguity that I see, everywhere around me, in regards to intentionality and affect. I don't know if you care to talk about this.
So, have you developed a meta-philosophy due to semantic-holism?
I have mostly read about Husserl in the context of reading about Heidegger. I think Husserl (a mathematician too) focused on 'eternal' phenomena. Heidegger saw something like the historical component living in our perception and very much addressed affect ('attunement'). For Heidegger we are like care that is stretched in time between the future and the past. Think about driving a car or riding a bike. How does time exist for us? We have memory, action, and anticipation in a living unity. I anticipate in terms of what I remember. I remember in terms of what I anticipate. How actually does the present fit into this ? Is there a 'pure' present? Is there an 'instant' where we are all 'collected'? If we look at the clock, we are tempted to say yes. If we assume that clock time is 'real' time (despite having invented clocks because we care and wanted to organize our actions), then somehow the real must be perfectly present. Reality exists in the freeze-frame. But this is a metaphysical abstraction, a theory that may get in the way of the naked facts that we mostly don't notice. We don't notice simply because we are so good at ordinary things. We don't need to notice. The dancer doesn't notice she has legs. She is her legs. The philosopher doesn't notice semantic holism. He is this holism.
What about intent? How do you address that finiky problem?
Intentionality? That is what is consciously 'lit up.' If we talk about consciousness, we feel forced by grammar to talk about consciousness of something. And indeed we are all familiar with focusing on something. Is that what you had in mind?
I'm thinking more along the lines of a behavioral solipsist that inferrs wrongly that intent is wholly shown through behavior. Wittgenstein talks about this a lot in the Investigations.
An improvised sketch:
(1) Something like the self-clarification of existence in conceptual terms.
(2) A clarification that results in a richer, more joyful existence, along with a kind of wonder and even the preservation of the inner child.
(3) Assuming holism, one should try to grasp things as a whole, make sense of all of existence, and not get tangled up any more than necessary in local issues that aren't really helping with (2.) Or, better, we don't really have a choice. This is actually what we already do. But we can embrace it.
Oh, OK. I think I know what you mean. For me this is related to fixed notions of the subject and meaning. One such notion would be that meaning is a lightning bug in our skull. If we try to give a context-independent description of meaning, we are going to run into the same old meaning-atomists problems.
So, how is intent discerned apart from behavior? Is there any way to prove this as true?
Ok, see you around.
Insofar as I can use it, yes.
It wouldn't be instantaneous. You don't use it all at once. You have something in mind as you use it, though.
Sure, because I can assign meanings to all of the terms in a manner that's coherent, consistent from my perspective.
Quoting macrosoft
And indeed I agree with both of those ideas. Meaning can not be shared and value is not at all objective.
Quoting macrosoft
"Subject" in the sense of "subjective"? It's mind. Mind exists as a subset of brain function. The definition/basic workings of meaning I gave to you earlier (a few days ago)--it's the act of (an individual) making mental associations. Truth I gave you my definition/basic account of a while ago, too . . .. it just seems to me kinda like quickly jumping around from topic to topic, though.
We engage or approach the work in an organized fashion in addressing arguments raised by Wittgenstein. By which I mean we talk for example about the private language argument or language as a form of life or the beetle in a box or family resemblances.
Of course we would address each argument raised by Wittgenstein in some logical and coherent manner; but, I honestly doubt we could make it past a couple of pages reading each paragraph in logical order.
What are your thoughts about addressing arguments raised in the book instead of the entire book itself?
So, for example. Someone might ask about what Wittgenstein meant by the Beetle in a Box, as to whether it implies logical behaviorism on Wittgenstein so part. Or what Wittgenstein meant by a lion that could speak English but never being able to communicate with us in that language? Does it imply some form of intuitionalism on his part with respect to language?
And so on.
Thoughts?
Quoting Posty McPostface
Story of my life. All of them. :cool:
The format of how comments appear here make that development difficult to overcome. Along with the natural disgust humans have for each other.
Maybe, as a matter of courtesy, a second thread could be set up alongside the first. The primary one would just be for direct attempts at wrestling with what the author says as given, the second one would be for all other activities and complaints about what have you.
No cats, though. I insist.
Oh dear. Anything but that. Hehe.
I like the idea of two threads addressing the same topic in different ways. Let's see if the moderators will allow it to happen. But, that might be too complicated for most folks. Let's see if anyone else has any suggestions.
Hmm. I think you know what I am getting at. In so far as you can use ---without having it all present to consciousness --is what I am pointing at. RAM is random access memory, 'random' in the sense of arbitrary. I think listening is palpably more passive and reactive than that. Words summon a know-how from where it sleeps in the background.
Quoting Terrapin Station
OK. Yes, I agree. We don't use it all at once. It lies coiled. That which lies coiled is what I mean by the dark place from which we listen. We can't fit all that we know into explicit consciousness. And much of what we know seems sub-theoretical. We never quite make it explicit without problems when we try.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Granted. But I don't the mind carefully assigns meaning to the terms one-by-one. The meaning is grasped as a whole. Afterward we can expand on this or that term 'from' that grasp as a whole.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I understand that, but I still think you are insisting using the terms in your way. So far I don't think you have even granted what someone might mean by shared meaning. Nevertheless we've been doing it all along, call it what you will. Insisting on the 'right' terms seems like something we do when we play a certain game. That game is fine. Making a 'spiderweb' might even require the (attempted) fixing of terms. But talking with others who aren't immersed in that same project requires that we learn their language. We do it all the time. I don't have an explicit theory of shared meaning, exactly since I think all explicit theories have problems. The point is to acknowledge the phenomenon 'behind' such formulations --in its vagueness.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I can see why you think I am jumping around from topic to topic, but that's maybe because you don't see these as all aspects of the same issue as I do.
At some point the demand for proof is artificial. It's like asking me to prove that you can ask questions. While it's hard to pin down what we mean by meaning or thinking, we are there all the time. What is it, I wonder, that allows us to grasp a proof as a proof? What are proofs made of if not of meaning?
What is reasoning if not meaning? You are almost asking me to prove that you have language, that you are not just a machine. 'Consciousness doesn't not exist.' Well who or what is talking there and to whom or what? 'Consciousness' is a word that points to the fundamental intelligibility of the world. You share meaning as you ask proof for it. You impose on this space we share where words signify to demand a proof that could only be more signification. See what I mean?
I split of this line of thought in a thread I thought deserves it's very own place. See if you like it.
It is supposed to be a reading group, and context is important in reading. So I think it is important to start from the beginning and understand how Wittgenstein is using certain words, like "rule". However, the problem is as you say, we might have trouble getting beyond the first few pages, and the exercise could extend indefinitely in time. Some readers would insist some parts of the book are unimportant, wanting to skip ahead without grasping the nature of each problem as Wittgenstein exposes them one after the other.
But that is the theme of the Philosophical investigations, there is an endless supply of problems brought up, one after the other, with a thread of relationship connecting them. As the book proceeds, Wittgenstein offers direction toward a possible way of avoiding all these problems. But if one does not completely understand the nature of the problems, that person cannot adequately judge whether Wittgenstein's direction is correct. That is why it is important to address all the little problems, one after the other, as they are developed into one big problem. And then proceed toward the possible solution.
So it makes no sense to begin the reading group with a discussion of the beetle in the box, or some such thing, because we would have no context. The discussion would go in a multitude of different directions, following a multitude of opinions, and those who referred to the book, to put the analogy into perspective would most likely be scoffed at as offering a faulty interpretation of the book.
Quoting Posty McPostface
There has already been many discussions here on those particular "arguments" which you mention, but many passages of the book have not been discussed here at all. The issue is that many parts of the book may be interpreted in many different ways (those produce interesting discussions), and other parts are less ambiguous (there is little to discuss). But the interpreters may refer to the ambiguous parts with interpretations of those parts which support their personal interpretations of the book as a whole, leaving behind some less ambiguous parts which do not support their personal interpretations. If these less ambiguous parts of the book which are incompatible with such an interpretation are brought up, the interpreter will be caught attempting to produce ambiguity in an unambiguous statement in order to support the personal interpretation. One might argue that a more ambiguous part is of greater importance than a less ambiguous part, but why would a more ambiguous part be of greater importance than a less ambiguous part? A true interpretation ought to offer consistency throughout the entirety of the book, because we ought to assume that Wittgenstein worked hard to present the piece in this way.
This is going to be very long, unfortunately (I'm not at all a fan of long posts), but hopefully it will help you understand my view better, and maybe it will give you a better position from which to offer objections, to explain your own view in counterdistinction, etc.
So re language/meaning. Let me try to explain this with a simple example. It's not easy to do that with typing, because on my view, it's important to keep in mind that (a) meaning is inherently mental and can't be "made into something else"--so I can't literally type a meaning and (b) meanings are not the same things as definitions or correlations, even though definitions or correlations are involved with meanings--they're basically "what we're operating with" when we do meanings, so I'll be mentioning them too,
So, we'll have two things at play here. One, meaning(s), which is the inherently mental act of making an association, which I'll represent via "random" symbols--¤ for example (hopefully you can see the symbol there), and two, what we're associating, and in this case, I'll use words and/or definitions a lot (for one, because that's something we actually can type).
So, let's take for an example someone saying "The cat is on the mat," since philosophy loves that example so much. On my view, "The cat is on the mat" has meaning only to the extent that a particular individual assigns meanings to it, however the individual in question assigns meanings to it, and insofar as that doesn't happen, it does not have meaning.
Probably one common way for individuals to assign meanings to a sentence like that is that they'll have something in mind for "cat"--so in other words, they hear the sound "cat," they'll make a particular mental act of association, ¤, for example, and what they'll associate it with are things like a mental image of a cat--it could be a particular real-world cat, or a particular imaginary cat based on their concept(s) of a cat, etc., and/or they might associate the sound "cat" with a definition (although for something like a cat this would probably be far more rare) a la "feline" or "a small domesticated carnivorous mammal with soft fur, a short snout, and retractile claws" or whatever.
And then they'll have something in mind for a phrase like "is on the," which wouldn't be unusual to treat as "one thing," so that you're making a mental association, ¶, with the whole phrase, and you're associating it with something like your concept of the relation, or perhaps you're picturing the relation or whatever.
And then they'll have something in mind for "mat," similar to how "cat" worked.
There are a number of things to note here:
* The above isn't how it has to work--that they make the association for "cat" and then "is on the" and so on. It just depends on how the individual in question thinks about it. Maybe a particular individual thinks of the whole sentence as "one thing." Any arbitrary person can think about it in any arbitrary way, really.
* Each association is unique. Hence why I used ¤ in one case, ¶ in another. This isn't just a peculiarity of how meaning works. I'm a nominalist. I think that everything is unique, including "the same thing" at different times (in "scare quotes" because as a nominalist, I don't think that it's literally the same thing).
* The associations we make that are meanings aren't necessarily simple or just one thing, especially for things that we're very familiar with. So in other words, for many people, "cat" is going to bring to mind many different things--maybe a mental image of a particular real-world cat AND a mental image of a particular imaginary cat, and maybe many of each, and maybe bits of definition, and maybe that one time that Mittens plopped a dead mouse on the bed, and so on. And all of that stuff can be very dynamic, quickly changing, it can be pretty fuzzy, various things both in succession and simultaneous, with various acts of association while all of that stuff is present mentally, ¤ and § and Ç and so on.
* Aside from the meanings differing, what's being associated can vary wildly per individual. So, in other words, for some people, when they hear the word "cat," the definition they associate with that term might be "fugitive." Someone else might associate the definition "quick reflexes." It could potentially be anything.
* Again, insofar as an individual does NOT assign meaning to a word, a phrase, or even the entire sentence, it does not have a meaning.
* All of the above is "to S"--to the subject in question. Nothing has or doesn't have a meaning aside from having or not having a meaning to some particular person.
* An upshot to this re the comments about "not using all of language at the same time," is that most "words that could be said" or most text in books, etc. does not have meaning most of the time. It only has meaning when someone is thinking about it and "doing meaning" with respect to it.
So, with "The cat is on the mat," if Joe has never heard the word "mat" before, or Joe has only heard it but to Joe it's "just a sound" that he assigns no meaning to, that he makes no association for with a definition or anything, then at least the "mat" part of the sentence has no meaning, and maybe that results in more of the sentence--maybe even the whole thing--having no meaning to Joe.
Joe can not be wrong about that. Meaning/no meaning is always to someone, and Joe can't be wrong that "mat" has no meaning (to him).
Joe also can't be wrong if his meaning of "cat" associates that sound with "fugitive."
Or in other words, no one can be wrong about any meaning, any association they make. They can be more or less conventional, but it's not wrong to be unconventional. Saying that it's right to be conventional is the argumentum ad polulum fallacy. The only thing you could get wrong is something like, "'Cat' is conventionally defined as 'fugitive.'"
So, when Putnam is talking about the meaning of water and twater, a la H2O and XYZ, my response, aside from noting that meanings are acts of association, not the associations themselves, and I think this is clearly undeniable, is that "water," in terms of the associations being made, refers to whatever an individual is using it to refer to, to that individual, so that "water" can wind up being both H2O and XYZ for Betty, or it can be just H2O in a particular state to Fred, and it can be "fugitive" to Joe, and so on. And whatever is the norm for some community per usage isn't correct just because it's a norm. Talking about the way that the knowledge of chemical composition influences meaning, the way that social interaction influences meaning, etc. is all valuable, but it's not the same thing as meaning. Meaning is still the stuff going on in individuals' heads. It's just that those individuals are obviously not in vacuums with respect to each other. They interact and influence each other and so on. Despite that, if Joe's meaning of both "water" and "twater" associates those terms with "fugitive," Joe can't be wrong about that. It can't be wrong that to Joe, the definitions of both terms are "fugitive," even though Joe might be very strange in that. These things are always to someone(s). That the definition of "water" is "H2O" to Fred and Betty and Billy and Jane etc. doesn't work any differently than the definition of "water" being "fugitive" to Joe (that is, in the sense that it's simply a symptom of the act of mental association in individual cases). It's just that Fred and Betty and Billy and Jane are far less unusual, maybe they're more easily influenced, etc.
People can't "share meanings" either in the sense of possessing the same one or in the show and tell sense. People can share definitions in the show and tell sense, and they can share them in the sense that they're using "the same one" (nominalistic concerns aside).
Ok. Then the argument idea was not a good one, then.
I have my copy of the Investigations ready.
Who wants to lead this reading group?
I like that you also see this fuzzy, dynamic process. To break it into discrete acts helps us say what we hand in mind, but I do wonder if it's not even fuzzier and more dynamic than that.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I agree, more or less, but can we say what the mental is? what meaning is? You say 'making an association.' That sounds roughly right to me. But what is 'making an association'? It's not that I expect a simple answer. I'm just pointing to the chase of the 'what meaning is' through a chain of synonyms. Seems to me that we have to assume that the other is just generally 'there' in language with us.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I agree, and I think this also points at dependence on context. How do sentences fit words together into meanings? It is not a simple horizontal addition, nor does this 'addition' move only forward in time.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think this is roughly right too, but it might still be too 'atomic' to catch all of the fluidity of the meaning experience.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Sure, I agree. We can experience sounds or written words as unknown. In the right context we will interpret them as unknown words and not just symbols or noises. We might grasp at the vaguest sense of meaning from context. But I mostly agree.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I agree, and I'd even say being unconventional is how language evolves. We use our tokens in new ways to create new meanings. I phrase this within the strong dichotomy of meanings and tokens which I find problematic. At least most of the time I think we experience meaning 'through' the tokens.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes I agree. I don't think this is the last word, and I have tried to point out a phenomenon that complicates this, but yes: meaning is subjective in an important sense. What you maybe neglect is the meaning of 'in individual's heads.' This is view from outside, that sees air-gapped skulls. It downplays what-it-is-liked-to-be-networked 'in' those heads. In everyday experience and language use, we experience the sense of being directly plugged in to a 'meaning field.' We don't see a string of symbols first and then experience sense-making. Meaning is grasped 'through' the symbols almost instantaneously. Nor do we hear sounds and then experience those sounds becoming meaningful. They are initially meaningful. Our issue here only seems to be that you want to approach what makes sense from outside the skull and I am trying to do a kind of phenomenology of meaning. The 'shared space of meaning' is for me nothing 'magical.' * Far from it. It is a 'first-person' description. I scare-quote 'first-person' because phenomenologically this phrase doesn't get the experience right. We aren't primary trapped in our skulls translating marks and noises into elusive meaning-stuff. Meaning shines 'through' these marks and noises. And 'meanings' also slightly betray the first-person experience of a continuous meaning-field (an atomization for practical purposes that should not obscure the phenomenon.)
*In case it's clarifying, I'd say that the 'spiritual' is radically 'subjective.' The postulation of objects like 'God' or etc. as making possible some kind of theology-as-science is counter to my grasp. Experience is 'only' concepts, feelings, sensations. This trinity of concept, feeling, and sensation slightly betrays a living unity moving in existential-phenomenological time in order to get a point across that nothing 'magical' is involved. The only 'objectivity' we might find is a strong sense (never allowing for proof) that it is roughly the same for all of us to be in love, be terrified, etc. We read one another's expressions and immediately read emotion 'through' these expressions, which is not to say that we can't consciously re-evaluate such an experience of reading-through.This 'going-back' is a significant aspect of our experience.
I will have a new copy soon (old one vanished in the hurly-burly of life.)
Do we need a leader? If so, why not you?
I'm not quite up for the challenge. We could do without a leader; but, someone needs to organize how we proceed, I think.
Personally I'm a bit of an anarchist on such matters. I'd suggest that people just bring up passages and interpretations and let the conversation rip --let it go where it goes. Even Wittgenstein was never settled about the order of the remarks.
Sounds like a good strategy. But, we do need some narrative, don't we?
At any rate, so hopefully you understand my view better.
Is there anything you believe would be difficult to account for under my view?
You define meaning in terms of undefined words. I think it would be good to address how the language is learned as a whole and seemingly can't be anchored in any one word. How is the subject's working 'set' of meanings constructed? And does my response to your long post make my approach more intelligble?
This may sound strange to you, but I think that my conversation with TS is already wrestling with the PI. What we could do is work more Wittgenstein quotes into this situation. How does meaning work? Is not this the theme of PI ? Or a central theme?
That statement doesn't make any sense to me. What undefined words are you referring to?
Quoting macrosoft
Why would you say "how language is learned as a whole"? There's zero evidence of anyone learning any language as a whole.
Well, I don't know what to make of your discussion on the PI. I'm somewhat confused about what both of you mean by "meaning" here. Do you want to lead the reading group? How about you, @Terrapin Station? Or maybe someone else? I don't know.
That confusion about what 'meaning' means is completely appropriate. It is confusing! If philosophy is an activity, the process of clarifying our thinking, then bombs away.
I read this as: we have a naive pre-interpretation of what language is really doing. Wittgenstein gives examples that fit this naive idea. That's from PI.
Words side-by-side on the page (out of the context of their use) look to be all the same kind of thing. But we aren't looking at them in their dynamic application. We are just staring at them, not watching them work.
I found a pdf of the PI, btw.
This already-having-to-know seems important to me. We can't start from zero and build everything up explicitly. We 'fade in' to having language. We always already have an initial understanding of what is going on that we can't get behind. If we try to get behind it, we have to use this understanding to try and do so. All the radical questions of the skeptic presuppose all kinds of tacit [s]knowledge[/s] of what is going on.
Just some passages I think are ripe for discussion.
I'll offer this: Wittgenstein starts from the assumption that language is learned from ostensive definition. He proceeds to describe problems with this assumption. It appears like ostension cannot account for the different "ways" in which the same word may be used. He calls language use in general "a game", but each different way constitutes a different language-game. He concludes this analogy by describing how learning a game requires learning rules. But learning rules requires that one already knows some rules, so it appears like learning a game requires that one already knows a game. So learning a language cannot be accounted for by ostensive procedure, because this requires that one already knows some rules of procedure. You'll find this argument at 30-33.
in conclusion, I would say that Wittgenstein argues that language is not learned by ostension, because ostension will not demonstrate the way that the word is being used, the "sense" of meaning. All words have different ways of use, different "senses", and the learner must be able to distinguish the sense. A different sense would constitute a different game, and a different game would have different rules. The learner must be able to determine which game is being played, and this implies that the learner already knows some sort of game.
I need to read it again, but if that's his argument, one obvious flaw is this: in saying that language is learned via ostensive definitions, and in comparing that to a game (where we accept (even though there's no good reason to) that the comparison is literally true, that a game can only be a game if it follows set rules (again, there's not a good reason to accept that besides stipulating that that's the sort of game we're talking about)), one is NOT saying that all games are language, or that all rules are language (well, or if one is also saying either one of those things, they'd need to be supported, too), so the fact that learning rules requires that one already knows some rules (also--what's the argument for that?--it doesn't at all seem self-evident to me, otherwise we'd have to say something like "some rules are built into brains automatically," which would be particularly dubious if we're saying that rules are necessarily linguistic) wouldn't imply that the language game can't be learned on top of the rules that one already knows.
I think you've left out the crucial part of the argument, what he spends the majority of the pages talking about, and that is how we could distinguish the way in which the word is being used, through ostensive demonstration. That is where the difficulty is. I think that's what the numerous examples are meant to convey. The conclusion is that language cannot be, and therefore is not, learned through ostensive definitions because this would require that one already know a language, in order to learn a language.
I think the premise which forces this conclusion is that some kind of language is required to clarify the ostensive demonstration in reference to the way that the word is being used. So as a simplistic example,(Wittgenstein's appear a bit complex), if you point to an object and say "red", the student needs to know that you are referring to the colour of the object, not the name of the object I.e. the student needs to be able to determine the way that the word is being used, the type of aspect of the world it is meant to signify, as pointing cannot provide this.
Quoting Terrapin Station
This is problematic because it would require that rules could exist in some form other than a linguistic form. How could that be?
. .
I think this holism is anticipated in Hegel (and surely others as well.)
So, bombs away!
Whoa, couldn't we start over again with a new thread with an agreement of how much to read as a start?
It has been a few years since I read it and my knees hurt when I try to jog.
Again, I'm very apprehensive about leading anything here. I'm liking the anarchic manner in which we are discussing the Investigations. Please start a thread however you see fit for the matter.
Thanks.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/4520/philosophical-investigations-reading-it-together
I welcome all interested participants to join us in that thread for the reading group.
Thanks!
If we really want to get radical, then do we really have concepts and not a single system? Is this system crystalline or net-like simply because we can stare at words in isolation? What is the ant? Does the little worker ant make sense apart from its colony?
The single ant is a solipsist.
Indeed, but he forgets where he learned the language to make that claim. (Can we say that he dreamed up the colony and his ant-childhood? I guess so. But this verges on monstrosity. Breakfast of Champions.
The ant doesn't care. It doesn't give two shits. It simply does.
I see. Well I have seen that philosophy expressed if not lived by. Max Stirner just burned down everything --in theory. He was very famous for a time, and he dedicated his truly wicked book to his 'sweetheart.' They didn't last. He ended up unfamous and just getting by for quite a few years. I still respect his critique of the 'the sacred.' But, as Marx said, this was still just words, just (anti-)theology.
The ant doesn't care about anything apart from it's role as a worker. It is a very Kantian creature and communist in nature or even totalitarian.
OK. But the ant sounds all mixed up. Do those things go together? The ant doesn't care. He's Walt Whitman. He contains contradictions.
The ant just does. It doesn't think. Blasphemy?
I left out anything you didn't specify immediately above. As I said re PI, "I need to read it again.". I was just going by what you had said.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Two things are pertinent here. One, people may very well wind up with different things in mind for the same terms, and two, what happens is that people observe various instances of pointing (literally or figuratively) and "grunting" (or making marks or whatever) and they attempt to formulate abstractions and make deductions so that various occasions of pointing and grunting make sense/are relatively consistent observationally, including re related pointing and grunting. This second set of methods isn't always successful, of course, and we see the results of that often, including on this board.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Natural laws are one example. (Whether we believe that there really are natural laws or not.)
For that one I simply say "wrong."
An individual could look at meaning that way, but it's simply a contingent fact about how that individual thinks.
Society can't come first. What would the society in question be comprised of?
He's conflating ontology with epistemology and philosophy of language there.
I don't agree with any intrinsic/superficial distinction of that sort.
?? An ontological structure isn't going to suggest anything about "semantic determinacy" whatever that's supposed to amount to, exactly. Why is he jumping from ontology to semantics anyway?
There's a string of words, eh? No idea what in the world "suited for thus remaining constant" would be saying. Is that another Heidegger term? Whenever anyone uses Heideggerian terminology (like "present-at-hand") I have to look up (again) what the f--- it's supposed to amount to, because no matter how many times I look it up, I can never remember it, because the explanation never seems to make much sense, it always just seems like Heidegger was assuming a bunch of completely wonky shit that's not very accurate or observant, etc.
What determines meaning is how a particular individual thinks about the meaning of something, whether that individual thinks "holistically" or "atomistically" or whatever else.
Yes, people "may" wind up with different things in mind, but to be able to use language successfully we must avoid that. And we do learn to use language successfully, so we must be able to avoid that. That's the issue, when there is a multitude of possible interpretations, each correct according to a particular set of rules, where does the capacity to avoid the wrong interpretation, by choosing the appropriate set of rules, come from?
Quoting Terrapin Station
As I said, that's problematic. Would you argue that inert matter is capable of interpreting natural laws in order to know how to behave? Or how would these natural laws exist, and act to influence the behaviour of matter?
I don't believe that's the case at all. As long as the involved parties parse things as going smoothly, consistently, coherently, etc. it doesn't matter what they have in mind, exactly.
Of course, language very often doesn't go smoothly, consistently, coherently, etc. to some parties who are paying attention. But sometimes it does, and it can regardless of people having very different things in mind.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I don't agree that there are any wrong interpretations. It's not wrong to be different.
Re what people have in mind, they can have very different content where we have no idea that they do, and we might never be able to acquire an inking of that.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Are you thinking maybe I'm in a loony bin?
Sure, it's not absolutely necessary, and it can go smoothly, but misunderstanding is likely the case.
Quoting Terrapin Station
But isn't it necessary to understand what the author intended, to interpret, isn't that what is "meant"? If an interpretation is not consistent with what was meant, can't we say that it's wrong?
Quoting Terrapin Station
More like you didn't seem to give much thought to what you said. Perhaps in that case there is no such thing as the correct interpretation.
No. I don't agree with any of that. For one, I more or less agree with the "intentional fallacy."
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Isn't that rather patronizing and arrogant on your part?
I'm just going by how the word "meaning" is commonly used, and defined in the dictionary. The meaning of a word is what is meant by that word, and what is meant is what is intended. Words have various different "senses", different ways in which they can be used, and we determine the meaning in a particular instance of use by referring to the context, what is meant by the speaker, or author.
So I'm following the rules of the language-game that I'm playing, while you're playing some other game. I haven't the foggiest idea of what you mean by "intentional fallacy", so that's lost on me.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No, I don't think so, it's what I honestly believed, that you didn't give much thought to what you said. And since you didn't try to explain, your reply just reinforced that belief.
A problem with that is that on my view, you can't actually observe another persons' meanings, intentions, etc. Those things are mental phenomena. They can't be made identical to something that's not mental phenomena.
I agree, you do not "observe" another person's meaning, you deduce, or infer it. And, you do this through the means of the meaning you produce in your mind, your own meaning. But it is often very important in interpretation to distinguish the two, the other's meaning, and your own meaning. You cannot simply assume that the meaning produced in your mind is what is intended by the speaker, or author. And if it is not, then we can argue that you have produced an incorrect interpretation. So I believe it is important to respect the possibility that one's own interpretation may be incorrect, and therefore do whatever possible to ensure that it is as close as possible to the correct interpretation. That requires empathy, putting oneself in the other's position, to determine what the other intended.
'Deduce or infer' is not perhaps the best description. Even if we grant that ultimately the brain is quickly processing sense-data, the experience of others' meaning is far more automatic and instantaneous than that. Worrying about the brain issue obscures what is perhaps the priority: describing our lived experience of meaning with others. Since concerns about the brain and our isolation are themselves part of this lived experience, it's not clear that isolated brain talk is more fundamental. The structure is like that of a mobius strip.
I don't agree. The automatic, and instantaneous meaning is one's own meaning, the meaning produced by one's own habituation. It is not the other's meaning (the speaker's meaning). And the hearer's own habituated meaning is only consistent with the meaning intended by the speaker when the hearer and the speaker have similar cultural conditioning. So when the meaning interpreted automatically and instantaneously by the hearer is consistent with the meaning intended by the speaker it Is not the case that the interpreter is processing the speaker's meaning. It is only when the interpreter takes the time to consider nuances and subtle differences, putting oneself into the speaker's shoes, through empathy, that one is actually attempting to experience the other's meaning.
Yes, I agree. Or rather I get that. I start from that. Maybe I should stress that, because I have the sense that jumping to the lived/ordinary point of view is misinterpreted as involving supernatural entities.
The brain throws up a picture of the situation. I can radically misunderstand the other. I am not wired directly to their brain. Except that I am, through words, gestures, facial expressions. Even if we can and do err in complicated situations (talking about talking about talking), ordinary life is quite a success.
It should be though, since consistent and important misreadings lead to death and ostracism. We've been at this for a long time, and those who can't get it (along with their code) are cast aside.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I know why you say this, and it is true from a certain perspective. On the other hand, I believe without proof that the word 'cat' throws up the image of a cat in your mind. I believe that this sentence throws up a voice in your mind, and that you understand me well enough in the way that I understand me. If you want to insist that these are different meanings (since they aren't perfect matches and are generated by different brains), then I can understand that. On the other, the entire point of our massive facility with language is to generate something like the same meaning in each consciousness. Stressing the difference ignores exactly what makes stressing that difference possible. Your speech act presumes that we can share meaning in some sense -- call it what you will.
I like your last sentence quite a bit. Empathy seems crucial, but I also think a certain courage is necessary. While we want to learn, we don't like to learn from a rival. If the situation is framed as a contest or argument and not as a genial exploration, everyone is a rival to be put in their place. As I see it, learning is largely a self-mutilation. We expose our network of beliefs to the violence of another network. Unless the lust for expansion over-powers the fear of mutilation, we apply tunnel-vision to an interpersonal situation where stepping back and seeing the basic situation is appropriate. Rather than pretending to be innocent of this, I confess that I speak from experience. That too seems like part of the self-mutilation --coming to terms with one's own pettiness and vanity. Excepting some technical and layman-irrelevant philosophy, I don't see how philosophy isn't a 'spiritual' practice if done well --nor how 'spiritual' practice can avoid self-mutilation (the destruction of persona.)
I find that to say things like this is to make a statement which simplifies something that is complicated, but it doesn't really make sense. It's like you're saying something, and it would be accepted by many people, simply because it sounds good, but it's actually quite unreal. This proposition glosses over the complexities of something extremely complicated, making that thing appear to be very simple, so let's accept it, and proceed on our way as if we have an understanding of that complicated thing.
The fact is, that in no rigorous sense of "same" can we say that each consciousness has the same meaning. People will argue, as your statement implies, that it must be the same or else we couldn't communicate. But I think that this actually obscures the true nature of communication, and that is that we get by on something which is merely adequate, and is far less than a perfect understanding. Language, communication, does not require, in any sense at all, that we "share meaning". It is this assumption which creates the illusion of simplicity that obscures the true complicated nature of language.
This is like the word "inter-subjective". There is a massive quantity of extremely complicated interactions between human subjects. Instead of attempting to understand these relations, let's just hand some objective reality to the "inter-subjective", and pretend that words like "language" refer to a real object rather than to the relations between individual people. So you say that there is a real object which is called "meaning", and we each share in this object, instead of representing the individuals as individuals who interact and their interactions create the illusion that there is such an object called "meaning".