Ludwig V

Well, if you are asleep, I would have thought that you are not in a position to believe (or disbelieve) anything. Well, what about dreams, you say? If...

Hey! There is something we agree on. So can we also agree that how we think about (conceptualize) our world changes us and therefore it? Or are we not...

Well, the answer to your last question must be No. If you define the problem as the connection between words and the world, you have built that answer...

There it is! But I'm running Norton's Anti-virus software. It warns me that connections to this site are not secure. Can you re-assure me that nothing...

Of course you can ask that. But you are asking whether your cell phone as real. Maybe it's a dummy or a toy. But you can't ask if everything you see i...

None whatever. That's the point. What Ayer wants to do, can't be done. He wants to ask the question about anything that we see (in the normal sense of...

Thanks. I'll add it to my reading list.

I think there is an elephant in the room. People do seem to have picked up the puzzle about why, if Austin wants to deny reality, he doesn't just come...

Thanks for that excellent summary. A foot-note. There is an additional aspect to this desire for certainty. It is the tendency to universalize. Admitt...

I'm not all that surprised that there is a variety of first person accounts of various mental phenomena. I'm sure that we all tend to fall victim to t...

Thanks for these links. I'll have a look at them.

The life of philosophy is debate, which requires a puzzle or a question. Solutions and answers end debate. Paradoxically, being right leaves nothing t...

What I said was that I don't always get mental images. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I call them up (especially when remembering) an...

Yes. The search for certainty. Nothing can bear the weight of that. Just occasionally, I find I have to take issue with something that W says. The ide...

His demolition of that classic idea is an excellent piece of philosophical work. Well, you may see them. But I don't think you can assume that everybo...

So you don't see the route to the shops when you remember it? That's good. It could be confusing to see the route as you remember it and as it actuall...

I'm afraid I have a mild form of aphantasia. You can speak for yourself, but not for me. See Wikipedia - aphantasia I'm quite capable of thinking, rem...

Forgive me, but if I understand you rightly, you are using "following a rule" as an example, but intend what you say to apply to all actions. I don't ...

This would be one way of understanding the debate between them. But you are giving too much to Ayer and so missing the point of Austin's argument. To ...

I didn't know about this. I'll have to look at it carefully. It addresses some important considerations. However, I'm a bit suspicious of any attempt ...

Thanks very much for these posts. They were very helpful to me. A good text, or a good writer, always has more than you think. It's curious how at one...

I suggest that Austin does not allow himself to be seduced by the cartesian sceptical argument into pursuing some perfectly assured certainty, which i...

I don't think we are very far apart, though I need to enter a caveat that "perceive" covers a range of activities. After this discussion, we have to b...

You certainly did, and a very welcome one, too. Thank you. But could I add that his little disquisition about ordinary language philosophy deserves so...

So you don't think that people can perceive themselves - be self-aware? I don't see how one can separate three things, perceiver, perceived and percep...

What you say confuses me, because it doesn't seem to fit at all with what I understood Malcolm to be arguing. Malcolm's thesis is regarded as outrageo...

Cavell's idea is very interesting and it would be nice to see how it could be developed into a real part of philosophy - digging deeper into the reaso...

This looks very plausible. It also looks to me that you might have been reading Cavell? As a final flourish, I would like to point out that this have ...

I'm afraid it is me that is the terrible writer. I should not have allowed myself to use that term, though I meant by it no more than seeing/hearing/....

Well, at the time, sense-datum theory was a staple of philosophy and was taught to and discussed by almost all analytic philosophers. In a sense, sinc...

I had the same feeling about this. Malcolm's take on dreaming has not been popular. Indeed, it has largely met the ultimate rejection - being ignored....

I don't disagree with this. But then he seems to me someone who thinks he has found firm ground to stand on, but actually has positioned himself on a ...

"Direct" and "indirect" are antonyms. The Cambridge dictionary defines "antonym" as "a word that means the opposite of another word" and provides, by ...

Yes, that's to be expected. Paradoxically, that's also why it pays to read the original text. There's room for a large discussion there. I'm not sure ...

I realize that is the usual way of describing certain phenomena of perception. But both "representation" and "interpretation" are usually applied in v...

In his time, it was not at all uncommon, so I assumed he was. Perhaps that's why I feel so at home with him. It's curious, though, to see how much mor...

The issues at this point are complicated, and I don't fully understand them. As a preliminary, it seems quite clear to me that Austin does disagree wi...

Part of the difficulty is understanding the significance of what he says. It is too easy to trivialize "ordinary language". But I think that's is a re...

Yes, it's an example of what I think of as the tyranny of the noun. I also found Lecture IV less than exciting, because his target wasn't obvious and ...

Thanks for the quotation from Austin. It does help. Austin's point is that we are not stuck with them. He doesn't analyse this particular duo, but if ...

Thanks very much for this. I don't want to move at a faster pace (except that I have skimmed through the book because I find it helpful to have someth...

My problem is that I can't imagine what direct perception would be. Isn't this part of what we need to recognize here? If nothing could count as direc...

I only discovered this thread to-day. Best thing that's happened to me in a long time. But I have read everything from the beginning. I lost my copy o...

If you mean the mathematical justifications of the rule, that's true - within the rules (practices, language games) of mathematics. But what justifies...

There are rules for which the process that brings them into effect is quite clear. They are what we call laws, but there are other varieties. They are...

I prefer pluralism coupled with pragmatism. Horses for courses. Logical analysis can give a kind of clarity.

Yes, that's true. I'm a bit inclined to say the W sees that "fuzzy non-linearity" as inherent in all concepts. So what do we say about logic? What mak...

I hope so. It's the only way that we get reliable information - and, in great part, we do. I'm sure there's a lot of quick and dirty solutions and heu...

Yes. There isn't a way of resolving that without going beyond that way of thinking. W's does that. His appeal to games, practices, forms of life etc. ...

I admire your memory! But isn't it exactly the same as we all (?) do when we memorize the standard multiplication tables and recall what 12x11 is. (It...