This sounds like Hacker’s reading of Wittgenstein. — Joshs

I just ordered the first Hacker & Baker volume, so I'll find out soon.

t's a pity there's so little in Wittgenstein about games evolving or morphing into other games, so that his readers, especially the less sympathetic, have always had to deal with the temptation to take "game" as indicating a closed, static rule system. — Srap Tasmaner

I think Wittgenstein was almost bound to be misunderstood this way, precisely because philosophers salivate for closed, static rule-systems (the intellectual conquest of the cosmos with magic words.)

You may be interested/challenged by Cavell's reading, which I draw out in the first post, as he compares it with Kripke's, who puts an emphasis on rules, and neither take the claim to be that there is a fundamental justification. As a teaser, Cavell points out that we are only inclined to, as he reads it, throw up our hands. — Antony Nickles

If I can find the time, I think I'll like Cavell. I have read much of this thread, so I have an idea of what you mean. Instead of fundamental justifications, I think in terms of basic conventions, basic habits. We don't justify driving on the correct side of the road. Either side works. All that matters is that we all drive on the same side. This echoes the arbitrary nature of the sign. Call is 'red' or 'booboo.' To me it seems that justification is a layer on top of an animal-like training. Ultimately I think even this justification layer is still training, so it's more of spectrum. To me there's no crystalline intellect riding on a meat-wagon. We all keep training one another as we interact (with words, smiles, frowns, payments, violence, sex, promotions, etc.).

This would be why he says he is not advancing theories, because for anything to have value as a grammatical claim, we have to come to it on our own, and then he hasn't really told us anything we didn't already know. — Antony Nickles

That's how I understand it also. As it take it, grammar (in this context) is just the way we (actually!) use words these days. The reasons that computers can't have toothaches is not metaphysical. It's simply that we usually don't attribute toothaches to machines. This could change. Once upon a time, machines couldn't catch viruses or get worms. 'Incorrect' (metaphorical) usages can obviously catch on until they are 'literally' literally true.

There is a difference between a grammatical claim and a definition, but I wanted to acknowledge the democratic affinity. — Antony Nickles

I suppose a definition is or could be seen as a type of grammatical claim. It's of the (implicit) form of: the world works like this, see? I need to know what a 'lawyer' or a 'bear' or 'cyanide pill' is. I need to know what these tokens 'mean' (how and when to use them). Their only meaning is out there in the wild, in the way they are actually being traded. (Contrast this with some 'angelic' language which is static, unambiguous, universal, and complete.)

Why is it impossible for the teacher to know "all there is about justice"? Surely they can know enough to teach a student what the word "justice" means (i.e. how to use the word "justice"). After all, didn't someone teach you what "justice" means? And couldn't you teach the meaning of the word to someone else? — Luke

I'd like your input on the following, inspired by the quote above. Personally it seems impossible for anyone to know all there is to know about (the token) 'justice.' At the same time, most of us could give most of us a rough idea, a start. Then we just keep living, keep interacting, and the way we understand or employ the token shifts, more or less, depending on our trajectories through time. It 'means' (roughly) how it's used. (I think we agree on this.) Its 'meaning' is out there in the hustle and bustle of the crowd, and definitely not in the possession of a clever individual. It has a 'market value.' I care about its so-called meaning only because I interact with others. Its meaning (for instance) is how they'll react to me if I used it like this rather than like that.

Examples are necessary because we can not explain rules for our concepts that cover every situation--account for every context or predict the way in which they may go wrong. — Antony Nickles

Agreeing with you and this, I suggest that 'rule' and (in another post) 'govern' are useful but imperfect metaphors. There's no top-down authority on what our noises and marks mean. We just live together, experiment, and hopefully get better at talking and writing and gesturing at others. What is 'better' here? Well, the use of 'better' is caught up in this 'game.' Any of us can give examples of when 'better' is used appropriately. Any of us can propose a definition. Personally I don't think any of us possess more than a 'cloud' of its so-called meaning...or the meaning of any other word. 'We don't know what we are talking about.' But we can improvise decade after decade. If they ask us what we mean, we give them still more words.

we are at the moment at which something falls apart: your understanding, our conventions, the "automatic" naturalness of expression and reception, and, in particular--what Witt is discussing here (PI #217, above)--the end of our ability to justify our actions to each other. It is, unfortunately, a tortured thread; I appreciate the interest. — Antony Nickles

It is a great line to wrestle with.

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. — PI 217

I've tended to take this in terms of justifying claims that one knows something. A dry example: a king is put in check by a bishop. Someone doubts this or doesn't understand. You explain the rules, perhaps trace the diagonal path of the bishop. If that fails to convince, there's nothing more to do. There's nothing deeper, nothing hidden.

Hutchinson’s point is that the background conventions do not do this work of understanding by themselves. They don’t exist independently of person-relative, occasion sensitive use. — Joshs

Of course. We navigate, interpret, improvise...always against a background of personal and social habit.

The actual use can "co-invent the sense of the rule, grammar", but ... that is a change in the rules, not an end to the rules. — Luke

If actual contextual use offers a fresh sense of a rule, and we only know rules in actual use , where is an ‘unchanged’ rule stored? Is there some internal or social non-contextual realm where they are kept protected from alteration? — Joshs

If I may jump in, all that's needed is a relatively stable background of conventions. For instance, I trust that you understand well enough what I'm getting at here, thanks to extremely complex conventions in stringing words together that have become almost automatic for both of us.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my grandfather did. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.

Tip 'o the hat to some forgotten wag. — James Riley

That's a good one. :up:

Suddenly BINK, the lights go out and there is no experience good or bad for that particular subject. — boagie

That's how I see it too. To be dead is to be gone, utterly gone. While we are still alive, we can worry about the living we'll leave behind, try to avoid death for their sake, buy life insurance. Of course we often avoid death for our own sake. We are attached to the plans we have for ourselves, and perhaps to all the many simple, sensual pleasures of being healthy and in good relationships.