Have a read of Moore's Principia Ethica. Then Philippa Foot. Then Martha Nussbaum.
— Banno

Fair enough. Probably won't have time. I did read Nussbaum's Capability Approach. It all seems very middle class (human rights/human dignity). Does she not essentially argue that human flourishing should be the universal goal of all ethical systems? Which doesn't mean it is wrong. But not being a philosopher, I can't tell if this stuff is useful or not. I need others with some deeper reading/interest to talk about it. — Tom Storm

I’ll save you the trouble of reading the other two. It’s the usual reliance on some universalistic grounding of ethical normativity mixed with a sprinkling of cultural situatedness.
Let’s just say I find their universalism to be riddled with parochialism.

Even if something is not directly relevant to one’s survival, if it affects the organism in a meaningful manner, there will in some way be a relation to a survival mechanism. — Vivek

What kind of survival are we talking about? A rock survives as itself only to the extent that it remains more or less self identical over time. But a living organism will perish if it remains exactly the same. What the organism attempts to preserve is a normative pattern of functioning in the face of continually changing conditions. And as for humans, our normative patterns of functioning, our goals and purposes, are continually changing over the course of cultural history. Within any given era and community, for each individual there will be particular goals and purposes, and the criterion of good and bad is aligned according to such goals. But as the cultural communities evolve, what constitutes good and bad changes along with purposes. If there is anything consistent which ‘survives’ all these transformations of the human perhaps it is the simple fact of pattern itself. Only something that changes itself in a patterned way can know good and bad. The moment a rock is formed it is already on its way to no long being a rock, because it doesn’t perpetuate itself in a consistently patterned way.

Unfortunately, Austin doesn’t talk much about why someone would claim indirect realism, nor why it is important to tear it apart (and “realism”) — Antony Nickles

Other than myself, you may be the only person I’ve encountered on this site over the past 6 years who is not a realist. It gets lonely here when you’re not contributing.

I am suggesting that the notion of 'formless matter' is meaningful…

clouds of interstellar gas could be considered formless matter in a metaphysical sense, as they are raw material that, under the right conditions (e.g., gravitational forces, fusion processes), can form stars, planets, or other celestial bodies. For that perspective, 'form' (morphe) refers not just to shape but to the organizing principle that gives a substance its identity…

…from a scientific perspective, interstellar gas and dust are not really formless, as they are subject to physical laws and composed of atoms which have regular structures. They are subject to processes of condensation, fusion, and gravitational collapse, enabling the formation of structures like stars or planets. In this sense, the term "formless" would not strictly apply, since even gas clouds have properties (mass, temperature, charge) and follow patterns like the formation of stars in nebulae. However, they could be seen as chaotic or unstructured compared to highly organized systems such as life-bearing planets and human artefacts. — Wayfarer

It is possible to make distinctions between different kinds of formative agencies without needing to derive formative agency from formless matter, or separating the two into different conceptual realms (mind vs world , or mind-body vs world). Instead of placing the inorganic under the category of efficient cause and the organic under the category of complex dynamical systems, and then trying to make the latter’s forming agency ‘ emerge’ from the former, formative agency can be accorded to the inorganic as well as the organic. We simply have to move way from the concept of ‘unstructured’, ‘chaotic’ efficient cause with regard to the physical.

I should add that what you’re identifying as formative
capability in humans is not a passive picture of the world created by an observer, but a performative activity, a set of practices involving mind, body and environment in a dance of interaffection. Form is not our stance toward the world but a pattern of material interactions with it, in the midst of it.

If the mind is imposing a form on "clouds of interstellar matter," that lack it, why does it impose one form over any other?
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Because 'cloud' is a familar cognitive trope. But do clouds possess form at all? I think in the strict sense that it is questionable. They fall under this description:

Clay, rocks, etc. are just bundles of external causes.
— Count Timothy von Icarus — Wayfarer

And the concept of external cause is not itself a form (Wittgenstein would say form of life)? What is it we are doing when we split an observer off from an observed, and then go on to declare the observed as lacking any form in itself?

In any case, the fact that forms are artefacts of the cognitive system, does not undermine their objective (or would that be transjective) reality. It doesn't say that they're solely the product of the mind, but that they arise in the relationship between observer and observed — Wayfarer

If forms arise in the relationship between observer and observed, isn’t this also true of what supposedly lies outside of the experience of the observer? This gets to the issue of the basis of the reality-appearance distinction questioned by writers like Wittgenstein (seeing something as something) and Nietzsche.

↪Joshs

The non-living world subsists in itself as configurative phenomena.

What does this mean? Are there non-configurative phenomena as a constant?

Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.

"Agent" as the term is used in chemistry, e.g anything affecting change, or "agent" as the term is often used in the social sciences, as an entity that makes intentional decisions/choices? — Count Timothy von Icarus

There are no non-configurative phenomena. All events take place within some larger pattern of relations. Agency here does not refer to an entity, but to the organizational capacities of reciprocally affecting relational processes.

Which brings to mind the Pinter analysis - that form is precisely what is brought to bear by cognition so as to navigate the environment — Wayfarer

It’s not just humans who bring form to bear on an environment. This is precisely what all living systems do. And we don’t have to stop there. The non-living world subsists in itself as configurative phenomena. Matter ‘comes to matter’ within intra-actively changing agential configurations.

In The Origin of the Work of Art, Heidegger critiques the idea that form and content can be treated separately, as though form were something imposed on a thing, or content were ‘beyond’ form and style.

I agree that we only derive from a philosophy what already accords with our worldview to a large degree. But that philosophy can still have a legitimately profound effect on our thinking , and it’s a testament to the richness and fecundity of great philosophy that it can have this effect, in different ways with different people, like the blind men and the elephant. In a way, most of us who are influenced by a set of philosophical ideas are in a similar position to “guys in their twenties who discover and misinterpret Nietzsche to bolster the radicalisation of their own arrogance.”

Are you saying Heidegger’s main question is ‘ why is there something rather than nothing’?
— Joshs

I do not know if it is 'the question'... it is his opener in his 'einführung in die Metaphysik" I believe... — Tobias

Indeed it is. What many don’t realize, though, is that he isn’t simply repeating Leibnitz’s question, he is deconstructing it. What he is really asking is , ‘why do we exclusively associate the copula ‘is’ with the notion of something, of presence, and not also the Nothing’?

How does it come about that beings take precedence everywhere and lay claim to every "is," while that which is not a being - namely, the Nothing thus understood as Being itself- remains forgotten? How does it come about that with Being It is really nothing and that the Nothing does not properly prevail? (Introduction to What is Metaphysics?)

You do realize you are introducing your readers to your thought, via Heidggers' main question? In good German I would say: "was sich liebt das neckt sich" ... :wink: — Tobias

Are you saying Heidegger’s main question is ‘ why is there something rather than nothing’?

↪180 Proof Thoughts on Husserl? I personally believe Heidegger, for the most part, hijacked Husserl's line of investigation and fixated on one tiny aspect of it effectively throwing the entire point of the phenomenology out of the window. I kind of think of it a little like the New Age movement hijacking Jung's work. The only difference being people took Heidegger seriously. — I like sushi

Have you read Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserl in Speech and Phenomena and his intro to Origin of Geometry?

People who are not philosophers are also bewitched by language, they just don't need to care, because few of the inconsistencies in our norms of interpretation matter. And it marks you as unusual, and perhaps rude or stupid, to care about those inconsistencies and point them out — fdrake

There is one aspect of our norms of interpretation that matters a great deal, and that is our failure to distinguish disagreement over facts from differences in linguistic norms. This is the most importance source of bewitchment for Wittgenstein. Most of our breakdowns in communication, our battles over politics, religion and even fights over trivial matters like who ate the last piece of pie, come from confusing what objectively is the case within a shared linguistic normativity and differences in the sense of HOW something is the case.

Regarding the statement about philosophy being the bewitchment of our intelligence by the means of language, then why is that so? I mean to say, why does language behave this way or what makes this true that language going on holiday is all that some philosophy amounts to? — Shawn

It’s not language that behaves this way of its own accord. It is the ways we construct grammars out of it that lead to bewitchment. A prime illustration of this is the subject-predicate structure common to most languages. It predisposes us to organize the world in terms of subjects and objects, as if reality is composed this way. If I say ‘the floor is hard’ , we are less likely to read this sentence as an invitation to construe matters in terms of subjects and objects than we are to take for granted that the sentence is describing what is the case. We may go on to question whether the floor really is hard, but not whether there are not alternatives to the subject-object construction.

I would love to hear your summary of Heidegger’s philosophy ...
Gladly. Here's some old posts — 180 Proof

Well, these are certainly negative comments on Heidegger, but they consist mainly of references to other authors’ opinions of him. There’s no actual summary of his philosophy. My summary is embedded in various places, like here:

https://www.academia.edu/113482477/Heideggers_World_Projection_vs_Bravers_Concept_of_Worldview

and here:

https://www.academia.edu/117697814/Heidegger_on_Anxiety_Nothingness_and_Time_How_Not_to_Think_Authenticity_Inauthentically

I would love to hear your summation of Heidegger’s contribution to philosophy.
— Joshs
Well, fwiw, I'd begin here ...

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/790451

... and whose "thought" has engendered a few pseudo-intellectual (according to Chomsky et al) generations of "post-truth" p0m0 populism. No doubt, Heidi is very important but, imho, more as a negative example – how not to philosophize – than anything else — 180 Proof

I would love to hear your summary of Heidegger’s philosophy, but that link isn’t it. It sounds like all you’ve done there is take the facts of Heidegger’s involvement with the Nazi party and combine it with a summary of popular fascist philosophies of the time. Pretty much what Richard Wolin did in his Heidegger in Ruins book.

The problem is the popular philosophers did something new and for this reason alone they can be deemed somewhat interesting. For me Heidegger is absolutely predictable and boring after reading one book I know them all, that's a style of philosophy easily replacable by chat gpt — Johnnie

Whenever someone offers a sweeping dismissal of the ideas of a philosopher as notable as Heidegger, it is not just an individual writer being critiqued, it is an entire culture of thought. It would be interesting to put together a list of all the philosophers and social scientists who find Heidegger’s work indispensable. Your indictment of Heidegger is a tacit indictment of them. I would love to hear your summation of Heidegger’s contribution to philosophy.

↪Joshs
You can correct my summation if you want and transform it from common sense insight to brilliant new revelation that shatters all philosophies. I don’t think you will. More drivel is spent explaining him than he spent explaining him.

Wittgenstein-scholastics? — schopenhauer1

I’m curious. Who would you name as the 10 most important philosophers born after 1900?

Ditto. A war hero, yes. Otherwise my eyes glaze over quickly. Early in my mathematical career I tried reading him but found little to interest me. — jgill

We tend to find uninteresting that which we don’t understand. Do you think you understand Wittgenstein? This goes for also for and and anyone who claims that they understand him but then go on to disagree with a host of prominent thinkers who find his work profound and radical. Could it be possible they are not understanding him as well as they think, and that is why he appears uninteresting?

Anyways, what are other people's most uninteresting philosopher/philosophy and why? — schopenhauer1

This is going to be a very predictable thread. Those on this site whose only exposure to philosophy is through physics , mathematics or psychology will likely find most actual philosophy to be boring or somewhat pointless. Those hostile to postmodern relativism will likely find uninteresting anyone associated with that orientation (Wittgenstein, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Heidegger, Nietzsche). Those , like myself, who are enthusiastic supporters of postmodern relativism will find its philosophical opponents ( Russell, Kripke, Searle) to be stultifying.

In OC Wittgenstein identifies one hinge proposition: 12x12=144. This propositions is true. 12x12 = any other number is false. If one doubts it, it can quickly and easily be demonstrated. If this cannot be proven then there can be no mathematical proofs. — Fooloso4

To say that 12x12 =144 is a hinge proposition is to think of it as a rule for arriving at the product 144. The result of a calculation can be true or false but the rule for arriving at the result is neither true nor false. The rule merely stipulates the criterion for determining what would constitute the correct or incorrect answer.

or does all science operate on the basis of historically changing social constructions? — Joshs

The stretch from psychology to all science misses a rather important difference that is peculiar to the 'human' sciences. When one studies electrons, or planets, or plate tectonics, one can reasonably assume that right or wrong, one's hypothesis about phenomena will not materially affect the behaviour one is studying. But human behaviour is radically transformed by human understanding, so that as soon as a psychological theory has some measure of success, it alters human nature and the phenomena one is studying change. This explains why psychology appears more like the fashion industry than a science — unenlightened

I like what Rorty has to say about this:

To deny the existence of facts and truths about protons long before the term “photon” appeared in language leads to para­dox. This is because it seems reasonable to infer as follows:
( l ) There were photons five million years ago.
(2) It was the case then that there were photons.
(3) It is true that it was the case then that there were photons.
(4) It was true then that there were photons.
It seems reasonable, but of course philosophers have, paradoxically, denied it. Heidegger notoriously said that “before Newton, Newton’s laws were nei­ther true nor false


We should think of normativity, of the possibility of correctness and incorrectness, in terms of human beings’ answerability to one other. We can say everything we need to say about ob­jectivity, about the possibility that any given judgment we make, no matter how unanimously, could be wrong, without ever talking about “answerabil­ity to the world” or “world-directedness.” This account of objectivity works just as well for mathematics as for physics. It is as applicable to liter­ary criticism as to chemistry. The centrality of perception and of natural science to his treatment of the topic of answerability becomes explicit when John McDowell says:

“Even if we take it that answerability to how things are includes more than an­swerability to the empirical world, it nevertheless seems right to say this: since our cognitive predicament is that we confront the world by way of sensible in­tuition (to put it in Kantian terms), our reflection on the very idea of thought’s directedness at how things are must begin with answerability to the empirical
world.”

When discussing literature or politics, however, it is a bit strained to say that we are in a cognitive predicament. It is even more obviously strained to say that this predicament is caused by the need to confront the world by way of sensible intuition. McDowell’s choice of Kantian terms is a choice of visual metaphors, metaphors that Kant used to lament our lack of the faculty of intellectual in­tuition that Aristotle had described, overoptimistically, in DeAnima. It is also a choice of natural science as the paradigm of rational inquiry, a Kantian choice that Hegel explicitly repudiates. When one switches from Kant to Hegel, the philosopher whom Sellars described as “the great foe of imme­diacy,” these metaphors lose much of their appeal. So it is not surprising that it is among anglophone philosophers, who read far more Kant than they do Hegel, that these metaphors should remain most prevalent.

From a Sellarsian, Davidsonian, Brandomian, or Hegelian viewpoint, there is no clear need for what McDowell describes as ‘a minimal empiricism’: the idea that experience must constitute a tribunal, mediating the way our thinking is answerable to how things are, as it must be if we are to make sense of it as thinking at all. We are constantly interacting with things as well as with persons, and one of the ways in which we interact with both is through their effects on our sensory organs and other parts of our bodies. But we don’t need the notion of experi­ence as a mediating tribunal. We can be content with an account of the world as exerting control on our inquiries in a merely causal way, rather than as exerting what McDowell calls “rational control”.

↪Joshs Sure. The big difference is the Wittgenstein rejects the solipsism of phenomenology by insisting on the place of perception as communal activity — Banno

Does this sound solipsistic to you?

” My friend Paul and I point out to each other certain details of the landscape; and Paul's finger, which is pointing out the church tower, is not a finger-for-me that I think of as orientated towards a church-tower-for-me, it is Paul's finger which itself shows me the tower that Paul sees, just as, conversely, when I make a movement towards some point in the landscape that I can see, I do not imagine that I am producing in Paul, in virtue of some pre-established harmony, inner visions merely analogous to mine: I believe, on the contrary, that my gestures invade Paul's world and guide his gaze. When I think of Paul, I do not think of a flow of private sensations indirectly related to mine through the medium of interposed signs, but of someone who has a living experience of the same world as mine, as well as the same history, and with whom I am in communication through that world and that history.”(Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p.471)

“ In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are inter-woven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator. We have here a dual being, where the other is for me no longer a mere bit of behavior in my transcendental field, nor I in his; we are collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity.

I suspect that this sort of philosophical meandering would not have impressed Wittgenstein. Frank is right; there is a chair over there if it can be moved, sat on, sold at auction and so on. But this is not about phenomenology, not just about perceptions. It is about the interactions between you, the chair and the folk around you. — Banno

Perception is fundamentally about interactions between us and the world, seeing as a form of doing, as phenomenologists such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty showed. And Wittgenstein’s copious analyses of perceptual phenomena in PI reveal an intricate link between his notion of ‘seeing as’ with respect to perceptual phenomena like the duck-rabbit and certainty pertaining to material objects.

The concept of 'seeing' makes a tangled impression. Well, it is tangled.—I look at the landscape, my gaze ranges over it, I see all sorts of distinct and indistinct movement; this impresses itself sharply on me, that is quite hazy. After all, how completely ragged what we see can appear 1 And now look at all that can be meant by "description of what is seen".—But this just is what is called descrip­tion of what is seen. There is not one genuine proper case of such description—the rest being just vague, something which awaits clarification, or which must just be swept aside as rubbish.
Here we are in enormous danger of wanting to make fine distinc­tions.—It is the same when one tries to define the concept of a material object in terms of 'what is really seen'.—What we have rather to do is to accept the everyday language-game, and to note false accounts of the matter as false. The primitive language-game which children are taught needs no justification; attempts at justification need to be rejected.

Take as an example the aspects of a triangle. This triangle
can be seen as a triangular hole, as a solid, as a geometrical drawing; as standing on its base, as hanging from its apex; as a mountain, as a wedge, as an arrow or pointer, as an overturned object which is meant to stand on the shorter side of the right angle, as a half parallel­ogram, and as various other things.

"You can think now of this now of this as you look at it, can regard it now as this now as this, and then you will see it now this way, now /j-." — What way? There is no further qualification. But how is it possible to see an object according to an interpretation? — The question represents it as a queer fact; as if something were being forced into a form it did not really fit. But no squeezing, no forcing took place here. (PI p.200)

I think what Witt is saying there is that he demonstrates confidence in the existence of a certain chair by his behavior. Isn't that what you see there? — frank

We have to be careful to recognize distinctions in the sense of ‘existence’. For instance, if we ask ‘does this chair exist?’, we might mean , does it persist as relatively self -identical over time for me when I observe it. Or we might mean, does it exist objectively such that its existence does not depend on an observer. The kind of certainty of existence that Wittgenstein has in mind with respect to the chair is the certainty of the intelligibility of the scheme of understanding underlying any and all senses of the word ‘existence’. Put differently, it doesnt matter what we mean by the ‘existence of the chair’ for Wittgenstein. There can be 10 people in a room and all have a different sense of what the existence of the chair means. But all can be equally certain of their pronouncement that this is a chair, despite the fact that there is no correct proposition here to arrive at.
Built into the pronouncement is a set of rules or criteria for correctness , and it is these rules and criteria that are certain in a relative sense , for a period of time, not any particular fact concerning chairs that are framed by the criteria.

Is that a rabbit or a duck I see in that drawing? If I say I’m certain of the existence of a rabbit there, in Wittgenstein’s sense certainty here means only that I’m certain that I interpret the pattern of lines in that particular way rather than another way.

How is what Moore is doing, by holding up a hand and pointing to it and saying "Here is one hand" making a conceptual point only? Is this not a way of establishing the truth, or the correctness of what he is saying? Moore is not trying to describe the language game "I know", he trying to get the language game of "I know" right — Richard B

One doesn’t get a language game right or wrong, one gets issues defined within the parameters of a language game correct or incorrect . The game itself, the particular pattern of connections between elements that sets up the rules and criteria of validation, is grasped like a picture.

My impression is that many psychiatrists have retreated from false claims to providing services that will foster trust: prescribing, managing certain kinds of care, and so forth — tim wood

Oooh, false claims. That sounds like a terrible thing. Imagine not accepting true claims like the idea that mental illness is the result of a chemical imbalance in the brain. Anyone trying to peddle ‘true’ claims with respect to psychological issues is someone I would run away from as fast as possible. I don’t want the claims of my therapist to be true, I want them to be useful, and that is as much a function of the mesh between client and therapist as it is the theoretical orientation of the therapist. Also , the ‘true’ claims of one era of psychiatry will inevitably be seen as false, or more likely simply forgotten by a succeeding era. Does any one remember when what we now call depression was understood very differently as melancholy? How long before the rage of bipolar and Adhd diagnosis gives way to something else? Is this the result of runaway pseudoscience , or does all science operate on the basis of historically changing social constructions?

The failure of any claim to knowledge is not just an "Oops" moment. Rather instead it is an indictment of the work that led to the claim and the system that supports the work. If nothing else, the evidence that psychiatry still needs work would be its still claiming knowledge it does not have, to the degree it still does so. My guess is that most professionals in their personal practices have taken the historical lesson and try not to make such claims. — tim wood

The same observations you’re making concerning psychiatry could be made with respect to philosophy. The only difference is that most philosophers don’t claim to be doing science. Underlying your analysis is what I detect to be an assumption concerning the nature of scientific objectivity and the difference between empirical
objectivity and the aims and methods of philosophical discourse. I reject this dichotomy. Science is just a conventionalized form of philosophy, and the reason that psychiatry seems inadequate in comparison with the ‘harder’ sciences isnt that it fails to solidly ground itself in objective facts like a domain like physics does, but that it has one foot in philosophy and one in science. This gives it a vantage on its subject matter that is more nuanced and richer than the abstractive generalizations that define the hard sciences. It is what the hard sciences ignore (namely, the interpenetration between subjectivity and objectivity) that makes them seem more successful and certain in their descriptions than psychiatry. But their grasp of the world is no truer in an ultimate sense than psychiatry’s.

The problem I see is that the conclusion Kant draws from this example is completely unwarranted. Chirality is a property of shapes. So is rotational symmetry. This is true even on the Leibnizian view of geometry. The role of the mind vis-á-vis perspective doesn't entail that space and time do not exist fundamentally in nature qua nature. Indeed, if nature is "mobile being," time must exist in it fundamentally as the dimension across which change occurs — Count Timothy von Icarus

Where do we get the idea that there can be a difference in degree that is not accompanied by a change in kind? Do we get this idea from nature or do we impose it on nature? This is key , because the concept of time as motion depends on the concept of changes in degree of spatial displacement of a quality that remains constant in its sense over the course of the movement. If this only appears to be the case as the result of an an abstractive act on the part of the mind, this doesn’t necessarily mean that a mind is necessary for the actualization of space and time. It means that agency is necessary, and that material configurations function to ‘subjectively’ orient time and space in relation to a point of view, much the same as minds do. Agency doesn’t mean material configuration is sentient, it means it situates time and space according to changing configurations of relevance.

Time has a history. Hence it doesn't make sense to construe time as a succession of evenly spaced moments or as an external parameter that tracks the motion of matter in some preexisting space. Intra-actions are temporal not in the sense that the values of particular properties change in time; rather, which property comes to matter is re(con)figured in the very making/marking of time. Similarly, space is not a collection of preexisting points set out in a fixed geometry, a container, as it were, for matter to inhabit. (Karen Barad)

I do disagree with your formulation that the world is "nothing but social practice," and "social practices all the way down."…” contingent existence is always relative existence, essentially referred, qua existing to another.” To be intelligible—to not be arbitrary—social practice must have its explanation in something other than itself since its essence does not explain its existence. On the view that the world is intelligible, such an explanation must be possible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

It’s not social practice all the way down, it’s normativity all the way down. That is, the contingent relationality of existence doesn’t ground itself in some non-normative explanation. Rouse doesn’t separate nature and culture. He instead refers to ‘nature-culture’ as a single entity. This doesn’t mean that linguistic practices directly influence the nature of DNA functioning in rats. It means that the physiological and environmental culture within which genes operate influence how they operate, and the environment within subatomic processes occur shape the nature of those processes and even their ‘lawfulness’.

the biology of the human eye, its lack of sensitivity to UV light, can only be considered a "social practice," if we use the term equivocally. Eyes are something humans have by nature, not an activity they engage in (except to the extent that all form is activity). — Count Timothy von Icarus

The biology of the human eye is not a social practice, but it is a practice. The eye exists by functioning, and its functioning takes place within an integrated internal and external milieu which continually shape how it functions, in a way not unlike the way that linguistic practices shape the meaning of concepts for humans. We know now that environmental factors directly shape genetic structures, so any attempt to locate a pre-cultural explanation for the origin of an eye will be lacking.

Looking/seeing stands over/against/ beside propositional justification — Fooloso4

Indeed. Imagine I am looking at a drawing of a duck , and you come along and say ‘I see the image of a rabbit there’. I say ‘where’? You respond ‘look closely’. If I then spot the rabbit, it wasn’t the result of a process of justification but of seeing differently, reconfiguring the pattern of connections among the elements of the picture such that something new emerges from the ‘same’ drawing.

I'd argue that it is possible for us to accept that our notions of truth are inextricably bound up in malleable social practices and language games without jettisoning the idea that there is something external to human social practices grounding such notions, that our language games are not arbitrary, nor are they determined by "nothing but" social practices (i.e., the principles of social practice are not self-contained and subsistent, nor arbitrary and untinelligible). So, we can agree that claims as basic as "I have hands," require the use of some language game, that they always take place in the context of such a game, without having to conclude that our having hands or not is merely a matter of language games. All such systems have first principles, but this only implies a sort of deflation if one assumes first principles are arbitrary — Count Timothy von Icarus

It is assuming there is something ‘external’ to human social practices which leads to dualism, skepticism and arbitrariness. Our practices are not on one side and the world on the other of a divide . Our linguistic practices are grounded in and express material circumstances as those circumstances interact with our practices. As Joseph Rouse argues:

“The "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself. The practice itself, however, already incorporates the material circumstances in and through which it is enacted

So supose we have a culture in which "certain performances... might be performed in an entirely different way... to produce entirely different meanings".

On what grounds could you then claim that this culture was playing chess? — Banno

You’re making Wittgenstein’s point for him. He sees Moore’s raising of his hand as a performance which is grounded in a picture of the world which cannot be proved more correct than any other. To doubt the truth of this picture is to substitute a different picture, a different language game, just as doubting the picture of the world implied by the rules of chess is to no longer be playing chess. Moore’s demonstration convinces doubters of its certainty by bringing them to look at the world in a different way, not by satisfying them of its correctness.

Wittgenstein's view is that Moore can be certain, but not know, that he has a hand. — Banno

I agree with @Sam26. For Wittgenstein the distinction between certainty and knowledge is that between a conviction or picture of the world, and a justifiable proposition. My picture of the world may have telling grounds, but not grounds on the basis of which I can prove that picture to be more correct than any other.

92…if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way.

94. I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

t seems to me that there is an important distinction between riding a bike and playing chess. I don't need to know anything about another person's language game to understand that a person confidently riding a bike has developed (at least) some intuitive understanding of the physics involved in riding a bike.

Can you show an example of bike riding that I will find unintelligible? — wonderer1

When I say the word ‘bike’ you already have a system of practices in mind, involving use of pedals, steering, balance, etc. Of course, your idea of bike doesn’t have to include all of those. Your bike may be electric and not have pedals, it may have three wheels and not require balance. But your practical understanding of bike will probably be general enough that you can participate with no problem in a language game in which criteria of successful bike-riding can be agreed on. But what if you live in a place where the language game ‘bike’ involved an entirely different system of relations, where bikes were flying, floating or digging devices? For you, someone justifying they know how to ride a bike by pedaling something with wheels on a street would be unintelligible as bike-riding.

One justifies that one knows how to ride a bike by getting on the bike and riding it. One justifies that one understands "here is a hand" by waving one's hand about. They agree that the "meanings" of words are seen in what we do with them, not in an explication. — Banno

These situations show that one is performing a practice in a particular way, and one’s understanding is this particular way of ‘knowing how’. These performances dont preclude the possibility that they might be performed in an entirely different way by some other culture, to produce entirely different meanings. If the game ‘chess’ is performed according to an entirely different set of rules in that other culture, then my playing chess according to my rules will not justify to that culture my claim that I know how to play chess. It will justify that I indeed know how to do something, but not what they understand as chess. What we do with words forms a system, and how that system of practices is organized as a language game determines its meaning.

If you and I inherit the same system of practices, then within that same system I may be able to justify that I know how to do something simply by doing it, which is what Wittgenstein means by certainty, that the performance simply IS the justification. Within this shared system of practices called riding a bike, I may make a mistake, and this possibility of error within the shared system is what Wittgenstein calls knowing. Justification, verification, being able to be wrong all are possible within a shared system, but are not applicable when we compare two different language games. If you and I are making use of different language games, then performances like riding a bike , playing chess or waving my hand which appear justified to me will not to you. They will appear unintelligible, even if you call my performance ‘incorrect’.

How does habituation work if a person doesn't have any innate sense of leftness vs rightness? I'm asking. — frank

It wouldn’t be an innate sense so much as one that arises through coordination among different sense modalities and their relation to our actions with our surrounds. We construct a body image and perceptual map out of schemes of action. Out of these coordinations, a relatively stable marker would have to emerge that would allow us to consistently distinguish left from right. For instance, perhaps that marker is tied to an asymmetry of kinesthetic feedback between one side of the body and the other. Also, most are either exclusively left or right-handed. The memory of which hand one uses to play the guitar or throw a ball can be used to distinguish left from right. I think this issue can be compared with that of the development of perfect pitch and other such accomplishments of coordination of perceptual input. One thing I can say definitely is that it has nothing to do with the Euclidean geometry of space.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230112-why-some-people-cant-tell-left-from-right#

Rather than getting hung up on statements like "here is a hand", I think it would have been more effective to follow the example of Zen Master Lin-chi and hold out his hand so the skeptic could see it and then smack him — Fooloso4

The tough love school of enlightenment :clap:

Witt's hinge propositions function the same ( as Kant).. They too are necessary conditions and outside experience. Their examples might be different, but their functional roles are about the same. They both propose preconditions that are cognitive frameworks for knowledge and experience to take place — schopenhauer1

For Witt they are not just cognitive but affective and valuative. Most importantly, for Kant innate categories make possible normative experiences but they themselves are non-normative and non-natural, whereas for Witt they are both normative and natural in that they consist of practices in the world. Witt’s practice-based concept of use unifies categories and experience via the same norm-generating processes, whereas Kant maintains a split between what is normative and non-normative, what is rational and irrational, what is categorical and what is not.

Are Wittgenstein’s notions of a language game, form of life and hinge proposition indebted to Kant’s categories? Of course, but one can say the same of the philosophies of Hegel, Schopenhauer, Heidegger Nietzsche and most other philosophers who have come since Kant. As has been said, in a certain respect we are all Kantians now. But it is one thing to show the indebtedness of modern philosophies to Kant, and quite another to claim that thinkers like Wittgenstein have reached “conclusions which Kant already implied with his ideas of "synthetic a priori truths"”.

His having a hand is a commitment to a set of practices? The fact is, he either has a hand or he does not. This may be "fluid" in so far as his hand might be cut off, and then the fact is he doesn't have a hand any longer.

There are practice which involve having or using our hands, but this is not a commitment to a set of practices. The practices follow the fact that we have and use hands. Without hands the set of practices would no longer exist. — Fooloso4

Practices aren’t what we do with factual objects which precede our actions on them. Practices precede and make intelligible the meaning of a those objects.

↪Sam26 Banno
Why do we need to read Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" to get back to conclusions which Kant already implied with his ideas of "synthetic a priori truths"? — schopenhauer1

We don’t. We need to read On Certainty to reach conclusions that move beyond Kant’s thinking. Synthetic a priori truths begin by splitting off the world in itself from the activity of the subject and then piece them together again.