So, if something doesn't just appear to be true (think) but we're sure/convinced/certain it's true (know), then why would a person choose "I believe"? — Millard J Melnyk

Normally, they wouldn't. That's why it seems to odd that you want to ignore "know". I know you explained that, but it seems to me a pragmatic reason, rather than anything to do with a philosophical understanding of these cognitive verbs.

"I think" and "I believe" and "I know" shifts attention to the speaker's relationship with the empirical reality. The effect is to dissuade (to some degree) empirical investigation by deflecting attention onto the speaker.
— Millard J Melnyk
H'm. I think that depends on the context.
— Ludwig V
Well, I can't think of any exceptions. What can you come up with? — Millard J Melnyk

Well, how about a group of people wanting to extract a vital document from a safe. But no-one knows the combination. Then someone says, "Oh, I know the combination?" What's they will focus on is not that that person knows it, but what the combination is. The first question will be "What is the combination", not "How do you know it?" Later on, when the police are trying to work out who stole the document, they will be more interested in how you know it.

I'd like to hear what you think the answer to that question is. For example, why to people say, "I believe that God exists"? Why not, "I know God exists," or just, "God exists"? What's that hedging really about? — Millard J Melnyk

I believe that people who say that they know that God exists are keen to emphasize their certainty. I would expect them to be very keen to cite their grounds. People who say that they believe that God exists are not necessarily any less certain, but are more likely to recognize that their faith in God is not based on purely rational grounds. When we say we believe in someone or something, we are expressing faith and loyalty, not just a cognitive achievement. It's a wrinkle in the standard use.

Now, if you want to talk political philosophy and about "authority and coercion", that is a timely matter, but, alas for all of us, not epistemological. — Antony Nickles

I think that's a philosopher's narrow view. Most of what we know, we know on authority. Naturally, a good deal then hangs on the warrant for that authority, but it is not a marginal source for our knowledge. Of course, sadly, it is all to easy to misuse authority, once it is conceded, but that doesn't undermine its importance in practice.

The first usage is more or less synonymous with "believe." It refers to the content of a proposition. The second usage, however, is completely separate from the issue of belief. It refers to a mental event, a thought, that Mary is having at the moment. She may be having it for any number of reasons, some of which will have nothing to do with a particular blazing house. (Perhaps she's remembering a line in a poem she likes.). — J

That's one of the ways in which thinking, thought etc. are hideously complicated concepts. It covers not only the activity of thinking, but also its results. It covers actual activities that we would call thinking and situations where thinking is not an overt process, but happens, it would seem, unconsciously or at least without our conscious involvement.

And of course as I am a terrible thinker that can’t imagine other arguments (nod to Paine), this has blown my mind. The difference between Witt and Austin comes to mind first, in that the farthest that Austin gets in trying to figure out why Ryle is making his argument is logically, and even then he is pitying him either to explain what he believes Ryle is trying to say, or what Ryle wants his argument to do and then why it doesn’t or can’t. Witt alternatively knows that the skeptic is also him (from the Tractatus), but, since he hates that he got drawn sucked into it, he wants to cut himself open and do a living autopsy to figure out how and why. — Antony Nickles

It is complicated. I was hinting at the criticism of Ryle, not on philosophical grounds, but on political (small "p") grounds. He acquired a great deal of influence and used it and many people (especially supporters of Collingwood) resented that. I don't have an opinion about the rights and wrongs of that, but, to my eye, it looks as if that has led to a certain turning away from him. But perhaps it's something about his style that people don't like - Ryle is, perhaps, rather more emotional and less coolly analytic than Austin.

I like the image of W doing a "living autopsy". It catches, what his writing doesn't really reveal, now tormented he often was.

I guess I was only trying to fight the stream of opinion that I have encountered elsewhere that that is primarily what he is doing, or, more of a loss, that that is only what he is doing. — Antony Nickles

Well, one of the less happy consequences of high-lighting issues of language in philosophy is that it can all too easily seem as if that's all that philosophy is about. So other philosophers seem much more exciting. Dissolving problems seems an anti-climax compared to a theory about the broad sweep of eternity or whatever.

Mary Midgeley embraced the problem by insisting that philosophy is about plumbing. It doesn't seem inappropriate that some philosophers, at least, should be insisting on the fundamental importance of plumbing. A breakdown in plumbing is the beginning of a breakdown of civilization.

Surely, the point about Wittgenstein is that he understood the inter-connection of philosophical problems. Analytic philosophers seem to believe that the answer is to focus on one problem, but Wittgenstein is trying to keep several plates (including a close focus on a problem) spinning and he is right to do so, IMO. Close focus without attention to context (setting aside, or possibly bracketing) doesn't cut it. But that doesn't mean that context is everything.

I find it extremely hard to grasp the overall structure of the Blue Book because of the interconnected discussions that he keeps going. But broadly, I think it is very simple. The discussion is framed by "what is the meaning of a word?" This is at the forefront at first, and a method, or an approach to a method, is outlined. In the later parts of the book, that method is applied to a grand philosophical problem - scepticism together with its terminus, solipsism. But it's hard to see that because he has three plates spinning at the same time - various philosophical issues, such as the meaning of meaning, to which his detailed discussions are directed, a critique of orthodox philosophy, and his own view of how philosophy should be done. These are interwoven throughout. Nevertheless, the conclusion of the book is an analysis of "I", which looks like the close focus of pure linguistic analytic philosophy. Am I reading too much into a detail if I guess that he's suggesting that the concept of the self is at or near the centre of the network?

It would be interesting to display the text using different colours or fonts to clarify the different threads as they weave through the text, and appear or disappear as his discussion develops. But it would take an awful long time and I suspect would be less helpful that I would hope. The human brain - or my brain, at least - has limited bandwidth and tracking what is going on in this text seriously stretches my ability to keep track of several issues or projects at the same time. On the other hand, I find that the constant switching keeps me going - my attention span is limited as well.

It's doing there in an attempt to distinguish the assertion from the statement of relationship to the assertion (which failed miserably as can be seen in the comments.) "I think it's raining," and, "I believe it's raining," are semantically identical with respect to the rain, i.e., the assertion each makes is identical. All that differs, as you point out, is the speaker's level of credence in the assertion. — Millard J Melnyk

That's right, if you are only thinking about the first person use - "I know that...", "I believe that...", "I think that...". Things are different if you think about "S knows that..." etc. In those cases, it is not about the level of credence of the subject, but about the level of credence of the speaker. When I report that "S knows that p", I am endorsing p as true; when I report that "S believes that p", I am refraining from any commitment; if I report that "S thinks that p", I am actually indicating that p is false. One can go further and report that S supposes that p, suggesting that p is absurd, or imagines that p, which classes p as a fantasy. First person uses are special because the speaker and the subject are the same.

LMAO! You can see from the discussion how problematic it is to get minds to open to the possibility that "I believe" is not all it's cracked up to be. .... When they say "I know" a boatload of new soldiers of skepticism suddenly get activated. — Millard J Melnyk

Yes, the debates around the remote possibility that p might be false can indeed rather tiresome. I'm prepared to concede that philosophers and scientists might have stricter criteria for truth (and so for knowledge) than we apply in the rough and tumble of everyday life.

Bullshit differs from lies by virtue of the fact that the bullshitter does absolutely nothing to establish warrant, because they couldn't care less about it. — Millard J Melnyk

Yes, I think Frankfurt is right about that. However, I'm bewildered by your apparent belief that all beliefs are based on bullshit. That doesn't follow from anything that Frankfurt says, so far as I can see.

To my mind, "knowledge" is a useless category, because either it remains open to revision -- in which case, what are the merits and advantages of calling it knowledge as opposed to theory or provisional conclusion or guess? -- or dubbing it "knowledge" prematurely closes the question, — Millard J Melnyk

Yes. If we accept that there is no possibility of anything ever being certainly true, the distinction between knowledge and belief collapses. But I do think that there are a good many truths about the world, and it is useful not to confuse them with probabilities and assumptions.

But the most persuasive form is to drop all reference to self completely. — Millard J Melnyk

If you are talking about the first person use, then I agree with you that "I know/believe that p" is unhelpful - and that's not just a matter of what is persuasive. But I think that the third person is useful. It's an important moment in the development of children when they recognize that sometimes they may know something that someone else does not (and the possibility that someone else may know something that they do not). It would be impossible to deal with people if that were not possible.

"I think" and "I believe" and "I know" shifts attention to the speaker's relationship with the empirical reality. The effect is to dissuade (to some degree) empirical investigation by deflecting attention onto the speaker. — Millard J Melnyk

H'm. I think that depends on the context.

"I believe P" has a markedly different effect, immediately raising the question what the person did or did not do, (likely the latter, because jumping that gap is what "believe" does,) to determine the extra that "believe" implies over "think". — Millard J Melnyk

Well, I explained that difference by reference to the speaker's endorsement or not. It is true that people often do jump to conclusions on the basis of incomplete evidence. That can be useful when judiciously adopted. Decisions in practice are often make under pressure of time. The catch is that one is taking a risk, which may or may not pay off. But a lot of life is like that.

Is there are reason why we haven't mentioned Ryle?

But yes, there is the confusion of turning this into a scientific/sociological enterprise, which I think comes from what Witt points out is the desire for an “answer”. — Antony Nickles

I think we should look to the question to see whether the empirical projects are framed by the same question(s) as Wittgenstein's.

Yes, but the logic of ordinary criteria provides a context-based sense of what is appropriate, etc., where the skeptic’s “must” is dictated beforehand by imposing the criteria of certainty. — Antony Nickles

I would go a step further and argue that the sceptic's certainty is muddled and/or makes the sceptical conclusion inevitable - i.e. begs that apparent question. The mere logical possibility that the sun won't rise tomorrow is confused with the actuality that it will. Roughly.

Just that Socrates doesn’t hear anything as important unless it meets his criteria. — Antony Nickles

Yes,, he does have a restricted range. But his interlocutors seem to accept his criteria and, in the end, own themselves not to know what they thought they knew.

As far as Cavell and Austin, I tried to limit it to just cross-over instances of the same method, but I imagine my studies leaked into understanding this text. — Antony Nickles

There something a bit odd about the mutual silence between Wittgenstein and the Oxford people. There must have been some sort of communication or awareness. Anscombe alone ensures that.

True, true. His method is to make the most sense of what they say even if that entails imagining a whole new world to do it. — Antony Nickles

Yes. The principle of charitable interpretation. Our first reaction to apparent nonsense is to look for an interpretation that makes sense. Quite different from what we usually find in philosophical debate. Yet Wittgenstein seems to have made up his mind - there's no hint of oscillation about his critical stance.

Ah but allowing for the possibility of, even assuming, the agreement, is to necessarily allow for the outlier cases/possibility of aversion to conforming to society, even in every instance. — Antony Nickles

True - especially when we start using words - stretching the normal rules - in non-standard contexts and limiting cases.

Epistemically, belief and thought are identical. — Millard J Melnyk

I don't really understand what work "epistemically" is doing here. However it is true that "I think that p" and "I believe that p" both indicate that you assign the value "true" to p. Moore's paradox is a powerful argument in favour of that intuition. I'm not sure why you don't add that the same is true of "I know that p". However, these terms are not synonymous. This becomes clear when one considers "S thinks/believes/knows that p". If p is false, A does not know that p, but can be said (by someone else) to believe or think that p.
The significant difference between "I know.." and "I believe..." and "I think ..." is that although they are, if you like, cognitively identical, they indicate more and less confidence in the truth of p, with "think" at the low end of the scale suggesting considerable uncertainty whether p.

I

Preexisting attachment to an idea motivates a rhetorical shift from “I think” to “I believe,” implying a degree of veracity the idea lacks. — Millard J Melnyk

If there is a pre-existing irrational attachment to an idea, the shift may well take place, and the resulting belief will be irrational. But if there is not a pre-existing irrational attachment to an idea, the consequence will not follow. So 3) does not follow.

To be clear, Bateson falls on the "psychology" side of what Wittgenstein is considering. And so does Chomsky. I don't mean to imply that their ideas are adequate responses to what Wittgenstein is trying to do. — Paine

No, I wasn't going there. There's nothing wrong with having different approaches around the same subject/object. I would need to do quite a lot more work before I could begin to really understand how all these projects relate to each other.

I don't think Wittgenstein would have objected to Linguistics as Chomsky pursues it. I wonder if Wittgenstein talked about that somewhere. — Paine

Perhaps not. Sadly Chomsky was just three years too late. He didn't develop the theory of transformational grammar until 1955.

I have the use of the information that that which I see, the images, or that which I feel as pain, the prick of a pin, or the ache of a tired muscle — Gregory Bateson, afterword to John Brockman

The argument that there is a difference between what our senses tell us and how the world "really" is is not wrong; it is grossly over-stated and reduces itself to absurdity, imo. From the differences that we can detect, we should conclude that some of the information is good. If all the information was bad, we could never detect the fact.

There is a combining or marriage between an objectivity that is passive to the outside world and a creative subjectivity, neither pure solipsism nor its opposite. — Gregory Bateson, afterword to John Brockman

I think the word he is looking for is interaction. A pure solipsist would be like someone floating in space. But pure objectivity would be like being fossilized into rock. Either way, you suffocate in seconds. Wittgenstein was right to favour the rough ground.

I can’t tell if it had to be genius or the guy’s imagination was wack. — Antony Nickles

Some of the argument lacks his usual elegance. It's not surprising that it didn't make it to the PI. But he was trying hard to cover all the angles. If nothing else, it shows how hard that is.
I think, however, that the approach that argues that what the sceptic/solipsist/whoever wants to say cannot be said sometimes comes over as denying even the space to state a view.

If we can’t accept the premise of what the logical difference is between an accident and mistake, we won’t see what Austin is trying to tell us about intentional acts. — Antony Nickles

Austin makes it look so easy, doesn't he? That's why he is not just a good philosopher, but a master, even though he makes jewels and not monuments. But I think it is dangerous to take widespread agreement about logical differences for granted - it leads to complacency and dogmatism. I recommend C.L, Dodgson's "What the Tortoise said to Achilles" as a corrective.

Sounds like solid thinking when something comes up we aren’t sure how to deal with—when “right” or “ought” are up for grabs. — Antony Nickles

Yes. It can be hard to cope with the bewilderment.

The fact that science has stayed away from the kind of philosophical clarification that Witt’s work represents is the reason for what Evan Thompson calls its ‘blind spot’ concerning its relation to the Lifeworld that generates it and makes it intelligible. — Joshs

Yes. The problem no-one likes to talk about - the moment that we have to face the ouroboros. The existence of the blind spot in the eye is a splendid source of metaphors. So let's remember that it is not a flaw - it is the inevitable consequence of sending information to the brain for processing.

The odd thing about Wittgenstein is that his "skeptical method" does not lead to a "once and for all" claim prominent in other theses. — Paine

I found myself unable to reply to coherently to this. I suspect it needs a book.

I don't know the best way to evaluate his work. I think he will have a place in the on-going pantheon of philosophy. The mainstream is not changing as much as he and many of his, and my generation hoped.

If there must be a further explanation that all of us can give examples of what anyone would say when X, and the logic of that, then I’ll leave it to someone else: — Antony Nickles

On thinking about this, I've come to the conclusion that perhaps all we need to say is that the study of the logic of our language and the study of how people actually use their language are different practices. That means they have different criteria for truth and falsity, what counts as an explanation and how disagreements are resolved. In order to take part in the former, people need to be initiated into the practice, not only of the language, but of logic. In order to take part in the latter, they need to understand data collection,, linguistic explanations and so forth. If people get confused between the two, we just need to point out the differences in the contexts.

Now of course this MUST does not convince the skeptic (these senses are not conflicting; this is not a fight with “common sense”), but it allows us the philosophical data/facts to compare and shed light on their “MUST” reasons. — Antony Nickles

There's no problem about that. The meaning of "must" is specified by the context.

I take it as the topic under investigation in the PI—why do we/they want this logical purity? — Antony Nickles

Is there anything obviously wrong with the answer that we want/need to resolve the cognitive dissonance?

I take all three instances as used in the sense of the first. — Antony Nickles

Well, I wasn't denying that "language-game" has the same meaning in all three contexts, just that the three contexts are different - they are putting different questions to the phenomena.

But seeing the other as a puzzle seems to again want the issue to have an “answer”. — Antony Nickles

I didn't quite mean what you seem to think I meant. The puzzle picture is a puzzle if only if you insist that there must be an answer to the question whether the picture is "really" a picture of a duck or a picture of a rabbit. It is both and neither, depending how you choose to interpret "really". It can be described as an answer or a refusal of the question. Either way, there is no more to be said. Whether one chooses to identify something as a foundation here, to deny the applicability of the metaphor, I am not sure.

But I do agree that seeing an aspect is related but in the sense of an “attitude” (PI, p. 178) or relation to another, rather than an “opinion” as contrasted to the sense of “conviction”, — Antony Nickles

Quite so.

But the sharp put down of the scientific method as a part of what W is doing is an unconformity with adjacent layers, to borrow a phrase from geology. — Paine

He doesn't strike me as "anti-science" in an objectionable way, but as anti-"scientism" - the over-enthusiastic idea that a practice that works well where it is applicable - as it is designed to. Mind you, there is a problem that systemic, objective study of anything can be called science whatever its methodology and that's not unreasonable. What is unreasonable is defining science by its method and the calling the systematic and object study of anything a science. Is linguistics a science?

I remember Chomsky saying something like, if W stays away from science, then science will have to return the favor. — Paine

Well, one sharp put-down deserves another. But the map of academia is contested - what map isn't, particularly when it comes to border territory, where both sides have relevant expertise? We need both sides to recognize where territory is contested, not pretend that everything can be decisively settled.

Oops! Sorry!

what is this distinction that you are speaking of? — Pieter R van Wyk

I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough.

What, exactly, according to you, is this distinction between the "laws and rules" that we can make and change and the "laws and rules" that we cannot change? — Pieter R van Wyk

Is this the question?

The former are what you call rules of man and the latter are laws of nature. — Ludwig V

That's my answer.

A principle of sufficient reason obtain in virtue of which we consider that no fact could be true or actual, and no proposition true, without there being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise, ... — Pieter R van Wyk

I'm aware of the principle and who first propounded it. It would be very helpful if you could outline to me what evidence or arguments are there for it.

But, already in 1918, Emmy Noether proved, mathematically, that every continuous symmetry of the action of a physical system with conservative forces has a corresponding conservative law. Is this a sufficient reason? — Pieter R van Wyk

Well, if someone has proved it, one would be inclined to think that it is. It follows that the conservation of energy and mass is a priori true.

So, my perception is that the conservation of energy and mass is true. — Pieter R van Wyk

If it is a matter of your perception, then, it would seem, the conservation of energy and mass is based on empirical evidence.

What is true? According to my understanding, in philosophy, it is a moving target:
So sometimes the conservation of energy and mass is true and sometimes it isn't? — Pieter R van Wyk

It simply states that there are no law of nature that is also a rule of man and there are no rule of man that is also a law of nature. — Pieter R van Wyk

What, exactly, according to you, is this distinction between the "laws and rules" that we can make and change and the "laws and rules" that we cannot change? — Pieter R van Wyk

The former are what you call rules of man and the latter are laws of nature. I suspect that everything else in your definition follows from that distinction.

I know what the Laws of Nature are because I have defined them. A typical example is the well known Law of the conservation of mass and energy — Pieter R van Wyk

You misunderstand me. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. My question is how you know that the law of the conservation of energy and mass is true?

So neither the laws of nature nor the rules of man can be changed? — Ludwig V

I see that you have changed your text. So I guess there was a typo. Don't worry. Everybody does that from time to time.

The Demarcation Meridian then states that there exists no shared collection between the Rules of Man and the Law of Nature. — Pieter R van Wyk

I'm sorry, I don't understand this sentence. Could you explain?

This demarcation then boils down to things that are time-invariant (the Laws of Nature) and those that are time-variant (the Rules of Man). — Pieter R van Wyk

Perhaps they do. But I think that the more important distinction is between the laws and rules that we can make and change and the laws and rules that we cannot change. So I wouldn't accept that boiling down.

There would remain the question how you know what the Laws of Nature are, and, especially, how you know there are any?

If you do not have a replacement to offer, fine; by all means, try to refute my proposal. — Pieter R van Wyk

I'm not interested in refuting your definitions. I'm trying to understand them. Then I'll be able to to evaluate them. But I doubt my verdict would be a simple agree or disagree.

Rules (of Man) := The time-variant interactions between systems, capable of abstraction, these systems use to create rules for themselves. The collection of all these rules then comprise the Rules of Man. — Pieter R van Wyk

the Laws of Nature are sacrosanct - they can be misunderstood, misinterpreted, we can even try to ignore them; but they cannot be changed. — Pieter R van Wyk

So neither the laws of nature nor the rules of man can be changed?

On the other hand, the Rules of Man is brought into being by politics ... or would this be philosophy? This is how we agree among ourselves how to interact with each other and with our environment. — Pieter R van Wyk

Are those time-invariant reactions created by the systems or not? If they are, they can be changed. If they are not, they seem to be at least very like the laws of nature.
Is the "we" here the same as the systems that are said to create the rules? Is that process of creation what you are referring to when you refer to politics? You seem to have a somewhat broader definition of politics than the usual one.
For example, there are often situations where we do not agree amongst ourselves. Sometimes we just go our separate ways, sometimes we resort to fighting. So is war just a form of .politics? What is clear, however, is that the outcome of war is the result of one side accepting what the victor dictates. It is not what is usually called "reaching an agreement". It is, most often, just a question of force. That's the point of it.
Your broad brush category leads you to ignore significant differences among them. For example, you seem to have in mind situations where we explicitly come to an agreement, like the supposed social contract. But most of our agreements are not based on any kind of contract (partly because there cannot be a contract or an agreement until after the rules for contracts and agreements have been agreed.)

I agree that "sacrosanct" is perhaps a poor descriptor, perhaps inviolable is a better word. But whenever in doubt - refer to the definition. — Pieter R van Wyk

"Inviolable" is not much improvement, if any. You don't need either.
"The Laws of Nature are sacrosanct - they can be misunderstood, misinterpreted, we can even try to ignore them; but they cannot be changed." does all the work. However, there is a problem here. "cannot be changed" would describe a situation where a change may be desirable but it politically or financially or legally not possible. The point about the laws of nature is that it is not even possible to change or break them.
This is hard to express clearly. I suggest a better way is to say that when an apparent violation or change of a law of nature appears, we modify our formulation of the law - the law itself has not changed. We conform our formulation of the law to the phenomena. Normally, when a human law is broken, we try to conform people's behaviout to the law.

shall in the future again and again draw your attention to what I shall call language games. These are processes of using signs simpler than those which usually occur in the use of our highly complicated everyday language. Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language-games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages. — BB, page 27

I see three different uses of language games here. One is their use as an analytical tool; the paradigm example is the builders at the beginning of PI. I think of these are invented rather than discovered - it could go either way. But the point of the exercise is to understand the logical structure of some concept or another. The second is their role in language-learning, working up from simple games to more complicated ones. How far the idea has taken off in empirical psychology, I could not say. But it seems a not implausible idea to me. The third is ambiguous between a historical story about how language develops over time and a structural analysis. But we are not led to expect just one history or one structure for all language, so it looks as if this concept marks a decisive rejection of the classical project of formal logic.

This has Wittgenstein looking like the skeptic, dissolving the verities of his opponents. — Paine

That's odd. The sceptic is sceptical about ordinary language or common sense, and is right in that philosophy (as the beginning of all science) cannot get off the ground unless it can put ordinary beliefs to the test. So philosophy develops some ideas, some of which spin off into separate projects and develop results which become, in their turn, common sense. Wittgenstein then turns the sceptical moment against those philosophical ideas that have not developed into sciences - and, perhaps, reassures us that there is no need to panic. Life goes on despite the sceptic's pressure. I guess the sceptic can retort to Wittgenstein that he should not be complacent. Philosophy will continue despite the pressure he is putting it under.
But perhaps we should regard W as special, not because he seeks to bring philosophy to an end, but because of the way in which he seeks to do so. How many philosophers have set out to deal with those annoying questions "once and for all"? None have succeeded.

Perhaps, in these cases, laws can be understood as tools which help us to achieve the moral/ethical case. But I understand that it is more complex than what I am posting — javi2541997

Yes. I don't have a complete answer.

We need a system where we "force" (I don’t really like this word, but I can't think of anything better) the application of a law to those who don't respect it. — javi2541997

The UK and USA have laws prohibiting euthanasia. Those laws apply to those who think it moral and those who think it isn't. If some country had a law requiring euthanasia, the same would be true. I think that both laws are repressive. But a law permitting euthanasia doesn't compel anyone to act against their conscience - except, perhaps, for those medics who think it is immoral - and they can be permitted not to act in those cases, so long as they allow someone else to act.
But freedom of conscience doesn't apply in many cases. In the UK, one is required to drive on the left-hand side of the road. In the USA, one is required to drive on the right-hand side of the road. Nobody's conscience is involved in that. If anyone did have objections, it is more important that everyone follows the law, for everyone's safety. So that law is not repressive.
There are some cases where to make and enforce a law would undermine the point of the law. You can require parents to support their children, but to make a law requiring parents to love their children would undermine the possibility of loving them. When parents don't love their children (or each other), it is better to work out a system for dealing with the mess.
It all depends on the specifics of the case, so general rules are not likely to cover the situation. Case by case is the only way to approach this.
Here's another awkward question. Is there a moral obligation to obey the law, whatever it may be? That means, where the law cannot be enforced, are we obliged to obey it anyway? I think so. Again, most people think that there are cases where it is legitimate and even morally required to flout the law as a protest - civil disobedience. I think that's right, where the law is repressive. But I wouldn't want to attempt a general definition of repressive laws.

The solipsist is “so sure” about what they are saying because they have already been convinced, not of something (an opinion) that they are trying to justify to you, but by something, — Antony Nickles

I think that Wittgenstein later discussion of "seeing an aspect" (interpretation) as in a puzzle picture. The solipsist is not wrong, exactly, but is gripped by an interpretation in a way that does not allow him to see another interpretation. (That can happen with a puzzle picture, too.) I've come to think that there is a point buried in solipsism, just not quite the point they see.

I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation, — Descartes, 1st Med., p.1

"Once for all" is just as much a mirage here as when politicians say it. What would he have done with his life if he had succeeded? What would the next generation of philosophers done? My philosophical life was bedevilled by the question of bringing philosophy to an end. I could never get anyone to take the problem seriously. As it turned out, they were right not to worry, wrong about the prospect of bringing philosophy to an end.

This process in itself isn’t anything esoteric, but I understand seeing them as evidence in a debate about the implications and how that is philosophically relevant, would require some further explanation, agreement. — Antony Nickles

Just to be clear. I'm not disagreeing with what you say about this. I'm observing that "what we would say.." needs explaining - and, to be honest - I'm not sure that I could convince a sceptic. So I'll look forward to your/Cavell's explanation. I suspect, in the end, it is a matter of being initiated into a practice, rather than a procedure that could be set out in an algorithm. Sometimes I even wonder whether, in the end, that's true of all philosophy.

If we think of this ’why’ as an overarching system expressing how reasons hang together, what Wittgenstein later calls a form of life, and which he is perhaps depicting incipiently here as a firmly held conviction, or that which ties tighter a wide range of convictions ( ‘this is what we do’), then why we desire what we desire cannot be located within the space of reasons, but prior (not in a chronological sense) to them. — Joshs

That's very true. But my puzzle is what Wittgenstein means by "our real need" - the hinge, whatever it is, around which thinking needs to arrange itself. The outline is clear enough - what we need (or what he needs) is a resolution of the cognitive dissonances from which philosophy springs - something that brings the peace that enables him to stop doing philosophy when he wants to. Toughly.. So, in principle, what he is talking about can be spotted or revealed within our general practices and desires.

Non-legal rules can also be the subject of law and philosophy of law. — javi2541997

Yes. The clearest case is whether there is a debate about whether a moral "law" should be made a law. There's also some dubious ground in the idea that there are commonalities across all legal systems - the "ius gentium" as I think it was called. But the relevant point is that what the moral laws are is not determined by Law as such. The rules of language can be made and unmade as a matter of law, but that is the exception. In the rule, they are settled by custom and usage.
Slightly awkward question - when there is a debate about what the law should be - think euthanasia as an example - is that settled by the law, or something else?I don't think the law can settle it. It's fundamentally a question of ethics or morality, isn't it?

So, you agree with my solution to the problem? — Pieter R van Wyk

Yes. But I think you have some issues to sort out. 1) The relationship between the ideas that human beings have about how nature works and how nature actually works. 2) Your category of the Rules of Man seems to be a rather mixed bag of different kinds of rules - not all of which are settled by politics. There are laws as such, moral rules (or laws), the rules of etiquette, the grammatical rules of language; I don't exclude the possibility that there may be others. These are all different from each other and the laws of nature. Apart from their being dependent for their existence on human beings, I don't see much in common. 3) Whether the laws of mathematics are rules of man or of some sort of nature is unclear, but in any case are distinct from both of your categories.

It would help a lot if you would get rid of "sacrosanct" from your definition. It doesn't add anything and it is distracting people from the real issues.

You are most welcome to negate or refute my solution, but then you have to provide your solution to the problem - that is how a debate works. — Pieter R van Wyk

I'm not sure that's how all debates work. In my experience, a proposal can be refuted, and often is, without any replacement being offered.

Precisely, the Rules of Man are the subject of Law and Philosophy of Law. — javi2541997

That works perfectly well if you are thinking of human laws. The "rules of man" has somewhat wider scope, which complicates the issue. Non-legal rules would, presumably, not the subject of Law or Philosophy of Law.

A more accurate expression would be "stable regularities of the physical world" or simply "physical invariants." — Astorre

Perhaps. Do statistical or probabilistic laws (thermodynamics, quantum mechanics) count as stable regularities?
There's some reason to suppose that rule-governed behaviour is usually stable enough to count as a regularity. Would you count the regular behaviour of driving on the right (or left) side of the road as a law of nature?

The Rules of Man can be adhered to, changed or ignored; the Laws of Nature are sacrosanct - they can be misunderstood, misinterpreted, we can even try to ignore them; but they cannot be changed. — Pieter R van Wyk

I think you are looking in the right place to draw the distinction. But it seems to me that the difference is that the human rules can be, and are, broken without invalidating them. Laws of nature cannot be "broken".

There is an awkward distinction between the laws of nature as formulated by human beings and the actual laws of nature. I am thinking of the actual laws of nature. The human formulations of the laws of nature may come across "infringements", but when they do, they - and not the behaviour - are subject to revision or change. When human rules are broken, they do not necessarily change; often steps are taken to correct the behaviour.

In view of the fact that, in the end, what are called the laws of nature are simply descriptions of regularities in the phenomena. Sticking to that description of them avoids the problem that you are raising. In a world that believed in a creator God, who laid the laws down, the term "law" has a clear neaning. Without that support, "description" seems to cover what we need.

The most prevalent confusion I see is not seeing that this is a philosophical method, not an empirical/sociological argument. — Antony Nickles

Yes. But the way we frame the method, it looks very like an empirical/sociological argument. "We say.." "We wouldn't say..." Gellner got very hung up on this. The problem is that you have to buy in to certain ideas, ways of talking and thinking, if you want to have a debate with people - and that can look very like a clique.

This brings back the question of how we get any traction with the skeptic. — Antony Nickles

Well, you wouldn't expect to get traction with an unreasonable doubt, would you? It's curious how reason, which ought to encourage us to be open to new ideas, so often becomes a fortress built to preserve what we believe.

Cavell talks about it as becoming aware of our commitments I think. — Antony Nickles

I don't know him well enough to be sure about that. I think he hit the nail on the head when he insisted that we need to get behind philosophical doctrines - particularly the perennial ones like scepticism - in order to work out what the sceptic (in that case) needs. He seems to treat the doctrine as a symptom, rather than something that's important in its own right. You may have read too much, but I think I've read too little.

But W does not say it is the only sense possible. That recurrent theme is the soundtrack of this book if it were a movie. — Paine

Yes, For someone who is trying to map the limits of language, he does have a remarkably elastic idea of what the possibilities are.

As the Professor says: — Paine

Yes. There are times when he comes over as, perhaps, a bit verbose, but perfectly capable of hitting a nail smack on the head.

It is an example to make a logical point, not to claim the example is right or illustrative. — Antony Nickles

Yes, that's true. Perhaps I'm overdoing it, but I find myself thinking that examples are not fully described and so the proposed response is not entirely determinate in view of the unspecified circumstances.

Absolutely, as Witt does when he imagines these crazy situations (let’s try on this hat/circumstance). — Antony Nickles

Trying things on. Not a bad idea.

But the solipsist really wants to be “inhabited” by the exceptional, in a way that “others can’t see”. — Antony Nickles

Lord of all he surveys. Or abandoned in a howling wilderness. Depends on your temperament, really.

What I am doing is not knowing my pain (which is not innately unique), not pointing to ‘me’, but, logically, pointing me out, in the sense of ‘Hey! It's me, I have [am in] pain’ (thus modeled “on the demonstrative”(p.68)—‘This person is the one in pain’.) — Antony Nickles

Holding up one's hand. Calling out "here!". Sending out distress signals. Drawing attention to myself. In a way, it's the opposite of referring to something. I think there's a case, though, to think of uttering "I am in pain" as rather different from expressions - just because it fits alongside "You are in pain" or "She is in pain". I am thinking of myself in a different way, putting myself in the shoes of other people, in something of the way that one might say of oneself "this person is in pain" or "The driver of the car is in pain".

But W does not say it is the only sense possible. That recurrent theme is the soundtrack of this book if it were a movie. — Paine

As he says in the preface to the PI, he does not save his readers the trouble of thinking for themselves. But it's a tricky balance, because I think, along with most people, that he does expect his readers to draw certain conclusions. It's a bit like giving someone a book about the wild west in order to discourage them from emigrating there. But we do know that he gave up on the TLP in 1929, and it seems unlikely that he could have hung on to the solipsism much beyond that.

I think the idea is that we play each of these roles at different times; that it isn't a matter of knowledge as information. But then the question is of course, when do we play the skeptic? and, then, why? — Antony Nickles

It may be a question of tactics or a question of the circumstances one is in.

I guess I agree with Kant that the "skeptic" is not opinion but an energy that keeps us alive.
Otherwise, thinking merely mirrors a reflecting of thinking. — Paine

I hadn't thought of it like that. On the other hand, once scepticism has become a dogma, it smothers everything in its path. It's a balance.

I believe we are in for an anticlimax so perhaps we can each write an overall analysis for discussion. — Antony Nickles

Thanks for the replies. I can't respond until tomorrow, I'm afraid. I would like to wait (procrastinate) thinking about an overall analysis to see what emerges about these final pages. But looking back would be well worth while. W is very difficult to summarize or analyze.

Section 19 pp. 65 - 69 More about solipsism, meaning as use, and pain

After the tricky discussion of "it is always I who see when anything is seen", (pp. 63, 64) in order to understand who it is that always sees whatever is seen, W modulates quite quickly through four variants to his conclusion (P. 65) that there are many expressions that seem to “convey” something to the speaker, but are “essentially incapable” of conveying anything to anyone else.

His diagnosis is that we wrongly compare our case with one in which the other person can't understand what we say because he lacks a certain information.” He reminds us that meaning is not a matter of what we experience, but of the use we are putting our words to. Two examples of meaninglessness – a varian of the word “bench” and a decoration for the white king in chess.

Now he considers whether people could accept the solipsist’s “Only I really see” and organize their language around this hinge, as we might call it now. It would be a new notation. But how could that change be justified? And now he returns to the self, to “I” starting with the distinction (p. 67) between “I” as object and “I“ as subject. He distinguishes the first by the fact that it requires identifying a particular person, where the second does not. In the latter case, there is no possibility of error and it is this that really interests him. He ends up distinguishing between “I” (sc. uttered by L.W.) and “L.W.” They do not, he says, mean the same thing. Not the orthodox conclusion, I think, But we are encouraged to think of them as different instruments, tools in the same language game.

There’s a brief excursus through the use of “I” when I say “I have a pain” and point to my own body, that use models “I” on “this person” or “he”. This is an interesting point, but not the main relevant issue, which returns with Compare the two cases: 1. "How do you know that he has pains?"--"Because I hear him moan". 2. "How do you know that you have pains?"--"Because I feel them".” (p. 68) We meet Mr. Nobody and revisit the shopping list with “five apples” and naming things. There’s a summary of “cases in which “I” is used as subject” (p. 69). Then he draws a line and moves on from mental activities to sense-data (p, 70).

That works for highway signs but does not explain why Wittgenstein calls it a mistake (without qualification) when reflecting upon learning language and the experience of meaning. — Paine

There are two mistakes here. One is thinking that because those signs fit the model of "signifier" and "signified", the same model has to fit all signs. The other is thinking that there is some problem with the examples I gave which requires positing something between the two which enables the relationship to function - i.e. "meaning", or an "image". It is the way we behave around signs and signifiers that enables the relationship to function. Nothing else is needed. "There must be a meaning as well as the sign and the signifier" is an illusion.

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by seeing some sort of outward object, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? – In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceases to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.) — p. 9

The talk of "life" and "death" is a bit peculiar. But, so far as I can see, W is trying to express the experience of meaning. To understand this, compare a word - a street name, perhaps - written in our "roman" script and the same name written in, say, Greek script. If you can't read Greek, the latter is dead (meaningless). But you know the meaning of the roman version immediately and without any thought. You experience it differently.
Does that help?

the opposition regarding the use of signs in this book's discussion of the real versus the empirical is applied to Augustine just as heartily in the Philosophical Investigations. — Paine

Certainly, it is. But he works very hard at explaining exactly what it is that he is opposed to - or so it seems to me.

Reflections such as the preceding will show us the infinite variety of the functions of words in propositions, and it is curious to compare what we see in our examples with the simple and rigid rules which logicians give for the construction of propositions. If we group words together according to the similarity of their functions, thus distinguishing parts of speech, it is easy to see that many different ways of classification can be adopted. We could indeed easily imagine a reason for not classing the word "one" together with "two", "three", etc., as follows: — p. 83

Put simply, in hostility, events turn out differently than one had expected, and instead of revising one’s thinking, one tries to ‘force a round peg into a square hole.’ — Joshs

Well yes. It certainly describes the cases I was thinking of. (Putin in Ukraine) But I don't think it applies to all cases of hostility. (Zelensky in Ukraine?)

How do we decide, i.e., on what criteria/logic? — Antony Nickles

Well, when we have a problem, we have to speak of criteria and logic. But most of the time, we don't articulate our criteria or our logic - we just decide and move on. This relates to his discussion of rules and rule-following.

not just as rules, but in terms of the piece’s part in the game’s larger strategy (not just what is allowed and restricted). — Antony Nickles

Yes. All I'm saying is that W is assuming the narrower, "strict" context. On the other hand, I think his more relaxed (flexible?) treatment of "grammatical" vs "empirical" later seems like an acknowledgment of the fact that the rules are not necessarily all developed in advance of the game being played. There's no problem about introducing a new rule to ensure that that the game is fair or to modulate play so that it remains interesting to spectators.

The hat has no usage (sense) because it has no leverage or importance or criteria for judgment of when it would, related to the piece, in its part in chess. — Antony Nickles

Yes. That's certainly the case that W has in mind, and it illustrates how he is thinking about philosophy. I'm just picking at the edges, really. At the back of my mind, however, I'm a little uncertain that, in the case of some philosophical paper hats, there might be a case of recognizing a variant of the game in which it does have a role. We might, or might not, want to play that game - or we might think that the resulting game is unplayable.

if you can take a crack at 65-69. — Antony Nickles

OK. That'll keep me out of mischief for a while!
I'll stop at "Philosophers say it as a philosophical opinion or conviction that there are sense data." which in my copy is the beginning of p. 70.

that the desire to stay on the path of illusion is not knowingly to do so. — Joshs

That's true. Though we can cling on to ideas because we want them to be true and/or can't bear the truth.

It is not as though desire knows the illusion as illusion and then decides to stay with the illusion, as though desire has a choice. — Joshs

Well, yes. To know the illusion for what it is is already to be cured.

I keep hammering on about this because it seems to me that Wittgenstein under-rates the difficulty and complexity of the task, and I worry that he does not seem to allow me to come to realize that what I thought was an illusion, isn't. Or, to put it another way, he doesn't seem to recognize the give and take that you can sometimes find in philosophical argument, where both sides have allowed their own view to be at stake in the argument. Not always, of course.

There are, however, some awkward phenomena. Akrasia (weakness of will) is one, and another is the phenomenon of protesting too much - where vehement denial of a truth betrays the denier's uneasy awareness the they are wrong.

a replacement would have to name what is thinking that "signs co-exist with their objects." — Paine

I think you are missing Wittgenstein's point. Of course signs co-exist with their objects. The image of the man with a shovel is ahead of the roadworks and the man with the shovel is at the roadworks. The board and arrow pointing straight ahead are deliberately place well before you get to your destination. There's nothing occult going on there.

If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by seeing some sort of outward object, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? — BB, page 9

That's quite different, isn't it? It "inserts" ("posits", if you want to be polite) an object between the sign and what it is a sign of. Wittgenstein's point is that the posited/inserted object doesn't do anything.

The classic arguments are these:-

From whence it seems probable to me, that the simple ideas we receive from sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our thoughts; beyond which the mind, whatever efforts it would make, is not able to advance one jot; nor can it make any discoveries, when it would pry into the nature and hidden causes of those ideas. — Locke, Essay, II, 23, xxix

One great inducement to our pronouncing ourselves ignorant of the nature of things is the current opinion that everything includes within itself the cause of its properties; or that there is in each object an inward essence which is the source whence its discernible qualities flow, and whereon they depend. Some have pretended to account for appearances by occult qualities, but of late they are mostly resolved into mechanical causes, to wit, the figure, motion, weight, and suchlike qualities, of insensible particles; — Berkeley, Principles, 102

The "occult" is what Wittgenstein is militating against. — Paine

Yes. It was/is a common complaint by analytic philosophers against their opponents. They were often identifying a problem with some philosophical idea. But there's a strong rhetorical component to this use - no doubt inherited from the 18th century empiricists. The actual content is something like "empty". I prefer not to use it.

Showing examples of other senses (usages) for a phrase than the skeptic claims, is not in order to be right, but to make a point by basically saying, “see?” to show the conditions which would allow the skeptic's phrase to do what they want (to give it the necessary context, expectations, implications, logic, etc.) — Antony Nickles

Yes. That's relieving the cramp. Though we need to think of someone suffering from cramp who doesn't want to be released from it. The cramp is our diagnosis. But movement can become restricted because it is never used. Perhaps that's better.

The intention to not be understood is an interesting charge to make against the solipsist and other philosophers. This shows that what troubles the solipsist is a condition other thinkers share. This encounter with a more general problem leads to a more general response: — Paine

I think that's a misunderstanding. The requirement that the solipsist's claim cannot be understood by anyone else follows from the solipsist's doctrine. The solipsist misunderstands their own doctrine if they do not understand that it is logically impossible for anyone else to understand it. IMO.

I want to play chess, and a man gives the white king a paper crown, leaving the use of the piece unaltered, but telling me that the crown has a meaning to him in the game, which he can't express by rules. I say: "as long as it doesn't alter the use of the piece, it hasn't what I call a meaning". — p. 65

This is an argument. But it depends on a restricting the interpretation of both "use" and "meaning" to what is laid down and permitted by the rules. Other kinds of significance are excluded. Perhaps the paper crown distracts opponents, for example.

Think of the law of identity, "a = a", and of how we sometimes try hard to get hold of its sense, to visualize it, by looking at an object and repeating to ourselves such a sentence as "This tree is the same thing as this tree". The gestures and images by which I apparently give this sentence sense are very similar to those which I use in the case of "Only this is really seen".

I love this. I've never been able to work out what "a=a" means. Nor does it help me to tell me that this is a "limiting case" of identity. What does that mean. It may be necessary in logic, but I don't think it helps at all in philosophy.

Note the "us" and "We" being used here.
— Paine
This is a good distinction to point out. — Antony Nickles

Now Witt does slip in and out of the sense of “we” as: the philosophers investigating these issues, and “we” for: everyone, — Antony Nickles

It is interesting, though, that this use is often intended to identify some ground common to all human beings. (Hume and Berkeley do the same thing with their appeals to universal agreement. It is odd, though, that their philosophical opponents clearly do not belong to that agreement; so, who are they? We, now, can see that what they meant by "we" was "people like us". Not a particularly convincing reference group to establish what they are supposed to establish.) (I use "we" and "us" quite freely myself, because it seems to work.

But “the meaning of a phrase for us is characterized by the use we make of it.” .... which is “use” as a noun, .... , and the ..... sense of “use”, as a verb, where I would employ (use) words, like tools to make what I want**.) — Antony Nickles

Yes. I make a similar distinction, which may map on to yours. Mine has use in an "objective" sense as meaning something like the role of a sign as defined by the system in which it exists as against what I do with it. (The difference can be seen in the wonderful way that language allows us to misuse it, to stretch it, bend it, turn it round.)

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language. — ibid. page 9

Wittgenstein frequently refers to language as a calculus. I have a feeling that his paradigms here come from formal logic - propositional and predicate calculus.

One sometimes hears that such a phrase as "This is here", when while I say it I point to a part of my visual field, has a kind of primitive meaning to me, although it can't impart information to anybody else. — p.65

.. and, of course, if your paradigm of pointing is what a sign-post does, there is no way that you can point to a part of your visual field - or even the whole of it. So "pointing" here has been moved into another language game or practice. And we know what is meant, don't we?

what do we really, freely, want? (what is my "real need"?) (PI #108) -- a discussion for later I think.) — Antony Nickles

I think this is why W's talk of practices and ways of life needs to be more articulated before it becomes more than a gesture - a promise.

Shared interests and desires that give rise to reasons are the raw material of sense-making, — Joshs

Yes. But identifying what those are. There seem to be precious few of them. It's a bit like the concept of "ius gentium" that the Roman lawyers invented - the idea that any human society needs certain laws in order to function at all. (I'm not saying that's false - just that it is very difficult to cash out.)

The 'human condition' is the only game in town but is difficult to locate. As Wittgenstein has said elsewhere, he does not want to make that easier for anyone. — Paine

That's another good concept for focusing what W seems to be getting at.

@Joshs, @Paine,

I agree with you. But I have some ideas about how to approach this.

The bad news is that I shall be busy today, so I won't be able to get to it until this evening.

That means for about 12 hours.

I think W is looking at Kant as the champion of idealism rather than Berkeley. The erosion of Kant's foundation is the work of the Blue Book from its beginning. While introducing the life of signs as use, the following mistake is made:
"The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of the reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a “thing corresponding to a substantive.”) — BB, 9, internet edition
That establishes how W uses "occult" but also points to how objects co-exist with their representations in Kant. — Paine

Forgive me, I'm a bit confused. Is the mistake that you say is made in the following quotation. That is, do you agree with W that it is a mistake to look for the use of a sign as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. Again, since the word "occult" doesn't occur in the quoted passage, I'm not clear how it establishes how W uses it.
Again, I don't know enough to see how W is eroding Kant's foundation. A bit more explanation would help.

This is a real thumb in the eye to Kant's Refutation of Idealism:
The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.
— CPR, B275
The difference between private experience and shared experience is not a demarcation of outer and inner. Since the Refutation is an argument against solipsism, it maintains its status as a particular model adjacent to the others. — Paine

There must be something wrong with me. Is the thumb in the eye in the previous quotation from BB? That quotation is all very well, but I don't see the relevance to the refutation of idealism. I take your point about outer and inner (which are pretty clearly metaphorical anyway. I can see an argument that my recognition of my own transcendental, geometrical POV proves the existence of space and time, since a POV (in our world) necessarily implies a viewer to view the view.

Solipsism is the result of an intellectual cramp, not a psychological flaw — Joshs

I wouldn't deny that psychological flaws might be part of the explanation why people make some intellectual choices. What I'm fishing for is a distinction between what explanations we can expect from philosophy and what belongs to a different, less intellectual, mode of explanation. If I say that Descartes' demon is a paranoid fantasy, is that a philosophical explanation or something else - and there's a danger here of straying into something perilously close to personal abuse. One distinction I'm looking at is precisely that difference between something we can attribute to anyone who holds that view and something that may vary from one person to another. I once got myself called a psychopath by someone in a debate about ethics. It was "only philosophy", not a serious rejection of ordinary morality. But my interlocutor seemed unable to make the distinction - or perhaps had just rung out of arguments. The point is, the distinction matters.

I think Witt understands motives as he understands meaning in general, as neither emanating from the subjective nor from the objective side , but as arising out of the interaction. Our interests are enacted in situations, out of which things strike us as funny , sad, boring or interesting in any unlimited variety of ways . When Wittgenstein uses terms like "dissatisfaction," "wants," and "wishes’ with respect to grammatical illusions, the want or wish is an expression of the intellectual disquiet caused by the grammatical picture. The picture's power is what causes the desire, rather than a pre-existing desire creating or contributing to the tendency to create grammatical illusions. — Joshs

Yes. This is very helpful - especially the emphasis on interaction and the picture as itselt a factor in what goes on.

He proposes that one source is “when a notation dissatisfies us”. (p.59) .....We might want our (culture’s) interest in a thing to loosen, adjust, perhaps respond to general changes in the associated circumstances, perhaps for the recognition of a different “position” (“attitude” he says in the PI). — Antony Nickles

Yes, I think that's right. When it comes to notations, we're inclined to think that one notation should take care of every position/attitude or perspective. But actually, horses for courses suits us, in the world in which we live, will suit us better. But if the solipsist's doctrine is just another perspective (or interpretation), all we can do is to point out that it is inconvenient in some way. What we want (!) is a wy to dismiss, set aside, reject the doctrine - isn't it?

Perhaps in claiming that only what the solipsist sees/feels, etc. is real (as if “alive”), they are thus “destroying” the world (by cutting it off/“killing” it), before it disappoints them. — Antony Nickles

I've come to the conclusion that the solipsist has a point, but is making far too much of it. We should not just brush the whole thing under the philosphical carpet. For example, I like "alive" as a description of the difference between my experience and yours - from my perspective, and allowing that from your perspective, it is vice versa.

it is interesting that he is claiming that the grammatical sense is ‘real’, and that the same proposition just looks like an empirical one. — Antony Nickles

Well, a distinction between appearance and reality is one way of acknowledging something that the solipsist has got right, which enables us to focus on what they have got wrong.

If we aren’t fixated on a mechanism of thought, then there is no ‘seat” or ‘location” of thinking (nor where a thought as an object would be). It dawned on me the other day that thought does not consist of a substance, but a judgment. — Antony Nickles

Yes. The "what is...." question pushes us in the direction of looking for something that things consist of. But there isn't always anything. (Not just judgment, though, but a whole range of intellectual activities.) W doesn't note that there are some activities that count as thinking, such as calculating or writing or planning and preparing and other cases where the thinking is actually a construction to rationalize activities that do not count as thinking, but which only make sense if there is thought behind it, so to speak. I think we have to treat these as different, but related, language games.

And if we are not picturing ‘experience’ also as a mechanism or “structure”, but, logically, I would offer that it is the description of a distinction, an event out of the ordinary, and not in some sense of: everything all the time that is “my experience”. — Antony Nickles

Well, yes. But I'm not sure that those mundane activities which we barely notice could not be picked out as experiences under some circumstances. Do I notice picking up my keys as I leave the house or putting one foot in front of the other as I walk to the shops? Usually, I don't notice, but I can bring them to my attention if I need to. Sometimes, of course, the experience "forces" itself on us, as when I reach for my keys in my pocket and they are not there.

One confusion I’ve seen is that it is seen as just personal, or just a belief only able to be defended by strong feelings, unable to be considered intellectually, logically. Related is the claim that philosophy does not or should not involve the “emotional”, but not actual feelings, because it’s just as a catch-all denigration to dismiss everything that does not meet a certain, predetermined requirement of rationality or logic. — Antony Nickles

Yes. It's an illusion that philosophy is without passion.

But that flies in the face of Witt’s broadening the variable types of criteria we recognize for judgment which shows us that our human interests are reflected in (and part of) the logic of our practices. ...... I see the motivations and responses as also creating actual logical errors leading to philosophical misunderstandings, able to be resolved through philosophy. — Antony Nickles

"Finding out" sounds like something empirical. I think "making sense of" is more appropriate to philosophy. There's no problem about motivations and responses creating logical errors.

Basically, we have still not answered (and I'd think you'd have to provide a reading different of) this: “He is irresistibly tempted to use a certain form of expression; but we must yet find why he is.” — Antony Nickles

Yes. But this finding out is not the kind of finding out you are doing when you ask people why they are adopting a philosophical position. In philosophy, we are looking for arguments, not expressions of personal preference.

we chose our relation to objects as the analogy to impose, and there are reasons why we picked that--perhaps not all of them are intellectual, not all are apart from reasons of interest, even originating in instinctive responses — Antony Nickles

"Chose" may not be quite the right word in some cases.

@Antony Nickles

In considering the solipsist, I think it is important to keep the "realist" and
"idealist" within shooting range. — Paine

I agree with that. They can all be seen as alternative views of the same issues - temptations.
Given that we (sort of) understand the difference between solispsist and realist, what are we to make of the distinction between solipsist and idealist?
Berkeley is clear that he believes in the existence of people other than himself. He believes that on the grounds of their effects - presumable on his ideas, the objects of immediate perception - where there is no such thing as mediated perception. He needs this premiss because he wants to argue that the world as we perceive it is caused by God. I can't see that there is any hope of consistency here, except in solipsism. So I think that idealism collapses into solipsism.

The distinctive contribution of Wittgenstein is the question of limits of the world.

And it is, furthermore, extremely important to realize how by misunderstanding the grammar of our expressions, we are led to think of one in particular of these statements as giving the real seat of the activity of thinking. — ibid. page 26

If the solipist was stating an opinion, the other views would be conceivable, which he denies. — Paine

We don't necessarily have to agree with him. Ryle has a good deal to say about thinking; in the end, as I remember it, he seems to give up. He slaps a label ("polymorphous") on it and leaves it at that. But I'm led to think that the range and confusion of the possible seats of thinking may be meant to get us to see that the debate about experience simply can't be tidied up into a structure of alternatives. (As well as understanding that the question where thinking is, or (better) what it consists of is not sufficiently articulated to be answerable.) Then we might be able to talk about holding one view (opinion) or another. But the solipsist's view of experience is part of the range of thinking and the solipsist's view is not special, except that we are tempted to hang on to it because it seems to be somehow above the fray.

Does any of that make sense?

I don't want to lose the momentum of making progress through the text. In any case, it seems to me that these last pages are germane to our discussion. Am I right to think that we have got to p. 65?

Because when it is real, what it says affects the speaker (the LLM) as much as the listener. — Fire Ologist

Yes. Curiously enough, the vision of a purely rational being is very attractive in some ways - we so often find the emotional, value-laden sides of life problematic. An impartial, well-informed referee.
But no - without the emotions, the values, there is nothing remotely like a human being, however much it may be designed and constructed to imitate that.

But an examination of the grammar of a solipsist statement like ‘it is only I who see’ reveals not whether something can or cannot be meant, but HOW it is meant, thereby avoiding both idealist certainty and scepticism. — Joshs

But doesn't he also claim that what the solipsist want to say, or mean, is incoherent or perhaps just a question of notation. You make me realize that I'm actually quite confused about exactly what is going on here.

What he said really recommended his notation, in the sense in which a notation can be recommended. — p.60

I can think of cases where a notation might recommend itself - for the most part on pragmatic grounds. Whether they are relevant to philosophy is not clear to me. I think we think that because any notation must conform to the same logic, the difference between notations will not be significant.

We are inclined to use personal names in the way we do, only as a consequence of these facts. — p.61

This, of course, radically changes how we need to think of analytic vs synthetic. The consequences are not at all clear to me. I think we need some distinction along those lines. (My next quotation suggests that W agrees).

But I wish it to be logically impossible that he should understand me, that is to say, it should be meaningless, not false, to say that he understands me. Thus my expression is one of the many which is used on various occasions by philosophers and supposed to convey something to the person who says it, though essentially incapable of conveying anything to anyone else. — p.65

But when W talks of understanding the solipsist, rather than merely refuting him, he suggests that we should be asking what they are trying to convey. His discussion in these pages illustrates how that might go, and be reduced to a difference of notation.

It would be wrong to say that when someone points to the sun with his hand, he is pointing both to the sun and himself because it is he who points; on the other hand, he may by pointing attract attention both to the sun and to himself. — p.66

This goes back to the question how we can point to a visual field.

Logically, this would mean that every instance of seeing would have something in common, which he narrows down to “the experience of seeing itself” (p.63), which I read as distinguishing nothing (“pointing… not at anything in [ the visual field ]” (p.64)), and thus wishful rather than meaningful to point out. — Antony Nickles

Well, he is quite right. There is a territory that, so far as I know, he does not explore. I point at a bus, and say (in grammatical mode) “That’s a bus”. The self-same gesture, in a different context could count as a definition of “red”. It’s not really a question of my intention being different. It’s that my audience needs to understand what kind of object a bus or a colour is, before they can interpret my definition.
In one way, one cannot point to one’s visual field – only to objects in it. To understand the gesture that W is talking about, we have to think about how we realize that we have a visual field, that is, we have to understand what kind of thing a visual field is. Whether that understanding would coincide with what the solipsist is trying to say is another question.

To hold “what I mean” (p.65) as unable to be fully understood is to wish for the implications and connotations of our expressions to be ultimately under my control, judged as met or meant by me, — Antony Nickles

Yes. But it could also be that I do not wish to be caged in the implicatons and connotations of our expressions.
I would be happy to say that we never “fully understand” things, even if we can understand them sufficiently for the purposes in hand. That is, that the phrase “fully understand” (which, presumably, contrasts with “partly understand) has not been given a coherent meaning.

AI doesn’t have to, or cannot, do all of that in order to do what it does. — Fire Ologist

No. But here's the catch. Once you have pointed that out, somebody will set out to imitate the doing of those things. We may say that the AI is not "really" doing those things, but if we can interpret those responses as doing them, we have to explain why the question of real or not is important. If the AI is producing diagnoses more accurately and faster than humans can, we don't care much whether it can be said to be "really" diagnosing them or not.

Ramsey then looks for the points of indifference; the point of inaction. That's the "zero" from which his statistical approach takes off. Perhaps there's a fifty percent chance of rain today, so watering may or may not be needed. It won't make a difference whether you water or not. — Banno

I think that you and/or Ramsey are missing something important here. It's might well not make a different whether you water or not, but if it doesn't rain and you don't water, it might make a big difference. Admittedly, you don't escape from the probability, so there's no rationality to your decision. Probability only (rationally) affects action if you combine risk and reward. If you care about the plants, you will decide to be cautious and water them. If you don't, you won't. But there's another kind of response. If you are going out and there's a risk of rain, you could decide to stay in, or go ahead. But there's a third way, which is to take an umbrella. The insurance response is yet another kind, where you paradoxically bet on the outcome you do not desire.

The second is to note that if a belief is manifest in an action, then since the AI is impotent, it again has no beliefs. — Banno

Yes, but go carefully. If you hook that AI up to suitable inputs and outputs, it can respond as if it believes.

Many of the responses were quite poetic, if somewhat solipsistic: — Banno

Sure, we can make that judgement. But what does the AI think of its efforts?