And the “theory of mind” is not an idea about what a mind is or does, expressed in generalities, but rather a theory you form in your mind specific to the mental state of another mind. — Questioner

Oh, I see. I misunderstood. But now "a theory you form in your mind specific to the mental state of another mind" seems just like a belief, so what I'm hearing is "a belief you form in your mind specific to the mental state of another mind"

I totally agree with you that it is a matter of interpretation. Our inability to agree then has an explanation. But whose is the better interpretation?
— Ludwig V

Sorry, I’m not sure what you’re asking.
What is a matter of interpretation?
What is the explanation for our inability to agree?
Whose is the better interpretation of what?

I'm afraid I have misunderstood you again. You said:-.

We do not just perceive – we perceive and interpret. the mental states of others. — Questioner

My questions followed from that.

"There is no clear standard by which to judge" was referring to the idea/claim that "behaviour expresses belief" and/or that approach. — creativesoul

I suppose you contrast the idea of metacognition, which might be considered to be clearer. However, the answers that it returns seems to me to be, let us say, odd.

When I recall my dog, I call her name. Supposing that she has no understanding of self and others, when she hears me call, how does she know which dog I want to respond? Or, if you prefer, why does she respond if she cannot distinguish herself from other dogs?
Or, when another dog approaches her, and goes through their greeting ceremonies, how does she know that she needs to respond?
Or, when she is dashing across the park, how does she avoid running into other dogs, distinguishing between what she can do from what the other dogs who are also dashing about the place are doing?
I had two dogs for a long time. They never failed to distinguish their own food bowl from the other one's food bowl. (Nor did they ever fail to check that the other one's bowl was empty when the other one had finished and walked away.)

The last suggestion/claim above has the methodological approach the wrong way around. — creativesoul

Yes, it makes sense to sort one's methodology out before trying to answer the question - when one understands the question. The catch is that if one does not understand the question, the methodology may not be appropriate. Methodology and understanding both need to be sorted out before answers can be achieved. Otherwise, one may be trying use a hammer when what is required is a spanner.
If you are dealing with a fridge, the manufacturer can provide you with instructions how to deal with the various things that may go wrong with it. If you are dealing with an unknown disease, you need to find out what methods for dealing with it work.

Would you say that the unknown details of higher maths, programming, coding, etc. are pretty much meaningless to you? — creativesoul

Yes. Not completely meaningless, but pretty much.

All sorts of creatures have regular schedules. Routine. Habit. They do all sorts of things around the same time of day and/or night. Many migrate, mate, bear young, and all sorts of other things during the same seasons(time of year).
Having a "concept of time" needs a bit more, does it not? — creativesoul

I don't remotely understand the concept of time involved in relativity theory in physics. Does that mean I have no concept of time? No, it does not. Similarly, the dogs have a concept of time that suits their lives. That concept is different from human concepts, but overlaps with it. Similarities and differences. Would you say that a philosopher who thinks that time is continuous and a philosopher who thinks that time is discontinuous have the same concept of time or different ones - or, perhaps, overlapping ones?
Archaeologists discovered an unknown script amongst the remains of Mycene. They weren't even entirely sure that it was writing. Attempts to decipher it failed for many years until Michael Ventris hypothesized that the writing was Greek. That worked. There are many similar examples. Methodology and practice develop hand in hand.

It renders the qualifications of "linguistic" and "non linguistic" when applied to beliefs suspect, at best. I used to use such language. — creativesoul

That I agree with. But I would have thought that impinges on the distinction between what requires being talked about and what "exists in its entirety" without being talked about.

It's all too easy for us to conflate our report(and what it takes) of the mouse's belief with the mouse's belief(and what it takes). There is a very long history and/or philosophical practice of treating these as one in the same. The report is existentially dependent upon language, for it is language use. The latter is existentially dependent upon language use as well, as set out earlier in this post(beers and fridges). However, the latter does not require being talked about in order for it to exist in its entirety. This peculiar set of facts results from the overlap(shared world) between creatures without naming and descriptive practices and things that are existentially dependent upon naming and descriptive practices. — creativesoul

I agree with most of that, especially the distinction between our report of a belief and the believer's formulation of it. I see this as the differences between "I believe that..." and "He/she believes that..." One of my unconventional views is that this distinction applies to all beliefs. So "..that p" is not a purely intensional context, nor a simply extensional context. It is perfectly true that conventional philosophy ignores this. (I know you won't freak out at an unconventional view!)
I would be happy to accept that the mouse does not think of the fridge as a fridge, but merely as a cool place. It doesn't understand the expansion of gases or electricity/gas. It would also be reasonable to recognize that it doesn't understand beer as we do, because it doesn't understand what alcohol is. But we can suppose that it understands beer insofar as it tastes good and has pleasurable effects - and presumably understands hangovers, though not necessarily the connection with drinking beer. (BTW It is not unknown for dogs to become extremely fond of beer. I read somewhere that even bees can get drunk when they happen upon nectar that has fermented.) Nonetheless it is perfectly reasonable to report that the mouse liked the beer in the fridge. The difference is not a question of truth or falsity, but of what pragmatically works in the context. The mouse doesn't have to understand how I report its belief to other human beings.

PS I have edited the above to put right an error in the formatting and restore the distinction between what I was quoting and what I was saying. My mistake. Sorry.

I'm having problems understanding how "meaning governs behaviour" fits into the rest of that — creativesoul

It's only a gesture at the complicated relationship between experience, beliefs and behaviour. When we close the fridge door, we act out (perhaps that's better than "express") what the fridge means to us. That's all.

He suddenly remembered. I'm assuming he wasn't trembling until you arrived. — creativesoul

So if he was trembling before Janus arrived, would you conclude that he did understand that he had
done something wrong?

There is similarity. I just think you're overstating it. Some (arguably most) children can and do draw correlations between their own behaviour and others' behaviour towards them afterwards. So, to that extent, it's the same. That's an early step in learning the rules. It's not enough though. It is enough to help increase the chances of one's own survival when living in a violent/aggressive social hierarchy. Canines have a very long history of that. — creativesoul

Forgive me, I thought that you believed that all belief is a matter of correlations. So what more do you want before accepting that Jimi believed he had done something wrong?

I see no ground whatsoever to say he believed, knew, or anticipated that he was being punished for not following the rules. — creativesoul

Ah, well, there are important differences between bad consequences and punishment. They are very different concepts. Jimi might well believe that he had done something wrong (bad consequences) and not see it as punishment. Further observations of his behaviour might reveal the difference.
However, if morality is essential for social life, then the fact that dogs have a social life - and especially have a social life that includes humans - then it would be reasonable to suppose that they have some moral (or at least proto-moral) concepts.

They are not different subject matters. The endeavor is comparison/contrast between the two. What's different is not the same. What's the same is not different. It takes discussing both the similarities and the differences to make much sense of either. — creativesoul

That's quite right. It is also reasonable not to put too much emphasis on universal differences, but to assess each case as it comes.

We, each of us, have a "theory of mind" about others - We can understand the beliefs, emotions, intentions and thoughts of others. Such a capacity is vital for complex social interactions. — Questioner

Well, yes, we do indeed develop a concept of mind. I would expect that there is a substantial common core to all our concepts, for two reasons. First, because we learn our concepts from each other as part of learning to speak and secon because if there wasn't at least a common core, we couldn't communicate about minds - our own or others'.

But do I think a dog can interpret and make inferences about human thought? No. — Questioner

Well, my concept of mind enables me to interpret the thought of dogs and some other animals.

We do not just perceive – we perceive and interpret the mental states of others. — Questioner

I totally agree with you that it is a matter of interpretation. Our inability to agree then has an explanation. But whose is the better interpretation?

I hope you will not mind if I post a comment on p. 15 - on causes and reasons - before progressing to p. 16.

If on the other hand you realize that the chain of actual reasons has a beginning, you will no longer be revolted by the idea of a case in which there is no reason for the way you obey the order. .....

The difference between the grammars of "reason" and "cause" is quite similar to that between the grammars of "motive" and "cause". Of the cause one can say that one can't know it but can only conjecture it. On the other hand one often says: "Surely I must know why I did it" talking of the motive. When I say: "we can only conjecture the cause but we know the motive" this statement will be seen later on to be a grammatical one. The "can" refers to a logical possibility.

The double use of the word "why", asking for the cause and asking for the motive, together with the idea that we can know, and not only conjecture, our motives, gives rise to the confusion that a motive is a cause of which we are immediately aware, a cause 'seen from the inside', or a cause experienced.- Giving a reason is like giving a calculation by which you have arrived at a certain result. — p. 15

The first bolded passage, it seems to me, turns on the distinction between an action being justified in principle, as it were, that is, whether or not it was performed and, if it was performed, it was performed from quite different reasons. Think of an umpire's correct decision being given, not because it was correct, but for some quite different reason. That is, W is concerned with the agent's reason(s), not whether the action is justifiable in principle. Fair enough.

The second bolded passage is confusing, at least to me. I can only suppose that he means that we may or may not know what the cause of an action is or whether a possible cause actually was the cause. I can see why he classifies the teaching process as a cause, not a reason - because it "drops out of consideration" - or, we don't need to know about it when considering how you responded to the order. But it isn't a cause like gravity or the impact of one billiard ball on another.

However, my problem is with his comparison of reasons with motives. I have to say, I think of a motive as a desire or wish or value - reasons map the path from there to the action. as in the third bolded passage. But set that aside. My question is how does this fit with the justification post hoc? It looks as if I may act for no reason, but then offer a justification post hoc, which suggests that I did act for a reason. But that doesn't fit with our immediate awareness of the motive.

There is no clear standard by which to judge whether or not the belief we are attributing to the language less creature is something that the creature is capable of forming, having, and/or holding. — creativesoul

That's true.
We might get some clues from thinking about how we decide what a human being believes or can believe and then thinking about what a creature like a dog does believe.
For example, you believe that a dog cannot form beliefs about beliefs. (Forgive me if that's not accurate, but I think it is enough for what I want to say). In my book, that needs to be considered in the light of what the dog does. Meaning is not some abstract entity floating about in the ether. It governs behaviour. So, for example, there are many beliefs that I cannot form because I have never learnt the relevant behaviours; I never learnt to write computer code or do more than elementary mathematics. While I can formulate some beliefs about those matters as they impinge on my life, but the detail is bayond me.
If a dog could read a clock and use the information in relevant ways, I would say it may know when it is 5 p.m. Does that mean it cannot have a concept of time? No, because it can show up for meals or walks at the right time. But it cannot have a concept of time like the human concept and there are other behaviours that can high-light that.

The difficulty is in discriminating between which sorts of thoughts are existentially dependent upon language use and which ones are not. — creativesoul

I have some intuition about that distinction, but I have trouble applying it. Is my belief that there is some beer in the fridge existentially dependent on language? I can only express it in language. Could a dog believe that there is beer in the fridge? Well, it can certainly believe that its dinner is in the fridge.

What is the standard and/or criterion you're using to decide/determine/judge what sorts of beliefs language less animals can and/or cannot have? — creativesoul

Roughly, the same ones that I use to decide what believes human beings have when I cannot ask them.

On pains of coherency alone. The problem is the notion/use of "thought".
The first claim is false as is what immediately follows "since". — creativesoul

I suppose you are disagreeing with "Thought and belief require a sentence/statement/proposition that expresses the content of the belief..." and "thought, belief and knowledge all involve an evaluation of the proposition"
As to the first, I may have been unclear. As to the first, it is true that one can hold beliefs that are not formulated in language. But I cannot talk about them without a formulation in language. To distinguish between what people believe and don't believe, I must complete the formula "S believes that..."
As to the second, "S knows that p" means that p is true. "S believes that p" means that S believes/thinks that p is true, but it may not actually be true. "Thinks" is more complicated than either, but is at least compatible with S merely entertaining the possibility that p is true.

A process.
Something(s) to become meaningful, a creature for that something or those things to become meaningful to, and a means for things to become meaningful to that creature. — creativesoul

We agree, then, that experience is a process. I am hoping that you also agree with me that what is meaningful to a creature affects how that creature behaves.

It's that the report of the language less creatures' thought(s) is based largely - if not exclusively - on the reporter's notion of mind. If that notion/concept of mind is incapable of discriminating between thoughts that only humans are capable of having and those that non human animals can have, then the report of those experiments, including what is purported to be the thoughts and/or thinking of the subject matter will inevitably conflate the two. That is, the reports will include false claims. — creativesoul

To be sure, the presuppositions with which one approaches describing animal behaviour are always important. If they are wrong, the reports will be wrong. You seem very confident that your presuppositions are correct. It is sensible to evaluate one's presuppositions in tne light of observations and to revise or refine them before making further observations. It seems to me very dangerous to think that observations of a particular incident can be conclusively settled without an extensive background of observations of a range of behaviour of the animal.

Claiming that a male bird of paradise clears out an area and dances because he's trying to impress a female is a bit of a stretch. — creativesoul

I wonder how one might explain that behaviour. The idea that he is doing it for fun is not impossible, but is a bit of a stretch. If females did it too, it would be plausible. But, as I understand it, they don't. Suppose that female behaviour indicates that they are attracted by what the male does. Perhaps that Is just an coincidence, but that's a bit of a stretch too.

the question "How can one think what is not the case?" — Srap Tasmaner

Now that is a very good question and distinctively philosophical. I shall look forward to that discussion.

That is, the problems philosophy worries over arise not because we don't know enough ― about the psychology of language, the nature of reality, whatever ― but because we misunderstand the nature of language or the grammar of particular words. — Srap Tasmaner

I think there are problems with this.
In the first place, it is suspiciously tidy, and does not reflect the dialogue that goes on between philosophy and the sciences. I came across an egregious example of this in the psychological approach to empathy through a concept of "theory of mind". (See Wikipedia - Theory of Mind)
In the second place, categorizing the philosophical problem as a problem about language works if one has a certain philosophical background. But many people seem to confuse the philosophical discussions with linguistics or even with logic-chopping. The real issues, they think, are about reality, not just the words that we use to describe it.

'Grammar' is an important word for him, but it's descriptive, not explanatory. — Srap Tasmaner

I see his use of this term as the remnant of the idea that language has a complete logical structure, which is quite clearly distinct from the world that we talk about. There's room for a lot of clarification, though most people (including me) seem to think that it is not difficult to graps his point. We silently ignore the traditional sense of grammar, though it plays its part in creating philosophical perplexity.

So to come back to the death of philosophy, on the one hand there will be criticism of philosophical positions that derive from misunderstandings of grammar, but there is also room to do this on purpose as a first step in exploring the grammar of our expressions, and you could maybe still call this "philosophy". — Srap Tasmaner

It occurred to me that anyone who thinks that a philosophical problem has, or should have, an answer or solution is implicitly committed to the death of philosophy. It may be that this illusion is the same illusion as the idea that a complete and final physics is a desirable aim - i.e. that the point of physics is the death of physics.

One might say that the subject we are dealing with is one of the heirs of the subject that used to be called "philosophy."
— p. 28
At least that's what I think he's up to. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't think you are wrong. But I do think that there are some puzzles and confusions in his explanations.

"This process of changing inputs into outputs—of changing sensation into useful behavior—is thinking." But all of this is, surely, the first stage of thinking. — Patterner

Thank you for this. I agree that it is important in that it puts the relationship between knowing and doing at the heart of both. Philosophy has created endless fake problems for itself by focusing on the first and treating the second as an optional add-on. Suggesting that it is the "first stage" instead of insisting that it is either thinking or not is also an excellent nuance and very helpful. I shall remember about the roundworm (and, hopefully, where I learnt about it) for a long time.

I don't think that explanation comes up in any creation stories. — Athena

No, it doesn't. it is a new creation story, and the creation story of our time. It differs from all the others in that it lays itself open to evalutaion as true or false. Which seems to be a great improvement on the traditional varieties.

An important way in which humans differ from all other animals is our highly evolved "theory of mind" - a mental capacity that allows us to make inferences about the mental states of others. — Questioner

How do you know that non-human animals don't have a theory of mind? How do you know that other people have a theory of mind?
Since the theory of mind is posited as an essential prerequisite of empathy, it seems to follow that if somone (human) can interact appropriately with other people, they have a theory of mind. I suppose.
So, if some non-human animals can interact appropriately with various other animals, including human animals, does it not follow that they have a theory of mind?
I do agree, however, that generalization about the extent to which all animals can do that would be very dangerous. I don't think that a fly has any real grasp of humans as people; nor do fish - most of them, anyway.

Rather than empathy, what a dog is experiencing when he responds to your grief is emotional contagion, which is a response to emotions without fully understanding what the other individual is feeling. — Questioner

I thought that emotional contagion was sharing the emotions of others, as opposed to responding to their emotions. It's like the difference between treating a disease and catching it.

After I posted this, I came across a separate entry in Wikipedia - Wikipedia - Theory of mind in animals

The existence of theory of mind in non-human animals is controversial. On the one hand, one hypothesis proposes that some non-human animals have complex cognitive processes which allow them to attribute mental states to other individuals, sometimes called "mind-reading" while another proposes that non-human animals lack these skills and depend on more simple learning processes such as associative learning; or in other words, they are simply behaviour-reading.

In practice, these supposed different alternatives come down to the same process. There is no way to read a mind except by reading behaviour.

I'm uh, troubled, to say the least, by the earlier flippant dismissal regarding the philosophical import of evolutionary progression as it pertains to any and all notions of thought, belief, and/or meaningful experiences. .... One's philosophical position regarding though, belief, and/or meaningful experience had better be able to take it into proper account. — creativesoul

I may be wrong to think that you are referring to something that I said. If you were, I am troubled by your impression that I would dismiss the philosophical import of evolutionary progression, let alone dismiss it flippantly. I would have thought that my general insistence that there is always continuity between what animals can do and what humans can do was evidence to the contrary. I must have said something to mislead you and I'm sorry about that.

I'm not sure what that means. — creativesoul

I hope it helps if I write that sentence as "Surely, (thought that involves trees and cats) is involved in the (behaviour that involves trees and cats)" and explain (which I should have done) that when a dog approaches a tree in order to sniffs it, it is because it believes that there will be interesting smells around it, and so on.

Problems with "what it means to say" anything aren't my concern. That's two steps backwards. Perhaps this will help...
Apple pies consist of apples, flour, and so forth. "Apple pies consist of apples" is not a problem, I presume. Meaningful experiences consist of thought and belief. Thought and belief consist of correlations. Thus... meaningful experience consists of correlations.
What's the problem? — creativesoul

My problem is the transition from apple pies to meaningful experiences. (By the way, I was wondering what a meaningless experience would be like; I can see that they would not consist of thought and belief - so what would they consist of?)
You seem to have assumed that because "apple pies consist of apples etc." is unproblematic you can substitue any noun for "apple pies" and give an unproblematic answer. But what do surfaces edges consist of? Does it make sense to say that rainbows consist of light waves or colours? What does the number 4 consist of? A recipe?
I agree that experiences are an important basis for thought and belief, though experiences, I think, are something that happens to me.
There are two slightly different senses of "thought". One makes it like "belief" in that I can believe that p and think that p; the other is an activity, so it is hard to see that experience can consist of thinking.
Belief and (thought that) is more like a state, rather than something that happens or that I do, so again, it doesn't seem plausible to think of it as a constituent of experience.

Thought and belief require a sentence/statement/proposition that expresses the content of the belief, but I'm reluctant to say that a sentence/statement/proposition is a constituent of thought or belief (or knowledge), since thought, belief and knowledge all involve an evaluation of the proposition. This is why some people are so reluctant to admit that there is such a thing as thought/belief/knowledge without language.

Behaviour is not thought. Behaviour is not belief. Behaviour is not meaningful experience. — creativesoul

I agree. But behaviour (including linguistic behaviour, and behaviours like talking to oneself silently) does express one's thought, beliefs and experiences.

What's in dispute here is whether or not all thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience consists of behaviour and behaviour alone. — creativesoul

I would be quite happy to give up any suggestion that experience consists of behaviour, in favour of the idea that experience is express by behaviour. What else, apart from behaviour, could meaningful experience consist of? What else, apart from behaviour could express experience?

Furthermore, I'm positing that all thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience consists of correlations between different things drawn by a creature so capable. I'm arguing in favor of that. — creativesoul

Well, in the same way that different kinds of thing have different kinds of constituent, so there are different kinds of correlation. For example, it is common to say that there is a difference between correlation and causation. But it is puzzling to understand 2+2=4 as a correlation.

Thought, belief, and/or knowledge is not a description. Some folk say that dogs are somehow, someway, doing calculus when they catch a ball. I say that that's bad thinking. Conflating mathematical descriptions(calculus) for knowing how to catch a ball. — creativesoul

But thought, belief and knowledge all require a description to explain what is thought, believed of known. Still, I think most people will agree with you about the dog. But most people then find themselves puzzled about how the dog knows where the ball will land. That's the point.

Other creatures capable of thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience are utterly incapable of comparing their own thought, belief, and/or behaviour to anything else at all. Knowing better requires having done so. Hence, they cannot know better. — creativesoul

Surely, when a dog approaches its food bowl, sniffs it and walks away despondently, the dog is comparing its hope that there is food in the bowl with reality and recognizing the difference.

There is no good reason to attribute thinking to creatures that do not have very similar relevant biological structures. — creativesoul

There I agree with you.

Sorry, I didn't mean to post that yet. Fat thumb syndrome.

A critical step of what? Of understanding an order? Does it go "Step 1: recognize the other person is not just making a noise; Step 2: ... "? — Srap Tasmaner

I meant a critical step in getting perplexed about understanding carrying out an order.

If I give someone the order "fetch me a red flower from that meadow", how is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word? — Srap Tasmaner

If you casually said that in the middle of a battle, I think you would be met by astonishment and bewilderment. W's question needs to be prepared for; it involves abandonment of our ordinary understanding and a peculiar way of thinking about the whole process.

When you give an order, do you worry that the other person might forget, and think you were just making a noise? -- Or maybe it will just happen at random: "I understood some of what you said, but there were a couple times you were just making noises." — Srap Tasmaner

My default position is that the other person will understand me. If things go wrong, I cope in one way or another. I don't worry, because I am confident that I can cope. Normally, if I did worry about those possibilities, I would be already doing philosophy.

Philosophy has never shown any inclination to roll over and die. — Srap Tasmaner

Quite.
A history of philosophy as endless mistakes is as much a mistake as a history of philosophy as endless progress.
One might think that, though philosophy never dies, philosophies can, and do, die. But I doubt even that. Can we really say that the philosophy of Plato or Aquinas is dead? There are plenty of people who not only study them as historical documents, but seem quite happy to adopt them.
The New Science developed a way (or ways) of not only asking questions, but finding answers. Almost everybody since then has been hypnotized by its success - which, I grant you, is impressive. But that model does not seem to apply to the arts or more accurately to our thinking about the arts - not even to history itself. I'm pretty sure that, to understand philosophy, we need to look away from science towards other models.
Of course, that way of thinking about it needs to recognize that the new science was originally simply Natural Philosophy. It took a good deal of work to establish it the distinction between philosophy and science and some sort of (uneasy) diplomatic relationship.

But there may be a third sort of philosophy, which is the more or less deliberate cultivation of perplexity — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. That would be a good description of the agenda of any Philosophy 101 course. It seems to me that it is now an essential step in learning about philosophy or, better, how to philosophize. Perhaps we should assess our students' success in such courses by their level of bewilderment. Look at how carefully Descartes instils his doubt at the beginning of the Meditations.

If I give someone the order "fetch me a red flower from that meadow", how is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word?
— p. 3
Where does this question come from? It's not an ordinary question, not the sort of problem people raise in everyday life. ..... Frege says that we have to get behind the signs to the meaning, precisely what Wittgenstein notes it never occurs to anyone to say about the signs we exchange in everyday life. — Srap Tasmaner

That's true, so far as it goes.
But I don't see how philosophy could have got started - in history or in individual consciousness - unless it has roots in ordinary life.

Recognizing the difference between the word as a noise and the word as an order is the critical step. But I would suggest that it does have roots in everyday life, such as encountering people who not only don't understand me when I speak - even when I speak slowly and loudly - but also make odd noises themselves, which seem to function for their friends and neighbours as my language does for me. The Ancient Greeks were very impressed by this phenomenon.

It requires a particular sort of imagination to notice what people do not do and what they do not worry about, and a particular sort of imagination to make it plausible that they would. ...... Now we have something a bit like a problem to work on, philosophically. A deliberately induced perplexity. — Srap Tasmaner

I would put it as a particular perspective, but imagination seems to work as well. Perhaps philosophy arises from a disruption of ordinary life.
But it doesn't follow that finding an answer would necessarily return us to everyday life. Doubts about the existence of the gods started very early in the history of (what we can recognize as) philosophy. Returning the doubters to everyday life would not have been a good idea. On the contrary, those doubts amounted to a new perspective on everyday life. Or, to put it another way, everyday life is a bit of a mess and sometimes a new perspective is what is required. I'm very fond of that quotation from TS Eliot about travelling the world and returning home, and "knowing the place for the first time."

there are the oddball questions which lead either to science (why does the second ball move? is also a very good question) or to philosophy. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. Oddball questions are sometimes just muddles or fantasies (nightmares). But sometimes they are more than that.

It's all dizzying. — Patterner

Yes, indeed.

However, when that happens, nature quickly resets the balance by killing off the excess, though famine, disease or both. — Vera Mont

Isn't that exactly what is about to happen to humanity? Perhaps it would be best to scrap the present system and start again. No-one will mind except human beings.

Yet many, if not most, humans do blame animals for being animals; do judge other species, as well as other humans by human standards - but themselves. Little brains are quite capable of dishonesty, but only the Big Brain is capable of unlimited hypocrisy. — Vera Mont

I'm not sure about the Big Brain, but yes, humans find it hard not to see the world entirely in their own interests. On the bright side, it is not completely impossible for us, so there is ground for hope.

At the moment, only one species has the ability to think in certain ways/about various types of things, even though other species are able to think. We can even see how the ability to think in new ways evolved from how other species are able to think. Still, it is a new ability. — Patterner

I get the point about the first two cases. But it's all about the cases and it's not hard to think of cases that are hard to classify.

No doubt there was a time when only one species was capable of walking. That required the evolution of legs. So that was a new ability. At some point, a species evolved that was capable of walking on just two legs. Was that a new ability or just a variant of an old one?

Our ability to see developed from creatures that just had light-sensitive patches in their skins. Gradually, the rest of the eye developed - you can look up the stages if you want. The first creatures were merely sensitive to light and dark, which was a new ability. Is our ability to see a new ability or just a development of the old one? At what point in that process did creatures develop that were not merely light-sensitive but capable of seeing?

I must confess I don't know enough about how language-less animals think to know what is old and what is new in our intellectual and cognitive abilities. Of course, I understand that humans have developed some of their abilities beyond what other animals are capable of. Whether they are new or just highly developed seems a secondary question to me.

Forgot this. Extinction Level Event. — Patterner

Thanks.

Even rabbits are capable of destroying their habitat. — Vera Mont

So even our awesome power to wreck the entire planet has forerunners. The rabbits' power is not different power; rather, the humans have a "super" of a power that animals also have. I think perhaps that's a better way to think of at least some of the features that we have been talking about.

The closer we and another species are to our MRCA (Most Recent Common Success) on the tree of life, the more characteristics we share.
-We share more characteristics with other primates than we do with mammals that are not primates.
-We share more characteristics with other mammals than we do with vertebrates that are not mammals.
etc. — Patterner

Yes, of course - though the link to evolution is not, strictly speaking philosophical business. The tricky bit is distinguishing between the characteristics that we can unhesitatingly assign - anatomy and physiology etc. - and those that require interpretation.
The Cartesian suggestion that animals are simply machines seem absurd when applied to cats, dogs and mammals in general, but much less so when applied to bacteria, viruses and protozoa. The difficulty comes to a head when we start ascribing perceptions, motives, emotions and reasons to their behaviour. I think this comes from the fact that those judgments are heavily dependent on context and background.

Condemning a cat for playing with something that moves, something she does not recognize as being like herself, is just as human and irrational as applauding a human when, after some fancy play, he kills a terrified captive bull. — Vera Mont

Yes. I didn't mean to suggest that the cat was to be blamed in any way. No more than the foxes are.

Heidegger was keenly attuned to the historical nature of philosophy, — Joshs

Yes. There's a difference between recognizing that one's own philosophy is historically conditioned and not. Much more could be said - the names I cited were off the top of my head.

I would have thought that, up till Wittgenstein’s later work, what was common within analytic philosophy was a failure to recognize the interdependence of subjective and objective certainty and clarity. — Joshs

That's certainly better put, because they are indeed interdependent.

So there is no “end of perplexity” but there is a truth to our getting perplexed, — Antony Nickles

Yes, that's true (!).
But I think my point is that W seems to start from our perplexity, which may be a good starting-point in one way. But in our actual situation, we are already in the middle of philosophy, and there are people around who think they have resolved them (or some of them). W thinks they are wrong about that, but that is a philosophical position, which needs to be demonstrated. I don't say he is wrong to do that - everybody needs to start from somewhere - but it seems to rely on a wholesale dismissal of the philosophical tradition(s), as in Russell's history of western philosophy. On the other hand, other philosophers have done the same thing. (Heidegger, Husserl, Hume, Descartes etc.)

The confusions so far appear to be motivated by the desire for a “crystalline purity of logic” (PI #107) like that misapplies the framework of objects to our feelings and sensations, or, most recently, that reasoning is thought to be causality. So there is no “end of perplexity” but there is a truth to our getting perplexed, which I take as the investigation and conclusion of the PI. This book lays the groundwork, not to ‘answer’ the confusion, but to ask what that says about us. — Antony Nickles

And, of course, that desire is, at least partly, based on the desire for certainty.
It occurs to me that there may be a different desire underlying scepticism, which is the desire to undermine baseless certainties. If we see Pyrrhonism in the context of its time, when the ideas that were traditional and conventional at the time were under increasing scrutiny, it may look more like a desire to prick bubbles of superstition and dogmatism. The same applies to Cartesian scepticism. Hume draws a distinction between what he calls judicious scepticism and Pyrrhonism - he ignores Descartes, so far as I can see, in favour of Pyrrho - and it seems to me that this is perfectly correct. However, he doesn't consider that it may be difficult to distinguish between judicious scepticism and Pyrrho.

Where, in that description, is an activity outside of psychology? Wittgenstein was the one who insisted upon an activity beyond that. — Paine

I agree that he seems to wander in the border country between the two. On the other hand, he may be relying on the common definition of his time - psychology as science and therefore limited to stimulus-response (causal) connections. I would have thought he would be justified in thinking that that methodolgy excludes what he is trying to do. But the failure to distinguish between psychological ("subjective") certainty and clarity and objective certainty and clarity is very common in analytic philosophy.

What I don't understand is why a change of notation would cure the desire. (I realize that the text itself doesn't explicitly get in to that question, but it stares us in the face.) — Ludwig V

On reflection, I want to add that what a notation can do is make us look at things differently, not in the sense of gathering new facts, but in the sense of interpreting the facts that we have differently. This takes us to "seeing as".

Nothing matters more. What makes humans different from other species? What is there answer to the Hard Problem of Consciousness? How did life begin? Did anything exist before the Big Bang? All fascinating topics. And we are driven to explore the unknown, and try to answer questions. — Patterner

Well, those questions are indeed important because they disorient us and conclusive answers are hard to come by. But I also think that the everyday concerns of food and shelter and sociality are more important. Certainly, If those things are not available, it would be irrational not to give them a higher priority.

But if we do not treat others, human and others, well, then we're filthy creatures pretending to be better than we are. — Patterner

I agree with that.

No animal other than us can be judged for cruelty. They aren't thinking cruel thoughts when they do anything. They aren't choosing to be cruel — Patterner

That's certainly what I was saying earlier. But I'm bedevllied by a tendency to think of counter-examples after I've said something. I have heard that if a fox gets into a hen coop, it will kill every single one of them even though it cannot eat them all and cannot store them for the future. Farmers, I've heard, have a particular down on foxes for that reason. Would that count as choosing to be cruel? At least the fox doesn't torture them. Cats, on the other hand, I've heard, tend to corner a mouse and play with it, allowing it to escape and then catching it back at the last moment. (I've never seen that for myself). Would that count?

We still die from diseases, just as other species do. We die if we fall from great heights, which many other species do not. We take in energy the way most other animal species do. Locomotion, respiration, vision, on and on, as much like the other species as they are all like each other. — Patterner

Does that mean you agree with me?

There is no ELE like us. It might be a good idea to better understand the things that make us different, rather than deny that we are. — Patterner

I'm sorry, I don't understand what "ELE" means. But it's a fair point.

Our power to destroy them all should be power enough. I don't see a reason to deny them basic attributes like affection, communication and rational thought. — Vera Mont

I agree with that.

Can I take that as suggesting that the things that make humans so special are not necessarily important to other creatures or, necessarily, to the planet?
— Ludwig V
Of course not. Why should they be? — Vera Mont

Quite so. What I'm getting at, though, is that our power over them and lack of awareness or at best understanding of it ought to impose a moral obligation not to mistreat them. It seems to me that a primary function of morality is to restrain the unlimited power over each other. But if our moral perceptions are restricted to our own species, it's hard to see how that works. We need a concept of a pan-species morality. But then, that morality would not necessarily restrain other creatures. I'm confused about this.

But humans are super-duper-special; utterly different from other species in so many ways that are hugely important to humans. — Vera Mont

Can I take that as suggesting that the things that make humans so special are not necessarily important to other creatures or, necessarily, to the planet? The planet, at least, seems poised to wreck our civilizations and we seem incapable of doing anything much about it.
The thing is, it seems to me that since, for better or worse, we are animals in so many ways, it doesn't really make sense to say that we are "utterly" different from other species.

Saying all generalizations are wrong would be another generalization. I don't read that as what is going on. — Paine

Quite so. It's a variant of the liar paradox. Most people seem to read it in the context of the analytic philosophy of his time. I think that must be right.
The argument that all philosophy is nonsense is based on a certain view of logic and truth. A true analytic statement is true under all circumstances. Hence it denies nothing. Hence it asserts nothing. A false analytic statement is not a statement at all, but a word salad - nonsense. If you compare him with, for example, Logical Positivism, W is quite moderate. (In the TLP, as I understand it) one of the things that shows as opposed to being said is the truths of logic. It makes sense, I think.
Anyway, that's the best explanation I can think of for the way that he starts on the basis that some statements are "occult" and suggesting a specific problem - that something in the statement is not properly defined.

But I understand why that is a question that persists through a close reading of the work. If the intention is truly the end of perplexity, Deleuze was right in declaring the "Wittgenstenians" as the assassinators of philosophy. — Paine

I think that the intention was precisely that. It was a revolution after all. So Deleuze's comment doesn't seem inappropriate. One person's assassination is another person's removal of a load of rubbish. Mind you, Heidegger thought the entire history of philosophy needed to be removed of abandoned as well. I wonder if Deleuze thought about that at all. The question "what next?" did get asked after a while, but I'm not sure that anyone has written about it. The only answer I ever heard was that people would go on making the same mistakes, so the cleansing process would go on. It wasn't particularly inspiring. In the end, of course, philosophy did manage to stagger on - though there are people who regard the persistence of analytic philosophy as a mistake.

Thank you both of you. As I was working on my previous reply I started to wonder why I think language and thinking are so important. Humans can be incredibly destructive and that is far from being intelligent. Our creation story making us to be not animals but as angels made separate from the animals. ? What is that? Might that creation story be harmful? — Athena

Sadly, intelligence is not restricted by ethics. It enables us to do wonderful things, and also to do terrible things.
Well, our creation story doesn’t mention angels. But God does decide to prevent Adam & Eve from eating the apple of the knowledge of good and evil for fear that “they might become as one of us”. Food for thought. I think the harmful bit in our creation story is the idea that God gave us “dominion” over everything. If only they had said “stewardship”…!
Plato thought that we are a combination of animal and god.

I think we need to understand we are evolved as are the rest of the animals. Equally important is our heart. If our hearts are not in tune with nature might be an evil force on earth? — Athena

Yes, heart is important – arguably more important than intelligence. I understand the feeling that being out of tune with nature is a bad thing. But the natural is not always a good thing. Nature, in itself, is neither good nor bad but just what it is – or perhaps sometimes good and sometimes bad.

I haven't read all of the thread. I know this was being discussed early on. But I don't know who actually said they held that position, and had no idea anyone in still saying it. I know with absolute certainty I never said it. — Patterner

I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have referred to the earlier discussion without identifying exactly where it is. I never wanted to accuse you of saying it. The earlier discussion centred on the consequences of Cartesion dualism for our treatment of animals.

I'm just saying there is a significant difference between humans and animals. I think this is evidenced by many of the things we do and manufacture. I also think we think about things no other species thinks about. Of course, I can't prove my cat isn't pondering the nature of consciousness, trying to find an easier way to locate prime numbers, or amusing himself with the thought of the cat who shaves all the cats who do not shave themselves. But, if someone invented a machine that allows us to listen in on his thoughts, I would be willing to bet anything that he isn't. — Patterner

There are differences between human and animals. There are also similarities. So the interesting part is what “significant” means.
Actually, I think the significant differences are the ethical ones. We have moral obligations to animals – essentially, not to treat the cruelly. But they have not corresponding moral obligations to us; in fact they can’t be judged by our ordinary moral standards – though one could argue that they do have something like the beginnings of a moral sense.

A fetus becomes conscious before being born and early self-conscious emotions appear during at age 15-24 months. Yet ask yourself, if nobody had talked about consciousness to you, you wouldn't have read about it or been taught about it, would you have come to think about the nature of consciousness? — ssu

Yes. Most of the abilities that seem to differentiate us from animals depend on our being brought up in human society. The “feral” children who turn up from time to time have great difficulty in making good what they missed.

Now your cat might not think about Russell's paradox, but it quite likely can count. It could be argued that it has some primitive feline mathematical system, because counting is very important for situational awareness. Logic is also quite important in situational awareness.
Hence the huge difference isn't a biological difference, but a social and informational difference. — ssu

Your point about the cat is well made. It’s the usual thing – every time something is identified as different and specifically human, it turns out that animals (some animals) have the beginnings or foundations of them. It’s just that we have supernormal development of them.
The point about mathematics and logic also seems to be right. But it does seem that our capacity to learn all those human skills and practices has a biological basis – over-developed cortex, opposable thumb, bipedalism.

I meant to refer generally to the discussion of both, not to just the mathematical section (though, as the text here points out, even mathematically the rule does not “determine” anything; even the judgment (“wrong”) can be suspended, say, with children). — Antony Nickles

I agree it's not just about mathematics. I think W is quite right to point out that a rule has no magic powers and that we determine what it determines - the meaning of the rule is its use, that is, how we apply it.

Yes, but maybe that is exactly the motivation for following a rule based on someone else’s authority, or your own feeling as a “cause”: in order to abdicate not only our authority, but to thus try to sidestep responsibility for our acts and speech. Thus the thought we can say “well that was my perception, so…” to attempt to excuse ourselves. — Antony Nickles

I think you are over-thinking this. It is true that "I feel that..." is often (mis)used rhetorically to establish one's authority and establish immunity from criticism/disagreement . But I think that the water-diviner's case is different from that. It is comparable to cases in which we know and can assert things confidently without being able to explain why. There's no need to establish authority or frame an excuse, because we very often get these judgements right. The water diviner seems to me more like someone who tells you what the sign says, because they can read or because they speak English.

We do not apply the rule (or next step), until it is applied (taken). Thus why he makes the point of saying it can only be explained after the fact (not by a “cause”). — Antony Nickles

Yes. I can see that. I think, however, that there is a great deal more to be said about "embedded beliefs" as reasons for action.

I think we're having different conversations. I'm talking about whether or not we have abilities that language-less species do not have, and, if so, whether or not language is responsibile for those abilities.
I think you are talking about how we use those abilities. — Patterner

That's odd. I thought you were asking how we might determine the significance of the difference between animals and humans.
It's just that we can argue endlessly about the differences between animals and humans. But, in the end, each species is different from the others in some respects and similar in others. So it seems to me that it is an empty debate (whether the glass is half full or half empty). Yet we we think the question is really important? Why? What is at stake?
It seems likely that language is important in enabling the human way(s) of life. Probably our opposable thumb is also important, not to mention our large brain. None of those differences means that we are not animals or that we are justified in pretending otherwise.

I'm not keen on conflating mathematical descriptions(which are existentially dependent upon language users) with language less knowledge, thought, and/or belief. Dogs are incapable of doing math. Doing math requires naming quantities. Dogs cannot do that. They can catch a ball nonetheless, and we can describe those events(or at least the trajectory of the ball) with calculus. — creativesoul

I wasn't conflating those two descriptions. I was pointing out that the mathematical description of the trajectory of the ball does apply to the ball and that the dog (or indeed, human) is not applying that description. What beliefs and/or experiences can we discern in ourselves to explain how the ball is caught? Can we attribute those same beliefs to the dog or not? I think that skills like these are attributed to "judgement", which means either that the human "just sees" where the ball is coming and the same can be attributed to the dog. Both express their belief about where the ball is coming by positioning themselves to catch it.
We can legitimately expect that there will be some neurological activity which we are not conscious of and which that enables this to happen. This will be similar to the neurological activity that must underlie our ability to discern where a sound is coming from. We can also expect the same or similar activity to be going on in the dog.

What difference is a question of how we interpret the events? The events are already meaningful. Hence, it is possible to misinterpret them. — creativesoul

The difference between the autonomous salivation and the growl which is under the dog's control.

I'm not convinced that growling is under conscious control, as if used intentionally to communicate/convey the growling dogs' thought/belief. I'm more likely to deny that that's what's going on. The growl is meaningful for both the growling dog and the submissive others. I'm not convinced that the growl is a canine speech act so to speak. — creativesoul

I wasn't going so far as claiming that it is a canine speech act. However, my speech acts are meaningful to myself and others (including my dog), so there may well be something to the comparison.
As to conscious control, I cannot train my dog to salivate or not on my command (any more than I can train myself to salivate or not as I wish). But I can train my dog to stop growling on command. That suggests the growl is under the dog's control.

Functioning in a social context does not lend itself to being a social function in the sense that the community members have some awareness of the awareness. — creativesoul

Sorry, I'm confused. If the growl warns others not to be aggressive, I would have thought that they were aware of the dog's belief that they are being regarded as a possible threat. Is that what you meant by awareness of the awareness? I would also have thought that the dog was aware of it's own awareness that the others present a possible threat. Perhaps that's what you mean?

The growl has efficacy, no doubt. It is meaningful to both the growling dogs and the others. I would even agree that it could be rudimentary language use, but it's nothing even close to adequate evidence for concluding that growls function in a social context in the same way that our expressions of thought and belief do. — creativesoul

So we agree at least to some extent. I wasn't making any claim about equivalence of that function to our expressions of thought and belief. Though it does occur to me that when I feel threatened by someone, I will make placatory and/or self-confident signals, whether by body language or in speech in order to warn them off. That seems to me to be performing the same function as the growl. The difference, I would say, is the difference between the simplicity of the growl and the complexity of the messages we can convey through the complexity of language. There is similarity and difference.

Yes. The question of the significance of the difference(s) is likely the trickiest one of all.
— Ludwig V
How would that be judged? — Patterner

Good question. One way is to assess the ethical implications of the differences we find. Another would be to examine and explore why people get so strongly committed. It would be at least helpful to know why people think it matters. But the difficult bit is that how one sees animals is very much a function of the relationships one has with them, so there isn't a purely objective basis for the judgement. There isn't a matter of fact that makes the difference - it's a question of how one chooses to interact with them.

we can(and do, I would argue) know what all meaningful experience consists of - at the basic irreducible core. It consists of correlations drawn between different things by a creature so capable. That question was asked to Ludwig, for he admits language less thought and belief. I presume he would admit experience as a result. However, his approach is woefully inequipped to answer the question. That was the point of asking it. — creativesoul

OK. I'll bite. I thought you were asking the question because I couldn't answer it; actually I have answered; it's just that you don't like the answer. I haven't worked out exactly how to argue the point, so I'm holding my peace until I've worked that out.
Preliminary problems include what it means to say that any meaningful experience consists of anything never mind what it means to say that meaningful experience consists of correlations.

Their meaningful experience, thought, and/or belief does not consist of language use. — creativesoul

Language users express their beliefs etc. by talking (and in their other behaviour). Clearly, creatures without human language cannot express their beliefs by talking. But they can and do express their beliefs by their behaviour. Both language users and creatures without language have meaningful experiences, which, presumably, "consist of" correlations. (I'm setting aside my doubts about "consist of" and correlations.)

They do not draw correlations between language use and other things. — creativesoul

Insofar as they do not have human language, that seems obvious. But then, when I call out "dinner", my dog appears. Isn't that correlating language with something else? When I call out "sit", she sits and looks at me expectantly. Apparently dogs are capable of responding appropriately to something like 200 words, which is about the language learning level of a two year old human.

The irresistible temptation is not “to use a certain form of expression”. The temptation is for mathematical certainty. That desire forces the expression into a certain form (as forcing the analogy that everything has the framework of an object.) — Antony Nickles

That looks like an idea that would explain why the temptation exists. No doubt there's more to say, but the desire for certainty would explain why the temptation exists. What I don't understand is why a change of notation would cure the desire. (I realize that the text itself doesn't explicitly get in to that question, but it stares us in the face.)

Some questions:-

This is the ability of language to extend into new contexts (discussed in the PI as: continuing a series) because at times how it matters is, as yet, to be determined. — Antony Nickles

I don’t see continuing the series as at all the same thing as extending a word or concept into new contexts. In the former, we say that we are doing the same thing and that is determined by the rule. The latter is a quite different problem, in circumstances when the rule does not determine how it is to be applied. Thus, the rule “+1” means that we do the same thing, but to a different number at each step. You can call each step a new circumstance if you like, but the rule defines it as the same. But when, for example, we define “ω” we create a new circumstance and have to decide how to apply “+1”.

I took the “cause” to show the authority that I take, which can be the trust in the teacher’s authority, or, without reason, based on the authority I have for my own acts (example 4 “‘I don’t know, it just looks like a yard’”), which is to externalize some ‘internal’ cause for speech into taking responsibility for what I say (wanting to be certain beforehand vs. continuing to be resolved to what I say afterwards). — Antony Nickles

Do you mean that citing the fact that I have been taught to identify the depth of the water or to cite the feeling I get is to try to outsource the justification that should rest with me – sticking to my judgement? But what if I’m wrong? Don’t I have to accept responsibility whether I outsource my decision or not?
To put it another way, there’s a big difference between the referee whose decision defines what happened as a goal and the reporter whose story reports what happened as a goal.

I found this rather confusing. It is true that “cause” does not always mean what it means in philosophy, and I can see why W might want to call the teaching process a cause, but if the teaching has authority, it would be clearer to call it a reason, because part of the meaning of reason is justification. But that isn’t altogether satisfactory either.
Compare:-

Now if one thinks that there could be no understanding and obeying the order without a previous teaching, one thinks of the teaching as supplying a reason for doing what one did; as supplying the road one walks. — p.14

no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule. — Antony Nickles

I don’t think that’s quite right. Should it not be “No course of action could be determined by any specific rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with it.”
Given any course of action, one can represent it as in accordance with a rule. But surely it does not follow that given a specific rule, one cannot determine the next step. That is what I learn when I learn to apply a rule.

Again, we can follow a rule or we can go “the way one has gone oneself”, even though we were taught by rules, the teaching “drops out of our considerations”. We may or may not explain by rules afterwards (“post hoc”). — Antony Nickles

`

Giving a reason for something one did or said means showing a way which leads to this action. In some cases it means telling the way which one has gone oneself; in others it means describing a way which leads there and is in accordance with certain accepted rules. — p.14

That’s true. Yet there is a difference between saying that the action is justified for the following reasons and saying that those reasons were the reasons why one did it.

Maybe we can't develop all beliefs without language. But, once developed, they can be expressed without language. — Patterner

Yes. You seem to have it about right. The only issue now is what concepts we can attribute when explaining what animals that do not have human languages.

Humans have a lot of beliefs that no other species has, and we wouldn't without language. That seems like a significant difference to me. — Patterner

Yes. The question of the significance of the difference(s) is likely the trickiest one of all.

Descartes' followers may have been expressing their belief in Cartesian dualism in a very strict sense. (I'm not sure "strict" is the right word, but it's the best I can do at the moment.) But they would not have come to that belief without language. Language was necessary for the belief to exist before the belief could be expressed with non-linguistic behavior. — Patterner

I don't contest the point that there are beliefs that we could not develop without language. All I'm suggesting is that linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour, in our world, are connected. Yet I don't rule out the possibility that there are some beliefs that cannot be expressed without language. These are not separate domains, but intertwined. This is why Pennings' Corgi is such a puzzle.

And nobody observing their behavior would have known the belief they were expressing if someone had not used language to explain it to them. — Patterner

Yes, of course, But context is always essential to understand behaviour in creatures capable of rational thought.

I can't say if I disagree, or don't really understand. — Patterner

For what it's worth, I'm not clear about this stuff either. It would be tidy if we could draw a clear line between what can be done with and without language. But I just don't see it.

I would be hard pressed to express any of the thoughts in this post, to say nothing of the thoughts expressed in the 39 pages of the thread, as well as the other however many threads at TPF, without language. I would be interested in hearing how all of these thoughts might possibly come to exist without language. But even without an explanation of that, now that they do exist, What language-less behavior can express them? — Patterner

Of course one cannot philosophize without language. One of the big puzzles in Berekeley's writing is that he is very clear that his immatierialism does not imply any change whatever to his everyday behaviour, and there's a good case for saying that the heliocentric view of the solar system does not result in any change to ordinary behaviour.
But one can express philosophical views in actions rather than words. There's a story that some of Descartes' followers in Amsterdam expressed their belief in Cartesian dualism by nailing a dog to a wooden plank. Devout Christians may express their beliefs in many ways other than asserting them - refraining from certain behaviours and pursuing others. One of the arguments against radical scepticism is precisely that the sceptic does not behave as if scepticism were true.
However, I never intended to claim that there are always non-linguistic ways to express any belief expressed in language. Perhaps I should have been clearer.

Are you claiming that all language less (creatures') thought, belief, and/or experience consists entirely of behaviour and behaviour alone? I would not agree with that, at all. Thinking about trees and cats includes trees and cats. Neither trees nor cats are behaviour. They are elements in such thought. — creativesoul

Surely, thought that involves trees and cats is involved in the behaviour that involves trees and cats. I don't see what you are getting at.

Do you not think there are things languages can express that behaviours that do not involve language cannot express? — Patterner

I'm inclined to answer yes. But I would much prefer to work from examples, so that I understand what the distinction amounts to.

When it comes to what counts as thought, belief, and/or meaningful experience(s) of language less creatures, we must be talking about what's meaningful to the creature. I'm hesitant to talk in terms of first or third person though. I see no point in unnecessarily adding complexity where none is warranted. — creativesoul

You may remember that earlier in this thread there was some discussion of Timothy Pennings' claim that his corgi could do calculus. See Excerpts from "Do dogs know calculus"
The path followed by light refracted through two different mediums is calculated in this way, but no-one worries about what meaningful experiences are involved. So if Pennings' Corgi follows the same path, I don't see that the experience of the corgi is relevant. The calculation applies. So Pennings' title forces us to face the issue whether what matters is the dog's experiences or the mathematics. Or, preferably, what the relationship is between the two points of view.
Or consider the theory of kin selection as an explanation of altruism in social creatures. The idea that preserving one's kin is as good a way (perhaps better than preserving oneself) to preserve one's DNA and that is what, in the end, matters. Empirically, that could well explain the phenomena. But no-one thinks that bees can identify the DNA of another bee. So we need to explain how the bees select who to sacrifice themselves for and clarify what the relationship is between the two points of view. For example, it may be that bees with the same DNA as our subject bee produce similar pheromones, which we know bees can identify and respond to. So that would be a candidate.
Catching a thrown ball is a quite complex mathematical problem. We have to learn how to do it and we improve with experience. But I'm quite sure that I am incapable of solving that mathematical problem. How do I do it? Well, I can also accurately identify where a sound is coming from. We know that we do that by calculation from the difference between the time the sound arrives at one ear and the time it arrives at the other, which is why stereo headphones work in the weird way that they do. Even if I could do the calculation, I could not do it in the time it takes me to identify where the sound comes from. (We can also accurately assess how far away the things we see are, at least at close range, by the extend we have to focus the two eyes in order to see one image - just like a range-finder. We don't normally experience that.)

I guess that the "craving for generality" is a condition that we cannot escape. That is a psychological observation along with whatever it is that Wittgenstein sees as going beyond that. — Paine

I'm a bit torn about this. Philosophers often generalize beyond what seems appropriate to me. "Everything exists" would be one example (not that I could cite a case) and "A=A" is another. It does seem appropriate to describe the cases like these as the result of a "craving for generality".
However, generalizing is deeply embedded in our thinking. To call it a craving does not distinguish between generalizations that are very helpful - even essential - to our understanding and those that are that cause confusion and misunderstanding.
W often seems to talk/write as if all generalization was wrong (misleading), or at least that all generalization in philosophy is wrong (misleading). If we took him to mean that all scientific laws were wrong or all legislation is wrong, it would not (I think) stand up. We accept or at least take seriously what he says because we understand him to be talking in the context of the generalizations of the philosophies that he seeks to escape from because they are misleading and unhelpful.

The question I have is to what degree does the Blue Book discussion of solipsism argue with what the Tractatus says. In the latter, the condition is "manifest" but not "said". In the former, it is a problem that is not necessary after considering other means of expression. Is that another way to point to what cannot be said or is it a change of opinion about the grounds of talking about conditions? — Paine

I had not thought about the relationship with TLP. In that context, it is striking that he thinks that solipsism is a matter of "notation" - of how to represent/express the same facts. In neither work is solipsism (or, by extension, any other philosophical doctrine) thought of as a matter of truth vs falsity. There's that much in common.
That said, the TLP doesn't recognize the multifarious uses of language in the way that his later work does. What happened to showing, not saying? I'm not sure.

It's quite a change from the old (Cartesian) scientific opinion. Perhaps there's some hope for the world.

All behaviors, but different kinds, with different possible consequences, and possibly different intentions (although we don't always think/intend before any type of behavior). — Patterner

Quite so. And the behaviours that do not involve language demonstrate/express/manifest my belief just as effectively as the linguistic behaviours. The difference is that expressing beliefs in language is more detailed, more specific, that non-linguistic behaviours.

If we don't know what it could possibly consist of, how do we know it exists? If we know it exists, doesn't whatever is proof of its existence give us clues about what it consists of? — Patterner

Thought etc. in creatures lacking human language is expressed and available to us in their behaviour. The same is true in human beings, but, of course, philosophers think that linguistic behaviour is, in some way that escapes me, something different from behaviour. I can't think why.


That's interesting. Are we talking about the responses of scientists who study animal behaviour? If so, it confirms my expectation that the closer people look at animal behaviour, the more they find in it.

I don't get the sense that the condition is explained away. The "illusion of language" seems like a complete explanation in a work that questions "general explanations." — Paine

But I don't think anyone is trying to explain the human condition away. The only thing that might be in dispute is what is and what is not a part of it. Remember, the role of the human condition (well, human ways of life) is to be the ground of all our justifications - not that that appears in this text.

If completely general explanations work for establishing human conditions, then Wittgenstein is hoisted by his own petard. — Paine

"Hoist with this own petard" is always satisfying when it works. But I'm not sure what you are saying here. Explanations of human ways of life are not part of W's arguments. For W, human ways of life are the ultimate ground for all other justifications and explanations. The tricky bit is whether we can go further - or rather whether philosophy can (or needs to) go further (deeper?). There's a temptation there - but is it an illusion (of language, perhaps)?

But here we are focused on the desire for the ideal, and not justifying it or achieving it. — Antony Nickles

Well, those are indeed different questions, though they are also related.

Cavell will say that in the PI Wittgenstein is showing that there is a truth to skepticism (it is not a confusion or problem) in that knowledge is only part of our relation to the world and there is no fact that ensures it so we fill the gap with/in our actions (to each other and in trusting/questioning the world and our culture). — Antony Nickles

Yes, I've a lot of time for Cavell. But doesn't he also raise the question of why sceptics cling to their view? Something about being acknowledged (and seeking safety).

He is irresistibly tempted to use a certain form of expression; but we must yet find why he is. — Blue Book, 59

That's the question that I don't understand. If the whole thing is a conjuring trick, there is no answer to it, or rather, the only answer is to the question how the trick is pulled off.

But I agree that we are veering outside the text, so I'll leave this there.

By “certain” I just mean the desire for mathematical/scientific answers—that are universal, predictable, generalized, free from context, “objective”, complete, conclusive, etc. I take these as the opposite of the time/place-dependent, partial, categorical, open-ended, etc. ordinary criteria that we uncover in looking at examples of our expressions regarding a practice, which I don’t take as “subjective” or “self-evident” so much as particular to each activity (thinking, pointing, rule-following, apologizing, identifying, etc.) — Antony Nickles

Aren't you are citing the ideals that science tries to achieve? In practice science is always provisional and restricted in its scope, not certain at all.

These are conditions of being human, and thus separate I would argue from psychological motivations. — Antony Nickles

So solipsism is part of the human condition? Then how can philosophy free us from it? But then, if solipsism is part of the human condition, what does it mean to say that it is only an illusion of language?

Is it the presupposition that fear is a directly perceptible thing? If the being full of fear does not count as directly perceiving fear then nothing will. It's part of the internal aspect of all meaningful thought, belief and/or experience. There are internal elements as well as external ones. — creativesoul

Yes, I see. I wasn't clear whether you were talking first-person view or third. I agree that creatures who do not have human language do experience fear (and pain). Obviously there may be complications and disagreements about other emotions and feelings. But what I'm not clear about is whether you regard fear as a stimulus or a response?

They're competing viewpoints about the same thing. They both consist of meaningful correlations being drawn by a creature so capable(the agents' themselves in this scenario). I'm unsure of why these were invoked. — creativesoul

Because I want to suggest that there is more than one pattern of correlation in play, and that mimicry might be described as a correlation, but it is different from either.

A difference between Pavlov and Skinner has no relevance when we're talking about the elemental constituency of that which existed in its entirety prior to language use. — creativesoul

You seem to be positing some kind of atomic or basic elements here, and I'm not sure that such things can be identified in knowledge or behaviour.

that which existed in its entirety prior to being talked about is precisely what needs set out first here, for any notion of thought and belief that is claimed to apply to language less creatures must satisfy that criterion. — creativesoul

OK. So how do we identify that which existed in its entirety prior to be talked about?

My charge has always been that convention has gotten human thought and belief horribly wrong. The fact that language less thought and belief cannot be admitted due to pains of coherency alone shows that there is a problem with convention. There is most certainly thought, belief, and meaningful experience of language less creatures. The question is what could it possibly consist of? I'm aware of your avoidance of talking in terms of elemental constituency, but from where I sit it makes the most sense of the most things. It also flips many an ancient archaic dichotomy on its head. — creativesoul

Oh, we agree there. I think that answer to what the thought, belief and meaningful experience of language-less creatures consists of is fairly straightforward. Behaviour.