As I said: other people. Other people such as the parents and teachers and others who taught you many of the rules and the games and the language. If you think that other people are no more than representations, and that you were born with an innate knowledge of all the rules and games and language, and that children don't learn rules and games and language, and that you are actually speaking only to a representation of me (and others) in your private language, and all of this because there are no things or people outside yourself but only your representations of them, then I can't help you with your solipsism.

Solipsism is not possible without a private language, and Wittgenstein showed that the concept of a
private language is incoherent. — Luke

It’s not my view it’s what Witts anti foundationalism points to. That is to say he wants the inner representation to be always hidden and private yet have “room” for public. Public is always individual confirmations of what are the rules and cultural ideas. So how is it he is getting out of any private version of representation? What is this public he refers to? Individuals may still just think they are confirming some thing, but one can still be a skeptic about all of it. You can’t just say common sense or refer to the other person because that can just be an individuals representation. The beetle is still in the box.

Just a meta question completely separate than my critique. Do you feel Wittgenstein can be wrong or everything he said is airtight? I mean this in both his content and in the weird “oh well the way he wrote there is no wrong even” or some such claim.

I’m asking without you making it personal or making a snide remark about me as a retort.

I think that, because you assume there can be nothing but private representations, your complaint is that there must be for Wittgenstein some public representation (or public mind) that is the arbiter of all rules and games and language. And who does that public representation belong to? The short answer to your conundrum is: it belongs to the public. That is, to other people, to accepted authorities, to rule books and other references, to convention, to general agreement; to things that are necessarily outside of one person but not necessarily outside of all people. — Luke

You haven't sufficiently provided what this public is. Those things you described can simply be representations in individual minds. Where does the beetle box drop out to the "public representation"? It is someone's reaction, and your reaction to their reaction, etc. There is an epiphenomenal or transcendent aspect to this "public" that is implied, that would be perplexing in this non-foundational philosophy. There has to be a theory of what this public is, or it drops back to solipsistic (people's individual representations of meaning).

Sorry took me a while to get back to this video on Harman's aesthetics.

There are some points here that I think are pretty interesting.

The first is that I have trouble understanding through the video what the "real object" in art actually means. Is it the "representation" itself (like an apple in still life) or is it something more akin to the historical information that went into the painting and the artist's intent (all the meaning and reason for the art piece from the artist). For the sake of argument, I am going to assume the latter.

If it the "real" here, the true "essence" is the artist's intent, then the observer of the art (us), inputs our own understanding of the art piece onto it by way of looking at only the "sensual objects" of the art, that which can be perceived and represented to us (the colors, the sounds, the shapes, and the forms). However, often times, we really don't know what the "intent" of the artpiece is (the true essence), but we may actually "get it right". This stumbling on the right answer is what Harman seems to call "unjustified true belief". We hit the right essence, but we didn't have any real justification for knowing this.

Metaphor also seems important here. Our imagination tries to capture an essence, playing various scenarios of what the artpiece means, what it is presenting us. It "beckons" us to its essence, but we can never get the thing-in-itself completely, only various interpretations using the sensual qualities. The real object (us) completes the picture and creates its own object (the imagined idea of the art), which is different than the essence of the artpiece itself that is presenting to us.

Here is the link to video post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14674/object-oriented-ontology-graham-harman-discussion/p1

Because what posits a public entity? What "public entity"? I don't see the problem. — Luke

Witt's theory. The beetle box deigns that you can ignore individual representations of meaning as "functionally" it's all "use". Well, that poses problems due tot he "public" nature of the "functionality of use". That requires a metaphysics of entities such as "public" that goes beyond the individual. It requires a foundation of metaphysics. One cannot deny the need or "use" of metaphysics and then posit an implicit metaphysics. Something has to obtain in the world called "public". Either that, or Witt is thoroughly a solipsist, which fine, in that case, you cannot ignore each individual's representation, as those are all that matters. The beetle counts in that case.

I was saying it was not a "point" because it is already assumed (no need to make a point of it, we all agree). He is not "demonstrating" it; he is looking at when it happens to see the ordinary criteria are different for each thing, that they come into play as markers of our interests in that practice. — Antony Nickles

Another way of saying it...language ambiguity/many meanings/can't be sure........

We share criteria as we share our lives together. This is not some "agreement" (in the past or in each instance), but just that we can all recognize what an apology looks like, what a joke is, etc. We share the same ways of checking off the list if necessary of what makes a mistake different from an accident because we have all been brought up into our... whatever you want to call it, society? — Antony Nickles

But he is against trying to figure out a foundation... Yet here we are at society.. which btw, how can that be discussed as an entity unto itself? Society is each person's experience of said "society" (whatever "entity" that is outside of ideas in individual minds). Meaning breaks down, certainty is not had, but somehow society and use remain.. Almost as if a "foundation" for meaning.. Uh oh....

You are right, there is no MUST here. But then the only thing getting in the way is you (or me), and not because the thing I get doesn't match the thing you have, but that we refuse, give up, resort to violence, etc. Wittgenstein finds that insisting on having something inside me is to remove "me" (what I do next) as the most important part; it is the desire to have knowledge take our place. This is why "I cannot know what is going on in him" (p. 225) is a choice when I see someone writhing in pain (a "conviction" he says). Their feelings are not "hidden" (as you say, "internal"), I am refusing to accept them, to see them as a person.

And also, as I said above, our criteria can in a particular case, not matter to me, become a burden, oppressive, exclude me, be dead to degenerate times, etc. I either continue to carry the interest in our criteria or not, but for that I can be judged (this is why I am culpable in the social contract I never agreed to). — Antony Nickles

I've addressed all this about responsibility etc. I'm not sure you are getting at what I am saying, perhaps, which is fine as a breakdown on communication is appropriate on a PI thread.

So do we start a seperate thread for the latter half of the PI? I suppose if we make the OP specific enough we might engage mod support in not simply transferring this dog's breakfast over to it. — Banno

You can call it Wittgenstein Circle Jerks - The Continuation.

I don’t follow why there needs to be either foundationalism or certainty in order for there to be rules. — Luke

Because it posits a public entity

So there are no rules? No rules of chess or any other game/sport? No road rules? — Luke

Im saying you can’t have both uncertainty, anti foundationalism but then claim that there’s X (rules, games, use)

202. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it. — Wittgenstein, PI 202

That logic makes no sense. Someone else’s beetle may think they understand what I’m doing, find it “normal” or not, but it’s just their beetle reacting to something. That doesn’t confer anything outside of solipsism. How is there a public to Witt if there’s no certainty to ontology? It’s all anti foundational. You can’t start positing an external confirming entity.

Apart from someone being "right" in a discussion, I might just give up because the other refuses to concede anything, not even acknowledge points of agreement. ;) That is to say, error is not the only measure, nor is mistake, but yes, things can go sideways, of course. I would think that the fact that things go badly is not a matter of contention. — Antony Nickles

Oh this is like philosophical gaslighting. Most of PI is devoted to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and errors :lol:. It certainly matters to him to demonstrate this as a point, not as an aside.

Again, you misunderstand that "use" is not a solution to the problem of, let's call it, our human condition (its possibility of failure), it is not an answer to this truth the skeptic records (nor is it a dismissal, or a cure). It is just a term to point out that an expression can have different importance to our culture (thus different criteria) based on the situation. — Antony Nickles

There you are again, sneaking in some externality. "Culture" is now used instead of "public" and "practice". Culture is an individual's perception of something. For all I know, what you read from me, is monkey gibberish but accords with your sensibilities somehow and you read it as English. Whatever it is, you can't say that your criteria is from "culture" because that too falls out and is dissolved away... It's only your understanding of culture. And if you want to rant and rave about it and say "rubbish" with incredulity.. go take it up with your prophet-philosopher. You can't get gold by squeezing coal long enough. You can't get to a foundation by appealing to a public sphere of agreement. It is all individuals agreeing, there is no public.

Maybe we can see that the reason you are digging your heels in here about an "internal aspect" is to record that I have a personal relation to our shared criteria; I can defy our shared expectations, extend them into a new context, court madness, call for revolution, etc. That I matter (me personally, individually). The takeaway of the variety of our criteria, even that they have different implications (uses, versions) in different situations, is the realization that our shared judgments and interests (what is meaningful in our culture) are captured and embodied in our ordinary criteria. Usually there is no reason for a conflict with our criteria to come up (there is no need** for "me"), but, as one example, when communication falls apart, it turns on how much these shared criteria matter to me, whether I am willing to be responsible for them, to them--that they do or don't speak for me; whether they are meaningful to me.
**That your picture of "meaning" "needs to be" always present (even when "knee-jerk") is the interlocutor's need, their insistence, which Wittgenstein is investigating. — Antony Nickles

Ok, but the whole "shared criteria" is not a thing. You can't dissolve and then say, "oh no but, ya know, ordinary stuff doesn't dissolve, that is meaning. Just keep the individual meaning part. Again, this isn't my theory. I am just holding Witt to his own standards.

The fact that I am responsible for what I say does not require that at every moment I "mean" what I do or say (or "intend" it), as if I always "cause" it, or even that there was anything about it that was internal (personal or individual). Things usually go smoothly; most times no one has to clarify, or dispute, or ask "What?". However, when something strange happens, or we defy those expectations, then our ordinary criteria and the assumed uses of our activities (e.g., imploring, apologizing, threatening, etc.) are how we judge what you said, and judge you, at which point you can: clear up the "intention" (from their confused inference), or apologize, or make excuses, or clarify (from how they took it; or under which criteria it should be taken, thus how its meaningfulness should be considered, under which "use"). If we look at responsibility as the duty to respond (be judged) for what we say based on the ordinary criteria of a situation, then the event of my saying it (part of why "expression" is important) simply creates a context of criteria and circumstances in which clearing things up is possible (but not guaranteed, assured, certain). — Antony Nickles

I'd bring in ideas of broken tools, but then we are getting into continental philosophy...

But you (Witt) can't hide behind the fact that many times we have no problems and everything goes smoothly. As long as that means nothing about anything we are good. In other words, that can't indicate a grander theory because that would be intimating some sort of path to a "certainty", something that cannot be known.

The duty is not a lack of transmission of something within you, it is a responsiveness to a confusion in a particular situation. "What did you mean?" is asked because you said something I didn't expect, which is resolved between the situational implications and expectations, not by you looking farther into yourself for a "personal meaning", but that records that the fact that you can defy or stretch those criteria. — Antony Nickles

Responsibility for what? What is it an appeal to? We can always be wrong... Common Sense needs to be explained, but it ain't, Blanche! Schopenhauer had a theory of compassion being the basis for ethics.. But that would be a type of "certainty" cause it's a theory foundational. Witt cannot rely on that, now. He's all alone in Solipsistic land. Your attempts are in vain... Appealing to WHAT responsibility? To WHOM? Now you are getting an ought from an is.. a terrible thing for a Witty.. You can't claim no certainty and then appeal to incredulity/common sense and especially not responsibility! Sorry, you claimed uncertainty... you cannot now posit positive statements (we MUST be responsible to understand each other). That would be a foundation!!

Moore and Austin were doing their thing at roughly the same time as Wittgenstein (Moore published Defense of Common Sense in 1925; the Investigations were published in 1953; Austin published How To Do Things With Words in 1955). Austin and Wittgenstein did not know of each other's work. Wittgenstein clarified Moore's version of OLP by seeing that it is not a matter that "common sense" or the common person's understanding is a better explanation of philosophical issues. He also sees that skepticism (the temptation of it) is an ongoing part of the human condition, where Austin didn't take it seriously. — Antony Nickles

Sounds like the main point I had right though.. Witt's own dissolving acid can't be resolved by other OLD systems that are more "constructive" or "foundationalist".



Edit;: Oh and you can't appeal to some reified "public" who will make you an outcast pariah, and "that" becomes the de facto foundation. That is still solipsistic self feeling the affects of whatever is affecting him/her. In other words, I don't dispute the affects (someone is indeed affected by a decision), just that those affects are derived from some ontological entity called "the public". Beetles all the way down, there is no external Platonic thing of "use" even "use in context of a community" or "community". Again, not my ideas, just taking Witt where Point I takes it, despite his assertion of Point II which is negated by Point I.


TL;DR: A full on skeptic can't make the magic move to any appeals to community, common sense, and especially responsibility.

I don’t know why I just saw this but I said on the Witt thread:

1) There needs to be an internal aspect for meaning to obtain. If there is no mental aspect, meaning is not meaning. Meaning is something else (a function perhaps, like a program running). Meaning has to somehow have a point of view. Even knee-jerk commands and actions from those commands are had from a point of view.. a "feels like". If it doesn't "feel like" something, then it is not meaning-ful. Even if at some point there was an complete lack of mental-state during some speech-act, as long as later on, someone can look back at it, it has become meaning-ful. If that person lacked a mental state in perpetuity, then meaning was not had for that person. He basically behaved like a computer, he performed a function, he did not garner any "meaning". Actually, I am not even going to let myself get away with "function", because function mplies someone with ability for meaning, has programmed it. I am just going to say, "a state of affairs happened in the universe". I'll give myself enough charity there, but even then... — schopenhauer1

I don't see how that has much to do with I'm saying. — Sam26

Prelingustic foundations for language? It’s necessary bedrock foundations without which, no language is possible.

Again though, I don't think there is anything special about meaning or understanding beyond "use". In this way, the difference in meaning and understanding between, say, me and one of those large language models is not some special, qualitative difference but rather just the extent of the functional capabilities. Im sure some A.I have better functional capabilities in some areas than us (e.g. how you can train A.I. to be exceptionally good at chess or go), but none of them have the functional capacities for the kinds of capabilities we think of as having true understanding of certain things, certainly not sentience. Obviously though this is a kind of continuous scale and as they get better, the divide between what we might call understanding and non-understanding becomes blurred, which is probably why there have been discussions recently about whether large language models have understanding - they are just getting better and better. — Apustimelogist

I mean this just goes back to the "map vs. terrain" debates that are perennial on this forum. A computer with the most advanced algorithms and computations, and even "error checking" mechanisms that are a kind of "self-check", gets nowhere closer to that thing having "meaning" (to itself), because nothing internal made it "meaning-ful". It is just a state of affairs happening. Functions (even ones where intended actions are to be performed and completed), are not meaningful. They are layers and layers of behavior behaving.

Uses are an expression or activity’s "possibilities" (#90)—what it is capable of (and not). The purpose of Wittgenstein’s term “use” is not to explain anything, it is part of showing that even the same expressions and activities can have different implications, different criteria, different ways it works, which is to contrast with the skeptic’s desire to have things work one way, be judged to have met one criteria. — Antony Nickles

Right, but see Witt can't get beyond his own dissolving acid. My premise is that WItt's PI has two points, one of which negates the other:

Point I: People's interpretation/understanding/sense of meaning can always be in trouble of being misinterpreted, of being in error. Of being mistaken.

Point II: If 1 is the case, then the best we can get is how the word is "used". But this too (as even you imply here) becomes subject for the dissolving acid. As, just like any other overriding theory of meaning (however deflated you want it to be for Witt vs a grandiose theory of certainty or whatnot), is still not going to get beyond being one's mere solipsistic (private) interpretation of meaning. Use should not even have been offered as a solution. His positive claim has already been wiped away by his negative claim. Use doesn't get a special pass either. The beetle-box does not explain away this phenomenon.

In other words, you can't have it both ways. If every other concept of an overriding theory of meaning gets dissolved, so does "use". You can't go back and say, "But doesn't it seem like use is the all there is?" Of course I can say, no it doesn't. Or perhaps I can say, "sure", but you could have said any concept there perhaps... Since there is no certainty, there is no default (such as "I guess it's just use then!!").

But with some uses of “understand”, there is no “my” understanding, there is no room for it. “If you leave this base you will be courtmartialed. Got it?” “I understand [Yes, Sir!]” and here the criteria (of judgment) is that there will be consequences, whether you understand or even accept them. In fact, most times, when I say something to you in a particular context, there is no question about “your understanding”. It just doesn’t come up because there is nothing to interpret (as intention only comes up when something is weird). — Antony Nickles

Two arguments going on here, so parsing it out:
1) There needs to be an internal aspect for meaning to obtain. If there is no mental aspect, meaning is not meaning. Meaning is something else (a function perhaps, like a program running). Meaning has to somehow have a point of view. Even knee-jerk commands and actions from those commands are had from a point of view.. a "feels like". If it doesn't "feel like" something, then it is not meaning-ful. Even if at some point there was an complete lack of mental-state during some speech-act, as long as later on, someone can look back at it, it has become meaning-ful. If that person lacked a mental state in perpetuity, then meaning was not had for that person. He basically behaved like a computer, he performed a function, he did not garner any "meaning". Actually, I am not even going to let myself get away with "function", because function mplies someone with ability for meaning, has programmed it. I am just going to say, "a state of affairs happened in the universe". I'll give myself enough charity there, but even then...

Ok that is issue 1 (really that was the issue you quoted there). However, I am also saying...

2) Possibly a more important point as to Witt's project... I see people throwing around the words "public" and "practice". But this is dangerously close to becoming Platonic. That is to say, it is proposing (inadvertently perhaps, or even covertly) an existence of something "public". There is no "public" though. There is no respite from the dissolving acid of personal meaning/perception of something. You can't get an escape hatch and say, "Ah, well it's okay, because we now have a public/communal/external/non-private meaning". No, if Witt's Point I is correct (as he constantly tries to demonstrate), then this too fails as a point of meaning. It is simply people acting upon their own perceptions. People can say, "You have heard me correctly. You have done the command I expected.etc", but that doesn't confer a certainty, any more than anything else. Use becomes use-less, because it's a vicious circle. The builder who is expecting the slab, might be pleased, my confirm, might have had expectations met or not met, but that is the builder and only the builder. It is his beetle. The other builder picks up the slab and gives it to the foreman calling out "Slab!". That is in turn "his beetle". What there isn't is "public use" of beetle whereby the boxes drop out, and "just use" becomes some overriding theory.

Wittgenstein’s method is Ordinary Language Philosophy! He is looking at what we say in situations to learn what matters to us about something, as shown in the criteria we judge it by. This is his philosophical data to learn about the issues of knowledge, thinking, understanding, intention, appearance, essence, etc., and, predominantly in the PI, why we want to run away from the fact that our criteria are based on our interest in them, to an abstract, “pure” place where we are removed from the calculation of precision. If you really want to get into OLP’s method, this is the thread. Heaven help us though. — Antony Nickles

Yes, but as I understand it, it was the next generation (like J.L. Austin) that really started that. It represents a positive (systemetized/construction) aspect of ordinary language. But how this itself doesn't then get dissolved by the critical parts, I am not sure.. Now you start having "overriding theories" of language, which starts to look like "ole philosophy" again with its need for certainty. Certain about its ordinary qualities.. but there is a "there" there.

Internal understanding counts to the extent that it can be demonstrated externally. We say that a person understands something to the extent that they are able to demonstrate their understanding. In fact, the external demonstration is all that we usually (non-philosophically) mean by "understanding". Whatever internal understanding there is "left over" that cannot be demonstrated, or that is not included in an external demonstration of understanding, is irrelevant to the meaning of "understanding". Like Wittgenstein's beetle, the internal aspect of understanding itself "drops out of consideration as irrelevant" to the meaning of the word "understanding". This is not to say that we don't have an internal understanding or an internal life or any feelings or thoughts or first-person perspective. Only that these private "inner" things do not determine the public meanings of our words. — Luke

And this is what I am trying to convey to @Antony Nickles, in my Point 2 above, there is no "external". That becomes each individual's "beetle" determining "what is public use".. Turtles all the way down, baby!

Use to whom? Surely if you get me a slab, there is nothing beyond me finding it "normal" and you finding it "normal" to do X and X. But it is still just "me" and "you" and nothing beyond that. There is no unifying form of "use".
— schopenhauer1

Our finding it "normal" or customary to "do X" is the unifying form of "use". The way "slab" is used in the builder's language game is that one person calls out "slab!" and another person brings them a slab. The same applies to all words, that is, we are trained in their use; we master the (techniques of) language. Whether or not we understand the language is demonstrated by our actions, which may be appropriate/natural or which may demonstrate that we don't understand what was said or that we don't speak the language.

All of these things are said as if there is a Platonic "public" judging this.. It is just people's internal "beetles" judging this.

Shared intentionality- one way towards a theory of prelinguistic bedrock.

Is this not the kind of theory that Wittgenstein expressed skepticism about? — Paine

Not sure, it all kind of muddles together at the end...

He wants to say "use" which is something "definitive" but then say that language keeps us ever in possible "error" of what is meant or conveyed. It seems you can't have both. His own skepticism starts to dilute even something as simple as "use".

To be a mini-Witt:
Use to whom? Surely if you get me a slab, there is nothing beyond me finding it "normal" and you finding it "normal" to do X and X. But it is still just "me" and "you" and nothing beyond that. There is no unifying form of "use". You can't get beyond the skeptical mode that he starts himself. Saying it's "public" or it's "practice" doesn't get beyond this either.. He is stuck with the mental and private...

Is that to say language gives the appearance of us sharing a world but we are actually stuck in an isolated theater of the individual mind? — Paine

In a way yeah. There is no "public space". When a "builder" says "slab", the language community of the builder, is "really" the individual understandings of slab that are in some connection with each other. But this connection and these individual understandings are an internal experiential form of knowledge. When the builder who yells "Slab!" gets his concrete block, it is his internal mental sense that the block was expected and confirmed the block was received. The person getting the block had their version of what was expected, etc. There is nothing outside the individual instantiations. The beetle's "use" can never be separated from the actual beetle in the box, in other words. Witt seems to think this can occur. But there is no "space" outside the individual self that this obtains. There is no Platonic thing that is "Public" that "use" is had outside each individual's private knowledge.

And if that is the case, what is this "sharing" you speak of? It seems a lot more possible as something we can observe ourselves doing than to propose an unknown process designed to make us feel like it is happening. — Paine

Not quite sure what you're saying, but it's alluding to what I am saying that there is no Platonic non-experiential "public sphere". It is all internal sensibilities.

And further, if we were to ever say that something akin to "use" can exist without a mental states, that is not meaning, but some sort of function. It's no more meaningful than some process in nature is meaningful.

This gets to other ideas.. pan-semiosis for example.. And actually feeds into the debates we continually have here for mistaking the map for the terrain.

Sorry, I was using the word in the non-technical sense. But thanks. — NOS4A2

:up:

These objects—the book, the guy reading it— are the ones at risk of being undermined by considering the Hobbit to be an object. Anyways, interesting stuff to think about. — NOS4A2

I see your issue with it, but I wouldn't use "undermined" here perhaps. He is using it in a very specific way to mean that the object is broken down to its constituents. If I talk to you about a person, you start talking about cells and atoms, that would be undermining the object of the person. If I talked to you about a person, and then you started talking about all the things he did, his family, etc. that might be overmining.

The use of a word is not something in a box. Meaning is use is a public not private. — Fooloso4

What is "public"? There is no public. Public is a shared internal understanding of use, which is internal :).

Reading more, I guess we agree with the mental in terms of experience. But I am saying that I don't think there is more above that and that the meaning embedded in our experiences is still totally functional... transitions in experience... i experience some context and i experience myself saying a word and then some further experiences follow that etc. — Apustimelogist

I think we can agree here. I am not saying we have some a priori definitional understanding per se, just that we need some sort of mental experience for meaning to obtain, period.

Well what do you mean by meaningful here? — Apustimelogist

That is the main question in this dialogue.. I am trying to say what it isn't at this point, and I am indicating that it isn't just use. Use in context of a mind that can understand the context. Mind needs to actually internalize something for meaning to mean anything other than state of affairs that is a function in the universe.

I don’t think something like The Civil War or abstract or fictional ideas are can be considered objects, either, and that to do so risks undermining the actual objects involved in thinking about and expressing those ideas. — NOS4A2

Yes an odd view from Harman at first glance, but perhaps there is something to it. I can see them being "something" in terms of their causal effects (thinking about a hobbit elicits something, for example, even if it is a bunch of neurons, or someone to pick up a book, or the mental image of a hobbit, etc.). But then, Harman thinks causal relations are overmining the object, so not sure. Any thought whatsoever being an "object" is odd, unless there is some sort of Platonic Realism of sorts. And how far does this go? Is EVERYTHING an object?

Anyways, I'm going to take a look at the book. Thanks for sharing. — NOS4A2

:up:

"Knowing is the process of dynamic assembly across multileveled systems in the service of a task. We do not need to invoke represented constructs such as “object” or “extended in space and time” outside the moment of knowing. Knowing, just like action, is the momentary product of a dynamic system, not a dissociable cause of action" ... "We think to act. Thus, knowing may begin as and always be an inherently sensorimotor act." — Apustimelogist

Eh, this gets awfully close to the problem of a hidden dualism. The mental quickly gets covered up with behavior or process, trying to hide evidence of the mental. Cause and ontology is different. Perhaps mental came about from some causal reason that is behavioral. Mental interacts with physical. But mental is still in the equation somewhere. Redness might have came about for some X reason, but whatever "redness" is in terms of its qualitative aspect, it is "mental" in some way.

But that's tangential here. You said:

It depends on what we both mean by think. What I meant here was just the internal vocalization of the word which we nonetheless still experience. To me, thinking is just another instance of "use" and state transitions, whether in ongoing vocalizations or those moments where you stop and "think" where in fact its all blank for a second and then suddenly pops another internal vocalization or some form of reaction in accordance to a eureka moment of some sort.. or intensely attending to an equation. To me, these are all the same kind of state transition/ "use" kind of thing. — Apustimelogist

So I am going to be firm here on my stance of meaning versus something else, like function. A program that requests and retrieves data. Is that meaning? It makes requests, the requests are used for various outputs. Are these requests actually "meaning-ful?" or are they simply behavior behaving. Who determines "what" the behavior is? At some point, the terminus ends with someone with a mental state that needs to be in the equation.

There will be those who disagree and think that programs running functions and creating outputs that are then checked and verified by other programs are providing meaning. But now I think meaning is lost altogether, and we are talking about a different phenomenon. We are talking function, error checking, or what not.

That is Wittgenstein's position! It has been quoted several times including by those who argue as if they disagree with him on this. — Fooloso4

He said the box can be empty no? Potentially all those boxes can be empty…leaving just use.

But surely there cannot really be a notion of shared meaning based on someones personal pain independently of observable pain-related behaviors. infact it is conditionally independent. the exact nature of the pain is virtually redundant compared to the functional implications. — Apustimelogist

Shared meaning doesn't need to be based on personal pain, but that a person is "in the beetle-box" understanding "something" about the word pain, needs to be there for at least one member of the language community. Otherwise it's not meaning but function all the way down. Use is not meaning simpliciter

"Meaning" is just how the word is used in terms of the context in which we say the word or think it. Nothing more is necessary. — Apustimelogist

But my claim here is "think" has to be part of it, otherwise "meaning" loses its meaning, and it is simply a "function" (like in a program). Imagine an unthinking ChatGPT that uses words to retrieve the proper answers to various requests. These are functions of algorithms as no internal (mental) thinking is involved in the understanding of the word.

You are overlooking this: "After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into
such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. ...my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination.——And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation." PI, Preface (emphasis added)

It is the motivation to "force" philosophy into a "whole"; a generalized, abstract, single answer, which are the pictures that Wittgenstein is investigating, through which he realizes our fear of skepticism, the desire for a standard of perfect knowledge, which is the revelation/revolution the Investigations is trying to bring about. — Antony Nickles

Yes yes, I acknowledged that here, but somewhat more snarkily (I see you ignored to quote):

You may think that's cute and clever and a hipster way of "demonstrating his point".. Maybe even saying the error in understanding of his point mimics the error in our greater understanding (and hence our responsibility to really "get" each other), but it just comes off as pedantic, pretentious, and annoying. — schopenhauer1

If indeed everything is conflated to ordinary language and "Forms of Life", surely, to be a pedantic question-asker without providing any exposition would be abusive to the community of sympathetic listeners. You are always going to convince me this is the only way, and I am always going to say to you that you deem it more clever and necessary than it is.

which ordinary criteria Wittgenstein is claiming are just as relevant for doing philosophy, investigating its issues. — Antony Nickles

How is it he is advocating for anything other than our inability to be accurate, or our ability to possibly be in error of what others are saying? It's more a "negative" (in the what is flawed) than positive (how to fix). I've heard of Ordinary Language Philosophy, but I believe that came after...

I'll add @Antony Nickles to this one:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/840860

But Wittgenstein is going further here. What sense can we make in saying that an individual is “judging” something in internal mental space. This, in principle, cannot be learned from the collective wisdom of a community. There is no criteria to teach someone how to do this. So why even use this terms like “judging” or “using criteria” to try to express anything at all for this private activity.

Imagine I produce a bunch of what appears to you as random symbols. And I proceed to tell you that this is a language. If you ask, “how do you use these symbols”, and I reply, “I cannot tell you how to use them, but rest assure I know how to use them in similar ways as how you use your language, and thus it is a language.” I believe you can rightfully say that you have no idea what I am trying say or express. This also goes for these claims of judging private activities within the mind. — Richard B

No I am not saying we judge others' private activities, but that "use" needs an internal mental component for there to be meaning at all. I don't have to know how you judge. In fact, I don't have to know you are a real person and not a robot. If everyone were robots (except me), and only I had an internal "mental" properties, than it would be solely me, and no one else that is keeping meaning alive in the world. However, if we lived in a universe where everything was behavior, and there was no mental events at all, then whatever is going on is not meaning.

Now you can Witt me to death, by saying "Aha! But it's precisely our inability to make such "certain" statements that he is showing is impossible". Then I would say that if this is not the case, then "use" itself is also lost, as you need "something" for which is "using". Otherwise, you are not just playing language-games, but word-games with the word "use". Rather, "use" becomes functions in a program, and not a meaning. I am sure that we are talking about meaning and not functions.

So it's the idea that knowledge of the world is possible, and this knowledge is not automatically contaminated, distorted, or even conditioned by the human subject. This draws near to classical realism. — Leontiskos

Thank you for the clarification. It makes sense to me. If Kant represented the Copernican revolution to make everything limited to "for-the-human" (whether that be in the form of cognitive faculties or language use or existential pre-conditions), then Speculative Realism is a "counter revolution" arguing that "the great outdoors" (the external world) can be intelligibly explained.

Not to say we do not sometimes chose what we say, but senses (uses) exist outside and prior to us — Antony Nickles

Sure, but this language game (the uses) learned from a community is not some Platonic "thing" but is rather the various instantiations of understanding in each individual (internally). Thus the beetle-box actually seems at odds with this, as if internal understanding doesn't count here. It is directly involved, and has to be. I may never know the beetle in someone else's box, but I better have a notion of some sort of beetle in a box. If that notion itself is missing, then there is no meaning had, even though, technically "use" can be still had in terms of how the word is being thrown around in the community of language users and acted upon. ChatGPT can act like a language user, and use the terms or misuse the terms, but no meaning is had for ChatGPT, only the person who has an internal sense using ChatGPT.

The past criteria of judgement upon whether a word is correctly used (even if it is the individually learned collective wisdom of a community), and the judging itself, is had within a person's internal mental space.

So what Wittgenstein uncovers is not an “error” (and he is showing us what he claims is evidence, not conclusions). His insight is that the fear of the uncertainty of being wrong, being immoral (“evil” Nietszche calls it), of the future, of others, is actually a primal fear created by the human condition of our separation (thus our basic responsibility to bridge it), and that the desire to overcome that fear (and attempt to remove our responsibility) is the motivation for intellectualizing our situation as a “problem” that can be “solved”. — Antony Nickles

That may be what he is "saying" but he rarely "says it" because he's busy trying to ask question after question. You may think that's cute and clever and a hipster way of "demonstrating his point".. Maybe even saying the error in understanding of his point mimics the error in our greater understanding (and hence our responsibility to really "get" each other), but it just comes off as pedantic, pretentious, and annoying. He admitted that he tried to make it a more expositional piece but failed, so perhaps you are reading into his method a wee-bit too much, as Witt has to be a hero apparently, not just someone who couldn't figure out how to explain it. But assuming all of this was a clever style-choice, question after question after question with little to no punchline, this itself is unsympathetic to the reader, and lacks empathy. If someone sat next to me in a diner and explained their theory to me by way of "demonstration" which meant asking question after question without a punchline, I would feel like punching him in the nose and calling him out for trolling me.

At best it would be a parody of Socrates, in which I would be okay with that. At worst he really was trying to "convey" something, in which case- punch on the nose :wink: .

Pain is used by philosophy as the “best case” of our knowledge of the other (because it’s hard for me to ignore, it’s constant, etc.). By “knowledge” here we are talking about a certain kind of “philosophical” knowledge, like an equating. Now, because there is error in the world, some philosophy (Hume for example) creates a thing between us and the world (appearances, your experience, your impressions, your sensations, etc.) which the philosopher then requires to have matched up exactly with the world, or for you and I to have an identical one or I can’t be said to “know” you (You might be an automaton! Or a zombie—which I also discussed with RussellA here).

It’s an assumption we are not zombies and that pain is roughly negative in similar ways.
— schopenhauer1

When has philosophy ever relied on common sense?—“assumed” anything? Plus, if we don’t investigate “knowledge” or “justice”, etc. we would never uncover all the things we have learned about the world (the assumptions, implications, criteria for judgment) but never drew out of ourselves (Wittgenstein and Socrates both say we all hold the knowledge of how our everyday world works in each one of us—Wittgenstein, because of our growing up together, by osmosis into our unconscious as it were. Hey, it’s a better metaphor than Socrates’.) — Antony Nickles

But my point is that most philosophers never asked for certainty of things like "pain". This is a false assumption, and thus becomes a strawman that Witt gets to heroically knock down. I am calling it out as a wrong assumption rather than a legitimate characterization. And again, always back to this, but the only contender for his interlocutor is his own Tractatus and early anal-ytics who focused on sense and reference. So yeah, his theories work best as an antidote to those philosophers.

If someone like Hume or a Locke had a theory on sensations or whatnot, those are theories and theories are people's best attempt at answering questions, leading to perhaps more questions or useful for constructing various ideas and worldviews. More sharing of in-sights. So much straw.

But it can only do so because a human, who did know the meanings of those words, had programmed it in the first place. — RussellA

This is the problem with computational understanding of consciousness. Process without mental is not conscious though intelligent. A computers monitor and keyboard is an output and an input bit it is not the eyes and ears of a computer or anything. The computation in the circuitry is not actually thinking. It’s all in relation to someone who does- someone with mental states.

The human needs to be there or it is nothing.

my point, or @RussellA rather, is that Witts premise about “use” cannot be solely what picks out meaning. You mentioned “state changes” implying some functionalism whereby mental can be there but it’s about change of state, maybe anticipation of next use or something. But whatever you want to call it, that is an internal mental phenomenon that has to take place. Not only that, there has to be a sort of internal “understanding” in order to use the word. As the zombie case demonstrates, use alone, without some internal understanding, is not “meaning”. In other words, meaning has to “mean something” to a subject. It’s not just use in abstraction, but someone’s idea of use having a significance to the person.

Edit: this indicates to me that Witts premise is either that meaning is never really known (meaning skeptic) and has to leave it there or meaning is use, in which case use alone would be wrong as meaning has to have some sort of internal component. If he is saying that, then it is unclear but p43 should then read something like “intersubjective ideas of use within a language communuty”.

Here is the second video:



My own commentary forthcoming...

I think this kind of response is a robust challenge to ontology at this very basic level, though not an unanswerable one. But for our purposes here, if Harman is indeed claiming to have an answer to the question “What is an object?” and if it’s pretty much along the lines the videographer has given, I’d be curious to know what you all think Harman takes himself to be doing. What kind of question is he answering? How might he reply to the charge, “This is purely verbal”? — J

Yeah, it is interesting he can prove anything besides his best hunch. I will put up the next video to see if he goes anywhere with it. So far, his idea is the rejection of the four things mentioned, and that objects should not be undermined to their constituents or overmined to their causal properties.

On the other hand, of course plate tectonics is a theory that seeks to explain phenomena observed by humans; yet that seems to be a trivial factoid in regard to all the sciences bar, perhaps, quantum mechanics. — Janus

Except Harman isn't just calling for scientific naturalism (or scientism), because science is human-centered (it relies on human experience). He is calling for the idea of rejecting these purportedly fundamental parts of science (whilst still being a realist about objects in the world outside of humans):

Physicalism- everything must be physical
Smallism- everything must exist must be basic/simple
Anti-fictionalism- everything must be real
Literalism- everything must be stated accurately.

Object is:
-anything that can't be reduced downwards or upwards
-undermining (no)
-overmining (no)
Leads to flat-ontology. — schopenhauer1

But besides this, an idealist can view science the same way as a realist, they would still say that it is "undefined" what is outside human epistemological faculties and experience.

You (and the skeptic) want to be different so that you can be singular, have something unique (but it may be the case that you are not, as I said). But the definition of a self does not work the way you picture it. We all know you: you are stubborn as hell, a creative thinker (to the point of slippery), etc. — Antony Nickles

See, I'm not interpreting RusselA that way. At least, how I see how he is formulating it, he poses a problem for "use" if it is just "use" without any internal mental states accompanying it. Hence I mentioned zombies and those who really don't understand internally a meaning, yet still "use" the word correctly (aping as Witt might say). I don't see "meaning" and "use" tied exclusively. It has to be use, but intersubjectively understood use. And the intersubjectivity part, requires the mental aspect, exactly which supposedly doesn't matter in the beetle-box. But it does, sir.

Except the bit where it doesn't matter in the slightest what the builder and the assistant have "in their heads" so long as the assistant brings the slab to the builder.

That you made the same mistake in another thread is not a good thing. — Banno

No I get Witt's claim (use), but does this really satisfy you that someone "understands the meaning of a word" based on the scenario if all were zombies or had no internal "understanding/sense/point of view" of the word's meaning?

If ChatGPT got someone a slab, ChatGPT is dealing in "meaning", for example?

How strange a claim.