Reading the PI is not a collective activity, discussing it is. Its the nature and conduct of the second part I was enquiring about, not the first.

Sorry, I know I'm new here and maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the sort of thing this forum is (if so, I apologise profoundly) but I really don't understand what you're aiming at here. You (and Sam) seem to be going through the statements one at a time writing what you reckon they mean and then dismissing any disagreement with your interpretation as being a result of the interlocutor's own (hopefully temporary) ignorance, and all will become clear later on.

Am I missing something major here, which those who've been here longer are aware of? Is it considered rude of us not to wait until you've finished your lecture before commenting? If this is supposed to be a thread where one or two people who've read the book guide a larger number who haven't through their own personal interpretation then I'm absolutely fine with that, I just want to understand how the thread works rather than waste my time (and annoying everybody) by getting involved in a way that is not generally acceptable.

It will spit out some completely anomolous response from time to time - like, ‘seasonal factors only accounted for -608,782,786.12% of variation in sales for this product line’ which I saw the other day - without the least sense that there’s anything amiss. — Wayfarer

Really, and you've never heard a football manager claim their players gave "110 percent" with exactly the same utter failure to recognise anything amiss?

A good interpretation of the text involves understanding Wittgenstein from the Notebooks (around 1914), which is his early thinking on meaning, all the way through to On Certainty. — Sam26

Yet you've still failed to define what 'good' actually is in this context. How can you make assertions about what is 'good' and what is 'bad' without being able to define them? What is an interpretation trying to achieve, such that any could be good at it, and why would you rate that objective over any other?

Obviously there are going to be different interpretations, but that doesn't mean we can't get the gist of his thinking. — Sam26

I presume from your hints thus far that you've read a fairly wide selection of interpretations of the PI. I can't really see how, after having done so you could reach any conclusion other than that we absolutely cannot agree on the gist of his thinking. I'm struggling to see a single point of non-trivial agreement between, say Hacker at one end and Horwich at the other, or Baker in a completely different direction. If you're seeing some significant overlap I'm missing I'd be interested to hear it.

That's just the way it is. I'm not going to pretend that I'm good at basketball when I'm not, and if I do pretend, it will be obvious to those who know how to play, that I'm don't know what I'm doing. — Sam26

I'm afraid this is the sort of onanistic nonsense that really annoys me and I think spoils a perfectly interesting discussion such as this might otherwise be. It is obvious, to the uninformed observer, who is good at basketball because the object of the game is obviously to get the ball in the basket more often than your opponents. The player who achieves that (or helps his team to) is clearly good at basketball. No such equivalent exists for philosophy and trying to pretend that it does using some clandestine measure which cannot ever be actually tested is dishonest.

Not at all. If Wittgenstein had intended, in these first sections, to simply lay out the problems, and if those problems were simply the linguistic ones that have been listed thus far, then what on earth would have prevented him from simply listing then clearly enough to remove the ambiguity. He's writing a work of philosophy, not a bizarre combination of developmental psychology textbook and crossword puzzle. First year child development students are not handed PI as their main textbook on language acquisition and told that once they've studied Wittgenstein's entire biography they should be able to decipher enough clues to finally pass their exam. If facts about language acquisition and use are what you're all interested in I can point you in the direction of a dozen child psychology textbooks which are much more clearly written, widely agreed on and well-supported. People have literally travelled the world looking at every language they can find, they've spent lifetimes collating all the data, testing theories refining them in the light of experiments, why on earth would you shun this entire collection of well-researched data to decode the reckonings of an early twentieth century philosopher with no background in language.

If, however, you want to follow through the absolutely fascinating insights Wittgenstein has on the nature of enquiry, the pitfalls of certainty and the fragility of the conclusions drawn therefrom, then this is the book for you.

I'm not sure I can agree with your analysis here. I understand entirely how the bigger question of Wittgenstein's intention cannot be deduced from the text until at least after §89, but I don't think there is much merit in the exegetical work prior to that.

The early points about the role of ostension, for example, seem to hinge entirely on an assumption that Wittgenstein was solely attempting to knock down some kind of straw man version of Augustine's argument which later sections make it clear (to me anyway) that he was not.

Unless this group is happy to agree on a particular interpretation of Wittgenstein's intent before beginning, then any exegesis of earlier statements without reference to both later ones, and a purpose to the critique/investigation in the first place are just going to get mired in pointless debate.

At the moment it seems to be a list of "things I reckon about Wittgenstein". We might as well discuss whether we like the font.

The problem with this approach is that you seem to be using reason to determine that those who take the application of reason for granted have a blind faith. Maybe they don't have a blind faith because maybe your application of human reason to this problem was inappropriate. It is only your blind faith which makes it seem so.

Yeah, I mean I'm quite happy with 100% determinism myself, but if you're looking for an alternative which also provides an explanation of why some people do seem to invest very little in most decisions, then it seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to think.

My approach is to try and firstly show that determinism exists but is not absolute — Jamesk

It's the "that" and "is" I'm having trouble with. Replace them both with "could be" and you'll have a fine theory, but trying to prove that they actually are is a lost cause.

think Conant and Diamond are incorrect in the way they interpret parts of Wittgenstein — Sam26

What would measure a 'correct' interpretation? One which reflects what Wittgenstein actually meant? (how could we possibly know, and why would that matter?). One which reflects what Wittgenstein should have meant presuming his intention was to representent the way things actually are? One which is consistent with other things Wittgenstein said? (why would we presume to know what he meant by these further statements if the previous ones are ambiguous?). I just don't understand your use of the term 'incorrect' in this context and it seems to be heavily colouring the approach here (the use of the term, not the statement in which it is contained)

I guess it's possible some here might come to see what is going on in the PI, although I'm not too hopeful. — Banno

Same question. What measure are you proposing could be used to distinguish what 'is' going on in the PI from what some people simply 'think' is going on?

I think what you're doing here - slowly refining your views as L.W. forces them out of you - "It's experience...wait no, that's too broad, it's ways of seeing and acting, what no..." is what the book is aiming to get us to do as readers. — John Doe

Couldn't agree more.

I don't mean to derail the reading group, but having read the thread so far, I'd really like to know what people think Wittgenstein was trying to do by writing PI. It seems that a lot of posters are drawing conclusions as if they knew without first establishing why they've reached that conclusion.

The analysis would be very different if a person were to approach the text assuming it to be a statement of 'the way things are' to if a person were to approach it as a normative statement of 'you should look at things this way (even though other ways are perfectly possible)'. In the former case, one can critique the text by arguing 'no, things are not that way, here's an example', but in the other, one would critique the text by saying 'looking at things this (other) way has the following use/value'.

A third way might be to simply presume that Wittgenstein must be coherent/useful to any intelligent reader at all points and so the exercise is to find that particular meaning in each sentence which is coherent to oneself, given all the other sentences, but this removes entirely the possibility of Wittgenstein simply not being coherent/useful at one point.

What seems to be happening on this thread is people taking one of the positions are arguing with people taking another as if they could actually resolve such differences.

I think any exercise such as this must first be explicit about its purpose.

Yeah, it depends on your objective for coming up with a theory. Obviously with science we want to use our theories to make predictions, and (under an assumption that we can infer the future from the past) we can select the ones which have performed best.

Philosophy is different though, in that we're using our theories post hoc, they're just there to comfort us about things which are the case, but can be conceived of on a number of different, equally valid, ways. We choose the way we find most comforting.

Yes, I see where you're going. The fact that we can demonstrate it is possible to experience a choice which is out of character, but nonetheless deterministic does not in of itself imply that all such choices are deterministic, your theory certainly seems to be a possible one. The point I'm unsure on is that if at least one 'out-of-character' choice can be deterministic, then we have no phenomenon to explain. Your theory might be sound, but not necessary?

Any hold it has over us is voluntary, we chose to sleepwalk through life because we are fundamentally lazy. — Jamesk

Yes, so if we 'choose' to sleepwalk through life, we must also 'choose' to stop sleepwalking, yes?

But if we must 'choose' to stop sleepwalking, we must make that choice **whilst sleepwalking**. So that choice must be determined, it cannot be our free choice (by your definition) because we have not yet woken up sufficiently to make it.

Yet, if a sleepwalking, determined state can result in our making a choice which is uncharacteristic (the choice to "wake up") then you are left with no phenomenon to explain, we have just established that it is perfectly possible for a fully determined state to result in uncharacteristic decisions.

I may well be missing something, but to me, the answer seems simple. Our decisions are mostly made by our brain's internal workings, occasionally some step in that process refers the decision to the conscious, analytical part because the correct course of action is no longer obvious. At this point 'we' (the part of our brains which is aware of a unified set of thoughts) decide what to do.

So, personal crisis is a good example. The subconcious brain (on autopilot) does not seem to be getting the results from the automatic decision making it is expecting, it refers the decision about whether to continue in autopilot up to the conscious analytical part. We experience this as a crisis of confidence, but it's really just the unconscious reporting that it's decision-making algorithm is not working for some reason.

I think I understand the gist of what you're saying, but I'm talking about the first decision. In your terminology, the decision whether to "wake up" or not. What motivates that decision? You must consciously decide "I am no longer going to sleep-walk through this bit of my life, but rather I'm going to really make decisions using my intellect". So how does one make this first decision, the decision to really think about one's decisions?

Surely, if this first decision is taken whilst sleep-walking, then all following decisions are simply the consequence of this one and so entirely in character. If, alternatively, the decision to "wake up" is the result of an out of character analysis, then one already has "woken up" (because one is now making decisions analytically) in which case we have to ask, what woke us up?

sometimes they do things that we say are out of character and I think that this is actually an example of freewill. — Jamesk

You seem to be suggesting that there are two options for acting; "in character" and "out of character". If so, then the first decision which needs to be made is whether one is going to act "in character" or "out of character" in any given scenario. You paint "in character" actions as if they were automatic and "out of character" actions as if they were thought through. So surely, when faced with a choice, the first decision must be whether to deal with this choice by automatic action (call it intuition, maybe) or by consideration. But then this itself becomes a choice, and the problem recurs. How are you going to choose how to choose, intuition or consideration. This is then another choice...

The problem with your characterisation is that you don't seem to be able to take the first step without intuition, and as soon as intuition has got involved it is no longer free will.