So, first of all, what do you mean exactly by balance in one’s soul ? — Hello Human

I cannot tell you exactly what it means, but the politics of the soul as discussed in Plato's Republic is a good place to start. The soul is a competition of desires. Different souls are ruled by different desires. The just soul is one in which the various desires are brought into a hierarchical order, from low - bodily desires, to high - the desire for the just, beautiful, and good.

That's what politicians are. Appearance... — javi2541997

As I said, you mistake appearance for statecraft.

Does this include alcohol?
— Fooloso4

Is that a rethorical question? If not, alcohol is also considered a drug yes. — Seeker

There is nothing in the video that is out of line with the behavior of people at an alcohol fueled party. She said she had been drinking. It that the end of it because it was alcohol, even though the outcome can be destabilizing? Or is it that drinking should be prohibited for those in public office? Or is it that drinking is okay as long as dancing the minuet?

It is not that 'crazy' when going through the variable 'outcomes' concerning various consumers of drugs ... Drugs-usage in general is known to destabilize people ... — Seeker

Does this include alcohol?

But Benkei started this OP to debate about this specific behaviour not her professional agenda... — javi2541997

But you said:

we expect from a statesman to be, at least, professional. — javi2541997

If you are to judge her professionalism you should do so with regard to her actions in her professional capacity.

We should expect more straightness from a PM. — javi2541997

What we should expect is statesmanship, the ability to steer the ship of state. It seems more than a bit quaint to hold to a standard of professionalism that excludes dancing at a time where true statesmanship is so rare. You mistake the illusion of a staid public image for statecraft. Appearance over substance.

we expect from a statesman to be, at least, professional. Right? — javi2541997

Then why not discuss what she has done professionally rather than clutching your pearls because she was videoed dancing at a private party?

I know who to ask, but will Fooloso4 respond? — Amity

You came to the right place, for I too am an expert on love.

The article compares Socrates' claim in the Symposium with his claim in the Apology, but it is not only the seemingly contradictory claims but the occasions during which he made them that should be considered. Being on trial in a court of law and a contest of speeches about eros are very different occasions requiring different ways of speaking.

This contest mirrors that of the contest between philosophy and poetry. It is the poets who claim to be experts on love. For Socrates to claim to be an expert in the presence of highly regarded poets was both surprising and provocative. In addition, Socrates was not, as it is commonly understood, an erotic man.

But how different are Socrates' claims in the Apology and Symposium? As Socrates says in the Symposium, eros is the desire for what one does not possess. Philosophy is erotic in that it is the desire for wisdom. It is Socrates' lack of knowledge, as professed in the Apology, that is the basis of his knowledge of eros, the desire to know.

Knowledge of ignorance is not simply recognizing one does not know. Socrates' "human wisdom" is a matter of the examined life, of how best to live in the absence of knowledge of what is best. The "art of love", ta erôtika, is the art of living. Since we all desire what is good, the art of living cannot simply be the philosophical life.

In the Phaedo Socrates says that philosophy is the practice of death and dying, the separation of body and soul. The joke here being that the only good philosopher is a dead philosopher. More serious is the question of the relationship between life and death, body and soul. I have discussed this here

We are not souls temporarily attached to bodies. We are ensouled bodies. One thing not two. Desire does not cut along the distinction between body and soul. Since we know nothing of death, preparation for death turns from unanswerable questions of death back to life, to how we live, here and now.

What does that even mean?
To converse elenctically...especially on a philosophy forum? — Amity

In the cited article Reeve defines it as "how to ask and answer questions". We may ask, in turn, what is the goal and what is the result of such inquiry? Socrates used it to demonstrate that one does not know what he assumed to know. This may lead to quite different results - anger, shame, resentment, or, as Socrates hoped, the desire to know, to a dissatisfaction with opinions. But this, in turn, can lead to a dissatisfaction with philosophy itself, to misologic, when it fails to provide the answers expected of it.

Philosophy is often treated as the art of argumentation - making arguments that attempt to be least vulnerable to attack, while attacking opposing positions. The limits of argument, however, are not the limits of philosophy. It is here that the "ancient quarrel' between philosophy and poetry is reconfigured. This is why the dialogues often turn from logos to mythos. The promise of dialectic in the Republic, the use of hypothesis to become free of hypothesis is itself hypothetical. The image of transcendence, from opinion to the sight of the Forms, is just that, an image. The mythic philosopher of the Republic who possesses knowledge is no longer a philosopher, that is, one who desires to know. The philosopher, like the poet, is an image maker.

Indeed. It's puzzling how a child that can barely string two or three words together knew when she heard the claim that it was not true, and then went on to demonstrate that much, and yet highly educated people seem to have talked themselves right out of that.

I think that that qualifies for Witt's notion of bewitchment. The story may be able to tell us something about hinge propositions??? — creativesoul

This apparently ruffled some feathers when I said it, way back when, eight days ago:

The dogma of the linguistic keeps some in their slumber. — Fooloso4

The "space of reasons" can be a philosophical prison, a cave. The notion of norms requires desedimentation. The Greek term 'nomos' means law and custom or convention, as well as song. In the absence of truth and knowledge there is nomos, likely songs or stories.

In the Timaeus Plato introduces a different notion of space, the Chora, with its own likely story. It is the work of the imagination, philosophical poesis. Something often disparaged by reason, but to the detriment of philosophy. It fails to recognize its own imaginative assumptions regarding what reason can do.


For a more detailed discussion of the Chora: Shaken to the Chora.

From that account:

Timaeus begins with a likely account of the beginning, which is to say, not at the beginning, but with where he is able to begin. The inability to identify the true father, the origin, the beginning, leads to bastard reasoning. Our reasoning is on the basis of likeness in the double sense of sensible things being a likeness without ever having what belongs to that which it is a likeness of (52c) and, a likeness in the sense of being likely or like what it is without being what it is that it is like. And, of course, without access to the original we cannot say just how likely the story is to be true.

Forms and Chora are an indeterminate dyad. Together they order all that comes to be through intellect and necessity, that is, according to paradigm and chance, order and disorder, determinacy and indeterminacy.

Will she become a Democrat? — Tate

I don't think so. I think she will try to return the Republican Party to what she thought it represented pre-Trumpism.

I just don't see how the Republican party can endure as it is. — Tate

Just about everyone who is not with Trump has left. The party may endure but its principles clearly have not.

I'm not sure that's going to happen. Do you think it will? — Tate

I don't know. Prior to Trump I would not have thought that things could be as they are. Right now it seems that the differences that divide us are greater than anything that might unite us. But, of course, being united is not necessarily in itself something good.

If there are no independent facts of the world to fix our concepts to, them concepts liken pragmatic relevance, consistency, anticipatory compatibility and coherence replace true and false belief as expressions of how we cope with our world. This is self-creation rather than a fitting of language with fact. — Joshs

Wittgenstein on the relation between facts and concepts:

From PI II (PPF)

366. I am not saying: if such-and-such facts of nature were different, people would have different concepts (in the sense of a hypothesis). Rather: if anyone believes that certain concepts are absolutely the correct ones, and that having different ones would mean not realizing something that we realize - then let him imagine certain very general facts of nature to be different from what we are used to, and the formation of concepts different from the usual ones will become intelligible to him.

From Zettel :

(352) Do I want to say, then, that certain facts are favorable to the formation of certain concepts; or again unfavorable? And does experience teach us this? It is a fact of experience that human beings alter their concepts, exchange them for others when they learn new facts; when in this way what was formerly important to them becomes unimportant, and vice versa. (It is discovered e.g. that what formerly counted as a difference in kind, is really only a difference in degree.

From On Certainty:

558. We say we know that water boils and does not freeze under such-and-such circumstances. Is it conceivable that we are wrong? Wouldn't a mistake topple all judgment with it? More: what could stand if that were to fall? Might someone discover something that made us say "It was a mistake"?
Whatever may happen in the future, however water may behave in the future, - we know that up to now it has behaved thus in innumerable instances.
This fact is fused into the foundations of our language-game.

What does it mean that Liz Cheney lost? Anything?This is something I've been wondering about. — Tate

For Cheney it means continuing her efforts to keep him out of office. If she is to help accomplish this it will not be with the support of the Trump Party. From an outsider's perspective, it does not look like what was once the Republican Party is ready to separate itself from Trump. Her sights are set on the national level rather than whatever is going on in Wyoming. She will not follow the current trend of working within the party by working against the Democrats. This is likely to be seen in a favorable light by moderates and Independents.

I think she will have a strong public presence, but she may be more effective speaking out seeking or holding public office. Much depends on the results of the current investigations into Trump and his company. Like the proverbial rats abandoning ship, a significant number of Republicans may come to see him as a liability. Taking the long view, Cheney might see the current situation as a temporary anomaly, and herself in the right position to regain political power in one form or another as things shift back to "normal".

...what everyone seeks is knowledge of the good. — Hello Human

But not everyone seeks knowledge of the good. They simply assume that what they seek, what they desire, is good. If, however, they were to seek the good rather than whatever it is they desire, then they would seek knowledge of the good. Or to put it differently, their desire would be to know the good.

Knowledge of the good is virtue, which is wisdom. — Hello Human

Yes, but knowledge is not a passive possession. It is the active state of the virtuous person who is wise.

And what is knowledge’s place in this ? — Hello Human

Since the good is what we aim for, it is knowledge of the good. This may be possible for one who has achieved human excellence, but for the rest of us we rely on deliberation about what seems best.

Yes, we shouldn’t be indifferent to them, but I think that doesn’t mean that they can be good or bad, it means that we have to consider them when making a decision, but what is good or bad, in the end, is the action we take. — Hello Human

Our actions may have unintended consequences. We may think doing this or that is good, but if the result is harm and suffering, then is the action good?

So if I understand well, you think that to be wise is to have realized human excellence, and that to be wise is to have achieved some equilibrium of the soul ? — Hello Human

Rather than something achieved,the idea of human excellence is something to aspire to, like the just city/soul in the Republic, an image in speech. And, as with the discussion in the Republic, it depends not simply on an equilibrium, but the right balance of the parts, each seeking its own desire.

You misunderstand his quote. — Benkei

I don't think so. This is an example of "Trumpspeak". He said it in such a way as provide plausible deniability, but we know how his supporters are reacting. As the article noted: "Even Trump's allies on Fox News have urged him to tamp down the "violent rhetoric" amid his verbal assault on the FBI."

I agree, however, that he would not think an insurrection terrible, but he is well aware that those who are not his followers and those who do not wish the overthrow of the government would see it as terrible or even terrorism.

From the salon article cited by Michael:

"Whatever we can do to help — because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn't, terrible things are going to happen," Trump said, adding that people "are not going to stand for another scam."

Rather than bring the temperature down, Trump turns it up, making threats, calling the investigation a scam, and signaling his followers to not stand for it, but says nothing to condemn the threats made by his followers on the FBI and DOJ.

Well, if antirealism means not attributing a truth value to unknowns, then he is an antirealist. But he does not attribute truth value to knows either. It is the system as a whole not particulars that is true.

I am reminded of Arthur Koestler's definition of philosophy:

The systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose.

'there are plums in the ice box.' — Pie

What about the fish?

That tells me nothing about Hegel's attitude towards the truth value of "there is a teapot in orbit around Jupiter". — Banno

Hegel's concept of truth is not to be found in truth values:

From the preface to the Phenomenology:

5. The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of that truth.

6. ... truth has the element of its existence solely in concepts.

18. Furthermore, the living substance is the being that is in truth subject, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of self-positing, or, that it is the mediation of itself and its becoming-other-to-itself.

So long, and thanks for all the fish. — Pie

"Give a man a fish ..."

I think a large part of the problem is that we have different ideas of what philosophy is about. I hold to the ancient idea of philosophy as a way of life. This does not mean making, defending, and attacking arguments, although that is a part of it.

You are of course free to develop a theory in that direction, but it doesn't seem relevant to the thread. — Pie

You asked:

Does a thermostat know when it's hotter than 68 degrees ? — Pie

And prior to that you quoted Sellars claim that knowledge requires concepts.

What if someone were to ask if it is true that a self-driving car knows how to drive? Does your interest in truth makers and truth bearers help in answering this question?

I agree that:

Clearly this hinges on how we understand what it is to know.

Is it sufficient to say that it is true that a car knows how to drive itself iff a car can drive itself? Or can we dispense with this and simply say that there are cars that drive themselves? Of course for those who want to preserve a particular concept of knowledge, this leaves open the question of the truth of whether or not they know how to do what they do

To be sure, (non-human) animal cognition is worth looking into, but I hardly think it's strange for a philosopher to focus on human (linguistic) claims. — Pie

It is not a matter of it being strange but of looking at questions of knowledge, language, and thinking by defining them in terms of what humans do. It is as if we were to claim that only humans can walk because what we do is what walking is and this is not what other animals do.

I would argue that a self-driving car knows how to drive. It is evident from the fact that it can drive. In some ways it already drives better than a human. Further, to drive requires an awareness of the surroundings, and so, it has awareness. I think it is a mistake to think that we have fixed concepts of such things as knowledge and awareness and if what a self-driving car does does not not match these concepts then it cannot have knowledge or awareness.

Do I want to say, then, that certain facts are favorable to the formation of certain concepts; or again unfavorable? And does experience teach us this? It is a fact of experience that human beings alter their concepts, exchange them for others when they learn new facts; when in this way what was formerly important to them becomes unimportant, and vice versa. (It is discovered e.g. that what formerly counted as a difference in kind, is really only a difference in degree. [Wittgenstein, Zettel, 352]

We all know that there's stuff in the world that's not language. — Pie

Your responses seem to indicate otherwise, but I am not going to rehash this. Time for me to move on.

For all its cosmopolitanism it is more than a bit provincial.
— Fooloso4

Oh dear. — Pie

Hegel's historical and geographical provinciality likewise seems remarkable, if we consider that he was the great exponent of a universal "Absolute Spirit." In the Philosophy of History, Hegel not only "writes off China as being outside history but refuses to give any serious attention to Russia or the other Slavic countries because they contributed nothing important to (European) history. And even Hegel's empathy with western European nations was severely limited, as is shown by his disagreement with Kant about the possibility of anything like a league of nations (PR, §333, Zusatz).

Hegel, like Kant, seemed to think of Negroes as a definitely inferior race. He theorised that although they were stronger and more educable than American Indians (PH, 109), Negroes represented the inharmonious state of "natural man," before humans' attainment of consciousness of God and their own individuality (PH, 123); and that, in general, white skin was the most perfect harbinger of both physical health and conscious receptivity!" In line with these sentiments, he of course eliminated the whole continent of Africa from explicit historical consideration, except insofar as certain Africans were influenced by European Mediterranean culture. He offered a left-handed compliment to "the Negroes," in that he ascribed natural talent to them, whereas the American Indians, he opined, had no such natural endowments (PH, 82). [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/kainz7.htm]

Thank you, Polonius ! — Pie

Why the insult?

“Look, your grace,” responded Sancho, “what you see over there aren’t giants—they’re windmills; and what seems to be arms are the sails that rotate the millstone when they’re turned by the wind.”

I assume you miss the irony. You appeal to linguistic practices and call it reality.

Does a thermostat know when it's hotter than 68 degrees ? — Pie

An important question for AI, but I would say that the ability of an animal to distinguish between two colors is a form of knowledge, even though it may be excluded by a favored theory of knowledge.

I didn't peg you for a panpsychist, but ? — Pie

but no.

I was half-joking, trying to get you to see that your theory includes the 'ineffable' implicitly. — Pie

There is nothing ineffable about a world that is not limited by what we say, or, for that matter, by what we see.

The issue is whether a theory including truthmakers, built on the ocular metaphor of representation, is ultimately more trouble than it's worth. — Pie

I am not talking about a theory. Of course a theory is linguistic!

We reason with/in sentences. — Pie

This is in many cases true, but reasoning about spatial relations, for example, need not be linguistic. I can figure out how to pack the car with too much stuff or arrange the furniture without language.

In short, knowledge requires concepts ... — link

You have shifted from being in the world to knowledge. While knowledge is, for human beings, a part of being in the world, that is not the whole of it.

To know something as simple as that the patch is red requires an ability to classify that patch ... — link

This is backwards. I must be able to see that the patch is red in order to classify it as red. Other animals can see and respond to colors without naming or classifying them. Do they "know" it is red or green? Their survival may depend on seeing something as this rather than that color.

... Hegel... — Pie

You may buy into Hegel's metaphysics, with everything wrapped in a nice teleological bundle with not only [added; European] man but Hegel himself playing a key role in the unfolding of reality, but I don't. For all its cosmopolitanism it is more than a bit provincial.

↪Fooloso4 While I appreciate your efforts, I'm too far removed from Hegel to see the relevance of your explication. You've lost me. — Banno

Earlier you said:

But idealism is tied to antirealism, — Banno

Hegel's idealism is not antirealism. Hegel's absolute idealism holds that the real is the ideal and the ideal is the real. All differences and distinctions are understood within the unity of the whole of Absolute Spirit, which plays out dialectically in time as history. This includes the inorganic as well as the organic, thinking and being, realism and idealism.

This should be quite obvious to anyone not seduced by philosophy.
— Fooloso4
Dude. Seriously ? Windmills — Pie

Do you not have a body?

.. what I talk about and what is are not the same.
— Fooloso4

Tell me what is then.

In response to the claim that there is more to reality than what we talk about, you ask for more talk, for me to tell you what is. Have you seen the images of the Webb telescope? Seeing into the past is something we can talk about, but what is seen are not things that have ever been talked about. Things that existed billions of years before there was anyone to talk.

Further, our way of being in the world is not limited to the linguistic, to what we say or think or talk about or conceptualize.
— Fooloso4

Tell me more. — Pie

This should be quite obvious to anyone not seduced by philosophy.

Are we to constantly celebrate the Priority Of Feeling And Sensation or the Ineffable Priority of Real Life within otherwise dry conversations about epistemological and semantic concepts ? — Pie

I said nothing about the priority of feeling and sensation. But I will say that they are temporally prior.

Nor did I say anything about ineffability.

Like I said, good common sense, which leads nevertheless to endless confusion. We can assign an X marks the ineffable spot if you like, but that's why I call this view Kantian. — Pie

Again with the ineffable? My view is not Kantian. Let me try again:

... what I talk about and what is are not the same. — Fooloso4

What if someone 50, 100, 150 years ago said this? How much of our present reality would have been left out what was talked about? And now?

... but you talking about reality here, so that this reality you talk about is indeed linguistic ... — Pie

What I say about reality is tautologically linguistic, but what I talk about and what is are not the same. But if asked what this reality is, in distinction from what we talk about, we are still within the realm of what we talk about. And, of course, our talking about reality is part of reality.

A few scattered remarks:

The story in John is told as a matter of truth, but in truth it is historically dubious. In addition, not putting the blame on Pilate, a Roman official was a defensive move. The question of the truth plays out in different ways.

Pilates question was in response to Jesus saying:

... the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth [or, according to Young's literal translation, everyone who is of the truth] listens to me.

Jesus refused to answer Pilate's question regarding the truth of the matter, that is, whether Jesus is the King of the Jews. Pilate now asks: "what is truth?". He did not walk away but went out to the Jews and said he found no fault in Jesus (18:38). He was not going to pick sides in what he regarded as a dispute between the Jews. Let them decide, but he found no fault, which is not the same as either confirming or denying the claim that Jesus was the King of the Jews. He was not of the people and so not on one side or the other of what he regarded as dispute among this people.

One other point: Simon Peter, who in Matthew is called the rock on which the church is built, in John's gospel lies about his relation to Jesus. The truth and its authoritative representative, is a matter of dispute even within the gospels.

I think the point is that reality, the one we (can) talk about, is 'already' linguistic — Pie

It is not that reality is linguistic, but that we are; and so it follows that the reality we talk about is linguistic. But our way of being in the world is not the way other animals are in the world or the way that rocks and galaxies are in the world. Further, our way of being in the world is not limited to the linguistic, to what we say or think or talk about or conceptualize. The dogma of the linguistic keeps some in their slumber.

is Hegel really an idealist? What is idealism, for Hegel? — Banno

From the preface to the Phenomenology, taken from an earlier discussion. The numbers refer to quotes from the text.

17: In my view … everything hangs on grasping and expressing the true not just as substance [*] but just as much as subject.

17: ... substantiality comprises within itself the universal, or, it comprises not only the immediacy of knowing but also the immediacy of being, or, immediacy for knowing.

Substance is the whole, knower and known. Substance is not in or a name for the universal. The universal is within substance. It should be noted that Hegel is not rejecting immediacy. We know the immediacy of being in that we are. The immediacy for knowing is 'der Sache selbst', the thing itself that is to be known. I intentionally translated it in this way to draw the connection with Kant.

17: However much taking God to be the one substance shocked the age in which this was expressed, still that was in part because of an instinctive awareness that in such a view self-consciousness only perishes and is not preserved.

If substance is the whole, and as such there can only be one substance, then God is in truth subject. It is not just that God was taken or regarded to be subject. It is something now understood if not yet known. And because it is not fully realized, self-consciousness perishes, but this is only half of it. It is also preserved, taken up anew.

18: Furthermore, the living substance is the being that is in truth subject, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is in truth actual only insofar as it is the movement of self-positing, or, that it is the mediation of itself and its becoming-other-to-itself.

The movement of self-positing is the movement described in paragraph 12, the movement in which the subject returns to itself from out of itself. It is a mediated process, but not, as for example with Kant, the mediation of the object given in experience by the subject's understanding, but rather the mediation of the subject with itself. This is not to exclude the object. The object is taken up in the understanding, the I thinks it. In taking up the understanding itself, the understanding is mediated, that is, becomes an object for knowledge for the subject.

18: The true is not an original unity as such, or, not an immediate unity as such. It is the coming-to-be of itself, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal and has its end for its beginning, and which is actual only through this accomplishment and its end.

* I take Hegel to be following Spinoza:

By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. (Ethics , Part One, Definitions, III)

If virtue = goodness, then wouldn’t that mean that a good act is also a virtuous act ? Or do you think that virtue is not equal to goodness ? — Hello Human

The virtuous act is good, but virtue does not equal goodness. What is good is not limited to what is virtuous.

Yes, but goodness may not lie at all in the consequences in actuality. I think goodness lies only in the action and in the virtue, so the consequences are neither good nor bad, because it seems to me that the domain of morality is human action, as it’s the only thing under our direct control. — Hello Human

The good, according to Plato and Aristotle, is what we all seek. We do not, however, always agree on what the good is. In distinction from others, the philosopher seeks the good in the sense of inquiry into the question of what the good is.

Although we cannot control the consequences of our actions, we are not indifferent to them, they matter.

Ok I see, but I don’t see how this ties into the issue of whether virtue is equal to wisdom. — Hello Human

See above:

The Greek term translated as virtue is arete. It means the excellence of a thing. Human excellence is the realization of human potential. Someone who has attained human excellence is wise. — Fooloso4

Does it matter what they thought ? — Hello Human

That depends. If we are to understand Socrates claim then it does. If we are to take the claim on its own in light of whatever it is we think virtue and wisdom are then perhaps not, unless we are open to the possibility that they may have something to teach us about these things.

I said that his use of "ethics" at PI 77 was in a manner consistent with the views he presented in the Tractatus, which you quoted in your post just after you made this comment (see above). — Luke

Yes. We are in agreement.

You appear to be making a distinction between "what can be shown" and "what can be seen or experienced". I consider these to be the same. — Luke

Again, we are in agreement. My comment was not directed against you but against how someone might read your question:

Does he show it instead of say it in the PI? — Luke

They might ask you to point to where he shows it.

Then I am unsure why you appear to be arguing against my position that ethics is not the subject of the Philosophical Investigations. — Luke

Sorry, I am not arguing against you. I was trying to work through the claim, which we both stated, that they are consistent.

Follow-up on my post above https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/727090

It might be helpful to distinguish between the idea that a) something is hidden in language or the world and b) Wittgenstein hiding something in his writing.

As is always the case, there is the problem of finding something in a text only because you put it there. One way in which we might guard against this is to see what we find in the text that would be excluded by a questionable inclusion.

It does not follow from the denial of something hidden that we can thereby see what is there. Aspect blindness, like not having a musical ear, means that something is not seen or heard even though it is there and not hidden.

If Wittgenstein's work is understood only by a few it is not because he hides something from us. It is, rather, because the reader will not understand, that things are hidden. But, of course, the words are there for anyone to see. If something is hidden, and he has given us good reason to think something is, then our failure to see it is a kind of aspect blindness.

But blindness to an aspect need not be a permanent condition.

PI 144 I wanted to put that picture before him, and his acceptance of the picture consists in his now being inclined to regard a given case differently: that is, to compare it with this sequence of pictures. I have changed his way of looking at things. (Indian mathematicians: “Look at this!”)

The parenthetical remark is explained in Zettel:

461. ... (I once read somewhere that a geometrical figure, with the words "Look at this", serves as a proof for certain Indian mathematicians. This looking too effects an alteration in one's way of seeing.)

My suggestion is that there are things that Wittgenstein does not state but that can be seen if one looks at this or that:

PI 66 To repeat: don’t think, but look!

The resolute reading seems to be trying to find something mystical and hidden "behind" or "between the lines" of Wittgenstein's words, when Wittgenstein explicitly urges us in the opposite direction in the PI; telling us that the real philosophical insights are to be found on the surface, in the mundane and obvious uses of language. His own should not be any exception. — Luke

In an early draft of the foreword to Philosophical Remarks:

The danger in a long foreword is that the spirit of a book has to be evident in the book itself and cannot be described. For if a book has been written for just a few readers that will be clear just from the fact that only a few people understand it. The book must automatically separate those who understand it from those who do not. Even the foreword is written just for those who understand the book.

Telling someone something he does not understand is pointless, even if you add that he will not be able to understand it. (That so often happens with someone you love.)

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it, unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside!

The honorable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only
by those who can open it, not by the rest. [Culture and Value 7-8]

What I was referring to was not Wittgenstein's work, but that I could not figure out what you are getting at. — Antony Nickles

Understood, but much of what I have been doing is trying to draw some of the connections in his work.

...morality is still not the subject of his philosophy in PI, nor his focus in the text. — Luke

I have not looked into the question of ethics in the PI, but suggest, in a tentative way, that although ethics is not explicitly discussed in the PI, this does not represent a break from his earlier concerns with ethics and aesthetics. It is, rather, consistent with it.

As I also mentioned earlier, the word "ethics" appears only once in the text (at 77), in a manner that is consistent with the views on ethics he expounded in the Tractatus. Does he show it instead of say it in the PI? — Luke

The "saying/showing" distinction is not limited to what can be shown as opposed to what can be said, but, rather, includes what can seen or experienced as opposed to being said. Ethics/aesthetics is experiential.

Two uses of the word "see" [PI ii,xl, PPF 111]

Consider how the cube is seen at T 5.5423 and such things as the duck-rabbit and seeing aspects.

Despite that, PPF is not about ethics or morality either, but about the philosophy of psychology. — Luke

From the Tractatus:

5.641 Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way.
What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.
The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world— not a part of it.

One does not see an aspect simply because the world is the way it is but because that is how we see it. Although he does not discuss the metaphysical self in PI, he maintains the distinction between how things are in the world and how they are or might be for us. The possibilities of phenomena.

It is no longer a question of the world as a whole but of aspects of the world that can be seen or experienced. Rather than what can be seen from outside the limit of the world, he turns to our experience in the world. The ways in which we see things

4.112 Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries

On the face of it, the passage from PI 77 seems to be a rejection of this. We cannot draw sharp boundaries for the ethical/aesthetic. But, consistent with the Tractatus, this is because the ethical/aesthetic is not something that philosophy deals with. It is, rather, the philosophical attempt to give clarity to them that entangles us.

There is in the PI no explicit statement such as this from the Tractatus:

6.43 If good or bad willing changes the world, it can only change the limits of the world, not the
facts; not the things that can be expressed in language.
In brief, the world must thereby become quite another, it must so to speak wax or wane as a whole.
The world of the happy is quite another than that of the unhappy.

But there is a connection here with what he says in PPF about aspect blindness:

258 ...The ‘aspect-blind’ will have an altogether different attitude to pictures from ours.

259. (Anomalies of this kind are easy for us to imagine.)

260. Aspect-blindness will be akin to the lack of a ‘musical ear’.

Someone who lacks a musical ear will hear and regard music differently than someone who has a musical ear. There will be much more that is heard by the latter and it will be more meaningful and important. The aspect blind will have a different attitude toward life.

The connection with ethics in the Tractatus might more easily be seen here:

256. Seeing an aspect and imagining are subject to the will.

The happy person sees aspects of the world that those of bad will are blind to.

254. The concept of an aspect is related to the concept of imagination.
In other words, the concept ‘Now I see it as . . .’ is related to ‘Now I am imagining that’.

I took a quick look. The question of map making does not appear in his translation of the passage. Nor do I see anything about "tabulating grammar". Reading on I find support for what I said above:

I do not know or care how Hacker reads Wittgenstein. — Fooloso4

In general, I am wary of taking secondary sources as being of primary concern. My interest in Wittgenstein was sparked in part by the fact that interpretations varied so widely. Rather than rely on secondary sources I set out to interpret his texts for myself.

I do not regard interpretation as merely a way of determining what someone else is thinking but as a way of thinking. As Wittgenstein says in the preface to PI:

I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking.

And in Culture and Value:

No one can think a thought for me in the way that no one can don my hat for me.

I am not against secondary sources. They can be helpful, but also harmful. Above all else, they should not spare me the trouble of thinking.



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