All I can say to that Fartricks is "bollocks!

IMV the grammar of sensations is public behavior though. Toothaches and stopsigns both get their "meaning" (if we insist on taking such a concept seriously) from what happens outside us, in between us. — hanaH

This is where we disagree profoundly. A stop sign's meaning is out there; exemplified in the behavior it produces, but a toothache's meaning is both in here and out there. Even the stop sign could be replete with individual meanings (associations) so I don't view the situation regarding what is private and what is public as being as close to cut and dried as you seem to want to be painting it.

Meaning is use doesn't stand up to closer examination. — TheMadFool

Dictionaries offer definitions (meanings) of words. Dictionaries are compendiums of usage. They need to be constantly updated. I pointed out this simple fact of life to you before, but I think you didn't (or didn't want to) take note.

"Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of language itself. ... For all I have said by shifting the expression of the miraculous from an expression by means of language to the expression by the existence of language"

I like this: language is indeed a miracle. and a Great Deceiver.

So, an omnipotent mind is able to create a stone it is unable to lift and lift it. That is, nothing prevents an omnipotent mind rewriting the laws of logic such that they permit there to be a person who is unable to lift a rock that he can lift. — Bartricks

Now you're changing your story. before you said God can give up his omnipotence by creating a stone he cannot lift. Now you claim that God can create a stone he cannot lift and yet lift it, thus defying logic. All you are doing now is saying that God can do what is unimaginable to us: both lift a stone and be unable to lift it; and yet you have absolutely no rational warrant for such a ridiculous claim. You and your God sure are lousy exemplars of reason. :rofl:

Bachelors are able to have wives. There isn't some strange forcefield preventing them from going down the aisle. But if a bachelor takes a wife, then that person ceases thereby to be a bachelor. That doesn't mean that prior to doing so the bachelor is not a bachelor. — Bartricks

Poor analogy! If a bachelor takes a wife they cease to be a bachelor. A bachelor cannot defy logic by remaining a bachelor and at the same time taking a wife. Similarly, if God creates a stone he cannot lift he ceases to be omnipotent. The point being that God cannot create a situation wherein he is both simultaneously omnipotent and unable to lift a stone, because that would be to defy logic. If God cannot defy logic, then he is subject to logic, just like the rest of us.

There is no solution to be found in the materialistic approach. — GraveItty

All solutions to problems are material solutions. What other kind(s) of solutions can you offer an example of? Sure, there are other fantasies and speculations, but they are of dubious coherency; although as exercises of the creative imagination they may not be without value; they cannot be counted as explanations, because a good explanation should be testable.

If all solutions are material, then either there will (or at least could) be a material solution, or else the question is ill-formed in the first place.

The comparison would be one of color for someone born blind from birth. "What it's like" is meant in the literature to denote there is a subjective sensation. There is nothing it's like for a blind person regarding vision, just like there is nothing it's like for humans to echolochate. — Marchesk

What is the word "like" doing there, though?

"The comparison would be one of color for someone born blind from birth. "What it is" is meant in the literature to denote there is a subjective sensation. There is nothing it is for a blind person regarding vision, just like there is nothing it is for humans to echolochate."

Does that change of phrasing make a difference? I think it is less prone to foster reification. Admittedly the second sentence sounds a little strange and would be better written as: Vision is nothing for a blind person, just like echolocation is nothing for (most) humans.

You know, "bewitchment by means of language" and all that?

The idea here is that when we relate to the world there both an experience of what the world is like for us and at the same time an experience of the self that is having the experience. — Joshs

I agree with what you've said, but again I think the phrasing would be better, less apt to mislead, if you had said "when we relate to the world there both an experience of what the world is for us and at the same time an experience of the self that is having the experience.".

The point is as to what work the "like" is doing there.

The point made by @180 Proof, if I understood it right, is that the 'what is it like' phrasing is based on the intuition that a comparison should be, or could be. possible. If you ask what is it to be a bat, it is more obvious in the framing that we are not referring to some reified something which could be compared with some other reified something. We actually can answer that question; it is to fly, to roost upside down, to be covered in your own urine, to be active at night, and so on. The main part we can't relate to exactly is the echolocation part (except some people may).

What it is to be human, is dealt with by phenomenology, but also by music, the arts, poetry, literature, architecture, religion and so on. What it is to be human is enacted within those pursuits; it is not like there could be a simply encapsulated answer to the question.

No, I mean he can do it. I think you don't understand omnipotence. Being omnipotent means being able to do anything. So, he can create a stone that is too heavy for him to lift. I fail to see what you're having trouble grasping.

If he did that - if he created that stone - then he'd no longer be omnipotent. Being able to not be omnipotent is an ability an omnipotent being has. It's just an ability that an omnipotent being, by hypothesis, does not exercise.

This isn't hard. — Bartricks

God cannot overcome logic though. can he? He cannot be both omnipotent and unable to lift a stone.

I've always found Nagel's intuition pump (Dennett) "what is it like to be a bat" to be incoherent. The problematic "like to be" presupposes a comparison, but to what? No one, Nagel or any of us, can aptly say what it is "like to be" a human being since each one of us only has a single data-point: a human being, like a bat, does not "know" what it is like to be other than what is, so there's no comparison, or differentiation, from the inside-out, so to speak. — 180 Proof

I agree; there is nothing it is like to be a bat or a human, in this sense of comparison you are alluding to. Since I encountered this question of Nagel's 'what is it like to be a bat?'. I've always thought the "like" should be dropped, and the question should become 'what is it to be a bat?', since that is what the incoherently phrased question is really asking anyway; and I guess the answer is that we can only guess about the one major perceptual difference with us (unless we are one of those blind people who are able to use echo-location, who might have an inkling).

Phenomenology attempts to deal with the question: 'what is it to be a human?'. At least we have more hope of coming up with something there!

Thanks Josh, that gives me something to think about. Can you recommend any works for further study on these themes?

If you want personally revealed wisdom, you might want to put some distance between yourself and other people. — James Riley

:up: As Gary Snyder calls it: "the power vision in solitude". I tried some of that in my twenties; living in a beaten down old fisherman's shack in the bush, and hiking in the mountains on my own various times for up to ten days. I have to say there is much to be said for solitude as opposed to "group" spirituality. In relation to the latter, I worked with a Gurdjieff organization for about 15 years, and later short stints with Zen and Tibetan Buddhist organizations; I found the same old human shit, fascination with hierarchy and "climbing the slippery ladder" everywhere.

All of that said Snyder also advocated for the "common work of the tribe".

Sounds very similar to my experience; predominately with the Gurdjieff Foundation.

Phenomenology as metaphysics and ontology: Heidegger presents something similar, with the addition of historicity and hermeneutics. Do you think Heidegger's critique of Husserl for neglecting the two Aitches is sound?

And what about Merleau-Ponty's correction of Heidegger's (and Husserl's?) neglect of the body?

As I understand it, phenomenology is non-committal on questions of metaphysics or ontology. It takes the self and world at their word; how it all seems is to be unearthed and examined with a richly metaphorical eye, prior to any metaphysical commitments based on this or that assumption about the nature of reality.

For me, the Beats are represented Gary Snyder is a more significant exemplar of the Beats aesthetic than Ginsberg. Kerouac and Snyder were strong influences on me in my late teens:


The Bath

Washing Kai in the sauna,
The kerosene lantern set on a box
outside the ground-level window,
Lights up the edge of the iron stove and the
washtub down on the slab
Steaming air and crackle of waterdrops
brushed by on the pile of rocks on top
He stands in warm water
Soap all over the smooth of his thigh and stomach
“Gary don’t soap my hair!”
—his eye-sting fear—
the soapy hand feeling
through and around the globes and curves of his body
up in the crotch,
And washing-tickling out the scrotum, little anus,
his penis curving up and getting hard
as I pull back skin and try to wash it
Laughing and jumping, flinging arms around,
I squat all naked too,
is this our body?

Sweating and panting in the stove-steam hot-stone
cedar-planking wooden bucket water-splashing
kerosene lantern-flicker wind-in-the-pines-out
sierra forest ridges night—
Masa comes in, letting fresh cool air
sweep down from the door
a deep sweet breath
And she tips him over gripping neatly, one knee down
her hair falling hiding one whole side of
shoulder, breast, and belly,
Washes deftly Kai’s head-hair
as he gets mad and yells—
The body of my lady, the winding valley spine,
the space between the thighs I reach through,
cup her curving vulva arch and hold it from behind,
a soapy tickle a hand of grail
The gates of Awe
That open back a turning double-mirror world of
wombs in wombs, in rings,
that start in music,
is this our body?

The hidden place of seed
The veins net flow across the ribs, that gathers
milk and peaks up in a nipple—fits
our mouth—
The sucking milk from this our body sends through
jolts of light; the son, the father,
sharing mother’s joy
That brings a softness to the flower of the awesome
open curling lotus gate I cup and kiss
As Kai laughs at his mother’s breast he now is weaned
from, we
wash each other,
this our body

Kai’s little scrotum up close to his groin,
the seed still tucked away, that moved from us to him
In flows that lifted with the same joys forces
as his nursing Masa later,
playing with her breast,
Or me within her,
Or him emerging,
this is our body:

Clean, and rinsed, and sweating more, we stretch
out on the redwood benches hearts all beating
Quiet to the simmer of the stove,
the scent of cedar
And then turn over,
murmuring gossip of the grasses,
talking firewood,
Wondering how Gen’s napping, how to bring him in
soon wash him too—
These boys who love their mother
who loves men, who passes on
her sons to other women;

The cloud across the sky. The windy pines.
the trickle gurgle in the swampy meadow

this is our body.

Fire inside and boiling water on the stove
We sigh and slide ourselves down from the benches
wrap the babies, step outside,

black night & all the stars.

Pour cold water on the back and thighs
Go in the house—stand steaming by the center fire
Kai scampers on the sheepskin
Gen standing hanging on and shouting,

“Bao! bao! bao! bao! bao!”

This is our body. Drawn up crosslegged by the flames
drinking icy water
hugging babies, kissing bellies,

Laughing on the Great Earth

Come out from the bath.

Wittgenstein is saying something new only if the prevailing theory of language holds that each one of us has our own private version of the meaning of the words. — TheMadFool

I can't see how that could be a sound enough theory to attract many adherents. We learn, we don't invent, the meanings of words. I agree with @Joshs that each of us has our own unique set of meanings (or better associations) around words. Conventional meanings can be stretched by association; for example when it is said that men are dogs; but that "stretching" is still reliant on conventional usages.

What I was thinking when I read Hanover’s post. Deliberate practice requires a high degree of structure and well defined goals. There are definitely well established methods for training in things like music and sports, but philosophy? I seriously doubt it. I doubt there are even well established training methods for aspects that are less subjective, like critical thinking. — praxis

Yes, I like how you expanded from criteria of excellence to methods of practice. :up:

That's an interesting take. It would seem to follow, though, that if language games are ways of seeing how utterances can make sense, then theologies, religions and poetry would all count as language games, unless you wanted to claim that no sense is made in some or all of those disciplines.

Or perhaps I have misunderstood you?

Be that as it may, it seems clear to me that if there were, Hanover doesn't think I would win it. — T Clark

:grin: I don't think any of us on this little forum would win it.

Sure, I agree, and I'm familiar with that having studied philosophy as an undergraduate. From what I could tell, though, the marks were awarded not for excellence in philosophy (whatever that might consist in) but excellence in writing essays; that is ticking all the boxes as to how an essay ought to be structured, the correct way to cite sources and set out the bibliography, as well as attention to clarity of expression, grammar, spelling, sentence and paragraph length and so on.

So. I wasn't talking about scholarly excellence in studying and writing about philosophy (or any other field) but about what might be thought to constitute excellence in philosophy itself; about the content more than the form or presentation. As I said I think it's telling that there is no Nobel Prize awarded for philosophy.

Two sentences:
1) I know God.
2) I know by (via, by means of) God. — tim wood

A reasonable distinction; but you cannot know that you "know by God". unless you know God, or?

This distinction is what is novel and important in Witty. Everyone knows words can be used wrong. That's trivial and uninteresting. Witt is ultimately concerned about words which are, as it were, 'not even used' (to paraphrase the old 'not even wrong'). Employments of language which do nothing, which serve no purpose. — StreetlightX

This makes me wonder whether, on your interpretation, Wittgenstein would count religions or theologies as language games.

So, yeah, I get you've found the path to improvement, just be aware your method is ultimately inferior. — Hanover

The problem with your tennis analogy is that there is no determinable criteria of excellence in philosophy. Even the so-called experts, the academics, are deeply divided on the values of, for example, on the one hand, Heidegger or Hegel and on the other, analytic philosophy. There is no Nobel Prize for philosophy and that is telling. Philosophy is, paradigmatically, a matter of taste.

Likewise :smile:

I hear you, but if the proposed referent of "pain" is uncheckable, then there's no reason to even assume that it's singular (or that you and I have the same referent in mind in this very conversation.) — hanaH

OK, I think I see the key difference between what we've each been saying. I would say that for a word to refer it is not necessary to know that it refers to the very same thing for all of us. In ostensive reference of course differences will become obvious. So I would agree that reference is more determinate in the empirical context. But I don't think that a lesser possibility of determination annuals the idea. It is enough that I take myself, and others generally take me, to be referring to a pain, an emotion, or a desire all of which are things commonly understood by almost everyone, to justify saying that non-ostensive words refer. I think the alternative is too black and white.

I don't think this exceptional situation cancels the concept's dependence on behavior in general though. — hanaH

In the spirit of not wanting to indulge in black and white thinking, I am not seeking to deny that the concept is at all dependent on behavior, I just want to say it is not (in its fullness) wholly dependent on behavior, as I think I've already acknowledged and explained.

Good points!

For me the meaning of 'definition' is given by the uses and purposes of dictionaries. (Actually one of the meanings of 'definition' because the word is also used as an antonym to blurriness). Dictionaries catalogue common current usages (and sometimes past, obsolete usages for the sake of those who might be interested). So, I'm not seeing a problem here.

Not clear what your point is there.

But in the Wittgensteinian spirit, I'd say that knowing what a word means is just knowing how to use it appropriately.

If I go by what you say, then I can't ever know if you know what "headache" means. The only way I can get a sense of whether you have experienced pain is by noting whether you use the token "pain" appropriately. — hanaH

I agree knowing what a word means involves knowing how to use it appropriately; but I cannot see how that could be the whole story. If the person who has never experienced pain talks about pain, the whole conception she could have of pain that informs that talking would be derived from the kinds of behavior exhibited by those who say they are in pain.

And that would be an inadequate conception inasmuch as it does not include the input derived from having experienced pain. Understanding pain cannot be wholly to do with what you can know about another, because in all cases their behavior could be wholly faked, and the concept of pain is not the concept of any kind of behavior, simply because someone could be in pain and manifest no outward sign of it at all.

:up: Yes, negation and also generalization (which would be impossible without negation). The question that seems to forefront is as to whether negation is possible without generalization. In any case symbolic language seems to be the key difference between us and the other animals.

It's impossible in principle to compare headaches, and it's therefore absurd to think that the "meaning" of headache is some quale-as-referent. It's far more reasonable to examine how the token "headache" is entangled with other public behavior (including the use of other tokens.) This is how we learn the "meaning" of "headache" to begin with. — hanaH

I agree that it is impossible in principle to compare headaches. I don't agree that the ""meaning" of "headache"" is learned entirely on account of public behavior, though. One could not learn the meaning of headache if one had never felt pain. One could learn something of the meaning of headache, even if they had never had a headache, if they had felt pain, because then it could be explained "you know, it's a pain in the head".

I agree with you about "gestures at the mystical". That is why I love poetry at least as much as philosophy. Expressing such things should be, and I think indeed is, possible, but by means of metaphor and allusion, not by means of description or proposition.

It's not a practical problem, but philosophically the concept-as-immaterial-referent doesn't seem very useful. By definition, we can't check such referents directly.

It may be an oversimplification, but I think a good path into Wittgenstein involves thinking of human communication as if it were just the communication of another, less complicated animal. Let's see how far we can get without immaterial referents that may be no more rational or useful than phlogiston. — hanaH

Do we need to be able to check referents (whatever that might mean: that they are really there,
perhaps?). I see no conceptual problem involved in referring to the headache I have today, or even the one I had yesterday, even though it is not possible to check the verity of their (present or past) existences.

Sure, I might be lying and then I would not be referring to anything that is occurring or had occurred, but rather to a fiction that I am purporting is occurring or had occurred. The fact that we all know headaches occur should be enough to establish the coherence of the idea that we can refer to them.

delete

I voted 'yes' because I believe personal wisdom is a thing. It is a disposition, a way of being. If it becomes confused and considers itself to be knowledge, the troubles begin.

It also seems relevant to mention that I do believe that personally revealed Gnosis is legitimate wisdom. And that it is able to be validated by science. — Bret Bernhoft

Let the troubles begin.

:up:

I get what you are saying, but I think it's problematic to call some personally assigned referent an "alternative meaning." This is because it's best to think about "meaning" being something like the system of behavior and worldly entities that includes spoken or written words. The "meaning" of a stop sign is (something like) the fact that people stop at it most of the time.

(I've been suggesting that talk of referents is, in general, more misleading than helpful. Better, in rational discussions, to say with what is public.) — hanaH

How do you think it is problematic? I can say that when I write or speak 'gronk' I mean or refer to horse. Of course that would be of no importance to public discourse, but it's not in any way confusing as far as I can tell. (Of course this purportedly private meaning would really be a public meaning insofar as it denotes horse; a denotation that would be impossible without the public language already being in place).

If there is a private mental accompaniment to that stopping, so be it, but it's not important.

Sure, but that wasn't what I have been intending to address. Someone could arbitrarily choose that, for them, the stop sign doesn't mean stop, but go. Of course, they wouldn't last long putting that into practice.

I've always been a bit, a whole lot actually, bothered by what is correct usage of words. This is basically the idea that a word has a fixed referent and while context/the language game matter, given a particular context/language game, a word has a referent that should remain constant.

Consider now Wittgenstein's private language argument. He deems such an impossibility because it would be incoherent. It's not clear what he meant by that but the received wisdom seems to be that correct usage becomes meaningless as the sign/word - referent association breaks down and becomes chaotic, too chaotic to be understood hence, incoherence.

This suggests, to me at least, that Wittgenstein subscribes to the sign-referent theory of meaning or some variation of it. If not, his private language argument is nonsensical (correct usage).

Come now to Wittgenstein's meaning is use concept. Words can be used for anything that we can do with them seems to be the takeaway. There is no essence (to a word) holding us back. Basically, correct usage is meaningless or N/A.

What up with that? — TheMadFool

Here's my take on what you're wondering about:

The correct use of words is a matter of convention which may change over time.

The only sense I can make of the PLA is that for any private language, its non-ostensive words, at least, would have to be translated into a public language you are familiar with in order to know what they mean or refer to. For example say your private language has a word for love; how could you know what the word meant if you didn't say it means the same as 'love'? I mean you'd have to be thinking of love in the first place to have invented the alternative word, no?

Some people claim that non-ostensive words don't refer. I think this is incorrect. 'Love' refers to love. We all have an idea what love is, but we needed familiarity with a public language in order to have that idea in any reflective, abstract sense.

Meaning is not use, strictly speaking, but use indicates meaning. If I were to use a word in an eccentric way to refer to something other than its conventional referent or referents, then my use would indicate the alternative meaning I have assigned to the word.