@Banno @“J” @Ludvig @Corvus @javi2541997
I forgot to tag people in my above post, but I also wanted to bring attention to Sec. 3 on page 9 where Austin comments that philosophers like to point out that they are noticing something that ordinary people do not; that philosophy is more aware, smarter, etc. And, yes, philosophy's job is to reflect and reveal what we don’t normally consider everyday. And Austin seems to breeze by this, at least for now. But I want to point out that, yes, there are problems, and mistakes, and falsehood, and ignorance, etc. and that philosophy is trying to record that fact. The only problem is that philosophy starts with simplifying the problem (to perception, appearance, etc.) and forcing a single answer (something "real", "objective"), rather than what Austin is doing here which is to examine how our failings are varied and thus have various ordinary ways in which we account for them.

@Banno

I think it needs to be reiterated that Austin is peeling away the logic of assuming mistakes about seeing things are evidence of a generalized problem with the faculty of our senses or something “after” that, as in “when something is amiss (that his 'senses are deceiving him' and he is not 'perceiving material things')” p 9

One of the problems he sees is that philosophy takes it that perceiving always works the same way as perceiving objects rather than all the ways we see, and thus the different ways we have trouble (other than just with our senses) seeing “people, people's voices, rivers, mountains, flames, rain-bows, shadows, pictures on the screen at the cinema, pictures in books or hung on walls, vapours, gases-all of which people say that they see or (in some cases) hear or smell, i.e. 'perceive'. Are these all 'material things'?” P. 8

Again, just because we have problems simply means in each case there is a separate logic of ordinary error. But the philosopher wants to group all the different errors into one problem (with perception) with one answer: flawed “Perception” compared to say “reality”. As Austin says, "...there is no neat and simple dichotomy between things going right and things going wrong; things may go wrong, as we really all know quite well, in lots of different ways-which don't have to be, and must not be assumed to be, classifiable in any general fashion." Such as something wrong with our ability to perceive anything at all (which we should also keep in mind is only one example of philosophies desire to create a problem as one kind of thing, as with: appearances, beliefs, subjective, morality, etc.)

Oh no need to apologize. It’s just I can’t do two things at once.

I don’t know what you are quoting; I was referring to Austin’s lecture, which is what we are reading. I thiink it would be getting ahead of ourselves to take into considerations other readings before we attempt our own or even have a clear view of what he is saying at way, as he is only collecting evidence and has not gotten to why the philosopher wants to have a generalized problem with everything we see all the time “already, from the very beginning” p. 8.

Yes, I was somewhat concerned not to present Wittgenstein's view. — Banno

I’ll leave him out of it; only complicate things. One book at a time. But, come on…

“It is a matter of unpicking… fallacies… which leaves us, in a sense, just where we began.” P. 5

“…we may learn … a technique… for dissolving philosophical worries…” Id.

Basically, I think that reality does exist objectively. — javi2541997

There is a part in this (very small) lecture where he addresses “real” and “reality”.

Perception is far more than just to say, what I see is "real", and that is it. The aftermath of perception is more complex, deep, rich and meaningful in human perception. — Corvus

If we read on, perception is used as a straw man for any problems in the “aftermath of perception”, but “seeing” a table is to identify something as a table, which is judging whether something is a table, or, say, a bench (that we somehow mis-identify as a table) and not a matter “after” perception, but I’m getting ahead of the text. “…our senses are dumb… [they] do not tell us anything, true or false.

Do you mean that it would be more accurate to say "roughly correct" or "very good approximation of the actual shape"? — J

I’m saying that “correct” is made up as a part of the “perception” of “actual” because the real issue is the identification of the table, judging whether it is a table or a bench, and thus “roughly” a table is a rock with a board on it. But I jump ahead I think; I’m going to read along.

[Arguments against Ayer] 4. …it is also implied, even taken for granted, that there is room for doubt and suspicion” - Austin — Austin

For how can I go so far as to try to use language to get between pain and its expression? — Witt, PI 245

Can't we imagine a rule determining the application of a rule, and a doubt which it removes—and so on? But that is not to say that we are in doubt because it is possible for us to imagine a doubt. — Wittgenstein, PI#84

@“J” @“Jamal”

I was thinking @“Banno” that I’ll just follow along in the book and ask when there’s something I never got about this, and then we can all make the most sense out of what he’s saying before we jump to judging the argument.

I really hate being misquoted — Jamal

OOHH.... that is entirely my bad. I was rushing and crammed your sentence in with Russell's, probably among other errors. Apologies. And if I ran roughshod over your point or concerns, I jumped the gun a bit on assessing them I'm sure. I'm just a little excited to have anyone talking about this book.

A quick look at Austin's book ngram shows continuous, perhaps even exponential, growth. — Banno

There goes my degree.

One of my favorite books @Banno, thanks for doing this (good luck).

There's the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back. — Austin

"What we should figure out, is knowledge... well, we tried. Then virtue!... nope, not that either." Plato

"Let's start with the thing-in-itself; and then set it over here behind this wall." Kant

"I exist! Or, if that's okay with you God." Descartes

"I see it! No, wait, that's only its appearance." Hume

His target is the idea that we only ever see things indirectly. — Banno

I think Austin is wrong to quibble about the terms “direct” and “indirect”, because both succinctly describe the relationship between perceiver and perceived as it pertains to the arguments for and against realism…. But in terms of realism, “directly” and “indirectly” describe the perceptual relationship between the man and everything he perceives, which includes the periscope, the air, the clouds, etc. — NOS4A2

He’s investigating how we see something directly by looking at the actual cases when we do, and then how we see something indirectly through different examples, to show that philosophy made up the problem of realism. I think the book might be interesting to you.

This talk of “not directly perceiving objects” makes me wonder, not for the first time, who Austin believed he was arguing against. Did he think that Idealism in general, or versions of Kantianism in particular, entailed such a view? I don’t think that’s a very charitable interpretation of what I take Kant and others to be saying — J

Wittgenstein will look further into why philosophy created a problem with sense perception, belief, appearance, subjectivity, etc., but Austin is taking down everybody’s problematizing of the issues which led to metaphysics and justified true belief and Ayer’s Atomism and Positivism and qualia, etc. because they all have in common that they want everything to work one way that allows for absolute universal, generalized, proven, predictable, etc., knowledge. There’s a reason we get stuck on logical/emotive, true/false, knowledge/belief, etc. and that is because we are only looking at one version that is resolved one way, as, in the case of perception:

The reason is simple: "There is no one kind of thing that we perceive, but many different kinds" — Banno

Austin - Sense and Sensibilia 1962; Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations 1958. They never met, but they should have. Wittgenstein will look at how we think a bunch of things work, like language, and rules, seeing, identifying color, etc., and decide there is not one way we judge how things work, but many different ways.

[Looking at false dichotomies like direct/indirect] is a standard critical tool for Austin, used elsewhere to show philosophical abuse of "real". — Banno

In A Plea for Excuses, he will label this “The Importance of Negations and Opposites” in a discussion of freewill based on looking at action—using another tool of Austin’s, which is to look at how something works by looking at how it doesn’t work, how it goes wrong; in the case of action, by looking at how we excuse it, qualify it, renounce it, etc.—he actually looks at how voluntary and involuntary are so different it doesn’t make sense to manufacture the issues as: was that done freely (voluntarily)? or was it determined (involuntarily)?

And it is certainly true that we construct the correct shape from a multiplicity of individual "takes." …In Russell's sense of "real" -- a perception that corresponds fortuitously to an actual shape — J

(emphasis added by Nickles)

The real table, if there is one, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. If there are any directly perceived objects at all for Russell, they are sense data, not tables — Jamal

(emphasis added by Nickles)

I can’t recommend reading this book more; Austin will have a lot to say about philosophy’s use of these words. Austin causes us to reconsider why philosophy creates a problem so it can solve it (@J why is the shape “correct” and “actual”, and not just roughly? - @jamal what does perception have to be immediate and direct in order to ensure? (spoiler!: it’s because we only want to answer one way, to one standard.)

talk of deception only makes sense against a background in which we understand what it is like not to be deceive. — Banno

Elsewhere he will say, basically, "intention" only makes sense (compared to imagining it as a cause) when someone does something "fishy" against a background in which we have ordinary, shared expectations. As in, "Did you intend to run that light?"

But notice that the contrast between philosophers and ordinary folk is borrowed from Ayer. — Banno

I just want to add that a common confusion is that Austin's method is pitting regular ol' common-sense people against esoteric philosophers, or as if “ordinary” was popularity—just taking a study, as if his philosophy was sociology. The common folk are all of us together who work within Wittgenstein's various criteria that are “ordinary” only compared to the single "prefabricated, metaphysical" criteria of certain, justified knowledge that philosophy uses.

I wasn't able to find a free PDF. If you have access to one, you might link it here. — Banno

Attached is a PDF of the book Sense and Sensibilia.
Come on and get me Oxford. I got a sandwich and a gun.

I do not know in advance how deep my agreement with myself is, how far responsibility for the language may run. — Minar's paper

What does "agreement with myself" mean? — Luke

This is a lot in one sentence, but I know what Minar is trying to get at. Our language reflects our interests and judgments (as Wittgenstein sees), and, so, in a sense, reflects who we are (by default—see my discussion about the self and conformity). If I am to use language responsibly, then, in saying something, I consent to be judged by it, for its criteria to be what matters to me. However, at a point (in time I argue elsewhere), my consent to be spoken for by language, as Minar says, “may run” out. This is to break with my culture, to stand against it, “adverse” (Emerson says in Self Reliance) to what language demands that we answer for; that I refuse to be determined by the shared judgments we make from it.

“If language really were a technique, then…. there would be no connexion between philosophy and scepticism. You should not understand what was meant by the notion of the distrust of understanding.”
— Rhees, as quoted in Minar's paper

I take the argument here to be that if language were a technique then there should be perfect understanding and no room for scepticism or doubt. — Luke

Yes, that is the implication. To say we “should not understand what was meant [by skepticism]” is a bit dramatic, fanciful. To make this more pedestrian, if traditional philosophy had its way, then what I say would be certain to you if I only mastered language. I would have control of the “meaning” of what I say, as if there were something in me, say, “my understanding” (or “intention”, or “thought”) which only fails because language is flawed, not able to capture my unique specialness, or I am just not good enough at it, when it is really the other way around. I am only as much as I capture in language (or action); but I don’t just either do that or not, because my expressions are mine to own (or not), as if they were my promise. Thus I can continue to make them intelligible, ask they be forgiven, take them back as poorly said, attempt to weasel out of the consequences of their inherent implications, etc.

How can Cavell reject the thesis of skepticism - that we do not know the world or other minds with certainty - while also claiming that skepticism is a natural possibility which results from having language? [that] the "truth of skepticism" is not a metaphysical dissatisfaction with knowledge, but is instead an expression of "the urge to transcend the human". — Luke

Minar is accurate and tells the story with all the parts, but it’s lacking in paraphrasing, unpacking Cavell’s terms of art. I am impressed and thankful you read the paper though and these are exactly the right questions to ask. I think how I put this to @Bano here might be a good start.

Summarizing that story, out of our fear of the other, philosophy created an intellectual problem of doubt about them that knowledge could then try to solve (with metaphysics, etc.), when the skeptic is right that there is no fact of the other (or ourselves) to know that will resolve our worries. But Wittgenstein sees that this truth is only because our relation to others (the mechanics of it, the grammar) is not through knowledge resolving our doubts about them, but that it is part of our situation as humans that we are separate, that our knowledge of the other is finite. But the implications of that are simply that the ordinary mechanics of our relation to others is not one of, here, knowing “their understanding”, but of accepting or rejecting them; that their otherness is at times a moral claim on us, to respond to them (or ignore them), to be someone for them. Thus “the urge to transcend the human”, in our ordinary lives, is to avoid exposing ourselves to the judgment of who we are in how we relate to others. In the case of understanding, by only wanting to treat what others say as information we simply need to get correct, rather than acknowledge their concerns and interests, and have ours be questioned. To put it that this is the “result of having language” is the picture of something like that what we say has a “meaning” that stands alone from who we will be judged to be in having said it, rather than it expressing us, allowing who we are to be read through it.

I am a little unclear what you mean by "Wittgenstein's strange people", but based on the cited paragraph, it could mean people who you may find difficult to understand. — Richard B

Sorry, the sentence before (which I have also referred to) and the passage from p 223 of the PI, 3rd, in its entirety (emphasis in the original) is:

“If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me.

We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them.”

One area I believe we can agree on is Wittgenstein's pointing out the importance "of natural actions and reactions that come before language and are not the result of thought."…

'You say you take care of a man who groans, because experience has taught you that you yourself groan when you feel such-and-such. but since in fact you don't make any such inference, we can abandon the argument from analogy' (Zettel, 537) — Richard B

Yes, we do not know the other because we infer them from our experience. But we do not know the other because of our shared history of actions and reactions either—we do not know the other. As I have been saying, the “natural actions and reactions” to others are the particular mechanics of our relation. Thus, it is no longer a “problem” to be solved by knowledge, by analogy or otherwise. Part of the workings of our natural actions and reactions to the other is that sometimes we can’t predict them, we aren’t sure they will agree with us, follow us, remain consistent to our expectations of them, etc. We sometimes cannot find our feet with them, understand them. This is not a philosophical problem; it is part of the human condition. So, instead of intellectually trying to “solve” or minimize it, we are simply trying to make explicit the (unspoken) ordinary criteria we live with for what counts in terms of getting to know someone.

@Banno @Richard B

The above can be summarized by saying that "other minds" is an oxymoron. — sime

Well I hope I get more credit than that, but I understand the confusion. I put “other minds” in the OP (I have changed it now) only because traditional philosophy had named the issues surrounding our relations to others: “the problem of other minds”. That someone has a “mind” is not the picture of the other I am arguing for; what I am doing is continuing on from Wittgenstein’s investigation into why philosophy looked at it that way, and from Cavell’s reading of him that that desire (for knowledge to be the “answer”) actually shows something about our situation as humans and thus affects our ordinary relation to other people. To catch up on all that would, I would suggest, at least take reviewing all the posts here, if not also reading Minar’s paper.

But let’s just stick with how your post relates to and interprets this issue. I take “behavioral disposition” to mean the other’s (outward) expressions (let’s set aside our history with them, the situation we find ourselves in, and how different types of things are handled in different ways, e.g., pain, opinions, excuses). I take you to be claiming that it only makes sense (is meaningful to us) to doubt another’s expressions in so much as we are judging that they are lying, being fake, making stuff up, etc., and that we have nothing to go on to make that decision other than their expressions. I agree. However, the resolution of even just that doubt may not be possible, or we can just be wrong, which shows that, in an ordinary way, “knowledge” of the other cannot do what we want it to (ensure our judgment of the other; remove or answer our doubt). But Wittgenstein shows us that expressions are not just information about the other; that they reveal us, what is essential to us. What we say reflects our interests in what we are talking about. Our criteria for judgment show what matters to us, is meaningful to us. The idea is that we can “read into” a person, not to get at an object of knowledge, e.g., their “mind” or “their understanding”, but to understand where they are coming from.

You frame Rhees’ version of understanding as if he wants you “to feel or think on their behalf”. But to feel on their behalf is to sympathize with them, in the sense of coming to a common feeling (as if this kind of understanding were not a rational process). To think for them is like putting words in their mouth (rather than reasons behind their words); as if it were a matter of just the right articulation; or, as Socrates emulates, making the strongest argument we can for another’s claim to knowledge. Of course it is good practice not to judge what someone says too quickly, not to be dismissive, or think we know what someone is trying to say immediately, or from, say, the title of a discussion ;) . However, just understanding, in this version of making another’s words make sense, is to treat what we say to each other as removed from who we are, what it says about us, and our responsibility to our saying it. Wittgenstein makes this point in his use of the term “expression”, in that what we say expresses (reveals) who we are, why we are saying it, what we are committing to and standing for. As you say “the practice of empathy lends insight with respect to their behavioral disposition.”

…one's beliefs concerning a person's behavioural disposition effects the course and extent of one's empathy towards that person. — sime

Yes, this is the flip side of the coin. That we can understand a person through what they say and do (that this is the mechanics of it, logically, structurally) means that it also works inversely that we can take them for what we would have them be. Thus that we can have no willingness to see another’s expressions as intelligible of interests other than ours (or what we simply assume theirs are) because we already have a judgment about people who act a certain way or say certain things (or look a certain way). We refuse the conversation Rhees is suggesting; another way to put this is that we refuse our friendship, any possible community with the person.

Wittgenstein… focuses on the intellectual problem the philosophical minded get themselves into. — Richard B

We agree on that. I’m only trying to say that there was a purpose: the “investigation” is to find out why they get themselves into it (why he did), why they want it to be a problem they can have a solution for. It looks like insanity, but this is exactly my point: it is our duty to humanize the Other, even the Skeptic, to find and imagine intelligible interests they may have. This is Wittgenstein’s struggle with his interlocutor, his fight with himself (the author of the Tractatus).

"I know that a sick man is lying here? Nonsense! I am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face.- So, I don't know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question nor the assertion makes sense."

What he is doing is showing how the concept "to know" does not make sense in this circumstance. — Richard B

This is a perfect quote to bring up, and you are absolutely correct, but there is a point to it—other than just “hogwash!”. You say he does not say there is a truth to skepticism (he also does not “show it” as some hold over from the Tractatus is his only means). He is showing us examples of what we ordinarily might say and do as evidence of the structure of something (it’s “grammar”), here: our relation to the Other.

In order to see the point of a Wittgensteinian example, you must see it for yourself; your assent is the only proof. Most of the time he asks a question that you must stretch your way of thinking to see; to see it from a different position—take a different interest in it. (Nietzsche will do this too; they court misunderstanding so that you can’t get the point unless you change who you are, how you see the world). Wittgenstein here is enacting an Interlocutor, who is playing the part of someone who wants our relationship to the Other to be one of knowledge.

When Wittgenstein says “Nonsense!”, what he says next is not that this is a situation where we cannot doubt, or that we must know, or that we are certain (because none of those need be the case); what he says is that he is “attending” to the person. He does not have knowledge that they are sick, he is responding to the person being sick. The point is that knowledge is not how we relate to other people; it is not how it works. What is essential about others is that we acknowledge them. Right there is a person in a state that is making a claim on you to accept or deny, respond to or ignore.

The truth of skepticism is that knowledge cannot solve the fact of the other’s… otherness, their separateness, their opaque quality to us. As he says elsewhere, if we see someone in pain, we don’t ask whether we know it or not (PI 3rd, p.223), and that is because we help them (or not). We are not of the “opinion” people have a soul (p.178), not because we “believe” it, but because it’s not a matter of knowledge (or not) at all. The way it works is that we treat them as if they have a soul or not, as a human or not (we have an “attitude towards [them]”). The truth is, however, that it is not only philosophy that fears doubt and craves certainty, but all of us, thus why Rhees is trying to make us see that understanding is not a matter of epistemology, but of ethical behavior.

[ redo ]

If this agreement does not mostly occur, we do not have a language at all; thus, there is nothing to be skeptical about. — Richard B

I agree that most of the time doubt is not an issue. I also agree that philosophy has a certain (radical) version of skepticism. As Descartes says, “Some years ago I was struck by how many false things I had believed, and by how doubtful was the structure of beliefs that I had based on them.” Wittgenstein sees that the pictures that philosophy creates are based on a desire for knowledge (“purity”) that will solve what philosophy framed as the skeptical “problem”. However, Wittgenstein goes on to see that the workings of our relationship to others is not one of knowledge, but that the desire (for our relation to be based on something other than me) is a basic human response to (the fear of) the fact that we are separate from others, that this is part of the human condition (and not just an intellectual problem). My claim is that because we are always in this (limited, uncertain) condition to others, the fear of it, and the desire to remove ourselves from it, have affected our culture and lives and how we “understand” each other. This is set out better and more thoroughly in the paper, and, with hope, above.

You should be skeptical of imagining what I am imagining. What you are imagining that I am imagining is wrong. — Fooloso4

I didn’t realize you were that guy. I stand by my earlier offense and decision. Please don’t address me until you can treat other people with respect and apologize for what I hope you can at some point see is regrettable behavior.

@Banno @Richard B @Fooloso4

Understanding "strange" people

"[In a country that is strange to us because we do not understand the traditions of the people (even knowing the language)]...one human being can be a complete enigma to another. ...We do not understand the people. ...We cannot find our feet with them." — Investigations 3rd, p. 223

Here it might appear Wittgenstein is saying that, once we understand their traditions, we will understand the people. But it is not a matter of learning a practice, but of "find[ing] our feet with them". I am taking this as the process of understanding others that Minar is claiming Rhees is drawing out from Wittgenstein. My point is that this sense of putting ourselves in their shoes is not to learn, say, how to do a practice correctly, but in grasping what is important to the people by learning what matters to them about the practice, because their interest in it is based on how they judge it (as a note on method: the criteria they use as seen through what they say when doing it).

On page 181, Wittgenstein casts "strange" as not just outside the workings of a practice (as if it were just a matter of knowledge of those workings themselves (that our options are only a judgment of normal or not), but that we may judge that "This is a different type of [person]." (simply substituting "man"). Trying to make some sense of this: we see them as a person, but of a different "type" (then us), apart from just different (surprising) behavior or (unknown) practices. The structure of this judgment opens up the possibility that we can be, and thus become, the "same" type of person.

What "type" means here (and even "same") is in need of some unpacking, but I would first say that, as it relates to "understanding" others, "same" is not an equation of some "understanding" each of us have (thus not an agreement in that). If people are judged as a type, what separates classes of people is not their, say, different opinions or conclusions, but the grouping of people with similar interests, or, as Wittgenstein analogously says elsewhere: that we do not agree on definitions to communicate, we share judgments. Thus, here, to understand the other, we must find out their interest in--reflected in their criteria for--judging as they do.

What I feel remains to be explored further is the process of "finding our feet with them", say, as a matter of imagining ourselves as them, getting at why one might want to judge as they do. Maybe: in taking them seriously; allowing another's reasons to be or become intelligible; respecting their interests by taking their expressions as a commitment of their self, their character as it were (what "type" of person they are). I take this not as a matter of critique, but of letting them be "strange" to us without rejection (tolerating but not assuming/resigned to difference); with open curiosity, (cultural) humility (that my interests and context are not everyone's). In a sense: understanding as empathy; understanding in the sense of: being understanding (Websters: vicariously experiencing the [interests] of another; imagining the other's attitudes as legitimate; the imaginative projection of [myself] into [the other] so that [they] appear to be infused with [me, being a person]).

We can know that the sun rose today, but can we know that the sun will rise tomorrow? It seems clear that he did not think we could. — Fooloso4

Yes, the sun. One type of thing. To the point here, we not only do not have a relationship with others based on knowledge, but our relation to the world at times is also not one for which the criteria of judgment is certainty of the future. My guess is that you are imagining every example leads to a conclusion about our approach to everything (that there is only one form of skepticism: the problem of a foundation for a particular criteria for knowledge).

I think his picture of knowledge takes this into consideration. Perhaps his best expression of this is the river of knowledge from On Certainty. — Fooloso4

It is unclear what your "this" is referring to. Also, again, I take you to be framing it that he only has one "picture of knowledge", and, for that matter, that there is only one sense of "certainty". We are here specifically talking about "understanding" and the workings and criteria for that, and also the picture of that which comes from the fear of skepticism and the desire for knowledge to be the sole criteria in that case. That is to say that I don't find where this is relevant to the matter at hand.

Did Wittgenstein change his mind on this:

T 6.36311 That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know
whether it will rise. — Fooloso4

I would say his thinking deepened. When he says “hypothesis” he is referring to a sense of “believe”. And it is satisfied in the case of the sun (as with believing it is raining outside), because we can know whether we are right or not when the sun comes out (or checking on the rain). This is a sense of belief, and thus a picture of knowledge. Later he realizes that not everything is subject to this sense of knowledge, and, in fact, that part of our lives (with others) does not involve this kind of knowing at all.

T 6.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity. — Fooloso4

This craving for “necessity” was the driving force in the Tractatus (the only standard that was allowed). He later finds that there are other criteria for different things, and that, in the case of our relation to others, the goal that necessity would want: your knowledge of “my” understanding, works despite necessity, in fact, despite it not being a matter of knowledge at all.

T 6.375 As there is only a logical necessity, so there is only a logical impossibility. — Fooloso4

But this is only the way some things work (the criteria for some things), such as whether a rule was “followed” or not (you either do it or don’t). What he found was that the criteria for a thing reflect our interests in that thing. Here, we want assurance. What Rhees’ observation is (following later Wittgenstein), is that “understanding” one another is to see how things matter to the other by examining how we are judging a thing (our interests in it).

y

If "us" refers to humanity, well I think this is a bit of an overstatement about what Wittgenstein is claiming. — Richard B

I would take issue with Malcolm’s characterization of skepticism by way of Kripke, but there is already a discussion of rules and Kripke (a reading by Cavell coincidently) and those quotes of Wittgenstein’s, here. Imagining Wittgenstein somehow “solves” skepticism or dismisses it, does not take into account that his investigation destroys everything that is built in response to it only to see that part of it is true. There is no fact that will stop things from going sideways, from us turning out wrong about what we thought was right, in following a rule yet still being guilty because whether a rule was followed doesn’t take into account who we are.

And the concerns of philosophy do shape our culture; think of all the times you hear “that’s subjective”, or “just your opinion”. The desire for quantification, DNA evidence, and the mistrust of anything that requires our judgment, comes from our fear of being responsible for our relation to the world that is outside of knowledge. You follow a rule or not (that’s how we judge that action), but our reasons for doing so, our interests in it, are not “ determined”, as Wittgenstein here is saying. In the same way, there is no “fixed meaning” to the self, because whether we are “ourselves” (or just some brainwashed political mouthpiece) is gauged by our relation to the conformity (say, rules) that we desire to take away our responsibility, by simply following them. We want to “know” the other without having to respond to their otherness; we want to imagine we know their pain, rather than having to acknowledge them as a person in pain that needs help.

…all is well with humanity. Because they keep talking, acting, and judging in similar, expected, and harmonious ways; we have meaning and understanding. — Richard B

“All is well with humanity”? Sure we act (judge) in accordance most of the times, but we don’t always, as we don’t always understand each other. We (commonly) believe in the myth that for you to see my “point of view” all I need to do is speak “my understanding” of a subject, and you will, if I have spoken well, understand in the same way I do, but that picture allows me to hold my cards behind my back. To call this “skeptical” is because I am imagining “my understanding” as something precise and knowable and equatable, and I do that out of fear that I may never be understood, or because, when I say something, I am judged by it, regardless of something I imagine is left over for me to claim control, as “I didn’t mean that”. We are separate; philosophy has classically turned that into an intellectual problem (which you believe is solved), and not seen it as a basic condition (working situation) of being human (or not).

it [ is ] not that this "when" lies outside discussions of epistemology — Astrophel

Yes, the idea is exactly that the self is not a matter of knowledge. Our relationship to others is that we accept or deny who they are, how they feel, etc. The same is true of our own feelings (we acknowledge or suppress them). This action happens as an event—so only a matter of time in that it is not a continuous state—just as we do not always have a self but differentiate from conformity as an occurrence.

Language produces generalities that fail to speak the complexities of one's subjective world. One can thus toss out casually words and their meanings into an arena of standardized thinking, and this pretty much belies the rich interior of one's true actual world. — Astrophel

Language is sufficient to share ourselves. The “rich interior of one’s actual world” is a fantasy of the self so I have the excuse of being unknowable and yet always special. We pawn our failures onto language, and make it incapable. (This is not to say we do not have personal experiences, even ineffable ones of, say, a sunset by ourselves after a hike (the awe of nature), where we cannot say it, nor paint it, nor have a picture capture it, nor even take you to see and point at it (though the difference here might be too close to matter between us). But this is the rare exception, not the general mechanics of the self.

The framework I am outlining is that the judgments and expectations and implications and all the different criteria of our society’s various ways of living may not match up with how I want to be in not being defined by those criteria, who I am willing to defy society to be.

My affective being, the caring, interest, doubt, dread, and so on, built into [the present], making the normativity of ethics a wholly temporal affair. — Astrophel

But isn’t this just to say that humans have interests, desires, fears, etc? And so does our culture, as evidenced in its criteria of judgment; and we either conform to the judgments of our culture or not, regarding ethics or art or city planning or making tea. That in general we do is because our lives together are what is “normative” in an ongoing way (from Cavell), but at times (at a particular moment and situation) we may have to cross the ethical dictates of our society as it stands, though we don’t do it in a vacuum but against (or with) our culture, e.g., the difference between society’s criteria of what a girl or boy is expected to do, and the interest of a boy or girl in either identifying with those criteria or not letting society define them, deter them.

doubt about the self is different because here we stand on the threshold of metaphysics: what is a self? Why am I (are we) born to suffer and die? And love and hope and dream? To me, this threshold is deeply profound, for it is not just an abstract issue, a premise in an argument (though it is certainly this). It is the palpable presence of the world, the "life" we are thrown into — Astrophel

Yes we all struggle with these issues. I am just suggesting the question is not who “we” “are” or “I” “am” so much as what am I willing to express interest in, and thus how this places me with or against the history, criteria, implications, etc. that I am brought up into. This would mean that neither the self (nor the world) is always “present”, nor is that particular goal necessary, but that the possibility of the self is always open, but only actualized as an event (now).

It’s a good idea to understand a philosopher on their own terms, and by that I mean: get at what part of their words is created (technical), specific to them, or the same as others but in a different sense, or purpose, etc. I would think it a bad idea to have terms generalized between two philosophers, much less across philosophy. As well, ordinary words can be terms in the hands of philosophy: know, see, appear, conscious, mean, intend, real, certain, criteria, truth, belief, and on and on. And I would only read a philosopher’s reading of another’s work, rather than any generalization of someone’s work, or, worse, a label. You’re better off grabbing a classic and stumbling around in the dark with the actual text, with the most important part being the thoughts you have in response, what it brings up, how it might make more sense than your first impression, be more than just able to be dismissed, somehow important to learn from, etc.

What is a strong argument for the conceivability of philosophical zombies? — dylspinks

Well there’s only a few ways to make this question intelligible, one being: whether there is a good reason (for philosophy) to imagine how we might not know other people are dead inside? What philosophy is conceiving is someone who looks and acts like a person, but is… (and here we are to imagine as full a context as we can, and really get specific about what the criteria would have to look like, in order for this fantasy to make the most sense it can (to make this depiction the “strongest” it can be)). The reason it is important is that learning about what can go wrong, how we might fail to know, tells us about how we—and how to—see others as human and themselves, as in: how being human matters to us.

Now we’d have to read a looooot of philosophy about robots and automatons, etc. I’ll just spoil Wittgenstein’s ending. The fact is that we do not know the other is human, because that is just not how “knowing” works here. Knowledge in other cases is different, but the way knowing another person works is that we act towards them as a person, or do not. We accept them as a person in pain or we ignore them. We acknowledge their life as different than ours, or we reject what matters to them. Wittgenstein, in the Investigations #420, would say (as would Marx) we see them only as a lawyer, or a pawn, or a hero, or a junkie, instead of any more or different than that, as we might see them as without color, avoiding the effects on them of racism.

The other question (analogy) this could possibly be, would be answered: yes, you can be dead to yourself, driven by a desire that is not your own.

If scepticism "haunts us all the time", then so does certainty. — Banno

Right, but, as I said, we are not talking about ordinary certainty opposed to regular doubt. It’s a kind of story. We actually are scared of the ever-present truth of our human condition: that we are separate, that there is no guarantee that we will work out our differences, or that our criteria will always be sufficient, or that we won’t be wrong even after working to (pre)determine what is right, that we might still be guilty (or lost) after following all the rules, etc.

And in response to that (what is basically change, the future, etc.), philosophy turned our situation into Radical (world-destroying) “Skepticism” (do we “really” know…). But it’s a trick. We are the ones who turn our human condition into the “problem” of skepticism because then it can be “solved” by (mythical) “Certainty”, which will stand in for us and be universal, abstract, generalizable, infinite, perfect, foundational, etc. It is this convoluted desire to remove the need for the human that leads to the fantasy of metaphysics, positivism, essence, the thing-in-itself, “Real” as an objective quality, etc.

But these fantasies have a real-world point; we can’t just solve or dismiss the reasons for them. When Cavell is saying we can “live our skepticism”, it is because he is placing “skepticism” back in the frame of our ordinary lives (not as a philosophical problem). The fear still remains of our fallible human condition, and we still want “Certainty”; but he sees this as the desire for knowledge to take our place, when part of being human is taking responsibility for the future, changing who we think we are, accepting not another’s claim (as in argument) but taking on our duty when who they are is a claim on who we will be. That there is a grammar to the other, the moral realm, our selves, that requires something of us: changing how we see (judge) the other (our attitude, to their aspects), relinquishing our assumptions, acknowledging they are a person in pain and helping them, etc. and, in the case here: understanding their interests and desires through what they say, what matters to them in the criteria they use to judge, which is different from the picture of me having “my understanding” and you having yours and we either equate or not (only being happy with Certainty). I have tried to explain this as the difference between Wittgenstein’s depiction of “private” and the ordinary sense of something personal (as what matters to me).

creating the internal idea of “my understanding” which I can then only hope to persuade you of, or that it is language that fails us in communicating it; in any event, that I am at least certain of myself, my unknowable specialness. — Antony Nickles

@Banno this is not a claim (not how I see it) but just drawing the picture that is created from acquiescing to the skeptic’s conclusion, say, through cutting off the possibility of failure we may have, by creating a barrier for us from every being able to have had a chance, in an attempt to retain something certain about ourselves, our control.

I’m going to say, not to reject” it, but to investigate it, through the criteria for it, as he found that those show what matters to us—is “expressed by grammar” PI#37—what judging it that way gets us, why we want “privacy”. If he is rejecting it, it implies he has a better picture, or that it doesn’t have any reason behind it, and Cavell’s basic claim is that Wittgenstein shows that skepticism haunts us all the time. Here, that the desire to be unknowable, or the attempt to control how we are known, or judged, is ever-present as a temptation which we can “live” by; thus everyday people retreat to saying they are entitled to their opinion (as if it were their identity), or that “they didn’t mean” what can only be construed as a passive-aggressive insult (when there is no other interpretation; no criteria or context for any other sense). But yes, the paper is differentiating from a private “understanding”, but not exactly trading it for a public one—though yes we are understood in our expressions and actions, judged through them. It is exactly because of that, if we conduct ourselves in a manner with that responsibility in mind, that we can “understand” the other because we can acknowledge or learn about their “reasons” for saying or doing something, in the sense of what matters to them in having done so (even despite what they say or didn’t “intend”). But this is a process of putting ourselves in their shoes in a sense, and not just judging them by our criteria.

But the piece set me to puzzling over the apparent desire to give priority to either scepticism or to certainty. We are not "always uncertain"; much of our daily living takes place within a frame of certainty. Our use of criteria in an attempt to justify certainty or scepticism only enters into a small portion of our world, those few occasions of hesitancy. Those criteria are public; or they are nothing. Hence we tend to talk about the stuff of which we are hesitant, the things about which we disagree. — Banno

There was actually a lot of skepticism about skepticism in that group. I understand where you are coming from (even if I don’t get it quite right here), but “certainty” with Cavell is not in the sense of everyday, say, confidence, punctuated by being lost as to what to do (when philosophy turns to examine our unspoken criteria). Certainty here is basically in the sense of a term, catching Wittgenstein’s “crystalline purity”, math-like knowledge, an outcome of scientific method, formal logic, “objectivity”, etc. The opposite side is the cynical acceptance that we cannot, or may never, be intelligible to each other (morally, artistically, individually), creating the internal idea of “my understanding” which I can then only hope to persuade you of, or that it is language that fails us in communicating it; in any event, that I am at least certain of myself, my unknowable specialness.

Both cases are projections of Wittgenstein’s insight that our criteria for judging something (reflected in—“shown” by—what we say in a situation) are an expression of our (public) interests in that thing, what matters to us (as a culture) about it, how we would judge it. Wittgenstein’s “diagnosis” is not of a sickness that is cured, but is his getting at the root causes creating these “lives” (pictures) of skepticism: our fear of relativism and our desire for foundation. In one case we deny criteria (judgment, of us), in the other, we impose and require only one (an answer with certainty).

The important part here is that “understanding” then is recognizing the interests and needs of the other because we can extrapolate those from what they say, rather than only making sense of the words on their face, ending in us just arguing about who’s right or retreating to just “my opinion”, detached from our reasons for committing to our words expressing us, our commitments, etc. Yes, our criteria are public, but they are nothing without our living in them, by them, or against them. As you point out, it is a rare instance when our criteria themselves run afoul or are extended into a new situation. But it is part of the human condition that everyday we take (or avoid) the responsibility to back our words and actions with our life (though, again, we may not be held to account), and thus it is an ongoing temptation for everyone to avoid that responsibility.

I did attend the meeting; some heavy hitters (Cora Diamond included, along with Marie McGinn, who took Minar to task about his characterization of a quote of hers--fireworks!). There was a lot of misunderstanding and underestimating the constant continuing threat of skepticism (that there is no fact ensuring understanding) in one way calling skepticism just a confusion (that Wittgenstein dissolved), but also not understanding that we can "live skepticism", from the desire to have something foundational and certain that removes my responsibility (right, rules, "forms of life"), or that we give up (believe we will, or can, never understand each other) and retreat to just "my" understanding, which is measured by simply comprehending words (or not), or fails because language cannot encompass "me".

Skepticism was also simply considered a philosophical problem and not a part of the human condition that is shaping modern society; that we live in a picture of the self which is based on the fear of others' separateness, cynicism about what is possible, and the human tendency to avoid responsibility. The paper is not just admonishing us (ethically) to do things differently, but is showing how our picture of the world and others (based on the adoption of classical philosophy's conception) is getting in the way of the recognition of the possibility--much less the duty--we have to make our interests intelligible through our commitment to be judged, and seeing what matters to you in what you say, rather than as an intellectual argument about opinions.

Some comments echoed my interest in the paper's unexplored hinting at "speaking for ourselves"--that an expression is sometimes the claiming of a self, who I will be (which ties into my discussion here about "when", and thus how, we have a self). Even though there may be a situation where there is no claim to authority (like knowledge), I am not just only trying to convince you of an opinion, but I am claiming the authority for me to give life (live in) our ordinary criteria, or commit to a new world by being its representative, answerable for my interests in it.

The first part of this paper does a good job of laying out Cavell’s claim about the truth in skepticism: that knowledge is not our only connection, and that our relation is also based on our need to respond to each other. It amounts to a series of quotes of Cavell, so I am not going to try to reiterate or do the work of explaining it, though I can if anyone is interested or has trouble with any particular point.

The most interesting part of the paper to me is the connection to Rhees’ view of the place of conversation in understanding at page 17. Instead of explaining “my” “understanding” to you, as a goal which I could be more or less effective at (Sophistic persuasion); nor as something that (only) I have of myself, call it (Socratic) knowledge, Rhees is suggesting a back and forth process, a conversation. Not to equate each of “our” “understandings” (what Minar calls sophistry’s “passing-by of private wills”), nor even to come to a separate agreement (like a contract), but to work to move forward together, to learn about the other (and ourselves) through self-growth. And so not a pragmatism, nor teleology, nor ontology, because not a result, nor meeting a predetermined requirement, nor just accurately transferring information. These “solutions” all fear the truth that everything can fall apart, or come to not, but not because of the fault of language or that we are somehow unknowable (accepting skepticism’s conclusion). Minar says in conversation we are “speaking for oneself”, which I take to involve that our judgments reflect our lives, our interests, and so we are expressing our commitments, without assurance that my life continues on with yours. Thus Rhees’ sense of understanding involves an ongoing responsibility to be intelligible, to others, and for ourselves (Minar says “one takes on the burden of responsibility for what one says”). And, even if we go separate ways, we may be the better for it anyway. Cavell calls this the possibility of rational disagreement, even when there is no authority; because we now have made explicit the terms upon which we differ.

The meeting is October 25th

As long as you acknowledge that, again, the “solution set” is YOUR requirement, not revealing anything but the answer you dictate. What you have imposed as “correct” suppresses any other interpretation and thus only has one set of answers.

Now of course if you are programming a computer than the terms are set and thus easy to force into a corner, but leave it as a formal logic problem or a programming issue for it says nothing about selves or human contradiction. Yes we have expectations and implications and consequences, but we still live in a culture and answer for ourselves in a specific circumstance with possibilities that we act within, or defy.

When Carol says "no" indicating that "no" is an incorrect answer
this makes "no" the correct answer thus not incorrect thus Carol is wrong. — PL Olcott

I gave you a perfectly acceptable alternative interpretation of what is happening (which you did not address). You are just applying an interpretation without any context or justification of why it MUST be taken that way; what appears to you as formal logic is just an implication you see as self-evident and singular, when it is just your imposed requirement.

Carol does not need to be “indicating… an incorrect answer”, she could be indicating there IS NO sense of correctness in this “question”, and thus how CAN she “answer” at all—the “correct” “answer” is to throw up her hands and say “no”, as if to say: “What?”. Another way to interpret this is that, of course, Carol CAN answer ‘no’, she can say whatever she wants, defying your idea of correctness with her own truth to herself, in protest. But with no world, you make the rules, so, sure, make them however you’d like. What you’ve proven is that such a question must be in an abstract environment with closed dictated rules, as if playing with a machine you programmed. So why bring a human (poor Carol) into it?

As you say, it does depend on whom we are asking. But the failure of this paradox shows even more. Even if we just ask Carol (and not ask someone else about Carol's abilities, as I take you to be saying as the alternative), the answer can be either yes or no because the interpretation of the question is not grounded by a context or custom (as Wittgenstein pointed out with our use of rules. PI # 198). There are not implications and assumptions here that would constrain our possible answer, unless we imagine a fixed context so the question is interpreted along predictable lines.

Can Carol correctly answer “no” to this question?
Carol answers no without this being a paradox because there is no possibility of being "correct". As in: can she [answer correctly]? no, she cannot.
Carol answers yes without paradox because the correct answer is; no, she cannot answer correctly (for the same reason as above), but here (with yes) "the correct answer" would be that it is true, as in: the fact of the matter is.

Without any context of what the circumstance is in which this question is asked, either interpretation can apply. This is why abstracted thought experiments, moral puzzles, and paradoxes only show that when, and to whom, and in what circumstances, doing what activities, etc. all matter and are not internalized into language, as if in its "meaning".