Although I may comment here after reading through, I did start a discussion about ‘When the self “exists” or not’, here: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14691/when-do-we-exist-or-not

Philosophically I think [Emerson] lacks discipline, as with my favorite, "Nature"; he sort of toys with Platonism”

I too have a hard time understanding Emerson as a serious analytical philosopher; to see “Fate” as about freewill, to see “Self Reliance” as wrestling with philosophy’s historic idea of the self, that he was responding to Plato and Descartes and Kant and Aristotle, trying to inherit analytical philosophy, as was Nietszche, as Wittgenstein had hoped to bring a new epistemology (about us in the world), with his new methodology. Perhaps an OP on Emerson sometime then. — Astrophel

…thought …threatened by the mentality of modern technology, which tends to reduce meaningful encounters with the world to a "standing reserve" of utility. — Astrophel

I was given the analogy, for “technology”, of a word’s fixed, timeless, violence cutting off any other interests we may have in the world (here, apart from teleology).

For Heidegger the general will is "the they," which is what we first encounter in the process of enculturation. It is here that we "forget" our essential self. — Astrophel

This is along the lines of what I’m getting at, although what I would say is “essential” to the self would be what is important to me in relation to “them”. I do highly recommend What is Called Thinking? as it is a demonstration, in a series of lectures, almost as if in real time along with him, on how to dig deep into all the facets of something, which is one earmark of what I call thinking. And I should brush up on my Kierkegaard for sure.

To know is to interpret. — Astrophel

It’s been a while since I’ve flown in those circles; I’d need to hear more. But, in relation to the self, it makes me want to say we don’t need knowledge (as in: information) of interpretation (as if “yours” vs “mine”). Interpretation is a kind of a guess so this sense of knowing is picking the option among the possibilities of a thing (interpreting which one) that can be shown (argued if not agreed) as to wrong or right, say, "that was a threat", "no, it was an offer", "yeah, an offer I can't refuse). The moment of the self I am getting at is when no one has any more authority to claim what is right. Then positing is creating, making alive, me and the world, extrapolating from information and possibilities.

Outside of language's contexts, nothing at all is to be said. — Astrophel

To clarify: when I speak of context, I’m referring, as I believe Wittgenstein is, to the “event” of when something is said or done (expressed, by someone)—who is there, what was the expectation, is there a confusion, offense, and all the bottomless things that could be asked or clarified or explained or brought to bear on an ongoing basis between those involved. This “context” is suppressed in being abstracted from in the process of generalization and purified knowledge that comes from imposing a singular standard of judgment. So then all that is left is the words together, which is insular and cannibalistic.

it is natural that people have different opinions and thoughts on the philosophical topics. — Corvus

No, philosophy is about truth. Kant says philosophy speaks in a universal voice, as if for each of us, for us to see ourselves in it. Not everyone will have all the answers but there is merit in learning how they think to find what it is they do see. I take your responses here as not only obtuse but dismissive, condescending and disrespectful. Keep your opinions to yourself in the future please.

So, the self as an accountable agent for moral decisions and broader social and contextual circumstances, a bit like becoming who you are by acting or engaging is such a way as to be responsible for who you are. — Manuel

There’s more to it, but yes. Thank you. My OP point being that I am a self only if, but also when, we are “acting and engaging” in relation with or against the social contract, the ordinary criteria for things; thus that the self does not “exist” as a constant, and for the purpose philosophy wants.

…philosophers are trying to elucidate, or find in experience the I, that binds everything together, not only objects in the world, but, as you mention, moral choices too. But all have failed, to some extent or other. I think it's weakness of understanding, you seem to take a view that it is a misleading or incomplete or potentially risky way to deal with the topic, because there is so much else to consider. — Manuel

It all fails because there is nothing that meets classic philosophy’s predefined standard for certainty, i.e. that there MUST be an understanding of “I”, the “world”, “reality”, “experience” that “binds everything together”. To require that outcome is not misleading; it is a delusional fantasy that not only twists our vision of how things are, but blinds us to our part in the world. The danger is its desire to altogether remove the need for us (each “me” defined against us all), even in reducing us to “perception”, “consciousness”, “intention”. So, yes, everything can fall apart, but knowledge is not our only relation to the world, as everything is judged differently, as with the self and the moral realm.

There is no escaping this nature of language as an historically evolving and contingent phenomenon… it is no less true then, perhaps, some social theory of the self or evolution… But out of context, it is not as if the world is speaking what it is outside of propositional possibilities. — Astrophel

But we aren’t investigating language, and I don’t know how an activities’ possibilities are “contingent” or “propositional” (somehow not how the world works?). The ordinary criteria come from what has mattered to us about stuff over the vast history of our lives; the “possibilities” are what count in the judgment of a thing. We define ourselves in relation to them (against, re-invigorating, etc.), so this is not a social theory but how the self is differentiated from our shared lives.

.....a new standpoint must be available which in spite of the switching off of this psycho-physical totality of nature leaves something over—the whole field of absolute consciousness. Thus, instead of living naively in experience (Erfahrung), and subjecting what we experience, transcendent nature, to theoretical inquiries, we perform the “phenomenological reduction”. In other words : instead of naïvely carrying out the acts proper to the nature-constituting consciousness with its transcendent theses and allowing ourselves to be led by motives that operate therein to still other transcendent theses, and so forth—we set all these theses “out of action”, we take no part in them ; we direct the glance of apprehension and theoretical inquiry to pure consciousness in its own absolute Being. — Astrophel

Well, kudos for reading Levinas. There is a thread of similarity here. When we are just conforming, we are “living naively” (as Plato will say, unreflectively), and just “carrying out the acts proper” and “allowing ourselves to be led”. Wittgenstein is investing the “motives that operate therein” as the fear of skepticism and thus the desire for certainty, which we turn from to realize our “real need” (PI, #108)—as we do in differentiating the self. He will similarly “set all these [he will say “metaphysical criteria”] “out of action”, not to “take no part in them”, but to understand why we desired their certainty.

things that are not me… epistemically transcend my reach. His priority cannot be the transcendent natural world, for this cup, this fence post, and so on, are themselves only accessed through what it is that connects one to these things. The self? It is the stream of consciousness that is intuitively and irreducibly there. This is the foundation for any knowledge claim at all. — Astrophel

In relation to the self, things don’t “epistemically transcend my reach”. Knowledge does not do everything; it is not our only connection to the world. We “access” apologies, and justice, and chairs each differently, through the ordinary criteria for each: for their identification, how our judgment of your acts with them work, how porous the boundaries, how change happens or not, etc. So there is nothing which connect these things; and, even if there were—say, all: objects—it would be the criteria for objects, not “me”. “I” am not “foundational”, and my self-awareness and internal dialogue are unremarkable in this regard. This picture of “me” and this conception of a “transcendent natural world” is based on the desire to have something fixed, pure, math-like, dependable, predetermined, universal, complete, generalized, etc. If our ordinary criteria are Emerson’s “conformity, the “social contract”, then I don’t only “know” those or not, I claim them, or defy them, live them, or don’t stand up for them, etc.

Curiously, something as murky as the self, is crucial for things like criminal law, which depend on such notions. Also, our moral intuitions come into play, in terms of, if John hit Bob, if John is provably sleepwalking, we can't blame him for such an act. But if he merely angry, then we do penalize him, etc. — Manuel

I didn’t notice this before but I went briefly through the example of legal culpability at the end off here.

I thought I had a general idea of what you had in mind, this last post leaves me unsure: As I understand it, one of the things you are trying to say, maybe the most important one is that philosophers often fall into a trap of trying to force or impose on the self a kind of structure - a "this-is-me" moment, which may not happen, because we are forcing certain demands made by our knowledge onto something which either fails to meet these demands or because we overlook all those other situations in which reason cannot attain what it seeks, the demand of finding this moment of "this is my self" being one way, among many, in which such an issue can arise and be discussed — Manuel

No, that’s close. I think there is something you’re trying to wriggle free to keep, but I’m not sure I’ll land on it. Yes, doubt interpreted as radical skepticism creates a trap: the desire for something foundational (or the despair of any rationality), which is the demand that our knowledge do everything for us (or that there is nothing else). So we impose the standard of certainty, logic, purity, perfection (like math) on everything, beforehand, which causes us to overlook the diversity of our criteria for our many different activities, forcing us into a certain picture, among others, of the constant, causal self. But I wouldn’t say these are “situations in which reason cannot attain what it seeks”, as our various criteria express what is essential to us about things (their “essence”).

Nevertheless, knowledge can’t do everything and is not our only relation to the world; there is a truth to skepticism: that, yes, we are separate, but for no reason, and so everything that comes between us is our responsibility. (Cavell, Claim of Reason) We fail, make mistakes, will be wrong. What this means is that the self at times must go on from knowledge, and our various criteria for judgment. “This-is-me” in the sense of: making myself answerable for what will matter to me, what I will be the measure of, what I take as mine, as founding, constituting me in this situation.

then yeah, the issue of self arises in many circumstances, most of these circumstances being quite foreign to the usual philosophical obsession with trying to articulate what this phenomenon is, through reason. — Manuel

Well here I wouldn’t say these situations would be “foreign”, but are the meat of philosophy. What is right here? How do we continue when we are at a loss (morally)? how do I judge you? How shall we form a nation? The “usual philosophical obsession” is trying to know the unknown future; replace the need at times for us to extend beyond (or bring back to life) our morals, or rules, or knowledge. So I guess I just don’t know what sets what I am saying apart from trying to “articulate (through reason) what this phenomenon is”. What do we want, or need, to explain that we don’t think we can?

I am not sure "Imagine" is the right word to describe what we do with other minds. Imagination sounds like free mind play on the mental objects when you don't have the physical object to perceive in front of you. — Corvus

That wasn’t clear, sorry. I meant imagine as in fabricate; we fantasize that there is something to “know” about the other. That is the picture we create in order to have the universal timeless certain knowledge we want (“pure” “logical”, like math). Yes, we don’t imagine people’s thoughts, but also hypothesizing about someone only applies in certain situations (guessing at thoughts, is Wittgenstein’s example, as luck would have it). If someone expresses something we don’t guess and then are “right” (now we “know”), like their expression matches my “perception” of it (that’s not how understanding or misunderstanding works). If they are in pain, I don’t guess or know, I accept or deny them, I help them.

This is a misconception of how thinking is judged and is recognized. “Nice thinking” as problem solving, “I am thinking I need to fight for this” which is a resolve to defy expectations. You are categorizing “think” as our self-awareness, our internal monologue, but these are just like everyone else. Descartes does desire certainty, which is why we project a requirement that this be rationally justifying or proving the conclusion that he wanted before it began (thus why we see it as logical), but he is still honest enough to recognize that the self does not work as a constant, thus the “when” of it. So we too are imposing that prerequisite which creates the picture polpularly taken from Descartes, which colors our interpretation of the workings of the self.
— Antony Nickles

I don't quite understand this passage, what it is trying to say. Could you maybe reiterate just the main point only in the paragraph? Thanks. — Corvus

This is hard to wrap one’s head around, particularly as I’m not that good at explaining it, but also because it is a radical refiguring of assumptions our whole culture has internalized, much less classic philosophy, which created the problem. Thinking does not work the way you (and classic philosophy) picture it, it is not judged as a mental activity. We manufacture looking at it this way because we want something certain, so we create a perpetual self that has and controls our constant individual “perceptions”—of “appearances” compared to an “objective” “reality”—or compared to someone else’s different “perceptions” that they have.

Now self-awareness and our internal dialogue are mine, but only like a secret, but they don’t lead to the picture of the self that philosophy created. Those things are just how humans are, a basis fact, no further conclusion to be had from it; it doesn’t mean or prove anything.

We don’t take into consideration, nor do others judge us, based on the presence of the human body’s self-reflection or internal monologue, etc; these are not the criteria for motive and purpose, which are activities just like resolve or a decision on a goal.
— Antony Nickles

Again, not sure what this quote is trying to say. — Corvus

Well I’ll just say that motive isn’t “internal”. The legal concept of mens rea (guilty mind) is not how we convict on 1st degree murder if the circumstances allow for only one reasonable explanation. We don’t infer whether they “meant to” or “intended to”. If they planned it, took steps beforehand, etc. there is no other criteria we use, or could, to judge—as we use other types of criteria to judge other things—but there is NOT a criteria that might ensure with certainty making it unnecessary that we be the judge**. And this is not the failure of knowledge, but why a juror must stand behind their decision (and why the law must absolve them). **The desire to avoid the responsibility of judging entirely is why people want something as certain as DNA, and why the success of science has cemented its standards in our culture for everything, creating this mistaken version of action and the self.

@Janus @Corvus @frank @Manuel

You have put your finger on the pulse of the matter. Consider how a physicalist's reality falls apart instantly, for if experience yields to a physical reduction, then the saying that something is physical is also duly reduced! — Astrophel

Well I was starting to think I was (ironically) alone in the universe.

the historical narrative that runs through all possible discussion and defines the "potentiality of possibilities" as Heidegger put it, for each. — Astrophel

And this I take as what Emerson is referring to as conformity, and Wittgenstein labels “grammar”(the ordinary criteria for judgment), and what Rousseau is calling the social contract, the general will.

Narratives are open hermeneutically, but then, IN this openness we have to deal with the givenness of the world that is not language and culture, like this sprained ankle I have and its pain, or the palpable encounter (as Michel Henry puts it) of living and experiencing. Language encounters what is not language IN the context of its own contingency.” — Astrophel

And of course, as there are similarities, there are divergences (though more interesting ones because sensible in being closer). In its openness to “interpretation”, I think it is important to note there is a “when” this happens (as not all the time), and forms, structures, “grammar”, rules, morals, etc. (what I take you to mean by “IN the context of its own contingency), in or from which a divergence is only even possible. However, each thing with its own structure, measures, considerations. Thus “the giveness of the world that is not language and culture” only enters into some situations, and those do not involve my interpretation (as science’s results are the same for anyone following its method), nor always my experience (neither the opportunity for it nor because I am always “experiencing”).

And so, the criteria and circumstances of the life of the self (which may not, or not continually, happen), work and are measured in totally different ways (as pain is important to us in my response to you being in pain). This is not in my interpretation of culture (though that is a thing), but in my relation to it: pushing against it, bringing it alive again (as it can be dead also). Thus the importance of this instant (go now! Emerson seems to say), and the “power” Rousseau claims it takes, to claim my self (my future responsiveness) as authority, for example, over what we are to call “right”, how to measure the (common) “good” (as Plato could not with knowledge, as Kant could not with logic).

This is where Wittgenstein feared to go, this "world" of impossible presence. Levinas was not so afraid, for he rightly understood that this radical other and Other of the world is the intrusion of a palpable metaphysics, not merely a senseless abstract idea. — Astrophel

I take it Wittgenstein is the one thought to be only describing “a senseless abstract idea”, which is the common misunderstanding that he is concerned with language, and not that he is looking at it—specifically: what we say, when… —as his method of understanding the world (and our interests in it, what is essential about it).

Nevertheless, the “radicalness” I claim as our self’s stance to the conformity to our culture (what Wittgenstein will see as the criteria for judging each different thing, the current possibilities of its “senses”, as in: versions). Some take Wittgenstein as defending common sense, or solving skepticism, but this misses his discussion of the extension of our concepts, the seeing aspects of a thing (as it were) with a force against the norm. Though not a “metaphysical” me, but constitutive of me (a new constitution); not a “presence” of the world, as if a quality, like an imposed “reality”. Derrida and Marx thought tearing down the ordinary would was necessary to reveal a new relation to the world. Nietszche says that our morals needed to be made alive again, or reconsidered, by a new human, a me in a new defining position to the world.

Phenomenology is the final resting place of philosophical inquiry, where it doesn't so much rest as invites one to yield (Heidegger's version of gelassenheit) one's egoistic totality in order to attend to what is there for meditative thought. What is revealed is not a finished matter at all. Quite the opposite. — Astrophel

I’ve read “What is called Thinking?”, in which I take Heidegger as examining that thinking is not the violent imposing of a set requirement (the “egoistic” idea of trapping the world in a word), but being drawn into, passively submitting (as you say, “yielding”) to, what he says “calls” to us about a thing, which I take as the difference Wittgenstein makes between explanation and description, or looking at our ordinary criteria as evidence of what is attractive about a thing, it’s “possibilities”, as what is essential. And when you say this is not a “finished matter” I take it as to the future of a thing, but also to the ability of our extending our practices, our judgment, etc., and that this is the true realm of the human, that we take up and thus which defines us.

Thinking about other minds in line with self perception sounds like a great idea. But as you say, it is impossible to see in the other minds internally. Only way we could know them is by facial expressions, language and behaviour. Maybe "knowing" other minds should be restricted to "guessing"? — Corvus

I said that we imagine that. It might help to reread that paragraph in that light. It is not set up that we can’t “know” your “mind” “internally”, nor is it a matter that judgment is based on their expression (“behavior”) alone, but judged on the criteria of the activity happening in a particular context. And the self is differentiated not by a constant thing like “our perception” (which I have explained why we construct it this way, at least elsewhere here). As I have said, we don’t “know” the other (or don’t because there is something in them we could, but can’t), we “react” to their expression, as you don’t have a “self” by default, but in your differentiation (or defense of) the natural conformity to our culture.

I feel all those perceiving words prove the perceivers' self knowledge logically.  You see, perceive, know, look, imagine, experience, hear ... but whose perceptions are they if not the person who perceives, knows, looks, imagines, experiences and hears?

Imagining, hearing, vision, our self-awareness, mental dialogue, are all just part of being human, there does need to be a “self”. Everyone has these capabilities (except the notable exceptions). Our awareness of our internal dialogue is not demonstration (proof) of anything, because it is our culture (influenced by philosophy) who put together this picture for a specific reason (which I have discussed). Now, this isn’t to ignore the personal, my interests, which I demonstrate in standing up for me in relation to our cultural criteria for judgment, expectations, etc. for each situation or activity. This is reflected in the texts I have provided.
— Corvus

When Descartes said Cogito Ergo sum, I am sure it wasn't epistemological or ontological, but a logical reasoning. A logical reasoning that he thinks, therefore he exists. The thinking must have the thinker, who thinks, therefore the thinker must exist. — Corvus

This is a misconception of how thinking is judged and is recognized. “Nice thinking” as problem solving, “I am thinking I need to fight for this” which is a resolve to defy expectations. You are categorizing “think” as our self-awareness, our internal monologue, but these are just like everyone else. Descartes does desire certainty, which is why we project a requirement that this be rationally justifying or proving the conclusion that he wanted before it began (thus why we see it as logical), but he is still honest enough to recognize that the self does not work as a constant, thus the “when” of it. So we too are imposing that prerequisite which creates the picture polpularly taken from Descartes, which colors our interpretation of the workings of the self.

Imagine, you are told to come to the Health Centre for vaccination.  Your name, age, and all your details will be in the letter from the GP with the appointment time and date.  So you are heading to the place on the day for the time driving to the place.  Even that action is based on the self perception, that you are the one needing to go there, and get the vaccination. No one else.  So every action with motives and purposes are also embedded with self knowledge or perception.  In other words, the human consciousness is embedded with self perception. — Corvus

We don’t take into consideration, nor do others judge us, based on the presence of the human body’s self-reflection or internal monologue, etc; these are not the criteria for motive and purpose, which are activities just like resolve or a decision on a goal.

skepticism cannot be refuted, heck, not even solipsism can be. Degrees of confidence is a more sensible approach on most topics. — Manuel

Yes, but even if we are not “refuting” skepticism (nor resolving it), to simple accept a lower judgment of still to impose a standard rather than see that each thing has its own criteria. So “degrees of confidence” is still an approach dictated by the desire to see the fallibility of the world as a problem which knowledge can answer (even if sorta), rather than as a truth that shows knowledge is not the only relation we have to the world, others, and ourselves. That, for example, the criteria for a self are different than we create, desire.

There is no discernible fact in me. "I" cannot perceive it. Yet, this stops short of a different issue, whether it (the self, or me or I) exists or not. It could be a "fiction" of convenience, or it could be a real natural phenomenon, which need not introduce dualism. — Manuel

The point is that there is nothing that rises to the level of factual certainty on which to base the self, but that we (might) find ourselves in the position where the only way to bridge a rift between us is for me to continue to try, to respond, rather than simply in succeeding or failing in “matching” the fantasy of a fact of (existence of) my “perception” or “experience” with yours. These are not “natural phenomena”, as vision and awareness and focus are, nor are they our ordinary criteria for judging. We both look at a tree and are aware of different things than each other, but I see it as a beautiful image, or as good firewood, and you see it as needing water. These are not individualized experiences or perceptions, but they may clash, though not as a matter of an internal something (even if not “perceived”). Our differences are be personal, matter to “me”, which may require me breaking with the judgments of our society, even reshaping the criteria or ordinary working of that judgment, but this is not a “‘fiction’ of convenience”.

I have the feeling that either we are in agreement, or I fail to see the problem you see. Which, if is the case, is all well and good. And if not, that's good too. — Manuel

Bit a this, bit of that; but I do feel I’ve been given ample opportunity to present my case, and have learned more in hearing your input, so thank you.

...[a] statement... made with... intent ... or putting oneself forward... are attitude words in nature... [and are] both cases [which] involve other minds with the speaker or actor, which felt inappropriate in the context. — Corvus

The "problem of other minds" is related to the differentiation of the self, as we also imagine there is something to "know" about the other (in the same way I imagine I "know" my "self") thus the creation of "their" special: experience, perception, sensation, etc., as always different from "mine". However, as Wittgenstein will point out (PI 3rd. p. 225), we do not "know" the other's pain, we acknowledge them being in pain--we accept them or reject them, e.g., we react to their pain by helping them. This is what is meant by the limitation of knowledge, and that we have other relations to the world (and our self). Not everything works the same way (e.g., that there is a "self" that is either an object or based of the same pure requirement we want for objects; for, as you say: "[my] doubtless and concrete existence through the experience in the reality"--emphasis added to highlight the singular criteria for certainty we impose on everything).

"perceiving"
"perceive my existence"
"seeing"
"looking"
"know[ing] I am here"

All of these things have different, ordinary criteria of judgment for completion, appropriateness, etc.; and various expectations and implications in different contexts (they are not removed from a situation, abstracted, say, into: "me"). They are not all the same nor tied to "my experience" or "consciousness" (though that is not to say I don't have interests, focus, awareness, reflection, etc.). Another way to say it is that the conditions for these things (what makes them "possible") is not "me", but what we judge as seeing something (as something), looking for or at something, that I know where I am (I'm not lost), etc. As in these cases, the creation of the "self" works differently than imagining it as my self-awareness, inner dialogue; as with looking and understanding (which simply turn on my interest in different aspects of something than you).

p.s. - not sure what is meant by "attitude words in nature".

Your citing of Descartes had apparently led me to think you were addressing the ontological, not the political, question of your existence; a different question altogether — Janus

I always respect that we all may have differing interests, but my claim is that the "political", as you call it, is the ontological--so not "different questions". The desire for unity, simplicity and continuity creates the ontological picture of the self as a constant which we know or cannot, whereas the way the creation of self works (is judged to be "you") involves our relationship to our culture's ordinary criteria. Though, as I said, I appreciate this may not be your cup of tea.

It might be a different conception that drives our view — Manuel

I think it is different interests that are taken as competing, as I don't mean to eclipse your interest in, say, our brain's affect on our lives, only that the relation of that project to this issue in philosophy resulted from a pre-imposed requirement (for something certain).

my intuition is that there may be something there, which we cannot explain — Manuel

My point is that this "intuition" is a desire to have knowledge (what I take as "mine" that we simply know and explain) substitute for the fact that our judgments and criteria involve our interests, what matters to us. So, at times, we must re-assert ourselves into their maintenance or extension or change. This is where the self is asserting (claims authority) as a standard against our ordinary criteria, creating its duty and responsibility to be responsive for our making a particular stand.

[Our] diachronic... selves... being the continuous perhaps more common idea that, I am the same person I was, five minutes ago or this morning. If I see a picture of me in the morning, I will (and many others) say that that person is me. — Manuel

That the "diachronic" is the popular or commonsense picture, shows that philosophy not only involves making explicit the unexamined criteria and workings of our world, but also effects our popular sense of our relation to our world (that everyone thinks in terms of (what they think they understand as) "objective" and "subjective"--thus philosophy's power to change how we think).

The necessity for "me" as an agent, for example, for a vision of "intention", is also based on the terror that I may not continue; that Descartes' fear misinterprets the truth of the beginning of the issue--that there is no fact (in me) that ensures things won't fall apart; that we may not understand each other or agree (and not based on an inability to communicate the manufactured sense of "my" experience, perception). His attempt to "solve" this fact of our condition creates the requirement that it be certain, that I "exist", or something does, as "perfect", like math. Strawson seems to record the continuing theme here that the self is only asserted at a time, and is not a continuous thing; that the need or event of our differentiating ourselves from conformity is in response to particular needs of a situation or the interests that we are willing to stand up for, in contrast to philosophy's singular "need" (requirement) that this ongoing duty be relieved from us by knowledge of a fact in us (the metaphysical conception of "me").

language and culture are the historical dimension of knowledge claims. — Astrophel

This is true, but I am claiming that there is a crucial, essential part of the self that is different than a claim to knowledge, though also related to the "historical dimension" of "language and culture"--what I am calling our "conformity".

The only hope one has to go further than this lies with phenomenology (the one true view?). — Astrophel

This is also a very interesting point of comparison. My Husserl being basically non-existent, I looked through the "General Introduction of Pure Phenomenology" where he discusses the, as I read it, "effecting" of the self--his term: "Ego" (p. 273). I see a connection in that he takes an act "effecting" the ego as separate from an act that does not (analogous to conformity; when nothing unexpected is happening or we are not at a moral crisis). Of note for me, he also sees the assertion of the self as an event, not a constant (in our "self"); that its "existence" comes and goes, lives and dies he says.

Ego 'lives' exclusively in a new cogito. The earlier cogito 'fades away,' sinks into 'darkness'.... the Ego does not live in them as an “effecting subject.” With that the concept of act is extended in a determined and quite indispensable sense. ...the act-effectings make up the “position-takings” in the widest sense... [those] of negation or affirmation with respect to existential claims or the like would belong here. — Id.

Although Husserl is elsewhere stuck in the picture of us as an internal constant and cause (my intending etc.)--which I hope we can avoid getting mired in--I take him here to be touching on the self as "affirmed" in "taking" a "position", which I take as analogous to a position in relation to society's judgments and criteria.

Also note the image of "fades away", which is similar to Descartes slipping back into the "law of custom" and Rousseau's picture of silence as consent to the general will. This seems to match up with Husserl's "non-effecting" acts.

But this is a passing attempt to make a connection (I have more to read of his); I leave it to you to see if there is a ball to pick up in this regard. Thank you for widening the discussion.

Doesn't Consciousness cover all mental activities going on in the mind? — Corvus

"Consciousness" is a made up placeholder to give feeling, seeing, thinking, awareness, understanding, the quality of being unique to me ("private"), that I can "know" them and communicate that (or not, but then that is blamed by projecting an "appearance" or complicating agreement, requiring our "experience" match). Personal is to record the fact that we can keep feelings secret, not express them. I believe I went over this elsewhere in this thread in more depth.

Why does one need to "assert" that he exists? Descartes wrote that to convince himself of the most ensuring knowledge with 100% doubt free. It was not as if he was "asserting" anything. — Corvus

You are thinking of "assert" as if he is arguing; this is the different sense that he is claiming authority apart from the social contract (our usual conformity)--that I am sticking myself out there and thus acting as the "maker of manners" as Shakespeare says. Of course, we are accountable for this and in relation to our shared ordinary criteria in judging whatever thing we are involved in.

I have never seen or heard anyone saying that in real life. — Corvus

No, we don't discuss it this way as if a reason why I am doing something. This kind of philosophy is an examination of the way we operate in relation to our situation as humans; here for insight into how the self is judged, how being someone (else) works (apart from our ordinary conformity).

Descartes wrote that to convince himself of the most ensuring knowledge with 100% doubt free. It was not as if he was "asserting" anything. — Corvus

And I am arguing that Descartes is not here "ensuring knowledge", he is trying to have certainty; and the only way to do that--in the case of not knowing what to do (who I am in this world), as I claim: "when" that is necessary--is to step into that gap as an authority apart from the social contract--proposing: me, what kind of person I will stand for. That my consent to our shared lives is not just withheld, but claimed as representative by my aversion to conformity.

It might help to read the responses to the other comments.

I don't exist at some times and not others simply because I only assert my existence at certain times. — Janus

I am not asserting my "existence"; I am claiming what I will stand for in relation to how our community judges a part of our lives where we are at a loss as to the criteria (e.g., for what will count as being just). I "exist" in standing against (or for) our shared culture in a way that requires that I have to back it up.

The very idea seems absurd to me. — Janus

This may be getting in the way of your understanding.

My view is that it is by virtue of having a sense of self (which I believe some animals also have) that I can be said to exist, and I don't believe that sense is operative only at the times that I am reflectively aware of articulating it as an assertion of self-existence. — Janus

Your argument is duly noted. Let me know if you want any help understanding the claim I am making.

@frank @Manuel It might help to read my response to Janus and Corvus above as I may have articulated better the essential difference between philosophy's standard "self" and what I am trying to point out here. I feel like I am muddling things as the act of defining myself against society could be interpreted as the same old picture that there is something about me that is unique or special that just needs to be known and then explained or communicated, rather than the act of standing for something different than the expectations of the social contract. (See I'm not sure that's any better.) I'll take a look at the texts again.

(or perhaps @bano or @Paine or @Sam26 can sort this out for me--any political philosophers?)

If it were true that my existence depends on my asserting it, then it seems to follow that, since I can assert it any time or even, in principle, constantly, that the dependence is really on the possibility of assertion and not on actual instances of assertion, that is that it follows that I always exist—until the possibility of my asserting my existence is gone, when I am dead and no longer exist. — Janus

First, that sounds exhausting. Now, you may express who you are by wearing clothes differently (or very well), but asking for the potatoes to be passed is not a moment for individuation. So the "possibility of assertion" is not constant, thus why Descartes says "whenever", as in: not always. Also, thinking is not our internal dialogue; I am judged as having thought about something when we have a problem (not "any time"), thus it is seen as timely, situational, deliberate, considering the expectations or implications, etc. Finally, the goal is not an argument for my "existence", as if that were a separate quality of things. It is in the sense of choosing how I will live my life, what I will get behind and what not.

One only exists, when one asserts he thinks, therefore he exists. And other times, he doesn't. That sounds not valid. — Corvus

It might be easier to read through my responses to other posts (say here) first for the sense of "assertion" here. I'll just say that this is not proposing an argument, it is asserting myself; as: claiming authority for me, against conformity (the social contract).

Shouldn't Cogito be understood as a wider meaning such as consciousness which includes all the mental activities such as general mental awareness, perception, thinking and feeling ... etc rather than just think? In that case, One is conscious (feels, thinks), therefore one exists.
As long as one is conscious (feels, perceives, thinks), one exists. Because consciousness requires, by necessity, the being who is conscious. — Corvus

And this picture, here of "consciousness", is what I am claiming these authors are trying to get you to see past. "Consciousness" is a manufactured framework of the self as something that is mine, caused by the misconception that your "perception" is (perhaps) fundamentally different than mine (It might help to read this first). Now you will say, "but I feel this, and think, and am aware" and all that is true, but it is not the cause of the curfuffle. We are humans who have feelings and self-awareness and mental dialogue (which is not "thinking"; again, read the first post), but those are personal, not individual (we are not different by nature). The actual problem is that we sometimes just don't see eye-to-eye, but not that we can't. So if our "mental activities" are just there, without the need of their being "mine", as if special, than the need for the self as a constant thing goes away, replaced by the self as differentiated from our cultural expectations; i.e., I make myself me in relation to the past, our shared judgments, the implications of our activities and expressions, etc., or I am: a sheep, asleep, brainwashed, etc. (again, "existing" being a different matter). Good luck.

I'm a mysterian, so, I have no issue with "being human is...beyond the judgment and criteria...of our cultural history. — Manuel

The relegation of our humanity to irrationality is driven by philosophy's desire to only consider what meets the prerequisites it sets of universality, abstraction, completeness, etc. as reasons. Wittgenstein shows us that our ordinary various criteria for judgment, under all the different things we do, allows everything to be discussed, explained, agreed on, specific, rigorous, "normative", etc. except at the point where they fail to cover all cases (extensions into new contexts), or where they reveal that we have another relation to the world, to others (their pain), our self, than knowing it (as if the self were a thing in me that I only need know, need explain); "beyond the limits of knowledge" for the self is not a mystery, because there is nothing more to know--I step into my future (yet out of or furthering our shared history**), for which I can provide reasons, make intelligible to you. **I said "sometimes beyond our criteria" as most of the time we just follow the ordinary way of things (conformity).

Kind of like Sartre? "I am the situation" — frank

This is interesting to consider; my Sartre is rusty but my recollection is that he (as with Foucault) is talking about a practical response to the state of our society as it stands, as in: protest, revolution, and what I take these authors to be getting at is the structural nature of being human, how that works. Not to negate Sartre from the conversation, as he also sees something necessary between the self and something social, but these authors address the (Kantian) conditions of our basic lives together; say--analogously, as I can't think of an example involving the self right now--not judging the injustice of our current institutions, but standing against (or for) our criteria for the judgment of justice at all (uberhapt). Worth further thought (and examples). Thank you.

You've brought this up before, the idea that there is no intention in language use. — frank

It isn't that there is no such thing as intention, just that it works differently than philosophy has sometimes pictured it (socially, rather than “mentally”). It is not a cause (which would thus require a “self” to enact). The picture of a constant “self” (who intends) leads to the picture that we "use" language, as if: operate it or control it (that is not to say we don't sometimes chose what we say with the intention, as in the hope, that it have a particular outcome). The desire for philosophy’s standard picture of intention is to maintain control of what “we” mean; to imagine our duty is merely to accurately describe our (inner) “self”, rather than remain accountable to the implications of our expressions and acts in light of the expectations and conditions (criteria for judgment) of a situation. Our situation is not our selves already always present, but that “I” am dormant within our cultural roles (limited to the means of production Marx would say); I am only myself in relation or opposition to this conformity, which I stand ready to answer to.

Sure, I can see [the self as created, not existing]. But aren't there empirical cases we could look into? As in a child being raised by wild animals in which they don't have other human beings as a reference frame, what would happen to them? — Manuel

You are asking for proof of what are the conditions we act under as humans (as if philosophy's issues could be answered with science). These authors are trying to get us to see that being human is sometimes beyond the judgment and criteria (and morality even Nietzsche will point out) of our cultural history, our shared ways of judging, identifying, proceeding, etc; not as an ideal but a part of our situation as humans, that our our lives are larger than the limitations of knowledge, that we are not always "circumscribed with rules"(Investigations #68).

"[creating the self] takes ownership ("possesses") ...what we want our interests to be in the world...". — Antony Nickles

Sure, he is aiming at that ownership status, as it were. — Manuel

Not sure what your understanding is here ("as it were"?), but the common picture is that there is something that is "mine" that I own (always, or in acting--a perception, an intention, a meaning) that you don't understand, or that I can't communicate (some kind of matching up with what is "me"--see Hume discussion below), rather than the sense of taking on, owning up to, whatever the judgment or consequences or need for response of a situation.

[Hume] recognized that his entire system essentially collapses, when he says "my hopes vanish", when discussing the problem of not being able to find a self and not being able to find a real (as opposed to imagined) continuity in objects. — Manuel

A little bit off topic but important in seeing his alternative "picturing" of the self, and why. Hume is important (as is Descartes), because he does take the threat of skepticism seriously: the possibility that we make mistakes, may be judged as wrong or bad, that we may not know or agree how to continue. Hume will take this fallibility as a "problem" (even with objects) and projects that onto a manufactured placeholder, "appearance", and then "internalizes" the "answer" (as Kant wants to externalize it, creating the "thing-in-itself" and then problematizing that), which makes "finding", as you say, matching up as it were, equating, my self, my perception, critical (to take the place of our role in answering for our self).

The reason for the machinations is to make our fallibility an intellectual problem (of knowledge) in the desire for the answer to meet a particular per-determined requirement, standard (predictable, concrete, "rational", universal, generalized, complete, controllable, etc.). As you say, he is "assuming the self is unified and that objects have a real connection...." (emphasis added because these assumptions are based on the desire for a knowable certainty). I am trying to show these authors take the creation of the self, thus the possibility of its not existing, not that we can't find an answer to the problem of skepticism,but that we are in the position were we "answer" for our actions and speech in ongoing various ways (not as a picture of matching up with what is "my self"--as above).

I mean if you have that in mind, say, sleepwalking through life or drowned in consumerism or some other metaphoric use of the term, I still think the whole "reasonable person" standard applies, you would be responsible for your actions because you know what you are doing is wrong. — Manuel

It is not "metaphoric" as in just language or a social commentary; there is actual import in it for the analytical workings of the conditions of being human.

See my response to @Frank above about morality (reason, standards, "right"). Although, again, that is a different discussion (though granted it is connected). You are "responsible" not in its sense that you are acting appropriately ("I'm a responsible person"); but in its emphasis on being liable for, answerable to, your actions. "Rationality" is (afterwards) giving reasons, or excuses, or contingencies. We have to justify ourselves, be intelligible, rather than rely on what has been determined as "right" (to avoid my being wrong in that I can blame: "moral ambiguity" rather than as a reflection on me).

cc: @Manuel

Assertion is a voluntary action, so it kind of requires a self of some kind, doesn't it? — frank

Well, Austin will have a lot to say about this in his 31-page "A Plea for Excuses, which I highly recommend, but it might be hard to see his purpose in pointing out that "intention" and "volition" are only brought up in special cases (not all the time) as when things go sideways ("Did you intend to do that?"); the purpose being that, no, an "act" does not require an actor in the sense of a cause or decision, etc. What occurs in a particular situation is judged (when necessary) to be an act under different though common (ordinary) criteria for each act taking into consideration the circumstances. The "self" that these authors are pointing out is an assertion in the sense of claiming authority (over this judging) where the thing gone sideways is our shared criteria (which I must stand against), or our lives together (which may not reflect our standards for the justice we profess).

If you mean the self is drawn out of events post hoc, I think I agree? Likewise, morality is always a post hoc construction (I think) where we judge an event according to some standard or rule. That event was screwed up, so it's bad, and anything in the future that's like that would also be bad. But we can't really judge events in the future because we don't have access to them. We only have access to hypotheticals and past events. — frank

Of course, who you are is “drawn out” from, or judged from, your actions. But I make a claim to (and for) my self; I put my self forth as an standard(bearer). This is also a different vision of morality (although that is a different discussion); not something worked out in advance or based on rules or history (although that can be taken into consideration). There is a moral moment, when we are lost and don't know how to proceed, at which point my action is based not on what is "right", but on what I will take as mine, be responsible for (Nietzsche will call this the birth of the human, as it were, over deontology or teleology).

But what if we're always sleepwalking in a manner of speaking? Always playing out the same habits and grinding the same axes, or maybe only doing what we think we're supposed to do. That's a kind of loss of selfhood. — frank

And this is the sense of self to which I am claiming these authors speak to. If we never allow our words to express our self (hide from that exposure, commitment), then we merely quote others' lives (as Emerson puts it).

...are you suggesting that the self exists only when we make propositions to others...? — Manuel

Well it's not a matter of the proposition being "true" in a true/false sense, or that there is a function of a proposition like this to others that would be different from one I make to myself. I am saying your being you (individually) works through a process of putting yourself in line or against our culture (the social contract as it were), and that this happens as an event (not all the time), either moral, political, relational, etc. That you are standing behind what you say and do in a way that defines you, makes you subject to judgment, responsible to be intelligible; that you are claiming something as yours--Descartes' "must" here is because you are in a sense making that promise to yourself (and others), that you will make it true.

...are you suggesting that... if we are alone, and we say we exist, we are not saying anything informative? — Manuel

Well, let's try to imagine a context in which we would say this (not to be too Wittgensteinian about it). Perhaps if we were getting ourselves psyched or trying to get our confidence up in the face of someone treating us as insignificant (less than a person)--"I exist! I exist!"--and this would be in the sense that I matter, that I am not nothing.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception — Hume, Treatise on Human Nature

.

Now, as has been commented on by several figures, he appears to deny or minimize something, he cannot help use: namely the "I". What is this referring to? — Manuel

Well here Hume is actually bemoaning his situation that he only observes "perception" and never any constant "self". What he wants to find is who and how we "possess" (make specific and certain, as we might objects) our "personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination" setting aside "our passions or the concern we take in ourselves", which I am saying these other authors take up as what we must assert and express into the world--in a way that is not self interest, but takes ownership ("possesses") of what we want our interests to be in the world (Wittgenstein will call this our "real need"), that we own (up to) them (living our shared criteria for judgment, or averse to them; extending them, revolutionizing our lives).

I appreciate your response.

I think the domain where the idea of you--as a thinking, feeling actor on the world stage--is the most potent is the moral realm. — frank

I agree, and would add that this understanding of the self as "asserted" (as it were along or against the backdrop of our practices and culture) is what creates the possibility of the moral realm. That, past trying to set out what we "ought" to do and beyond deciding on a goal, the sense of a place where we are lost at the edge of our culture or that our society as it stands has lost our interests, is the limit of knowledge, where we must, as you say, "materialize" our future (self, culture).

…there is nothing contradictory about a self that is not (at the moment) available to conscious awareness. Paul Ricoeur pointed out (somewhere; I can't find the reference at the moment) that "knowing that I exist" doesn't tell me what I am. The cogito is uninformative about depth psychology. — J

The extent, then, that [the "cogito"] is just as metaphysical and hyperbolical as [Descartes' radical] doubt, this "I" possesses immediately the value of an example, but in a sense of "anyone" which is without any common measure with its grammatical sense: anyone who, after Descartes, retraces the trajectory of doubt, says, as he did, "I". But, in so doing, this "I" becomes a non-person, that is to say, unidentifiable, undesignatable... — Ricoeur, Crisis of the

Though this may not be the quote you are referring to above, I take it you would agree that "what I am" is done differently than that "I" am constant and always special. From my studies of Ricoeur, I took away that time was an important element to him. Specifically, that everything happens as "an event", which allowed him to see that something that I say is: to someone, at a place, under certain circumstances, knowing things, not knowing others, maybe blind to my (unconscious) reasons, knowing full well the consequences, etc. I can't but compare this to Descartes' "assertion" and Wittgenstein's "expression" of: "me". That I both stand for what I am here, now, but also that the judgment for which is: on me.

The cogito is uninformative about depth psychology. — J

As an aside, I wouldn't differentiate between a conscious and unconscious self; humans just have an "unconscious". But there is also more than psychology (e.g., repression of trauma and the resulting anxiety) to our criteria of a "self" (we are not defined or measured by our unconscious, however compelled we are to reenactment). Philosophy investigates what in our (collective) lives is unexamined, how life can be meaningful, our human condition and the resultant desires, how our practices involve our interests and our participation, and what matters to my being me.

Even if I am deceived, I am having an experience, and so I am. I might be wrong about my form, but I as long as there is experience, however false, there is an experiencer. It is inconceivable that a nonexistent entity might be fooled in any way whatsoever, and that includes being misled to believe that it exists. — petrichor

But this is “exist” simply in the literal sense of, just: here; as it were: not not here; or just: alive, rather than dead. But then why is Descartes skipping over this human self-consciousness to “thought”? And why does he qualify it with “whenever” (as if sometimes he is not, and thus does not)? He goes on to say that “thought” is when he understands the conditions of a thing clearly and distinctly, not that it is just anything I say to myself. So this sense of "existing" tells us nothing other than I am a human that is alive, which is an obvious empirical fact.

What these philosophers are getting at is that “existence” is, in a sense, a mythical term, to capture that life can be meaningful or not, to “me”, that it might matter for me to make that known to others. Sometimes you don’t have an experience, in the sense that “you” do not have an experience when you, say, go to the store and nothing notable happens. “What have you been doing?” “I went to the store.” “How was your experience?” “Fine.” In your terms perhaps, if there is not “content”, there is no point to differentiate a “subject”.

If you don't have that story, there is no You. — Kaiser Basileus

I agree; only are we just "telling a story"? (to ourselves, or from ourselves? I'm not sure why "internal") I would suggest our fitting in or pushing back obligates us to "tell a story", in the sense of being answerable for what we claim to be ours.

Here is a good explanation of the historical and philosophical place Wittgenstein holds. I hope it helps with reading the Investigations.

“By the middle 1960’s two separate but related intellectual forces were taking root in American social sciences and humanities. Both were a response to the positivism that had dominated the professions in the period immediately following the Second World War. The appeal of that positivism was wide-spread – in social science, in philosophy, in the New literary Criticism – and was itself in great part a reaction to what appeared to have been an extremely dangerous subjectivism and irrationalism in the 1930’s. Both of these reactions had the effect of breaking the intellectual hold -- or were at least taken to have broken the hold – of the positivist understandings of the social world and of how one should go about trying to understand that world.
Central to positivism had been three claims. The first was that there was a clear-cut conceptual separation between facts and values and that, in consequence, values were subjective, not of the world, and could be kept apart from ones analysis of social reality. This was not a denial that values were “important” but it was a denial that values were objects of knowledge.
The second claim was parent to the first. It was a claim that propositions about the world could and should be made to speak for themselves – thus that propositions about the world should have a validity independent of he or she who advanced them. One could and should clearly separate the speaker from the spoken, for if one did one’s work right not just empirical claims about the world but concepts themselves would stand independently of the speaker. In its simplest form, the claim was that a statement like “mass equals force times acceleration” was true independently of who said it and of when and where it was said.
The third claim derived from the first two. It held that certain forms of discourse (claims to knowledge) were responsible and responsive to the real world in ways that other forms (one might think of them as emotive, or expressive) were not. In the first form honesty towards the world required something of the thinker; in the second anything (apparently) went.
Into this vision of the world came a critique that came to carry the shorthand name of “Kuhn.” Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that claims about the world carried with them participation in a broader understanding – to some degree social and historical in nature -- without which those claims would not be possible. Kuhn called these broader understandings “paradigms.” Kuhn, in other words, appeared to question the distinction between the two forms of speech or knowledge, between the expressed and the un-or inexpressible.
Soon, everyone was citing Kuhn. Crudely, what most people took him to have done -- whether or not they approved of it – was to have brought “values” or cultural commitments back in scientific discourse. It is important to realize that in this reading of Kuhn, however, “values” were still understood precisely in the terms that positivism had cast them in. They were, in other words, the unexpressed, the non-cognitive and so forth. That facts, as one learned to say, were “theory [or value] laden,” and “embedded” in “webs of meaning” did not seem to join culture, value or meaning any more tightly to the world, nor make knowledge of these things any more shareable. The emphasis was rather in the other direction – loosening the grip of facts on the world, introducing a scrim of “values” before everywhere we might look for the former.
This terrain was fertile enough to foster a second development. Pretty soon those who read Kuhn in this manner – whether favorably or not – were reading Wittgenstein and allowing themselves free passage between paradigms, pictures, forms of life and language-games. Central here was the claim taken from Wittgenstein that language, or certain linguistic conventions, so shape our understanding of the world that we do not see around their corners. Wittgenstein’s apothegm that “a picture held us captive” came to stand for a peculiar kind of blindness forced on one through language itself. For those who were favorable to this so-called “linguistic turn,” however, Wittgenstein’s proposition about imprisonment became a slogan of liberation. For if what seemed to constrain our thought was merely a picture, then it would certainly seem one could get out of it, or at least change pictures, -- or so it appeared. The irony here is that Wittgenstein’s passage expresses a disappointment with knowledge. Wittgenstein continues: “And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” The irony is compounded in that two disappointments are captured here simultaneously: the initial one, a disappointment with the failure of knowledge to satisfy its own inveterate demands (in the Investigations this appears as the demand for a crystalline pure ideal of language), and the succeeding one, a disappointment with this initial disappointment -- a finding of the latter to be in effect empty, a disappointment with success. It is this second disappointment that drives Wittgenstein to his famous turning around of the axis of his investigation (PI 108). We shall have more to say about such turnings below.
In the social sciences, however, it was not long before some were proclaiming that “what you see depends on where you sit.” Kuhn’s paradigms – already carried from scientific practice into society itself – were now radicalized by being located in the plurality of “language games” that were suddenly found to mark the differences among everything from academic disciplines to political projects. Ironically, since Wittgenstein’s earlier work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, had been a central document in the rise of positivism (whether properly understood or not), his later work, the Philosophical Investigations, acquired its prestige in part as a recantation of an earlier “positivism.”
We shall not be concerned here directly with the status and importance of Kuhn’s work for the social sciences. However, leaving aside the question of whether or not those who read Kuhn got him right – and the answer to that would have to be for the most part “no” – it is important to realize that Kuhn’s work drew heavily on certain developments in philosophy which have were associated with the designation “ordinary language philosophy,” a practice of philosophy variously associated with the work of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Its most prominent contemporary American practitioner is Stanley Cavell, who has extended Austin and Wittgenstein beyond any point that might have seemed obvious. We shall focus here on the importance and implications of this practice of philosophy for political theory and political science.

II. Sources and Resources

…Wittgenstein has been, for the philosophical community, a difficult person to place. Three broad approaches to domestication seem to have developed. First, to some he appears as a Humean (or “mitigated”) skeptic. In this reading, the central part of Wittgenstein’s achievement is to have shown that philosophically we can always raise questions, but that these questions will, however, have little to do with our ordinary life. This view places great weight on passages such as “Justification comes to an end” (PI 194) and “My life consists in being able to accept many things.” (PI 44). In this reading, the task of philosophy is to keep itself in its own, proper, corner and not to pretend to be part of life as we live it. This view is held in different ways by Richard Rorty and Saul Kripke.
A second reading holds that Wittgenstein is a kind of empiricist justificationist. The Investigations are taken to be a justification of cultural common sense. Hence: “Our mistake is to look for an explanation.. where we ought to have said ‘This language game is played’.” (PI 654). This view derives ultimately from G. E. Moore for whom philosophical problems can and should be eliminated by reinforcing what all people know unproblematically. A contemporary exponent of this understanding of Wittgenstein would be the late Peter Winch.
A third view is a kind of Kantian justificationism. Kant, as is commonly known, tried to determine those categories of the understanding which delineated the realm in which reason was possible. David Pears, for instance, refers to Wittgenstein as a “linguistic Kantian.” In readings such as this, Wittgenstein wants to show the limits of human reason by reestablishing the boundaries between the phenomenal and the noumenal realms. Thus: “Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.” (PI 373). Grammar, in this reading, becomes the equivalent of the synthetic a priori; however, it is understood as conventionally based.
It is important to realize that all three of these readings see Wittgenstein as concerned centrally with the justification of knowledge. Thus to the degree that any one of these views would be correct, Wittgenstein’s thought will not be of much use in political theory. There is also a danger when addressing these questions – more present in Wittgenstein and Cavell than with Austin -- of falling into one of three interpretive modes. The first is that of the valorization of ineffability – these authors are taken to point at the power of what cannot be said, at a realm of mystery lying beyond language and to which language is inadequate. A second mode is to hold that these authors are not talking about philosophy at all but rather about that which is pre- or non-philosophical, a kind of anthropology. Here the expectation is that these readers desire to keep philosophy in its proper place. The last mode is to think that these men are attempting to turn philosophy into literature – a kind of edifying discourse that since it makes no real claims to the truth need not bother about being “right.” Here they are read into a particular version of continental thought, with its emphasis on reading as opposed to (in Anglo-American analytic thought) argument. Gerald Bruns may be thought to hold this position.” TELLING THE DANCER FROM THE DANCE: ON THE RELEVANCE OF THE ORDINARY FOR POLITICAL THOUGHT (has appeared in Andrew Norris, ed. The Claim to Community) Joseph Lima and Tracy B. Strong

Sorry about quoting the whole thing instead of attaching it but I didn’t want people to get confused by the rest of the article, which is beyond the OP here.

I also think Wittgenstein’s experience may have informed his focus, based on stuff like #426. Our “muddied” ordinary practices cause some to want to “fix the sense un- ambiguously. …[as if] designed for a god, who knows what we cannot know; …sees into human consciousness. In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side-roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed.” (Emphasis added)

And I always thought this was insightful but naive. It is not that we “cannot” force the easy answer, it is just unethical not to take the “detours” to examine the actual circumstances, draw out the criteria we ordinarily use. If we cannot tolerate our failings, and claim all authority—as if our first impression is correct, that everything can be generalized together, and that we need to assert a standard for what is judged to “fix the sense unambiguously”—this is a facist methodology, the arrogant belief that we are a god, that there is always a “me” intending things, dictating meaning, “fixing” it.

means of discrimination have consequences far beyond the subjects they entertain. [Wittgenstein] was proposing a measure of fragility not commonly observed. A way of thinking about what one could reasonably expect that was not all that it seemed. — Paine

I can only try to paraphrase speculatively: So discrimination—analogous to seeing people as robots, seeing them as not human, soulless—affects more than the discriminated?; so we should be careful, or humble?, with our expectations? (say, of what knowledge can tell us about others) but this will come off as, weak? As if giving in to skeptical doubt about others?

I don't understand this quest for "pure knowledge" angle. What I took from the passage is that means of discrimination have consequences far beyond the subjects they entertain. — Paine

I'll go with that. Is our imagining others as dead inside the same means as discrimination? And are the consequences for me, that I feel "uncanny"?

I equate trying to doubt that we are all human with the "uncanny" feeling of being lost as to what to do (a moral quandary without any morals), unable to resolve what you mean with what I mean, or learning I was wrong when I thought I was right, which creates the generalized doubt the skeptic has. If I can tie that in to your question about the "quest for pure knowledge"; Wittgenstein takes our response to this doubt to be a fear that we can't be sure about anything. Descartes actually thought himself a madman, or underwater with no bottom. And, because our ordinary means and methods of judging do have the possibility of failing us, we chuck those criteria and any particular situation, and we fixate on wanting something abstract, universal, predetermined, foundational, certain, as if mathematical, bulletproof. However, the more we want to be certain, the less stuff that actually meets that requirement (just math), which leads us back to our ordinary--if falliable--means of judgment. Thus we can't "keep hold of this idea"--we can't see the pure requirement and our ordinary criteria at the same time. Both Descartes and Hume found it was an effort to combat the skeptic for long. "But this task [trying to be certain, without a doubt about everything] is a laborious one, and insensibly a certain lassitude leads me into the course of my ordinary life." 1st Meditations

As long as we avoid private language and rule following I'm okay. — Antony Nickles

This is like saying when studying mathematics, I'm okay with the subject as long as we avoid multiplication and division. You can't be serious. — Sam26

I don't find those sections to be essential as they are only two examples among many others that attempt to find out why the response to skepticism has been presumed to be just better ("pure") knowledge. And I think those sections screw people up or are more divisive than helpful.

For now I'm just going to work on the other thread. — Sam26

This is a disappointment to me as I'm sure it is to @Banno. I might just fix my resolve to take another crack at On Certainty.

@Banno @Sam26 And we're off and running.

So, what about this paragraph? It does not fit into your 'reduction of skepticism' model:

420. ...Seeing a living human being as an automaton is analogous to seeing one figure as a limiting case or variant of another; the cross-pieces of a window as a swastika, for example. — Paine

Well there is a lot going on in this quote, and I don't know what you are referring to by my "reduction of skepticism" other than I might say that the skeptic records a fact about our life but does not take into account that knowledge is not our only response to the separation, the limitation of us.

He starts with the observation that seeing someone as an automaton is antithetical to our naturalness (#418); we just are humans ("consciousness" does not record anything--any fact--more than that). But the unnaturalness of the skeptic's doubt does not mean it is not valid (records a fear, a fact). Not seeing someone as a person is as little a thing as only treating their pain (as the skeptic only wants to "know" their pain). Our desire for knowledge is "a limiting case" for it obscures our ability to judge, to see, that they are a person. The skeptic imagines the other's body blocks us from knowing their pain, but it is our unwillingness (to accept anything but pure knowledge) that shields their humanity from us; he will also says that someone having a soul is a function of my being in a position (an "attitude"), a relation, to the other, e.g., treating them as if they have one p. 178. Witt will later talk about this as "seeing an aspect".

@Sam26 @Paine

As long as we avoid private language and rule following I'm okay. #319 thinking; #344 imagination; #416 consciousness; #437 expectation; #472 belief; #499 senseless; #425 understanding; #547 negation and identity; #572 states "of mind"; #611 willing; #641 intention; #661 meaning; and then Part 2

Agreed; but just "Inv. Part 2?" or... ?

What's sad is, this thread has spent so much time on the first hundred remarks, but there is so much of great interest in the last hundred that remains unaddressed. — Banno

@Banno @Paine If you start anything, tag me in; I'd rather play in that sandpit than have to keep saying things like this.

Most of PI is devoted to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and errors :lol:. It certainly matters to him to demonstrate this as a point, not as an aside. — schopenhauer1

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

There you are again, sneaking in some externality. "Culture" is now used instead of "public" and "practice". Culture is an individual's perception of something. — schopenhauer1

Well I'm just trying to find a word that you don't get all twisted up about. Culture, public, practice, shared lives, are in the sense here the way we have been interested in and judged things as a community, as a people (human, English speakers, etc.). Anytime I (or Wittgenstein) have used "our" is not in the sense of the possessive of "mine"; "our criteria" is not each of our individual criteria (as if you have yours and I have mine). We share criteria as we share our lives together. This is not some "agreement" (in the past or in each instance), but just that we can all recognize what an apology looks like, what a joke is, etc. We share the same ways of checking off the list if necessary of what makes a mistake different from an accident because we have all been brought up into our... whatever you want to call it, society?

You can't get to a foundation by appealing to a public sphere of agreement. It is all individuals agreeing, there is no public. — schopenhauer1

Wittgenstein is not looking for a foundation; he finds none. The ordinary criteria for something don't ensure things won't go sideways, but when they get wonky they do so along (or against) the judgments we would all (usually) make about a practice (and are resolved mostly the same way); this does not ensure everything works out, but it doesn't "dissolve away".

Responsibility for what? What is it an appeal to? We can always be wrong... — schopenhauer1

Responsible to make yourself intelligible to me about the confusion; whether along the appropriate expectations and judgments (though this is not "common sense"), or to explain transgressing those, or explaining how and why you are stretching our criteria for an act into a new context, and all the other ways things do or might go array. The point is there are times when we can't go on together, where everything breaks down, but there is nothing stopping us from continuing to try to work it out.

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

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