@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".

Here I take you to be assuming that having vision, self-awareness, memory, focus, self-direction, etc.; in other words, in just being a human, that we have a self, and that that is what the self consists of. But this is an assumption and an extrapolation backwards.

Yes, you are separate from others, but the way you work is not different than me, and we have the same possibilities of experience, meaning you do not experience anything I cannot also. Of course there are exceptions, but the point is that this imposed picture is that we are a constant self (“your” “consciousness”) and that we are always special (“your” “perception”), not just rarely, having something we would ordinarily call: personal or secret.

Now we can speak of brains and processes but that is just how a human works (even including the unconscious), not how the self does (studying the human does not elucidate what it is to have a self; how that works is the task of philosophy). Classic philosophy (Descartes) created this picture of “me” out of a need for something undoubtable (as: pure), and thus this constant picture of the self is just a projection of the desire for something certain.

I don’t want to bring up my argument for the self here, as I started a discussion here claiming that the self is only formed (if at all) at times in relation to our common culture, most relevant here as taken up by @Manuel starting Here and @Astrophel here.

X

I don't see Wittgenstein looking through language. — Astrophel

Well this is an entirely different topic (that I have addressed elsewhere—or could explain by msg) but I’m not saying he sees through language like a wall that he makes transparent, but that he examines (looks AT) the kinds of the things we say (the possible expressions) about a certain thing (at a time and place) because those are evidence of our criteria for that thing. It is a philosophical method. And taking Wittgenstein to be dividing what we can and cannot talk about is a remnant of the Tractatus; part of the point of the PI is to show how we can actually have rational, quasi-logical discussions about all kinds of things, and, thus, that the Investigations is actually an examination of why we imagine we can’t.

The good is a special question. But what it IS is going to be cast in language. — Astrophel

Yes, a moral agreement works differently than walking, or measuring an atom, or having a self. But they are all going to be “cast in language” as the means by which we communicate about them (or, meant how else?). We think we understand what “Language” is (as some general thing), but this is just to take the possibility of, and our part in, failing to communicate or reach agreement, and to project it—out of fear—onto something other than us (to put our failings onto “language”). Another way of doing this is to say we (or language) cannot communicate “me” (my “constant” self), “my thought”, what “I mean”. This mischaracterization is not a misunderstanding of “language” (to be corrected) but blindly homogenizing the world in requiring something certain (even in creating an “uncertain” fall-guy). We ignore that things are more complicated so we don’t need to be responsible for what we say, or do, or judge.

I agree that the way things “are” is how they are essential to us: what matters to us about them, the criteria by which we judge that they are what they are, the expectations, the disappointments, the mistakes involved with each, etc. As I take you to be echoing in part here:

A thing IS the anticipated response in a certain environment... Everything is like this, for an encounter with a thing is always already known, anticipated, prior to the encounter, like taking a step and knowing the sidewalk will not sink but support the step. — Astrophel

This “anticipated response” comes, as I think we also agree, from being raised into a culture, a way of living together, which comes before us, prior, “already” (though perhaps not “known” as in: not always aware of, explicated, examined; thus philosophy). But there are times where a practice moves into a new context, when there is an act which we do not anticipate. I find you basically the same place in saying “Ontology begins when we insert the question about this world and its being.” (Though I’ll just qualify, if needed, that this is not to question the “whole” world, in seeing the situational nature of our various customs, etc.). And, like any moral situation, that we have the means of addressing it, understanding it (because it is in contrast to the already-existing expectations (standing possibilities you say). This is the moment of the self, its being in relation to our history, our culture, against our conformity to it.

So knowledge is always anticipatory. This lies not in accepting the out come, but in accepting the possibilities, which seems the opposite of certainty. — Astrophel

I am not arguing for certainty, what I am saying is that humanity craves it. We are afraid of the fact that knowledge doesn’t get us all the way there, that we must insert ourselves behind our words, to stand by them; “accepting the possibilities” especially when extending those possibilities, living in a way that gives them new life, shows what it is to be, say, “just”, by being an example of it. That fear of our fallible human condition creates the desire for something that can take us out of the equation, e.g., if there are rules, then I can just follow the rules and I will be right; as if conformity absolves me. So we impose upon everything the same desired outcome which generalizes over each things’ possibilities. So the self is imagined as a constant, given, maybe unknowable thing, so I can have it (and I can keep it from you) without having to answer for my expressions and actions. I take this as Kierkegaard “sin” that is possible in this moment. Or that in not answering, we are still held to account, but only in that it doesn’t matter if it is us, because the usual expectations and answer, etc. apply, so I am unnecessary, or, that I do not exist, which I take it you mean by “failure to confirm to be applied to one's own existence qua existence.”

I should also say that reflection at these moments is the purpose of philosophy. That to have “consciousness of one’s freedom” is not a given, but an effort, a change in not knowledge, but attitude (perspective), such as contained in a paradox like: we are born free but are everywhere in chains.

"Who am I?" It's a tricky question, — Jake Mura

Yes, a tricky question. I would agree that discovering one's self is a primary concern, but I am claiming that we may not have discovered it yet, partly because our understanding of how that works is misguided (thanks to classic philosophy). And so I am making a claim about how we "discover the Who" that accounts for this conformity, and why we want discovering the self to happen a certain way. Perhaps you have not read through all the "nonsense" and "unnecessary thinking" above, but, if we agree discovery comes first, how does that happen? (why is it: tricky?)

I agree with that, assuming that you mean everything should be out in the open and that there should be no hidden or unacknowledged premises at work in philosophical discussions.
— @Janus

Yes: no concealed premises or motivations, and no lack of clarity about one's position. — Leontiskos

I would point out that, although we may try to place what we say in a context of assumptions and contingencies, we cannot think of everything that might apply (although Mill tries), nor can we anticipate the expectations that concern you, nor all the features of the possible (or imagined) contexts that qualify the matter.

Imagining we can reveal all the premises ahead of saying something comes from a picture of argument in a logical vacuum (our desire to make “everything” clear beforehand drives us to an abstracted answer--as with the sophists). The criteria for judging something (its "truth") reveal our shared interests, expectations, possible interpretations, etc., but it is the process of philosophy to draw out those criteria, how we determine what is what (thus Socrates' back and forth trying to get at how we can tell, say, what is good, or knowledge); the conditions and possibilities Kant and Wittgenstein discuss.

This is also seeing the self as something that is complete, constant, and knowable (even setting aside the psychological) rather than as revealed more than I can know in what I say, or even more than I may want. Thus the duty to continued responsiveness, to make myself intelligible, and bound to the implications of what I say.

I would say I should make myself “out in the open” as in ready to "acknowledge" premises you point out are implied, on an ongoing basis.

It would be argued that whatever you talk about, you are always talking about language when inquiry moves to basic assumptions, which is philosophy. Wittgenstein's Tractatus' states of affairs are facts and facts are propositions in the logical grid of sensible talk. — Astrophel

But philosophy does not always “talk about language”. To ask what the good is, is not to talk about the word “good”. In the Investigations, Wittgenstein just looks through language (specifically, what we say when...), that is his method to see the world, because our interests and judgments of the world are reflected by what we say in a situation (during an activity).

An activity? What is this? This is a predelineated event, that is, I already know what it is before I do it. We live in this always already knowing. — Astrophel

By “activity” I just mean what Witt terms “concepts” which is just to say, regular human stuff: pointing, apologizing, being just, measuring, excusing, following a rule, extending a series, etc., some of which he uses as his examples in the Investigations. To say “we already know it” is the same as the fact that we get indoctrinated (or, as you say, “enculturated education”) into a history of criteria and judgments for things which we operate on without reflection; I take this as the social contract and conformity. That Kierkegaard says we inherit the “sin” of it I take to record that we are compromised by conformity, comprised of nothing but our culture (the means of production) if I do not claim what is mine from it, against it.

A human being IS a WHEN… not IN a when…. — Astrophel

Well, we would need to unpack this, but to be as poetic: the self IS only WHEN (in relation to conformity).

Doing a hand stand is not explaining a hand stand, this is understood. But what a hand stand IS, is in the explanation. — Astrophel

A handstand can be explained (how to do one, etc.), but what is essential to a handstand (what it IS) is reflected by the criteria we use to judge, for instance, what makes one better. or a handstand different from a… to switch examples, say, walking different than running; what goes toward counting with this activity, mattering to us. Thus the self IS only in its alignment or aversion to these terms of judgment, when those things are at issue for me.

if for S to know P is inherently anticipatory, and knowledge is a time event, then my knowing where to put my hands on the uneven bars is essentially like my knowing oaks trees are deciduous: no more than the forward looking engagement that anticipates an outcome. — Astrophel

We are far afield here, but knowledge is “inherently anticipatory” only if we require that certainty (only accept the outcome of predictability, predetermination), as if equating “knowing” gymnastics is like the knowledge of facts. Thus, in the light of this requirement for certainty, the self must be an ever-present, unique "fact".

To understand "why we desired their certainty" is interesting. I'll have to read this in whole (having just looked here and there). — Astrophel

The idea of this certainty is probably more succinct in the last paragraph here and probably better off in that discussion (of our desire for rules), or in a new one. Though the conversation in this thread with @Manuel did relevantly veer into this territory, most notable, here, and afterward.

You would be hard pressed to argue that knowledge is not our connection with the world. …when we try to understand anything at the most basic level of assumptions… Everything is a knowledge claim when we try to say what a thing is. I ask you, what IS justice? or, what IS a promise? — Astrophel

I said knowledge is not our only connection to the world. Thus the importance of an occasion regarding the self. Our understanding of what is essential about a promise are the ordinary (unreflected on) criteria for identity of a promise, the appropriateness, the completion, etc. It is when these criteria (our shared conformity) come into question (in a situation, not stripped of everything to be “basic”, contextless), that we are not making a “knowledge” claim, but a claim of what is ours, what we are prepared to live by as mattering to us in a situation where knowledge has failed, or does not rule, as in a moral moment. But there is a time and place when we are lost, as you say, “where everything is epistemically indeterminate”, which is the moment for the self to assert itself, claim itself.

I appreciate the further connections and the effort, thank you.

There are two basic ways that an argument can get at truth: by being right and by being wrong. Yet in order for this to work the argument must be seen to be right or wrong... that it be transparent. — Leontiskos

I think there is something unrevealed here (perhaps a specific gripe), for which--a now contextless--"transparency" is seen as the answer (which would be ironic). But, in claiming I am right (about the existence of this hidden want), I am not claiming that @Leontiskos is wrong or osbcure (though perhaps blind to themselves), or that I will be arguing that I have the right presumption. I will only assert some possibilities to, in a way, help, I hope, by putting "words in their mouth" (and those perhaps not correct through no fault of mine, as I am here guessing), which is to say, drawing out some possibilities, in investigating what they might be saying before assuming I know what they mean at first glance.

Framing it that one making an argument may not be transparent appears to ignore that someone hearing it may not see the gist--be able to grasp why it is right--not because they have not been shown everything, but because of their own inability to see it, see how it is right (setting aside lack of experience and nature ability). If I try to argue that the quality of reality was created by philosophy out of the desire for certainty, and you can't get past thinking that I mean that nothing is real, is it really my fault in somehow not putting all my cards on the table? That is to say, sometimes "arguments... are opaque and difficult to discern" but not because of me, but because of another's unwillingness see something on someone else's terms, open their mind, map out the implications, account for the possibilities of misunderstanding, etc. This will lead to someone reading (some of) a post with which they are pretty sure they will disagree, finding the one murky point, and throwing out the baby as well. Here there is no offering of grace, which @NotAristotle rightly points out as a lack of humility, but also a lack of collegiality, as we are to be both searching for the truth (imagine Socrates and (some of) his interlocutors). In the Meno, Socrates at one point is basically telling us that we must walk in another's shoes in order to see what they are saying (the basis of Wittgenstein's method of Ordinary Language Philosophy).

Because people sometimes stick their heads up only their own context, not everything can be shown by being direct; sometimes the truth cannot simply be told, or is something that can be merely explained and then known. As if Nietszche and Emerson and Wittgenstein were just bad writers or being mystical or that it is not philosophy but just social commentary or common sense. Sometimes, you must change how you think (not just what you think) in order to understand; Nietzsche said his audience had yet to be born (that you have to turn into someone else to be able to read him). Heidegger can only point the way to Thinking, and you must, as it were, walk through the door into a totally new world, shed your presumptions, turn on the "picture" which holds you captive Wittgenstein says. Sometimes this is just ships passing in the night; sometimes people simply do not share the same interests (beyond when someone just wants to look smart, win, dismiss the other, etc.). And if you have no interest in what I am trying to say, that is fine; philosophy has lots of concerns.

Now, having gotten through my own axes to grind, I may be able to better see what @Leontiskos is getting at (or left unsaid, but let's not quibble). Maybe it is not courageously leaving myself open to misunderstanding, nor is it addressing everything up front that may need to be made intelligible, but it's that some people say things and then do not stand behind them. They are cowards who don't stand still and take their lumps. As our OP author says, if I "could question premises or inferences, the person giving the argument might realize that they are mistaken, etc." So it is not cases where someone says, "Sorry, I meant to say...", or "You're right, I hadn't realized that would mean...", but cases where someone dodges the implications of what they have said. As if I have a “meaning” that I communicate in words, that everyone has their own "perception", that "interpretation" is without context, that you can just retreat to "your opinion" in the pursuit of truth. (Unfortunately talking out of school, but for example there was just no nailing down @RussellA and @schopenhauer1 in a recent discussion of Wittgenstein.)

To say something is to commit to it, to be subject to be read by it, to be responsible to making it intelligible to me, to have to stand behind it, to be held to the implications of it being said to me, here, now, which dictate how it can and cannot be taken (even if there are multiple implications, there is no getting out from under the obligation of its being taken one way or the other). Now of course you CAN slip out, but your word is your bond, as: who you ARE (to be) is bound to your ongoing responsiveness. As Cavell will say, "...if I say truly and appropriately, "You must [mean what you say]" then in a perfectly good sense nothing you then do can prove me wrong. [If I say you must move the queen in diagonal lines, y]ou CAN push the little object called the Queen in many ways, as you can lift it or throw it across the room; not all of these will be moving the Queen [in a game of chess]. Must We Mean What We Say?, p. 31

What I then take the point as, here, is to handle ourselves in a way that provides something for the other to grab onto, of the available options (here @Leontiskos being most interested in right and wrong).

Shouldn't we have a single, perpetual thread for this question? — Banno

Actually I second this motion. @Jamal @Baden @fdrake
Not to be necessarily punitive in this instance, but it is hard to be helpful if someone isn't even taking a position. @Kevin Tan, I think those are actually just six questions.

I recently took up the structure of a moral truth. It is a bit technical but it doesn’t have to be, though that may take some reading through everything.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11976/the-structure-of-a-moral-claim-to-truth

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.