How do you know? There are smidgens of philosophers he sort of mentions but this seems very interpretive. — schopenhauer1

The claim is not “interpretative”. It comes from a familiarity with the history of western analytical philosophy. The desire to solve skepticism is an ever-present theme.

Plato was trying to figure out change and permanence, universals and particulars, things like this. Kant was trying to figure out empirical knowledge and a priori knowledge and how they fit together to understand the world, etc. I don't see that as major breakdowns in ordinary use of language. — schopenhauer1

Again, it’s not about language or language use. Skepticism starts with a case of not knowing what to do (#123). Kant and Plato find no satisfactory certainty to resolve it and so abstract from our ordinary cases to the forms or requiring imperatives having denied the thing-in-itself (“constructing systems” you say). It is this flight from ordinary criteria for how things work in a desire for certainty that concerns Wittgenstein.

“The preconceived idea of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole examination round. (One might say: the axis of reference of our examination must be rotated, but about the fixed point of our real need.)” #108 He is turning the investigation around onto ourselves—why we have this delusional need for a standard of purity (certainty) that we create systems in advance of looking at the world.

Nietzsche and Wittgenstein share the goal of creating a new philosophy out of the old, and so are speaking to a new philosopher, one that you must become in order to see in a new way. These are not textbooks that say everything explicitly, only there to tell you information.

Then why doesn't he just say it thus?… Some explication is okay… An author presumably is trying to convey "something". — schopenhauer1

Well there are times he addresses us directly but the point is for you to judge if you would agree with what is said in a situation, or agree that his explication of a context allows what is said to become understandable in a way other than the “philosophy” he is critiquing insists on. He is not trying to convey anything; he is trying to change how you think, get you to see yourself (as having the same desire he did). The investigation is to find out why we want what he wanted in the Tractatus, what Plato, Descartes, Kant, Hume, etc. wanted.

Even "knowing" that there are various rules in various contexts, doesn't thus confer anything more than the usual of me just trying to interpret the person's philosophical statements. — schopenhauer1

Well I would say criteria rather than rules (another day), but what you are meant to see is not (only) his descriptions, but to ask why the philosopher wants to overlook our ordinary criteria to substitute the sole standard of certainty or something certain (as metaphysics was). This I would say first takes letting go of the fixation that he is trying to (somehow alternatively) answer the problem the skeptic (or uncertainty) poses.

It just seems like not making any commitments and saying "language games" is akin to putting on a pair of sunglasses and posting an "office closed" sign with feet up on the desk and calling it a day… if it is just stalling and spinning in circles about language use, I just see it as a kind of long con trolling. — schopenhauer1

He is trying to find out why we want to create explanations, such as correspondence, forms, positivism, and, as I tried to say, your (and others) misreading that “language games” or “use” is a substitute for those (even if a failed one). I would take your requirement to having an explanation (a “commitment”) as the same desire for certainty for which Wittgenstein is trying to find a reason.

Also, as I said, this is not about language. He is looking at the things we say in a situation as a method and means for learning why philosophy ignores our ordinary criteria of judgment about the world to focus on a general explanation to ensure certainty. “Language use” is neither the issue nor a “solution”; it is a means of seeing the variety of what is meaningful rather than a single standard and explanation.

The rest of what you said, I'm not sure. — schopenhauer1

I remain willing to elaborate or answer questions but it’s fine if that is just an expression of a lack of interest.

@Banno @Sam26 @Luke @Corvus

For that reason, I call this particular thing in front of me an "apple", even though "apple" is a universal concept and the thing in front of me is only one particular example of it.
— @RussellA

But that doesn't answer the metaphysical question of "what" is this concept apple. It is obviously a mental thing. What is that? Witt doesn't have an answer. — schopenhauer1

Wittgenstein is responding to the historical status of philosophy in his time. However, the problem of appearances or “resemblances” has been an issue since Plato in the Theatetus. What he did was take the ordinary alignment between language and the world and our lives (that they are the same; that they operate without any concerns) and inserted a space between them, creating the necessity of a connection in order to make it fixed. Mostly this starts with an inability to reconcile moral or interpersonal issues, and then working backwards to try to be certain with the best case scenario, physical objects.

So doubt creates the framework of ontology, appearances, or something else (in Wittgenstein: the misinterpretation of “use” or forms of life or language games) to try to ensure our words are meaningful, to close the gap we created. Philosophy takes the limitations of knowledge and turns it into an underlying ever-present intellectual problem it feels it needs to “solve”, rather than a truth about our human condition that only raises it head when we “don’t know our way about”, and we become dissatisfied with our ordinary criteria.

So Wittgenstein is making explicit the criteria and activities we use about a bunch of different examples in order to show that our ordinary criteria are more complicated and it is not just a matter of solving a problem like “essence” or “meaning” with a different, better explanation. In the case of physical objects, there are many underlying activities and contexts that we skip over, such as: identification, pointing out an aspect, extrapolating from seen to unseen, our interests in that object, when it is out of place, scientific problems, differentiating from other objects, the stretching and extension of the criteria of identity and purpose thus our judgement of whether they are misapplied or broken, e.g., an ottoman is not a table but can be used for that purpose, or, part of or judgment of a “table” is where we gather with others to eat, so, even if it is around a rock, we would still say we are sitting around the “table”. This is not empirical or about the about, but is still normative, “real”, not “subjective”.

@Banno @Luke @Joshs @Sam26 @Paine

After reading some of the recent comments, I wanted to offer what help I can on reading Wittgenstein (following the Cavell essay I attached earlier):

Yes, words sometimes refer to objects (and are meaningful as names), but that is only one of many ways the world (and meaning) works. The PI is an investigation of examples to show how varied other ways are, and why we want it to only be one way.

He is using a particular method (this is not ordinary writing). He looks at the evidence of what we say—shorthanded as: “language”, but not as the subject (except as another example) nor the salvation—when we are doing activities (the examples, which he groups under the term “concepts”, like chess playing, rule-following, meaning, seeing, pointing, etc.) and he either offers an appropriate situation (context) in which we would say it (or he imagines that) in order to see how vast are the ways that the world works (their “grammar” and criteria), and how and when they don’t.

You have to be able to see what he is describing for yourself (at times only hinting at it or in a riddle-like phrase), because he can’t tell you (he is trying to change our mindset, how we see the world, others). Look at what he says as speculative (he is almost running it by himself at times), because we must agree in our judgment of the situation—what we would also say in that situation. (Thus why @schopenhauer1 and @RussellA balk at the unsubstantiated accept-or-reject nature of his statements.) It is almost like it isn’t a matter of understanding him as much as seeing (the vision) the perspective, as he puts it, the attitude (as in: the position in relation to).

The goal is to see how and why we are (philosophy is) tempted to want a single theory for everything that is simple, logical, and certain (he says “pure”); to look at the desire philosophy has to have the problems of skepticism and other minds solved by something we can know. But Witt is not offering a better solution or some foundation for the limitations of knowledge—as people take: language games, “use”, forms of life, etc., to be. The reason he finds is that there is an open possibility of meaninglessness (uncertainty, doubt, skepticism) which scares us away from our ordinary criteria into a myopic view of how the world works so we can be sure about it, know it (but that knowledge is not the only relation to the world).

Also: “Use” is not some operation done to, or result held by, language (say, by the casual power of “our intention”); it is part of his method to look and see that what is said can be meaningful in different ways, from different vantages, in different situations (have different “uses” or “senses” he also calls them) depending on the concept, the context, who, when, where, to whom, etc. He is saying look at all the factors and criteria from the whole history of all our lives that hold what we are interested in, what matters in what we do, our criteria of judgment about what is meaningful. “Meaning” is not put into language by you, it is judged as meaningful (or not) by our ordinary criteria.

What if we were to recognize that responsibility is “the essential, primary and fundamental mode" of objectivity as well as subjectivity? Ethics is therefore not about right response to a radically exterior/ ized other, but about responsibility and accountability for the lively relationalities of becoming of which we are a part.” Barard — Joshs

These are all very interesting. I would agree that yes without “responsibility and accountability” the moral realm is not inhabitable (that refusing to acknowledge the other is a “conviction”. P. 223). But I’m worried Barad might be seeing the other as “radically exterior” before we find out if they are such, and jumping to “becoming” together without knowing how we would—unless we are coming from who we are while simply finding our “way about” (#123) as a culture or community (or friends), which may very well mean extending our understanding, our judgments, or even our lives.

Since responsivity is a given of relational being, the challenge isn’t how to become responsive to each other, morally or otherwise. The issue is how to enrich and enlarge the system of relational intelligibility that defines us as ‘selves’ within a tradition, so that we can make sense of and embrace alien traditions. — Joshs

It is a “given” that our obligation (to their claim on us as other) characterizes us either in responding or not. However, even if we end up disagreeing, that qualifies as a moral answer. Even with the effort to explicate our criteria on an issue or action, and develop what we find important in the context, we may very well still come to a point where we find we are not in agreement on how to continue together, but at least the process allows us to part on terms we better understand, having learned the others’ interests and desires, as it were, rationally, i.e., being morally rational. So, while I support our ability to be intelligible to the other—and more, the importance of working towards intelligibility of and on the others’ terms (especially in doing philosophy)—I don’t believe a moral solution ends with either a global sameness or the rejection of the others’ legitimacy to define their selves without us, even against us.

the radically social constructionist position I’m arguing from doesn’t see shared systems of intelligibility as grounded in autonomous selves. On the contrary, the self is derived concept, a social construction. — Joshs

While I see Wittgenstein as defining the self differently than an inherent, given thing (e.g., as the self only existed, for Descartes, when we are clear and distinct), I wouldn’t think we go so far as to politicize the terms of the self (requiring the other to be intelligible to us or be “ungrounded”, say, irrational). Though I can see how Marx would agree that the self only has public means for its production (“construction”), he took that to show the importance of not allowing a generic capital (culture) to separate us from our interests, our work, or, as some would say, our “subjectivity”, or what Emerson would call our moral “partiality”, which I read as what I take personally.

I agree wholeheartedly that “certainty” and “knowledge” are specific here, apart from the various senses they have in ordinary use. But both are the product of the desire philosophy has always had for, as he puts it, “crystalline purity”, as old as at least Plato, with the creation of his Forms to stand for the wish for a knowledge apart from the human—e.g., the inherent risk of incommensurability in the moral realm—a fixture beyond the limitation of our human condition (our separateness, the contingency of the future at times on us alone).

In poststructuralist and other postmodern forms of discourse, the idea of certainty is no longer considered useful. This is not due to a repression of the desire for it, but because the concept has lost its intelligibility. — Joshs

And I disagree that this obsession has left us. The war between skepticism and attempts to “solve” it is sphinx-like in its incarnations. The whack-a-mole that once was metaphysics continues with the wish for science to resolve our feeling of lacking sufficient knowledge, and in the modern theoretical convolutions to explain away the truth that there is no fact (or theory) that ensures our understanding each other or continuing on together. To claim the dragon dead (or unintelligible) is to miss the point that as humans we clamor not to err, to be good, to ensure that the future is in our vision and control, that intelligibility is only a matter of process rather than our fickle will.

If there is any motive which transcends the locality of cultural eras, I suggest it is the need for intelligibility. — Joshs

But yet we want to maintain our inherent uniqueness; that you can’t know “This!” (#253); that my experience is still paramount to communication and the failure is intellectually explainable. That our communicating with each other is just “constructing, through joint action, shared systems of intelligibility” and not an ongoing responsibility to be responsive to each other and our moral claims on each other, or, all too often, to fail or refuse to make ourselves intelligible.

I believe @Banno was referring to the Cavell essay I attached, but it is about reading the PI anyway.

I’ve taken a run at On Certainty a few times and I’ve found that he was attempting to look at the ordinary ways certainty works, having taken apart the philosophical desire for certainty as a foundational solution to skepticism, much as he took apart the desire for “essences” but showed that our ordinary criteria satisfy that yearning in expressing what we find essential about something, its importance, and so retaining the aspiration of Socrates and Kant without succumbing (as they did) to the need for knowledge to replace our role in the world.

I hope, as well, to find the time and motivation to review the work and your posts and learn more (or something else), but I also keep putting off Zettel too.

I'm not sure what you mean by "explaining language"…he also does this via looking at how language actually works. — Luke

Fair point. But, as you say, he is looking and all I am saying is let’s not loose track of the reason he is looking, and it’s not to be an English teacher (though I do see the irony based on his tone sometimes). We might say he is looking at how language works in the sense of when it is achieving something, but more at why (and when) it doesn’t, which is more akin to why Socrates never seems to quite come up with the answer he wants. Wittgenstein is critiquing traditional philosophy and doing philosophy; addressing traditional philosophical problems. He is not solving the skeptical problem but is investigating language as a means (method) of seeing, for example, that “essence” is what essentially matters to us and “meaning” is really the ways in which things are meaningful, including that the type of sciencified knowledge we want is not our only relation to the world and others.

…Wittgenstein's philosophical investigation gets it importance from "destroying [..,] only houses of cards, and [...] clearing up the ground of language on which they stood." — Luke

It is the house of cards and its destruction that is important—clearing language of the idea that it has a foundation, certainty: meaning or rules or mental occurrences, etc.

Well I don’t want to high-jack the thread. I looked at a Cavell essay on Kripke here in a post on rules.

But I’ll entertain any thoughts on Cavell’s assessment of how to read Wittgenstein more profitably. I always find people take him to be explaining language or offering it as a solution to skepticism, when it is simply a window to see that each thing works differently, not to justify claims about how we play games or follow rules or dream of our own world, but as examples to see why we insist on a requirement (certain knowledge) that they fail to meet.

Wittgenstein reifies as a primal desire of humankind is in fact the product of historically changing social-discursive forms of life. — Joshs

I would characterize Wittgenstein’s insight of our desire for certainty as a temptation based on the human condition (that we are separate and we want knowledge to bridge that gap). Our situation to each other would only change if we someday can read minds or no longer have ongoing relationships (which we may be approaching). The desire for certainty is as ancient as Socrates’ desire for knowledge, spawned from the desire for control, the fear of chaos (and death), and the mistrust of others, so again, I find it unlikely those responses will go away (though they may wax and wain/be overcome and succumbed to).

Yes Wittgenstein is critiquing philosophies gripped by the desire for certainty (including the author of the Tractatus) but he wouldn’t claim that our ordinary language is “a stable, ahistorical background.” It is only a window into our lives (a method) to put the skeptic’s claims into context—not as a skeptical solution, which he goes to great pains (not hard enough it appears) to avoid. The only controversy he is avoiding is the skeptical/anti-skeptical one, the relativist/foundationalist dichotomy, which is to realize our ordinary criteria are sufficient to allow us to bridge the gap between us together.

Cavell would not be my got-to for this stuff. There are others who had more direct contact with Wittgenstein. That's not to say that what he says is wrong, so much as that the emphasis may be skewed. In particular, it seems to me that the essay follows Kripke into rule-scepticism, which I think absent from Wittgenstein. — Banno

I do think Cavell is a good example of the method Wittgenstein uses, and explains it well, so I had hoped those parts would be helpful to Russell. I take Cavell as appropriately reading Wittgenstein, focusing on the effects of the desire for certainty and Wittgenstein’s final insights about the limits of knowledge (and rules), which differentiates him from Kripke, who takes rules as fundamental, though flawed.

The act of “expression” (rather than “observable behavior”) is necessary as it implies that it is of me (reveals me)you can know I am in pain by inference from the context)
— Antony Nickles

I could say "ouch!" or I could wince, both serve the same function in indicating to others that I am in pain. They cannot know that I am in pain, they can only believe that I am in pain.
===============================================================================
And, again, expression is not a “name”.
— Antony Nickles

From the Wikipedia article Name, a name identifies something, a referent. A proper name identifies a specific individual human. A common name identifies a person, place or thing.

Wincing is an instinctive behaviour. Saying the word "ouch!" is a cognitive act, and as a cognitive act refers to something. As a part of language that is identifying something, it is a name. — RussellA

Sorry, but it appears you are not attempting to understand Wittgenstein but are simply operating from your opinions which you refuse to question, in which case, I can’t help. I would suggest reading the entire work of PI and actually answering the questions and trying to see how you could see things entirely differently. Sorry I couldn’t be of more use, good luck.

@Banno @Luke @Sam @schopenhauer1 @Richard B @frank

"Ouch!" is a name for an observable behaviour. As pain is not observable, if there was no observable pain behaviour” — RussellA

The act of “expression” (rather than “observable behavior”) is necessary as it implies that it is of me (reveals me), and pain does not function as “unobservable” but is suppressed (even if I try to hide it, it can be expressed in hiding it; even when nothing is observable, you can know I am in pain by inference from the context). Imagine sadness or guilt (pain is just one example of the problem of the other). And, again, expression is not a “name”. You are confusing all this by hanging onto a certain goal or picture; I suggest you start taking a look at that insistence (the need of that desire). It is the same as the interlocutor’s.

“after all, the interlocutor is part of Wittgenstein's imagination, and is putting forward ideas that Wittgenstein considers important.” — RussellA

They are important because they embody the confusion Wittgenstein was in during the Tractatus; the interlocutor has the impulsive desire for certainty and “crystalline purity” that Wittgenstein is trying to understand and unravel—this is the point of all of his examples (they are not explanations). You appear to be in the mindset of the interlocutor now (which is an ancient desire of philosophy—and why it wishes it was science). Wittgenstein cannot tell you an answer (a fact or theory), you have to become a different person, see differently.

As an alternative reading, or way of reading, I would suggest Stanley Cavell’s 29-page essay on the availability of the PI, a copy of which I am attaching below, particularly the section on the Style on the page marked 70 and the discussion of his method starting on 62.

And to say pain is “caused by something inside us” is just a physiological fact..........................that is philosophically unimportant and confusing because it appears to bring up issues of causation and determinism, etc.
— Antony Nickles

The issues of causation and determinism are important philosophical topics. — RussellA

I said the fact is philosophically unimportant. The picture of our expression being caused or determined by neurons, even if true, is not relevant to the skepticism of the other. We want science to solve philosophy, but they are like two separate worlds, and what Wittgenstein is doing (his method) is not empiricism or statistics or an experiment. The result is not facts or theories, its to change you.

Let’s try to do the work and answer the question “how could I say [ordinarily, he means] I felt something which is established by experiment?” one answer: “I’m sad”, “why?”, “Because of the neurons firing within me” Also, did you figure out how it is “indeed true that observation of regular concomitances is not the only way we establish causation.”? If you can see for yourself the other ways, then perhaps you might start to see the fact that the picture of internal causation is forced by a desire for a particular outcome. (He is more often asking you to imagine something or being cryptic to force you to see something for yourself—he is not arguing for a conclusion.)

“even though the private sensation of pain may drop out of consideration in the language game, pain does not drop out as a private sensation.” — RussellA

First, “language game” sounds trivial (simplistic). Our language and our lives are the same (usually), and it is not playing a “game” as opposed to some alternative that is more serious, valid. Second, if we can say our pain is the same, we have the same pain. #253 “I have a headache. Me too. No, mine is sharp and behind my ear. Mine too!” Taking out the focus on my difference is to show that the owning is the important part about pain. Part of this process would be to ask yourself why you are fixated on our singularity?

The discussion of a “private” language is not an argument—it’s the examination of a fantasy. One realization of its failure is that our lives are essentially shared; that, yes, it is possible to have a personal even ineffable experience (alone with a sunset), but not always or just because I am me (we could say, our nature is the same; I can feel everything that you feel.) Now you can try to hide your pain (even from yourself), but this is not its being private (unique), but secret. These are the ordinary ways in which pain works; humans have (traditional philosophy has) a reason for wanting to hang onto the uniqueness of our sensations, our selves. Wittgenstein is getting at the motivation for those reasons. Maybe to avoid the responsibility to make ourselves intelligible, to block off the other from our imagined “knowledge of ourself”—so we imagine that it is the nature of humans that comes between us, rather than our choice, our “conviction” p 223. And it is possible (and terrifying) for you to be empty, just a puppet, fake, and, in the face of that fear, we want to stay unique, unknowable, so we look around for a reason, and pick the thing most certain—“our” experience. But all the focus on us is easier to face than the real problem to be accounted for: our lack of knowledge of the other. The desire to enforce a connection between outward and inward in me is actually about our limitation to have knowledge of the other, which shows how we do respond to them (acknowledging them, or not).

“PI 304 Not at all. It is not a something., but not a nothing either!” — RussellA

So yes, pain is not a “thing” (like color is not), but what he is saying is that it nevertheless is important (thus, not “nothing”); it just matters in different ways; we care (or not) about the pain being “had” by this person; it is that pain is expressed by a person, that it expresses them, that they matter. It is not a matter of knowledge, but interest.

…the expression "I know I am in pain" does have a different meaning to "I am in pain" PI 246 It can't be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean—except perhaps that I am in pain? — RussellA

It is not that they are “joking”; it only makes sense as a “joke” (you are to imagine the context in which it is a joke)—we would never otherwise say “I know I am in pain” because pain is not known (other than in the sense of knowing as being sure, as in “I am certain I am in pain and that it’s not indigestion”) Again, I do not know it, I have it; I do not know their pain, I acknowledge it (them). The idea is to take a strange philosophical picture or framework apart by looking at the ordinary ways they are said (this is his method, not that his philosophy is about language), not that there is a better framework, but to find out why we insist on an intellectual picture at all. For instance, if we had “knowledge” of ourself, there would be something specific that would by mine, me, but also something that I could hold in reserve so I could be different, unique, from you. In addition, we would have “certainty” of ourself, control, and an impersonal explanation for your indeterminacy.

Yes, we can talk about pain in the language game, even though no one else can know my pain and I cannot know theirs. Wittgenstein is trying to find a means of countering Cartesian solipsism, the separation of mind from world, through language. — RussellA

Again, pain is not a matter of knowledge (except in its sense of “I know” as “I accept/acknowledge”). Wittgenstein is not “countering” solipsism, but getting at the desire for it, and the desire to “solve” it. One realization is that there are more relations to the world and others than knowledge.

And there is a misunderstanding that Wittgenstein is trying to create a theory of language that is different, or that the solution to skepticism is that the world is language or “language games” or not skeptical because of “forms of life”. He is bringing up examples of what we say, the language we ordinarily use, as a method, to examine philosophy and ourselves. Most notably misread “ Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” #109 It is not that language is the “means” of our bewitchment, so we just need to clear up language in order not to be bewitched. Language is the means of “battling”, the method by which we battle. He is using the evidence of the historical things we say in situations as a “means” to gain insight into why philosophy abandons our ordinary criteria to impose the singular standard of certainty.

…the same problem attaches to a language game based on rules. Where is the rule that there are rules. PI 5: A child uses such primitive forms of language when it learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explanation, but training. — RussellA

Language does not follow rules; there is no fact that ensures communication. We are not “trained” in rules; it is an osmosis of, an indoctrination into, our culture, including implications, consequences, criteria for judgment, learning from mistakes, being guided, following examples, etc. This is like an apprenticeship, not knowledge to be explained, or workings we are always conscious of, or reasons we always use. Wittgenstein is not looking at rule-following to explain language, it is just one among all the examples of how different things work differently than we’d like. Wanting our world to work like rules has in common with other of his examples the desire for certainty that Wittgenstein is trying to understand why it’s so compelling for humans, for philosophy.

The intent is part of the way we explain actions with reasons…

I think we agree on this. — Banno

Yes. I would only add that we don’t normally (in anticipated contexts) explain actions, and it is not necessary or even possible to always explain—an ordinary context would never necessitate asking “Why are you stopping at the light because it is red?”, and we might not be able to imagine one (even an imaginary one; though, of course, now that I say that, maybe someone learning who has never been in modern civilization). The point being that talk of intention is situational (and, as Banno says, not metaphysical, i.e., part of meaning or all action); in Banno’s example—"Oh, he does that when he wants his bowl filled"—the intention, or reason, must be explained, say: in response to my curiosity at the animal’s, perhaps, inexplicably pawing at the air, or any other action which is, as Austin would put it, “fishy”, or, as I put it to @frank, unexpected, or abnormal (our lives are what is normative Cavell says). Expected, appropriate actions in ordinary situations would not and do not have reasons, and I would be stumped how to answer if you asked for one (though I may have subterfuge at heart in “acting” normal; but the exception proves the rule).

All that to say that traditional philosophy wants to place “intention” before action, or tie “meaning” to speaking, in order to have certainty (rationality, control, predictability) so it can remove (by theoretical explanation) the limitations and vagaries of involving a human, an uncertain future, calling for responsiveness and responsibility, perhaps breaking us apart.

But it is not a request; not because of the lack of something (magic, intention), but just that birds can’t meet the requirement of asking something of another
— Antony Nickles

The parrot might have an intent to elicit a peanut, so yes, that seems right. Those requirements are the "form of life", presumably? Good stuff, although I don't follow the overall argument. — Banno

To address any metaphysical sense, the bird (or anyone) would not have an “intent”, and because it is a bird, it would not intend (in the sense of deliberately decide), but we could ask (it is part of the grammar of intention) whether the bird was asking for a cracker because it was hungry, in other words, whether it wanted a cracker, and the owner might know its behavior well enough to tell when it was hungry and when it is merely saying it, or saying it, maybe, to get attention.

The practice of requesting is different than a demand (which is more what the bird is doing) because it implies that I understand I am asking a favor, that my desires are contingent on you, that I should couch my request in order not to meet the possibility of denial, that I have no authority over your actions, that I can suggest reasons (an emotional pitch, say from a dog, is begging). All of this is philosophical evidence of the difference between the bird and the human that is more than what is normally reduced to the physical differences of animals and humans, e.g., they don’t use language, they aren’t self-conscious, etc. All of that is to say that there are more ways that the world works than: intending actions or referring to objects.

I agree that the exclamation "ouch!" is not a name for the pain inside us, but rather, is the name for an observable pain-behaviour that has been caused by something inside us. — RussellA

Again, Ouch! is not a name for a thing (an object—“something inside us”), it is an expression of my being in pain (an externalization). (This is not to say that we cannot “name our pain”—a headache—but this doesn’t work as a referent to an object but also as an expression to others (though including myself, as other to my repressed self). As Witt says, “In so far as it makes sense to say that my pain is the same as his, it is also possible for us both to have the same pain.” But here it is the saying and the establishment of recognition that matter). And to say pain is “caused by something inside us” is just a physiological fact (firing neurotransmitters, yada yada) that is philosophically unimportant and confusing because it appears to bring up issues of causation and determinism, etc. when what we care about (what matters as evidenced by its workings, its criteria) when we talk about our pain (or don’t care about it) is the person.

Wittgenstein refers to the difference between pain and pain-behaviour:
PI 281 - "But doesn't what you say come to this: that there is no pain, for example, without pain-behaviour?" — RussellA

It is the interlocutor (not Wittgenstein) that is asking a question based on their desire to separate pain and the expression of pain (see #245). They are trying to force Wittgenstein into admitting a behavioral conclusion that without expression there is no pain. Keep in mind, the example here of pain is used for its unmistakability, but it is analogous for the other in their entirety. To keep the pain theirs (as in unique) is to want to keep the picture that they are innately individual, to have certainty of themselves, and the desire to be unknowable to others (or to be fully known in “knowing” and communicating what they take as a definite personal object, “my pain”). But the way pain works is not in my knowing my pain, it is in my having my pain (#246) which the next line says is part of being human—that what is important to us about pain is ordinarily not mine different than yours**, but me separate from you (that it is me that is in pain), and that bridging that gap is not a matter of knowledge of your individual pain, but my reacting to you having pain, your being in pain.

(You seem to be misreading this I believe because you are trying to force as essential the physical nature of pain and are taking this out of context and possibly without understanding the role of the interlocutor (the second voice Wittgenstein uses to speak the assumptions of traditional philosophy). It might help to realize that Wittgenstein is asking questions to get you to reflect on your assumptions and desires; and so you should spend the time to really try to find an answer that reveals something revelatory (say, in #278 & 280)).

And the word is not a replacement for a “picture” (whatever we would imagine when we hear it I suppose you to mean); it is a replacement for the wordless expression, the wince, the cry, the clear attempt at repression, etc.
— Antony Nickles

An Indirect Realist would say that the word is a replacement for a picture of the wince or cry. A Direct Realist would say that the word is a replacement for the wince or cry. — RussellA

Wittgenstein is trying to get us to see that both of those misunderstand how we handle pain, what is important to us about it. His point is that the word (a description, etc.) are expressions, just like a cry is an expression, different entirely from a referent to an object (“reality”).

This way of looking at pain as word-object is created to avoid the real way pain matters between me and to you (how it works)—that it is I that is in pain (I am the one; I don’t know pain, I have it) and you either acknowledge me (say, come to my aid) or ignore me, reject me (say I’m faking).
— Antony Nickles

Yes, how does an observer know whether someone is exhibiting pain-behaviour, that they are actually in pain. An actor on the stage may exhibit pain-behaviour without actually experiencing pain.PI 304 - "But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behaviour accompanied by pain and pain-behaviour without any pain?"—Admit it. — RussellA

Of course we can exhibit pain behavior and not be in pain. That is the uncertainty of the other that makes us want to circumvent them through just having knowledge (certainty) of them; it’s also why we want to know ourselves—have it be impossible not to be known to ourselves—because we can be in pain and not be aware of it at all (suppression being the opposite of expression). But as Wittgenstein points out, the way our lives work, we don’t know another’s pain. “If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me.” P. 225. We react to them (or ignore them), accept or reject them (even because of faking it).

**And of course I have personal experiences (alone seeing a unique sunset) and sensations, but the points Wittgenstein makes are that our language and ability to express ourselves have a shared depth and so possibility of reaching all the way into each other, across the panic from our separation; that we have a fantasy that we can’t fail to know ourselves, a desire to be unknowable to others, and a (rightful) fear that there is nothing more to us than anyone else.

Ok. I'm not sure how that relates [that meaning is not internal], but it all sounds good — frank

Well, one point is we do not need intention; that it is only an issue when something is unexpected (not incorrect nor not the norm), and intention is judged differently, comes into play in other ways (there are other reasons for explaining what was intended).

communication requires more than just using words and sentences correctly. We need intention. — frank

The presumption of “intention” comes from expectations that go along with situations. It is not a constant state of something like deciding or “meaning” that we do. We ask about intention when something unexpected happens: “Did you intend to snub them or were you oblivious?” And this is not asking if you had chosen to be rude (though you can), but to now differentiate. So we “need" implications and consequences and expectations and criteria for judging when something is the case or not, etc., and these are all here before anything is said. This is how motive can be inferred from circumstances, which is not guessing at something going on in another’s head.

So just form of life. That's as good an answer as any. — frank

Well, what I am saying is not an “answer”, nor is it one of any, say, foundations, or however “form of life” is thought to play a part. Our relation to the other (their pain) is a fact of the human condition. We (philosophy, historically) want to turn the other into an intellectual problem, a lack of certainty, but the other is just separate from us, and knowledge is not our only relation to the world (and others). We want the other (their pain, for example) to be an object of knowledge to avoid responding to the fact of: them; that we cannot be sure (they are really in pain), that we commit ourselves in relation to the claim of their pain on us, etc. That is how pain works; that is its significance and manner. The picture of “form of life” is only meant to say there is more than one way the world works; more than objects and knowledge, for example. It is not one more justification of a theoretical solution to the truth of our blindness to and possible refusal of the other.

What do humans have that birds don't have, which allows them to "acknowledge the debt of it."? — frank

We have the practices of obligation, asking a favor, duty, betrayal, insincerity, etc. which come into play between triggering a response and making a request; the differentiation between them is, we could say, part of the difference between an animal and a human.

Ouch!" is an exclamation… an exclamation is a noun: — RussellA

It is the exclamation itself that is a noun, as an event, not as a name for (referent for) “the pain” (some object inside us). And the word is not a replacement for a “picture” (whatever we would imagine when we hear it I suppose you to mean); it is a replacement for the wordless expression, the wince, the cry, the clear attempt at repression, etc.

This way of looking at pain as word-object is created to avoid the real way pain matters between me and to you (how it works)—that it is I that is in pain (I am the one; I don’t know pain, I have it) and you either acknowledge me (say, come to my aid) or ignore me, reject me (say I’m faking). The theoretical approach to other minds (of which pain is just an example) is to attempt to get around the opacity of the other, the truth that I may not know because I cannot be certain of the other.

If someone can see me, they see a picture of me wincing. If someone cannot see me, and hear me say "ouch!", they can replace the word "ouch!" by a picture of me wincing, ie, the word "ouch!" names the picture of me wincing.

The word "ouch!" names a picture, and a picture is a noun. Therefore, in the sentence "Ouch!", the word "ouch!" is being used as a noun. — RussellA

“Ouch” is not a name, it is an expression; not like a saying, but like the opposite of being stone-faced. And so wincing is also an expression of pain (they mean the same to us, as in: they have the same implications). Not “a pain” like if you turned the hurt into an object (or a pulse of neurons). Your expression of pain is a release, like a good cry, or it is (to me) a cry for help, a claim on my compassion. These are the ordinary terms upon which we handle pain, what matters about it to us. The desire to name the pain is a desire to be certain of my humanity while avoiding me as a human. To take “what I mean” as an independent thing rather than an obligation to become intelligible to each other.

If someone were to use a given word appropriately in every case, on what grounds could you claim: "Yes, but they do not know what it means."
— Banno

On what grounds would you say they do know what it means? — frank

Ask yourself: what makes it possible, what has to be the case, what would we judge as necessary or sufficient in order to claim that you know what you are saying? The answer are the criteria that matter to us (what is meaningful in this case). To say you know what is meaningful in having said something is to be aware and cognizant of, or at least experienced with, the consequences you are getting yourself into, the implications that can be drawn, what else might have been said in this situation (a threat rather than an apology), etc. Take the case where we would say “They don’t know what they are saying.” The person’s words need not be “incorrect”, nor “misused”.

So a computer or parrot always uses the word correctly without knowing what the word means. I guess that makes me wonder what the special human magic is that renders them knowing. Hmm. — frank

“Meaning” is not attached to words (other than naming, in a sense) to be used (as in operated) “correctly”. There are concepts (activities) like naming and regurgitating, synthesizing, paraphrasing, arguing, supporting, etc. And there are “uses” of those concepts: sometimes different senses, like knowing has; and sometimes just in different situations. What determines what use, is whether and how the criteria of that particular use are ordinarily met in a particular context, even something that is or can be two things at once, like a request that is also a joke. We do not make these things happen (with exceptions), we judge them to be the case.

A parrot saying “Polly wants a cracker” knows how to get a cracker, which is knowledge in the sense of (in its use as) knowing how something works, and it might even mean (as in correspond with, name) that the bird is hungry (even that it is an expression of its desire). But it is not a request; not because of the lack of something (magic, intention), but just that birds can’t meet the requirement of asking something of another (though the concept stretches when we look at some of their dances) because they cannot acknowledge (or ignore) the debt of it. And a parrot having said that also fits into the category of humor, but we wouldn’t say the bird is joking because part of humor is the self-knowledge of the implications and consequences of saying something across form or in the wrong context, which awareness and reflection etc. are only possible in humans (expected of), which is also part of how and why a request coming from a bird is funny. A person can also be unaware though, but then it is foolish, or unwitting; so nonetheless funny, only in a different sense (use).

The interesting case might be, say, ChatGPT, which apparently uses words correctly just on the basis of a large scale statistical analysis. And yes, I am incline to say that ChatGPT does not participate in the world to the degree requisite to say that it understands the words it uses. It lacks the "magic" if you like. — Banno

So if we take away the picture of words being necessarily (always) “used”, as in manipulated or ordered or operated or intended, and so also throw away the measure of “correct”, than we can judge that or whether a computer is copying, quoting, regurgitating, synthesizing, paraphrasing, arguing, supporting, failing, mistaking, etc., which is a richer tapestry and with hope of more interest than just whether a machine is “human”. That ChatGPT is not “participating in the world” is true in the sense that we do not judge it as we would judge a human (the consequences of the plagarism transfer to its user). The words cannot mean what they do to us (even if said correctly) because a computer is not (nor a parrot) responsible for what it says. If a human is unable to face the fallout of their actions, they do not “understand” what they are saying (“the words they use”) because they are ignorant (a child), naive, a buffoon, etc.

A=I think
B=I believe

In the sense of a guess or hypothesis, I think and I believe are the same. “I think it is raining.” is interchangeable with “I believe it is raining.” In either instance, we go outside and confirm if it is raining or not—they are both a claim of knowledge.

But “I think you are mistaken” is in the sense of a claim to a judgment, while “I believe in God” is an expression of faith or an attitude or a duty. In any event, there are uses in which they are not interchangeable.

[ Your assessment that apologizing is the right thing to do is false ] is an unusual phrasing, but isn't it clear enough? "That's not true" would be a happier wording. — Banno

But “phrasing” and “clarity” do not take seriously a claim about the workings of our concepts (like belief, or apologizing). The method of looking at what we say when something is the case is to make explicit the implications of our acts—that our phrases are evidence (philosophical data) of the way the world works. “That’s false” sounds forced in this case (is “unhappy”) because it is an attempt to impose the criteria for truth onto a concept that has its own rationale. True or false just do not apply in a case of right and wrong in a moral sense (or correct or felicitous); in this case, the criteria of when an apology applies or is warranted, etc. The point being that the concept of believing has different senses (uses) which employ different criteria, not all of which are truth.

I find myself here somewhat at odds with Wittgenstein, and leaning towards Davidson. — Banno

I only have a passing familiarity with Davidson, but, if my understanding is correct, the structure of a separate discussion of the workings of a concept are similar to both. Wittgenstein would call it the grammar of the criteria of a concept where Davidson’s talks of a meta-discussion of an object-language. If this is a similarity, where is the space between them?

I find myself wondering why "The right thing to do is apologise" should not have a truth-value…

"The right thing to do is apologize", claimed Antony
"That's true", replied Banno. — Banno

Well if you said “I agree” it might mean you intend to apologize. If you say “You’re right” it maybe means you are giving your assent to my analysis of the situation. And you could say “That is right” if you were teaching me about apologizing. If we look at saying, as Austin might, “That is false”, it is unclear what the implications would be (but something is amiss). This problem is not the same as a math problem or a fact (we can’t look it up). We can argue about what should be done, but neither of us has any inherent claim to what is right, and, as well, we may not reach a point where we agree, and so what is at stake is more than what is right, it is also our relationship, our community; I may shun you for refusing to acknowledge or do what I see as correct. In fact, you might say “That is true” if you agree that it is the right thing to do but you aren’t going to do it and don’t what to offend me.

p.s. Even though this situation does not value certainty, we nevertheless have a way of discussing what would matter in deciding what the right thing to do is. Does it matter if you feel remorseless? Do you intend to keep the relationship or is it more important to hold to the action or words that hurt the other? Can you fulfill the expectation of a promise to act differently?

A belief is a relation between an individual and a proposition. That there is much more to be said about belief is not in contention; this is just a place to start. This is set as a falsifiable proposition. — Banno

Let’s continue on then to see if there are different senses of belief. Provisionally (subject to assent), there at least appear to be different kinds of propositions to believe in. A proposition that can be false is, yes, an assertion that the proposition is true. And here is there actually a difference between the belief that an assertion is true, and an assertion being true? Are not “I believe the earth is flat” and “The earth is flat” both assertions? We might say one is me making a claim (say, not on behalf of you) and the other is a claim for a larger group (everyone?), but then, as you note, why stake an individual claim to a fact?

Maybe at times I am not asserting that the proposition is true, but I am predicting that something might be true (hypothesizing, Wittgenstein says, p. 162 3rd). If I believe it is raining (per Moore), then, when it is not, it is more than that my claim is false, I am said to be wrong (or correct). And we can now understand “I believe the earth is flat” as a prediction, though it makes more sense in examples such as: “I believe Mount McKinley is the capital of Vermont” or I believe 134x23=3082, in which cases we can look it up and find out—not if the assertion is true (though we do just that), but whether I was right or wrong, in the sense of guessing.

But we also propose to believe some things that cannot be looked up. “(I believe) The right thing to do is apologize.” Now the personal claim of belief makes more sense here. The proposition is not true or false, nor can we be “wrong” about this proposition; or, only in so much as misguided, foolish, appeasing, etc. depending on the claim and the situation. We can be said to stand for its truth, prepared to defend it, make ourselves intelligible, give reasons in favor, die before renouncing, etc. I believe this would be, as Wittgenstein puts it, a “tone” of belief, as conviction (#187)—though we need not be “convinced” to make a personal claim (as if it were necessarily rational; that it must be to be part of this category, this sense of belief). And maybe this is the same sense of belief as “I believe in God”, and here we may substitute for God: in the power of absolution, or in eating an apple a day, etc. And maybe we would say that belief here is faith, as “I trust in”, say, the promises of God’s scripture, or that I give control of myself over to God, or my future health over to fruit.

When you communicated in the past, you weren't following any particular rule. Meaning does not arise from community rule following. — frank

And I can agree with that too. I’m not denying the skeptic’s argument.

Kripke presents this as the discovery of a problem; Cavell reads Wittgenstein as stating a truth. There is no fact that ensures the extension of a concept into the future or a new context. Unless it is a game or math, we do not “follow a rule” to reach a certain effect or conclusion. I got into this here

I agree with most everything you are saying and believe we are for the most part preaching past each other to the same choir. However.

There’s no desire for certainty here in acknowledging conditions for objectivity... And I’m not sure what ‘theoretical solution’ you’re referring to — Possibility

I agree with your description of an “accounting” to the criteria for what are “relevant features”, but that is not the classic conception of what “objectivity” is. Plato and Kant’s idea of a metaphysical “object” for comparison with its “appearance” to us was born of a desire for certainty (exactness), not just responsibility, accountability. This is the theoretical picture which I think is continued through in having “discursive” and “materiality” (the word, then the referent) with a tweak to try avoid the conclusion it is “metaphysical”.

What are ‘ordinary criteria’ but ‘conclusions’ themselves - apparatuses that reconfigure the world by enacting agential cuts? — Possibility

I’ll take from what I said to Number2018: we do have criteria for each practice for the judgments we make about them (whether they are appropriate within what we identify as that thing). What is normative is our lives themselves Cavell says. And we can make explicit those criteria for, say, an excuse, an apology, what we would call “following a rule”, or pointing, walking (compared to running)…

“Appropriateness” is precise, rigorous, and clear. Accuracy is a judgment to a set criteria, and so imposed onto an ordinary setting. This is how objectivity was created (out of the desire for an outside, higher, predictable, general criteria).

So yes, every practice is different, but it is differentiating that constitutes each practice, each reason or interest, and even culture itself - “not just what matters, but what is excluded from mattering”. — Possibility

And here I agree as well. To have a something we must push against everything. This speaking is a kind of violence and death. I would also point out that off course the “what” that is excluded is importantly also a “who”.

Being immersed in practices undertaking, how can one keep any basis for comparative evaluation or any means of applying normative criteria? — Number2018

My point is that we do have criteria for each practice for the judgments we make about them (whether they are appropriate within what we identify as that thing). What is normative is our lives themselves Cavell says. And we can make explicit those criteria for, say, an excuse, an apology, what we would call “following a rule”, or pointing, walking (compared to running)…

nature is a flow running through everything rather than a prescriptive essence unique to each being or species, — Number2018

But this “if” is flawed in both premises. We are not unique; and it is our “prescriptive” inculcation into a society and history that allows us to judge someone’s act, if necessary, along the criteria of what has come to be essential to that being what it is—to us, for example, identifying an excuse from a reason.

What has seemed ‘essential’ for ‘our culture’ in the past has been found on numerous occasions to be no indication of its accuracy, let alone its importance or appropriateness. — Possibility

Our practices can be appropriately done, but they are (mostly) not judged to be “accurate”. You can have an appropriate excuse, but it cannot be an “accurate” excuse. Measuring is accurate, the retelling of the facts of an occurrence can be more or less accurate, but there is no standard against which we would call most of our practices “accurate”. The “conditions for objectivity” have “not been lost”, they were imposed in the first place (from math). The desire for that certainty creates the need for a theoretical solution to what is just the varied conclusions available or not under our ordinary criteria.

”practices… are perpetually open to rearrangements, rearticulations, and other reworkings”. That this has been happening long before you and I get there does not render it a priori. — Possibility

Yes our practices are not fixed, however, as I tried to claim previously, they are not decisions, arrangements, or solutions. They are the ways we have lived our lives over thousands of years; changing our shared expectations that create the implications on which our actions are judged is not resolved intellectually but culturally, over time as we change how we live, judge, and expect. And another point I was trying to make is every practice is different in the means and possibility of its evolution and extension.

And by a priori I am pointing out that there is no reference here, only reasons, interests, what matters; and that we do not easily see these, but must deduce them, reflect on what has been there but is normally overlooked, assumed.

There is more here that I agree with than disagree; I think the generalization and something about the non-situational ethical discussion trips me up.

It’s not about responsibility or accountability to a category’s criteria (as if these ‘qualities’ were not simply ‘classic’ but essential, static or a priori), but to each other (human or non-human) in general, regardless of criteria, “for the lively relationalities of becoming of which we are a part”. — Possibility

I can agree that we are responsible to each other, but I would frame it in the sense that the criteria of a category are what has been essential to it for us (our culture) before you and I get there (a priori as it were). We came into our practices with their criteria already having been sculpted by human life choosing what is important about something being what it is, being done appropriately, what we can be held “accountable” to it for being a threat or an apology or a conclusion, etc.

And I agree this is a process of limitation and exclusion as much as identity and participation, but we do not articulate (decide) our criteria. They aren’t static nor inherent, and are subject to change, but as much as our shared lives are. What makes up an apology may not change as much as what we count as justice (dead to us maybe, or as yet unrealized), or even how we address one another.

What is at stake and at issue, that is, what matters within a given set of practices among the participants, is constantly under contestation in partially shared circumstances. — Joshs

Although I wouldn’t say it is always, or “constantly”, maybe we could agree that when “what is at stake” in a practice (its criteria) does become contested, we enter the moral realm, in which, I would say, part of it can be philosophy’s reflection on the workings of our practices, say, how we might continue from being at a loss, part of it is whether we continue together at all.

The endgame is responsible and accountable practices, or intra-action. — Possibility

I can understand how I could be held responsible and accountable for, say, an apology I did, held to the criteria for that practice. I can also imagine someone extending the limits or context of what we would consider the practice of comedy (say, its distinction from tragedy), but that would be relaxing the practice, expanding its criteria, though if we are judging a comedy as lacking the classic qualities, we are defending accountability to its practice. But what would be an example were we make a practice more responsible and accountable? And how?

Rations

What would be Barad’s standard of objectivity other than the measurements determined via the criteria offered by contingent configurations of phenomena? — Joshs

The point is that there is not one goal or outcome like “objectivity”. The standard of objectivity is certainty with goals like repeatability thus predictability and foreknowledge, basically what you get if you remove the human from the mix like science does (it not mattering which human is involved). The “contingent configurations of phenomena” are the criteria for each kind of thing, but each has its own, thus a moral problem can’t ensure agreement like a scientific one.

There are also no hard and fast distinctions between scientific, political, economic and literary domains. — Joshs

I’m not sure what “domain” means here, but what matters in each field leads to different criteria without any similar endgame. My point is that requiring certainty is a theoretical desire that strips away ordinary criteria which are different for each type of thing.

ascertaining the real is simultaneously an empirical, ethical and political endeavor. — Joshs

Well if we’re saying that there are political dimensions to philosophy, or ethical considerations in science, I agree, but the process and criteria, for the identity and correctness or appropriateness or ways in which they fail for each, are different and create the category and structure of a thing or practice.

The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself. The practice itself, however, already incorporates the material circumstances in and through which it is enacted. — Joseph Rouse

I believe this mirrors my reading to say each practice has its own problems and interests, and maybe “material circumstances” simply means the limits and categorical structure, but it appears to be brought up to defend that there is some solidity or consistency to our practices (like an object but not an object). My point is I find this unnecessary and confusing the issue because it implies that we need and will only accept certainty with any practice.

If I read this correctly, Barad wants to acknowledge that the world is not independent of us, abstract from our… particularity, situation. But she also wants to maintain the outcomes associated with “objectivity”, “existence” and “reality”. She accounts for these two seemingly disparate goals by claiming it is a misconception that the world is already “fixed”—as I take it: is an already-created object which we just come to know—and that the world actually becomes a certain thing (“determinate”) through our interaction with it.

One thing she is saying does not “pre-exist” are the criteria for judging a thing to be what it is (its “relata”; its “boundaries”), and that “which cuts are enacted” are themselves judged as “a matter of accountability for what materializes, for what comes to be”. But it is just Barad’s position, or wish, that criteria should be held to one standard of “objectivity”.

The idea of a “fixed world” was created by the fear of uncertainty associated with the human (termed “subjectivity”) in order to try to attain the certainty we associate with the standard of “objectivity”. Unless we unravel the desire for objectivity, we will merely continue to tie ourselves into theoretical knots imagining we are hiding the same old wish to avoid the “subjective” human. Notice how careful Barad is to stay away from a first person even though there is a lot of “doing” “enacting” “cutting” “accountability”, etc. Her fear of ‘the human’ (uncertainty) is why I take her to pointedly say “Phenomena are real material beings” and “This is, after all, a realist conception of scientific practices.” (Edit: science’s certainty, it’s “objectivity”, comes from its practice (not “reality”); it’s method leads to, because it requires, repeatability, predictability, uniformity (apart from us, as it doesn’t matter who does science)).

Wittgenstein takes criteria and subsumes them into our lives. Expounding Barad’s words: that the world “come [ s ] to matter”, is to say, implicitly: matter to us. What is meaningful about a thing (in our lives) is reflected in our ordinary criteria for judgment of a thing or activity; as Barad might put it, a things “materialization” is “embodied” with us. So there is no singular standard for our criteria like “objectivity” to make them all certain. Now we can say our criteria are “accountable”, but their change and correction and life and death and misuse and corruption are all a part of our shared lives. Barad says we are not the “condition of possibility for the existence of phenomena” but the possibilities, or options, for a phenomena are our shared interest in it (this is not our “self-interest” or desire). Our interest in politics or morality or art are different than our interest in science (though some would have it different).

Maybe a better concept is a fantasy. If there is something there or not, we have a desire that it, for example, serve a certain purpose (reference to an appearance) that it, perhaps, hold a place to allow or close off interpretation. Whatever the object and purpose, the fantasy is from the desire for a certain outcome.

We have an everyday theory about how we perceive and think, and that theory is, you know, wrong. — Srap Tasmaner

I didn’t say “theory”, because philosophy is not explaining vision or whatever the mechanism is for self-reflection or internal dialogue. And I’m not saying science doesn’t correct the lay-understanding of the world with definitive knowledge. But our ordinary criteria for judging that something is seen, or what is a thought, are, however, sufficient and precise enough to allow us to resolve our failings and misunderstandings, without abandoning them for the certainty and generality historically desired by philosophy and hoped for by a scientific explanation of the fantasy that this is all handled by cognitive processes (although not without cognitive processes, but only to say they don’t come into it here, with our ordinary criteria).

modern science has stepped up to continue doing what philosophy used to do — Srap Tasmaner

We used to call philosophy what science does now—the pursuit of knowledge—however, our relation to the world is not entirely by way of knowledge. I’m not speaking of belief or opinion, but of activities, practices, and even self-determination at times. How we “perceive” (let’s say see) or are “aware”, as @NotAristotle says, of objects as objects is based on our criteria for what an object is (rather than an illusion, or a gas, or something like peace or anger) and what counts as those activities in relation to them (what counts as seeing an object rather than another’s point of view, becoming aware of a distinct object rather than of a sneaking suspicion). Usually we don’t reflect on these issues until we are having a problem, in a specific context; we don’t use them rationally to do a thing (usually, unless Machiavellian) nor as reasons for doing something (though depending on the activity, having a motive or interest would be a integral part or requirement—say, applying for a job, but not, throwing a stick).

But you think almost all Western philosophy is a train-wreck anyway, and you're among the special few who understand how most philosophy and almost all science is based on a colossal mistake. — Srap Tasmaner

I’ve never said science is a mistake (though I do claim science is confused about this issue, as philosophy has been). And I take your comment that I am special in understanding this issue as sarcasm, which would be disrespectful and inappropriate here, so, unless I am mistaken, I’ll leave you to it.