solipsism has basically been proven wrong (or absurd or confused. — green flag

true - but irrelevant. — Manuel

foolish and impractical it is for one to believe something while knowing it makes them miserable. — Judaka

...someone ended up proving solipsism true." — Darkneos

Solipsism, born from skepticism, is not ridiculous, or just illogical, or wrong.

Cavell (through Wittgenstein) shows that there is something that the skeptic is getting at that is true. If we want only to rely on justification, proof, certainty, than we see nothing else, and so are only left with their lack, sliding right through the cracks of the world into a void--there is no fact to solve this. But knowledge is not the only way we relate to the world. The truth of Skepticism is that part of being human is our part, to step forward with courage, to treat the other as if they are a human (as if they have a soul Wittgenstein would say), meaning not as if they were real, because I don't know your pain, I react to it (or ignore it).

I can understand as someone whom philosophy changed dramatically. I was searching for what had or made meaning, and ran straight into Plato and Descartes, only coming out through realizing, in Wittgenstein, and Emerson through Cavell, and Nietzsche analyzing Kant, that it is not "appearance" vs "reality", because that whole picture is created by our desire to have certainty; the criteria we create and require. So if nothing satisfies that need, you live only in that skepticism until nothing has meaning.

The thing is, the world does have solidity. The criteria for a thing being what it is, for its "existing", have developed through our whole history. The difference between what is a plea and what is a claim, is actual, ordinary, common. You know what an excuse is, different than a reason. These are the bounds and points of flex of our culture, not by fragile agreement, but through the thrust of our ancient lives carried on by what we claim as our future duties. All of this: is outside you. Yet still, rather than accept it, its uncertainty, you can kill the whole world. Up again old heart, as Emerson says, and, also, that patience and hope are needed for insight, more than thought.

This made me think of one of my favorite quotes from Stephen Jay Gould, a great science writer—In science, ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' — T Clark

Gould spoke where I went to school at Willamette about rapid evolutionary changes. When someone asked about creationism, he started yelling at them (as if they were perverse). The point about science is that it does not need assent. The method could be done by anyone and the results are the same. Your moral claim on me needs to be acknowledged by me (or rejected). You swear allegiance to a country. But we do not agree about science (disagreeing with someone's science is to say it was done poorly). Now you can ignore science's facts or exagerate their significance, but those are political moves, not scientific ones. Gould is right in saying science is confirmed; and this just means we've done the same experiment enough times to be sure it wasn't a fluke, not that we are confirming our hypothesis against anything--"the world" or "reality".

So, again, to say my belief (opinion, theory, etc.) is justified (say by the facts of science) does not make it a higher order of belief, now deemed "knowledge". It's just a statement of fact; the only relationship to belief which it has is the kind of belief that is a guess, to which the fact is an answer with certainty--"I believe it's raining out" "Well, let's go and look and we will know". But there are other senses of belief that are not just uncertain guesses, such as "I believe in my son".

Humans have knowledge when they demonstrate the application. — Richard B

I would go one further and say that we have knowledge when we meet the criteria for someone to say we have the knowledge (criteria as the term is used by Wittgenstein in the Investigations). One difference being that there are different kinds of "knowledge" and so different criteria. One overlooked use is as acknowledgement. "I know you are in pain" being a recognition of your pain, your plight, your claim on me morally to react to your situation, etc.

Calling all knowledge belief justified to be true is an imposed (made up) criteria, desiring certainty before looking at how various kinds of knowledge actually work. Science is not justifying beliefs; it is a method. A fact is something you or I or anyone can replicate through a competent experiment. We know that oxygen has a weight of X because when anyone yada yadas it, it always comes to X. The reason for the desire for something certain and the invention of abstact criteria are more complicated, but one reason is that we create "justification of truth" as a way to avoid our responsibility for offering ordinary reasons and standing behind them.

So maybe, is there some core thing to which all of these various areas of interest contribute mutually, whether individually or in concert? Time and again the answer seems to be the self or... the sefl-in-sociey — Pantagruel

I agree. Though philosophy obviously has made contributions in: say, starting science, creating the model for psychotherapy, etc., I would argue that searching for certainty (scientific knowledge) is not really doing the core of what philosophy is anymore (con-tra-visy!!), which is the betterment of me, and my relationship with the other.

A lot of philosophy is simply analogous to the human condition. The Republic is not just about society and politics. We are the Republic; we are rulers over the domain that is our self--it is about how the human self works, as is The Prince, The Bhagavad Vita, Zarathustra, etc. Wittgenstein's Investigations is not about language, as most take it. He is looking at the things we say about the world as evidence of our desires and what matters to us about it--seeing the ordinary things we say as a reflection and/or projection of our self (analogously, in a sense).

Logic, modern "ethics" courses, and how the brain works don't make you a better person the same way as struggling to really understand philosophy through the process of reading it (allowing yourself to be read by/through it), rather than just getting the gist of it off wikipedia or imagining you understand it (or other's posts) at first glance, say, thinking we can summarize it, label it, dismiss it.

And not everything is philosophy. Its peripheral tasks have been peeled off into science, sociology, anthropology, behavioral psychology, etc. So to say it is a matter of interest just means you have other interests than the central domain of philosophy, or just have an end game for "philososphy"--say, fixing skepticism with science or logical theories.

I think this is the basis for a kind of meliorism.... — Pantagruel

I take philosophy as a process, more akin to psychotherapy than science or pragmatism or teleology--examining hidden implications, uncovering frameworks created by our desires or judgments, making our ordinary overlooked lives explicit--basically, reflecting on ourselves (even through investigating the world, e.g., Socrates, Hegel, Wittgenstein, etc.) Emerson and Nietzsche and Cavell call this perfectionism, but it is a journey of personal growth, not the establishment of a theoretical attitude.

When I say (perhaps too flippantly) that Kant "erased us", I was referring to his pre-requirement for logical necessity and predetermination which forced him to remove, in a sense, the individual--say, as in science, where it does not matter who is doing the experiment correctly, the answer will be the same. Nietzsche is reacting to that move in reintroducing "the human", along with history, cultural context, and our continuing responsibility.

Real human individuals, in the form of “finite human beings” never are alone sufficient for that which exemplifies philosophical thought — Mww

Wittgenstein would point out that the requirement to be considered "sufficient" to be philosophy is imposed by our desire for certainty, or, as Kant would say:

[ the ] transcendental unity of apperception is established as the absolute requirement of experience — Jamal

So “us” may have referred to philosophers — Jamal

I was referring to "us" as the condition of human uncertainty faced (or ignored) by each person, making philosophy our ticket to seeing our part (and with others), thus bettering our response, ourselves.

So would it be fair to say you see philosophy itself as kind of enlightened humanism? — Pantagruel

I think philosophy is about texts, or discussions, and so not limited to a position or theory or topic, but I think I see what you are wondering about. And I would say that there is a tendency to avoid our failings and vagaries in hope of something certain and determined, etc., and, to the extent philosophy is tempted to remove our responsibility to ourself, is one way we end up no longer doing the work of philosophy.

I'm interested in what people think best exemplifies philosophical thought. — Pantagruel

The fundamental example that philosophy provides is the betterment of the self. Socrates' questions were to learn about, say, the good, but the reason was to become more, grow, change, and expand our understanding of who we are. In the modern era, Nietszche was creating the space for this after Kant erased us from the picture, Hegel showed us a method to loosen our rigidity, and Wittgenstein took up Socrates reflection on our concepts to find that our desires and interests are within them. Stanley Cavll is my favorite current practitioner, most explicitely in the introduction to Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, which are essays on what he calls moral perfectionism. Most other philosophical areas are just specialized interests on this theme, or attempts to ignore or circumvent the process entirely.

How can it be said the meaning is a property of the expression—its use, its context, its syntax, its content, its whatever—if Y could not derive from it its meaning, and if Z has not expressed anything? — NOS4A2

Without getting clear about any antithetical claim (or what criteria are being used to judge), let's take the definite position: meaning is a property of the expression. One corollary is that, X has something more than Y does, than Y ever could. One imagining is that this is an object--as @Banno was trying to point out--that the explanation would be based on the picture of how we treat "things" (say, here the word, there the thing). However, the claim is true if we shift the "thing" which X "has", to be: the responsibility. The "property" of the expression is not imbued by X and not Y (X's "meaning"). It is simply that Y cannot be held to account for speaking X's words (or could, only unjustly). Y will point to X (unless Y is quoting, etc.) The extent X "means" them is the extent X will stand up for them. X does not "use" them any more than Y does. That they are X's "expression", and not Y's, is only that X is the individual who owns (up to) them (or disowns them). The "meaning" is also not "in the expression" (taken as: the words); the question of meaning does not come up unless Z has to ask, and then Z asks X. Without any X, Z may conjecture from evidence (context, etc.), but Y cannot help; in fact, X may know less than Z can confidently piece together. We could even say this interpretation is an expression of Z.

some people look past the text’s attempt to analyze consciousness and the meaning of geist there are harsh criticisms that the book has inspired fascism, communism, and overall totalitarianism. I — Dermot Griffin

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In reading the Phenomonolgy of Spirit, I understood his discussions of topical situations to be created as examples, to illustrate our tendency to want to think in dichotomies, and not a claim about the state of the world. I find this use of examples like Wittgenstein's--though not as self-aware, open to acknowledging his limitations, less humble--in Witt's investigation of our tendency to desire certainty. My understanding of the terms is that this focus is analytical (about us, our desire for simplicity) rather than continental (a comment on society, e.g., Arendt or Foucalt), but to discuss our concpts is to discuss the world, so maybe it's a matter of interest.

Can you provide an example of this [understanding another’s speech on their terms, treating it as expressions of their interests, as possibilities of a human life] in action in one of the purported democracies? — Tom Storm

In the essay of Dewey's that I attached to the original post, he claims, more even than not purporting a explicit version, that democracy is not maintained in institutions at all (separation of powers, voting, protesting, etc.), but personally by us and interpersonally in how we treat others. It might not look like it, but this is analytical philosophy; he is describing the limits of the category of democracy as Kant uses that word--the necessary conditions and threshold criteria to judge whether what is happening can be categorized as democracy (at all).

That being said, an example is always a good idea, but it would be an example of a political dispute (different than a moral dispute or a factual dispute). What makes a dispute political is that no one is in an authoritative (better) place to make an assertion (say, to claim what is right); it is in that way that we are all equal (this is the same position each person is in when doing Ordinary Language Philosophy--like Wittgenstein--it is in finding for yourself grounds for my claim that it has validity as evidence).

So we are using a democratic method to approach a dispute. The Dewey essay is actually quoted in a book I just read on philosophy of education, The Gleam of Light (a bit repetitive and explaining to the inside of a bubble of understanding already, but); the claim is that education should not be held to a scientific standard but to the measures of a child becoming their future selves. Now, democratically, Dewey wants us to learn what desires and needs are attached to conditions as they are, in this case, let's say: how a child learns to come into themselves. My interests are not something I would tell you, only in this case in some way different than opinions and argument. My desires and needs are able to be investigated and described without me--though also through what I say. (To clarify, learning about my interests has been interpreted as my self-interest, which is taken as only what benefits me; for Dewey, what I am interested in is more like: what I am focused on.) I would say that Dewey is interested in allowing a child freedom and the ability to express themselves, including questioning the status quo, so that they learn about themselves and develop their interests and fulfill their needs; not necessarily in conflict with the State, yet possibly apart from it. The interests of using a quantitive measure of outcomes could be said to be to allow for a standard that is certain--comparable, calculable, able to measure the effects of change, etc. Not a very personal claim, nor a dispute over the administration of such educations, but I hope that shows the methodology and difference of Dewey's approach to someone's claim in a political dispute.

Well, democracy is not our participation in a process (say, voting), it is not the granting of power or authority, it is a way we live. It is not codified in law; what is right is not determined, it is entered into together (not as an agreement, but as a life together, a union, a government, etc.). Also, it is not in allowing others the right to speak; it is in understanding their speech on their terms, treating it as expressions of their interests, as possibilities of a human life.

Just that Dewey is not talking about "the process" of democracy, but the conditions of its existence, what makes it what it is (not how it works, but how it is at all, say, compared to other forms of government). Democracy is based on our personal treatment of others:

living... as an example of human partiality... as the human individual... open to the further self, in oneself and in others, which means... making oneself intelligible to each other as an inhabitant now also of a further realm ["of the human"]... prepared to recognize others as belonging there... [and] not to... depress, and cynicize and ironize. — "

Cavell echoes Dewey's call for the act (not "idea") of the creation of democracy through our treatment of others and their expressions. We are not asked to trust the other: that they will join, reciprocate, or end together with us (say, at "well being", even). Dewey talks of faith in my and the other's (equal) "possibility". We are not trusting (naively hoping) that they will be rational like us, our duty is to grant that their judgment and actions have intelligibility, even if we do not yet understand how. Our trust is that there is a future world where all our interests are understood.

there has to be at least one argument for democracy — Agent Smith

What I wanted to convey is that for Dewey democracy is not come to through argument. The way in which we come to democracy is through pledging our allegiance (much as you do not get married by making a decision, you make vows)--this does not mean you can not have reasons for your allegiance (nor that you can't make a decision to get married). Dewey focuses on conditions as they are because democracy lacks the grounds to assert right or an ideal--we are compromised by default and our consent does not allow us leverage against the individual ills of the state. It is our mutual trust and friendship (being an example to each other to see a different way) that allows for greater intelligibility and further contexts.

From what I've read the only thing I would say about happiness is that philosophically it is set against despairing of the truth (as Nietzsche puts it) and letting the inevitable failures of democracy disappoint us. This is why Emerson tries to "cheer" us and both speak of "joy" in the face of skepticism, finding a peace Wittgenstein will say.

no type of government is wholly good or wholly bad — Agent Smith

To tie this back in, there is not an argument for democracy; Dewey is describing democracy without advocating for it because equality and freedom are principals born from the human condition for the perfection of the self. Democracy by nature is free, so there is no set end goal (teleologically) thus effectiveness is not its ordinary criteria (this is different for our institutions, including our government). We either have democracy or it teeters into tyranny (Plato says). Its the kind of thing to which we pledge ourselves; we subject ourselves to its terms of judgment, which is why Dewey speaks in terms of treason and treachery. This is a realm like the moral that Nietszche puts beyond (the terms of) good and evil.

So we can put ourselves in the shoes of some other that calls this 'Commie indoctrination'. They are not letting us in the house to discuss.To them, we are undermining the foundations. They are claiming the virtue word 'democracy' for themselves and excluding us from it. Now you can say oh that's politics and this is democracy, and I can agree, but what are we to do about the Republican Party? — unenlightened

I understand you feel the lack of power here, and you are not wrong. When Dewey reacts to those chiding his call for democracy as a "utopia", it is in the same vein as, "yeah, but what about the real world?" The truth is there is no fact that matters enough to have any effect. There is no convincing; there is no "but don't you see"; knowledge is not power. In the face of that, it would seem that whatever is the most powerful will rule; that justice is simply the interests of the stronger, or--more pertinent here--that we decide or agree what is right, and that (institutionalized) will rule by judgement. But Dewey's call for understanding is not wishful thinking; it is a different playing field. We do not regularly look at the conditions and criteria of our concepts (apologizing, judging, thinking, following a rule, etc.); likewise, we do not normally consider our interests and needs. To investigate the others' is to enlighten both of you. There may be no changing their opinion, but it may be that we change them, or at least change their awareness of themselves, say, that their needs and our needs differ less than our opinions, or our encampments. Now, they may still call names, refuse engagement, moralize, etc., however, if it is not an argument, there is less antagonism and maybe less defensiveness. In the end, however, your duty is your own, but this is not how Dewey wishes democracy could be--if we ignore that these are the conditions for the betterment of our political realm, then we are blind also (treacherously Dewey says) to the structure of the perfection of ourselves.

Plato thought that knowledge was greater than or equal to virtue; that, if we knew what the good was, we'd do it. But I side with Emerson, who says "character is higher than intellect", or, i.e., what we do matters more than what we know. Cavell takes from Wittgenstein that there is more to the world beyond knowledge: I don't know your pain, I accept it, react to it. Here, Dewey is saying democracy is up to how we treat each other, not whether we are free to tell each other our opinions.

Tyranny? What about Socrates' philosopher kings and Buddhism's wisdom kings? Mythical, like dragons? — Agent Smith

I need more. Are we asking why tyranny? as if, what does tyranny have to do with democracy? say, when we are off searching for the right and good in order to rule justly? (the answer in the face of, simply: might makes right) And, if that's close to the case, I would conjecture that Dewey would say the philosopher king is one more tyrant; that the good and right oppress us because they take the conversation of justice away from our interests (abstract it), removing the human, in order to create some certainty (knowing the right, we know what we ought to do, and we can avoid failing to do so).

This does not deny rationality, it makes rational agreement a local and imperfect achievement. — Joshs

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We do not need to agree on or share interests or needs; and the means for discussing those are just the conditions of the world as they are. Yes, Gadamar is correct that there is no guarantee our dispute will be resolved; we may not be able to find or maintain any kind of union, but the fact of this does not make the means for it any less workable, nor does it relinquish our duty to try. All of the limits and qualifications described are not the barrier here—Wittgenstein shows that we share enough of our lives to get at our essential desires and needs (there is nothing special about you).

We are actually what gets in the way: the ideas of universality and certainty are the standards we--along with Plato, Kant, Descartes, etc--fantasize about which cause us to overlook our existing conditions (Wittgenstein will call them “our ordinary criteria”). Since we can’t have knowledge with certainty in politics, we think we can only settle for opinion (people condescend to call Dewey “optimistic” or his democracy a “utopia” because it sidesteps the criteria of certainty). This is how we feel that we cannot even get started (our "anterior" preconditions have not been met). And Dewey is not calling for us to agree in our opinions (nor contract for a knowledge of the right or good), or even to “agree” (say, to decide on the means, or the conditions). His measures of our political structure (its requirements for being democracy; its "grammar" Wittgenstein will call ito) are actions, not agreements or answers or endings.

Additionally, people would rather state an opinion, and judge others on theirs, because then they do not need to be responsible for bridging the gap between us, standing for the other (taking their stance, seeing from their position), which would also mean being known, answering for our own desires and needs.

Lyotard is correct that our community (he calls it the "we") is "always in question". For quoting, here's Stanley Cavell: "we are separate, but not necessarily separated (by something).... "there is no assignable end to the depth of us to which language reaches; ...nevertheless there is no end to our separateness. We are endlessly separate [bodies], for no reason. But then we are answerable for everything that comes between us." The Claim of Reason, p. 369.

But Dewey is reacting to tyranny, just as the founders did, even mentioning a simpler time when it was strictly physical tyranny rather than the tyranny over ours and others’ selves (the self; he calls it “moral”). And he even discusses the institution of our democracy, structured in the hope of curbing tyranny, which, he says, lulls us into the thought that that structure will perpetuate democracy without me, without my being responsible personally other than in participating externally (even, say, in protesting).

He does talk of the importance of “attitudes”, and I tied that to our position in relation to others, but Dewey also talks of “faith” in others, as the kind of trust we must have in ourselves in reaching for a greater, as yet unknown, self. And I think it is selective to think of the formation of our country as coming only from mistrust. Our democratic hope for all people is one of attainment of a happy founding of our self in freedom (this is not “optimistic”; it’s claimed as part of the structure of our human condition). To stop at cynicism is, in Dewey’s words, “treachery”; I have said above that the possibility of failure in an ethical conversation does not equate to its irrationality.

are there necessarily situations where we cannot even agree to disagree? This is what Lyotard refers to as the paralogical situation, where the very terms of the conversation exclude participants, so that neither agreement not disagreement is possible. — Joshs

It seems obvious to say yes; sometimes when we are intransigent, others where we do not have common-enough interests to make disagreement possible. But both of these seem peripheral. To say that it is possible to talk past each other, even probable, appears to be a social observation and perhaps critique and not evidence for a structural philosophical insight. It seems to come back to the old panic that, because we may not come to agreement in an ethical discussion, there must not be any rationality. It remains the claim that democracy is the duty to put yourself in the others' shoes and investigate the desires and needs involved in the dispute at hand.

Unfortunately, there is no escape from the politics — unenlightened

To the extent we allow ourselves to fall into what Dewey calls cliques, sects, and antagonistic factions (which I take as what you mean by “politics”), we are not practicing democracy. We could call it the tyranny of others' opinions (even those we agree with). To say we care about your interests but not your opinions is to admit that politics is not disinterested, but that our interests are not isolated but expressed in our institutions. This is not that I tell you what my interests are, but that what is (the conditions as they are) gives away our interest in it, it contains what matters to us about it.

I make much of the use of the word 'indoctrination' because it is used as a term of abuse projected by those who would abuse onto those who want to prevent that abuse. This practice, which has infected the US and the world, destroys the language and society with it. — unenlightened

I'm not sure I understand exactly what you're saying, but a less charged word would be "training", though it implies conscious effort, which is usually not the case. We are trained in the ways of our lives: apologizing, pointing, obeying rules, etc. We pick these up as we go along by a kind of osmosis: watching others, following examples, being corrected, explicitly told some things, etc. Language is picked up the same way; there is no meaning for every word such that I teach you each one and that covers all applications--most of the time its a kind of thing where we know to use this phrase in that type of situation. Now you are talking about the occurrence of someone with one culture being forced into the ways of another; but there is no habitable place outside of every culture, and so Dewey, as you say, starts in the house we have, but his fight is not between progress and stasis, but between the cultural and the personal.

the idea that need and desire can be separated from knowledge of things as they are has been questioned. — Joshs

I'd be interested to know where that ties in to the tradition, but I don't take Dewey as wanting to separate the two; only for us to see that knowledge contains our interests. As he says: institutions are our expressions; they are projections and extensions of us. Importantly also though, we are not talking about knowledge of “things” but of our “conditions”—Wittgenstein will call this "grammar", their "possibilities" (#90)—which are the particulars of a thing's context: the options and the criteria of how we differentiate between them, count something as something; this is how they contain our desires and needs (what is essential to us about them--PI #371) and how they are the means of sharing our interests with each other.

If desire co-constitutes things as they seem to be , then things as they ‘are’ cannot be a basis of consensus without also being the basis of marginalization and repression. There will always be those left out of the conversation of mankind. — Joshs

In saying our desires and needs are satisfied by the “knowledge of conditions as they are”, Dewey is not contrasting this with how things "seem to be". He is alluding to, but rejecting, the traditional framework that our political conversation is about what “ought” to be, thus our goal is not to come to consensus, say, in our opinions or to Plato’s “knowledge” (as addressed by Wittgenstein in #241). And so there is no "basis" that need be fixed (not even from Rawls' original position), including and thus excluding, though I find your bringing up marginalization intriguing. I would agree there is no guarantee that my interests and needs will be manifest: our times may be degenerate Thoreau would say; or, despite it not being due to inhabited hatred, oppression can be institutionalized; or, because it is the responsibility of each to find and follow their own voice, we may fail in hating ourselves.

As a postscript, Wittgenstein will also find our need to "go beyond knowledge" (e.g., in the face of another's pain, PI 3rd, p. 225), and this brings up that the political realm (like the moral realm) has its time and place as an event, when we disagree. As with most philosophy, we do not usually reflect to see ourselves in our institutions, to make conscious the implications of our acts, to remember the criteria we use to judge. Our duty is to find our actual disagreement, if any truly exists, by learning about the other's interests and needs (as Wittgenstein searches for our "real need" in #108). Instead of arguing about an abstract right, we are learning about what matters to each other. In doing so, we have the possibility to truly understand each other, and, if we do still disagree, we at least do so rationally, having preserved our community, our union.

The victims of bigotry and coercion should remember insights such as these, especially when terms such as “democracy” leak from the other side of a hater’s mouth.[/quote]

To understand, what would the victims remember? And to what gain?

I'm also interested in your bringing up the forces against democracy. Dewey is defining freedom of speech not as our being free to say whatever we want, but as a duty to bring each other together. Your allegiance is not to the state, but to your fellow citizen. Acceptance is the "essential condition of the democratic way of living", not just the opportunity to say something, to tell us your beliefs. It is not the content of our speech, nor is it agreement—as if convinced to esteem something true or right or fact—it is allowing the others' words to be an expression, which is to say that we read a full person into them. The goal is not to judge them (bad, or even good, say, because they share our opinions) but to enlarge and deepen that reading to get through to a place where we can appreciate and respect the other, learn their desires and needs, their history and context, to acknowledge the self of the other as a moral not an empirical claim. Our treason then, is failing in what Emerson calls the "upbuilding" of people as part of his similar call for the perfection of the individual, here in American Scholar (but, most directly, in Self-Reliance). Our work is the opposite of hate, and so, love. If not to suppress the individual voice, then to listen in a new way, as if to a friend, as if to our own self.

Despite the title of this discussion (being provocative simply to draw attention), I wouldn’t say Dewey is against institutions or truth or science or culture, even as something that must become fixed, an end. Democracy is “experience as end and as means” which generates the authority for our further direction. But that experience is ours: we are democracy; the way we come to ourselves and treat others, which is always becoming enlarged and enriched. And so the enemy is not these things in themselves except maybe their use against our greater selves, and the necessary freedom and support from us.

So I take the framing as the personal rather than the public (process, abstraction, institution, constitution, theory, etc.) as hate comes in all forms and for all reasons: maybe not just defense of a fixed state, but as me against you, even treating you only as what you say in abstraction, in violence of its life “in your shoes” (as “expression” of what matters or revealing your interests—a key term of Wittgenstein’s as well)—looked at as merely opinion or beliefs in argument of what is true or false.

And so conservative vs progressive are too loaded, not only as associated with beliefs, but because defense and provocation do not capture Dewey’s non-partisan indictment of suppression, silencing, dismissal, etc. as these can come from any encampment, and Dewey is trying to avoid stratification itself. As an example, an argument against perfectionism (say against Nietszche’s will or Emerson’s whim) is that it is selfish or solipsistic or “subjective”, but there is nothing stopping someone’s duty and expression to be aligned with the state, to others, or in congruence with culture (not, however, in “sacrifice”, or suppression or abandonment, of our self they will admonish).

And yes education for Dewey is a term for something special, so something merely additional to the necessary and inevitable indoctrination with the ways of our lives (their criteria and judgments Wittgenstein will call it). Encouraging all of us to reach for our higher self is in the same spirit as our duty to “learn” from those with whom we disagree (quoted from the essay) to be broadened to a larger world, a more complete vision of how things are (a fuller perspective on the grammar of the criteria of a practice as Wittgenstein puts it).

His interest in the use of concepts helps to dispel the myth that the words "pain", "understanding", "meaning", etc., are used to refer only (or at all) to mental processes. That is what I consider the PI to be about — Luke

I'm not arguing against this; the picture of mental processes is of the kind of "hidden" thing under discussion here (one example among others like rules, meaning, essence, knowledge, etc.) I am merely claiming that Wittgenstein goes further to find out why we project these myths and that that cause is not dispelled in a generalized way for all time.

I could provide a dictionary definition if you like, to show how people typically use these terms [morality and ethics]:

"Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior". — Luke

Witt is looking at how our practices work and break down, including why we abandon our ordinary criteria. The approach above is caught in the trap Witt is diagnosing: thinking we can have a defendable system of how to pre-judge behavior.

"[Axiology] concerns matters of value" — Luke

As opposed to matters of fact, or logic. Welcome to the Tractatus. Once again, Wikipedia fails.[/quote] I would think with your adamant denial you would have your own thoughts on this issue.

Where does he call [loss of direction] "morality" in the text? I think you are seeing something that isn't there. — Luke

Again, Witt is not spelling it out for you. He is pointing in a direction and requires you to pick up the thread, the examples, the questions. Most times our actions don't require philosophy. When they do, our conceptual investigation shows us what our interests are in others pain, following rules, justification, etc. Just as Plato would think we knew what virtue was, but then tear it apart to learn more about it.

When he comes to the end of his justifications, then his "spade is turned" and he has stopped digging. There is nothing more he can do in terms of explaining or justifying why he follows the rule as he does; — Luke

We are inclined to say this to the student. We do not have to; it does not show that our action is our explanation. What it demonstrates is that the relationship between the student and teacher is more important than justifying the explaination. We can simply judge the student as wrong and stop the conversation, or start again, ask more questions, move to other examples, etc. The skeptic assails us with questions and doubts; Witt is trying to give them reasons in order to understand how to continue with them, with that part of them in us.

I don't believe that we want to have something private, hidden - that is simply the misconception of meaning and understanding that philosophers had inherited. — Luke

You've called the skeptic (the interlocutor) unreasonable and say they have simply misconceived how language is used. But the book is an investigation of why we want to flee from our ordinary criteria, why regular humans would rather know the other rather than be bound to their claim on us. He takes skepticism seriously as an ongoing threat to our ability to remain responsible (morally) to what we have said and done.

You seem hell-bent on maintaining your position, with little interest in understanding what I am saying about the matter at hand (explanation vs description, the hidden). I don't believe I have anything I could say that would satisfy your vague objection that grammar is literally about how to use words, rather than showing us something about the world, and thus, ourselves.

I have tended to read Antony’s interpretation of the later Wittgenstein as consonant with that of the ‘new school’. — Joshs

Categorizing each other, rather than responding to our claims and readings, diminishes our effort to personally respond to a text or discussion and learn something new or change. That said, the deepest layer of this reading (the fallout from the skeptic's desire for knowledge) comes from studying Stanley Cavell, who I would say, more than anyone, carries the flag for modern OLP and yet still marches to the beat of his own drum (his interests in philososphy).

You're assuming what ethics and moral philosophy looks like.
— Antony Nickles

Of course. So are you. We each have an understanding of the (linguistic) terms "ethics" and/or "moral philosophy". — Luke

I am not assuming it, I am making a claim that Witt is thinking of the moral realm as something particular, yet different. You just denied he is, without any explanation of what it's supposed to look like or include. This is not just words to me.

And what Witt would call "morality" is when we enter an unknown situation-..." Nickles

Do you have any textual support for this? — Joshs

Justifications coming to an end, rule-following and its limits, continuing a series (able to go on) or being inclined to give up on the other (student), aspect-blindness, whether we can know the other (pain, thoughts). He discusses how our ordinary criteria work, but also how they break. Instead of a moral theory or rules I can tell you, Witt is showing us that it is a moment, a crisis.

The subject is language because it is the means by which we struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding--it is the "resource", not the cause. — Nickles

I don't follow. Language is the means by which we struggle, but language is not the cause of our struggle? — Joshs

Yes. We struggle against our bewitchment (by certainty) through the method (OLP) of looking at our expressions (“language”) surrounding an example (and context) to see the variety of other workable criteria there are and to recognize our desires (for projecting criteria of certainty) and our real need (what is essential to us as evidenced by our criteria for a thing).

Grammar is found in language use, and relates to our linguistic practices. If you are saying that these practices themselves have grammar, then I disagree. — Joshs

Most of the time there is no space between our words and our lives (as with knowledge and pain)--we have not come to a point of loss. Here, the desire for certainty forces the skeptic to remove words from their ordinary contexts and expressions, which creates the problem that they then project onto the world, as intellectual (there is something mysterious, hidden, unknowable). For example, they might say: "because agreement on ethics is not ensured, it is irrational".

The term “use” is for the options (“senses” he will also call them) that a practice has, it’s different “possibilities”; for example: knowing your way about, knowing your phone number, knowing as acceptance, being aware—he will also umbrella it under the term “concept” (which is not in the sense of idea or “linguistic”). "Use" is not a connection between, or manipulation of, us, words, and the world. You express yourself (even if you choose the words)--as in: “I know they are in pain”--and that can then be judged (by our ordinary criteria) as: I am aware of it, rather than I am certain about their sensation. We can look and see how it is here between the two senses of the expression, its uses.

Crystalline purity does not refer to there being only one criterion of language (as if there are many more besides this one); crystalline purity refers to the mistaken presupposition that there is a non-empirical "essence of language" that it is the philosopher's task to discover. — Joshs

I was using the term that Witt does to cover the category of criteria, as if requirements, which we are susceptible to desire (not mistake): universality, certainty, repeatability, predetermination, prediction, grounds for judgment as to right and wrong, reasons outside of our character and responsibility, only knowledge, true/false, correspondence to reality, etc. This manifests in different ways, but is basically getting our (human) messy selves out of the picture, which puts us in limbo with no ordinary criteria or context.

...but also that [ordinary criteria are] not an alternative or rejection [of logic or essence or ...], but the opportunity to ask: why do we do that? Is it right, good?
— Antony Nickles

Do you have any textual support for this? — Joshs

From the beginning of this post I have been arguing this. He is trying to figure out how he got into the mindset he did in the Tractatus, the motivation of the interlocutor's questions, his discussion of temptation, obsession, need, etc. Why do we want to have something private, hidden? The question is everywhere. There is not an answer "...if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it." #201 All the examples are to get you to see yourself in him, his journey, his failings, his revelations--that philosophy has a way and its own satisfactions.

I don't see that he is recommending that we should change, except for the way that we do philosophy and think about philosophical problems. Again, if this makes it about ethics, then every philosophical work is about ethics. — Joshs

Yes, I think Witt's work is an example that every work of philosophy is about us and the human condition--philosophy is the betterment of the self. Nietzsche and Emerson court controversy to implore us to perfect ourselves. This is the moral urgency of Socrates stopping people on the street or Marx calling for a revolution because he wanted the things that produce us to be our own. Witt is showing us that epistemology must include us (is ethical), even to see when knowledge is no longer the issue.

What does our ordinary means of judgment mean? — Fooloso4

I think it will help to show the differentiation I'm trying to make about "the ordinary" to point out that we are not talking about the obvious, surface, or, i.e., "common sense" of our words, like there is a different, regular "point of view" or approach to them that is just not based on (is a rejection or refutation of) our desire for certainty, explanation--e.g., something hidden (metaphysically, personally)--and that this is self-evident, grasped fully and immediately, as if it does not need any "explanation" which, in this sense (not in Witt's use), turns out to be: further thought, investigation, going by "side roads" (#426).

This difference in the sense of "the ordinary" (its place as a term of Witt's) is evidenced by the fact that Witt creates his own fantasy worlds/situations in order to place an expression in a context that attempts to give the interlocutor/skeptic what they want (say, knowledge of the other). Thinking of our ordinary language as straightforward misses the point that making up these crazy situations is done to highlight that there are contexts in which these expressions normally live, and this varied, endless context is the ordinariness of our expressions, which Witt's method attempts to have you see for yourself, accept--in each situation, each time (when the need arises). Realizing this, we can move to simply describing the parameters (criteria) for our practices through our associated expressions in various contexts: for example, what breaks the practice of promising so that it is no longer even a promise? what makes it (say, "I promise to love you")? my knowing it? maybe only feeling it? "meaning" it? what does this tell us about identity, character, duty, moral responsibility?

The discussion of the availability of Witt's text is well-put by @Fooloso4 above in linking it to our being blind to an aspect of something. If you open any page of PI, it is clear that Witt is opening a question, posturing/hypothesizing, maybe something in contrast, and then leaving it at our feet to complete or see for ourselves. Yet those open-ended claims are taken as statements rather than seeing them as posed for our acceptance. Instead of proving them to ourselves, we cheat and take the followthrough to be given already, in those words, simply, without our participation, as if this investigation has nothing to do with the reader, our journey (the interlocutor in us--the skeptic), to change us, as the writer of the Tractatus is changing before us. I am only trying to point out that the work is to see why we blind ourselves to the sufficiency of the ordinary? Why we step over describing the contextual criteria of our expressions to look for something hidden that meets our necessity for it to be certain, universal, predetermined, etc., in other words, explainable by knowledge; how and why?

Understood, but much of what I have been doing is trying to draw some of the connections in his work. — Fooloso4

I get that and it’s appreciated, but I’m only left to speculate where you’re going without a claim to a certain interpretation of the quotations and the reasoning to tie them to this discussion. None of what Witt is doing is self-evident.

Where does the PI "morally implore us" to do anything at all; any of this? Do you want to say that any advocation/teaching of the right way to do something, such as change a car tyre, is a moral imploration? That seems like a tenuous association with morality. Even if there is a sense of morality in Wittgenstein's telling us the "right" way, or a better way, to do philosophy, morality is still not the subject of his philosophy in PI, nor his focus in the text. — Luke

You're assuming what ethics and moral philosophy looks like. Aren't the subjects of thoughtfulness, understanding, teaching, treating people as more than objects of knowledge, etc. what ethics is about? And what Witt would call "morality" is when we enter an unknown situation--not the everyday stuff like changing a tire, but when we come to the end of our justifications, we're at a loss as to what to say to each other (say, a student), our regular courses of action amount to contradiction (stunning us he and Plato say), etc.

The main focus of the Philosophical Investigations is language... "Philosophy is a struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding by the resources of our language." - PI — Luke

Th subject is language because it is the means by which we struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding--it is the "resource", not the cause. The interlocutor is given to say things, but they are things which we could agree could be said in such a situation. They are our expressions. Examining those expressions ("our 'ordinary' language") shows us the grammar (criteria) of the practices like chess, rule-following, thinking to ourselves, being in pain, see a thing as a thing (or in another way), etc. And these examples of practices show that we have a multitude of criteria rather than just crystalline purity, but also that this is not an alternative or rejection, but the opportunity to ask: why do we do that? Is it right, good?

There is no mention of ethics or morality here. — Luke

Maybe we've gotten so used to science telling us things that we read everything as a statement, every philosopher has a philosophy. But if I tell you something, do you learn better than if I ask a question and force you to come to it yourself? Witt comes in second after Nietschze for cryptic, half-finished thoughts and just flat-out question marks. If it were easy to change, he could just tell you how. Knowledge would equal wisdom. It is not explicit because it is imbedded in going through it (with him), but I would say it comes down to the simple lesson that our need for some tidy and certain knowledge makes us flee from ourselves and others. See, it's already wrong, dead, misstated, arguable...

"What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a new true theory but a fertile point of view. " CV 18. ...In both cases [of changes to our theoretical paradigm] we are freed from a picture that held us captive. A point of view given to us and protected by Christianity. A point of view that was regarded as not only ordinary but true. — Fooloso4

So science can change our picture of the world, even our vision of ourselves. It finds the anomalous, the contradictory, and we are certain it is not a mistake because it is repeatable, so the theory must bend, expand to include it (it is not so much true as reconcilable). So, yes, the shift in our story of facts allows for the fertile growth of more knowledge, the discovery and verification of new information. But science's success is not philosophy's (much as we would like it to be)--we do not have its power, its certainty--but neither can science do the work that is philosophy's. The place of peace (the understanding of our desires) that philosophy provides, is not one of knowledge. It is not a story of mystery and discovery, but of awakening what is already there, expanding ourselves; learning about our real need, as our desires are embodied in the criteria found in our ordinary expressions, say, for example, the fear that makes us want to skip over our flawed criteria (for, say, knowing, thinking, intending, etc.). Behind the idea of theories that are true to a reality (that theory/picture, which is the subject of the investigation) is our obsession with science's certainty. Witt's "ordinary" is not popular opinion, established or imposed. We may be ignorant of how the world works (empirically, scientifically, factually) but everyone can provide the kinds of examples of expressions that Witt does.

P.S. -

"That philosophy claims that everything is before us does not mean it is already understood." — Antony Nickles

But this is not what philosophy claims. — Fooloso4

What I should have said was "Even though Witt claims that everything is before us..."

"I've tried to piece it together myself but I'm at a loss."
— Antony Nickles — Fooloso4

What I was referring to was not Wittgenstein's work, but that I could not figure out what you are getting at.

The point of view of Copernicus or Darwin is that the method and tools of philosophy are in plain sight? — Fooloso4

No, I was revisiting Witt's claim we are discussing in the PI. I would think science's shifts in paradigms (to reconcile new facts, etc.) offer it the means to continue more productively, but it is not doing philosophy in getting there nor benefitting from philosophy's clarity. Ultimately, I think that is off topic unless you can explain.

It is not that ordinary language has to be understood against the expressions of traditional philosophy, but that traditional philosophy fails to understand ordinary language. — Fooloso4

We fail to understand what the ordinary is until we understand why philosophy wants more. Just because the ordinary normally works (although we still come to a loss) does not mean we understand how it works or see its part in connection with why philosophy normally wants to flee from it. That philosophy claims that everything is before us does not mean it is already understood. Our ordinary expressions are right there, but philosophy still has work to do.

I'm not sure I can respond further, as you have't explained enough about all of your other claims or shown their relevance to the matter at hand nor provided any context or evidence for me to get your interpretations of the quotes you’ve given. I've tried to piece it together myself but I'm at a loss--there is some belief about mystery and science and maybe philosophy's role, but I don't followed. And it's not clear to me your fundamental disagreement or misunderstanding with what I am saying.

"What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a new true theory but a fertile point of view." (CV 18)

He is talking about ways of seeing things. — Fooloso4

The point of view that Witt is claiming is that the method and tools of philosophy are in plain sight. My point was only that philosophy does not achieve this through empiricism but through understanding how and why we desire and create the picture that anything is hidden. This is not "ways" of seeing things, but a singular way that is different than traditional philosophy. I will grant that it is "fertile" as well, but because it is not hoping for the perfect conditions to be met before it begins. Other than that, I do not understand your interpretation of this quote nor how you believe it is relevant, and there is no effort to provide evidence of any view except the quote itself (as if it were self-explanatory). I could try to unpack it for you to argue or agree, but I leave that responsibility to you.

I don't think he is using the term "ordinary" in a way that is not ordinary. — Fooloso4

In #108 he is contrasting the voice of "ordinary life" with the speech of "the philosophy of logic", the context of our world against the "non-spatial, non-temporal". In #402 he is contrasting the "expression of ordinary language" with the "disputes between Idealists, Solipsists and Realists". In saying that "ordinary" is used in a technical sense, I am saying it is different than its usual senses because it is always meant in comparison. Witt's ordinary is not naturally understood or easily grasped. The ordinary is special and distinct because it is seeing our everyday world as unusual and extraordinary, without escaping to another or claiming it is hidden from us. Another word he uses is "everyday", which, in #116, is a place philosophy returns to from the "metaphysical". Ordinary is a descriptor of our language and expressions and their senses (uses), which is only truly understood against the expressions of traditional philosophy and the senses of our words that it manufactures.

To some extent [your sense of wonder] must [remain mysterious to me] ["I think you do not know what the sense of wonder I am thinking of is."]. Wittgenstein connected wonder and awe with the mysterious and unknown. But if we ask what these things are I have no answer. — Fooloso4

But I am not asking what wonder is; asking that you answer its mystery--make explicit your experience of it. I was guessing at what use of wonder you were speaking of ("sense" in Witt's way of the options a concept has, which one of its possibilities).

Both Plato and Aristotle say that philosophy begins in wonder. It is, however, the pursuit of philosophy that led to modern science: — Fooloso4

An example of the use of wonder as curiosity would be one wondering about how something came to be, the answer of its (hidden) cause. Wonder as awe is surprise and amazement, as if an answer is impossible or unnecessary. Science and philosophy may both start in wonder, but science seeks an answer, to explain that which is hidden (in mystery), and the philosophy that Witt is doing merely lays the ordinary before us, to be struck by it (#129 @Luke), as in awe.

If philosophy is what is possible only before science's curiosity (#126), then the "complete clarity" (#133) at the end of philosophy (each time) is not the answers of science, but making aware our lives right before us.

It is not by such ordinary criteria that "a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved a fertile point of view". — Fooloso4

But this is science and empiricism (repeatability by anyone allowing for stability and certainty). This is the “explanation” that Philosophy for Witt is not involved with. Thomas Kuhn does a grammar of scientific revolution, and this would be something Wittgenstein could have done as well.

Ordinary criteria are not like beliefs or agreements, like a prevailing opinion. “Ordinary” in this sense is like a technical term defined in contrast to the singular criteria of crystalline purity, logic, certainty, that Witt is widening after the Tractatus and which was the standard of Plato’s forms or Kant’s thing-in-itself. It is the multitude of grammar which are different for every thing. Our lives embody our judgments, these limits, identity, distinction, etc.

I think you do not know what the sense of wonder I am thinking of is. — Fooloso4

Is this to remain mysterious? or just to end the discussion? I don’t mind someone attempting a take on what I have said, but if that is unwanted I apologize.

If "an ethic" can be used to apply to any course of action, then I would agree. — Luke

But the Pi does not only morally implore us to take certain actions, but to do so in the name of our betterment, not only in thinking, understanding, teaching; in being rigorous, clear, deliberate, honest, fair; but in learning about our responses to our human condition (our separateness), our fears, our desires, our blindness. But the Pi also uncovers our ethical obligation in the groundlessness of our world and the limitations of knowledge. To treat someone as if they have a soul; that it is not our knowledge of another’s pain, but our response to it that matters.

This is not a traditional moral philosophical theory or just a set of ethical principles because it subsumes the is and ought, the in and out, etc. What I would think is relevant here is that the discussion of explanation vs description and hidden vs plain-view shows our part in ontology, or desires for epistemology, and thus our moral part in philosophy, to be better people, do better.

Witt is not taking the same problems and answering them with a different thing, he’s not abandoning the problems, it is not just seeing the problems differently, it is a new way, a larger you, a changed world.

What does our ordinary means of judgment mean? — Fooloso4

They are our ordinary criteria; how we judge that a thing (or act) is that thing, what matters for it, counts in our culture, etc., and for each thing or act individually (having an opinion, dreaming, reading, intending), rather than the singular standard of whether we can be certain, logical, in everything. The PI is a series of examples of ordinary vs, say, philosophical/metaphysical/math-like criteria.

Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary is not for most of us our ordinary way of seeing things — Fooloso4

I agree (though the second "ordinary" is used differently, in the sense of usual rather than not special). Our everyday criteria do regularly go unnoticed; we are not aware of every implication--not everything matters all the time (there may be no reason for them to). But also, none of us see them all of the time (there is no lasting enlightened vantage or knowledge) this why we are amazed (stunned) at the unexamined implications (grammar) of, say, walking, or, another's pain. There has been no need for it to strike us (an event for philosophy).

Is it our ordinary means of judgment and identity that leads to new inventions and discoveries? — Fooloso4

Witt is not talking about leading as if caused or guided by. In saying “before” there is the sense of “not until”, as if there is something obstructing us, perhaps a house of cards, and, once reduced to rubble, it prepares the ground for profitable labor. But also that philosophy is limited to a different work, done apart, before.

Are we ordinarily awake to wonder? — Fooloso4

If we are struck by the ordinary, we are in a state of awe, but the sense of wonder you are thinking of seems like a curiosity, for discovery.

in 129: "we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful."

Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. — Fooloso4

I absolutely agree. Instead of wanting some specific criteria, we come to see our ordinary means of judgment and identity and felicity as good enough. We throw out the desire to explain things in order to be certain, to be able to see (describe) the varied rationality that were always there. And, yes, I would categorize seeing the ordinary as extraordinary as a course of action, an ethic @Luke.