Because you are the person who said it (as in, not me). You didn’t keep it to yourself. The identity of the expression of pain is that it is yours, individually, not particularly. You own it--you either express or deny it. You stand by what you said or weasel out of it.
— Antony Nickles

This seems similar to what I was saying in the other discussion: that I intend my use of the public language, but I do not invent the conventional uses/meanings that exist in the public language. — Luke

I would agree that we do not invent what is common amongst us, but I would not take "meaning" out of the internal and simply place it externally. Look at it as if "meaning" disappeared completely. Our shared judgments for doing one thing rather than another, what is important in an activity, what is crucial, what counts in failing, etc., is what is meaningful, in explaining, clarifying, distinguishing what is meant by an expression.

The point of disagreement seems to be this: I say that we use words intentionally to have a particular meaning (in accordance with conventional uses/meanings), whereas you say that we use words unintentionally and leave it up to others to decide what we mean by it. — Luke

It is not that we use words unintentionally (this is not the opposite of the picture of intention you propose). We do not intend or "use" (as if during) what we say, based on a private meaning nor in accordance with a public one. We say (do) something, and afterwards we can discuss the use (explain the meaning #560), ask what was intended, identify what conventions it followed, or failed at (one difference is we have a contex now). I'm not sure I can put the importance of the timing better (or am too lazy to) than @Banno does above in discussing his weeding example "articulated" "post-hoc". As I have said, we can choose what we say; we can even deliberately attempt to follow conventions, explicitly address (having considered beforehand) what might be a confusion between one use of an expression (concept) and another in this situation, to this person. However, in the same vein that, as you say, we do not "invent" the use of concepts, neither do we ensure an expression nor make it particular (in the sense of a certain instance) and neither does any rule we might "use".

How is it that others can know what we mean by it but we cannot? That seems to imply that I cannot say what I want, or mean, or intend to say. — Luke

The idea of an intention is the want (the desire) to ensure that what you say has the impact, interpretation, clarity, etc., that makes it complete and certain, without your being responsible for it, and its "meaning", afterwards. This would imply that you have said it according to the rules, rightly, and so my confusion, disagreement, bewilderment, is, as it were, on me, unless I disagree with whether you followed the rules correctly.

And that others can know what I mean but I might not is simply because of the public nature of how expression is meaningful. I know the same way you know (#504). The implication of Witt's realization that meaning is public must be pushed farther. On p. 223 (3rd Ed) there is a discussion of guessing at thoughts, and it is said that some people can be transparent to us. This is the sense in which I may know more about the meaning of what you have said than you. To say you alone can know what you mean defies the fact that once you say something, you can not, as it were, take it back (without saying you misspoke or literally taking it back)--you can not get out of it. Cavell puts this that we must mean what we say--that we can be read by what we have said; we are bound to it, wedded to its implications and consequences, fated to it Emerson says. You can "say what [ you ] want" but you can not make what you say mean what you "intend".

You are equating faith with belief. — Nickolasgaspar

You had said believe "in". I'll take it that was a mistake.

Belief is the act of accepting a claim. — Nickolasgaspar

If you want to choose to discuss the sense of "believing" as in accepting, that's fine, but it is not the only sense of belief. And we also say "I believe you", that is: accepting what they say without evidence, on faith, as in trusting the person enough not to question the claim (their authority, our relationship, etc.) This is not bad, neither is it, therefore, not knowledge. Again, if you want to limit things to make it easy, that's fine, but it doesn't make it a complete picture.

As I just responded to others...belief is the umbrella term. Under it we will find Knowledge and faith. We believe things either on faith or knowledge(without or with evidence). — Nickolasgaspar

I'm not sure if you want to restrict the discussion either to only include certain people under "we", or to just the topic of belief as opinion that is either justified or not (that's a well-trod circle), but I discussed a number of other senses of belief, some of which do not function on a dichotomous relationship to "evidence".

We can not say that we "know" something but we don't believe in it. — Nickolasgaspar

You appear to be making a categorical claim. Something like, if we do not believe in it, or we do not have faith in it, then we cannot say we "know" it. As syllogistic as it sounds, I would think you mean the sense of know as don't doubt. If we do not believe it, we can not say we know it, without a doubt, for certain. But when you phrase it as "believe in it" then what you are saying is there is something that you can not say you know if you don't believe in it, and the first thing that comes to mind is what people say about God. You can not say you know God without believing in Him.

Perhaps the "in" was added by mistake, or perhaps there is another example I am not thinking of. To say we know something, but do not believe in it, might be something we would say about a politician's campaign, that, despite our lack of support, will happen anyway (though maybe not quite certainly). Or to say we know (the facts) about, say, climate change, but we don't believe that knowledge (those facts) will persuade anyone; don't believe in the knowledge's ability to overcome our selfish, lazy, blasé, denial/death wish.

Or maybe it is a different claim. Knowledge determined by the scientific method can be reproduced by anyone (should be able to be, if done right). With this sense of knowledge it does not matter if I believe in it or not, though this does not have any positive force to make me interested, say, to believe strongly about it.

So we need to distinguish beliefs that are knowledge based and claims that are faith based. — Nickolasgaspar

Now you've thrown in "claims" as well as "beliefs". Because we can say a belief is an opinion, like a guess (hypothesis), or in comparison to knowledge, but a claim can be me making a claim upon you, for your support or recognition. And that can be to ask you to trust me, but also my claiming to know something, which would not be verified in the same way as a guess. So, water's a little choppy here.

How am I be responsible for it if I did not intend it? — Luke

Because you are the person who said it (as in, not me). You didn’t keep it to yourself. The identity of the expression of pain is that it is yours, individually, not particularly. You own it--you either express or deny it. You stand by what you said or weasel out of it. If you can show you killed someone by accident or inadvertently, then you can avoid being punished for doing it with premeditation, but to be innocent/not responsible (in most cases), you have to show someone else did it (or that they could have).

I wish to argue that belief and the idea of suggesting that 'I believe' is about ownership of ideas, rather than bringing these in a vague way' as aspects of development of argument for any philosophy position. — Jack Cummins

Modern philosophy has an understanding of our ownership of our expressions. That once you say or do something at a time and place, you are the one who said it--you are responsible for answering for it: clarifying, defending, apologizing, etc.

I am trying to explore in the idea of this thread is the personal and wider aspects of ideas, especially in relation to what may be considered under the scope of 'belief, in the context of the personal and cultural contexts. — Jack Cummins

Your point differs in claiming the ownership of "an idea". But maybe saying "you believe" is in the same sense that Wittgenstein points out in that you "feel strongly about it" (#574-575), which is to say you are serious, ready to justify, defend; and even more, to be making a comment on the criteria for being able to say one believes. If you are going to say you believe something, you must be prepared to back it up by owning it, standing up for it, allowing it to define you.

There is also the sense of belief as a hypothesis, as "I believe it is going to rain" (PI, x), but I don't see that touching on your OP. Perhaps it matters more in the sense that believing is more like hoping than thinking, but it appears you are starting with the more traditional sense of belief: that a belief is like an opinion.

IWhat is 'belief, or a system of beliefs and the scope of its validity'? How does one justify belief, through scientific methodology or through other means of verification of personal belief systems? — Jack Cummins

If we start with the idea of knowledge, or truth, and we characterize everything else as opinion or belief, then we can hold onto the standard and goal of that abstract certainty despite the partiality, failure, and unpredictability of the human. So we say that opinion is individual and that belief is unjustified.

But there is the sense of believing as having faith, trusting. There is blind faith, which would be trusting despite any/every evidence to the contrary (as unjustified as "opinion"). But we also say it as a request, to trust in me (or my authority) without questioning further, despite the opportunity of doubt. So faith could be said to have justifications, but, rather than to convince you that my opinion is knowledge, I would have reasons for asking the request for trust. And then having faith can be the relinquishment of myself as the measure (of certainty, as reliability), giving over my fear of uncertainty, as an acknowledgement that not everything stands in a relation to doubt, that I need not question you (your humanity), nor not trust myself.

In this sense of certainty, we are resolved, steadfast. Now this can come from power, stubbornness, righteousness, ego, or, as Emerson calls it, just quoting another. We can believe, as have confidence, in ourselves even (especially) in a position where there can be no certainty, when we have reached a point where there is no right, because we are sure we did the best we could, considered the negative outcomes, thought it through, explicated all the criteria, questioned our assumptions, etc. We are prepared to have faith in ourselves to be questioned, to answer for our position, etc.

Do collective aspects of verification and validity cancel out the individual ways of thinking, as inferior to larger systems of belief? — Jack Cummins

Science's methodology is to provide conclusions where the outcome does not matter whether you or I did the experiment (unless done poorly). So yes, in this, you as an individual are cancelled out completely. And no one is beating science on its turf. That does not mean that an individual's thought cannot be rigorous, specific, precise, etc., just that there are some areas where we can not be certain in the same way science is. But science has infected politics, economics, sociology, and moral situations with the desire to remove us and impose a predictable, generalized, abstract certainty. Though we may not come to agreement in these areas, or be able to predict, or determine outcomes, that does not mean, however, that the judgments, implications, and conclusiveness are up to you.

and, by "certain", here you mean specific, which is a different sense of certainty
— Antony Nickles

How could I mean one sense instead of another? You just said that "Saying something particular is not caused by my intention". — Luke

I was attributing meaning (afterwards), not guessing at a "meaning" caused by you--I could have said "here in the sense of clear and precise". It is a claim open to debate, not an individual, unique instance. The way I put it sounded arrogant, but it exemplifies how the use or sense of something that is said is as available to me as to the speaker. You are the cause of the meaning of an expression in that you are the one answerable for it, responsible for having said it.

Unfortunately, this assumes what a "process" is
— Antony Nickles

Well, I can confirm here that you make the whole issue too complicated. If we start questioning such common terms as process, idea, logic, and so on, we could never complete a discussion! :roll: — Alkis Piskas

If we do not draw out the options and the implications of what, say, a "process" is, it's possibilities, we do not understand what we are getting ourselves into when we say it, put it in an expression. That a word can have a specific definition does not make it clear even what that is here (between the options of what a process can be), much less the impact on this question as a whole, which is not clear and not subject to definition. The idea of some common sense for ordinary words hides the assumption that our confidence in an expression dictates what it means or that the way it has meaning is "simple". Taking the time to make this unexamined structure explicit I would argue is the basic nature of philosophy from its beginning. Skipping understanding the question is what makes the answers "complicated".

No offense (my turn now! :smile:), and I am really sorry about this, but the discussion has been reduced into clearing very simple and evident points. Let's put an end to it. OK?

I was pleased to "talk" with you! :smile:[/quote]

I'm not sure you understand how being rude works. I pointed out a fact that was not personal, but I still apologized because I knew the embarrassing nature of calling it out, even granting that it actually was up to me to make it intelligible rather than dismiss the matter out of hand before we got started.

You have ignored the bulk of what I took the time to go through to set up and then actually answer your question, and then you are cutting off the conversation right before it could begin. Your implied characterization that I am being obtuse to what you feel are "very simple and evident points" is both condescending and dismissive; that I am (unnecessarily) making this complicated is belittling and vaguely slanderous. And then you want to be cute and passive aggressive at the same time, implying that, because of me, we didn't even get to a conversation you are ending! Apology not accepted. If you don't have the interest to discuss anything that doesn't fit into your self-defined simple world then don't get on a philosophy forum and ask a question. I was going to actually take the time to read your other post answering this question, but, yeah, we're done.

What I was getting at is that the model of meaning based on a word's definition, imagines it as particular and certain; which creates the picture that I cause or intend something particular and/or use rules for a certain outcome. Wittgenstein is taking apart that explanation to see how each thing is important to us (all).
— Antony Nickles

Doesn't what you've written here have a meaning that is "particular and certain"? — Luke

Saying something particular is not caused by my "intention" (or the particularity of a rule) so a particular "meaning" is not transferred from me to you; and, by "certain", here you mean specific, which is a different sense of certainty (something I am sure of, resolved to stand behind) than the kind of certainty in which some kind of intention or rule would give you: complete repeatability, extension, application, removing the need for me, judged as true/false, right or wrong.

3) That a word can be defined (which we do call: its "meaning") does not reflect the way language works, e.g., a sentence cannot be defined. Meaning is not an action (a cause/our "use") or a thing (internally, like, intention; or externally, like rules for a practice); it is what is meaningful to us as a culture, what is essential to us, expressed in the implications (grammar) of our expressions and actions.
— Antony Nickles

How does this relate back to the private language argument? I don't view the PLA as being about what is meaningful or essential to us as a culture. — Luke

If we say: meaning, grammatically, is not something I share with myself alone, than we share meaning together, we share how we would judge a particular event; how it has meaning to us, thus meaningful to us.

It's a trick question, or loaded. ...
— Antony Nickles
All that is unnecessarily too complicated! You could just answer, "Indeed, they are conflicting statements." And make some correction or something.
Anyway, the question is very straight: — Alkis Piskas

No offense, it's just not a straight question; it asks for a straight answer. Logically (technically, definitionally) this is a loaded question because it includes hidden assumptions and then limits the possible answers to only “yes” or “no” forcing an answer within the limits of a specific conclusion.

The term "thinking" is used here basically as "The process of considering or reasoning about something — Alkis Piskas

Okay, I see that I could "make some correction or something" with this definition of the assumption of what thinking is.

The question thus would be: "Does the process of considering and reasoning about something take place in the human brain?"

Unfortunately, this assumes what a "process" is, so we are back in the same (a similar) boat. However, let's try to give the benefit of attempting to move past whatever doubts we may have (we could say this is part of the process of thinking), which is I take it the gist of accusing me of overcomplicating this, perhaps in the vein of my not being constructive. I get it, so let's try to help.

A given is that "take place" limits the answer to a location, and specifically: in or out of the brain. So maybe we can solve for: what processes take place inside the brain? and what processes take place outside the brain?

Science!! It can not only tell you that thinking takes places in the brain, it can tell you where in the brain those (thinking) processes take place.

The prefrontal cortex is where sophisticated interpersonal skills and competence for emotional well-being take place; the inferior frontal gyrus is where the use of baseline knowledge combines with innovation for creativity, along with where speaking and understanding, attention control, and memory take place; the temporal lobe is where reading and hearing take place; the occipital lobe is where visual recognition takes place; the parietal lobe is where math, anaulysis and geometric perception and manipulation take place; and the limbic system is where emotional memory and mood control take place. — Paraphrase of Parts of the Brain Associated With Thinking Skills by Dr. Heidi Moawad

The "process of considering and reasoning about something" sounds an awful lot like: the use of baseline knowledge combined with innovation, speaking, understanding, attention control, memory, reading, hearing, analysis, geometric perception, manipulation, and emotional memory.

So thinking takes place in the brain. Game over. Who needs philosophy?

Actually, if you ask where any of the processes of thinking I mentioned take place, and the answer is: yes, they take place in the brain (or can be said to). Considering, reasoning. listening, explicating, waiting, strategizing, experimenting, reserving, judging, accepting, receiving, contextualizing, mulling over, finding and learning about options, studying history, drawing out the implications of a type of action, and being thorough, patient, creative, reflective, imaginative, concrete, etc., etc.

So what processes of "considering and reasoning about something" take place outside the brain? Let's say "outside" is a physical location (not in us), with other actors, changes in time to an external situation; we could call that, a context. This would include experimenting, focusing on an object (seeing a person in a different aspect); attending to what changes happen; problem-solving by manipulating physical objects, a conversation (bouncing ideas off a sounding-board), being understanding to another's thoughts/hearing them (there's that benefit-of-the-doubt thing), knowing how long to be patient for, not jumping at a first impression, leaving a thought and coming back to it, avoiding dichotomies, etc., etc., ???

We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough. — Wittgenstein, PI p. 212, IIXI (my/Cavell's emphasis)

Doing more science is not going to tell us anything about what is essential to thinking (why we care about it), nor how to think better. What part does our interest play? being attracted? desiring an outcome? how does it go wrong? what temptations? how is it faked? how does a goal fit in? an expectation? how does (must) thinking change based on the object of thought?

The brain allows for thinking, or, put another way, for us, at all. Any examination into the brain is not going to find out how/if it determines or causes our thoughts or intentions. Those concepts just do not work that way (determination, cause, intention, thought), as neither do: currency, fairness, believing, knowing, etc., etc.

Some measures of thinking well are keeping an open mind, , not jumping to conclusions, seeing things from another's point of view
-- Antony Nickles

I am open to all kind of views and I have stressed this point a lot of times. I always like to hear things that challenge my reality. In this case, however, you said "to see for yourself that the answer is no". But I already know and have answered "No" on this subject! What then do I have to see? ... See? — Alkis Piskas

Eeeeeerrrrrr, whoops. That's on me; that's my bad.

There is form essence and essence essence.
Form essence is what form qualities are necessary to call something a particular kind of form — Yohan

The OP is well-stated, thorough. Wittgenstein says that "Essence is expressed by grammar." PI #371 which is fairly cryptic apart from the history of Kant's thing-in-itself which cut us off from a certain picture of a thing's essence, in a sense killing what we are interested in. He does this because the certainty he is requiring ahead of time precludes the fact of the possibility of error, failing, conflict, etc. The division into appearance and "essence" (as "reality", "the world"; essence essence as you put it) is the picture created by this desire for something predetermined, certain, universal, complete in all outcomes, having the ability to force agreement, etc.

So what Witt means is that the "forms" (as you, and Plato, and Kant, call them) of our acts and expressions (Witt calls these "concepts" for lack of a better way to group them): choosing, pointing, thinking, understanding, apologizing, excusing, justifying, meaning, believing--everything in our lives here before us in our culture that we grow into and live--these forms/concepts work by a Grammar: the criteria of judging, identifying, completing, doing something appropriately, etc. for every different concept (applied in each context, possibly in their different options/"senses"/"uses"). Because we have been living our lives, making distinctions, judging rationale, etc. for centuries, our concepts contain, all our interests, desires, judgements. The criteria are what matters to us (together) about each thing.

So it is not a question of what "essence" is generally, it is what is essential, as in important, about something to us (all of us), captured in and revealed by a concept's grammar. Now of course we may differ in what criteria are most important to the concept of justice, but this is a rational (if not certain) discussion along the options and possibilities of a concept (PI #90).

Two other things. The idea of "appearance" is also a picture created by our fear of, say, making a mistake (having a doubt, crashing even Descartes' self to the ground), because we do not have anything more certain to get at. We take ourselves out of the picture because of our fear that without certainty, stability, we may fail to pull off our acts or resolve our differences. We want to get to the "real" "essence" of "the world" because of our desire not to be responsible for, and to, the implications of the grammar of our concepts. Wittgenstein stops at "the human body is the best picture of the human soul" (PI, iv p. 178, 3rd ed)--we must treat (not "know") the other as a person. Emerson, in Experience, will say "We live amid surfaces, and the true art of life is to skate well on them." In our skepticism, we look for a solution by imposing criteria for certainty and logic (frozen logic, Witt says) missing the ordinary grammar/criteria that is all around us that we can "take hold of anywhere". Id.

Not that this is a solution. We still are separate people (our internal life is not special (necessary), but it is owned by us). This is our responsibility, and perhaps your grief. You only have my expression (despite your desire for certainty), but I have a responsibility to make myself known (reveal myself, despite my desire to remain unknowable), even to myself. Emerson's Self Reliance is not me as the judgment of the world, but my duty to turn my "intuition into tuition"--explicate the criteria I am relying on, provide rationale, clarify, answer for myself, etc.; to respond to the other and give voice to our experiences, feelings, differences.

Aren't these conflicting statements? You say "yes" (i.e. thinking takes place in the human brain) and then you say "the answer is no"! And then, "the brain is active, but that is not the 'place' or cause of thinking". — Alkis Piskas

It's a trick question, or loaded. You can't say no, because it begs the question: the body doesn't have anything to do with thinking? (preposterous!) then where does thinking take place? (in the "mind"? Ha!) So, yes, one must say thinking involves the brain, as everything human does, which means it doesn't particularly matter to thinking anymore to anything else, say, any movement (which are not particular "actions" without our history of acts). We could say, "I can't think straight" and the answer could be I'm hungry; my brain is affecting my thinking because I'm hungover.

But to say the body is necessary (a threshold requirement) does not make it important/relevant--it means little to finding out what thinking consists of at all (which acts compared to others); or to the fact that thinking involves thinking well (as opposed to something like pointing); that thinking "takes place" in doing certain things, and, categorically, Kant says, grammatically, Wittgenstein says, in doing them closer to the manner we judge them being done well). To focus on the brain as part of thinking is to confuse science with/for philosophy, that science has an answer for everything, is important simply because of its ability to be certain (not seeing philosophy can be specific and rigorous and rational, just without the same force or ability for conclusion). This also goes the other way, in that science does not consider its knee-jerk framework of an ancient (self-serving?) picture of causality (as the basis and measure of everything).

... to see for yourself that the answer is no
— Antony Nickles
But I don't have to see anything ... I already know! — Alkis Piskas

Some measures of thinking well are keeping an open mind, not jumping to conclusions, seeing things from another's point of view, finding common ground, not prejudging, imposing our interests, etc., etc.

Does thinking take place in the human brain? — Alkis Piskas

I have to say yes, but I offer you to see for yourself that the answer is no. Yes, the brain is active, but that is not the "place" or cause of thinking, anymore than it is the "cause" of, say, us, everything of a human being. Thinned out that much, how does it matter to everything?

As Cicero and Heidegger (and Wittgenstein @Luke, even Austin @Banno) would say, thinking is the kind of act that is ethical, in the sense it matters how you do it, who "you" are, your interests (your voice, Cavell says).

I would like though to include in it all the possible complex functions of the human mind: computation, problem analysis and solving, creative imagination, etc. — Alkis Piskas

So thinking (as an ethical epistimology, say) is in pursuit of the criteria, the way of reasoning, of every different type of thing, action, expression. It "takes place" in our listening, explicating, considering, waiting, strategizing, experimenting, reserving, judging, accepting, receiving, contextualizing, etc., etc. In our striving to do those well, to think better, say, more thoroughly, patiently, creatively, reflectively, imaginatively, concretely, etc., etc.

The term "thinking" is used here basically as "The process of considering or reasoning about something — Alkis Piskas

I would say: considering the process of each individual thing's rationale (taking in the expression of what is essential about that thing). But this is not a "use" of thinking, that is a definition of thinking. I can think, in the sense of: mull over, find and learn about options, study its history, draw out the implications of a type of action., etc., etc. ("In the sense of" is the same as "in the use here of"--as (in the sense of) which option of--here: thinking--are we talking about? which use of the expression or action; in the sense of entertaining, or pondering? And you can tell yourself the difference if you think about it.

— Joshs

what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? We are "expressing" the pain, only to ourselves, but isn't that just to say: not out loud. What your two sentences "do" (Cavell would say Wittgenstein is drawing out the implications) are: correcting a mistake, and, realizing a presumption (like freaking yourself out when there is nothing actually there to be scared of). — -- Antony Nickles

A question occurred to me. If it is the case that the above conversation with ourselves would be comparable to having it with someone else, would it not also be the case that a conversation with oneself is a language game, and public? — Joshs

I re-wrote this in the Private Language Argument thread, and what I remembered is that, grammatically, we do not "know" or "doubt" or own experiences or feelings, we focus on or suppress them internally--we allow them to be known (reveal them) to ourselves. I was trying to capture this in saying we "express" them to ourselves similar to another, in that we acknowledge (accept) them to ourselves/as ours, say, out of repression (denial), trying to put them in words, etc. Though I find much the same to our public life, I am uneasy saying the workings here are a mirror (analogous) to our public conversation. We do, in the same sort of way, hide or express (reveal) our feelings and experiences publicly, and they are accepted or denied by the other, but our internal life is still ours, not in the sense it is special, but that it is owned (or not) by us, individually, maybe secretly, but in any case, separately.

3) That a word can be defined (which we do call: its "meaning") does not reflect the way language works, e.g., a sentence cannot be defined. Meaning is not an action (a cause/our "use") or a thing (internally, like, intention; or externally, like rules for a practice); it is what is meaningful to us as a culture, what is essential to us, expressed in the implications (grammar) of our expressions and actions.
— Antony Nickles

Do you acknowledge two different senses of "meaning" here? One sense of "meaning" (as in word meaning) is definition, explanation, or sense. The other sense of "meaning" (as in meaningful) is significance, consequence, or worth. — Luke

I would say an explanation does not show something's significance. Or that a definition imposes itself over anything else of consequence. What I was getting at is that the model of meaning based on a word's definition, imagines it as particular and certain; which creates the picture that I cause or intend something particular and/or use rules for a certain outcome. Wittgenstein is taking apart that explanation to see how each thing is important to us (all).

@Hanover @Janus

The first problem with the private language "argument" is that it (and the whole of PI for that matter) is seen as only true/false statements, rather than the work of finding out for ourselves the insights from these claims. It is taken as an argument for a conclusion, as @Banno has noted (or multiple). As elsewhere, Witt is coming up with examples (even fantasies such as this), in order to draw out their implications which reveal our interests, needs, and desires (at times, looking for a particular outcome). This is not an explanation of human biology or "language" (the language claims/examples are to reveal the implications, which are about our lives).

People also get stuck just saying language cannot be private (and how it cannot), overlooking that we do have "privacy", as in personal experiences (the awe of a sunset by myself), sensations (feelings), and our own desires, interests, needs, and intuitions. These are mine, separately, perhaps secretly, maybe alone (this counters some* of our feeling of being denied/losing something). Witt could be said to make room for the personal, even the ineffable (think: opera, painting, crying). This is not the erasure of the self, nor is it a fight against "solipsism"--the idea I control, judge, or value everything, as it were, individually (without history, our lives, language, etc.)--which ends in our solving our skepticism of each other by saying "you do not!", perhaps (as emphatically) pointing to our "forms of life", language, rules, etc.

More important than proving that a private language is not possible or is nonsensical (pointless), his investigation is to reveal our hidden desires and the state of our human condition. Beyond (in between) the "Private Language Argument" is that:

1) I do not "know" my own pain; I feel it/I express it. There is no space between those for certainty (my "knowledge"). So "referring" to my pain, even the sensation, is in the sense of making it known, as in revealed (to you), not "referring to", as in pointing to a "thing" (an object of knowledge). And "doubt" is just not what I do with pain; I repress it, ignore it (though the example of pain makes this seem impossible, as if I am skewered on it, Cavell says; imagine instead, say, sadness). We focus on, or suppress, our pain/experience, as we would express it to others (or hide it). And you and I have the same pain, experience, etc. to the point we can express and accept them as similar. Here Witt shows that the picture of solipsism comes from a desire to be unknowable.

2) I also don't know your pain, say, by inferring it from behavior, or through science (@Isaac). I do not "know" your pain, I acknowledge it, I react to it (or deny it, blind myself to it) (Cavell--drawn out in my OP on the "Lion Quote"). Knowledge is not our only relation to the world; we have a relationship to others (we may treat them as having a soul, PI p. 178); and our acts/expressions at times define us, even adverse to our culture (beyond what is meaningful to it/in it).

3) That a word can be defined (which we do call: its "meaning") does not reflect the way language works, e.g., a sentence cannot be defined. Meaning is not an action (a cause/our "use") or a thing (internally, like, intention; or externally, like rules for a practice); it is what is meaningful to us as a culture, what is essential to us, expressed in the implications (grammar) of our expressions and actions. This desire for rules is to ensure beforehand that my expressions work out, but most importantly, without my being responsible for my actions, answerable to others (even myself). And the picture of causality satisfies the human wish (for me) to be necessary and for my experience to be special (certainly known, or never fully).

4) There are such things as deception, lies, faking, acting, repressing, etc. Though our word is our bond (Austin), there is just no getting around this (other than reading credibility and the context, etc.). Our response is to try to reach past you, in a sense, to something fixed (inside or out) that we can rely on. The shear fact of this failing leads us to deny the other (as a person) in order to ward off the conclusions of the skeptic; however,

5) *There is a truth to skepticism: that we are separate(d) individuals (we have our "own" pains/sensations/experiences, not because they are necessarily special, but because we "own" them, express/hide-accept/deny them). More to the point, we are responsible to answer for our expressions--and the attitude we take, the aspects we see (or ignore). And we can always/endlessly work to understand each other and our expressions, though there is no assurance this will lead to a resolution--which is the same fear that fuels our desire to turn the fact of our not being the same (person) into an intellectual problem.

What does Witt make of the various ways feelings are experienced? We can imagine a feeling, remember a feeling, experience a vague sensation that is ambiguous and sets us off on trying to differentiate whether it is a tickle, pain or pleasure sensation. When I say to my self after some exploration , ‘Ah, that really was pain rather than tickle’, or when I correct an initial impression and say. to myself ‘I only imagined that pain’, what have I done? — Joshs

Not to dismiss your concerns, but what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? We are "expressing" the pain, only to ourselves, but isn't that just to say: not out loud. What your two sentences "do" (Cavell would say Wittgenstein is drawing out the implications) are: correcting a mistake, and, realizing a presumption (like freaking yourself out when there is nothing actually there to be scared of).

More importantly for Wittgenstein is: what desire do we want from the picture we believe to be necessary?

To radically simplify: If I understand ED, there is a distinction between the physical and the non-physical, and that the physical (body activity) has a casual effect on the physical and non-physical.

If I have this correct, it is a jumble of concepts. First, simply because the body does all the things it does, does not make a movement an action. We need all the history of our lives, along with the procedure of the act (say, apologizing), plus the context it is expressed in, to recognize it as that "action"--waving hi, pointing, etc. So to say apologizing is a physical act is partial, as well as saying the physical is the "cause" of the apology, as we want a "cause" in order to skip over the public nature of the history, procedure, and the responsiveness that is necessary to have it accepted as/be an apology (Witt calls these, "concepts"). We want to ensure (beforehand) that my cause makes (I make) the action what it is, have the "meaning" it does, makes it certain, or ensure it works out predictable, universally, without my being responsible for my expressions. This is where people start talking about "solipsism"--or that I control, judge, or value everything, as it were, personally (without history, our lives, language, etc.)

Second, people get stuck on saying language cannot be private, missing that we do have personal experiences (the awe of a sunset by myself), secrets, and also our own desires, needs, and intuitions. More important is what Witt gets around to after the "Private Language Argument", that: 1) I do not "know" my own pain, I feel it/I express it (there is no space for knowledge between pain and its expression). We have the same pain, experience, etc. to the point we can express and accept them as similar (solipsism is also the desire to be unknowable, "special"). 2) I do not "know" your pain, I acknowledge it, I react (or not) to it--knowledge is not our only relation to the world; our "acts" at times define us, even adverse to our culture. 3) There are such things as deception, lies, faking, acting, etc. There is just no getting around this (other than reading credibility, the context, etc.), but the shear fact of it leads people off a cliff of skepticism. 4) there is a truth to skepticism: that we are separate(d) individuals. But we are responsible to answer for our expressions and we can always work to understand each other (though there is no assurance this will ensure agreement).

This is a classic example of how the desire for certainty forces a picture on us that we then try to intellectually solve. — Antony Nickles

Of course that's their desire; they're scientists. We should not admonish scientists for attempting to explain, predict, etc. — Luke

Neuroscience pictures the concept of intention (and the entirety of humans) as a physical phenomenon, an empirical occurrence, which comes from the belief that science can explain everything, anything. The conceptual misunderstanding forces their hypothesis on them. They're like a politician, looking around for evidence to shore up the conclusion they've already decided upon.

He completely misses the point of #641, taking the phrase "the most explicit expression of intention is by itself insufficient evidence of intention”, to signal that: there must be sufficient evidence of intention out there somewhere! — Antony Nickles

Isn't that precisely what Wittgenstein signals here? Otherwise, what does he signal with this statement? — Luke

Yes, that was insufficiently worded. We are not talking about evidence for a scientific explanation, sufficient to make our knowledge of our intentions certain, for the specific type of conclusion that the scientist wants. As with a lot of what Witt says, this is a grammatical statement: that the context of the expression is necessary. There is no intention of an expression if there is not a context in which there are conditions which would make it possible to ask about or have an intention.

'I am not ashamed of what I did then, but of the intention which I had.'—And didn't the intention lie also in what I did? What justifies the shame? The whole history of the incident. — Witt, PI 644

Something happened which was out of the ordinary for this incident, something shameful. Why was it out of the ordinary? In every way and everywhere we look and find something unusual from what we would normally expect. These are the criteria and substance of what matters to us about asking after, or explaining, intention, such as the requirement for a reason--for clarification, as an excuse, as a curiosity, etc.

'But when Witt says an expectation is "imbedded in a situation" (#581), he is saying the context is what makes expectation here even possible (with a bomb about to go off). Only "in these surroundings"(#583) is there any significance (meaning) to "expecting". — Antony Nickles

I'll just point out that an intention is not an expectation. — Witt, PI 644

The author takes up expecting as similar to intention with the idea that both occur over a period of time. They're not wrong, only that it is the "whole history of the incident" (#644 above) and not just the pattern of the person's behavior, say, extrapolated chronologically.

quote="Witt, PI 644"]Also, it's "embedded".[/quote]

You'll have to take that up with Anscombe, or the British in general.

How do you account for PI 647: "What is the natural expression of an intention? — Look at a cat when it stalks a bird; or a beast when it wants to escape." - This is not about "an unanticipated part in a situation." — Witt, PI 644

This is the expression of an intention. Neither the look on a cat's face nor the beast's actions would be an intention without the context of the stalked bird or the cage. An intention would never "dawn" on us, like an aspect, unless there was a situation were, say, the bird was out of our frame. "What is that cat (intent on) doing?" or we had not factored in the context that a beast does not normally want to be in a cage (we might think it was just scratching its back or trying to get attention for food; then the context would set the intention in relief).

it is the (cultural/personal) expectation that makes the discussion of intention even possible, not the occurrence or lack of someone's "intention". — Antony Nickles

Are you saying that "the (cultural/personal) expectation" is an intention? — Witt, PI 644

The expectations (and the confusion about an expression) are the conditions necessary for there to be intention at all.

Now we say belief (opinion) can be justified. Now based on these first two uses of justification, this could be that my belief has authority (I am right), or it could be in the sense of removing me from any need to stand behind what I say (letting the justification absolved my responsibility).

I don't understand how a belief/opinion "could be in the sense of removing me from any need to stand behind what I say (letting the justification absolve my responsibility)". How is that a belief/opinion? By not understanding this, I don't understand the rest of what you say here. — Luke

Justification; it's two senses of justification. One is authority, the other sense is a justification that props up my opinion so it doesn't matter that I said it, say, a rule, or scientific methodology.

If a police officer, who has the authority to kill someone under certain circumstances, does so under those circumstances, we could say they had justification, but we might be left with the feeling that is no justification, that here, there is authority without absolution. These were two senses/two uses that we could be said to be familiar with, that were applied to a different context (belief), and then both brought to weigh in on their original context in reasonable but contradictory ways.
— Antony Nickles

Who is "we" in this situation? — Luke

Wittgenstein's method is to make a claim that would apply for everyone, for each of us to see for ourselves, "prove" to ourselves in a sense, to accept. So he speaks using "we" and "our" and "us", giving examples of what "we say", etc. There shouldn't be claim I'm making where "we" can't be me, you, anyone, everyone. The fact they might conflict is the point.

If "we" feel it is unjust, then why do "we" say it is just? — Luke

It could be justified, in one sense, because the police had authority; at the same time, in another sense, there could be no justification as we are not absolved of our guilt, even if only for conferring our authority. Both things pulling at us at the same time is the anxiety that creates the desire to have a rule (rely on definitions) for the "meaning" of a word.

What role do "our" feelings play here? — Luke

The feeling here was meant as a nagging suspicion, like we're missing something, overlooking a consideration. I'm not sure it plays a role (in the justification?), only that it marks our cultural investment in the conflicting justifications.

Try imagining justifying (the rules of?) the concept of justification in the two uses (senses) in the case of the police shooting above
— Antony Nickles

These rules of the concept of justification are simply the two different uses (senses) of the word "justification" that you have described; the rules for using these words with different senses. There is no need to justify the existence of the different uses/senses of our words. — Luke

To say the rules of a concept are simply a description of its use, say, that we are using justification in its sense of authority, does not seem to tell us anything that would make that a "rule". And I did not mean justify the existence of a sense of a concept, I meant justifying how we justify, or justified, as in the kind of justifications that run out, for, in our example, following a rule.

Maybe the law (the rule) represses the sense of what might be just, and a righteousness (based on a moral law) would seem to undermine society's ability to assert its authority.
— Antony Nickles

The sense of the word "just" is already established; you already know what it means. Are you saying that the law could repress or change the sense of the word? Okay, but so what? Maybe it doesn't change the sense of the word, and it only changes our views about what acts or events we would classify as being just or unjust. — Luke

Yes, the sense of justification as, say, authority is already established, but it is not unchanging (as our lives change). Also, justification by authority, as much as we are familiar with it, can be different when pushed into a new context, e.g., taken from the church to the state. What is important about it might change, or some criteria for it might matter more, or again (having been ignored previously).

And you keep talking about words. The law (authority) can repress our sense of right, or our ability to redress its failings. To talk as if this "only changes our views", is exactly the suppression that imagining rules of classification imposes with a picture of right/wrong which leaves our expressions merely opinions.

Whether or not the killing is just does not affect the two different senses of "justification" (or "just") here. — Luke

This is exactly an example of the death of a moral conversation before it even starts. The desire for our words to bring stability to our lives is why a killing can be justified by a definition. We have no concerns about our concepts? If shame has replaced guilt, what is absolution for us know? how does legislative authority have or not have moral authority? And our culture changes, sometimes because of people dying without justification. What counts and matters to us about authority or having a clean conscious are not fixed timeless equations (which criteria are important, how we are to apply them, what facts count under them). Extending justification in the sense of being wiped clean of guilt from its home in the world of religion into the context of a police shooting affects the grammar and criteria of the concept. In this sense, if we can't find a way to wipe away our guilt for a killing we've authorized, our society is irredeemable.

But it seems to me that it is possible to try to change the practice. One might call this inventing a new practice, depending on the degree of continuity. But in any case, there will be a kind of negotiation. I don't see how this is inconsistent with the above view. Would you agree? Does this fall under the "politics" you refer to? — Welkin Rogue

Cavell expounds Wittgenstein's description of continuing a concept into a new context. Since our concepts aren't complete, predetermined, universal, etc., we can have familiarity with a concept, say, the form of a fictional romantic comedy, and we can write our own comedy, even building off the standard formulas. Or we have the concept of justification in the senses of authority, righteousness, or rationale. Any or all could be applied to a new context of an event we have never experienced, a new context which makes certain criteria and grammar of a concept more important, or newly important, newly alive. Or our world slowly changes over time such that the concept of what is right, what is considered justifiable, absolving us of sin, has moved from the judgment of guilt to, say, the assessment of shame.

The realm of politics is of course a way of navigating our moments of how to continue a concept into a new context, a moment where we are at a loss as to how the criteria of our practices are to be applied or how our laws and words will meet our changing lives. Cavell analogizes this as a conversation between us and our culture that can be rational, rigorous, specific (based off the grammar of our concepts). Though Cavell is at pains to differentiate the relationship we have to our society from the picture that we agree on or decide our concepts (as "conventions"), or their criteria or grammar (unless they are the ones we decide--rules, measures, etc.).

The inability for politics to find a way forward for us together, much as the impotence of our moral reconciliations, does not mean they are hopeless, just not ensured. Our frustration and disappointment with our conflicts and politics is what leads to the desire to make our concepts discrete and fixed (with a "meaning") so all its applications are determined, or logically determinable, in advance, say, with rules.

I came across this neuroscience article (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6499020/#sec3title) which I think has a good discussion of Wittgenstein on intention. I note it's quasi-conclusion that Wittgenstein "solves the problem of causation-by-states by positing an equally contested form of causation-by-agents." However, since it still involves causation, I'm not sure you would agree. — Luke

This is a classic example of how the desire for certainty forces a picture on us that we then try to intellectually solve. It starts out okay by breaking the bad news to "neuroscientists" that intention does not come down to a physical process. Unfortunately, it does not stop there; but why? Why are we driven to continue? The problem is that they want to have our explanation of intention be "normative" or, be subject to "explanation, prediction, evaluation, and regulation". This is their desire. In the essay Must We Mean What We Say, Cavell takes the air out of the desire to find some intellectual normativity by pointing out that something is normative to the extent the practice is normative in our lives. Intention is just not like promising--each concept has its own implications, consequences, or none; you can say whatever you like, but only some things will be considered, say, instructions, or an excuse.

But the author plows forward claiming that "we need to answer the question: what makes the ascription of an intention (by others or by oneself) legitimate?"(emphasis added) But, again, what is this need? He completely misses the point of #641, taking the phrase "the most explicit expression of intention is by itself insufficient evidence of intention”, to signal that: there must be sufficient evidence of intention out there somewhere! Here he tries to latch onto a pattern in our behavior rather than seeing the grammatical distinction that talking about intention only happens in certain situations.

The author quotes the same passages I did (#581-583), but they take the "situation"(#581) or the "surroundings"(#583) to be what is happening with the person, their "pattern" over time. Intention not being mental, they would have it be behavioral--"ascribed" to the person--as if to push causality into them externally. But when Witt says an expectation is "imbedded in a situation" (#581), he is saying the context is what makes expectation here even possible (with a bomb about to go off). Only "in these surroundings"(#583) is there any significance (meaning) to "expecting".

The same applies for intention; it is not a cause, it is an unanticipated part in a situation--"Did you intend to (do something unexpected)?" "I intend to (do something I might not otherwise)." It is the (cultural/personal) expectation that makes the discussion of intention even possible, not the occurrence or lack of someone's "intention". Intention is part of a discussion, not an action, nor a person.

Still the author clings on. "But does not this overlook one of the most important features of the concept of intention, namely that the commitment they express plays a guiding role in human action?" (emphasis added)--important to whom? why? The machinations the author and all those cited are going through are based on the same fears and for the same desires that shape this discussion about rules.

Do you ever critique any aspect of Kantianism from the vantage of more recent philosophers, like Hegel, Kierkegaard or Schopenhauer? — Joshs

@mmw@tim wood

@Welkin Rogue How did this thread get Kant-jacked?

Cavell does reference a few of Kant's ideas. He points out that Wittgenstein's idea of the grammar of a concept are categorical as Kant would say, that the criteria of a concept are how we judge the identity of a thing being what it is compared to another, as if this applies to every word.

Also, he takes Wittgenstein's reference to penetrating a phenomenon as a reference to Kant's line drawn between us and the thing-in-itself, and that what Witt is doing is investigating the possibilities of phenomenon (#90), which is to say, the Kantian conditions of a thing's possibilities. Thus, why Witt says Grammar expresses essence (#371) because identity and possibility and conditions show what is essential, as in important, to us about a thing.

Cavell also borrows from Kant's Critique of Judgment as a way to explain Austin and Wittgenstein's philosophical method. We speak in Kant's "Universal Voice", positing a grammatical claim about a concept (its implications, identity, categorical criteria, etc.) based on an example of an expression in a context: When we say X, we imply ___. As with aesthetics, you must see for yourself.

I appreciate you taking the time, Antony. It's helpful. — Welkin Rogue

It's what I studied but no one takes him seriously, especially as an analytical philosopher.

I took the give and take of reasons to occur when there is a conflict between any two sets of commitments. This can take place even between people in different cultures. Nobody needs to feel lost or conflicting with respect to their own culture. — Welkin Rogue

I would say commitments is the wrong word, as if they are personal or chosen. My main point was that we are dealing with a moral moment, event, in time, with a context, not clashing ideals, as if to answer, say: "what's more right?" Because it is a moment, of crisis, Cavell is saying: we don't know what to do, how to find our way forward, which, as you say, may be between us and someone who does not share our culture, but we may be lost in our concepts, our words may be empty, we may be in a new context, etc.

knowledge is not our only relation to the world (it is also our act). We do not 'know ' another's pain, we acknowledge it, react to it (or not).
— Antony Nickles

I would have said 'knowledge is thus about our relation to the world, which includes how we act with respect to it. — Welkin Rogue

This is hard to draw out briefly, but the point is that there is a truth to skepticism, that, as part of our human condition, we are separate. Knowledge (or philosophical theory) itself can not bridge that gap. For example, we do not 'know' another's pain, we acknowledge it, react to it (or not). We do not judge our acts so much as take responsibility for them; my moral reasoning is what I am willing to stand behind.

I take it this 'logic' is basically the same thing as 'grammar'. And then there's the negotiation of or coordination among our various grammars or logics. Considered broadly enough, this negotiation seems to be the whole of moral conflict. For example, we are negotiating (or affirmingdifferent conceptions of) the practice of promising, from our different personal commitments and reasons - when has a promise taken place, what are good excuses for failing to keep a promise, and so on. Not in the abstract, but in relation to some particular case of promising, I take it. — Welkin Rogue

Yes, Cavell uses the same idea as Witt's term grammar, which is the kind of ordinary "logic" each of our concepts have (another Witt term)--these are not individual (mine). The words negotiate or coordinate make it seem like we decide, say, what an apology is, but that is of course already just a part of our lives, like choosing. We may have reasons for promising, but we individually don't conceive of what promising is (with reasons ). This is Witt's method, but, for example, when we don't know how a concept applies to a new context, we could provide examples and make claims about the grammar of the concept in this unforeseen situation, drawing out the implications of what we say or do in this case. The grammatical claims are made to apply to everyone, to be accepted or clarified by anyone, but it is remembering those implications, not justifying them. I would consider this a philosophical enterprise more than a practical one. We are not deciding between morals, but simply learning more about intention, understanding, knowing, seeing, thinking, etc. I'm not sure grammar helps with what a good excuse is, as that seems political. Austin spent a lot of time examining the grammar of excuses, but that was to learn about action.

But taken as an individual pursuit, [Moral Perfectionism] cannot simply be a question of aligning one's behaviour to one's authentic sensibility or some such thing, right? Surely, it is also a question of how to cultivate one's sensibility.

Could you help me make sense of how Cavell understands this question, given that there is nothing, no ideal, to aspire to which is not independent of the individual? Is it a kind of dialectical unfolding, where we aspire to cultivate new aspirations, which lead us to go after yet newer aspirations, and so on...? — Welkin Rogue

The first paragraph makes it seem like we are just changing ourselves to meet some ideal we have picked, and then: what is the right ideal? It is just the realization that we are (and will be) what we say and do. Emerson changes Descartes to read "I think! I am!" As you say in the second paragraph, it is becoming the next version of yourself, to each their own, but answerable for it. This is, of course, broad strokes, possibly misremembered. You'd have to read the preface of Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome to get your questions answered correctly.

What....method for me examining my own expressions, or methods for another to examine my expressions? — Mww

Our expressions, as in "I know he is in pain" or "Did you intend to shot your neighbor's donkey?" for the benefit of making explicit the different implications (of knowledge, intention) in different contexts. Witt used it to understand our philosophical motives. A claim about the logic of what makes up, say, an excuse, is for each of us to come to see for ourselves rather than being emperically true. This is not a different solution to the same picture of the need for a foundation for our acts.

quote="Mww;593286"]As worthy a dialectician as you are, we have a history of opposing paradigmatic metaphysics. Which is fine, kinda cool, actually. I have answers for whatever you say, you reciprocate with equal vigor and justice. And the world is a better place.[/quote]

I'm only trying to explain not to disagree but so you aren't just dismissing this without understanding.

Without the sheer power of reason, how do I even know what an abominable moral act is? ...if I lack moral wisdom I have no reason to judge my act as immoral in the first place, which then tells me absolutely nothing about my moral constitution. — Mww

The start of seeing the difference is that, yes, we have a social moral structure (as we have lives with each other), but the desire for a certain answer beforehand to what is right, clouds the truth that we are separate individuals who must act, at times, beyond/apart-from/against that structure, with an understanding that our rational morality does not absolve use from the responsibility to be answerable after our act to ourselves, others, our society. Having that in mind, we learn not what is right, but how an act is judged, what our responsibility here will be, and thus our duty to ourself in relation--in defining our character (over intellect, Emerson says).

The alternative can only be, I must be informed from external sources what an abominable moral act is. If such be the case, it cannot be said I’ve followed a method of rationality, which contradicts the methodological necessity of obtaining ethical wisdom, insofar as mere information about a thing is very far from the understanding of it. * * * This isn’t moral philosophy, it’s empirical anthropology. — Mww

We are not trying to determine what is right and wrong, but a kind of "information about a thing" that is an "understanding of it"--an ethical epistemology of the nature of our acts. Though this is specifically not empirical anthropology, but Witt's (and Austin)'s method of examining our expressions (or examples of those--even made up ones), not empirically, but to learn what the implications are of what we say (in a context and time). We are learning the criteria that we use to judge what a thing is, what makes a movement a certain action, and, with Witt, what matters to us about something, what (all) our interests are in such a thing, the actual needs of our lives.

Elsewhere, he says something like “Let your experience of the object teach you how to think about it” (from memory). — Welkin Rogue

This starts with Socrates, but the modern version is Wittgenstein, in realizing that there is not one over-arching theory, but that each activity and object has its own grammar (everyday logic, rationality) and so in learning the criteria our culture has for judging a thing, we take a more ethical approach to it; understanding a person by walking in their shoes, as it were. Heidegger also tries to get us to let a thing attract us on its terms in What is Called Thinking?.

"But really, once you've read Cavell, most discussion of ethics - in a philosophical setting anyway - come off as unbearably stilted and artificial. It's great."
— @StreetlightX

His initial work was reacting, as was Austin and Wittgenstein, to logical positivism and it's desire to solve radical skepticism. The refreshing thing about Cavell is that he treats philosophy as a trail of texts, so it is not just his work, but re-figuring the history of analytical philosophy as contributing to an idea of the betterment of the self. Other than Wittgenstein (and Austin), his work is most similar to Nietzsche, later Heidegger, and Emerson, but also draws from ideas in Kant, Socrates, Marx, James, Kierkegaard, Hegel, Wisdom, Malcolm, etc.

I've been meaning to follow up some secondary/elaborative lit on the issue. In any case I would even suggest that your questions about ethics - "what are we doing? What are we aiming at?" ought to be read back into ethics as the sine qua non of ethical practice itself: that the demands that ethics makes on us are demands to grope at finding whatever partial, workable, passable solutions to just those questions. And those are questions of life and practice that cannot be closed off by any theoretical investigation that would provide any kind of ethical guidebook from on high. — StreetlightX

The other seminal book (other than the one mentioned to @Welkin Rogue) is a book of essays on political philosophy called "Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome", which sets out Cavell's claim that some philosophy points to a moral path for each individual in relation to our society. There is also an essay in that book that I am discussion in another thread about rules and the end of justifications.

It is about the giving and taking of reasons, in a fairly ordinary sense, and this in itself is part of its telos, if you like: it is about the respectful engagement with others at the personal level... The personal nature of ethical reasons and judgement is what distinguishes Cavell most, it seems to me. — Welkin Rogue

There are just a few comments I can add. To differentiate, this is specifically not about how we feel or some Humian individual moral compass. Also, the point is not for another ethical foundation, only this time, "arising from our way of being in the world, our form of life", which I think was taken back anyway. We "give and take" reasons because Cavell pictures a moral moment, an event where we are lost or conflicted within our culture so our acts carry from our aligned lives into a sort of extension to an unknown with each other.

A moral reason must issue from our commitments - commitments which are proven as such when we show ourselves to be prepared to take responsibility for them, to defend them and their consequences to others. — Welkin Rogue

And so we define ourselves by what we are willing to accept the implications for, what acts we take as ours, at this time, here, in response to the other, society, etc. And thus knowledge is not our only relation to the world (it is also our act). We do not 'know ' another's pain, we acknowledge it, react to it (or not).

Cavell, I think, has a Kantian streak in that he gives reason a central place in ethics... Impersonal reasons, insofar as they are impersonal, therefore lack all traction in what actually matters, ethically. — Welkin Rogue

This is not to say we only act from our own interests. He, like Witt, sees that our ordinary criteria for what counts for a particular activity, how we identify a thing, are what matters to society (thus, to us) about that thing (a concept Witt calls it). The interests of our culture are reflected in the way something works the way it does. So these interests and my interest most times align, but when they conflict, they do so reasonably, for reasons and from the everyday logic of each thing we do, or at least possibly, as we may fail to come together. This is the hope, and fear and dissapponment with the moral realm at all.

While ethics isn't just about coming to understand one another - at times Cavell places enormous emphasis on this aspect - it is surely an important part of moral reasoning, for all sorts of reasons. I take this as a substantive ethical point in itself. — Welkin Rogue

Part of learning the criteria for how things work is we find out what we are getting ourselves into, but, also, because the criteria are for the judgment of our lives, we, in a way, learn about ourselves at the same time.

On the other hand, this view seems to make obscure the notions of moral progress and moral aspiration. ...And further, how are we doing whatever it is that we are doing? What are the 'methods' of ethics? — Welkin Rogue

Elsewhere he specifically addresses what he calls Moral Perfectionism, but it is each individual, in a sense, doing what they find their duty is to themselves, with the same sense of accepting responsibility. And the methods would be, as well, to learn the makeup of the activity (it's implications, criteria, judgments) that we are involved in.

We aren't even required to aspire to coherency or consistency (except as a moral stance in itself - wherever that stance might come from... as such it would call out for an ethical justification in this loose sense). — Welkin Rogue

The consistency is our culture, all our lives, and, when it comes down to it, in a moral moment, me, who I am to be.

The Claim of Reason is pretty hard reading. If you are interested, there is a much more focuses set of short essays that are foundational for his insights. Must We Mean What We Say, especially the one on Later Wittgenstein, Knowing and Acknowledging, Aesthetic Problems, and the title essay, though that's a little dense too.

Well, I prefer (so far) to just pick up Wittgenstein. — Zugzwang

I commend this. Of course going through the book on your own first is paramount. I also think noting one’s own thoughts in reaction are almost more important, as this is not about being told things as much as coming to see something for yourself.

Or actually,, once W breaks the ice, to just start paying more attention to the barks and moans and tweets we do. — Zugzwang

Witt’s method enables anyone to pitch in on what the implications are of an example of an expression. And our examples can follow our personal interests.

You draw an interesting connection here between mathematics and Platonism. I wonder if this is what Antony means by “mathematical” in the thread title. — Luke

The term "mathematical" is Cavell's, meant to differentiate the type of criteria (how we judge indentity of a thing, the ways it matters, what counts under that concept, etc.) that we attribute to math (chess, etc.), like certainty, predictability, completeness of every application, etc., from the ordinary diverse open-ended criteria for other concepts, like understanding, seeing, apologizing, etc. The starting point is the desire for ordinary criteria to work like mathematical ones and how, here with Kripke, that creates a picture of rules for that kind of backdrop, which limits our options when things go sideways.

If language was like math… we'd be essentially free from humiliating surprises. — Zugzwang

Behind all the fuss to be certain about what is right, is a desire to predict outcomes, which will avoid our being responsible after our act. That I can say, “Well, I followed the rule correctly!”

How can I be sure? Not sure enough to act with confidence...but even surer than that somehow. Infinitely sure. — Zugzwang

One new thing I realized in this thread is the difference Witt shows between the sense of certainty as perfection, from certain in the sense of resolute, understanding the terms of our commitment to stand for our actions.

I just ordered the first Hacker & Baker volume — Zugzwang

I don't recommend this. It's like when people teach themselves piano, then, when they try to go back really serious about playing, it is hard to break their old habits, e.g., hold their hands in the formal position, etc. Hacker will just reinforce a reading of Witt that is limited and unconsciously driven by the same forces Witt is trying to investigate. I would suggest Cavell's The Claim of Reason, in which he discusses Hacker, or, easier, the very short essay The Availability of the Later Wittgenstein.

The question only comes after the expression. My claim is that we don't always intend what we express; that that idea creates a necessity which, as Witt would say, forces a picture upon us (of causality). — Antony Nickles

You seemed earlier to be disputing that we ever use language intentionally, in relation to our discussion about meaning and use. I did acknowledge earlier that we may not always speak intentionally (e.g. on autopilot), but I would say that we speak intentionally at least most of the time. — Luke

The picture you have of how language works creates the picture of intention as present during speech. We can intend what we say, as in choose, for speeches etc., but intend as in cause is not a part of speech. Now #648-660 account for the feeling that intention happens before every expression. The actual grammar of intending is a person being determined about an action (#588); grammatically different than a decision (not that sure). There is something about an intention that is open to other possibilities ("I intended to go, why?") There needs to be evidence other than expressing it (something in the context calls for the expression of it)(#641)--as Austin says, something phishy. We can see intention, even a cat's (#647).

We can intend to say something--we can reflect and try to say something specific, perhaps explicitly trying to influence (ahead of its reception) which way to take what we think might be misunderstood as another sense of the expression. However, most times we don't intend what we say in this sense, as a deliberate choice. — Antony Nickles

I think that we generally use words with intention, particularly by intending one meaning of a word or sentence rather than another; intending to express something or other. Whether it is taken in the right way, understood or interpreted correctly by its audience is another matter. However, I confess that I don't think this talk of intention is very relevant to anything Wittgenstein was saying. — Luke

The reason why it is relevant is this picture: you say something, something specific, specified by your intention, let's say following the rules, communicated correctly. And so "whether it is", say, heard, is now on us. If we take it in the wrong way and misunderstand, you are still assured you said the right words in the right way to intend one thing rather than another. If there is a problem, it is a problem of "interpretation" rather than the responsibility of the parties. This leads to the characterization of language as slippery, which ends up with us wanting to cause words to follow a set of rules.

you were bordering on a misunderstanding whereby grammar is no longer about language, but about the things themselves (about "the world" and "our lives in it"). Hence, my blunt responses to remind you that grammar is about language.[/qu

It would help if you could say more yourself (to me or for yourself) other than grammar is about language. I'll try again. Witt is giving examples of what we say in certain situations, but not to shed light on what we should or should not say, but to see from that data (of the way we say something in a situation) what it reveals about the grammar of the thing. In drawing out the grammar of pain, we find out what is essential to us, meaningful to us, about pain itself. We indirectly get past Kant's line in the sand by looking back at expressions. If that can't be accepted, I'll need a little more justification and evidence to buy that Philosophical Investigations was meant as just some kind of etiquette book about how we should talk.
— Luke

That, unlike the mathematical, these concepts are opened-ended, extendable into unforeseen contexts. — Antony Nickles

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you appear to suggest that it is not the concepts themselves which can be extended (in terms of their family resemblance), but it is the applications/uses of the concepts which can be extended "into unforeseen contexts". — Luke

Let's try an example, say, the concept of justification. I can be justified if I was right in killing another, in the sense of absolution. But I am also justified to kill another by right, as by authority (by rule, law). Now we say belief (opinion) can be justified. Now based on these first two uses of justification, this could be that my belief has authority (I am right), or it could be in the sense of removing me from any need to stand behind what I say (letting the justification absolve my responsibility). If a police officer, who has the authority to kill someone under certain circumstances, does so under those circumstances, we could say they had justification, but we might be left with the feeling that is no justification, that here, there is authority without absolution. These were two senses/two uses that we could be said to be familiar with, that were applied to a different context (belief), and then both brought to weigh in on their original context in reasonable but contradictory ways.

If I am asked why, given that I was told to add 2, I wrote ‘1002’ after ‘1000’, there is little I can say other than ‘That is what is called “adding 2”. — Baker and Hacker, exegesis of PI 217

What will you say to the poor sod who continues to demand further justifications for why we write '1002' after '1000' when we are told to add 2? How will you avoid "repressing" them during this "crisis"? — Luke

A. No one is going to ask why; we don't need a justification; and what they say is just condescension; and
B. That’s math! All I've been talking about is how the ideal of mathematical concepts affects the rest of our concepts.

Try imagining justifying (the rules of?) the concept of justification in the two uses (senses) in the case of the police shooting above, and now try to reconcile them. Is this enough of a crisis? Is there still "little we can say"? Maybe the law (the rule) represses the sense of what might be just, and a righteousness (based on a moral law) would seem to undermine society's ability to assert its authority.

Expectation is, grammatically, a state; like: being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something. But in order to understand the grammar of these states it is necessary to ask: "What counts as a criterion for anyone's being in such a state?" (States of hardness, of weight, of fitting. — Witt, PI 572

We do not follow a rule to expect something, but are said to be expecting (in that state). — Antony Nickles

The rule pertains to the use of the word "expect", not to (how to) expect something. The emphasis is on "said to be" (expecting). - "we are not doing natural science; nor yet natural history". — Luke

If grammar are rules, then in what way is the grammatical rule--that expectation is a state--about the way to use the word expect? And the question is actually how do we judge someone being in
the state of expectation, not just whether we have said expecting correctly.

Imagine it as grammatical claim meant to differentiate "being in a state" from other concepts, say, "being in a position", and to claim we have ways of judging someone else being in a state. This is not explaining a rule we could say they followed rightly. As you say, we are not doing science, but ask yourself what indicators matter to us in saying someone was expecting--are all of them (any of them) rules?

115. A picture held us captive. And we couldn’t get outside it, for it lay in our language, and language seemed only to repeat it to us inexorably. — Luke

None of these quotes help your claim that any of this is just about language, particularly without any explanation of your reading of them, instead somehow imagining that it is clear exactly what they are supposed to point out, without saying anything.

It is not a problem with language that we can't get outside it or that we keep getting the same picture. You are trapped because words are so important, even to you (that you want to fix them), not a trivial annoyance or bewitching filter. It is our desire for certainty that creates the picture. Language is just the means of creating the self-delusion, but it is thus also the method of our self-knowledge.

Pursuing a theme that will be familiar to readers of Cavell's earlier writing, he does not dispute the skeptic's claim that rules lack absolute grounds but laments the skeptic's cure. The cure, associated with Kripke, strips rules of their pretense of resting on an independent reality but then restores a demystified, antifoundationalist version of rules in which they ground themselves not in truth but in consent. Cavell claims that skepticism rejects one justification of conformity to existing rules only to endorse a more sustainable conformity. Skepticism, in this light, encourages conformity to community consensus. This argument about the politics of antifoundationalism should prompt further discussion of the links between liberalism's antifoundationalist update and the ongoing crisis of conformity in US democracy.

Well if this were any more '90s he would have used the word "agreement", but it doesn't seem helpful in getting an idea of the content or Cavell's method or impact. The writer seems particularly stuck with the idea philosophy is always worried about what foundation it does or does not have.

If I can find the time, I think I'll like Cavell. — Zugzwang

The essay we are debating is in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome. It is a later work that builds on The Claim of Reason, which is a massive undertaking, but also his first book of essays, which are easy enough to get through, Must We Mean What we Say. The Availability of the Later Wittgenstein is a good place to start.

What's clearly missing from this list is "compelled" and friends.. but I guess you might want to compare the two sets, if you could be certain the variation isn't stylistic.) — Srap Tasmaner

Imagine we can take every word and placement seriously, as if it all mattered, that nothing is rhetorical (Cavell basically, from The Availability of the Later Wittgenstein). That every unanswered question was for us, every claim subject to our acceptance. If we take it that there is no depth our reading can't reach, maybe we will learn the responsibility we have for our actions, even if only to ourselves. So I do see a reason for the different phrasing: that we have a desire for certainty that forces us to see things a particular way; we are compelled to see a word I say as something I (and you) can be sure of, e.g., that I am tempted by the picture that I use (intend) words in the way, a practice, in which they are supposed to be, normally, rightly (or wrongly).

[my children] move a rook in a great curving arc, flying over various pieces and pawns, and capture my piece. That's not misunderstanding but a signal that they're done for now. The best response always seemed to me to join them — Srap Tasmaner

When we are at a loss as to how to respond, as to how to take an expression, there are many actions we can take: judgment, dismissal, projection, moralism, assumption, etc. Socrates recommends in the Theatetus not to trip up your opponent, looking for controversy, but to be fair, in earnest and, with a friendly and congenial spirit, find out what they really mean. And putting himself in the other's shoes is the exact process by which Witt presents his examples. I haven't read through the idea of the continuation of the relationship we have with the opaque and strange people (p. 223), but one idea is that they are hidden from me, by: me, my inability to join them, ignoring their movements as actions, dismissing their institutions as without purpose.

Some parents tend to be a little tone-deaf about this sort of thing.... Treating failure as self-exclusion from the game (as readers of LW sometimes will) strikes me as similarly tone-deaf. — Srap Tasmaner

The phrasing of not being able to hear a tone, bounces off Witt's image of understanding an expression as like a theme of music (#528). Cavell, In a Pitch of Philosophy, examines the idea of the human voice in philosophy (through opera), and its repression, turning on its head (side) the emperical idea of seeing reality for a hearing, listening for the right sound of an argument.

"I don't want to play anymore right now"... as "I don't want to play" or "I don't understand" or "I don't want to learn this" or any of the various other ways the game you're playing might stop. Being alive to those differences matters[/quote]

Each of these expression have a sense simply of which the child does not want to continue (as overwhelmed, play with you, put more rules on this game making it boring). Outside of their not wanting to engage anymore with the game, is a context the concept is extended into that doesn't involve interaction with the game, but is connected to the fact that they "just can't play anymore right now because my brain is tired". Can we say the sentences now have a different sense? Perhaps as excuses to save pride or avoid shame?

There's no top-down authority on what our noises and marks mean... Any of us can give examples of when 'better' is used appropriately. — Zugzwang

This is actually the basis of Wittgenstein's method. He sets out an example of what we might say (maybe setting out part of its context) and then makes a claim about how and why it seems appropriate or not to fit or to reveal something about us, for us to see for ourselves. This would be why he says he is not advancing theories, because for anything to have value as a grammatical claim, we have to come to it on our own, and then he hasn't really told us anything we didn't already know. There is a difference between a grammatical claim and a definition, but I wanted to acknowledge the democratic affinity.

I've tended to take this in terms of justifying claims that one knows something. A dry example: a king is put in check by a bishop. Someone doubts this or doesn't understand. You explain the rules, perhaps trace the diagonal path of the bishop. If that fails to convince, there's nothing more to do. There's nothing deeper, nothing hidden. — Zugzwang

You may be interested/challenged by Cavell's reading, which I draw out in the first post, as he compares it with Kripke's, who puts an emphasis on rules, and neither take the claim to be that there is a fundamental justification. As a teaser, Cavell points out that we are only inclined to, as he reads it, throw up our hands.

"If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: 'This is simply what I do.'

If I may jump in, all that's needed is a relatively stable background of conventions. For instance, I trust that you understand well enough what I'm getting at here, thanks to extremely complex conventions in stringing words together that have become almost automatic for both of us. — Zugzwang

Not to quell interest in any topic of discussion, but we are at the moment at which something falls apart: your understanding, our conventions, the "automatic" naturalness of expression and reception, and, in particular--what Witt is discussing here (PI #217, above)--the end of our ability to justify our actions to each other. It is, unfortunately, a tortured thread; I appreciate the interest.

I have referred to this wider sort of grammar - Wittgenstein's concept of grammar - as a corrective to what is indicated by the discussion title: 'Rules' End', and to Antony's explicit statements that some concepts are without rules; the idea that some meaningful language-use is not rule-governed. That's just not the case. — Luke

Not to get in the middle of this, but my pithy yet misleading title is not a narrow claim that we operate at the "end of rules". It would have been better to have said: what happens at the end of justification? What I was shooting for is the end of the idea that Witt is touting rules as a conclusion/solution/judgment rather than an example, among others. The line of discussion of this OP was supposed to be Cavell's reading that takes criteria and our human falibility as more important for Wittgenstein than rules (here championed by Kripke). We strayed into the issue of meaning and use because that picture allows for rules to be structured a certain way, say, to resolve everything other than our following them or not.

IFurthermore, it is a clear misreading by Cavell (followed by Antony) to view PI 217 as pointing to an end to rules or an invitation for further justification. (Cavell reads far too much into the word "inclined".) — Luke

It is simply not clear how this is a misreading, though I see that is how you adamantly feel. This would be a case where, as Cavell says, we may come to where I say, "This is simply what I do", but that does not confer any authority, as we have not come to any resolution of what is "right". Thus, just an emphatic declaration that he is (I am) wrong carries no weight. We would need questions for clarification, counter-examples, to see the sense of another view, to address a claim seriously, etc., but not a patent rejection. It were as if there was a rule, and I am simply not following it. Here I would think, at the very least, there would need to be an accounting for the evidence of the text. Why, then, are we only inclined to say so? Witt uses the phrase at least 30 other times in the text, say, at #144. He also uses, "we should like to say", "we are tempted to say", "we might say". I would call these the data of investigation. Evidence from which he makes his claims to the grammar of an example, sometimes for correction, sometimes to allow for greater possibilities.

Also, the opportunity left by this only being an inclination is not for further justification (though possibly repeated, or reworded) but to show that we are now two people (or society and me) in a relationship (here, "teacher" and "student" as in #211 to "continue" after "instruction"--call it justifyor and justifyee if you like) that may continue the conversation about the crisis, or rift between us. This does not have to be about what justifying can not seem to accomplish here: to resolve whether the rule was followed correctly. We may have to turn against ourselves in the sense of finding the rule no longer agrees with our lives.[/quote]

Rather than judging whether the use of a word correctly follows the rules for a practice (language), I am judging how an expression, something said, fits into a concept (it's possibilities) based on the concept's criteria, e.g. "How did you mean 'I know'? [what use of "I know" is this?]"
— Antony Nickles

Your question "How did you mean 'I know'?" implies what I am saying here. You are asking what use of 'I know' was intended by the speaker. Why do you think that we use language without intention? — Luke

The question only comes after the expression. My claim is that we don't always intend what we express; that that idea creates a necessity which, as Witt would say, forces a picture upon us (of causality). We can intend to say something--we can reflect and try to say something specific, perhaps explicitly trying to influence (ahead of its reception) which way to take what we think might be misunderstood as another sense of the expression. However, most times we don't intend what we say in this sense, as a deliberate choice. As I said, we ask "what did you intend when you said?" when (after) what you say is unexpected in this situation. Witt puts it as "An intention is embedded in its situation" (#337). Sometimes it would be strange to even ask what we intended, as when a question can not exist. The possibility, and possibilities, of us having to clear up the sense of an expression is the grammatical structure for the concept of intention, not casual or determined or a part of what happens during expression.

"If anyone says: "For the word 'pain' to have a meaning it is necessary that pain should be recognized as such when it occurs"—-one can reply: "It is not more necessary than that the absence of pain should be recognized." The point is not to explain how language works, but to feel out the limits and logic of the world (our lives in it). (#119)
— Antony Nickles

No, the point is grammar, and what it makes sense to say (e.g. about pain). — Luke

That is one point, but not the one I was trying to draw your attention to there. I was pointing out the framing of the claim, not commenting on the topic of the paragraph. Those are not mutually exclusive.

Sometimes we just have to be an example, #208. #474.
— Antony Nickles

You have cited #208 a few times now, but I think you are mistaking what Wittgenstein is saying. He is not talking about something "beyond the rules", as suggested by your OP. — Luke

As poorly misleading as the OP is named, I would still say: other than rules, but of course my topic was the influence of the mathematical on the desire for rules to play the part Kripke gives them. The mathematical can be extended repetitively with certainty and completeness for every application, predetermined and predictably (even when--particularly when--"used" incorrectly). It is this desire for certainty which "muddles" our expectation for everything else, generalizing the picture of meaning based on rules to impose as close to those criteria as can be across the board in place of the ordinary, various means of judgment for each different thing. Now granted grammar is sometimes about limits and do/don't-do, but clinging to that alone is to overlook that, as in this passage of Witt, our application of a concept may be in a never-before-mentioned way. That, unlike the mathematical, these concepts are opened-ended, extendable into unforeseen contexts. That we are not at a loss (limited), because complete knowledge is not necessary in advance to "continue a series" (with the ordinary this is metaphorical for extending a concept into a new context). Examples are necessary because we can not explain rules for our concepts that cover every situation--account for every context or predict the way in which they may go wrong. One example may shed light on a grammatical consideration, an implication when we say something in a certain situation; something to keep in mind, to educate us about ourselves, what we are getting ourselves into in saying this, here.

A cardinal point of W.’s argument is that a series of examples can itself be employed as the expression of a rule. Cf. ‘Isn’t my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely expressed in the explanations that I could give? That is, in my describing examples of various kinds of games . . . and so on’ (PI §75) — Hacker

This question is by the Interlocutor, who desires or believes possible a "complete expression" of a concept by explanations and describing examples. I take Witt's answer to the question here as no (or, not outside mathematical concepts, like the height of a mountain). In the paragraphs following he points out that we can draw boundaries around different parts--mine loose and yours definitive--but that ultimately most times we can't completely express a concept by explanation; we can't say what we know (#78) or we can't anticipate the 9 mil ways an expression may be meaningful (#79)(even apart from just "what I intend it to be").

Despite that false start, there is a lot to agree with Hacker about unpredictability and our desire to overcome that. I would say he sees the problem of our desire for predictability, but his remedy is to contain our involvement to salvage some surety. He puts the variability on our unpredictability, when I would say its just that most concepts (non-mathematical) are categorically without the mathematical criteria (certainty) we hope for, even from rules.

And Hacker couches the desire for predictability as our delusion, where I take Witt's Interlocutor to be voicing our real, human fear of the threat of skepticism. Witt is saying that fear is what stokes the desire for certainty, say in our rules, removing the involvement of the fallible, unpredictable human, who is, then, merely subject to judgment based on those rules--the outcome of an expression falling on my precarious shoulders alone.

What do you make of the last [ paranthetical ] paragraph of PI 217?

"(Remember that we sometimes demand explanations for the sake not of their content, but of their form. Our requirement is an architectural one; the explanation a kind of sham corbel that supports nothing.)" — Luke

I don't see how it alters Cavell's reading of the paragraph above, only to say that we sometimes judge by the adherence to grammar rather than the truth of a statement; that saying something the right way (in the right form) is more important than saying the right thing (content).

We need have no reason to follow the rule as we do (BB 143). The chain of reasons has an end. When one has exhausted justifications, one reaches bedrock. This is what I do; and, of course, this is what is to be done. * * * W.’s point is not that where justifications thus give out my action is unjustified (haphazard, a free choice), but rather that it has already been justified * * * The bedrock is the point at which justifications terminate, and the question ‘why?’ is answered simply by ‘Well, that is what we call “. . .”.’ — Baker & Hacker on #217

Hopefully, this shows that PI 217 is not indicating an invitation for further justifications. — Luke

The standard reading of Witt here is based on our requirement eventually for some kind of foundational justification, which is most times projected through all his terminology (forms of life, language games); that our shared lives are the final or preexisting justification for our choices. Kripke allows us "inclinations" and Hacker appears to give us "propensities", but the common practice is "what is to be done". This is Cavell's point in saying that Kripke's picture ends the conversation before we even begin about what to do when we are at a loss, what to base our action on in a situation when our justifications to each other run out--that Kripke's picture limits our relationship to judge/defendant. This is not to say there are further justifications, but that we are only "inclined" to end the discussion with a shrug (which you and Hacker have completely ignored). Cavell calls this (p. 95) assertion of judgment ("the repudiation of deviance") a "stance"** to the other (not a ground) without the authority to then claim we are right. (**you will notice the similarity of a "stance" to an "attitude" or a "conviction", as quoted previously about ethics). The desire for normativity creating social repression, suppressing the fallibility of the ordinary with the need to avoid the chaos of the skeptic's conclusions: we may not be justified, we may not (continue to) share a life, we can not be sure, relying on our knowledge and predetermination of practice or rules.

Part of the reason to discuss rules would be to draw a limit around how rules differ from grammatical/logical rules.
— Antony Nickles

How do they differ? There is no difference. There aren't rules on one side and grammatical rules on the other. The rules are techniques that we learn how to apply, as per B&H's exegesis of PI 208. — Luke

There are grammatical limits (of identity) that you could call a rule (demarcating a threat from a warning), but not all grammar nor criteria are rules (and not something we are necessarily taught explicitly). As I've noted, Wittgenstein realizes our grammar shows our interests in our lives (what is important to us about something), and I'll point to this again as well:

Expectation is, grammatically, a state; like: being of an opinion, hoping for something, knowing something, being able to do something. But in order to understand the grammar of these states it is necessary to ask: "What counts as a criterion for anyone's being in such a state?" (States of hardness, of weight, of fitting.)
— Witt, PI #572

To say expectation is a state, is not to say there is a "rule"; nor is pointing out that it is a state necessary for making the word "expect" have the sense of anticipating, much less an obligation, or probability. We do not follow a rule to expect something, but are said to be expecting (in that state). The judgment of that being the case is made by our criteria for expecting, how it differs from waiting, is similar to hoping, etc., we could say, necessarily, there must be the possibility of something going wrong (we are not sure or certain), but this is a categorical requirement, not a rule.

Witt's term "concept" is used in the sense of a classification for what we do: apologizing, understanding, knowing, seeing, etc. These are parts of our lives, so concepts are not abstract from that, nor individual nor arbitrary.
— Antony Nickles

But neither is "what we do" separate from the words "apologizing", "understanding", "knowing", "seeing". The words encompass "what we do" and our uses/meanings of the concepts. — Luke

One hopes our langauge and the world are always together, connected in a way that is inseparable, but sometimes our language does not keep up with our lives, sometimes our words are dead to degenerate times, sometimes the use of words must fly in the face of practice. So to say we are only talking about language is minimizing, but to assume that in talking about language we are talking about our lives without separation, is to ignore the threats that exist to our communication and understanding, our lives as shared.

Let's call it the grammar of our ethical situations.
— Antony Nickles

Let's not. — Luke

Okay, sure.