If truth is not an axiom that can be applied universally then are such truth statements as the first one in this OP useless? — invicta

You are assuming a few things, though understandably. Your measure of “useful” is based on the success science has had, which, as you say, is due to the certainty, predictability, consistency, etc. of its method (that it does not matter who does the scientific method).

Philosophy (that not peeled off historically as science) does not have this luxury of mathematical certainty, but judging whether its truths are “useful” is the desire to make philosophy be science, to require certainty, to avoid our part in our human truths. That we accept them and stand behind them, not in the sense of an opinion, but such, for example, that philosophy is not meant to explain, but to describe what you then might see for yourself, and in reaching to see and think in a way more than just certain knowledge, we change and become a better version of ourselves.

So are philosophical truths dependent on context? You won’t get far outside of the non-contextual abstract universalized pre-determined fixation philosophy has without considering how context plays a part in how we have truth-value despite not being analogous to mathematical criteria.

What other philosophy books did you read besides the textbooks during your undergraduate studies and why you read them? — Largo

I studied Ordinary Language Philosophy, but that would be hard to find a focus on. Most notably, it includes Plato, J.L. Austin, Wittgenstein, and Stanley Cavell (most recently).

I have a suggestion. Before you register, go to the actual school bookstore, and they should have all the books for each class grouped together. Read the first five or so pages of the start (not the introduction or the preface) of each book for every class you could take. Focus on which makes you react to it with your own ideas (as in reading you should make note of those first). Sign up for whichever courses have the books that interested you the most. Good luck.

Sure, if you want to be more precise, you can say that we put together what comes to us when we externalize to others what we say, or when we are attempting to get the other person to see what we are trying to say, as I am doing know, replying to what you said. — Manuel

This is a more precise description of the same picture I’m saying is only an occurrence (that we decide what to say), not a universal generalization that can explain or figure out “language use”; I’m saying there is no “answer”. Most of the time nothing definite “comes to us”; we, as with your examples, just want to apologize, or you want to convince me, or I have to say something polite, or we are responding, in situations where we can’t know how it will turn out—so we turn it into something we can control; but we don’t “have in mind” what we say; there’s nothing that specific or unique about us. Communication is much more slipshod and vague and prone to failure than imagining something definite in you, or that happens in some definite way, instead of as many ways as there are things to do with words. I’m saying that the desire for that certainty, that systematizing, that general explanation, is a wish to avoid cleaning up our own mess, or wanting to ensure what “we mean” beforehand, but that desire creates the goose-chase after a solution.

It's not always there beforehand. — Banno

Yes, and what we want to be there is in order for us to avoid our having to stand there ourselves (afterwards); to be responsible for the implications of what we said, to answer for being intelligible further, to be held against our own words. Cavell does a reading of Emerson’s essay Fate as a discussion of freewill, and I think it’s there where he has one picture the occurrence of starting a sentence and then realizing that, there, then (in that situation), there is only one way to finish it, of it being out of our control even when we are conscious and careful and choosing our words. I’m a twin, and people ask if we finish each others sentences, but what is happening is that I am starting a sentence that doesn’t need to be finished, by anyone. You “know what the other person is thinking” a lot of the time, it’s just rude to interrupt.

…it's not the development of a concept but the interaction with the world that counts…. And so more generally for… concepts [other than counting]. They are better thought of not as things but of acts. And I take it that this is what underpins "Don't look to meaning, but to use". Hence,
[as he said] “Understanding that concept is just being able to do that stuff. Including talking.”
— Banno — Banno

I agree that a concept (in Wittgenstein’s sense) is better imagined as an accomplishment (an act of its kind) and not an idea (mental, owned process), and so thinking, knowing, intending, are more like pointing, apologizing, and counting—we judge them based on the criteria that matters to us about them, “that count” as Banno says.

I would make clear that the end to grab onto is not thus that “we” then are “actors” (as a universal or even general rule). We are not now to simply shift to the picture that we control or do these acts or practices. This is not the same game just with a different explanation—the jig is up. We do not “use” words as a different explanation than that we “mean” them (not even in moving from picturing that we express a meaning we have inside us). This casual or individuated explanation still relies on a process (internal or external) that remains the mystery that we imagine we simply need to understand to be certain about communication. (Wittgenstein is merely saying that if you want to know what “I know” means here, look at which of the finite number of versions, or “senses”—a better word he employs than the easily misunderstood “use”—of that word is happening in this context. For example: of the different possibilities of “use”, his, in the PI, is the version of “use” as in “which sense”, which version in the conceptual category. Whew.)

So the picture is not that we are, somehow: intending, thinking, talking, etc. The point is that judging whether these have occurred is not a matter of knowing a brain process or language structure, but: differentiating what is deemed “a thought” from merely quoting, or speaking in platitudes; and intention is what we ask you about when you do something weird; and talking is different than shouting or singing. ALL the rest of it [okay, most of all the rest] is based on the desire to create a problem to fix so we can be sure about us squirrelly humans—Forms, quaila, analytic, factual, real, innate, etc. (or we want to bar ourselves from the possibility of fixing anything).

when we vocalize, we put together these [internal word] fragments into a coherent whole that another native speaker will understand what we are saying. I suspect that the initial babbling of infants offers a clue of the language faculty growing to maturity. — Manuel

We rarely “put together” most of what comes to us unless we are on a first date or creating a speech, much less can use that as a universal description. (The desire though is that we could control what we mean by what we say, even more than we “always” put it together.) The hoped-for picture here is that there is something (thought, meaning, intention, etc.) that we convey or at least that goes into language (or in this instance is in language systematically). However, for example, when Wittgenstein talks about “expression”, it is to point to the moment at which we are responsible for what we have said—speaking “externally” to this extent only; not to infer it is from something internal. We can also say we speak in expressions; that our words are judged (have importance, are meaningful) by the criteria for threatening, entreating, explaining, describing, etc. But it is not some “we” that do these or cause them to happen. As I have said in my last post, you are individually responsible for what you say, but it is not otherwise special in your having said it.

Chomsky's, supposition seems to be that since most of our language use is the little voice in your head, then the source and prime example of language use must be that little voice. But isn't it entirely possible that the little voice is a sort of back-construction, the internalisation, as it were, of our external language? — Banno

More than that maybe even. Is talking to yourself “necessary”? Don’t we sometimes want to not listen to ourselves? Despite our internal ramblings, or, more likely, in giving them too much attention, don’t we nevertheless speak thoughtlessly?

Words may change, but Kripke's Causal Theory of Reference illustrates the importance of the Performative Act Of Naming in Language in ensuring the stability of language, whereby the reference of a linguistic expression, what it designates in the world, is fixed by an act of “initial baptism”. — RussellA

Again, the desire to have all of language work like the very limited process of naming objects—to imagine all words referring to an object, even “meaning” or something “real”—is because we want logical necessity and predictability. If nothing else, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations started with that picture of language and goes on to show that not only does most of language work entirely differently (each concept having its on criteria) but that language was taken out of individual case-by-case contexts by philosophy to ensure certainty, and that it is not the structure of language that is essential but our lives; that what we ordinarily say in a given context is simply a means of seeing what matters to us about our lives; and is the tool to take us out of our fixation (“bewitchment”) of an abstract solution to our failures and limitations.

Language has to be embedded far more widely in cognition - to the point where cognition and language use are much the same thing. — Banno

I don’t want to disagree that there are very complicated (brain/syntactic) processes happening when we use language, or even that there is perhaps some benefit to learning about them. But (as I see it; as Wittgenstein sees it) we are lured into thinking we will learn how our communications (“our sentences”) are meaningful if we understand the brain or how language operates logistically (internally as it were). But there is no “answer” to this desire.

What the brain is able to achieve, its thoughts, concepts and language cannot be [without] the physical structure that enables such thoughts, concepts and language. — RussellA

The reason we want it to be true (meaning to be systematic) is that we want to supplant the vagaries and failures of our ordinary back-and-forth, with certainty, such that it can be studied and deciphered (ahead of time).

But, as @Banno may agree, the criteria for judgment of a concept (say, apologizing or intending or threatening or knowing) show that these practices are meaningful to us, reflect what matters to people for that concept to happen or be what it is, not the understanding of a process. And we learn those criteria, judgments, etc. (by osmosis for the most part) through training and watching and making mistakes and being corrected, i.e., living (language is not normative, life is—conventions are not “agreed to” or “defined”). But, again, maybe I have Chomsky wrong here, however, it is suspect that an “analytic” statement is one that is true without external reference or without us screwing it up (as we do) and as we want, desperately, to find some way not to (with “necessity”); most classically, by taking “us” out of the equation.

We want to create an intellectual (logical, scientific) problem that we might be able to solve, rather than see that actually being able to communicate with people is much more of an ordinarily problematic part of the human condition than we’d like it to be. As Wittgenstein said, “We find certain things about seeing puzzling, because we do not find the whole business of seeing puzzling enough.” PI, p. 212 (emphasis added). The “certain things” that we find are the ones that we can maybe solve (e.g., the optical process of the brain) because we do not want to accept the fallibility of people (say, their inability to accept things that are pointed out to them).

The question then is not what is analytic (or “innate” or “generative” language processes), but: why do they matter? what importance would figuring these out have? where do they get us?

In a nutshell, I can't see why generative grammar requires analyticity. — Banno

Why indeed.

“It is clear, as Katz and Fodor have emphasized, that the meaning of a sentence is based on the meaning of its elementary parts and the manner of their combination. … [T]here are cases that suggest the need for an even more abstract notion of grammatical function and grammatical relation than any that has been developed so far, in any systematic way.” Chomsky, not sure where.

I’m not fully up to speed with Chomsky, but I take it he is claiming that our language is meaningful because we know how words work individually (as labels perhaps) and they function together by some human process that we just need to decipher systematically. We imagine we do this all the time when we try follow where someone is going with a new (unexpected) thought. I’ve seen it on this board a lot; people see words they know and take them at first glance, imagining their first impression of them together is something they can easily understand.

The picture is perfect (perhaps too so) if we wanted to be certain about what would be meant by what we said, or, say, if we wanted to know what we should do (what would be the right thing to do) before we did it.

But if we extend a concept (or speak across it) the projection is not made inteligible by our understanding the individual words and some internal structure they have (or external structure the world has). We won’t figure it out ahead of time by being clever, we carry a concept forward in continuing to talk amongst ourselves as we forge a new path ahead. We put ourselves out in front of our words (responsive to them) in moving past our ordinary practices. There is no certainty that you will, or even can, take up my words (support my acts); that’s why we have questions, denials, imagination, impasse, and madness.

If we are defining something that is empirical (objects), we are determining what counts—not what it is or what is there (@frank), but what we are focusing on about it to include that thing as identified under the definition; we are explaining what distinguishes it for us—say, to pick out a bird as a goldfinch (and not a robin). But we stop once the difference is grasped; so a definition is not about the objects, but to make the distinction clear to the other. Thus we can continue to define what we are talking about until that goal is reach. This unbounded limit is why Kant says it is useless to define empirical concepts, because they are not definite (complete).

But we are in a different class of definition if we are discussing knowing, thinking, intending, etc. We can operate the different uses (senses) of a concept, say, knowing (Do you know his phone number? Do you know New York? I know you’re in pain, suck it up.), but do we simply describe the use? (“I mean ‘know’ in the sense: I know my way around”.) Wittgenstein would say we describe the measures by which we judge whether you do, or do not, as what counts or doesn’t as an apology is already determined, only just unexamined.

when there are terms that have more than one commonly accepted use, [definitions are] certainly helpful for mutual understanding. — creativesoul

The definition of terms is an interesting case. Kant differentiates between a priori concepts and arbitrary ones, which I take him to mean: technical terms (set aside by @Jamal; referred to as “stipulated” by @Banno). He says they are ones (conceptions) that we create, which (unlike the other kinds of concepts) we can define; he says: however we choose, as we created them (which Kant excelled at).

But it makes me think of Wittgenstein’s use of the word “criteria” (or, even more starkly, “grammar”) in Philosophical Investigations. He is not “creating” it so much that it is not recognizable along its ordinary use, but there are differences, distinctions, such that it must be recognized as a “Wittgensteinian term”. However, he cannot “define” it for you, even for himself. It takes the whole book for him to bring you along with him, to show us the differences to the ordinary use through examples (playing chess, following rules, knowing others’ pain, etc.), dialectically against other terminological uses (even Kant’s, called “crystalline purity”), and (à la Austin) to show how they go wrong (through the interlocutor).

Socrates (paraphrased) would say that we must understand what the other is saying, on “their terms”. But this is not because they “created” what they are saying, as if a Kantian technical term; nor that an individual reinvents a concept unique to them, apart from its ordinary use, (without breaking it off from its ordinary contexts), but maybe that our concepts stretch and grow as we do, perhaps because our lives and judgments are reflected in them—that we are created by them. So getting us to see a new way means one might not even know yet what to tell (as Heidegger seemed unable to ever do). Mill didn’t even pick one audience to write to; and Nietzsche wanted to create his own (to change us).

By "ordinary understandings", didn't you mean our assumptions about the mind-independence of the world we experience? Or what? — frank

What I was trying to bring back to the fore was what Kant denigrates as our "given conceptions", which are our existing, cultural, historical, common concepts which Kant admits we "employ... in our application of the conception" but that he calls "confused" and only "presented to the mind", and requires to be "complete", "a clear representation", and "adequate with its object", yet, when they cannot be, they are judged unable to be defined, where I am claiming that our given, ordinary concepts are sufficient to define (though that is a process, takes effort--examples, distinctions between uses, etc.).

By "knowledge," Antony means knowledge of a mind-independent world. — frank

You were suggesting a definition of “terms” (which is a separate category from those under discussion, though getting confused into it anyway). But we were in agreement on the terms empirical and a priori and it was just a mixup as to which one I was referring to in making the point about Kant creating an “object” and then putting it outside of knowledge’s ability to access.

I still disagree with your angle on Kant but otherwise (I’ve read your first post in this thread) I think we’re in agreement. — Jamal

Well, it might be worth discussing the Kant if it is regarding his section on a priori definitions, though your first response does point to a wider difference in interpretation (I would say focus) on his broader approach, which I agree would be a different matter entirely.

Maybe it does not matter, but we may disagree because I would say that we can define our concepts, after investigation, and it’s just that Kant’s understanding of, and requirement for, a “definition” is wrong.

I don’t really want to do more of this exegesis, but I suppose it’s fair if what you’re saying is that I was mistaken in using Kant to back up my point. — Jamal

I also don’t want to turn this into it a digression about Kant. I was not trying to say that to you were wrong to use him to show that we need to dig into our concepts to explicate the different uses and their criteria. My only point was that Kant’s requirement overlooks that we can come to a place of deep intelligently and rationality within our ordinary concepts and examples, which only adds to your point that we can already apply our concepts, to say that we can actually “define” them, draw them out, despite Kant’s doubts (created by his desire for certainty).

[In fact, in the realm of empirical reality—that which we can know—Kant is very much on the side of our ability to know, to directly perceive and to judge objectively. — Jamal

Well, this is the realm of science, not philosophy (which deals with what Kant calls the “a priori”—and Wittgenstein calls our “concepts”), and this is a digression, but we also fail to define the empirical, to Kant’s satisfaction, because, though we do explain it (rather than describe, as we do with our concepts), in doing so, we set the limits of what counts or doesn’t (which is a terminal fault for Kant). In creating “objectivity”, Kant cordoned us off from the world “directly”, unfiltered by us, though that was his ideal.

And my contention is Kant’s ideal makes his standards for a “definition” untenable; that defining a concept is different than he imagines, though I agree that our understanding is never immediate and there is the need for development of a concepts senses.

Indeed the whole point of that section of the CPR is to say that what works for mathematics is not appropriate for philosophy. — Jamal

Again, digressing, but Kant takes this as a failure and a tragedy for philosophy, rather than a fact that nevertheless doesn’t make philosophy less rigorous than science, less methodical, practical, relevant.

You, I, Austin, Wittgenstein, and Kant are similarly sceptical about definitions in philosophy, claiming that we can use these concepts without such "mathematical certainty". — Jamal

Kant denies that we can “define” our “a priori” concepts because we cannot obtain certainty. I (and Austin and Wittgenstein) believe his desire for that standard leads to his conclusion, and that, despite the openness of our concepts, we not only are able to operate them, but that we can “define” them, which, against Kant, would mean that we can rigorously make explicit and precise (no less than certainty) the implications and criteria of and for the different senses (or “uses”) of our concepts. Only, they reflect our lives, rather than are rational apart from our fragility, as Kant would have it.

The overall point being that our “a priori“ concepts are “rational”, have depth and precision (not “confused”, not ordinarily lacking intelligibility—are definable), even without meeting Kant’s requirements of completeness; certainty, finality, closed to expansion, etc.

Kant says that "no a priori conception, such as those of substance, cause, right, fitness, and so on, can be defined. For I can never be sure, that the clear representation of a given conception (which is given in a confused state) has been fully developed, until I know that the representation is adequate with its object."

I take Kant as claiming that our non-empirical concepts (thinking, meaning, causing, doing right, etc.--those not subject to science, to explanation) cannot be defined because our ordinary understanding ("given" to us culturally) is "confused" and cannot be made certain--that our knowledge cannot reach the standard of complete clarity--representing its "object".

I claim that what Kant has done here is put the cart before the horse. In wanting to be certain of our concepts, to have our knowledge of them be complete and clear (ahistorically), he has created the idea of an "object" that they would represent, as with a Platonic "form". Of course elsewhere he puts this "thing-in-itself" outside the reach of our knowledge, thus the lack of faith in our ordinary understandings.

"But, inasmuch as the conception, as it is presented to the mind, may contain a number of obscure representations, which we do not observe in our analysis, although we employ them in our application of the conception, I can never be sure that my analysis is complete, while examples may make this probable, although they can never demonstrate the fact. Instead of the word definition, I should rather employ the term exposition— a more modest expression, which the critic may accept without surrendering his doubts as to the completeness of the analysis of any such conception."

I take it here that Kant wants it demonstrated as fact (to be certain, beforehand) that we have made explicit every use of a concept ("completely"), and then comes to the conclusion--because we cannot ensure a concept will not be expanded in its uses, applied obscurely--that he will only allow that we are exposing examples.

However, exposing examples is the bread-and-butter of what Austin and Wittgenstein do in order to show that, as @Jamal has said, we do not need certainty to apply our concepts, to operate their uses, and to make the terms and criteria of those uses explicit. This "definition" does not meet Kant's standard of mathematical certainty, but it is nonetheless precise, rigorous.

A definition of a philosophical concept might be required at the beginning of a discussion only in the case that the term is equivocal… implies different things for us… [ and ] are poor substitutes for a skill, namely the ability to use terms successfully… — eat with a Jamal

I think I understand and agree that: starting a philosophical investigation of a concept (separate from a technical "term") with a tidy unexamined single explanation in advance is antithetical to what I take philosophy to be for, which is learning about ourselves through explicating what matters to our concepts.

And, as one who uses Wittgenstein’s and Austin’s methods, I, as well as--I take it--you, believe that there is an implicit understanding of the implications of our concepts in being brought up and trained in the life of our culture, as evidenced in our language (what I take as your expression “shared meaning”).

And that you are right to make the distinction that these are not individual understandings but unexamined conflicting public "uses" of these concepts (Wittgenstein also refers to them with the additional term: "senses").

And that we should not ("ought" not, as @Isaac says) be arguing to persuade the other of our initial position, but working together to see the breadth of our world in openly, seriously "producing" the terms the other is using, by creating examples and imagining a context where they are valid (as pointed out by @plaque flag); to, as Socrates says, stand in the other's place, their shoes. I take this "unfolding", as you say, of our unexamined (shared) lives as the purpose and skill of the philosopher (mirroring @Banno).

I would point out that: philosophy is exactly for when we are lost as to what to do; when, as you say, our understandings of our concepts are “equivocal”, and we don’t yet see why (see the different use(s) of the concept, their different implications). That we don’t yet consciously “know”, and we are “talking past each other”.

So I agree that we should not start by stating and arguing for the right or correct use (as Socrates desired, however fruitful his method), that we are not just naming an "object" (as @Manuel pointed out through Leibniz), but differing about complex actions and ideals, like thinking, meaning, seeing, doing justice, determining right, etc. In these instances there are multiple "categories" (as Kant terms it) for a concept (like "knowing") which (possibly of interest to @frank) each have their own "proper", valid (necessary and sufficient) "conditions" (again, from Kant--Wittgenstein will call them Grammar, or criteria) with my point being that these criteria reflect our various interests, judgments, failings, etc. inherent in our lives together, which is really what we are trying to learn about and reconcile.

Thank you for bringing up an interesting and important topic. I think it will help to address your discussion of Kant (which I'll do separately), to look at why we want these kind of "definitions".

If two people have headaches there is no way of comparing whether both of them are having the same type of pain... Does this mean we are closed off from others in some kind of profound way? — Andrew4Handel

The philosophical problem is created because we are focused on the number of things and their being identical. "They are two people, so how do we know their, say, pain, is identical". And we picture this as when there are two blocks but the identical color; we say the color is the same, and that it is one color.

But with people it is more like when we both have cars; we each have our own car, but if both of our cars are Porsche 911s, we have the same car (to the extent they can be described the same). Wittgenstein puts it like this:

Another person can't have my pains."—Which are my pains? What counts as a criterion of identity here? Consider what makes it possible in the case of physical objects to speak of "two exactly the same", for example, to say "This chair is not the one you saw here yesterday, but is exactly the same as it". In so far as it makes sense to say that my pain is the same as his, it is also possible for us both to have the same pain. — Wittgenstein, Philososphical Investigations, #253

So we can have the same pain ("I have a searing headache on the back of my head", "me too!", as @Banno points out), and memory, dream, thought, etc. However, the real issue is that we each have our own body, so you have to express your pain for it to be said it is the same as mine (my pain is "private" like a secret, not "private" as if unable to be had by another). So we feel unsure of this descriptive solution, as if the problem remains. Philosophy mistakenly takes it as a ("hard") problem of knowledge, in the sense of certainty (and so "correlation" or "identity" become the sticky points).

But the simple truth is that, yes, we can be closed off from others in a profound way. You may not express your pain as the same as mine, and I may reject your expression of pain. This knowledge is different than certainty, it is the acknowledgement of pain. In this sense, I may not acknowledge that you are in pain, react to your claim that you are in pain with: "I know" (your pain). I may not accept that my heartache is the same as yours (I am putting on a brave face; or I won't let you make a fool of me).

Not to be known is thus your conviction (PI, p. 223 3rd), not an intellectual lack (me not being certain of your experience @Michael). Language can bridge any divide between us, but we must remain responsible to being intelligible to each other (Cavell).

the self is a thing just like any other thing. It comes into existence just like every other thing, by being thought of, conceptualized, by a person. — T Clark

I’m not sure we just disagree or whether you misunderstand my point. Not everything in the world is an object, like a tree; some are activities, like pointing or apologizing; some are concepts, like justice, truth, etc; some are logical conceptualizations, like Plato's forms or Kant's thing-in-itself. The idea of a physical or casual "consciousness" is a manifestation of our need for something specific, knowable. The act of naming, as Tzu references, is not the only way language works (we, more generally, particularize, which is I think more to his point). And “consciousness” is not an object. The question is: what matters to us in wanting it to be one? Because, if it is an object, we can know it, be certain about it, and ascribe causality and intention and “thoughts” to it; also, if I have a consciousness, and others do, then we have something certain in “knowing” other minds, say, their pain.

I don't think consciousness handles intention and judgement, it just attaches meaning, labels to them using language. — T Clark

The idea that “consciousness” “attaches” something to words, or “uses” words, is just the desire to have control over the meaning of what we say by internalizing how language works. It's as if: because we have experiences, and we can chose words, that all of language is us putting words to what we are aware of, like labeling it.

I'll just say that of all the functions of the body, none of them amounts to the mathematical, factual/physical certainty that we want for "consciousness"--for ourselves or others; philosophy created this picture, and science chases the image.

If my will is not a thing then how could I be free to pick my words? Again contradiction. — Benj96

I feel like we are rushing past the distinction I am making. I can choose my words, and there is a part of that where I am free (and partly I am constrained); all I am saying is that that is a matter of how freedom is judged to work, not that our choices come from a “will” pictured as a thing, a power or casual object, thus knowable with specific certainty. And the original point being that we picture consciousness in the same way in order to meet our criteria of a knowable predictable generalized special “thing” that makes me “me” amongst everyone. The facts that we are self aware and can choose our words is not generalizable to every act nor to extrapolating that there is something behind it all.

What of it? — Benj96

Yes, you might not care about what I am talking about, which is fine, but I’m not sure you understand the point that putting our requirement for certainty first creates these frameworks, rather than looking at the specific criteria of each act.

being able to take control and actually taking control are two separate things. This is a choice within consciousness. — Benj96

That you can chose to focus on doing something, or make a decision to do it, does not mean you always focus or always make a decision (you don't "intend" what you mean, but you can choose your words carefully); you making things happen (or not) is not how our motions are deemed to be actions. Your "will" is not a thing either; you are free to pick your words if you like, you are then fated to them (the implications of having said them).

You just contradicted yourself from start to finish. Not talking about being sure I exist and ending with do you really exist. — Benj96

You're right; and that was churlish. I was going to delete it.

The difficulty is discerning "self identity" or "human consciousness", "goat consciousness" "dog consciousness etc" from fundamental consciousness (the "I am" sensation). Don't conflate the 2. — Benj96

My point is that philosophy imagines that consciousness is a thing in order to make our part in the world more under our control than it is, more certain. It makes us seem like a given entity, the cause of action and the meaning behind speech. What would be an issue if you pictured a world without "consciousness"? We are aware of (part of) ourselves. We can talk to ourselves. We can focus on sensations. There is more, but why does it have to be consciousness? What are we missing without it?

Consider that I've ripped a paragraph out of a systematic philosophy. — plaque flag

I hope I didn't give the impression of disrespect. Is he not saying that we judge our acts by reasons for and against?

Certainty of the knowledge of ourselves doesn't have to be imposed. — Benj96

I'm not talking about you being sure that you exist (though being self-aware is a pretty low bar to say you're not a sheep, or a puppet, or a dupe, or a "ghost of your former self". You "exist"?; if you are here but it wouldn't matter if it were someone else just as much as you, do "you" really exist? Yes, existence is another idea we ascribe to the world to give it solidity, predictability, certainty).

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that the idea of "consciousness" as something specific, knowable in a "we-can-find-out-about-it" way, as if looking further (perhaps with science!) we could see it (me), as if it has agency or causality, this idea is created so that we can have surety, not about consciousness (its existence), or our self-awareness, but so we can be certain about what others are going to do, about our understanding of ourselves. If it is a thing, an object, or the byproduct of an object, then we know how to handle those with math and the methods of science. We don't have to prove we have a self by being responsible for what we say, because we have "consciousness" which handles intention and meaning and judgment, etc. for us.

Note that Brandom is trying to merely describe what we are and were always already doing as philosophers. He is making this background situatedness explicit. — plaque flag

I understand that we may assess when and whether or how well someone has done something, but it's just that we do not make anything explicit before we do an act (unless we are doing philosophy, or we're lawyers) and, if we are doing that, then reasons for and against are not what we look at, as every act has its own criteria for identity and completion, for missteps, excuses, etc.

Did you ever wrestle with Limited Inc ? — plaque flag

I never did get into that one. I hate to say I read a book about a book, but Stanley Cavell was a student of Austin's, and, in his second chapter of "A Pitch of Philosophy", he discusses the book and how it appears to him that Derrida was responding to a mistake he read into Austin's work, and then later that Derrida had turned presence (or the voice) into something more metaphysical than logos. I have a hard enough time with Hegel, so I skipped it.

The self is not different than any other thing in the world. If what you say is true then what you've written is also true of the rest of reality, not just of our selves. — T Clark

I think I get this, and, yes, the idea of "reality" is also a quality attributed to the world to give it certainty--facts correlate to reality, words refer to reality, etc. That's not to say that there is no reality; it's the opposite of fantasy (what smacks you awake in the face). And words do refer to the world, when we are naming objects (they do much more) but that is not the blueprint for how language works. And we do have facts that are certain; they come from the dependability of the scientific method (you do it; I do it -- same answer? fact).

The self is not a thing like an object. And I know of nothing else in the world that it is like.

what one becomes liable to assessment as to one’s success at doing, is integrating one’s judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception

quoting Bransom

I agree that we may be assessed on our execution of, say, our apology. My only concern is imagining that everything happens before we do anything--like we are using "apperception" all the time. We may not even be judged on our apology, but, even so, we definitely do not usually think of any of the parts--reasons for and against, etc.--until we are judged. We may very well not have a reason, but what responsibility means here is that, if I am to stand behind what I say, I remain open to answer those questions (even if I have to think about what answers to give after the fact of having done it). If we picture communication working that way, then we are a slippery slope from attributing "intention" to each act, or imagining morality as a matter of working out what is best ahead of time.

I have read Austin years ago. He seems to convince himself that he has it all commonsensically figured out and that it is misuse of language and only misuse of language that causes philosophers to tie themselves up with metaphysical knots that can never be unravelled, but rather, like the Gordian knot of legend, can only be cut by the sword, in this case the sword of linguistic analysis. I find that attitude unconvincing because I see it as over-simplistic. — Janus

I can understand seeing it that way. Wittgenstein is better at keeping open the question of why skepticism continues to appear. And, yes, Austin can seem like he is just cataloguing how language works. What he is doing though is looking at: what we say when we.... (know, think, etc.) because the way we talk about those activities shows us what matters to us about the activities. The criteria for having apologized are what count towards being forgiven. So the workings of how we discuss the activity show us what we are interested in about it. The language shows us the world.

We are both paraphrasing influences. But that's beside the point I was trying to make. — plaque flag

I thought it was a question about how I could be certain about the claim I was making. What was your point that I didn't address?

A person's hero myth is roughly the thing they can't easily put in question. — plaque flag

I understand that we want to hold someone to what they say, to have them answer for it, make it intelligible to us. But what if one way they did that was to rescind it? As Emerson would say "Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day" Self Reliance.

How certain would you like to be about your theory about the desire for certainty? — plaque flag

It's actually Wittgenstein, but the claim is made on the evidence of the things we say when we discuss these things: knowledge, intention, meaning, excuses, etc. His method is now referred to as Ordinary Language Philosophy. Drawing out the implications of the way we talk to show how these things work. The "proof" is if you can see it for yourself; come to the same conclusion. I would say the idea of this kind of Truth is that it is accepted, adopted more than justified, which I would agree gives it the feeling of being not tied to specific grounds of the here and now.

I agree that responsibility (responsiveness) is the key to understanding this issue in a new sense. Instead of knowing ahead of time the, say, process of our brains, or my meaning or intention, we should see these issues as a historical process (as Nietszche grasped) to examine what was intended (afterwards) when we deviate from ordinary implications in the context of a case. “Did you intend to do that [unexpected thing—fishy Austin says]?”

I’m not sure of a few things. My claim would be that both philosophers and scientists are prone to the desire for certainty. I guess the “costume” would be the hats we wear in pushing an agenda (of predetermined universality, overlooking our ordinary criteria).

I also wonder what you mean that “unity” and “self” should be taken as the same thing. Thoreau characterizes our self as two, Freud as three. I imagine you mean that we are fated to be held to all of our acts in relation to our (one) self. So when you say we “can’t disagree with ourselves” you are underlining that who we are is subject to all our acts in our, or others’, desire to put us together as a coherent self.

@Fooloso4@Nickolasgaspar@green flag@fdrake@RogueAI@Benj96

I will try to help with the philosophy though I am late to the game. In an attempt to impose certainty on our knowledge of ourselves and others--to try to have control over who we think we are and what we say—philosophy created the idea of "consciousness" (along with subjectivity, internal intention—“my” meaning, qualia, etc.)

Our individual "experience" does not happen in a unique way, unpossessable by others. At times we alone experience something unique, perhaps even inexpressible (a rare sunset). But our self awareness does not characterize our relation to ourselves (define “us”), or to others, or to the world. Wittgenstein saw that, to the extent we come to agree that our pain is similar, it is the same (though we are not "the same" as if identical).

Taking "me" as given and special and building our understanding around that desire is an attempt to remove the unpredictability of people, the vagueries of communication, and our ongoing responsibility to make ourselves intelligible and to respond to the claims of others. These things cannot be secured in advance by the wish for knowledge of something inside ourselves or of others that could be followed, or expressed without having to stand behind what we say and do and be defined by that.

So, what everyone is searching for to either know by science or explain through philosophy is a bogey created by our need for (mathematical-like) certainty or ownership of something that makes us special by default.

I find much of philosophy, however impressively intellectually acrobatic it might be, tedious and uninspiring. If it lacks poetry, then I lack interest — Janus

I find Emerson inspiring, though it can be hard to make out how he is doing analytical philosophy (following Kant and Descartes and Socrates). Nietzsche is as arcane unfortunately. The later Heidegger (Poetry Language Thought in particular) is a kind of poetry. I would try an essay of J.L. Austin’s too. Although pedestrian, it is refreshing to see him actually get somewhere with issues that tie others in knots, though again it can be hard to take him as dealing with the same issues as the tradition.

an acceptance/knowledge of death is a liberation from dread and anxiety and an open door to freedom? — Tom Storm

When Socrates, in the Pheado, says philosophers "practice death", he meant that, as death releases the "soul" from the body, so do philosophers release pure truth from the deceptive body, distracting desires, opinions, biases, etc. Cicero believed we should "meditate" on death, and Montaigne picked that up in saying: "Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die has unlearned to serve." Essay #20. His point being that if we are not afraid of losing life, we are free to live it.

Ignoring death--not being afraid of it happening, of our losing life--can look like we are focusing on "life". We are "in the moment" and pursuing "feeling alive"--Derrida refers to this, I believe, as Presence. However, if you ask any psychotherapist they will tell you that we do not fear death so much as we fear life.

It has been said that those who are afraid to die are afraid to live.... — Janus

Perhaps dread is a terrified resistance to the endless rush forward of life, as if one note from the horn refused to die to make way for the next.... Is the expansion of identity precisely the destruction of its pettier identifications? — green flag

Emerson believed that we grew in partial circles which we had to close in order to form each version of our self. The picture is an adolescent becoming an adult, first having any and every opportunity open to them, but then stepping into the world and becoming a lawyer, etc. It's also pictured as the time before speaking (before suffering I think the Buddhist would say), when our experience of the world can be immeasurable, and so fitting that into a word is a kind of violence, and expressing it to others is putting it on the record--as if thought were alive and writing was dead.

As I read Heidegger his notion of death does not refer (predominately at least) to physical death, but to the closing off of many possibilities that comes with committing oneself to anything. — Janus

So I would agree that "not fearing death" is not to ignore it, or think of it always, or to focus on "living", but to have the courage to define ourselves in committing to form and structure and institutions and the judgment of others; to speak despite the inadequacies of our expressions and still be held to our words as if all that we are was in them, with everything else dying each time.

I presume sensory simple mistakes are not the essence of the question. — Alexander Hine

Not sure who you are responding to, but, for my part, the whole exercise of looking at mistakes is to see that we judge them based on what act was being done and how any deviation could be excused by a response from the actor. So the essence of the issue is our criteria for judging what matters to each type of action (and also in this instance)--what counts. So a "[simple] sensory mistake", if I understand that right as, say, seeing something (mistakenly) as something it is not, could be what matters when I shoot my neighbor's donkey instead of mine. The excuse would be that "my eyes played tricks on me" or something similar, but this only shows that that particular excuse is rare and not "essential" to most acts. But the ordinary excuse would probably take the form of: "I wasn't paying close attention", as there is the expectation of care in acting, especially shooting something, and it is the expectation which is important here, not our sensations or my experience of the incident.

a failing in any part (knowledge to execution) can lead to an undesired outcome and thus a mistake. — Benj96

My point (well, Austin's) before was that we have to be clear about the circumstances and describe them accordingly; a mistake is different than an accident, etc., and not every act incorporates all the list of things that an act can. You may not have knowledge, or planning, have executed it perfectly, etc., and this comes into play in judging and excusing.

And, as you say, nothing may go wrong at all in our view, which is what I take you to mean in doing a "good" thing. And this would be something you would justify if someone disagreed, not beg to be excused. You would argue it was not a bad or wrong act. Again, there is admitting I did it and justifying that the act was right or good, but, separately, denying it was me that did it, or that I (fully) did it.

For me, whether a mistake is forgivable or not is primarily based on intent. Intent can be good or bad. How you act out intent can also be good or bad. — Benj96

Which brings me to my main point. Austin will comment that, in philosophy, there is a lot of hand-wringing about "cause", "intention", "effect", "consequence"--thus Hume's attempt at explaining the moral compass in each of us (and our praise and blame) and Kant's reaction to try to remove our feelings from moral consideration altogether by making our judgment logically necessary or categorical (beforehand). What Austin is doing is taking every single act as its own category (with different--mostly external--criteria for what makes up a mistake, accident, etc.) as well as taking into consideration the exact situation (context) and this specific occurrence (here, now, to be drawn out as much as necessary).

My point is that judgment based on one's intent is taken from an oversimplification of action pictured as happening one way; Austin uses the example of pushing a rock (Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is about looking at tons of examples). In the simple (generalized) case, we make a conscious decision of what to do and how, we "cause" ourselves to move, and we anticipate (intend) a particular result or consequence. However, more types of examples show that we so rarely consider our acts or decide or think what exactly to say--much less that we can even be aware of all the implications, which do not depend on us--that we will find that intention and causality are internalized by philosophy onto every instance only in order to have control, universality of theory, "knowledge", when both are actually only investigated after the act and determined not by our good or bad intention (as some ever-present internal force of mine) but through parcing it out from the shared expectations of this situation (Wittgenstein calls these an act's Grammar, which are the criteria Austin is drawing out for each type of excuse--what makes something a "mistake"). We only ask about intention when something is unexpected: "Did you intend to do that (bad, weird, unexpected act)?" "No, I didn't even cause it to happen; he pushed me!"

That is not to say that with some acts it does matter why (or whether) I did choose to do something--judging between 1st and 2nd degree murder; judging someone who chose to send a missle or did it mistakenly (they wanted to send something else), or, more likely, accidentally (Whoops! Wrong button!) The imaging of ever-present "intention" or "cause" gets at our relationship to responsibility (and freedom) for our actions. But looking at all the different ways we get out of responsibility or say our freedom (to act) was limited, shows it is not always (or even most times) the case there is a good or bad motive. This also shows that having a predetermined judgment of what acts are good and which are bad is not what is really a "moral" situation (just following rules), as most moral theory struggles with and stumbles upon. This is why Nietszche implored us to move beyond good and evil (side-stepping the deontological-teleological-emotive debate).

J.L. Austin has an essay called "A Plea for Excuses". It is actually about morality, looking at how a normal act gets screwed up, to see how we make amends, learn our responsibility, understand our freedom, etc. He says it starts with someone being accused (even ourselves) of doing something (wrong, bad, poorly, etc). Now admitting the act and denying it was bad is to justify it, which is what most moral theory tries to do (even beforehand -oo- Kant). But to admit it was bad but deny responsibility is to make an excuse, which turns on how (me) doing something works at all.

He looks at the things we say (doing Ordinary Language Philosophy) in making excuses to see how action works. He learns it is broken into parts: knowledge, decision, planning, resolve, execution, etc. But in the case of a mistake it falls under a failure to realize or appreciate the situation. Ultimately every case has its own standards and some excuses fold together, even here with inadvertence, absence of mind, not to mention sheer, mere, simple, etc. but sometimes these distinctions are everything; the more serious or complex the act may call for a closer look at the details of the situation, the context in that case.

To the point at hand, he says "In an accident something befalls; by mistake you take the wrong one; in error you stray..." Philosophical Papers, pp. 201-202. His example of a mistake would be writing Dairy instead of Diary on your new book, but elsewhere he says you may go to shoot your donkey and find you have shot your neighbor's--by mistake (mistakenly taking one for the other). If you go to shoot your donkey and miss and hit his cow--that's an error. If the gun misfires and kills anything, that's an accident.

Now you go to plead your case to your neighbor, and out will come any mitigating circumstances (no coffee blurry-eyed; donkeys all look the same; he just bought a donkey? you didn't know!). Does how bad you feel have anything to do with whether your neighbor will forgive you? Maybe; depends. Will it matter in the case of labeling your journal Dairy? Depends on the judge.