An essence is that quality/property necessary for a thing to be that thing. If an essence is absent, then a thing stops being that thing, we're talking about something else entirely. A wolf forebear is an essence of a dog. — TheMadFool

This actually catches some of what is important that Witt is pointing out, particularly that the grammar of a thing (the way it works, or not) expresses what makes a thing that thing. But to term it as a quality/property is to put "essence" into the framework of an object. For one thing, since there are a number of criteria for judging whether a thing is a thing, that would mean there would be multiple "essences", which would defeat the unexamined reason that we need to create it: to be "necessary", in other words, to be determinate, to be decisive--to create certainty in our relation to the thing. As well, in saying "essence" there is a tendency to imagine one generalized picture for what an essence is, how it works; when the criteria for an apology and of a table are not only categorically differentiating, but the criteria for which can be structured completely differently, such as that moral responsibility does not work as a function of knowledge.

To take a fact about a thing as the essence of it is to miss that our criteria for determining a thing are made up of what matters to us about something, what interests us, what makes up why we judge it the way we do. The impersonalization of a scientific categorization is fixed and certain but is not what matters to us in most cases. We could argue that the essence of a dog is loyalty, unconditional love--that the essence of a dog is that it is our best friend. A definition is set by us (if not just a list of examples), as a criteria can be when it is a standard, such as measuring (these are not the criteria Witt find illuminating). A dog is defined as: ____, and pick whatever fact you'd like. It is necessarily a mammal, does that tell us why it is important to us?

Wittgenstein is right in saying words lack an essence but words and definitions are two entirely different things. — TheMadFool

The point is that words can be defined individually, independently; that is possible to define words. This ability to put together these definitions is what makes us feel we can understand a sentence without a context, without it having been first said. To say that our definitions capture what is essential, means that it is us who strips away the ordinary criteria for judging, identifying, a seeing how a thing works. And we do this in order to have control and presage our communications rather than be responsible for them.

You can refer to objects with words--say "Cat" when you see a cat; the use here could be naming, or identifying, or seeing. But this will not tell us anything about a cat's essence (what is essential to us about them) other than it is an object that can be seen, identified, and named (though even as: Fluffy).
— Antony Nickles

Why not? A cat is a domesticated small species of feline. These are the essences of a cat. — TheMadFool

This is a description of a cat; these are facts about a cat for identifying a cat, say, from a dog, or a tiger. These are not the essence of a thing that philosophy seeks. The criteria for a table could be that it is flat and has four legs; but someone might disagree that a table is anything on which we share a dinner. If we can let go of the fantasy that the essence of an object or concept is some fixed universal property that is certain and continuous, than we can begin to have a discussion about what is essential--what is important about the world, captured in how we live and judge and identify. What you find essential about justice and what I do has depth and weight and matters to us (all). Though sometimes that can't be reconciled does not mean the discussion should be cast aside in exchange for rules and meanings and an "essence" (without us).

That said, there is a certain interpretation of Wittgenstein I've warmed up to viz. philosophy, all discourse in fact, is simply symbolic manipulation... Nobody understands a word they're saying is my point à la Wittgenstein's ladder. — TheMadFool

If you want to dismiss philosophy, there is every opportunity. I would offer that you suspend the urge to simplify and judge; you will not be better for having put a label on something and trivialized it. The person who started writing the Tractatus is not the same person who wrote the end of it. It is an exploration of what could be said given a certain standard. The ladder are all the claims he can make in the Tractatus with such certainty because no one would object. (Later in the PI, he will say "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them." #128) They are not without sense, but there is no sense in having said them. Having gotten through saying them all, he finds himself without anything to say. Yet he is lucid, transcendent, aright. It is a catharsis and expiation of his desire to fix the world to a criteria of certainty that he began with. In Philosophical Investigations, he turns towards what in the Tractatus he calls philosophers' "nonsense", to take that seriously and understand the motivation for it.

Wouldn't we say it is more in the sense of "Hey, I thought you had a headache."--as in confused, requesting confirmation; rather than a question (despite the question mark). — Antony Nickles

Which goes to my point that we often distinguish — and need to distinguish, for conversations to make any sense — the literal, conventional meaning of what we say from the use we are making of it in the circumstances. "Don't you have a headache?" does not mean "Hey, I thought you had a headache" or "I am confused about your headache status," but we can use it that way. — Srap Tasmaner

(emphasis added)

In the PI, Witt is trying to get us to see why we want there to be such a thing as a "literal, conventional meaning" (a "meaning"). It is the logic of our concepts that make an expression possible, but it is the circumstances which make the expression interpretable. We do not know the use of an expression until it is said in a situation (sometimes even ourselves, as speaker); we may not know the concept even without some sorting out, as we did in this case. As I said earlier, a misleading fact about language is that every word can have a definition (PI, #1), so we can look at a sentence in isolation, without a context, and it appears to have "a meaning". But, of course, even with the simplest cases--like someone saying "Slab!" (#19)--we learn that how something is meaningful to us is tied up with the importance to us (all) of ordering, pointing, seeing, responding, acknowledging, etc. (To understand a sentence means to understand a language. PI #199) That we must have our whole lives to draw on in order to understand a sentence. The idea that a sentence has a meaning (like an object, even a similarly-structured "use") comes from the desire to have a direct, certain, complete, immediate, correlation between what we say and what it "means" (a word and its referent; an object and its essence). There is no simple picture anymore for philosophy after Wittgenstein.

The other part of this is harder for people to hear (accept), as it means our role in language is much less than we had hoped. In saying language is not structured as having meanings, Wittgenstein is not simply proposing a replacement for "meaning" in the same picture with his suggestion to look at the use of a concept. We distinguish between the possibilities of a concept (like knowing), but only when conversations don't go as expected; a sentence can pass unnoticed, without meaning anything at all (a type of non-sense). This means that intention is a question asked when there is something odd about an expression, not an accompaniment to everything we say. Although some expressions are said intentionally, what is meaningful about them is not how we use them . The use is seen in the expression (afterwards). Our wish for certainty is a desire to have control over "the use" of an expression, so that we can avoid our responsibility afterwards for what we have said.

The question I am focused on is whether, in denying that a sentence is useful in some circumstance, do we deny that it is meaningful? Do we deny that it could carry a truth-value?
* * *
that's what meaning is--- use in a language-game. If a sentence is not useful, then it's nonsense. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't want to run off topic here but the term "use" captures that language can not be meaningful beforehand (as if in a "meaning" or by anticipated rules), that concepts (knowing, pointing, threatening, believing) can have multiple possibilities and various conditions and criteria, so we have to wait until something is expressed at a time, in a place, to an audience, within the context of expectations and implications, etc. that are inherent in a real situation (a full context). The actual "context" does not even create something specific but just the variables of the moment to clarify or question the expression in relation to any number of unexplored contingencies. It may be that a concept is even extended to something new based on a new context (or in a moral moment).

So, "use" plays a part in what is meaningful because, once something is said, then we can look at the expression and the context, what the concept appears to be, its criteria, the possible judgments, etc. and see what sense of a concept we are talking about. And here sense is synonymous with use, and they are like options of the concept and expression, as we have talked about "I know" as in the sense of being aware (or I know in its use as: I can justify).

It is not a utilitarian judgement of what is useful, as in practical. It is not what I "use" my words for, as if I control how they will be meaningful (though I can control what I say).

So@Srap Tasmania, denying that an expression has a use (in the associated concept) does not mean it is meaningless, though its impact might just be to raise brows. And I wouldn't think we could consider every use of a concept as being normative like truth is, but we would need examples of both of these to even start a discussion.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Meaning is use. Check.

Therefore, I can use words as signs to refer to things, their essences. — TheMadFool

You can refer to objects with words--say "Cat" when you see a cat; the use here could be naming, or identifying, or seeing. But this will not tell us anything about a cat's essence (what is essential to us about them) other than it is an object that can be seen, identified, and named (though even as: Fluffy).

if you can sensibly say you know you have a headache, you ought to be able sensibly to say that you don't know you have a headache. — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps there might be occasions where it would make sense to say. But I can’t think of any and I’d imagine they would be exceptional circumstances. — Luke

In this case, as I said earlier, that "I know I have a headache" is "know" in the sense of being aware. To decide what we can "sensibly say" is to imagine that we can understand the context and impact of what we say before it happens, which is not how language works. For example, before judging what use "know" has in the sentence "I don't know that I have a headache", we need a context (as anything does). Here, imagine that you see me wincing and holding my head, and ask "Do you have a headache?", and I turn my head and squint and say, "I don't know that I have a headache, it's more like my neck is sore and I'm getting shooting pain up through my scalp." So here we could say that "know" is related to its sense of what we would make a claim about, what we would stand behind to justify--"I wouldn't say I have a headache, so much as...". As @Banno pointed out though, if you asked "What justifies your knowledge?" I would be at a loss as to how to reply, but if you asked "Are you sure?", I could say "No, it's weird; let's go to the doctor". Now there is a sense of certainty that we want from the first question about justification, which is reliable (verifiable) truth. But in this use of know, the certainty (we can't claim) here is confidence, thus the turn to authority.

Now even the imagining of the context for a concept is not to tell if we can "sensibly say" it or whether we can judge it as nonsense--philosophy is not the arbitor of expression. The method is to be able to bring a concept back to its ordinary criteria to learn why we want to picture it another way, here as reliable, justified truth. Again, the importance for philosophy is its tendency to simplify by abstracting from the event of an expression at a time in a context to a world without criteria other than those that lead to an outcome that is predictable and certain.

As well, the converse or negation of a statement is not necessarily its opposite; Austin's example is that the opposite of "voluntary" is more like "under constraint" than "involuntary", the opposite of which is "on purpose".

There are a couple things to note about this. One is that "Don't you have a headache?" is a yes-or-no question... — Srap Tasmaner

Wouldn't we say it is more in the sense of "Hey, I thought you had a headache."--as in confused, requesting confirmation; rather than a question (despite the question mark).

What an amazing attempt at building up a distinction where none exists... Pain is objective... And nobody in real pain ever gave a rat's ass for, say, Mars' atmosphere. — Olivier5

Oh good, you figured it out! Enjoy your Kant; we're done.

The method Witt uses in imagining a context for an expression is to show that the sentence is meaningful,
— Antony Nickles

Was it meaningless when originally said here a few pages back? — Srap Tasmaner

The emphasis is being able to show a context; in this way we can see the implications of the expression, the way in which it works (it's grammar) and thus which sense of the concept, what use it is here. TMF's original sentence is meaningful because all the words can be, but there is, as yet, no context (despite its being a retort here) in which we can see which use of know this is and what the sentence tells us of the implications to the concept of sensations. To say the sentence is more/different than I have outlined is to have a different context/example or to be able to say there is something objectionable in my description, reasonably, with evidence (what else we say when we say that).

In the case of a pain, were the only justification is the pain itself, it is simply not possible to provide the necessary evidence. — Banno

I knew there was a more definitive criteria of the sense of knowledge I was trying to contrast with that of being aware for @Olivier5, but I couldn't come up with this, so thank you. I would add that the flip-side is that our impotence to prove our sensations to the other outside of our expression of them makes the other's rejection of our pain all the more isolating, which adds to the desire for a picture that ensures our ability to communicate who we are to someone else as if it were just a matter of simply describing some thing that is certain and complete (all that is required) to be known/justified in a way that defies rejection, ensures acceptance.

Does [You can't correctly be said to know you have an itch. @Banno] mean it's incorrect to say I know I have a headache? "Incorrect" how? In the sense that it's false? Or does "I know I have a headache", despite appearances, have no truth-value? — Srap Tasmaner

Earlier, here, I said:

In what context would we say "I know I have a headache."? Maybe when you've made it aware to me that you have a headache, then, when I see you a little while later and you have an ice pack on your knee, and I point to your head and shrug, saying "Don't you have a headache?", you might look at me (like I'm an idiot) and say "I know I have a headache." -- but this is in the sense of "Duh, I know", as in the use (grammatical category) of: I am aware. — Antony Nickles

The method Witt uses in imagining a context for an expression is to show that the sentence is meaningful, that there are ordinary criteria for judging such a use of I know (as that I am aware), in order to show (by contrast) that the criteria are just not what we want--as an answer to the skeptic that there is in fact something in me that is "me" (rather than pain just being mine), which the example of pain seems to provide with its intensity (apparent inability not to be known) and seeming certainty (that our knowledge is unshakable, rather than not certain at all). The need to "know" our pain in this way removes any context (and our human part in someone's pain) and imposes criteria like correctness and truth-value of the pain. For pain, we judge the expression not the pain, though I may judge the pain by the expression ("That's not quite it")--not having the words (quite yet), not paying attention, not fully aware of my repressed pain, being mistaken out of shock. Others' judgement is also not by the criteria of correctness or truth in correspondence, but it works in the ways that I can lie or be mistaken, and all you have is to accept my expression as a person in pain, or reject the expression (question me or dismiss me).

What is the sense of "knowledge like that of an object"?... I believe that my pain can be known in the exact same sense that any other object can be known: perceived via the senses and explained rationally by the intellect. — Olivier5

We could say we "perceived via the senses"(empirically) and can explain pain "rationally" as neurons firing and tissue swelling and brain processes (this is me being sciency). But my pain is not explained or justified; we don't use reasons, but, at best, describe our pain, yet, in describing it, we are expressing it (even to ourselves, as in, becoming aware of it in that way) because it is ours, we have it. I don't even need to be (necessarily) aware of my pain nor say anything to me or you intellectually rational, because I can merely cry out; and now, substitute words. #244

For how can I go so far as to try to use language to get between pain and its expression? — Witt, PI #245

With an object, we have the space (between us and it) to create the picture of a word and the thing it refers to. This kind of thing can be given qualities and must meet criteria like discrete, defined, perceivable, certain. And in this space I can have knowledge in the sense of what is true. This picture of an object is not how pain works; there is no pain that is true for me, there is no criteria to meet other than my awareness of it and my expression (description) of it to you. Now I can lie (to myself and you) and I can do a better or worse job of expressing my pain, but that will only matter to the extent of the context--doctor's appointment, request for sympathy, comparison to your pain, etc.--and not as knowledge, say, of Mars' atmosphere.

I don't think there is such a strong difference in kind between sentences and words. — Banno

Well I took this up above, but the idea that a sentence like "I know I am in pain" looks like it is meaningful in the abstract is because words can be defined (however partially, they can) and so we can imagine we understand what this sentence does. But a sentence is like an expression, which is meaningful by the criteria of a concept, as what I say can be judged to be a threat or an apology, or that only in an expression are we able to determine which use of a word applies.

@Banno

By grammar, my hunch is, Wittgenstein is talking about the rules of a given language game. However none of the articles I read on Wittgenstein's theory gives any information on what that actually looks like? What's your take on this matter? — TheMadFool

It might save time to find the phrase "Essence is expressed by grammar" on the first page and see if that post makes sense. But I would say the criteria for judgement rather than rules, as rules are not always our criteria.

@Banno

Another Wittgensteinian idea I haven't got a handle on is the so-called rule following paradox. — TheMadFool

This is really one you have to read with the larger context of the whole discussion of rule-following, but I did another discussion of Cavell's critique of Kripke's reading of Witt as relying on rules (rather than investigating them as an example), instead of drawing out each thing's criteria, so maybe this topic goes there. But Cavell looks at the "paradox" as the same as Witt's imagining of a "private language"--that the "paradox" is between the nature of rules needing interpretation, endlessly, and our desire to be certain that if we follow this rule we will be correct (right), rather than looking at each thing as having different criteria (even different types).

@Srap Tasmaner

It seems weird to refer to language-games without reference to correctness, and it seems self-sealing. I can always say someone else's language-game isn't a language-game, because the word is not doing anything. And, in many cases this can be demonstrated, but in other cases, it's not an easy thing to do. Does this mean that there are cases that will never be resolved? Maybe that's just what it means. Is that just the nature of language. It seems to be. This is the point about my post. — Sam26

Maybe it would help with some examples. Let's say, making an apology. Now, I can judge that what someone else is saying is not an apology, but I would probably ask: "Was that supposed to be an apology? You don't even sound sorry!" But this is not to say it is doing, nothing. And Austin would say they did not pull it off, not that it was "incorrect" (that correctness is not the criteria). And we can say that, e.g., an apology is not the correct, as in appropriate, thing to say if we didn't do it; that we should offer an excuse instead, but it is hard to see in what sense we would argue that excuses are not correct in themselves, as a practice.

But another example might be, say, making a claim for justice. Now the implications (the workings) of such a claim is to call into question what is just, and so to say their words do nothing is not just to say they are not making a correct claim (or making it incorrectly, say, by using violence), but to deny them access to justice. We are now in the moral realm where what we decide to do is based on who we are willing to be--this is the way that works--so, yes, this case may never be resolved, but it is not the nature of language, but our human condition.

So the essence of (what is essential about) a "language-game" (AKA, Witt's term: concept)--the criteria for judgment in it or of it, what interests us about it, its "grammar", may not be correctness (or even rule-based).

why this is the statement that he feels he needs to make, such as that, say, my categorizing our relationship with pain as expression takes away having something fixed and constant about ourselves.
— Antony Nickles

I suppose it's taking away or not mentioning self-awareness, or more precisely in this specific case of pain, it takes away or does not mention our capacity for introspection (conscious perception of sensations from inside the body) of pain. In short: pain is an MIS for the body, a carrier of information that can be reliably acquired, consciously examined and thus in some measure known and recognised as such by the subject. — Olivier5

I specifically said that knowledge in this case is its sense as awareness (thus sometimes it can not be "reliably acquired" as we are not aware of it, have repressed our pain). And to say "in some measure known" is to be aware of it (in me) and to express (to you). None of this is the sense of knowledge like that of an object.

We cling to the aspiration for the ideal but simply accept that we only "approximate" it, are "relativistic" to it.
— Antony Nickles

What else can we do than try and approach truth? — Olivier5

The point here is there is not an essence of a thing (like an object) which we know in the same way as everything else. So, epistemologically, everything has a different way it is judged (even outside of knowledge), and, for some of them, it is not truth, or an ideal, or certainty. We nevertheless have ordinary criteria to judge what interests us about it, what is essential about it to us (all).

Words have definitions;
— Antony Nickles

You so sure? Perhaps, so long as you don't mistake the definition for the use, or for the meaning. — Banno

To, clarify: words can be defined, as in, they have that possibility, unlike sentences.

let the thing tell us how to grasp it with its ordinary criteria
— Antony Nickles

The word "its" there is odd, though, isn't it? Why isn't it, "our ordinary criteria"? — Srap Tasmaner

That's a good point. I said it to emphasize the fact that each thing, like knowing, believing, pointing, has different criteria and grammar than others--say, not everything submits to true/false statements, or that knowledge works differently about pain than it does about objects. I did not want to differentiate that criteria are the thing's criteria, rather than ours. I feel like any attempts to force the question of ownership would miss that things and us and criteria are all wrapped up together in our lives (we'd get trapped into a subject/object picture).

We cling to the aspiration for the ideal
— Antony Nickles
* * *
I think language is inherently idealizing, and when we talk about it, we're idealizing the idealizing already there...." — Srap Tasmaner

I would say that language has the possibility to lead to problems, one reason is that words have definitions individually, so when we put them together we imagine a sentence has meaning in the same way. But if you look at the way Witt describes the interlocutor, it is the person creating the picture, language is only the means of our bewitchment.

When we believe that we must find that order, must find the ideal, in our actual language, we become dissatisfied with what are ordinarily called "propositions", "words", "signs". — Witt, PI #105

when [Witt] describes the language-game in which an Important Word has its 'original home' (was that the phrase?) [yes** -A.N.], is not a use devoid of idealization, but how idealization works, and how it can be used to do work. — Srap Tasmaner

I agree with the sentiment here, but we are not so much "idealizing", as searching for understanding, truth, depth, breadth, clarity, a sense of solidity, progress; that we still want to understand the world, and, with language in its ordinary uses, we have traction to look into what interests us, what is essential about something, only that we no longer impose the criteria for its "essence".

When philosophers use a word a “knowledge”, “being”, “object”, “I”, “proposition/sentence”, “name” a and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language in which it is at [**] home? What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. — Witt, PI #116

I'm not convinced by this "clinging" image, or by pointing the finger at our "desire" for certainty, as if the trouble is some psychological quirk. — Srap Tasmaner

I wouldn't dismiss it as quirky, or psychological (if that is to mean the position humans are in does not matter in our search for truth), but that Witt is talking about the human condition. The wish to exclude the human from the equation is the step (desire) to abstract to criteria that lead to certainty. The voice of the interlocutor is at times desperate, emphatic, worried, absorbed, tempted, etc. The desire I mention is the "must" in the following:

We want to say that there can't be any vagueness in logic. The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal 'must' be found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this "must". We think it must be in reality; for we think we already see it there. — Witt, PI #101

why does he feel he has to make this statement?
— Antony Nickles

You were proposing that sensations are felt, but not known, and he thought that it was incorrect, so he told you... — Olivier5

Is this the "context" in which he said it? Saying it is incorrect doesn't even say how it is incorrect, much less why this is the statement that he feels he needs to make, such as that, say, my categorizing our relationship with pain as expression takes away having something fixed and constant about ourselves.

at what point is your knowledge not just your expression?
— Antony Nickles

Before I express it. — Olivier5

The question was asked in response to a back-and-forth were I was expressing my pain and it was being accepted as known; the reason for the question was because if our language can reach any depth of pain, than there is nothing leftover to know except what is unexpressed. But to address your taking it as a point on a chronological line, yes, there is a time before which we express our pain to others (or ourselves), but this is just to say that we are aware of it, which we may not be.

What's leading somewhere though, is paying attention to what others are saying — Olivier5

You mean like saying "You were proposing that sensations are felt, but not known", when I said we have pain, we are aware of it (or repress it), we express it (or suppress it), and it is acknowledged by others (or rejected).

So the biggest error in your para above is ["we want to be sure I cannot fail to know myself"]. We will always fail at understanding ourselves completely. — Olivier5

And here, I was not making a statement or a claim; I was describing why everyone has a desire for certainty--the formulation "we" and "I" is because we all fall prey to this temptation.

But just because absolute certainty and truth is beyond grasp does not mean that we cannot approximate truth here or there. — Olivier5

And this is the tipping point, when we realize we cannot know something with certainty, completely. We do not then abandon true/false statements, or rules, or knowledge, or word-referent and let the thing tell us how to grasp it with its ordinary criteria. We cling to the aspiration for the ideal but simply accept that we only "approximate" it, are "relativistic" to it.

This [that Witt is not looking at language itself], I suspect, is your interpretation. — TheMadFool

Nothing I can say will tell you anything so that you won't have to see for yourself.

From what I read from SEP, no one seems to have a handle on what Wittgenstein really meant to convey. — TheMadFool

Can everyone please stop thinking philosophy is like facts; that we can just sum it up in a couple sentences and put it in a box and we've, what? learned something? have the popular answer? reached a consensus?

Then it's no longer language language is it? — TheMadFool

That's a bit harsh. He changes the direction of philosophy and he isn't entitled to a term to generally refer to what takes him a whole book to set out. No forms? no thing-in-itself? no means of production?

When I read the word "grammar" in Wittgenteinian philosophy I immediately think language but when I dig deeper it's got a technical meaning that has nothing to do with grammar in the linguistic sense. I fear the so-called linguistic turn, true to Wittgenstein's own pronouncements, is in name only. — TheMadFool

People calling it "the linguistic turn" is, of course, a misnomer (as if Austin just wanted to label "speech-acts"). He is not looking at language itself (although meaning is one of the concepts he investigates). He is looking at our expressions to learn about the structure of different things in our world. The claims he makes are based on the fact that our criteria and the conditions of our concepts are part of us, what we say reflects how we actually work in the world; when we ask: "What do we mean (imply) when we say 'I know I am in pain' " we learn about the implicit workings (essence) of our lives.

You've missed my whole point. I guess I didn't explain it well enough — Sam26

I believe we just disagree. I was making a different claim about "use" and showing the limitations of correctness (and rules; as if to say: there are all kinds of coins)--that rules are not essential to what is meaningful.

not just any use conveys meaning — Sam26

If it is a use of a concept it is a meaningful sense of the concept. It is not my use (say, as if intended); a use is a possibility of the concept (although concepts may be extended into new contexts and then the use and the meaningfulness is of course tested--this is where our responsibility comes into play).

Maybe there just isn’t any precision here. It’s just like the command, “Stand here!” There is no X that marks the spot, but this response can’t be satisfying, at least not to me. — Sam26

As Witt will say about vagueness (~#98) and blurriness (#71), an imprecise expression can sometimes be better than an exact one. The unsatisfying part may be that rules do not apply to vague statements--that our desire for completeness and certainty is unfulfilled. But to say "Stand roughly there!" (#71) and point is all that is essential in my expressing this to you; it makes a distinction from down the street, and there is no reason (given the context Witt provides) to take this as anything except a use of a command--why "must" (#101) we have something exact? how exact (exactly) in this case?

I guess so but I have a feeling the word "grammar" has a rather unconventional meaning in your post and Wittgenstein's writings if he ever uses it. — TheMadFool

Well yes, it's a technical term the way he uses it. He is getting at what expresses the essence of a particular "concept" (another technical term, but just a grouping of activities and things, like knowing, believing, pointing, playing chess, guessing at thoughts, following rules, etc.). And the essence of something is how we identify it from something else, what matters about it to us, how we judge whether it is done appropriately, how it can go wrong, etc. These are the ordinary criteria that are implicit in how things have come together in our lives over all this time, so they embody our interests and judgments and conditions--what is essential to us (our culture) about each thing. And each thing has a different grammar, even different senses of the same concept, like knowing--as being aware, acknowledging, knowing your way about, etc., which are really only able to be figured out in the context of something happening because of the possibilities of a concept, its "uses" (which is another term of Witt's, for saying in which sense).

there is no exact definition that will convey every possible use in our language. — Sam26

Words have definitions; sentences do not, concepts do not. How they are meaningful is not a matter of definition; that is not how they work. The fact that words can have definitions makes sentences like @TheMadFool's sentence about knowing a headache you have, appear to have (or be able to have) a clear meaning.

there is no easy method for determining what looks like a language-game from that which IS a language-game — Sam26

The method Witt employs is to look at the history of our expressions (or imagined expressions) as data to make explicit a claim about the implications of what we say, how (in what way) they are meaningful to us when we imagine them in different contexts (their different uses, possibilities). The response to the skeptic is to remove any context, any criteria--Witt is bringing us back to our ordinary criteria.

There has to be some criteria by which we judge correctness here. And yet, nothing is definitive. — Sam26

There are some things that can be done correctly: measuring, a wedding vow; there are also things where it might be overkill to say we do them "correctly": pointing, doubting; and there are things were "correctness" does not apply--where there is no measure of having met a predetermined standard (say, a rule) that would ensure it was right: a call for justice, artistic expression, the extension of a concept into a new context, etc. That is not to say these things do not have any criteria (anything essential about them), but just that correctness is not the way they work (though we desire to have meaning work one way--word here and essence there).

Tylenol? Aspirin? Pain medication. They seem to work for everybody as if everybody's pain is the same. The beetle, in this case at least, each of us has in our private box is identical...or not? — TheMadFool

To the extent my pain goes away with the same medication, my pain is the same as your pain (as it were, essentially--a grammatical claim on the sense of "sameness" as it relates to sensations). They are the same pain but in two separate bodies (as color can be the same on two separate objects)--this is the fundamental fact that makes expression and acceptance the grammar of sensations.

TMF's statement does not need a context--that's been the point (above). Every word has a meaning, so no context is needed
— Antony Nickles

That is not what I wrote. — Olivier5

I was not paraphrasing what you wrote. I am pointing out the lack of necessity of a context--all that is needed is a definition of pain and of knowledge; so I provided a counter-example. Do we feel the "context" of TMF's statement is complete? that the implications do not need to be spelled out more because of our ability to see that it could be a sense of knowledge?

There was no need to try and find another context for it, other than you wanting to avoid dealing with TMF's point, that feeling is knowing. — Olivier5

The question is, what does that lead to? imply? do we understand how that is meaningful? I gave a counter-example of not knowing (being aware of) our pain. In response to another post above, I gave a reading of his claim as a grammatical claim about our ownership of our pain--our "having" it.

I will attempt to make another sense of it. TMF's claim could be in the sense that: when I have pain, I [can't help but] know that I have pain--I am pierced through with it. But we could simple ask, why does he feel he has to make this statement? (other than as a defense to what is perceived as my threat "But surely another person can't have THIS pain!" Witt, PI #253).

Is "When I have a headache, I know I have a headache" more than: when I am in pain, I know I am in pain. How is this not tautological? Couldn't "I am in pain" be all that is necessary? but what then do we "know"? Isn't "I am in pain" simply to say (to myself) I am aware that I am in pain? How else is this knowledge? What else is it knowledge of? As I said before, I can express my pain: "I have a scratchy throat" and you can say: "Oh, I know what that is like", and you can object "No, its not a a regular sore throat, it's like fire at the bottom", and then: "Oh, yeah that's happened to me." And you can begin again, but at what point is your knowledge not just your expression? In what context does something remain that you "know" apart from your expression? How is it more than your expression so as to be known?

But, yes, there is a truth to what TMF is saying. It is the expression of a desire for knowledge of a certain kind. I grant that it is not awareness, it is not repression, it is more than just working out my relationship to my pain and your reaction to it; it is the kind of knowledge that is important. None of my examples satisfy the criteria of a certain, constant, specific sensation. Before we even look at what my pain is, much less how pain is meaningful/how it works, we want to be sure I cannot fail to know myself, that there is something essential in my experience, so we manufacture a picture that can meet those requirements. This is the creation of Plato's forms, Descartes' god, Marx's proletariat, Ayer's statements that are only true or false, and positivism's correspondence picture of the world (in response to which Wittgenstein is trying to find out in the PI why we are driven to think this way). But the truth is there is no fact about my pain that will save me from the threat of being unknown, to ourselves, rejected by others. The response to this is the desperation of the interlocutor for knowledge to bridge that gap (to make our separateness a problem of knowledge), but all we have is the true yet empty statement that: "When I have a headache, I know I have a headache."@TheMadFool

Try and pay attention, I hate repeating myself. — Olivier5

I don't think name-calling got us anywhere previously, and I also think condescension is inappropriate. That's two.

@StreetlightX "I'm surprised no one commented on your comment ["I know I have a headache! You don't need to remind me!"... the point of the rebuke [is] not an affirmation of my cognitive understanding of my state of being] which is very important in terms of the use of the word know. Moreover, the negation of, "I know I have a headache" - is an important juxtaposition that points to something important about how we go about affirming that we DO know. — Sam26

I'm interested in how we affirm that we do know sensations (me mine, you mine). Of course there is not always a opposite direct negation of an epistemological claim. Maybe its just that we do not have a context in which to say: "I don't know I have a headache" (or is it: "I know I do not have a headache."? )Or could we say "I don't know I have a headache, it may be coming from my back injury", as if to express a lack of confidence it our ability to adequately express ourselves.

You can of course say, "I know I have a headache" - but are you saying something about knowing? — StreetlightX

That knowledge (of me) is acceptance of myself and in being able to admit it to others, as in: 'I know I have an addiction problem." I "know" this in the sense of know that I agree with your critique of me, the pain I was not dealing with but that you saw clearly on my face, or my lack of emotion, given my knowledge of your history, habits, and defenses.

1. I'm experiencing this particularly unpleasant throbbing sensation in my head, H.
2. H is, from my interaction with others, an ache.
Ergo,
3. I have a headache.

Statement 3 is a proposition, which in this case, is justfiably true. Therefore, I know I have a headache. — TheMadFool

Except that you could be lying, and we may never know; or, we might see your pain, and reject it/you as dramatization, posturing. Or you have expressed your trauma to others, who acknowledge your pain by reacting to it (its claim on them), by accepting what is essential for you and I in your pain (within the conditions and criteria of sensation).

The difference in the picture of them (or me) taking my expression of pain as "justifiably true", is to want to skip over "me", and be able to know my pain as not only true but justified (certain), presumably by something other than my expression. But can I not postulate and accept that my pain is aching, throbbing, rather than, say, flashes of pain, for myself? what is it the "interaction" then does? Define, identify, locate? Until we (or even I) can do these things, am I not having the sensation of being, e.g., hot, though unclear to what extent, how close to heat exhaustion, and so whether I have to express my discomfort, which may be alarming, or taken as merely rude (depending on your acceptance or rejection). What is essential to pain about being true, and justifiable?

That concern [the sense of avoidance of something true] is not irrelevant to the discussion.... — Srap Tasmaner

"When I have a headache, I know I have a headache."
@TheMadFool

I agree. There is something true in this expression, but it is not what this reaction to the skeptic wants it to be. I have not avoided the truth of what that is saying, I am showing a counter-example of when we have a sensation, but do not know it (when I do not attend to it, or repress it), but also to see the truth in the statement is that I know my experience and sensations when I take ownership of them, admit them (even to myself), stand ready to answer for them, as if some things are movements and some expressions, and the difference is in the fact that they express me, reveal me, make my pain open to be known, rejected or ridiculed. An injustice is to have one's expressions become only words of information--to pass over the person in pain to know the headache.

TMF was only stating the obvious. — Olivier5

He said so... to a post pretending (absurdly)... and it made perfect sense. — Olivier5

.

TMF: "Obvious", "perfect sense".

Mine: "pretending", "absurd", "disingenuous"

Succinct. TMF's statement does not need a context--that's been the point (above). Every word has a meaning, so no context is needed and any usual criteria and conditions (as that pain is expressed, accepted) can be ignored and a requirement of certainty be imposed, which creates a thing to know, out of our fear and desire of our part in the risk of expression and yet the fear of being known. This is for you to either see for yourself--which you could/might if you try--or you need a legitimate alternate explanation of how this is not the case that takes into consideration the evidence I have presented and the claim I have made. And also what would be considered a "context" for his statement. The game is the game.

'Forgetting a headache' sounds an awful lot like not having a headache. How do you forget a headache?...The grammar of 'forgetting' is not quite right. — StreetlightX

I agree that the sense of forgetting associated with awareness is maybe not the first sense one would think of (that I should have thought of a better word), and that it is complicated with more possibilities to sort out than needed; a simpler way to put it would have been I got lost in doing something else and wasn't paying attention to my pain for a bit (I would say that is a sense of forgetting though). Also, the example of pain is used for the best-case scenario of sensation so that Witt could understand: "if we can't know our !pain!, than what sensation can we know [be certain about]?"; so we might more easily imagine my not being aware for a while of the sensation of the weight on my leg of someone resting against it on a couch while we watch TV, until it even falls asleep, at which point I can't feel it.

Bad example aside, the point is what is meaningful about pain, what is its important grammar (its essence @TheMadFool) is that the sensation is mine. Not in that only I can know it, but that it is me who owns it. That you do not "know" my pain (in the true/false/referent; of the empirical sense--though that is possible, it does not apply here), that the expression of my pain, my sensation, my experience, makes a claim on you--I am accepted in your acknowledgement of them; if my expressions are ignored, I am rejected, alone with the lack of expression to others. That my "knowledge" of my pain is just in knowledge's sense of my awareness of it, consciousness of it, in not repressing it, as a trauma.

"Questioning why it seems you're not aware you have a headache (your example basically)."
— Antony Nickles

That is not my example.[/quote]

It appears I edited after posting it. It did occur to me that there might be something different that you were pointing out, and I was going to say "similar" but then I got lazy as I would have to say how, and how dissimilar, and I passed it off that you'd get what way I meant, but let's see if there is a distinction that helps.

What I probably should have ended up with was this: "[My] confirming for someone else [who is] questioning [me as to] why it seems I [am] not aware have a headache".

Of course maybe this is not even an accurate summary of my original full example, which was:

In what context would we say "I know I have a headache."? Maybe when you've made it aware to me that you have a headache, then, when I see you a little while later and you have an ice pack on your knee, and I point to your head and shrug, saying "Don't you have a headache?", you might look at me (like I'm an idiot) and say "I know I have a headache." -- but this is in the sense of "Duh, I know", as in the use (grammatical category) of: I am aware — Antony Nickles

There is no one that would question 'why it seems you're not aware you have a headache' - as if they knew better than you. At best, they might say, 'Don't you have a headache? Why are you exerting yourself like that?", or something similar. — StreetlightX

Gotten to this point I think I would claim that the use of your: "Don't you have a headache? Why are you exerting yourself like that?" is actually the same as my: "Don't you have a headache?" [Why do you have the icepack on your knee?"] And by "same" I'm saying in the same parts that matter--essentially the identical use, as your pain and my pain identically (essentially--in their essence), if we accept they are.

And if not, then what is 'know' doing when you affirm that you do know it? — StreetlightX

And maybe this was before my post about that.

When does a fact establish itself as knowledge? More precisely, if knowledge is Justified-True-Belief, then how do facts fit into such a conceptual scheme for or of knowledge? — Shawn

Wittgenstein looks at belief in the Philosophical Investigations. He lands on the claim that belief operates like a hypothesis: "I believe it's going to rain". The other sense of belief is a strong feeling, like emphatic confidence: "I really believe in our chances for a win today." I think the way that belief is used in philosophy is like an opinion, which, structurally, appears to be individual: "In my opinion, ..." but also, restricted to certain topics: politics, moral moments, art. We do not have facts in these areas, nor is our opinion capable of being a fact, however justified. That does not mean that there aren't things like authority, expertise, norms, expectations, judgement, criticism, conceptual structure, etc. It's just that an opinion on these subjects will never become a fact.

Cavell says in The Claim of Reason that the thing that gives a fact its "factness", its certainty, its universality, its repeatability, its completeness of application, is not its justification nor its correspondence to the world, but the method of science. I'm not heavily-studied in philosophy of science, but there is science done well, and done poorly, as well as "soft" sciences (like economics) which, although they involve math, do not offer repeatable conclusions. This lack of reference is why we can be wrong about facts, why our world must only be a paradigm (Kuhn) though a fact is a fact nevertheless (until it is not).

The point was, you don't know you're in pain in an epistemological sense... Now if you want to say it has sense in other non-epistemological ways, that's fine, but that's not my point. — Sam26

Of course. All I was adding is that is only half the battle; Witt goes on to show a legitimate logic of pain in the alternative; in what sense I know my pain (in acknowledging it, or rejecting it--and yours). That the story does not end in the rubble but with remembering our ordinary criteria for judging pain (awareness, attention, isolation, etc.)--the essence of sensation.

can you not know you have a headache?

You can not know in knowing's sense of not being aware, forget about it while doing something else.
— StreetlightX

And if not, then what is 'know' doing when you affirm that you do know it? — StreetlightX

Confirming for someone else questioning why it seems you're not aware you have a headache (your example basically).

You can of course say, "I know I have a headache" - but are you saying something about knowing? — StreetlightX

That pain works differently than emperical knowledge; it is the sense of know as acknowledge--to myself, by others, etc.

Mostly, it's giving the concept know, no sense, as opposed to the wrong sense. What I mean is, it has no epistemological sense to say, "I know I have a headache." — Sam26

However the whole point of PI is to show how different things matter to us in different ways, leading to the various ways they work. What matters to us about pain is the fact of its being mine (having it) thus my announcement of it (and your acceptance or rejection of it) are its conditions, and not the conditions of knowledge.

Basically, epistimology is not the only way things make sense: are meaningful, have conditions, are judged by criteria, have identity, etc. The PI is showing that our relation to the world is not always epistemological (you're missing the third act where all the fun happens).

When I have a headache, I know I have a headache.
— TheMadFool

In what context would we say "I know I have a headache."?
— Antony Nickles

Err... TPF? (considering TheMadFool just said "I know I have a headache" right here — Olivier5

Well if that's not just facetious, it demonstrates Witt's point that we want to strip away any context and take a sentence in isolation to have met the standard we want for knowledge. Context is not simply the location where something is said; it is what is relevant to a sentence being one sense or another (or both). Basically, as flippantly, saying that, here--assuming it's trying to make a philosophical claim about knowledge and headaches--is wrong; it's applying the wrong sense of "know". Maybe it's better to ask what context would help us understand what sense of know this is?

No, what Witt is saying is that the way sensations/emotions/experience work, their grammar, is that they are not they are expressed, or not (suppressed, repressed, kept secret), as much to ourselves as anyone else.
— Antony Nickles

I don't think he was saying you don't know what you're feeling. — frank

Good catch; that was a test to see if anyone was actually still reading--I only meant that in the sense of the recognition of pain; although Witt does touch on the grammar of our emotions, like sadness (p. 209), and he has a lot to say about feeling as a kind of implicit interpretation or impression.

Is your critique based on a thoroughgoing knowledge of the work of the ‘New Wittgensteinian’ authors or is this a knee-jerk reaction to the blurb I quoted? — Joshs

I found that language; that's an intro Crary did for a book of essays I have that is just new authors saying different stuff--I'm not sure that wiki-author read more than the intro (what?!). I think what Crary, at least, is referring to is that Witt is pointing out how philosophy goes wrong, including his, and he is trying to show how philosophy can get back on track (in each of the different examples--as Austin did with Ayer) and what we learned from that. The people minimizing the impact just don't feel taken on directly, but that's because those philosophies were not so much "wrong" as entirely misguided (by themselves, it turns out), lacking awareness, failing to see that their want for a certain answer pushes them into errors in their thinking. We used to say: how can we win, they're not even playing hockey. They're so fundamentally wrong Witt (apart from Austin) goes back to: how and why do you think that? and there is something to learn in that; something substantive, corrective, but also game-changing, and so not just "therapeutic" as in dispelling an illusion or crazy thoughts or how ta talk good.

"I’m trying to figure out who to turn to (other than Cavell) for a reliable and faithful interpretation of the later Wittgenstein."

Well to me its more the method, so the people I like aren't necessarily writing on Witt as, from him into their own interests. But I liked some Malcolm, Wisdom, Mulhall is at least interesting; you might like Conant (Methods) from the little I've read, he seems concerned to address other readings of Witt. But I was trained in Ordinary Language Philosophy, and, apart from Witt and Austin, Cavell is the best at that and so at explaining Witt's methodology (The Availability of Later Witt). But I'm not sure it's a good idea to read commentators until you just find one you like. I'd slug it out on your own; this book, more than most, is important to work through than be told about.

What exactly do you consider worth preserving within the analytic tradition? — Joshs

Well I see the good even in the partly broken, plus I don't quite buy the term itself, because if we're looking at what we say, we're looking at the world (just maybe not like Arendt, Foucault, Machiavelli, a lot of Aristotle). I'd start the ark with Plato, Marx, Locke, Hegel (to a point), Kant, Hume, Descartes, Emerson, Nietzsche, later Heidegger[/quote]

When I have a headache, I know I have a headache. — TheMadFool

In what context would we say "I know I have a headache."? Maybe when you've made it aware to me that you have a headache, then, when I see you a little while later and you have an ice pack on your knee, and I point to your head and shrug, saying "Don't you have a headache?", you might look at me (like I'm an idiot) and say "I know I have a headache." -- but this is in the sense of "Duh, I know", as in the use (grammatical category) of: I am aware. The reason we have to twist ourselves in knots to even get that, as Witt would say, is that I do not "know" pain; I have it. This is the meaning of pain (it is meaningful because it is mine). I am the one that owns it, even when we do not know it--which is also in the sense of: are not aware of it, just, to myself---say when we have a headache but we forget (which is a refutation if the above was a claim to a proposed statement about the way pain works). But there is also the fact that sometimes I can not hide my pain; I am expressed outside the control of the conveying (or secreting) of knowledge. There is no place for knowledge in the occurrence to us of pain (say, different than the knowledge of watching an opportunity slip away). "How can I even attempt to interpose language between the expression of pain and the pain?" Witt PI, #245. Between the event of the expression of pain and the meaningfulness of my having it.

There are other uses of "I know" (I acknowledge your pain; I know my way around; I know something is a lie (for I know the truth!)). But there is a sense in which philosophers would like to know sensations, but the criteria of continuous, exacting, certain, and immediate, do not apply to how, say, pain works. Philosophy imposes those as the requirement for knowledge from its other uses in science and, to say it again, in the picture of an object, a referent; as if the physiology of pain is the structure of how we relate to pain.

But the kind of knowledge philosophy has typically wanted from sensation and experience is not how pain works. And the best way to try to show that is to give the example that our pain is expressed, not "known" (expression is the mechanics of it). I can talk about what I know about my pain: I can give a description (even poorly), I can isolate it (even x-ray it, sorta), but that, fundamentally, it is ours to express--to cry out about (or not) #244--to clarify or hide; to relive, or try to forget. This structure is the essence of our experience and sensations, the most important part about them, as opposed to what is essential to making excuses, or doing physical science.

Possible but not necessary. — TheMadFool

Of course I don't know to what you are referring that you think is not necessary, but the way I read Witt he is necessarily, grammatically, claiming that the way sensation works is that it is expressed, not known--that is its structure. Where concepts have certain possibilities (uses), and categorical conditions, that pain is expressed (or repressed) is a fundamental ingredient of our lives that differentiates sensations from knowing how gravity works or knowing the structural makeup of the brain's effect on our emotions.

I don't recall ever expressing a fear of being empty. I don't think I ever have. According to you, if I don't express this fear, I don't have this fear. — frank

No, what Witt is saying is that the way sensations/emotions/experience work, their grammar, is that they are not known, they are expressed, or not (suppressed, repressed, kept secret), as much to ourselves as anyone else.

Maybe it's just that I do have experiences that I tell no one about. I do, actually. Sometimes I do tell people about what I've experienced, so it's not private in the sense Witt uses in the PLA. — frank

Yes you do have experiences; sometimes you tell no one about them, sometimes you do; sometimes you can't even tell yourself.

There must be private experiences? — TheMadFool

The fear of being empty, not unique, creates the idea there must be some "thing" beyond language which is mine, that I can know. Now it's not that there is nothing there, it's just that experience isn't known, it is expressed or denied (by me)' it's accepted or rejected by you. So to say "It was amazing" is to express our ineffable experience (however poorly). So there are personal experiences but they don't work the way Witt tried to imagine (as the skeptic would like them to).