So could be just a little reminder to insiders, with a mischievous wink, that he's not doing that anymore. In certain quarters at the time, the word "description" alone carried a whole theory along with it. — Srap Tasmaner
don't think the trail of text above this post supports that. It has been suggested (in so many words, seems to me) that pain refers to a sensation, that signs refer to ideas. Private substances. The controlling picture seems to be that of the soul in unmediated contact with pain-stuff and meaning-stuff. Or perhaps of the soul as a self-referential bundle of such stuff. — hanaH
It gives philosophers a special domain, often take to be eternal and offering a kind of ideal, "direct" access. I "can't" be wrong about what I think I mean. I "can't" be wrong about my pain. This "can't" is more grammatical than logical ( — hanaH
[Witt's idea of expression allowing for the personal] seems we are borrowing the Wittgenstein avatar for different projects. Yours reminds me of a therapist. — hanaH
But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences—his feelings, moods, and the rest—for his private use?——Well, can't we do so in our ordinary language?—But that is not what I mean. — Witt, PI #243 (emphasis added)
We speak of understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be replaced by another which says the same; but also in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other. (Any more than one musical theme can be replaced by another.) In the one case the thought in the sentence is something common to different sentences; in the other, something that is expressed only by these words in these positions. (Understanding a poem.) — Witt, PI # 531
"Cries" is an intentionally jarring metaphor. "Just" cries suggests meaninglessness, where I'm simply looking at relationships of stuff in the world (stuff that includes our sounds and scribbles) for meaning. — hanaH
I agree that one can say there are many different frameworks. — hanaH
It seems we are borrowing the Wittgenstein avatar for different projects. Yours reminds me of a therapist. I'm not objecting or mocking. — hanaH
Note that I'm avoiding the terms "physical", "material" and "immaterial" because I do not quite understand or trust what they mean. — Olivier5
I think it's simply false to assume that "I can't be wrong about what I think I mean." We are not fully transparent to ourselves IMO.
In Wittgensteinian, you don't necessarily know all the beetles you have. — Olivier5
The point is there are different frameworks (grammar) for each different concept: thinking, reading, rule-following, sensations, justification, etc. — Antony Nickles
Why not 23,546 categories? Why not a grammar for each word, for each finite sequence of words? Are you cutting nature at the joints here? Or is this just a handy improvised system, heuristic and traditional?
As I see it, the map will never do justice to the teeming territory. — hanaH
My point is that the answer to the bolded question is, yes, I can "write down or give vocal expression to [my] inner experiences—my feelings, moods, and the rest", even "for [my] private use"--only here "private" is not the term that Witt makes of "private" (that no one else would understand), but with the ordinary criteria of personal, secret. I can even express my experience individualistically, say, poetically — Antony Nickles
I don’t think Witt ( or Antony) is interested in cutting nature at its joints. — Joshs
If our marks and noises get their "meaning" from the world at large (something like the role they play in it as worldly objects among other worldly objects), then it should be no surprise that we don't "really" (exactly) know or control what we are talking about, anymore than a dog can give an exhaustive account of how the wagging of its tail will affect other dogs — hanaH
It s a representational approach to determining sense.
But for Witt lamguage isnt about adequating one’s understanding to a world or ‘territory’ by mapping it , but about producing or enacting a world. — Joshs
We always behave into our world on the basis of ongoing concerns , aims and goals. That makes us sense-making creatures. Sense-makers are anticipative, not simply reactive. This is what makes the world recognizable to us, and means that grunts barks and hisses are motivated and emerge out of a background context of anticipations. — Joshs
Mouths shake the air, hands smear liquids on solids or scrape shapes in stone. Cloth is sewn so that it can be waved prominently, guns are fired to start a race. — hanaH
I don’t think rules are discovered out there in the world. They are enacted. This is a different concept. — Joshs
What is the genesis of these associations? Did these events just so happen to be fortuitously paired in temporal proximity at one point and then this created an association between the two? Or was there a pre-wired inherited association in some cases? — Joshs
The rules of a game are not a description of the game. — Srap Tasmaner
Are you not describing how one uses 'rules'? — hanaH
That [each concept has different grammar is] a reasonable assertion, but perhaps you'll agree that there's nothing final about those categories. — hanaH
As I see it, the map will never do justice to the teeming territory. — hanaH
I would also say, not complete; as there are further contexts for concepts to be extended into. — Antony Nickles
As part of dismantling the word--internal-referent picture, Witt can be seen as offering a picture of word-public "form of life" or "language game", but this is merely to substitute one "meaning" for another, when he is dismantling the entire picture/theorizing about meaning. — Antony Nickles
475. I want to regard man here as an animal; as a primitive being to which one grants instinct but
not ratiocination. As a creature in a primitive state...Language did not emerge from some kind of
ratiocination. — OC
How does it come about that this arrow >>>––> points? Doesn’t it seem to carry in it something besides itself?—”No, not the dead line on paper, only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that.—That is both true and false. The arrow only points in the application that a living being makes of it.
"It seems we are borrowing the Wittgenstein avatar for different projects. [Antony's] reminds me of a therapist."
— hanaH
Indeed. I would say Antony is borrowing Witt for some side interest. He is putting forth an interpretation in which ‘therapy’ is absolutely central to ( although not the only thing) what Wittgenstein is doing. — Joshs
Indeed. I would say Antony is borrowing Witt for some side interest. — Joshs
“ Baker's post-1990 ‘position’ is that Wittgenstein's method is radically therapeutic: therapeutic in that the aim is to relieve mental cramps brought about by being faced with a seemingly intractable philosophical problem — Joshs
the goal of Philosophical Investigations was to understand our desire for seeing everything in one way (word-object). This is not the "therapy" of us (our "mental cramps"--or language's bewitchingness) — Antony Nickles
Do I know what 'pain' means because of some private experience? Or because my body has been trained by the bodies of those around me in the world we share to react to and employ the token in multifarious ways? — hanaH
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