That difference is interesting to me as well. Will ponder.

I think there are other ways to look at the table of possibilities being presented here. I will be more cautious about talking about it in the future.

@Ludwig V

W does not say it is the only sense possible — Paine

Agreed; getting fixated on the topic of the example is a big problem, and of course at a certain point it gets to be a matter of what implications are of interest/focus, but I would hope I am not misreading the logical necessities of these "uses" of I. I found most interesting the difference between the logic of the self as object and subject, which I found echoed in the literal grammar.

The solipsist could be me, after all, — Paine

I think the idea is that we play each of these roles at different times; that it isn't a matter of knowledge as information. But then the question is of course, when do we play the skeptic? and, then, why?

I guess I agree with Kant that the "skeptic" is not opinion but an energy that keeps us alive.
Otherwise, thinking merely mirrors a reflecting of thinking.

Bbbb

It is an example to make a logical point, not to claim the example is right or illustrative. — Antony Nickles

Yes, that's true. Perhaps I'm overdoing it, but I find myself thinking that examples are not fully described and so the proposed response is not entirely determinate in view of the unspecified circumstances.

Absolutely, as Witt does when he imagines these crazy situations (let’s try on this hat/circumstance). — Antony Nickles

Trying things on. Not a bad idea.

But the solipsist really wants to be “inhabited” by the exceptional, in a way that “others can’t see”. — Antony Nickles

Lord of all he surveys. Or abandoned in a howling wilderness. Depends on your temperament, really.

What I am doing is not knowing my pain (which is not innately unique), not pointing to ‘me’, but, logically, pointing me out, in the sense of ‘Hey! It's me, I have [am in] pain’ (thus modeled “on the demonstrative”(p.68)—‘This person is the one in pain’.) — Antony Nickles

Holding up one's hand. Calling out "here!". Sending out distress signals. Drawing attention to myself. In a way, it's the opposite of referring to something. I think there's a case, though, to think of uttering "I am in pain" as rather different from expressions - just because it fits alongside "You are in pain" or "She is in pain". I am thinking of myself in a different way, putting myself in the shoes of other people, in something of the way that one might say of oneself "this person is in pain" or "The driver of the car is in pain".

But W does not say it is the only sense possible. That recurrent theme is the soundtrack of this book if it were a movie. — Paine

As he says in the preface to the PI, he does not save his readers the trouble of thinking for themselves. But it's a tricky balance, because I think, along with most people, that he does expect his readers to draw certain conclusions. It's a bit like giving someone a book about the wild west in order to discourage them from emigrating there. But we do know that he gave up on the TLP in 1929, and it seems unlikely that he could have hung on to the solipsism much beyond that.

I think the idea is that we play each of these roles at different times; that it isn't a matter of knowledge as information. But then the question is of course, when do we play the skeptic? and, then, why? — Antony Nickles

It may be a question of tactics or a question of the circumstances one is in.

I guess I agree with Kant that the "skeptic" is not opinion but an energy that keeps us alive.
Otherwise, thinking merely mirrors a reflecting of thinking. — Paine

I hadn't thought of it like that. On the other hand, once scepticism has become a dogma, it smothers everything in its path. It's a balance.

I hadn't thought of it like that. On the other hand, once scepticism has become a dogma, it smothers everything in its path. It's a balance. — Ludwig V

As the Professor says:

This method of watching or even occasioning a contest between assertions, not in order to decide it to the advantage of one party or the other, but to investigate whether the object of the dispute is not perhaps a mere mirage at which each would snatch in vain without being able to gain anything even if he met with no resistance - this procedure, I say, can be called the skeptical method. It is entirely different from skepticism, a principle of artful and scientific ignorance that undermines the foundations of all cognition, in order, if possible, to leave no reliability or certainty anywhere. For the skeptical method aims at certainty, seeking to discover the point of misunderstanding in disputes that are honestly intended and conducted with intelligence by both sides, in order to do as wise legislators do when from the embarrassment of judges in cases of litigation they draw instruction concerning that which is defective and imprecisely determined in their laws. — CPR, B451

@Paine

I find myself thinking that examples are not fully described and so the proposed response is not entirely determinate in view of the unspecified circumstances. — Ludwig V

This is absolutely how it should be, and Witt does say that we can always layer on more complexity, and he himself regularly adds on or changes a situation or facts (tries on hats) to consider what it is about the context that matters (what criteria), and what is affected (or not) by the judgments that are made. But, of course, no situation is "fully" described, but it can be fun to play around with because we may be surprised what we learn, as I think you are doing in thinking beyond the sense of "They are in pain" as describing them (as Witt is using it), to the fact that we can feel another's pain (in our body Witt says), as "They are in (some serious) pain", in the sense of a recognition. I would say this is some of the (even if peripheral) benefit of Witt's method; Cavell talks about it as becoming aware of our commitments I think.

The most prevalent confusion I see is not seeing that this is a philosophical method, not an empirical/sociological argument. Now of course we do need to agree on the logic, i.e., the implications of what we say in this particular situation (as a judgment from the criteria that apply here), thus we could and should say things like: "We wouldn't say that", or "If we said that it wouldn't mean we'd have to...", or, as you mention as to context, "When we say that, it's only in a situation where...", or "We would first need to know... if we were going to say (judge whether)..."

But that is just the start, with the end being to see a further, philosophical, point (there is a reason for the example). It's not about how we follow rules, but the import of the example (basically: does the logic of this sense show us anything interesting). Other examples (different contexts) might be important to take into consideration. But sometimes we get stuck on the starting line, worrying over a tree and never getting to the forest (and Austin frankly seems to assume we'll understand when we get there).

One mistake I've seen is that two people are thinking of two different senses/usages, such as the different senses of "seeing", so we are basically talking apples and oranges. We are not fighting with the skeptic about a practice, because we are trying to differentiate two senses of a practice, not bring in every possible criteria (thus every context) from every sense--such as: being aware of, focusing on, identifying, assessing--as if to make one judgment about "what I see" (or how I make a mistake). This brings back the question of how we get any traction with the skeptic.

I think, along with most people, that he does expect his readers to draw certain conclusions. — Ludwig V

I think in answering that question with your thought: if the skeptic is (and we are) to draw a (any) conclusion, they are only going to do it by themselves, see it for themselves.

The most prevalent confusion I see is not seeing that this is a philosophical method, not an empirical/sociological argument. — Antony Nickles

Yes. But the way we frame the method, it looks very like an empirical/sociological argument. "We say.." "We wouldn't say..." Gellner got very hung up on this. The problem is that you have to buy in to certain ideas, ways of talking and thinking, if you want to have a debate with people - and that can look very like a clique.

This brings back the question of how we get any traction with the skeptic. — Antony Nickles

Well, you wouldn't expect to get traction with an unreasonable doubt, would you? It's curious how reason, which ought to encourage us to be open to new ideas, so often becomes a fortress built to preserve what we believe.

Cavell talks about it as becoming aware of our commitments I think. — Antony Nickles

I don't know him well enough to be sure about that. I think he hit the nail on the head when he insisted that we need to get behind philosophical doctrines - particularly the perennial ones like scepticism - in order to work out what the sceptic (in that case) needs. He seems to treat the doctrine as a symptom, rather than something that's important in its own right. You may have read too much, but I think I've read too little.

But W does not say it is the only sense possible. That recurrent theme is the soundtrack of this book if it were a movie. — Paine

Yes, For someone who is trying to map the limits of language, he does have a remarkably elastic idea of what the possibilities are.

As the Professor says: — Paine

Yes. There are times when he comes over as, perhaps, a bit verbose, but perfectly capable of hitting a nail smack on the head.

Great quote; boring ol’ Kant can zing ya. "This method… to investigate whether the object of the dispute is not perhaps a mere mirage at which each would snatch in vain without being able to gain anything even if he met with no resistance"

And I think we could say that Witt is investigating skepticism's "object" as a mirage, and finds himself met with no resistance, at least nothing to push against, but it is an open question here whether and what there has been to gain. I would offer the contrasting logic of other senses has provided a way to step out of the ring and see the how and perhaps why of their framework. Obviously Kant’s skeptic, and Montaigne’s, and Hume’s at times, are a necessary part of reflecting on and examining the unspoken, assumed, implicit parts of our thinking and acts.

As promised before, I will leave off from challenging the role you have assigned the skeptic. But I will point out that Wittgenstein is unambiguously "stepping into the ring" when advancing a method that does not accept many of the premises Kant was working with:

If we say thinking is essentially operating with signs, the first question you might ask is: “What are signs?” – Instead of giving any kind of general answer to this question, I shall propose to you to look closely at particular cases which we should call “operating with signs”. Let us look at a simple example of operating with words. I give someone the order: “fetch me six apples from the grocer”, and I will describe a way of making use of such an order: The words “six apples” are written on a bit of paper, the paper is handed to the grocer, the grocer compares the word “apple” with labels on different shelves. He finds it to agree with one of the labels, counts from 1 to the number written on the slip of paper, and for every number counted takes a fruit off the shelf and puts it in a bag. – And here you have one use of words. I shall in the future again and again draw your attention to what I shall call language games. These are processes of using signs simpler than those which usually occur in the use of our highly complicated everyday language. Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language-games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages. If we want to study the problems of truth and falsehood, of the agreement and disagreement of propositions with reality, of the nature of assertion, assumption, and question, we shall with great advantage look at primitive forms of language in which these forms of thinking appear without the confusing background of highly complicated processes of thought. When we look at such simple forms of language, the mental mist which seems to enshroud our ordinary use of language disappears. We see activities, reactions, which are clear-cut and transparent. On the other hand we recognize in these simple processes forms of language not separated by a break from our more complicated ones. We see that we can build up the complicated forms from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms.

Now what makes it difficult for us to take this line of investigation is our craving for generality. — BB, page 27

This has Wittgenstein looking like the skeptic, dissolving the verities of his opponents. That he separates his method from the scientific at page 29 demonstrates that he intends to maintain the distance from the "psychological" he established in the Tractatus. To go forward with his method, he has chosen to walk on a narrow tightrope.

@Ludwig V @Joshs @Paine

Section 20 - Finale! (p. 70-74)

Philosophers say it as a philosophical opinion or conviction that there are sense data. — (P.70)

This mention of “opinion” brings us back to where “The solipsist… is not stating an opinion; and that's why he is so sure of what he says.” (p.60) I take “opinion” here as what is thought of as a lesser version of knowledge; as “merely subjective, a matter of taste.” (p.48), as if it were unjustified, or isolated to just me.

But the solipsist “is so sure of what he says” that you can bring all the knowledge you have to bear, and tell them their position has no rationality, but they are “not stating an opinion”; they “say it as a…conviction”(p.60). But this is not as in a firmly held belief, i.e., that wants to be knowledge, but doesn’t quite meet the grade based on justification. It is in the sense of saying something with conviction. The solipsist is “so sure” about what they are saying because they have already been convinced, not of something (an opinion) that they are trying to justify to you, but by something, so they don’t care what you say.

Witt says they believe in something as possible but not here. I take the mirage to be created by the projection of the “mental” as imagined objects (by analogy), and I’ll grant to @Joshs that they are “gripped” by the picture, and are “inclined” (“tempted”) to say certain things as natural given their position once they have intellectually fortified it. But there is a why we have been chasing and I take it as the reason for picking (gravitating to) objects as the analogy.

Their conviction comes by a secret they see that we don’t, like they “had discovered… new elements of the structure of the world”. But what makes them excited are the possibilities of an object, which are generalizable, complete, concrete, verifiable, substantial, etc. They become so compelled because there is nothing in the way of them projecting/imagining what they want: knowledge; an answer, a justification, a foundation, something of which they can be certain. Any more beyond that I will let go as it is taken up in the PI, but listen to Descartes set his mind:

It is now some years since I detected how many were the false beliefs that I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was convinced that I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure in the sciences. — Descartes, 1st Med., p.1

Thank you to @Ludwig V for hanging in there throughout this reading, and to all the others for your input. I hope to review, summarize, and draw lessons from all we have worked on separately.

Agreed; he is not throwing in the towel. All I wanted to point out is that he is showing another option to compare to the skeptic’s, rather than engaging them within their framework.

But the way we frame the method, it looks very like an empirical/sociological argument. "We say.." "We wouldn't say..." Gellner got very hung up on this. The problem is that you have to buy in to certain ideas, ways of talking and thinking, if you want to have a debate with people - and that can look very like a clique. — Ludwig V

This would require much more explanation; Cavell takes this up better than I could a number of times in the essays in “Must We Mean What We Say”. It is not an empirical claim requiring observation and verification. They are claims about the logic (what it means) that “we” all can make as masters of our practices which he takes as reflected in the things anyone might say in doing them. This process in itself isn’t anything esoteric, but I understand seeing them as evidence in a debate about the implications and how that is philosophically relevant, would require some further explanation, agreement.

Witt says they believe in something as possible but not here. I take the mirage to be created by the projection of the “mental” as imagined objects (by analogy), and I’ll grant to Joshs that they are “gripped” by the picture, and are “inclined” to say certain things as natural given their position once they have intellectually fortified it. But there is a why we have been chasing and I take it as the reason for picking objects as the analogy.

Their conviction comes by a secret they see that we don’t, like they “had discovered… new elements of the structure of the world”. But what makes them excited are the possibilities of an object, which are generalizable, complete, concrete, verifiable, substantial, etc. They become so compelled because there is nothing in the way of them projecting/imagining what they want: knowledge; an answer, a justification, a foundation, something of which they can be certain — Antony Nickles

If we are to associate desire, seen as ‘what we want’, with the ‘why’ which motivates our reasons, then what we desire isnt the same thing as this ‘why’ Rather, like our reasons, what we desire gets its intelligibility from within the why. If we think of this ’why’ as an overarching system expressing how reasons hang together, what Wittgenstein later calls a form of life, and which he is perhaps depicting incipiently here as a firmly held conviction, or that which ties tighter a wide range of convictions ( ‘this is what we do’), then why we desire what we desire cannot be located within the space of reasons, but prior (not in a chronological sense) to them.

If knowledge, an answer, a justification, a foundation, is what we want, then the larger system of intelligiblity is what makes these concepts intelligible. If knowledge-as-picture and foundations are grammatical illusions, the source of our being captivated by this illusion is not to be found in what we want but as this larger ‘why’ organizing the sense of our motives and reasons. It then would make no sense to trace the genesis of something like a form of life to what we desire and what our reasons are. We don’t want to be a solipsist or skeptic; we want what we want, and how we want it, WITHIN these illusory grammars. Is this consistent with your thinking here?

what we desire isnt the same thing as this ‘why’ — Joshs

At this point (as it is taken up in the PI) I’m putting a pin in asking the greater ramifications or other reasons why the properties of an object (call it “objectivity”) give the skeptic such conviction—as it were, one step back. I think Witt does not here address the skeptic as explicitly arguing for objectivity, but just examines their (subsequent) claims as a function of the picture created by the analogy, but which does ultimately allow him to speculate on their attitude (position) towards their claims (their “conviction”).

why we desire what we desire cannot be located within the space of reasons, — Joshs

It then would make no sense to trace the genesis of something like a form of life to what we desire and what our reasons are — Joshs

I think Witt would say the criteria we (society) uses to judge within a practice (form of life) reflect our culture’s interests (desires) in that practice; thus why the skeptic’s singular interest in criteria for objectivity appears empty when made to apply to a particular sense and specific case.

This process in itself isn’t anything esoteric, but I understand seeing them as evidence in a debate about the implications and how that is philosophically relevant, would require some further explanation, agreement. — Antony Nickles

Just to be clear. I'm not disagreeing with what you say about this. I'm observing that "what we would say.." needs explaining - and, to be honest - I'm not sure that I could convince a sceptic. So I'll look forward to your/Cavell's explanation. I suspect, in the end, it is a matter of being initiated into a practice, rather than a procedure that could be set out in an algorithm. Sometimes I even wonder whether, in the end, that's true of all philosophy.

If we think of this ’why’ as an overarching system expressing how reasons hang together, what Wittgenstein later calls a form of life, and which he is perhaps depicting incipiently here as a firmly held conviction, or that which ties tighter a wide range of convictions ( ‘this is what we do’), then why we desire what we desire cannot be located within the space of reasons, but prior (not in a chronological sense) to them. — Joshs

That's very true. But my puzzle is what Wittgenstein means by "our real need" - the hinge, whatever it is, around which thinking needs to arrange itself. The outline is clear enough - what we need (or what he needs) is a resolution of the cognitive dissonances from which philosophy springs - something that brings the peace that enables him to stop doing philosophy when he wants to. Toughly.. So, in principle, what he is talking about can be spotted or revealed within our general practices and desires.

The solipsist is “so sure” about what they are saying because they have already been convinced, not of something (an opinion) that they are trying to justify to you, but by something, — Antony Nickles

I think that Wittgenstein later discussion of "seeing an aspect" (interpretation) as in a puzzle picture. The solipsist is not wrong, exactly, but is gripped by an interpretation in a way that does not allow him to see another interpretation. (That can happen with a puzzle picture, too.) I've come to think that there is a point buried in solipsism, just not quite the point they see.

I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted, and commence to build anew from the foundation, — Descartes, 1st Med., p.1

"Once for all" is just as much a mirage here as when politicians say it. What would he have done with his life if he had succeeded? What would the next generation of philosophers done? My philosophical life was bedevilled by the question of bringing philosophy to an end. I could never get anyone to take the problem seriously. As it turned out, they were right not to worry, wrong about the prospect of bringing philosophy to an end.

shall in the future again and again draw your attention to what I shall call language games. These are processes of using signs simpler than those which usually occur in the use of our highly complicated everyday language. Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language-games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages. — BB, page 27

I see three different uses of language games here. One is their use as an analytical tool; the paradigm example is the builders at the beginning of PI. I think of these are invented rather than discovered - it could go either way. But the point of the exercise is to understand the logical structure of some concept or another. The second is their role in language-learning, working up from simple games to more complicated ones. How far the idea has taken off in empirical psychology, I could not say. But it seems a not implausible idea to me. The third is ambiguous between a historical story about how language develops over time and a structural analysis. But we are not led to expect just one history or one structure for all language, so it looks as if this concept marks a decisive rejection of the classical project of formal logic.

This has Wittgenstein looking like the skeptic, dissolving the verities of his opponents. — Paine

That's odd. The sceptic is sceptical about ordinary language or common sense, and is right in that philosophy (as the beginning of all science) cannot get off the ground unless it can put ordinary beliefs to the test. So philosophy develops some ideas, some of which spin off into separate projects and develop results which become, in their turn, common sense. Wittgenstein then turns the sceptical moment against those philosophical ideas that have not developed into sciences - and, perhaps, reassures us that there is no need to panic. Life goes on despite the sceptic's pressure. I guess the sceptic can retort to Wittgenstein that he should not be complacent. Philosophy will continue despite the pressure he is putting it under.
But perhaps we should regard W as special, not because he seeks to bring philosophy to an end, but because of the way in which he seeks to do so. How many philosophers have set out to deal with those annoying questions "once and for all"? None have succeeded.