I do not agree with this characterization of a "de-interiorizing" at this point. There is no warrant for an exterior/interior dichotomy here. And this is the same as at 56/57, the division of internal/external is shown to be irrelevant. — Metaphysician Undercover
He's saying, that if his knowledge of what a game is, is equivalent to an unformulated definition, then he ought to be able to formulate that definition, and this description, or explanation, which he ought to be able to produce, if his knowledge is like that, would completely express his knowledge of what a game is. — Metaphysician Undercover
When I give the description “The ground was quite covered with plants”, do you want to say that I don’t know what I’m talking about until I can give a definition of a plant?
An explanation of what I meant would be, say, a drawing and the words “The ground looked roughly like this”. — PI §70
And this is just how one might explain what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way. - I do not mean by this expression, however, that he is supposed to see in those examples that common feature which I - for some reason - was unable to formulate, but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an indirect way of explaining - in default of a better one. — PI §71
Though this comparison may mislead in various ways. - [e.g.] One is now inclined to extend the comparison: to have understood the explanation means to have in one’s mind an idea of the thing explained, and that is a sample or picture. — PI §73
Isn’t my knowledge, my concept of a game, completely expressed in the explanations that I could give? That is, in my describing examples of various kinds of game, showing how all sorts of other games can be constructed on the analogy of these, saying that I would hardly call this or that a game, and so on. — PI §75
Won’t you then have to say: “Here I might just as well draw a circle as a rectangle or a heart, for all the colours merge. Anything - and nothing - is right.”
W indicates that the concepts of ethics and aesthetics contain a high degree of blurriness, and that (e.g.) philosophers have a similarly hopeless task of trying to find "definitions that correspond to our concepts". — Luke
A third Cambridge philosopher Virginia Woolf was acquainted with has become the object of much attention and analysis. She did not read Ludwig Wittgenstein, though he read her. Even if she had not met him, Virginia would have known of Wittgenstein from Leonard, from Keynes, and particularly from her nephew Julian Bell, and Julian’s satirical poem “An Epistle on the Subject of the Ethical and Aesthetic Beliefs of Herr Ludwig Wittgenstein (Doctor of Philosophy)”. Despite the distance between Wittgenstein’s misogyny and Virginia Woolf’s feminism, one could speculate on the applicability of some of Wittgenstein’s ideas in both his earlier and later thought to her fiction — his later conception of philosophy as description rather than explanation, for example. It is an idea he applied to aesthetics and criticism and is useful for an account of the philosophers Virginia Woolf knew.
Oh ... unenlightened ... referring to your post about 20 pages back! Language doesn’t need “sound”. And “pointing out” doesn’t need vision either ;) — I like sushi
§77: "In this sort of predicament, always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word (“good”, for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings”.
In other words, if one has lost one’s bearings on a concept, look to the language-game in which that concept is employed: that language-game - and not a definition - will (help) provide those lost bearings. — StreetlightX
In saying this however, Witty also wants to stave off another misunderstanding that may follow from this: the idea that language is somehow then a degraded or less-perfect thing than logic. The basic idea is that logic if not an 'ideal language' of which specific instances of human language are lesser forms of. In saying this, Witty interestingly sheds light not only on language, but on logic as well: following (his understanding of) Ramsey, Witty understands logic to be a matter of construction, something 'made' and not 'found'. — StreetlightX
81 is quite difficult, and I believe pivotal to an understanding of Wittgenstein's belief of how rules apply within language. Here's the concluding paragraph from each, ed. 3, and ed. 4
All this, however, can only appear in the right light when one has
attained greater clarity about the concepts of understanding, meaning,
and thinking. For it will then also become clear what can lead us (and
did lead me) to think that if anyone utters a sentence and means or
understands it he is operating a calculus according to definite rules. — Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, ed. 3
All this, however, can appear in the right light only when one has
attained greater clarity about the concepts of understanding, meaning
something, and thinking. For it will then also become clear what may
mislead us (and did mislead me) into thinking that if anyone utters a
sentence and means or understands it, he is thereby operating a calculus
according to definite rules. — Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, Hacker, Schulte, ed. 4
Notice the disagreement between "lead us", and "mislead us". I believe that this ambiguity is indicative of what Wittgenstein means when he says that someone operates according to a rule. — Metaphysician Undercover
§85: "But where does it [the signpost, the rule - SX] say which way I am to follow it; whether in the direction of its finger or (for example) in the opposite one?”
It’s worth recalling that one of the imports of Witty's discussion of of ostension was that ostension is thoroughly differential: the same pointing gesture may point out any number of different things, and that
§30: "An ostensive definition explains the use a the meaning a of a word if the role the word is supposed to play in the language is already clear.”
Similarly, rules too must be understood in a differential manner: what rules ‘do’ depends on the role that rules themselves play in a particular language-game. This differential nature of rules is captured in §85 itself: — StreetlightX
---So I can say, the sign-post does after all leave no room for doubt. Or rather: it sometimes leaves room for doubt and sometimes not. And now this is no longer a philosophical proposition, but an empirical one. — Philosophical Investigations 85
and he might on some occasion prove to be right.
5.135
There is no possible way of making an inference from the existence of one situation to the existence of another, entirely different situation.
5.136
There is no causal nexus to justify such an inference.
5.1361
We cannot infer the events of the future from those of the present.
Belief in the causal nexus is superstition.
505. It is always by favour of Nature that one knows something.
558. We say we know that water boils and does not freeze under such-and-such circumstances. Is it conceivable that we are wrong? Wouldn't a mistake topple all judgment with it? More: what could stand if that were to fall? Might someone discover something that made us say "It was a mistake"?
Whatever may happen in the future, however water may behave in the future, - we know that up to now it has behaved thus in innumerable instances.
This fact is fused into the foundations of our language-game.
This passage at 85: "So I can say, the sign-post does after all leave no room for doubt." is inconsistent with this passage at 87: "The sign-post is in order—if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose." The latter "if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose", is inconsistent with "no room for doubt". — Metaphysician Undercover
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