But when he says our judgments (“A has a toothache”) have “always coincided” with our criteria for them (the “red patch”) it seems to open a can of (skeptical) worms, i.e., like it is a coincidence (that could disconnect at any moment). But I take it to be the sense of “coincide” that they “correspond in nature”; or, “are in accord” (Merriam-Webster) — Antony Nickles
I don't see how anyone who has not undergone even an introductory course in philosophy could not see this as a rehearsal of the sceptical attack on, in this case, other minds.Now one may go on and ask: "How do you know that he has got toothache when he holds his cheek?" The answer to this might be, "I say, he has toothache when he holds his cheek because I hold my cheek when I have toothache". But what if we went on asking:--"And why do you suppose that toothache corresponds to his holding his cheek just because your toothache corresponds to your holding your cheek?" You will be at a loss to answer this question, and find that here we strike rock bottom, that is we have come down to conventions. (If you suggest as an answer to the last question that, whenever we've seen people holding their cheeks and asked them what's the matter, they have answered, "I have toothache",-remember that this experience only co-ordinates holding your cheek with saying certain words.) — pp. 24/25
I don't understand your diagnosis here. I thought that criteria are what guides judgement in the application of linguistic rules. The "criteria vs symptoms" argument complicates that, but I can't see that it negates it. There is also the argument about rules, and this is what is recalled by the reference to "rock bottom", but I don't see any reference here to the discussion of rules that we find in the Phil. Inv.. Could you elaborate a bit?But the specter of skepticism remains, because a referential relation is implied between judgement and criteria. And this implication is deliberate on Wittgenstein’s part. As he elaborates later, what grounds the meaning of a phrase, its use, is not determined by a comparison between judgment and criteria. — Joshs
the specter of skepticism remains, — Joshs
You adopt a possible interpretation of "coincide", but I'm not convinced that it is valid in this context. — Ludwig V
this as a rehearsal of the sceptical attack on, in this case, other minds. — Ludwig V
I thought it was interesting and clever because, with a dictionary and a flick of the wrist, you turn the conventional trope (conventions as arbitrary) upside-down.I thought it was interesting (clever?) because philosophers see “always coinciding” and think either: here is a “form of life” that justifies the knowledge! or think: it is uncertain because the “always” could have until now been a coincidence! — Antony Nickles
Yes. It is still floating about - and likely always will be. I thought when I read "You will be at a loss to answer this question, and find that here we strike rock bottom, that is we have come down to conventions." that Wittgenstein turns this conventional rock bottom into something real, almost foundational.My point perhaps not being “validity” but just to shed light on the unrelenting nature of the desire for this to be a matter of knowledge (that mere accord wouldn’t stop anyway). — Antony Nickles
There is a sense of being abandoned.if we wanted a bottom of “rock”-like justification, we are only left with “this is how things are usually done” (a sense of convention). — Antony Nickles
There is a good deal to be learnt from doing that.But, as you say, my main concern here is just to follow the process of his thought. — Antony Nickles
I thought… that Wittgenstein turns this conventional rock bottom into something real, almost foundational. — Ludwig V
OK. I see what you are saying. The discussion of the toothache is set in the context of practical use, and Wittgenstein's point is that the doubt is created by shifting (silently, unconsciously) to the context of strict use. It is not that either is wrong, but that the silent change is inappropriate. It looks as if the decision which context to adopt is pragmatic.But this doesn’t square with framing it as distinctly not foundational (“loose”, “conventional”, “only co-ordinates… with”, being “unable to answer” what is the defining criteria), despite the desire to know (for sure); and so the (philosophical) point is about the (inappropriate, out-of-context, ad hoc) desire, “particular purpose” (next, for strict rules). — Antony Nickles
“…the puzzles which [philosophers] try to remove always spring from this attitude towards language [compar[ing] our use of words with one following exact rules]”. (p. 26) — Witt.
That's about right. Though what counts as simplicity can be complicated. I mean that once you have learnt to drive a car it seems quite simple. But when you first sat in the driving seat, it was a different story.We choose a framework of sense that fits our desire for strictness, but we analogize it because that leverages our craving for simplicity to fill in the blanks of the disparate parts between the two cases with the likes of “sense data”, “appearance”, “reality”, “mind”, “forms”, or telling time using a tape measure. — Antony Nickles
This is one of my hobby-horses. It is a well-established figure of speech, and everyone knows it. Perhaps it does not harm. But we learn to speak a language that already exists, from people who did not invent it. There is a sense in which there is a kind of scientific investigation into what the word really means - how people actually use it. Whether that information is likely to help with any philosophical question is not clear - empirical philosophy does, apparently, exist. (Did Austin invent it?) On the other hand, it is perfectly clear that language is maintained in existence by people who use it, and those users do change the language by introducing new uses. But what does not happen is a confabulation and decision. Except in countries like France and Sweden, introductions - even when they are invented by a known individual, as sometimes happens, - are taken up and spread almost unawares by the anonymous mass of users. "A word has the meaning someone has given it." is a misleading way of putting this.But let's not forget that a word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a kind of scientific investigation into what the word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it. — p. 28
All true. The difference between enumerating actual usages and Wittgenstein's therapy is I think at least close to getting at what it means to understand the meaning of a word.... ordinary language is all right. Whenever we make up 'ideal languages' it is not in order to replace our ordinary language by them; but just to remove some trouble caused in someone's mind by thinking that he has got hold of the exact use of a common word. That is also why our method is not merely to enumerate actual usages of words, but rather deliberately to invent new ones, some of them because of their absurd appearance. — p. 28
If philosophy’s puzzles “spring” from this desire for exactness, that makes its own expectation the creator of the issues it thinks it sees in the world and wants to solve. I don’t think we yet have a good sense of why it has this desire, but perhaps it helps to listen when he says “We are unable to circumscribe… concepts….” (p. 25), as if we wanted to, but cannot, draw a limit around them that is complete enough, covering or predicting all possible outcomes (and here “concept” is a practice, like identifying or following a rule — Antony Nickles
I think that there is another motive at work here - the desire to find something surprising and interesting to say, the need to emerge from one's library with a trophy from all those explorations. — Ludwig V
But we learn to speak a language that already exists, from people who did not invent it…. "A word has the meaning someone has given it." is a misleading way of putting this. — Ludwig V
If ethical desire can transcend historical contingency, then perhaps this is why for Witt other kinds of desires as well (desire for certainty, generality, completeness) are not simply ‘what we do’ in the historical sense of contingent discursive practices, but confused expressions of a transcendent feeling. — Joshs
I've always been a bit puzzled why he didn't take the obvious step from forms or life to historicism, relativism, or even perhaps naturalism. It's always been obvious to me that this was aching to be explored and developed. I just assumed that it was just where he stopped, leaving further development to the next generation. It sorted of fitted with how he does philosophy and he would have been justified in feeling that he had achieved his aims. There could have been plans that were never fulfilled.In the Investigations, “forms of life” are the background practices that make language intelligible. Witt insists they are not grounded in theory, but in “what we do.”
At first glance this sounds close to historicism or relativism (since forms of life can differ). But Wittgenstein doesn’t historicize them in Nietzsche’s or Foucault’s sense (as contingent, power-saturated events in a genealogy). — Joshs
I don't know if we are allowed to feel sorry for him. It seems somehow impertinent. Now I'm even more puzzled about his "wonderful life".It is clear from remarks he wrote elsewhere, that he thought that if he could come to believe in God and the Resurrection - if he could even come to attach some meaning to the expression of those beliefs - then it would not be because he had found any evidence, but rather because he had been redeemed.” — Joshs
If he stuck with ethics as transcendent, is it possible that his ahistorical "form of life" was actually some sort of transcendent idea? One might feel that he doesn't seem to regard language as defined in the TLP as transcendent, but if the truths of logic cannot be said, but only shown, then it looks as if logic is also transcendent.If ethical desire can transcend historical contingency, then perhaps this is why for Witt other kinds of desires as well (desire for certainty, generality, completeness) are not simply ‘what we do’ in the historical sense of contingent discursive practices, but confused expressions of a transcendent feeling. — Joshs
In my book, culture and history come back to people, so, while I wouldn't disagree with you, I don't feel that there's a significant difference between us.And, when I saw this part, I immediately thought the “someone” in this situation should be our culture, or the whole of human history, which would be the “us” or “we” like, humanity, from which meaning is not given independently. — Antony Nickles
I've always been a bit puzzled why he didn't take the obvious step from forms or life to historicism, relativism, or even perhaps naturalism. — Ludwig V
In my book, culture and history come back to people, so, while I wouldn't disagree with you, I don't feel that there's a significant difference between us. — Ludwig V
I'm not at all sure that historicism etc. are about justification, though I suppose it might be. That is, sosmeone might take a historical account of our form of life to be a justification. But if what Wittgenstein is interested in clarifying what our justification practices are, how we justify ourselves, then, in this context that is inappropriate. The attempt to justify our justification practices inevitably begs the question. Just as, in the end, there can't be an argument to the conclusion that logic justifies our arguments. That sets up an infinite regress or a circle of arguments. In the end, one simply has to "get" the point - a bit like a joke.This seems to assume this is about justification, and not an investigation of other examples to see why we insist on certain prerequisites (and what we miss in requiring them), instead of just taking them as just different answers to the same issue. — Antony Nickles
No, no, I wasn't going there. Though, as individuals, we are deeply embedded in our culture and history. We are, in a sense, our culture and history -- to the point where our sense of our individuality is itself the product of them.I only wanted to head off the presumption that this was about individuals, and not a matter, as you say, of our (people’s) culture (our language) coming before us. — Antony Nickles
|I'll do something on that.I am tempted to skip the discussion “what is not the case” and shadows, etc., and move to the mention of “intention” on p. 32, but if anyone else wants to take up or comment on that section, please do (as anyone can lead the charge at any time). — Antony Nickles
I shall cover what might be seen as the first phase, — Ludwig V
Thanks for cracking this, well done; — Antony Nickles
I think you are right. I think that Wittgenstein must have recognized this. That’s why I emphasized the way the problem is presented. It seems to me to be quite carefully set up so as to make the problem clear.I was at a loss (and maybe still am) as to why we imagine a difficulty in picturing what is not. ….I take the confusion that follows to be that: if we are thinking of the absence of something, than how can there then be an object that is the thought. — Antony Nickles
Yes. That’s not an accident, of course. It’s part of the project.Asking "How can one...?" (p. 30, 1965 Harper's Ed.) “beautifully” plays right into his method of drawing out the means for doing a practice—its workings (grammar), how we can…. i.e., the “grammar” of thinking, facts, and "existing", etc. — Antony Nickles
Yes. Or rather, it should. It does rather raise questions about what it means to say that something exists, since the broken or toy watch does, nonetheless, exist - it's just that the description "watch" doesn't apply.If a watch is seen to "exist" because, say, it is completely put together, or functioning, then we might let go of identification by correspondence with an internal object. — Antony Nickles
Yes, I found this part very difficult. I’m not sure I really understand what he was getting at. The business about seeing redness when one presses one’s own eyeball didn’t impress me. The need to learn from others what redness is makes this possibility dubiously relevant – unless everyone has the same experience, which is, I suppose, possible.The feeling of difficulty in first identifying red I would think comes from the desire to identify color by equating that color, as a “quality”, with an internal “object” of our vision, say, an “appearance” as part of “perception”, which philosophy would ask: “how could we have that object of red before encountering it?” But I take it the way color works (it’s grammar) is like a pain (PI #235) In saying “it is not the fact we think”, I would offer that he is showing that, though something is a fact, like a house is on fire, its “fact-ness” is not an object (of thought, always there), because its expression may not be used as a fact. — Antony Nickles
You are right about the role of the shadow fact. It does indeed fit with “proposition” and sense of a sentence”. Appearances and impressions are tangled up with experiences, so he may have wished to set them aside.I am at a bit of a loss on the “shadow fact”, but I imagine it plays the same role as “appearance” or “impression”; inserted in between the ordinary process of vision and identification, etc. in order to mitigate all our statements in order to explain (and control) the possibility of error. — Antony Nickles
It does rather raise questions about what it means to say that something exists, since the broken or toy watch does, nonetheless, exist - it's just that the description "watch" doesn't apply. — Ludwig V
Yes. It seems to me that Descartes and Hume both receive similar treatment - they are known as sceptical philosophers, when actually, the point of their work was to deal with scepticism.He went straight at tearing done the house of cards and is never seen as building it back up from the rubble that still remained, I would say because he turns to why we (he did) fight so hard against it. — Antony Nickles
to p.36/35Then if this scheme is to serve our purpose at all, it must show us which of the three levels is the level of meaning. I can, e.g., make a scheme with three levels, the bottom level always being the level of meaning. But adopt whatever model or scheme you may, it will have a bottom level, and there will be no such thing as an interpretation of that. To say in this case that every arrow can still be interpreted would only mean that I could always make a different model of saying and meaning which had one more level than the one I am using.
Another source of the idea of a shadow being the object of our thought is this: We imagine the shadow to be a picture the intention of which cannot be questioned, that is, a picture which we don't interpret in order to understand it, but which we understand without interpreting it.
The business about seeing redness when one presses one’s own eyeball didn’t impress me. The need to learn from others what redness is makes this possibility dubiously relevant – unless everyone has the same experience, which is, I suppose, possible.
But the idea that one could somehow abolish redness, I think, is based on a misunderstanding of how colour works. Colour words are a system; they segment the colour spectrum, so abolishing redness sounds as if it would leave a gap in the spectrum, which is hard to understand, or just restrict the spectrum. That is possible. Dogs, for example, can’t see red. As I understand it, they see red objects as black, so the abolition is a substitution. But the ability to see red is, for us, a physiological capacity – are we to imagine some feat of genetic engineering?
I think you may be right in comparing colour with pain – in the sense that W is thinking of redness as (grammatically) like pain. Perhaps this is possible if one doesn’t understand the colour spectrum, but we do. That makes a huge difference, because if there is a spectrum of pain, it is a spectrum of intensity, not of quality. We do have qualities of pain – stabbing, aching, throbbing etc. – but they are not on a spectrum. — Ludwig V
I've got a bit confused about where we are — Ludwig V
Well, yes. Pressing one's eyeball and noticing a new colour is not enough. We have to see how other people describe the phenomenon. So I'm very puzzled, except that, perhaps, he hasn't yet constructed the private language argument. BTW, I pressed my own eyeball to see what would happen. Nothing - only darkness and the usual display from my retina. As I pressed harder, I experienced pain. Not that it matters.You suggest Wittgenstein’s “pressing the eyeball” example is irrelevant because color concepts are socially learned. — Joshs
Yes, that's the general context. The specific context is the question how we can think of something that does not exist, and he is considering the answer that we just imagine it. But if imagination is just combining elements that do exist in new ways, imagination cannot play the role of shadow facts. Yet he presses the argument further, and seems to want to find a way of saying that we can imagine something that does not exist.He isn’t denying the biological basis of vision; he’s showing that philosophy generates pseudo-problems by treating “redness” as if it were an inner object. — Joshs
What puzzles me is that he seems to conclude that abolishing redness is not nonsensical. He seems to be grasping for a sense in which it can make sense.Wittgenstein might say “abolishing redness” looks nonsensical not because of biology but because of how the grammar of color words works in our language. — Joshs
I think he also acknowledges that this does not resolve the problem, because he promises to deal with the "reservations" we "may be feeling here at a later occasion."Suppose I said "Exerting a pressure on your eye-ball produces a red image". Couldn't the way by which you first became acquainted with red have been this?
And why shouldn't it have been just imagining a red patch?
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