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

That's my point too.

§73. Explaining the names of colours by pointing to samples is comparable to giving someone a colour chart. "Though this comparison may mislead in various ways." One of the various ways it could mislead is by incorrectly assuming that to have an understanding of the explanation means "to have in one's mind an idea of the thing explained, and that is a sample or picture." What does this paradigmatic picture of what is common to all samples - e.g. "the sample of what is common to all shades of green" - look like?

W then asks: "Might there not be such 'general' samples?" - i.e. physical instances of the paradigmatic picture? "Certainly!" he says, but whether this 'general' sample is to be understood as a paradigmatic type or instead as a particular token depends on how the sample is used, or "the way the samples are applied".

What shape should a sample of "pure green" be? If it were, e.g., a rectangular or an irregular shape, then we might mistake it for a sample of shape instead of colour. This demonstrates that it depends on how the samples are used, and that we cannot just assume that it will play the role of a colour sample regardless of any context of use.

§74. W raises the idea that someone who views a leaf as a sample of a paradigmatic type sees it differently from someone who views the same leaf as a sample of a particular token. He quickly dismisses this idea insofar as seeing it differently amounts only to using it differently. He does not deny that people can see things differently, but this is exhibited by their use of those things, and by their use of language in relation to those things.

§75. "What does it mean to know what a game is...and not be able to say it?"

Wittgenstein answers in the form of a question that could be rewritten as: "my knowledge, my concept of a game, [is] completely expressed in the explanations that I could give".

Notice that at 75 he asks the following question concerning knowing what a game is without being able to say what it is:
"Is this knowledge somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition?"

An "unformulated definition" suggests that there is something of my knowledge (i.e. something mental) which is left unexpressed in the "mere" giving of explanations (e.g. by providing a list of typical examples). If this missing something were able to be formulated, then maybe "I’d be able to recognize it as the expression of my knowledge". But this picture is inaccurate. Instead: "my knowledge...[is] completely expressed in the explanations that I could give".

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.

He's going to show at 76-77, that his knowledge of what a game is, is not like this. It is not the case that he could produce an explanation, description, or definition, which could express his knowledge of what a game is, because it would be extremely difficult to make that explanation, description, or definition "correspond" with the knowledge that he has of what a game is. This would be a hopeless task.

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

Then why does he ask whether his knowledge is not completely expressed in the explanations that he could give? Your account is inconsistent with the preceding passages:

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

Keep in my, that at 75 he is asking those questions. He provides no answer to them at 75. To answer these questions he draws the analogy of two pictures at 76. Another person wants sharp boundaries to the concept "game" (definition), Wittgenstein does not want such boundaries. Wittgenstein's "picture" is one of colour patches with vague contours, the other person's "picture" has similarly distributed colours, with sharp contours. There are similarities between them, and there are differences. He proceeds to investigate the correlation at 77.

Last week, in my post: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/246986 I said this is analogous to comparing what a person with poor vision sees, to what one with 20/20 vision sees. and Isaac did not like my analogy. But really it's Wittgenstein's own analogy of "seeing", and we do judge whether a person sees better or worse.

In any case, Wittgenstein proceeds with the two pictures analogy at 77, to investigate whether a picture with clearly defined colour contours can be made to correspond with the one with vague colour patches. As I said in the post referenced above, I see this a s a rejection of Platonic dialectics.

§76. Bounded and unbounded concepts differ conceptually but share a family resemblance. Their resemblance is like that of two "similarly shaped and distributed" colour patches, one with a sharp boundary and the other a blurred boundary.

§77. The degree of resemblance between the sharp and blurred colour patches (at §76) "depends on the degree to which the latter lacks sharpness". W asks us to imagine drawing a sharp rectangle which 'corresponds' to a blurred one, before noting that this is a "hopeless task".

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".

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

I think he goes even further than this, suggesting that since it is a hopeless task, we ought not even try to define ethical words like "good", instead, recognizing that such words just naturally have a "family of meanings". That is why I said he is rejecting Platonic dialectics, which is a method that analyzes different sorts of usage in an attempt to produce the ideal definition which all usage partakes of; as exemplified by "the good".

Some local colour - the taste of the zeitgeist -

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.

http://letourcritique.u-paris10.fr/index.php/letourcritique/article/view/27/html

From what I understand, Wittgenstein was not impressed by the philosophical discussions of the "Apostles". Probably their skepticism was too institutionalized and not radical enough for him. He seems to have had within him the Karl Marx attitude --- strip the Idea of all formal aspects, leaving exposed its material basis.

Sorry guys I dropped the ball here! Life happens :)

How’s the discussion going? Where we all at (roughly speaking?)

Oh ... unenlightened ... referring to your post about 20 pages back! Language doesn’t need “sound”. And “pointing out” doesn’t need vision either ;)

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

On the one hand I am not going to disagree with you, and on the other I am not going to search back to find out why that is an apparent inconsistency on my part. Instead I will assume that such an obvious comment is only inconsistent with an uncharitably literal reading of whatever I said, or else that i was having a senior moment that no one else was so disrespectful as to mention to me. :joke:

§75

§75 continues Witty’s expression of skepticism regarding the exhaustion of a concept by its definition. So to the pair of rhetorical questions: “Is this knowledge [of a game] somehow equivalent to an unformulated definition? So that if it were formulated, I’d be able to recognize it as the expression of my knowledge?”, I can only imagine Witty answering both in the negative. The formulation of the next question is somewhat more interesting though:

"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”. (my bolding)

The juxtaposition of ‘completely expressed” - which suggests a sense of exhaustiveness - along with “could” and ‘and so on’ - which suggest open-endedness and in-exhaustion - strikes me as notable. That the 'completely expressed’ is, qua 'complete', nonetheless open-ended suggests to me that Witty wants to gives a different sense to the very idea of ‘completion’, that ‘completion’ or ‘the completely expressed’ does not need to be ‘closed’ in the sense of having an exact intensional definition, but can itself be subject to elaboration, variety, and context.

§76

§76 riffs again on how concepts do not need to be exactly bounded, and that, even if one were to supply a boundary (read: definition), this would not make the two concepts - one unbounded, the other not - the same. There would bb affinities, with still with differences.

§77

§77 seems to want to ‘apply’ the preceding remarks to what happens when we employ concepts in the sphere of aesthetics and ethics, the implication presumably being that the concepts involved in both are inherently fuzzy, and attempts to employ definitions here are doomed to failure. There isn’t really an argument here, it ought to be noted, so much as an assertion of ‘where Witty stands on this’.

§77 also begins to address a point that will come up in detail later: that of skepticism, and how to address it. For, if Witty is right that fuzzy concepts cannot be subject to definitions (by definition?), then one implication might simply be that 'anything goes’ - “Anything - and nothing - is right”. As an antidote to this kind of ‘definitional skepticism’, as one might term it, Witty offers the following panacea: “

§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.

§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

There's a discrepancy here between your use of "language-game" and Wittgenstein's use of "language-games". The "family of meanings" is associated with a multitude of "language-games". To find one's bearings on a concept (as you say) requires identifying the appropriate language-game. But this is a type of comparison, as to a sample or a paradigm, and it is what Wittgenstein is trying to avoid.

So he doesn't exactly choose this route. Choosing the appropriate language-game would be like choosing a definition. Wittgenstein appears to me, to be advocating restraint from even making such a choice, and this would leave "the meaning" if there was such a thing, as ambiguous. Instead, there is a family of "meanings". It's like a matter of possibilities, and to understand this requires understanding the very nature of "possibility". Choosing one possibility, as the correct one, negates the others as possibilities. They are no longer possibilities if another has been selected. To leave them in their true state as "possibilities" requires not choosing. Therefore there is no "meaning", only the possibility of meaning, which is intelligible as a family of possible "meanings", represented by numerous related language-games.

Just as a side comment - I've been reading Witty's Remarks and Lectures on math, and doing this excercise in this thread has been super useful in getting on handle on them. It's also made me solidify, in a way I wasn't doing before, my conceptualization of the link between use and roles. To use is to use-as, in an intensional manner. That intensional aspect of use is a point of emphasis I've never quite grasped so concretely before.

Gonna try and work my way back into some momentum for this...

§78

§78 works to cast the whole of the preceding discussion about definitions into a distinction between knowing and saying. At stake here seems to be a twofold attempt to show, concretely, both the point(s) of overlap and point(s) of divergence between the two terms. Correspondingly, this serves two purposes that I see: first, by highlighting the similarities, Witty shows quite nicely how the a confusion between the grammar of the two might arise - how it is that we might take a definition of something (‘saying’ something) to be exhaustive of our knowledge of it [cases (1) and (2)].

Second, by highlighting how the terms diverge [case (3)], he aims to clearly show that a distinction exists; that one can drive a clear and obvious wedge between the grammar of saying and knowing.

§79

§79 works to iterate or project the discussion of definitions once again into yet another avenue: that of names. Those familiar with Kripke will recognise it as containing the seeds of Kripke’s anti-descriptivism, which, admittedly, I can’t help but read this section through the lens of. Anyway, the basic idea is that just as an imperative to “stay roughly here” is not exhausted by any particular boundary (§71), so too are names not exhausted by any particular descriptive determination:

§79: “So is my use of the name “Moses” fixed and determined for all possible cases? … But where are the boundaries []? … I use the name “N” without a fixed meaning”.

As a general comment, one way I’ve been framing a lot of this discussion in my head - and Witty’s approach in general - is as an attempt to discern what I’d call the immanence of meaning to use: the fact that the meaning of something attains it’s ‘adequacy’ always in relation to the circumstances of its invocation (‘use’): if one says ‘stay roughly here’, or if one uses a name, meaning here is not ‘built out of’ smaller pieces (simples) which, when put together the right way, would ‘give’ meaning to these things. Names are always adequate to what use we make of them: attempts to resolve names down to finer grained descriptions are always bound to fail.

In my head, I almost think of this visually: if a meaning is this: — — , one can’t ‘take it apart’ so as to attain pieces like this: ‘- - - - - -‘; meaning does not derive from a synthesis of smaller, more foundational things, and therefore cannot be analyzed out into any such pieces. The adequacy of meaning is immanent to use, and does not lie beyond it. This stuff really comes out in Witty's discussion of math, but alas that's beyond this thread.

§80

§80 continues with yet another variation on the theme of definitions not exhausting meaning, this time treating common nouns ('chair'), instead of proper nouns (names, §79), and imperatives ('stay roughly here', §71). One further advance in the discussion is the re-invocation of 'rules' as similarly not exhausting the employment of common nouns like 'chair'. Interestingly then, there's an equivalence being set up, in some respect, between rules, simples, and definitions, and the respective roles they play (or rather don't play) in defining the boundaries of their respective concepts or words (common nouns, proper nouns, and imperatives, at the very least).

The next few sections mark what I take to be another change in theme, giving explicit attention to the nature of rules, which have periodically cropped up in the discussion so far, but not quite in so explicit a fashion as the next few parts. Zooming out again, so far, a breakdown of what's been covered might look like this:

§1-§27: Imperatives (block! slab!)
§28-§36: Demonstratives (this, that)
§37-§45: Names (Nothung, Mr. N.N.)
§46-§64: Linguistic Roles (Simples, Composites, and Iterations thereof)
§65-§80: Definitions and Boundaries
§81-88(?): Rules, Logic, and Idealization

---

Anyway, lets tackle §81:

It's worth recalling some of what motivates the current discussion before digging into it, specifically, Witty's comment back in §65 that there is no 'general form of the proposition', and that one must look 'close up' in order to understand language. In this light, §81 and onwards is something like a critique of what happens when you do the opposite of this: a look at what happens when language is not looked at from 'close up', and instead treated in an 'ideal' sense.

Witty begins by comparing the use of language to games and "calculi with fixed rules", and notes that there is nothing necessary about any such comparison: language use can be compared to games, but this doesn't mean that it really 'is' or 'must be' such a game. Language-use has an autonomy from any such 'fixed calculi' at the end of the day, and cannot be reduced to them. Or, to put it sharply, there is an irreducible wedge between language and logic.

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'.

Hence, in turn, the sharp distinction between the way in which 'natural science treats of a natural phenomenon', and logic, which deals with ideal constructions. This sharp distinction helps explain the reference to Ramsey at the beginning, in which logic is referred to as a 'normative science'. The idea being that something constructed must at every point be governed by some kind of imperative or rule which enables transitivity between propositions (this follows from that if...; think of axiomatic systems where every move must be justified according to the axioms which ground it). Note that 'normative' here must be understood in its formal and logic sense, and not its ethical and juridicial sense.

By contrast, natural phenomena do not participate in any such economies of inference, but instead economies of causes. I'm admittedly banking on a distinction treated in detail by Sellars on this (causes vs. reasons), but I think putting it in these terms - although not explicitly employed by Wittgenstein - is very useful in helping to understand the sharp distinctions at work in §81 (and I know I keep dragging it in, but in the remarks and lectures on Math, Witty continuously makes reference to the distinction between natural phenomena and ideal language and insists constantly just how important it is to keep the two apart).

§82, §83

Not much to say about these as they are fairly straightforward: just as Witty questions the exhaustion of meaning by definitions, here he questions the exhaustion of langauge-use by rules - much as he did in §80. §82 is basically a series of rhetorical questions all meant to prise open an gap between language and rules, and §83 offering something like a parable also meant to put into question the idea that all language-use is exhaustively delineated by rules.

In any case the gist is this: just as complexes cannot be analyzed-out into simples, neither can language-use be analyzed-out into rules.

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

I think that this is the importance of 81. It is a separating of the notion of "perfect" from the notion of "ideal", such that perfection can be something other than the ideal. We can characterise mathematics and logic as ideal languages, but everyday language is no less perfect in its existence as everyday language, than the constructed ideal languages of logic. So it will come out in the following sections that "inexact" does not mean "imperfect". Metaphysically, or ontologically, perfection inheres within the existence of language itself, and is not to be found in the form that it takes.

This has deep implications with respect to how we apprehend the relationship between rules and language. If we characterize ideal languages as languages whose existence is dependent on rules, and strict adherence to rules, then everyday language escapes this characterization, of "rule-based" and does not appear to be governed by rules. But if we characterize "rules" in a different way, such that the ambiguity found within everyday language inheres within the rules themselves, then everyday language can still be said to consist of rules. The two perspectives create two distinct possibilities for the relationship between language and rules. On the one hand, only ideal languages are instances of following rules, and so the construction of rule based languages follows from everyday language which is not rule based. On the other hand, all language use involves rules, but rules are inherently ambiguous, such that different people can go different ways following the same rule.

The two different perspectives create completely different interpretations of what Wittgenstein is saying at 81, and indecision as to exactly what he is saying is evident in the different translations. Here I will repost what I said about #81 last month.

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

I believe that what follows in the next section of the PI is indication that Wittgenstein takes the position that all language use is an instance of following rules, and that ambiguity is inherent with rules themselves. The reason for the reference to being "mislead" is found in the reference to "definite rules". Ideal languages such as logic use "definite rules", but everyday language uses more ambiguous rules. That one is not more "perfect" than the other is found at #98:

"That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal,
as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable
sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us.—On the
other hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect
order.——So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence." --- Philosophical Investigations. #98

At 82 - 84 you'll see that he describes situations in which rules are being followed, even when we cannot say what the rule is which is being followed. Even if we play a game in which we make up rules as we go, we would be following rules in making up the rules. At 85, a rule is described as a 'sign-post". The sign-post does not tell you which way to go, your interpretation of the sign post tells you which way to go. From this, we can conclude that Wittgenstein opts for the position that rules are inherently ambiguous, and that all instances of using language are instances of using rules, despite the fact that the rules are not "definite rules", and the same rule (sign-post) might lead one person in one direction, and another person in another direction. Therefore the "perfection" of language is found in its very existence, as the existence of rules (signs), despite their ambiguity, and it is not found in the exactness, or the ideal nature, of any rules.

§84

§84 introduces the question of doubt into the mix. Lots has been written on Witty's take on doubt - especially in the later sections on pain, and his more focused remarks in On Certainty - so it's worth noting its appearance here for the first time in an explicit manner in the PI.

In any case, importantly for this section, doubt is introduced in its relation to rules, the question being: if the application of a word is 'not everywhere bounded by rules', does this mean that cases not covered by such rules always necessarily in doubt as to their use? I imagine this somewhat pictorially: as though one carves out a little bounded space of certainty among a larger, ambient space of doubt (light surrounded by darkness, as it were).

But this is a picture Witty rejects, or at least, ascribes instead to the imagination, rather than reality: just because we can 'imagine' doubts, 'is not to say that we are in doubt'. At stake here is again the question of regress: must there be rules that 'regulate the application of rules' ad infinitum? Witty's closing remark: "but for all that, I do not doubt in such a case", suggests not. §86 will make this point particularly clear.

In this connection, it's worth harking all the way back to §1, where, in relation to looking up words in the color chart, and asking all sorts of further questions (§1: “But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word ‘red’ and what he is to do with the word ‘five’?”), Witty simply says: "Explanations come to an end somewhere." This theme of stopping infinite regress (questions of doubt and justification) will become increasingly important later down the road.

-

In a larger context, it ought to be noted that this is effectively a thoroughly anti-Cartesian stance: generalized doubt, belonging as it does to the imagination and not reality, entirely reverses the Cartesian operation in which doubt is primary. This is a pretty obvious point, so I simply mention it without further comment.

§85

§85 brings together a number of important themes covered in the course of the book so far, although if you blink, you might miss it. For, by linking rules to ‘signposts’, Witty brings to bear upon rules the entire discussion of ostension undertaken in the earlier sections in the PI. The following line in particular makes it clear:

§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:

"And if there were not a single signpost, but a sequence of signposts or chalk marks on the ground - is there only one way of interpreting them?” (this rhetorical question obviously being meant to be answered in the negative - SX).

Yet for all this, the most important part of §85 is contained in the last section, which ties all this once again back to the question of doubt. Does the differential nature of the rule, the fact that it can be interpreted in more than one way, lead automatically - ‘philosophically’, as Witty says - to doubt (one thinks here again of Descartes)? In line with his downplaying of doubt in §84, Witty here 'relegates' doubt from a ‘philosophical’ register to an ‘empirical’ one:

§85: "[The signpost, the rule] sometimes leaves room for doubt, and sometimes not. And now this is no longer a philosophical proposition, but an empirical one.”

This too ties in to Witty’s appeal to look at things ‘up close’, and to avoid any attempts at a ‘general form of the proposition’. Such attempts wrongly transform doubt from an properly empirical matter, into a ‘philosophical’ - I’d prefer to say transcendental - one.

§86

Much like §85, §86 also serves to integrate some of the apparently disparate themes so far addressed. Indeed, it explicitly relates itself back to the language-game in §2, in which ‘block’ and ‘slab’ were called out. §86 revises the game somewhat, with written instead of spoken words. In this sense it’s actually made to look a lot like the language-game in §1, with the shopkeeper who looks up color words in a chart. If we recall, §1 opened with the problem of regress - if the shopkeeper has to look up a chart, how does he know what to do while looking up the chart? And how does he know how to do that, and so on? In response Witty affirms: ‘explanations come to an end somewhere’.

In this connection, §86 moves the discussion forward by relating all of this to rules. The chart, in §86, functions as a rule (§86: "So the chart is a rule”). And as a rule (much like an ostensive act!), it can be read in different ways:

§86: “Suppose different ways of reading a chart were not introduced; one time according to the schema … another time according to this schema … or some other one…"

With Witty again addressing the question of infinite regress with a series of rhetorical questions:

§86: "Can we not now imagine further rules to explain this one? And, on the other hand, was that first chart incomplete without the schema of arrows? And are the other charts incomplete without their schemata?”

And although Witty doesn’t come right out and say it, one can infer, given both the tone of the questioning, as well as from the answer given in §1, that these questions must, like most of Witty’s series of rhetorical questions, be answered with a big fat ‘no’.

§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

I think it may be appropriate to call this section a "de-interiorizing" of rules. The rule is given a physical presence, it stands there, like a sign-post. So in the case of language, the rule is the physical presence of the words. The rule is not what the sign means to the person who interprets it, it is the sign itself.

I believe that this is an acceptable ontological principle, but if we adhere to this premise, we need to respect the implications. The principal implication, as Wittgenstein points out, is the existence of doubt. If the rules by which we know and understand things, are outside of the mind, not directly accessed by the mind (noumena, in Kant's terms), and what is present to the mind is a representation of the rules (phenomena), then doubt is justified in all of our knowledge and understanding. This is because doubt with respect to the rules by which we know and understand, is itself justified.

The infinite regress which would be created by characterizing 'the rule" as a principle within the mind, is an infinite chain of needing a rule to understand a rule. If the rule is positioned outside of the mind, as Witty does, the "sign-post", then it is not by means of rules that the mind interprets and understands rules, because rules are not within the mind. The mind must have within itself something other than rules by which it understands. But if it is not the case that rules are at the bottom, the foundation, the basis for the mind's understanding, but are something which need to be themselves understood by the mind, using something other than rules, then doubt is a real concern.

Wittgenstein grapples with this problem in "On Certainty" and attempts to establish some principles to contain doubt. He attempts to distinguish between situations where doubt is reasonable, and situations where doubt is unreasonable. The problem with his procedure is that his ontology of rules makes some degree of doubt reasonable in every situation. So we cannot separate doubt from the situation, to say that there are situations where doubt could be excluded, as appears to be Witty's intent in On Certainty. So when he proceeds in this way, he's producing an incoherent epistemology. The kernel of this incoherency is evident at #85

---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

I believe this empirical proposition is false. Instead of describing the sign-post as always leaving some room for doubt, even if it's the most minute, infinitesimal degree of doubt, and each different instance of occurrence having a different degree of doubt, he describes the sign-post as sometimes leaving room for doubt, and sometimes not. The difference between these two descriptions amounts to a substantial epistemological difference.

What should we make of the parenthetical remark in §84? The general point seems to be that even though it is possible to imagine a doubt whether an abyss did not yawn behind it when we open the door, we do not; but he adds parenthetically:

and he might on some occasion prove to be right.

I think the following from the Tractatus is instructive:

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.

In line with Wittgenstein’s mystical bent I suggest that what is at issue is not simply an epistemological problem, that we have no knowledge of causality, but an ontological one. It may be that when I open the door there will be a yawning abyss. That things are as they are does not guarantee that they will continue to be so. This does not mean that we have good reason to doubt that they will be so. It is, rather, a recognition of the radical contingency of existence.

From On Certainty:

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.

§87

§87 now carries over the discussion of doubt into the discussion of proper names (which we left off in §79, and in which, to roughly recall, it was argued that names are not exhausted by any particular description). §87 then tries to draw out the implications of this ‘inexhaustiveness’ with respect to doubt: If the explanation of the use of a name cannot, or rather, is not exhausted by the ‘elements’ of that name (I think of set: Moses: {man, led Israelites out of Egypt,, etc}), does that mean doubt about the use of the name is always possible? Does explanation here need to ‘go all the way down’, as it were? And if it doesn’t, does this automatically induce doubt?

(Another image, one similar to the one Witty uses: the name ‘Moses’, atop an infinite pyramid of explanatory terms, each one explained in more detail by the level below. Cf: §87: "As though an explanation, as it were, hung in the air unless supported by another one”.)

But just as Witty has rejected the infinite cascade of rules that explain other rules ad infinitum (§84, §86), so too is this infinite pyramid of explanations rejected - §87: "an explanation may indeed rest on another one that has been given, but none stands in need of another”; Explanations are adequate to the degree that they simply remove a ‘local’ misunderstanding: “an explanation serves to remove or to prevent a misunderstanding … The signpost is in order - if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose.”

One way I like to think about all this is to draw a distinction between what might be called transcendental doubt and empirical doubt: transcendental doubt being a kind of a priori doubt, a doubt which, by default, serves to infest gaps in the ‘foundations’ of the explanatory pyramid, wherever they may be (§87: "It may easily look as if every doubt merely revealed a gap in the foundations; so that secure understanding is possible only if we first doubt everything that can be doubted, and then remove all these doubts”).

But for Witty, insofar as such pyramids are unnecessary - we can understand the meaning of names perfectly well without them - so too are such transcendental doubts simply illusions. The only doubts we ought to entertain here are the empirical ones, the ones that crop up in the course of explanation (cf. §85: "this is no longer a philosophical proposition, but an empirical one"). In line with this one can also consider two kinds of corresponding explanations: transcendental explanations and empirical ones: transcendental ones being of the kind like the explanatory pyramid, an a priori structure which each explanation of one thing relates to every other in a globally structured, networked manner. And correlatively to his rejection of transcendental doubt, so too does Witty reject transcendental explanation: §87: ”none stands in need of another”.

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Almost done with this section, one more to go before a whole new 'part' of the PI begins.

Of course, Wittgenstein's empirical explanation is doubtful, and most likely incorrect, as I explained above. Instead of describing "explanation" as an effort to minimize the probability of misunderstanding, thus minimizing the degree of doubt, to the point where we can safely proceed, he characterizes it at 85 as leaving "no room for doubt". This difference between excluding the possibility of misunderstanding (W's description at 85), and minimizing the probability of misunderstanding (what I believe is the true description, at 87), is significant epistemologically.

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".

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

Who is Norman the Normal? Expecting the German invasion, we Brits turned the signposts around, and took down the railway station signs. Some people collect old signs. These are not normal circumstances. Sign posts belong at crossroads, at the parting of ways. I don't know how i know, but I do know,under normal circumstances, how to read a signpost. I think if there is something important being said here, it is where and when to theorise a conspiracy, and where and when it is fatuous and counterproductive. The line is somewhere short of "absolute certainty".