But as I've been explaining to unenlightened, there is a fundamental inconsistency between probabilities and impossible. Any impossibility created through probability is not a true impossibility, as the principle of plenitude indicates. — Metaphysician Undercover
So maybe you can explain to me what the others have not been able to. Why must there be an underlying psychological certainty? Take your example. I've lost my cup. — Metaphysician Undercover
The leading implicit (psychological) certainty in this hypothetical is that “I’ve lost my cup”. Devoid of this certainty, how would doubts as to where it might be begin manifesting? — javra
Emotive reasons for such statements aside, when it is said, “It is certain that the planet Earth is not flat,” one here affirms, what I’ll term, an ontic certainty: a determinate state of affairs that thereby holds no alternative possibilities. — javra
Devoid of our subjective certainty that there is a relevant, underlying ontic certainty to be discovered, states of uncertainty and doubt become meaningless. — javra
“The cup is on the table” doesn’t express a probability but a fact, which, as facts go, are taken by us to be absolute/total/complete actualities (in so far as they are not mere possibility, or mere potential regarding being). — javra
More briefly, one must first be certain that something is in fact the case in order to be uncertain or in doubt about what the case might in fact be. — javra
I think it is no longer worth my time and effort trying to help you see more than your myopic vision allows. It is one thing to discuss the texts but quite another when you resort to personal insult. — Fooloso4
insinuating that I have misunderstood what Wittgenstein has said. — Metaphysician Undercover
The issue was whether or not Wittgenstein's appeal to "ordinary circumstances" (87), is sufficient to "leave no room for doubt" (85). — Metaphysician Undercover
In TS 227(a), one of the two surviving typescripts, Wittgenstein crossed out the ‘k’ in ‘keinen’ in §85(b), thus changing the sentence from ‘der Wegweiser lässt doch keinen Zweifel offen’ (‘the signpost does after all leave no room for doubt’) to ‘der Wegweiser lässt doch einen Zweifel offen’ (‘the signpost does after all leave room for doubt’). This, in the context, makes much better sense. — Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition
The issue was whether or not Wittgenstein's appeal to "ordinary circumstances" (87), is sufficient to "leave no room for doubt" (85). — Metaphysician Undercover
Let me make it clear: you have misunderstood Wittgenstein. — Fooloso4
The third edition has it as "leave no room for doubt", but the fourth edition has it as "leave room for doubt" (at §85). — Luke
I'll have one more go with you Meta, as all my other threads are full of trolls at the moment. — unenlightened
It is not by some complex argument or power of reason, but in exactly the same way as the non-philosopher, by going about the world, and coming across these special circumstances, and learning to recognise them in exactly the same way that he learns to recognise a tree. — unenlightened
The apparent sophistication of doubt turns out to have no firmer foundation than the naive certainty it replaces. — unenlightened
Suppose your example goes another way, suppose the person who is asking, differs from the person answering, and says "no that's not a tree, it's a shrub", and then produces of argument for that point of view. The person who claimed that it was a tree, and insisted on certainty, did not know of the special circumstances, without the power of reason and argument. — Metaphysician Undercover
Consider what might happen when the context gets old, written material has aged for hundreds of years. Living in a different era now, we have great difficulty determining the meaning of old texts, because this requires putting ourselves in that context. This for example, is always a problem in interpreting religious texts, and has become a notable issue in the interpretation of the 2nd amendment of the USA. — Metaphysician Undercover
No, that's not the point. You missed the point by blowing linguistic smoke. Foundations are set into the ground and so they are grounded. The green thing growing outside my window is a green thing growing outside my window and there is no uncertainty, no doubt about it, whatever language we speak. Any uncertainty one might suggest requires the same certainty that is being undermined - the special circumstances that don't, as it happens, apply.The point is that there is no firm foundation. — Metaphysician Undercover
To justify this assertion, you ought to address this section of the text, and show me where I've been mislead by Wittgenstein's words. — Metaphysician Undercover
Good, this supports my claim that "leaves no room for doubt", is inconsistent with what Wittgenstein was trying to say. — Metaphysician Undercover
Since you agree with me that he is saying that the rules, as sign-posts, leave room for doubt, then for what reasons do you not agree that his position is consistent with what I've described, what you've called "radical doubt"? — Metaphysician Undercover
But that is not to say that we are in doubt because it is possible for us to imagine a doubt. — PI 84
I don't see how you can make a valid argument here. I'm doubting the location of my cup. [...] — Metaphysician Undercover
Isn't the engine idling?
§85 is a prelude to the later passages on rule following, including §201 ("there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation"). — Luke
A game I take to have profound philosophical significance, but which is usually shuffled off to the social sections of the forum. — Banno
90. We feel as if we had to see right into phenomena: yet our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena.
What that means is that we call to mind the kinds of statement that we make about phenomena.
Our inquiry is therefore a grammatical one. And this inquiry sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away.
5.5563 In fact, all the propositions of our everyday language, just as they stand, are in perfect logical order.—That utterly simple thing, which we have to formulate here, is not a likeness of the truth, but the truth itself in its entirety. (Our problems are not abstract, but perhaps the most concrete that there are.)
I understand all this as saying that logic does not set out the rules of language, but that rather we choose a logic that suits what we are doing with language. That's the "...turning our whole examination around..." in §108. — Banno
We can argue about nomenclature, but it is a different kind of uncertainty entirely, and one that W. also goes into exhaustively. Why muddy the waters instead of dealing with the example given, and the special circumstances given? — unenlightened
Yeah language can become divorced from context and so meaning can become less clear and certain.
But again you are not dealing with the challenge but posing a different language problem. Deal with the tree, or the shrub if you want to call it a shrub. Deal with the source of the uncertainty of its being, not the uncertainty of its name. You seem to me to want to run to a linguistic confusion in order to avoid dealing with the argument. — unenlightened
Despite your talk of uncertainly you seem certain that you have understood Wittgenstein, and that his epistemology is incoherent, and that those who do not agree with you have not been paying sufficient attention. — Fooloso4
The irony is that you have not "been mislead by Wittgenstein's words". It is not the words that are misleading. Like the signpost, someone can always interpret it in the wrong way, but that is not the fault of the signpost. — Fooloso4
When I come to stop sign I do not wait for a go sign to appear before proceeding. There is no room for doubt, but someone who does not know what a stop sign is might never go any further once he has seen "stop". — Fooloso4
Not really, because in the very next sentence of §85 - which is unchanged in both the third and fourth editions - W says: "Or rather, it sometimes leaves room for doubt, and sometimes not." You've willfully ignored this sentence for the last few pages of this discussion, and built your 'incoherent epistemology' thesis around the claim that W says "leaves no room for doubt" (only). — Luke
This is Wittgenstein's view, which is what everyone here has been trying to tell you. — Luke
Doubt (as we are addressing it) is a conscious activity. Do we agree? — javra
So, when doubting the location of the cup, can one simultaneously doubt that one is doubting, and furthermore doubt that one is in doubt about one's doubting of where the cup is, and this in infinite regress, at a level of momentary conscious awareness? If not, one will be psychologically certain that one is in doubt at the moment one is in doubt. Thereby making global doubt a psychological impossibility. — javra
But, then, if by "global doubt" one intends to express the held psychological certainty that there are no infallible certainties, this would in itself be a position one is certain about - and this, of itself, contradicts the position of global doubt. — javra
Notice that engaging the clutch does not stop the engine; it just sits there spinning away - not unlike Metaphysician Undercover, with whom I and others have had this discussion many times over the years. — Banno
I am not the one muddying the waters, — Metaphysician Undercover
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