Wittgenstein's method for restricting doubt does not fulfil its purpose.
— Metaphysician Undercover
What method? — Luke
What method? — Luke
85. A rule stands there like a sign-post.—Does the sign-post leave
no doubt open about the way I have to go? Does it shew which
direction I am to take when I have passed it; whether along the road
or the footpath or cross-country? But where is it said which way I
am to follow it; whether in the direction of its ringer or (e.g.) in the
opposite one?—And if there were, not a single sign-post, but a chain
of adjacent ones or of chalk marks on the ground—is there only one
way of interpreting them?—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. — PI 85
IS this what Metaphysician Undercover is doing - seeing the frame rather than the picture?
I think it is something like that. His points always seem off-target — Banno
"Inexact" is really a reproach, and "exact" is praise. And that is to
say that what is inexact attains its goal less perfectly than what is more
exact. Thus the point here is what we call "the goal". Am I inexact
when I do not give our distance from the sun to the nearest foot, or
tell a joiner the width of a table to the nearest thousandth of an inch?
No single ideal of exactness has been laid down; we do not know
what we should be supposed to imagine under this head—unless you
yourself lay down what is to be so called. But you will find it difficult
to hit upon such a convention; at least any that satisfies you. — PI..88
98. On the one hand it is clear that every sentence in our language
'is in order as it is'. 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. — P.I.98
I don't know if Wittgenstein thought pictures and language games incommensurable, but I think Davidson has shown that they can't be, that if there is a contradiction between them, then one is wrong; or more likely, one is talking past the other. — Banno
76. If someone were to draw a sharp boundary I could not acknowledge
it as the one that I too always wanted to draw, or had drawn in
my mind. For I did not want to draw one at all. His concept can then
be said to be not the same as mine, but akin to it. The kinship is
that of two pictures, one of which consists of colour patches with
vague contours, and the other of patches similarly shaped and distributed,
but with clear contours. The kinship is just as undeniable as
the difference.
77. And if we carry this comparison still further it is clear that the
degree to which the sharp picture can resemble the blurred one depends
on the latter's degree of vagueness. For imagine having to sketch a
sharply defined picture 'corresponding' to a blurred one. In the latter
there is a blurred red rectangle: for it you put down a sharply defined
one. Of course—several such sharply defined rectangles can be drawn
to correspond to the indefinite one.—But if the colours in the original
merge without a hint of any outline won't it become a hopeless task
to draw a sharp picture corresponding to the blurred one? Won't
you then have to say: "Here I might just as well draw a circle or heart
as a rectangle, for all the colours merge. Anything—and nothing—is
right."——And this is the position you are in if you look for definitions
corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics.
In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning
of tliis 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. — P.I.
The blurred picture is incommensurable with the one that has sharp boundaries, — Metaphysician Undercover
You tell me. — Banno
Have a look at §99.
This is the other voice, answering §98.
Then look at §100. Perfection does to belong here. — Banno
Are they incommensurate? Or are they doing different things? Talking past each other. They do not contradict each other. — Banno
that's what 98 says, — Metaphysician Undercover
The most prominent example of a simile producing a false appearance is for me the Mashed Potato thread. "There's the potato, and then there's the mashing of it". this is like "There's the meaning, and then there's the expressing of it".
But this isn't how it is! But S says yet this is how it has to be!
There will be other examples on the forums. And examples of other errors. I suggest one way to proceed wit this thread is in identifying such examples. — Banno
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