"consistency" is something other than simple use. — Metaphysician Undercover
The way I read it, is that one compares, maybe, red and green and becomes (overly) impressed with the significance of 'colour', as if does some work as the generality of how things can look, as opposed to marking out another possible look of things as 'colourless'.what two things are being compared? (1) The thing and (2) The mode of representation? — StreetlightX
I think 'we predicate of the thing what lies in the method of representing it' is fleshing out how we 'find' the ideal in language in the sense of 101: — fdrake
78. Compare knowing and saying:
how many metres high Mont Blanc is a
how the word “game” is used a
how a clarinet sounds.
Someone who is surprised that one can know something and not be able to say it is perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not of one like the third.
66. Compare chess with noughts and crosses.
Note how frequently in the passages between 66 and 78 (and elsewhere as well) he not only says "compare" but makes comparisons. It is this method of comparison that is of central importance. There is a clear connection with questions of language, but if one is looking for an übersichtlichen Darstellung, a representative overview or surveyable representation or perspicuous representation, then limiting the comparison to linguistic matters foreshortens one view. The Tractarian distinction between seeing and saying is still at work here, although it functions differently. — Fooloso4
I did not mean to suggest otherwise, to the bolded statement. — fdrake
I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around. — Culture and Value 7
If you shout 'banana', when there is a wolf, it is no use, no one will come to your aid to fight a banana; you have to shout 'wolf' — unenlightened
Every wolf is unique, and every wolf attack is unique, but every wolf attack demands the same call, and every non wolf attack demands the same call not be made (where 'same' is roughly but recognisably - 'Woolve' would probably be near enough, and it is the near enough ness that allows language to be mutual. And being mutual (and thus consistent) is necessary to language being useful, rather than decorative. — unenlightened
Exactly. So the satisfaction of some other objective is what truly governs play. If the rules no longer suit it, they are changed. The rules are a convenience, an aide memoir for what worked last time. — Isaac
The question is whether such 'governance' - another word that appears nowhere in the PI with respect to rules - exhaustively characterizes language, on Witty's view. — StreetlightX
I mean seriously, if the PI amounted to 'language is a rule governed activity', one wouldn't need to read a jot of it. One would just need to listen to your grade school teacher. — StreetlightX
You are right, but you cited unenlightened saying: "grammar is extracted by pedants from pre-existing communication. It starts as description and becomes prescription - we convene, and from there comes convention." He is not referring to Wittgenstein's idea of grammar and I was responding to this. — Fooloso4
It is the practice that governs the language. — Fooloso4
When we do as others do it might be said that we are following a rule, but we are simply following along. — Fooloso4
So you're saying that "rule" is an empty concept and that "the rule is dead", but also that "obviously there are rules in language - just ask your grade school teacher"? — Luke
Why do you think these are somehow incompatible? Maybe that might throw light on where, if anywhere, we disagree. — StreetlightX
133. It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for
the use of our words in unheard-of ways.
For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But
this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely
disappear.
The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping
doing philosophy when I want to.—The one that gives philosophy
peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself
in question.—Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by examples;
and the series of examples can be broken off.—Problems are solved
(difficulties eliminated), not a single problem.
... — Philosophical investigations
It is the practice that governs the language.
— Fooloso4
Therefore, the practice is the rule? — Luke
When we do as others do it might be said that we are following a rule, but we are simply following along.
— Fooloso4
What's the difference? — Luke
Is what we call “following a rule” something that it would be possible for only one person, only once in a lifetime, to do?
Paraphrasing §199: To follow a rule...is a custom (usage, institution). — Luke
To follow a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess are customs (usages, institutions).
Also, much of what's been said had me turning back to §50, which also deals with the issue of representation, even employing the same vocabulary of 'mode of representation' (from the discussion of the meter rule and samples) — StreetlightX
Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses. — PI 18
Suppose I ask: "What are they doing?" and you answer "Following the rule". "What is the rule?" "What they are doing". — Fooloso4
Are they following a rule by going wherever it is that they are going? Am I also following this rule even though I do not know where they are going? What if they are just wandering about. Is the rule to wander? How does one know in which direction to wander? Is there a rule for wandering? — Fooloso4
To play a game of chess is not follow a rule or set of rules. There is no rule that says I must move this piece rather than that. The game is played in accord with the rules. — Fooloso4
To follow a rule may be a custom but a custom is not simply following a rule. Here's a quick story to illustrate, something I heard on the radio. A cookbook author was talking about her mother's recipe for brisket. Following what her mother always did, before putting the roast in the pan she would cut off a piece at the end. After doing it this way for years one day she asked her mother why she did it that way. Her mother answered: "Because otherwise it would not fit in the pan". The daughter was not following a rule that one must cut off the end. If her mother had a larger pan or a smaller brisket she would not have had to cut off the end. But the daughter thought she was following a rule by doing what her mother always did. — Fooloso4
36. And we do here what we do in a host of similar cases: because we cannot specify any one bodily action which we call pointing at the shape (as opposed to the colour, for example), we say that a mental, spiritual activity corresponds to these words.
Where our language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say, is a spirit.
Edit: perhaps another good analogy is this:
p∧(p→q)⊢qp∧(p→q)⊢q
show that to someone who hasn't learned to process propositions in logical syntax and it wouldn't mean a damn thing. We have to 'learn to see' the connections between natural language argument forms and the modus ponens. The 'representation' of our argument forms (in terms of validity, soundness, truth functionality and so on) consists in fabricating rules for propositional calculi spurned on by real argument patterns, and then we may say that the above formula is modus ponens. Even someone who understood how to argue using the modus ponens syllogism would not necessarily immediately 'map' it to the representation of it in the theory. — fdrake
What is the practice supposed to be here? — Luke
It is the practice that governs the language. — Luke
To play a game of chess is to follow a set of rules. — Luke
The set of rules, or the practice, constrains the possible moves, determining what move is allowed and what isn't. — Luke
The rules or the practice of playing chess does not involve the millions of permutations that the game can be played out. — Luke
What does this example have to do with a custom? — Luke
The preconception of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole inquiry around. (One might say: the inquiry must be turned around, but on the pivot of our real need).
And we may not advance any kind of theory.There must not be anything hypothetical
in our considerations. All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place.
My example of following was intended to get at the distinction between following along and following a rule. There may have been no practice of following along and it is not clear whether what they are doing is part of a practice. It may have simply been what they all did on that one occasion. — Fooloso4
The practice of playing chess means playing chess. This is not the same thing as the rules of chess. — Fooloso4
This is why my question was accompanied by the paraphrase of §199 — Luke
Perhaps if you take "the practice" to mean the application, exercise, action or rehearsal, but not if you take "the practice" to mean the method, way, procedure or convention. Which did you intend when you stated "It is the practice that governs the language"? I had assumed it was the latter, given our discussion of rule following. — Luke
Therefore, rules or grammar determine proper and improper meaning. — Luke
It is the practice that governs the language.
— Fooloso4
Therefore, the practice is the rule?
— Luke — Fooloso4
From page 34 of this discussion: — Fooloso4
Ah, I missed this. Still alot of catching up to do! — StreetlightX
There either 'is' meaning or there is not: either what is said has some significance that can be cottoned on to, or there is not. 'Improper meaning' is not a thing. — StreetlightX
125. This entanglement in our rules is what we want to understand: that is, to survey.
It throws light on our concept of meaning something. For in those cases, things turn out otherwise than we had meant, foreseen. That is just what we say when, for example, a contradiction appears: “That’s not the way I meant it.”
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