Pomophobe referred to a "background or framework that we are always already in". If "the background" is like the context, within which language exists, then this context is thoughts and opinions, some expressed, some not. — Metaphysician Undercover
So the foreground is expressed opinions and the background is unexpressed opinions, right? — Luke
How would you suggest a boundary between the foreground and background be drawn? — Metaphysician Undercover
The idea in PI 128 is a kind of ideal, i.e., if we were able to apply Wittgenstein's methods (it's not method by the way), then clarity would be achieved. There would be no debating the obvious, we would all agree, and thus no thesis or theses to advance. — Sam26
The problem according PI 129 is that what's hidden is what's before our eyes, it's something so familiar that we tend to ignore or miss it because of its "simplicity," or again, its "familiarity." It seems as though the answer to our question or confusion lies in the open, which means according Wittgenstein, that we fail to be struck by it. However, once seen anew, it becomes "striking" and "powerful." — Sam26
I don't know since I have no idea what these terms mean. I've asked you to explain what you mean by 'foreground' and 'background' in my last two posts. — Luke
Maybe you think that might help you to understand it, but it might just create confusion if it was never used as an opposition to "foreground" — Metaphysician Undercover
"Background" implies that there is also a "foreground", so your representation of the background as "all" is unjustified. — Metaphysician Undercover
Wouldn't the thesis (which stated the obvious) have to be advanced before we could agree on it? — Metaphysician Undercover
<emphasis added>
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.
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I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.
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What has to be accepted, the given, is — so one could say — forms of life.
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One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.
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When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly.
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An entire mythology is stored within our language.
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If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don't have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.
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The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something — because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. — And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.
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At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.
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What makes a subject difficult to understand — if it is significant, important — is not that some special instruction about abstruse things is necessary to understand it. Rather it is the contrast between the understanding of the subject and what most people want to see. Because of this the very things that are most obvious can become the most difficult to understand. What has to be overcome is not difficulty of the intellect but of the will.
— Wittgenstein
We already know how to use the word 'know.' But that doesn't mean that such knowledge is propositional. It's instead the kind ofI am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy." — Wittgenstein
Things do not have names until after there is agreement that this will be the thing's name. And this agreement can only be produced by someone suggesting names for things. — Metaphysician Undercover
First sentence is fine. but how can the suggestion be made until we have agreed that 'name' and 'suggestion' mean what we agree they do? — unenlightened
The distinction between a tree and a shrub, for instance, is pretty well established to the extent that you and I can argue about it with some hope of arriving at a resolution that is not based on our reaching an agreement but on our learning the agreement that has already been made by generations of yore. — unenlightened
This pair of remarks are one of a few handful in this section, I think, where Witty actually goes about spelling out - making explicit - why he keeps insisting on the 'descriptive' nature of his investigations, and why there is no 'explanation' in them. They are best approached, imo, as methodological pointers. — StreetlightX
I'm talking about how that agreement made by generations of yore came into existence. The spoken word must be prior to the agreement as to what the word means. — Metaphysician Undercover
This seems like more like rhetorical bluster than anything of conceptual import, much like his grumbling about 'depth' and 'surface' in §111: an effort to change our metaphors, our attitudes. — StreetlightX
Agreement is reached without ever being expressed. — unenlightened
Is it not obvious to you though, that a thesis must be stated before it can be agreed to? — Metaphysician Undercover
Agreement is reached without ever being expressed.
— unenlightened
The point though is that the words must be expressed before they can be agreed on, so agreement follow language. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think this paragraph is much more important than just rhetorical bluster. It goes to the heart of much of what he's saying. We often miss the obvious in spite of it being "always before our eyes." It's as if we have to be reminded over and over again in order to see the obvious. — Sam26
Understanding lives in use, much the way understanding how to ride a bicycle occurs in riding it and vanishes if we attempt to do so intentionally or to articulate this ability.
If flowing absorption characterizes normal use, stopping and staring are exemplary modes of philosophical observation.
Wittgenstein singles out similar unusual behaviors, especially repeating a phrase or word over and over to oneself and focusing intently (often introspectively) on something like the experience of reading (“as it were attending closely to what happened in reading, you seemed to be observing reading as under a magnifying glass”). An epistemological tragedy ensues: the very attempt to achieve a clear view of matters by suspending usage renders them opaque, like shining light on a developing picture. This is what Wittgenstein means by his famous claim that “the confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work.” As long as language is working an honest job in plain circumstances, its use comes easily; it is when we stop and stare that it baffles.
...the philosopher knows less than the average person because disengagement suspends her usual mastery of grammar...
The inability to answer philosophical questions does not reveal ignorance; it manufactures it.
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