Again, Derrida is jumping to conclusions maybe for his own reasons (if context is closed than the only option is difference?). A context only needs to be fleshed out to clarify any distinctions which are necessary for you and I to have no more concerns. If a concept is used generally, than the need for criteria and any context are simple to resolve. To quote myself from Emotions Matter: "The sky is blue." "Do you mean: we should go surfing? It's not going to rain? or are you just remarking on the brilliant color?" All these concerns of course may not need a much larger, more-detailed drawing out of a context to resolve (either to the Other or myself), but the context is endless if the need for distinctions remain. Context is not a means of (all) communication, it is a means of investigating our criteria of our concepts. One question would be: what context gives us an idea of the criteria a philosopher is relying on when saying "Surely I must know what I feel!" (Witt) — Antony Nickles

Is a context a kind of frame within which events happen? Do things take place WITHIN a context? Do two people interact within a single context? Can i hold onto an intention over time within a single context?

I ask these questions because the way that I interpret Derrida, context is synonymous with text , and text is synonymous with differance, the mark, the gramme, etc.
I don’t think a single context is large enough to include two people for Derrida. His notion of interability determines a context as being only a single moment of time, and it is only a single moment as experienced from a single perspective , that of the one forming an intention.

The moment I intend an utterance is the context for me. The next moment I find myself meaning to say something other than what I meant to say in the previous moment. What i originally meant to say has subtly changed its sense The context has changed and with it the criterion of my intention. It will appear for all ‘intents and purposes’ that I hold onto the ‘same’ context from moment to moment, because the shift in sense is so imperceptible. But what of my relationship with my interlocutor? If there is no ‘same’ context from moment to moment in my intending to say, then certainly my own intending and my receiving of the other’s response to me cannot be part of the ‘same’ context. I don’t think a context is something that can be said to be shared between two people for Derrida.

“The sky is blue”. However I intend this phrase , I cannot say that the moment of my intending it is the same moment , and thus the identical context, as my awareness of the other’s response to it. Relative to this very narrow notion of context, Austin’ s notion appears to Derrida to totalize into a single frame what is in fact a whole series of transformations of contexts, between myself and myself, and between myself and another. A whole series of very subtle transformations of sense end up being ignored , and stuffed into a single criterion of sense, a single situation. This does not mean that there isn’t a similarity between my criteria of sense and another’s, only that they are not the identical criteria or the identical context.

For the purpose of determining pragmatic social criteria of meaning Derrida makes use of a notion of dynamical context which is not-self-identical but consists of chains of differential marks.

“...the value of truth (and all those values associated with it) is never contested or destroyed in my writings, but only reinscribed in more powerful, larger, more stratified contexts. And that within interpretive contexts (that is, within relations of force that are always differential-for example, socio-political-institutional-but even beyond these determinations) that are relatively stable, sometimes apparently almost unshakeable, it should be possible to invoke rules of competence, criteria of discussion and of consensus, good faith, lucidity, rigor, criticism, and pedagogy.”(Limited Inc)


“Iterability makes possible idealization-and thus, a certain identity in repetition that is independent of the multiplicity of factual events- while at the same time limiting the idealization it makes possible:broaching and breaching it at once...the possibility of its being repeated another time-breaches, divides, expropriates the "ideal" plenitude or self-presence of intention,...of all adequation between meaning and saying. Iterability alters...leaves us no room but to mean (to say) something that is (already, always, also) other than what we mean (to say) (Limited,Inc,p.61)... It is not necessary to imagine the death of the sender or of the receiver, to put the shopping list in one's pocket, or even to raise the pen above the paper in order to interrupt oneself for a moment. The break intervenes from the moment that there is a mark, at once. It is iterability itself, ..passing between the re- of the repeated and the re- of the repeating, traversing and transforming repetition(p.53).

Is a context a kind of frame within which events happen? Do things take place WITHIN a context? Do two people interact within a single context? Can i hold onto an intention over time within a single context? — Joshs

This is a lot, and, as Cavell says in the Abbrogation of Voice (the reading of Derrida reading Austin I mentioned), not much touches. I will only attempt to paraphrase his points. He says "context" does much more and "intention" does much less than Derrida wants. I also think the idea of time is getting in the way. As Witt's builders show: a lot of the context is already there ("written" Derrida might say)--our understanding of money, a transaction, private ownership, a question, on and on--for both of us to know, when I say to a grocer "Can I get that Apple?", that I want to buy it. The context also allows for concurrent misunderstanding (or inconclusive understanding), say, for the grocer to ask, "Just the one, or a pound?" Context can be shared, past and present (into the future), but we may find different parts significant (identity, capitalism) in running down any confusion.

Now how much of all the things that could be brought to bear, actually need to be, is determined by the possibilities in the concept and what questions if any remain. An "intention" can only be what it is in light of a concept, say an offense: "Did you intend to slight your mother-in-law by not serving her a drink? Or did you forget?" "I" have far less to do with this than Derrida, or positivism, would like. Intention is not the cause of action (or meaning); not every action is intended; nor does intention create or influence the context, nor affect the criteria of a concept (unless the concept allows for that). My "perspective" may only, if at all, come in (at the end, as it were) if there is a problem. Concepts already (before and outside of me) have significance, I only say them; and that "mark" doesn't secure or set the context (or the meaning). I give myself over to that expression (fate myself, Emerson says, to the concept). There are only certain ways to qualify it or excuse it--one of which might not be to say, "that's not what I intended!" (except as an expression of the desire to take back having said something). Derrida says I don't have to imagine my death to see the non-presence of context make my meaning already other then what I say (or intended), but I do not die. As Austin says, I am tethered to my words, which are my bond, to which I am shackled. Now I can understand Derrida politically wanting to get out from under the tyranny of our concepts, but he has sold out our responsibility to what we say in the process.

So I'm just, as always, not sure what to do with Derrida. The idea of a concept repeating through different contexts, or iterability, is in the same vain for me as a word tied to a meaning (stripped of any need for context), or a representation being true or false about the world (the bogeymen Austin takes on). I know they are meant to be different, but it's as if Derrida doesn't want his cake but still wants to eat it.

I'll just reserve "ordinary language philosophy" for those who were at Oxford in the twenty years from 1945, and place an emphasis on analysis of common word use. — Banno

I'll let the idea drop that the conflict, between what we ordinarily mean by what we say and what we'd like to mean philosophically, has not been happening since Socrates started asking random people questions on the street, if you'll check out Must We Mean What We Say by Cavell (a student of Austin) some time, and consider OLP didn't die in '65 and that it's reach might stretch a little further (and leave off that it came out in '58--the guy just died!).

...our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking, in the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method.
— Austin [care of @Banno]

Sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. I wonder how much of that ‘common stock of words’ would remain if we removed the contributions of writers in innumerable fields of culture who thought them up in their armchairs(Plato, Freud, Shakespeare,etc). — Joshs

I believe Austin's point is the richness of what we ordinarily mean by what we say is the distinctions between one concept and another that are imbedded in their criteria for OLP to find that reflect what is worthy about that concept for us--what is meaningful about it to us: why it matters to draw that distinction, what counts for inclusion, why we would assume a connection to something else or between us, etc.

The important part here is not that they are common (ordinary) words (@Pantagruel); the point of OLP is that words "embody" the unconscious, unexamined ordinary criteria (not made-up, or philosophically-important criteria)--all of the richness that is buried in them of all the different ways we live.

He wants us to imagine the subtlety in how our ways of living are distinguished (not separate from the words, as Witt says too), and now compare this to Descartes. The armchair is a dead giveaway, but also he imagines his way into massive skeptical doubt and will only be satisfied with a standard of criteria he set by/for himself right then--neither subtle, nor connected to, nor worth anything but satisfying his fear.

I wouldn't say Austin understands skepticism (or cares about it) as Wittgenstein does (or Cavell), but he does qualify our entire reliance on "our common stock of words" to "all ordinary and reasonably practical matters" and so leaves it open that we might run out of words (what then?), or have to think more subtley, or because they are not always "sound"--though maybe just not as a start before looking at the richness of our existing concepts.

The important part here is not that they are common (ordinary) words (@Pantagruel); the point of OLP is that words "embody" the unconscious, unexamined ordinary criteria (not made-up, or philosophically-important criteria)--all of the richness that is buried in them of all the different ways we live. — Antony Nickles

If ordinary dialogue does not reflect ordinary content then I don't know what else would. This sounds like a discontinuity between means and ends.

Anyway, clearly this is a "special technical" usage which doesn't carry the force of meaning of "ordinary dialogue" as it really exists, so I'll leave it at that. Perhaps it should be called "Strawson's method" or "Wittgenstein's way" or the "epoche".

A PDF or link might help. Cavell is not high in my reading list, not having much of an interest n aesthetics. But has come up a few times recently. The fame of the deceased, perhaps.

From his first book of essays (rather short):
Cavell on Witt's Phil. Inv.

On the categorical Must of concepts

I have argued from OLP in my post about Wittgenstein’s lion quote (@Mmw) — Antony Nickles

Yeah, I got some enlightenment from that; just not enough to rearrange my metaphysical prejudices. This thread is interesting as well, but doesn’t really cover new ground, does it? Like....method?

the point of OLP is that words "embody" the unconscious, unexamined ordinary criteria (not made-up, or philosophically-important criteria)--all of the richness that is buried in them of all the different ways we live. — Antony Nickles

And from this is raised the question...how can the hidden, unexamined, unconscious criteria be called ordinary? If some embodiment is unavailable for examination, how can it be said to be ordinary? And if ordinary just stands for “not made up”, how is that not self-contradictory, if words are exactly that....made up in order to properly represent the objects to which they are meant to relate?

I accept there is a certain unconscious part of the system from which words arise, but I reject the words themselves can arise from unconscious criteria, or that they necessarily embody such unconscious criteria. Case in point....phenomena have no names, but subsequently cognized objects derived from them, do.

Kant was well aware of this (hey, you mentioned him three times already, so......), thus ensuring his method allowed words to merely represent the concepts used by the understanding in its relation to objects of experience. As such, they do embody certain criteria, but such criteria is by no means hidden or unexamined, insofar as both concepts and the words which represent them in objective manifestation, arising from perceptions or from pure thought, are entirely present to conscious mental activity**. From here, it is nothing but the domain of general employment given by common experiences, which sustains the notion of “ordinary”, and somehow or another this became sufficient causality for language philosophers to simply assign a different connotation to “ordinary”, but with insufficient explanatory methodology for doing so.

So we arrive at: to whom is OLP actually directed, and why does to whomever it is directed, need it?

Here’s my version of OLP: I speak, you listen; you speak, I listen. If we communicate successfully, fine. If we don’t...start over. Wash, rinse, repeat. Don’t need any analytic philosophy for that.

**Not quite, but elaboration is beyond the scope, methinks. Not for you so much as the subject matter.

As Witt's builders show: a lot of the context is already there ("written" Derrida might say)--our understanding of money, a transaction, private ownership, a question, on and on--for both of us to know, when I say to a grocer "Can I get that Apple?", that I want to buy it. — Antony Nickles

Of course , properly speaking , the context isnt anywhere, doesn’t exist, until it is experienced in the act of drawing from a background and in the same instant changing that background by using it in the now. But nowhere do we have evidence that the background that I draw from and the background that you draw from are the ‘same’ background. That is why Derrida talks of internally stratified contexts , social contexts that are ‘relatively stable’ rather than centered or unified as ‘shared’ from me to you. The ‘from me to you’ doesn’t share the context, it changes the context, but does so such that it can be seen ‘the same differently.’

There is no context that is shared. That is , there is no situation of communicating with another, such as what you and I are doing now , where you wouldn’t be in a better position to understand me by assuming that every word I use is not just the mark of a history of sedimented cultural contexts , but my own integral interpretation of that history of contexts as I interpreted them, just as you own contextual background is unique to your history.

That is to say, you should be looking to see how I mean every word that I use in relation to that larger personal system of understanding that is unique to me even as it bears a close enough relation to your own system that we are seemingly able to understand one another. But I don’t assume that we will understand one another beyond a certain secondary level of ‘sharing’. and I can even get a sense of where we will depart from each other in our interpretation of each other’s terms.

Now do we know how well we have understood one another ? The way I would put it to the test is by researching as much of your previous comments in this thread as possible, so as to construct an ongoing model of your synthesis of Wittgenstein, austin, Emerson and Cavell, and how it differs from other contributors to this forum who also enjoy those authors. I would then attempt to summarize my reading of your position back to you, and use your own assent or rejection as the validation of whether my efforts were successful. I consider my method as a kind of subsuming of your system as a variant of my own system. Not melding or sharing of the of the two, but a going back and forth between two contextual worlds of sense-making. I would be interpreting each of your words in the way that I hypothesize you mean them and contrast that with the way that I mean them, with no expectation that that gap can ever be narrowed by more than a small amount because of the stable self-consistency of each person’s evolving system of understanding.

You, for your part , may not even be assuming that there is such an integral superordinate background unique to me and producing a common resistance of my use words to ‘shared understanding with you. So your criteria for understanding might be much looser than mine, and also would probably not have as its goal an ability to anticipate my further behavior beyond what could be determined in terms of ‘shared’ contexts.

So I'm just, as always, not sure what to do with Derrida. The idea of a concept repeating through different contexts, or iterability, is in the same vain for me as a word tied to a meaning (stripped of any need for context), or a representation being true or false about the world (the bogeymen Austin takes on). I know they are meant to be different, but it's as if Derrida doesn't want his cake but still wants to eat it. — Antony Nickles

Never mind Derrida then. I want you to deal with my claim that you miss a vital amount of what goes on with people when you apply a glorified conditioning model, which is essentially what Austin’s approach is. For conditioning models, the ongoing personhood of the peso. is nothing but the constantly changing sequences of arbitrary impingements that shape their behavior.

Let me try and set the terms of this debate:

Austin’s belongs to a multi-varied movement in philosophy that wanted to move behind both idealism and empiricism. That movement includes Wittgenstein,
Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, Foucault, Deleuze, social constructivism , radical constructivism, hermeneutics, enactivism, etc.

A Rationalist apparatus in the head , and a representationalist language of inner correspondence with an outer, independently existing world , was abandoned in favor of social interaction as the set of meaning-making. The limitation of these approaches is that as they did away with ‘inner’ contents insulated
fro social context , they retained a reliance
on a substantial notion of content. Now instead of our rational internal templates dictating our meanings, our behavior is dictated by interpersonally formed contents. This was certainly an improvement, i. that it revealed the endless creativity in social structures and language , and also revealed a dynamically changing distributed order absent from rationalist and empiricist models.
But it didn’t go far enough to deconstruct the idea of content. Austin’s socially formed notion of concept begins too late, presumes too much. When you cite examples of the criteria for a concept to be felicitously used , your. examples of possible sense of a word are too over-determined. They treat ‘sense’ in a way that hides a whole universe of shading, variations and
textures within it that I suspect are invisible to you. And because they are invisible, Derrida’s use of intention is also invisible to you, leading you to profoundly misread him as having in mind a version of the old rationalism.

“The sky is blue.” take a shared’ sense of that phrase, such as ‘it’s not going to rain’, and then dig beneath that generic shared shell to reveal of senses of senses, different for every participant in that supposed same context of sense. For each participant, there is totality of relevance , as Heidegger puts it , that determines why they care enough in the first place to participate in the conversation, why rain is important to them in terms of their clothing or the fishing they hope to do or the fact that hey are less prepared for bad weather than their companion who they feel competitive with. All of these background concerns are an intrinsic part of the sense FOR THEM of that phrase.

“ The idea of a concept repeating through different contexts, or iterability, is in the same vain for me as a word tied to a meaning (stripped of any need for context), or a representation being true or false about the world.”

For Derrida the concept doesn’t repeat through different contexts. The first repetition of the concept destroys its meaning, just as change in context does for Austin’s notion of concept. The difference between derrida and Austin here is that time is context for Derrida. This follows upon Heidegger’s notion of temporality. Every new moment of time, every new ‘present’ is a new context, and destroys the old concept
and replaces it with the new. There is no onoing ‘perspective’ that survives this endless destruction and birth of concepts.

At this point you must be very confused. On the one hand, I’m presenting a view of contextual change that is so immediate, continual and thoroughgoing as to make it seem that the only kind of social world that could ensure from such flux would be without any stable order and without any room for shared conceptualization.

On the other, I have talked about systems of sense- making and stable superordinate worldview s, which I’m sure immediately raised red flags(aha, he’s invoking a pre-constituted rationalist inner system resistant
to contextual change!)

This paradoxical situation is difficult to explain in the language of the old way of thinking about such things as time and context. All I want to say at this point
is that to succeed at deconstructing Austin’s ‘concept’
is to replace content with process. Put differently , it takes away the arbitrary force and power invested in the notion of shared concept. A minimalist , intricate grounding of sense doesn’t have the substantiality of arbitrary force.

This minimalist notion of sense does not achieve its integrative continuity through any rationalist internal power. On the contrary, it simply lacks the formidability of value content implied by socially embedded and physically embodied sedimentation necessary to impose the arbitrariness of polarizing conditioning on the movement of experiential process.

...and what is it I am looking for in these?

If ordinary dialogue does not reflect ordinary content then I don't know what else would. This sounds like a discontinuity between means and ends.

Anyway, clearly this is a "special technical" usage which doesn't carry the force of meaning of "ordinary dialogue" as it really exists, so I'll leave it at that. Perhaps it should be called "Strawson's method" or "Wittgenstein's way" or the "epoche". — Pantagruel

Well, clearly I suck at explaining things--to the examples!! (I forgot actually that's the whole gig.) So the "dialogue" we would have is coming up with (seeing and describing Wiit says), and agreeing on, circumstances (the contexts) when we say, as an example (from Malcolm): "I know" and what those instances imply about our various criteria for knowledge (what we ordinarily imply (mean) when we say, here: I know).

One option ("sense" Witt says) is that I am certain: "I know when the sun will rise today"; the criteria for this might be that I can give evidence of that certainty, etc. This appears to be philosophy's one and only use and preoccupation. Second, we can say "I know New York", as in: I know my way around; I can show you; Third, I know (knew) that, as in to confirm or agree with what you said; and Fourth, I know, as in to sympathize with you. Cavell uses this last sense to shed light on our knowledge of another's pain--we don't "know it" in the first sense, we acknowledge it, recognize and accept the claim their expression of pain makes on me.

Witt uses OLP to figure out the reason (spoiler: certainty in the face of skepticism) that metaphysics and positivism remove any context and replace our ordinary criteria. He does this by putting their claims/terms back into a context of when we say: "doubt" or "mean" or "mental picture". His other goal (and Austin's) is to show the variety of criteria for different concepts (the different ways concepts are meaningful, how differently they judge, what matters to us in their distinctions), and that each concept has their own ways they work (as opposed to word=world as Witt's nemesis, and that every statement is true/false for Austin).

So, to try this again, we are not using an ordinary dialogue or talking about ordinary (non-philosophical) content; that's fine it's just not analytical philosophy. We are examining what the ordinary criteria and context are when we say such-and-such philosophical claim. With "ordinary" maybe not as, conventional, so much as opposed to metaphysical abstract (absent) contexts and pre-determined criteria (the irony that Ordinary Language Philosophy has a weird version of ordinary is not lost on me--they didn't pick the name). Any "force of meaning" here is that if we can agree on the examples and the criteria, you might see what I see--see for yourself.

And from this is raised the question...how can the hidden, unexamined, unconscious criteria be called ordinary? If some embodiment is unavailable for examination, how can it be said to be ordinary? And if ordinary just stands for “not made up”, how is that not self-contradictory, if words are exactly that....made up in order to properly represent the objects to which they are meant to relate? — Mww

I hope the example above illustrates the criteria of different senses of a concept are not "hidden" nor "unavailable for examination". To examine them is exactly the point. Witt says something like: they are simply not usually examined--like, walking. And metaphysics makes up the criteria (for common words), though I would point out that the picture of meaning as: words represent objects (ideas, etc) is exactly the kind of thing that looking at examples (of representation) might help clarify why philosophers want to frame it this way (this is basically the main thrust of Witt's Philosophical Invetsigations). Maybe it helps to examine the disparities between your framing and Austin's above.

I accept there is a certain unconscious part of the system from which words arise, but I reject the words themselves can arise from unconscious criteria, or that they necessarily embody such unconscious criteria. Case in point....phenomena have no names, but subsequently cognized objects derived from them, do. — Mww

Edit: Witt gets into a lot of examples when the word and the world are not separate (see my mention of "accident" above)--say, that there is no space between my pain and its expression for knowledge. And "unconsious" is simply one way to put it. Another might be: most of the time we don't discuss criteria because they are wrapped up in everything we are already doing--we don't have to mean it, or intend it, or justify it, "think" about it, etc. The context is clear, the expression is uncontroversial--none of that comes up; though I could explain all that with the context: which sense based on what was pointed out, etc.--thus, the universality of the claim (you could make those claims, anyone could), and its powerlessness if I can't get you to see what I do.

Kant's... criteria is by no means hidden or unexamined, insofar as both concepts and the words which represent them in objective manifestation, arising from perceptions or from pure thought, are entirely present to conscious mental activity**. — Mww

This the philosopher's dream of power. As if they, or some rational process, created or perceives the (at its worst, singular) association of words with the world, and that they (and not "us") are privy to the whole landscape of our rationale so what they say actually matters (as judgment, etc.)--the difference may be clearer in that anyone can give examples of what we mean when we say "accident", but do we actually use the categorical imperative to decide what to do?

From here, it is nothing but the domain of general employment given by common experiences, which sustains the notion of “ordinary”, and somehow or another this became sufficient causality for language philosophers to simply assign a different connotation to “ordinary”, but with insufficient explanatory methodology for doing so. — Mww

And this is exactly philosophy's dismissal of our ordinary criteria, as "common experience" (not phislosophy's special insight) and "general employment" (compared to philosophy's rarified uses). OLP does not claim a "causality" or a special place or "connotation" (though, yes, the method needs explaining, badly it appears). What it is trying to do is put the human, say, voice, back into the philosophical discussion by bringing up the contexts in which our concepts live.

So we arrive at: to whom is OLP actually directed, and why does to whomever it is directed, need it? — Mww

OLP was (initially) directed at traditional analytical philosophy and the metaphysics, representationalism, positivism, and descriptive falacy, etc., of philosophical theories or statements that, among other things: communication/rationality works in one universal or specific way, or towards a particular standard, that it is dependent more on individuals, and that we have more control in how it works. It's necessity is to breath new life into a tradition which has removed us from its considerations. We fear skepticism and ambiguity, so we mechanize our world and language and relations. The place of philosophy is now bright and shiny and hollow and no one is allowed to live there.

Antony Nickles ...and what is it I am looking for in these? — Banno

Solid question. The one on Witt might allow you to see him in a larger context, and the other one I thought you might just enjoy as a good defense/example of OLP--I particuarly think the MUST of meaning something said is something Austin would enjoy. Also, as evidence that, with Cavell, Cora Diamond, others, OLP is still relevant and has more to say.

Of course , properly speaking.... — Joshs

"Properly" speaking....... Was I speaking... Improperly?

...nowhere do we have evidence that the background that I draw from and the background that you draw from are the ‘same’ background. — Joshs

This reminds me of Witt's (and Cavell's) examination of philosophy's obsession with knowing whether the pain I have is the same as yours. Unless there is a need to address a confusion, there is no need to talk of difference--what evidence would prove that? All OLP has is examples of "confusion" and what a "difference" is in "our" "background". Sometimes communication fails fundamentally--that's not a reason to restructure everything as if it always does or could whenever, unless maybe you have a reason to, say, attack logocentrism to allow for different voices--shift power to the individual.

"there is no situation of communicating with another, such as what you and I are doing now , where you wouldn’t be in a better position to understand me by assuming that every word I use is not just the mark of a history of sedimented cultural contexts , but my own integral interpretation of that history of contexts as I interpreted them, just as you own contextual background is unique to your history." — Joshs

That sounds exhausting; most of the time we don't need to be that special, nor intentional (if at all), but, yes, some times it is appropriate to be deliberate (a speech), or to "speak your (individual) truth" as it were. Emerson will talk of aversion to conformity (as Thourea civilly disobeys), and of breathing life into words--making a specific distinction, or even pointing out something new, or taking a concept into a new or broader context. All of the discrete, specific examples of, say, excuses, are evidence of the expansive ways language falls apart, rights itself, expands, and is used by us in the ways it allows (or against them).

"I mean every word that I use in relation to that larger personal system of understanding that is unique to me" — Joshs

You "meaning" every word is the same as you "intending" every action. Maybe the example about accidents helps. We are not that powerful--we don't set meaning, nor mitigate understanding; again, we abandon ourselves to our words.

There is no such thing as "ordinary language", it is an oxymoron, and that is what Wittgenstein demonstrated. The so-called "ordinary language philosophy" is a reaction to what Wittgenstein did.

"Ordinary" is a generalization, but what is implied by "ordinary language" is reference to the specific instances of use, occurring in unique and particular circumstances. So we have the self-contradicting concept, that the peculiar and unique instances of language usage, can be described or spoken of, under the generalization of "ordinary language".

The philosophical issue which arises is the need to distinguish between what a person appears to be saying, and what a person appears to be doing, in order to avoid deception. If we assume that a person is speaking any sort of "ordinary language", then we assume a fixed meaning to the terms, consistent with this generalization, validated by concepts, and the person is interpreted as speaking ordinary language accordingly. This allows that what the person is doing with the words, within the particularities of the unique circumstances, is actually somewhat different from what the words say, according to the assumed concepts of the "ordinary language". Therefore the person who interprets under the assumption of "ordinary language" is capable of being deceived, if the speaker is doing something different from what the assumed concepts say the speaker is doing. We can call this deception a form of hypocrisy, saying something (as interpreted through the assumed concepts of "ordinary language"), while the person is in the midst of doing something completely contrary to what is being said.

Wittgenstein was a master at this form of hypocrisy, actually taking it to a higher level, by attacking the foundations of it, with it, implying that what he was doing with the words is actually the same thing as what he was saying with the words, while actually demonstrating that he was saying something different with the words from what he was doing with the words. The result of course, is multiple levels of ambiguity, and an impossibility of agreement in interpretation.

And again, the claim of OLP is hyperbolic, it is voiced to include everyone (though impossible), as if to move past resorting only to the individual and approaching a sense of the universal without erasing the context of the particular--Nietzsche will appear righteous and unabashedly anarchistic; Austin, contemptuous or condescending; and Wittgenstein, enigmatic, curt, presumptuous (as I've said elsewhere, the lion quote is used as an uncontested fact). — Antony Nickles

I see you have an inkling of the issue right here, with the reference to hyperbole. All you need to do is carry this analysis one step further, and OLP is seen as oxymoronic rather than hyperbolic. Until you relinquish the idea that there is any such thing as what a person is saying with words (ordinary language), and replace that idea with the idea that there is only what the person is doing with words (as philosophy is an instance doing something with words), you will always leave yourself exposed to the possibility off deception. President Trump provides a very good example, 'I kept telling those people not to use violence in our fight to prevent the election from being stolen from us'.

I believe Austin's point is the richness of what we ordinarily mean by what we say is the distinctions between one concept and another that are imbedded in their criteria for OLP to find that reflect what is worthy about that concept for us--what is meaningful about it to us: why it matters to draw that distinction, what counts for inclusion, why we would assume a connection to something else or between us, etc. — Antony Nickles

The first thing you need to do is dispense with this idea that there is such a thing as "a concept". This notion, of what Banno would call mental furniture is what is misleading you. When you think that there is a concept, then you think that there is some sort of "ordinary language" which consists of a relationship between word and concept. If you rid yourself of this notion, you will see that each instance of language use is particular to the circumstances, and the assumption that there is "a concept" which poses as the medium between the words, and what the person is doing with the words, is really an unnecessary attitude which renders you vulnerable to deception.

Kant's... criteria......
— Mww

This the philosopher's dream of power. — Antony Nickles

I suppose, yeah. He does admit his intention to:

“....bequeath a legacy to posterity, in the shape of a system of metaphysics constructed in accordance with the Critique of Pure Reason, still the value of such a bequest is not to be depreciated....”

Still, I doubt if he sat around indulging in vainglorious rumination, “I’m gonna be remembered long after Baumgartner, Schelling, Mendelssohn, et al are merely faded wannabes”. Dunno....I wasn’t there.

Fine line between rampant ego and manifest genius.
—————

OLP was (initially) directed at traditional analytical philosophy and the metaphysics, representationalism, positivism, and descriptive falacy, etc., of philosophical theories or statements that, among other things: communication/rationality works in one universal or specific way, or towards a particular standard, that it is dependent more on individuals, and that we have more control in how it works. — Antony Nickles

This implies a distinction between traditional analytic philosophy, and philosophical theories regarding metaphysics, representationalism, etc. Is that right? Is there a distinction? Or are you meaning to say, directed at analytic philosophy and those philosophical theories and statements contained in it?

Doesn't matter, really. All philosophy is human rational construction, therefore is itself confined to the species, it is dependent on individuals and they do have control in how it works. It’s a simple as, objects and ideas control my intelligence, the ends by which I philosophize, but I and only I control my intellect, the means by which my philosophy is developed.
————-

What it (OLP) is trying to do is put the human, say, voice, back into the philosophical discussion by bringing up the contexts in which our concepts live. — Antony Nickles

If OLP doesn’t have its own method sufficient to justify its tenets, hypotheses or claims, it is nothing but a compendium of illustrative examples and not a philosophy at all. Such method may explain how bringing up the contexts in which our concepts live, puts the human “voice” back into philosophical discussions. It might begin by showing how there can even be a philosophical discussion that doesn’t have a human “voice” participating in the discussion, and making the discussion possible in the first place. But, I suppose, as in “ordinary”, there might be a different......grammar.......for “discussion” in regards to OLP as opposed to conventional discourse.

Do I recall you positing that the ordinary in OLP doesn’t mean conventional use of words? Hopefully, because we both know concepts don’t “live” in the conventional sense.
—————-

It's (OLP’s) necessity is to breath new life into a tradition which has removed us from its considerations. — Antony Nickles

I agree analytic philosophy tends to remove us....us being thinking subjects as such.....from its considerations. Still doesn’t tell me how OLP puts us back, which wouldn’t at the same time make it just another form of speculative or theoretical metaphysic, imitating the ones we already have.

there is no situation of communicating with another, such as what you and I are doing now , where you wouldn’t be in a better position to understand me by assuming that every word I use is not just the mark of a history of sedimented cultural contexts , but my own integral interpretation of that history of contexts as I interpreted them, just as you own contextual background is unique to your history."
— Joshs

That sounds exhausting; most of the time we don't need to be that special, nor intentional (if at all), but, yes, some times it is appropriate to be deliberate (a speech), or to "speak your (individual) truth" as it were. — Antony Nickles

How often in your life , say over the course of a
month, a week or even a day, do you feel feelings of guilt, anger, anxiety? These are the social affects that tell us of the myriad ways we misunderstand each other , talk past one another, fail to ‘ put ourselves in the other’s shoe’ I would say that , given how prevalent these forms of suffering are in our lives, and how often they can lead to cruelty and suffering, most of the time we are in desperate need of a way to understand each other better than we do. If what I described is exhausting , it is much less exhausting than settling for emotional pain. That is, if we are successful at it. And we don’t have a chance at succeeding if we miss a large chunk of what produces misunderstandings. and their associated feelings of guilt, hostility , stress.

We are not that powerful--we don't set meaning, nor mitigate understanding; again, we abandon ourselves to our words. — Antony Nickles

We are even less powerful than Witt or Austin assume. That is to say, ‘we’ are even less powerful that the socially formed we that they talk about, which is still quite powerful in violent and arbitrary ways. We don’t abandon ourselves to our words, we abandon ourselves to temporality, to change in context, which is more fundamental than words seen as shared conventions.
Creative shifts in sense operate before, beneath , within and beyond shared conventions.


Derrida says all speech is writing in Derrida’s sense of writing as differance, so when I speak or write to myself, I am speaking to the other. This is the origin and only site of the social.

“When he writes himself to himself, he writes himself to the other who is infinitely far away and who is supposed to send his signature back to him. He has no relation to himself that is not forced to defer itself by passing through the other in the form, precisely, of the eternal return. I love what I am living and I desire what is coming. I recognize it gratefully and I desire it to return eternally. I desire whatever comes my way to come to me, and to come back to me eternally. When he writes himself to himself, he has no immediate presence of himself
to himself. There is the necessity of this detour through the other...”

“From this point of view, there is no difference, or no possible distinction if you will, between the letter I write to someone else and the letter I send to myself. The structure is the same.”

This would also apply to speaking to oneself and to another.

I should mention that , concerning concepts like ‘I’ , ipsiety, the subject, Being, the self, Derrida and Heidegger don’t begin from a notion of self as Anthropos, as a human being , or living thing, or empirical body.
For Derrida the mark, difference, the trace, writing can’t even be said to be a ‘who’ as opposed to a ‘what’.

Intention , meaning to say, Being, experiencing, is a bare temporal structure , the past which is changed by a presenting which comes from a future. This tri-partite structure is what a single moment ‘is’, and it is irreducible, and comes back to itself as utterly other than itself, as utterly new context.

If we cannot say that this temporality of intention is a human or living thing or any sort of ‘entity’ , then the notion of two ‘people’ and what takes place between them is already a secondary or derived modification of the primary sociality of the ‘self’ that continues to be what it is by being a new and other self every moment. The self ‘is’ this other to itself , what Heidegger calls the in-between.

Getting back to the arbitrary and violent power of the socially constructed ‘we’, tell me a little about what you and Austin think happens when you sit by yourself in your armchair for hours or days with no communicative contact with others, and you are thinking and writing nonstop. Let’s not worry yet about what ‘ thinking’ means here. How would you characterize this experience? What if I were to talk about what took place in the following way: you began your writing by moving from a foundation of sedimented social norms, conventions and practices that are embedded in the words that you think to yourself. By over time , you found yourself rethinking the conventional sense of those words and moving beyond the conventions. Your solitary thinking and writing brought you to a changed relationship to those conventions , and this is reflected in the odd new terms
that begin to crop up in your work.

When you re-engage with your intellectual
community after this period of solitary creativity, you find you understand them less well and they understand you less well. You may eventually need to move on from
that community and find or form a new one .

Tell me how you would translate what I just said in Austinian terms. Does your solitary creativity amount to no more than a reshuffling of socially formed concepts?

I prefer Eugene Gendlin’s explanation:

“After Wittgenstein philosophers have assumed that only language gives meaning to sensing the body “from inside.” The common experiencing we have all day is philosophically ignored because they think of it as merely internal and indeterminate, made interactional only by language. There is a big difference between my view and that of the current philosophers. They say that the body as sensed from inside is meaningful and interactional only through language (which includes concepts, culture, and history). If we find a bodily sense meaningful, they think this can only be what language and culture have trained into our bodies.”

If our interactions are attributed to ‘culture’, we may seem culturally programmed since we are born into a world of language, art, and human relationships. Culture may seem imposed on human bodies. But we can ask: How can a body have cultural patterns such as speech and art, and how can it act in situations? If we can explain this, we can explain how culture was generated and how it is now being regenerated further and further.

“We can speak freshly because our bodily situation is always different and much more intricate than the cultural generalities. A situation is a bodily happening, not just generalities. Language doesn't consist just of standard sayings. Language is part of the human body's implying of behavior possibilities. Our own situation always consists of more intricate implyings. Our situation implies much more than the cultural kinds. The usual view is mistaken, that the individual can do no more than choose among the cultural scenarios, or add mere nuances. The ‘nuances’ are not mere details. Since what is culturally appropriate has only a general meaning, it is the so-called ‘nuances’ that tell us what we really want to know. They indicate what the standard saying really means here, this time, from this person.

Speech coming directly from implicit understanding is trans-cultural. Every individual incorporates but far transcends culture, as becomes evident from direct reference. Thinking is both individual and social. The current theory of a one-way determination by society is too simple. The relation is much more complex. Individuals do require channels of information, public discourses, instruments and machines, economic support, and associations for action. The individual must also find ways to relate to the public attitudes so as to be neither captured nor isolated. In all these ways the individual is highly controlled. Nevertheless, individual thinking constantly exceeds society.”

I appreciate the responses and thank you for helping me see the crossed-wires and misconceptions (and I wish I was better at addressing those). Before going back to responding (I will), I thought I would try to gather the misconceptions we have discovered.

1.That OLP's subject is only language, rather than us, the world, communication, culture, politics, philosophy's issues in general...

2. By ordinary, OLP is using regular words, for ordinary ideas, (or anyone's opinion) compared to philosophy's complex problems;

3. "Concept", "ordinary", "grammar", "criteria", "context, "use", etc., can be assumed (presumed) to be understood at first glance or in an ordinary way or as other philosophy might, instead of as specific terminology.

4. That a "concept" is similar to an "idea" or other mental metaphysical "object" that corresponds to words or the world, instead of a general category of words that have criteria imbedded in them for the way they are used: generalizing, knowing, seeing, understanding, meaning, intending, i.e., the words philosophy appropriates and stripes of their criteria to create a picture of one theory of language.

5. That OLP is saying or showing that language is simple, or works simply, dismissing or not interested in, or applicable to, philosophy's honest concerns (skepticism, the problem of other, identity, etc.),

6. That OLP is simply an empirical popularity contest of what most people say or that OLP is merely pointing out what makes people act in certain ways, or is conservatively limiting what can be said philosophically, or dismissing philosophy with “common sense”.

7. That Witt blames philosophy's problems on language, rather than on:
a) philosophy's desire/need for language to meet its standard;
b). the possibility in language to allow us to bewitch ourselves in that way, its ability to seem uprooted (isolated words) and so appearing to need roots; and
c) ordinary criteria's inability to defend itself.

8. That OLP has a theory of langauge, meaning, rationality etc., (and one overarching all) rather than being a method for insight (that the process is the "argument"), yet also a style and attitude, in that it is not telling us so much as asking us if we see too, requiring us to look differently (thus includes philosophers such as Socrates, Nietszche, Emerson, Thoreau, later Heidegger, and a new wave interested in OLP's involvement in and lessons from: literature, film, education, politics...

9. That representation, etc. is wrong (and OLP right, on the same terms), rather than us being confused, blind to ourselves (the entire picture ignoring our real needs/desires);

10. That OLP is making statements about how language works, rather than claims which only need to be fleshed out better, finding a context where the criteria might be something more apt, i.e., I have an equal right as the philosopher.

Good lord, how does one convey an innovation in thought WITHOUT either using the common stock uncommonly or inventing neologisms? — Joshs

Languages evolve, certainly. New words derive their meaning in the same manner as old words did, thus becoming part of the "common stock" of words. Once they have done so, then ascribing to them a another meaning or significance can create problems.

For example, "website" is a relatively new word. Nobody contends that it really means "the location of a spider's web" though. If some philosopher began claiming that the mind is a website, however, then it may be that some proponent of OLP might suggest that philosopher is taking a word with a recognized meaning and running with it off to Never-Never Land.

I'd be interested in some examples of instances where an innovation in thought was communicated by using common stock words uncommonly. Note, though, that I don't think saying something is like something else is to use common stock words uncommonly.

I'd be interested in some examples of instances where an innovation in thought was communicated by using common stock words uncommonly. — Ciceronianus the White

Heidegger: Being, ‘is’, self, curiosity, idle talk, care, hearing, understanding , discourse, time, past, future.

Derrida: spacing , intention, writing , trace, mark, presence, expression, sign,

Husserl: ego, intention, empathy, sense, real, objective, nature, material, physical.

I could list many more philosophers. And it’s not just individual words whose sense is changed , it is also conventional grammatical structure.

Well, I suppose an innovation in thought doesn't have to be a good one.

They used all those words uncommonly? What did "writing" mean, and "hearing"? "Is" we know has more than one meaning, thanks to former President Clinton.

Having no idea what these philosophers achieved in uncommonly defining these words, or how they defined them, I'm afraid I can't comment on whether an innovation in thought resulted.

Well, I suppose an innovation in thought doesn't have to be a good one — Ciceronianus the White

Here’s the first page of Heidegger’s magnum opus, Being and Time.

“”For manifestly you have long been aware of what
you mean when you use the expression 'being.' We,
however, who used to think we understood it, have now
become perplexed.”( Plato)

Do we in our time have an answer to the ques­tion of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question
of the meaning of being. But are we nowadays even per­plexed at our inability to understand the expression
'being'? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an
understanding for the meaning of this question. Our
aim in the following treatise is to work out the question
of the meaning of being and to do so concretely. Our
provisional aim is the interpretation of time as the pos­
sible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of
being.”

how does one convey an innovation in thought WITHOUT either using the common stock uncommonly or inventing neologisms? — Joshs

I'd be interested in some examples of instances where an innovation in thought was communicated by using common stock words uncommonly — Ciceronianus the White

One "uncommon" use is when philosophy stripes concepts of the criteria that account for their ordinary uses (possible senses) and significance (why those senses matter to us)--"knowledge" 'appearance" "difference", intention" etc. And, yes, this "creates problems", like when "thought" is imagined to be an internal thing that, to be special, new, innovative, needs to be "outside" of the ordinary criteria of our concepts, that those must be circumvented.

But by investigating our ordinary criteria for each concept and how they allow for change is to see that it sometimes changes with our (cultural, practical) lives, but also to see that the ordinary criteria of senses of a concept can be extended into new contexts. With the example above, "thought" is externalized (see late Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?) not as limited to/by language, but that our desire for its "originality" and change is a possibility of (within) our concepts because of their criteria and the ordinary ways in which their "conformity" can be broken or pushed against or revitalized (in degenerate times). I guess this is to say I am, "my" "thought" is, not special, so much as, if I want what I say to be special, I am responsible to make that intelligible (which is a possibility of/from our ordinary criteria).

One "uncommon" use is when philosophy stripes concepts of the criteria that account for their ordinary uses (possible senses) and significance (why those senses matter to us)--"knowledge" 'appearance" "difference", intention" etc. And, yes, this "creates problems", like when "thought" is imagined to be an internal thing that, to be special, new, innovative, needs to be "outside" of the ordinary criteria of our concepts, that those must be circumvented. — Antony Nickles

Another ‘uncommon’ use is to convince
onself that one is using ordinary language to talk about olp, only to find the readers are all over the place in interpreting the sense of those ‘ordinary’ words. Why do you think that is? Perhaps our ordinary criteria are themselves , from one to the next to the next person( and ‘within’ each person), already ‘outside’ the ordinary, so no circumvention is needed. Perhaps this is because there is no purely internal any more than there a a purely public.

Are you familiar with the work in the area of the problem of other minds, or the issue of empathy?
It’s become a burgeoning field of study and I think it is germane to the understanding of language, given that in order to communicate with others, we must first recognize them as like ourselves, as fellow language-using beings.

The three prime candidates for explaining empathy are theory theory, simulation theory and interaction theory. The first two pre-suppose an ‘inner’ mentation that actively infers the existence of others and attempt a to ‘mind read’. The interactioniat group rejects internal representations in favor of a primary intersubjectivity , which has much in common with Wittgenstein.
This growing group of writers make use of Husserl’s and Merleau-Monty’s analyses of empathy.
The other feature of intersubjectivity that is becoming widely accepted is that there is something it is like for me to experience a world( Nagel) They stipulate that all consciousness is self-consciousness ; there is a minimal pre-reflective self-awareness that accompanies al experiences. I’m wondering what you take is on this, since it speaks to the subjective side of language.

I suppose I should make it clear, if I haven't done so already, that I while there are aspects of OLP I think are admirable and useful, I think of it as therapeutic. It was largely the philosophy I was taught when I received formal instruction in philosophy--the philosophy of my joy and my youth, so to speak, as the God of Catholicism was the God of my joy and my youth (opening words of the Mass, sorry). Wittgenstein, Austin, Urmson, Strawson and such--that was what we read outside of courses on the history of philosophy. I was impressed by the way the method employed in that kind of philosophy dissolved the traditional "problems of philosophy" as did the pragmatism of John Dewey (or so I thought, and still think).

As a result, I suppose, the "question" of Being isn't one I've considered nor have I thought it worthwhile to do so. And I'm leery of what seems to be the tendency of many philosophers to come up with definitions of such grand concepts as "Being" and "Thought" as part of an effort to understand, finally, what they are, or what reality is, or what knowledge is, what "Good" is. I suspect that efforts to do so are tainted by what Dewey referred to as "the philosophical fallacy" which he summarized as being "lack of context."

So I acknowledge that such concepts have been the subjects of philosophy and that their use in philosophy is specialized. I also think that philosophers tend to redefine them or use them uncommonly in their efforts to understand them once and for all. So, for what it's worth, I acknowledge that in doing so--in philosophy--such concepts may be used uncommonly and and have uncommon meanings. I don't think those efforts are rewarding, however, and think that we're better served if "ordinary language" which is quite versatile is used in explanations and discussions, and ordinary events considered, even in philosophy. Words may invoke great insights, but I think that's the business of poets.

the "question" of Being isn't one I've considered nor have I thought it worthwhile to do so. And I'm leery of what seems to be the tendency of many philosophers to come up with definitions of such grand concepts as "Being" and "Thought" as part of an effort to understand, finally, what they are, or what reality is, or what knowledge is, what "Good" is. I suspect that efforts to do so are tainted by what Dewey referred to as "the philosophical fallacy" which he summarized as being "lack of context." — Ciceronianus the White

Whatever ‘Being’ means to you in a philosophical context, I’m betting that it has absolutely nothing to do with Heidegger’s project , but the only way you’ll find that is to get over your prejudice and read Heidegger. I felt exactly the same way as you when I was a grad
student in experimental psychology. I was
convinced the style of writing of contemporary continental philosophers was unnecessary and that more ‘empirical’ or ‘ ordinary’ language was more effective.
I now realize that the best of the continental philosophers use a language to express exactly what they mean to say, and what they are saying is vitally relevant and substantive. My initial difficulties in penetrating their language, i found out , had nothing to do with arbitrary word choices on their part and everything to do with the challenging content of their ideas.

The fact that Dewey used a more ‘ordinary’ vocabulary(did he really? You think his notion of pragmatic is the everyday notion, or a profound change in its sense?) didn’t seem to help him gain acceptance. He was ignored by mainstream psychology for 90 years. In some ways his vocabulary was less accessible or ‘ordinary’ than Heidegger’s.

such concepts may be used uncommonly and and have uncommon meanings. I don't think those efforts are rewarding, however, and think that we're better served if "ordinary language" which is quite versatile is used in explanations and discussions, and ordinary events considered, even in philosophy. Words may invoke great insights, but I think that's the business of poets. — Ciceronianus the White

Heidegger’s vocabulary isn’t extraordinary with respect to Wittgenstein or Dewey , it’s simply richer, and or uses more routes of access to it from more cultural modalities ( the theological, political, psychological, literary) than he so-called ordinary vocabularies of analytic philosophy. If you want to be understood deeply , you must draw from as rich and multi-varied a stir of cultural resources as possible.

As far as why you should read Heidegger, he is now being used more and more as an important source of ideas for a current generation of writers in enactive , embodied approaches to cognition. His work has been important i the understanding of the relationship between affect and cognition, in the interpretation of schizophrenic, depression, autism, ptsd and more.

I think of OLP as therapeutic... I was impressed by the way the method employed in that kind of philosophy dissolved the traditional "problems of philosophy" as did the pragmatism of John Dewey (or so I thought, and still think). — Ciceronianus the White

Although a lot of traditional OLP takes it as solving skepticism (or other philosophical problems), I admire Stanley Cavell's reading of the nuance that Witt is using to point out (with "seeing aspects" and "following a series", etc.) that in reviving our ordinary criteria, we learn about ourselves and our philosophical concerns. So I believe it doesn't solve those issues, or unravel them (eternally), or cure us (forever), or make philosophy obsolete, as Rorty, Dewey, Austin, Hegel, etc. in some sense believe.

Another ‘uncommon’ use is to convinceonself that one is using ordinary language to talk about olp, only to find the readers are all over the place in interpreting the sense of those ‘ordinary’ words. Why do you think that is? — Joshs

My crap job of anticipating how philosphers would need to be warned about the misconceptions of OLP. That everyone looks for a weak point to characterize a claim so it may simply be dismissed with nothing learned.

I should have been clearer that OLP is not "using ordinary language". And, yes, it has terms: "concept", "sense", "grammar", "use", "family resemblances", "aspect", "attitude". OLP's work is not hypocrisy; all philosophy has terms. What Witt is using those terms for is explainable. It is a lot harder explaining how philosophy has used: know, intend, mean, see, appearance, etc.--as if every word were a term, with no context.

What OLP is doing is investigating the ordinary ways something like "intention" works (it's criteria) in different contexts. OLP investigates the ordinary criteria for concepts by looking at what is going on when we say "intend", what distinctions are made, what we care about with the concept, when it is not considered the concept, what counts in its judgments, etc.

Other "Concepts" would include: seeing, knowing, an accident, a game, calling, naming, essence, etc; maybe it's easiest to say a Concept is like a field of expression or action, only that it is not enough to say "these words" because these words blanket how things work in the world too. One of OLP's contentions is that words and the world are tied together--to investigate one is to learn about the other--though the skeptic is correct that that connection can be lost.

Are you familiar with the work in the area of the problem of other minds, or the issue of empathy? — Joshs

Yes, started with, Descartes I wanna say. I think my post of my reading of Witt's lion quote is to show what he discovered about the problem of the other. I found that the best overview of the arguments is in Cavell's "Knowing and Acknowledging" and his finding that "I know he is in pain" is not intelligible as a claim to certainty, nor that I infer their pain, but it is in the context where the use of knowledge is that "I acknowledge" he is in pain (I accept its claim on me, rather than deny the Other--I believe this is in the sense of a moral claim, as in, above, though of course not necessarily apart from, empathy), and that this shows us a lot about our relationship to the Other (that we are separate but answerable to each other).

...there is no purely internal any more than there a a purely public. — Joshs

Witt's claim is that there is a personal (separate person) and that language is public, but the relationship between the two is not theoretical and universal (singular), but that I attach myself to language (an "expression" Witt will say), and then I am responsible to that expression, the ways it is rational (along each concept's criteria); responsible to answer to you for clarification, justification, excusing it, drawing a line in defense of it, for having defied its rationality, etc.

consciousness is self-consciousness ; there is a minimal pre-reflective self-awareness that accompanies all experiences. I’m wondering what you take is on this, since it speaks to the subjective side of language. — Joshs

To say "experience" is to mean (this is the method of OLP)... "I had a great experience at Disneyland." One criteria would seem to be: for you/me to have an experience, we must be aware of it. But does this criteria say anything? It also appears we talk about experience related to one thing, rather than all things, because what context would there be to ask "How is your experience?" (a waiter perhaps) or "What are you experiencing? (a clinical psychologist during an experiment of weightlessness?). Also, can we ask about your--talk about my--experience of everything/anything? And here, try to provide a context where you can, and where you can not.

Well you'll be happy to read Sense and Sensibilia. Austin basically just punches him in the face repeatedly. Logical positivism and the principal that only emperically-verifiable statements have the value of truth bear the brunt of Austin's wrath and they serve as the Interloctor in the later Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, so basically he is talking to himself--the earlier author of the Tractatus--who set up the path to positivism. — Antony Nickles

Just noticed this now. I'll bear that in mind and thanks for it.

Are you familiar with the work in the area of the problem of other minds, or the issue of empathy?
— Joshs

Yes, started with, Descartes I wanna say. I think my post of my reading of Witt's lion quote is to show what he discovered about the problem of the other. I — Antony Nickles

I’m going to take that as a ‘no’. I sense a gap between the Wittgensteinian approach you are using and the fertile research currently taking place on self-consciousness and empathy. You’ll have to trust me when I say that scholars like Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher have a thoroughgoing familiarity with Wittgenstein, and would claim to embrace his approach. I believe they would say there is more to say about the basis of intersubjectivty and its relation to subjectivity than what you are offering , but which not at all incompatible with Wittgenstein. My initial impression is that your approach doesn’t allow you to allow sufficiently for the role of subjectivity in intersubjective functions like language, that it runs the risk of idealizing discursive structures. It comes off as a radical social constructionism of the sort that Deleuze critiques as leaving out the ‘bio’ favor of the political.


It may be that if your interests gravitate toward political theory or literature , the approach you are using may be suffice for for those purposes. But I believe it is inadequate to address such phenomena as pacholfical pathologies and developmental aspects of empathy and langauge acquisition . As Zahavi notes:”Relevant test-cases would include thought-insertion and other self-disorders in schizophrenia, disturbed forms of self-understanding in autism and diminished self-experience in dementia and Alzheimer's disease.”

I should add that the authors and approaches I’m referring to now do not follow the more radical
line of reasoning of Heidegger or Derrida regarding temporality. They are fully in line with Merleau-Ponty when he says

“ In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are inter-woven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator.”

Do me a favor and take a quick look at the following paper by Dan Zahavi, one of the leading phenomenological writers.

Here’s the abstract:

Is the self a social construct?

DAN ZAHAVI
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract: There is a long tradition in philosophy for claiming that selfhood is socially constructed and self-experience intersubjectively mediated. On many accounts, we consequently have to distinguish between being conscious or sentient and being a self. The requirements that must be met in order to qualify for the latter are higher. My aim in the following is to challenge this form of social constructivism by arguing that an account of self which disregards the fundamental
structures and features of our experiential life is a non-starter, and that a correct description and account of the experiential dimension must do justice to the first-person perspective and to the primitive form of self-referentiality, mineness or for-me-ness that it entails. I then consider and discuss various objections to this account, in particularly the view that an endorsement of such a minimal notion of self commits one to an outdated form of Cartesianism. In the final part of the paper, I argue that the self is so multifaceted a phenomenon that various complementary accounts must be integrated if we are to do justice to its complexity.

http://www2.psych.utoronto.ca/users/tafarodi/psy425/articles/Zahavi%20(2009).pdf

I’d also recommend this comparison of Ryle and Austin with phenomenology, penned by Shaun Gallagher

http://www.ummoss.org/gall17doublePhen.pdf

ABSTRACT – A discussion between phenomenologists and analytic philosophers of mind that took place in 1958 reveals some hidden connections between these two approaches to studying the mind. I argue that we can find two complementary phenomenological methods within this discussion – one that follows along the line of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the other that follows the kind of analysis of speech-acts, avowals and “unstudied speech,” proposed by Ryle and Austin.”

we misunderstand each other [in myriad ways], we misunderstand each other, talk past one another, fail to ‘ put ourselves in the other’s shoe’ I would say. — Joshs

That is literally an example of doing Ordinary Language Philosophy . So let's look and see. The next step after this is that, because of the possibility of misunderstanding "we are in desperate need of a way to understand each other better than we do". Then the "in myriad ways" would be to say so much that we are "desperate" to lesson their number, or have understanding work in one way.

And you go on to list ways in which we misunderstand each other. But if we look at them as examples, we can perhaps see in them the ways in which we can avoid, and work out, misunderstandings. When we say: "Talk past one another." We imply that we are "talking at" but missed; wait, no, we were talking at something behind ("past") the other; or maybe it is just that I talk past you, that is to say: your cares, your interests, your curiosity, your terms--the things that I should be talking at, or to. So the evidence of our pain becomes examples of the ordinary ways in which we can make understanding work, or get back to work, or at least work better. (This is the same move Austin makes, backwards: understanding moral action by studying how excuses work. @Banno) Now you can work through the next example of what we say about misunderstanding for its criteria for understanding. One question might be: it does seem we have control over where we go, and it would be better to go to the Other (maybe rather than try to bring them to me) and go to their shoes, in which they travel the world--as if to see where they go, or perhaps how they go--what will get them to move, how to get them to go, their motivations.

Now their will be other ways conversation breaks down, and now it would seem to be helpful to examine each of those through what we say when we have a misunderstanding. And OLP would say: imagine examples of when we say something about misunderstanding, and we can investigate the context and criteria and learn what it says about understanding better. Instead, we take our "guilt, hostility, and stress" (our desperate skepticism) out on our ordinary criteria, and abandon them. The step is made because the ordinary ways are subject to failure, and we want something--"a way to understand each other better than we do". Not to make ourselves better, but to start the way langauge works over from scratch and build from the criteria we want. But then we understand everything in one way, built to address or solve all our misunderstandings, at once (dispell or solve our skepticism). And this instead of seeing and learning about the many ways we have come up with over the life of our trying to understand, through what we say when we talk of our misunderstandings (even in idioms).