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? — Joshs
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
...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
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
I have argued from OLP in my post about Wittgenstein’s lion quote (@Mmw) — Antony Nickles
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
So we arrive at: to whom is OLP actually directed, and why does to whomever it is directed, need it? — Mww
Antony Nickles ...and what is it I am looking for in these? — Banno
Of course , properly speaking.... — Joshs
...nowhere do we have evidence that the background that I draw from and the background that you draw from are the ‘same’ background. — Joshs
"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
"I mean every word that I use in relation to that larger personal system of understanding that is unique to me" — Joshs
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 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
Kant's... criteria......
— Mww
This the philosopher's dream of power. — Antony Nickles
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
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
It's (OLP’s) necessity is to breath new life into a tradition which has removed us from its considerations. — Antony Nickles
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
We are not that powerful--we don't set meaning, nor mitigate understanding; again, we abandon ourselves to our words. — Antony Nickles
Good lord, 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
Well, I suppose an innovation in thought doesn't have to be a good one — Ciceronianus the White
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. — Antony Nickles
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
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
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
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
Are you familiar with the work in the area of the problem of other minds, or the issue of empathy? — Joshs
...there is no purely internal any more than there a a purely public. — Joshs
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
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
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
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
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