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. — Joshs
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 — 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
I’m going to take that as a ‘no’. — Joshs
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. — Joshs
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 is not at all incompatible with Wittgenstein. — Joshs
“ 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.”
- Merleau-Ponty — Joshs
- DAN ZAHAVIIs the self a social construct?
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. — Joshs
Austin will fume over they idea that everything that is not a true/false statement is either irrational or emotion, etc. — Antony Nickles
I find even his clearer work, such as his essay on the question of technology, to be so infused with Romanticism as to be meritless. Oddly, he wrote very clearly when drafting the speeches he gave as Recktor at Freiburg, praising Hitler and providing philosophical support for Nazi ideology. — Ciceronianus the White
Infused with Romanticism? How so? BTW, I think that essay would be almost impossible to understand without first having read Being and Time. — Joshs
Hannah Arendt , his lover of many years , was also Jewish. I think she was pretty cool, and she didn’t seem to find him loathsome. — Joshs
I speak only for myself, really, and the fact that there are or were Jews who admire Heidegger isn't relevant to my feelings about him. It wouldn't matter to me if he is considered a hero by all good men and women. I understand many think him a great philosopher. I don't, though. — Ciceronianus the White
Do you often make ethical judgments about people based on ‘feeling’ and a profound lack of knowledge of their work? You may be less immune to the sort of errors Heidegger made than you think. — Joshs
Your method reminds me of the social constructionist Ken Gergen. — Joshs
[I--me Tony--require we] relinquish the subjective in favor of a discursive idealization which denies a role to point of view." — Joshs
Both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty add that localized experiences of possibility presuppose a more-enveloping orientation, a sense of belonging to the world. — Joshs
"language’s failure is taken to be unavoidable and insurmountable." *** "how was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted[?]" - Weisel — Joshs
“the struggle for words is essentially the struggle to communicate the destruction of much of what in ‘ordinary life’ we take for granted” -- Kusch — Joshs
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). — Antony Nickles
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
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). — Antony Nickles
o, 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. — Antony Nickles
ut 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). — Antony Nickles
The reason why OLP becomes self-contradictory, or hypocritical, is that the activity of philosophy, as a quest to dispel misunderstanding in favour of understanding, is itself a specialized activity with a particular goal. — Metaphysician Undercover
I was just telling Athena about Heidegger's view of technology the other day. Although that is not the topic under discussion here. — Antony Nickles
I think you need to distinguish between the intention involved with describing what philosophers are doing, and the intention involved with doing philosophy. If you do not allow for this distinction, then "doing philosophy" is an act of describing what philosophers are doing, which is describing what other philosophers are doing, onward ad infinitum, without ever taking into account what a true philosopher is actually doing. — Metaphysician Undercover
The premise is that criteria has failed, the description given, which may or may not have been based in criteria, is insufficient for understanding, so the philosopher is seeking a better description. — Metaphysician Undercover
When we describe, we assume to know what is going on, as a fundamental attitude of certainty, allowing one to put words toward making a description. When we do philosophy, we assume not to know, we are seeking knowledge, therefore we request, or ask for descriptions from those who appear more certain, we inquire, in order to dispel one's own misunderstanding. — Metaphysician Undercover
At this point, you ought to see how you are making a clean break from Wittgensteinian principles, by seeking criteria for concepts, rather than seeking family resemblances. — Metaphysician Undercover
The use of criteria to create concepts, which Wittgenstein called boundaries, is carried out for a particular purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover
The reason why OLP becomes self-contradictory, or hypocritical, is that the activity of philosophy, as a quest to dispel misunderstanding in favour of understanding, is itself a specialized activity with a particular goal.
— @Metaphysician Undercover
***
The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it. (R.G. Collingwood)
***
As I mentioned elsewhere, there is the typical, and there is the exemplary. — Pantagruel
Yes, but Sacred Cows are allowed to wander where they will. — Ciceronianus the White
"Even as [words] are uttered, there is a sense or feeling of their inadequacy." (One way to look at this is our lose of control, and our vulnerability, once we express something; that our words are out there, for us to be read by, held to.) However, the next sentence (as you quote) shows the radical, world-entire, world-ending doubt where philosophy takes it to: "With this, there is also a more pervasive experience of lack or absence. Something that once seemed integral to the world, like bedrock, is experienced as missing, perhaps altogether [enduringly] lost." This ends our trust in our ordinary criteria of our concepts, and philosophy's recourse is to have its own criteria and standards, and take away the context of criteria — Antony Nickles
rds] One way to look at this is our lose of control, and our vulnerability, once we express something; t — Antony Nickles
Context is novel and familiar (background history ) at the same time. * * * Word contexts can be more or less familiar, more or less felicitous , more or less successfully understood. — Joshs
So what does this tell us about scientific approaches that are currently in use? — Joshs
You seem to find problematic accounts of resistance to communicative understanding due to personally sedimented histories. But Witt seems to acknowledge the role of background in causing difficulties in understanding.
Witt says “ There are, for example, styles of painting which do not convey anything to me in this immediate way, but do to other people. I think custom and upbringing have a hand in this.” — Joshs
Custom and upbringing are objects in a box, we only know them in contexts of use. — Joshs
Nevertheless, there are... more and less felicitous relationalities, that can be spoke of usefully as ongoing patterns rather than as simply this momentary difficulty of understanding. — Joshs
Your analysis of Ratcliffe’s treatment of some heady psychological topics (ptsd, severe depression) implies an alternative ‘psychotherapy’. — Joshs
Philosophy is, however, often about revolutionizing, or re-envisioning, philosophy itself. Where do we get Nietszche from if not in response to Kant? and Kant from Hume, etc. And so OLP must first clear up the grounds. So when I say "philosophy" does this or that, I am referring to a specific "type of philosophy". — Antony Nickles
he refusal, the standard, the bar, are what I mean by criteria set by these philosophers (certainty, universality, pre-determined, infallible, or only fallible in predictable ways, etc.). Now OLP, instead of setting those standards (for the description of our "concepts"--knowledge, intention, ad infinitum), looks for the standards (criteria) to judge what it is to be those concepts and what is important to us about them, by investigating when we say those things, "When we say...", i.e, When I say "I know you are in pain" one example is that I acknowledge, accept that you are in pain. — Antony Nickles
I will grant you that "criteria" for Witt is a term, not all the applications are used--I would say (his term) Grammar is interchangeable--and I admit I have not done a good-enough job differentiating it from all the other senses of "criteria" (I will edit this in at the bottom when I can). But criteria do not "create" (from the PI): having a toothache, sitting in a chair, playing a game of chess, following a rule, believing, seeing, thinking, hoping, etc., but the idea of them as boundaries is well taken, because criteria tell us what type of thing those are. PI # 373. We are investigating what we say when about a concept in order to understand what counts as an instance of it, how it works, what matters to us about it, how we judge under it, etc., which gives us a way of understanding them, ourselves, and philosophy's issues. — Antony Nickles
OLP is literally letting language--what we say--explain itself. Taking the typical as exemplary; looking at what we typically mean with what we say as exemplary of the structure of our concepts. — Antony Nickles
I am asking that you rethink the "specialized activity with a particular goal" that is the method of a tradition of some analytic — Antony Nickles
Family resemblances are part of a picture in contrast to the picture of representationalism. — Antony Nickles
Well that is good to point out. Witt does say Essence is expressed by grammar, which is to say, what you want from the idea of an “essence” of a thing, you get from examining the ordinary criteria for it.I think family resemblances are more about a contrast to essentialism rather than representationalism — Luke
Consider that essentialism, representationalism, mental processes, metaphysics, positivism, are all different reactions to the same fear; — Antony Nickles
Well Cavell tags it to scepticism, or the tipping point where all the failures of communication and moral confusion lead to the fear that we are never able to tell or say or judge and so we abandon our ordinary ways of understanding about telling, saying or judging and create one picture for all action and speech based on certainty, universality, prediction, etc. Along with the fear of never being heard, Cavell diagnoses that we remove our criteria in order to remove us (our fallibility) from the equation, our responsibility to what we say and our answerability to the Other.What fear is that? — Luke
The problem though, is that as Wittgenstein pointed out, in what you're calling ordinary language, there is no such standards or criteria. There need be no boundaries for me to understand what "game" means. — Metaphysician Undercover
Well I guess I haven't done a good enough job with the examples I've tried to give above (re knowledge, apologies). I know that forms of life and family resemblances hold a big place in the investigations, and what I am saying does not detract or take the place of his point in bringing those up. But if you check the index there is 3/4 of a column of references to criteria of how to tell one thing from another or how a thing works: for raising your arm #625; learning a shape p. 158; of meaning #190, #692; of a mistake #51, etc. There is also the central role of the term Grammar for the concept of how and what ordinary criteria tell us about our concepts. — Antony Nickles
[Each of Witt's examples involving creiteria] involves a case of judgement as to whether or not one has correctly understood, and is therefore a specialized epistemological use of language. Criteria for judgement as to whether or not one is correct, knows such and such, or understands such and such, is epistemology, and therefore specialized language, not examples of "ordinary language". So the examples really do not justify your claim of "ordinary criteria". — Metaphysician Undercover
Do you see the difference I am pointing to? In ordinary language use we communicate with each other and carry on with our activities respectfully, without hesitation, questioning, or otherwise doubting what the other has said. Understanding is assumed, taken for granted, and we carry on without issue. However, if misunderstanding occurs, it creates a problem, and the problem might be greatly magnified because understanding was assumed, and the person carried on under the assumption of having understood, and therefore proceed into doing the wrong thing which might constitute a significant difference. — Metaphysician Undercover
We [philosophers] impose criteria to escape the pitfalls of ordinary language. — Metaphysician Undercover
I can at this point, thus only address where you seem to go off track. Words do not have contexts, expressions do (actions do). — Antony Nickles
philosophy's concerns are not about facts (not that they fly in the face of them)--philosophy does not look to facts. I also believe that positivism's mistakes have led to a sense that science can address the concerns of philosophy (though it has reduced the purview of philosophy over time to such things as morality, meaning, aesthetics, what is the best way to live, etc. — Antony Nickles
Custom and upbringing are objects in a box, we only know them in contexts of use.
— Joshs
Our customs are literally the criteria we see when we look at the use of what we say when (in whatever context to draw out the criteria). They are not in a box (though they may be unexamined), and we do not "only know them" in looking at their use in context, that is exactly what OLP is doing — Antony Nickles
...my interests lie in the areas I mentioned to you ( deconstruction, Heidegger, hermeneutics, constructivism, social constructionism, phenomenology , autopoietic self-organizing systems theory, Rorty and pragmatism, enactive embodied cognition, Deleuziain bio-politics). — Joshs
As you know it has been at least 70 years since Austin and Witt introduced their work, and in that time, a healthy, vibrant and complex scholarly dialogue has been unfolding in a diverse variety of disciplines, embracing and utilizing Austin, Witt and Cavell, expanding their thinking in many directions. — Joshs
Now let me ask about your comment that words do not have contexts, expressions and acts do. If we change any word in an expression, doesn’t it change the
sense of the expression? — Joshs
Is there such a thing as two identical expressions with non-identical words composing them? — Joshs
What is an act and what exactly is the difference between an act and a word? — Joshs
Are you saying that we know [criteria] outside of local, contingent contexts, that they transcend contexts?... Are you trying to say that shared custom, upbringing, background assure that when move over from context to context a thread of normative continuity allows us to a avoid ‘starting from scratch’ with every new context? — Joshs
The problem though, is that as Wittgenstein pointed out, in what you're calling ordinary language, there is no such standards or criteria. There need be no boundaries for me to understand what "game" means. — Metaphysician Undercover
(original italics in underline)(I may) use the the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept, but I may also use it so that the extensions of the concept is not closed by a frontier. And this is how we use the word "game". For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can I give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. — Wittgenstein, PI
If you want to investigate the standards (criteria) involved when we say "..." in ordinary language, you are imposing a philosophical perspective somewhere where it does not belong. In other words you proceed from a false premise, that there are criteria and standards invlolved when someone says "..." in ordinary language.
* * *
The point is, that we do not judge the meaning of a word, in ordinary language use, through reference to criteria — Metaphysician Undercover
[Philosophy] is a specific type of activity with a specific goal, so standards and criteria are imposed toward that goal.
* * *
If you change the goal, then you do not have the same activity. — Metaphysician Undercover
If you are investigating to understand what counts as an instance of a particular concept, then you are doing philosophy, and this is not what we do in ordinary language use. — Metaphysician Undercover
What you don't seem to grasp, is that ordinary language usage is not exemplary of the structure of our concepts. In ordinary language use, we learn how language is used from observation and practise. This does not involve any standards or criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover
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