tried to make clear above that OLP does not mean "ordinary" as in everyday language, or just language generally, or that people actually discuss these criteria (though they may have to) in making judgements, though OLP is drawing out the ways in which we are making judgements about our concepts such as "whether or not one has correctly understood." — Antony Nickles
And, second, yes, this is epistemology. It is a method to discover the unexamined ways in which our concepts work, their grammar. (And also an ethics of epistemology, a comment that the way in which we seek knowledge, and the type of knowledge we seek (the criteria for it), reflects on us.) — Antony Nickles
Now this is where I am trying to point out the philosophy that differs from OLP. Instead of "imposing" criteria to "escape" the pitfalls, OLP is trying to show all the ways we have to carry on in the face of these pitfalls, and that we can not escape and shouldn't impose, but look and work within (or extending beyond). There is no philosophical solution for this failure (nor the implied radical skepticism)--it is our human condition. I tried to work through this with Joshs above in relation to when words fail us. — Antony Nickles
Again, this is not philosophy using or justifying "ordinary" language or our games, in the sense of regular, unquestioned, etc., but to say that these games (Witt uses concepts to generalize here) have criteria for how they work, their grammar; these are our ordinary criteria for these concepts. Looking at our ordinary criteria gives us an idea of why philosophers react to solve "the gap" that skepticism takes as absolute and world-ending, by imposing particular (universal) criteria to ensure understanding. But OLP also sees that we are separate and that we do sometimes fail, but that who we are is responsible for our expressions and for our answerability to the Other, our misunderstandings along the regular ways we already have. — Antony Nickles
One thing I realized I need to clear up. The term "language-game" is to say the games we play with a "concept"--what criteria/grammar describe. — Antony Nickles
Now it is not the point here, but he is not saying that the concept of "game" has no ordinary criteria. One is that it is, as he says, "not closed by a frontier" (he later says it is the kind of concept that has blurred edges (#71)--that is another one of the ways it works, its grammar). He directly says, "And this is how we use the word 'game'." Another criteria, or grammar, for games is that its boundaries and rules are drawn--not set ahead of time. Another is that "What still counts as a game and what no longer does?" is answered by us (that is part of the way the concept of a "game" works). "That's not a game! You're just playing with a tennis racket!" but then I could counter that we are balancing it (a skill) and seeing how long we can (a measure of winning)--are these not some of the criteria of (set for) a game? and do they not allow for a discussion of what counts (criteria) and what matters? Witt is calling out the fear that if rules and boundaries can sometimes be drawn by us, we can't count on anything,which leads to the fixation to have rules take our place. — Antony Nickles
Again, we can remove "in ordinary language" because we are not opposing that to any other language. — Antony Nickles
The premise with OLP is that we regularly do not know what the criteria for a concept are (they work behind the scenes as it were), — Antony Nickles
Right, not investigating "what we do in ordinary language use", but "investigating to understand what counts as an instance of a particular concept", which is to say, as you do, OLP is doing philosophy. Its method is to investigate an instance (example) of a concept by looking at: when we say "I know___" to understand what counts, what matters, where the distinctions are made, etc., i.e., the criteria for the concept. — Antony Nickles
I think I've got another misconception. It is not that what we say is an example of the structure of our concepts. We take an example of what we say when to investigate the structure of our concepts--the criteria hidden in what we say when. And, it is exactly philosophy's "standards" for [the explanation of] criteria (universality, certainty, predetermined, "normative") which causes the loss of our ordinary criteria and any use of their context. — Antony Nickles
it is case by case for OLP (we are not looking for a general theory). — Antony Nickles
I believe you are using "sense" here as in "meaning", as if they were attached to the expression. Witt is trying to show that words (concepts more specifically) do not have an associated "meaning", in the sense of thought: — Antony Nickles
an expression" has a lot of moving parts in each case, — Antony Nickles
not that the concept is changed by the context--we could have the same sense of a concept expressed (same type of threat) and the contexts would only need to align in the ways necessary to allow for the criteria to work as they do in the same way--so that "every context" is different is not as meaningful as: they have differences, but they may or may not matter: to the expression (you deciding to say it, say, at an inappropriate time), or may only matter in the aftermath of you saying something we have to make sense of, or which changes the consequences of the expression (what happens after a threat to your brother may be different than after — Antony Nickles
When would one use a word like self except in order to contrast it with a person who is not myself? What other use is there? I can have a use of ‘I’ and ‘self’ which only considers ipsiety as background to a figure that appears before ‘me’ . The ‘me’ is nothing but whatever this background part of the current context is. What occurs into the ‘me’ .’ I see, I do, I feel’ :these terms just are talking about how the background is changed. There is no ‘I’ without the background but there is also never an ‘I’ without what appears to it, changes it , interrogates it, expresses it. The ‘I’’s ‘ ‘voluntary’ actions also interrogate it, so that the ‘I’ finds itself deciding or acting. It doesn’t decide to decide or decide to desire. The matter confronting it interrogates it , decides for it. — Joshs
There is no definite distinction between my talking to myself and my talking to another person. Both experiences are forms
of talking to another who interrogates the ‘I’. — Joshs
The picture view that Witt problematizes hides all differences from context to context in what it believes to be the same meaning, the same standard or origin that supposedly exists apart from
those changing contexts. — Joshs
The premise with OLP is that we regularly do not know what the criteria for a concept are (they work behind the scenes as it were),
— Antony Nickles
Oh come on, this is nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover
People act out of habit when they talk. And acting out of habit is not applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover
From here, it is easier to see that there are only two criterion for any conception....the principle of identity for those conceptions relating to conceptions in general, and the principle of non-contradiction for those conceptions supplementing given general conceptions.....both principles operating entirely behind the scenes. — Mww
Or, it is applying criteria behind the scenes, without ever being conscious of it. — Mww
Makes sense actually; regularly-learned folk don’t need to consciously examine the validity of a thing’s verbal description when the habitually communicated description has always sufficed. Nevertheless, theoretically-learned folk will maintain that the cognitive system as a whole must still be in play, otherwise, we are presented with the necessity for waking it up when needed, and then the determination of method for waking, and then the necessity of determination of need, ad infinitum......and nothing rationally conditioned is ever successesfully accomplished. — Mww
So....my thinking is that OLP as I understand it, is at least superfluous and at most utter nonsense, but that the criteria for our conceptions, operating “behind the scenes”, and therefore not “regularly” known as belonging to our knowledge structure, is not. — Mww
So despite the ever changing difference of 'I', which you aptly describe, there is an underlying attitude of sameness, identity, within the 'I' which gives the 'I' of yesterday a special relationship with the 'I' of today, in comparison with the relationship between the 'I' of today, and any other person. This attitude, which is grounded in the difference between the temporal separation between the 'I' and itself, and the spatial separation between the 'I' and others, substantiates the difference between talking to oneself and talking to another — Metaphysician Undercover
The person would only be using the principle of identity if the two different dogs were seen as the same dog. — Metaphysician Undercover
And since the person knows that the two different thing which are called by the name "dog" are not the same thing, the principle of non-contradiction is not even relevant. The two different dogs might have contradicting properties. — Metaphysician Undercover
My position is that there is no reason to assume that what is going on behind the scenes is a matter of applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover
We are, on the other hand, only concerned with the conceptual notion of identity, which has to do with the synthesis of a plurality of phenomena under a general rule. — Mww
First... he knows they are not the thing while knowing they are different instances of the same kind of thing; he knows all this because the synthesis of contradictory predicates is held in abeyance. Or, the principle of non-contradiction inheres in the cognition. — Mww
Second..... two different dogs can have different properties, but those properties cannot contradict the general conception under which they are all subsumed. One dog can have four legs another have only three without being thought as different concepts. — Mww
Third....two different dogs cannot have contradicting properties and still both be conceived as dogs. — Mww
No one should fault you for that. So what....there isn’t any behind the scenes going on, or there is but it doesn’t manifest in applying criteria? There must be a behind the scenes or the notion of being conscious is meaningless. So it reduces to.....what is going on behind the scenes if not the application of criteria? — Mww
the synthesis of a plurality of phenomena under a general rule is called inductive reasoning, it's not identity. — Metaphysician Undercover
What is at issue is how does he know that they are the same kind of thing. — Metaphysician Undercover
I don't see how the principle of non-contradiction is relevant, because he can see that the two things, have contradictory properties (different colour, or different size, for example), yet he still calls them by the same name, "dog". — Metaphysician Undercover
In Aristotelian logic these are accidental properties. — Metaphysician Undercover
What is going on behind the scenes remains as unknown, and that's why we have so much difficulty agreeing on metaphysical principles. — Metaphysician Undercover
an expression" has a lot of moving parts in each case,
— Antony Nickles
I think it is safe to say that the collection of terms that are interlinked as part of Austin’s approach to doing things with words points to many moving parts. I consider this a particular kind of structuralism. — Joshs
One could say that the terms of ordinariness are whatever allows for an alignment of moving parts that creates agreement, shared practice , normativiity. — Joshs
The rabbit is there to be seen because it supposedly pre-exists my seeing it ‘as’ a rabbit. But it is not as if the person who relies on this picture view is not seeing what they believe is the ‘same’ meaning ( or just a different aspect of the ‘same’ meaning) via an endless series of language games. They just don’t notice this transformational process. It is invisible to them at an explicit level @even though they rely on it implicitly. — Joshs
For olp change and stability are functions of different kinds of relations between participants in language. — Joshs
When would one use a word like self except in order to contrast it with a person who is not myself? What other use is there? — Joshs
think it would be more apt to focus "change and stability" in our world and our concepts; people usually come into it afterwards to figure out a mess. — Antony Nickles
I really don't know what you mean by "ordinary" then. It seems like your attempts to define "ordinary" "ordinarily", and in your usage I see nothing to indicate anything other than everyday language. I'm hoping you will enlighten me concerning this other type of "ordinary language" which you are concerned with. — Metaphysician Undercover
So if I understand correctly, you are saying that there is a way to make judgements as to whether or not our concepts are misunderstandings without referencing metaphysical principles. — Metaphysician Undercover
As far as I understand, epistemology is grounded in metaphysics, so if you can demonstrate an epistemology which is not, yet is well grounded anyway, I'm ready to consider it. — Metaphysician Undercover
I view philosophy as an effort toward a higher understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover
Since the same word has different meaning in different language games, then if we are going to say that the word refers to a concept, we need to say that it is a different concept in each different language game. — Metaphysician Undercover
Since a concept would consist of rules or boundaries (criteria), and the rules would be different for different games, then we cannot say that it is the same concept. So these are not games we play with "a concept", they are games we play with a word. In other words, word games. — Metaphysician Undercover
What Witt explicitly says in that section, is that there is no boundaries for the supposed concept of "game", but this does not prevent him from understanding what is meant by the word when it is used. Further one can draw boundaries for a particular purpose, if a person wants to. So he is saying that criteria (being boundaries) are not necessary, but can be imposed for particular purposes. — Metaphysician Undercover
You are saying that people apply criteria without knowing that they apply criteria. But if this were the case, then we could not call this applying criteria, because applying criteria is to make a conscious judgement in relation to the criteria. Let's look at the reality of the situation. People act out of habit when they talk. And acting out of habit is not applying criteria. So let's just forget this unrealistic notion that people are applying criteria for the concepts involved with each of the words when they are talking. — Metaphysician Undercover
If you are distinguishing between "it rained this morning", and "I know it rained this morning", saying that the latter must be justified by conceptual criteria, then how are you going to justify standards for what "rain" means, or what "morning" means without ontology? — Metaphysician Undercover
Let me paraphrase where I think we're at. You are claiming that there is a type of epistemology which is grounded in some type of criteria other than metaphysical criteria. You call this "ordinary criteria"? This is not criteria in the sense of some philosophical principles, but in the sense of some grammar. Can you demonstrate to me, how we might ground epistemology in grammar? For instance, if a proposition was composed according to proper grammatical form, would it be necessarily true? — Metaphysician Undercover
it takes the concepts that philosophy wrings its hands over and reveals their mystery and seeming power as driven by our disappointment with misunderstandings and our desire to take ourselves out of the solution. — Antony Nickles
If we take a step beyond Descartes, for whom the 'I' finds itself being, to see the 'I' finding itself deciding, acting, and therefore changing, we cannot assign to this deciding, or acting, a method of applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover
If we cannot agree on the principles which drive a decision or judgement, and justification is based in agreement, then we have no means for justification. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think it is the case that the average person doesn’t know how it is he knows things. — Mww
To him, a dog is just some particular thing; the ways and means between the thing and knowing it as a particular thing are (regularly) undisclosed to him. — Mww
It is only when he wants to know its kind, its degree of danger, etc., must he then determine supplemental conceptions to add to the conception of dog in general — Mww
From here, it is easier to see that there are only two criterion for any conception....the principle of identity for those conceptions relating to conceptions in general, and the principle of non-contradiction for those conceptions supplementing given general conceptions.....both principles operating entirely behind the scenes. — Mww
regularly-learned folk don’t need to consciously examine the validity of a thing’s verbal description when the habitually communicated description has always sufficed. Nevertheless, theoretically-learned folk will maintain that the cognitive system as a whole must still be in play, otherwise, we are presented with the necessity for waking it up when needed, and then the determination of method for waking, and then the necessity of determination of need, ad infinitum......and nothing rationally conditioned is ever successesfully accomplished. — Mww
my thinking is that OLP as I understand it, is at least superfluous and at most utter nonsense — Mww
The point was that "applying criteria" is a conscious act. If the subconscious, or unconscious, is doing something which might be in some way similar to "applying criteria", then we ought to acknowledge the difference, rather than asserting that the unconscious is applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover
My position is that there is no reason to assume that what is going on behind the scenes is a matter of applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover
the conscious human being must suppress the natural inclination, which is other than applying criteria, with will power, in order to actually apply criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover
Inductive, yes, henceforth from the establishment of the rule. The rule is the identity, the reasoning is either deductive in the establishment of the rule by which a thing becomes known, or inductively, by which subsequent perceptions are identified as possessing sufficient correspondence to the original. — Mww
My “synthesis of the plurality of phenomena” indicates the establishment of the rule, phenomena herein, not the number of objects perceived, but rather, the variety of properties the matter of some particular object exhibits, and the synthesis being the reduction from all possible properties held in intuition, against only those exhibited by the object, which is deductive and leads to the rule from which the representation follows as its conception, in turn represented by its name. The rule thus established by which all following instances of sufficient similarity are identified, those all represented as schema of the original conception. Family, genus, species, member. Simple as that. — Mww
When sufficient properties exhibited by the subsequent perception correspond to the properties of the original — Mww
The premises are behind the scenes, the conclusion is present to conscious thought. — Mww
Oh absolutely. It’s all speculative theory, and could be all catastrophically wrongheaded. But as in all theory, all it has to do is be internally consistent and not in conflict with observation. In which case, one theory is no better or worse than any other; none of them being susceptible to empirical proofs, even if they stand as logically coherent. — Mww
There has to be more to perceived self-relationality of the’I’ than just temporal and spatial continuity. For instance, schizophrenics may experience thought insertion, the sense that another person’s voice is speaking to one inside one’s head. The schizophrenic knows the voice is coming from their own head, and yet they don’t recognize it as their ‘I’. So in this case absolute temporal and spatial
proximity is not enough to have a sense being one’s own ‘I’. — Joshs
"think it would be more apt to focus "change and stability" in our world and our concepts" - Antony Nickles
What do you mean by world? Can world have any useful meaning outside of how the word is used by people relating via language? — Joshs
“schizophrenics may experience thought insertion, the sense that another person’s voice is speaking to one inside one’s head. The schizophrenic knows the voice is coming from their own head, and yet they don’t recognize it as their ‘I’.” In the West , this voice is typically belligerent, accusatory, judgmental, whereas in other cultures it can be positive and supportive.
I was wondering if you think the kinds of conversations that that place with this sort of ‘other’ voice in one’s head are amenable to an Austinian analysis. By that measure, what of the voices of characters a novelist creates? Often, writers say that the characters they create come to life and tell them what they want to do. — Joshs
I don't see how a rule is an identity. It might be a principle that a person would use in an effort to identify something, but that does not make the rule itself an identity. — Metaphysician Undercover
How do you know "what they mean to say" if there is no context in common? — Janus
The issue I see would be whether or not the person knows the voice to be coming from one's own head. The voice might be within one's own head, but one's own head is not necessarily the source of the voice. It might be the case that the voice is coming from God or some other source like that. So it wouldn't be correct to say that the person knows the voice to be "coming from their own head", if in fact they believe that the voice has a different source. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is our ordinary ways of telling an accident from a mistake--the criteria of their identity and employment (grammar), and all I can say at this point is it is a term to hold a space opposite of how philosophy sets up the traditional criteria (certainty, universality, etc.) it wants for the concepts of meaning, knowledge, understanding, etc. — Antony Nickles
Yes, but you're probably not going to be happy about it because it takes the concepts that philosophy wrings its hands over and reveals their mystery and seeming power as driven by our disappointment with misunderstandings and our desire to take ourselves out of the solution. OLP is investigating our concepts to show that desire in our philosophy by showing that our concepts have ordinary (various, individual) ways in which they work and ways in which they fail, and, at some point, they involve our involvement, accepting, denying, asking, walking away, etc. and in ways that reflect on us, or require us to change ourselves, our world, or extend these concepts into new contexts, a new culture, perhaps to make a word include a change in our lives, perhaps to re-awaken it to old contexts. — Antony Nickles
I was speaking of epistemology as the investigation of knowledge. OLP gives us a knowledge of our concepts that we did not have, of their ordinary criteria. Now justification is a trickier subject as we can say our criteria align with the ways in which our lives are, but that is not to say our forms of life are the bedrock of our criteria or that we "agree" on our criteria. And also not to say that radical skepticism is the outcome either. The truth of skepticism is that knowledge only takes us so far and then we are left with ourselves, you and me to work out the failings and clarifications that our criteria/lives lack the necessity, conclusiveness, completeness, etc. to ensure. Our concepts are breakable, indefensible but also open-ended (justice) and extendable into new contexts (freedom of speech). — Antony Nickles
Maybe it is better to say concepts have different criteria for the different ways (and different contexts in which) they are used (the sense in which they are used). So they have more possibilities than under the fixed standards (one picture) that philosophy wants. So in a sense they ARE different "games we play" with a concept, but a concept is not just about "words" or even expressions, because concepts are not "conceptual" or "ideas" as opposed to the world as philosophy's picture of certainty creates. — Antony Nickles
Criteria are not like rules, they are not always fixed, or unbreachable, or determinative. — Antony Nickles
One thought on application is that, even unconsiously, we know the criteria of an action to ask "You know you smirked when you apologized." not because we explicitly are thinking of the criteria, but that we were raised in a world with others, and pain, and a need for forgiveness, etc. — Antony Nickles
Well two small tweaks. I take epistemology not as the search for grounds for knowledge, but as the search for knowledge, and that looking at what we say to see our criteria, as in to make them explicit--known from the unknown--is a way of knowing ourselves since our lives (what is important to us, what should count as a thing, judging, making distinctions) are our criteria. And that sometimes, we are responsible for our claims to aversion, to our extension of a concept asserting a new context, (politically, culturally) creating a new context. — Antony Nickles
I'll leave"applying criteria" alone for now (still not sure what to do with it), only to say that criteria could be described as "unexamined" (not unconscious exactly) which means we are maybe missing the fact that criteria are just all the ordinary ways we might judge someone as doing or saying this well, how we show in this case how it matters to us, what counts as an instance of it, etc. These things are not mental constructs, or created standards (though there are those too), these are our lives of doing these things like apologizing, thinking, knowing, threatening, identifying a dog, etc. — Antony Nickles
Types have identities, just as tokens do. So the type <dog> has an identity as a kind, just as an individual dog has an identity as an individual. — Janus
You may say that a type has an identity, but a rule is not a type, even if it defines a type. — Metaphysician Undercover
had thought you had said that context exists only in individual temporal instances and not between or across them. — Janus
How do you know "what they mean to say" if there is no context in common?
— Janus
I don’t, any more that I would know what Einstein meant to say without a context in common. Context in common means I have already found myself thinking in terms that are close enough to that of the writer that I can relate to what they have to offer. — Joshs
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.