as completely opposed to Mww's proposed definition of "principle" as an absolute truth) — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t mind disagreements with my words. They should actually be my words, though.

No need to rectify it; just letting the world know I committed no such metaphysical blunder as defining principle with “absolute truth”.

My apologies, your precise words were "necessary truth".

A principle is a synthesis of conceptions into a necessary truth. — Mww

Regarding the rules of language games...

One need not know or interpret the rules to learn them. The knowing is shown in the using. We do not call trees "cats". Etc. We learn that trees are called "trees" by drawing correlations between "tree" and trees. Learning the rules is embedded in language acquisition. We learn that "Shut the door" can have several different meanings, depending upon the speakers' tone, facial expressions, volume, etc. The different contextual elements are part of the different meanings(uses) 'tied to' the same words. The same words are part of several different uses. We learn about the differences in meaning by virtue of drawing correlations between the same words and the different contextual elements(tone, volume, facial expressions, etc.)

We do not make promises unless we intend to make the world match our words.

The whole point of interaction theory is that standards don’t have any existence outside of their use, and in their use they are altered to accommodate themselves to what they are applied to.
— Joshs

I can accept this. with a slight revision, and this is what I've been arguing. We can not call this a "standard" then. That is why I rejected Antony's use of "criteria". The point though, is that we also have stated standards, and criteria, laws, which are not intended "to accommodate themselves to what they are applied to", they are intended to be steadfastly adhered to. These are exemplified in mathematics and logic. And they are what those words more properly refer to. — Metaphysician Undercover

Husserl made a distinction between free and bound idealities. Mathematical logic is an example of of a free ideality. It is designed to be able to be identically repeatable outside of all contexts, it it is by itself empty of intentional meaning.
Spoken and written language, and all other sorts of gestures and markings which intend meaning, exemplify bound idealities. Even as it is designed to be immortal, repeatable as the same apart from any actual occurrences made at some point, the SENSE of a spoken or inscribed utterance, what it means or desires to say, is always tied to the contingencies of empirical circumstance. In other words , no matter how hard we try to steadfastly adhere to a standard , there is always contextually driven slippage. That’s why a document like the constitution is worthless outside of its interpretation, and its interpretation is a widely varying as the subcultures which make use of it.

The unique particulars of the very distinct and unique situations which we find ourselves in, makes it impossible for us to govern our lives through strict adherence to any rigid standards or criteria, because these general, universal principles cannot be applied in the majority of those mundane situations. — Metaphysician Undercover

It sounds like you are saying that we have unaltered access to a standard first, and only after do we pick and choose what parts of it to apply to a news contextual situation. I’m saying that regardless of how hard we attempt to keep our understanding of the original standard an exact duplicate of the first time we became acquainted with it , there will be continual slippage in the meaning of that standard. Such slippage will be subtle enough, at least over short periods of time , that it will go unnoticed. For all intents and purposes we can claim to be able to consult an unchanged version of the standard every time we think of it in our mind or re-read it.

But it is important to recognize that learning , and experience in general , beginning at the most basic perceptual level , is not a matter of accumulating bits of data , but of transforming one’s past knowledge in the face of the present context. The past (our standards ) is changed by what it occurs into.

New approaches have moved past the Enlightenment notion of thinking as objects in the head that are shuffled around to correspond with objects in the world. We know know things in the world perceptually by interacting with them. Perception is based on schemes of bodily interaction with an outside.

what is involved in my recognizing what another person has said, is simply a matter of switching out my intention, and replacing it with the other's intention. My "principles" have a direct relation to my intention, and the switch allows a direct relationship with the other's intention because I have assumed the other's intention to take the place of my own. The important word is "assumed", because the other's intention doesn't actually take the place of mine, i simply allow it to seem that way. — Metaphysician Undercover

Dan Zahavi discussed ‘putting oneself in the others shoes’ in the context of a comparison between theory theory, simulation theory and interaction theory.


“ According to Goldman, we don’t need a theory in order to understand others. Rather, we can simply use our own minds as a model. Our understanding of the minds of others would be grounded in our introspective access to our own mind;our capacity for self-ascription precedes the capacity for other-ascription. More specifically, Goldman argues that my understanding of others is rooted in my ability to project myself imaginatively into their situation. I literally use my imagination to put myself in the target’s “mental shoes”. If I for instance witness an immigrant being harassed by a desk clerk, I would be able to grasp the immigrant’s mental state and predict his subsequent behaviour by means of the following procedure. By means of an explicit simulation, I would imaginatively put myself in his situation, would imagine how I would feel and react under similar circumstances and on the basis of analogy I would then attribute or project similar states to the person I am simulating (cf. Goldman 2000). In my view, both sides in the theory of mind debate are faced with difficulties.When it comes to the simulation theory of mind, one might initially question whether there is any experiential evidence in support of the claim that our understanding of others relies on conscious simulation routines. As Wittgenstein once remarked, “Do you look into yourself in order to recognize the fury in his face?” (Wittgenstein 1981,Sect. 220). Furthermore, one might ask whether it is really legitimate to cast our experience of others in terms of an imaginative exercise. When we project ourselves imaginatively into the perspective of the other, when we put ourselves in his or her shoes, will we then really attain an understanding of the other or will we merely be reiterating ourselves? To put it differently, will a process of simulation ever allow for a true understanding of the other or will it merely let me attain an understanding of myself in a different situation?


In contrast to the take favoured by simulationists and theory-theorists alike, the crucial question is not whether we can predict and explain the behaviour of others,and if so, how that happens, but rather whether such prediction and explanation constitute the primary and ordinary form of intersubjectivity. There is a marked difference between the way we engage with others in the second-person and the third-person case. When we interact directly with another person, we do generally not engage in some detached observation of what the person is doing. We do in general not at first attempt to classify his or her actions under lawlike generalizations; rather we seek to make sense of them. When you see somebody use a hammer, feed a child or clean a table, you might not necessarily understand every aspect of the action, but it is immediately given as a meaningful action (in a common world). Under normal circumstances, we understand each other well enough through our shared engagement in this common world, and it is only if this pragmatic understanding for some reason breaks down, for instance if the other behaves in an unexpected and puzzling way, that other options kick in and take over,be it inferential reasoning or some kind of simulation. We develop both capacities,but we only employ them in special circumstances. Neither establishes our primary nor ordinary access to the embodied minds of others. They are the exceptions rather than the rules. In most intersubjective situations, we have a direct understanding ofthe other person’s intentions, since these intentions are manifested in the person’s behaviour and embedded in a shared social context. Thus, as Gallagher remarks,much is going on in our understanding of others that exceeds and precedes our theoretical and simulation capabilities. At best, the theory–theory of mind and the simulation theory of mind only explain a narrow and specialized set of cognitive processes that we can employ when our usual way of understanding others fall short (Gallagher 2005, p. 208).



https://cfs.ku.dk/staff/zahavi-publications/Book_Ratcliffe_Hutto.pdf/

Stubborn bunch, aye. They’ve done the heavy lifting, so perhaps have earned the right.

I’m familiar with the essay. What I found quite telling about it, is located in fn2, wherein it is admitted that the explication of the stated purpose of the essay, follows conditions "as I understand them to be”. — Mww

Well, footnote 1 talks about philosophical problems common between OLP philosophers and that similar questions enter into their attempts to deal with those problems. He says it is with these questions he is concerned, and qualifies that to say, with what he understand them to be. I take that to refer to the fact that among the common problems there are similar, but not the same, questions, and that Cavell counts (understands) certain of those questions to be his to answer among all the similar (though non-identical) ones that enter into dealing with those problems. I will also note that Cavell interestingly earlier says philosophy for him is a set of texts rather than a set of problems, so it may be that he counts (understands) the questions to be categorically about something else (the "what") than problems.

That's all you took from that essay?

“understanding” is precisely the quanta of the heavy lifting to which the especially post-Renaissance continentals directed themselves, and the anti-metatheoretical analyticals have back-burnered. — Mww

I enjoy Cavell because he talks about bridging that trans-continental divide, which I take as meaning that analytical philosophy can be meaningful to how we live our lives (being a better person, to use the parlance of the scurge that is self-help). I did talk about Witt's take on "understanding" with Meta in the last few comments.

Question: are images part and parcel of human mentality? — Mww

Well this sounds like a loaded question--what is "mentality"? Are we saying imagination? Or just the ability to bring up an image? I would say "part and parcel" sounds like a lot even with either in terms as general as "human" anything, but I'd need more I think.

Look no farther than the United States Government for real life examples of standards existing in writing but no one following them, or using them to show that no one is following them. — creativesoul

So ‘original intent’ is a thing?

Understanding as:

looking at use...
seeing certain words articulated in a novel or curious way
thinking anew...
intentionally suspend[ing] our judgement...
carefully considering another's viewpoint...
grasping where another is coming from...
wanting to hear from another...
entertaining - sometimes said to be "for argument's sake"...
begin[ing]... with an attitude that everyone deserves a certain modicum of respect...
hear[ing] them out as thoroughly as is needed... — creativesoul

Hear, hear. An ethics of understanding, being understanding to reach the point I try to make of Witt's in my further response to @Metaphysician Undercover--where we can go on from/for the other, and the similar necessity in OLP that the criteria for Grammar being true is that you can see it for yourself, come (from where I am, what I have said) to it on your own.

Our original worldview is almost entirely adopted, and all the stuff you learn to talk about is already meaningful to those with whom you learn to talk about it with. In this way, the world is always already meaningful, if and only if, the world is equal to word (to what one can talk about, what has been talked about, or what can be talked about). It's not. — creativesoul

You bring up a good point which I have overlooked; that interest, attraction, and what is meaningful are very important. Now what is meaningful for us (everyone) is what shapes our lives and our Grammar of our concepts (our shared interests in judgments, distinctions, what counts, how we decide, or reconcile, etc.--for each concept). But there is also our personal interest and what attracts us about something--meaningful as impassioned. Witt will say "Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life?—In use it is alive. Is life breathed into it there?—Or is the use its life?" #432 That is to say something happens in the expressing (not within the language, or me), the fact of me saying this now, here and the options of the concept that come into play. That language is dead is to say that writing comes before the speaking (as if opposite of Derrida I believe @Joshs). We make our concepts come alive by being sloppy or ignorant of the way they work, or calling for a higher justice (aptness) as it were for our expressions--being answerable for them, called out by them, and openly prepared for further intelligibility.

Surely everything said is meaningful at least to the creature saying it, even if it sounds like gibberish to everyone else. — creativesoul

Well, not really (everything?)--sometimes we say things flippantly, mechanically, under duress, etc. To a certain degree we could say the person may care about receiving a basic respect for having said something, but some people don't care about that even. Sometimes we are passionate, sometimes we just say things we don't care about.

That language is dead is to say that writing comes before the speaking (as if opposite of Derrida I believe Joshs). — Antony Nickles

‘Writing’ for Derrida means that what is spoken is not immediately understood but is deferred, delayed in its reception.
“ When he writes himself to himself [or speaks to himself], he has no immediate presence of himself
to himself. There is the necessity of this detour through the other...”

In same fashion , when I speak to another , this detour through the other is necessary.
“ . A living being - whether a human being or an animal being - could not have any relation to another being as such without this alterity in time, without, that is, memory, anticipation, this strange sense (I hesitate to call it knowledge) that every now, every instant is radically other and nevertheless in the same form of the now. Equally, there is no ‘I’ without the sense as well that everyone other than me is radically other yet also able to say 'I’, that there is nothing more heterogeneous than every 'I’ and nevertheless there is nothing more universal than the 'I’.”(Arguing with Derrida)

This is not a denial of conventional use.
“No doubt, for a meaning to be understood and for discussion to start, for literature to be read, we need a community that has, even if there are conflicts, a certain desire for normativity, and so for the stabilization of meaning, of grammar, rhetoric, logic, semantics and so on. (But, by the way, if these imply a community, I wouldn’t call it a community of 'minds' for a number of reasons - not least those touched on In response to your last question regarding the 'inner' .) This is obvious. And, again, I would say that it is true even for animals, for animal societies. They form a community of interpretation. They need that. And some normativity. There is here some 'symbolic culture‘.”

Not "what do you mean by___" It's: "what do we mean when we say___?"
— Antony Nickles

Your phrases "we say", and "we mean", are incoherent, as if a phrase could be properly interpreted outside its context. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think maybe you are taking this as a statement, when I am trying to explain the method of OLP, which necessarily involves fleshing out the context in which the example would be said.

But this is to just divide acts/expressions into intended ones and unintended ones, so the intended ones still fall under the picture of a ever-present cause (for those "intended"). And this is different than my proposing the question of intention only comes up sometimes, not that it applies to all acts that are (pre?) "intended".
— Antony Nickles

You are simply denying the reality of the situation. Human beings are intentional beings. — Metaphysician Undercover

I hope you see that this makes your rebuttal to my point appear to be that you know what reality is, and I do not.

They always have goals and therefore they cannot separate themselves from their goals, as if they could pass some time without having any goals. So an habitual, "unintended" human act, exists within the wider context of intention. When I walk to the store, my legs are moving in an unintended habitual way, but this is within the context of me intending to get to the store. When I talk to my brother, my lips are moving and I'm making sounds in an unintended habitual way, but this is within the wider context of intending to speak to him about some subject. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not denying that people have goals or "intend" to do things, just that I think the picture is framing them a particular way (I could say they seem to be in the present, when we can see from examples--below--that they are about the future), as if there was the intention, and then the action. Or that there is some thing "the intention" which divides these two types of action (habitual and intended), maybe rather than dividing them between movement and action? Anyway, you say "my legs are moving in an unintended habitual way, but this is within the context of me intending to get to the store. When I talk to my brother, my lips are moving and I'm making sounds in an unintended habitual way, but this is within the wider context of intending to speak to him about some subject." (Which, by the way, is close to doing OLP, but these are explanations.) Can we not just say: "I'm going to the store." or: "I'm speaking to my brother about something." We do not need your picture of intention here-- what is the determination of where the line is between intended an unintended? I could say: "I'm intending to go to the store." and there is a context you can imagine for this. And also "I'm intending to speak to my brother about something." and a context or this as well. And these show us something about intention--that it is a hope for the future, which, however, may go wrong (like shooting a cow instead of a donkey).

If it's difficult to justify the idea that "you and I" exist as one united entity called "we", how much more difficult is it to justify your claim that "all English speakers" exist as such a united entity? — Metaphysician Undercover

"Our" is not an "entity" but merely a way of saying our language, its Grammar, our shared lives, are owned by each one of us and together--a form of social contract. And with each expression, we consent to the contract (agree to be bound by our expression), or break it.

"What about the circumstances led to the mistake?" The fact that the person (oneself a part of the circumstances) did not properly account for the particulars. "Why did you shoot the cow instead of the donkey?" "Someone put the cow into the donkey's stall and I didn't confirm that it was the donkey I was shooting." This is the answer to "why" in every instance of a mistake, "I did not take into account all the particulars of the circumstances". A mistake is an intentional act which was made without adequate knowledge of the particulars of the situation, therefore it does not result as intended. It is because each situation consists of particulars which are unique to that situation, as "the circumstances", and the person fails to account for the particulars, that mistakes are made. — Metaphysician Undercover

I can see what you see here as part of the Grammar of a mistake: failing to account for the particulars of a situation, and I agree. And I think this is a very good job of using OLP to get there.

"We are separate people, but not separated by anything...
— Antony Nickles

The biggest problem of idealism is to account for the fact that we, as individual minds, are separated. There is a very real medium of separation between your mind and my mind, which we call the material world, and this very real separation forces the idealist toward principles to account for this reality, to avoid solipsism. If you deny the reality of this separation between us, you force us into a reality in which there is no material world, and we are all just one solipsistic mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was referring to the point I made previously, which Witt gets to and Cavell elaborates (in Knowing and Acknowledging); we are separate bodies, and that gap can not be intellectually solved by knowledge--we have a further relation to each other. We make claims of the other, and they accept those claims, or deny them (see my post on Witt's lion quote). Character is higher than intellect Emerson says. And Nietzsche is pointing to this as well.

Regarding ordinary language...

I'm all for striving to use as much common language as possible to explain something or other. The simpler the better assuming no loss in meaningful explanation. I'm also inclined to believe that Ockham's razor is worthy of guiding principle status, so... — creativesoul

If it matters, not at all what OLP is about. But I agree Kant and especially Hegel could have dialed the terminology back some.

Regarding the rules of language games...

One need not know or interpret the rules to learn them. The knowing is shown in the using. We do not call trees "cats". Etc. We learn that trees are called "trees" by drawing correlations between "tree" and trees. Learning the rules is embedded in language acquisition. We learn that "Shut the door" can have several different meanings, depending upon the speakers' tone, facial expressions, volume, etc. The different contextual elements are part of the different meanings(uses) 'tied to' the same words. The same words are part of several different uses. We learn about the differences in meaning by virtue of drawing correlations between the same words and the different contextual elements(tone, volume, facial expressions, etc.) — creativesoul

I agree; and this is an important fact for OLP; that we learn our language (concepts) and the world at the same time. That our language is molded by the interests, judgments, distinctions, etc. that we have shared over the course of our (everyone's) living in the world.

Husserl made a distinction between free and bound idealities. Mathematical logic is an example of of a free ideality. It is designed to be able to be identically repeatable outside of all contexts, it it is by itself empty of intentional meaning. — Joshs

I don't agree that being repeatable in any or all contexts makes mathematics empty of intention. That also would be the claim of those who support the idea of "pure mathematics", axioms created without the influence of intentional meaning. But the goal to produce something like that, with the possibility of universal application, is itself intentional. So I don't believe that we can escape intentional meaning in this way. As living human beings, even sleep might not free us from intentional meaning, as dream interpreters might show. Some might argue that meditation seeks to free us from intention, but meditation requires effort. I think it is inherently contradictory to engage in an activity which would have as its goal to free one from intention.

Spoken and written language, and all other sorts of gestures and markings which intend meaning, exemplify bound idealities. Even as it is designed to be immortal, repeatable as the same apart from any actual occurrences made at some point, the SENSE of a spoken or inscribed utterance, what it means or desires to say, is always tied to the contingencies of empirical circumstance. In other words , no matter how hard we try to steadfastly adhere to a standard , there is always contextually driven slippage. — Joshs

I agree with this, but I believe that the "slippage" extends even to fundamental mathematics. Evidence of the slippage in fundamental mathematics is the fact that we have numerous distinct ways of numbering, natural numbers, rational numbers, real numbers, for example. As living human beings, with living conditions, living needs, and the constraints of a living body, we cannot produce pure principles which would be free from the influence of empirical circumstance.

It sounds like you are saying that we have unaltered access to a standard first, and only after do we pick and choose what parts of it to apply to a news contextual situation. I’m saying that regardless of how hard we attempt to keep our understanding of the original standard an exact duplicate of the first time we became acquainted with it , there will be continual slippage in the meaning of that standard. Such slippage will be subtle enough, at least over short periods of time , that it will go unnoticed. For all intents and purposes we can claim to be able to consult an unchanged version of the standard every time we think of it in our mind or re-read it. — Joshs

As I said, I would not call these "standards", I'd prefer to call them principles. The fact is that we allow slippage, intentionally, for whatever reason. Since we intentionally allow slippage, not adhering to them because the principles are not universally applicable, or whatever, then we are actually appealing to a different hierarchy of values, one which does not give that principle the status of "a standard" in that hierarchy.

We can see this very clearly in moral philosophy. We learn and accept moral principles, but then we intentionally stray from them. In other words, we sometimes do what we know is wrong. This is the argument Plato used against the sophists who claimed to teach virtue, insisting that virtue is a form of knowledge. To know the difference between, and be able to judge between, bad and good, wrong and right, or incorrect and correct, is not sufficient to ensure that one does not intentionally do what that person knows is wrong. We judge the act as wrong, yet we do it anyway.

When we call them "principles", I think we recognize that they are themselves, free to be judged by us, in relation to other principles. When we call them "standards", I think that we think of them as the basis for judgement, therefore we think that we cannot judge them, because we'd have nothing to base that judgement on.

More specifically, Goldman argues that my understanding of others is rooted in my ability to project myself imaginatively into their situation. — Joshs

I would not accept this proposal. To put myself into another's situation is far too difficult and complex, and it appears to be completely inconsistent with my experience. Instead, as I proposed in the last post, I think we allow the other's intention to replace one's own. In other words, we submit to the other, to do what the other person wants from us. We can see this quite readily, in education, the child does what the parents want, the student does what the teachers want, etc.. So as a listener, to understand the speaker, we do not try to project into the speaker's position, we simply open up in trust, and allow our own intention to become one with the assumed intent of the speaker. We simply try to do what we think the speaker wants us to do.

The advantage of my perspective is that doing this is very quick and easy and doesn't require the mental gymnastics of attempting to put oneself in the other's position. There's one simple question, what does the other want from me, and we learn to judge this very quickly as children. Since the judgement can be made very rapidly, conversation is facilitated. We go back and forth in conversation very quickly and smoothly, from listening, judging what the other wants, to speaking, showing the other what you want, without even noticing the transition.

Where there is a problem, is that we are often not forthcoming in showing the others what we want from them. And if our trust for each other wanes, we will throw up more and more roadblocks to understanding, until these insecurities become habitual, and the person is naturally difficult to understand.

When we interact directly with another person, we do generally not engage in some detached observation of what the person is doing. We do in general not at first attempt to classify his or her actions under lawlike generalizations; rather we seek to make sense of them. When you see somebody use a hammer, feed a child or clean a table, you might not necessarily understand every aspect of the action, but it is immediately given as a meaningful action (in a common world). — Joshs

There is a distinction to be made here between simply observing a person and judging what is that person doing, and engaging communicatively with a person where I must judge what does the person wants from me. At first glance, you might think that the latter would be a more difficult judgement to make, but I think the reality is that it is much more easy. This is because what the person is doing in communicating with you, is intentionally showing you what is wanted from you. In the other case, the person is just doing things, and you must judge what they are doing without the person trying to show you. So communication is much easier than putting yourself in the other's shoes, which would be determining all that the other is doing, it's just a matter of determining what the other wants from you, which is one of the things the person is trying to do anyway.

I hope you see that this makes your rebuttal to my point appear to be that you know what reality is, and I do not. — Antony Nickles

Yes, you suggested that a human being could remove oneself from the context of intention, and I think that's simply unreal. It's no different from asking me to accept a proposition which I strongly believe to be false. I'd tell you that if you believe that proposition you simply do not know the reality of the situation.

Can we not just say: "I'm going to the store." or: "I'm speaking to my brother about something." — Antony Nickles

We could say that, but intention is implied when we say "I'm doing...", "I'm going...", "I'm speaking...". To say that we ought to discuss these activities as if there is no intention involved would be foolish.

And these show us something about intention--that it is a hope for the future, which, however, may go wrong (like shooting a cow instead of a donkey). — Antony Nickles

Yes, we always have a view toward the future, so intention is always present. A mistake does not remove intention from the scene, it just means that things did not turn out how it was intended.

..our shared lives... — Antony Nickles

Again, this is incoherent to me. My life is my life, and yours is yours. We are separated by space, we are born and die at different times. There is no such thing as a shared life, except perhaps the Siamese twins'.

No, "language" is the more specific term, while "communicate" is more general. Using language is a form of communicating, but there are forms of communicating which do not use language. If language is a specialized human form of communication, then the child might still use more animalistic types before learning the human type. — Metaphysician Undercover

Do these "more animalistic" forms of communication have rules?

Right, it's a sort of dilemma which the philosophical misconception of language creates. The resolution to that dilemma is to recognize that the philosophical representation of language, which assumes rules as a necessary aspect of language, is wrong. Language allows for the existence of rules, which are expressed via language, and therefore cannot exist without language. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's a simple solution for you to claim that language is necessary for rules but rules are not necessary for language. I would agree that language is necessary for the linguistic expression of rules (as you imply), simply because language is necessary for any linguistic expression. But why are rules not necessary for language? Is your position that language has no rules?

There are right and wrong ways to use words and to make sense with words. This is what grammar is about. Besides, you appear to acknowledge that language consists of rules, when you say:

These rules would be private rules, constituting a private language — Metaphysician Undercover

Private or not, you are effectively saying that rules constitute a language.

Why are "rules required to learn rules"? Because you say so?
— Luke

You don't seem to grasp the issue. Rules are expressed in language. — Metaphysician Undercover

Rules can be expressed in language. They don't have to be.

A rule is: "one of a set of explicit or understood regulations or principles governing conduct or procedure within a particular area of activity."

Regarding ordinary language...

I'm all for striving to use as much common language as possible to explain something or other. The simpler the better assuming no loss in meaningful explanation. I'm also inclined to believe that Ockham's razor is worthy of guiding principle status, so...
— creativesoul

If it matters, not at all what OLP is about. — Antony Nickles

It certainly matters. I'm in dire need of getting over the the name of the method, and looking more towards understanding the benefits thereof a bit better than I currently do/can.

Do you have another link to the paper that's more friendly towards my antiquated mac?

Meta either cannot or will not set aside his framework, and thus either cannot or will not understand another's if it is too different from the one he works from. Arguing over definitions for the sake of doing so... never getting to the comparison/contrast between the consequences thereof.

It's only a website link, so not sure why it wouldn't work for you, but here it is again: https://www.academia.edu/42996392/Wittgensteins_grammar_through_thick_and_thin. Note that you don't need to download the PDF, you can just scroll down the page to see the article.

Must be closer to needing a new computer to play around with. This one is corrupted, I suppose. This forum is about the only place that it is possible to successfully navigate...

Good enough for now, aside from the fact that I cannot open all linked things... some though. Not this time. Thanks for trying.

hope you see that this makes your rebuttal to my point appear to be that you know what reality is, and I do not.
— Antony Nickles

Yes, you suggested that a human being could remove oneself from the context of intention, and I think that's simply unreal. It's no different from asking me to accept a proposition which I strongly believe to be false. I'd tell you that if you believe that proposition you simply do not know the reality of the situation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I understand you want to let me know that you disagree, but you simply rejected this with no justification than I'm not living in reality. It is arrogant and not even an argument. I find it rude and I will not tolerate it. This is a philosophical discussion. If you speak to me like that again I will not respond.

To say that we ought to discuss these activities as if there is no intention involved would be foolish. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is unacceptable behavior. I feel I have been quite patient and met with nothing but refusal of consideration. It is not a foolish argument. I appreciate the opportunity to attempt to refine how I present this material but a blanket denial in the end leaves nothing to say. I hope you have learned something from all the effort I put in but I fear you are not ready to hear from others other than to defend your beliefs.

..our shared lives...
— Antony Nickles

Again, this is incoherent to me. My life is my life, and yours is yours. We are separated by space, we are born and die at different times. There is no such thing as a shared life, except perhaps the Siamese twins'. — Metaphysician Undercover

It must seem like a lonely world. Good day sir.

I've spent a lot of time reading the 'canonical' OLP philosophers, and I tend to think that to the extent OLP exists, it's just an expression of a more Moorean as opposed to Russellian tendency in the larger scheme of analytic philosophy. In fact the core inaugural document of 'OLP' as an explicit kind of 'doctrine' is Norman Malcom's exegesis of Moore, which Moore repudiated, but which is an interesting reading of what his tendencies would have to amount to.

It's a good approach, one that I think can be deeply assimilated to make your life and everyone else's better while conducting any inquiry that requires talking. The idea that it 'died' is false; its insights were simply assimilated into the wider contemporary mass of analytic philosophy. I don't really think that's a kind fate, since analytic philosophy as it stands now is sort of bad. The tendency to think of it, along with logical positivism, as a philosophy somehow 'outdated' or 'refuted' is laughable – it's something I think everyone should have to contend with.

Besides all the usual crap everyone knows about – you know, Strawson on presupposition, Grice on implicature, speech act theory – OLP spawned some of the most exquisite methodological discussions about how inquiry itself works that I've ever read. To read Ryle on what constitutes 'ordinary' language, what it is for words to have a 'use,' and so on, is truly a pleasure, and the back-and-forth between Ayer and Austin, and Mates and Cavell, are wonderful. I don't think analytic philosophy ever reached such self-awareness and methodological heights again. It was a rare burst of sophistication. The less-celebrated OLPers, such as Malcolm, Wisdom, Urmson, Ambrose, and Lazerowitz, are all worth reading in their own right.

I'm in dire need of getting over the the name of the method, and looking more towards understanding the benefits thereof a bit better than I currently do/can. — creativesoul

Well that's refreshing. The name leads to a lot of confusion. If I didn't already suggest it, this essay by Cavell is a good explanation and example (way better than I appear to be doing); though a little dense, it's only 40 pages.

https://sites.ualberta.ca/~francisp/Phil488/CavellMustWeMean58.pdf

(I provide the whole link as I understand you are working on a 1994 PowerBook)

It's strange but the idea is that we formulate an expression, say, "I know..." (maybe a regular one or a traditional philosophical one) and then imagine a context where this would be said, or what about it makes it impossible to imagine a context, (even a fantastical one), and other variations of this, and in doing so we see something traditional philosophy usually skips over, that has the same legitimacy and addresses the same issues.

If you skip through the comments and find ones with quotes, like in the OP, those are examples (though pretty horrible really). I made a list of Witt quotes too and tried to list out some misconceptions again somewhere in the middle. I really need to re-write the OP in having learned where a lot of people are coming from, and the assumptions they carry about OLP.

I've spent a lot of time reading the 'canonical' OLP philosophers,
* * *
OLP spawned some of the most exquisite methodological discussions about how inquiry itself works that I've ever read.
* * *
To read Ryle on what constitutes 'ordinary' language, what it is for words to have a 'use,' and so on, is truly a pleasure, and the back-and-forth between Ayer and Austin, and Mates and Cavell, are wonderful. I don't think analytic philosophy has ever reached such self-awareness and methodological heights again. It was a rare burst of sophistication. — Snakes Alive

Well, you are officially in charge of this thread. I'm finding "explaining" it is either beyond me or does little to shift people's framework to consider it, and I'm afraid I don't seem to have the skills to provide compelling examples and don't even do a good job of stealing Austin's or Cavell's. I have posted a few other oblique attempts, and I will, of course, carry this on.

The less-celebrated OLPers, such as Malcolm, Wisdom, Urmson, Ambrose, and Lazerowitz, are all worth reading in their own right. — Snakes Alive

I'm impressed. I have read everything Cavell has written (the essay in "Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome" looking at Ryle on rules is even better than the Mates' one--great political philosophy book) and Witt and not enough Austin, and I have a book of Wisdom's, but I will check those out. I have considered reading Stephen Mulhall, Alice Crary, Tracy strong, or Cora Diamond--people "influenced by" OLP, but I find myself reading back with fresh eyes on late Heidegger, Nietszche, Hegel, Kant, Marx, and Emerson. Any modern/old interests?

"That language is dead is to say that writing comes before the speaking (as if opposite of Derrida I believe Joshs)."
--Antony Nickles

Writing’ for Derrida means that what is spoken is not immediately understood but is deferred, delayed in its reception. — Joshs

I put your name in there as I thought you might have a better idea of Derrida's take on this idea of the life and death of language, or of the priority or primacy or metaphorical temporality of voice and writing (the garmene?) I know there is a "trace" and the idea of "presence" but I'm not sure they come into play here.

It's a simple solution for you to claim that language is necessary for rules but rules are not necessary for language. I would agree that language is necessary for the linguistic expression of rules (as you imply), simply because language is necessary for any linguistic expression. — Luke

Yes, we learn rules from their linguistic expression. If one simply observed an activity and made up so-called "rules" to follow, from the observations, in order to engage in that activity, this would not be a case of learning rules, it would be a case of making up so-called "rules". Those would be private rules which don't qualify as "rules", under Wittgenstein's restrictions, or criteria, as to what constitutes following a "rule".

Consider the difference Wittgenstein describes between thinking oneself to be following a rule, and to be actually following a rule. Think of this as a part of Wittgenstein's definition of "rule", as a restriction placed on the word's usage. If I watched an activity, and made up rules for myself to follow, and then proceeded to engage in that activity, I might think that I was following a rule, but I wouldn't actually be following a rule.

But why are rules not necessary for language? Is your position that language has no rules? — Luke

I see no reason to belief that rules are necessary for language. I have seen no acceptable logic which leads to this conclusion, and I see no evidence of learning rules in early childhood learning of language. I see that people only learn rules after they learn language. And rules are only a part of more advanced language development like writing, mathematics, and logic. Therefore I conclude that rules are not necessary for language use. So it is not my belief, that language has no rules, I think that they are a feature of advanced languages, we could say they are an emergent feature in language use.

Rules can be expressed in language. They don't have to be. — Luke

If you truly believe this, then you ought to be able to provide some examples. Show me some rules, or even a rule, which is not expressed in language. Remember though, a repeated pattern, or any type of pattern, does not constitute "a rule", but the description of it may be a "rule".

Meta either cannot or will not set aside his framework... — creativesoul

I do this intentionally, to demonstrate to people like Antony who take agreement, "our coming together", "our shared lives" as a fundamental premise, that their premise is false.

I understand you want to let me know that you disagree, but you simply rejected this with no justification than I'm not living in reality. — Antony Nickles

I justified with both explanation, and examples. My legs moving, in the context of walking, exists within the context of an intentional act, going to the store. My lips moving, in the context of speaking, exists within the context of an intentional act of speaking to my brother. I explained that even if we find simple habitual acts, which appear to be unintended, they exist within the overall context of a living human being who has ongoing goals, intentions, which influence those seemingly unintentional acts.

You said:
"Can we not just say: "I'm going to the store." or: "I'm speaking to my brother about something." We do not need your picture of intention here--"

The fact of the matter, the reality of the situation, is that this is simply the way that 'we' (meaning most ordinary normal people), talk about these things, that they are intentional acts. What do 'we' mean by "I'm going to the store"? 'We' mean that I am engaged in an intentional act with the goal of getting to the store.

If your purpose is to deny the intention implied by such phrases, when you answer the question "what do we mean by...", then you are not practicing your professed OLP, because you are not answering the question truthfully. This is part of the hypocrisy I warned you about. If however, it is a part of your method, to provide untruthful answers to such questions then your method is one of deception..

This is unacceptable behavior. — Antony Nickles

That I refuse to accept the principles of a hypocrite is unacceptable behaviour?

I appreciate the opportunity to attempt to refine how I present this material but a blanket denial in the end leaves nothing to say. — Antony Nickles

Take off your tinted spectacles, and take a look at the situation! Who is the one in denial here? In defense of your denial of the reality of intention, you suggested we could take sayings like "I'm going to the store", and truthfully consider what is meant by them, outside the context of intention. I've simply pointed out to you, that it's not a realistic representation of how we speak, of what we mean, your proposition that we speak about human acts as if they exist outside the context of intention.

It must seem like a lonely world. — Antony Nickles

Why do you think I'm here, engaged in this unpleasant situation?

Question: are images part and parcel of human mentality?
— Mww

Well this sounds like a loaded question......

Yeah...no. No more loaded than the title of the article, must we mean what we say. No, it is not necessarily the case that we must mean what we say, and, yes, images are part and parcel of human mentality or no they are not.

......what is "mentality"? Are we saying imagination? Or just the ability to bring up an image?....

Mentality is whatever you think it is, and from which whether images are part and parcel of it, is then determinable. We are not saying imagination, because we already said mentality. If it was the ability to bring up images, then they are presupposed and the question remains as to their part and parcel.

.......but I'd need more I think. — Antony Nickles

Ok. I’ll wait.
————

That's all you took from that essay? — Antony Nickles

No. I discovered where you got your writing style.

With respect to content, however, there is this, which I found enlightening, after dropping out all those stupefying cogito interruptus parentheticals:

“....What now needs emphasizing is that (...) justifying a statement or an action is not (...) justifying its justification. The assumption that the appeal to a rule or standard is only justified where that rule or standard is simultaneously established or justified can only serve to make such appeal seem hypocritical (...) and the attempts at such establishment or justification seem tyrannical (....)....”
pg 191

And with this next...

“...And what we mean (...) to say, like what we mean (...) to do, is something we are responsible for....”, pg 197

.... is merely a reiteration of that which has always been the case, long before this article was written, because the rules for what is meant by what is said, are never simultaneously established in the saying, but already completely established beforehand in the relation between the words said and the conceptions thought, from which they arise. And to which the question regarding images becomes its most relevant.

Well, you are officially in charge of this thread. I'm finding "explaining" it is either beyond me or does little to shift people's framework to consider it, and I'm afraid I don't seem to have the skills to provide compelling examples and don't even do a good job of stealing Austin's or Cavell's. I have posted a few other oblique attempts, and I will, of course, carry this on. — Antony Nickles

I don't think there's much point in trying to convince people. While OLP is good, it relies on a certain psychological leap that it never figured out how to instill in other people. Lazerowitz said it was a matter of 'clicking,' or like seeing through a magic-eye painting. Much of OLP was, and I think should still be seen, as destructive to philosophy, and is a matter of 'seeing through' it. People who are invested in philosophy as part of their identity have a predisposition not to listen, and even someone who wants to listen has no guarantee it will 'click.' That's the major shortcoming of the method – no one figured out how to make someone see that initial insight. Philosophy is, in some sense, stupid or defective, but we're cognitively disposed to fall into its traps.

The thing that did it for me was Malcolm's 'Moore and Ordinary Language,' which contains something like the OLP 'master argument' in the allegory of the animal, and the argument over whether it's a fox or a wolf.

Suppose we're going through the forest and we hear rustling, so we go to investigate. We look beyond and in a clearing there's an animal. We are close enough to see it perfectly clearly. You say it's a wolf, and I say it's a fox. When you protest, I ask, how can that possibly be a wolf? It looks and acts like a fox – it has all the features typically associated with a fox. But you protest, and say 'I grant you that – it has all the characteristics of what we would normally call a fox. Nevertheless, it is a wolf.'

The idea is that here you're doing philosophy, in insisting that a fox is a wolf. The point is to consider – what sense is there in saying that a creature that has all the characteristics of what is normally called a fox, not a fox? Yet this is precisely what the philosopher spends the great majority of his time doing.

Philosophy is, in some sense, stupid or defective, but we're cognitively disposed to fall into its traps. — Snakes Alive

Except that philosophy didn’t die with Wittgenstein. It absorbed his ideas and reinvented itself as post-metaphysical ( Derrida would say there is no such thing as post-metaphysics, he would instead say that one must work at the margins of philosophy. He would also suggest that olp rests on implicit metaphysical
assumptions.).

I don't think philosophy died – it just went on doing pretty much what it did before when people got bored of one way of doing it and moved on. It's a matter of historical contingency and fashion. It's not any better now than it was then, though.

s I don't think philosophy died – it just went on doing pretty much what it did before when people got bored of one way of doing it and moved on. It's a matter of historical contingency and fashion. It’s not any better now than it was then, though. — Snakes Alive

I’m saying exactly the opposite(unless you’re just referring to analytic philosophy, in which case I agree) and here’smy list of philosophers who absorbed the lessons of olp ( whether they read it or not) and moved on from it:

Heidegger
Derrida
Foucault
Deleuze
Jan-Luc Nancy
Lyotard
Gendlin
Merleau-Ponty
Rorty
Dan Zahavi
Shaun Gallagher
Matthew Ratcliffe
Jan Slaby
Thomas Fuchs
Andrea Jaegher
Gadamer
Ricouer
Francisco Varela
Evan Thompson
John Protevi
Brian Massumi

That’s just a sampling . Please defend your claim that this philosophy isn’t any better than the pre-olp philosophy. My hunch is you haven’t read much of any of these authors.

here’smy list of philosophers who absorbed the lessons of olp ( whether they read it or not) and moved on from it: — Joshs

This list doesn't make any sense, since it includes philosophers who wrote their major works prior to or during the time OLP was being worked out. Rorty is the only one here that really makes sense as having 'learned from' OLP – many of these guys probably hadn't even read it or weren't aware of it.

And yeah, if I'm meant to be impressed by Heidegger and Gadamer and so on as examples of 'good' philosophy...well, our notions of what is good are probably too different for any interesting discussion to happen here. I have no interest in 'team continental' versus 'team analytic' nonsense, which this post smacks of.