Where did you ever get that idea from? — Metaphysician Undercover
I asked you how do we determine that going outside the boundaries of a convention does not fulfil the criteria of staying within the boundaries of a rule.
I understand why going outside the boundaries of a rule would not fulfil the requirement of staying within the boundaries of a rule, but I don't understand why going outside the boundaries of a convention does not fulfil the requirement of staying within the boundaries of a rule.
Surely, it must be possible that either following or not following a convention, or acting in some way with regards to a convention, could fulfil the requirement of staying within the boundary of a rule? Or have you simply presupposed that either following or not following a convention does not fulfil the requirement? — Luke
Yeah, I didn't want to suggest it was just a matter of emotion. I think the pull toward 'discovery' is also part of the same nebula of things I'm talking about with values, modes of awareness and so forth. But I take your point - you're focusing more on the 'how' than the 'why.' — csalisbury
Any understanding of the destructive portion of OLP has to start with the recognition that philosophy, objectively, doesn't work. That is, it is not what it claims to be – a form of effective inquiry. — Snakes Alive
I asked you how do we determine that going outside the boundaries of a convention does not fulfil the criteria of staying within the boundaries of a rule. — Luke
Surely, it must be possible that either following or not following a convention, or acting in some way with regards to a convention, could fulfil the requirement of staying within the boundary of a rule? Or have you simply presupposed that either following or not following a convention does not fulfil the requirement? — Luke
I asked you how do we determine that going outside the boundaries of a convention does not fulfil the criteria of staying within the boundaries of a rule.
— Luke
If going outside the boundaries of a convention is the same thing as staying within the boundaries of a rule, then obviously a convention is not the same thing as a rule.
— Metaphysician Undercover
If staying within the boundaries of a convention is the same thing as staying within the boundaries of a rule, then obviously a convention is the same thing as a rule.
— Luke
Yes, we could make that judgement — Metaphysician Undercover
Do you agree with (at least some interpretations of) Wittgenstein that the role of philosophy then becomes a form of therapy for resolving conceptual confusion? — Luke
No, because I don't think philosophy has a good track record as therapy either. — Snakes Alive
Yeah, that's right. But I think his mono-causal model is a bit oversimple. It's more just that we lack certain metacognitive abilities having to do with how language and inquiry work, and by dint of having extremely specific intellectual concerns and a certain personality and cognitive disposition, you can sort of start to notice this by accident. Trying to express your fantasies and desires, and maintain the omnipotence of the intelligence, can be part of that, but sometimes it's something more banal – simple confusion, and so on. — Snakes Alive
No, because I don't think philosophy has a good track record as therapy either. My position, and I've expressed it here before, is that philosophy ought to be exited, and viewed from the outside anthropologically. We should look at philosophy as a practice that we are no longer 'natives' of, and that we do not engage in, but that we do seek to try to understand, much like an anthropologist might for a foreign culture.
Philosophy, in other words, is something certain human beings in certain cultural situations do – and it isn't what it claims to be, and doesn't work, and so there isn't that much good reason to actually practice it, not even for therapeutic reasons. But looking at it and understanding why people do it, and what cognitive factors drive it, is interesting in understanding how human inquiry works. — Snakes Alive
I don't think philosophy is good therapy, but I do think it can do some work at helping inoculate you to bad arguments. — csalisbury
If staying within the boundaries of a convention is the same thing as staying within the boundaries of a rule, then obviously a convention is the same thing as a rule. — Metaphysician Undercover
A rule consists of a stated principle of conformity, therefore defined boundaries. — Metaphysician Undercover
A convention has no boundaries. — Metaphysician Undercover
Only according to your own self-imposed stipulation for how the word "rule" should be used. — Luke
So, if the boundary of a convention is implicit instead of explicit, we cannot get beyond "I think I am following a rule", because the boundary is only thought of. — Metaphysician Undercover
I would advocate looking at it a bit more dispassionately – people trying confusedly to express themselves is fine, but we also want things that are actually real, work, and so on. — Snakes Alive
If I understand OLP correctly, the move to look at what's actually happening in philosophical discussion is right - people are talking about words and how they're used. — csalisbury
A lot of the animus toward OLP seems to stem from a feeling that it's trivializing those values and emotions and modes of awareness. But values are borne out in action, not discussion; And emotions, or different ways of attuning to the world, are borne out in activities that do that kind of attuning. The 'click' can only happen if you're also willing to give up the (implicit) idea that living-well (in accordance with your values, say) means simply verbally laying claim to the right kind of thing, or discussing the world in a certain way. — csalisbury
I won't quibble here, as I think the gist of what you are trying to point out is relevant. It is hard to avoid the dismissive nature of OLP (Moore, Austin to an extent) when it does not take the effort to account for the legitimate concerns of traditional skeptical philosophy (Cavell does a better job of this). And I agree with looking past philosophical theories to connect them to a motivation. That it is doing more than making a claim; it is a person taking a stance, and it reflects on that person. Cavell will discuss this as "living your skepticism". I would also point out (as I did above regarding a kayak) that when we are making claims about the criteria of our expressions (and actions), we are at the same time making claims about the ways we live in the world--not just discussing language, nor just speculating without any of the value of truth. — Antony Nickles
there's some lack of meta-cognitive awareness of what goes on when we use [language], in general. But sadly, I think philosophy itself is also not a great medium for giving people these meta-cognitive skills. Any understanding of the destructive portion of OLP has to start with the recognition that philosophy, objectively, doesn't work. That is, it is not what it claims to be – a form of effective inquiry. — Snakes Alive
Witt will talk a lot about philosophy not being able to work, get traction, be anything but a house of cards, a fly in a bottle. Heiddeger and Emerson say that the more we grasp (for certainty) the more slips through our fingers; our acceptance of only a narrow criteria for knowledge blinds us to our more varied lives. — Antony Nickles
the search for the conditions under which expressions become meaningful, and what it is for something to be meaningful. Granted, this was under the guise of providing a very specific metasemantics, adopting the Wittgensteinian maxim distorted through Moore, but this was the first time in the specific tradition they were working in that it was done.
You can see precursors to it in the early analytic concern with meaning, especially the positivist conditions on intelligibility, but the positivists never asked the question in such an explicit way, not of which sorts of things were meaningful, but what it even meant for something to be meaningful, and how this might be made intelligible in terms of actual linguistic practices. This is a very powerful move, and one that I take to be 'naturalistic' and 'anthropological,'... — Snakes Alive
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