Yes, or a point-at-infinity. For Peirce, inquity is about settling beliefs. What's true for this ideal, future community is just reality itself (because there's no meaningful/practical difference.) — T H E
There's a gnostic myth that in heaven all questions are answered. It's our origin and our ultimate destination. — frank
87. Suppose I give this explanation: "I take 'Moses' to mean the man, if there was such a man, who led the Israelites out of Egypt, whatever he was called then and whatever he may or may not have done besides."—But similar doubts to those about "Moses" are possible about the words of this explanation (what are you calling "Egypt", whom the "Israelites" etc.?). Nor would these questions come to an end when we got down to words like "red", "dark", "sweet".—"But then how does an explanation help me to understand, if after all it is not the final one? In that case the explanation is never completed; so I still don't understand what he means, and never shall!"—As though an explanation as it were hung in the air unless supported by another one. Whereas an explanation may indeed rest on another one that has been given, but none stands in need of another—unless we require it to prevent a misunderstanding. One might say: an explanation serves to remove or to avert a misunderstanding——one, that is, that would occur but for the explanation; not every one that I can imagine. It may easily look as if every doubt merely revealed an existing gap in the foundations; so that secure understanding is only possible if we first doubt everything that can be doubted, and then remove all these doubts.
The sign-post is in order—if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose. — PI
But now it may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis of our forms of language, and so a single completely resolved form of every expression. That is, as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light. When this is done the expression is completely clarified and our problem solved. It can also be put like this: we eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact; but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state of complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation. 92.. This finds expression in questions as to the essence of language, of propositions, of thought.—For if we too in these investigations are trying to understand the essence of language—its function, its structure,—yet this is not what those questions have in view. For they see in the essence, not something that already lies open to view and that becomes surveyable by a rearrangement, but something that lies beneath the surface. Something that lies within, which we see when we look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out. 'The essence is hidden from us*: this is the form our problem now assumes. We ask: "What is language?", "What is a proposition?" And the answer to these questions is to be given once for all; and independently of any future experience. — PI
But if knowing something presumes believing it to be true, how could knowledge be "definitionally something more than... psychological states"? Knowing is a psychological state.One might accordingly argue that the goal should instead be knowledge, so understood that it is definitionally something more than the psychological states (believings) an epistemic subject has to be in as a necessary condition for entering the richer, truth-constrained, relation in which 'knowing' consists.
But if knowing something presumes believing it to be true, how could knowledge be "definitionally something more than... psychological states"? Knowing is a psychological state. — Banno
What's this gap between the system and the foundations? IMV, it's more like the system is the foundation of inherited, shared practices (in this context the ways we use words, the 'way things are done around here.' )OC1 thus states that scepticism gets no purchase because our beliefs inhere in a system (the first component) which rests upon foundations (the second component), which latter non-negotiably constitute the conditions upon which our beliefs have content — AC
But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. 105. All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system ... The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.
I have a world picture. Is it true or false? Above all it is the substratum of all my enquiring and asserting (WR252).
341. The questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges upon which those turn. — W
I don't think W suggests (and I don't personally think) that the 'foundation' is piecewise impervious to doubt. We can question any little piece of the system that we can manage to become aware of. I think @frank was defending this aspect of skepticism, and I agree. Maybe W's view (and a more reasonable view) is something more like Neurath's raft. We can analyze any particular word, suggest new ways of using them, but we can't do this with all words at the same time. Because we depend on living, current conventions to be understood (even by ourselves.) The radical or complete skeptic is a babbling dada poet.OC1 thus states that scepticism gets no purchase because our beliefs inhere in a system (the first component) which rests upon foundations (the second component), which latter non-negotiably constitute the conditions upon which our beliefs have content and which therefore constitute the conditions even for doubting, which, therefore again, cannot take the foundations for their target. The justification for the foundations is thus effected by a "transcendental argument" : restated, it is that foundational beliefs (expressed by what Wittgenstein calls, in senses of 'logical' and 'grammatical' special to OC, logical or grammatical propositions; see e.g. 51, 56-8) are what make the system possible, and it is within the system that claims to knowledge and challenges of doubt are alone intelligible. A clever encapsulation of the transcendental argument is given at 248: 'I have arrived at the rock-bottom of my convictions. And one might almost say that these foundation-walls are carried by the whole house.' — AC
OC2 is relativism. Relativism is the view that truth and knowledge are not absolute or invariable, but dependent upon viewpoint, circumstances or historical conditions. What is true for me might not be true for you; what counts as knowledge from one viewpoint might not do so from another; what is true at one time is false at another. Paragraph 97 arguably shows that the relativism implicit in this aspect of OC is of a classic or standard type. Its presence in OC is entirely consistent with its presence elsewhere in the later writings: one remembers the lions and Chinese of PI. What was left open in those earlier relativistic remarks was the degree of strength of the relativism to which Wittgenstein was committed. OC2 constitutes a claim that the framework within which claims to knowledge and challenges of doubt equally make sense is such that its change can reverse what counted as either. That is classically strong relativism. — AC
65. When language-games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change.
95. The propositions describing this world-picture might be part of a kind of mythology ...
97. The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift.
99. And the bank of the river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away, or deposited.
166. The difficulty is to realise the groundlessness of our believing.
256. On the other hand a language-game does change with time.
336. But what men consider reasonable or unreasonable alters. — W
If I start to doubt that these words mean what I think they mean, what can I say about that?
— unenlightened
That you have realised that there is no fact about that kind of matter?
The hand proposition is the big fat fact. — bongo fury
... knowing that presupposes being able to say that... and hence is a genus of knowing how to talk. But talking is just getting stuff done with words, and its the getting stuff done that is important. — Banno
What you demonstrate by giving a sensible answer, is that you do not on this occasion doubt the meaning at all. — unenlightened
166. The difficulty is to realise the groundlessness of our believing. — W
There's a bias against accepting that we're equipped with a kind of faith. Faith has the same relationship to doubt as the eternal has to change. They're a package deal. — frank
As language games and forms of life change, that remains the same. So Witt was discovering an unchanging feature of the mind? — frank
As I read him, he's discovering or at least modifying a vision of some kind of permanent structure (of the mind if one embraces how social-public-embodied the 'mind' turns out to be.) IMO, this is related to what Hegel meant by zeitgeist/timespirit. — T H E
So his philosophy is phenomenology? — frank
It's better perhaps to think of Wittgenstein as doing a kind of phenomenology, which is to say call our attention to what would be obvious if it wasn't so terribly taken for granted. A certain kind of philosophy is trapped in a picture. — T H E
Yes, it appears quite possible to me too that a person could be uncertain. However, you do not appear to be uncertain, but quite dogmatically certain. you are playing the uncertainty card in order to dispute something that you do not in fact dispute. and that is the game I am playing back at you, that you are now disputing in turn. This is by way of a demonstration of something, rather than a proof of anything. You want to tell me "you probably already know what I mean," but you will not have it the other way about. — unenlightened
Part V
Claiming to know only makes sense when doubt is possible.
This depends on the notion that our beliefs are to be found only within language games, each of which is formed by taking some beliefs as non-negotiable.
And is threatened by truth and knowledge being dependent on the language game in which the claims of truth or knowledge occur.
This is the claim. I can't at the moment see the argument. — Banno
And what is it that is taken for granted? That a certain kind of philosophy trapped in a picture is experienced as necessary, when it should be experienced as merely contingent? — Mww
Perhaps it would it be better to think this kind of phenomenology when attempting to understand Wittgenstein, but seems rather inept when attempting to understand human nature in general.
Keeping with language games, all philosophies are trapped in their respective pictures by the mind that creates them. Never stays that way, re: interpretational distinctions, which raises concerns over what being trapped really means. If trapped in every mind, it isn’t trapped in any. The epitome of contingency. — Mww
So true doubt must be directed at the system as a whole. — Metaphysician Undercover
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