This is where we disagree profoundly. A stop sign's meaning is out there; exemplified in the behavior it produces, but a toothache's meaning is both in here and out there. — Janus

I think I understand why you might say that, but I don't think the private sensation that you seem to be referring to (trying to refer to?) can affect what I gesture toward with "meaning." I confess that I am trying to twist the meaning of meaning here, just as Wittgenstein and others have.

I don't the situation regarding what is private and what is public as close to being as cut and dried as you seem to want to be painting it. — Janus

This is tricky, because the implications of my view are that nothing is ever cut and dried (or only relatively so.) It's like Ryle's interpretation of "John knows French" (quoted above) applied everywhere. If meaning is out there in the world, it exceeds what might have otherwise been called my 'intentions.' In the same way, the 'meaning' of the predator warning cry of the vervet monkey is hardly something we'd want to ground in the consciousness of that monkey. Ants might be an even better example. Does the individual ant grok the genius of the system they've evolve to coordinate their actions? Humans, much clever, are plausibly still mostly in the dark on such matters, despite our relative metacognitive genius. Our skill exceeds our self-transparency.

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I think you might like this. I think we both have our own, radical interpretation of Wittgenstein.

A characteristic distinguishing feature of linguistic practices is their protean character, their plasticity and malleability, the way in which language constantly overflows itself, so that any established pattern of usage is immediately built on, developed, and transformed. The very act of using linguistic expressions or applying concepts transforms the content of those expressions or concepts. The way in which discursive norms incorporate and are transformed by novel contingencies arising from their usage is not itself a contingent, but a necessary feature of the practices in which they are implicit. It is easy to see why one would see the whole enterprise of semantic theorizing as wrong–headed if one thinks that, insofar as language has an essence, that essence consists in its restless self–transformation (not coincidentally reminiscent of Nietzsche’s “self–overcoming”). Any theoretical postulation of common meanings associated with expression types that has the goal of systematically deriving all the various proprieties of the use of those expressions according to uniform principles will be seen as itself inevitably doomed to immediate obsolescence as the elusive target practices overflow and evolve beyond those captured by what can only be a still, dead snapshot of a living, growing, moving process. It is an appreciation of this distinctive feature of discursive practice that should be seen as standing behind Wittgenstein’s pessimism about the feasibility and advisability of philosophers engaging in semantic theorizing…

…
[T]he idea that the most basic linguistic know–how is not mastery of proprieties of use that can be expressed once and for all in a fixed set of rules, but the capacity to stay afloat and find and make one’s way on the surface of the raging white–water river of discursive communal practice that we always find ourselves having been thrown into (Wittgensteinian Geworfenheit) is itself a pragmatist insight. It is one that Dewey endorses and applauds. And it is a pragmatist thought that owes more to Hegel than it does to Kant. For Hegel builds his metaphysics and logic around the notion of determinate negation because he takes the normative obligation to do something to resolve the conflict that occurs when the result of our properly applying the concepts we have to new situations is that we (he thinks, inevitably) find ourselves with materially incompatible commitments to be the motor that drives the unceasing further determination and evolution of our concepts and their contents. The process of applying conceptual norms in judgment and intentional action is the very same process that institutes, determines, and transforms those conceptual norms.

That's Brandom, btw.

I think I understand why you might say that, but I don't think the private sensation that you seem to be referring to (trying to refer to?) can affect what I gesture toward with "meaning." I confess that I am trying to twist the meaning of meaning here, just as Wittgenstein and others have. — hanaH

I am not sure what you mean here by "twist"; I'm seeing it more as "restrict". I can refer to a sensation that, even though you have no hope of feeling it (since you are not me), you can nonetheless understand what kind of thing I am referring to since you ( presumably) also experience sensations. We can certainly say that this is a different kind of reference than ostensive reference, but I see no rationale for denying that it is reference at all. You (presumably) take yourself to be referring to meaning when you speak of it, and yet meaning is not a determinate object.

This is tricky, because the implications of my view are that nothing is ever cut and dried (or only relatively so.) It's like Ryle's interpretation of "John knows French" (quoted above) applied everywhere. If meaning is out there in the world, it exceeds what might have otherwise been called my 'intentions.' — hanaH

I agree that meaning exceeds our intentions, but I don;t view it as being merely what is "out there in the world". This is what I meant by "cut and dried", 'black and white", "either/ or"; wanting to say it is either what is out there in the world or it is "intentions", or associations, what is "in our minds". In my view it is both.

a largely refuted reference theory. — hanaH

By that, do you mean not all language usage is referential, or that no language usage is referential?

By that, do you mean not all language usage is referential, or that no language usage is referential? — Srap Tasmaner

I think it's tough to deny the seeming referentiality of words like "cow" or "hat." But what is "refer" supposed to refer to? I feel as if I am trying to define a bark with a hiss and a growl.

I am not sure what you mean here by "twist"; I'm seeing it more as "restrict". — Janus

Yes, restrict. I'm exploring a materialistic, biological, behavioristic perspective ... largely inspired by Wittgenstein, which I also take back into my reading of him.

We can certainly say that this is a different kind of reference than ostensive reference, but I see no rationale for denying that it is reference at all. — Janus

For me the rationale is that the "beetle" serves no purpose. It's like phlogiston or the ether. If, as I do, you choose to start from the bodies of social animals in nature that need to coordinate their behavior, the "beetle" or "what-it's-like-for-them" can't play a significant role, since it's typically understood to completely invisible. Nothing constrains our speculation. Can we even falsify an inverted spectrum hypothesis? I don't see how.

The inverted spectrum is the hypothetical concept of two people sharing their color vocabulary and discriminations, although the colors one sees—one's qualia—are systematically different from the colors the other person sees.

I don't know if you and I see the apple in the same way, but I can confirm that we both call it 'red' (the uncontroversial public use of an uncontroversial public token.) I think, roughly, that rationality reasons from the uncontroversial toward the more controversial (not from sense data but from statements that all parties accept, which skips the quasi-mystical "given" that's been supposed as the source of knowledge.)

You (presumably) take yourself to be referring to meaning when you speak of it, and yet meaning is not a determinate object. — Janus

It's very tough to avoid mentalistic language. Philosophy is something like a snake trying to crawl out of its own skin. Or it's Nuerath's boat. Or it's a cartoon in which a cat climbs a ladder by bringing the bottom rungs up to the top in order to keep climbing higher.

On one level of this discourse I'd say I'm squeaking or buzzing rather than referring. I like to forget for a moment, if possible, all the inherited baggage of reference and think of a pack of wolves using a variety of signals to hunt successfully. In our case, the practical payload is so far down the stream that it's hard to (fore)see.

But what is "refer" supposed to refer to? I feel as if I am trying to define a bark with a hiss and a growl. — hanaH

When you use the words ‘bark’, ‘hiss’, ‘squeak’, ‘buzz’ and ‘growl’ do you mean to convey the idea of meaningless in themselves utterances which only take on sense when they interact in particular ways with other such utterances? But isn’t this notion of a meaningless-in-itself utterance an example of a beetle in a box? Beetles in boxes don’t only have to do with what is supposed to be hidden inside a subjectivity. They can just as well be about things in the outside world or social realm. What makes them beetles in boxes isnt where they are located ( inner subjectivity vs social world)
but that they mean something in themselves (empty signal) before or outside of their relations within a discursive matrix.
So for instance , if you intend ‘hiss’, ‘bark’ , squeak’ ,’buzz’ and ‘growl’ as meaningless in themselves, you defeat your own purpose, because ‘meaningless in itself’ works in the context of your aims as a specific pragmatic but confused sense. It intends to point to a picture of an in-itself, a growl or hiss which only later becomes linked to meaning.

I think Wittgenstein was trying to critique behaviorism.
Hutchinson points out that the American pragmatist versions of pragmatism , while similar in a general sense , failed to overcome empiricism.

“But such similarities are superficial when one acknowledges the empiricism at the heart of pragmatism (and they are what led some Pragmatists, unlike Wittgenstein, toward behaviourism).”

When you use the words ‘bark’, ‘hiss’, ‘squeak’, ‘buzz’ and ‘growl’ do you mean to convey the idea of meaningless in themselves utterances which only take on sense when they interact in particular ways with other such utterances? — Joshs

No, I don't mean meaningless. I've used the example of the vervet monkey's cry several times now. Organisms coordinating their action in a shared world, that's my focus. You just mention other utterances above, forgetting all else. Instead think of utterances as physical actions among others, shaking the air. An animal shits, an animal fucks, an animal cries in the proximity of a predator. Or an ant chases the gland of another ant.

The bark-grunt-roar metaphor gestures toward the animality and materiality of communication and away from the typical theology of the philosophers and its pure concepts, pure sensations. In both cases an infinite intimacy is suggested, or, if you like, a self-transparence.

So for instance , if you intend ‘hiss’, ‘bark’ , squeak’ ,’buzz’ and ‘growl’ as meaningless in themselves, you defeat your own purpose, because ‘meaningless in itself’ works in the context of your aims as a specific pragmatic but confused sense. — Joshs

AFAIK, animal communication is generally less historical, so that signs are not arbitrary in the Saussure's sense. I suppose they are inherited genetically as opposed to culturally (for the most part, and I am just speculating.) For us, on the other hand, our conspicuously varying and largely " arbitrary" languages are "received like the law." Just a rock thrown into a pond causes rings, so does one wave of the hand tend to cause another. Cough up what can be categorized as the token "hello, "and expect the same in return or a synonym. (Spoken words are something like equivalence classes of sounds.)

An animal shits, an animal fucks, an animal cries in the proximity of a predator. Or an ant chases the gland of another ant. — hanaH

But what would it mean to suggest that the shitting, fucking and crying is always a different sense of these terms? That is , not examples of a larger category called shitting or fucking in general, but events that share a family resemblance without there being any category to hold them? I’m looking for the contextual specificity that is the true and only site of what these terms do. It would help if we could talk a little more about what materiality and physical action are supposed to be about.
Materiality suggests to me a notion that is at least partially independent of context.

Cough up what can be categorized as the token "hello, "and expect the same in return or a synonym. — hanaH

Is the token ‘hello’ something we could call a member of a category? Where does the category have its existence? Expecting the same or a synonym is a move in a language game. But there are many possibilities. The other person could fail to return the hello, and thus lead to all sorts of further developments. Did they misunderstand? Were they upset about something? Did they fail to hear? Or we could say hello with no expectations of a reply, depending on the circumstances.
Or we could say hello in a context of hostility, expecting it to irritate the other. In that circumstance, we could be surprised by a return of the hello.

But what would it mean to suggest that the shitting, fucking and crying is always a different sense of these terms? That is , not examples of a larger category called shitting or fucking in general, but events that share a family resemblance without there being any category to hold them? — Joshs

I'm not clear on what you are asking here. But I'm happy to say that I don't claim to have some final theory of everything. I also don't pretend to deduce (in detail) our current, tacit mastery of the metacognitive molasses we're working within from brute biology.

Is the token ‘hello’ something we could call a member of a category? — Joshs

I hope so, since you are using it that way.

As Nietzsche might say, it's a 'lie' we need to survive, treating the different as the same (ignoring the position of the word, the handwriting, the color of the letters, etc.)

Expecting the same or a synonym is a move in a language game. — Joshs

You can describe it that way. But my point is to bring talking back to the world. I throw a rock to kill a bird. I make the sound for "food" and my mother feeds me. In one case I move my hand. In the other case I move my diaphragm and tongue. In the second case, between social humans, the sign is arbitrary (culturally inherited).

(I don't think there's some perfect distinction between language and non-language.)

The other person could fail to return the hello, and thus lead to all sorts of further developments. — Joshs

Of course. And the rest of nature never surprises us? I like to visit a fossil bed and walk on rocks. Some of them give way. I've learned to prepare for that.

Human conversation is arguably the most complex thing we are aware of, involving billions of human brains.

It would help if we could talk a little more about what materiality and physical action are supposed to be about.
Materiality suggests to me a notion that is at least partially independent of context. — Joshs

Just as "knowing French" is far indeed from referring to some precise and complete (immaterial) "content," so is "material." Think material as the "plane" or "realm" of food & sex ... and medium-sized dry goods. It's a hot air ballon, a vomiting baby, a hot apple pie. It's more fact than interpretation, and therefore, yes, relatively independent of context.

Or we could say hello in a context of hostility, expecting it to irritate the other. In that circumstance, we could be surprised by a return of the hello. — Joshs

Of course. See the comment about complexity above. I'm aware that humans can be sarcastic. But aggressive irony is not yet rocket science, as irony is a conceptually simple inversion. Also:

.
When we look at such simple forms of language the mental mist which seems to enshroud our ordinary use of language disappears. We see activities, reactions, which are clear-cut and transparent. On the other hand we recognize in these simple processes forms of language not separated by a break from our more complicated ones. We see that we can build up the complicated forms from the primitive ones by gradually adding new forms. — Blue Book

In that circumstance, we could be surprised by a return of the hello. — Joshs

But not by an insult.

The issue is perhaps whether one is willing to see humans as continuous with the other animals and then also (very much related) their language as continuous with the body-coordinating signals of those other animals.

From the Blue Book:

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign.

Perhaps Wittgenstein should have stressed not only the other signs (the system of signs) but the world with which that system is entangled. It's not so trivial to separate signs from non-signs. It's also hard to make sense of a system of signs that has no use. So we need organisms and a world in which they strive.

Perhaps Wittgenstein should have stressed not only the other signs (the system of signs) but the world with which that system is entangled. It's not so trivial to separate signs from non-signs. It's also hard to make sense of a system of signs that has no use. So we need organisms and a world in which they strive. — hanaH

Language-games were still in their infancy in the Blue Book.

I want to say that the interesting thing about a language-game is that the sense an utterance (or gesture or other action) makes is obvious. But it's still just a reminder.

More specifically, I think language-games are supposed to be occasions of language use stripped of the non-essential so that the sense of them becomes obvious.

There's a story about Capablanca walking by a board where two masters were analyzing a difficult ending, considering several strategies and lots of lines. Capablanca stopped, moved several pieces on the board to new squares and removed some pieces, and then walked away. What was left on the board was a position that was obviously a win for white, and it was position white could obviously force eventually.

I think that's what a language-game is supposed to be. In real life, the sense of things may be obscured by all sorts of other considerations and complexities. Strip all that away and you don't wonder whether something makes sense or how an exchange works; it's obvious.

It seems you're not sure we know we're on firm ground until we get down to the biological, the material conditions of life, to something we might even do science with. I don't think Wittgenstein feels that need.

I think that's what a language-game is supposed to be. In real life, the sense of things may be obscured by all sorts of other considerations and complexities. Strip all that away and you don't wonder whether something makes sense or how an exchange works; it's obvious. — Srap Tasmaner

:up:

It seems you're not sure we know we're on firm ground until we get down to the biological, the material conditions of life, to something we might even do science with. I don't think Wittgenstein feels that need. — Srap Tasmaner

As far as ordinary life goes, I think we can and do feast on mentalistic language without hesitation. Even in the context of philosophy, I too can and have turned the crank on the old fog machine with a feather in my hat.

I guess I do think we are theoretically on thin ice with theories of meaning that depend on what I'd call (and what I think Wittgenstein reveals as) habitual nonsense. But I also think that we do not practice what we preach, and it's perhaps precisely this distance that affords us our ignorance. So much of philosophy is so removed from practice that it seems to function more like peacock's feathers than the fang of a cobra (quasi-religious status grooming, etc.) It's fine to be wrong (incoherent) as long as one enjoys a morale boost that cashes out in the bigger picture...along the same lines religion may be an advantageous confusion. Our mastery of sign-slinging is mercifully tacit, while the account we give of that mastery is a confused, childish ghost story. To me it's adjacent to more classic forms of theology. I may indeed err on the other side to make a point, impatient at always being offered ectoplasm as explanation. (I asked for water, she gave me gasoline.)

Just to be clear, I don't pretend to speak for long-gone Wittgenstein or even to have the same temperament. I'm working from passages in his text that I found essential, trying to draw them in out in a certain direction, purify them, if you will.

I understand the impulse. For a while I read Wittgenstein as a man desperately trying to invent game theory. Same really for Paul Grice. But the game-theory version of all this you find in David Lewis's Convention kinda ends up in the wilderness without quite reaching the revelation it was looking for.

I don't see much to brag about with any of the previous attempts to make philosophy into a science, and I don't really need a new vocabulary, so I've been retreating from the whole approach.

I'll tell you one thing I've kept from reading Lewis, though I don't remember whether he says it in so many words: once we upgraded from signaling to language, we didn't stop signaling. We use words now because, well, there they are. Sometimes when you utter a perfectly coherent bit of English, you're not really speaking at all, but only signaling. We know that, but we forget. ("How are you?" might be an English question or it might be the vocal equivalent of a smile and a nod.)

But the game-theory version of all this you find in David Lewis's Convention kinda ends up in the wilderness without quite reaching the revelation it was looking for. — Srap Tasmaner

Haven't read it, but I'll look into it.

don't see much to brag about with any of the previous attempts to make philosophy into a science, and I don't really need a new vocabulary, so I've been retreating from the whole approach. — Srap Tasmaner

I think philosophy has tried to become more rational which includes providing a theory of science. Imagine dismissing philosophy's attempts to become more rational. Would that make sense? Is the drive toward coherence aesthetic, practical, ethical, ...?

once we upgraded from signaling to language, we didn't stop signaling. We use words now because, well, there they are. Sometimes when you utter a perfectly coherent bit of English, you're not really speaking at all, but only signaling. We know that, but we forget. ("How are you?" might be an English question or it might be the vocal equivalent of a smile and a nod.) — Srap Tasmaner

Sure, and the way "how are you" can pour out automatically is not so different from the way that philosophical clichés pour out. I think in terms of a continuum. "Speaking" has no definite referent, but we can discuss and debate situations where one either 'ought' to be or is more likely to be applied rather than another. So it becomes a normative (political?) or empirical question. Of course something like inference from analogy is also involved (analogy is the core of cognition, etc.) And this is why I can complain (playfully, like a gripey Seinfeld) about incoherent ghost stories and not just their theorized practical effects.

"Toothaches" and "God" and "justice" and "truth" are, in my view, tokens, just like the cries of the vervet monkey, albeit caught up in a far more complicated system. — hanaH

I'm not sure what version of the term token you are referring to; I take Witt to be showing us that a toothache (a sensation) works differently than justice (a moral claim). Different things matter to us, they operate (or fail to) in different ways, we identify them differently. To say they are just cries is to equate every expression as the same type, when Witt's point is that toothaches and rocks and honesty have different frameworks of criteria for how they work.

It might be helpful here to think of individual social organisms as relatively closed systems that signal one another "materially" (as opposed to a telepathy of rarefied concept-stuff.) As I see it, the point is synchronized behavior. — hanaH

"Individual social organisms" seems to be, me, as part of a culture, or humanity. And, at least in terms of sensations, we are, in a sense, closed off from the other except that which we can't but express. And a "concept" is not like an "idea" (something... mental?), it is a term of Witt's just to refer collectively to all our human activity. Not everything is "material" (if that means physical) but justice and thinking and judging are still part of our lives, and affect are lives, are "normative" (if we must say), and synchronized, sure (the similarity maybe not as important as that we are inculcated into our culture).

So looking inside a single organism for meaning seems misguided, though one might naturally inquire how the sign system is "stored" as it is learned, etc. — hanaH

My point is not that "meaning" is inside me, but I do claim that: I, personally, am interested in some things and not others, that some parts of my experience are meaningful to me (essential even), more than they are for you. In exactly clearing up that there is not "meaning" (or a theory of it), Witt makes the space for the personal, by showing us the nature of human expression (and yes all the public yada yada).

Abracadabra, an armchair science of the eternal essence of reality. — hanaH

Who was speaking of science, or eternity, or even reality? None of that has anything to do with the fact that words carry meaning, and that's why people use them.

If "meaning is use", then no meaning is no use. If words carried no meaning, people would have no use for them...

2. Which naturally leads to something like hanaH's view that all of these uses and possible uses, even the ones we can't imagine now, have something in common: they are solutions to a coordination problem faced by living creatures like us. — Srap Tasmaner

I think even this constraint would be too much. The 'untotalizable' character or uncountability of types of use is a positive, "built-in" feature of 'use'. Wittgenstein says as much:

§23: "But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question and command? - There are countless kinds; countless different kinds of use of all the things we call “signs”, “words”, “sentences”. And this diversity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. ... The word “language-game” is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life" (emphasis in the original).

§23 also contains a list of examples of such types of uses - Giving orders, and acting on them, singing rounds, Cracking a joke, are just a few of them. The point is that these types of uses are derivative of our forms of life: there are as many types of uses as they could be forms-of-life. This is why further down, in discussing why he is not offering a theory, Witty says that the point is to do away with any sense of explanation, and to stick wholly with description:

§109: "And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place" (emphasis in the original). This can only make sense if we drop even minimal conditions like "language use has in common the fact that they are solutions to a coordination problem faced by living creatures like us". Witty's strong thesis is: there is and can be no such condition of commonality. The very capaciousness of this approach to language is also mercilessly eliminative: it expels all efforts at welding even minimal conditions upon what language is.

Apposite quotes, thanks. §100 is one of the ones I was remembering.

Is there connective tissue between §23 and §100 to suggest that the Doctrine of No Theory is derived directly from the countlessness of kinds of sentences? (I'm working from memory here but will go back to the text too.) I keep thinking the prohibition would stand even if you had an enormous Austinian catalog of sentence types and language-games.

Why say, "There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations"? The implication is that theory is hypothetical and description is not. I suppose that's kind of what I've been trying to suggest by saying that sense in a language-game is obvious, plain to see. But why say, "there must not be anything hypothetical" rather than "there need not be anything hypothetical"?

I can't connect this "hypothetical" talk to anything else in LW off the top of my head. I can make some guesses, but LW says I shouldn't. Do you know what's going on here?

Well typically a hypothesis is what you test for confirmation or disproof of a theory: if your hypotheses are confirmed, your theory is given credence. It's just another way of saying the same thing, and I wouldn't read too much into it.

And for the 'must' - I think it just follows from what I termed before as understanding language as a resource or a fund. Say you have a stock of wood. Can you stipulate in advance all the uses of that wood? I mean you can try. You'd probably be wrong. You'd end up like those old-timey futurologists:



And language is far, far more flexible than wood. Also, the citation is from §109. I mis-cited it as §100 before I edited it.

Who was speaking of science, or eternity, or even reality? None of that has anything to do with the fact that words carry meaning, and that's why people use them. — Olivier5

I was suggesting one motive among other possible motives for the philosophical insistence on immaterial entities. It gives philosophers a special domain, often take to be eternal and offering a kind of ideal, "direct" access. I "can't" be wrong about what I think I mean. I "can't" be wrong about my pain. This "can't" is more grammatical than logical (or, if you like, logic is a byproduct of grammar in some ways.

If "meaning is use", then no meaning is no use. If words carried no meaning, people would have no use for them... — Olivier5

I think it's reasonable to speak of words carrying meaning. At least it's a gentler metaphor than reference. The vervet monkey cries when an eagle is before its eyes, and this cry triggers the other vervet monkeys to take an evasive action appropriate for that particular predator. To speak of carrying meaning adds a layer of interpretation, but it's not as thick and objectionable as postulating that the monkey cry refers to the Platonic form of the eagle or of evasion. (I'm suggesting that we be conservative here and be slow to smear immaterial substances on what these bodies are doing in nature. I extend this to us humans.)

To say they are just cries is to equate every expression as the same type, when Witt's point is that toothaches and rocks and honesty have different frameworks of criteria for how they work. — Antony Nickles

"Cries" is an intentionally jarring metaphor. "Just" cries suggests meaninglessness, where I'm simply looking at relationships of stuff in the world (stuff that includes our sounds and scribbles) for meaning. Because animals do coordinate their behavior, meaning is out there. Pain talk is part of us taking care of one another, surviving together.

I agree that one can say there are many different frameworks. I'll always vote for the theory that acknowledges more complexity, more difference in this context.

In exactly clearing up that there is not "meaning" (or a theory of it), Witt makes the space for the personal, by showing us the nature of human expression (and yes all the public yada yada). — Antony Nickles

It seems we are borrowing the Wittgenstein avatar for different projects. Yours reminds me of a therapist. I'm not objecting or mocking.

was suggesting one motive among other possible motives for the philosophical insistence on immaterial entities. — hanaH

I think that's actually you who's insisting that we think about immaterial entities.