I meant to say ‘I WOULDNT SAY’ — Joshs
We don't learn how to employ tokens, or use words (I don't teach you all the things to say). — Antony Nickles
the goal of Philosophical Investigations was to understand our desire for seeing everything in one way (word-object). — Antony Nickles
still don't understand the "therapy" label--I mean I barely get what it is actually supposed to mean — Antony Nickles
Yes, there are mistakes, lies, empty words, descriptions that fall short, but that is why there are excuses, the endless depth of language; it is not that our words systematically fail us as much as we fail them, to continue to be responsible for them, answer to make ourselves intelligible. — Antony Nickles
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/herder/#PhilLangLangThouMean
Thought is essentially dependent on, and bounded in scope by, language—i.e., one can only think if one has a language, and one can only think what one can express linguistically.
Meanings or concepts are—not the sorts of things, in principle autonomous of language, with which much of the philosophical tradition has equated them, e.g., the referents involved (Augustine), Platonic forms, or subjective mental ideas à la Locke or Hume, but instead—usages of words.
Conceptualization is intimately bound up with (perceptual and affective) sensation. More precisely, Herder develops a quasi-empiricist theory of concepts that holds that sensation is the source and basis of all our concepts, but that we are able to achieve non-empirical concepts by means of metaphorical extensions from the empirical ones—so that all of our concepts ultimately depend on sensation in one way or another.
Perhaps you'll agree that anyone can emphasize the destructive or constructive mode in Wittgenstein and cherrypick quotes to that purpose. Folks will connect the dots he left behind differently. — hanaH
How does it come about that this arrow >>>––> points? Doesn’t it seem to carry in it something besides itself?—”No, not the dead line on paper, only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that." —That is both true and false. The arrow only points in the application that a living being makes of it. — Witt, PI #454 - hanaH
As in an animal, you or me, being trained to look to the right when we see this token. — hanaH
the goal of Philosophical Investigations was to understand our desire for seeing everything in one way (word-object).
— Antony Nickles
That sounds like the goal of a psychologist. 'If you want to know why the word-object thing was so cool back in the day, read PI.' Does that sound right? — hanaH
still don't understand the "therapy" label--I mean I barely get what it is actually supposed to mean
— Antony Nickles
Stuff like this:
Yes, there are mistakes, lies, empty words, descriptions that fall short, but that is why there are excuses, the endless depth of language; it is not that our words systematically fail us as much as we fail them, to continue to be responsible for them, answer to make ourselves intelligible.
— Antony Nickles
Not saying it's bad, just that you like me have a flavor, a vibe. — hanaH
This may seem minor, but aren't we indoctrinated in pointing? and then learn that we can apply that in the case of this sign? — Antony Nickles
(Couldn't we take it as the start of a drawing of weapon? be confused as to what 1992 DOS emoji this was supposed to be?); — Antony Nickles
This 'technique of applying them' is just what I'm trying to cash out in terms of social organisms in an environment. Conversation, by mouth or keyboard, is still physical, organic, ..the contraction of muscles, the disturbance of a medium. What role does this or that token play in the world, as a type of (material) object? The temptation toward the immaterial is understandable. A token is (as I mean it) an equivalence class of actual marks and/or sounds. Our nervous systems ignore irrelevant differences.there is something important about application/employment (given the number of index references). "The meaning of the brackets lies in the technique of applying them." (#557) — Antony Nickles
It's an investigation into the human condition--the constant threat of skepticism and the effect on our thinking in reaction to it. — Antony Nickles
I get that it is a tad poetic, but that is not just stylistic, those are grammatical claims, logical claims as it were--I'm saying that's the way our relationship to our expressions works. I make them in all seriousness, and to take them as merely therapeutic seems trivializing. — Antony Nickles
Labeling this as psychology is the same fear that causes philosophy to want to work outside the involvement of the human. — Antony Nickles
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. — hanaH
The claim that we cannot get between pain and its expression (#244-245) is to show us that the structure (the grammar) of our sensations is not that they are known, but that they are expressed or not. That they are meaningful to me is in releasing them into the world (or hiding them); that they are meaningful to you is the extent to which you accept them, that you accept me as a person in pain. "If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me." (p. 223 3rd.)(emphasis added) I do not know their pain (use a "criterion of identity" #288), I reject them, or I help them--as it were, beyond knowledge (Emerson's reliance, Nietzsche's human). This is the essence of experience/sensation. ( TheMadFool ) The picture of a word-referent mistakes this limitation of knowledge as the vision that no one could know me (my "sensation"/"experience"); that I am essentially, always unique/special--that the only failure/solution is a matter of epistemology. — Antony Nickles
That's part of why I give the reference theory hell. — hanaH
directly but privately experienced. — hanaH
Yes, I agree. We can't talk about so-called private experiences — TheMadFool
I'm at a loss as to what exactly could be considered private experiences. — TheMadFool
There's a certain character pain has that I can't put into words. — TheMadFool
Wittgenstein hit the bullseye - language is social in the sense it's domain is restricted to the public. — TheMadFool
"qualia" does mean something, it refers to the ineffable, the inexpressible. We can now have a intelligible conversation about our private experiences. — TheMadFool
"qualia" doesn't tell us what these private experiences actually are. — TheMadFool
Well... maybe you just mean talking about Witt's attempt to imagine an experience that I would know but that no one else could (that being the made-up quality/criteria of "private"), but the takeaway is not: that we do have personal experiences but that language just can't reach them, or that we have no experience that is not public. The point is that being known is not how our experience works--we can not get between a sensation and its expression for there to be the opportunity for knowledge (#245). That is not to say we can't talk about it, but only that we express our experience/sensations (even to ourselves, or repress them) — Antony Nickles
Witt's scenario is an imagined one (like the builders), so we can release ourselves from the Gordian knot of picturing an experience that is private in the way Witt was attempting. Again the lesson is not that we do or do not have our own experiences. As I quoted Witt earlier (#243), our ordinary criteria for a private experience is just something personal, secret: a sunset, a trauma, what I focused on in seeing a movie. And we are able to draw out (express, "give voice to" Witt says) and discuss our inner experiences (or hide/repress them). — Antony Nickles
Well expressions of pain of course can be more than words (thus, opera). In imagining a quality (a thing? a referent?) we are here, again, searching for knowledge of something certain, of ourselves, for the other's reaction to us. The feeling that pain is inexpressible is the fact that the other may reject my expression of pain, that I may be alone with my pain. — Antony Nickles
he other part of retaining something of pain within me is that I can remain unknown, untouchable, not responsible, special without having done anything, a unique person without differentiating myself. — Antony Nickles
rony aside, the idea of "qualia" still imagines our experience as a thing (the MacGuffan of neuroscience); it is a noun (you even have a word to refer to it)--we can "know" a thing (or can not!). Ineffable is an adjective as a qualification of our experience--too much to be expressed; not as if words leave some "thing" left over, but that our experience overflows our words. — Antony Nickles
In fact, we could simply say, "words can not express", "it's just a sense of awe", "I don't know what to say except I feel alive". These are not to tell us (know) anything about our experience, but express that there is nothing to be told (even when singing, crying, or violence can't). — Antony Nickles
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. — Ludwig Wittgenstein
Can we now claim that language has made its first tentative steps into our private worlds which until now had been hidden and beyond the reach of language? — TheMadFool
I still don't understand the "therapy" label--I mean I barely get what it is actually supposed to mean, but I do see it as a condescending, dismissive term and also don't see how my reading has anything to do with that interpretation, as I sorta see it. — Antony Nickles
Our 'private worlds' are what people talk about all the time, what poetry and literature have been about for several thousands years. I will never understand expressions of stupor or bewilderment at the most familiar stuff of all: our own thoughts. How alienated from oneself can one pretend to be? — Olivier5
Why does it got to be coherent in the first place? — Olivier5
I assumed you were comfortable with the therapy’ label because it seems to have been embraced by a community of Wittgenstein interpreters that I associate with your approach. — Joshs
Would you agree that in their hands [calling this work "therapy"] is not meant as condescending and dismissive? — Joshs
In fact, we could simply say, "words can not express", "it's just a sense of awe", "I don't know what to say except I feel alive". These are not to tell us (know) anything about our experience, but express that there is nothing to be told (even when singing, crying, or violence can't).
— Antony Nickles
Spot on!
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein — TheMadFool
I can't help but think we've lost the thread here, because the point of PI is that the conclusion of the Tractatus was wrong. We can talk about all kinds of things (just not when we first require that the outcome be certain). Just because there are times when we feel like we can't put an experience into words does not mean that we must be silent. We can try again, we can bring someone along with us as far as we can (we are not alone); and those examples above were things we can actually say--something that expresses our "ineffable" experience. The fact we do not want to accept that as enough is because we want there to be some thing that is unique and special about us, but there very well may not be. You may not exist if you are a ghost of yourself, one of the herd, if everything you say is propaganda, quotation---you can be empty inside. This is the desperation of the person who wants to "strike himself on the breast and say: 'But surely another person can’t have this pain!' " (Witt, PI, #253) It is this fear that compels the idea that there must be a private experience in the sense Witt explored. — Antony Nickles
Don't ask me. I'm just following the herd. — TheMadFool
Wittgenstein himself was incoherent, from what I can tell, so he can't help you out. — Olivier5
There must be private experiences? — TheMadFool
The fear of being empty, not unique, creates the idea there must be some "thing" beyond language which is mine, that I can know. Now it's not that there is nothing there, it's just that experience isn't known, it is expressed or denied (by me) — Antony Nickles
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