↪Joshs
what is wvc ? — Jackson

Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, from the notes of F. Waismann (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). Zettel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967).

126. Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.—Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations Ed. 3

I don't think [ that "everything lies open to view", above ] means we understand things simply by looking at them. I think he is alluding to what was called ordinary language philosophy. — Jackson

That "everything lies open" is not to say it is clearly evident, but that we do not need special access or are learning anything new or creating a special generality, and this "openness" is the basis of the validity of Wittgenstein's method (dubbed ordinary language philosophy--see, ad nauseam, here). His descriptions have truth ("truth-value") because you acknowledge them; when we do not or would not disagree (#128), but also that anyone can and may disagree, because there is no force but its clarity and comprehensiveness with the goal to bring you along; you are to look for yourself, "prove" it to yourself (each reader, not agreement generally as consensus or convention).

As @Banno points out, the work is to make explicit what is implicit (express our intuition Emerson says; Plato will call it "remembering"; Heidegger: letting the object come us), or, as Witt says: "putting everything before us". For example, we might advance the description that: when we say "by mistake", we imply that we wanted to take a specific action but mixed up somehow, as opposed to "by accident", where something happens unwittingly (J.L. Austin's example). This is what Witt refers to as a grammatical statement; it is a provisional claim but not an empirical observation (a discovery), nor a statement (or belief) that he is claiming is justified, nor the proposition of a (undeniable/logical) cause.

Many stop at this point (here, including @Banno and @Janus) and take Witt only as describing the unspoken "rules" of the world (say, for what counts as walking)--as if he is just giving us different knowledge rather than pushing for an ethical change in our conduct--or take his point to be that philosophy's problems are merely a trick of language (misreading #109), but Witt is drawing out examples of our ordinary practices as a means of personal revelation, as, for example, our bewitchment by our false, preconceived need (#108) for something universal, abstract, and predeterminable which will remove us from our fears and responsibilities (through simply more, better knowledge).

Instead of (pre-)imposing our desire for certainty (requiring/accepting only logic), Witt turns around (as in a cave) to draw out (investigate) each thing's own criteria for what matters for it to be what it is, so that, through these examples (rule-following, pain, seeing aspects, etc.), we might see our part (as in an epiphany), our obsessions, and change in the process (for example, adopting a new "attitude"--#310, #575, p. 179 "IV"). For instance, Austin's example of accidents and mistakes is to show that "intention" is only a question asked after the occurrence of something unexpected, and that to imagine it as a cause special to each person's acts is a means of sliding out of our moral responsibility to explain ourselves, answer to each other.

Philosophy simply puts everything before us... — Wittgenstein

where we can see 'em!

Before us, as opposed to behind us or to our sides, above our heads or under our feet, obscured from view, outside our field of vision.

… our investigation is directed not towards phenomena, but rather, as one might say, towards the ‘possibilities’ of phenomena. We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena.
...
Our investigation is therefore a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. (Philosophical Investigations, 90)

By the possibilities of phenomena he means the various ways in which we can see things. This is connected to what we say about things, that is, the way we conceive things. This includes our misunderstandings, which limit the ways in which we can see things. They must be cleared away.

Such clearing is preparation for what may grow:

I believe that my originality (if that is the right word) is an originality belonging to the soil rather than to the seed. … Sow a seed in my soil and it will grow differently than it would in any other soil. (CV, 36)

He gives an interesting example of possibilities of phenomena:

What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a new true theory but a fertile point of view. (CV 18)

His concern is not novelty for the sake of novelty but with what a new way of viewing things can allow us to see.

The clear lines of distinction in the Tractatus between seeing and saying no longer holds. They are not separate but interrelated:

A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words.—Our grammar is lacking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connexions'. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases.
The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a 'Weltanschauung'?) (PI 122)

It is not simply a matter of what is seen objectively, but of the person looking:

Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (Culture and Value, 16)

His concern, however, is not with phenomenology as a method or discipline:

53. There is no such thing as phenomenology, but there are indeed phenomenological problems.
(Remarks on Colour)

Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) — Witt., Culture and Value, p. 16

In distinguishing what is viewable from what is hidden (the doable from the fantasy), I take "working on oneself" to be an ethical admonishment--work on changing your acts rather than somehow altering (or understanding) our perception (as phenomenology wishes); that philosophy for Witt is not about seeing in a new way, but, to use this re-framing, realizing what we can expect from interpreting and seeing, say, by finding the limit of what they (and we) can and can not do.

By the possibilities of phenomena he means the various ways in which we can see things. — Fooloso4

Yes, I know, he does use the word "phenomena", but he is not focusing on a thing or action or occurrence themselves (empirically, as it were), nor their "appearance", nor our experience of them, but their possibilities (and impossibilities). "One's" way of seeing things is not in the sense of yours or mine (as if an "interpretation" is like an opinion, and not a process), so any "various ways" are just the different criteria for judging each thing to be that thing (and not another). He will also call this: different "senses". For example, knowing can be in the sense of knowing a phone number, as opposed to a knowing look, or knowing as accepting, acknowledging. These different senses of knowing are not dependent on me; we do not "conceive things".

More to the point here, Witt is broadening our focus to stop us from fixating on our insistence that there is something special or hidden about things (say, their "essence"); stop us imagining we lack some kernel of knowledge (say, understanding perception) just because that would be easier for us than facing our ordinary relationship with the myriad ways of the world, and all their implications and responsibilities and fallibility and limitations.

This [ desire for a single complete resolution (PI, #91) ]--"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... [ finds expression in questions about essence ] ...not something that already lies open to view and that becomes surveyable by a rearrangement, but [ we imagine ] something that lies beneath the surface... something that lies within, which we see [ only ] when we look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out." PI, #92 This is the human compulsion to "penetrate" (PI, #90) the world by way of knowledge that Wittgenstein is turning from in glancing sideways at what is essential about a thing by examining what Kant would call its "conditions"; that our ordinary expressions reveal what something can be (is possible of, and limited to).

This [ desire for a single complete resolution (PI, #91) ]--"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... [ finds expression in questions about essence ] ...not something that already lies open to view and that becomes surveyable by a rearrangement, but [ we imagine ] something that lies beneath the surface... something that lies within, which we see [ only ] when we look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out." PI, #92 This is the human compulsion to "penetrate" (PI, #90) the world by way of knowledge that Wittgenstein is turning from in glancing sideways at what is essential about a thing by examining what Kant would call its "conditions"; that our ordinary expressions reveal what something can be (is possible of, and limited to). — Antony Nickles

Excuse my ignorance. Are you claiming that Witty was in favour of ordinary language philosophy?

I take "working on oneself" to be an ethical admonishment--work on changing your acts rather than somehow altering (or understanding) our perception (as phenomenology wishes); that philosophy for Witt is not about seeing in a new way, but, to use this re-framing, realizing what we can expect from interpreting and seeing, say, by finding the limit of what they (and we) can and can not do. — Antony Nickles

I agree that there is an ethical aspect to working on oneself, but how one sees things is a prominent and recurring theme for Wittgenstein. Beginning with his 1914-1916 he connects ethics and aesthetics:

The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connexion between art and ethics.

The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them,the view
sub specie aeternitatis from outside.

In such a way that they have the whole world as background.

Is this it perhaps — in this view the object is seen together with space and time instead of in space and time?

Each thing modifies the whole logical world, the whole of logical space, so to speak.

(The thought forces itself upon one): The thing seen sub specie aeternitatis is the thing seen together with the whole logical space.(NB 83)

And in the Tractatus:

Ethics and aesthetics are one. (6.421)

To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a limited whole.
Feeling the world as a limited whole - it is this that is mystical.

(6.45)

If the ethical view, the view from outside, changes your acts, it is as a result of how one looks at the world rather than how one acts within it.

we do not "conceive things" — Antony Nickles

His analogy with architecture should not be ignored. Throughout his writings we also see the recurring use of terms related to building and construction. The German term 'Auffassung' translated in the quote as "interpretation" means conception. In the revised edition (Blackwell, 1998) it is translated 'conception'.

The connection between perception and conception is also discussed in “seeing as”. He has a great deal to say about the conceptual involvement with perception. The way we see things involves the framework we see them in as well as the context we put them in as part of a larger picture. This picture is to a large extent culturally inherited but not immutable.


Although not what is at issue in 126:

For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.

with regard to interpretation of Wittgenstein and something hidden:

If you have a room which you do not want certain people to get into, put a lock on
it for which they do not have the key. But there is no point in talking to them about it,
unless of course you want them to admire the room from outside!

The honorable thing to do is to put a lock on the door which will be noticed only
by those who can open it, not by the rest. (CV 7-8)

Ethics and aesthetics are one. (6.421)

This is true. A lot of people talking about art should pay attention.

Excuse my ignorance. Are you claiming that Witty was in favour of ordinary language philosophy? — emancipate

The term ordinary language philosophy was coined to refer to Wittgenstein's method, not a position that he is for or against (though Moore and others are lumped in, confusing things). He is using it, doing it--not arguing in favor of something. J.L. Austin has a similar method, as did Socrates (Witt and Austin ask his questions of themselves, and trust the answers more). The method is related to this topic because in investigating our normal ways of talking about a thing or topic--which Witt refers to as that thing's "grammar"--and, once we accept that: "yes, that is the kind of phrase we say in talking about, for example, following a rule"--he uses the implications of those phrases as evidence for philosophical insight.

Our forms of speaking are "in plain view" because the implications and workings of our ordinary ways of doing things can be claimed and agreed to by anyone. They are not hidden, mysterious, special, or requiring arcane or abstract explanations. That is not to say that his conclusions from that data (a thing's grammar) are not eye-opening; only that it is simply making explicit the things we all understand implicitly (why Socrates calls it "remembering", as if something we knew before birth). It seems this way because our language already holds the world (our ways of judging, differentiation, assessing whether something comes off right) into which we are trained by example and picking things up (rather than being "told" everything, as knowledge would be.)

how one sees things is a prominent and recurring theme for Wittgenstein — Fooloso4

I was trying to fill out Witt's story of how philosophy is led to imagine and search for something "hidden", rather than working with what is in plain view. The picture is that the world is only an appearance, with something real that is then hidden (behind that), which Witt realizes comes from our desire for something more perfect and certain than our everyday assessment of things (our ordinary "criteria" he calls it).

I was equating that with phenomenology's picture that we always possess a "conception" of the things we see, which we imagine as the product of some inherent ability ("perception") tied to our "consciousness" (say, my framework), which is either known only to us, or which needs to be understood generally to "really" see things. This is the flip side of imaging the world as an appearance, allowing us to keep ourselves hidden. The analogy of conceiving as building is that it exactly is an action, a place we get to, work towards in actual ways: like broadening the context, incorporating more evidence, keeping an open mind, seeing from another's shoes, "taking side roads" (#426), etc., rather than unethical acts of thought, like grasping in a flash, imposing our desire for certainty, generalizing, etc.

But Witt's examples show that we recognize different aspects of a thing because and only if those aspects are possibilities for that thing (a "phenomena")--which aspects (senses) come to us from our culture, through our regular, transparent ways of talking about those things.

The other way the world becomes hidden is if it is deemed inaccessible to us (as we imagine ourselves unknowable by others). Your quotations from Witt's earlier work amount to the limitations he projected onto our ability to (rationally) discuss or understand morality and aesthetics. But it is exactly this picture that he is questioning and replacing through the work of the Philosophical Investigations. Specifically, it was his requirement for crystalline purity in the Tractatus that stopped him from realizing the regular ways we talk about these subjects, causing him to feel this part of the world was "mystical".

The analogy of conceiving as building is that it exactly is an action ... — Antony Nickles

Yes, but not in this sense:

work on changing your acts rather than somehow altering (or understanding) our perception — Antony Nickles

The point is that perception is not passive, it is active, constructive.

Your quotations from Witt's earlier work amount to the limitations he projected onto our ability to (rationally) discuss or understand morality and aesthetics. But it is exactly this picture that he is questioning and replacing through the work of the Philosophical Investigations. — Antony Nickles

And yet he says very little about morality and aesthetics in his later work. What exactly is he replacing the earlier picture with?

Specifically, it was his requirement for crystalline purity in the Tractatus that stopped him from realizing the regular ways we talk about these subjects, causing him to feel this part of the world was "mystical". — Antony Nickles

The demand for crystalline purity does not extend to the ethical/aesthetic. They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical.

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again. (CV, 5)

This was written in 1930, after he returned to philosophy.

Philosophy does not explain anything — Jackson

Oxford LEXICO defines philosophy as "The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline."

Stanford Encyclopedia, on the other hand, does not give any definition of philosophy --at least I have never found one-- but instead it lists a dozen of different philosophies (https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=philosophy).

So, statements like "Philosophy simply puts everything before us", I, etc. do not mean anything, because one must first define philosophy, i.e. tell us what kind of philosophy he is talking about. Isn't that so?

Then, they do not mean anything for another reason: Philosophy itself cannot explain anything, since it is a system of thought, framework of thinking, etc. Only people who use it can or cannot explain something. In other words, philosophy is a tool. It cannot work by itself.

Here is a concrete example: We cannot say that a screwdriver can or cannot drive a screw. Someone has to use a screwdriver to do that. And then, not all screwdrivers are suitable for all kinds of screws.

(BTW, I find most Wittgenstein's statements provocative, in the sense of causing a negative reaction, especially deliberately! :smile:)

If you need a dictionary, then you are not ready to do philosophy.

Excellent philosophical argument!
And great joke!

Excellent philosophical argument!
And great joke! — Alkis Piskas

Indeed.

The point is that perception is not passive, it is active, constructive. — Fooloso4

Maybe it would have been clearer to say that picturing "perception" as something special happening in us (as if, all the time) is mystifying what is just the expression of what I am experiencing. There is nothing outside of the need to clarify (construct) for someone else what possibility of a thing I am focusing on--which aspect of it matters to me right now (along its grammar). "It's true I say 'Now I am having such-and-such an image', but the words 'I am having' are merely a sign to someone else; the description of the image is a complete account of the imagined world." PI, #402.

Relevant to this discussion, there is nothing "hidden" that I possess (see #398). We (and philosophy) want to be indeciferable sometimes so that the failings of our world can appear to have an intellectual quality that we can solve for (as guys want to believe they can fix everything). Witt discusses this as the desire to have knowledge of the pain of another.

And yet he says very little about morality and aesthetics in his later work. What exactly is he replacing the earlier picture with? — Fooloso4

The point of the PI is to show that there is not one logic, but that everything we do has its own criteria and rationality, which is a revocation of the fixed criteria of certainty enforced in the Tractates that created the picture of aesthetics and ethics as a mystical part of our world (though the world is not without wonder and mystery). He is replacing the earlier picture with, in this sense, one for each kind of thing (its criteria and grammar).

The demand for crystalline purity does not extend to the ethical/aesthetic. They are not matters of fact and logic. — Fooloso4

It is exactly the desire for purity that creates the idea that they are outside fact and logic. Just because we may not come to agreement does not mean there is no rationality, no discussion--that there is something hidden or mystic about which nothing can be said. As elsewhere in the PI, our desire for force and surety hides the ordinary means of moral and ethical discussion and agreement, all the means for which are at our disposal, so we remain responsible for what comes between us or what we fail to show each other.

The point of the PI is to show that there is not one logic — Antony Nickles

Agree. The P.I. is not a refutation of the Tractatus so much as but an extension. Logic always has a context.

...statements like "Philosophy simply puts everything before us", I, etc. do not mean anything, because one must first define philosophy, i.e. tell us what kind of philosophy he is talking about. Isn't that so? — Alkis Piskas

He's within and responding to the tradition of western analytic philosophy (the problem of other minds, epistemology, ethics, education, skepticism, etc.). And philosophy is always partly self-criticism. Witt is making the claim that philosophy is a method, in the sense of more like a practice than a "philosophy", in the sense of a statement, or theory, or a position.

The point of the PI is to show that there is not one logic ... — Antony Nickles

He equates logic with grammar. And there is not one grammar.

... which is a revocation of the fixed criteria of certainty enforced in the Tractates ... — Antony Nickles

Right. Logic is no longer seen as the transcendent and transcendental scaffolding of language.

... that created the picture of aesthetics and ethics as a mystical part of our world (though the world is not without wonder and mystery). — Antony Nickles

I think he maintains a sense of the mystical, of experiences that we may wish to express, but which language cannot convey. He talks about this in his Lecture on Ethics (1929)

It is exactly the desire for purity that creates the idea that they are outside fact and logic. — Antony Nickles

Although he rejects the idea of a logical underpinning it does not follow that he rejects the experience of the mystical.

Just because we may not come to agreement does not mean there is no rationality, no discussion ... — Antony Nickles

The problem is, we do not possess the facts and logic to bring moral deliberation to a satisfactory conclusion. There is no moral science. Moral deliberation, although rational, is not reducible to facts and logic.

The problem is, we do not possess the facts and logic to bring moral deliberation to a satisfactory conclusion. There is no moral science. Moral deliberation, although rational, is not reducible to facts and logic. — Fooloso4

So we could both agree that it is true that we can not ensure agreement in ethical and aesthetic dialogue; agree that that is part of the grammar of those subjects--their workings, in that they are capable of failure, coming to nothing. They are not science, which has facts because it doesn't matter who it is: if they do the science right, they will reach the same result. It is reproducible, predictable ahead of time, dependable, independent of us. Aesthetic and moral discussions rely on us, our possibilities for irrationality, fear, obsession, denial, cowardice, deception, etc.

But intellectualizing this as a "problem" makes the world seem hidden, which Witt is claiming need not happen. The desire (to have moral deliberation reducible, a science) is the same desire Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus; a requirement before anything could be accepted, but only one standard (Witt calls them criteria in the PI). The interlocutor is the embodiment of this historic desire of philosophy for certainty, apart from which philosophy exiles everything else as unknowable, inexpressible, "emotive" (say, as Kant's thing-in-itself or Plato's forms).

What happens in PI is that he shows examples of how the world is not so black and white. One example is that the Interlocutor wants to know (for certain) someone is in pain. But we do not know someone is in pain, but that is simply just not how it works--we react to them as a person in pain (acknowledge their pain, or not), much as we treat someone as if they have a soul (p. 178)--grammatically that is not a matter of knowledge. We are responsible for bridging the gap of our separateness, much as we are responsible for making our moral reasons known to each other, attempting to see what you see in art. We can shirk those duties, but then it is not a failing of those realms, but ours.

He's within and responding to the tradition of western analytic philosophy (the problem of other minds, epistemology, ethics, education, skepticism, etc.) — Antony Nickles

All this is fine and thank you for the clarification.
However, my response was about the meaning, usefulness, etc. of such statements, independenty of who has stated or states them. They are quite general, and one should not need to know or study the work of Wittgenstein or whoever else to find out what they mean about philosophy and whatever other terms or concepts are involved in these statements.

If one wants to refer specifically to philosopher X, he should form the title of his topic as follows: "What did X mean by saying this and this?" This would put the topic and discussion in the right perspective. Isn't that right? And in that case, I wouldn't have anything to say.

But intellectualizing this as a "problem" makes the world seem hidden — Antony Nickles

Only if one assumes there is an objective morality to be uncovered.

The desire (to have moral deliberation reducible, a science) is the same desire Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus — Antony Nickles

The Tractatus attempts to show that it is not reducible to a science.

If one wants to refer specifically to philosopher X, he should form the title of his topic as follows: "What did X mean by saying this and this?" This would put the topic and discussion in the right perspective. Isn't that right? And in that case, I wouldn't have anything to say. — Alkis Piskas

Yes, certainly you have nothing to say.

Only if one assumes there is an objective morality to be uncovered. — Fooloso4

I guess the analogy--of something "hidden"--here isn't straightforward. But, if we require certainty for moral deliberations, it "hides" the ordinary possibility for agreement, the steps we can actually take; that there are practical ways in which we actually can come to agreement. We are not relegated to the obscurity Witt originally put ethics and aesthetics into because of his requirement for statements to have certainty.

The Tractatus attempts to show that it is not reducible to a science. — Fooloso4

My point is that it was not something that he believed that he was trying to argue for or support. He was not "attempting to show" it. He wanted it to be reducible to logic, required it to be; everything and the only things in the Tractatus were what he could say with certainty. When you come out of the gate with that single criteria, you miss all the regular ways we can and do discuss and agree in morality and aesthetics. Later, in the PI, he showed that every different type of thing has its own criteria, and that philosophy should draw those out to show why we want to overlook them and grasp for the single purity he had required previously.

It is a fact that morality and aesthetics are not science; that does not mean we do not have means of discussion along with the opportunity, and more importantly the responsibility, to create agreement. The failing is not morality not being scientific; it is our decision to want it to be because of the fear that we must stand in its place.

one should not need to know or study the work of Wittgenstein or whoever else to find out what they mean about philosophy and whatever other terms or concepts are involved in these statements. — Alkis Piskas

Even with Witt--someone classed as an "ordinary language philosopher"--he has terms, like, criteria, grammar, aspect, etc. But his way of doing philosophy does not end up with something he "means"; it is a process of examples and answering questions and self-analysis, like Hegel's "dark path". This work is done with interacting--conversing--with the work. We can try to emulate that process in a discussion, but some philosophy is about the work and struggle rather than statements and summaries.

I undestand your point.
BTW, in my experience, from the hundreds of texts and dozens of philosophers I have read in my life, starting with Socrates at school, most known philosophers are "ordinary language philosophers" ...
However, we must take into consideration another point: Most of us read and know about the works of philosophers from translations into English or our mother language. That is, we know nothing about how did these guys use their own (original) language.

We are not relegated to the obscurity Witt originally put ethics and aesthetics into because of his requirement for statements to have certainty. — Antony Nickles

It was not a matter of certainty, but of propositions having a sense, a meaning; they represent some state of affairs in the world. Ethics/aesthetics do not represent what is the case. Ethics/aesthetics are not a matter of certainty but of personal experience.

He wanted it to be reducible to logic ... — Antony Nickles

No. Just the opposite. He said that ethics/aesthetics are transcendental. They stand outside the relations of things in the world, outside logical relations. That is why the have no sense, why they do not represent some state of affairs. But this does not mean that they do not have meaning in the sense of significance or importance for our lives.

The failing is not morality not being scientific; it is our decision to want it to be because of the fear that we must stand in its place. — Antony Nickles

But in the Tractatus he was arguing against the decision to want it to be a science. He ties it to our lived experience of the world.

He said that ethics/aesthetics are transcendental. — Fooloso4

That is not Wittgenstein idea at all, false.

He said that ethics/aesthetics are transcendental.
— Fooloso4

That is not Wittgenstein idea at all, false. — Jackson

Ethics is transcendental.
(Ethics and æsthetics are one.)
— T 6.421

[Edited to indicate a quote from the Tractatus]

No. Transcendental means the condition for experience. A Kantian term. Clearly this is not W. meaning.

But by all means, explain what W. means by "transcendental." Then explain his use of that term in the Phil. Investigations. Thank you.