1
The world is all that is the case.

1.1
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.

1.11
The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.

1.12
For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus

Why of facts and not of things ? Whatever W's intention, I read this as brilliant avoidance of a confusing break between sense and some senseless stuff to which sense is supposed to somehow refer. One can say everything is made of atoms. The world includes that fact (if it happens to be a fact). But the world itself is not atoms.

The world is not a thing, not an entity.

The world is all that is the case — plaque flag

How would someone who takes this proposition as a true premise, understand future possibilities as a real part of the world? We know that future possibilities are grounded in reality somehow, because some are acknowledged as highly probable and some are highly improbable. Therefore the art of prediction, in the world of future possibilities, may be supported by the science of "all that is the case", yet prediction deals with what will probably be the case rather than what is the case.

Nothing is hidden, — plaque flag

The next question therefore, is how can anyone hold this premise as true and also accept the reality of future possibilities? How is it possible to conceive of the reality of the future as not hidden, when we talk about it in terms of what is possible rather than what is the case?

In case anyone finds this helpful ( obviously I think this dude is brilliant).

https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts%20Mark%201%20p.html
One of [ Kant's ] cardinal innovations is the claim that the fundamental unit of awareness or cognition, the minimum graspable, is the judgment. Judgments are fundamental, since they are the minimal unit one can take responsibility for on the cognitive side, just as actions are the corresponding unit of responsibility on the practical side... The “emptiest of all representations”, the “’I think’ that can accompany all representations” expresses the formal dimension of responsibility for judgments. Thus concepts can only be understood as abstractions, in terms of the role they play in judging. A concept just is a predicate of a possible judgment, which is why

The only use which the understanding can make of concepts is to form judgments by them.

For Kant, any discussion of content must start with the contents of judgments, since anything else only has content insofar as it contributes to the contents of judgments.
...
On the side of propositionally contentful intentional states, paradigmatically belief, the essential inferential articulation of the propositional is manifested in the form of intentional interpretation or explanation. Making behavior intelligible according to this model is taking the individual to act for reasons. This is what lies behind Dennett's slogan: "Rationality is the mother of intention". The role of belief in imputed pieces of practical reasoning, leading from beliefs and desires to the formation of intentions, is essential to intentional explanation—and so is reasoning in which both premise and conclusion have the form of believables.

Sub specie aeternitatus ... Deus, sive natura ... ~Spinoza

People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. ~Einstein

Nothing is hidden — plaque flag

Like 'possible moves' in Chess or Go ... :fire:

It is only when immanence is no longer immanence to anything other than itself that we can speak of a plane of immanence. ~Deleuze

:cool: :up:

Sub specie aeternitatus ... Deus, sive natura ... ~Spinoza

People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. ~Einstein — 180 Proof

That does not address the issue of prediction, possibilities, and probabilities, which I described. An issue which is very real to science, regardless of what those who put their faith in physics believe.

The link brings up a rather large list of links. Which one contains “ One of [ Kant's ] cardinal innovations…”?

"A Social Route from Reasoning to Representing"
https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Texts/A%20Social%20Route%20from%20Reasoning%20to%20Representin

The world is described or articulated or disclosed by our true claims. In different words, the world is that minimal something that a self can be wrong about. This underspecification is not an oversight. What is the case is endlessly revisable. — plaque flag

Would you say your view of rationalism is compatible with Donna Haraway’s?

“So I think my problem, and ‘our' problem, is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own ‘semiotic technologies' for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a ‘real' world, one that can be partially shared and friendly to earthwide projects of finite freedom, adequate material abundance, modest meaning in suffering, and limited happiness.”

It is only when immanence is no longer immanence to anything other than itself that we can speak of a plane of immanence. ~Deleuze — 180 Proof

Nice quote !
I haven't seriously looked into Deleuze yet, but it sounds like what I'm also trying to get at.

All entities are linked (are meaningful!) inferentially ('structurally') , so they are on the same plane.

Thanks.

Would you say your view of rationalism is compatible with Donna Haraway’s? — Joshs

Haraway sounds reasonable in the quote, but my focus in more narrow. I am trying to articulate the relatively stable 'given' of philosophy. What does every philosopher as such at least tacitly presuppose ? I am unfolding the concept of philosopher, largely inspired by Heidegger, but with an inferentialist twist from Brandom.

Our situation is being-in-our-world-in-our-language-together, where language includes the logic thereof in terms of semantic and inferential norms. It's rationalism because I think doing philosophy always already assumes this situation, if only tacitly.

There are, according to the rationalists, certain rational principles—especially in logic and mathematics, and even in ethics and metaphysics—that are so fundamental that to deny them is to fall into contradiction. The rationalists’ confidence in reason and proof tends, therefore, to detract from their respect for other ways of knowing.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/rationalism

'Experience' enters the system in terms of statements which are accepted without being the conclusions of inferences. We can read off measurements from a machine or just sufficiently trust a witness.

No prob! I meant to include the link to begin with.

What is the intention of the philosopher ? To impose a claim, establish as a premise for further use, stack one more brick on the tower. Is there a feeling of rightness ? One feels, in the light of norms taken to be given and authoritative, that a next step is justified. As Feuerbach might put it, it's like participating in a distributed computation, finding a consequence or disclosing metaphor, and reporting back to the blockchain.

Our situation is being-in-our-world-in-our-language-together, where language includes the logic thereof in terms of semantic and inferential norms. It's rationalism because I think doing philosophy always already assumes this situation, if only tacitly. — plaque flag

Aren’t you putting the norms before the generating process that creates and continually modifies those norms? For Heidegger , for instance, the linguistic community does r create our language norms, Daseins in their interaction do, but always from a vantage that subtly reinvents the basis of the norm. A space of reasons is always particularized on the basis of each of its participants As to the questions of what is at stake and at issue, the ‘norm’ can’t answer these, because it is precisely the sense of space of reasons. that is under question from the vantage of each participant and in each new context of use. That is why the contexts of norms are always only partially shared.

Aren’t you putting the norms before the generating process that creates and continually modifies those norms? — Joshs

Time is one's [ the Anyone's ] self-confrontation. A generation is a bundle of adversarially cooperative persons -- a parallel but competitive computation/articulation of the real ?

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/229403462.pdf
Geist refers to the normative in general. As such reference to the spiritual is a reference to the normative; correspondingly talk of normativity is talk of Hegelian Spirit... In this view, Geist arises with intersubjectivity; Geist has intersubjectivity as its ground and could not exist outside of it.

I think spirit's norms have nature as their foundation and origin -- that they are modifications of nature, a timebinding dance of nature's legs.

always from a vantage that subtly reinvents the basis of the norm. A space of reasons is always particularized on the basis of each of its participants As to the questions of what is at stake and at issue, the ‘norm’ can’t answer these, becauseit is precisely the sense of space of reasons that is under question from the vantage of each participant and in each new context of use. That is why the contexts of norms are always only partially shared. — Joshs

I agree. Philosophy is something like outsiders pushing toward the inside, into the center. It's a will to establish claims, to be taken as authoritative, to be recognized, to install tomorrow's norms. It ought to be the bringing of a gift ?

... the creative misreading of two Wittgenstein quotes. — plaque flag

What is the point of a creative misreading blind misunderstanding of Wittgenstein? What are you hiding?

the world is that minimal something that a self can be wrong about. ...What is the case is endlessly revisable. — plaque flag

Someone can be wrong if they claim that I ate the cake. If, however, it is the case that I ate the cake that is not endlessly revisable. I cannot eat my cake and have it too. Claims about what is the case are revisable, although not endlessly so without being pointless. What is the case is not. Something either is the case or it is not. Although there are cases that may be undecidable.

Such norms are appealed to in order to instigate their modification. That's what philosophers do. — plaque flag

Since you are deliberately misrepresenting Wittgenstein, you can ignore what he does, but he does not instigate modification of norms. He points to them and claims that philosophers create confusion for themselves by attempting to modify them.

What is the intention of the philosopher ? To impose a claim, establish as a premise for further use, stack one more brick on the tower. — plaque flag

A bit more from Wittgenstein. For him at least philosophy is the opposite of what you describe:

It came into my head today as I was thinking about my philosophical work and saying to myself: “I destroy, I destroy, I destroy– (CV, page 21)

Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (All the buildings, as it were,leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) (Big Typescript #88)

Fundamental to Wittgenstein's philosophy, starting with the Tractatus, is the primacy of seeing over saying.

Working in philosophy–like work in architecture in many respects–is really more a working on oneself. On one’s own interpretation. On one’s way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (CV 16)

But the primacy of seeing is not a peculiarity of Wittgenstein. It is a way of doing philosophy that goes beyond the fixation on language.

Claims about what is the case are revisable, although not endlessly so without being pointless. What is the case is not. Something either is the case or it is not — Fooloso4

What is the case rests on rules, criteria, norms, but none of these have existence independent and outside of the actual pragmatic contexts in which we enact the sense of what is the case. As Rouse says of the later Wittgenstein, “the "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself.”

What is the case rests on rules, criteria, norms, but none of these have existence independent and outside of the actual pragmatic contexts in which we enact the sense of what is the case.

— Joshs

:up:
People stuck in a representationalist mindset have trouble seeing this. They think concepts label entities.

As Rouse says of the later Wittgenstein, “the "objects" to which our performances must be held accountable are not something outside discursive practice itself. — Joshs

Exactly. Talk of objects plays a structuring role in that practice.

Discursive practice cannot be understood as an intralinguistic structure or activity that then somehow "reaches out" to incorporate or accord to objects. The relevant "objects" are the ends at issue and at stake within the practice itself. — Joshs

:up:

it is precisely the sense of space of reasons that is under question from the vantage of each participant and in each new context of use. — Joshs

The deeper the challenging of the basic structure of this space, the more philosophical the challenge, assuming that the challenge is constructive in some sense ?

What is the case rests on rules, criteria, norms — Joshs

If you are talking about the Tractatus, and the quote is from the Tractatus, that is simply wrong. Quoting what Rouse says of the later Wittgenstein, who had rejected the ontology of the Tractatus, has no bearing on what Wittgenstein meant. But if a "creative misreading" means using a few words out of context and contrary to what was said, then anything and everything can stand as a "creative misreading".

More generally, when talking about what is the case, it helps to look at the case. My example was me eating cake.

How does this compare to your claim that?:

What is the case rests on rules, criteria, norms, but none of these have existence independent and outside of the actual pragmatic contexts in which we enact the sense of what is the case. — Joshs

What is the case is that I ate the cake. We can make up rules and criteria for what is and is not a cake, we can appeal to norms for what a cake is and what it means to eat, but even if someone does not know what a cake is or what it means to eat, the fact remains: I ate the cake.

Below we see Peirce's version of the world is all that is case.

https://courses.media.mit.edu/2004spring/mas966/Peirce%201878%20Make%20Ideas%20Clear.pdf
Let us now approach the subject of logic, and consider a conception which particularly concerns it, that of reality. Taking clearness in the sense of familiarity, no idea could be clearer than this. Every child uses it with perfect confidence, never dreaming that he does not understand it. As for clearness in its second grade, however, it would probably puzzle most men, even among those of a reflective turn of mind, to give an abstract definition of the real.
...
The only effect which real things have is to cause belief, for all the sensations which they excite emerge into consciousness in the form of beliefs. The question therefore is, how is true belief (or belief in the real) distinguished from false belief (or belief in fiction). Now, as we have seen in the former paper, the ideas of truth and falsehood, in their full development, appertain exclusively to the experiential method of settling opinion. A person who arbitrarily chooses the propositions which he will adopt can use the word truth only to emphasize the expression of his determination to hold on to his choice.
...
Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. This activity of thought by which we are carried, not where we wish, but to a fore-ordained goal, is like the operation of destiny. No modification of the point of view taken, no selection of other facts for study, no natural bent of mind even, can enable a man to escape the predestinate opinion. This great hope is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.

But it may be said that this view is directly opposed to the abstract definition which we have given of reality, inasmuch as it makes the characters of the real depend on what is ultimately thought about them. But the answer to this is that, on the one hand, reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks. Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone the settlement of opinion; it might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long as the human race should last. Yet even that would not change the nature of the belief, which alone could be the result of investigation carried sufficiently far; and if, after the extinction of our race, another should arise with faculties and disposition for investigation, that true opinion must be the one which they would ultimately come to.

reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general,but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it — plaque flag

Peirce is not misled by the dualistic idea that thought language is unreal.

Pragmatic theories of truth have the effect of shifting attention away from what makes a statement true and toward what people mean or do in describing a statement as true.

Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief. (1901a [1935: 5.565])

If Truth consists in satisfaction, it cannot be any actual satisfaction, but must be the satisfaction which would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue. (1908 [1935: 6.485], emphasis in original)

If by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockham’s razor would clean shave off. Your problems would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that you want to know the “Truth”, you were simply to say that you want to attain a state of belief unassailable by doubt.

if we were to reach a stage where we could no longer improve upon a belief, there is no point in withholding the title “true” from it. (Misak 2000: 101)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-pragmatic/

In case anyone finds this helpful ( obviously I think this dude is brilliant). — plaque flag

My first philosophy mentor, in the late 1990s, Anders Weinstein, was a graduate student at Pittsburgh University. I had asked him for reading suggestions and I therefore have had to cut my teeth (and break some) on Sellars' Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Brandom's Making It Explicit and McDowell's Mind and World. I few years later, while I was a philosophy student at Montreal University, Brandom visited to give a lecture and so I had an opportunity to meet him. (He remembered Weinstein as one of the sharpest students he ever had had).

That's awesome ! Any overall thoughts about Sellars and Brandom ? ( I haven't looked into McDowell yet.)

So as a corollary - if nothing is hidden there is nothing in need of discovery? Sits rather uneasily alongside:

Our perversity and that of others may indefinitely postpone the settlement of opinion; it might even conceivably cause an arbitrary proposition to be universally accepted as long as the human race should last. — CS Peirce

So as a corollary - if nothing is hidden there is nothing in need of discovery? Sits rather uneasily alongside: — Wayfarer

Bad form. Did you even read the OP ?

Nothing is hidden, in this context, is the denial of dualism. — plaque flag

The world is all that is the case, in this context, means the embrace of rationalism. — plaque flag

Did you even read the OP ? — plaque flag

Twice. Maybe I didn’t understand it.

So as a corollary - if nothing is hidden there is nothing in need of discovery? — Wayfarer

I think a better lesson to be drawn from Wittgenstein's point is that what impedes understanding oftentimes isn't the lack of data but rather the fact that we aren't looking at the phenomenon in the right way. I say "oftentimes" because in the realm of empirical science, more data often is needed. But Wittgenstein, and also Ryle, Strawson and Austin, were insistent that, when intelligence and mindedness are at issue, what leads us to be puzzled by the phenomena is our tendency to subsume them under theoretical categories that just aren't apt at making sense of them. They weren't targeting science but rather scientism.