It can but neither of these is what slab means in the builder's language. — Fooloso4

You haven't been on some the the building sites that I have been on, where a slab of cake has been the highlight of the day.

In the builder's language it cannot be described at all, but what it means can be shown by bringing the builder a slab when he says slab. — Fooloso4

Unless it weighs 10 tonnes, then it would be inconvenient.

All of its uses are uses within the activity of building. — Fooloso4

Yes, but we must understand what the slab is before knowing how best to use it.

In the builder's language it means one thing - bring me a slab. Pointing to a slab does not explain the meaning of "slab". — Fooloso4

Unless the assistant is a foreign worker who doesn't know the language yet.

a language is not a collection of names. — Fooloso4

One can point not only to objects such as slabs, mountains, trees but also to actions such as running, walking, wincing.

Developing the idea, one can then point to a behaviour such as wincing, and replace the behaviour by the word "pain". On the assumption that every effect has a cause, together with the natural inclination of humans to conflate effect with cause, we can then start to include the word "pain" within our language as referring to something that is hidden from sight.

You quoted me and then quoted Cavell. You are going to have to explain the connection (or disconnection) if you want me to understand.

Is it possible to learn the meaning of every word one uses just from a dictionary? — RussellA

There is another problem with the pain behaviour of others. What if the person was acting as if he was in pain?  How do you tell if it is genuine pain or acting or pretending to be in pain?

There is another problem with the pain behaviour of others. What if the person was acting as if he was in pain?  How do you tell if it is genuine pain or acting or pretending to be in pain? — Corvus

Yes, as Wittgenstein wrote:PI 304 "But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behaviour accompanied by pain and pain-behaviour without any pain?"—Admit it?

You quoted me and then quoted Cavell. You are going to have to explain the connection (or disconnection) if you want me to understand. — Antony Nickles

You contrasted the metaphysical with the interlocutor and the ordinary use with Wittgenstein.

Cavell is pointing out that Wittgenstein accepts both the ordinary and the metaphysical, ie PI 304 Not at all. It is not a something., but not a nothing either!

Cavell in The Later Wittgenstein makes the point that Wittgenstein never denied that we can know what we think and feel.

You haven't been on some the the building sites that I have been on, where a slab of cake has been the highlight of the day. — RussellA

Neither of us have been on the building site where the builder's language occurs, but Wittgenstein gives us enough information to know what the word slab means as it is used there. You keep conflating the builder's language with other language games.

Yes, but we must understand what the slab is before knowing how best to use it. — RussellA

All the assistant needs to know is to bring a slab when the builder calls "Slab!". The builder needs to know how to build with slabs, but there are no words for instructing the builder. His knowledge is not based on a language that consists only of the words “block”, “pillar”, “slab”, “beam”.

Unless the assistant is a foreign worker who doesn't know the language yet. — RussellA

He will not be an assistant unless or until he learns the language. He will not learn it by pointing to "blocks" and "slabs". He can only learn it by learning how those words are used.

One can point not only to objects such as slabs, mountains, trees but also to actions such as running, walking, wincing. — RussellA

You are agreeing with Wittgenstein that there are different kinds of words, that not all words are the names of objects.

How do I know that you are pointing to running rather than the runner?

It is still the case that a language is not a collection of names, even if those names name activities.

Yes, as Wittgenstein wrote:PI 304 "But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behaviour accompanied by pain and pain-behaviour without any pain?"—Admit it? — RussellA

He adds "The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose: to convey thoughts - which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or whatever." - PI. 304

It seems saying the word pain can convey your sensation of pain to someone by expressing it in description with language. It doesn't say that you learn the word pain by looking at someone's pain behaviour.

The sensation of pain is only accessible to the owner of the sensation. Therefore the observer of the other person's pain doesn't know if it is pain or pretention of pain. The observer can only guess. Meanings learnt from guessings are bound to be empty and unreal. :)

Not to say we do not sometimes chose what we say, but senses (uses) exist outside and prior to us — Antony Nickles

Sure, but this language game (the uses) learned from a community is not some Platonic "thing" but is rather the various instantiations of understanding in each individual (internally). Thus the beetle-box actually seems at odds with this, as if internal understanding doesn't count here. It is directly involved, and has to be. I may never know the beetle in someone else's box, but I better have a notion of some sort of beetle in a box. If that notion itself is missing, then there is no meaning had, even though, technically "use" can be still had in terms of how the word is being thrown around in the community of language users and acted upon. ChatGPT can act like a language user, and use the terms or misuse the terms, but no meaning is had for ChatGPT, only the person who has an internal sense using ChatGPT.

The past criteria of judgement upon whether a word is correctly used (even if it is the individually learned collective wisdom of a community), and the judging itself, is had within a person's internal mental space.

The past criteria of judgement upon whether a word is correctly used (even if it is the individually learned collective wisdom of a community), and the judging itself, is had within a person's internal mental space. — schopenhauer1

But Wittgenstein is going further here. What sense can we make in saying that an individual is “judging” something in internal mental space. This, in principle, cannot be learned from the collective wisdom of a community. There is no criteria to teach someone how to do this. So why even use this terms like “judging” or “using criteria” to try to express anything at all for this private activity.

Imagine I produce a bunch of what appears to you as random symbols. And I proceed to tell you that this is a language. If you ask, “how do you use these symbols”, and I reply, “I cannot tell you how to use them, but rest assure I know how to use them in similar ways as how you use your language, and thus it is a language.” I believe you can rightfully say that I have no idea what I am trying to say or express. This also goes for these claims of judging private activities within the mind.

my point is that most philosophers never asked for certainty of things like "pain". This is a false assumption — schopenhauer1

Pain is just one example among many--as is the picture of reference, correspondence; (but they are not the only manifestation, as neither is positivism); all of Wittgenstein's discussions are examples: rule-following, the fantasy of "mental objects", the other as unknown, "seeing", "thinking", etc. Think of Descartes falling back on God as our standard of "perfection", or Plato creating the abstract universal as a measure of "knowledge", Kant's imperative, etc. This does not apply to all philosophers, nor does it preclude their contribution to philosophical issues; and Wittgenstein is not scolding them, or dismissing them, not saying they are wrong" (like he has an answer that is right, or is dismissing them). Perhaps you feel the pull of that fear and desire (of and in response to skepticism) is silly or unnecessary; or, if it is just a matter of interest, and Wittgenstein or Descartes of Hume can't help you feel that sense of being lost, then there is not any argument that will spur that curiosity, and thus be able to see the desire to alleviate it, "solve" it. (And, again, I believe you are thinking of the sense of "certainty" as confidence, or the like, and that is not what Wittgenstein is getting at when he is looking into the desire for "crystalline purity", so, again, let's let go of that.)

If someone like Hume or a Locke had a theory on sensations or whatnot, those are theories and theories are people's best attempt at answering questions, leading to perhaps more questions or useful for constructing various ideas and worldviews. More sharing of in-sights. — schopenhauer1

The thing Wittgenstein is trying to get us to realize is this need to "answer" what the skeptic records (that knowledge cannot solve everything); and to see we are making it a "question" (as if it is an intellectual problem), say, when we find out that we have been wrong when we thought we "knew" (as Descartes says in his intro, as if knowledge precludes error; thus, he (and Plato) start to panic: "What is knowledge then?"), that we sometimes do not know what we "ought" to do, how to come to an understanding, that sometimes we speak past each other. Not that these issues are not important, but that, in response, the skeptic (Witt's "philosopher") abstracts--as in: removes the issue from any context in which it arose--from our shared interests, judgments (which criteria embody), which ordinary criteria Wittgenstein is claiming are just as relevant for doing philosophy, investigating its issues.

But Wittgenstein is going further here. What sense can we make in saying that an individual is “judging” something in internal mental space. This, in principle, cannot be learned from the collective wisdom of a community. There is no criteria to teach someone how to do this. So why even use this terms like “judging” or “using criteria” to try to express anything at all for this private activity.

Imagine I produce a bunch of what appears to you as random symbols. And I proceed to tell you that this is a language. If you ask, “how do you use these symbols”, and I reply, “I cannot tell you how to use them, but rest assure I know how to use them in similar ways as how you use your language, and thus it is a language.” I believe you can rightfully say that you have no idea what I am trying say or express. This also goes for these claims of judging private activities within the mind. — Richard B

No I am not saying we judge others' private activities, but that "use" needs an internal mental component for there to be meaning at all. I don't have to know how you judge. In fact, I don't have to know you are a real person and not a robot. If everyone were robots (except me), and only I had an internal "mental" properties, than it would be solely me, and no one else that is keeping meaning alive in the world. However, if we lived in a universe where everything was behavior, and there was no mental events at all, then whatever is going on is not meaning.

Now you can Witt me to death, by saying "Aha! But it's precisely our inability to make such "certain" statements that he is showing is impossible". Then I would say that if this is not the case, then "use" itself is also lost, as you need "something" for which is "using". Otherwise, you are not just playing language-games, but word-games with the word "use". Rather, "use" becomes functions in a program, and not a meaning. I am sure that we are talking about meaning and not functions.

which ordinary criteria Wittgenstein is claiming are just as relevant for doing philosophy, investigating its issues. — Antony Nickles

How is it he is advocating for anything other than our inability to be accurate, or our ability to possibly be in error of what others are saying? It's more a "negative" (in the what is flawed) than positive (how to fix). I've heard of Ordinary Language Philosophy, but I believe that came after...

I'll add @Antony Nickles to this one:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/840860

He admitted that he tried to make it a more expositional piece but failed — schopenhauer1

You are overlooking this: "After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into
such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. ...my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination.——And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation." PI, Preface (emphasis added)

It is the motivation to "force" philosophy into a "whole"; a generalized, abstract, single answer, which are the pictures that Wittgenstein is investigating, through which he realizes our fear of skepticism, the desire for a standard of perfect knowledge, which is the revelation/revolution the Investigations is trying to bring about.

...question after question after question with little to no punchline, this itself is unsympathetic to the reader, and lacks empathy. — schopenhauer1

Well I will grant you that it is frustrating, and that Wittgenstein is unsympathetic, however, just look at @RussellA's unwillingness to see any picture but the one he has that includes some fact in me that ensures that I am unique, that what I say and see is only mine. Despite considerable effort @Banno and @Luke have been unable to say anything to convince him of any other perspective. And I have been unable to convey to you the desire for a metaphysical answer to address the fear within a statement like "But surely another person can't have THIS pain!" (#253) So, yes, it is necessary. The method is hard to see, and his style requires a lot of work (for you to find for yourself an answer to his questions and cryptic statements that makes sense), but this intransigence is the problem he is addressing (along with thinking these are, or should be, easy things to see, simply explanations); you take his style as unnecessary or some weakness, but it is hard to understand because it is complicated (p. 212), and it takes the work that it does because the person for which it is written has to work through their defenses, their reluctance to change what they want, to accept that our knowledge is insufficient to live our lives. If you haven't, I would take a look at the Cavell I attached from p 56 about the necessity of Witt's style.

You are overlooking this: "After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into
such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. ...my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination.——And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation." PI, Preface (emphasis added)

It is the motivation to "force" philosophy into a "whole"; a generalized, abstract, single answer, which are the pictures that Wittgenstein is investigating, through which he realizes our fear of skepticism, the desire for a standard of perfect knowledge, which is the revelation/revolution the Investigations is trying to bring about. — Antony Nickles

Yes yes, I acknowledged that here, but somewhat more snarkily (I see you ignored to quote):

You may think that's cute and clever and a hipster way of "demonstrating his point".. Maybe even saying the error in understanding of his point mimics the error in our greater understanding (and hence our responsibility to really "get" each other), but it just comes off as pedantic, pretentious, and annoying. — schopenhauer1

If indeed everything is conflated to ordinary language and "Forms of Life", surely, to be a pedantic question-asker without providing any exposition would be abusive to the community of sympathetic listeners. You are always going to convince me this is the only way, and I am always going to say to you that you deem it more clever and necessary than it is.

meaning is contingent — Corvus

Well, more that meaning is irrelevant. It's use that is of interest, and asking for a slab in an Australian pub is for some an effective way of improving one's weekend.

Your rant on intrinsic and extrinsic meanings is incoherent. In particular,

But is this world in the Investigations a world that exists inside language or a world that exists outside of language? — RussellA

Folk have been at pains to try to get you to understand that language games involve both the world and words. It's not one or the other, but both.

my point, or RussellA rather, is that Witts premise about “use” cannot be solely what picks out meaning. — schopenhauer1

I actually do agree on this because I don't think all uses of words are what we would normally think of in terms of meaning. But I also think the boundary is arbitrary, maybe not in terms of meaning, but in the sense that it still uses the same mechanisms. In other words, there is nothing particularly special or unique about meaning other than another kind of "use" in terms of state transitions, which we just happen to highlight and add special signifcance to. But I don't think there is like some specific clear cut.

But whatever you want to call it, that is an internal mental phenomenon that has to take place. Not only that, there has to be a sort of internal “understanding” in order to use the word. — schopenhauer1

If you mean internal as in experiences then I would agree but I dont agree on any kind of "hidden" internal mental stuff, at least thats what im calling it, I hope you get what i am getting at there. We don't need internal understanding, only hebbian learning and neural activity which drives the state transitions, and these cannot be cached out in terms of semantic meaning or understanding because they are just mechanistic physical mechanisms. "Meaning" is just how the word is used in terms of the context in which we say the word or think it. Nothing more is necessary.

Well, more that meaning is irrelevant. It's use that is of interest, and asking for a slab in an Australian pub is for some an effective way of improving one's weekend. — Banno

Meaning" is just how the word is used in terms of the context in which we say the word or think it. Nothing more is necessary. — Apustimelogist

:cool: :up: :fire:

But surely there cannot really be a notion of shared meaning based on someones personal pain independently of observable pain-related behaviors. infact it is conditionally independent. the exact nature of the pain is virtually redundant compared to the functional implications.

"Meaning" is just how the word is used in terms of the context in which we say the word or think it. Nothing more is necessary. — Apustimelogist

But my claim here is "think" has to be part of it, otherwise "meaning" loses its meaning, and it is simply a "function" (like in a program). Imagine an unthinking ChatGPT that uses words to retrieve the proper answers to various requests. These are functions of algorithms as no internal (mental) thinking is involved in the understanding of the word.

But surely there cannot really be a notion of shared meaning based on someones personal pain independently of observable pain-related behaviors. infact it is conditionally independent. the exact nature of the pain is virtually redundant compared to the functional implications. — Apustimelogist

Shared meaning doesn't need to be based on personal pain, but that a person is "in the beetle-box" understanding "something" about the word pain, needs to be there for at least one member of the language community. Otherwise it's not meaning but function all the way down. Use is not meaning simpliciter

my point, or RussellA rather, is that Witts premise about “use” cannot be solely what picks out meaning. — schopenhauer1

That is Wittgenstein's position! It has been quoted several times including by those who argue as if they disagree with him on this.

That is Wittgenstein's position! It has been quoted several times including by those who argue as if they disagree with him on this. — Fooloso4

He said the box can be empty no? Potentially all those boxes can be empty…leaving just use.

It depends on what we both mean by think. What I meant here was just the internal vocalization of the word which we nonetheless still experience. To me, thinking is just another instance of "use" and state transitions, whether in ongoing vocalizations or those moments where you stop and "think" where in fact its all blank for a second and then suddenly pops another internal vocalization or some form of reaction in accordance to a eureka moment of some sort.. or intensely attending to an equation. To me, these are all the same kind of state transition/ "use" kind of thing.

I found the parts of PI on understanding and reading quite convincing in this regard. For a while, a lot of these kinds of thinking as kind of mysterious mental processes didn't make sense to me, but this kind of enactive / situated approach just makes much more sense to me. I think of Wittgenstein as a the godfather of enactive cognition and that kind of stuff. I have a nice quote actually from important late developmental psychologist Esther Thelen who utilized an enactive dynamic systems approach which is reminiscient of the Wittgenstein view imo:

"Knowing is the process of dynamic assembly across multileveled systems in the service of a task. We do not need to invoke represented constructs such as “object” or “extended in space and time” outside the moment of knowing. Knowing, just like action, is the momentary product of a dynamic system, not a dissociable cause of action" ... "We think to act. Thus, knowing may begin as and always be an inherently sensorimotor act."

"Knowing is the process of dynamic assembly across multileveled systems in the service of a task. We do not need to invoke represented constructs such as “object” or “extended in space and time” outside the moment of knowing. Knowing, just like action, is the momentary product of a dynamic system, not a dissociable cause of action" ... "We think to act. Thus, knowing may begin as and always be an inherently sensorimotor act." — Apustimelogist

Eh, this gets awfully close to the problem of a hidden dualism. The mental quickly gets covered up with behavior or process, trying to hide evidence of the mental. Cause and ontology is different. Perhaps mental came about from some causal reason that is behavioral. Mental interacts with physical. But mental is still in the equation somewhere. Redness might have came about for some X reason, but whatever "redness" is in terms of its qualitative aspect, it is "mental" in some way.

But that's tangential here. You said:

It depends on what we both mean by think. What I meant here was just the internal vocalization of the word which we nonetheless still experience. To me, thinking is just another instance of "use" and state transitions, whether in ongoing vocalizations or those moments where you stop and "think" where in fact its all blank for a second and then suddenly pops another internal vocalization or some form of reaction in accordance to a eureka moment of some sort.. or intensely attending to an equation. To me, these are all the same kind of state transition/ "use" kind of thing. — Apustimelogist

So I am going to be firm here on my stance of meaning versus something else, like function. A program that requests and retrieves data. Is that meaning? It makes requests, the requests are used for various outputs. Are these requests actually "meaning-ful?" or are they simply behavior behaving. Who determines "what" the behavior is? At some point, the terminus ends with someone with a mental state that needs to be in the equation.

There will be those who disagree and think that programs running functions and creating outputs that are then checked and verified by other programs are providing meaning. But now I think meaning is lost altogether, and we are talking about a different phenomenon. We are talking function, error checking, or what not.

I genuinely don't think I know what meaning can mean outside of the context of use. Even my internal experience of pain has meaning only in a functional sense. If pain was just a sensation that did not elicit any kind of responses in me, not even my attention, then it would be meaningless. I wouldnt even be aware of the pain sensation that I was having. Pain is only meaningful to me in how it elicits my reactions, changes in my attention, changes in thoughts, arousal etc. Obviously I am having a distinct sensation and I can identify that but even idenitification only is meaningful in the context of responses I am making internally in the act of identification; changes to thought, attention, whatever. Sensation is necessary but functional responses are equally necessary. Only through them does the sensation mean something.

Eh, this gets awfully close to the problem of a hidden dualism. The mental quickly gets covered up with behavior or process, trying to hide evidence of the mental — schopenhauer1

I am not denying the mental in the sense I am not denying my own experiences. But I side with Wittgenstein and Thelen in saying that I think the evidence for more than that is tenuous and this way seems a better fit with how I view neuroscience.

Reading more, I guess we agree with the mental in terms of experience. But I am saying that I don't think there is more above that and that the meaning embedded in our experiences is still totally functional... transitions in experience... i experience some context and i experience myself saying a word and then some further experiences follow that etc.

A program that requests and retrieves data. Is that meaning? It makes requests, the requests are used for various outputs. Are these requests actually "meaning-ful? — schopenhauer1

Well what do you mean by meaningful here?

He said the box can be empty no? — schopenhauer1

You are making much more of this analogy then is warranted.

43. For a large class of cases of the employment of the word “meaning” - though not for all - this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

The use of a word is not something in a box. Meaning is use is public not private.

Reading more, I guess we agree with the mental in terms of experience. But I am saying that I don't think there is more above that and that the meaning embedded in our experiences is still totally functional... transitions in experience... i experience some context and i experience myself saying a word and then some further experiences follow that etc. — Apustimelogist

I think we can agree here. I am not saying we have some a priori definitional understanding per se, just that we need some sort of mental experience for meaning to obtain, period.

Well what do you mean by meaningful here? — Apustimelogist

That is the main question in this dialogue.. I am trying to say what it isn't at this point, and I am indicating that it isn't just use. Use in context of a mind that can understand the context. Mind needs to actually internalize something for meaning to mean anything other than state of affairs that is a function in the universe.

The use of a word is not something in a box. Meaning is use is a public not private. — Fooloso4

What is "public"? There is no public. Public is a shared internal understanding of use, which is internal :).