I was looking for that:

The picture theory is abandoned. — Fooloso4

which chimes with this:

This and the text thereabouts lead me to suppose that the picture theory of meaning is itself being rejected here. — Banno

...which you appeared to be rejecting, here: ; especially:

Despite significant changes the Tractarian theme of seeing and saying are still at work — Fooloso4

which it seems I had misunderstood...

All by way of clarification; thanks.

But Wittgenstein was quite taken by the fact that it can flip from one to other. He discusses this in the Tractatus as well, with regard to a picture of a cube. — Fooloso4

I wish I could talk to Witt about neuroscience and his thinking. From my point of view, the different ways we perceive Necker cubes makes perfect sense, and with a bit of practice I developed the ability to see a Necker cube as a 2-D image, although it requires defocusing my vision to overide the usual visual processing that tends to result in perceiving one of the 3-D interpretations.

As a bit of a tangent... Is it widely known that there is speculation that Witt was on the autism spectrum? And if so, what do people tend to think of such speculation?

The "common factor" is what is done with the utterance. — Banno

I agree that a word wouldn't be in language in the first place if it didn't have a use, An almost infinite number of words could be created, but only about 170,000 of these possible words have been found to have a use to the users of the language.

So it is true that only words that have a use to the users of the language mean anything to the users of the language. As Wittgenstein wrote: PI 43: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.

As only those words that have a use to the users of the language are included within language in the first place, even though every word has a meaning, ie, it has a use, to say that a word has a meaning becomes redundant. As Wittgenstein wrote in PI 246:"It can't be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean—except perhaps that I am in pain?".

As you wrote: "As if our words all have meanings apart from what we do with them."

However, there is a difference between a word having a potential use and a word having an actual use. I can learn the meaning of words to which I don't have an actual use for. For example, I may know the meaning of "transmission", as "acts as the medium that transmits power generated by the engine to the wheels via a mechanical system of gears and gear trains.", even if I never use such knowledge.

Every word in language has a potential use, otherwise it wouldn't be in language in the first place, but to any particular individual, even though they may know the meaning of these words, only some of these words ever have an actual use.

Obviously not. — Banno

I wrote "These two minds are independent of each other". If two minds are not independent of each other, is telepathy a possibility one should consider?

The slab does not exist only in the mind, nor only in the world. You seem stuck on this false dichotomy. — Banno

I think a large part of the philosophical problem is that any word can have more than one meaning, and it is not always clear from the context which particular meaning is intended.

For example, the word "slab" in the sentence "The slab does not exist only in the mind, nor only in the world."

Using inverted commas as used by Davison "snow is white" is true iff snow is white, where a word in inverted commas refers to language and without inverted commas refers to the world (ignoring the question of where the world actually exists, whether inside language or outside language).

For example, "slab" could refer to:
i) the concept "slab" that exists in the mind to a Conceptualist
ii) a slab that exists in the world as a particular to the Nominalist who accepts the ontology of relations
iii) a slab that exists in the world as a particular to the Nominalist who doesn't accept the ontology of relations
iv) a slab that exists in the world as a universal to the Platonist
v) a slab that exists in the world because it exists in the mind to an Anti realist
vi) a slab that exists in the world to a Direct Realist
vii) a slab that exists in the world as a representation in the mind to an Indirect Realist

As the Britannica article on Relation between mental and physical events wrote
For the later Wittgenstein and many philosophers influenced by him, the proper role of philosophy is not, as it was for Russell, to develop theories in answer to philosophical problems but to clear up the conceptual confusions through which philosophical problems arise in the first place. These confusions invariably come about through misunderstandings of the complicated ways in which terms with philosophical import—such as know, believe, desire, intend, and think—are used in everyday life.

The question is, which slab is being referred to?

This indicates that a mental image is what one imagines at a particular time, and the description will describe what one imagines at the time. — Luke

I agree.

it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else — Luke

I don't agree. Many things can influence our mental images. Two different events can get blurred in the mind.

What Wittgenstein criticises is that the interlocutor "might come to regard a mental image as a superlikeness" with an object. — Luke

How is it that he might come to regard it in this way? As I read it, because he assumes that a mental image must be more like its object than any picture. I think just the opposite is true. My mental picture of the house I used to live differs from photographs of it. I trust the photo to be more like the house.

Hacker tells us that a mental image is "not a likeness [to its object] at all" since its being a mental image of X "is not determined by its likeness to X". — Luke

Now I remember why I balk when Hacker is mentioned.

I wish I could talk to Witt about neuroscience and his thinking. — wonderer1

That would be interesting.

it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else
— Luke

I don't agree. Many things can influence our mental images. Two different events can get blurred in the mind. — Fooloso4

Then the mental image would be an image of the two blurred events and of nothing else. The mental image would be singular even if it was of two blurred events. See the definition at PI 367.

What Wittgenstein criticises is that the interlocutor "might come to regard a mental image as a superlikeness" with an object.
— Luke

How is it that he might come to regard it in this way? As I read it, because he assumes that a mental image must be more like its object than any picture. I think just the opposite is true. My mental picture of the house I used to live differs from photographs of it. I trust the photo to be more like the house. — Fooloso4

I take it he comes to regard it this way for the reasons given at PI 389, namely: "however similar I make the picture to what it is supposed to represent, it may still be the picture of something else. But it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else."

Your reading - where you trust the picture to be like its object more than you trust the mental image to be like its object - could explain how the interlocutor comes to regard a mental image as a sub-likeness instead of a super-likeness. It might make more sense to you to trust the picture over the mental image, but it is not consistent with the text.

It may make more sense if you bear in mind that Wittgenstein is criticising the interlocutor for thinking that there can be a superlikeness, or even a likeness; for thinking that a mental image can be used as an object of comparison, or compared with an object in the same way that a picture can.

Incidentally, I think there is a similarity here to PI 253 (despite its being about pain). Consider:

I have seen a person in a discussion on this subject strike himself on the breast and say: “But surely another person can’t have THIS pain!” — PI 253

It is the immediate experience of pain or qualia described here ("THIS pain!") that I think is relevant or similar to the idea of a superlikeness (compare: "a mental image...is an image of this and of nothing else" at PI 389). I guess the similarity is simply that it cannot be of anything else, but also that it is private.

Now I remember why I balk when Hacker is mentioned. — Fooloso4

I'll try to limit my references to his exegesis then.

Then the mental image would be an image of the two blurred events and of nothing else. — Luke

The mental image of this refers to the one object it is an image of. Two blurred objects or events is a counterexample.

I take it he comes to regard it this way for the reasons given at PI 389 — Luke

Right.

Your reading - where you trust the picture to be like its object more than you trust the mental image to be like its object - could explain how the interlocutor comes to regard a mental image as a sub-likeness instead of a super-likeness. This might make more sense to you but it is not consistent with the text. — Luke

The interlocutor comes to regard it as a super-likeness because he assumes that it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this object and of nothing else. I think the interlocutor is wrong and I gave some reasons why. You think Wittgenstein agrees with the interlocutor's assumption, I don't.

I'm presenting this hypothetical scenario to critique Wittgenstein's idea that language use is sufficient as a foundation. The main point is to stress the necessity of a robust foundation for language, especially if we claim it's rooted in community or "Form of Life." — schopenhauer1

I believe brains are the foundation, if I am understanding you correctly. Brains are complicated dynamical systems with self-organizing behaviour. Networks of brains (i.e. social systems) that communicate are also complicated dynamical systems with self-organizing behaviour. You're not going to get some form of justification because its just how Brains happen to behave determined by the physical context in which they exist; being "correct" is irrelevant and it is trivially the case that people are wrong about things all the time. Nonetheless, this is an objective explanation for how language is learned, used, "corrected". You being not "correct" isn't enough to stop the wheels of the universe turning and neuronal messaging being transmitted and societies going on their daily business.

You being "correct" isn't enough to stop the wheels of the universe turning and neuronal messaging being transmitted and societies going on their daily business. — Apustimelogist

Nope, but since humans are deliberative animals (as in, behaviors are often chosen with degrees of freedom), knowing what is more "correct" leads to outcomes that would only be done by instinct, chemical markers, or more associative type learning in other animals.

That's more an aside from my point that you quoted though. My point with Witt particularly is he wants to demolish overarching theory whilst sneaking in an overarching theory (use), while he "gets to do so" because it's merely a case of "What else can it be?" through a series of proclamations rather than justification.

You as the audience get to sit back in satisfied head nodding that this is a legitimate move because he has already set the tone against notions of "certainty". It rings true for amateur pragmatists, and so confirmation bias in favor this deflationary view of theory (whilst still getting to promote a theory, nonetheless).

You can compare this style to his also suspect Tractatus which was all theory but without good explanation such as the nature of objects (the very root of how the "picture theory" hangs!). He has contempt for anything "beyond" language, and it shows in both works. It takes a dull philosophy to say "bUt YU CaNT get BYOND LNgAGe!!"

And what becomes a weakness is the very thing that he's supposed to have as a strength. Because there is no metaphysical underpinnings to his work, it's all him talking "inside politics of language use", there are no overarching theories of what "community" or "forms of life" are. How it subsists other than the obvious. But if it is obvious he should have stopped before he started his work. But I do know that PI was posthumously published.

Perhaps it was really meant as an inside sentiment to send to philosophers like Russell and his former self. So perhaps it is the audience who reads too much into it and expects too much of it. That is on the audience, not him then.

But pretending this was meant to be published at some point, because he is against certainty (the way he defines that word of having a sort of overarching theory of grounding), things like "Forms of Life" are themselves grounded in nothing. I mean that in the metaphysical sense of not having a theory of "what that is" other than our individual perceptions of what we think others think (a sort of linguistic solipsism). Is it "emergent"? What is emergence then? Is it epiphenomenal? What is that then? What does it mean for there to be social facts? Is it loss of pride, resources, status, self-esteem, survival that one knows that one is following them versus other kinds of "facts"? Are all facts really social facts? etc. etc.

Hacker tells us that a mental image is "not a likeness [to its object] at all" since its being a mental image of X "is not determined by its likeness to X". — Luke

This is like saying a photo of X is not a likeness of X at all since it being a photo of X is not determined by its likeness to X.

A photo of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X. So too, our mental images of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X.

What I am getting from this post mainly is that things like "forms of life" lack some kind of inflated metaphysical underpinning or something, but concepts like this and games more or less just refer to our behavior in which we use words. There doesn't need to be anything else unless you want to really get into the neurobiological causes of that. I mean, I think Wittgenstein is much closer to jettisoning the idea of reified meaning rather than trying to establish some rigorous explanatory theory.

What I am getting from this post mainly is that things like "forms of life" lack some kind of inflated metaphysical underpinning or something, but concepts like this and games more or less just refer to our behavior in which we use words. There doesn't need to be anything else unless you want to really get into the neurobiological causes of that. I mean, I think Wittgenstein is much closer to jettisoning the idea of reified meaning rather than trying to establish some rigorous explanatory theory. — Apustimelogist

Cool, let me know when the philosophy begins then. Otherwise, I am on the wrong forum.

Let me know if you want me to help you put the toys back in the pram.

Let me know if you want me to help you put the toys back in the pram. — Apustimelogist

?

Just so you know, that last comment was aimed at Witt not your commentary.

Here is a good explanation of the historical and philosophical place Wittgenstein holds. I hope it helps with reading the Investigations.

“By the middle 1960’s two separate but related intellectual forces were taking root in American social sciences and humanities. Both were a response to the positivism that had dominated the professions in the period immediately following the Second World War. The appeal of that positivism was wide-spread – in social science, in philosophy, in the New literary Criticism – and was itself in great part a reaction to what appeared to have been an extremely dangerous subjectivism and irrationalism in the 1930’s. Both of these reactions had the effect of breaking the intellectual hold -- or were at least taken to have broken the hold – of the positivist understandings of the social world and of how one should go about trying to understand that world.
Central to positivism had been three claims. The first was that there was a clear-cut conceptual separation between facts and values and that, in consequence, values were subjective, not of the world, and could be kept apart from ones analysis of social reality. This was not a denial that values were “important” but it was a denial that values were objects of knowledge.
The second claim was parent to the first. It was a claim that propositions about the world could and should be made to speak for themselves – thus that propositions about the world should have a validity independent of he or she who advanced them. One could and should clearly separate the speaker from the spoken, for if one did one’s work right not just empirical claims about the world but concepts themselves would stand independently of the speaker. In its simplest form, the claim was that a statement like “mass equals force times acceleration” was true independently of who said it and of when and where it was said.
The third claim derived from the first two. It held that certain forms of discourse (claims to knowledge) were responsible and responsive to the real world in ways that other forms (one might think of them as emotive, or expressive) were not. In the first form honesty towards the world required something of the thinker; in the second anything (apparently) went.
Into this vision of the world came a critique that came to carry the shorthand name of “Kuhn.” Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that claims about the world carried with them participation in a broader understanding – to some degree social and historical in nature -- without which those claims would not be possible. Kuhn called these broader understandings “paradigms.” Kuhn, in other words, appeared to question the distinction between the two forms of speech or knowledge, between the expressed and the un-or inexpressible.
Soon, everyone was citing Kuhn. Crudely, what most people took him to have done -- whether or not they approved of it – was to have brought “values” or cultural commitments back in scientific discourse. It is important to realize that in this reading of Kuhn, however, “values” were still understood precisely in the terms that positivism had cast them in. They were, in other words, the unexpressed, the non-cognitive and so forth. That facts, as one learned to say, were “theory [or value] laden,” and “embedded” in “webs of meaning” did not seem to join culture, value or meaning any more tightly to the world, nor make knowledge of these things any more shareable. The emphasis was rather in the other direction – loosening the grip of facts on the world, introducing a scrim of “values” before everywhere we might look for the former.
This terrain was fertile enough to foster a second development. Pretty soon those who read Kuhn in this manner – whether favorably or not – were reading Wittgenstein and allowing themselves free passage between paradigms, pictures, forms of life and language-games. Central here was the claim taken from Wittgenstein that language, or certain linguistic conventions, so shape our understanding of the world that we do not see around their corners. Wittgenstein’s apothegm that “a picture held us captive” came to stand for a peculiar kind of blindness forced on one through language itself. For those who were favorable to this so-called “linguistic turn,” however, Wittgenstein’s proposition about imprisonment became a slogan of liberation. For if what seemed to constrain our thought was merely a picture, then it would certainly seem one could get out of it, or at least change pictures, -- or so it appeared. The irony here is that Wittgenstein’s passage expresses a disappointment with knowledge. Wittgenstein continues: “And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” The irony is compounded in that two disappointments are captured here simultaneously: the initial one, a disappointment with the failure of knowledge to satisfy its own inveterate demands (in the Investigations this appears as the demand for a crystalline pure ideal of language), and the succeeding one, a disappointment with this initial disappointment -- a finding of the latter to be in effect empty, a disappointment with success. It is this second disappointment that drives Wittgenstein to his famous turning around of the axis of his investigation (PI 108). We shall have more to say about such turnings below.
In the social sciences, however, it was not long before some were proclaiming that “what you see depends on where you sit.” Kuhn’s paradigms – already carried from scientific practice into society itself – were now radicalized by being located in the plurality of “language games” that were suddenly found to mark the differences among everything from academic disciplines to political projects. Ironically, since Wittgenstein’s earlier work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, had been a central document in the rise of positivism (whether properly understood or not), his later work, the Philosophical Investigations, acquired its prestige in part as a recantation of an earlier “positivism.”
We shall not be concerned here directly with the status and importance of Kuhn’s work for the social sciences. However, leaving aside the question of whether or not those who read Kuhn got him right – and the answer to that would have to be for the most part “no” – it is important to realize that Kuhn’s work drew heavily on certain developments in philosophy which have were associated with the designation “ordinary language philosophy,” a practice of philosophy variously associated with the work of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Its most prominent contemporary American practitioner is Stanley Cavell, who has extended Austin and Wittgenstein beyond any point that might have seemed obvious. We shall focus here on the importance and implications of this practice of philosophy for political theory and political science.

II. Sources and Resources

…Wittgenstein has been, for the philosophical community, a difficult person to place. Three broad approaches to domestication seem to have developed. First, to some he appears as a Humean (or “mitigated”) skeptic. In this reading, the central part of Wittgenstein’s achievement is to have shown that philosophically we can always raise questions, but that these questions will, however, have little to do with our ordinary life. This view places great weight on passages such as “Justification comes to an end” (PI 194) and “My life consists in being able to accept many things.” (PI 44). In this reading, the task of philosophy is to keep itself in its own, proper, corner and not to pretend to be part of life as we live it. This view is held in different ways by Richard Rorty and Saul Kripke.
A second reading holds that Wittgenstein is a kind of empiricist justificationist. The Investigations are taken to be a justification of cultural common sense. Hence: “Our mistake is to look for an explanation.. where we ought to have said ‘This language game is played’.” (PI 654). This view derives ultimately from G. E. Moore for whom philosophical problems can and should be eliminated by reinforcing what all people know unproblematically. A contemporary exponent of this understanding of Wittgenstein would be the late Peter Winch.
A third view is a kind of Kantian justificationism. Kant, as is commonly known, tried to determine those categories of the understanding which delineated the realm in which reason was possible. David Pears, for instance, refers to Wittgenstein as a “linguistic Kantian.” In readings such as this, Wittgenstein wants to show the limits of human reason by reestablishing the boundaries between the phenomenal and the noumenal realms. Thus: “Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.” (PI 373). Grammar, in this reading, becomes the equivalent of the synthetic a priori; however, it is understood as conventionally based.
It is important to realize that all three of these readings see Wittgenstein as concerned centrally with the justification of knowledge. Thus to the degree that any one of these views would be correct, Wittgenstein’s thought will not be of much use in political theory. There is also a danger when addressing these questions – more present in Wittgenstein and Cavell than with Austin -- of falling into one of three interpretive modes. The first is that of the valorization of ineffability – these authors are taken to point at the power of what cannot be said, at a realm of mystery lying beyond language and to which language is inadequate. A second mode is to hold that these authors are not talking about philosophy at all but rather about that which is pre- or non-philosophical, a kind of anthropology. Here the expectation is that these readers desire to keep philosophy in its proper place. The last mode is to think that these men are attempting to turn philosophy into literature – a kind of edifying discourse that since it makes no real claims to the truth need not bother about being “right.” Here they are read into a particular version of continental thought, with its emphasis on reading as opposed to (in Anglo-American analytic thought) argument. Gerald Bruns may be thought to hold this position.” TELLING THE DANCER FROM THE DANCE: ON THE RELEVANCE OF THE ORDINARY FOR POLITICAL THOUGHT (has appeared in Andrew Norris, ed. The Claim to Community) Joseph Lima and Tracy B. Strong

Sorry about quoting the whole thing instead of attaching it but I didn’t want people to get confused by the rest of the article, which is beyond the OP here.

Thanks!

The mental image of this refers to the one object it is an image of. Two blurred objects or events is a counterexample. — Fooloso4

I don't see why the mental image must correspond to any object. As I understand it, the mental image is just whatever its content is; whatever the image is. I don't see that it needs to be of any singular thing in particular. To repeat the definition given at PI 367:

367. A mental image is the image which is described when someone describes what he imagines. — PI 367

Your requirement that the mental image must be of one object presupposes that it can correspond or be compared to some object.

Like the private timetable at PI 265, the mental image cannot be tested for correctness. There is no method of projection (PI 366) from the mental image to the object. There are no rules for verifying that the mental image corresponds to its object.

On the other hand, the description of the mental image is a kind of picture and can be compared or correspond to some object, but the description (of the mental image) is not the mental image.

At least, that's how I read it, and how I see it tying in to the rest of the text. I don't see how your reading relates to the rest of the text.

Your reading - where you trust the picture to be like its object more than you trust the mental image to be like its object - could explain how the interlocutor comes to regard a mental image as a sub-likeness instead of a super-likeness. This might make more sense to you but it is not consistent with the text.
— Luke

The interlocutor comes to regard it as a super-likeness because he assumes that it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this object and of nothing else. I think the interlocutor is wrong and I gave some reasons why. You think Wittgenstein agrees with the interlocutor's assumption, I don't. — Fooloso4

Your takeaway from PI 389, as I understand it, is that the interlocutor has it backwards; that a picture better represents its object than a mental image does. Also, that the interlocutor is incorrect to assume that a mental image can only represent one thing. Do you therefore think it follows that a picture has a superlikeness to its object, or is the idea of a "superlikeness" irrelevant to Wittgenstein's point here? Is his point simply that there is no distinction between a picture and a mental image?

On my reading, a mental image is unlike a picture because a mental image can only be "the image of this and of nothing else", whereas a picture may still represent something else. Consequently, the interlocutor may mistakenly come to regard a mental image as a superlikeness with its object - because a mental image cannot represent anything else, whereas a picture can. I view Wittgenstein as being critical of the interlocutor's inference that the mental image is any sort of likeness; that there can be any correspondence between a private (undescribed) mental image and its object.

Hacker tells us that a mental image is "not a likeness [to its object] at all" since its being a mental image of X "is not determined by its likeness to X".
— Luke

This is like saying a photo of X is not a likeness of X at all since it being a photo of X is not determined by its likeness to X. — Fooloso4

Only if you take a photo to be no different to a mental image. A photo is a picture; a mental image is not.

So too, our mental images of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X. — Fooloso4

If you were to describe your mental image, then maybe we could compare it to the object and find out how closely it resembles its object, but a mental image cannot be compared to its object; only a description of the mental image can.

Did I know it was a picture of him?

"it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else." — Luke

I don't see why the mental image must correspond to any object. — Luke

In general a mental image need not correspond to any object, but we are discussing PI 389:

389. “A mental image must be more like its object than any picture.

Your requirement that the mental image must be of one object presupposes that it can correspond or be compared to some object. — Luke

This is not my requirement. This is the interlocutor's claim:

However, this need not imply that Wittgenstein rejects the interlocutor's statement that "it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else". — Luke

Do you therefore think it follows that a picture has a superlikeness to its object, — Luke

No. As I said:

A photo of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X. — Fooloso4

or is the idea of a "superlikeness" irrelevant to Wittgenstein's point here? — Luke

His point, in part, is to reject the idea of a "superlikeness". He traces that idea back to the interlocutor's assumptions.

Is his point simply that there is no distinction between a picture and a mental image? — Luke

Of course not!

On my reading, a mental image is unlike a picture because a mental image can only be "the image of this and of nothing else", — Luke

What does "

this

" refer to?

I view Wittgenstein as being critical of the interlocutor's inference that the mental image is any sort of likeness; that there can be any correspondence between a private (undescribed) mental image and its object. — Luke

Why can't my mental image be a likeness to the object it is an image of? I do not have to describe that image to myself, I see it.

A photo is a picture; a mental image is not. — Luke

A mental image is the way I picture something to myself.

If you were to describe your mental image, then maybe we could compare it to the object and find out how closely it resembles its object, but a mental image cannot be compared to its object; only a description of the mental image can. — Luke

I talk to someone on the phone who I have never met. I imagine what this person looks like. I form a mental image of them. Later I meet this person and they are very different from my mental image.

@schopenhauer1

Could you please scan the following for anything you think is not logical:

As shown by PI 293, it seems that it is not only private beliefs about private sensations such as pain that fall out of consideration in language but also private beliefs about public objects such as slabs

Language is grounded on the ability of the animal (and human) mind to perceive family resemblances in several different physical things in the world. It is the family resemblance that is named, not one particular example of it. For example a family resemblance of slabness can be named "slab", a family resemblance of wincing behaviours can be named "wincing behaviour", which in practice can be replaced by the figure of speech "pain". The Platonist would say the family resemblance exists in the world independent of the mind. The Nominalist would say that the family resemblance exists in the mind as a concept and is projected onto things that exist in the world.

The Investigations discusses family resemblances, but doesn't discuss why there are family resemblances. IE, the Investigations doesn't ground language.

PI 293 proposes that the private belief in private sensations such as pain drops out of consideration in language. One can extrapolate this and propose that private beliefs in public objects such as slabs also drop out of consideration in language
PI 293 - the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is. That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant

It is a fact that individuals with different private beliefs are able to successfully communicate using one language. For example when the foreman says to the assistant "bring me a slab" and the assistant brings a slab, this is regardless of whether either the Foreman or assistant are :

i) a Berkelian Idealist - where a slab is an idea in a mind
ii) A conceptualist - where the slab exists as a concept in the mind
iii) A Nominalist who accepts the ontology of relations - where a slab exists as a momentary set of atoms related to each other
iv) A Nominalist who doesn't accept the ontology of relations - where a slab exists as a momentary set of atoms independent of each other
v) A Platonist - where a slab that exists in the world as a universal
vi) An Anti realist - where a slab that exists in the world because it exists in the mind
vii) A Direct Realist - where a slab that exists in the world
viii) An Indirect Realist - where a slab exists in the world as a representation in the mind

Therefore, the meaning of the word "slab" in the sentence "bring me the slab" cannot be the private belief of either the foreman or the assistant, but can only exist in the language itself, as language is agnostic about the private beliefs of the users of the language .

In fact, for the foreman, a "slab" could mean a blue Martian with purple ears and for the assistant a "slab" could mean a giraffe with orange legs, but as private beliefs of private sensations and private beliefs about public objects drop out of consideration in the language game, when the foremen says "bring me a slab", the assistant will bring a slab.

Therefore the meaning of the word "slab" doesn't exist in any user of the language but exists within the language itself, as Wittgenstein wrote
PI 43 - the meaning of a word is its use in language

This doesn't mean that language exists as a Platonic Form independently of its users, as the language was created by its users. But it does mean that language is independent of the private beliefs of its users. Language is grounded in the ability of the mind to discover family resemblances in different physical things in the world. These different things can then be given a public name by one or more individuals within the language community. One should note that it is the family resemblance that is being named, which for the Nominalist is a concept in the mind, not any particular physical thing in the world.

Did I know it was a picture of him? — Banno

I will read and comment in that thread.

Therefore, the meaning of the word "slab" in the sentence "bring me the slab" cannot be the private belief of either the foreman or the assistant, but can only exist in the language itself, as language is agnostic about the private beliefs of the users of the language . — RussellA

I was thinking that Wittgenstein meant the content of the thought (like your Martian example) more than belief about the nature of the content, but I still liked your list of metaphysical theories that can be believed.

This doesn't mean that language exists as a Platonic Form independently of its users, as the language was created by its users. But it does mean that language is independent of the private beliefs of its users. Language is grounded in the ability of the mind to discover family resemblances in different physical things in the world. These different things can then be given a public name by one or more individuals within the language community. One should note that it is the family resemblance that is being named, which for the Nominalist is a concept in the mind, not any particular physical thing in the world. — RussellA

I would say this is accurate though Witt doesn't seem to discuss "ability of the mind", which makes it as I said mainly about "inside politics of language use" rather than a theory proper. That family resemblances exist, as I see how he is presenting it, is not a positive theory for epistemology, but rather a negative theory of opposing a certain view that words correspond to exactly one kind of meaning. Meaning becomes a sort of emergent phenomenon (he doesn't use that word I don't think), by way of the community's acceptance of the word as being referred to that. So I see it as more about consensus than the individual.

So if you drank from the coffee cup and said, "I am doing a game", someone might look at you funny. But you tried to justify yourself by saying, "Yes, every time I pick up the coffee cup and put it to my mouth, I call that "game"", someone would just say you are crazy. They would tell, you, "Just say "sip" or "drink"!. In other words, you should be using a different set of family resemblances (to drink, sip, imbibe, ingest, partake in, guzzle, gulp, etc.) than the set we usually employ when we say "game". These have historical precedents in the language community and thus these are the proper words to use. If before you sipped from the coffee mug you looked around suspiciously, then stated, "I am getting myself a drink", then winked at me, I might infer "drink" to mean you spiked your coffee. It is all kind of related in a web of notions because of the community's use. So community "grounds" words (i.e. Form of Life), and as far as I see, context grounds how the words are employed (language games). And by "ground" I don't mean metaphysical, but one can say as a some sort of "error checker" for permitted or non-traditional use of words.

But all this being said, my particular critique is that Witt insufficiently posits his theory because it is very common sensical. Communities form language games and their use in context grounds the meaning. But I believe, any anthropologist could have told you that even by his time, so what else is he saying? And that's where I fail to see anything of interest. There are a ton of questions that can arise from this view (common sensical as is it is). For example, how does Wittgenstein explain how it is that social facts exist outside of some sort of linguistic solipsism? There are beliefs that prima facie are not facts of the world, but interpretations we have. So what is a "community" outside a set of individual points of view interpreting information? So you see, there has to be a greater theory for how something like "community" obtains outside of individual perceptions if one doesn't want to maintain solipsism. How does this get beyond the Cartesian Demon? And if you say we can't, we shouldn't, or we shan't try, okay, then it's not that interesting to me as it is essentially just more explicitly coming up with ways we use language that don't correspond to a direct "truth correspondence theory of logical positivism, which is just tedious to me as someone who never cared for logical positivism to begin with.

@RussellA The way I see it is to look at this progression as a history of philosophy problem....

-You have empiricists (Hume, Locke, Berkeley, etc.) and
-you have rationalists (Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, etc.).

-You have Kant trying to combine the two, making a sort of new paradigm about internal and external. He wanted to make the analytic-synthetic distinction clear, and then combine the two for certain judgements.

-You have Idealists (mainly German and French like Schopenhauer, Hegel, Fichte, Shelling, etc.), that were captivated by the Thing in Itself notion.
-From the Idealists you get the phenomenologists (still focus on the internal like Brentano, Husserl)
-From the phenomenologists you get the existentialists (still focus on the internal but not structural as much as "being" itself as a subject.. Heidegger, Sartre, Camus.)
**Nietzsche can be considered a perspectivist- a subjectivist.. so a sort of phenomenologist..

-From the empiricist tradition, you have Frege forgoing the internal or "psychologicism" for the empirical and what can be stated accurately in logical puzzles (beginning of logical positivism)
-You have Frege, Russell, early Wittgenstein, Ayer, Carnap, and a bunch of the Vienna Circle, Mach (from a physics perspective who early on cared more about verification than theory behind it ... didn't even believe in "atoms")..
-Logical positivism, the idea that verification is what makes a statement meaningful, was hostile to psychologicism..

So you get people like Freud who split the mind into three parts and pleasure principle etc... This is clearly some sort of rationalist camp... How can you ever prove such a thing? This isn't falsifiable or observable. This is one of the last major holdovers that sort of posited internal a priori notions whilst claiming "science".

So the logical positivists would have scoffed at Freud. Wittgenstein would have too.. However, Later Wittgenstein, could then say, "Is Freud useful to a language community"? He started a Form of Life he called "psychoanalysis", and then people participate in the language community and play his language games. Some of these people find a relief to their issues.. Can one say that Freud was "wrong"? In a pragmatic sense, he was "useful" no? Doesn't that matter?

When you are building a building, you don't care if the slab is real or not. You need to survive, so you "get shit done" (use).

But of course, that is just grounding an "is" with an "ought". That is to say, because we need to "get shit done to survive", thus all our inquiry stops about what grounds reality. But Wittgenstein might turn that around again and say, "There is no problem with inquiry, as long as it is "useful" for the game you want to play called "philosophy"". And I'm afraid that's all you're going to get as far as Wittgenstein and philosophy's value, perhaps.

I was thinking that Wittgenstein meant the content of the thought (like your Martian example) more than belief about the nature of the content, — schopenhauer1

There may be a problem if thought and content of thought are separated. I have the thought "I am in pain". If the content of the thought is "I am in pain", this leads to PI 246 It can't be said of me at all (except perhaps as a joke) that I know I am in pain. What is it supposed to mean—except perhaps that I am in pain?

If the thought and content of the thought are separate, this leads to infinite regression, in that if the content is "I am in pain", then what is thinking "I am in pain" .

Perhaps in order to avoid infinite regression it is best to say that the thought IS the content.

This is similar to when @Banno wrote: The picture can be seen in different ways, and so does not, as it where, give the meaning of what is pictured. That is found in what is done with the picture.

Perhaps it is not the case that the picture gives a meaning to what is pictured, but rather the picture IS the meaning.

I would say this is accurate though Witt doesn't seem to discuss "ability of the mind", which makes it as I said mainly about "inside politics of language use" rather than a theory proper. — schopenhauer1

Yes, he is describing something that depends on the mind but avoids talking how the mind works. A little bit of science would have helped.

That family resemblances exist, as I see how he is presenting it, is not a positive theory for epistemology, but rather a negative theory of opposing a certain view that words correspond to exactly one kind of meaning. — schopenhauer1

I look out of the window and see a "tree", but no two trees on Earth are identical. Every tree is different in some way to every other tree.

In one sense "tree" has a single meaning as a concept, yet in another sense has many different meanings, an Oak Tree, a Yew Tree, an old tree, a short tree, a green tree in the summer, etc.

There seems to be an ability of the brain to discover family resemblances in things in the world that are different yet have something in common. It is because of this ability we have concepts.

I can only see this ability as a positive thing. Why would Wittgenstein see it as a negative thing?

Meaning becomes a sort of emergent phenomenon (he doesn't use that word I don't think), by way of the community's acceptance of the word as being referred to that. — schopenhauer1

Yes, being born into a community where the word "tree" has an accepted meaning, I have to follow convention if I want to fit in with society. The individual generally has to comply with the wishes of the majority.

But all this being said, my particular critique is that Witt insufficiently posits his theory because it is very common sensical. — schopenhauer1

Yes, my belief is that every paragraph of Investigations should be read from a common sense point of point, as I am sure that is what Wittgenstein intended,.

The problem is the inherent ambiguities in language , where one word can have several meanings and the context is often unclear. There is always more than one way to read a paragraph

I'm not sure we should take the advice as regards Wittgenstein of Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley who argued in their essay "The Intentional Fallacy" that "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art".

I think when interpreting one of Wittgenstein's' paragraphs we should always look for the simplest, most straightforward and most common sense reading, in other words what Wittgenstein calls the "good philosopher" rather than the "bad" philosopher who creates problems out of nothing.

Perhaps in order to avoid infinite regression it is best to say that the thought IS the content. — RussellA

Yes, I meant it like that. What I was referring to with "belief" was the list you had (Platonism, nominialism, etc.). That is what I meant by he was not referring to "nature of thought" but the content.

Yes, he is describing something that depends on the mind but avoids talking how the mind works. A little bit of science would have helped. — RussellA

My main problem with it..

I look out of the window and see a "tree", but no two trees on Earth are identical. Every tree is different in some way to every other tree.

In one sense "tree" has a single meaning as a concept, yet in another sense has many different meanings, an Oak Tree, a Yew Tree, an old tree, a short tree, a green tree in the summer, etc.

There seems to be an ability of the brain to discover family resemblances in things in the world that are different yet have something in common. It is because of this ability we have concepts.

I can only see this ability as a positive thing. Why would Wittgenstein see it as a negative thing? — RussellA

You are building a theory. Wittgenstein I don't see as doing what you are doing. He is pointing to a way of meaning but not really giving it an explanation except, "Don't you see!". You are explicitly saying, "Brain discovers X.. " He is just saying what he thinks we do. And this seems to be to counter other theories like his ones in Tractatus. By negative, I simply mean he is critiquing, not positing a full blown theory of mind, or theory of meaning. He is demonstrating some things about how language is derived from community and context, but without really explicitly theorizing about it either.

I think when interpreting one of Wittgenstein's' paragraphs we should always look for the simplest, most straightforward and most common sense reading, in other words what Wittgenstein calls the "good philosopher" rather than the "bad" philosopher who creates problems out of nothing. — RussellA

Cool.. Maybe one day there will be a book of schopenhauer1 and people can read it all sorts of things from it. I-Ching is another I hear is good for that. The Bible is another.

He is pointing to a way of meaning but not really giving it an explanation except, "Don't you see!". You are explicitly saying, "Brain discovers X.. " He is just saying what he thinks we do. — schopenhauer1

Maybe the point to take away then is that we don't need an overarching theory of meaning. If you want to know how language and words work and how information is communicated between brains.. we have psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology etc.

Maybe the point to take away then is that we don't need an overarching theory of meaning. If you want to know how language and words work and how information is communicated between brains.. we have psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology etc. — Apustimelogist

Indeed, and I would go to these subjects to answer questions about how humans developed and use language. I would perhaps philosophize rather on the nature of mind, ethics, and the like. Some hypothesizing is necessary, but at some point, experiments, comparative animal studies, and the like, would get us closer, and thus why Philosophy of Language is kind of a dead end for me. Insofar as it is covertly used to apply to metaphysics or epistemology due to its deflation to various forms of logical constructions (e.g. modal logic somehow getting us any closer to essences, things such as this), I rather just go straight to talking it out in the open. This mid-ground is tedious though. I'm against the propositional project on one hand (i.e. logical construction somehow gets us anywhere other than formalization itself), and I'm against armchair anthropology (i.e. hipster Wittgensteinism).

"it is an intrinsic feature of a mental image that it is the image of this and of nothing else."
— Luke

I don't see why the mental image must correspond to any object.
— Luke

In general a mental image need not correspond to any object, but we are discussing PI 389:

389. “A mental image must be more like its object than any picture. — Fooloso4

Yes, but you provided a counterexample to this:

The mental image of this refers to the one object it is an image of. Two blurred objects or events is a counterexample. — Fooloso4

Therefore, I take it you disagree with the interlocutor's statement that "A mental image must be more like its object than any picture".

Your requirement that the mental image must be of one object presupposes that it can correspond or be compared to some object.
— Luke

This is not my requirement. This is the interlocutor's claim: — Fooloso4

You appear to agree that a mental image can correspond or be compared to some object, even though you disagree that the mental image must be of one object.

Do you therefore think it follows that a picture has a superlikeness to its object, — Luke

No. As I said:

A photo of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X. — Fooloso4

Yes, you also said:

So too, our mental images of X may to varying degrees and in various ways capture a likeness of X. — Fooloso4

So, your position is that mental images and pictures/photos can both correspond or be compared to some object.

Is his point simply that there is no distinction between a picture and a mental image?
— Luke

Of course not! — Fooloso4

What do you take to be his point at PI 389?

On my reading, a mental image is unlike a picture because a mental image can only be "the image of this and of nothing else", — Luke

What does
"this"
refer to? — Fooloso4

I was quoting PI 389.

Why can't my mental image be a likeness to the object it is an image of? I do not have to describe that image to myself, I see it. — Fooloso4

I think Wittgenstein might take issue with your use of "see" here. You don't really see or look at your mental image; it is what you imagine.

I talk to someone on the phone who I have never met. I imagine what this person looks like. I form a mental image of them. Later I meet this person and they are very different from my mental image. — Fooloso4

That's an obvious assumption to make (just like the assumption of a private language), but how does it relate to the text or to what Wittgenstein says at PI 389?

But of course, that is just grounding an "is" with an "ought". That is to say, because we need to "get shit done to survive", thus all our inquiry stops about what grounds reality. But Wittgenstein might turn that around again and say, "There is no problem with inquiry, as long as it is "useful" for the game you want to play called "philosophy"". And I'm afraid that's all you're going to get as far as Wittgenstein and philosophy's value, perhaps. — schopenhauer1

As you say, first we come up with a few questions (which the Investigations does do), then we hypothesise a theory or two (which the Investigations doesn't do) and then we test out our hypotheses by comparing them to what happens in the world (which the Investigations doesn't do).

Extreme Relativism

Taken to its extreme, in Extreme Relativism, in Cognitive Relativism, each language game is autonomous, and in Kuhn's terms incommensurable. Not only can the user of one language game not be able to judge a different language game, but also the user of one language game would not be able to contemplate any meta-language game. The user of a scientific language game would not be able to judge the religious language game, and the user of the philosopher's language game would not be able to judge the language game of the ordinary man. Such would be exemplified by the instance of showing Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea to either a dog or cat, who would not even recognize that there was a different language game to the one they know. As Wittgenstein wrote: If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

Moderate Relativism.

But in practice, there is Moderate Relativism, a Cultural Relativism, where individuals often have different roles within their community. Sometimes a chef, sometimes a builder, sometimes the ordinary man and sometimes the philosopher. As a chef, "slab" means a cake, as a builder "slab" means a block of concrete, as the ordinary man "slab" means slow, loud and bangin and as the philosopher, "slab" means a section of critical text. The meaning of a word then depends on which particular role the individual is playing at the time: PI 156 The use of this word in the ordinary circumstances of our life is of course extremely familiar to us.

The Investigations must be Moderate Relativism

The Investigations must be that of Moderate Relativism, in that different human language games are referred to, such as those of builder, the teacher, philosopher, the shopkeeper and ordinary man. As different language games are referred to, this cannot be the position of Extreme Relativism where the user of one language game would not be aware of the existence of a different language game. Wittgenstein refers to these different language games when he wrote: PI 116 What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

Within Moderate Relativism, there are many language games. Each Language Game has its own Form of Life, each language game has its own set of grammatical rules, each language game has its own truth, and the meaning of a word depends on its context within its language game . Each language game has a foundation that cannot be justified but must be accepted, and are, in effect, hinge propositions
PI 217 If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

The Investigations in moving between Language Games must be that of Moderate Relativism, whereby all Forms of Life are cognitively accessible. The problem is, of course, is that we don't know what we don't know, as was the case with the dog or cat when presented with a copy of a Hemingway novel, in that there may well be a language game outside of ours whose existence we cannot even contemplate.