He only sees that logic and interest are tied together. But Cicero argued that a good speaker had to be a good man. Plato just didn’t trust individuals to be up to the task. — Antony Nickles
The history of philosophy is rife with one camp picking apart another and calling into question what philosophy actually is. — Antony Nickles
Yes, the history of philosophy is one attempt after another of trying to remove the human... — Antony Nickles
And drawing a limit around knowledge is exactly what Plato... — Antony Nickles
I would argue Witt is saving the true nature of philosophy from itself. — Antony Nickles
This seems obvious, unless someone wishes to claim that when Wittgenstein criticizes philosophy he is at the same time criticizing himself? — Leontiskos
Another’s pain is not known, it is responded to — Antony Nickles
The point that I have been making over and over again is that the one making the criticism of philosophy is intending to step outside philosophy. This seems obvious, unless someone wishes to claim that when Wittgenstein criticizes philosophy he is at the same time criticizing himself? — Leontiskos
I think he's very interested in the sorts of things we do willy-nilly, oversimplifying, overgeneralizing, and not just to say "don't do that". It's here I think there is something deep about Wittgenstein, this feeling that there are things we might legitimately call "mistakes" we cannot really avoid. — Srap Tasmaner
115. A picture held us captive. And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.
121. One might think: if philosophy speaks of the use of the word "philosophy" there must be a second-order philosophy. But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word "orthography" among others without then being second-order.
This seems obvious, unless someone wishes to claim that when Wittgenstein criticizes philosophy he is at the same time criticizing himself? — Leontiskos
Four years ago, however, I had occasion to reread my first book (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and to explain its ideas. Then it suddenly seemed to me that I should publish those old ideas and the
new ones together: that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my older way of thinking.
For since I began to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I could not but recognize grave mistakes in what I set out in that first book.
There are two different senses of “know” here at p. (246), one being: with certainty, the other being knowing as acknowledging, recognizing. The part of the sentence you are quoting is the second kind. “I’m in pain.” “I know” or “He’s in pain!” “I know, but he’s so dramatic, he’ll be fine.” — Antony Nickles
I think it's a good question, but maybe it isn't, I don't know. — Srap Tasmaner
My own problems appear in what I write in philosophy. What good does all my talent do me, if, at heart, I am unhappy? What help is it to me to solve philosophical problems, if I cannot settle the chief, most important thing?
6.52 We feel that even when all possible scientific questions have been answered, the problems of life remain completely untouched. Of course there are then no questions left, and this itself is the answer.
6.521 The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem.
(6.43)The world of the happy man is a different one from that of the unhappy man.
If there is a sense of "know" that means "acknowledging, recognizing", then you are saying that we do know another's pain (at least, sometimes). I agree, but this is contrary to your earlier statements that we do not know another's pain. — Luke
philosophers are very likely to bristle at […] the idea of speaking for the person you're having a discussion with; — Srap Tasmaner
And these criteria are not individual (psychological, or “self”) interests (or feelings, being persuaded), but all our history of human lives of distinguishing and identifying and judging, i.e., what is essential to us about a practice, the various reasons that count with/to it. — Antony Nickles
113. I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another.
I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this expe-
rience “noticing an aspect”.
114. Its causes are of interest to psychologists.
115. We are interested in the concept and its place among the concepts
of experience. — Philosophy of Psychology - a Fragment
4.1121 Psychology is no more closely related to philosophy than any other natural science.
5.641 What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.
The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—not a part of it.
Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. — ibid.
6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.
6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one.
It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized. — ibid.
113. I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another.
I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this expe-
rience “noticing an aspect”.
114. Its causes are of interest to psychologists.
115. We are interested in the concept and its place among the concepts of experience. — Philosophy of Psychology - a Fragment
111. Two uses of the word “see”.
The one: “What do you see there?” - “I see this” (and then a description, a drawing, a copy). The other: “I see a likeness in these two faces” - let the man to whom I tell this be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself.
What is important is the categorial difference between the two ‘objects’ of sight.
But we can also see the illustration now as one thing, now as another. - So we interpret it, and see it as we interpret it.
254. The concept of an aspect is related to the concept of imagination.
In other words, the concept ‘Now I see it as . . .’ is related to ‘Now I am imagining that’.
Doesn’t it take imagination to hear something as a variation on a particular theme? And yet one does perceive something in so hearing it.
(PI 122)A main source of our failure to understand is that we don’t have an overview of the use of our words. - Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in ‘seeing connections’. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.
The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a ‘Weltanschauung’?)
Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) (Culture and Value)
I don't understand what you mean by "our history of human lives" in the context of the distinction made by Wittgenstein. — Paine
If there is a sense of "know" that means "acknowledging, recognizing", then you are saying that we do know another's pain (at least, sometimes). I agree, but this is contrary to your earlier statements that we do not know another's pain. — Luke
Is there a difference between knowing someone's pain and knowing that someone is in pain? — Michael
We cannot know other minds because our relation to others is not knowledge, but how we treat them, our “attitude” in relation to them, in its sense of: position “towards”. I treat you as if you have a soul. — Antony Nickles
As with others’ souls (p. 178) or the pain causing another to writhe in front of us (p. 235), we do not know it, because that is not how knowledge works. We respond to them (or ignore them). That is how humanity and pain are treated, the way in which they matter to us, their grammar. — Antony Nickles
We cannot know other minds because our relation to others is not knowledge, but how we treat them, our “attitude” in relation to them, in its sense of: position “towards”. I treat you as if you have a soul. — Antony Nickles
But, as I noted, this contradicts Wittgenstein’s comments. — Luke
Is there a difference between knowing someone's pain and knowing that someone is in pain? — Michael
But, as I noted, this contradicts Wittgenstein’s comments. — Luke
So what I am not a fan of, is when something that is pretty common understanding of things is presented as if it’s profoundly innovative wisdom. — schopenhauer1
The philosopher imagines “knowing” another’s mind as being (requiring) an identical equation, thus the impression you could never know my pain, have the same pain, and why the philosopher comes up with a carrier, an object, for this imagined uniqueness, as a pain “sensation”, pain “perception”. — Antony Nickles
Excellent observation. What Witt would do is create a situation and give examples of what we’d say. “I’m in pain” “Me too” “But I have a headache.” “Me too!” “Mine’s a shooting zing behind my ear” “Right! Boy, I know your pain.” Thus why he will conclude that, as a matter of identity, to the extent we agree, we have the same pain (PI # 235). — Antony Nickles
Which philosopher(s)?… No one presumably thinks that we actually can feel the same exact thoughts… a much more interesting philosophical point is that of "p-zombies", a thought experiment proposed by David Chalmers. But that is more interesting because it imagines that people don't have any inner sensation. — schopenhauer1
…the point of it is to prove the weirdness of subjectivity and why it exists at all — schopenhauer1
…you take it on habit and as a matter of course that people feel similarly when they are in pain or other sensations. — schopenhauer1
The fact that we use the same word "pain" to refer to your sensations and to my sensations isn't that your sensations are the same as my sensations. — Michael
We are getting rather far afield from Witt’s approachability, however, — Antony Nickles
As a matter of connection and to identify with the other person, we say our pain is the same, that we know the other’s pain. — Antony Nickles
Again, Witt’s point is not to be right — Antony Nickles
point out things as if they are novel when they are pretty readily held by the majority. In this case, the idea that we can never have perfect "certainty" of what others are feeling, so must rely on outward observations and public displays, and then take action from there and believe them. None of this is an uncommon view. — schopenhauer1
He is drawing out (making explicit) the type of criteria in individual cases to contrast them with the philosophical fixation with knowledge as certainty, or that we have to settle for some lesser version in contrast… because we “never have perfect” knowledge. — Antony Nickles
The point is not the answer, nor to say philosophy is stupid or useless, but to allow for self-reflection, to see our projection into our thinking. The obviousness of our ordinary criteria, once we see them, is uncanny (Cavell’s term) for me exactly because I have been trained so long to think in the frameworks of philosophy. — Antony Nickles
That we say it isn't that it's true. — Michael
And this is part of the problem of Wittgenstein. It denies the reality of reference. Many words refer to things, and the word like pain refers to a sensation. — Michael
Right, but this might be because one is feigning agreement because they are pitying the other, or being stoic, and maybe not some way for our pain to be “truly” the same, which philosophy perhaps simple creates in order to impose the requirement we wanted all along. — Antony Nickles
Right, but my contention is that this thing he is setting up of "perfect knowledge" and "making due" is a false narrative, and thus a strawman that doesn't need addressing really. — schopenhauer1
So I am just focusing on this idea of not knowing what someone is really thinking internally, this doesn't seem like something that needs deconstruction because it never was constructed. It's a straw man. — schopenhauer1
However, now I am amazed at how my mind is [weak and] prone to error… I also say I see the people themselves, just as I do with the wax. But what am I really seeing other than hats and coats, which could be concealing automatons underneath? However, I judge that they are people. And thus what I thought I was seeing with my eyes I understand only with my faculty of judgment, which is in my mind. — Descartes, 2nd Meditation
why should I care… ? — schopenhauer1
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