Of all the people I've engaged with over the years in this forum you're one of the few that remind me of a troll. — Sam26
I don't, but you might. Perhaps one advantage of so doing is that it displays how integral language is to our interactions with the world.We think of our interaction with the world as if it's a conversation we're having with it. — frank
Notice how this ends by listing prerequisites for asking about a colour and playing chess. These are the what is held firm in order for the game to be played, the task to be done: 'Here is a hand".340. We know, with the same certainty with which we believe any mathematical proposition, how the letters A and B are pronounced, what the colour of human blood is called, that other human beings have blood and call it "blood".
341. That is to say, the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn.
342. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.
343. But it isn't that the situation is like this: We just can't investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.
344. My life consists in my being content to accept many things.
345. If I ask someone "what colour do you see at the moment?", in order, that is, to learn what colour is there at the moment, I cannot at the same time question whether the person I ask understands English, whether he wants to take me in, whether my own memory is not leaving me in the lurch as to the names of colours, and so on.
346. When I am trying to mate someone in chess, I cannot have doubts about the pieces perhaps changing places of themselves and my memory simultaneously playing tricks on me so that I don't notice. — OC
And yes, their illocutionary force is to say how things are.Statements are grammatical combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present king of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition. — Me
Odd. I would count "I have a laptop" as a proposition in the first person, and "You have an internet connection" as a proposition in the second person. True, rendered in a first order logic they do come out as third person, but I don't see that as a characteristic of propositions so much as of force.that propositions are not first or second person accounts. They're in third person. — frank
I would count "I have a laptop" as a proposition in the first person, — Banno
And yes, you can't use any particular proposition to prove that there is a world, since there being a world is presupposed by there being propositions. — Banno
I sometimes find Fooloso4's comments unhelpful because they offer a criticism - often quite minor - without an apparent alternative or solution. — Banno
But there is also the more general point I've made about the exegesis of a text such as On Certainty, that as it is a work in progress, there is no reason to expect it to be coherent and consistent. — Banno
(CV 17)I really do think with my pen, because my head often knows nothing about what my hand is writing.
(CV 28)If I am thinking about a topic just for myself and not with a view to writing a book, I jump about all round it; that is the only way of thinking that comes naturally to me. Forcing my thoughts into an ordered sequence is a torment for me. Is it even worth attempting now?
I squander an unspeakable amount of effort making an arrangement of my thoughts which may have no value at all.
This is philosophy, not theology. Feel free to engage the ideas in play rather than becoming caught up in interpretation of the text. — frank
Start with thinking for yourself. — frank
(CV 18)I ought to be no more than a mirror, in which my reader can see his own thinking with all its deformities so that, helped in this way, he can put it right.
(CV 8)If I am not quite sure how I should start a book, this is because I am still unclear about something, For I should like to start with the original data of philosophy, written and spoken sentences, with books as it were.
And here we come on the difficulty of "all is in flux". Perhaps that is the very point at which to start.
Then all the philosopher does is broaden your horizons. — frank
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, -- that is genius.
And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny ...
The salient point I would make for you is that a game can only be played if some propositions are, not exempt from truth or falsity, but treated as being true. — Banno
I suspect saying that this or that belief is a hinge might mislead one into forgetting that the it is a hinge only within the games we play, the things we are doing - perhaps into thinking that it is a hinge always and in all circumstances. — Banno
There's a lot in that, most notably the notion that a proposition is something apart from the utterances that instantiate it.Maybe I should say a P can be expressed in a first person account, but the P itself is denoted by what philosophers call "eternal sentences." Those sentences are from the narrator's POV. It's the world talking, so to speak. — frank
I think they are exactly that: normal propositions. They do not differ in their structure from any other proposition. Where they differ is in the place they take in the things we do with words.I would say that what we are dealing with aren't propositions in the normal sense... — Sam26
"...has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of incontestability". Being outside of contention is a role taken on in the way we make use of mathematical propositions. It is given to the statement by the way we make use of it.655. The mathematical proposition has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of incontestability. I.e.: "Dispute about other things; this is immovable - it is a hinge on which your dispute can turn." — OC
658. The question "But mightn't you be in the grip of a delusion now and perhaps later find this out?" - might also be raised as an objection to any proposition of the multiplication tables. — OC
In the first, an abstract entity is invoked, and immediately followed by all sorts of philosophical investigations - what is the nature of this abstract entity, the proposition? Is it real, is it a Platonic form, is it an eternal statement, and so on. — Banno
We can interchange sentences between belief-in form and belief-that form; this does not show that either has some sort of priority.We might very well also write every statement in the form of a question followed by a "Yes"; for instance: "Is it raining? Yesl" Would this shew that every statement contained a question? — Philosophical Investigations §22
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