If we had no basic intuitions, then each rule would require further rules setting out how it is to be followed—infinite regress follows. — Janus
If we had no basic intuitions, then each rule would require further rules setting out how it is to be followed—infinite regress follows.
— Janus
Yes, we can say the same for all word meaning, I mean! — Apustimelogist
As I understand it, Kripke’s argument begins with the skepticism that ensues from rejecting a classical realist approach to the factual justification of meaning interpretation. There is no fact of the matter that can determine whether the meaning for me of a rule like the plus sign is the same as I apply it now as when I applied it last year.
How do we use a basic intuition to avoid an infinite regress of rules? — Joshs
It seems like it should just as well apply to all memories and all sense experience, resulting in exactly the sort of all encompassing skepticism Wittgenstein was trying to avoid. — Count Timothy von Icarus
Is an intuition a robustly persistent interpretive content of meaning that we can consult again and again to tell us how to follow a rule? Is an intuition an internal cognition as opposed to a socially discursive practice? — Joshs
You both seem to me to have got this the wrong way round. You are positing the individual's interpretation of the rule as primary. But we can only interpret rules because we have learnt to do so - from other people. No doubt it is a complex process, but it seems overwhelmingly likely that it is develops by trial (responses of whatever kind) and error, coupled with positive and negative reinforcement. Once we have learnt, we can do it on our own. Our intuitions are, if you like, a kind of summary of what we have learnt - not purely in words, but in actions.Because its just acting blindly, and "social discursive practise" is just an extension of that involving many individuals. — Apustimelogist
I have no idea what a determinate objective view might be. But I thought the impossibility of a picture of meaning (or even an explanation of it) was quite different from that. I thought the point was that there could not be a picture of how a picture relates to the world. If you can't grasp the relationship between a picture and what it is a picture of, it will be no good presenting you with another picture to explain. You'll have to do something different. Similarly, when someone doesn't "get" the idea of explanation of meaning, there's no point in trying to explain what it is, for the same reason. It's like not "getting" a joke.A picture of meaning would present a determinate , "objective" view of things; but the point is that no such thing can be presented to us. — Apustimelogist
If it applies to those things then surely, the skeptical solution also applies.
Is an intuition a robustly persistent interpretive content of meaning that we can consult again and again to tell us how to follow a rule? Is an intuition an internal cognition as opposed to a socially discursive practice?
— Joshs
Because its just acting blindly, and "social discursive practise" is just an extension of that involving many individuals.
— Apustimelogist
You both seem to me to have got this the wrong way round. You are positing the individual's interpretation of the rule as primary. But we can only interpret rules because we have learnt to do so - from other people. No doubt it is a complex process, but it seems overwhelmingly likely that it is develops by trial (responses of whatever kind) and error, coupled with positive and negative reinforcement — Ludwig V
You are positing the individual's interpretation of the rule as primary. — Ludwig V
I have no idea what a determinate objective view might be — Ludwig V
So not only can Tarzan not follow rules, but he has no memory and no sense experiences. Seems hard to believe. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm afraid I couldn't detect how what you said was a deconstruction. There must be something earlier that I missed or have forgotten. Can you explain or refer to your explanation?No, I’m not positing individual intuition, I’m trying to show how Wittgenstein deconstructs the idea. I should add that Wittgenstein was no behaviorist, and training into following a rule involves more than reinforcement contingencies, it requires understanding the relevance of the rule, what is at stake in following it. — Joshs
If they were so fed up with it, why did they read it to each other? The obvious answer must be that they enjoyed hearing the text and jeering at the lines they didn't like - as a community.Apparently the Vienna Circle read TLP aloud to one another and members got so fed up with it that they began screaming "metaphysics!" at certain lines. Which, given their views, amounted to yelling out "bullshit!" — Count Timothy von Icarus
I guess you mean "This is what I do!", and that's fine. I'm just not happy with describing that as "acting blindly". That phrase suggests that it is possible that I could act not blindly. I think that "This is what I do!" is, essentially, an ostensive definition, so neither blind nor not blind.Not at all. Acting blindly is primary. — Apustimelogist
That's how a philosopher pursuing theory would put it. I think that Wittgenstein does not posit assumptions, but skills - practices.There is no good presenting another picture because prior assumptions are required, — Apustimelogist
Sorry - what is the sceptical solution?If it applies to those things then surely, the skeptical solution also applies. — Apustimelogist
No, I’m not positing individual intuition, I’m trying to show how Wittgenstein deconstructs the idea. I should add that Wittgenstein was no behaviorist, and training into following a rule involves more than reinforcement contingencies, it requires understanding the relevance of the rule, what is at stake in following it.
— Joshs
I'm afraid I couldn't detect how what you said was a deconstruction. There must be something earlier that I missed or have forgotten. Can you explain or refer to your explanation? — Ludwig V
Sorry - what is the sceptical solution? — Ludwig V
That phrase suggests that it is possible that I could act not blindly. — Ludwig V
I think that "This is what I do!" is, essentially, an ostensive definition, so neither blind nor not blind. — Ludwig V
I suppose so. But "act blindly" suggests that you think that it is possible for them not to act blindly, which I think is incompatible with Wittgenstein's arguments.Yes but then there is the opposite perspective on these things where someone might say that we do not act blindly. — Apustimelogist
I suppose you are referring to Wittgenstein's point that many algorithms are compatible with any finite series of numbers. That sounds like indeterminacy or at least underdeterminacy. But that doesn't mean there is no criterion for correct and incorrect applications (and for which cases are problematic). That's what the practice is for. So the rule is determined as it is applied.And the reference in ostensive definition is equally indeterminate!? — Apustimelogist
I read your discussion. I think I agree with it. It doesn't mention (or use) the word "intuition", so I'm no further forward in understanding how that concept comes to be a part of Wittgenstein's deconstruction. I must have missed something.I'm afraid I couldn't detect how what you said was a deconstruction. There must be something earlier that I missed or have forgotten. Can you explain or refer to your explanation?
— Ludwig V
I discussed it here: — Joshs
which I think is incompatible with Wittgenstein's arguments. — Ludwig V
I suppose you are referring to Wittgenstein's point that many algorithms are compatible with any finite series of numbers. — Ludwig V
But that doesn't mean there is no criterion for correct and incorrect applications (and for which cases are problematic). That's what the practice is for. So the rule is determined as it is applied. — Ludwig V
So he does. I had forgotten. I'll have to take it up with him directly.Well he uses the word himself! — Apustimelogist
That's also a bit of a problem. I think part of what's confusing me is that there are several issues here. At first sight, you seem to be referring to the point that Wittgenstein concedes and solves when he points out that my audience needs to know the "station" of the word in the language-game - whether I'm pointing at the colour, the shape, etc. I agree that my intention is not a solution, since the definition can only work if there is agreement about that. Then there's the complexity about applying the definition in practice, which is resolved if I have learnt how to play the language game. Ostensive definition can only work if both I and my audience have learnt the skills/practices that are needed. Even then, there can be disagreements. But we know how to detect and how to work with those.That may be a good example; but I was more thinking that with "pointing" at something, it is similarly somewhat underdetermined what is being pointed at, so pointing is also "blind" in that sense. — Apustimelogist
Well, if your idea of a solution is a magic bullet that abolishes indeterminacy, there can't be one. But being able to use the words (and deal with what they refer to or are true of) is all the solution that matters, isn't it. (Scepticism as bogey-man.)Yes, this is part of the skeptical solution albeit I would say it doesn't actually solve indeterminacy, just is used as a way of explaining how coherent word-use emerges. — Apustimelogist
I read your discussion. I think I agree with it. It doesn't mention (or use) the word "intuition", so I'm no further forward in understanding how that concept comes to be a part of Wittgenstein's deconstruction. I must have missed something. — Ludwig V
186. "What you are saying, then, comes to this: a new insight — intuition — is needed at every step to carry out the order '-f-n' cor-rectly." — To carry it out correctly! How is it decided what is the right step to take at any particular stage? — "The right step is the one that accords with the order — as it was meant" — So when you gave the order -\-z you meant that he was to write 1002 after 1000 — and did you also mean that he should write 1868 after 1866, and 100036 after 100034, and so on — an infinite number of such propositions? — "No: what I meant was, that he should write the next but one number after every number that he wrote; and from this all those propositions follow in turn." — But that is just what is in question: what, at any stage, does follow from that sentence. Or, again, what, at any stage we are to call "being in accord" with that sentence (and with the mean-ing you then put into the sentence — whatever that may have consisted in). It would almost be more correct to say, not that an intuition was needed at every stage, but that a new decision was needed at every stage.
213. "But this initial segment of a series obviously admitted of various interpretations (e.g. by means of algebraic expressions) and so you must first have chosen one such interpretation."—Not at all. A doubt was possible in certain circumstances. But that is not to say that I did doubt, or even could doubt. (There is something to be said, which is connected with this, about the psychological 'atmosphere' of a process.) So it must have been intuition that removed this doubt?—If intuition is an inner voice—how do 1 know how I am to obey it? And how do I know that it doesn't mislead me? For if it can guide me right, it can also guide me wrong. ((Intuition an unnecessary shuffle.))
Ok. Thanks for coming back to me and providing the quotations.In PI, Wittgenstein treats intuition as an inner picture one consults: — Joshs
I think "unnecessary shuffle" dismisses intuition as unhelpful.So it must have been intuition that removed this doubt?—If intuition is an inner voice—how do 1 know how I am to obey it? And how do I know that it doesn't mislead me? For if it can guide me right, it can also guide me wrong. ((Intuition an unnecessary shuffle.)) — Wittgenstein Phil. Inv. 213
Intuition explains nothing. Drill (learning what to do by repetition) is the explanation. That's the basis of practices. — Ludwig V
Yes. As Wittgenstein points out, an agreement can break down at any moment!Yes, I think we are basically in agreement, as far as I can tell! — Apustimelogist
The versions of Robinson Crusoe that I've seen have all failed to recognize that he does not have to learn any of the skills of West European society. He arrives with a tool-chest, which he is fully equipped to use. So he knows the rules he needs and what is correct and what is not. Defoe's novel is irrelevant.I remember also thinking that the Robinson Caruso argument should also apply to all learning, but the idea that it is impossible for an isolated feral human being to learn anything or to ever be wrong about what they think they've learned seems implausible to me. — Count Timothy von Icarus
It's a while since I've read Kripke's text, but that seems to be right. But it's a bit more complicated than that. If the thesis is that meaning is established by practices, then it does not seem to be wrong to say that there is no fact of the matter that determines it. However, given that the sky is blue, it is true to say that there is a fact of the matter that makes the statement "the sky is blue" true. IMO.Kripke is not even advancing a skeptical position but a nihilist one. He isn't saying facts about meaning are impossible to pin down with certainty, but rather that they don't exist. — Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm always uncomfortable with those grand philosophical concepts. But I would agree in many cases that our access to - no, better, our practices in - a world "outside" language does ground meaning. I think the game may be differently played in fields like mathematics and logic - though even there, there are facts that kick us in the face; we are not simply in control.This would seem to offer another way out of the meaning dilemma, since meaning is grounded in the mind's access to the intelligibility of being. — Count Timothy von Icarus
and pointing out that his bar for "certainty" — Count Timothy von Icarus
However, given that the sky is blue, it is true to say that there is a fact of the matter that makes the statement "the sky is blue" true… our access to - no, better, our practices in - a world "outside" language does ground meaning. I think the game may be differently played in fields like mathematics and logic - though even there, there are facts that kick us in the face; we are not simply in control. IMO — Ludwig V
There is no determinate scheme or context that can fix the content of utterances, and hence no way to get outside of language. How a theory or practice interprets the world is itself inescapably open to further interpretation, with no authority beyond what gets said by whom, when…. we can never get outside our language, experience, or methods to assess how well they correspond to a transcendent reality.“
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