Western civilization has suffered from a longing for ontological certainty, ....should be able to lead us to afirm and unchanging knowledge of ourselves and the world around us.

This longing for unchanging, certain knowledge seems to me to be associated with religion and old-fashioned metaphysics ('rationalized' religion). As I understand them, the scientific spirit and more recent philosophy understand our knowledge to be provisional & constantly evolving.

Where's the Cartesian anxiety in this?

In rejecting representationalism and the essentialism that it implies, Dewey abandons the Cartesian-inspired spectator account of knowledge, which radically separates the knowing subject from the object being studied. No longer considering that objectivity a result of a detachment from the material under study but rather as an ongoing interaction with that which is at hand, Dewey elevates practice over theory; better said, he puts theory in service to practice. From Rorty’s perspective, while Dewey had a great insight, he ought to have taken the next step and rejected scientism—the claim that scientific method allows humanity to gain a privileged insight into the structural processes of nature. His failure to reject the alleged epistemologically privileged stance is one main reason Rorty must re-imagine Dewey. Nevertheless, Dewey’s elevation of practice continues the movement away from the pre-Darwinian attachment to the belief in a non-human source of purpose and the immutability of natural kinds toward a contingent “world,” where humans define and redefine their social and material environments. It is within a social practice or a “language-game” that specific marks and sounds come to designate commonly accepted meanings. And, as Rorty states in “Feminism and Pragmatism,” (1995) no set of marks or sounds (memes) can ever bring cognitive clarity about the way the world is or the way we as humans are. Instead, memes compete with one another in an evolutionary struggle over cultural space, just as genes compete for survival in the natural environment. Unguided by an immanent or transcendent teleology, the memes’ replication is determined by their usefulness within a given social group. And it is through their utility for the continued existence and prospering of a social group that the group’s memes—like their genes—are carried forward and flourish. They establish their niche in the socio-ecological system. — link

https://iep.utm.edu/rorty/#SH3a

I think 'Cartesian anxiety' only works against an unworthy enemy and even doubles back to some degree. It's as if (static) religious thought and scientistic thought are two brothers fighting over the same inheritance, while 'dynamic' philosophers abandon that inheritance.

My theory is that the 'fake porn' or 'doll' case summons to mind (fairly or not) a person without an actual lover who is therefore perceived as more likely to cross over from fantasy to abuse. I imagine that even couples who engage in such taboo-violating role-play are secretive about it. Also, with couples' role-play, it's far less obvious where the line is. The bodies are adult. The verbal aspect could hardly be more offensive than Lolita.

I can’t see how you can strictly separate the laws of logic from the predictive requirements of science. — Wayfarer

Consider Hume's problem of induction. If you mean necessity by the 'laws of logic,' then (as noted) quantitative models include it in their pure math aspect but not as far as I can see in their application. The math is applied in a certain extra-mathematical way. A model responds to a hypothetical input with a predicted output and this becomes part of serious decisions. We seem to trust whatever reliably works. Few people learn real analysis, and this doesn't stop them from trusting calculus. I think we'd trust a magic 8-ball if kept beating other methods at making predictions.

The real encompasses reason and only the unreal, not reason, encompasses the real. The hole in the unreal is the real and reason is the hole in the real. Simply, unreals are holes in reason.
(Heidi & Hegel ain't got mystagogic shit on me!) :victory: — 180 Proof

:party: :fire: :clap:

Quite what ‘the uncreated’ is, then, is obviously an exceedingly delicate hermeneutical question, probably best ‘bracketed out’ rather than made subject of speculation. However it remains central to the whole tradition - if you go to sutta central and search for the unconditioned you will learn there are references throughout the literature. — Wayfarer

That's a tough one. I can only guess what this or that author intended. Personally I'd make sense of the unconditioned in terms of the 'system' as a whole. Within the system conditioned entities depend and are defined in terms of one another, but there's outside or beyond the system for it to depend on. How intelligible/useful this 'system' or 'the unconditioned' are is another issue. But roughly I can imagine a heightened state (achieved thru compassion and the labor of the concept) where the boundary between selves and conventional intrawordly objects (oh wait that includes selves?) vanish.

The reason madhyamika is not simply nihilism is that on the level of conventional existence, empirical facts are to be respected. However empirical objects of perception have no ultimate or independent existence, which is where it differs from scientific realism, which imbues objects with inherent existence. — Wayfarer

For me antifoundationalism != nihilism. Personally I don't embrace/defend scientific realism. Electrons are no more real or unreal than chairs. Also/or 'real' has no context-independent meaning.

But you still have to respect scientific facts. — Wayfarer

Sure. I'd say science is one of our best conventions.

I think the takeaway is that attaining ‘insight into emptiness’ requires, or indicates, a radical change of perspective, namely from that of the ‘uneducated worldling’ (putthajana) to the awakened perspective of the bodhisattva. At least, that is what all of the standard texts indicate. There’s a saying from a recent teacher, that compassion and wisdom (meaning, ‘realisation of emptiness’) are the two wings of a bird, both are required to take flight. — Wayfarer

I like the two-wings metaphor. As in the esotericism thread, we seem to differ in our attitude to the sage. I think critical thinking, which requires courage & compassion, is the path, but that the path doesn't lead to either a superhuman state and so to some unvarying intensity of compassion/insight.
I don't find an on/off notion of enlightenment plausible. Obviously my views could change.

But what I see on the surface at least (the passages I quoted), I also find in some of the critical, 'secular' 'Western' thinkers I already study. Of course it's not about the fame/authority of this or that author but the case they make.

He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it. — god must be atheist

Whence this power? It's not the average guy in the bar who knows about him, talks about him. It's skeptical, critical, egotistic, pugnacious foolosophers who grudgingly admire the slippery fucker.

:eyes: :death: :eyes:

.

If everything is contingent/conditioned, then what is its basis or foundation? If that question is situated in the tradition of Western metaphysics, or for that matter even in the context of Indian philosophy, it is a question that has been entertained for millenia, and remains current to this day. Seems to me that the notion of 'contingent' can't stand on its own, because contingency always implies something to be contingent on. — Wayfarer

I know this comment was not for me, but I think we can imagine a system of entities each depending on one another for their identity or meaning. In language, we have something like the meaning of one word being entangled in or dependent on the meaning of all the others. The edifice hovers or an abyss if you like. No particular entity bears the weight.

You mentioned Indian philosophy. Perhaps you had this in mind? I'm just looking into Nargarjuna, but he seems very familiar to me thru his similarity to thinkers I'm more familiar with.

begin quote

To say that all things are 'empty' is to deny any kind of ontological foundation; therefore Nāgārjuna's view is often seen as a kind of ontological anti-foundationalism[53] or a metaphysical anti-realism.[54]

Understanding the nature of the emptiness of phenomena is simply a means to an end, which is nirvana. Thus Nāgārjuna's philosophical project is ultimately a soteriological one meant to correct our everyday cognitive processes which mistakenly posits svabhāva on the flow of experience.

Nāgārjuna was also instrumental in the development of the two truths doctrine, which claims that there are two levels of truth in Buddhist teaching, the ultimate truth (paramārtha satya) and the conventional or superficial truth (saṃvṛtisatya). The ultimate truth to Nāgārjuna is the truth that everything is empty of essence,[59] this includes emptiness itself ('the emptiness of emptiness'). While some (Murti, 1955) have interpreted this by positing Nāgārjuna as a neo-Kantian and thus making ultimate truth a metaphysical noumenon or an "ineffable ultimate that transcends the capacities of discursive reason",[60] others such as Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield have argued that Nāgārjuna's view is that "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth" (Siderits) and that Nāgārjuna is a "semantic anti-dualist" who posits that there are only conventional truths.[60] Hence according to Garfield:

Suppose that we take a conventional entity, such as a table. We analyze it to demonstrate its emptiness, finding that there is no table apart from its parts […]. So we conclude that it is empty. But now let us analyze that emptiness […]. What do we find? Nothing at all but the table’s lack of inherent existence. […]. To see the table as empty […] is to see the table as conventional, as dependent.[61]
...
Nāgārjuna also taught the idea of relativity; in the Ratnāvalī, he gives the example that shortness exists only in relation to the idea of length. The determination of a thing or object is only possible in relation to other things or objects, especially by way of contrast. He held that the relationship between the ideas of "short" and "long" is not due to intrinsic nature (svabhāva). This idea is also found in the Pali Nikāyas and Chinese Āgamas, in which the idea of relativity is expressed similarly: "That which is the element of light ... is seen to exist on account of [in relation to] darkness; that which is the element of good is seen to exist on account of bad; that which is the element of space is seen to exist on account of form."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna

also consider

Fear of the corrosive effects of antifoundationalism was widespread in the late twentieth century, anticipating such things as a cultural meltdown and moral anarchy,[11] or (at the least) a loss of the necessary critical distance to allow for leverage against the status quo.[12] For Fish, however, the threat of a loss of objective standards of rational enquiry with the disappearance of any founding principle was a false fear: far from opening the way to an unbridled subjectivity, antifoundationalism leaves the individual firmly entrenched within the conventional context and standards of enquiry/dispute of the discipline/profession/habitus within which s/he is irrevocably placed.[13]

By the same token, however, the antifoundationalist hope of escaping local situations through awareness of the contingency of all such situations—through recognition of the conventional/rhetorical nature of all claims to master principles—that hope is to Fish equally foredoomed by the very nature of the situational consciousness, the all-embracing social and intellectual context, in which every individual is separately enclosed.[14]

Fish has also noted how, in contradistinction to hopes of an emancipatory outcome from antifoundationalism, anti-essentialist theories arguing for the absence of a transcontextual point of reference have been put to conservative and neo-conservative, as well as progressive, ends.[15] Thus, for example, John Searle has offered an account of the construction of social reality fully compatible with the acceptance stance of "the man who is at home in his society, the man who is chez lui in the social institutions of the society...as comfortable as the fish in the sea".[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-foundationalism

A category, such as a species of animal, is a population of unique members who vay from one another, with no fingerprint at their core. — Lisa Feldman Barrett, ‘How Emotions Are Made’

Bingo!


If you are interested in Saussure, then Culler's book has a great chapter that sums it up in 20 or 30 pages (pdf link in first post.) Glad you dropped in & hope to talk more.

There ARE outward sings of pain, produced by the individual and produced by those the individual sees. This is not a matter that can be ignored, and W forces us to ignore it. — god must be atheist

No, man, he's saying the meaning is out there in those signs (to put it crudely.)

HE IS AN IDIOT, A FOOL FIT TO BE TIED. I am actually getting angry at how people are fooled by this nincompoop. He has convincing power, and he takes total philosophically invalid advantage of it. — god must be atheist

:starstruck:

That's me, fooled happily by the charlatan.

Hey... it's just a thought experiment to make a point. No big deal.

The point is that 'pain' has a public function. It's caught up in the ways we interact. If someone tells me they have a 'headache,' then I give them an aspirin. Or a doctor might check for 'headaches' in an attempt to diagnose. The 'meaning' of 'headache' is the stuff we do interactively with words and deeds. 'Headache' cannot be anchored to private experience, because such experience, being private, is totally useless for explaining the social fact of language. Note that we don't have to assume 'private experience.' We just take the foggy concept and show that it fails on its own terms to do the job it's being asked to do, which is found meaning.

If you need to quit, do so. But if not, here's more.

The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. What am I to say about the word "red"?—that it means something 'confronting us all' and that everyone should really have another word, besides this one, to mean his own sensation of red? Or is it like this: the word "red" means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each person, it means something known only to him? (Or perhaps rather: it refers to something known only to him.) Of course, saying that the word "red" "refers to" instead of "means" something private does not help us in the least to grasp its function; but it is the more psychologically apt expression for a particular experience in doing philosophy. It is as if when I uttered the word I cast a sidelong glance at the private sensation, as it were in order to say to myself: I know all right what I mean by it.


Look at the blue of the sky and say to yourself "How blue the sky is!"—When you do it spontaneously—without philosophical intentions—the idea never crosses your mind that this impression of colour belongs only to you. And you have no hesitation in exclaiming that to someone else. And if you point at anything as you say the words you point at the sky. I am saying: you have not the feeling of pointing-into-yourself, which often accompanies 'naming the sensation' when one is thinking about 'private language'. Nor do you think that really you ought not to point to the colour with your hand, but with your attention. But don't we at least mean something quite definite when we look at a colour and name our colour-impression? It is as if we detached the colout-impression from the object, like a membrane. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.) But how is even possible for us to be tempted to think that we use a word to mean at one time the colour known to everyone—and at another the 'visual impression' which I am getting now"? How can there be so much as a temptation here? — PI

Okay. So I take that the quotes are from W. Please correct me if I am wrong. Now I'll read them, and reply in kind. — god must be atheist

Correct. They are from Wittgenstein.

... and someone along the way came and decided arbitrarily and because of his style that he is a genius.

Much like due to my style I come across as contrarian.

Style is everything. — god must be atheist

Style is fucking huge. I'm with you there. But not quite everything. I'm a contrarian too, not given to the admiration of others just because they are famous. No, ol' Wittgenstein had to impress me.

Wittgenstein didn't want to fuck up and make bold statements. It's more like he pops ten thousand balloons until you get the drift.

I asked myself: how can this be? I had to explain it somehow.

It came out as a porjecting. Yes. But what would you have done in my position? — god must be atheist

Hey, I think we all use folk-psychology in dealing with one another. So it's only a matter of using it on ourselves as well. As Gadamer says, interpretation is basically us revising our projections again and again until we stop needing to. That's yours of me, mine of you, and both of ours of Wittgenstein.... This is talked about earlier in the thread, btw.

Thanks for your magnanimity. — god must be atheist

Yours too.

I asked for a quote that links your opinion to W's world view as expressed by him; there is (supposedly) none. — god must be atheist

Well the texts are publicly available. I can't justify/defend my interpretation with any single quote taken out of context. That's part of the charm of W. He doesn't make grand statements for the most part. He gives us fragments and we put them together. I'm happy to keep showing them to you until a cumulative effect is or is not achieved.

Consider that I mostly dwell on this stuff over hundreds of posts.

I wish I could change my style, because it really hurts my cause. My cause is to state my opinions and to defend them. But people dismiss my opinions not on their inherent worth, but because how they are stated. — god must be atheist

FWIW, I see a certain 'arrogance' at times in thinkers I respect. It's not a deal-breaker.

Consider what you said:

until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius. — god must be atheist

I was responding to your psychoanalyzing of my view. No offense taken. Just pointing it out.

I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius. — god must be atheist

Honestly I think you are projecting here. While I agree that young men tend to take such thinkers as heroes and gurus, I ain't so young anymore. Like you, I have often wanted to dismiss difficult thinkers as over-rated charlatans, to save me the trouble of the cognitive dissonance in assimilating and criticizing their work.

In my book (no offense intended), arrogant disregard is the same kind of thing as hero worship...another form of bias that distorts interpretation. This is discussed in the posts above about Herder, a precursor to Witt in many ways.

The passage above my immediately prevous post, would be an excellent one to tackle, and I am glad you provided it. However, it is attributed to PI. Not to Wittgenstein. Please clarify before I would proceed to respond to it. — god must be atheist

PI with OC are two great texts of the 'later' Wittgenstein (his views evolved from the TLP, his young-man's work, interesting in its own right.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

I wish to see it if it exists, but until then I consider your POV a rationale, a rationalization of a cognitive dissonance between an opinion that W is an idiot, and that he can't be an idiot, due to emotional devotion to his imagined genius.

Once you can supply the evidence that your POV is valid, I will consider it. — god must be atheist

Welcome to the joys of interpretation! While I don't want anyone to miss out on what I consider good philosophy, it's not on me defend his reputation anymore than it is to defend Einstein's. Lots of smart people find him worth talking about and weaving in their worldviews/philosophies. Your view seems to imply that all of these smart people are duped while you are not. In your shoes, I'd be wary of how self-flattering such a view is. Because philosophy has such an indirect utility for most people in their daily lives, most people can afford to believe whatever they want to believe, because mostly nobody cares, as long as they punch the timeclock and not their wives.

My old man didn't like me reading philosophy books. He said he had his 'own' philosophy. What he didn't realize is that it was a mashup of stuff he saw on TV. We all mostly synthesize.

:smile:

Your and my opinions about Wittgenstein's utterances has only one difference, which is an interpretive difference: I see them as stupid, worthless and useless, and you see the same thing as works of a genius, valuable and making sense. — god must be atheist

:up:

Yeah I think Witt is a strong philosopher, one among many others. At this point I'm trying to draw all of their insights together.

Here's another good one.

"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'."—Well, let's assume the child is a genius and itself invents a name for the sensation! —But then, of course, he couldn't make himself understood when he used the word.—So does he understand the name, without being able to explain its meaning to anyone?—But what does it mean to say that he has 'named his pain'?—How has he done this naming of pain?! And whatever he did, what was its purpose?—When one says "He gave a name to his sensation" one forgets that a great deal of stagesetting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense. And when we speak of someone's having given a name to pain, what is presupposed is the existence of the grammar of the word "pain"; it shews the post where the new word is stationed. 258. Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation.——I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.—But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.—How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation—and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.—But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign.—Well, that is done precisely by the concentrating of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation.—But "I impress it on myself" can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connexion right in the future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can't talk about 'right'. Are the rules of the private language impressions of rules?— The balance on which impressions are weighed is not the impression of a balance.. "Well, I believe that this is the sensation S again."
...
What reason have we for calling "S" the sign for a sensation? For "sensation" is a word of our common language, not of one intelligible to me alone. So the use of this word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands.—And it would not help either to say that it need not be a sensation; that when he writes "S", he has something—and that is all that can be said. "Has" and "something" also belong to our common language.—So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.—But such a sound is an expression only as it occurs in a particular language-game, which should now be described. — PI

but he fails to see the bridge between language (or its representation) and meaning. — god must be atheist

He sees that bridge and blows it up. Consider that 'I' or 'ego' itself is caught up in the play of signs. He's not saying that signs are meaningless. He's showing us that we've been looking for the 'life' of the signs in the wrong place.

I will look for some good quotes for you to tackle.

He then proceeds that meaning to scribbles is given by adding other scribbles. HE COMPLETELY MISSES that there is a bridge there somewhere, that connects scribbles, in one form of another, to experience of a sentient being. He is stuck in the mud with his scribbles, scratching his head, how they can have meaning. And he massages his own un-understanding in such formative detail, in such refined language and bringing up such sophisticated associations, that his basic message, stupidity, does not get through to most readers. His basic stupidity lies, as mentioned, in the inadequacy to see that language is symbolic, human language is, and there has to be some sort of primary association between expressions of the symbolic language, and experience. — god must be atheist

From my POV, you are completely missing the point that Wittgenstein is pointing out how mistaken that admittedly intuitive-automatic view is.

If I say of myself that it is only from my own case that I know what the word "pain" means - must I not say the same of other people too? And how can I generalize the one case so irresponsibly?

Now someone tells me that he knows what pain is only from his own case! --Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by 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. — W

It's cool that you disagree with him. I think Wittgenstein is offensive to common sense, because he challenges it. He's revolutionary because so many philosophers just accept this 'common sense' and try to build on it, only to get their wheels stuck in the same mud.Your objections seem to be based on the intuition that meaning is 'really' in the private consciousness. You take what I'd call a methodological solipsism for granted. You inherit this Cartesian baggage as a truth, when it's only a useful but misleading fiction.

Note that you seemed to have switched from Wittgenstein is obviously right and boring to Wittgenstein is obviously wrong and stupid. Isn't that noteworthy?

That's not a quote from Witt. I quote lots of other folks too when I talk about a thinker, reeling in what seems illuminating.

But let's talk about your talk about it.

He fails to realize that there is a primary understanding one needs to apply to language, and which language applies to the person who understands it, and that is that a direct relationship exists between, say, a camel and and the word "camel". — god must be atheist

For the most part, language is not a nomenclature. I don't deny that 'camel' can summon up the image of a camel (in some vague sense), but as the beetle-in-the-box argument shows, what happens in the individual mind is useless where the study of social facts and public meaning are concerned.

"When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and I grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shewn by their bodily movements, as it were the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus, as I heard words repeatedly used in their proper places in various sentences, I gradually learnt to understand what objects they signified; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires."

These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the individual words in language name objects—sentences are combinations of such names.——In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word.If you describe the learning of language in this way you are, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like "table", "chair", "bread", and of people's names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself.

That philosophical concept of meaning has its place in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one can also say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours. Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with buildingstones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words "block", "pillar", "slab", "beam". A calls them out;—B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call.——Conceive this as a complete primitive language. 3. Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in many cases where the question arises "Is this an appropriate description or not?" The answer is: "Yes, it is appropriate, but only for this narrowly circumscribed region, not for the whole of what you were claiming to describe." It is as if someone were to say: "A game consists in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules . . ."—and we replied: You seem to be thinking of board games, but there are others. You can make your definition correct by expressly restricting it to those games. 4. Imagine a script in which the letters were used to stand for sounds, and also as signs of emphasis and punctuation. (A script can be conceived as a language for describing sound-patterns.)

Now imagine someone interpreting that script as if there were simply a correspondence of letters to sounds and as if the letters had not also completely different functions. Augustine's conception of language is like such an over-simple conception of the script.. If we look at the example in §i, we may perhaps get an inkling how much this general notion of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. — Witt

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf

He finishes by another blindingly obvious (and wrong) conclusion that meaning is just a different sound. — god must be atheist

I think the correct way to go here is not the reduction of meaning to sound but the recognition that meaningful sound is systematic, that meaning is (primarily) in the differences in the sounds and the different ways that such sounds are used in our lives. Very roughly...meaning is use is a social fact. It's not 'in here' but 'out there.' (Yes we have something like consciousness and feeling but these can't play the role that we think they can. They are private & ineffable by definition. As Ryle notes, they lead to epistemic apocalypse.)

I never read him. I can't read text, that is my folly. — god must be atheist

That's a tough situation. I'm sorry you've had to deal with it. I appreciate your honesty.

I ask you to give me any of Wittgenstein's quotes, and I show you how my GENERAL opinion of his utterances applies. — god must be atheist

This is a good one. It touches on some of the stuff I'm focusing on in the Saussure thread. I think Wittgenstein is looking at 'social facts.'

Frege ridiculed the formalist conception of mathematics by saying that the formalists confused the unimportant thing, the sign, with the important, the meaning. Surely, one wishes to say, mathematics does not treat of dashes on a bit of paper. Frege's ideas could be expressed thus: the propositions of mathematics, if they were just complexes of dashes, would be dead and utterly uninteresting, whereas they obviously have a kind of life. And the same, of course, could be said of any propositions: Without a sense, or without the thought, a proposition would be an utterly dead and trivial thing. And further it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs.

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

The mistake we are liable to make could be expressed thus: We are looking for the use of a sign, but we look for it as though it were an object co-existing with the sign. (One of reasons for this mistake is again that we are looking for a "thing corresponding to a substantive.")

The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language.

As a part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign. — W

In the Culler book, 'social facts' are stressed and Durkheim is presented as a similar thinker. Zooming out and thinking of social systems more generally helps me zoom back in to the social fact of speech-hearing.

Durkheim conceived of sociology as the scientific study of a reality sui generis, a clearly defined group of phenomena different from those studied by all other sciences, biology and psychology included. It was for these phenomena that Durkheim reserved the term social facts, i.e., "a category of facts which present very special characteristics: they consist of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him." Since these facts consisted of actions, thoughts, and feelings, they could not be confused with biological phenomena; but neither were they the province of psychology, for they existed outside the individual conscience. It was to define the proper method for their study that Durkheim wrote The Rules of Sociological Method (1895).

Durkheim was particularly concerned to distinguish social facts, which he sometimes described as "states of the collective mind," from the forms these states assumed when manifested through private, individual minds. This distinction is most obvious in cases like those treated in The Division of Labor -- e.g., customs, moral and legal rules, religious beliefs, etc. -- which indeed appear to have an existence independent of the various actions they determine. It is considerably less obvious, however, where the social fact in question is among those more elusive "currents of opinion" reflected in lower or higher birth, migration, or suicide rates; and for the isolation of these from their individual manifestations, Durkheim recommended the use of statistics, which "cancel out" the influence of individual conditions by subsuming all individual cases in the statistical aggregate.2 Durkheim did not deny, of course, that such individual manifestations were in some sense "social," for they were indeed manifestations of states of the collective mind; but precisely because they also depended in part on the psychological and biological constitution of the individual, as well as his particular circumstances, Durkheim reserved for them the term "socio-psychical," suggesting that they might remain of interest to the sociologist without constituting the immediate subject matter of sociology.3

It might still be argued, of course, that the external, coercive power of social facts is derived from their being held in common by most of the individual members of a society; and that, in this sense, the characteristics of the whole are the product of the characteristics of the parts. But there was no proposition to which Durkheim was more opposed. The obligatory, coercive nature of social facts, he argued, is repeatedly manifested in individuals because it is imposed upon them, particularly through education; the parts are thus derived from the whole rather than the whole from the parts. — link

https://durkheim.uchicago.edu/Summaries/rules.html

What I am saying about Wittgenstein IS very pertinent, and it is very pointed aimed at Wittgenstein and at Wittgenstein only. — god must be atheist

I believe you, but I don't think you made a case. As I see it, most people don't find Wittgenstein's points obvious. You called him a 'worthless two penny' thinker...which seems to imply that all the scholars of his work are misguided one penny thinkers. That comes off as arrogant.

The only kind of criticism that seems worth taking seriously is serious criticism, engagement with the details. I think we should give intellectual 'heroes' hell. Reputation doesn't earn a free pass.

Here's quoted stuff, evidence against the 'lack of reason' in non-Western foolosophy.


The Buddha's epistemology has been compared to empiricism, in the sense that it was based on experience of the world through the senses.[39][40] The Buddha taught that empirical observation through the six sense fields (ayatanas) was the proper way of verifying any knowledge claims. Some suttas go further, stating that "the All", or everything that exists (sabbam), are these six sense spheres (SN 35.23, Sabba Sutta)[41] and that anyone who attempts to describe another "All" will be unable to do so because "it lies beyond range".[42] This sutta seems to indicate that for the Buddha, things in themselves or noumena, are beyond our epistemological reach (avisaya).[43][opinion]

Furthermore, in the Kalama Sutta the Buddha tells a group of confused villagers that the only proper reason for one's beliefs is verification in one's own personal experience (and the experience of the wise) and denies any verification which stems from personal authority, sacred tradition (anussava) or any kind of rationalism which constructs metaphysical theories (takka).[44] In the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13), the Buddha rejects the personal authority of Brahmins because none of them can prove they have had personal experience of Brahman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_philosophy



Utilizing the Buddha's theory of "dependent arising" (pratitya-samutpada), Nagarjuna demonstrated the futility of [...] metaphysical speculations. His method of dealing with such metaphysics is referred to as "middle way" (madhyama pratipad). It is the middle way that avoided the substantialism of the Sarvastivadins as well as the nominalism of the Sautrantikas.

In the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, "[A]ll experienced phenomena are empty (sunya). This did not mean that they are not experienced and, therefore, non-existent; only that they are devoid of a permanent and eternal substance (svabhava) because, like a dream, they are mere projections of human consciousness. Since these imaginary fictions are experienced, they are not mere names (prajnapti)."[/quote]

Nāgārjuna's major thematic focus is the concept of śūnyatā (translated into English as "emptiness") which brings together other key Buddhist doctrines, particularly anātman "not-self" and pratītyasamutpāda "dependent origination", to refute the metaphysics of some of his contemporaries. For Nāgārjuna, as for the Buddha in the early texts, it is not merely sentient beings that are "selfless" or non-substantial; all phenomena (dhammas) are without any svabhāva, literally "own-being", "self-nature", or "inherent existence" and thus without any underlying essence. They are empty of being independently existent; thus the heterodox theories of svabhāva circulating at the time were refuted on the basis of the doctrines of early Buddhism. This is so because all things arise always dependently: not by their own power, but by depending on conditions leading to their coming into existence, as opposed to being.

Nāgārjuna means by real any entity which has a nature of its own (svabhāva), which is not produced by causes (akrtaka), which is not dependent on anything else (paratra nirapeksha).[50]

To say that all things are 'empty' is to deny any kind of ontological foundation; therefore Nāgārjuna's view is often seen as a kind of ontological anti-foundationalism[53] or a metaphysical anti-realism.[54]

While some (Murti, 1955) have interpreted this by positing Nāgārjuna as a neo-Kantian and thus making ultimate truth a metaphysical noumenon or an "ineffable ultimate that transcends the capacities of discursive reason",[60] others such as Mark Siderits and Jay L. Garfield have argued that Nāgārjuna's view is that "the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth" (Siderits) and that Nāgārjuna is a "semantic anti-dualist" who posits that there are only conventional truths.[60] Hence according to Garfield:

Suppose that we take a conventional entity, such as a table. We analyze it to demonstrate its emptiness, finding that there is no table apart from its parts […]. So we conclude that it is empty. But now let us analyze that emptiness […]. What do we find? Nothing at all but the table’s lack of inherent existence. […]. To see the table as empty […] is to see the table as conventional, as dependent.[61]



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagarjuna

.

The Master said, "Yu, shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it;-this is knowledge."

Tsze-kung asked what constituted the superior man. The Master said, "He acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions."

The Master said, "The superior man is catholic and not partisan. The mean man is partisan and not catholic."

The Master said, "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous."

The Master said, "It is virtuous manners which constitute the excellence of a neighborhood. If a man in selecting a residence does not fix on one where such prevail, how can he be wise?"

The Master said, "Those who are without virtue cannot abide long either in a condition of poverty and hardship, or in a condition of enjoyment. The virtuous rest in virtue; the wise desire virtue."

The Master said, "When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves."

The Master said, "The reason why the ancients did not readily give utterance to their words, was that they feared lest their actions should not come up to them."
— link

http://classics.mit.edu/Confucius/analects.1.1.html

The sign is arbitrary or convention. Much can be inferred from this 'first principle.'

The arbitrariness principle can be applied not only to the sign, but to the whole sign-system. The fundamental arbitrariness of language is apparent from the observation that each language involves different distinctions between one signifier and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'free') and between one signified and another (e.g. 'tree' and 'bush'). The signified is clearly arbitrary if reality is perceived as a seamless continuum (which is how Saussure sees the initially undifferentiated realms of both thought and sound): where, for example, does a 'corner' end? Commonsense suggests that the existence of things in the world preceded our apparently simple application of 'labels' to them (a 'nomenclaturist' notion which Saussure rejected and to which we will return in due course). Saussure noted that 'if words had the job of representing concepts fixed in advance, one would be able to find exact equivalents for them as between one language and another. But this is not the case' (Saussure 1983, 114-115; Saussure 1974, 116). Reality is divided up into arbitrary categories by every language and the conceptual world with which each of us is familiar could have been divided up very differently. Indeed, no two languages categorize reality in the same way. As John Passmore puts it, 'Languages differ by differentiating differently' (cited in Sturrock 1986, 17). Linguistic categories are not simply a consequence of some predefined structure in the world. There are no 'natural' concepts or categories which are simply 'reflected' in language. Language plays a crucial role in 'constructing reality'.
...
The principle of arbitrariness does not mean that the form of a word is accidental or random, of course. Whilst the sign is not determined extralinguistically it is subject to intralinguistic determination. For instance, signifiers must constitute well-formed combinations of sounds which conform with existing patterns within the language in question. Furthermore, we can recognize that a compound noun such as 'screwdriver' is not wholly arbitrary since it is a meaningful combination of two existing signs.
...
The arbitrariness principle does not, of course mean that an individual can arbitrarily choose any signifier for a given signified. The relation between a signifier and its signified is not a matter of individual choice; if it were then communication would become impossible. 'The individual has no power to alter a sign in any respect once it has become established in the linguistic community' (Saussure 1983, 68; Saussure 1974, 69). From the point-of-view of individual language-users, language is a 'given' - we don't create the system for ourselves. Saussure refers to the language system as a non-negotiable 'contract' into which one is born... The ontological arbitrariness which it involves becomes invisible to us as we learn to accept it as 'natural'.
...

Saussure added that 'any means of expression accepted in a society rests in principle upon a collective habit, or on convention - which comes to the same thing'

I think of something like an implicit metaphysics in every natural-historical language that chops up a (postulated) continuous reality in different ways. Even this 'processing' in terms of signifieds is arbitrary in the sense of contingent.

Some issues come to mind: if words like 'God' or 'reason' have no positive content but rather play their role in terms of their distance and difference from other terms, this suggests a limit on the kind of clarity we can hope to achieve. One traditional idea is that we know exactly what we are talking about, that we have 'direct access' to exact meaning and that it's only language-as-medium that introduces ambiguity. IMV, we think in signs, allowing for certain unimportant-here exceptions perhaps.

Here's a quote from the lecture notes (Saussure never wrote a book on his 'ontology' of language, but his Course (thru these notes) was influential.)

Everything that has been said up to this point boils down to this: in language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic difference that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. Proof of this is that the value of a term may be modified without either its meaning or its sound being affected, solely because a neighboring term has been modified (see p. 115).

But the statement that everything in language is negative is true only if the signified and the signifier are considered separately; when we consider the sign in its totality, we have something that is positive in its own class. A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass thought engenders a system of values; and this system serves as the effective link between the phonic and psychological elements within each sign. Although both the signified and the signifier are purely differential and negative when considered separately, their combination is a positive fact; it is even the sole type of facts that language has, for maintaining the parallelism between the two classes of differences is the distinctive function of the linguistic institution. — link

http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/saussure.htm

I think we shouldn't spend too much time on the wheel analogy. So far you have made only very general comments about Wittgenstein that could be aimed at pretty much anyone.


Descartes again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Descartes was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.

Hume again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Hume was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.

Kant again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Kant was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.

Hegel again very cleverly discovered the obviousity of the common wheel. You can't get out of your own mind obviously, whatever you study. This Hegel was nothing but an incredibly clever observer, student, and bard of the blindingly obvious. It's just that he used language that made the worthless insights he mustered to master seem incredibly clever and deep. He was a loser, if you ask me, a worthless, two-penny thinker.


Can you provide some more insight about Wittgenstein that suggests some familiarity with his work? Would you mind summarizing him (a challenge, I know)?

One of the noteworthy charms of Wittgenstein's work is that he gets us out of the methodological solipsism that runs from Descartes to Hegel. Actually Hegel does too on some interpretations, but Wittgenstein does it without any systematic baggage. In some ways his work is a set of counterexamples, evidence against various systems and perhaps the possibility of a crystalline system.

Thanks! I just returned and finished starting a thread on this. I hope to see you there.

Here's a bit from the post I mentioned, tweaked for context. I'm largely influenced by Saussure in what's expressed here. You might like his notion that language is form rather than substance.

For Saussure, both the signifier and the signified were purely 'psychological' (Saussure 1983, 12, 14-15, 66; Saussure 1974, 12, 15, 65-66). Both were form rather than substance:

A linguistic sign is not a link between a thing and a name, but between a concept and a sound pattern. The sound pattern is not actually a sound; for a sound is something physical. A sound pattern is the hearer's psychological impression of a sound, as given to him by the evidence of his senses. This sound pattern may be called a 'material' element only in that it is the representation of our sensory impressions. The sound pattern may thus be distinguished from the other element associated with it in a linguistic sign. This other element is generally of a more abstract kind: the concept.

Thus, for Saussure the linguistic sign is wholly immaterial - although he disliked referring to it as 'abstract' (Saussure 1983, 15; Saussure 1974, 15). The immateriality of the Saussurean sign is a feature which tends to be neglected in many popular commentaries. — link

But Saussure thought in terms of a system of differences.


We trade signs as if they encoded a 'meaning' or 'plaintext' that for us is infinitely intimate. You hear only the code that I am forced to use, but I gaze on pure 'intention' or crystalline meaning-stuff. In other words, the speaker is supposed (under normal or at least ideal conditions) to understand exactly what he means. Let's call this a mostly tacit default ontology. Perhaps we find this plausible because we can usually offer a replacement expression that does the same-enough job. 'It's raining.' 'Little drops of water are falling from the sky.' Those sentences (roughly) have the same 'meaning.' But some are tempted to leap from this use of the word to a mysterious ineffable meaning-stuff as its referent. We could instead use the metaphor of equivalence classes.

In mathematics, when the elements of some set S have a notion of equivalence (formalized as an equivalence relation) defined on them, then one may naturally split the set S into equivalence classes. These equivalence classes are constructed so that elements a and b belong to the same equivalence class if, and only if, they are equivalent. — wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_class

Saussure noted that his choice of the terms signifier and signified helped to indicate 'the distinction which separates each from the other' (Saussure 1983, 67; Saussure 1974, 67). Saussure stressed that sound and thought (or the signifier and the signified) were as inseparable as the two sides of a piece of paper (Saussure 1983, 111; Saussure 1974, 113). They were 'intimately linked' in the mind 'by an associative link' - 'each triggers the other' (Saussure 1983, 66; Saussure 1974, 66). Saussure presented these elements as wholly interdependent, neither pre-existing the other (Silverman 1983, 103). Within the context of spoken language, a sign could not consist of sound without sense or of sense without sound.
....
Louis Hjelmslev used the terms 'expression' and 'content' to refer to the signifier and signified respectively (Hjelmslev 1961, 47ff). The distinction between signifier and signified has sometimes been equated to the familiar dualism of 'form and content'. Within such a framework the signifier is seen as the form of the sign and the signified as the content. However, the metaphor of form as a 'container' is problematic, tending to support the equation of content with meaning, implying that meaning can be 'extracted' without an active process of interpretation and that form is not in itself meaningful (Chandler 1995 104-6). — link

https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/courses/BIB/semio2.htm
This is where equivalence classes become useful as a replacement for the container or encryption metaphor.

The most familiar equivalence class is Q. 1/2 ~ 2/4 ~ 4/8 ~ ... There is nothing 'behind' all these numbers that shines through them. Each is just as good a representative of the class as any of the others.

He writes: “The thought, in itself immaterial, clothes itself in the material garment of a sentence and thereby becomes comprehensible to us.

This is the metaphor of 'naked' thought in the 'clothing' of words, a tempting and dominant metaphor. But I see no necessity in this metaphor. Rather something like the reification of a equivalence class. Because one text is a translation of another, we imagine a third thing 'behind' both translations, the 'universal meaning' stripped of everything contingent.

I'm trying to get some passages from Culler's book on Saussure which drive home 'form rather than substance.' Cultures divide both the sound and concept 'continuums' into a system of differences differently. The 'ideal' universal culture is something like a fiction or goal.

The key question. for me is is how you understand the flow of experience moment moment to moment — Joshs

I wrote about this recently in the Blue Book thread:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/10703/wittgensteins-blue-brown-books-open-discussion/p2

I'm interested in the movement/delay of 'meaning' in general and as we hear/read a sentence in particular. Also interested in the 'materiality' of the signifier and in challenging the assumption that speech encodes material-independent 'meanings.' It's a 'continuous' approach both temporally, semantically, and in terms of "mind" and "matter." Speech is a kind of metaphorical music, profoundly in time or even as time.

To dig under what ought to be obvious but isn't is one important purpose of philosophy. — magritte

:up:
It's not so easy to take off glasses we don't know we are wearing. Gotta thank those who point it out. Ever seen Pleasantville? An optimistic reading is that philosophers are seeing in more colors than us, because we are stuck in B&W glasses we don't know we can take off, because we don't know we have them on the first place. (The contingent is mistaken for the necessary...or there's just knowledge too close, too tacit, to touch. Till they do. Then we can.)

This is an old but good point that may inspire some comments.

...if you don’t know English, and want to know what a cow is, you would have to look up “cow” in the dictionary. But under the entry “cow,” instead of finding a meaning that would satisfy your search for a meaning, since you don’t know English, you would only find a bunch of other sounds: Cow, The mature female of domestic cattle, or of other animals, as the whale, elephant, etc.

But in order to know the meaning of the sounds “cattle”, “whale”, and “elephant”, you would have to look up their meanings, their signifieds, but you would find only more lists of signifiers, more sounds! A whale is a large mammal that lives in the sea, but then what is a mammal, what is a sea….? ... Because every potential meaning turns out to be just another sound, searching for yet another potential meaning, one never reaches meaning—there is only an endless chain of sounds. — link

https://newderrida.wordpress.com/category/derrida-and-saussure/

This simple point gestures toward the 'abyss' that this system of ('meaningful') sounds 'hovers' over. It makes sense to me to think of a (vague) 'core' of the language, which we might call a 'soft' foundation.

The movement from one word to another in search of a final meaning can be thought of in terms of being put off, delayed, deferred. There's an analogous delay as we read a sentence and wait for its meaning to come into focus before its period. Saussure saw that speech is 'linear' (one sound after another in a chain) and 'in' time. I think of Kant's 'Time is the a priori formal condition of all appearances in general.' Or Eliot's " Words move, music moves / Only in time ." We might say 'consciousness is time,' ignoring what's still wrong in that. (As far as I can tell, it's all wrong. I mean it's all just blowing the horn about blowing the horn and striving hopelessly but fascinated against the limits of this instrument. )

In-the-way, the music of our mouthhorn (our foolosophical saxofoam) is 'meaningful' or has a 'dimension' that the saxophone doesn't. This metaphorical extra dimension seems to be (most importantly anyway) metaphor itself ('analogy as the core of cognition.')

Pardon the miss.

Linguistic form has nothing to do with representation. What is at stake is the specific organization of a linguistic sequence operating upon its auditive materiality. For Saussure, this means something that is determined by the fact that we speak within a temporality which makes our words possible. Linguistic form is the grammar of linguistic temporality, words following each others, rhythms, repetitions, pauses; the gestalt of what we hear displayed through the dimension of time. In short, something comparable to music.

Wittgenstein's notion of language as a technique makes perfect sense in this context. We have a form related to a sign-technique that must be regarded as a process; starting, going on, ending, making discourses or poems. But this is only possible through the ear of the other. This does not only mean that a linguistic occurence is something understood by the other. It also means that it must be related to comparable occurences in such a way that this relationship makes what we call a word something essentially repeated. A linguistic item in a sequence is a linguistic item if it can be repeated in other sequences. This is essentially because the existence of – let us say a word – is a relational existence in the sense that it gets its identity from the web of linguistic sequences and from its repetitions within them. This means that what is repeated is not an indentity – the same word. Every speaker says a word in slightly different ways and this implies that we have only variations and nothing but variation. Therefore, it is the variations that make the identity of a word and not an invariant or constant that the variations are supposed to manifest in the indvidual speech. To use Wittgenstein's term we can say that the variations hold family-resemblances to each other. The links between them are – so to say horizontal and comparative which means that these links are not explained by an identity on another level. Instead we have relations between variations – lines of variations. And this makes up the form of a language – the form being the systematicity of the variations. If we accept this, there is no essential difference between the individuality of my phrase the fact that I'm saying it – and the fact that it is understood by the other. For the individuation of what makes the words in what I say is at the same time the relations – the form – that makes us hear it as a linguistic sequence: The individualization of my utterance is at the same time what gives it its linguistic identity. Differences and variations are not parasitic to a language, do not threaten language. On the contrary, it is just what makes language possible. To say the opposite, would presuppose a code or an invariant which can explain variants and so called deviations; a standard or a normal language. But this is a political entity, not a linguistic entity. As Saussure has stressed, a language in this sense is a construction; there are only dialects and variations between dialects.

According to this point of view, a language cannot but change. Change and thereby history is not something external to it. A language cannot but be spoken in different ways and that means that it will also change because here there is no identity that is repeated or presupposed. This means, that with respect to language a form or a system cannot but change. But this change is a change without origin and without finality. The traditional opposition between system and history can therefore only be dissolved if we give up the metaphysics of history on the one hand and the metaphysics of the system on the other (the system being an universal atemporal order). This means that grammar is arbitrary – a grammar does change, but it does'nt have to change in a definite direction. Chance and order are two sides of the same coin. So the patterns of our language change, otherwise there would have been no language or a created artificial language. And they change because our words are not things and not something that can copy a model of some super-linguistic kind. But the word is not a nothing either; it consists in those auditive differences and variations forming the patterns of our language.

It is essential for such a pattern to be linked to time – time being just what makes a linguistic sequence possible. If you still beleive in a referent making the word what it is, this might be difficult to see. What is, then, the pattern of such a time-sequence? It is not causal in the sense that a word is an effect of the word preceeding it. It is not intentional in being linked to an intention in the speaking subject. It is not logical in the sense of giving the form of an inference. What we have is what I have tried to speak about – difficult as it is – grammatical or linguistic form. But here I cannot give you a clear-cut theory or a method that can formalize what I have called "form in language". Maybe such a form can only be shown in the use of language and that those who try to formalize it are trying to write down what can only be shown in what we say. So let me say the last sentence that I wrote in my abstract: What we hear we cannot write about in the same manner as we hear it. — Utaker

http://wab.uib.no/agora/tools/wab/collection-2-issue-1-article-8.annotate

A couple comments. For Saussure there's the sigifier (the 'sound image') and the signified (concept). I find it fascinating that the sound image is ideal. As Utaker says, we don't say the 'same' word in the same way. Even a single individual never pronounces the 'same' word the same way twice. But we do have in written language the same word ('cat' is 'cat' is 'cat') which of course will differ in its meaning effect in different contexts. Perhaps we use 'cat' to name what we conceive of as an equivalence class, which should be thought of here as having no center, no prototype.

Utaker doesn't come out and say it, but I think he dances around one of my favorite ideas, which is something like: living words are 'all surface.' Wee donut meow what we are barking about. We trade signs as if they encoded a meaning or plaintext that for us is infinitely intimate. 'You hear only the code that I am forced to use, but I gaze on pure 'intention' or crystalline meaning-stuff.' In other words, the speaker is supposed (under normal or at least ideal conditions) to understand exactly what he means. Perhaps we find this plausible because we can usually offer a replacement expression that does the same-enough job. 'It's raining.' 'Little drops of water are falling from the sky.' Clearly 'meaning' is a useful as a word here. Those sentences (roughly) have the same 'meaning.' But some are tempted to leap from this useful equivalence class (as something like a meaning) to a mysterious something that both sentences encode.

Let's call this a mostly tacit default ontology. Because it's tacit, we don't think to examine it. It's obvious in some vague way that there's this stuff called meaning, as if meaning were a musical score and the speech act a performance (so we say, trapped by a picture, a metaphor.)
This is like thinking that 1/2 and 4/8 both encode the same inexpressible something, simply because they are in the same equivalence class. To be sure, language is messier than Q, and 'equivalence class' is already an imperfect metaphor when applied to it, tho I do think it's one rung up at least from 'hidden essence.'

I'm thinking in terms of a 'meaningful materiality' that can only falsely (if conveniently) be split into an arbitrary token/signifier and a concept/signified This is not my idea. It's already in Saussure. The image is two sides of the same page or two faces of the same coin. A useful lie?