deleted by myself.

I, perhaps, suffer from the opposite problem where everything in the discussion remains where it last stopped.

Responding to your added text, the idea of transjective constituents would count as antithetical to what Gerson required.

I recognize an archeological perspective in Wittgenstein, using language to uncover experiences we do not have a clear view of. That element seems to make the boundary between the personal and the social more arbitrary. The distinction serves some purposes but conceals others.

I don't offer that as a rebuttal to your description of the work as a moment of philosophical history. But it does leave out what I find most interesting. We do not know what we are doing.

It is funny to hear the self-identified champion for Trump complain about the nefarious consequences of excessive litigation.

I have seen bad faith actions in U.S. corporate culture.

Some of it happened in the context of managers competing for resources. But they are limited if they burn those resources at the same time.

Then there are patterns of not compensating labor and production. The latter, though, has the effect of poisoning the water. Cats who do that either have to relocate or fold their operation into another one. NYC construction has a long institutional memory.

We discussed the activity of mind in relation to individuals two years ago. I had drawn the distinction between Plotinus' and Aristotle's views of the soul in this comment. I replied to your comment about personal identity here.

The different views of the soul shape how one is to understand hylomorphism. The role of universals as a cause was addressed earlier in this discussion by Fooloso4 when he said:

The central question of the Metaphysics is the question of being, or ousia. Being is not a universal.

Again, thinghood [ousia] is what not attributed to any underlying thing, but the universal is always attributed to some underlying thing.
(1038b) — Metaphysics

I responded to that by noting the limit of the universal in revealing the nature of things that come into being. The limit puts us at a greater distance from the life of forms. The relationship between actual and potential being is something that can be conceived through analogy but not as something known as itself.

Well, from what I have observed in the world of work and personal interactions, little else matters.

It seems to me that Gerson is not assuming a unity in what he opposes. I have understood your critique to be different, namely the claim that he mistakenly assumes the unity of what he proposes (e.g. Aristotle's inclusion). UR is a (overly?) complex thesis, but given that it consists of five "anti's" I don't think it envisions a unified opposition. — Leontiskos

Leaving aside my (or other people's) objections to Gerson's idea of Ur-Platonism, Gerson certainly seems to group the 'naturalists' as unified in their opposition to what he supports:

In other words, Platonism (or philosophy) and naturalism are contradictory positions. Someone who recoils from naturalism burdens herself with all the elements of Platonism; conversely, someone who rejects one or another of these elements will find herself sooner rather than later in the naturalist’s camp, assuming, of course, that consistency is a desideratum. If I am right, the history of modern philosophy has been mostly the history of misguided attempts at compromise among Platonists and naturalists. They have been doomed efforts to ‘have one’s cake and eat it, too’. — Gerson, Platonism and Naturalism

But I take your point that a collection of five "anti's" has problems asserting a clear thesis. That highlights a difference with other critiques of the modern era.

And these criteria are not individual (psychological, or “self”) interests (or feelings, being persuaded), but all our history of human lives of distinguishing and identifying and judging, i.e., what is essential to us about a practice, the various reasons that count with/to it. — Antony Nickles

The difference between psychology and philosophy is expressed this way in Philosophy of Psychology:

113. I observe a face, and then suddenly notice its likeness to another.
I see that it has not changed; and yet I see it differently. I call this expe-
rience “noticing an aspect”.
114. Its causes are of interest to psychologists.
115. We are interested in the concept and its place among the concepts
of experience. — Philosophy of Psychology - a Fragment

That places the two activities in closer contact than the sharp lines drawn in Tractatus.

4.1121 Psychology is no more closely related to philosophy than any other natural science.
5.641 What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that ‘the world is my world’.
The philosophical self is not the human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world—not a part of it.
Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the self in a non-psychological way. — ibid.

But the remark about causes in PoP 114 does show a continuity with the limits of induction laid out in Tractatus:

6.363 The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences.
6.3631 This procedure, however, has no logical justification but only a psychological one.
It is clear that there are no grounds for believing that the simplest eventuality will in fact be realized. — ibid.

These approaches to experience are an exploration of "the world is my world". I don't understand what you mean by "our history of human lives" in the context of the distinction made by Wittgenstein.

I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. — Antony Nickles

That is a predominantly psychological observation. Where does the philosophy start? Or not?

Before going into the details of what Aristotle said or did not say, I would like to think about Rorty as the poster child for what Gerson militates against. Rorty is baldly "historicist" in his description of the 'end of philosophy'. I agree with Gerson that Rorty is too general and reductive in how the practice is conceived. But is Rorty the best exemplar of what Gerson opposes? I have been questioning the unity imparted by Gerson upon classical texts in previous discussions. The assumed unity of what is being opposed by Gerson needs some consideration.

Taken too broadly, this battle of the books will make no distinction between the differences between different models. To pluck out one among many, will the argument about what is innate versus what is developed through events in life hinge only upon the categories by which they are described? Or will the process lead to discoveries yet unknown by studying them?.

That prompts the question of how Aristotle was searching for something new or not. And that is different from asking how a set of propositions, defended (and opposed) centuries later, relates to contemporary activities.

In regards to the problem of 'totalizing' propositions, there is an interesting historical comment made in the Tractatus:

6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.

And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. — ibid.

This supports my previous contention that choosing not to couch his arguments in the context of other writings does not mean he was unaware of them. The discussion of solipsism, for example, surely sounds like a debate with Kant, even though it is not presented that way.

When one goes to the first page of the search for Gerson, the comments I made there are some arguments against his view. Further in the past, I expressed differences with Gerson's interpretation of De Anima unrelated to this thesis.

As time has passed, I have been thinking about his thesis as a "philosophy of history" that searches text to find the steps he is looking for. Up to now, I was mostly approaching it as a competing interpretation of the text.

I will think about how to expand upon the historicist angle.

We have disagreed over Gerson in the past. As a devoted student of Plotinus, I cannot fault his view of Plato since Gerson follows Plotinus' reading.

But I object to Gerson's picture of Aristotle as an anti-naturalist. It elides Plotinus' criticism of Aristotle.

Gerson's version of materialism ignores the limits of the universal that Aristotle discusses in the Metaphysics, which my quote above is taken from.

This is a sharp contrast from the language of "participating in Forms." As he says a little further:

And in general it follows—if the human |1038b30| and whatever is said of things in that way are substance—that none of the things in their account is substance of any of them or is separate from them or in something else. I mean, for example, that there is not some animal—or any other of the things in the account—beyond the particular ones. — Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1038b30, translated by CDC Reeve

This focus on the limits of what can be known through distinctions of kinds is evident in the discussion of actual being contrasted with potential or capacity:

Activity, then, is the existence of the thing not in the way in which we say that it exists potentially. And we say, for example, that Hermes exists potentially in the wood and the half-line in the whole, because it could be abstracted from it, and also we say that even someone who is not contemplating is a scientific knower if he is capable of contemplating. And by contrast we say that other things exist actively. What we wish to say is clear from the particular cases by induction, |1048a35| and we must not look for a definition of everything, but be able to comprehend the analogy, namely, that as what is building is in relation to what is capable of building, and what is awake is in relation to what is asleep, |1048b1| and what is seeing is in relation to what has its eyes closed but has sight, and what has been shaped out of the matter is in relation to the matter, and what has been finished off is to the unfinished. Of the difference exemplified in this analogy let the activity be marked off by the first part, the potentiality by the second. |1048b5| But things are said to actively be, not all in the same way, but by analogy—as this is in this or to this, so that is in that or to that. For some are as movement in relation to a capacity [or a potential], and the others as substance to some sort of matter. — ibid. 1048a30

I appreciate your willingness to continue the conversation. I apologize for my intemperate comment.

If I can pull together a response, I will put it in your thread since this comment is a continuation of what is said there.

What is your native language?

This sounds like an AI generated thing.

I am challenging your description of what the writing is about. If it is not worthy, just ignore it.

Where does he say all propositions are language?
They all are language, of course.
But your reading of "domains" is not in the text.

That statement does not say:

science is a smaller domain within the larger domain of possible natural language — 013zen

Witt does not limit what can be said to the domain of science, but rather science is a smaller domain within the larger domain of possible natural language. — 013zen

Which statements support this interpretation?

Whether or not that is the case, instead of wasting time telling me that so and so is misunderstanding him, let’s reveal the difference in underlying metaphysical commitments that separate your reading from mine. — Joshs

In my various disagreements, they have mostly been made as understanding the text differently than what was offered by others.

Your approach of placing x in a context before discussing x is itself a proposition. And open to challenge, like other propositions.

I readily admit my view is the confluence of education, experience, and personal preferences.

There are many ways to live a good, flourishing life, but the life of contemplation is highest and most divine. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Metaphysics connects the concerns stated in Nichomachean Ethics and Politics by asking if it is wrong to pursue the primary causes:

{6} What in fact happened is witness to this. For it was when pretty much all the necessities of life, as well as those related to ease and passing the time, had been supplied that such wisdom began to be sought. So clearly we do not inquire into it because of its having another use, but just as a human |982b25| being is free, we say, when he is for his own sake and not for someone else, in the same way we pursue this as the only free science, since it alone is for its own sake. It is because of this indeed that the possession of this science might be justly regarded as not for humans, since in many ways the nature of humans is enslaved, so that, according to Simonides, “a god alone can have this |982b30| privilege,” and it is not fitting that a human should not be content to inquire into the science that is in accord with himself. If, then, there is something in what the poets say, and jealousy is natural to the divine, it would probably occur in this case most of all, |983a1|and all those who went too far [in this science] would be unlucky. The divine, however, cannot be jealous—but, as the proverb says, “Bards often do speak falsely.” Moreover, no science should be regarded as more estimable than this. — Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982b24, translated by CDC Reeve

The search for causes is theological in the context of how it challenges other views of what our place is as humans. Asking what is good by nature is at odds with other ideas of justice.

If one takes your approach, no person is speaking for themselves in response to the text but are parroting "so and so's" who speak for others. That means I am not speaking for myself but advancing someone else's view.

So, the humility you are asking from me is a keeping of a gate. And you have shopped out the work to a contractor.

This, too, fills in a space left empty by Wittgenstein. It mischaracterizes the role of "forms of life." The work does not mark out what a "legitimate role" is.

A few philosophers, we may admit, are “like savages, primitive people, who hear the expressions of civilized men, and then draw the queerest conclusions from it”. (PI 194) But most of them are not. They are, rather, contributors to the progress of civilization.

Rorty supplies additions to what was written that are sharply at odds with other ways to read those words. I don't understand Wittgenstein to be denigrating the role of the philosopher in PI 194. It is an expression of humility toward what has been created around the philosopher. If all the problems of philosophy are without value, then one should stop. And yet Wittgenstein is out there digging in ancient grounds.

Rorty’s analysis of Wittgenstein’s peculiar use of the word philosophy may go some way toward appreciating the basis of his lack of interest in its history. — Joshs

Wittgenstein does not place himself in the narrative of the philosophy of history by means of talking about it. Concluding that means he had no interest in it is prejudicial. That suggests the absence of word on the matter was not intended but a condition of his times, or something.

I disagree. I need time to frame my rebuttal.

What does the opposite of an obsession with language look like?

Interesting. The text does not follow you to your conclusion.

I will ponder upon it.

What do you make of the following?

6.4 All propositions are of equal value.
6.41 The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value.
If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental.
What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental — ibid.

That view is distant from visions of discourse defined solely by use or general purpose.

That is an interesting observation.

Will think about.

He also believed early on that any philosophy that wasn’t linguistic analysis to be a criminal waste of effort but here he was wrong as he later softened his position. — kindred

That is one interpretation. There are others. The statement "purely linguistic" indicates a particular point of view.

Are you proposing that is a self evident component of the text?

If all that is a side track, what is the main path? What is supposed to be studied?

What examples of this sidestepping attract your notice?

Yours is a fair representation of what Heidegger was about.

Where does an opposing view start? A rebuttal of a narrative? A different frame of reference?

Well, that is proof of my charge that there is nothing there to challenge you as a philosopher.

Heads you win, tails you lose.

From what I understand, Wittgenstein did not want to participate in that conservation the same way others did.

The diffuse quality you object to is different from the broad reflection upon what is happening in view of what has happened. History, by any other name.

The broad difference in our reading is whether a consideration is being opened up or closed off.

If nothing is at stake in considering differing points of view. If Wittgenstein is truly a valueless cipher, then he should be ignored. By you and me.

If both sides of the coin are different kinds of irrelevance, then the discussion is meaningless.