It is reassuring to know that we have saved addition from Kripke's skeptic ... at least for the time being. — Fooloso4

Ha ha! Yea. Except it wasn't addition that was in danger. :wink:

On page 11, Kripke talks about the criteria the wanted "meaning fact" would have to meet:


"In the discussion below the challenge posed by the sceptic
takes two forms. First, he questions whether there is any fact
that I meant plus, not quus, that will answer his sceptical
challenge. Second, he questions whether I have any reason to
be so confident that now I should answer '125' rather than '5'.
The two forms of the challenge are related. I am confident that
I should answer '125' because I am confident that this answer
also accords with what I meant. Neither the accuracy of my
computation nor of my memory is under dispute. So it ought
to be agreed that ifl meant plus, then unless I wish to change
my usage, I am justified in answering (indeed compelled to
answer) '125', not '5'. An answer to the sceptic must satisfy
two conditions. First, it must give an account of what fact it is
(about my mental state) that constitutes my meaning plus, not
quus. But further, there is a condition that any putative
candidate for such a fact must satisfy. It must, in some sense,
show how I am justified in giving the answer '125' to '68+57'.
The 'directions' mentioned in the previous paragraph, that
determine what I should do in each instance, must somehow
be 'contained' in any candidate for the fact as to what I meant.
Otherwise, the sceptic has not been answered when he holds
that my present response is arbitrary. Exactly how this
condition operates will become much clearer below, after we
discuss Wittgenstein's paradox on an intuitive level, when we
consider various philosophical theories as to what the fact that
I meant plus might consist in. There will be many specific
objections to these theories."

So

1. We need a fact that explains why I'm compelled to answer 125.

2. We need a fact that contains the "directions."

It goes like this:

This challenge comes from Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982). Note that Kripke advises against taking it as an attempt to correctly interpret Wittgenstein (which is a convoluted statement considering the nature of the challenge), but rather it's a problem that occurred to him while reading Wittgenstein. This post is the challenge in my words:

We start with noting that there is a number so large, you've never dealt with it before, but in our challenge, we'll just pick 57. You've never dealt with anything over that. You and I are sitting with a skeptic.

I ask you to add 68+57.

You confidently say "125."

The skeptic asks, "How did you get that answer?"

You say "I used the rules of addition as I have so often before, and I am consistent in my rule following."

The skeptic says, "But wait. You haven't been doing addition. It was quaddition. When you said plus, you meant quus, and: x quus y = x+y for sums less than 57, but over that, the answer is always 5. So you haven't been consistent. If you were consistent, you would have said "5.""

Of course you conclude that the skeptic is high and you berate him. He, in turn, asks you to prove him wrong. Show some fact about your previous usage of "plus" that demonstrates that it wasn't "quus." — frank

:up:

So if up until we get to this number, which as far as we know no one has ever encountered, there is no discernible difference between plus and quus and puus. The practice is the same. What then is the skeptical objection? — Fooloso4

That there is no fact about which rule you were following.

I am sitting down, frank. You might want to give your imagination a rest for a while because your projections are becoming commonplace. — NOS4A2

My projections have always been commonplace I'll have you know.

YOUR SOURCE states that reducing biogenic carbon is one of the most cost effective ways to reduce global warming — EricH

You guys aren't talking about the same thing, Eric. His source claims that there's an opportunity to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere if we reduce the methane emissions from livestock farming. He hasn't contested that. He's just saying that as it is, (probably more so in his country where farming isn't as inefficient as it is here) livestock farming is net-zero because the CO2 the cows put out is reabsorbed by the plants they eat, so it's a cycle.

You're talking about a different issue: which is that we can go beyond net-zero and make farming net-negative. The plants the cattle and sheep eat will have to absorb CO2 that's from somewhere other than farming. Like from your gas tank. See?

I'm gonna need you to sit down, take a breath, listen to this video, and realize that everything is going to be ok...

It does occur to me to say that I'm relying a lot on the SEP article as I read along. It gives a broader context than I would have on my own. A deeper look at the PLA is also a good idea.

Murphy's law says that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. — Agree to Disagree

Good ole Murphy. But necessity is the mother of invention. I wouldn't rely on good intentions. Most good intentions are a veil behind which lies the same old greedy buttheadedness. You have to give up on the goal to finally realize the ends don't justify the means. It's a Protestant principle. Do they have Protestants where you are? :razz:

As long as we are dealing with quantities less than this imaginary number that has not been dealt with before, then there are a multitude of rules we might invent that we could say are being adhered to. It is only when we encounter this number that we can say say that what follows is or is not arithmetic, for the rules of arithmetic do not allow that two positive integers added together will be less than either one. — Fooloso4

That's correct.

seems like you're just ignoring the whole section where I argue that addition generally solves the sorts of problems I use it to solve, even for numbers > 57. — flannel jesus

In the challenge, you've never dealt with numbers above 57. Addition and quaddition give the same answers up to that point. The question is: what fact would show us that you were adding and not quadding?

If someone is going to tell me what's in my mind - and telling me I've been using quaddition instead of addition is doing just that - then they should have a good reason for believing that. — flannel jesus

If I could give you a fact about which rule you were following, then the challenge would fail. I think I need to flesh out the criteria a proposed fact has to meet in order to crash the challenge. I've just been busy lately. Need to collect the army of brain cells.

The big difference between you and me Frank, is that you are an optimistic pessimist, and I am a pessimistic optimist. — Agree to Disagree

Wow! I think that's actually true about me. I accept death. It would take a while to explain why, but I'm ok with oblivion. It's from the door to oblivion that you can see how beautiful it all really is.

How are you a pessimistic optimist?

if I'm disregarding the obvious silliness of the whole thing — flannel jesus

I'm finding it to be pretty mind blowing, but I can see how it would seem silly to some.

Quaddition doesn't generally solve the sorts of problems I've thus far been using addition to solve, so no, I haven't been doing that. — flannel jesus

In the challenge, addition and quaddition produce the same results up to 57, and that's as far as you've ever gone. If there is no fact about which one you were doing all this time, then it shows that if meaning arises from rule following, there is no meaning. That's the crazy part.

The country that I live in is very efficient at producing lamb and beef, I am not sure if this is totally true, but I read once that our lamb and beef has a lower carbon footprint even when it is flown to the other side of the world, than the lamb and beef produced locally there.

And our government here wants to cut back our lamb and beef production to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement. They seem to think that it is better for other places to produce lamb and beef locally with a huge carbon footprint, rather than use our lamb and beef with a smaller carbon footprint. — Agree to Disagree

And that's just wrong. If you're very efficient, then you're a model for everyone else to follow. Not only are you helping the climate by being so efficient, your meat is healthier than what you'd get elsewhere.

Can you see why the problem of global warming won't get solved? — Agree to Disagree

It won't be solved by humans as they are now. I agree with that. We can change though. We can morph into a species that reacts intelligently. I'm not guaranteeing that will happen, I'm just saying that we have a history of being incredibly adaptable. It's possible.

Kripke's skepticism is based on his assumption that there must be some fact independent of and other than the fact of the practice of addition. — Fooloso4

He grants that there's such a thing as the practice of addition. He's asking for a fact that shows you've actually adhered to this practice as opposed to the practice of quaddition.

You chose 57, but 59 would have been better because the number after 59 is in fact 1:00. — Hanover

:lol:

If we're dealing in synthetic truths, we see the same thing. The rules governing planetary travel show a predictable course and the coordinates can be predicted so that it would appear which number would follow next, until something interferes with the travel. Would we then say we're not following the word game because the next in sequence wasn't predictable from the last in that one instance? — Hanover

For Kripke's challenge, we want a fact that shows intentional rule following. This entails justification and correctness. We usually wouldn't look for that kind of rule following in a planet because we imagine they just blindly do what they're going to do and we identify a structure in it. We then use that historic structure to predict where it's headed (which is what technical analysis of a market is, btw.)

An example of a fact that might work is dispositionality: which says it's a fact about the world that you have a predisposition to answer "125" instead of "5". That kind of thing.

One thing to consider is that not all beef and dairy production is the same. American production (and anywhere else that's been bullied by Americans) is not particularly efficient. A lot of pesticide and petroleum based fertilizer has been used. Corn production goes into beef, which again, isn't an efficient way to feed cattle. So if your local beef production is efficient, you may find that you're talking apples and oranges with an American. See what I'm saying?

I wrote a simple program for my computer, following the rules of arithmetic originating with the principle of succession from set theory. When I ask the program to add two numbers it follows the rule I have instilled. — jgill

That's wonderful. There's probably a calculator program already on there, though. See if you can find it. :cheer:

Kripke poses the challenge:

Who is to say that this [quus] is not the function previously meant by '+'? (9)

The answer is simple: the rules of arithmetic. We either follow them correctly or we do not. — Fooloso4

The challenge is to point to some fact that shows which rule you were following in the past. Remember, the challenge is not about epistemology. It's not about how we know what rule you were following. It's conclusion, and the one Kripke doesn't see Wittgenstein ever ruling out is this: there was no rule following. If you disagree, he's asking you to prove it.

This is not an exegesis of Wittgenstein. It's not an attempt to correctly capture what he thought out of the elusive text he wrote. This thread is about considering a Kripkean challenge.

Bacteria that decompose methane into fertilizer and tofu.

Just kidding, it's not tofu, it's some kind of edible sludge.

that's roughly the story of John Chau in 2018, just not Africa but the Sentinelese. So, not hypothetical. — jorndoe

I think that's the guy I was thinking of.

Surely the only thing you need to prove historically that you weren't quadding is to show any instance where you've added two numbers > 57, right? — flannel jesus

Yes, but in the thought experiment, you've never done that. The idea is that in real life there's a number you've never added up to before. For the sake of presenting the challenge, we just pick 57.

If I've done proofs via induction using addition, doesn't this show that I've taken addition all the way to the infinite in the past? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think so, but in the challenge, you've never added numbers up to above 57.

That or I smugly pull out a crumpled sheet of paper from my pocket with the Peano Axioms written on them. I inform the skeptic that, as a good positivist, I only preform arithmetic by starting from this sheet and working up from there. "Show me how it is possible to derive quusing from these axioms and I will accept your proposition." — Count Timothy von Icarus

He grants that math has specified rules, but is there a fact that shows you're following those rules every time to add? Do you really take the sheet out?

Still, I get the point. Defining systems only in terms of past use seems to miss something. — Count Timothy von Icarus

He sees it as an outcome of the private language argument. This is the PDF text if you become fascinated enough to read it. :grin:

Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language

Why it helps to have a weak sense of identity:

You know how there was this American missionary who decided to bring the faith to a small island off the coast of Africa? It was an area where there were no police, there was no government, and no law. People told the missionary not to go because the natives would kill him.

He was like, "No, I have love in my heart, and these people will see into my soul and understand that I'm coming to help them. He was practically glowing with his bright pearlescent halo as he set out alone in a canoe to save some souls.

They killed him.

It's good to try to look at the world through other people's eyes, but if you find that you don't have the experiences necessary to do that, at least recognize that the basic trust necessary for human interaction is not built by beaming your righteous heart out at the world you want to save. Sometimes you have to notice what other people need in order to trust you. If you're too bound up in your ego to look outward, you may end up destroying any chance of trust (like by insisting that in your flesh and bones you believe the ends justify the means, that's a bowling ball into trust.)

it is because of simple accounting. — Agree to Disagree

I don't know, accounting is pretty complicated. :razz:

The same is true of a "farm". In the long run the farm captures carbon atoms from the atmosphere (or has them delivered in other forms e.g. grains to feed the cows). It outputs carbon atoms in a variety of ways (crops, fruit, vegetables, milk, meat (processed cows), etc). The farms biogenic carbon cycle must balance. — Agree to Disagree

The whole planet's carbon cycle has to balance because of gravity. :grin:

:smile: :up:

But the articulation between language games is a topic of some considerable complexity. It's all that incommensurability stuff and the very idea of a conceptual scheme I keep ranting on about. IS that where you are headed with your thread? — Banno

Not really. I was just pondering Kripke's skeptical challenge. It's had me reaching around to get my bearings. :razz: Thanks for your help!

Ok, then in contrast, true and false are moves within some language games. — Banno

Exactly!

The looming issue is this: when the ancient Greeks wondered whether the world is made of fire or water, were they engaged in a language game? Or were they beyond the limits of language? It appears that the context for their discussion is somewhere outside the world, outside of time, in short, outside of everything. So was it nonsense?

And with this question in mind, we come back to PI itself. What of the concept of a language game? What's the context for this discussion? Where are we when we have a vantage point on language use? Is it nonsense?

So roughly, nonsense is the stuff that happens between language games, or when terms from one are inexplicably applied to another, or when grammar is stretched beyond recognition. — Banno

And that makes sense. In fact, it makes more sense than the PI itself. Non-Pyrrhonian interpretations fill in blanks with ideas that aren't there explicitly.

Yeah, sure. As time goes on the interpretations of Witti become increasingly distorted. I think the Pyrrhonian reading misses much of what he had to say. Those who worked with him do not adopt it. — Banno

There aren't any interpretations that aren't controversial though. It's interesting that in this case you emphasize age as the guide. You usually poo poo older philosophy and favor newer.

But what counts as false and what counts as nonsense will depend on the game being played.

So what is the outcome if you say that talking pots are nonsense, as opposed to saying that it is false? It depends on how the games are set up. — Banno

That's cool. There's another way to interpret it though.

Along these lines, two overlapping distinctions concerning how to read Philosophical Investigations have arisen: the resolute–substantial distinction, and the Pyrrhonian–non-Pyrrhonian distinction. In general, the resolute and Pyrrhonian readings make Wittgenstein out to be an anti-philosopher, one who is not offering positive philosophical theses to replace false ones; rather, his goal is to show the nonsensical nature of traditional philosophical theorizing. It is this goal that is partly responsible for the unique style of Philosophical Investigations (its dialogical and, at least at times, anti-dogmatic, therapeutic character). On the substantial and non-Pyrrhonian readings, Wittgenstein is not only presenting a method for exposing the errors of traditional philosophers, but also showing how philosophy should rightly be done and thereby offering positive philosophical views, views which must often be inferred or reconstructed from an elusive text.

There is neither a single resolute/Pyrrhonian nor a single substantial/non-Pyrrhonian reading of Wittgenstein. Moreover, there is an important difference between the resolute–substantial and Pyrrhonian–non-Pyrrhonian distinctions. The former distinction arises from a continuing debate on how to read Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, both on its own and in relation to Philosophical Investigations (see, e.g., Conant 2004 and Mulhall 2007), and is associated with the so-called New Wittgensteinians (see, e.g., Crary and Read 2000). The Pyrrhonian and non-Pyrrhonian discussion is to be found, for example, in Fogelin (1994), Sluga (2004), and Stern (2004, 2007), and concerns the ways in which Wittgenstein might be considered as writing in the tradition of the ancient Pyrrhonian sceptics, who were philosophically sceptical about the very possibility of philosophy (see Fogelin 1994, pp. 3ff and 205ff). These distinctions cut across the distinction between Orthodox and Kripkean non-orthodox readings of the text: both Orthodox and Kripkean non-orthodox interpreters have tended to offer substantial or non-Pyrrhonian readings of Wittgenstein—though the line may not always be clear and some (e.g., Hacker, 1990) move from a resolute/Pyrrhonian to a substantial/non-Pyrrhonian reading without remarking the fact.

Some (Fogelin, Stern, and Mulhall, for example) have come to question whether it makes sense to suppose that either one or the other, resolute/Pyrrhonian or substantial/non-Pyrrhonian, must be the correct way to read Wittgenstein. Fogelin and Stern see the tension in the text of Philosophical Investigations as the expression of a tension, indeed a struggle, within its author, between his wanting to uncover the ‘disguised nonsense’ of philosophical theses and his being tempted and drawn into still other philosophical positions on the nature of language, reference, private experience, and philosophy itself. — SEP

The interpretation you gave is non-Pyrrhonian, that is, you're saying Wittgenstein was offering a philosophical approach for all the follow. The alternative interpretations would be

1. Pyrrhonian, which would take this passage as pointing to why all philosophy is nonsense: talk of a conscious pot is beyond the limits of language because there's no context for such talk. This means the words of the story are pulled out of regular language use.

2. It could be that this passage highlights a struggle in Wittgenstein that lies behind PI. When he asks whether it's nonsense or false, he's actually asking about the PI itself. Of all the ways to interpret that passage, this is the most mind-blowing.

Might be best to keep Kripkenstien to his own thread. — Banno

I was just explaining why I'm not looking for immersion in any particular method of interpretation. Kripke's interpretive anchor was the community view, but he draws some astounding conclusions out of it. I was just trying to fit Kripke into the rest of the history of Wittgenstein interpretation. Thanks for helping me flesh it out!

I will let you go first. — Paine

I already did. It's in my recent thread: Kripke's skeptical challenge. I won't be responding further.

Yes, I have read it. — Paine

Great. What did you think of it?

It's in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language by Kripke.

Okay. How would you put that view in your own words? — Paine

Kripke's view? He says the private language argument indicates that there is no rule following. There was no rule you followed. There is no rule now.

Open scalp. Brain explodes.

I'm mainly trying to understand how Kripke's take on the private language argument fits into the larger zodiac of interpretations. — frank

:brow:

I don't know what to make of this place where you are collecting evidence for a particular purpose. — Paine

I'm not collecting evidence for a particular purpose.

This view is odd since the Tractatus keeps referring to "what is the case." — Paine

One interpretation of the Tractatus is that it concludes that we can only talk about what is the case in the world in which we find ourselves. Statements about the world itself are beyond the limits of language. Some say the PI should be understood in that light.

By the way, I'm mainly trying to understand how Kripke's take on the private language argument fits into the larger zodiac of interpretations. To that end I'm collecting a flow chart of the different avenues. I'm not really looking for a deep dive on any particular one, although I'm always interested in people explaining what a particular philosopher meant to them personally.

Firstly I should have looked a bit more closely at the source of these articles. While they are by University of CA, from what I can gather these studies are funded by our old friends the cattle industry (I could be wrong on this — EricH

I assumed the one from UC Davis was produced through a grant from some beef collective. It just has that written all over it.

Now just to be precise we could quibble about the "net zero-ness" of this cycle since the whole process of raising cattle creates additional CO2 apart from the CH4 - but for purposes of discussion we can ignore that. — EricH

I agree. Through this discussion, people have been approaching the issue as if it can be answered by applying armchair principles. I doubt that. If it takes a super computer to run a simplified model of the climate, why would somebody think they can spitball the effect of cows? C'mon!

I took the point of the observation to be that we can deliberately use what is not experienced (for the most part) to imagine a scene that is neither false nor meaningless.

The sword cuts in two ways. Separating truth from falsehood belongs to some activities but not to others. There is something about this constraint that invites other ways of making sense. — Paine

:up:
There are two primary ways to interpret the PI:

1. Pyrrhonism: that Witt believed that all philosophy is nonsense because it can't be about anything of this world.
2. Non-pyrrhonism: that Witt believed that philosophy can point out the cases where philosophers fall into nonsense, but that he was also offering positive philosophical views (which often have to be reconstructed from the text).

Then there's the third way: Witt wanted to abandon philosophy because he knew that it's all nonsense, but he couldn't stop, so the PI is confusing because he was stuck in this struggle when he wrote it.

According to this scheme, there are three ways to take the private language argument:

1. That he believed the question is nonsense.
2. That he believed it is truly impossible to have a private language.
3. That the argument carries the dynamic tension of the struggle all philosophers face when they realize that philosophy has no answers, but we can't stop looking for them.

I took the point of the observation to be that we can deliberately use what is not experienced (for the most part) to imagine a scene that is neither false nor meaningless. — Paine

This is what we tell ourselves when we set out again asking philosophical questions, right?

The sword cuts in two ways. Separating truth from falsehood belongs to some activities but not to others. There is something about this constraint that invites other ways of making sense. — Paine

What are the other ways of making sense?