Wittgenstein and I both think that mathematical inconsistencies are meaningless. I think. Maybe. I think that's what the article said — T Clark

The liar's paradox, like all logical paradoxes, has a simple non paradoxical solution. It's only an apparent paradox. So of course it can't break bridges or lead to poorly conceived ones. — Olivier5

I don’t think the solution you have in mind has anything to do with what Wittgenstein was trying to illustrate here.

happily or even casually allowing contradictions in math is equivalent to dropping the law of the excluded middle from mathematical logic, with far reaching consequences. — Olivier5

We don’t have to drop the law of the excluded middle, it deconstructs itself.

“ In the decimal expansion of TT either the group "7777"
occurs, or it does not—there is no third possibility." That is to say:
"God sees—but we don't know." But what does that mean?—We use a picture; the picture of a visible series which one person sees the whole of and another not. The law of excluded middle says here: It must either look like this, or like that. So it really—and this is a truism—says nothing at all, but gives us a picture. And the problem ought now to be: does reality accord with the picture or not? And this picture seems to determine what we have to do, what to look for, and how—but it does not do so, just because we do not know how it is to be applied. Here saying "There is no third possibility" or "But there can't be a third possibility!"—expresses our inability to turn our eyes away from this picture: a picture which looks as if it must already contain both the problem and its solution, while all the time we feel that it is not so.”
(Philosophical Investigations 352)

It seems strange to say that we made up numbers like e or π. We don't know what the 10000000000000 trillion digit of e is, yet if we invented e shouldn't we know that? — Amalac

e and like are less numbers than they are recursive processes. We made up the process. To be more precise, all our mathematics is parasitic on our notion of the object, which is why modern mathematics emerged in tandem with the modern scientific notion of the empirical object. Empirical objects (not just perfect circles ) are subjective constructions, abstractions, idealizations. Such idealizations made mathematical calculation possible.

It's another example of people mistaking words for reality, the map for the territory. — T Clark

Except that Wittgenstein rejected the idea that words represent reality and maps represent territories.

What Turing saw, and Wittgenstein did not, was the importance of the fact that a computer doesn't need to understand rules to follow them — Richard B

And what Wittgenstein saw , and Turing and Dennett did not , was that the computer’s actions mean nothing without an interpreter.

One of the [to me] more interesting corners to root around in is back-tracking from the current set of beliefs of either side to constructing a coherent underlying philosophy — Torus34

I think this Atlantic piece does a pretty good job of identifiying the major ideologies involved:

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619012/

What strikes me as ironic is this would be the view my uneducated grandmother would hold. It's very commonsensy and relies on a very literal interpretation of experience. — Tom Storm

What a coincidence. I was just reading a review of a compilation of essays by Devitt, which concluded:

‘Putting Metaphysics First is a nicely written defence of (what Jerry Fodor might call) Granny’s philosophy.’

What an excellent paper. — StreetlightX

Do you have any significant problems with the following , or are you in general agreement with its sentiments?

‘[tokens] of the most commonsense, and scientific, physical types objectively exist independently
of the mental. Realism about ordinary objects is confirmed day by day in our experience . . . Given this strong case for Realism, we should give it up only in the face of powerful arguments against it and for an alternative. There are no such arguments.’

↪Joshs I'd say that people expand their sense of self over to their child. So the child is seen as their continuation. ) — stoicHoneyBadger

I agree. But notice you used the word ‘expand’ . The child isnt just a continuation of self as if the self were some sort of fixed content that everything else in the world the person cares about becomes transformed into. The self expands and enriches. Even when we are alone the self is never this fixed thing. It is constantly being born anew through our experiences of the world. What gives our self the sense of continuity from day to day isnt a fixed identity but a relative continuity, a referential consistency. We are never exactly who we were but we are similar to our older self. The point is that we are already familiar with otherness simply by being a self changed by the world in a daily basis. So the gap between our own selves and other persons in our lives isnt as big as it might seem. What we crave isnt protection of self but the ability to value, identify with , relate to others, since our own self is already an other.

I m not sure I got exactly the meaning of unitary self here. You mean he didn't believe that there is a real "self" in humans or that people can't act united? Or something else? — dimosthenis9

He believed the self was a society of competing drives. This multiplicity could be harmonized from time
to time by a dominating drive.

So, what percent of people would attempt to help a stranger before helping themselves? — stoicHoneyBadger

What percentage of people would attempt to help a loved one, let’s say their own child, before helping themselves? Why do you think this is? Could it be the formulation of the self as a container walled off from the world is an outdated notion? Maybe what we call the self is the product of relations with an outside that are either pleasing or disturbing based on harmoniousness and compatibility. That’s why we care about some
people and not others, and why we would sacrifice our lives for some people and not others.

Plus as Nietzsche wrote "the one who gives is the one he gains the most". For me that's a huge truth. — dimosthenis9

Nietzsche also said there was no such thing as a unitary self.

“

Are there some cases when such theory might be wrong? — stoicHoneyBadger

Here’s a rebuttal of self-interest from the mindfulness tradition:

We believe that the view of the self as an economic man, which is the view the social sciences hold, is quite consonant with the unexamined view of our own motivation that we hold as ordinary, nonmindful people. Let us state that view clearly. The self is seen as a territory with boundaries. The goal of the self is to bring inside the boundaries all of the good things while paying out as few goods as possible and conversely to remove to the outside of the boundaries all of the bad things while letting in as little bad as possible. Since goods are scarce, each autonomous self is in competition with other selves to get them. Since cooperation between individuals and whole societies may be needed to get more goods, uneasy and unstable alliances are formed between autonomous selves. Some selves (altruists) and many selves in some roles (parents, teachers) may get (immaterial) goods by helping other selves, but they will become disappointed (even disillusioned) if those other selves do not reciprocate by being properly helped.

What does the mindfulness/awareness tradition or enactive cognitive science have to contribute to this portrait of self-interest? The mindful, open-ended approach to experience reveals that moment by moment this so-called self occurs only in relation to the other. If I want praise, love, fame, or power, there has to be another (even if only a mental one) to praise, love, know about, or submit to me. If I want to obtain things, they have to be things that I don't already have. Even with respect to the desire for pleasure, the pleasure is something to which I am in a relation. Because self is always codependent with other (even at the gross level we are now discussing), the force of self-interest is always other-directed in the very same respect with which it is self-directed. What, then, are people doing who appear so self-interested as opposed to other-interested? Mindfulness/awareness meditators suggest that those people are struggling, in a confused way, to maintain the sense of a separate self by engaging in self-referential relationships with the other. Whether I gain or lose, there can be a sense of I; if there is nothing to be gained or lost, I am groundless. If Hobbes's despot were actually to succeed in obtaining everything in the universe, he would have to find some other preoccupation quickly, or he would be in a woeful state: he would be unable to maintain his sense of himself. Of course, as we have seen with nihilism, one can always turn that groundlessness into a ground; then one can maintain oneself in relation to it by feeling despair.”
( The Embodied Mind)

I think there is such a convergence concerning childhood vaccination , despite your naysayers.
— Joshs

The JCVI in the UK have just advised against rolling out childhood vaccination, so I don't know where you're getting your 'consensus' from. — Isaac

Welll , then , there’s your consensus. That’s good enough for me. I was never particularly interested in the topic so just did a cursory search of articles. If I were serious about it I would have been a lot more thorough. I entered the conversation because I was concerned you were promoting the ideas of a minority of researchers over a majority scientific view. Looks like we’re in agreement that the recommendation by members of a well regarded scientific body should be good enough for most people.

You found an article written by a science journalist which disagreed with three professors in epidemiology and the entire UK Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. Why? Because it supported a view you already had - come on, you know this stuff, why have you suddenly become an absolutists about narratives on this one topic. — Isaac

Since I wasn’t all that that invested in the issue I could have been swayed in either direction. His was just the first one I stumbled on. I knew I’d find others, but apparently I would have had do do more reading to appreciate that the risk-reward issue here, whichever way a particular study comes down on it , doesn’t strongly favor one direction over another. I did notice that the JCVI said the risk reward profile favored vaccination, in contrast to Pegden, but not by enough to justify the risk. So they are situated somewhere between Pegden and my links. It’s not surprising that the situation turns out to be complex and ambiguous.

You know about confirmation bias, you know how we build our representations to reflect our expectations and interact with the world to construct our beliefs (or belief/world constructs). I can't think why I'm having to go through all this as if you were a freshman. — Isaac

Becuase you’re missing something vital about how bias, expectations , frames of reference and paradigms organize our thinking.

Kuhn did indeed set pen to paper , and what did he say? He said that choice of paradigms was essentially an aesthetic choice. There’s merit in aesthetics.
— Joshs

Indeed, so we can drop all the bullshit about weighing up articles and polling the numbers of experts. You know as well as I do that people adopt beliefs as interactive parts of the social narrative and change them only when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. — Isaac

That’s not what Kuhn said at all. You’re confusing him with Popper, whose approach is much more consonant with yours than Kuhn’s is. Kuhn insisted that what constitutes ‘evidence’ changes along with paradigms, so we cannot use ‘overwhelming evidence’ as a means of convincing someone to accept our theory. This is the whole point of a theory being an aesthetic product. Evidence doesn’t change minds in situations of competing paradigms. A gestalt shift in outlook is needed. You’re trying to make a distinction between bias and empirical objectivity that Kuhn wanted to dissolve.

why have you cited an article written by a psychiatrist and science-journalism hack as evidence against one written by three epidemiologists with professorial posts at some the top US universities? You say you're interested in what epidemiologists say, I give you the responses of eight epidemiologists and you respond with some science blog entry. — Isaac

Because I found his argument convincing enough to suspect that your authors are offering a fringe position without my having to delve deeper into the literature. Apparently I was on the right track, as the link below suggests. I’m sure I can find plenty more rebuttals
from medical experts. Look, if you find their claims convincing them by all means act accordingly. Having read their assertions and the rebuttals I don’t find them convincing. At any rate , I think we should
encourage others who cannot wade through research studies to do what I have done, start with a particular policy recommendation, find medical experts who support it based on the science , and try and see if there is some kind of convergence of thinking among a majority of experts. I think there is such a convergence concerning childhood vaccination , despite your naysayers.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8358829/

I want to hitch my wagon to the most popular starting assumptions.
— Joshs

And how are you going about finding out what they are? Are you conducting a poll? — Isaac

No, there are already plenty of polls out there , plus opinion pieces by medical experts. I also find it useful to do what I did here , suss out contrarian opinions and see how the medical mainstream responds to them.

The most popular starting assumption ( dominant paradigm) earns its stripes by offering a particularly useful way of interpreting empirical phenomena.
— Joshs

Oh come on! In any other area would you be arguing that the dominant paradigm earned it's position by being more useful than the others? — Isaac

I didnt say the dominant paradigm is more useful than all the alternatives , only that it has to be respected for convincing its many adherents that it is the most useful approach. In that sense it has earned its stripes The reason we’re dealing with so many climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers is that they don’t believe there is a legitimate consensus. That is, they either dispute the numbers of experts who are on board , or impugn their motives.

you're giving me some crap about the dominant paradigms in science being all there entirely as a result of some merit-based approach as if Kuhn had never set pen to paper. — Isaac

Kuhn did indeed set pen to paper , and what did he say? He said that choice of paradigms was essentially an aesthetic choice. There’s merit in aesthetics.

This is Wesley Pegden questioning the ACIP presentation - https://medium.com/@wpegden/weighing-myocarditis-cases-acip-failed-to-balance-the-harms-vs-benefits-of-2nd-doses-d7d6b3df7cfb — Isaac

Apparently , Dr Pegden is something of a professional
contrarian. Here’s a rebuttal to Dr Pegden’s article( Baral and Prasad were co-authors)

To summarize, the article by Drs. Pegden et al. does not mention that:

482-582 children have died of COVID-19 in the US.
A non-trivial percentage of children who contract COVID-19 will need to be hospitalized.
One-third of hospitalized children require ICU level, care and 6% require invasive mechanical ventilation.
Over half of children hospitalized with COVID-19 had no underlying health condition.
19% of American children are obese and therefore “high-risk.”
COVID-19 may cause long-term complications in children.
Tens of thousands of children have lost a parent due to COVID-19.
Millions of teenagers older than 16-years have been safely vaccinated so far.
A highly successful trial of the COVID-19 vaccine has been completed in adolescents. (Another successful trial has also been completed, with preliminary data just released).
Further vaccine trials (and presumed approvals) are proceeding in a purposeful, stepwise fashion by age.
An EUA for a COVID-19 vaccine requires a two-month waiting period and data “from at least one well-designed Phase 3 clinical trial that demonstrates the vaccine’s safety and efficacy in a clear and compelling manner.”
Vaccine side-effects almost never emerge after two months.
The core difference between an EUA and full FDA-approval is four additional months of observation after already-completed trials.
Vaccine rates in the US are unlikely to be high enough to achieve herd immunity, especially in certain regions.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/covid-19-vaccine-children-under-an-emergency-use-authorization/

general are in a better position than you are to make policy recommendations.
— Joshs

policy recommendations are made by public health authorities. Epidemiologists advise them. As I said on the other thread, public policy is a tool to accomplish government objectives. It is not, as should not be treated as, a statement of scientific consensus. — Isaac

Yes, my interest is in consensus of epidemiological advice to policy makers.

why 'consensus'? You're an academic right? We don't all patiently check everybody else's work for errors. Especially not over the sorts of timescales involved here. Consensus is far more determined by the popularity of key starting assumptions than by the result of some mass error-checking exercise.

I can definitely see the sense in trusting someone else to check through papers for you, we rarely have time to do so personally, but consensus adds little to nothing. — Isaac

You make it sound like the arrival by scientists
at risk-reward profiles for therapeutic interventions is merely a matter of error checking. It has never been that, nor will it ever be. How one weighs the import of the various factors involved in such determinations is filtered though pre-existing assumptions. Error checking alone is unlikely to convince Pegden et al to change their minds about child vaccination. If I’m not going to be reading through every research paper that comes along , I want to hitch my wagon to the most popular starting assumptions.(note that those popular starting assumptions are not impervious to evidence. On the contrary, they are necessary to give order and meaning to the evidence. Furthermore , this assumptions have continually shifted as new data emerges).
The most popular starting assumption ( dominant paradigm) earns its stripes by offering a particularly useful way of interpreting empirical phenomena.

Scientific naysayers, conspiracy buffs, climate change deniers can’t be shown the ‘error’ of their ways by error checking. They have to be able to join a different normative community from the one that informs their views.

It depends what you take as your default assumption. Assume it probably works and you'll need a study to show it doesn't to change your mind. Assume it probably doesn't and you'll need a study showing it does. Given the atrocious history of the pharmaceutical industry, I'm in the latter camp. — Isaac

My default assumption is that epidemiologists in general are in a better position than you are to make policy recommendations. Why is this? I don’t doubt your knowledge in empirical methodology. But epidemiology also involves also sociological and political kmowledge. The ability to Interpret research studies is only part of what is needed to make policy recommendations.
As science is consensus based , so too is policy recommendation.. Epidemiologists are polled all the time concerning thes things. I want to know what sorts of consensus there may or may not be be concerning such questions as the value of universal vaccination. Partly this is because I don’t have the time to read every study , and partly because I appreciate that there are other considerations besides the conclusiveness and validity of study results , considerations which can allow for reasonable recommendations even in the absence of definitive conclusions.

Maybe you could point me in the direction of links to statements by epidemiologists who recommend against policies advocating or requiring vaccination of young people.

I'm not saying the evidence to support that claim isn't out there, but the article is good example of why people oppose this stuff. It's little more than "believe me because I'm right". — Isaac

Maybe we’re taking about different things. I thought you were advocating against young, healthy people getting vaccinated because there was wasnt clear evidence it would significantly slow the spread of the virus. Aren’t the “peripheral’ claims, that vaccination reduces infection and most cases are in the unvaccinated, enough to support recommendations for vaccinating the young?
Or are you arguing a different point?

made a nice little straw man for you to knock down. — Isaac

Don’t forget another misconception that is being knocked down:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/the-vaccinated-arent-just-as-likely-to-spread-covid/620161/

So a computer is natural, because it is measururable, calculable, mathematizable? And my personal experience of the computer is not natural? — Yohan

My experience of the computer within the natural
attitude makes the computer appear to me via a description that incorporates measurement and calculation . If I shift my attitude toward a fundamental phenomenological thinking, I can expose my naturalistic account as a derivative abstraction. It is not as if the empirical description simply vanishes, but its condition of possibility in subjective processes is revealed. That is to say, the objective world, along with all the technological
objects that belong to it, is shown to be the product of an intersubjective construction based on a correlation of many subjective experiences. Understanding my experience of ther world most fundamentally, I don’t see enduring objects with measurable qualities , I see a flowing stream of constantly changing events.

The natural is what is measurable, calculable, mathematizable
— Joshs
So what would that make anything which is immeasurable, un-calculatable, or non-mathematizable? — Yohan

It would make it the phenomenologically experienced

The natural is what is measurable, calculable, mathematizable within an intersubjective community. We can oppose it to the personalistic , which is perspectival and specific to a contingent context of use.

The pursuit of knowledge is maturing into science, our world revolving around research, innovation and efficiency. Human life fast becomes a mechanistic system, centered on theoretical models that shape the environment via technology and dispel many long-standing uncertainties, though the awesome power of nature still humbles us on a regular basis — Enrique

You’ve left out the critiques of science that, while not disputing its achievements, point to the continuing tendency, especially in the natural sciences and technology, to perpetuate the philosophical assumptions of its founders whereby the empirically naturalistic is split apart from the personalistic stance on the world, the latter becoming merely subjective window-dressing.

“Some approaches to phenomenology trap folk in a solipsistic world, preventing them from reaching past what they think of as private experiences to the world beyond. For many, escaping this cartesian trap is the most important lesson Wittgenstein taught.” — Banno

Husserl was the founder of modern phenomenology, and phenomenology has often been misread as introspectionism, solipsism , Cartesianism. That may be who you have in mind here. That view is changing. For instance, Evan Thompson recanted his earlier critique of Husserl here:

“READERS FAMILIAR WITH MY EARLIER BOOK, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1991), might be surprised by the importance I give to Husserlian phe-nomenology here, given the critical attitude toward Husserl that book expressed. What accounts for this change of attitude?

Our earlier interpretation of Husserl was mistaken. I now believe (i) that Husserl was not a methodological solipsist; (ii) that he was greatly concerned with the intersubjective and embodied aspects of experience.

My viewpoint has changed for two reasons. The first is that when Varela and I were writing The Embodied Mind (during 1986-1989; Eleanor Rosen joined the project near the end of 1989) our knowledge of Husserl was limited.

The second reason is that we accepted Hubert Dreyfus's (1982) influential interpretation of Husserl as a representationalist and pro-tocognitivist philosopher, as well as his Heideggerian critique of Husserl thus interpreted.”( Evan Thompson, Mind in Life)

Embodied enactivist approaches have found Husserl
and Merleau-Ponty to be among the most useful philosophical foundations for their models. You will also find that they embrace postmodern readings of Wittgenstein against more conventional interpretations. See Hutchinson and Reid for an integration of Wittgenstein and phenomenologically oriented enactivism.

So why is Husserl not a solipsist? For one thing, his account of how persons constitute their understanding of the objective world determines objective , empirical reality as an intersubjective accomplishment. The words we use to describe the things in our world point to entities that none of us see on our own. I see phenomena in my surroundings via constantly changing perspectives , which shift in correlation with the movement of my body. Others may have similar but not identical experiences of the same phenomena. Our words synthesize these multitudinous flowing changes in phenomena , experienced slightly differently by each of us, into objective entities that are presumed to be the same for all of us ( this tree , this rock, etc). Our everyday language assumes that each of us personally experiences an aspect of the one ‘real’ empirical object. This assumption is what makes science possible.

It is not just I who do these things; it is not hidden. The things you do are embedded in the world, and so not just available to yourself but available to others. You can tell and show what you are doing, we can listen and watch, and do the task with you, if need be. — Banno

The simper the task or coordinated social interaction ( navigating traffic) the more it appears that the senses of meaning invoked in the situation are transparent to everyone, that a common understanding is involved. But there are things we encounter just about every day that matter more profoundly to us , that impact our lives, our goals, our sense of ourselves. These are the everyday feelings of anger, guilt , sadness, anxiety. When we you feel any of these , it is because there is a rift between your understanding of a situation and the behavior of others that you can’t accommodate successfully. It is these feelings that remind us that the ‘public’ understandings are only superficial, involving aspects of situations that don’t matter greatly to us. You can teach me how to plant a mugwort and I can demonstrate to you that I understood your instruction. But what if I said I found gardening boring, or disputed your method of tending to your garden or of planting mugworts? You would would not likely become frustrated, angry or upset unless my sentiments violated your prior sense of how I felt about gardening and your skills with mugworts.
It is at this point that it is vital for you to be able to discern that my sense of these matters is not your sense, inspite of a supposedly shared vocabulary. Because that generic vocabulary masks imdividual differences in interpretation , and the fact that our interpretations of trivial , subordinate meanings of events is guided and determined by more superordinate schemes of understanding that comprise a worldview for each of us and determines each of us as subcultures within and beyond a larger culture. These relatively stable , but evolving personal world views orient even the most seemingly insignificant tasks , such as planting, in ways that are mostly hidden from others until a disagreement appears. But because our ‘shared’ language disguises the fact that others are often living in a different world than us, we ascribe our disagreements to stubbornness on their part, or irrationally, pettiness, perversity , arbitrariness. At the level of larger political groups , we blame polarized views on indoctrination and conditioning, ignorance or devious intent. The idea that the ‘same’ words we understand in one way evokes an entirely different universe to others is alien to our thinking.

Meaning is not a thing in your mind. It is created in the way we interact with each other and with the world — Banno

For Husserl meaning is neither in the mind nor is it merely ‘public’. It transcends the inner vs outer distinction. It is a radical intersection between my past and new experience that remakes who I am every moment through my exposure to an outside. I am already exposed to and altered by the otherness of the world every moment. I am already an other to myself and therefore ‘out in the world’ each moment. You begin too late when you determine the origin of the social, alterity, the alien, the world only at the point of interaction between persons. That is not the primary site of the social and the world. There is no ‘ inner’ to be contrasted with an outer , no private to be contrasted with a public.

You expect to see a tree; and your expectation is satisfied. What you have done is to divide the world up as is customary in your language - into trees and not-trees. This is not an instance of a private application of a word. But moreover, your understanding of trees is built not just by seeing, but by feeling, climbing, cutting; and by doing this in the company of others. You were show what a tree is, and you still modify that understanding. — Banno

I do t just divide up the world according to discursive conventions. I subdivide the world in a much
more grained way within and outside the bounds of those generic conventions. Whatever I do with the tree either alone or in the company of others is done from my vantage in my own way in relation to my own overarching framework of goals, intents , relevances. These are not wholly alien to some languaged culture that I interact with ( there are actually myraid languaged subcultures that I interact with)
but neither are they simply ‘within’ the bounds of some normative frame. They are my own variation of practices and understanding and sense of the language. Becuase there is never ‘one’ language but as many languages as there are speakers of English. These are subtle but comprehensively unique variations.

You consult your notes and find that the tree before you is similar in relevant ways to the one you found elsewhere. The similarities are all the sort of thing that can be shared - it has a certain bark, leaves of a certain colour and shape, and so on — Banno

What I share with others( words like bark, leaves, etc) is understood by all of us in ways that are unique to each of us.

What is it that any groundbreaking philosopher is doing when they construct an idiosyncratic vocabulary?
— Joshs

They are showing others how to use that vocabulary. And hence it is public. Hence this is not an example of private language. — Banno

They may be disappointed for many years , since in most cases their use of the words is so profoundly different from the way that others demonstate their use that others’ interpretations are almost unrecognizable to them
for an long time. The question of public vs private comes down to the role of novelty in language and thought.
Public use of language must imply fundamental difference in sense also. Every time we participate in language we reinvent the bounds of that language in some fashion. Even when I am engaged in solitary thinking or talking or writing I am reinventing my own sense of my language.

The think the Continental-Analytic distinction is useful to the same extent as the science-philosophy distinction. Both point to a difference in style of approach to complex questions about the world. Analytic approaches , having emerged in close proximity to the fields of logic, mathematics and empirical science, share with those disciplines a conventionalized way of thinking that leaves its most fundamental
presuppositions implied rather
than explicitly articulated. Continental
philosophy , on the other hand , likes to dig as deep as possible beneath all presuppositions , and to synthetically connect as many aspects of culture as possible within an overarching model. So it probes deeper and wider than its analytic counterpart.

You can't write about inner experiences because the definitions of the words are ostensive and that would mean every time you think of a word in your private language you would need to recall what it referred to but what if you're not sure? You would be stuck in a loop. — TheMadFool

What is it that any groundbreaking philosopher is doing when they construct an idiosyncratic vocabulary? Even before they have written a word of it or even fully articulated their new concepts in words, they have an inner sense of this new way of thinking that they consult , refer to , modify. Ostensive definition is only useful
if you want to copy dictionary definitions. In terms of how we actually use words, we rely on their sense for us in relation to each of our unique ways of understanding the world. My sense of each word I write here is slightly different from your sense of these words as you read them. Ostension misses this about actual
word use. It is an abstraction that covers over what is really happening. Ostension is just a rickety, inadequate belief system about how we do what we do with words.

if I construct a private language, what happens is I can't determine if I'm using the words correctly (consistently), necessary for comprehension. The only person who knows what words mean in a private language is myself and if ever I doubt the meaning of these words, I have only myself to consult but that's a dead end - that I doubt means I don't know and if I don't know how can I clear my doubt? — TheMadFool

When I perceive my environment my expectations guide and co-determine what appears to me and how it appears to me, visually, tacitly , auditorily. You could think of this as my perceptual language. Due to the anticipatory nature of perception , events can appear recognizable or not, coherent or not , correct or not with respect to those expectations. If I construct a new way of thinking , I will modify my langauge to express new ideas. Words now have senses of meaning foe me that are unique to my new outlook. If, when I read some of my written ideas , I encounter a word whose sense I am not sure of( perhaps I knew it and in the meantime forgot how I intended to utilize it , or only ever meant it in a vague and ambiguous way) I can read further into my written work and this may recall the context in which I used the word. Or I could decide that for whatever reason I had or finally used the word, I know want to choose a better or clearer
term. In any case , when I am in doubt about the uses of words in my private language , I consult a written text or my memory of the context of use of that word in sentences and paragraphs that determine its sense.

the extent to which active inference and enactivism differ is way out side the scope of this thread (which is already a little off topic), lets not make matters worse. — Isaac

I mentioned enactivism only because in the thread I linked to , I addressed the concerns of Hutchinson and Reid over a pervasive reading of Wittgenstein in which rules. , grammars , representational structures and concepts are claimed to be based on pragmatic ‘use’ but only within a conventional , normative , categorical framework. They see enactivism , due to its embrace of phenomenology, as giving priority to the personalistic over empirical, naturalistic accounts of experiencing. In other words , they argue that Wittgenstein , like the phenomenologists, believes the sense of a word, including empirical terms , is person-relative and occasion-sensitive. What the sense of a word points to is not a matter of belief , because belief presupposes the pre-existing sense of something that is or not the case, whereas the use of a word creates the sense. For a word to be is for a word to be used. Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world.

Your discussion of the treatment of pain seems to operate on two levels, a personalistic level of contextual language use and a naturalistic level of neurobiological entities( physiological signals, computational neural
networks). What I’m wondering is whether the concepts you utilize from the subpersonal , neurobiological level are presumed to have sense independently of their person-specific use in actual situations, that is, whether you prioritize a naturalistic over a personalistic account.

I'm arguing against the identification of a word with a referent. People can nonetheless use words wrongly, it's not a free-for-all.
When we use the word "pain" we do so as a result of a modelling relationship with a non-exclusive set of triggering physiological signals, it's one of the outputs from the model, a tendency to say things like "I'm in pain". — Isaac

This strikes me as the kind of reading of Wittgenstein that Hutchinson and Reid object to:

“The mistake here then is (Baker &) Hacker's thought that what is problematic for Wittgenstein—what he wants to critique in the opening remarks quoted from Augustine—is that words name things or correspond to objects, with the emphasis laid on the nature of what is on the other side of the word-referent relationship. Rather, we contend that what is problematic in this picture is that words must be relational at all—whether as names to the named, words to objects, or ‘words' belonging to a ‘type of use.'It is the necessarily relational character of ‘the Augustinian picture' which is apt to lead one astray; Baker & Hacker, in missing this, ultimately replace it with a picture that retains the relational character, only recast. There is no such thing as a word outside of some particular use; but that is a different claim from saying, with Baker & Hacker, that words belong to a type of use. For a word to be is for a word to be used. Language does not exist external to its use by us in the world.”

Arent you claiming that words belong to a type or category of use when you define use by reference to subpersonal physiological structures whose sense supposedly transcends situational contexts?

I claim that Wittgenstein is giving us a way to treat a notion like ‘correctness' that doesn't depend on the reproductive representation of an alleged ‘essense'( the essense of what cases have in common). Correctness would not be conformity to a categorical essense, but the fresh generating of a resemblance that produces the possibility of agreement, among other things.

a private language cannot consist of rules, so right and wrong within a private language is nonsensical. This does not mean that a private language is nonsensical, it just means that the ideas of right and wrong cannot be supported by the private language. So we have a deep division here, a fundamental divide between two very distinct types of language-games, the private game within which there is no such thing as correct and incorrect, and the public game, within which "correct" and "incorrect" appear to form the substance. — Metaphysician Undercover

When we think or talk to ourself, or perceive our surroundings, we know when an event is recognizable or unrecognizable, coherent or incoherent , consistent or inconsistent , with respect to our expectations. Aren’t these forms of correctness? Let’s say we are creating poetry or literature that is making use of idiosyncratic grammar and words. Within that world of language we have constructed dont we know when we have violated our own norms?

I haven’t looked closely enough to see if you and Antony have had any substantive engagement over your linking of free energy models with the later Wittgenstein, but my supposition is that he would find its representationalism problematic. That is to say, aren’t such approaches more compatible with the Hacker-Ryle-Malcolm-Strawson reading of Wittgenstein than with Cora Diamond-James Conant-Cavell and phenomenologically informed enactivism? This difference i reading has to do with what to make of rules, grammar, concepts , criteria. Do they have any existence outside of actual, contextual situations? This question would seem to apply equally to terms like model and representation as they are utilized in free energy approaches. Put differently, do you understand and concur with Antony’s objections to Luke’s reading of Wittgenstein on grammar and rules? https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/11479/bedrock-rules-the-mathematical-and-the-ordinary-cavell-kripke-on-wittgenstein

Nothing is a Greater Evil encircled by Good, a Greater Good is a blue mirror that comes naturally when the encircling good cubes itself — ghostlycutter

Who colored the mirror blue? Inquiring minds want to know.

what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? We are "expressing" the pain, only to ourselves, but isn't that just to say: not out loud. What your two sentences "do" (Cavell would say Wittgenstein is drawing out the implications) are: correcting a mistake, and, realizing a presumption (like freaking yourself out when there is nothing actually there to be scared of). — Antony Nickles

A question occurred to me. If it is the case that the above conversation with ourselves would be comparable to having it with someone else, would it not also be the case that a conversation with oneself is a language game, and public?

the problem with it being "religious" metaphysics is that no religion in history as ever attempted to truly separate good from bad in human beings. Rather, ALL religions have ALWAYS pronounced evil to be a choice in every human being. That is precisely what I am arguing against. — AlienFromEarth

All religions that I have read about do not agree with my views. I assume you have been exposed to basically the same information on the different religions as I have, therefore you know clear and well they do not share my sentiments on evil. — AlienFromEarth

I don’t have in mind religion in the way that you may be thinking about it ( the major faith groups and their doctrines of good and evil as understood in the most general and generic way). What I have in mind is a movement in philosophy dating back 400 years, commonly referred to as Rationalism. Yes, this is philosophy but it espouses a metaphysics that is theological in nature. Rationalism believes we were born with the ability to discern good from evil. We use our logical faculties to achieve this differentiation. Sounds a lot like your view. All we have to add is that in some people this innate capacity is faulty or missing ( or as you say they ‘lack consciousness’). So it sounds to me like your view is a variation on the Rationalist theme.

I’m not saying your thinking is identical with Descartes, Spinoza or Leibnitz, but it belongs within that era.

Not religious, just logical and autonomous. Oh and conscious. Lets not forget that. — AlienFromEarth

Whether you know it or not, your description of evil puts your thinking in the category of ‘secular’ religion. You may have absolutely no affiliation with organized religion( thus it is secular) , but your approach is a classic example of a religious metaphysics, and not even a very modern one at that. It is incompatible with the implications of evolutionary biology as well as modern psychology.

I’m assuming that your stance on evil commits you to some kind of religious point of view. Is that the case? Also, how do you reconcile your view of evil with evolutionary theory? Is there adaptive survival value to pure evil? Perhaps even more than to good?

Losing the role playing lets the real you come out. — DMcpearson

Aren’t the different roles I play with the other people in my life part of the real ‘me’. Arent I changed by each interaction with others? Doesn’t a different side of me come out when I am with my dog or my kid or my wife?

From George Kelly, 1962:

“A good deal is said these days about being oneself. It is supposed to be healthy to be oneself. While it is a little hard for me to understand how one could be anything else, I suppose what is meant is that one should not strive to become anything other than what he is. This strikes me as a very dull way of living; in fact, I would be inclined to argue that all of us would be better off if we set out to be something other than what we are. Well, I'm not so sure we would all be better off – perhaps it would be more accurate to say life would be a lot more interesting.

There is another meaning that might be attached to this admonition to be oneself; that one should not try to disguise himself. I suspect this comes nearer to what psychologists mean when they urge people to be themselves. It is presumed that the person who faces the world barefaced is more spontaneous, that he expresses himself more fully, and that he has a better chance of developing all his resources if he assumes no disguises.

But this doctrine of psychological nakedness in human affairs, so much talked about today and which allows the self neither make-up nor costume, leaves very little to the imagination. Nor does it invite one to be venturesome.

What I am saying is that it is not so much what man is that counts as it is what he ventures to make of himself. To make the leap he must do more than disclose himself; he must risk a certain amount of confusion. Then, as soon as he does catch a glimpse of a different kind of life, he needs to find some way of overcoming the paralyzing moment of threat, for this is the instant when he wonders what he really is – whether he is what he just was or is what he is about to be. It may be helpful at this point to ask ourselves a question about children at Halloween. Is the little youngster who comes to your door on the night of October 30th, all dressed up in his costume and behind a mask, piping "trick or treat, trick or treat" – is that youngster disguising himself or is he revealing himself? Is he failing to be spontaneous? Is he not being himself?”

So you agree with me that an emotion needs to be processed in order for us to interpret and define an "upset" under a specific feeling ? — Nickolasgaspar

I would put it this way. Rather than assuming an unformed pattern of sensations ( negative or positive) arising out of core physiological bodily maintenance processes that only later undergoes higher perceptual processing and is turned into a feeling through our interpretation of it, emotion , affect and feeling are indissociable aspects of an integral organizational feature of cognitive-affective systems. That is to say, the cognitive system is normatively driven toward goal-directed aims. Affectivity arises out of that integral process. Experience is always relevant and significant to us moment to moment in relation to our goals , and feeling always accompanies that experience as the expression of the particular ways in which the world is significant to us.

what makes us believe that we have that conversation any differently with ourselves than we would with someone else? — Antony Nickles

I agree with you completely. I just wanted to make sure you thought about it this way.

I do not "know" my own pain, I feel it/I express it (there is no space for knowledge between pain and its expression). — Antony Nickles

What does Witt make of the various ways feelings are experienced? We can imagine a feeling, remember a feeling, experience a vague sensation that is ambiguous and sets us off on trying to differentiate whether it is a tickle, pain or pleasure sensation. We may even be confused as to whether we are having a perception or a feeling. When I say to my self after some exploration , ‘Ah, that really was pain rather than tickle’, or when I correct an initial impression and say. to myself ‘I only imagined that pain’, what have I done? It seems in all cases of having a feeling , we are not dealing with something immediate but a mediated event , and therefore languaged in a certain respect.