why the juxtaposition? — Banno
Maybe the point to take away then is that we don't need an overarching theory of meaning. If you want to know how language and words work and how information is communicated between brains.. we have psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology etc. — Apustimelogist
You don't justify them, you take them for granted, axiomatically. — baker
And it helps to acknowledge that, otherwise we're stuck on a wild goose chase. — baker
That's solipsistic. — baker
You, too operate with axioms just not necessarily the same ones as other people's. — baker
Perhaps in order to avoid infinite regression it is best to say that the thought IS the content. — RussellA
Yes, he is describing something that depends on the mind but avoids talking how the mind works. A little bit of science would have helped. — RussellA
I look out of the window and see a "tree", but no two trees on Earth are identical. Every tree is different in some way to every other tree.
In one sense "tree" has a single meaning as a concept, yet in another sense has many different meanings, an Oak Tree, a Yew Tree, an old tree, a short tree, a green tree in the summer, etc.
There seems to be an ability of the brain to discover family resemblances in things in the world that are different yet have something in common. It is because of this ability we have concepts.
I can only see this ability as a positive thing. Why would Wittgenstein see it as a negative thing? — RussellA
I think when interpreting one of Wittgenstein's' paragraphs we should always look for the simplest, most straightforward and most common sense reading, in other words what Wittgenstein calls the "good philosopher" rather than the "bad" philosopher who creates problems out of nothing. — RussellA
No. Hinge propositions are axioms, that's the point. — baker
But what exactly does this "shared" mean? — baker
What else do we have to express ourselves but language? And who else can we communicate with if not other people? — baker
That we do things is not something that Wittgenstein, or for that matter, as far as I know, anyone else attempt to explain. — Fooloso4
A community is not made up of individual perceptions but of shared beliefs, practices, and language. A common form of life. — Fooloso4
The role of the hypothetical demon is to establish that there is something that cannot be doubted, something we can be certain of even if we are deceived about everything else. Wittgenstein has an interesting response: in order to doubt there must be things that are not doubted. — Fooloso4
So if you drank from the coffee cup and said, "I am doing a game", someone might look at you funny. But you tried to justify yourself by saying, "Yes, every time I pick up the coffee cup and put it to my mouth, I call that "game"", someone would just say you are crazy. They would tell, you, "Just say "sip" or "drink"!. In other words, you should be using a different set of family resemblances (to drink, sip, imbibe, ingest, partake in, guzzle, gulp, etc.) than the set we usually employ when we say "game". These have historical precedents in the language community and thus these are the proper words to use. If before you sipped from the coffee mug you looked around suspiciously, then stated, "I am getting myself a drink", then winked at me, I might infer "drink" to mean you spiked your coffee. It is all kind of related in a web of notions because of the community's use. So community "grounds" words (i.e. Form of Life), and as far as I see, context grounds how the words are employed (language games). And by "ground" I don't mean metaphysical, but one can say as a some sort of "error checker" for permitted or non-traditional use of words.
But all this being said, my particular critique is that Witt insufficiently posits his theory because it is very common sensical. Communities form language games and their use in context grounds the meaning. But I believe, any anthropologist could have told you that even by his time, so what else is he saying? And that's where I fail to see anything of interest. There are a ton of questions that can arise from this view (common sensical as is it is). For example, how does Wittgenstein explain how it is that social facts exist outside of some sort of linguistic solipsism? There are beliefs that prima facie are not facts of the world, but interpretations we have. So what is a "community" outside a set of individual points of view interpreting information? So you see, there has to be a greater theory for how something like "community" obtains outside of individual perceptions if one doesn't want to maintain solipsism. How does this get beyond the Cartesian Demon? And if you say we can't, we shouldn't, or we shan't try, okay, then it's not that interesting to me as it is essentially just more explicitly coming up with ways we use language that don't correspond to a direct "truth correspondence theory of logical positivism, which is just tedious to me as someone who never cared for logical positivism to begin with. — schopenhauer1
I don't think it has anything to do with justified true belief.
The question of whether I know that the picture I have of him is a picture of him is odd. When the picture of N suddenly floated before him there was no question that it is a picture of N. It is only subsequently, after the fact, that the question arises. — Fooloso4
Therefore, the meaning of the word "slab" in the sentence "bring me the slab" cannot be the private belief of either the foreman or the assistant, but can only exist in the language itself, as language is agnostic about the private beliefs of the users of the language . — RussellA
This doesn't mean that language exists as a Platonic Form independently of its users, as the language was created by its users. But it does mean that language is independent of the private beliefs of its users. Language is grounded in the ability of the mind to discover family resemblances in different physical things in the world. These different things can then be given a public name by one or more individuals within the language community. One should note that it is the family resemblance that is being named, which for the Nominalist is a concept in the mind, not any particular physical thing in the world. — RussellA
I was right into Whitehead for a good while. I think process metaphysics is closer to actuality as experienced than substance ontology is. I like speculative metaphysics because it's an exercise of the creative imagination. Whether or not it accords with any absolute reality is unknowable, but I don't think that question matters at all, or is maybe even coherent. Falsification has no provenance when it comes to metaphysics. — Janus
A correlationist will say that we cannot imagine how objects exist "in themselves". We can imagine that they do exist in themselves, which is something else, obviously. — Janus
Let me know if you want me to help you put the toys back in the pram. — Apustimelogist
What I am getting from this post mainly is that things like "forms of life" lack some kind of inflated metaphysical underpinning or something, but concepts like this and games more or less just refer to our behavior in which we use words. There doesn't need to be anything else unless you want to really get into the neurobiological causes of that. I mean, I think Wittgenstein is much closer to jettisoning the idea of reified meaning rather than trying to establish some rigorous explanatory theory. — Apustimelogist
You being "correct" isn't enough to stop the wheels of the universe turning and neuronal messaging being transmitted and societies going on their daily business. — Apustimelogist
Imagine I produce a bunch of what appears to you as random symbols. And I proceed to tell you that this is a language. If you ask, “how do you use these symbols”, and I reply, “I cannot tell you how to use them, but rest assure I know how to use them in similar ways as how you use your language, and thus it is a language.” I believe you can rightfully say that I have no idea what I am trying to say or express. This also goes for these claims of judging private activities within the mind. — Richard B
Just using Wittgenstein against himself perhaps, what if every person in the community had an idea wrong such that every correction was actually never correct. How would you know any differently than the private sensation case? Diving in further in skepticism, how do you know that every supposedly public correction is not distorted by one’s own view? At some point you can keep drilling downward and you start getting to Decartes Demon again. Using public or practice or community as a way out doesn’t suffice. — schopenhauer1
This outward pain behaviour is visible to not only me but others, and can be given the name "toothache". — RussellA
A child can then learn the word "toothache" by being pointed at the connection between toothache pain behaviour and the name "toothache"
Note that the child cannot learn such a connection from a single example, but only from many examples, where every example is different but all share a family resemblance. — RussellA
Therefore any public language within a community must have been founded on the private languages of the individuals within the community.
An individual may be corrected by a public language, but recognising that such a public language has previously been collectively corrected by the individuals who make up the community.
Yes, without the foundation of private languages, a public language cannot be corrected. — RussellA
pause.
Though the famous PI 43 does very much sound like a theory:
For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. And the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer. — RussellA
For Plotinus, the first principle of reality is "the One", an utterly simple, ineffable, unknowable subsistence which is both the creative source of the Universe and the teleological end of all existing things. — Wiki Neoplatonism
Many philosophers have taken ‘I remember the connection right’ to mean ‘I use “S” when and only when I really have S’. They then take Wittgenstein’s argument to be based on scepticism about memory: how can you be sure that you have remembered aright when next you call a sensation ‘S’? …
Critics of Wittgenstein have found the argument, so interpreted, quite unconvincing. Surely, they say, the untrustworthiness of memory presents no more and no less a problem for the user of a private language than for the user of a public one. No, Wittgenstein’s defenders have said, for memory-mistakes about public objects may be corrected, memory-mistakes about private sensations cannot; and where correction is impossible, talk of correctness is out of place. At this point critics of Wittgenstein have either denied that truth demands corrigibility, or have sought to show that checking is possible in the private case too. (Kenny[ 1973] pp. 191–2) — SEP - Private Language
Well, I've answered that. I'll leave you to your private language. — Luke
A second ago you were asking about getting outside of one's own representation. Now you are asking about getting outside of everyone's representations. Which is it?
It's our practices, our rules, our games, our language. Calling all of these "our representations" makes them seem like some communal, shared idea, rather than our practices and actions in the world. I don't see the benefit or truth in caliing them all "representations". — Luke
If the practice called "following the rule" wasn't outside of one's own representation, then there would be no difference between thinking one was following a rule and following it.
I'm not going to keep going around in circles on this. — Luke
What do you mean by "external"? I mean public, open to view, available for others to verify, not limited to one person's private experiences. — Luke
Nobody decides this. We are unable to verify anyone else's private, internal beetle, so we can only judge whether another has followed the rule based on their ("external") behaviour. — Luke
Individuals may still just think they are confirming some thing, but one can still be a skeptic about all of it. You can’t just say common sense or refer to the other person because that can just be an individuals representation. The beetle is still in the box. — schopenhauer1
I don't. What's internalized (or internal) is the beetle, which drops out of consideration as irrelevant. All that matters to following a rule is "what's being conveyed" or one's words and actions. — Luke
It doesn't matter how it is "internalized". That is irrelevant to following the rule. — Luke
Individual confirmations of what are the rules and cultural ideas are not hidden and private; they are expressed publicly. One's public expression can be demonstrated to be inconsistent with the accepted practice that is called "following the rule". — Luke