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  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    ↪Terrapin Station
    Noting and correcting irrelevancies is important sometimes :)
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    if people aren't interested, that's fine. They don't have to pay attention to me. — Terrapin Station
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    ↪Terrapin Station
    Not interested in your comment. I'm interested in reading the PI.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    ↪Terrapin Station


    This is all well and good, until, of course, one pays attention to the specificity of Wittgenstein's example, which for reminders' sake, runs like this:

    §29: "Perhaps someone will say, “two” can be ostensively defined only in this way: “This number is called ‘two’." (emphasis in the original)

    The discussion that follows is in reference to understanding this utterance, where 'number' is a word specifically employed in the use of language to be understood.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    We certainly don’t arrive at the term “number” before we have the terms “one,” “two,” “three,” etc.,. — I like sushi

    Yes, but that's not what's being discussed. It's not about the term 'number', but the term 'two', in the example discussed:

    §29: "Perhaps someone will say, “two” can be ostensively defined only in this way: “This number is called ‘two’."

    And in this example, the understanding of number comes prior to the understanding of the ostensive definition of two. Witty is explicit about this:

    §29: "But this means that the word “number” must be explained before that ostensive definition can be understood."

    To be clear, we don't have a disagreement here. We're simply talking about two very different things. My point is only that the specificity of the example that Witty gives here is important, and that there's a reason he gives this example, and not the kind you offer (even though your example and the point it illustrates is perfectly correct). And that reason is because Witty is setting up the importance of kinds of words - of grammar, of the 'place' of a word in language, what you referred to as 'categories' - that your example, fine as it is on its own, does not capture.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    I simply meant that to point out “red” you need to collect objects that are red. — I like sushi

    In the context of the sections we're talking about, the point to be made is something like: in order to point out red, we need to understand that it is a color - and not a shape, texture, or name (for example) - that is instead being pointed out. It can be put like this: to understand what is being pointed out by ostentation, one needs to understand two things, not one, and always both together: first, the 'actual' thing that is being pointed out - red, say - and second, the kind of thing that is being pointed out - in this case, the color (and not the shape, texture, name, etc). All these early sections are basically at pains to point this 'double understanding' out.

    §30: "One has already to know (or be able to do) something before one can ask what something is called."

    You can point out the number of items and an understanding of “four” or “five” will come. Once these terms are established then, and only then, can the term “number” be applied. In this sense the “category” of number is set out after the use of them (ostensively.) — I like sushi

    This is true as far as it goes, but it doesn't quite capture what is at stake in these sections. Notice, to begin with, that Witty insists on the reverse order of what you've said: to understand ostension we first need to understand the kind of thing it is (say, number), then we grasp what actual thing it is (the number 3, say):

    §29: "Perhaps someone will say, “two” can be ostensively defined only in this way: “This number is called ‘two’.” For the word “number” here shows what place in language, in grammar, we assign to the word. But this means that the word “number” must be explained before that ostensive definition can be understood."
    §30: "One has already to know (or be able to do) something before one can ask what something is called."
    §31: "This [ostensive] explanation again informs him of the use of the piece only because, as we might say, the place for it was already prepared."

    In all three cases here, what is 'prepared' and what is explained 'before' the actual ostensive definition is the 'category' - as you said - of the thing that is being pointed out. The 'category'' is not set out after the pointing out, but before. It must be 'prepared' before one understands that it is 'two' things that are being pointed out.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Just to circle back to this:

    W then goes on to mention something of symbolism and categories (yet I don’t think he explicitly says “categories”?) when talking of colour, shape and number (23 - ref. to language/words as “tools”, 28, 29 to 35 - talk about numbers, colours and shapes). Here he mentions that pointing out a group of items and announcing something doesn’t make explicit what the word announced means (could be “group,” could be “five,” could be “circular,” could be “yellow,” etc.,.) it is from here that categories are formed by cross referencing what is said in reference to what items. — I like sushi

    What you call 'categories' here, and what Witty variously refers to as the 'place' that is 'prepared' for a word prior to the ostensive defintion of something, or 'kinds of word', is pretty much, imo, the most important thing that is being set-up in these early sections. It begins to lay the groundwork for what is maybe the most important concept developed in the book: that of grammar. In fact §29 marks one of the first appearances of Wittgenstein's use of the term 'grammar' in the PI (the second appearance, in fact - the first was back in §20, but it was not used there in the quasi-technical sense that it first has here in §29):

    "For the word “number” here shows what place in language, in grammar, we assign to the word. But this means that the word “number” must be explained before that ostensive definition can be understood. The word “number” in the definition does indeed indicate this place - the post at which we station the word." (my bolding).

    The 'place' of a word is its place 'in grammar' - which is used almost as a synonym for 'in language'. That language and grammar are here co-eval and essentially equivalent indicates the importance that grammar plays in Wittgenstein's conception of language as a whole. This theme will only get more important as we continue. In any case, I will simply reiterate again the importance of thinking in terms of 'kinds of words' and the 'place(s) prepared' for the use of a word, which you capture here in your talk of 'categories'. Attention to this aspect of the work will clear up alot of what is going on in §31, which MU is struggling with.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    A remark about the 'difficulty' of the PI: one should be careful about taking a priest's approach to the book, as if reading it requires some series of initiation rites and ritual incantations. It is a difficult book, but one eminently approachable when read with care - that is, when read with the attention appropriate to any good work of philosophy.

    One element of difficulty specific to the PI though, is that it develops its arguments in two contrasting temporal keys: on the one hand, the arguments develop over long stretches of discussion, where nascent points are slowly and deliberately teased out bit by bit. There's a need to keep passages in mind that might have long ago been read. This contrasts with the PI's otherwise very tight argumentative structure were points are taken up and dropped very quickly in the space of a single subsection or two, and which themselves require close attention in order to grasp them.

    The fact that the book largely operates at these two different scales at the same time is not easy to square with our usual habits of reading, and it can be hard to coordinate the two with each other. Still, it can be done, and it doesn't require some kind of kabbalah-like esoteric hermeneutics that often and damagingly gets associated with the work. Just a bit of hard work, nothing more.

    In terms of this little reading group, I'd simply suggest to be careful about getting to caught up in local arguments and particular subsections without trying to relate them to the global whole of the work. It's far too easy to get stuck on one or another example without trying to understand its place in the larger narrative (and there is a narrative arc or arcs to the PI, fragmentary looks notwithstanding). I would also add that I agree with Sushi that for those reading the PI for the first time it might not always be beneficial to track secondary readings along with it. It's hard enough to keep the double tempo of the book in mind without adding a third.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    ↪Wallows
    Perhaps you ought to simply participate and contribute rather than proliferating reading groups and readings which you don't commit yourself to.
  • Chemistry: Elements and Substances
    ↪blokeybloke
    Neither. I interpret it as a cup of water, and everyone knows what that is. Most children understand this, long before they are introduced to either molecules or the idea of liquid states.

    Again, this is just a question of how language is used, nothing more. Trying to milk philosophy out of this will get no one anywhere.
  • Senses
    I'd suggest that the first thing to understand is that senses work upon differences - gradations, distinctions, and invariants under movement - in an environment. To see something is to see its contour against a background, its varying specular qualities on its surface in light and so on. To touch, similarly, is to feel the differences in grain and texture as one moves a finger or hand across a surface. So too with the other modalities of sense. In other words: difference (or rather, distinction) is information. The modalities of sense we have are probably those with allow us the best 'access' to variations in differences. Sight is exemplary because light and movement provide a great deal of differentiation in an environment from a point of view, and hence information. Something relatively uniform (for animals of our size), like air pressure, on the other hand, is probably not super useful to have developed as a sensory modality (we don't primarily navigate our environment by sensing changes in air pressure).

    This kind of explanation would have to be coupled to a good evolutionary history to give the full picture, but that's a rudiment of an answer, I reckon.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    All meaning is from a particular space and time period. So if that's sufficient to count as indexical, language is indexical period. — Terrapin Station

    Oh dear. Yeah, not worth continuing when this is the level of response :( Please learn some basic grammar terms before continuing :smile:
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    One last way to put it: ostension is indexical - acquiring definite meaning from a particular space and time - and all indexicals by definition are general; there's a reason why this or that can refer to, well, pretty much anything, precisely because indexicals have no particular content when shorn of their deictic employment. If indexicals were not general and always tied to some particular thing or another, one would be confronted by weird objections like 'that's not a this!... everyone knows what a this is, and that's not it!'. This is, like... first year grammar.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    The problem is that "ostension is inseparable from generality" seems very obviously wrong (as do many other things you said and that you quoted from Wittgenstein). — Terrapin Station

    It's been explained though. It's unfortunate you don't understand I guess.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    ↪Terrapin Station
    I was using the word in the same manner as Witty speaks of places and kinds. Consider it a synonym, if you like. Your question is still confusing to me because it lacks any context with the PI or its concerns. And so I still have no idea what motivates it. I can only tell you how I meant it. If you want to connect it to some other issue, that's for you to do. I'm not that interested in going in circles here. If you have a question about the PI, the arguments in it, or my presentation of them, present them. Otherwise I'll abstain from continuing this very strange conversation.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    ↪Terrapin Station
    I don't know what you're talking about - 'Generality and its complement'?
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    I quite obviously mean what Wittgenstein does when he speaks of types, places, and roles in language and the like. I thought that was quite clear given this is a PI thread, and I was literally discussing passages from the book but I guess I'm mistaken?
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    A role is always general. That's... just what it means to be or to 'occupy' a role. A name plays the role... of a name, with a distinctive grammar shared by other uses of names. Basic stuff dude.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    §30: "An ostensive definition explains the use - the meaning - of a word if the role the word is supposed to play in the language is already clear".
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    ↪Terrapin Station
    Yep. But the pointing out of a proper name is still to employ that proper name in a role: "that is X" [implication: refer to him as such; or, she is the one you're looking for; etc - there is a whole grammar implied here]; I speak of and about a name differently than I speak of and about a color. A name remains a name (indefinite article), no matter how singular the name is.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    For one, this sounds like you're saying that we couldn't point at something or someone and utter a proper name. But that can't be what you're saying. — Terrapin Station

    Indeed it isn't. Which is why names are not demonstratives.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    First, I'm not saying that ostensive learning of language would amount to "correctly identifying" anything. — Terrapin Station

    The phrase "correctly identifying" has not so far been used by either me or the passages we're up to in the PI, so I'm not sure what you're responding to here, or why it's in quotes. As for this:

    The learner might think about what's being ostensively presented in terms of kinds, or tokens, or non-generalizable particulars, or anything imaginable. That's just the point. — Terrapin Station

    The problem is that ostension, by definition, is always demonstrative, and demonstratives are always of something. Pointing to 'this' is always demonstrative of something (else): X is an instance of [a color/shape/texture/size/etc]. It is demonstrative even if it simply is 'the thing I am talking about' (*point* "that is what I am talking about"; which can be read: "the role occupied by what I am talking about is that"). One would not be pointing otherwise. In other words, ostension is by definition inseparable from generality, regardless of what is 'imagined' (of what is 'thought about'). Witty even refers to the difference in kind between the grammar of imagination and meaning in the boxed note of §35, noting in particular that "It is only in a language that I can mean something by something. This shows clearly that the grammar of “to mean” does not resemble that of the expression “to imagine” and the like" (my emphasis).

    [As a curious historical note, Hegel famously begins the Phenomenology by making this exact same point: that terms like 'this' and that' can only ever capture generality, and never singularity, as a matter of principle (although he draws somewhat different conclusions: "It is as a universal too that we utter what the sensuous [content] is. What we say is: 'This', i.e. the universal This; or, 'it is', i.e. Being in general. Of course, we do not envisage the universal This or Being in general, but we utter the universal; in other words, we do not strictly say what in this sense-certainty we mean to say. ... The same will be the case with the other form of the 'This', with 'Here'. ' Here' is, e.g., the tree. If I turn round, this truth has vanished and is converted into its opposite: 'No tree is here, but a house instead'. 'Here' itself does not vanish; on the contrary, it abides constant in the vanishing of the house, the tree, etc., and is indifferently house or tree. Again, therefore, the 'This' shows itself to be a mediated simplicity, or a universality." (Phenomenolgoy of Spirit, emphasis in original).
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Ostensive language-learning works via the learner simply assigning some mental association between what they take to be pointed to and the word in question. — Terrapin Station

    So tokens, rather than kinds, in your opinion? Or rather, singular, non-general(izable) things?
  • Currently Reading
    Mary Tiles - The Philosophy of Set Theory: An Historical Introduction to Cantor's Paradise
    Albert Lautman - Mathematics, Ideas and the Physical Real
    Giorgio Agamben - What Is Real?
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    The differential nature of ostension leads to this question:

    §30: "One has already to know (or be able to do) something before one can ask what something is called. But what does one have to know?"

    - which in turn leads, once again, to the importance of kinds. In order for ostension to 'work', one must understand what kind of thing is being pointed out by means of ostension. §31 will employ a spatial metaphor, speaking about a "place" that must "already [be] prepared" in order for ostensive explanation to function effectively. Witty also refers to kinds as 'roles':

    §30: "An ostensive definition explains the use a the meaning a of a word if the role the word is supposed to play in the language is already clear." (my emphasis)

    Two things are important to note here. First, the question of kinds (or roles, or 'places') are intimately related to use: §31: "[ostensive explanation] informs him of the use only if the place is already prepared": that is, only if the kind of thing being pointed out is understood 'in advance'. This, in turn, sheds vital light on what Witty means when he speaks of use: to know how to 'use' a gesture, is to know what kind of things it points out. The same holds, mutandis mutatis, for the use of words:

    §31 "We may say: it only makes sense for someone to ask what something is called if he already knows how to make use of the name" (my emphasis)

    This is the second important thing: the connection to sense. The idea is that ostension can only make sense when understood as picking out a kind of thing; contrapositively, ostension is senseless without an understanding of the kind of thing it is pointing out. This is one reason why the question: 'it is possible or not to learn language only through ostension?' is so wrong-headed: there is no such thing as 'only though ostension': either ostension is constitutively coupled with an understanding of kinds, or it no longer even makes sense to call something an ostensive act.

    Sense, use, kinds. These concepts and the articulation between them can be said to be the themes that preside over these sections - if not the whole of the PI to come.
  • Heidegger's vision of philosophy in 1919
    ↪One here
    I've read the Intro to Metaphysics and at no point does Heidi mention, let alone discuss, the number zero.
  • Chemistry: Elements and Substances
    Is water a type of molecule or is water made of molecules? — blokeybloke

    Both. Water is composed of molecules, each of which are molecules of water. This isn't so much a question of philosophy or chemistry than an ambiguity in how language is used. Water is simply an equivocal term, which is used differently in different contexts.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Ugh, the question of 'weather it is possible or not to learn language only through ostension' is a pseudo-debate and should be dropped as having to do anything to do with the sections we are discussing. The question about ostension is one of intension, not extension - the nature of ostension and not its scope. At best, the latter is a derivitive and secondary issue, but it can't be discussed properly without first understanding what Witty is trying to say about the former.
  • Heidegger's vision of philosophy in 1919
    He denied existence of number zero(0). — One here

    Citation pls.
  • Are our thoughts certain?
    This discussion was merged into What can we be certain of? Not even our thoughts? Causing me anxiety.
  • Naming and Necessity, reading group?
    ↪Snakes Alive
    Yep. Names are rigid designators. It makes no sense to say names 'have' rigid designators.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Anyway, with respect to ostension, the remarks so far in the PI have had nothing to do with if "we can learn language solely through ostension" or not - which in any case is a largely meaningless question.

    Rather, the point of the early passages are to establish the differential nature of ostension (in contrast to a 'linear' understanding of ostension); i.e that the 'same' ostensive act (pointing at 'this', say), can play different roles depending on the use to which ostension is put. There is no one kind of thing that ostension always picks out, but always the possibility of a variety of kinds of things (or put differently: in principle, there is always the possibility of a one-to-many mapping between ostension and what is 'picked-out', and never a simple one-to-one mapping between them):

    §6: "With different instruction the same ostensive teaching of these words would have effected a quite different understanding."
    §28: "an ostensive definition can be variously interpreted in any case."

    The 'enemy' here is still Augustine, who can be read as still hewing to the one-to-one model of ostension. The question opened up by the differential nature of ostension, however, is this: given that ostension is just pointing, and that such pointing can refer to many different things, how can we know what an ostensive act is 'really' pointing to (If I point to a red pocket square, am I pointing out it's color? It's shape? Its fabric? Its texture? The fact that it is a pocket square? Something to wipe a stain with? All or some of the above in combination?). §29 onwards begins to address this question.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Yeah, considering that rules are not yet discussed at this early stage, one is hard pressed to know what MU thinks he is talking about.
  • Dennett on Colors
    ↪Wayfarer
    This is a dumb criticism. When I say "wow he looks like a leather handbag from all that sun", the metaphor - or simile, in this case - only extends to the look of skin, and not to the fact that handbags carry things. It's as if one were to reply "I don't think you can put things in him" - well, no, but then, the idiot here isn't the one making the metaphor.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Some remarks on §1:

    (1) "In this picture of language we find the roots of the following idea: Every word has a meaning. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands."

    One thing to keep in mind is that Wittgenstein will attempt to break this correlation:

    word = object (= meaning)

    In both directions. Not only will he try and show that words don't correlate to objects (which is relatively easy), but he will also try and show that 'words' themselves are not natural 'units' of meaning. In other words, he's not attempting to replace 'objects' with something else. He's trying to undermine the idea that one needs words to 'equate' to anything at all in order for meaning to be expressed ('meaning to be expressed' as distinct from 'for words to have meaning').

    (2) "Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between kinds of word ... the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself."

    Just a quick orienting remark: pay close attention to Witty's focus on kinds (and 'sorts'). The notion of kinds of words, kinds of questions, sorts of things, plays a vital role in the PI. The attention to kinds is inseparable from his understanding of the role of grammar, which will because super important in later discussions.

    (3) "Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere" (italics in original).

    This ties back (forward?) into the comments I made about §19: note the distinction between 'act' and explanation: that explanations 'come to an end' in 'acts'. This will also be super important later, but for now, it's worth noting as an indicator of the importance of questions of regress (and putting a stop to it) that will rear their head all through the PI.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Because that's what both wanting something and meaning are--mental phenomena — Terrapin Station

    I don't think you'll get much out of this reading group by simply hewing to this position and then measuring everything in the PI against it. The point here is to understand what and why Witty says what he does, not contrast every section with Terrapin's pet theory of meaning. Nobody is here to engage with the latter.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    Re (2), I'd once again say that it's just a matter of what words (what sounds/text strings) have what meanings and associations for an individual. It's a matter of how an individual thinks about it. — Terrapin Station

    But why thought? In saying 'Slab!', it is not 'thought' at stake but actions. I want that person over there to hand me that slab next to him. The sound 'slab!' initiates a movement of bodies and things, and its role in the transaction is functional. It is only within the context of me over here, you over there, a slab further away, and perhaps a structure to be built that the sound 'slab!' attains its particular sense in that situation. This 'context' - which is largely extra-lingustic and extra-mentalistic - is what Witty refers to as 'a form of life'.

    The series of rhetorical questions in §19 is meant to highlight the irrelavency of the line of questioning it pursues: if one keeps looking to translate words into other words, framing meaning as a wholly intra-linguistic rather than always already bound up within a broader context of actions, things, projects, and movements, one cannot understand what is going on when one shouts 'slab!'. If one tries to understand 'slab!' in only in terms of sentences and thoughts (or thoughts of sentences) - rather than actions and practices - one will miss how it is that 'slab!' can function to initiate action - and subsequently, 'mean' anything at all.
  • Heidegger's vision of philosophy in 1919
    I like what you've written, but I think I've interpreted death differently (perhaps a misreading.) If death (as possibility at every moment and not some future event) opens the genuine future, it rips open the timeline and shreds it into a welter of possibilities. For me this would be like clashing orientations and associated disorientations. To experience a stable orientation would be to make the future present in the form of waiting for its already determinate form. As I read him, death reveals us as essentially possibility in a dizzying way. The 'pastness' theme seems important too. We can already image ourselves dead in a way that allows us to grasp our lives as a completed story. And we can author that story within the constraints of our thrown-ness. — macrosoft

    I guess if I were to summarize the critique it is that Heidegger doesn't pay enough attention to the impossible: that every possibility is equally and also an im-possibility, the possibility of the impossible. And the impossible in turn speaks to the recalcitrance of things to 'worldhood', their opacity and irreducibility to intelligibility. Lingis gets at it thus:

    "Does it not happen that we find the onward drift of our environment disconnected from our actual movements and operations? Does not each life extend across metamorphoses, in which it finds itself reborn with tasks that were nowhere yesterday; docs it not find whole fragments of its past drifting behind it, unintegratable like dreams in the daylight reality about it? We go to the cellar to fix a broken chair with drill, screws, and glue; the phone rings and we plan a trip with a friend, mapping out an itinerary, jotting down things that have to get done-have the car greased and oiled, get a passport,
    arrange for injections from the doctor; suddenly there is a scream and we drop the phone, hurdle out the door and grab a stick to thrash the cat that has caught a blue jay; on the way back to the house we glance at our watch and realize it is almost time for our appointment with the hypnotist to stop smoking ...The one that grasps the hammer does not comprehensively envision the carpentry of the whole world. The practicable fields are limited and discontinuous. Between and beyond term, there are innumerable impracticable fields."

    The unintergratable, the impracticable, the impossible, the discontinuous, the opaque: these are things that Heidegger only tends to think of negatively in the guise of limitation and breakdown, and not as constitutive of the human condition:

    "Heidegger's analysis, axed not on the material but on the forms a practical life manipulates in the dynamic field, argues that things are essentially means; - each mundane end is a means in turn. The relay from implement to implement and to work being done returns to the manipulator. Before the hand
    grasps the hammer, this whole circuit must have already been laid out. The handling is a movement .rhat fits in this comprehensive system and is de!-ermined by it from the start. But does not the finality in things also come to an end in them? Water which one knows in the savoring and in the drinking, berries which one gathers and which melt in one' s mouth as one walks through the meadow do not catch our eye as refurbishments for our cells and muscles and means for our projects; they are substances in which sensuality glows and fades away. The materiality of things is not just there as the materialization of the dynamic form we grasp; once grasped and brought under one's eyes and in -one's home, the instrumental forms of things dissolve into the density of their substance."

    This is 'worldhood' held in suspension, time as condensed into the beatitude of an unintegrable moment, one that resists being woven into some overarching narrative in which would reduce it to just one more story beat among others. Anti-holism.

    Actually I agree with most of that, but inadequate proximating doesn't have to be read in a gloomy sense. As I understood Kisiel's rendition, the point of all of this proximating is to live more fully and openly. I think the heavy style obscures what is finally aimed at (openness to the depths of life) . And of course avoiding the world turned upside down seems central here. In Ontology:Hermeneutics of Facticity, Heidegger writes some beautiful paragraphs about a table in his home, skis in his garage. As we go back we have factic life at the center. Switching to the language of being gives the project a different feel. — macrosoft

    While I think there's a rich and laudable tradition of philosophy that links it with 'life', I'd be very careful about the over-determination of philosophy by the concerns of 'life'. Philosophy can be richer than even that. Brassier's well-known injunction on this is well worth heeding imo:

    "Philosophers would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. Philosophy should be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. ... Thinking has interests that do not coincide with those of living; indeed, they can and have been pitted against the latter." (Nihil Unbound).

    I would like to emphasize the H's vision circa 1919 is not at all for me an exhaustive description of what philosophy is or ought to be. I did find it stirring. It's one more direction, one more persona even. I'd say that I experience philosophy as a gallery of vivid personalities. None of them get it right. Most of them offer something, often an excess that needs the others as a complement/supplement.

    Fair enough. I'm a big fan of pluralist approaches to things, and my worry is generally always the over-determination of philosophy by one aspect over others; I want richness, always.
  • Philosophical Investigations, reading it together.
    First, I'm confused by "Slab I" ("Slab <Roman numeral one>"? Or "Slab <indexical for oneself>"?) — Terrapin Station

    If you're working off the PDF, I think that's an OCR error. It's just 'Slab!', with an exclamation mark in my copy of the book.

    With respect to §19 as a whole, I will only comment that the whole section needs to be read in light of the two most important sentences which can be found at the beginning and end of the section respectively:

    (1) "To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life".
    (2) "does 'wanting this' consist in thinking in some form or other a different sentence from the one you utter"? (my bolding)

    It's clear that §19 is meant to answer the question (2) in the negative (it does not consist in thinking in some form or other a different sentence form the one you utter). In place of 'thought', what is offered is 'a form of life'. Witty does not at this point comment too much on what he means by this, but as a start, §19 is meant to pick apart the equation of 'wanting this' with 'thinking'.
  • How can I enjoy things if I cannot be certain they are happening?
    Why would certainty be a condition of enjoyment? A bizarre connection,
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