That's it. You are reading something into my words that just isn't there. — Michael

Feel free to keep your grammatical fiction, it may serve you well.

When Michael says that colors are percepts or that we only ever see percepts and never colors, he is in a very real sense committing himself to the position that we only ever see colors indirectly. — Leontiskos

I would say Michael, and others, are committed to a particular metaphysical worldview I like to call “The Private Theater.” In this worldview, they imagine they are in a theater where they alone are watching a series of images being projected onto a screen. Based on their memory, they have been in this theater all their lives. With time they have learned to use language and logic from rather useful pedagogical images. Fortunately, or unfortunately, this language and logic has revealed a rather uncertain existence. Ideas of cause and effect have made them realize that these projected images have some kind of cause of some unknown nature. What could be these images “really” be like they wonder. If only their scientific laws could remove this doubt, but unfortunately no matter how many times they predict future images, the next one could undermine everything. Doubt creeps in again. But if one thing they can gain comfort in is the certainly that what appears to them in the theater is always certain.

This is based on Searle's ontological distinction between modes of existence. Entities like mountains, molecules, and tectonic plates have an existence independent of any experience. They are ontologically objective. Entities like pains, tickles, and itches exist only insofar as they are experienced by a subject (for Searle this is either a human or an animal). They are ontologically subjective.

Yep, I often thought if Wittgenstein wanted to theorize instead of just describe he might have moved in the direction that Searle has.

I will have to take your word about Aquinas as I am only familiar with his arguments for the existence of God.

I will start off with a quote from W.V. Quine from his seminal work "Word and Object." He says, "There are however, philosophers who overdo this line of thought, treating ordinary language as sacrosanct. They exalt ordinary language to the exclusion of one of its own traits: its disposition to keep on evolving." Of all of the criticisms of ordinary language philiosophy I have read, I find this one to be the most compelling. Another criticism often brought up of ordinary language philosophy is that of defining philosophy's role as merely description. For some, this is too narrow of a definition and ignores the fact that philosophy can, should, and/or does have a normative function as well.

I believe these two ideas are essentially what Gellner is ultimately worried about in this book, however, he does not do a great job in expressing it in a succinct manner. For example, pg 78 (section 6 The Contrast Theory of Meaning) he says "In fact, contrast often overlay presuppositions which are worth bringing out, and sometimes worth denying: the contrast between good and bad witches is worth ignoring for the sake of denying that either kind exists. Far from thought generally moving within a tacitly determinate system of contrasts, it often happens that by refining a concept which at the time is contrast-less, a new contrast, a new concept is brought into being." And, pg 78 "The error springs in each case from the failure to realise that thought is not bound and enslaved by any of the language games it employs, but on the contrary that a most important kind of thinking consists of reassessing out terms, reassessing the norms built into them and reassessing the contrast associated with them." Here I believe are a good examples of language evolving, new ideas being created. Additionally, pg 267 (section 4 Failue of Normativeness) he say, "What is conspicuous about Linguistic Philosophy is its abdication of any kind of normative role, both in its practice and in its programmatic announcements." Or pg 72, "Yet this is precisely what philosophy is and should be: The asking, not of specific questions within a category, but of questions about categories as whole, about the viability, possibility, desirability, of whole species of thinking." Here Gellner is speaking of the normative role pf philosophy.

I don't have a copy of Searle, but according to this:

Searle presents the example of the color red: for an object to be red, it must be capable of causing subjective experiences of red. At the same time, a person with spectrum inversion might see this object as green, and so unless there is one objectively correct way of seeing (which is largely in doubt), then the object is also green in the sense that it is capable, in certain cases, of causing a perceiver to experience a green object.

This seems to be arguing that colours are mental phenomena and that the predicate "is red" is used to describe objects which cause red mental phenomena. — Michael

I little more exposition on Searle's view of colors:

From Seeing Things as They Are:

"Color is a bit tricky because of such phenomena as spectrum inversion and color constancy, and we will get into those issues in the next chapter. Let us now examine our visual experience of the red ball. Is the visual experience itself red? Emphatically, visual experiences are not colored. Why not? Colors are observable to all, and visual experiences are not. The color red emits photons of about 6500 angstrom units and the visual experience emits nothing. So it is wrong to think of the visual experience as itself colored. Also, to think that visual experiences are colored is almost inevitably to commit the Bad Argument because one has to ask who is seeing the color."

(The Bad Argument Searle refers to is any argument that attempts to treat the perceptual experience as an actual or possible object of experience.)

He continues, "First, for something to be red in the ontologically objective world is for it to be capable of causing ontologically subjective visual experiences like this. The fact of its redness consists at least in part in this causal capacity (with the usual qualifications about normal conditions and normal observers) to cause this sort of ontologically subjective visual experience. There is an internal relation between the fact of being red, and the fact of causing this sort of experience. What does it mean to say that the relation is "internal"? It means it could not be that color if it were not systemically related in that way to experiences like this. Second, for something to be the object of perceptual experience is for it to be experienced as the cause of the experience. If you put these two points together, you get the result that the perceptual experience necessarily carries the existence of a red as its condition of satisfaction."

Newton: "For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and Disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour." — Michael

Alternatively, Newton, From Opticks, said,

“From what has been said it is also evident, that the Whiteness of the Sun's Light is compounded all the Colours where with the several sorts of Rays whereof that Light consists, when by their several Refrangibilities they are separated from one another, do tinge Paper or any other white Body whereon they fall. For those Colours ... are unchangeable, and whenever all those Rays with those their Colours are mix'd again, they reproduce the same white Light as before.”

The topic is about perception, not grammar. — Michael

Again from Russell’s Analysis of the Mind Lecture VII The Definition of Perception

“The notion of perception is therefore not a precise one: we perceive things more or less, but always with a very considerable amount of vagueness and confusion.”

Russell’s analysis is a conceptual one, not experimental.

“When a mental occurrence can be regarded as an appearance of an object external to the brain, however irregular, or even as a confused appearance of several such objects, then we may regard it as having for its stimulus the object or objects in question, or their appearances at the sense-organ concerned. When, on the other hand, a mental occurrence has not sufficient connection with objects external to the brain to be regarded as an appearance of such objects, then its physical causation (if any) will have to be sought in the brain. In the former case it can “be called a perception; in the latter it cannot be so called. But the distinction is one of degree, not of kind. Until this is realized, no satisfactory theory of perception, sensation, or imagination is possible.”

From what I gather, Russell is reluctant in calling “mental percepts” perception at all. And seems to want to move in the direction of Quine and just be concerned with brain activity. Again Russell is not performing science here, but has a lot to say what perception is all about in a general sort of way.

On colour, Quine has said this:

But color is cosmically secondary. Even slight differences in sensory mechanisms from species to species, Smart remarks, can make overwhelming differences in the grouping of things by color. Color is king in our innate quality space, but undistinguished in cosmic circles. Cosmically, colors would not qualify as kinds.

Your quote of him is him arguing for eliminative materialism, which I have previously accepted is a possibly correct account of so-called mental phenomena (e.g. pain just is a type of brain activity, and so colours just are a type of brain activity.

Indeed, Quine goes even further say that colours are “neither natural kinds nor any significance to theoretical science.” But if this is the case, why not eliminate this talk of mental percepts of colour, this is not what science is investigating.
— Michael

Russell is not saying what (I think) you think he's saying. When he says "the sensation that we have when we see a patch of colour simply is that patch of colour" he is saying that colour just is that sensation. — Michael

The point of this example is to show that Russell is concerned about the grammar of colour, so we can get it right about what science is actually investigating.

I don't care about how Wittgenstein viewed perception and colours. He was not a physicist or a neuroscientist and so he didn't have the appropriate expertise. To think that somehow an examination of language can address such issues is laughable. Do you want to do away with the Large Hadron Collider and simply talk our way into determining how the world works? — Michael

Since this is a philosophy forum, I will provide some interesting nuance views of color and mental percepts from for philosophers who were admirers of the achievement of science.

From the Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell:

“If there is a subject, it can have a relation to the patch of colour, namely, the sort of relation which we might call awareness. In that case the sensation, as a mental event, will consist of awareness of the colour, while the colour itself will remain wholly physical, and may be called the sense-datum, to distinguish it from the sensation. The subject, however, appears to be a logical fiction, like mathematical points and instants. It is introduced, not because observation reveals it, but because it is linguistically convenient and apparently demanded by grammar. Nominal entities of this sort may or may not exist, but there is no good ground for assuming that they do. The functions that they appear to perform can always be performed by classes or series or other logical constructions, consisting of less dubious entities. If we are to avoid a perfectly gratuitous assumption, we must dispense with the subject as one of the actual ingredients of the world. But when we do this, the possibility of distinguishing the sensation from the sense-datum vanishes; at least I see no way of preserving the distinction. Accordingly the sensation that we have when we see a patch of colour simply is that patch of colour, an actual constituent of the physical world, and part of what physics is concerned with. ”

From Word and Object by W. V. Quine:

"If there is a case for mental events and mental states, it must be just that the positing of them, like the positing of molecules, has some indirect system efficacy in the development of theory. But if a certain organization of theory is achieved by thus positing distinctive mental states and events behind physical behavior, surely as much organization could be achieved by positing merely certain correlative physiological states and events instead. Nor need we spot special centers in the body for these seizures; physical states of the undivided organism will serve, whatever their finer physiology. Lack of detailed physiological explanation of the states is scarcely an objection to acknowledging them as states of human bodies, when we reflect that those who posit the mental states and events have no details of appropriate mechanisms to offer nor, what with mind-body problem, prospects of any. The bodily states exist anyway; why add the others?"

From Language, Truth, and Logic by A.J. Ayer:

"To determine, for instance, whether two people have the same color sense we observe whether they classify all the colour expanses with which they are confronted in the same way; and, when we say that a man is colour-blind, what we are asserting is that he classifies certain color expanses in a different way from that in which they would be classified by the majority of people. It may be objected that the fact that two people classify color expanses in the same way proves only that their colour worlds have the same structure, and not that they have the same content; that it is possible for another man to assent to every proposition which I make about colours on the basis of entirely different colour sensations, although, since the difference is systematic, neither of us is ever in the position to detect it. But the answer to this is that each of us has to define the content of another man's sense-experiences in terms of what he can himself observe."

And Lastly, from Seeing Things as They Are by John Searle:

"Question 2 How does the account deal with color constancy and size constancy? I will consider these in order. Imagine that a shadow falls over a portion of the red ball so that part of it is in shadow and part not. Did the part in shadow change its color? Well, obviously not, and it is obviously not seen as having changed its color. All the same, there is a difference in the subjective visual field. The subjective basic perceptual properties have changed. The proof is that if I were drawing a picture of what I now see, I would have to include a darker portion of the part in shadow, even though I know that there has been no change in its actual color. It is extremely misleading to describe this phenomenon as "color constancy", because of course the experienced color is precisely not constant. It is because of my high-level Background capacities that I am able to see it as having the same color even though at the lower level I see it as having in part changed its color. I want to emphasize this point. At the basic level, the color is precisely not constant, neither subjectively nor objectively. It changes. It is just at the higher level that I know, because of my Background abilities, that it still keeps the same color."

Notice no mental percepts needed
— Richard B

Of course they are, else you wouldn't be seeing anything; you'd just have light reaching your eyes and then nothing happening, e.g. blindness or blindsight. — Michael

I think the following two passages provides some insight on how Wittgenstein viewed perception and colors:

From Wittgenstein's "Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology The Inner and the Outer Volume 2",

"Psychology describes the phenomena of color-blindness as well as those of normal sight. What are the phenomena of color blindness'? Certainty the reactions of the color-blind person which differentiate him from the normal person. But certainly not all of the color-blind person's reactions, for example not those that distinguish him from a blind person. - Can I teach the blind what seeing is, or can I teach this to the sighted? That doesn't mean anything. Then what does it mean: to describe seeing? But I can teach human beings the meaning of the words "blind" and "sighted", and indeed the sighted learn them, just as the blind do. Then do the blind know what it is like to see? But do the sighted know? Do they also know what it's like to have consciousness?"

"Indeed he might be astonished when he sees the object, but in order to 'be astonished about the colour', in order for the colour to be the reason of his astonishment and not just the cause of his experience, he needs not just sight, but to have the concept of colour."

We don't learn concepts of "color" and "seeing" by only experiencing colors and seeing. We don't teach children what colors are by sharing are experiences of mental percepts of color, but by using the words under particular circumstance and seeing if the child can do the same. We don't teach what "seeing" means by describing what seeing is, but by using the word in the form of life humans typically engage in. By using these learned words and acting in the appropriate ways, we demonstrate to our fellow humans we do experience such things as colors and seeing.

But not only a percept.

Where are these percepts to be found? — Banno

And what is the common essence of calling these all “percepts”? I guess I can not use family resemblances, or I will be accused of being blinded by Wittgenstein.

Claiming that they do not "really" have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour.
— Banno

No, claiming that they really have these colours is a misunderstanding of the nature of colour. — Michael

If I put on a pair of color distorting glasses and the tomatoes appear white, do we need to question if the color of the tomatoes are “really” red? Or that the circumstances have changes where the reported color of tomatoes is white. And if I damage my brain in such a way where tomatoes “appear” white, so be it, the circumstances have changed. Notice no mental percepts needed, although we need a human community agreeing on color judgment.

Pragmatism instead is a positive alternative in being based on a willingness to believe - and then test. Belief becomes an inveterate habit if it keeps passing the test. And that same evolutionary credo explains reality as a whole. — apokrisis

Well put

No, that is our disagreement. We agree we perceive the pen as red. Maybe you think the pen is actually red, but I don't.
— Hanover

Ok. So for Hanover, "the pen is red" is not true. I think it is. — Banno

This is insanity. No wonder Wittgenstein saw this as an illness.

I believe in a God who is Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Just (by Just I mean It delivers Good and Evil in the right proportion). Therefore, I think that life is Just. — MoK

But does not God create humans to have free will? And if so, can choose in such a way to create an unfair and unjust world?

The "common-sense" naive view falsely posits that colours-as-we-experience-them are mind-independent properties of objects, but the science shows us that they are not; they are mental percepts related to neural activity in the visual cortex. — Michael

The “common-sense” naive view truly posits that colors are mind independent properties of objects because when I change the color of my room’s wall and get another bucket of paint with a different color, not a different mental percept. A scientific view truly posits that there is a correlation of brain activity when I look at my room’s wall color, and how that activity changes when I change its color.

Mental percept drops out of the conversation.

don't think the OP, for example, is asking if atoms reflecting light is mind-independent. He's referring to the mental percept and asking if it's a mental percept or (as the naive colour primitivist believes) something mind-independent. — Michael

It is strange to ask if mental percept are mind-independent, seems like we have already defined it as mind-dependent by calling it “mental”. You keep mentioning that science supports such notion, but I don’t see it. As you mentioned in previous posts, you are not clear if you are committing to some sort of dualism. If you don’t , are you saying mental percepts are identical with brain states. Problem with this is you are no longer talking about mind dependent concepts but mind independent (brain neurons etc I would think you would call mind independent). But if you go the dualism route, you out of the science realm and moving into the metaphysical realm, and we both know the many problems with this view since Descartes.

Well, I would say that the stick that looks bent is not, just pull it out of the water. And the same with dreams/hallucinations, what appears to have happen has not. Additionally, when a colorimeter instrument gets a color wrong, I don't posit that it is hallucinating the wrong mental percepts, I would fix it to ensure it detects the right colors.

But we do not teach what the meaning of "hallucinations" and "dreams" are by pointing out "mental percepts", but by teaching these words to someone who reports events that are not the case in particular circumstances.

Yet another reason to not to posit them.

We can use the adjective “red” to describe a mind-independent pen that has properties that are the cause of red colour percepts. But the noun “red” refers to that colour percept, not a mind-independent property of the pen. — Michael

So "black" is an adjective and a noun because not only does it describe the property of the object (absorbs all colors of light) but it picks out the object from other objects of color (There is no color percepts to refer to). But if "black" is adequately described in this way, it is hard to see why we could not extend this to "red", "blue", etc... as well. There is no practical reason to refer to "mental percepts" at all, or for that matter, it seems more parsimonious not to.

As such there is no (visible) light to stimulate the rods and cones in our eyes, and so the V4 neurons are not fired, and so no colour percepts are produced.

It’s certainly not the case that black is some mind-independent property of objects that is seen by the absence of (visible) light. That just makes no sense at all. — Michael

Yet, I can see black objects. I can pick out an object that is black from other objects that are colored. Why can't we say it lacks the property of color? What makes less sense is to say I pick out a black object because it has no mental percepts. I pick it out because it was black.

Disdain for scientific metaphysics: talk about material substance, naturalism or physicalism, as if these were primordial concepts. — Constance

Here, I see some agreement with scientific metaphysics, in particular on how this is manifested in the debate of determinism and freedom. That said, in your very first post you said:

"My thinking is this: Religion rises out of the radical ethical indeterminacy of our existence. This simply means that we are thrown into a world of ethical issues that, in the most basic analysis, are not resolvable. Yet they insist on resolution with the same apodicticity as logical coercivity. Meaning, just as one cannot but agree with something like modus ponens or the principle of identity in terms of the pure logicality of their intuitive insistence, so one cannot resist the moral insistence of moral redemption."

This smells of the odor of "determinism" from my humble nose. How does "freedom" and "logical coercively" exist where I can continue to feel human and not like the Mac I am typing on.

I haven't said that mental phenomena aren't just particular brain states. I'm not necessarily arguing for any kind of dualism. I'm leaving that open. Maybe pain just is the firing of C-fibers, as Churchland argues. Maybe colours just are the firing of V4 neurons.

Regardless of what mental phenomena are, pain and colours are mental phenomena; they are not mind-independent properties of fire. — Michael

I believe sense can be given to saying colors are brain-independent and brain-dependent. For example, I am looking at a multi-color object in front a me and report out the different colors. Next, I put on some glasses and now the object appears black. I call this part of the process of seeing colors, brain-independent. Another example, I have an operation on my brain where the doctor removes the neurons associate with color perception. I look at that multi-color object again and it is black. I call this part of the process of seeing colors, brain-dependent. I think you would agree to this.

That said, this brings up the interesting idea of whether black is a color or, from a scientific point of view, the absence of color. If it is an absence of color, like science says, are you compelled to admit that black is a mind independent property of an object? But how could you, can't I dream of black objects which is mental phenomena? Alternately, can't I order a can of paint with the color black contra science?

Language, it can be so messy.

One's sees the same in Quine: "there’s mystery at the bottom of every question ultimately." When the priority is science and clarity at the level of basic questions, one finds Quine's indeterminacy staring back at you, and there is the abiding Kantian making way for faith through a kind of apophatic method of seeing where thought has its limitations. I have always had contempt for this kind of thinking, and I don't think Wittgenstein is right to dismiss ethics and value from meaningful philosophy, which I think addresses your thoughts. Analytic philosophers, at least in Quine's time, really did have that "What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem" style of Fideism, and Witt has been said to be just like this. — Constance

I have to say your position is a bit of a mystery. It seems you have a particular disdain for science, or dare I say jealousy of its status in modern life. Yet you are a bit annoyed of Wittgenstein's rather egalitarian attitude that religious needs no rationale foundation from philosophy or science, that it can stand on its own to freely be engaged in what matter a group of human so choose.

Yes. Mental phenomena are either reducible to brain activity or are caused by brain activity. We dream/hallucinate/see (in colour) when the visual cortex is active. — Michael

Imagine we discover an unknown tribe of humans from some remote island. After several months of studying their ways, we discover that they are particular skilled at gathering local fruit at night in a very dense tropical forest. When we go along with the tribe it is near impossible for us to find this fruit, but for the local tribe, no problem. After several more months of study, we learn that this tribe of humans has a unique layer of cells in their eyes that is not seen in other humans. We begin to suspect that this may be a reason for their skill at night in locating local fruit. After great effort, we are able to create a synthetic version of these cell in the form of a contact lenses. We put the lenses on, and go out at night to gather fruit. To our surprise, the colors of the fruit are now vibrant neon colors.

In this example, are the contact lenses causing new mental phenomena? Or, are they just allowing us to see the colors the fruit had all the time. The mental phenomena is not the cause of us seeing the colors of the fruit, the cause is the addition of the contact lenses. You mention that you need mental phenomena to make sense of hallucination. But I don't see that from a scientific point of view. For example, a person took a hallucinogen which put the brain in a particular physical state, and thus caused the hallucination. Is this not enough to explain what is happening without appeal to mental phenomena?

The relevance is that many human beings do not report dreams, hallucinate, etc, so are we compelled to say they have no mental phenomena. Mental phenomena seems to be contingent on whether a human being reports experiences that do not occur (dreams/hallucinations), or problem with discernment of colors compared to normal performance. But, I have the impression that you believe that all human beings have mental phenomena, regardless if they have dreams or not, hallucinations or not, etc

To put it another way, if I imagine a world full of beings who do not dream, hallucinate, etc, I do not need to posit mental phenomena for these being.

Again, this is the only way to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, and differences in colour perception – all of which are real. — Michael

Do you really believe that the only way to make sense of dreams, hallucinations, etc is to posit mental phenomena. Definitely science does not need to posit such things, they can go on investigating "real" things like brains, neurons, cells, etc. Some people do not report out dreams, most people do not have hallucinations, have synesthesia, or problems judging and reporting out colors. Would you actually commit your self to say that if a human being did not experience dreams, hallucinations, synesthesia, or problems with color discernment they have no mental phenomena, or this is evidence they have no mental phenomena, or I do not need to posit mental phenol phenomena for this type of human being (or are you willing to change the definition of such a being as a "zombie"). I am interested in see how you carry out the implications of "the only way to make sense" comment.

"Family resemblances" is not an "idea" or "theory" that can be proved wrong. It's a vague metaphor that one could call "true" so long as there are any shared similarities between whatever one considers to be a "language-game," (which is also a term that is left vague). — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am saying "this level of vagueness is no longer necessary or helpful; there now exist ways to describe similarities in languages, animal communication, and codes with much more rigor—to actually say something beyond the trivial and banal." — Count Timothy von Icarus

*And I should note that plenty of Wittgensteinians make admirable attempts to dispell the vagueness, even at the risk of theories that sound wildly counterintuitive and implausible. It is only a certain type that seems to really thrive on the vagueness and the ability to avoid error by never really saying anything of substance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interestingly enough, Wittgenstein has some interesting things to say about vagueness of concepts.

From PI 71, "One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges. "But is a blurred concept a concept at all?" Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need?
Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it. But is it senseless to say "Stand roughly there?" Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand-as if I were indicating a particular spot. And this is just how one might explain to someone what a game is. One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way. I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I-for some reason-was unable to express; but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way. Here giving examples is not an indirect means of explaining-in default of a better. For any general definition can be misunderstood too. The point is that this is how we play the game. (I mean the language-game with the word "game")."

Sometimes a concept works better with some degree of vagueness. This is an important quality to have with language. I can think of no better example of this than John Searle's analysis of "Proper Names."
In his analysis, he ask if proper names are just a set of descriptions. What follows in his conclusion is that proper names perform a great function in language by not being precise descriptions. He says (pg 171, Proper Names) "But this precision would be achieved only at the cost of entailing some specific predicates by any referring use of the name. Indeed, the name itself would become superfluous for it would become logically equivalent to this set of descriptions. But if this were the case we would be in the position of only being able to refer to an object by describing it. Whereas in fact this is just what the institution of proper names enables us to avoid and what distinguishes proper names from descriptions."

One has to understand ethics as Wittgenstein did in the Tractatus. See also the Lecture on Ethics and his Culture and Value. Apparently this is hard to see, as is made clear by all of the Wittgenstein fans at this forum, who entirely fail to understand this basic point: ethics and value are transcendental. See what he says: — Constance

You can see why Witt's positivist friends could never understand what he was talking about. He was a deeply religious philosopher as he realized that this dimension of value in our existence is utterly transcendental and yet permeated our existence. It is not about an afterlife, or some divine plan or punishment. It is there IN the fabric of what we are. — Constance

I believe Norman Malcom's book Wittgenstein: A Religious Point of View provides a nice exposition on his view of religion. In the introduction, Malcolm presents a quote from Wittgenstein that had puzzled him thought-out his life. Wittgenstein said to a former student, "I am not a religious man but I cannot help seeing every problem from a religious point of view." Malcolm then proceeded to present an interpretation of what it could mean to say that there is, not strictly a religious point of view, but something analogous to a religious point of view, in Wittgenstein's later philosophical thought.

The four analogies are as follows:

1. The first analogy involve the notion of explanation. Basically, explanation comes to an end, and what needs to be accepted is the language game or form of life itself. As Malcolm says, "Religious practice are part of the natural history of mankind and are no more explicable that are other feature of this natural history."

2. The second analogy is the Wittgenstein's feeling of the "wondered at the existence of the world" or "the experience of seeing the world as a miracle." This was similar to his views of language games, for example, "Let yourself be struck by the existence of such a thing as our language game of: confessing the motive of my action (PI, p. 224).

3. The third analogy, Malcolm says the following of Wittgenstein's view of "religious emotion, thinking, practice, are an expression of the conviction that something is basically wrong with human beings. From Wittgenstein's Culture and Value, "The Christian religion is only for one who needs infinite help, therefore only for one who feels an infinite need. The whole planet cannot be in greater anguish than a single soul. The Christian faith - as I view it- is the refuge in this ultimate anguish. To whom it is given in this anguish to open his heart, instead of contracting it, accepts the means of salvation in his heart." Malcom see the similarity in Wittgenstein later approach to philosophy when he says "A main cause of philosophical disease - one-sided diet: one nourishes one's thinking with only one kind of example. (PI 593)."

4. Fourth, Wittgenstein did not see any value in intellectual proofs of God's existence or theological formulations in general. For Wittgenstein, religion was about changing one life, amending one ways, and helping others. Faith without works is dead as St James would say. Malcolm sees the same kind of thinking when Wittgenstein says "it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game (OC 204.)"

Based on Malcolm's reading, I am not so sure if Wittgenstein would go so far in claiming anything transcendental. He did not believe we needed to explain religion with anything transcendental; that the world was a wonder and a miracle itself; that we need to look at ourselves in mirror and change our lives and help others, and not submit to the temptation to overly intellectualize religion.

But I would agree with you that for him it does permeate our lives and is woven in the very fabric of reality. As he says in Culture and Value:

"Life can educate one to a belief in God. And experiences too are what bring this about; but I don't mean visions and other forms of sense experience which show us the 'existence of this being', but e.g. suffering of various sorts. These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, nor do they give rise to conjectures about him. Experiences, thoughts, - life can force this concept on us."

Re PI 65, I think this has simply been proven wrong by advances in linguistics and information theory. We can identify similarities. I find it hard to even imagine Wittgenstein wanting to argue this point in the modern context given his respect for the sciences. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is quite a claim and strongly put that the idea of "family resemblances" has been proven wrong. Please provide some references to support such a claim. For that matter, let me provide a reference that contradicts your point that there is no support from linguistics. In a well thought out critical study of Wittgenstein, Jerrold Katz, in his book, The Metaphysic of Meaning, presents his linguistic theory on meaning that actual support this idea of family resemblances. He states the following in Chapter 2, pg 110:

"I do not doubt the correctness of Wittgenstein's finding that there is nothing more than family resemblance in the cases like the application of 'game', but this finding is far from a general argument against essentialist definition. The supposition that the finding provides such an argument rest on the notion that a definitional account of the semantics of general terms is incompatible with family resemblance in the application of words like 'game.' But, in the case of at least one definitional account- the proto-theory and the "top-down" approach-family resemblance is exactly what is predicted!"

The supposition is not really specific enough to sensibly answer the question. We have to make decisions step by step, acknowledging mis-steps as we discover them — Ludwig V

I would I have something like this in mind:

From RFM 153 “What does people’s agreement about accepting a structure as proof consist in? In the fact that they use words as language? As what we call “language”.

Imagine people who used money in transactions; that is to say coins, looking like our coins, which are made of gold and silver and stamped and are handed over for goods. But each person gives just what he pleases for goods, and the merchant does not give the customer more or less according to what he pays. In short this money, or what looks like money, has among them a quite different role from among us. We should feel much less akin to these people than people who are not acquainted with money at all and practice a primitive kind of barter. “But these people’s coins will surely also have some purpose!” Then has everything that one does a purpose? Say religious actions.

It is perfectly possible that we should be inclined to call people who behaved like this insane. And yet we dont call everyone insane who acts similarly within the forms of our culture, who uses words ‘without purpose’. (Think of the coronation of a King)”

One need not take as one's target so radical a form of the thesis to show that cognitive relativism is unacceptable, however. This can be demonstrated as follows. Suppose that cognitive relativism is the case. How then do we recognize another form of life as another form of life? The ability to detect that something is a form of life and that it differs from our own surely demands that there be a means for us to identify its presence and to specify what distinguishes it from ours. But such means are unavailable if the other form of life is impenetrable to us, that is, if it is closed against our attempts to interpret it enough to say that it is a form of life. This means that if we are to talk of other forms of life at all we must be able to recognize them as such; we must be able to recognize the existence of behaviour and patterns of practices which go to make up a form of life in which there is agreement among the participants by reference to which their practices can go on. Moreover, if we are to see that the form of life is different from our own we have to be able to recognize the differences; this is possible only if we can interpret enough of the other form of life to make those differences apparent. And therefore there has to be sufficient common ground between the two forms of life to permit such interpretation.

I would agree from this perspective. Those who engage in the language game of “forms of life” need to agree in judgment when it comes to pointing out differences. You can call this the observing community. Yet, if another community is so radically different in terms of action and judgment and its use of symbols, communication is impossible under such circumstances. However, it is not impossible for the observing community who can see these differences to carry on conversation among themselves since there is agreement in use and judgment in their language.

And yet this thesis seems entirely implausible. For instance, I have never heard of a culture who does arithmetic completely different from any other culture. Where is the arithmetic that is untranslatable? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yep, and this was my point, if they are completely different in action/ judgement, why call it arithmetic at all.

And aside from that, it seems to leave the door open on an all encompassing skepticism, for on this account how can anyone be sure that they truly share a form of life with anyone else? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well it will not be from some self evident absolute certain proposition. But that we act and judge similarly in most case to sustain the form of life.

But to my mind this capability doesn't jive well with the concept of entirely disparate, sui generis forms of reason (e.g., that Chinese reason is entirely different from French reason). — Count Timothy von Icarus

But has not history shown that what intelligent people called “reasonable” and “unreasonable” has changed from time to time.

'm not sure how the vague metaphor here is supposed to address the point TBH.

But funny enough this is a point of contention in Wittgensteinian circles precisely because he uses a lot of vague metaphors. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Ok, point taken, I rather not hide in vague metaphors. Let us start with some quotes from Wittgenstein:

PI 23 "...Here the term "language-game" is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life."

PI 65 "Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations. - For someone might object against me: 'You take the easy way out! you talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and what makes them into language or part of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language. And this is true.'-Instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, - but that they are related to one another in many different ways. And it is because of this relationship, or these relationships, that we call them all "language"."

PI 67 "I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than "family resemblances"; .....And I shall say: 'games' form a family."

OC 204 "Giving grounds, however, justify the evidence, comes to an end;- but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language game."

As I see it, A.C Graying desire is to hold on to the idea that there is one common essence for "truth", "reality", and "value" because the only alternative is "cognitive relativism." However, what I was suggesting is we need not fall into relativism either. First, words like "truth", "reality", and "value" will have multiple uses and thus have family resemblances that will related these word conceptually. These multiple uses are discovered by examining the forms of life which are grounded in the some human activity. That said, these concepts can take place in such radically different forms of life, the family resemblances are not strong enough to call them related. Hence, I introduce the term "stranger" to describe such a case. For example, if we visit another world where the inhabitants utilize symbols like 1, 2, +, -, etc and made expressions such as 1 + 1 = 3 were carried out, would we want to say this is some sort of arithmetic that was carried out? Or is the judgment so radically different that we would not want to call it "arithmetic"? To say "truth" is relative seems to presuppose that there is something conceptual linking all these words together but somehow the outcomes conflict. But that need not be the case, if these concepts are used is such dramatically different ways in which humans act and judge in entirely different ways, why should we even talk as if they had some relationship that deserve to fall under the banner of "truth".

A similar thing that crops up in these relativistic accounts is a sort of cognitive relativism. I'll let A.C. Grayling describe this one:

Cognitive relativism is a troubling thesis. Consider the point that it makes the concepts of truth, reality, and value a matter of what sharers in a form of life happen to make of them at a particular time and place, with other forms of life at other times and places giving rise to different, perhaps utterly different or even contrary, conceptions of them. In effect this means that the concepts in question are not concepts of truth and the rest, as we usually wish to understand them, but concepts of opinion and belief. We are, if cognitive relativism is true (but what does true now mean?), in error if we think that truth and knowledge have the meanings we standardly attach to them, for there is only relative truth, there is only reality as we, in this conceptual community at this period in its history, conceive it. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I guess there is a lot of "trouble" to go around when it comes to this thesis. I think we can all agree that there are different concepts. Do we need to police the use of the words "truth", "reality" and "value", so we can ensure a unifying meaning for each of these terms? If someone chooses to use the word "truth" in such a an odd way where they judge differently than myself, they act differently than myself, why should I feel trouble to such a degree that I need to relegate my concept of "truth" to mere opinion and belief? I should say that I feel more inclined to just say that their concept of "truth" no longer resembles mine; so sooner or later they are not part of the family but mere strangers.

One of those possibly pseudo-questions which may be sophistry; but, in your opinion do you think physics describes logic? — Shawn

Not sure what this could mean, but maybe one can give it meaning. For example, I had a computer which can display a simple valid argument using traditional symbolism, say modus ponens. Could we not describe the physics behind the computer’s expression of this argument. If so, could we not do the same with a human?

If there is no mind to experience and conceptually designate “red” does red ever aquire an inherent existence independent of a third party mind? — Mp202020

What is more fascinating is that anyone understands what one is referring to with regards to a supposedly private object that no one has access to but we feel the idea about shared judgments on a common public property of an object is somehow found wanting.