Best drop this. It is a side line and rather pointless.

, , that'd be ChatGPT, not you. You can do more than just "continue the prompt".

Well, I went over the various papers mentioned hereabouts.

But in the end it seems to me that if what is involved in 'sublimating Kant" is just making use of a transcendental argument then the point is pretty trivial.

And that if there is some deeper point, I haven't been able to follow it. Kant places transcendence in experience, Wittgenstein places transcendence in the commonality of language. On this we agree.

I do not share your regard for Kant. So while there are plenty of issues here we might discuss, I see Kant as being of little help.

The obvious objection is that we coordinate behaviour by communicating.

But "I promise to fetch water for you if you give me some of that haunch" does much more than just communicate; it changes the way things are. It does something new by setting up a contract that did not previously exist and which would stand scant chance of happening outside of language.

Supose that how you think is not the same as how others think.

There is a growing body of evidence that this is the case.

Suppose that despite this there were common habits that we all learned, allowing us to do things together.

So how we think is not important, but getting on with doing things is.

Beetles in boxes, in a slightly different context.

Language is not about sharing information so much as coordinating behaviour. It's use that counts, not information.

A Banno impersonation — Jamal

& , should I feel flattered or flattened?

Nowhere does Wittgenstein say that we cannot know all the facts. Nowhere is that relevant to his argument.

He does say "The world is the totality of facts".

Hence Sam is correct here:

if you have all the true propositions, then you have completely described the world. — Sam26

Note that this is a contingent sentence. Its truth is not dependent on our having a complete description.

In order to feel sandpaper:
The sandpaper must contact our skin.
The contact must register with sensory nerves.
The nervous signal must conduct to our brain.
Our brain must translate the nervous signal to sensation. — hypericin

Yep. And at the end of all that, you will have felt the sand paper.

Not your skin, not your nerves, not the signal conducted to your brain.

That we cannot give a complete description of the world — Fooloso4

Where?

Yep.

just to be sure, is this what you think Wittgenstein is claiming in the tractatus?

Then I'm not seeing a cogent point in your remark to Sam.

You said

We would not have completely described the world. — Fooloso4

But how could the facts about the world not be complete description of the world?

I dunno. I can't make sense of your remark.

Of course the propositions do not give a compete description of the world, but surely the facts do.

As a curiosity, some languages have a word that is kinda like brighten — Lionino

Illuminate?

Everything that can be said about the world includes saying things that are not true. — Fooloso4

There's an equivocation in this. Everything we might say includes saying things that are not true. But if you say something about the world, it would be odd if what you said about the world were not true...

I'd say that if you tell me something about the world, you are undertaking that what you say is true.

What if one does not know the facts well enough to speak about them? — Paine

If there is a fact you don't know, then there is a fact.

It's not about things that haven't been said, but things that cannot be said.

We have an audience? Cool.

Yep. If the world is the totality of facts, then how could everything that can be said about the world not be a complete picture? Supposing this would imply that there are facts that cannot be said, which would be anathema to the theme of the Tractatus.

I may get around to replying to you down the line.

Everything that can be said about the world would not give us a complete picture of the world — Fooloso4

Then I do not see how you can make sense of Tract 1.1

Hmm. Do you feel the sandpaper or the model of the sandpaper?

I would say that feeling the sandpaper involves modelling its texture, and that what you feel is the sandpaper.

Either you're experiencing reality as-it-really-is, OR your experience is something subjective and crafted for you by your brain. — flannel jesus

I notice that this is not (p v ~p). It is not a tautology.

That would be

Either you're experiencing reality as-it-really-is or you do not experiencing reality as-it-really-is

or

Either your experience is something subjective and crafted for you by your brain or it is not something subjective and crafted for you by your brain

The simple point here is that sometimes the brain models the way things are.

If you like, the model does not have to be perfect - "as-it-really-is" - only adequate.

Misfire are curious. One can touch but not feel - numb fingers in the cold. Or listen but not hear - the sound had too high a pitch, perhaps. Or look but not see.

Sniff but not smell? Eat but not taste?

See, hear, feel, smell and taste. Look, listen, touch... sniff and eat?

You feel the differential effect of sandpaper of varying grit on your nervous system. — AmadeusD

Well, no. I feel the different grit of the sandpaper. I don't feel my nerves. I feel using nerves.

That's kinda the point. Feeling only one's nerves would provide you with no information about the sandpaper.

I didn't say it bears no relation, — flannel jesus

Smell is ENTIRELY an experience built up for us by our brains. — flannel jesus

Hmm. Ok.

Smell is ENTIRELY an experience built up for us by our brains. — flannel jesus

So smells bear no relation whatsoever to the stuff around you? Odd.

...the conscious part of my brain. — hypericin

...your homunculus. Sitting in there looking at the stuff your brain presents to it, never seeing or touching the stuff around it, not knowing if it is in a vat or a Boltzman coincidence...

They are all ways that your brain presents sense data to you, — hypericin

Your homunculus is showing...

The glove is a fine example. Here, indirect touch or feel makes sense.

And yes, touch and feel are different things, which is why we have two words. It's an interesting distinction. Is there something similar for smell or hearing?

I don't think it's right to say you 'feel' the sandpaper itself, anyway. You feel it's impression on your nervous system, shunted through your nerves, into your brain where it is constructed into an experience. — AmadeusD

I don't agree with that at all. Of course you feel the sandpaper - 200 grit is very different to 40 grit; a fact about sandpaper, not about nerves.

How do you touch something indirectly? What to make of an indirect realist account that has one feeling a representation of the sandpaper, not the sandpaper itself?

,

What happens if you reconsider these issues in terms of touch or smell?

It becomes harder to insert a "representation" in those cases.

Is that your fear here? That you will lose your autonomy?

I'm sorry, Nos, I genuinely have been unable to follow what it is you see as problematic, nor have I been able to make sense of your account.

Nobody is saying that representation is the thing seen. — hypericin

Ayer sometimes appeared to be doing just that. But as Austin shows, there is little consistency in his account. Trouble here is, without citations there are only straw men to discus.

You are enjoying the change of subject, I see.

Yes, not at all dissimilar.

Curious, that you chose such a cooperative resource as Wikipedia.

The citations in Wikipedia come down to one source, that noted resource for etymology, the Australian Journal of Political Science, which is paywalled.

But even if not quite true, it ought be. After all, by your own account, you have not made any statements here. Only thumped your keyboard.

I'm not sure that I would even describe seeing a hand in a mirror as seeing it indirectly. — Luke

It's intended as an example; one might differentiate seeing the hand in the mirror as indirect, in contrast to seeing it without the mirror - directly.

Austin, especially in Other Minds, addresses "real".

But is it a real one? When you ask if it is real, what are you sugesting? No, it's a fake; it's an illusion; it's a forgery; it's a phoney, a counterfeit, a mirage... What is real and what isn't is decided in each case by contrast; there is no single criteria.

The wile of the metaphysician consists in asking 'Is it a real table?' (a kind of object which has no obvious way of being phoney) and not specifying or limiting what may be wrong with it, so that I feel at a loss 'how to prove' it is a real one.' It is the use of the word 'real' in this manner that leads us on to the supposition that 'real' has a single meaning ('the real world' 'material objects'), and that a highly profound and puzzling one. Instead, we should insist always on specifying with what 'real' is being contrasted - not what I shall have to show it is, in order to show it is 'real': and then usually we shall find some specific, less fatal, word, appropriate to the particular case, to substitute for 'real'
— Austin — Banno

"Direct" and "indirect" relate in a similar way - You don't see it directly, you see a picture, a reflection, or through a telescope or video screen.

It is the use of the word 'indirect' in this manner that leads us on to the supposition that 'direct' has a single meaning.

Some words get their sense from an almost Hegelian juxtaposition against their opposite.

So when someone claims to see that the hand before them indirectly, it is reasonable to ask what it would mean here to see it directly? And their answer might well be "as it is in itself" - but this is of course a nonsense, since the hand is aways already an interpretation... Or they might say "we see only the metal model (qualia, sense datum...) directly" and so commit themselves to being forever segregated from the world or to solipsism.

And hence to the idio-cracy of fertility law in 'merca.

The Greeks had a term for those who did not think in terms of our commonality,

Given what you've written, I'm going to assume that you haven't really studied the Tractatus. To understand what Wittgenstein is saying in this quote, you have to understand what is going on in philosophy vis a vis Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege ("I will only mention that I am indebted to Frege's great works and to the writings of my friend Mr. Bertrand Russell for much of the stimulation of my thoughts (p.3 Preface to the Tractatus)); and you have to understand Wittgenstein's goal in the Tractatus. I'm not going to get into the philosophy of Russell and Frege, but I will say a few words about the Tractatus, and what Wittgenstein was trying to accomplish.

In the Preface to the Tractatus Wittgenstein clearly states that his goal is to draw a limit to the expression of thoughts, and since language is used to express our thoughts, it will only be in language that the limit can be drawn (p. 3 Preface). For Wittgenstein there is a definite logic to language. In fact, Wittgenstein's sees a one-to-one correspondence between propositions and facts in the world. Propositions describe the world, they are pictures of the world. So, the three main issues are logic, language, and the world, and Wittgenstein's analysis is an a priori analysis of these three ideas and how they connect.

So, Wittgenstein is caught up in the continuing problem of how thought and language connect to the world, i.e., how is it that we are able to say things about the world? His a priori investigation includes the idea that logic will reveal the structure of language and the structure of the world. There must be a logical connection that will reveal itself through analysis. His work extends "...from the foundations of logic to the nature of the world (Nb, p. 79)."

If as Wittgenstein believed, there is a one-to-one correspondence between what can be said about the world, and the facts of the world, then everything that can be said about the world, would give us a complete picture of the world. We would have completely described the world, given we have everything that can be said. So, if this is true, then the limits of our language, i.e., everything that can be stated about the world, would completely describe the limits of our (or my) world.

This hopefully, will give you a different way of thinking about the quote from Tractatus 5.62.

Also, your own understanding of the world is limited by your grasp of the propositions that really do line up with facts in the world. This, I believe, is why Wittgenstein believed it important to understand the logic of our language, which continued into his later philosophy. Although, his later philosophy is a much more expanded view of the logic of language.

Maybe this will help you to understand the quote a little better, and get you to read more about the history behind the Tractatus. — Sam26

Yep.

I see my hand directly when I look down, indirectly when I see its reflection in a mirror. Here I have a clear enough understanding of what it means to see my hand directly and indirectly.

But if someone says that when I look down at my hand I am seeing it indirectly, I do not have a way to make sense of what they say.

If they say I am not seeing my hand, but a "mental image of my hand" or some such, my reply is that, the "mental image", so far as it makes any sense, is me seeing my hand. — Banno

This appears to be the only thing we’re doing with words. — NOS4A2

Which implies that you have not asked questions, made statements, extracted responses, provided answers and so on.

Which is a bit odd.

Well, yes, but that is insufficient to carry the thesis of the op. In particular whether the three contentions on p.687 of the Hanna article are acceptable.

I don't think any rough equating of the thing-in-itself with that of which we cannot speak will suffice here, but I'm afraid that far more scholarship would be required to carry the point in either direction.

Might leave it there.

Ok.

Wittgenstein had an infamous disregard for the history of philosophy. Some might say this was in order to think things through without prejudice; others that it was in order to claim credit for the ideas of others.

But Kant does not loom large either in Wittgenstein's own accounts of his influences, or in the accounts of contemporaries and sympathisers. The links seem to be relatively recent scholarship.

So I would urge some caution.