Is there any physical basis for what constitutes a 'thing' or 'object'?

Here is Wittgenstein rejecting the notion of a "simple" he had developed in his first work, the Tractatus. A "simple" is perhaps not too far from what you call "a 'thing' or 'object'". Wittgenstein had supposed a form of logical atomism, the notion that there were elementary facts - simples - from which a complete description of the world might be constructed. Here he is questioning whether there is any such absolute basis for claiming something is a simple or a composite object.

47. But what are the simple constituent parts of which reality is composed?—What are the simple constituent parts of a chair?—The bits of wood of which it is made? Or the molecules, or the atoms?— "Simple" means: not composite. And here the point is: in what sense 'composite'? It makes no sense at all to speak absolutely of the 'simple parts of a chair'.

Again: Does my visual image of this tree, of this chair, consist of parts? And what are its simple component parts? Multi-colouredness is one kind of complexity; another is, for example, that of a broken outline composed of straight bits. And a curve can be said to be composed of an ascending and a descending segment.

If I tell someone without any further explanation: "What I see before me now is composite", he will have the right to ask: "What do you mean by 'composite'? For there are all sorts of things that that can meant"—The question "Is what you see composite?" makes good sense if it is already established what kind of complexity—that is, which particular use of the word—is in question. If it had been laid down that the visual image of a tree was to be called "composite" if one saw not just a single trunk, but also branches, then the question "Is the visual image of this tree simple or composite?", and the question "What are its simple component parts?", would have a clear sense—a clear use. And of course the answer to the second question is not "The branches" (that would be an answer to the grammatical question: "What are here called 'simple component parts'?") but rather a description of the individual branches.

But isn't a chessboard, for instance, obviously, and absolutely, composite?—You are probably thinking of the composition out of thirty-two white and thirty-two black squares. But could we not also say, for instance, that it was composed of the colours black and white and the schema of squares? And if there are quite different ways of looking at it, do you still want to say that the chessboard is absolutely 'composite'?—Asking "Is this object composite?" outside a particular language-game is like what a boy once did, who had to say whether the verbs in certain sentences were in the active or passive voice, and who racked his brains over the question whether the verb "to sleep" meant something active or passive.

We use the word "composite" (and therefore the word "simple") in an enormous number of different and differently related ways. (Is the colour of a square on a chessboard simple, or does it consist of pure white and pure yellow? And is white simple, or does it consist of the colours of the rainbow?—Is this length of 2 cm. simple, or does it consist of two parts, each 1 cm. long? But why not of one bit 3 cm. long, and one bit 1 cm. long measured in the opposite direction?)

To the philosophical question: "Is the visual image of this tree composite, and what are its component parts?" the correct answer is: "That depends on what you understand by 'composite'." This is of course not an answer but a rejection of the question.) — Philosophical Investigations

Immediately following, in §48, he describes coloured squares on a grid, as:

We might write a sentence about this arrangement: "RRBGGGRWW". Wittgenstein asks, what is simple here and what is complex?

Here the sentence is a complex of names, to which corresponds a complex of elements. The primary elements are the coloured squares. "But are these simple?"—I do not know what else you would have me call "the simples", what would be more natural in this language-game. But under other circumstances I should call a monochrome square "composite", consisting perhaps of two rectangles, or of the elements colour and shape. But the concept of complexity might also be so extended that a smaller area was said to be 'composed' of a greater area and another one subtracted from it. Compare the 'composition of forces', the 'division' of a line by a point outside it; these expressions shew that we are sometimes even inclined to conceive the smaller as the result of a composition of greater parts, and the greater as the result of a division of the smaller.

But I do not know whether to say that the figure described by our sentence consists of four or of nine elements! Well, does the sentence consist of four letters or of nine?—And which are its elements, the types of letter, or the letters? Does it matter which we say, so long as we avoid misunderstandings in any particular case? — Philosophical Investigations, §48

I hope you can see how this sort of analysis can be applied to object. Wittgenstein himself does so a bit later:

60. When I say: "My broom is in the corner",—is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? Well, it could at any rate be replaced by a statement giving the position of the stick and the position of the brush. And this statement is surely a further analysed form of the first one.—But why do I call it "further analysed"?— Well, if the broom is there, that surely means that the stick and brush must be there, and in a particular relation to one another; and this was as it were hidden in the sense of the first sentence, and is expressed in the analysed sentence. Then does someone who says that the broom is in the corner really mean: the broomstick is there, and so is the brush, and the broomstick is fixed in the brush?—If we were to ask anyone if he meant this he would probably say that he had not thought specially of the broomstick or specially of the brush at all. And that would be the right answer, for he meant to speak neither of the stick nor of the brush in particular. Suppose that, instead of saying "Bring me the broom", you said "Bring me the broomstick and the brush which is fitted on to it."!—Isn't the answer: "Do you want the broom? Why do you put it so oddly?"——Is he going to understand the further analysed sentence better?—This sentence, one might say, achieves the same as the ordinary one, but in a more roundabout way.—imagine a language-game in which someone is ordered to bring certain objects which are composed of several parts, to move them about, or something else of the kind. And two ways of playing it: in one (a) the composite objects (brooms, chairs, tables, etc.) have names, as in (15); in the other (b) only the parts are given names and the wholes are described by means of them.—In what sense is an order in the second game an analysed form of an order in the first? Does the former lie concealed in the latter, and is it now brought out by analysis?— True, the broom is taken to pieces when one separates broomstick and brush; but does it follow that the order to bring the broom also consists of corresponding parts? — Philosophical Investigations

What constitutes an object is not to be found in physics or in the physical structures around us, but in what we are doing with our language and what we are doing with the objects involved in those activities. We give consideration to the broom if we are sweeping, but perhaps only to the broomstick if we are using it to move something that is out of our reach, or to the brush if we are looking for hair for a scarecrow...

I don't think you're likely to get what I'm saying. — frank

Seems so. The world doesn't talk, people talk.

Maybe I should say a P can be expressed in a first person account, but the P itself is denoted by what philosophers call "eternal sentences." Those sentences are from the narrator's POV. It's the world talking, so to speak. — frank

There's a lot in that, most notably the notion that a proposition is something apart from the utterances that instantiate it.

Let's contrast two ideas. There is a similarity between "It is raining" and "Il pleut". How do we analyse this similarity? Here are two ways of thinking about this. The first is that there is something that both "It is raining" and "Il pleut" stand for or refer to, and that thing is the proposition present in "It is raining" and "Il pleut". The second is that the use to which we put "It is raining" is much the same as the use to which we put "Il pleut", and so the similarity between them is about their place in our language games.

In the first, an abstract entity is invoked, and immediately followed by all sorts of philosophical investigations - what is the nature of this abstract entity, the proposition? Is it real, is it a Platonic form, is it an eternal statement, and so on. Thousands of years of misguided verbiage ensue.

In the second, we might simply have a translation: "Il pleut" is true IFF it is raining, and no abstract entity is invoked.

If we see things in the first way, it seems legitimate to supose, as you do, "that the same P can be expressed by a lot of different methods", and to supose that the true form of a proposition is to be found in a disembodied third person account.

If we see things the second way, we simply have a group of statements with a functional similarity - in French or English, as in the first or second person.

Now of course there are all sorts of issues to be dealt with in seeing the issue in this second way, but amongst them is not the ontological status of propositions.

And if we see things in the second way, it remains that we might on occasions speak metaphorically of the proposition expressed by two differing statements, but we should baulk at going looking for that proposition. No need to hunt the Snark.

I would say that what we are dealing with aren't propositions in the normal sense... — Sam26

I think they are exactly that: normal propositions. They do not differ in their structure from any other proposition. Where they differ is in the place they take in the things we do with words.

Hence "treated as...". "Here is a hand" might be treated as indubitable in Moore's lecture, but perhaps not in Frankenstein's laboratory.

Look at the wording of this:

655. The mathematical proposition has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of incontestability. I.e.: "Dispute about other things; this is immovable - it is a hinge on which your dispute can turn." — OC

"...has, as it were officially, been given the stamp of incontestability". Being outside of contention is a role taken on in the way we make use of mathematical propositions. It is given to the statement by the way we make use of it.

I've sometimes toyed with the idea that any proposition could take on the role of being indubitable, in a suitably constructed language game - in much the same way, after Feyerabend, that an observation statement can be discounted as a falsification if suitable auxiliary hypotheses are invoked. Here considerations go off into the nature of modality, and the sort of propositions that might be true in all circumstances. I think one is left with little more than the desire to be consistent in how one expresses oneself.

In OC Wittgenstein spends much effort in looking for propositions that are indubitable in all circumstances, but in all circumstances finds situations in which a proposition might be doubted:

658. The question "But mightn't you be in the grip of a delusion now and perhaps later find this out?" - might also be raised as an objection to any proposition of the multiplication tables. — OC

that propositions are not first or second person accounts. They're in third person. — frank

Odd. I would count "I have a laptop" as a proposition in the first person, and "You have an internet connection" as a proposition in the second person. True, rendered in a first order logic they do come out as third person, but I don't see that as a characteristic of propositions so much as of force.

But yes, there are unspoken propositions.

And yes, you can't use any particular proposition to prove that there is a world, since there being a world is presupposed by there being propositions.

Sure. Propositions as proposals as to how things are. Did I say something contrary to that?

Ordinarily,

Statements are grammatical combinations of nouns and verbs and such like; Some statements are either true or false, and we can call these propositions. So, "The present king of France is bald" is a statement, but not a proposition. — Me

And yes, their illocutionary force is to say how things are.

We think of our interaction with the world as if it's a conversation we're having with it. — frank

I don't, but you might. Perhaps one advantage of so doing is that it displays how integral language is to our interactions with the world.

Again, that something counts as a hinge is not a general characteristic. One can set up circumstances where "This is a hand" does not function as a hinge. Counting as a hinge, being indubitable, is a role within a language game; something one does with a sentence.

Your last paragraph stand, I think. The vatted brain is still involved in the various discussions that make up the world, even if that world is a simulation.


The salient point I would make for you is that a game can only be played if some propositions are, not exempt from truth or falsity, but treated as being true.

I suspect saying that this or that belief is a hinge might mislead one into forgetting that the it is a hinge only within the games we play, the things we are doing - perhaps into thinking that it is a hinge always and in all circumstances.

So consider again the wider context of 13:3, one of the mentions of 'hinge"...

340. We know, with the same certainty with which we believe any mathematical proposition, how the letters A and B are pronounced, what the colour of human blood is called, that other human beings have blood and call it "blood".
341. That is to say, the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn.
342. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.
343. But it isn't that the situation is like this: We just can't investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put.
344. My life consists in my being content to accept many things.
345. If I ask someone "what colour do you see at the moment?", in order, that is, to learn what colour is there at the moment, I cannot at the same time question whether the person I ask understands English, whether he wants to take me in, whether my own memory is not leaving me in the lurch as to the names of colours, and so on.
346. When I am trying to mate someone in chess, I cannot have doubts about the pieces perhaps changing places of themselves and my memory simultaneously playing tricks on me so that I don't notice. — OC

Notice how this ends by listing prerequisites for asking about a colour and playing chess. These are the what is held firm in order for the game to be played, the task to be done: 'Here is a hand".

As for types of hinges, there are I think at least two*. There are things that must be in place in the world in order for the game to occur - slabs and blocks for the builder, apples for the shop keeper, hands for Moore, and so on. There are also what might be called constitutive statements - getting the ball in the net counts as getting a goal; this wall counts as dividing my property from yours... See Searle.

There may be other candidates for taking on being undoubted for the sake of getting things done.

I sometimes find @Fooloso4's comments unhelpful because they offer a criticism - often quite minor - without an apparent alternative or solution. But there is also the more general point I've made about the exegesis of a text such as On Certainty, that as it is a work in progress, there is no reason to expect it to be coherent and consistent. What counts in such a text is exactly what you, Sam, have described yourself as doing - going beyond the text to see where it leads. Wittgenstein is not Aristotle. Not a body of rules to be assimilated, but a set of tools to be made use of.

Anyway, my notes on Moyal-Sharrock would now make an essay, if they could be put into some sort of coherence. I more or less agree with their text, all except the conclusion. I suspect Moyal-Sharrock is arguing against the likes of Fodor and in so doing has placed too much emphasis on belief as trust rather than belief as an attitude. This is where I would like to take this conversation next.

*Well, prima facie, at least two. It is worth considering if "This is a block" and "This is a hand" ought be analysed as "This counts as a block" and "This counts as a hand".

Edit: Oh, and another point about §340. Notice that the things listed - the colour of blood, that it is called "blood", how "a" and "b" are pronounced, mathematical propositions - are routine, mundane. So many of the examples given in OC have this characteristic - my address, that I am dreaming, that this is a tree... Calling these "hinges" perhaps gives them too much celebrity; they are a commonplace aspect of our use of words. Not so special.

I do not think that one can use their hand to touch or move something without being aware that it is one's hand that one is using. — Fooloso4

One cannot move something with one's hand without using one's hand. But one can certainly - and indeed usually does - use one's hand without directing one's conscious awareness to one's hand...

Indeed, doing so is often counterproductive. Think of carrying a tray of drinks - one focuses on the glasses in order not to spill the contents; focusing on one's hands will not help. One is aware of the object one is moving, rather than of one's hands.

Go back to the post that initiated this somewhat tedious discussion:

"Here is a hand" - we behave in this way, we set up a way of doing things that takes "This is a hand" as granted, as enacted in the way we do things.

And notice that it's "we" and not "I" - the confidence that this is a hand comes from communal agreement, not from the perception of a homunculus or solipsistic conviction. It is inherently a public activity. — Banno

Notice that it is the confidence that this is a hand that I am pointing to, not the confidence shown in using the hand. The baby may of course make use of its hand without awareness that what it is making use of is a hand.

Being aware that this is a hand stands seperate from making use of the hand.

WIfe's cat habitually shows us that its food or water is empty. These serve as a part of the world that the is common to us and the cat. The cat broke its lower left canine yesterday, in such a way that it was still attached to its jaw, but projecting forward out of its mouth. Wife noticed that the cat would go to eat or drink, and jerk back at the discomfort. The cat repeatedly took us over to the full food or water bowl, as if to say that the bowl needed fixing, that the food was hurting - apparently unaware that it has teeth as such. It very practically made use of the common features of the world, the bowls, in order to make us aware of its tooth. Whether the cat is aware that it has teeth, as distinct from being aware of how to bite or pull out its claws, is moot.

How is being aware of one's hand just like a dog expecting his master but not expecting him to come next Wednesday? — Fooloso4

Notice the misrepresentation of what I have said - being aware that "this is a hand" is like being aware that the dog's master will come next Wednesday in that both require a level of language acquisition. Being aware that "this is a hand" is not the same as making use of a hand to perform some task.

So it seems to me that you are "arguing" about points on which we mostly agree. It's more of argument for the sake of argument than any substantial difference. Might leave this chat there, since it would be more interesting to consider the substantial account offered by Danièle Moyal-Sharrock.

Thank you.

That thank you has been sitting in drafts for six months. My apologies for not posting it earlier.

My apologies also for involving you in what has become a somewhat farcical discussion. The ideology of physicalism prevents some folk from seeing the reality of social constructs. A basic category mistake.

There is a difference between using one's hand to touch or move something, and being aware that it is one's hand one is using to touch or move something. Just as a dog may be expecting his master to come, but not to come next Wednesday. Much of our world is constructed within and by language, and the associated mental content.

Which is why the accounts of Sellars, Grice and Davidson are directly relevant. Davidson addresses the issue by setting out a triangulation between one's hand, one's beliefs about one's hand, and one's language concerning one's hand. There is a recursive relation here, not a simplistic causal sequence from hand to concept to word. We build on our beliefs and on our language in constructing our social world.

Using one's hand is not physical so much as animal. Hence:

357. One might say: " 'I know' expresses comfortable certainty, not the certainty that is still struggling."
358. Now I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life. (That is very badly expressed and probably badly thought as well.)
359. But that means I want to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal. — OC

.



For Wittgenstein aesthetics and ethics are shown in performance, so that expressions of ethical or aesthetic preference are all but irrelevant. One shows one's appreciation for a tailor by wearing his cloths. One shows one's understanding of what is right by making it so, The suggestion that ethics and aesthetics are matters to be resolved by linguistic analysis badly misrepresents W.'s view.



The word "hinge" is used only three times in OC. Perhaps its importance has been exaggerated. But let's consider this:

340. We know, with the same certainty with which we believe any mathematical proposition, how the letters A and B are pronounced, what the colour of human blood is called, that other human beings have blood and call it "blood".
341. That is to say, the questions that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn.
342. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted. — OC

It is very clear here that it is certain propositions that are exempt from doubt. The game can only be played if certain propositions are, not exempt from truth or falsity, but treated as being true. I also think it worthy of note that "hinge belief" does not occur in OC.

This is not an aspect of these propositions, but an aspect of the game. One can of course move the Bishop down a column, but in so doing one ceases to be playing chess. A proposition's being a hinge is a role it takes on within a language game.

Hence "language games are only possible if we don’t question certain facts" as a part of that language game.

Specifically, that some empirical fact - "Here is a hand" - is to be counted as a hinge is in virtue of its place within the game, not in virtue of its empirical content.

So I'd be cautious about suggesting that language games rest on hinge propositions, as if the hinge were something apart from the door. "If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put"; without the hinge the door is a plank filling a hole in the wall. Again, being a hinge is a role within a language game, not a aspect of beliefs or propositions apart from the language game.

In the builder's language there is no word for 'hand' but surely they are aware they have hands. — Fooloso4

Aware?

There is some unpacking to do here. They use their hand, perhaps; but is that all there is to being aware of one's hands? The game takes place without mention of hands, as you say - so are the players aware of their hands? If the block falls on the apprentice's hand, they might become aware; perhaps in doing first aid. Again they become aware of the hand as it enters into their interactions.

Nice example, though. The baby and the builder are not unaware of their hands, any more than aware of their hands. "A dog cannot lie. Neither can he be sincere. A dog may be expecting his master to come. Why can't he be expecting him to come next Wednesday? Is it because he doesn't have language?"

Puts me in mind of this:

...on Wittgenstein’s view, while chess is essentially a game for two players, this does not exclude the possibility of playing it against oneself provided such solitary games are not regarded as paradigm instances of chess. Similarly, he can claim that language is essentially social, but still allow the possibility of exceptions provided these are peripheral cases. — https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/#ComVieRev

We can take this further, though, if we leave exegesis and look at the broader context. Which comes first, meaning or mental content? Will we follow Sellers in taking mental content as deriving from linguistic meaning? Or Grice in taking linguistic meaning as deriving from mental content? Until there is more by way of evidence, it might be better to follow Davidson, and presume that mental content and linguistic meaning are interdependent.

Which of these three Wittgenstein might have accepted must now remain conjectural. His role was to show that rules have a place here, but are of themselves insufficient.

Is there anything he says in the Investigations that refutes the insight in the Tractatus that ethics and aesthetics are not matters to be resolved by linguistic analysis? — Fooloso4

There are deep differences between the aesthetics of the Tractatus and the Investigations:

For now, at this stage of Wittgenstein's development, where the complexity-accepting stance of the later Philosophical Investigations (1958) and other work is unearthing and uprooting the philosophical presuppositions of the simplification-seeking earlier work, examples themselves have priority as indispensable instruments in the struggle to free ourselves of misconception in the aesthetic realm. . And these examples, given due and detailed attention, will exhibit a context-sensitive particularity that makes generalized pronouncements hovering high above the ground of that detail look otiose, inattentive, or, more bluntly, just a plain falsification of experience. What remains is not, then—and this is an idea Wittgenstein's auditors must themselves have struggled with in those rooms in Cambridge, as many still do today—another theory built upon now stronger foundations, but rather a clear view of our multiform aesthetic practices. Wittgenstein, in his mature, later work, did not generate a theory of language, of mind, or of mathematics. He generated, rather, a vast body of work perhaps united only in its therapeutic and intricately labored search for conceptual clarification. One sees the same philosophical aspiration driving his foray into aesthetics. — Wittgenstein's Aesthetics (SEP)

So again, it is perhaps a mistake to see any of Wittgenstein's writings as complete, and hence an exegetical error to attempt to set out a coherent and complete picture.

If there is a third Wittgenstein, it is the one Kripke invented.

I'd suggest that the social aspect of rule following provides the answer to Kripke's sceptic, along the lines of Davidson's notion of triangulation. And I would throw in Austin's "The meaning of a word".

It is a shame you left so much out of your post. It's an ongoing discussion.

Postulating a "hand as it is in-itself" gets nowhere. Such a hand cannot enter into our discussions, cannot be used to pick things up, and "drops out of consideration as irrelevant."

There is more to this, though, in that postulating a "hand as it is in-itself" already posits a hand, already separating hands from non-hands, and so is already indulging in interpretation. It suffers a deep circularity.

But that's more Hegel than Wittgenstein. Hegel and Wittgenstein might find agreement in noticing that Kant's attempt to reach outside of reason to the thing-in-itself, is itself reasoning. We are always, unavoidably, immersed in the Logos.

Frankly I do not expect some here to agree with this, as there are quite fundamental things going on in Wittgenstein that some folk appear unable, perhaps temporarily, to apprehend. But that they cannot see it should not be taken as reason to shut down discussion of Wittgenstein. There are would-be gatekeepers on either side of the gate.

Since 'it is always "the hand as it appears to us"', silence is what remains for "the hand as it is in itself". Notice again that it is "the hand as it appears to us", not "the hand as it appears to me".

Others might agree that there is more to silence than mere inactivity. W's response to the second war was not to theorise, but to take on a menial job in a hospital - to act. Whereof one must be silent, thereof one must nevertheless act, appreciate, mourn, and get on with life. Waving one's hand in Kant's face is a silent act.

Hopefully in silence, baby sucks its fist, unawares of being a baby , or having a fist . That this is a fist arises as the baby takes its place in its family, in its linguistic community.

Trouble is, of course, that some things refused to sit neatly as either a thing in the world or a thing outside it. As W. showed in Remarks on Colour, an explanation of colour must take into account the way in which communities manage to get on with purchasing tins of paint despite their philosopher being unable to pin down what it is that is the same about red seen here, and seen there, and for you, and I. We need to ask not just what is it that the Tractatus must remain silent about. We need to go the step further and see why that silence needed to be broken by the Investigations.

"Here is a hand" is a hinge proposition. It has the structure of a statement and it has a truth value. That it is true need not be justified by other facts, need not be seen as a consequence of ratiocination; but, like something's being red or beautiful, this being a hand involves both how the world is and how we employ language.

The move from the Tractatus to the investigations is from removing complexity to accepting it as part of being human.

A few points.

Foremost, OC is not a coherent argument for a specific point of view. It would be an error then to attempt to interpret it in a way that is both complete and consistent. The work is incomplete, and so need not be consistent.

As part of W.'s notes from the last few months of his life, it is instead a window into the progress of this thinking. It shows us his approach in practice. The method of OC is far more important and interesting than any conclusions that it might be thought to draw.

OC hangs on a grand tension W. sees in Moore's "here is a hand".

It seems to me that, so far from its being true, as Kant declares to be his opinion, that there is only one possible proof of the existence of things outside of us, namely the one which he has given, I can now give a large number of different proofs, each of which is a perfectly rigorous proof; and that at many other times I have been in a position to give many others. I can prove now, for instance, that two human hands exist. How? By holding up my two hands, and saying, as I make a certain gesture with the right hand, ‘Here is one hand’, and adding, as I make a certain gesture with the left, ‘and here is another’. And if, by doing this, I have proved ipso facto the existence of external things, you will all see that I can also do it now in numbers of other ways: there is no need to multiply examples. — Proof of an External World by G. E. Moore

Moore is replying to Kant, as is clear, and presumably the objection is to the argument that we never have access to the thing-in-itself. Moore's reply is to shake the thing in Kant's face.

Wittgenstein had great sympathy for Moore's view. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent; one can say nothing about the thing-in-itself; therefore leave it out of our conversation.

Yet W. was unsatisfied with Moore's response. OC is Wittgenstein working through the issues raised by that dissatisfaction.

Of course silence is only a small part of the tale. There is also the world - all that is the case; and as well, there is what we might do about it. We evict questions of meaning, looking instead to questions of use, and so trade silence for action.

Hence the appeal of hand waving.

In so far as Moore shows that there are hands, W. is on side. In so far as Moore knows that there are hands, W. remains perplexed.

While he shows that Moore's use of "know" in "I know this is my hand" is problematic, Wittgenstein pretty much agreed with the argument Moore presents against idealism and scepticism. "Here is a hand" shows that there is stuff around us to be dealt with, providing a foundation, a setting for certainty. There have to be slabs in order to engage in the builder's game, hands for there to be had shakes, and certainty within which to express doubt.

"Here is a hand" - we behave in this way, we set up a way of doing things that takes "This is a hand" as granted, as enacted in the way we do things.

And notice that it's "we" and not "I" - the confidence that this is a hand comes from communal agreement, not from the perception of a homunculus or solipsistic conviction. It is inherently a public activity.

The special place of some propositions is that bringing them into question is bringing in to question the game in which they are played - how do you recognise that this card is an ace, or that the standard Metre is a metre long, or that a dollar coin is worth one dollar.

In the Investigations Wittgenstein sets out two ways of "following a rule"; the first is seen in setting out the rule, interpreting it, translating it and so on; the second,

...there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which is exhibited in what we call "obeying the rule" and "going against it" in actual cases. — PI §201

The rule is enacted, not stated.

This focus on enacting a rule is the engine behind treating use rather than meaning, and behind the private language argument. A rule may well be stated, perhaps in order to pass it on to others, or for purposes of regulation. It is not that the rule is unstatable, although any statement might well be incomplete - hence family resemblance. Following and going against a rule is recognisable by a community, and forms the way in which a community functions - their "form of life". To state a rule is to set out its propositional content, what following or going against the rule consists in.

This informs the parts of PI now often referred to as W's philosophy of psychology. Following or going against a rule allows us to implement practices, ways of doing things, that have a social role despite in a sense not having an empirical grounding. So you cannot feel my pain, nor tell if I see red where you see blue, nor infer my beliefs indubitably from my actions, but despite this we have a functional - usable - language around pain, sensation, belief and so on.

One of the marvellous things about PI is the number of philosophical tools with which it presents us - beetles, family resemblances, private language, and so on. These are the tools used in On Certainty

For Wittgenstein, Moore's paper touches on many of the issues raised in PI. In On Certainty W. is taking the ideas of PI and applying them to notions of knowledge and certainty, exploring how a consistent account might be formulated.

But On Certainty does not present us with a "Third Wittgenstein".

Recent work in these forums has tended to focus on either the Tractatus or on On Certainty. The Investigations has dropped somewhat from view. The Tractatus was unsatisfactory, obliging Wittgenstein to reenter philosophy, and giving us the Investigations. Reading the Tractatus without referring to the Investigations will lead one to misunderstand the progress and errors in W's work. One must read each in the light of the other.

If the Tractatus had been complete and consistent, there would have been no need for the Investigations. It is a mistake therefore to treat the Tractatus as complete and consistent. This error is apparent in some threads hereabouts.

It is also a mistake to try to understand On Certainty apart from the philosophical tools presented in PI. Doing so has led some recent scholarship to supposing that because a rule is sometimes unstated, it must thereby be unstatable; that a rule may have no propositional content. In contrast, the considerations of the PI show that an unstatable rule can have no claim to being thought of as a rule. It is instead perhaps a sentiment or a habit.

The remedy for this misunderstanding of On Certainty lie in Philosophical Investigations.

This is a trolley:


This is a tram:

A valiant attempt. But the "tram problem" is lost - not even a mention of Philippa Foot. I can't help but suppose the over simplification occurred as the problem drifted across the Atlantic, and the tram became a trolly.

A trolly is that from which one serves tea.

might check out The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect. The issue is not what you might think it is, and cannot be simplified into a mere calculation.

It's about the poverty of mere expediency in our ethical considerations.

The Philosophy Forum is responsible for tripling my post. Not me. — Astrophel

External locus of control.

The OP seems pointless.

Thanks for that. Bathtubs? Best laugh today.

Interesting.

The Gestalt approach might provide a way of understanding Kripke's skeptical argument. Kripke has us being unable to account for why adding 57 and 68 gives 125. Kripke's argument is perhaps based on particular cases, and shows us that no number of individual cases is sufficient to explain what we do in the next case. But there is a way of understanding a rule that is not exemplified in individual cases but understood as applying to all cases... "now I know how to go on!"

Yep.

Reaching aporia, methodologically, can be an indication that the picture one has been exploring is unclear, confused... nonsense?

I prefer toothpicks to floss. Is that the right understanding of the metaphor? Or is maieutic practice like the comfort of a silk cocoon?

Nice. We might look to differences as well as similarities. One difference is that Wittgenstein's writing leads less to aporia than to a change in gestalt, a reconsidering of the way in which something is to be understood.

Presumably, there are folk who cannot see the duck, only the rabbit. It's not a surprise that they feel excluded.

quire — Fooloso4

To fold four sheets of paper into eight leaves. Apparently.

This is bad-faith argumentation... — Leontiskos

You'd know. I'll leave you to it then.

Edit: "vis-a-vis" and "regarding" are not so dissimilar. Nor does anything in what I have said reference Anselm or the other ontological arguments. Leontiskos is not responding to what I said.

These are examples of the sort of "bad faith" that Leontiskos has displayed both here and in other threads, where he has relied on perfidious reinterpretation.

The mention of age is simply puerile.

The thread has gone in other directions. Enjoy.

if logic had no ontological implications then there could be no historical progression in logic vis-a-vis ontology, there could be no better or worse logics vis-a-vis ontology, — Leontiskos

Does any one else see this as a bad argument? @Count Timothy von Icarus? @Srap Tasmaner?

If logic does not have ontological implications, then there are no better or worse logics regarding ontology.

But it remains that there may be better or worse uses of logic in ontological arguments.

Or is there a more charitable way to read this than as a transcendental argument with a false conclusion?

To be fair, is this obvious? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Well, yes. First order predicate calculus does not render ontological conclusions.

Be charitable here.

It is obviously false. — Leontiskos

:grin:

Seems we are getting to the real point of disagreement.

Well said.

Consider;

Suppose the target language involves contradictions: a phenomenon all too common among anthropologists and that Evans-Pritchard faced when studying the Azande in Africa. The very idea of a proper translation would require one to preserve the inconsistencies when translating the target language into the home language. Otherwise, rather than translating the target discourse, one would be amending, correcting, and distorting it. — Quantifier Variance Dissolved

Would it be more charitable to keep or remove the inconsistencies? On the account you gave, it would be best to remove the inconsistencies.

It's not always an argument that is being translated.

Conceptual relativism on stilts. Which honestly I'm not absolutely against (unlike both Banno and @Leontiskos) but I'm unsympathetic with the whole approach and nothing I've read was at all persuasive. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not quite against conceptual relativism. You might recall my fascination with Midgley, who emphasises the difference between various conversations, ways of speaking, in her essays - her evisceration of the scientism of Dawkins, her defence of personal identity and free will and so on. I pointed to one form of relativism earlier in this thread, where a bowl of berries contains strawberries and blackberries at breakfast, but bananas and grapes in the botany class.

Language is extraordinarily flexible. With some care we can trace paths and find patterns. But we can also make sense of A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs. "We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases", as Davidson shows.

Language is not algorithmic, nor will it ever be complete. There cannot be a "maximal quantifier", a language that talks about everything, without sacrificing consistency. But this is not a problem since we can differentiate between breakfast and botany. We avoid the inanity of insisting that one use of "berries" is the correct use.

I don't think quantifiers have much of anything to do with existence or being or any of that. — Srap Tasmaner

Th thread should have finished there. Logic does not have ontological implications.

But here we are.

Reading the last few posts, I wonder what folk think the Principle of Charity is.

Both make use of the very same rule for quantifier introduction.

D says that this is a table; P says that this is not a table. D can introduce a quantifier so: This is a table, therefore there are tables; tables exist. P introduces a quantifier thus: For any item you choose, it is not a table, therefore there are no tables, tables do not exist.

They can agree that the argument the other presents is valid, but disagree as to the premise, and so as to the conclusion.

Notice that they are both using natural deduction of the first order; they are using the very same logic.


Hence calling their difference a quantifier variance is misleading. They are taking the same logic and applying it to a different range of things.

This thread seems to have run its course.

There is no definition in the quote you cite.

Elsewhere:
DKL: “There exist tables”
PVI: “There do not exist tables”
The deflationist: “something is wrong with the debate”
— p.3
DKL includes tables in his domain. PVI does not. Both make use of the very same rule for quantifier introduction.

No case has been presented for a variance in the quantifier introduction rules, as opposed to a variance in the domain. — Banno

No, it doesn't.

An adequate explanation of "what quantifier variance is" would show the difference between at least two forms of quantifier. The quote says that there are two differing forms of quantifier, but does not say how they differ.

Folk hereabouts can verify this for themselves.

Whether there is a better explanation elsewhere in the text remains undecided.

Elsewhere:

DKL: “There exist tables”
PVI: “There do not exist tables”
The deflationist: “something is wrong with the debate” — p.3

DKL includes tables in his domain. PVI does not. Both make use of the very same rule for quantifier introduction.

No case has been presented for a variance in the quantifier introduction rules, as opposed to a variance in the domain.

Never seen one. — fdrake

After thinking on it, it seems not to be a possibility.

But you do so in natural language. So you don't care about the underlying formal logic. — fdrake

Indeed, since Universal Generalisation is taken as granted in first order logic. The formalisation is trivial.

Since if even mathematical reasoning has both ambiguity and commonality regarding the underlying logic and its quantifier introduction rules, why would we expect logic to behave as more than a prop, crutch or model of quantification in natural language? Never mind ontology! — fdrake

Formal logic can serve to clarify usage in natural languages. The primary case being how first order logic sets out and separates the three uses of "is" - predication, quantification and equivalence.

I still do not think that a sufficient case had been made for quantifier variance. We could not have two languages that talk about the same thing but which differ only in the way they introduce quantification. Generalising that, we could not have two languages that vary only in how they quantify, without their also varying in their domain.

The metaphysical notion (@Count Timothy von Icarus) grounding this is that logic can have no ontological implications. Logic does not tell us how the world is. I suspect you will agree with this.

That quote does not set out what quantifier variance is. It merely stipulates that DKL - David Lewis - and PKV - Peter van Inwagen - mean different things by "exists". Simply asserting that there is quantifier variance is not explaining what it is.

The article can be found here.

The last few pages of the article are worth a read.

Yeah, I like it, it's a bit divergent, but on topic. "Any particular man is mortal" introduces a quantifier almost obliquely. In first order logic it would be parsed "For all x, if x is a man then x is mortal", but now I am wondering if there might be an alternate parsing in some alternate logic.

Cool. Took me a while to catch on. My apologies. So

that is, "...for arbitrary a..." just is "for any a you might pick", or "for any a" - it's introducing a quantifier. — Banno

This is pretty clear: How Universal Generalization Works According To Natural Reason Salient is that the item chosen as the exemplar could have been any particular x in S. One can't conclude from "Socrates is mortal" that "all men are mortal", but one can conclude from "Any particular man is mortal" that "All men are mortal".

But I'm not sure how this relates to

How would you account for people's differences in use? — fdrake

You haven't interacted with any of this. — Leontiskos

I think this is the first time that paper has been quoted in this thread. — Leontiskos

So you haven't been reading my posts. Fine.

In what salient way is logic like chess? Why would we assume such a thing? Chess is just a made-up game we created to have some fun and amusement. — Leontiskos

and logic...
:wink:

fdrake has been consistently talking about intensional differences in quantifiers, namely by way of introduction and elimination rules for quantifiers. — Leontiskos

Has he? Ok. So what are these "intensional differences in quantifiers"? How are you using "intensional" here? How does that play out?

How do introduction and elimination rules differ in intensional logic?

And, significantly, classical first order logic is extensional.

So fill that out; what are your intensional introduction and elimination rules for quantifiers, and how do they differ from extensional introduction and elimination rules for quantifiers?

Fill it out.

Just to be clear, here's the extensional intuition behind quantification:

If our domain is {a,b,c} then "U(x)fx" is just "fa & fb & fc"; and "∃(x)fx" is just "fa v fb v fc". — Banno

How does translation play into it here? — fdrake

Well, that's what I'm asking, by way of answering this:

The challenge I see that presenting is that people can believe statements that block applications of inference rules, or otherwise not believe in appropriate inference rules. Even when two people share the theorems of the underlying logic... You just have to hope that every person innately believes every theorem. If they don't use the quantifiers in the same way, they don't have the same intensions over people. — fdrake

I'm still wanting an example of where quantifier variation is not also domain variation. I don't think it can be done - quantifier variation just is domain variation.

That is, you asked me

How would you account for people's differences in use? — fdrake

And my answer remains, perhaps they are talking about different domains.

You can introduce the quantifier onto (Pa->Qa) to get (for all x P(x)->Q(x) ) if you made no assumptions about a anywhere in your reasoning. — fdrake

Hang on.
(Pa→Qa) → (∀x (Px → Qx) is not valid.
How does "if you made no assumptions about a anywhere in your reasoning" change this?

And P( a )→ ∀xP( x ) is also invalid.

If "a" is arbitrary, doesn't that just make it a variable instead of an individual? Sure, ∀yP(y)→∀xP(x) is valid.

I remain lost.


Edit: that is, A→B gets parsed into predicate calculus as (∀x(Px→Qx)), not as (Px→Qx). Leaving out the quantification is not using a different quantifier...?

Second edit; that is, "...for arbitrary a..." just is "for any a you might pick", or "for any a" - it's introducing a quantifier.

The challenge I see that presenting are that people can believe statements that block applications of inference rules, or otherwise not believe in appropriate inference rules. Even when two people share the theorems of the underlying logic... You just have to hope that every person innately believes every theorem. — fdrake

I'm not sure I follow what you are suggesting here. Yes, sometimes folk make invalid inference, or fail make valid inference. But in order to recognise this, we must understand the distinction between valid and invalid inference.

In order to recognise a failure of translation, you must have an idea of what success would look like.

(P(x)=>Q(x) where x is arbitrary lets you derive (for all x P( x ) => Q( x ) ), and they can'd do that). — fdrake

It might but I don't see that it does - those unbound variables make it hard to see what is going on here. But (Pa→Qa) does not allow (∀x (Px → Qx))... You've lost me.

Thanks.