Yes, I forgot to state the obvious. a memory is of an event which I recognize as being in the past, and I anticipate events I recognize as being future events. — Metaphysician Undercover

I experience memories and anticipations. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then you experience the memories and anticipations of events, but you do not experience the events themselves (via sense perception). Otherwise, you are collapsing the distinction between memories that we recall and "memories" that are sense perceptions.

I may even conclude that my experience is in the present, because past experiences are gone and future ones have not yet happened, but I don't yet see principles whereby I can say that the present is something which I experience. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is at least some concession, given your earlier statement that:

We sense the past, not the present. — Metaphysician Undercover

So you can have experiences in the present but not of the present, and you can have experiences of the past (but not in the past)?

I don't yet see principles whereby I can say that the present is something which I experience. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure about "principles", and this may be heading down the 'absolute' path, but if you accept that we exist in time, then our (veridical) experiences can only be of the time at which we find ourselves. And whatever time we find ourselves at is the present moment (for us).

How do you think that you distinguish memories from anticipations? — Metaphysician Undercover

Apart from the distinction already made by the relevant meanings of the two words, the short answer is: sense perception. I anticipate what I will see (or otherwise will sense), and I remember what I have seen (or otherwise have sensed). And I have sense perceptions in/of the present moment.

This doesn’t seem like an option for you given your position that we do not experience the present, and that the present is merely a conceptual or logical assumption that we use to divide the future from the past.

It is unclear to me what you are anticipating or remembering if not a perceptual experience. From what you’ve said, it seems that you can only anticipate and remember memories. This is all re-presentation and no presentation.

I’m unsure how you escape circularity here, since you’ve said that past and future are defined in relation to memory and anticipation. You haven’t said so, but it seems that you can only define memory and anticipation in relation to past and future.

Consider that if a memory gets very general, that's when it is fading away and being lost, but when anticipation is very general, that's when it is the strongest, as anxiety. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don’t understand what you mean by memories or anticipations being “general”. I find that I anticipate and remember specific events or qualities.

It's not "in the past of the other", it's "in the past", where "past" is defined as the things whose existence is demonstrate by memories. "Past" and "future" are not defined here in relation to each other, they are defined in relation to memory and anticipation. — Metaphysician Undercover

How do you distinguish memories from anticipations?

Then how can you assert that: "the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created"?
— Luke

Why not? I'm talking strictly about future and past, not before and after. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then perhaps you could explain the basis of your claim that “the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created". Why must the one be in the past of the other?

Don’t we already know that the future is after the past?

Luke, since I’m not sure what to make of your statement, I’ll take it at face value. — javra

I was not being critical of you. I only meant to point out that MU's criticism could equally be directed at himself.

We haven't determined the basis for saying that either one, the past or the future is before or after the other one. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then how can you assert that: "the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created"?

I would be inclined to say that the anticipation of an event is prior to the memory of an event, and since anticipation relates to the future, and memory to the past, the future is before the past, from my experiential perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover

What do you require in order to determine "the basis for saying that either one, the past or the future is before or after the other one"?

I revealed the basis for my conception of time as the difference between memory and anticipation. Before and after are not essential to this conception. — Metaphysician Undercover

Does "the real thing which is being represented" come before or after "the time the representation is created", given that the former "must be in the past" of the latter? Or is there "no basis for saying that one event is before or after another event"?

Your conception, based in past and future, is just as circular.

you have no basis for saying that one event is before or after another event — Metaphysician Undercover

the real thing which is being represented must be in the past by the time the representation is created — Metaphysician Undercover

but the brain is not a person — Michael Zwingli

Then, who is?

Don't mind me. I was just poking a bit of fun at the discussion title.

If the brain isn't a person, then who is?

The meaning of the word, yes.

There are of course some concepts for which the grammar involves rules, just not all concepts.
— Antony Nickles

Which concepts do not involve rules?
— Luke

Hard to know how to take this. — Antony Nickles

You said that "not all concepts" involve rules (or "for which the grammar involves rules"). I asked you to name an example of such a concept. How is that "hard to know how to take"?

The grammar of concepts is more varied than simply (only) judging right and wrong (in accordance with a rule), such as what counts in the concepts of thinking, being in pain, seeing more than looking, mistaking, dreaming, guessing thoughts, understanding (as like a musical theme #527), not to mention the differences of the role (and limits) of grammar in the concepts of justice, beauty, virtue, progress, knowing the other's pain, illusion, fairy tales, nonsense poems (#282), etc. — Antony Nickles

If you are talking about "what counts" in the concepts, then you are talking about the criteria of the concepts. However, there can clearly be right and wrong ways of using these words (such as "dreaming" or "justice"), otherwise we would not be able to teach the conventional uses of these words, or to understand them. You still seem to be talking about concepts (and their criteria), while I am talking about the uses of words (and their rules).

And concepts cannot all be taught by explaining rules... — Antony Nickles

But the use of words can. Otherwise, there wouldn't be correct or incorrect ways to use them. Again:

"...there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”. (PI 201)

...but in some cases only by giving/being an example or by practicing... — Antony Nickles

What gets practised? The (existing) practice is the conventional use.

The totality of conditions of a concept's grammar are not worked out ahead of time (#183). — Antony Nickles

The "conditions for" walking - or, the criteria that count as walking - at #183 seem to me quite unlike the rules for the meaning/use of the word "walking" (i.e. for whether or not one is using the word correctly/sensibly).

The point is that an expression does not carry "sense" (or meaning) or "senselessness", as if within it, but that we make sense of it, or give up, call it "senseless", as in there is no sense of a concept with which we can associate it to see how it is meaningful, not that it is categorically without sense because it does not follow a rule. — Antony Nickles

My point was that using words incorrectly can lead to nonsense.

Even if we cannot make sense of an expression, place it within a sense of a concept--its grammar and criteria--a "sense" is not the only gauge or limit or result of an expression (you may just stare and gape #498). — Antony Nickles

If the use of "Milk me sugar" has the "impact" of causing people to stare and gape, then why does W say it is not a command to stare and gape? After all, that's how commands are typically used - to have the hearer act in a desired way. It's because it lacks sense (grammar, rules) and is not a conventional use of those words. Merely "having an impact" is insufficient for it to be considered as meaningful language use (or a move in the game). That's how I read #498.

I'm not sure how this isn't entirely circular, but, yes, I am questioning "explaining" "meaning" (let's say, how it always works) as "using" words, as (the act of?) your "meaning" it, or "intending" a meaning, even if my "meaning" is judged by conformity to a practice or convention. — Antony Nickles

I went on to explain this. Here, I was just criticising your question of why use is not a mental act.

I am not saying that "using words" is the act of "meaning it". I'm saying that we can both use words and mean it (i.e. we can use words with intention). The two different senses of "meaning" may cause confusion here. W's observation that 'meaning is use' is about the meaning (e.g. signification) of a word and how it is used in a sentence, in context. A word might have several different conventional meanings, but typically has only one meaning when used, in context. We learn these conventional uses/meanings of words when we learn the language. This is the sense in which word meaning is not a mental act - because we learn a word's uses, we don't each invent them from our minds.

After becoming fluent in the language and in the conventional uses/meanings of words and phrases, one can also "mean it" when they use words (i.e. speak/write with intention). For example, if I want the salt, I know how to use language to request it. I don't imbue the words "pass the salt" with meaning by some private mental act; the words already have a conventional meaning/use. But I can still use (or even misuse) those words intentionally.

For a large class of cases—though not for all—in which we employ the word "meaning" it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.
— Witt, PI #43

Not sure we can have a universalized picture of "meaning is use" when we would only define it that way most of the time. — Antony Nickles

Who said it was "universalized"?

If my use of language in accordance with the rules for a practice is not the only definition of "meaning", then what are the other cases and how can these coexist? — Antony Nickles

There seem to be few counterexamples. Personally, I think that W simply allows for the possibility that meaning may not always be use. Baker and Hacker suggest that "the phrases 'the meaning of a word' and 'the use of a word' are not everywhere interchangeable". They offer the following example: W "speaks of meaning blindness, but one could not speak of this phenomenon as 'use blindness'."

Anyway, I'm only arguing that Cavell's and your reading is inaccurate, not the merits of W's philosophy.

Another case would be in which we expect the expression to be intended, chosen, purposeful, as in art, or a speech, as we would then claim something about the speaker "They are meaning to say X". — Antony Nickles

You appear to be talking about something like subtext. Where do you see Wittgenstein as talking about subtext?

If the analogy is that an expression is used as a hammer is used (as a tool), it does not follow that all expressions are "used"... — Antony Nickles

I really don't understand your argument that language (or an expression) is not used. W says:

11. Think of the tools in a toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. — The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.)
Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them in speech, or see them written or in print. For their use is not that obvious. Especially when we are doing philosophy!

...I grant that we can choose what we say, and even can agree that some concepts are (can be) tools... — Antony Nickles

I don't read Wittgenstein as saying that we use concepts as tools, but that we use words as tools.

...they can do things (as Austin points out), like promising... — Antony Nickles

Austin talked about How to Do Things With Words, not with concepts.

Also, a hammer can be a tool, under the concept of hammering, but then so can a rock, though, even if used to hammer, is not then a hammer; and a hammer can be a weapon, but then would we say we have "used it" wrong? — Antony Nickles

Hammers have a conventional use, but they can also be used unconventionally, just as words can also be used unconventionally. The results may not always be ideal, depending on the re-purposing.

The comparison to tools not only reinforces that language use can have various different purposes/functions, but also that the use of language occurs in the world and not (only) in our minds. Hence, language-games, which are like other games that are played in the world, often with other people.

...one could say I adhered to the rules for hammering (though on a person), but that is both true and yet seems to completely miss the point, as if to want to determine the meaning by an intellectual act. — Antony Nickles

I think you have missed the point, which is that the meaning of a word is not an intellectual or mental act.

Maybe the use of the hammer is a foregone conclusion rather than a discussion, but, even so, the judgment of whether it is hammering or bludgeoning would be clear without involving "your" use at all. — Antony Nickles

A better analogy would be that you don't/didn't invent the conventional use of hammers. You can use a hammer however you want/intend, but I wouldn't try using one to grate cheese.

I agree that we cannot "make words mean whatever we want them to mean", but we also cannot make words mean something they can mean (our want does not factor in). In this picture you are still "meaning" them--using them to (or making them) "mean" some specific thing (here, a public, conventional use). — Antony Nickles

I don't make, or intend for, words to have "a public, conventional use". They already have that without me. I only intend how I use them.

Again, how is using an expression "intentionally" not causal? — Antony Nickles

It is causal. I cause my use of the expression. The important factor is that I don't cause the conventional meaning/use of the expression, because the expression already has a conventional meaning/use (or several possible meanings/uses). I only cause my use, but I can exploit my knowledge of the different conventional meanings/uses in doing so.

To take the "sense" or "meaning" out of your head and put it in the world, still leaves you in control of which use is meant, whether done right or wrong. — Antony Nickles

I didn't take the conventional meaning out of my head and put it into the world; it was already in the world to begin with.

Again, we sometimes choose what we say, but we do not always do so, nor "intend" a use for what we say, as if our intention was always picking which use we wanted. — Antony Nickles

Right, sometimes we might be on autopilot; sometimes it might be unclear what to say. As W says at §142:

It is only in normal cases that the use of a word is clearly laid out in advance for us; we know, are in no doubt, what we have to say in this or that case. The more abnormal the case, the more doubtful it becomes what we are to say. And if things were quite different from what they actually are —– if there were, for instance, no characteristic expression of pain, of fear, of joy; if rule became exception, and exception rule; or if both became phenomena of roughly equal frequency —– our normal language-games would thereby lose their point. — PI 142

The use of "knowing", afterwards, is in the sense of figuring out ("Did you intend to shoot that mule?") — Antony Nickles

The use/meaning of the question might be ambiguous and it can be misunderstood or have an unforeseen impact, but presumably no rules of language are being broken; there is no incorrect use of words in the question.

Also, "Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning." (PI 198)

I am not talking about the world (necessarily) changing after we say something, but that the discussion of how an expression is meaningful, if necessary, begins after something is said. — Antony Nickles

If we can only know afterwards whether an expression is meaningful, then how can we teach (the meaningful uses of) language to anyone? What is it that gets taught in the teaching of a language?

The implication you assume is exactly the picture of rules for use that imagines we know all of the applications of a concept ahead of time, as if to resolve every discussion except whether we "used the expression" correctly. — Antony Nickles

I'm not talking about "the application of concepts", but the use of words. It's unclear to me how a concept can be applied incorrectly, but it is clear to me how a word can be used incorrectly.

Cavell would say this is placing too much importance on rules, not seeing that rule-following is discussed and then moved on from to show how the grammar of other concepts differs. — Antony Nickles

Why do you (or Cavell) think rule-following is discussed at all? Also, can you provide a reference that W shows "how the grammar of other concepts differs"?

But if the judgment is simply that my use is senseless (wrong), then that does not give us anything to do other than correction (re-conformity) or rejection. — Antony Nickles

Why do you need something more to do? Nobody complains that breaking a rule of badminton "does not give us anything to do other than correction...or rejection".

Expression is judged on criteria, not rules, and words are (nothing without) concepts. — Antony Nickles

I think W would say you have it backwards; that concepts are nothing without (the use of) words. Concepts are ideas; mental contents. Wittgenstein spends a good deal of the book making the point that "An ‘inner process’ stands in need of outward criteria." (PI 580) See also the private language argument, PI 307, and the majority of the book, including:

In the sense in which there are processes (including mental processes) which are characteristic of understanding, understanding is not a mental process. (PI 154)

155. So, what I wanted to say was: if he suddenly knew how to go on, if he understood the system, then he may have had a distinctive experience — and if he is asked: “What was it? What took place when you suddenly grasped the system?”, perhaps he will describe it much as we described it above —– but for us it is the circumstances under which he had such an experience that warrant him saying in such a case that he understands, that he knows how to go on. — LW

To explain the criteria for toothache, for joy or grief, intending, thinking or understanding is not to describe an empirical correlation that has been found to hold...To say that q is a criterion for W is to give a partial explanation of the meaning of ‘W’, and in that sense to give a rule for its correct use.
— Baker and Hacker on 'Criteria'

Again, hard to say whether B&H need a correlation — Antony Nickles

B&H say they don't.

And to say, e.g., that "recognizing your fault" is a criteria for an apology does not mean that it is a rule of correctness. The apology may still come off (I may accept it), as you may acknowledge your blame but I may still not consider it an apology. — Antony Nickles

Why would you not consider it an apology if you accept it as such? Or is your acceptance or rejection about something other than whether or not it meets the criteria of being an apology (i.e. the grammar of "apology")? (Consider PI 354-355 and PI 496-497)

So to say my contrition is an "explanation of the meaning of" an apology is to discount or limit what is meaningful to me, or in this situation, in exchange for a rule that dictates to me, over, say, my authority; skipping over, me. — Antony Nickles

Whether or not you accept an apology makes no difference to what an apology is, or to what the word "apology" (conventionally) means. The conventions do "skip over you", in this sense. In terms of grammar, your feelings about what is meaningful regarding an apology counts about as much as your vote counts in an election.

B&H's claim is ambiguous as to who is doing what, when, but let's take it that the foundation on which you or I make a prediction is "mastery of rule-governed techniques". — Antony Nickles

Nobody is claiming that grammatical rules are "the foundation on which you or I make a prediction". At pp.223-224, Wittgenstein is providing a grammatical treatment of the expression “What is internal is hidden from us.”

Our justifications for acting only consist of pointing to rules to the extent a concept involves rules as part of its grammar. As they admit, even then a rule may only provide part of our rationale. We may also qualify our acts with excuses (mitigating our responsibility), extenuating circumstances (pointing to the context), etc. These are not judged as whether we rightly or wrongly followed a rule. — Antony Nickles

Okay, but PI 217 concerns W's justifications for following the rule in the way he does. One cannot wrongly follow a rule (and still follow it).

This paints the picture that we can clarify and arrange the rules for what makes sense regarding our questions, then they will be resolved as confusions or dissolve. Again, this puts our agreement about expressions ahead of the occurrence of an expression, now, by me, here, to you. It may be nothing, or it may be a philosophical moment, where we do not know how to understand the other, continue with our conversation; it may be a moral moment, where what I do in response defines who I am. None of these things are possible in a world where everything is agreed to ahead of time and all our questions are already answered, or deemed senseless, or confused. — Antony Nickles

Unless you can provide evidence to demonstrate that Wittgenstein is talking about morality in PI, rather than vaguely gesturing at it by saying that he "does not say things directly because they won't matter unless you see it, come to it, yourself" or reference "tons of backwards, hinted statements and questions left to be answered by us", then the evidence explicitly indicates that Wittgenstein's interest is limited only to grammar. He is not concerned with morality in PI.

Our inquiry is therefore a grammatical one. And this inquiry sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, brought about, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of our language. — Some of them can be removed by substituting one form of expression for another; this may be called ‘analysing’ our forms of expression, for sometimes this procedure resembles taking a thing apart. (PI 90)

If concept formation can be explained by facts of nature, shouldn’t we be interested, not in grammar, but rather in what is its basis in nature? —– We are, indeed, also interested in the correspondence between concepts and very general facts of nature. (Such facts as mostly do not strike us because of their generality.) But our interest is not thereby thrown back on to these possible causes of concept formation; we are not doing natural science; nor yet natural history — since we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes. (p. 230, 3rd edition) — LW

Sorry, I didn't have time earlier to provide a proper response.

This approach, therefore, reads the phrase “the meaning of a word is its use in language” as a ‘grammatical remark’, rather than a hypothetical remark or expression of a philosophical theory. This one might call for shorthand the Oxford reading — Joshs

This sounds right. As W says: "And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations." (PI 109)

Talking of the essence of Wittgenstein’s account of meaning is rendered redundant... — Joshs

Where did this "talk of essence" come from? Not from the preceding part of your quote. Where is the evidence or argument that the Oxford reading "[talks] of the essence of Wittgenstein's account of meaning"?

...when one observes that nowhere does Wittgenstein offer an account of meaning. — Joshs

Depends what is meant by "an account of meaning". PI 43 might be considered an account of meaning. Also PI 560.

Instead of "definition", a better way of putting it might be that Wittgenstein provides a 'grammatical explanation' or 'grammatical description' of "meaning" at PI 43; i.e. an explanation or description of the way the word "meaning" is used:

43. For a large class of cases of the employment of the word “meaning” — though not for all — this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language. — LW

Instead, [Witt] is saying that ‘meaning’ in all its guises ( like definition) is a hopelessly confused idea. — Joshs

I don’t think that’s right.

Since you’ve said nothing about Antony’s reading, I think you’re only reacting to the word “definition”. I wasn’t completely comfortable using it either. I’m happy to say he “connects” meaning with use. I don’t see this as radically altering anything, including Baker and Hacker’s reading, unless you could explain otherwise.

P. Hutchinson provides a reading of Witt on the relation between meaning and use that appears to support Antony’s interpretation. — Joshs

Why do you think this supports Antony’s reading rather than mine?

There are of course some concepts for which the grammar involves rules, just not all concepts. — Antony Nickles

Which concepts do not involve rules?

It is not grammar that makes an expression "senseless", as if our "using" it wrong makes it not an expression at all (without "sense", as in: lacking "a meaning"). It just is an expression (as, an event), it is we that cannot make out where it fits, — Antony Nickles

To whom is it "senseless" if not we English-speakers?

But it still has an impact — Antony Nickles

Having an impact is not synonymous with having sense.

How is the picture of us "using language" not a version of a mental act? — Antony Nickles

Wittgenstein defines meaning in terms of use as an alternative to the commonplace picture that meaning is a mental act. You are questioning how use is not a mental act? If use is a mental act, and if 'meaning is use' as W says, then meaning must also be a mental act. This would defeat the purpose of Witt's definition of meaning in terms of use. I suppose I could ask you how using a hammer is not a mental act?

How does simply externalizing "meaning" make our part in this picture not still causal (#220)? — Antony Nickles

Because I can't make words mean whatever I want them to mean. But I can use them with the conventional uses/meanings that they have. And intentionally so.

Also, it's not the same causality at #220, which is talking about rules (not) causing us (to follow them). You are talking about us (not) causing meaning.

(If you are "using language", where/how is the "using" process happening?) — Antony Nickles

The same place I use hammers (the shed).

If you can agree this should not be the picture, I'm not sure why we are still struggling to see that Witt's concept of "use" is not determined, as in caused, by us (beforehand), but determined, as in (in the sense of) figured out in making a determination (afterwards, when necessary), by the criteria for its grammar. — Antony Nickles

How can we know the meaning/use afterwards if we don't know the meaning/use beforehand?

So our ability to "talk it out" is endless: justifying our acts, making excuses, weighing criteria to be applied in judgment, pointing out relevant context (ad infinitum), settling claims of the grammar of a concept. Those paths may close; the spade may be turned. But that does not end our relationship in continuing to resolve our differences (creating a new world--projecting a concept into a new context; standing in place of our words, whether mad or "before our time" or futily. — Antony Nickles

You're talking about what can happen in the future, as if a language-game or a game like chess is played according to all the rules over time that a game has had, does have, or will have in the past, present, and future. There might be conventional uses/meanings in the future which are not currently conventional uses/meanings, but that doesn't mean they have any meaning or use to us now. Should we postpone Wimbledon until we know what all the rules of tennis will be? Can we not decide whether or not a move in a game is legal (or makes sense) now?

If we imagine language as driven by rules, then, having broken one or gone beyond it, there is not a lack of the ability to make sense, but nothing; we have reached our end. — Antony Nickles

What's the difference in terms of language?

When Witt refers to the ordinary he means all the criteria that are not "mathematical" (except for "mathematical" concepts). Mathematical criteria would be complete, universal, certain. etc. — Antony Nickles

Right, but the discussion is titled: 'Rules' End', not 'Criteria's End'.

We may not know this ahead of time (be aware or have it worked out explicitly, as they are imbedded in our lives). — Antony Nickles

You seem to be talking about the criteria of our concepts, while I am talking about the rules for the use of our words.

Baker and Hacker on 'Criteria':

[A criterion] is not part of a theory of meaning, but a modest instrument in the description of the ways in which words are used. As we should expect if we have followed Wittgenstein thus far, it plays a significant role in his philosophy, but not by way of a premise in an argument, nor by way of a theory. ‘An “inner process” stands in need of outward criteria’ (PI §580) is not a thesis from which philosophical propositions are proved. It is a synopsis of grammatical rules that determine what we call ‘the inner’. [...]

To explain the criteria for toothache, for joy or grief, intending, thinking or understanding is not to describe an empirical correlation that has been found to hold. For criteria, unlike symptoms (inductive correlations), determine the meanings of expressions for which they are criteria. To explain the criteria for the application of an expression ‘W’ is to give a grammatical explanation of ‘W’. It explains what we call ‘W’, and so explains a facet of the use of the word (AWL 17 – 19). To say that q is a criterion for W is to give a partial explanation of the meaning of ‘W’, and in that sense to give a rule for its correct use.

Baker and Hacker on 'Rules':

Philosophical questions commonly concern the bounds of sense, and these are determined by the rules for the use of words, by what it makes sense to say in a language. This is the source of philosophy’s concern with grammatical rules. For by their clarification and arrangement, philosophical questions can be resolved, and philosophical confusions and paradoxes dissolved. [...]

That a person’s action is rule-governed, that he guides himself by reference to a rule, is manifest in the manner in which he uses rules, invokes rule-formulations, acknowledges rules cited by others, refers to rules in explaining what he did, justifying what he did in the face of criticism, evaluating, criticizing and correcting what he did, and so forth (cf. PI §54). It is to these familiar features of rules and rule-governed practices that we now turn.

(1) The instructional aspect: We typically teach a rule-governed activity by citing rules, i.e. by using sentences as formulations of rules: ‘This is a pawn' [...]
(2) The definitory aspect: Rules define actions: for example, castling in chess [...]
(3) The explanatory aspect: [...] An action is explained by giving the agent’s reason why he acted as he did, and the rule which the agent follows provides part or the whole of his reason [...]
(4) The predictive aspect: The mastery of rule-governed techniques provides foundations for predictions. [...]
(5) The justificative aspect: A rule is cited in justifying (and also in criticizing) an action [...]
(6) The evaluative aspect: Rules constitute standards of correctness against which to ‘measure’ conduct as right or wrong.

"The ordinary" would just be all our everyday criteria that matter, say, for an expression to be an excuse, but which are not complete or whose application is fixed in advance, so, not like rules. — Antony Nickles

You seem intent on talking about criteria instead of rules. Are you talking about ordinary rules or ordinary criteria?

Rules needn't be "complete or whose application is fixed in advance"; that is Wittgenstein's point. Tennis still has rules and is still a game, even though (e.g.) there is no rule "for how high one may throw the ball in tennis". And Wittgenstein seeks to emphasise the strong similarity between games and language in this regard (see language-games). Language also has rules and remains language, even though it is not "everywhere bounded by rules".

There are of course other kinds of rules than “mathematical” ones (but these are not Witt’s idea of criteria either). — Antony Nickles

What adds to the confusion here is that, as I understand it from the little I know or have read of his philosophy of mathematics, Wittgenstein does not even consider there to be these sort of fixed, complete, all-encompassing "mathematical" rules in mathematics (itself).

But it is the desire for rules like math that Cavell is saying leads to Kripke’s picture of a rule-driven language (a complete system). — Antony Nickles

Yes, I view Kripke as seeking the "ideal" that Wittgenstein considers problematic, as described in the PI 100s.

So I am trying to connect the desire for mathematical rules with the picture of acting/speaking "in accordance with the meanings that they have" which is manifest from that same desire to have the application judged as just right or wrong (as the picture of statements as just true/false). — Antony Nickles

I think this is confused. Language does have rules (grammar) even though it is not "everywhere bounded by rules"; even though the rules are not "complete".

133. We don’t want to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of ways.
For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear. — LW

The rules of language (that we are taught when we learn language-games) include how to use words "in accordance with the meanings that they have". And there are right and wrong ways to use them, otherwise any combination of words would make sense and none could be senseless (i.e. otherwise there is no grammar). PI 500 indicates this is not the case.

Now, however, let us suppose that after some efforts on the teacher’s part he continues the series correctly, that is, as we do it. (PI 145)

The words “Now I know how to go on” were correctly used when the formula occurred to him: namely, under certain circumstances. For example, if he had learnt algebra, had used such formulae before. — But that does not mean that his statement is only short for a description of all the circumstances which set the stage for our language-game. — Think how we learn to use the expressions “Now I know how to go on”, “Now I can go on”, and others; in what family of language-games we learn their use. (PI 179) — LW

Wittgenstein is saying that the picture that we "mean" sentences (use them)... — Antony Nickles

No, he does not mention "use" at PI 81. 'Meaning is use' views meaning in the "right light", rather than thinking of meaning as a mental act, which views meaning in the "wrong light". Wittgenstein is referring only to those views of meaning that are in the "wrong light" at PI 81, including his own views of the Tractatus and also (I believe) those of his "middle period".

Baker and Hacker offer this exegesis of PI 81 which may help to clarify matters:

Many words of our language are not everywhere bounded by rules (§§68, 71, 75–7). In some cases, such as proper names, W. claims, we use expressions without a ‘fixed’ or ‘rigid’ (feste) meaning at all (§79). The rules for the use of our words do not budget for every conceivable eventuality — and are none the worse, for all that (§80). But there is a powerful philosophical temptation to deny that this can be so. W., when he wrote the Tractatus, succumbed to it, thinking that the vagueness and indeterminacy exhibited by natural language is only a surface-grammatical phenomenon that disappears on analysis. [...]

A different temptation, and a different reaction to the fact that the words of natural languages are not everywhere circumscribed by rules, is to view natural languages as being defective to the extent that they do not meet this requirement. In philosophy, especially since the mathematicization of logic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, we often compare the use of words in natural language with the calculi of logic, which have rigid rules. It is then tempting to say that natural language approximates such calculi — that the calculi of logic are ideal languages, by comparison with which natural languages are deficient. It is against this temptation that W. now warns. — Baker and Hacker

And if we do not have a complete system of rules (#133), then how can rules be the (only) way language operates? — Antony Nickles

It seems that you desire this "ideal" for a complete system of rules yourself. Ask yourself the same of tennis or chess or any other game. Here's a hint:

Where is the connection effected between the sense of the words “Let’s play a game of chess” and all the rules of the game? — Well, in the list of rules of the game, in the teaching of it, in the everyday practice of playing. (PI 197) — LW

What happens when our rules would be not so much broken, as, just, run out? What happens beyond the bounds of rules? — Antony Nickles

If you're talking about beyond the rules of language, then the answer can't be "more language" or "let's talk it out", because there is no sense beyond the rules of language (i.e. grammar). Grammar is the bounds of sense.

Yes, we do not decide the grammar of a concept, but we also can not ensure which use our words will have. — Antony Nickles

This needn't imply that we can't use words to mean one thing rather than another. You are again seeking an ideal (certainty) to make language "everywhere bounded by rules" and to shore up all the gaps (to always "ensure which use our words will have").

Making the discussion about rules so important definitely makes any ethical or moral themes seem insignificant. — Antony Nickles

Yes, Wittgenstein does make quite a point about rules and rule-following...

But it is exactly this fight against the desire for certainty, universality, the completely "mathematical" which Wittgenstein is impressing upon us as a moral obligation. — Antony Nickles

Do you have a reference?

The pursuit of knowledge of our lives through an investigation of our language, learning about ourselves, the other, can be done in an ethical manner, attending to each grammar for each different thing, or tainted by the desire for an all-inclusive answer. — Antony Nickles

I'm sure it can, but where does Wittgenstein explicitly say any of this in PI? It seems to involve a lot of reading between the lines.

There is also the implications of his discussion of aspect blindness and that knowledge is not our only relation to the world. — Antony Nickles

How is aspect blindness related, and do you have a reference for the knowledge part?

we do not "use" words as in: do not "mean" words. — Antony Nickles

We obviously do use words, and we use them to mean this or that. We do not invent their meanings, we learn their meanings. And we learn to use them, and do use them, in accordance with the meanings that they have or can have. It is a mastery of a technique; a practice.

Consider this analogy: in chess, no individual decides or determines the rules (the allowable moves; the grammar) of the game on their own, but individuals can and do decide the moves that they make from among all of the allowable/possible/meaningful moves. This is analogous to choosing/using one's words (to speak meaningfully).

I don't think that we disagree on this, except that you assume my position to be other than it is, and except for your wild claims (or strong implications), such as that language is not used by us, or that we do not teach how to use words.

You may understand it as when Wittgenstein realizes that the internal process of "meaning" vanishes — Antony Nickles

He does not realise that the internal process "vanishes"; he realises that this is not how meaning works (just as individual chess players do not decide the rules on their own).

All of this is externalized, so the sense (or use) of an expression is in the expression and context, not coming from us. — Antony Nickles

Like I said earlier:

The rules determine which moves are allowable (make sense) in the language-game, and the moves allowable in the language-game are just the "possibilities" (different senses) that you mentioned. So, an expression can be used (e.g.) as an assertion or as a hypothesis, but which of those possibilities is actualised depends on what a speaker/writer actually does with it (how a speaker/writer actually uses it) in a given instance. — Luke

But our desire for "mathematical" certainty creates a picture of the power of (necessity for) judgments made previously (rules, moral imperatives) which threatens our ability to see we can continue, to wait, to try again, to listen, without which how can we teach anything new to anyone, try to tell someone something hard to hear, have any hope in a moral moment. — Antony Nickles

I think I understand what you are getting at now with your distinction between "mathematical" and "ordinary" rules. Wittgenstein refers to these as "calculi with fixed rules" and "the rules of a game" respectively (see PI 81). A game is "not everywhere bounded by rules" (PI 100), but it is still a game "for all that" (PI 68). Wittgenstein repeatedly compares language to games, and speaks of language as having rules (e.g. PI 84, 100, 125, 133, 549, 558).

However, I still disagree that morality is a significant theme of PI.

There is an object of experience, just like there is an object of sensation. — Metaphysician Undercover

What's the difference?

I think we do need the additional "idea" over and above these things. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think you've grasped the point. You said that we "derive directly from experience" our memories and anticipations. But then you said:

"We do not derive directly from experience, the idea that things are happening (and we are experiencing things happening) at the present."

But of course we do "derive directly from experience" that "we are experiencing things happening". It is this that we do not need the additional "idea" for. Some might even say that our experience (or our "experiencing things happening") is less conceptual than our memories and anticipations.

I agree with the first part here, you can equally say that no time passes in the past and future, but you cannot say that this statement does not employ a concept of time. You have used "time" in that statement. So you simple employ a particular concept of time, within which time passes, and claim that such a conception of past and future would not require that particular concept of time, but it just requires a different conception of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

Whatever. If time doesn't pass at the present moment, then time doesn't pass. And you can't have a past or future without a present moment.

I find "present moment" to be logically incoherent and that is why I assume the need for two dimensional time, a thick present, or a present with breadth. — Metaphysician Undercover

How long do you need the present moment to be? It makes little difference.

There are objects of sensation, as I said above, but as I also said previously, these objects are all in the past by the time they are perceived by me through the medium of sensation. Therefore I class such perceptions with memories, images which appear to me, but the true object represented by the image is in the past. So what you call "conscious perceptions of the world" (assuming that you refer to sense perceptions) are in fact memories, by the time the images are present to the conscious mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then I ask you again:

What, according to you, is the amount of time between the present moment and the moment things are sensed? — Luke

In other words: what is the time difference between an experience and a sensation?

I did not deny that we are sensing at the present, I deny that we experience the present — Metaphysician Undercover

What's the difference?

As I explained, we derive directly from experience, memories, (that something just happened, or happened a long time ago), and also anticipations (concerning things which will happen). This provides what you call the "benchmark of the present moment". We do not derive directly from experience, the idea that things are happening (and we are experiencing things happening) at the present. — Metaphysician Undercover

We "derive directly from experience" our conscious perceptions of the world, just as much as our memories or anticipations. We don't need the additional "idea" of these things (over and above these things).

To produce a concept of time requires reference to past and future, as I described. And when the concept of "time" is constructed in this way, the idea that things are happening at the present moment becomes incoherent. because no time passes at the present moment, and activity requires the passage of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

I could equally say that no time passes in the past or the future, either. In that case, according to your logic, past and future cannot produce the concept of time, either.

you might suggest that we start with the simple notion that we are experiencing things occurring at "the present". From here, we cannot derive a concept of time though, without referencing past or future, .so this concept of "the present" is not temporal. — Metaphysician Undercover

The concepts of "past", "present" and "future" are interrelated. You "derive" the present from the past and future as much as you "derive" the past and future from the present.

If we start with the assumption that we are experiencing "the present", then there is no means by which 'the present" says anything temporal, it's just, 'being-here', 'being-there', or something like that, in an eternal (as in outside of time) way. — Metaphysician Undercover

But we can say that we are always experiencing at the present moment, or that the present moment is (defined as) the time at which we are sensing/experiencing. The "outside of time" (or B-theory or untensed) way of expressing this is as being "simultaneous with" (some time or event).

It's merely two different ways of describing "experience". Javra describes experience as being present, and I describe experience as consisting of memories and anticipations. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your description of experience does not include conscious perceptions of the world?

...although we say "we are sensing at the present", we are really sensing things which are separated from the mind by a medium, and because of this separation, the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed — Metaphysician Undercover

Even if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed", that needn't contradict the statement that "we are sensing at the present". The present could just as easily be defined as the time at which we are sensing, instead of "the time of things" - whatever that is.

That is, when is the present moment if "the things sensed are in the past by the time they are sensed"? If the present moment is not 'the time at which things are sensed', then the present moment must presumably be time shifted by adding or subtracting some arbitrary amount of time to or from 'the time at which things are sensed', in order to account for light bouncing off an object, brain function, or something else. In other words, you are still using 'the time at which things are sensed' as your benchmark of the present moment, except that you account for some arbitrary "gap" or "medium" between an event and our sensing it. I can tell you what I am sensing at any given time, but what is the definition of this arbitrary gap or "medium" between some event and my sensing it? What, according to you, is the amount of time between the present moment and the moment things are sensed?

...without the construction of these temporal notions of past and future, we would not see ourselves as being at the present. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the present is the time at which we are sensing, then the past and future are not needed to help define the present; they are instead defined by it.

the way a word has meaning doesn't have anything to do with us, in the way your picture describes. — Antony Nickles

So you accept that 'meaning is use', but you reject that meaning has anything to do with "us": the users of words and language?

Your picture injects the speaker as "the user"; that the use of language depends on them. — Antony Nickles

Yes, the use of language depends on its users. This is controversial?

But "the" use (not "our" use) is a part of language (our lives), not in the speaker doing something, "using it". — Antony Nickles

Does language use itself? Tell me more about "the" use of language which is not "our" use of language.

There is the whole of language, that is to say everything worth expressing or that matters in our lives, and this word has a role, a place. That is its use, not our using; the word's use, as in the word has a use, or uses; Witt will also call them senses (like varieties or options)... — Antony Nickles

So words have possible uses (senses, varieties, options), but we don't actually choose any of the uses/options? Words use themselves?

...which depend (mostly) on the context, not upon my intention or my "actualizing" it. — Antony Nickles

Why "mostly"?

An intention is embedded in a setting, in human customs and institutions. If the technique of the game of chess did not exist, I could not intend to play a game of chess. To the extent that I do intend the construction of an English sentence in advance, that is made possible by the fact that I can speak English. (PI 337)

[PI Part II] 295. How do I find the ‘right’ word? How do I choose among words? It is indeed sometimes as if I were comparing them by fine differences of smell: That is too . . . , that is too . . . — this is the right one. —– But I don’t always have to judge, explain; often I might only say, “It simply isn’t right yet”. I am dissatisfied, I go on looking. At last a word comes: “That’s it!” Sometimes I can say why. This is simply what searching, that is what finding, is like here. [see also 298, 300] — LW

There are two (at least) "understandings", and Wittgenstein is saying "in the sense of" to clarify/differentiate which grammar for this concept we are discussing. — Antony Nickles

I don't find this example relevant. How does it relate to 'meaning is use'?

This is one main part of this essay in understanding the impact of the desire for "mathematical" rules: — Antony Nickles

Sorry, but I still don't get it. Aren't all rules ordinary?

the point of the rule was to provide a foundation for a kind of certainty to our language, a bedrock — Antony Nickles

But is that the point of rules?

I can wield/use the words "Pass the salt" as a command/request, for example.
— Luke

...the point being that it doesn't have anything to do with "you". — Antony Nickles

I didn't mean to emphasise the "I", and I don't know why you think I did. Any English speaker could make the same command/request by saying "pass the salt", obviously.

I'm not sure what the grammatical point could be here with this example — Antony Nickles

The point of this example was to show you that I know not "all language works by reference/correspondence", since a command or request uses language for a purpose other than mere reference/correspondence. "Slab!"

The focus on "is used like" is on whether it is [ used ]: as an assertion, or, as a hypothesis; not on the person "using" a word, but on the possibilities of the expression (the possible uses); you could call these different senses, but it is not the "sense" (meaning) of the expression. — Antony Nickles

You are suggesting that the "focus" is only on possible uses, not on actual uses. As though nobody actually uses language...

Now you can say: "I used belief as a hypothesis" but the focus is on differentiating between the uses that belief has, not that "your use" gave it, or related it to, the "meaning" that it has--you are merely clarifying among the limited options. — Antony Nickles

If the focus is only on the "possibilities" of use, then it's not really about actual use at all. However, Wittgenstein is definitely focused on actual uses of language; that's why he keeps harping on about language-games and language-use as an activity:

The word “language-game” is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity (PI 23)

To repeat: don’t think, but look! (PI 66)

We’re talking about the spatial and temporal phenomenon of language, not about some non-spatial, atemporal non-entity. (PI 108) — LW

Of course if there is confusion we can ask: "What did you mean?", but the answer to this falls (usually) within a concept's grammar (its possible senses). Now this is different than saying there are rules and I "used the word" in accordance with its rules. — Antony Nickles

How is it different? Language is the game and grammar is its rules. The rules determine which moves are allowable (make sense) in the language-game, and the moves allowable in the language-game are just the "possibilities" (different senses) that you mentioned. So, an expression can be used (e.g.) as an assertion or as a hypothesis, but which of those possibilities is actualised depends on what a speaker/writer actually does with it (how a speaker/writer actually uses it) in a given instance.

Yes, that is literally the kind of claims he is making. That the structure of our language and that of our lives are (usually, for the most part) them same—this is carried from the Tractatus but a different kind of form for each thing, each type of act; and we are looking for its “logic” (on its terms) rather than imposing a fixed criteria. A grammar for excuses (Austin), for apologies, for a threat, for acknowledging pain, for treating someone as if they have a soul, for raising one's arm, for justifying or disagreeing. Grammatical comments highlight the criteria of a thing—what is essential for it to be that thing: learning, mistaking, reading, talking, lying, seeing, etc. — Antony Nickles

I'm not sure whether it is Cavell or Kripke making this kind of claim, but, for Wittgenstein, grammar is about the sense of the words "excuse", "apology", "threat", "pain", "learning", "reading", "talking", "lying", "seeing", etc. Our actions are obviously related to the use of these words, but grammar is not about the actions themselves (independently of the words/concepts).

According to Wittgenstein scholar Daniele Moyall-Sharrock:

[Wittgenstein] does not see grammar as comprised merely of syntactic rules, but of any rule that governs 'the way we are going to talk' (MWL 72): 'By grammatical rule I understand every rule that relates to the use of a language' (VOW 303).

...grammar consists of the conditions of intelligibility of a language. It is the conventionally-established basis on which we can make sense: 'Grammar consists of conventions' (PG 138), keeping in mind that conventions here are not due to a concerted consensus, but to an unconcerted agreement in practice.

...grammar includes '[a]ll the requirements for sense'...

'The connection between "language and reality" is made by definitions of words, and these belong to grammar', writes Wittgenstein (PG 97).

...the Tractatus sets the stage for what Wittgenstein will later call 'grammar': grammar is that which enables or regulates sense (and so is itself nonsensical) and cannot meaningfully be said in the flow of the language-game but only heuristically articulated.

At the conceptual basis of our confrontation with experience are not bare particulars, but grammar: it is grammar that tells us what kind of object anything is (PI 373).

...when Wittgenstein speaks of the correspondence between concepts and nature, he is talking about the correspondence between the structures of concepts – that is, our grammatical rules – our grammar – and facts of nature. Take the concept of pain, some of the 'structures' of that concept can be expressed in grammatical rules such as: 'Human beings are normally susceptible to pain'; 'Tables and chairs don't feel pain'; 'There is psychological as well as physical pain', etc. In these passages, then, Wittgenstein is saying that of course we are interested in the correspondence between our grammar and very general facts of nature, but not in the way natural scientists or historians are interested in this correspondence. That is, we are not interested in any empirical justification or historical account for our having the grammatical rules we do. — Daniele Moyall-Sharrock

Our lives are meaningful, and we learn words (moreover, concepts) in coming into our culture, acting, failing, interacting, becoming part of everything everyone does. Again this picture of "meaning" is getting in the way. Our expressions, as our lives, don't have a "meaning" attached to them; part of the confusion Witt recognizes is that we believe that since we can give a definition ("meaning") for ever word, that this is how all language works (reference/correspondence). — Antony Nickles

I've never claimed that all language works by reference/correspondence only, and "wielding" words need not imply it. I can wield/use the words "Pass the salt" as a command/request, for example. If your earlier distinction between "wielding" words and words being "meaningful in our lives" meant to imply that not all language works by reference/correspondence only, then I misunderstood you. At least, I hope you do not intend to argue against Wittgenstein's position, famously summarised as "meaning is use".

To obey a rule is to obey it correctly (do it right) or wrong (fail to obey it). Justifications can differ as to why we obeyed it, and we can argue about what it means to have (rightly) obeyed a particular rule, but what is right and what is wrong are not contained/decided by rules (unless they are set by us--laws, commandments, etc.). — Antony Nickles

If "what is right and what is wrong are not contained/decided by rules", then why bring Wittgenstein's rule-following into it? If it is to discuss what I take to be Cavell's and/or Kripke's misreading: that Wittgenstein creates an open question with his "turned spade" and invites further justification, then I have nothing further to contribute. If you don't wish to discuss whether or not this is a misreading (or was Wittgenstein's position), then I will leave it for you and others to discuss Cavell's and/or Kripke's take on it.

If I am following the rule, I may only have, "I was following the rule." And so cannot explain, detail, qualify, defend, make explicit, distinguish, or justify myself, except as to how I believe following the rule is done and that I did it. — Antony Nickles

If that's what you meant by "abdicating [your] responsibility to be intelligble to the other", then fair enough.

You can hold me responsible for the act, and for my choice to follow the rule (though, in following the rule, if I judge the rule as irresponsible, I am not obeying it (#222)). — Antony Nickles

§222 is not about judging the rule as being irresponsible. §222 supposes that what determines following the rule is the judgment of one's private "intimation" (i.e. one's intuition, instinct, feeling, hunch). However, one could judge their intimation irresponsibly, and then "I wouldn't say that I was following it like a rule". This brings into question the supposition that our "intimation" is what determines following the rule. This supposition "is, of course, only a picture."

And I can claim I was following the rule as an excuse from the guilt/wrong, but Kripke's society is judging my having followed the rule or not, not whether the rule itself is right/wrong — Antony Nickles

Wittgenstein is not talking about "whether the rule itself is right/wrong". But if you don't want to have that discussion, then I'll leave you to it.

If I am behaving as expected there is no need to make myself intelligible (as we don’t ask after intention unless something phishy happens). If you have broken the rules of chess and I tell you, and you claim you did not, you must explain yourself if we are to go forward, together. For you to explain in what sense you intended, or so that you know what is at stake and have a chance to qualify what seems inexplicable from my position. This may come to our being unable to reconcile, however, as Cavell will say elsewhere about it: though we are endlessly separate, there is no depth to which langauge can not reach, and we are answerable for everything that comes between us. — Antony Nickles

What if someone breaks (or fails to learn) the rules of grammar (i.e. the bounds of sense)? This is a "depth" that language cannot "reach" or reconcile.

This is the criteria that Cavell is describing as "mathematical", which he believes Kripke is aspiring to impose on the grammar of all concepts, any action. — Antony Nickles

Grammar applies only to language use, not to "any action" - unless you have a reason to think otherwise?

That we learn rules, instead of having lives... — Antony Nickles

We don't either learn rules or have lives. You might as well have said: "That we learn [language/chess], instead of having lives." We learn these as a part of (within) our lives, not instead of us having lives.

...and that right and wrong are simply a matter of obeying the rules or not... — Antony Nickles

But they are. Otherwise, there is no rule.

(what is right is worked out ahead of time; — Antony Nickles

But it is. Otherwise, there is no rule. (Rules can change, of course.)

Cavell takes Kripke's view of rules as "more skeptical than the skeptic", meaning that the desire for purity (certainty, pre-determination, simple enforcement) is satisfied by making rules central to our agreement (then we can teach the rule, rather than the student, rather than agree in our lives) — Antony Nickles

What is "we can teach the rule, rather than the student" supposed to mean? The rule is not the student and vice versa. Rules are taught to the student.

The distinction hinges on the difference between words as used (as if, by rules) and seeing that there are different things an expression, for example, can do: be a threat, an invitation, etc. — Antony Nickles

Why can't it be both? We are taught the rules for how to use words and how to use those words as threats, invitations, etc. We are taught both how to wield words and how they are meaningful in our lives. (On reflection, this is what I should have said in my previous post.)

So we do not have to be answerable for the action; we can point to the rule as the answer of why we did the action, abdicating our responsibility to be intelligible to the other, respond to their claims on us about what we have done. — Antony Nickles

Aren't we responsible both for following rules and for not following rules (that is, once we know the rules)? You seem to imply that we are responsible only when we don't follow rules.

In terms of intelligibility, I would say that following the rules (e.g. in chess) is what allows us to make ourselves (our moves) intelligible to our opponent; that following the rules maintains the intelligibility.

Therefore, I do not understand how we "abdicat[e] our responsibility to be intelligible to the other" by following rules.

Cavell’s claim is that Witt is comparing rules to ordinary (not instituted) criteria (see the PI index: having a dream, remembering right, mistaking, talking to oneself), so we are not just deciding true or false compared to something we have found certain (or which aspires to a mathematical rule). — Antony Nickles

I think that Wittgenstein attempts to highlight similarities, not differences, between rule-bound activities. Perhaps Cavell distinguishes mathematics from other activities because it might be considered as "more ideal" than others, but Wittgenstein wants to bring all these activities back to the rough ground, including mathematics. As Banno noted early on, mathematics is but another language-game.

Our judgment of the other (their act) is not based on a rule they either obeyed or not (except when it is, say, the law) — Antony Nickles

Or except when we are teaching them the rule.

The concept of justice was picked as an example of when sometimes we don't/won't know how a concept will matter, what criteria will have what importance and to whom--its criteria make its grammar a different type than concepts with mathematical criteria. — Antony Nickles

You are speaking in the future tense. We can say that the rules are in constant flux, such that there is no ultimate, final, "all-encompassing" rules or criteria. But if that is your requirement for a rule, then there are effectively no rules at any point in time. However, clearly there are rules that we follow; games and sports being an obvious example. If your point is that mathematical rules/criteria are more enduring and perhaps more clearly defined than other rules/criteria, then I take your point.

"Anything--and nothing--is right. This is the position you are in if you look for a definition corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics and ethics." #77. That this is different then the certainty (lack of disagreement) we have in math. p. 192. And asking if my knowledge is completely expressed by the explanations I could give (#75), describes that my unconscious familiarity can be made exhaustively explicit, but does not say that a concept is finite, complete in advance, learned by saying X (#75 is not about definitions, but explanations) — Antony Nickles

You're right. I may have confused or conflated definitions with explanations. However, the larger point, of Wittgenstein's, is that concepts are still "usable" (and, therefore, teachable) even if they have "blurred edges" (see §69). W's point at §77 seems to me to be that some concepts are simply resistant to sharper definition.

and there is no limit to the explanations that I might have to give (to the student), and it is I who might become exhausted, our relation break down, rather than we have tidy all-encompassing rules justified to begin with, and the student is either right or wrong. — Antony Nickles

Does this imply that there is no right or wrong (if there is a "limit to the explanations")? Or what does it mean for rules to be "all-encompassing" and "justified to begin with"?

A concept can also be brought into new, unexpected contexts, extended Witt will say at #67, or he uses the analogy of continuing a series. — Antony Nickles

I take "extend" at §67 in the sense of what is included or what falls under the concept of "number", rather than the concept's use in "new, unexpected contexts". You can possibly read that into it, but Wittgenstein is concerned with description not theory (§109).

or he uses the analogy of continuing a series. As in "being inclined" in our beginning quote, when making a mistake in continuing a series, we are tempted to say that the student has understood wrong #143, as Kripke's society would judge, as if we have a complete list of how things can go wrong. But we say only that the student has "mastered the system" (#145) "followed the series as I do" But "we cannot state a limit" on when we have a right to say that. "Our pupil's capacity to learn may come to an end." #143. This is my claim that it is "impossible" to nail everything down for all time in any situation. — Antony Nickles

Wittgenstein's intent with these remarks is not to demonstrate that it is impossible to "nail everything down for all time", although this kind of "preconception of crystalline purity" is one of his targets in the book. §143 deals with understanding, rule following, being guided by a rule, and normal/abnormal reactions.

In the extension of non-mathematical concepts we do not have the ability to say " 'and so on', in order to reach infinity." — Antony Nickles

I'm not sure I understand the analogy. Wittgenstein reminds us that, normally, students do learn and are able to go on to use the mathematical and non-mathematical concepts they are taught. Anyway, the real lesson of the student/teacher scenarios is that understanding and rule following are less about the student's inner thoughts/feelings and more about the student's actual behaviour. "Just for once, don’t think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ at all!" (§154)

This is where Cavell's student and teacher begin. — Antony Nickles

But this is where Wittgenstein's student and teacher end. Likewise, Wittgenstein's turned spade is not an invitation for further explanation (see §87 again).

you say we teach how to "use" words, but that seems different than Witt's point that, in teaching meaning, we teach the use of a word in the language — Antony Nickles

I say that we teach how to use words, but Witt's point is that we teach how to use words in the language? This is a distinction without a difference. At least you are no longer questioning whether we teach how to use words.

We don't show how to, say, wield the word, but show the word's place(s) in our world, how it is meaningful in our lives. — Antony Nickles

I haven't said otherwise. You appear to be projecting views onto me that I do not hold.

Sure, but learning the rule does not ensure correctness, nor that, even if correct, that there would be the same justification (if any need for one). I am not unreflectively "confident" or "assured" of following the rule correctly (granting myself authority); I give over my responsibility to the rule, no longer needing to make anymore decisions (further steps--a myth is not a lie or wrong; the picture, though not literal, still strikes: see p. 180). In obeying the rule (not myself) I can be "blind" to the consequences, not responsible. I do not "judge" as Hacker claims (#222). The justifications for obeying the rule are different than the explanation (afterwards) for having followed it incorrectly. — Antony Nickles

I don't know what you mean by "I give over my responsibility to the rule". What responsibility? Also, I don't believe you when you state that you are never assured or confident of following any rules correctly. "Correctly" should not mean "flawlessly".

Why does learning the rule not ensure correctness? If you are saying that someone who has learnt the rule could still make an error, that's true, but why is your expectation that learning a rule should eliminate all errors? You appear to have a "preconception of crystalline purity" about this.

Talk of "responsibility" here is also misguided, as if you can choose to learn the rule or not. Toddlers do not make the considered decision not to learn their native language - this is the problematic Augustinian view of language acquisition.

And if they are acting from an internal/individual assessment (their "judgment") of what is in accord ("right")(even if that was as you claim, only in learning it), they are subject to the correction of society when they are wrong--their fear of exclusion is their desire for criteria (a rule I can know, be assured of) that will ensure that does not happen. — Antony Nickles

Which rules can't you know or be assured of? Should rules be tailored to each individual? The student's motivations for learning to follow the rule are irrelevant. All that is relevant for Wittgenstein's purposes is that children normally do learn to follow the rule. That is our form of life.

He is investigating why we want "obeying rules" (meaning; knowledge of the other) to be "privately determined", reliant on us individually (say, our confidence). Why he keeps trying to make sense of the interlocutor's obsession, fixation. This is not just an argument for a different picture (or a confusion to be alleviated), it is an investigation into the human condition, our desire to not have to rely on the human. — Antony Nickles

I disagree. It has nothing to do with "our desire to not have to rely on the human", as far as I can tell. He is trying to get the obsessed, fixated philosopher to see the matter in a new light. Therefore, it is "an argument for a different picture", e.g.:

it is, rather, essential to our investigation that we do not seek to learn anything new by it. We want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand. (89)

Our inquiry is therefore a grammatical one. And this inquiry sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. Misunderstandings concerning the use of words, brought about, among other things, by certain analogies between the forms of expression in different regions of our language. (90)

The preconception of crystalline purity can only be removed by turning our whole inquiry around. (One might say: the inquiry must be turned around, but on the pivot of our real need. (108)

There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. All explanation must disappear, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light — that is to say, its purpose — from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; but they are solved through an insight into the workings of our language, and that in such a way that these workings are recognized — despite an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by coming up with new discoveries, but by assembling what we have long been familiar with. (109)

115. A picture held us captive. And we couldn’t get outside it, for it lay in our language, and language seemed only to repeat it to us inexorably.

116. When philosophers use a word — “knowledge”, “being”, “object”, “I”, proposition/sentence”, “name” — and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language in which it is at home? — What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use. — LW

And the way we measure whether a concept's grammar has been met is through criteria for having done them, not rules — Antony Nickles

When are criteria not rules?

the criteria for a game being all over the place, the criteria for justice being subject to disagreement — Antony Nickles

I don't believe that these are the criteria.

I can give a definition of justice, which I take as what you are referring to when you say "teach a student what the word 'justice' means", but does a definition contain "all there is"? — Antony Nickles

For a particular meaning/use of the word, yes. It is both possible for the teacher to know "all there is about justice" and for the definition that is taught to contain "all there is". See §75, for instance.

You've also fallen back on teaching "how to use the word" justice, but do we teach how to use words? — Antony Nickles

Yes, obviously we teach how to use words. How else do we learn their meanings?

I will claim again that this a misunderstanding; that Witt would say there is a use of a concept, as in its sense (one among possible others). — Antony Nickles

Its sense is its meaning, and "the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (§43).

"What use of justice are we talking about?" morally right? lawful judgment? fairness? to appreciate properly? — Antony Nickles

You tell me. It was your claim that the teacher cannot possibly know "all there is about justice". Which use/meaning of justice is it impossible to know?

And that these are not "teachable" with a definition in the sense Witt is getting at with our aligned lives. — Antony Nickles

Then how can we possibly acquire or learn the sense (meaning) of a concept?

We see examples of being fair, we experience injustice, we know the law, we do justice to our father's memory... Again, the "meaning" of a word is taken apart in PI, as a bit of knowledge, and turned about towards the grammar of a concept which shows us what is meaningful about one use compared to another, why we make such a distinction, yada yada. — Antony Nickles

Perhaps, but he never says that a teacher (or anybody else) cannot know "all there is about justice" or that we don't teach the meanings of words. It's unclear whether you are trying to say that justice is a family resemblance concept or referring to something outside of concepts/language altogether.

I think maybe I need more than not "typically regarded" or "just not what [you] see" to feel this is a rational critique rather than just feeling you've only gone as far as you want into the text. — Antony Nickles

The SEP article gives the following account:

Directly following the rule-following sections in PI, and therefore easily thought to be the upshot of the discussion, are those sections called by interpreters “the private-language argument”. Whether it be a veritable argument or not (and Wittgenstein never labeled it as such), these sections point out that for an utterance to be meaningful it must be possible in principle to subject it to public standards and criteria of correctness. For this reason, a private-language, in which “words … are to refer to what only the speaker can know—to his immediate private sensations …” (PI 243), is not a genuine, meaningful, rule-governed language. The signs in language can only function when there is a possibility of judging the correctness of their use, “so the use of [a] word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands” (PI 261). — SEP

If the rule following sections in PI are "directly follow"ed by the private language argument - which the article positions somewhere around §243-261 - then the rule following sections must be just prior to §243, and so not at §426. I could cite more references to support what is "typically regarded" as the rule following section if you like.

Moreover, you have provided zero textual evidence to support your assertion that Wittgenstein says (or implies) anything remotely in the vicinity of "the student has taught the teacher something, in this instance by extending the concept into a new context...something about justice in a new world."

The onus is on you to support your claim that Wittgenstein's remarks on rule following in the PI are about morality or ethics. By your own admission, this is an unorthodox reading. I have already provided several quotes and references to show that you are reading something into the text that is not there.

To say that he should have said it strikes him that the "steps are taken" is not to say it's not true (nor saying that it is "mythological") that they are already taken... — Antony Nickles

Yes, it is "to say it's not true that they are already taken". That is Wittgenstein's entire point here.

219. “All the steps are really already taken” means: I no longer have any choice. The rule, once stamped with a particular meaning, traces the lines along which it is to be followed through the whole of space. —– But if something of this sort really were the case, how would it help me?
No; my description made sense only if it was to be understood symbolically. — I should say: This is how it strikes me.

221. My symbolical expression was really a mythological description of the use of a rule. — LW

"If something of this sort really were the case, how would it help me?"
With this question, Wittgenstein clearly implies that something of this sort (i.e. that all the steps are already taken) really is not the case.

We do follow the rule blindly, in the sense that we follow it with complete confidence and without reflection. It is only in this "symbolic" sense that "I do not choose". This is merely "how it strikes me" when I follow a rule - as if there is no choice. But this should not be mistaken with the mythological idea that I actually have no choice and that all the steps are already taken in advance. I can move my knight from one end of the board to the other if I so choose, but that wouldn't be following the rule. Baker and Hacker provide the following exegesis of these sections:

"we misunderstand the nature of following rules if we think that ‘having no choice’ in this context means that in some medium the rule traces out its own applications in advance of being applied, and hence one has no choice. For if something like that were the case, how would it help one to make the transition to action?"

"Hence the description ‘All the steps are really already taken’ only makes sense if understood figuratively (like the wings on Father Time). So understood, it signifies the fact that I do not choose. For once having understood the rule, I am bound in what I do further, not in the sense of being compelled, but ‘I am bound in my judgement about what is in accord with the rule and what not’ (RFM 328f.). Hence, if I want to follow the rule, ‘then only doing this will correspond to it’ (RFM 332). So I follow the rule blindly: not like a machine, but with the blindness of complete assurance." — Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein: Rules, Grammar and Necessity: Volume 2 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Essays and Exegesis §§185-242, p. 197

...but just that they are not "steps", we don't "follow" the line the rule "traces". All of this stepping, following traces, is how things look (from our desire to be caused along the way) against the way we (logically) "blindly" follow a rule; we do not have our eyes open, looking, intending, choosing each step. — Antony Nickles

I don't understand this. Are you saying we don't follow rules?

On a generous reading, it looks like you might be in agreement with Baker and Hacker's exegesis above, but then why would you also assert (via double negative) that Wittgenstein is saying or agreeing that "All the steps are really already taken"?

Even with all that, I think we agree that it is not an internal determination of the rule, which is all I mean to say: that rules are (logically, i.e., that's what they're for; they function) to be obeyed, but not all grammar functions in that way. Rules take "us" out of the equation (math pun intended), but our ordinary, non-mathematical, grammar for learning, justice, sitting in a chair, are not based on, to be understood as, rules. — Antony Nickles

I still don't know what you mean by the "grammar" of (or "for") these things. (The grammar for sitting in a chair?) It remains to be shown that there can be grammar without rules.

that the line does not nod, or whisper, or tell us (#223); that we do not follow along it as a path "on tenterhooks", anxious each second about society's moral judgment (our intention, what we "mean").
— Antony Nickles

I don't know why you bring "society's moral judgment" into it. This is simply another description to reinforce the point that rules are not privately determined.
— Luke

That's a small take-away; can't we even grant that Witt learns why we want them to be? Much less that if we imagine ourselves, as Kripke does, just confidently acting on rules we've been "taught", the only possibility is for correction because you didn't follow the rule (thus the anxiety). — Antony Nickles

"Witt learns why we want" what to be what?

In the quote above, you were talking about the anxiety of society's moral judgment. You now seem to be talking about a different anxiety relating to not following the rule? What Witt actually says at §223 is that we do not have to wait upon the nod of the rule and that we are not on tenterhooks about what it will tell us next. So there is no anxiety here. §223 is not about learning the rule, but assumes the rule has already been learnt.

"[ No explanation ] stands in need of another — unless we require it to avoid a misunderstanding. One might say: an explanation serves to remove or to prevent a misunderstanding —– one, that is, that would arise if not for the explanation, but not every misunderstanding that I can imagine." #87

Explanations avoid, remove, or prevent a certain type of misunderstanding. But there are other misunderstandings we could imagine... — Antony Nickles

No, he says "but not every misunderstanding that I can imagine."

I don't see why you view the rules of chess or the rules of mathematics differently to rules of grammar or road rules.
— Luke

The point of all the examples of the different types of practices/concepts is to show that there is a different grammar for each one. — Antony Nickles

Do you mean to imply that grammar pertains to more than just language use; that grammar involves something outside language use? Or what "different types of practices/concepts" are you referring to?

There are not "rules of grammar" — Antony Nickles

Then how do you account for PI §497 or PI §558?

Wittgenstein's remarks, as well as the following quotes from SEP and Baker and Hacker, indicate that there are rules of grammar:

Grammar, usually taken to consist of the rules of correct syntactic and semantic usage, becomes, in Wittgenstein’s hands, the wider—and more elusive—network of rules which determine what linguistic move is allowed as making sense, and what isn’t. This notion replaces the stricter and purer logic, which played such an essential role in the Tractatus in providing a scaffolding for language and the world. Indeed, “Essence is expressed in grammar … Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar)” (PI 371, 373). The “rules” of grammar are not mere technical instructions from on-high for correct usage; rather, they express the norms for meaningful language. Contrary to empirical statements, rules of grammar describe how we use words in order to both justify and criticize our particular utterances. But as opposed to grammar-book rules, they are not idealized as an external system to be conformed to. Moreover, they are not appealed to explicitly in any formulation, but are used in cases of philosophical perplexity to clarify where language misleads us into false illusions. — SEP

The use of a word, Wittgenstein averred, is determined by the rules for the use of that word (AWL 30). For using words in speech is a rule-governed activity. The rules for the use of a word are constitutive of what Wittgenstein called ‘its grammar’. He used the expression ‘grammar’ in an idiosyncratic way to refer to all the rules that determine the use of a word, i.e. both rules of grammar acknowledged by linguists and also what linguists call ‘the lexicon’ and exclude from grammar — i.e. the explanations of meaning (LWL 46f.). To grammar belongs everything that determines sense, everything that has to be settled antecedently to questions about truth. The grammar of an expression, in Wittgenstein’s generous use of ‘grammar’, also specifies the licit combinatorial possibilities of the expression, ‘i.e. which combinations make sense and which don’t, which are allowed and which are not allowed’ (ibid.; emphasis added). ‘What interests us in the sign’, he wrote, ‘the meaning which matters for us, is what is embodied in the grammar of the sign. . . . Grammar is the account books of language’ (PG 87). Wittgenstein contended that the questions ‘How is the word used?’ and ‘What is the grammar of the word?’ are one and the same question (ibid.). The use of a word is what is defined by the rules for its use, just as the use of the king in chess is defined by the rules (AWL 48). — Baker and Hacker, Wittgenstein: Understanding and Meaning, Volume 1 of An Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations: Part I: Essays, Volume 1, pp. 145-146

There are not "rules of grammar" (that sounds like a sillogism) because each grammar is different, the criteria for their employment are different. — Antony Nickles

How do rules differ from "the criteria for their [each grammar's] employment"?

Every practice is not bound by "rules" — Antony Nickles

I never said or implied that every practice was bound by rules. (And why the scare quotes?)

(not all grammar is rule-like) — Antony Nickles

Then I'm not sure what you mean by "grammar". I suspect you might be conflating grammar with form of life (which is wider than language).

though there is a grammar to rules, and a different kind of grammar for different kinds of rules. — Antony Nickles

For example?

Do you believe that all moves (or all movements of a knight) in chess are circumscribed and predetermined?
— Luke

Well, I think so... aren't they? I'm mean, strategically unexpected, but the criteria for the rules are complete, exact; this is the category of "mathematical" criteria. — Antony Nickles

They are certainly not complete. There have been numerous changes and additions to the rules (of mathematics and chess and grammar and the road). I'm sure there will be many more to follow. Although you could consider them as complete (or "circumscribed") at any particular time.

(Though predetermined is the wrong word, especially in a philosophy discussion.) — Antony Nickles

So not "predetermined" either...

Why is it impossible for the teacher to know "all there is about justice"? Surely they can know enough to teach a student what the word "justice" means (i.e. how to use the word "justice"). After all, didn't someone teach you what "justice" means? And couldn't you teach the meaning of the word to someone else? I don't believe that #426 is typically regarded to be in the rule-following section of PI, but we could look at 218-221 instead. — Luke

Was this quote without comment meant to signify something?

Confusingly in this case, the grammar for movement of a knight in chess is based on rules--it falls into the category of mathematical criteria: that all the applications are circumscribed, predetermined, etc. — Antony Nickles

Do you believe that all moves (or all movements of a knight) in chess are circumscribed and predetermined? Per Banno's earlier comment, I don't see why you view the rules of chess or the rules of mathematics differently to rules of grammar or road rules.

And, although the teacher has authority over the student, that does not mean the teacher knows all there is about justice — Antony Nickles

Of course; that is the point of Wittgenstein's remarks at 208-211, for example.

And, although the teacher has authority over the student, that does not mean the teacher knows all there is about justice (which, my point here, is impossible--seeing the whole of each infinite series #426). — Antony Nickles

Why is it impossible for the teacher to know "all there is about justice"? Surely they can know enough to teach a student what the word "justice" means (i.e. how to use the word "justice"). After all, didn't someone teach you what "justice" means? And couldn't you teach the meaning of the word to someone else? I don't believe that #426 is typically regarded to be in the rule-following section of PI, but we could look at 218-221 instead.

the teacher could concede that: not only has the student applied (justified) the concept of justice appropriately (within its grammar--not the "meaning", but what is meaningful to us about it), but that the student has taught the teacher something, in this instance by extending the concept into a new context (my example doesn't really fit), something about justice in a new world (say, what is just in reconciling our past incorporation of our reaction to race into our continuing institutions). — Antony Nickles

That's all very possible; it's just not what I see as being the point of Wittgenstein's remarks on rule-following, or anything he's actually talking about.

we obey rules, we do not "follow" them — Antony Nickles

I don't understand the distinction. I consider "obey" and "follow" to be synonymous here.

I meant to point to the entire section from #218-#232 (after the passage #217 under discussion), which, following the grammatical claim that "When I obey a rule, I do not choose," (#219) in the sense that: part of the criteria for "obeying" a rule is that I do not obey "my inspiration" (#232), as it were, at each moment, like my "eye travel [ ing ] along a line" Id--as if always tracking it/myself--that, if I do that, then I am, categorically, not "obeying" the rule. — Antony Nickles

This appears to be the source of our disagreement, and where I believe you are misreading Wittgenstein. You seem to think that Wittgenstein genuinely holds that "All the steps are really already taken" (219). I read him, instead, as saying that we should not become captivated by, or fear, this misleading picture. As he says at 221, this is "really a mythological description of the use of a rule."

Furthermore, his comments on "inspiration" are intended to show that one's inspiration is irrelevant to following the rule; and that it is not one's private feeling, but one's public behaviour, that determines whether a rule has been followed (it is not accidental that these remarks lead into the private language "argument" where the rules of language cannot be determined privately, either). So I wouldn't say that "part of the criteria for "obeying" a rule is that I do not obey "my inspiration"; I would say instead that obeying my inspiration is not part of the criteria for obeying a rule or for determining whether I have obeyed a rule.

At #222, Witt sees this fantasy of ours is only a picture of the line intimating to us (absolving us of being "irresponsible"--or the one who taught us being so); — Antony Nickles

I don't understand this. I take the "intimation" in 222 to mean that the line gives one a private impression or intuition about "the way I am to go". That the line gives us this kind of intuition, W says, is "of course, only a picture", and this intuition could be judged "irresponsibly" in which case he would not be following it like a rule. This is, again, arguing against the mistaken picture that a rule can be determined privately.

that the line does not nod, or whisper, or tell us (#223); that we do not follow along it as a path "on tenterhooks", anxious each second about society's moral judgment (our intention, what we "mean"). — Antony Nickles

I don't know why you bring "society's moral judgment" into it. This is simply another description to reinforce the point that rules are not privately determined.

Well again I take #217 as about teaching someone how to be able to obey rules, presenting my justifications (say, even: myself as justification by example) for how it is that obeying rules is justified (in justifying how I have obeyed one). — Antony Nickles

I see it more in accordance with his remark at #1: "Explanations come to an end somewhere."

“But then how does an explanation help me to understand, if, after all, it is not the final one? In that case the explanation is never completed; so I still don’t understand what he means, and never shall!” — As though an explanation, as it were, hung in the air unless supported by another one. Whereas an explanation may indeed rest on another one that has been given, but none stands in need of another — unless we require it to avoid a misunderstanding. One might say: an explanation serves to remove or to prevent a misunderstanding —– one, that is, that would arise if not for the explanation, but not every misunderstanding that I can imagine.
It may easily look as if every doubt merely revealed a gap in the foundations; so that secure understanding is possible only if we first doubt everything that can be doubted, and then remove all these doubts.
The signpost is in order — if, under normal circumstances, it fulfils its purpose. — LW (PI §87)

Both Kripke and Cavell take Witt as pointedly not trying to resolve skepticism (the "orthodox" view I described earlier), but take it seriously, investigate it, see what it shows about us. — Antony Nickles

I've just finished reading the second chapter of Cavell's Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome; the chapter on Wittgenstein and Kripke. While interesting in places, I find Cavell misreads Wittgenstein and/or is too generous to Kripke, giving his reading more respect than it deserves.

I note that Cavell says PI is not meant to refute scepticism; but that's not the same as saying that Wittgenstein attempts to resolve scepticism.

What I found most interesting in Cavell's paper is the view - which he says he had found elsewhere only in Kripke's reading - of "the possibility of skepticism as internal to Wittgenstein's philosophizing." As he later expands:

...the irreconcilability in Wittgenstein between our dissatisfaction with the ordinary and our satisfaction in it, between speaking outside and inside language games, which is to say, the irreconcilability of the two voices (at least two) in the Investigations, the writer with his other, the interlocutor, the fact that poses a great task, the continuous task, of Wittgenstein's prose, oscillating between vanity and humility. Skepticism appears in Philosophical Investigations as one of the voices locked in this argument, not as a solution or conclusion. — Cavell

It could be tempting to view PI in this way, seeing all the voices in it as Wittgenstein's own, including an expression of Wittgenstein's own geniune scepticism and philosophical doubts via the voice of an interlocutor. But the interlocutor could alternatively be viewed as a mere literary device which allows Wittgenstein to express these typical philosopical concerns only so he can provide his response (or philosophical viewpoint) to them.

The issue that Wittgenstein identifies (or forecasts) is that philosophers such as Kripke are sceptical or dissatisfied with any and all justifications of behaving in accordance with, or obeying, a rule.
— Luke

In the passage starting this OP, Witt acknowledges the possibility of the exhaustion of justifications. — Antony Nickles

Do you view this as Wittgenstein conceding to the sceptic? The quotes from 198-199 in my previous post include his reply to the sceptic (that following a rule is a custom, a practice, a usage, an institution).

But Cavell is attempting to draw out that there is grammar (not just judgment) in obeying a rule; that there are cases that exhibit what these criteria are (#201); that we can go over these examples and see if the context matches ours, whether it is an example, etc. And that grammar, even that of obeying a rule, is different than rules--even leaves us in a different place in the end. — Antony Nickles

Cavell references Wittgenstein's PI 199 regarding the grammar of obeying a rule. I don't know what you mean by the rest, starting from: "see if the context matches ours, whether it is an example, etc."

It gets even more straightforward, let's use the example of math. The idea is that things are not straightforward like rules (#426), that our criteria (our lives) are open-ended, unpredictable, etc. — Antony Nickles

What has this got to do with rule following?

The further point of the passage of the turned spade is that, though I can wield rules the way you point to (as Kripke grabs onto them as finalizing), we do not have to, there is nothing necessary in treating the other on black and white terms--unless you don't want to address the Other (open the moral realm), that you just want, as it were, to apply the rule. — Antony Nickles

I don't see Wittgenstein or Cavell as talking about "the moral realm" with regard to rules, so I don't see that as being "the further point of the passage of the turned spade". But I invite you to make a case for it.

On p. 192, Witt calls this a "conviction". — Antony Nickles

In which edition? The word "conviction" does not appear on p. 192 of my copy.

240. Disputes do not break out (among mathematicians, say) over the question of whether or not a rule has been followed. People don’t come to blows over it, for example. This belongs to the scaffolding from which our language operates (for example, yields descriptions).
— LW

I would say #240 clarifies our need to be able to know how to fight well (keep open the possibility for reasonable moral debate), — Antony Nickles

You might need to expand on why you think that. I don't see that at all. 240 is simply describing the wide (world-wide) consensus that exists among language users and among mathematicians.

241. “So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?” — What is true or false is what human beings say; and it is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life.
— LW

...and that #241 does not solve those issues, by pointing to our way of life in the way Kripe takes it as a contractual (enforceable) agreement. — Antony Nickles

I think your assumption that Wittgenstein intends 240 or 241 to be about a "moral debate", or about a solution to it, still requires justification. I don't recall Kripke talking about a moral debate either (although it's been a while and I may not have read it too closely). I take 241 only to be clarifying the type of agreement/consensus Wittgenstein is referring to at 240.

Pointing to the existing practice that constitutes the rule. "You're not allowed to move your knight like that!" (in chess) because that's not the practice or the way it's done.
— Luke

This is to justify the judgment of not obeying a rule by pointing to our practice. We (teacher-student) are at the moment where I claim there is an attempt to convey what it is to obey a rule, how it is that we obey a rule. That this has an ordinary (non-"mathematical") grammar that is not just pointing to a rule (Kripke as it were, generalizes this practice/picture). — Antony Nickles

Sorry, I don't understand. How can you convey what it is to obey a rule without pointing to our practice? Are you referring to the student's (and/or teacher's) thought processes or something? And what do you mean by "grammar" here?

And the other might claim his is an example, but responsive to a new context. "This is justice, but here we must do harm in this case." — Antony Nickles

That would require that the student/trainee already understands what "justice" means; that they are not being taught the rule for how to use the word.

When I obey a rule, I do not choose.
I obey the rule blindly. — Wiit, PI # 219

Right, like when you move the knight in chess; if you know the rule, then you don't think about how the piece can move. But let's go back to what you said and to my original concern:

You say that the teacher is unable to provide sufficient justification to the student about what constitutes obeying a rule. Then you say - crucially - that the teacher does not have to give up on the student because both teacher and student can "resist philosophy's anxiety". I guess I'm asking: what is it that allows the student to "resist philosophy's anxiety"?
— Luke

To make themselves intelligible. They might claim they did obey the rule; or explain their aversion to conformity--examine their "blind" obedience (#219); as normally we do not "follow" rules (#222). Not to take the position that their actions are unable to be communicated--to feel there is something private, unknowable (not just personal). But really this is an examination of the teacher, and the limitation/impotence of our knowledge (what comes after it). — Antony Nickles

The student and teacher can "resist philosophy's anxiety" in order to "make themselves intelligible"? I presume you are talking about the student when you say "They might claim they did obey the rule; or explain their aversion to conformity" -- if the student does not know the rule (otherwise why are they being taught the rule?), then they are in no position to claim that they did obey the rule. To "explain their aversion to conformity" implies that they did not obey the rule. Unless they already know the rule, then the student would not have a "blind obedience" to it. And 222 neither states nor implies that "normally we do not follow rules".

I do not then "follow" the rule, as in watch it go on ahead of me (#232). Kripke takes it that our justifications end (I act blindly) when I obey the rule, and then as if this is how we are said to act at all, with no space for discussing (justifying) that choice afterwards, for rescission if your suggestion to obey the rule was irresponsible, that I would no longer (morally) say I obeyed the rule, but that I obeyed your intimation (#222). — Antony Nickles

Wittgenstein is only talking about the teaching and learning of existing rules. I don't see him as talking about morality, justifying choices or changing rules.

It is peppered throughout, in his insistence not to treat our practices mathematically, singularly, but also (albeit cryptically), in Part II, with his discussion of attitudes, seeing aspects. — Antony Nickles

Where does he insist "not to treat our practices mathematically"? Perhaps you could provide an example or two?

Summon the specter of skepticism for the philosopher (reader), yes; the fear that leads to our need to have a foundational bedrock to justify our acts. An average person might feel an inability to communicate, that words/fact/truth lack power, discouraged at the prospect of (or empowered by) not having anything else to say... — Antony Nickles

In my experience, the average person does not typically have "the fear that leads to our need to have a foundational bedrock to justify our acts." That is a "fear" (if you can call it that) which is peculiar only to some philosophers.

Witt's example is meant to show us something about philosophy; its powerlessness, and hope. — Antony Nickles

And its recurring, thematic, archetypal problems, which he is attempting to resolve.

Maybe not my best work trying to show a distinction (part of the problem is Witt is discussing justification for how we follow a rule; and Kripke is reading that as we act from inclination ("inspiration" #232) and then are judged as right or wrong based on if we follow the rule, conform to the rule (before there is any justifying why/how you did or didn't follow the rule)). Cavell takes Witt as leaving open the judgment/exclusion to begin a conversation about what it means to have followed a rule (what counts, what matters, etc.). One view ends the relationship, the other begins a moral discussion. — Antony Nickles

I'm not sure whether you would agree that Kripke's is a terrible misreading of Wittgenstein, albeit one which might help to raise some interesting issues. If so, then the question I have is whether you consider Cavell to be in disagreement with Wittgenstein, and whether Cavell is saying anything different to Wittgenstein, or if he says mostly the same thing by interpreting him better than Kripke. That is to say, I agree with Banno's assessment regarding the opacity of your distinction between them here.

I disagree that Wittgenstein is inviting a moral discussion at all, nor any further justification in general terms, although he might consider a place for philosophy or justification to intervene in relation to some specific issue. Generally speaking, the matter is fairly black and white: people do manage to follow rules and are able to be judged as following them or not. As W says: "there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it” (201). See also 240-241. I view 232 as a continuation of the thread that brings into relief the impossibility of privately determining a rule (see 202).

What constitutes justifying that I obeyed a rule. — Antony Nickles

Pointing to the existing practice that constitutes the rule. "You're not allowed to move your knight like that!" (in chess) because that's not the practice or the way it's done.

“So is whatever I do compatible with the rule?” — Let me ask this: what has the expression of a rule — say a signpost — got to do with my actions? What sort of connection obtains here? — Well, this one, for example: I have been trained to react in a particular way to this sign, and now I do so react to it.
But with this you have pointed out only a causal connection; only explained how it has come about that we now go by the signpost; not what this following-the-sign really consists in. Not so; I have further indicated that a person goes by a signpost only in so far as there is an established usage, a custom. (198)

To follow a rule, to make a report, to give an order, to play a game of chess, are customs (usages, institutions). To understand a sentence means to understand a language. To understand a language means to have mastered a technique. (199) — LW

And Kripke wants to resolve the worry that we may not be able to justify how we obey a rule or what constitutes obeying a rule — Antony Nickles

It's an odd reading to think that Kripke is attempting to resolve this worry, when, by design or by folly, he exacerbates it.

Cavell takes Witt as leaving that possibility of failure open, but also continuing a conversation beyond our pre-determined judgment. An ongoing conversation about, say, what constitutes an example (#223)--rationalizing our relationship instead of it relying on, say, violence (understanding rather than just change). — Antony Nickles

I'm not sure what you mean here, but I don't see 223 as questioning what constitutes an example.

To make themselves intelligible. They might claim they did obey the rule; or explain their aversion to conformity--examine their "blind" obedience (#219); as normally we do not "follow" rules (#222). — Antony Nickles

This is not my reading of 219 or 222.

I agree with framing it as training, but I am trying to show two "particular ways" we can be seen as going on--that maybe it isn't (as in teaching math), that we behave (obey) or not, but that we are learning the skill of how to continue, to be able to justify our actions at all--to move forward rather than not be able to "conflict" or "accord" at all (#201) — Antony Nickles

The issue that Wittgenstein identifies (or forecasts) is that philosophers such as Kripke are sceptical or dissatisfied with any and all justifications of behaving in accordance with, or obeying, a rule. So it is not the person learning a rule that needs to justify their actions (as being in accord with the rule); rather, the philosopher is confused into thinking that no justification is possible or sufficient. This is who Wittgenstein is writing for. A teacher can determine whether or not the student is acting in accordance with the rule. The rule is not (privately) determined by the student. There is no middle ground in obeying the rule for how the knight moves in chess, only conflict or accord.

206. Following a rule is analogous to obeying an order. One is trained to do so, and one reacts to an order in a particular way. — LW

I may ask why you didn't obey, say, the golden rule, and you may claim that you did, and then go on to try to justify how what you did was still an instance of obeying the rule. — Antony Nickles

I don't think the principle or maxim of the Golden Rule is the same sort of rule Wittgenstein is talking about (it is not mentioned in PI). For the sake of clarity, let's use the example of a very straightforward rule instead, such as a rule of chess or a signpost.

If Kripke's reading is correct, the discussion of what is right happens before my personal action, upon which I am judged. If we take Witt to be reserving judgment, then we begin a dialogue of what it is to, say, treat the other as having a soul (p, 152; 3rd 2001), or convince ourselves we can not know them (p. 192). — Antony Nickles

I don't see Wittgenstein as talking about ethics or about "what is right" in general (in life) in PI. Or at least, not in relation to his discussion on rule following.

We can point to rules, we can give examples, we can threaten consequences; at a certain point sometimes they run out, you don't continue as expected--it is meant to be a situation which summons skepticism. — Antony Nickles

Is it meant to "summon skepticism", though? Maybe from Kripke's overly philosophical perspective, but I doubt it would summon skepticism from the average person. This is a very alien way of looking at obeying a rule.

Kripke's take on the passage is that this leaves us with only the options of following the rule, change the rule, or be excluded--that it is conformity to a rule. Where Cavell takes Witt as showing that... — Antony Nickles

I'm not familiar with Cavell's work, so I'll have to take your word for it. Your interpretations of Wittgenstein sometimes seem foreign to me, which may be due to your reading being coloured by Cavell. Anyway, I don't see that Cavell adds any options to the three that you attribute here to Kripke.

So the exhaustion of justifications for how you should obey a rule, make a wish, apologize, mean what you say, etc. can be that you refuse to follow the rules, but it can also be that we have not yet imagined all the implications, shown you how our interests are aligned, etc.--that there is not only force and defiance — Antony Nickles

This seems to fit into the three options cited above.

Weren’t you instructing me (or “someone”)? How does your not giving up on me in your instruction (about what constitutes obeying a rule) suddenly become you and I both resisting philosophy’s anxiety? How does that help me?
— Luke

The fear is of the inability to justify obeying a rule or justify how we obey rules. — Antony Nickles

I get that, but you (or Cavell) were instructing someone about what constitutes obeying a rule.

Both Cavell and Kripke leave that possibility open, but Kripke's picture pits "what we typically do" against your instincts, in judgment of your authority, in a sense, before our discussion even gets started. This is to cave into the anxiety of leaving it up to us, to the vision that there is more to us than rules and conventions, that such discussions can be reasonable, between conformity and exclusion. — Antony Nickles

This does not address the main point of my question, which was the main reason for my posting. You say that the teacher is unable to provide sufficient justification to the student about what constitutes obeying a rule. Then you say - crucially - that the teacher does not have to give up on the student because both teacher and student can "resist philosophy's anxiety". I guess I'm asking is: what is it that allows the student to "resist philosophy's anxiety"?

The problem might be better viewed in this way:

But teaching (indoctrinating into society) sometimes runs out of ways to convey, in this example: what constitutes obeying a rule (justifies saying how/that we obey/have obeyed). — Antony Nickles

Teaching/indoctrination is training someone how to obey a rule or how to "go on" (or behave) in a particular way(s). You cannot first teach/train someone what it means to obey a rule in order for them to then go on and obey a rule; otherwise, you would not be able to teach them what it means to obey a rule in the first place.

Yet I don't have to give up on you; my fallback is not a judgment of exclusion, a turning away. Our impotence (that of our ordinary rules) turns us toward each other--rather than necessitating we solve this (always eminent) failure with authority, agreement, knowledge, better rules, more logic, a foundational bedrock--we resist philosophy's anxiety to be better than, a solution for, the ordinary by removing our (uncertain, frightening) part and responsibility. — Antony Nickles

Weren’t you instructing me (or “someone”)? How does your not giving up on me in your instruction (about what constitutes obeying a rule) suddenly become you and I both resisting philosophy’s anxiety? How does that help me?

Isn’t it just the case that we obey the rule because that’s the practice/convention and that’s what people typically do here? Or else we don’t follow the rule for whatever reason, yet the rule still exists because that’s how most people do this particular thing, as a rule. Or we might even try to change the rule and get everyone to follow a different practice/rule.

What do you think it is talking about? — baker

That's what I've been trying to figure out. Possibly what Janus said. But I doubt it is to do with translation of homophones.

I still don't see your point, or the relevance. — Metaphysician Undercover

The point is that basing your mathematical "principles" on empiricism or reality demonstrably leads to absurdity, including your rejection of fractions, negative numbers, imaginary numbers, infinity, circles, probabilities, possible set orderings, and potentially all mathematics. Instead of coming to realise that this indicates a serious problem with your principles and position, you continue in your delusion that you possess a superior understanding of mathematics.

"2" can also refer to two distinct but same things, such as "things" of the same type or category. — Luke

This is a different sense of "same", not consistent with the law of identity. — Metaphysician Undercover

So "2" cannot refer to two distinct but same things? You cannot have 2 apples or 2 iPhones, etc?

But all categories/classifications are equally as fictitious and man-made as the sets and orders you reject. — Luke

When they are based in empirical observation they are not equally fictitious. — Metaphysician Undercover

So "2" can refer to two distinct but same things? You can have 2 apples or 2 iPhones, etc?

Scientists justified both the inclusion and exclusion of Pluto as a planet at different times. Like Pluto, many individual "things" are borderline cases in their classification. Moreover, nothing guarantees the perpetuity of any category/set, or of what defines ("justifies") the inclusion of its members. — Luke

That a person later decides to have been wrong in an earlier judgement, is not relevant. — Metaphysician Undercover

The categories we use are either discovered or man-made. If they are discovered, then how can we be "wrong in an earlier judgement" about them; why are there borderline cases in classification; and why does nothing guarantee their perpetuity as categories?

I do reject fractions — Metaphysician Undercover

You need help.

I believe that the principles employed are extremely faulty, allowing that a unit might be divided in any way that one wants. — Metaphysician Undercover

What principles should be employed?

In reality, how a unit can be divided is dependent on the type of unit. — Metaphysician Undercover

How many slices should a cake or a pizza have? Also, doesn't this reintroduce the fractions you rejected?

That's the case if there are "no real boundaries between things". But I am arguing that empirical evidence demonstrates that there are real boundaries. — Metaphysician Undercover

Where's the argument?

Obviously, "2" refers to two distinct and different things. If there was only one thing we'd have to use "1". — Metaphysician Undercover

"2" can also refer to two distinct but same things, such as "things" of the same type or category. But all categories/classifications are equally as fictitious and man-made as the sets and orders you reject. As you say:

Suppose you arbitrarily name a number of items and designate it as a set. You have created "a thing" here, a set, which is some form of unity. But that unity is completely fictitious. You are just saying that these items compose a unity called "a set", without any justification for that supposed unity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Scientists justified both the inclusion and exclusion of Pluto as a planet at different times. Like Pluto, many individual "things" are borderline cases in their classification. Moreover, nothing guarantees the perpetuity of any category/set, or of what defines ("justifies") the inclusion of its members.

Furthermore, if you base your mathematics on empiricism rather than on "abstraction" or "fiction", then you must also reject fractions, since a half cannot be exactly measured in reality.

If we adhere to empirical principles, we see that there are individual objects in the world, with spatial separation between them. If we are realist, we say that these objects which are observed as distinct, really are distinct objects, and therefore can be counted as distinct objects. We might see three objects, and name that "3", but "3" is simply what we call that quantity. Being realist we think that there is the same quantity of objects regardless of whether they've been counted and called "3" or not.

But if we give up on the realism, and the empirical principles, there is no need to conclude that what is being seen is actually a quantity of 3. There might be no real boundaries between things, and anything observed might be divisible an infinite number of times. Therefore whatever is observed could be any number of things. — Metaphysician Undercover

If there are "no real boundaries between things", then acknowledging that "anything observed might be divisible an infinite number of times" is not to "give up on the realism", but to adhere to it.

The number 2 is an unnecessary intermediary between the symbol, and what the symbol represents, or means, in use. — Metaphysician Undercover

How can either the number 2 or the numeral "2" represent or mean anything in use if no two things are identical in spatiotemporal reality? Isn't the law of identity the basis of your mathematics?

I reject "the empty set" for a reason similar to the reason why I rejected a set with no inherent order. it's a fiction which has no purpose other than to hide the shortcomings of the theory. There are very good reasons why "0" ought to represent something in a class distinct from numbers. There are even reasons why "1" ought to be in a distinct class. — Metaphysician Undercover

Since no two things are identical in spatiotemporal reality, do you also reject the number 2?

The paradox ( formulated by Wittgenstein) :

"This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be made out to accord with the rule". — Wittgenstein

I think the solution to the "paradox" can be found by simply reading on a little further:

201. This was our paradox: no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule. The answer was: if every course of action can be brought into accord with the rule, then it can also be brought into conflict with it. And so there would be neither accord nor conflict here.
That there is a misunderstanding here is shown by the mere fact that in this chain of reasoning we place one interpretation behind another, as if each one contented us at least for a moment, until we thought of yet another lying behind it. For what we thereby show is that there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call “following the rule” and “going against it”.
That’s why there is an inclination to say: every action according to a rule is an interpretation. But one should speak of interpretation only when one expression of a rule is substituted for another.

202. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it. — LW

This seems consistent with your first solution. Your rebuttal to it looks like an example of not following the rule (or, perhaps, of following a different rule).