Propositions are beliefs, they are statements that are true or false. The only time they wouldn't be beliefs is if you're giving one as an example or something where they're not attached to someone. — Sam26

So, how does the proposition "I know that here is one hand" serve as an axis? Moore's proposition: "The earth existed for a long time before my birth" might function in this way, but just because I don't doubt that I have hands does not mean it is a hinge. — Fooloso4

Already debunked. — fishfry

Understanding lives in use, much the way understanding how to ride a bicycle occurs in riding it and vanishes if we attempt to do so intentionally or to articulate this ability.

If flowing absorption characterizes normal use, stopping and staring are exemplary modes of philosophical observation.

Wittgenstein singles out similar unusual behaviors, especially repeating a phrase or word over and over to oneself and focusing intently (often introspectively) on something like the experience of reading (“as it were attending closely to what happened in reading, you seemed to be observing reading as under a magnifying glass”). An epistemological tragedy ensues: the very attempt to achieve a clear view of matters by suspending usage renders them opaque, like shining light on a developing picture. This is what Wittgenstein means by his famous claim that “the confusions which occupy us arise when language is like an engine idling, not when it is doing work.” As long as language is working an honest job in plain circumstances, its use comes easily; it is when we stop and stare that it baffles.

...the philosopher knows less than the average person because disengagement suspends her usual mastery of grammar...

The inability to answer philosophical questions does not reveal ignorance; it manufactures it.

I think this paragraph is much more important than just rhetorical bluster. It goes to the heart of much of what he's saying. We often miss the obvious in spite of it being "always before our eyes." It's as if we have to be reminded over and over again in order to see the obvious. — Sam26

Maybe you think that might help you to understand it, but it might just create confusion if it was never used as an opposition to "foreground" — Metaphysician Undercover

"Background" implies that there is also a "foreground", so your representation of the background as "all" is unjustified. — Metaphysician Undercover

How would you suggest a boundary between the foreground and background be drawn? — Metaphysician Undercover

Pomophobe referred to a "background or framework that we are always already in". If "the background" is like the context, within which language exists, then this context is thoughts and opinions, some expressed, some not. — Metaphysician Undercover

To change my words from "we should see that disagreement is the background of unexpressed opinions" to "all unexpressed opinions are a disagreement", is not to demonstrate a contradiction but to exemplify a straw man. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Background" implies that there is also a "foreground", so your representation of the background as "all" is unjustified. — Metaphysician Undercover

Your disagreement is evidence that what I say is true. — Metaphysician Undercover

The kind of misunderstandings which give rise to philosophical problems are, as we have seen, deeply rooted in ordinary thinking; these are features which are hidden not because they are unfamiliar but precisely because they are too familiar. New and unusual things are noticed: everyday occurrences are not. Hence a philosophical discovery does not, as a scientific one so often does, point out something novel and singular (and often meet with scepticism on that account); it points out something which, once seen, seems obvious. For this reason, a philosophical argument is not so often regarded with scepticism and mistrust but treated rather as a mere truism.

The aim of philosophical reasoning is what Wittgenstein calls complete clarity. It is characteristic of his whole conception of the nature of a philosophical problem, that this complete clarity does not lead to the solution of the problem, but to its disappearance. And to say that it disappears instead of being solved, is to emphasize that the origin of the philosophical perplexity is an error, or rather a misunderstanding – a misunderstanding of the logical grammar of the sentences concerned. When the misunderstanding has been healed, the source of the problem has not been ‘solved’, it has Vanished. Wittgenstein says the problem is like a fly in a fly-bottle; and the philosopher’s job is to show the fly the way out of the bottle.

This metaphor has a further significance. To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle is not to describe or demonstrate the innumerable directions in which the fly might fly, but simply to show the one that will take it out of the bottle, and that, incidentally, will also be the way that took it into the bottle. Equally, philosophy does not need to describe or demonstrate the many, often countless, uses of a word or an expression, but only the one – or ones – that will make the problem disappear, and this is a matter of revealing the misconception of the logical grammar of the utterance or expression that gave rise to the problem. — Justus Hartnack

But disagreement is to hold a difference of opinion, just like agreement is to hold a similar opinion. We ought to consider the possibility that each of these may exist without the respective opinions being expressed in language. If we do this, we should see that disagreement is the background of unexpressed opinions — Metaphysician Undercover

What Wittgenstein is saying here is not that there cannot be any philosophical theses, but that should there be, they would be, or so he believes, non-debatable and uncontroversial.

Does this mean that what philosophy advances is just trivial? Wittgenstein said as much to Moore:

[Wittgenstein] said that he was not trying to teach us any new facts: that he would only tell us ‘trivial’ things – ‘things which we know already’; but that the difficult thing was to get a ‘synopsis’ of these trivialities […]. He said it was misleading to say that what we wanted was an ‘analysis’, since in science to "analyse" water means to discover some new fact about it, e.g. that it is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, whereas in philosophy ‘we know at the start all the facts we need to know’ (MWL 114) — Daniele Moyal-Sharrock

...the kind of explanation he struggled to avoid was only the scientistic kind, and that this leaves coherent room in Wittgenstein’s philosophy for both the conceptual and the theoretical, thinly rendered. Perhaps the temptation for the latter – which we might call simple explanation – was too great to pass up, particularly as it makes so obvious the idleness of explanations that involve speculative metaphysics or the fabrication of ghostly processes. Simple explanation thus became an extension of the perspicuous presentations of a philosopher aware of all the wrong ways of importing explanation into philosophy. Indeed, non-theory-laden, perspicuous explanation is the only kind of explanation that should be expected from a clear philosophical vision. — Daniéle Moyal Sharrock

I pointed out that your response missed a key point. The so-called goal of philosophy requires a process, or work, described at 130-132, which is inconsistent with the described work of philosophy prior to 127. Why does that insult you? — Metaphysician Undercover

Order does not refer to sense or meaning, — Metaphysician Undercover

‘. . . our language “is in order as it is” ’: an allusion to TLP 5.5563 (see 2.1),
contra Russell and Frege. In the Preface to the Tractatus Russell had revealed
his incomprehension:

Mr. Wittgenstein is concerned with the conditions for a logically perfect language —
not that any language is logically perfect, or that we believe ourselves capable, here
and now, of constructing a logically perfect language, but that the whole function of
language is to have meaning, and it only fulfils this function in proportion as it approaches
to the ideal language which we postulate. (TLP p. x)'

This view W. repudiated, both then and later. What was wrong with the Tractatus
conception of the ‘good order’ of ordinary language was, among other things,
its forcing the requirement of determinacy of sense upon language. This theme
is pursued in §§98–107. — Baker and Hacker

Right, and at 98, "order" refers to the "grammatical evidence" of the sentence. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're missing a key part of the description, which is explored at 128-132. — Metaphysician Undercover

The point I'm making is that at 127 there is a shift in the description of the method of philosophy, from simply describing things and even doing things (laying things out) to provide a clear look at things, to now, actively arranging things for the purpose of clarity. The latter might be called explanation. — Metaphysician Undercover

the sentence consists of words. If the order is not the order of the words, then what is it? — Metaphysician Undercover

Take it as you will, but if "the business of philosophy" is to do such and such, then I would assume that its aim or "goal" is to do that. Don't you think? — Metaphysician Undercover

A sentence consists of words and nothing else. If a sentence has perfect order within it, then that order must be the order of its words. If you happen to think that the "perfect order" which is "in the vaguest sentence", could possibly refer to something other than the ordering of its words, perhaps you could try your hand at explaining this. — Metaphysician Undercover

That is to say, we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language still had to be constructed by us. — On the other hand, it seems clear that where there is sense, there must be perfect order. — PI §98

It seems undeniable that even a vague sentence like 'There is something on the table' must have a 'perfect order' buried in it, one that pins down its meaning exactly. [...]

The fact that ordinary language lacks the definiteness philosophers aspire to is no strike against it. Sentences that fall short of perfection in the philosopher's sense are not unusable. Ordinary sentences should not be regarded 'as if [they] had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense'. They do not have to have a perfect order of the sort philosopher's envision to make perfectly good sense in the normal course of events.

Would you perhaps, agree with this assessment? — Wallows

I did. If you cannot understand, then so be it. — Metaphysician Undercover

He says "On the other hand it seems clear that where there is sense there must be perfect order". This does not say that the sense is the order. It says that order is necessary (as determined by some sort of logic) for there to be sense. The order, which produces sense, is what I described above. At this point in the book (130-133), we have moved from "sense", to what underpins sense (as has been determined to be required for sense at 98), and that is "order". — Metaphysician Undercover

I quoted 126 at least twice and 125 at least once. I'm not here, to teach you how to read. — Metaphysician Undercover

At 98 he is talking about the ordering of words in a sentence. — Metaphysician Undercover

Does that imply quietism? — Wallows

Prior to 127 the goal of philosophy is just laying things out. — Metaphysician Undercover

If the complete clarity is for the purpose of something other than philosophy, then this further goal is irrelevant to this discussion of philosophy. — Metaphysician Undercover

To arrange things for the purpose of getting a clear view is completely opposed to what is stated prior to !27. — Metaphysician Undercover

If you must, go right back to 98: "So there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence.". By what principle is one order better than another order? If a philosopher is creating an order for the purpose of clarity, then that philosopher is explaining. But Wittgenstein has introduced no principle whereby explaining is what a philosopher ought to do. In fact, he has explicitly denied that there is any need for a philosopher to explain. Any order is a perfect order, even the vaguest of sentences, and there is no reason why any philosopher ought to arrange things in any specific order, for any specific purpose, because all orders are equally "perfect". — Metaphysician Undercover

When someone says we are aiming at something, as is the case in 133, "the clarity we are aiming at", then that thing is a goal. — Metaphysician Undercover

The inconsistency is that prior to 127 Wittgenstein is describing philosophy as simply putting things in front of us, not explaining anything, but after 127 he switches to say that the philosopher will arrange things into a particular order, for a particular purpose. He then proceeds to identify that particular purpose as clarity at 133. — Metaphysician Undercover

The point being that there is a radical difference between laying everything out in front of us for the sake of observation, and arranging things in an order for the sake of clarity. The latter being a form of explanation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Does that imply quietism? — Wallows

No, it is succinctly stated at 133 that clarity is the end of philosophy. "For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear." — Metaphysician Undercover

Then, at 127 he shifts, — Metaphysician Undercover

255. The philosopher treats a question; like an illness.

I see a move of inconsistency in this section. Prior to 127, he describes philosophy as just laying things out, "to make it possible to get clear view" -125. That would be the goal of philosophy, to lay things out for viewing, analysis, whatever. — Metaphysician Undercover

309. What is your aim in philosophy? — To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

The thing I make no assumptions about is what he means when he says "this is here". — Fooloso4

I am assuming that when he says "this here" while pointing to the object in front of him he means the object in front of him is here. — Fooloso4

If someone points to an object and says "this is here" I assume he means the object he is pointing to is here — Fooloso4

The specific meaning refers to what he means when he says "this is here". — Fooloso4

I don't think Wittgenstein intends for us to question what he is pointing to or that what he is saying refers to what he is pointing to. Isn't that the way pointing works? — Fooloso4

You are not pointing to the object, the map, but to something on the map. — Fooloso4

Your example is one in which you point. Not all examples of where it makes sense to say "this is here" involve pointing. Here are a few: — Fooloso4

I take the example as given. There is no reason to think that there is information that is being withheld. — Fooloso4

I do not think there is any value in continuing this. Perhaps as we move forward things will become clearer. — Fooloso4

• pointing is part of the example given at §117, and therefore should be part of the special circumstances that Wittgenstein motivates the reader to consider;
• it is a matter of adding context to the example to make sense of the sentence;
• there is no obvious meaning of the sentence 'This is here' at §117 and we should not assume there to be one in the absence of the special circumstances which will give it a meaning.

If it's a proper name for a human, yes. — frank

And per Kripke, the things identified by proper names do have essential properties. — frank

Would Kripke say a proper name refers to the same person in all possible worlds or a proper name is stipulated in all possible worlds? I think the latter. — Richard B

I'd agree that in possible world semantics names are merely stipulated to refer to the same person. — Janus