the asking of a question involves trust in the certainties of linguistics? — dex

What I have in mind is a radical interpretation of this famous Neurath quote.

***
We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction.
***

If I ask some question about what a word means or how things stand in the world, this asking depends on a 'fixed' background or unquestioned meaning/world to make it intelligible (in our case here, 'knowing English,' which also means sharing a world in and for which English makes or has sense. Here's a quote from W from On Certainty.

***
All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments; no it belongs to the essence of what we call an argument. The system is not so much the point of departure, as the element in which our arguments have their life.
***

Pointlessness more relates to nonsense utterances that are linguistically inane. — dex

Right, and I think that's context dependent. If somehow a time machine could send back out-of-context quotes from 23rd century philosophy, we might call them pointless nonsense.

They would not make sense to us against the background of our current way of living and thinking. 'If a lion could speak, we would not understand him.'

It's also possible that today we could feed all of Wittgenstein's works to AI and get surprisingly insightful output that did not (as far as we know) originate from some consciousness.

Distinguishing sense and senseless from nonsense might be achieved through knowing where that logical scaffold ends; distinguishing sense from senseless, through knowing where knowledge ends. — dex

Right, and this is like conquering the future from the present. If we can discover the 'eternal' structure of all possible experience or all possible scientific thought, then the future is essentially already here --and we are essentially in eternity with all of the other metaphysicians that came before (who we also reject as having not got it quite right, unlike ourselves of course.)

Seems like this stuff is Wittgenstein's meat and gravy. — dex

I agree. Let me also add that I'm aware that my take on W is just my take. To me his work has radical implications, especially through his behaviorist streak on the issue of meaning.

if the human reason is not trustable, what's the point to make a deduction at all? — farmer

Exactly. — Pfhorrest

But this isn't a binary situation (no trust versus complete trust.) Instead we are on Neurath's boat.

It's like reading Darwin against Darwin too strongly or not reading Darwin against Darwin at all.

which is the faculty that sees meaning. — Wayfarer

The visual metaphor is noteworthy here. εἶδος meant visible form or shape. What is this inner eye? And why does it depend on an eye-metaphor?

Meaning tends to be anchored in the world, though philosophy strives against this anchoring in its construction of a literal-as-possible terminology. This reminds me of a soul trying to escape the body and the dove that wants to fly in an airless space.

t's not as if the word is one thing, and the mental experience another — Wayfarer

Yup, that's what I am saying. If nouns are sounds entangled in conventions, and we think with nouns,...

The issue is that in modern philosophy, reason is subjectivised — Wayfarer

On the contrary, one of the big themes in more recent philosophy is a critique of the subject (for instance, arguments against the intelligibility of a private language.)

the suggestion that reason is real independently of what humans deem it to be, is vigorously disputed. — Wayfarer

That sounds more plausible, especially since reason independent of human language is hard to parse.

Perhaps the problem is the hypothesis of two reasons, the world's and then derivative human reason.

you can't take away the observing intelligence and leave the world. — Wayfarer

Nor does an observing intelligence makes sense outside of a world. What I see is a system of interdependent concepts.

We might say that philosophers have tended to anchor the entire system in/through just one of its elements, forgetting that the sense of this element depends on the system it is supposed to anchor or ground.

But isn't that a good argument for universals? — Wayfarer

Note, though, that Aristotle offers no argument and only articulates what he takes for obvious.

The fact that an idea can be expressed in different languages...but retain exactly the same meaning — Wayfarer

That translation occurs in some sense does support the fuzzy hypothesis of mental stuff, but this same hypothesis forecloses any investigation into whether some exact meaning is communicated.

Recalling the OP, this is related to difficulty of knowing whether I or my guru is 'enlightened,' if being enlightened is understood as one and the same state potentially attainable by anyone.

If we know the tree by its fruit, then perhaps the fruit is primary.

I can't peek into the mind of the other at language-independent thought-stuff is there.

I just used Google translate to translate 'meaning is ineffable' into Icelandic: 'Merking er óhagkvæm.'

Rather it's that everything we judge to be real is, well, a judgement, and judgement is first and foremost a mental act. — Wayfarer

While I also see something primary in judgment, the leap from language to the 'mental' is problematic. This is the dove trying to fly in an airless space.

To what degree does this Aristotle quote express what today is common sense?

**************
Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words. Just as all men have not the same writing, so all men have not the same speech sounds, but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same for all, as also are those things of which our experiences are the images. (On Interpretation)
**************

The idea that spoken words directly symbolize mental experiences, however initially intuitively plausible, turns out to have some serious problems.

The most obvious issue is epistemological. If the 'mental' is also 'private,' then we have created a realm that excludes objectivity (and critical thinking) from the beginning.

Note that even the meaning of 'mental' is lost in the fog this way, along with the meaning of 'meaning.'

But Aristotle also sees something else, which subverts his opening.

**************
By a noun we mean a sound significant by convention, which has no reference to time...

The limitation 'by convention' was introduced because nothing is by nature a noun or name- it is only so when it becomes a symbol...

**************

Perhaps we should say significant as convention. λόγος comes to mind here.

I'm suggesting that language or λόγος is prior to the mental/physical distinction, which would make it the structure of the world, with this structure still being born and dying off.

I am reminded of Heraclitus.

**************
It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.

I agree with @Adam's Off Ox in their rejection of those bulleted points. I mention this in case it illuminates some of the thoughts presented in this thread.

Poetically you could say it’s minds made out of mental contents, where the “contents” are ontologically prior to the minds that later are able to contain them. — Pfhorrest

Perhaps we both see private minds as 'constructions' or 'fictions' then, or at least ontologically secondary or derived or dependent.

What is language? Is it mental? Is it physical? Neither works for me. It is within language that such distinctions are possible in the first place.

It is within language also that we can talk of individuals with their private minds (stuffed with more language, toothaches, and God-as-love.)

Would you be able to expand on how trust in the language of a question involves doubt in asking it? — dex

Sure, but note that I said (in different words) that articulate doubt trusts/obeys sociolinguistic conventions that make it intelligible, even for the questioner.

"What is nothing?" is only senseless to a laymen; a theoretical physicist, on the other hand, will probably make sense of it. — dex

Personally I'm wary of calling expressions senseless. In context, 'what is nothing' might be in pursuit of a clarification of what we even mean by 'nothing.' Clarification in general would be a kind of reduction --- and not the elimination --- of fuzziness, often connected to action.

'I understand you now (well enough to get back to work!) '

Under what principle of language do we appeal to to ensure sense in a question? — dex

That is (or perhaps was) the question. At least one philosophical project has been the construction of a nonsense detector.

Is this not equivalent to a philosophical revolution that installs itself securely against all further revolutions?

If you will pardon the poetry: to dream the nonsense detector is to dream the death of philosophy as its completion.

The Tractatus appears to offer a cohesive foundation for this stuff. — dex

The TLP is great...and too complex for me to be done with. But Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty are texts that more directly influence my approach to this thread.

Here's a sample from P.I. from around section 257, which gets at the point that meaning is public or between rather than inside us.

***************************************************
"What would it be like if human beings shewed no outward signs of pain (did not groan, grimace, etc.)? Then it would be impossible to teach a child the use of the word 'tooth-ache'.
...
Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign "S" and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation.——I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated.—But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.—How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation—and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.—But what is this ceremony for? for that is all it seems to be!
****************************************************

There's plenty more, but in the end even concepts like 'consciousness' and 'meaning' lose their familiarity (in a good way that lets us see the fuzz.)

(There's a pdf online, btw.)

I don’t view the objective and the subjective as cleanly separated. Empirical experience is inherently subjective; objective reality as I construe it is just the limit of accounting for more and more such experiences, gradually removing subjective bias in the process. In holding reality to consist entirely of empirical stuff, I’m denying that there is anything utterly beyond subjective experience, affirming that objective reality is made of the same stuff as our subjective experiences; it’s just ALL of them, rather than only some. — Pfhorrest

While this is a pretty awesome way of viewing things (reality as the intersect of dreams), it ignores the successful-in-my-view destruction of the subject in 20th century philosophy.

I don't mean that the concept loses its utility, but only that it is undermined as a foundation.

Rather than building up the shared world from individuals, it (counter-intuitively) looks more plausible to me to work in the other direction.

clearly written by someone who has conceived of being as spirit, or flame. — Punshhh

Yes indeed, and I agree with you that being is spirit or flame (or time or...). Carlyle apparently influenced Emerson, and other passages remind me of highlights of 20th century philosophy.

The book is online at Gutenberg.org, which saves me from typing these out.

**************
"Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, "not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is King over us; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams in from the circumambient Eternity, and colors with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horse-shoe? It is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being: those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?
**************

That's from the 'Symbols' section. Personally I like to render unto science what is science's. This might sound like 'religion is just symbols,' but this is only reductive if we underrate symbols.

It's much more like Eastern religious practices, with much less emphasis on belief - doxa - and more in developing wisdom - gnosis. — Wayfarer

I like what I know of it. What I was getting at, though, was that the idea of suppressed spiritual knowledge was already by itself a spiritual text, a myth/symbol with a certain potency.

A life can be satisfactorily structured as a pursuit, with not suffering but despair as spiritual danger.

---------------------------------------
His disciples said, "When will you appear to us, and when will we see you?"

Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."

(Gospel of Thomas)

Below is nice quote from Sartor Resartus, the section called 'Natural Supernaturalism.' Carlyle was raised religiously, struggled for an intellectual freedom, and ended up using 'God' in a fresh way. For him the world itself was a 'miracle' that lost its color through our habitual exposure to its regularities, and our immersion in the business of life.

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"Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is Alexander of Macedon: does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre-hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away?—Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once."

"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gathered round our ME: wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes; force dwells in his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the Earth is but a film; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A little while ago, they were not; a little while, and they are not, their very ashes are not."

"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form of a Body; and forth issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's mission APPEARS. What Force and Fire is in each he expends: one grinding in the mill of Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow:—and then the Heaven-sent is recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious MANKIND thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth; then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage: can the Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are alive? On the hardest adamant some footprint of us is stamped in; the last Rear of the host will read traces of the earliest Van. But whence?—O Heaven whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God.

*****************

In general it's an amazing text.

"Philosophy complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the first; that we do everything by Custom, even Believe by it; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against Custom; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcendental?"

Carlyle (Sartor Resartus)

'Custom' includes the conventions of our shared language/world that we never bothered to notice as we question as fiercely as possible. Without such currently-unquestioned conventions, no questioning of convention seems possible in the first place.

One way to make sense of 'doubt depends on certainty' is to emphasize that the questioner enacts a trust in the conventions of language as he questions. As Witt demonstrates, a private language does not make sense.

So we get a world and a language at the same time, even if we are never done co-making sense of our situation.

The point is not a denial of realism about universals or whatever. The point is that any hypothesis as to their reality, pro or con, is equally metaphysical in the relevant sense, and is a matter of proposing to use words in a certain way. — Snakes Alive

I agree, but reducing 'metaphysical' propositions to 'proposals to use words in a certain way' is itself such a proposal (it's also metaphysical). 'Math is fiction' is already close to this reduction of metaphysics to a surface matter of terminological fashion.

Metaphysics, in other words, is often already meta-metaphysics. Perhaps it's less about getting outside of it than it is about doing it less badly.

we cannot help but tacitly make such an assumption by our actions, choosing to search for the uniformity we presume is in there somewhere, or not. — Pfhorrest

We can't help ourselves, as Popper saw. We creatively project structures/uniformities on the world. So where is the choice you mention? We can find ourselves attached to a critical tradition in which one gives reasons for one's theories and adapts them to criticism.

'Darkness' seems to be tacitly assumed within any critical tradition (a tradition of being anti-traditional.)

But what it is, is unknowable to the discursive intellect. We might say that it is a form of gnosis that completely transforms our understanding of the nature of things. — Wayfarer

But what are we as outsiders to make of this? It sounds like a knowledge that doesn't involve words.

It sounds like 'God as a feeling' that doesn't want to be 'just a feeling.'

Now, whether to take that on faith or not - I don't claim to have any direct familiarity with such states or to have realised such higher states of being. — Wayfarer

While talking with a friend recently about buried spiritual scrolls, it occurred to me that their role as forgotten/repressed wisdom 'was' the message. The idea of forgotten/repressed spiritual secrets is already more stimulating perhaps than the secrets themselves.

Is the envelope the letter here?

If I have God as a feeling, then I don't need to argue for God's existence. I just write poetry or prophecy.

If I have God as an 'alien' who can physically preserve me, I don't need to argue for God's existence. Why should I care what the less favored think?

From this perspective, philosophy is intrinsically atheist. It's the 'religion of science' trying to make sense of both science and itself, 'rationally.' It is exoteric (aimed at anyone) as opposed to esoteric (aimed at the blessed, the three-eyed, etc.)

you have a lit area, but past the light you have the impression of things moving around in the dark that you can't see. So the only way to see them is either to drag them into the light, or shine a light on them — Wayfarer

That's what I had in mind, but without the moonlight that you go on to mention. This story of the moonlight would itself be light from the lantern. 'Darkness' is what a basic story doesn't account for, doesn't notice in the first place, or gets wrong in the sense of leading us into trouble.

I like 'falsifiable' theories, but doesn't this notion of falsifiable depend on the uniformity of nature? A theory makes some bad predictions or leads to a disaster, so we abandon it. But maybe the world will change so that the theory becomes vital.

I'm not saying that we should hide in a bunker, paralyzed by skepticism. Perhaps we just ignore the 'darkness' to get along. Perhaps sanity is 'irrational' and the sane man is Oedipus, self-blinded.

If saying "gavagai" gets me fed, I don't have to care what it means to you, or means objectively, or even if "a language" exists. — Adam's Off Ox

:up:

Is the Tractatus a good place for the OP to find a comprehensive answer? — dex

Ah, a comprehensive answer...

Is there such a thing? Anyway, I think W's later stuff might be better on this issue.

If belief is manifest in action, then perhaps so is explanation. The 'explained' is what we know how to deal with, as long as the world doesn't change on us.

I paraphrase what you said as: nature is uniform, because we need it to be, and not because we can prove or explain it. Can I doubt the uniformity of nature? I don't know. I don't feel that I am deciding to act as if.

The more reasonable approach would be to ask if this reversion would be identical to before, or merged with the newer thought. — Risk

As a novelty-as-progress addict, I'd tell the forgotten-wisdom crowd that they can't get the moment back, that the image of that wisdom is different the background of our world now.

At the same time, I don't think that the mission has to consciously be the search for novelty. I imagine old dogs annoyed at all the new tricks they don't feel like learning. I tend to read the dismissal of 'pomo' as a defense against difficult novelty.

though not necessarily my brand of pessimism. — schopenhauer1

For me Gray is just an example. Will tech give us utopia? Will we all wake up and be cool one day? How does antinatalism connect to the apocalypse desired by the first Christians or concerns about overpopulation? Does part of us want it all burned down and over with?

It’s nothing more than giving up. — Pfhorrest

Speaking as an atheist, I find this nothing more a bit too strong. Consider the gap between the believer in some creed and the more cautious person who doesn't quite believe his own creed, including a creed like this 'nothing more.'

Consider Hume's point about our animal faith in the uniformity of nature. Perhaps a certain type of philosopher (or just everyone) needs to keep something tied up in the basement.

I agree with you about the presumption involved in how 'darkness' is understood. What do darkness-managing stories have in common? Well, the managing of darkness, at least. Perhaps there is also always an other who is lost in the darkness (whoever rejects that particular darkness-management strategy.)

But I think "there might be something that is unexplainable" is a more gentle presumption than "anything is explainable". — farmer

Adding to this, 'anything is explainable' might scratch the same old itch that theology scratches. We are afraid of the dark, and stories are perhaps the torches we cling to as we move through it.

any such case of progress not being novel — Risk

I don't know if you'll count this, but some people think in terms of forgotten wisdom. They want to return to the good old days. Backwards is forwards for them.

I think it has everywhere to go as it is not bounded by a systematic framework of restrictions or isolated thinking. — Risk

Does it have everywhere to go except nowhere? Is it bound to this project of not being bounded?

will lead to fascinating new insights and innovations. — Risk

Novelty as progress? Is 'pomo' another name for an old demon?

We seem to see the situation in basically the same way. How do some of John Gray's darker passages fit in here? He attacks the religion of progress.

I also was just shown this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hJv5yBLe9c

It seems they are 'fictions' because they are more like stories than stones. Complex numbers were controversial once. Now they are intuitively obvious for those brought up among them.

It's not taking any grand narratives seriously — schopenhauer1

I like Lyotard's book, but the position sketched above has been with us much longer than the term 'postmodern,' no? What about an atheist who doesn't believe in progress? Is that enough?

It's a boogeyman as it lurks behind all sincere claims. — schopenhauer1

'Lurks behind' is nice, as it suggests the repression of an internal boogeyman.

Pomo is a bogeyman? It's what we call people to the epistemological left of us ?

Well the truth is all questions assume. They must. In order to have any meaning at all. — Benj96

I agree. They assume language and a world for it to be about, or something along those lines.