@Ludwig V @Paine

The impression I get is that it is the tricky grammar of language itself that motivates our confusions, not something that could be misread as an inner psychological motive, — Joshs

I’ve seen the term “psychological” used a few times now, and, since it does not appear to be used in reference to actual subconscious psychological forces (reenactment or displacement of trauma, insecurity, etc.), I can only assume it is being used as Witt does elsewhere, but I think that technical use is not appropriate to apply here. In this case, I’ll have to piece together the situation that is imagined and the implications that are imagined should follow, that it is not relevant.

One confusion I’ve seen is that it is seen as just personal, or just a belief only able to be defended by strong feelings, unable to be considered intellectually, logically. Related is the claim that philosophy does not or should not involve the “emotional”, but not actual feelings, because it’s just as a catch-all denigration to dismiss everything that does not meet a certain, predetermined requirement of rationality or logic.

But that flies in the face of Witt’s broadening the variable types of criteria we recognize for judgment which shows us that our human interests are reflected in (and part of) the logic of our practices. It is finding out why we predetermine and/or limit what criteria (interests) are valid and important that we have realized is at the heart of what we are investigating here. Also, as I mentioned to @Ludwig V here, I see the motivations and responses as also creating actual logical errors leading to philosophical misunderstandings, able to be resolved through philosophy.

And, yes!, the confusion inherent in the structure of language—not realizing that the things we say have multiple usages, partly because of the fact that words do have individual definitions outside of any context—and the leverage of analogy is how we impose and can get fixated on a certain picture. But that is the mechanism. Basically, we have still not answered (and I'd think you'd have to provide a reading different of) this: “He is irresistibly tempted to use a certain form of expression; but we must yet find why he is.”

It might help to acknowledge that, in their being a “why”, logically, there is a reason or motive, as: we chose our relation to objects as the analogy to impose, and there are reasons why we picked that--perhaps not all of them are intellectual, not all are apart from reasons of interest, even originating in instinctive responses to the basic logic of our situation to each other and the world.

You might say I’m projecting this, but there is evidence and references throughout the text. He does discuss disappointment (well actually, “dissatisfaction”**, but same enough) on p.58-59 (in my book, starting with “Now when the solipsist says that only his own experiences are real”). And he refers to what the skeptic “wants” (desires) “Thinking, one wants to say, is part of our 'private experience'.” (p.16) Or wishes for: “…describing the experience which we wish to call "observing thought in our brain"” (p.8) or “when we wish to give meaning to substantives to which no material objects correspond.” (p.36)

**I discuss the dissatisfaction with notation here in the 3rd paragraph.

Whoops

@Paine

But I'm led to think that the range and confusion of the possible seats of thinking may be meant to get us to see that the debate about experience simply can't be tidied up into a structure of alternatives. — Ludwig V

In saying that thinking can be in all those “locations” I take it just to say there is associated logic to thinking in each case. The confusion is from imagining thinking as a mechanism and not an activity (conducted by the hand, our speech, our ‘mind’). If we aren’t fixated on a mechanism of thought, then there is no ‘seat” or ‘location” of thinking (nor where a thought as an object would be). It dawned on me the other day that thought does not consist of a substance, but a judgment. “They are thinking (it through)”, “They are not thinking (but just reacting impulsively), “See that squirrel thinking about how to get the seeds out of that bird feeder.” It consists of acts (writing, speaking, internal monologue, problem solving, brain storming, just mulling it over) that meet certain criteria (not about the result, but compared to parroting, expressing, performing, etc.).

And if we are not picturing ‘experience’ also as a mechanism or “structure”, but, logically, I would offer that it is the description of a distinction, an event out of the ordinary, and not in some sense of: everything all the time that is “my experience”. As I may have said, sometimes going to the grocery store is not an experience.

And yes, p. 65, paragraph starting: “The meaning of a phrase for us is characterized…”

I didn't think that my observation would be a distraction — Ludwig V

I think I just didn’t see the original connection @Paine was making to the “opinion” issue, so I took the rest as just an unrelated discussion of the TLP.

that destruction would be part of my life — Ludwig V

Perhaps in claiming that only what the solipsist sees/feels, etc. is real (as if “alive”), they are thus “destroying” the world (by cutting it off/“killing” it), before it disappoints them.

the Berkeleyan move… [of] giving oneself a world before retreating from it. — Paine

Where @Ludwig V’s mind goes to the world we create in lieu of the thing-in-itself, my thought went to the related but opposite side where we imagine (“give” ourselves, as I take @Paine to put it) a ‘real’ world, but then we manufacture the idea of a (“peculiar” Witt says) mechanism, say, of ‘perception’, that only allows us an ‘appearance’ of that world, letting us “retreat” to arms length behind knowledge (or a lack of it), to avoid risking our hands getting dirty (to account for the mistakes we would make in a way that gives us a feeling of control).

These words [ ‘I can't imagine the opposite’ ] are a defence against something whose form makes it look like an empirical proposition but which is really a grammatical one. PI #251

Not to try to sort all of this out, but, for our purposes, it is interesting that he is claiming that the grammatical sense is ‘real’, and that the same proposition just looks like an empirical one. There is something to that in trying to persuade the skeptic, like: revealing the illusion of its empirical sense, but we know it can’t be a factual dispute, as the skeptic already acknowledges that their “fact”, say, of “me” as an object, is unverifiable, and the rest they grant as common sense, which they then just demote in its entirety as not in the class (of certainty) that philosophy sees or provides. Perhaps it is the logical impossibility (the “can’t”). Here, of not being able to imagine an opposite, or some other exercise, that defends against the temptation to see a claim as empirical.

@Ludwig V

My focus has been on the discussion of solipsism in the Blue Book and why W says it is not an opinion. I don't see the issue of certainty as germane to my observations. — Paine

Ah, my mistake; I lost the trail (from p.60). The “opinion” reference is obviously germane. I take it up here (though, of course, there is no obligation to address that). And to answer your question on the discussion: yes, we are pointing to/contrasting, etc. any corresponding mention of terms/discussions in other texts. I only mentioned it as we are of course primarily trying to understand how this text considers them. All that is just to say that I’m having a hard time understanding even what this text is saying (internally).

The solipsist who says ‘only I feel real pain’, ‘only I really see (or hear)’ is not stating an opinion; and that's why he is so sure of what he says. — (p.60)

For example, the text of the quote and its place in the surrounding train of thought seems to beg some questions (all of which I state rhetorically, simply to show the depth of his esotericism, and not to dismiss anyone else’s interests in the matter). Foremost, if not an “opinion”, what? or is it that the solipsist is not “stating” an opinion? (Or both) and then what is the alternative act? and form? Does their “being so sure” have anything to do with their being “irresistibly tempted”? (just below) or, if “so sure” is not being ‘certain’—like knowledge of a fact as if a math-like equation—what constitutes this surety? i.e., why/how “so” sure?

In that vein, the act they are doing (besides “stating an opinion”) is described by negation (in the paragraph above) in that “[ in not stating an opinion, they do ] not thereby disagree with us about any practical question of fact” i.e., we agree on the facts, so their claim is not that what they are saying is actually the correct fact of the matter. Thus, logically, what they are saying is not a factual claim in opposition to: ‘I am not the only one to feel (real) pain’; or, ‘others feel pain, and theirs is as “real” as mine’. If what they are saying is not opinion nor fact, then what are they doing (in what they are saying)? and how is not being a claim to knowledge “why” they are “so sure”? (a compulsion? a conviction?)

Another part any answers I would think have to include is that, even though “not stating an opinion”, they still want to “restrict” what is referred to as “‘real’” (and so how, if not restricted factually?). Methodologically Witt would take the fact to which he claims we both agree—about only my pain being “real”—and give examples of usages of “real” other than what gives the solipsist what they want (what I read, in Sec 18, as the desire to be unknowable). As I said in my reading of this quote above, these could be “real” as in: not possibly manufactured; not (necessarily) over-exaggerated as someone could; contained, in feeling the pain but not having to be responded to, as another’s are by me.

When W says that solipsism is not an opinion, the view is connected to the Tractatus saying it is present but cannot be said. There is something to be overcome but it is not like overturning a proposition. — Paine

I do think [ responding to the quote, that ] Wittgenstein is looking for a way to help the solipsist find an answer to a problem — Paine

Not an opinion: present, not proposed; problematic though not to be overturned, but answered by overcoming. I would guess this is referring to the “irresistible temptation”, but I am not familiar enough with the Tractatus to be sure in relation to the reference to that and the subsequent discussion. Any chance any of what I said is close? or at least the text here is related in some way?

@Paine

Scepticism is often explained as a desire for certainty, but if certainty is an unattainable ideal, perhaps we should think of it as being, not the desire for certainty, but the fear of it, as some inflexible that hems us in. — Ludwig V

Obviously I’d like to stay on topic (understanding this text), or at least until we get to the end (only 10 pages left), after which we will of course open it up to discuss these themes in larger contexts. But I think we can address this in the ballpark of the topics of the book. In understanding ‘certainty’ as a term we could apply here, it would be the framework imposed by the analogy of our relation to objects. In the PI it is the ideal of a pure logic, like math, and On Certainty is its own beast, but @Ludwig V has a point, which is the flip-side of what Witt takes up in the last section (being unknowable). If we have/are something ‘certain’, we keep something, but if language is ‘certain’, like equating ‘meaning’, as an object, with the world as something static (meaning as only labels), then we might object (fear) that I am trapped by my ‘self’, not only for me, but that I am completely ‘knowable’ to others in my entirety, as unguarded myself and through what I say—not just wedded to it, but only to it, constrained within it. Thank you for your patience with the reading.

@Ludwig V @Paine

Section 18 - the unidentifiable individual (p.61-65)

At first, I take his “considering the criteria for the identity of a person” (p.61) as more about ‘essence’ and grammar (criteria). He says that we could and might identify someone entirely differently if circumstances changed making certain characteristics more prevalent or useful, implying there is not an underlying, determinate identity. “We can say whichever we like [that Jekyll and Hyde are one or two people]. We are not forced to talk of a double personality.” (p.62) He even throws away that there is a “right” or “wrong” about identity. The “inheritance” and “preservation” of what is meaningful is “at liberty” and without one “legitimacy”, as, by analogy, circumstances shift under our (say, math) terms over time, becoming meaningful for entirely different reasons.

I take the point as: how society ended up with the criteria for judgments that we have is not only contingent on how our world rolls (our history of circumstances). The fact that we do, or could, have multiple ways of judging something shows that we also have an interest (or multiple) in doing it the way we do. The “usage” is connected to those (cultural) interests in something, reflected in the criteria to identify that use.

He next considers the idea that ‘seeing’ is a continuous part of who ‘we’ are; that it is essential and ever-present (as people take Descartes to want from thinking). Logically, this would mean that every instance of seeing would have something in common, which he narrows down to “the experience of seeing itself” (p.63), which I read as distinguishing nothing (“pointing… not at anything in [ the visual field ]” (p.64)), and thus wishful rather than meaningful to point out.

The difference between a physical object and what we ‘see’ are not different types of objects, as a railroad law is not a railroad track (one is an idea). I take this to mean that what we are trying to do, in ‘seeing’ something, is not in the same category (“kind”) as our relationship with physical objects (equated with knowledge). Our interests differ for each. Some examples would be that we are pointing something out to you when we ‘see’ something; or we are evaluating it, say, seeing it’s potential; or interpreting it as… (PI #74), say, a box to step on or a container.

So he finally gets to our interest in only wanting what I see to be ‘real’, which is to keep part of me for myself, in reserve, impossible to be fully known or limited, read, characterized, labeled. To hold “what I mean” (p.65) as unable to be fully understood is to wish for the implications and connotations of our expressions to be ultimately under my control, judged as met or meant by me, to always allow me the last word, as if there was an essence of what I say that is “information” that the other lacks because it is mysterious, hidden, private… me.

The first issue is to get him puzzled, to get him to see that his resolution is not a solution. Or, it is we who feel unhappy with his conclusion. So, in a way, all we are doing - all we can ever do - is to develop an untangling - an alternative view, and then, perhaps, persuade him of it. — Ludwig V

But if you remember on p.6, the solipsist/skeptic were already in a “muddle” that they turned into a problem so that they could have it be something to solve (to find an “answer”). “How do I know you are in pain?” So it is not just untangling the solution, but reversing the framing of it as a problem/puzzle in the first place. I would offer that the “source” of their puzzlement is in a sense themselves. Witt starts by saying they mistakenly picture thoughts as objects, and that they are forced into befuddlement by the analogy, but it’s from a “temptation” to chose “objects” as analogous, and I offer it’s because they want the same things from thoughts that they have with objects, like a direct relationship, something verifiable, measurable, predictable, generalizable, independent, etc., i.e. “object”-tive.

If that is the case, then his method, of showing other senses of the same expressions/propositions, is not to show them they are “wrong” or are being obtuse, but for them to see that their solution simply can’t do what they want it to—to know/or not know the other for certain, objectively (at least not without circumstances like conjoined twins)—it can’t satisfy their desire, their intellectual requirement. And perhaps it’s not just a desire for objectivity, but also a fear, a truth they are unwilling to accept: that you and I just have separate bodies, and we are thus responsible for the work (back and forth) to bridge that gap. The reluctance to give up claiming impossibility is the fear of being known, possibly entirely, because we may not have the depth (or difference) they wanted to hold on to as inherent (as different from you as a bat).

Now I know @Ludwig V might worry the difference between the “psychological” and logical, or others might say I’ve changed the issue to feelings, but Witt talks about the mindset of the skeptic (tempted, dissatisfied, puzzled). I am not attributing motives as necessary, but from the categorical error (anthropomorphizing the logical mistake) because we are not just talking about a “philosophical” issue, but our basic human response to others. The skeptic claims the same dominion, only limiting it to the intellectual, which is (though unaware) by design, and the whole problem.

Why would the solipsist ask that question? — Ludwig V

I think it is similar to getting sucked into asking how we could destroy red (p.31) or what the absence of thought would look like (or maybe a thought about nothing; can’t remember where that was) because we got stuck on a framework with color as a quality and thought as an object (then how: an object of nothing?). But I could barely get there.

To me, this reads as his response to the Oxford ordinary language philosophers. — Ludwig V

Wisdom, yes, and Hume; to say “of course that’s a table, duh”, not trying to understand the “difficulty”, not seeing there is perhaps something to learn from/by the skeptic.

I have no idea what this [negation discussion] is referring to. — Ludwig V

No idea. There is mention of imagining a substantive (object) for time would make it understandable how there might be a deity of negation (p.6). But I know more understand that, then the reference here, nor negation itself really.

@Ludwig V

Section 17 - The solipsist’s reality (p.58-61)

[ The solipsist ] is irresistibly tempted to use a certain form of expression [ ‘Only I really see, or hear, or feel (real pain)” ]; but we must yet find why he is. — (p.60)

We may not get this “why” yet, but it is not an issue with language—not just notation. The method is to look at/into the “form of expression” to see that it dictates a certain usage, limits the possible “schema” (p.58). He points out the variability of a discussion of ‘what is the usage?’ with his example of the hammer. It is more than just a matter of the situation and the possibilities (the answer to all the questions is ‘yes’), but also what we are interested in (in a particular case—between banjos and string instruments again). The solipsist’s interests force the possibilities and remove the situation, like “the man who… has already decided… and what he said expressed this decision.”

Many take the issue to be just to cure the solipsist, to either solve or untangle the “puzzle”. But it is not a matter of right; we look at the form of expression of the solipsist, in comparison to other usages, and we see our interests in them, in order to get at why the solipsist proposes what they do. We want to understand “the source of his puzzlement”(p.59), in order to “have answered his difficulty” (p.58).

He proposes that one source is “when a notation dissatisfies us”. (p.59) This does seem to just be a superficial issue of words, but, if we take it that our words matter, then what he is saying is that how they matter, and what they matter for, have disappointed us. Another way to say this is that our ordinary criteria about judging a thing have dissatisfied us. We either want other facts, distinctions, perspectives, to matter more, or less, or the judgment to lead to “other associations”. We might want our (culture’s) interest in a thing to loosen, adjust, perhaps respond to general changes in the associated circumstances, perhaps for the recognition of a different “position” (“attitude” he says in the PI).

In any case, it is what interests the solipsist has that are under investigation, and it is through the method of looking at their form of expression that we find them. Witt says they can’t conceive that experiences other than their own are real. Now we know this is misunderstood as a physical impossibility, but Witt also grants that it is not in the sense they lack pity. It is perhaps a logical impossibility given the form of expression, but then what do they want in claiming the only “real” feelings? (As it is “not an opinion”, i.e., something they could be wrong about.) Perhaps their criteria (for “real”) are that their feelings are certain (not possibly manufactured), measurable (not over-exaggerated as someone else could), complete (contained in feeling them; not having to be responded to, as another’s).

He wants to show “the tendency which guided” the solipsist in limiting and simplifying the usage of “I see” (the way it works and its implications) as something only I have. As an analogous tendency, he has the solipsist ask "How can we wish that this paper were red if it isn't red?” and then they provide an answer that there is a variation that we just (agree to) call “red”. This allows them to have their cake (what “they see”) and eat it too (still have “seeing” be a functioning part of our world). But he says that does not tell us a “new truth” nor show us that “Doesn't this mean that I wish that which doesn't exist at all?” is false. What might show that: no, that expression does not lead to that conclusion, is to show something true about color that is newer than picturing it as trying to occupy the same seat on a bench, and pointing out that “wishing” is closer to imagining a replacement color than physically having it (exist) to put in the other’s place.

Thus, in the case of the claim that “only I really see”, we should “examine the grammatical difference between the statements ‘I don't know what he sees’ and ‘I don't know what he looks at’, as they are actually used in our language.” The second is a recognition of (a “new truth” of) grammatical logic: at times we are not able to guess where another’s visual attention is focused. An option (usage) of the first would be “I don’t know what he sees (in her, in that art)” where, grammatically (logically), “see” is in the sense of “value”, and “know” is in the sense of: relate to at all, acknowledge as justifiable. But the solipsist takes the first as the lack of knowledge, by equation, of my vision and yours, which they picture as comparing two objects, made impossible because we each keep them only to ourselves. Perhaps this desire (for “our precious”) is the solipsist’s dissatisfaction and temptation, which ultimately leads to their difficulty.

@Joshs @Ludwig V

Section 16 - Physical vs logical impossibility (p. 56-57)

As above, here (with color) we have a situation mistakenly analogized as a physical problem. With pain, it was a barrier (to knowledge) that we imagined, instead of the fact that we are just two separate people, and the (logical) way that works is that any claim of your pain involves me (taking steps towards or away from) recognizing it, for it to be “known”. The “impossibility” (p.56) of your pain was my desire to be outside the bounds of humanity; to see it, as it were: intellectually, apart from accepting you, thus the impact of it (seeing you suffer with a cold (p.54). Alternatively, the logical (grammatical) “cannot” is that I can’t know your pain without accepting it, identifying with you.

We come to this conclusion, as he says, “when we meet the word ‘can’ [or cannot] in a metaphysical proposition… We show that this proposition hides a grammatical rule. That is to say, we destroy the outward similarity between a metaphysical proposition and an experiential one…” (p.55). This seems to say that the grammatical rule is the “experiential one”, taken from human experience, which is hidden because so similar (in phrasing, conceptually) to the metaphysical proposition.

I think it’s necessary to point out that the importance here (to “destroy” the similarity/what hides the grammatical necessity) does not come from the grammatical logic being more “correct” than the metaphysical framework, nor that it satisfies, only differently, the same goal desired by the metaphysical/scientific “answer” or explanation (its “objectivity”). These are examples we all agree to, only described enough to show an alternative possibility (usage) for the “difficulty” (p.48) wanting to be addressed by a metaphysical framework, just without the forced criteria like timelessness, generalizability, etc. Thus the physical “can’t” of knowing pains is not alleviated by the realist saying “Yes, we can!”, but in finding the logical “can’t” of our having separate bodies, but, in doing so (not as an argument for), we also see a different relationship to another’s pain than knowledge.

This brings up the problems of language, in that we can make some sense of words on their own and together out of any context so we can impose a framework on them without getting into particulars, not seeing something more subtlety than an analogous, imposed framework. He says we have to turn our familiar forms of expression “out by force” (p.46), which I take as similar to looking past a snap judgment.

There is also something methodological to his saying that we “can’t apply” a metaphysical picture; like we should bring up certain contexts and show that the picture, created to solve a difficulty, can’t be applied there. And, also, that we would have to stand on our head and create a situation (say, with conjoined twins) to have the picture “apply” (to that situation).

The philosopher has “discontentment” (p.57) with our ordinary criteria (they are not generalizable, object-based, abstract, etc.), and they “rebel against” them, and supposedly would not if they were “aware he is objecting to a convention”. But I’m not sure if pointing out just any alternative criteria would be convincing, nor do I think he means to say the argument would be over if they were aware of the nature of what they were objecting to, as if convention is more justified or powerful or certain, because the trick is to capture the “difficulty” seen by the metaphysician (and philosophy in general), which I take as real and actual and not something he is dismissing.

@Joshs

Section 15 - Why couldn’t I know your pain? (p. 53-55)

At one moment we are saying "I know your pain" because we've had an injury like that. The next we are saying "You can't know my pain" because you can't feel it. It may be that there is no truth of the matter, that the illocutionary force attached to each is the real point. — Ludwig V

Well my understanding is that an illocutionary act is a very specific thing, but it is used by Austin as an example (to show there is validity other than just true or false, and not in some gray area). I take the example of pain here as used in the same vein, but to show there is a practice not framed as an object of knowledge, like a black eye, which is compared to its original object for “correctness” (p.53).

My reading is that the point of the example of the conjoined people is to get to a situation where the skeptic would actually accept that their “pain is exactly like mine” (p.54)—where they would grant that there is nothing different in the feeling or anything else about our pains—which then paves the way to see a different reason why anyone would still say “My pain is my pain and his pain is his pain”, and thus come to a “truth” that still exists when the “experiential” (call it scientifically-proveable) truth is granted. The conclusion I would think is they are different, not because each of ours are unique, but that: when I am in pain, it is me (my person) that is in pain, like each instance of a color on different objects, even when it is the exact same shade of color. This additional “truth” is another version of how ‘different pain’ works (its practice), another sense (usage), which he is labeling “grammatical”.

And he qualifies any “can’t” [know the other’s pain] as not in the sense that we “could not reach” knowledge and are thus relegated to only assume by analogy or “conjecture” (p.54) (as “belief” is sometimes framed). The point of showing that we are separated by instance and not different in kind (necessarily), I think is that we may** realize the way we relate to someone in pain is different than through knowledge. The grammatical truth (“taught by experience”) is the way pain works, such as: that I do or don’t “suffer when you” feel pain. It is not an object we “have” (p.53) like a gold tooth that is just hidden in us, like “private” (unique) data (p.55) that we could (scientifically) identify, but, I would offer for example, something that I ‘have’ happening to me.

He says our not knowing another’s pain is not an inability, a “human frailty” (p.54); which I take to mean that knowledge is just not the logic of pain: he says, I do not know that I have pain; I just have pain. (p.55) But, interestingly, the practical logic is “hidden” but interpreted as an “insurmountable barrier”. In connection with the concern @Ludwig V and I had of how any of this must (not ‘may’**) convince the skeptic, the question changes from not how it would be persuasive, but why someone would avoid it, skip over it in the first place. Choosing to say “I can’t know your pain” buffers us from suffering your pain, such as above: that it can hurt me to think of you as cold. Another way to think of it might be that, if there was an impossibility (of knowledge), then I would not be responsible for ignoring your pain. I would not have to address you as a suffering human (PI p. 223].

@Joshs

if it is not based on criteria, it is my pain. If there are criteria (reasons, justifications) in play, it is not my pain. — Ludwig V

I agree there is an important difference that my pain is in my body, as in: not your body, but also that it is “mine”. I do think that the importance that pain has, for us as a society, gathers certain kinds or types of facts to it (pain works in certain ways).

“…one person could feel pain in another person's body.” (P.53)

Initially I thought this was like empathetically feeling another’s pain. Eventually I gave up trying to exactly sort it out because I think the point is there are different types of criteria to, and for, say, for example, “pointing out” something (and so, different senses, or usages of it), because there are different reasons for (interests in) doing so. Plus, he seems to believe that it is true (we could), only to better understand what the skeptic wants to deny.

I said that the man who contended that it was impossible to feel the other person's pain did not thereby wish to deny that one person could feel pain in another person's body. In fact, he would have said: "I may have toothache in another man's tooth, but not his toothache". — (p.53)

But to say “I know your pain” is not to try to equate ours, but to identify with you; to say “I feel your pain” is to console you. So then the context of saying it is “impossible” might be in the sense of giving them the space to be alone in their pain, to have their dignity to be pained (as if going through it for the first time, even as if, ever in human history), say, rather than saying [ I know what that pain is, and ] “You’re over exaggerating” or that they desire to be unknowable to pity themselves (to make their pain so unique and important as to be above anything else).

But perhaps this does not “fulfill” what he wants, which is to “try to find the form of expression which fulfills a certain craving of the metaphysician which our ordinary language does not fulfill and which, as long as it isn't fulfilled, produces the metaphysical puzzlement.” (p.55) He has discussed previously the way we create a “problem” of knowing the other, and some reasons for why (false analogy as an object), but there remains the “certain craving” to fully flush out.

@Joshs @Ludwig V

Section 14 - Variety of criteria and the place of pain (p. 49-52)

The problem of (knowing) someone else’s “mind” is an age-old issue in philosophy. Here he diagnoses it as a “grammatical difficulty” (p.49, after p.48, “Now the answer…”) because we take a picture, like not seeing something because it is hidden (in another’s mouth), as the framework by analogy for understanding another person (the pain in their tooth). So we have to look past thinking of the other as hidden and “get familiar with the idea” of pain to answer “What does it mean to know that the pains are there?” (p.50)

This takes us back to p.1, where the method to know what length is, comes from asking how to measure length. Pun aside, what he is looking for is what counts in judging length. In this case, “one must examine what sort of facts we call criteria for a pain being in a certain place.” (p.49) In other words, what kind of facts do we take into consideration as relevant in making a judgment about where pain is. In the case of an object, the factual criteria would be that I see it (it is not hidden). If it were a place, it would be necessary for me to be familiar with the ways around. He decides that these are cases where we must be aware of something before we could judge what is the case, as in needing to understand an order before being able to obey it.

A peripheral case that does not appear to fit the above “beforehand” necessity is “I must know where a thing is before I can see it” (p.50) perhaps because I would be told what it is, not where, and then I would search for it and know where it is in the seeing of it. After seeing how these cases work completely differently, he makes the leap to postulating that “What I wish to say is that the act of pointing determines a place of pain.”

In the pages after this he wants us to realize that our easiest or most sure evidence, i.e., means of judgment (in this case, touch, movement, etc.), may not be the only evidence in play (here, also sight). “what we regard as evidence for this latter proposition is, as we all know, by no means only tactile and kinesthetic.” (P.51) The type of evidence is contingent on the criteria that need to be met, with the point being that we are only imagining that the criteria for pain (for, say, location) has the same structure as those for physical objects. He says our language obscures the variety of evidence. We also may be confused about the world because criteria have been overlooked; or evidence is wrongly gathered or attributed just because they meet criteria we want/have imposed (like an “object”; empirical, certain).

And so to say “pointing determines the place of pain”, makes me think of two things. It is my pain, to hide or reveal; and, what also matters about pain is bringing your attention to it (the fact of my desire for attention), so that you respond to it (or not). So the exact, empirical location is not important in the case of pain (until it is). As with knowing where something is only in recognizing it while looking, where our pain is, is secondary to the act of pointing it out, to you.

Wittgenstein stops short at saying that "I am in pain" replaces "Ouch" and does not describe it — Ludwig V

They are the same, as my expressions, and of me. This is partly that it sets me apart, as the individual that is doing it, who is thus responsible for it, and to it. And that it reveals me—is telling about me—that I am a person in pain. If I call you a liar, I am putting myself out there as judge. In parallel, when I say “I am in pain”, I am making a claim on your compassion in the sense it is (in its usage of) expressing my need to you. “They are in pain” is either: just an observation, or me acknowledging them, as a person who is in pain, who may need help. This is one place where he and Austin almost touch, in that such a statement does something, even more than being a proposition (to be true or not), or a description (to be understood or measured), or just the way (as if style) something is said.

he (and Austin) do rather give the impression of thinking they can be some sort of conceptual police. — Ludwig V

Part of that I think comes from the feeling of arrogance; that his insights from what we say and do in a situation must be correct. But it is both less and more. The common misconception is that we are just talking about what we say, or the way we say something, which is not only missing their use as evidence, but also imagines that what we say and the world are not connected. They are made as provisional claims to “trouble” us to think through and approve for ourselves; and also presumed to be so obvious no one would disagree. But they are not about being right. They are drawn from examples to bring to awareness something we had not considered. If we don’t agree, it would not be important that he is wrong, but that his description does not capture a distinction, or have the importance he claims, or some other rational difference which may be accounted for. They are not meaningful in themselves, but for their contrast to something, or as evidence for a further claim. So finding our way is always beyond his investigating examples, building to an as yet unrecognized insight that is left to us, for us to see.

@Joshs

W's account of "I have a pain" as an "expression" as opposed to a description — Ludwig V

This is the most-succinct, elucidating summary I’ve come across (of course needing to know what he is getting at with “expression”, and what the description would be presumed to be of, but still, well put).

Ordinary language is sometimes "all right as it is", but sometimes it is not. The trick is to tell the difference. — Ludwig V

I would offer that the method of “Ordinary Language Philosophy” does not give privilege to our common sayings, nor is the point that they are true (“common sense”). What we say in a situation is merely evidence of the criteria for a particular practice (our interests in it) to compare to the imposed, generalized, metaphysical criteria of objectivity, certainty, universality, completeness, etc. “Ordinary” criteria allow us to see the workings of a practice. That method of insight also allows us to create “imagined” cases (and simplified ones), and to clarify a common phrase in showing its sense/usage despite its not being worded well, forcing analogies, etc. Conversely, Cavell will work very hard creating fantastical scenarios (as Witt does with beetles and private language) to give as much sense to the skeptic’s words in order to understand what they want them to do.

The trick here is to juxtapose a sense in which one can speak thoughtlessly with the philosophical doctrine, in such a way that the emptiness of the doctrine stands out. But much depends here on the reaction of the audience, who, I find, are a bit liable to object that they did not mean that, so that the two sides are speaking past each other. — Ludwig V

Well you’ve hit the nail on the head again. The initial relevance of bringing up examples seems to just be to point out how our practices (feelings, etc.) work differently than in a metaphysical framework. But the examples of our ordinary criteria also show us that philosophy’s imposed criteria are not required, “that it is not necessary”(p.12). But not “not necessary in order to still have certainty” like philosophy wanted (which is a classic misunderstanding of his project), but just not needed to have an option to proceed at all, which is what skepticism seems to take away (in not getting the justification it requires).

He is showing what is important, even essential, to our practices, without resorting to certainty. “When I say: ‘we can only conjecture the cause but we know the motive’ this statement will be seen later on to be a grammatical one. The "can" refers to a logical possibility.” (P.15) The “logic”, however, is unfortunately not undeniable; if one does not see the distinction for oneself (the “cannot” of knowing causes), there is no force to it. Even worse, it does not satisfy philosophy’s desire for power from truth, but unravels it (here, the picture of causality).

But the goal is not to prove the skeptic wrong (to be right about the grammar of a practice), but to find out why we wanted to impose the criteria for certainty, universality, etc. in the first place. He calls it a “temptation” (p. 1). Thus we constantly remain able to supplant our ordinary criteria, tempted only to see the world the way we want, to try to make it answer to our desires. I agree that part of what needs answering is the question of how and why to fight against this temptation.

I would say that, so far, I don’t see it as an argument meant to convince us of a conclusion (say, sense data don’t exist, or, there is no such thing as a private language), but as ethical suggestions of methods to combat the desire to impose ourselves on the world, in order to discover our “real need” (PI #108). Thus the abundance of his examples is to see how we are “interested in a phenomenon in a variety of ways” id.

@Joshs@Ludwig V

Sec. 13 Personal experience and skepticism (p. 45-48]

At a certain point in the next section (“It seems to us… p. 47 ), he lands on the question of whether it is possible for a machine to think, and he submits that it is “not really that we don’t yet know”, because the question is mistakenly framed from our desire for personal experience to be “the very basis of all that we say with any sense about [being a human]” (p. 48). He also says we are “tempted to say that these personal experiences are the material of which reality consists.” (p. 45)

Of course Descartes will want to rely on our certainty in ourselves to justify the world, but, with Wittgenstein’s ordering, we seem to put ourselves first, perhaps out of self-preservation; that if anything needs to be certain, it’s “me”, even as a product of our doubt about others. “There is a temptation for me to say that only my own experience is real: ‘I know that I see, hear, feel pains, etc., but not that anyone else does. I can't know this, because I am I and they are they.’” (p. 46)

Ironically, our confidence in our personal experience leaves us without a shared world, only “a lot of separate personal experiences of different individuals”, which gives us a sense of “general uncertainty” (radical skepticism), and a belief that we need a “firm hold”, e.g., “How could I even have come by the idea of another's experience if there is no possibility of any evidence for it?” (My emphasis) I take this desire for “reliability, and solidity” to be the motivation for a (certain) solution to this “problem”, analogous to an object or biological mechanism.

If we are right to say we have been looking for a why to our forcing the analogy of objects, this seems to be the start of an answer.

I have the impression that these writing do not pay attention to the difference between conscious and unconscious processes. That allows the argument that there must be certain processes going on that we are not aware of - i.e. unconscious processes. — Ludwig V

I don’t take this work as an argument for a conclusion, such as that there are no processes of the brain of which we are not conscious. He implicitly acknowledges (p.6) that our brain is, of course, unconsciously doing all the things it does do (remembering, focusing, deciding, using language) while we are thinking or understanding. But I take him to be examining thinking, understanding, and meaning because these are examples that are just not independent mental mechanisms of the brain (but activities we work through; judgments we come to). The point of drawing out how they work is not to prove that (or prove that there are no unconscious brain processes), but to learn why we nevertheless want to force that framework on them, why we want to require the issue be a problem.

Similarly, his consideration of the possibility of a private language in the PI is superficially taken as just an argument against it (that the point, elsewhere, is that there are simply no “beetles” in us). As here, I take that section as an investigation of why we would want a private language (and that he finds reasons).

@Joshs @Ludwig V

Sec. 12 Expression and its accompaniments—memory, judgment, thinking (p. 40-43)

the experience of thinking may just be the experience of saying, or may consist of this experience plus others which accompany it. — After “Let us sum up”, p. 43

And so we are adding layers back in, and I think we’re left to contemplate rather than being told, what “others”? Obviously we do many things along with saying things (Austin would even say “in” saying them), and it is just a matter of not getting caught in the old traps while looking into them.

At p. 40 I take him to be differentiating my “expression”, in the sense of “by me”, from me describing a mental object that I have. The analogous “tune”, which he divorces from the mechanism of the phonograph, is from the world (before us) and is not “kept, stored, before we express it”. We perform the tune, as we go. Now beforehand, or when that retelling is interrupted, we may search our memory, but not necessarily, as we may just start off (or continue).

We might exhibit pain or describe a vision because these are actual—though not necessarily unique—physical states. But I would venture that expecting is just the label for a judgment we make from the evidence of our response to anticipation (fear of the past, in the case of a gunshot). The answer to: “Why are you tense, steadying yourself, holding your breath?” is not: “I have an expectation.”

As well, I see “groping for a word” not as putting a word to something “already expressed” internally (p. 41), but as an activity (though perhaps just passive waiting). In this sense, the expression is only in having found the word, in the saying of it (to you or myself).

I see his use of “expression” as meant to capture the event of that initial introduction of a thought, hope, or wish to the world, to, as he says, “existence” (p. 40), without the need for any “independent” process or thing in a “peculiar medium” (p. 43). The “sentence” is “reality”. (p. 37, 41)

This, of course, doesn't mean that we have shown that peculiar acts of consciousness do not accompany the expressions of our thoughts! Only we no longer say that they must accompany them. — p. 42

(The power of this “must” I take as very important to why all the forced analogies and “fixed standards” (p.43), but so far he only goes so far as to blame our forms of speech—not yet seeing the need driving it).

I think it is worth noting that he wants to add back in a sense of “private” thinking and experiences, as I take all this here (and in the PI) to be for much more than just a conclusion about “private language”. Here he acknowledges certain senses of privacy, such as being hidden from others, like a secret we tell to ourselves in an aside; as we could reveal (and thus hide) the “muscular, visual, tactile sensations” of my body, in the sense of bringing attention to (like admitting) the fact that I have them.

His method allows us perspective on thinking as the assumption that we just speak our “thoughts” (not in the sense of voicing our inner dialogue), by asking “what do we say if we have no thought?” and then pointing out the sense of speaking thoughtlessly as simply not considering beforehand the consequences of saying something in a particular context.

Next, personal experiences, I think.

There's an interplay between what we are aware of, what W calls a mechanism of the mind - I think of it as the unconscious. — Ludwig V

I take his point to be that we create the idea of a mechanism. We try to internalize the processes of thinking, understanding, and meaning to imagine we control what the words that we say do (or do not) mean, as if we could avoid the responsibility to make ourselves understood, or not have to answer for what we say.

And the “unconscious” aspect of meaning I would offer is that words have a history and are subject to circumstances, which are either so pedestrian that they operate without our doing (being conscious of) anything, or that at times their possibilities of meaning outstrip our ability to encompass and/or control (be conscious of) how they will come off in a particular (even novel) context.

But it seems odd to say that understanding is not "present" during communication. — Ludwig V

I believe he would say that understanding is not a quality or thing—that is present or not; it is that picture/analogy which leads to the feeling of oddness. I think understanding is more appropriately thought of as a process (not a mental mechanism, but: clarification, explication, distinction, etc.) I only mentioned the “after” version, but of course there is the “before” process as well; e.g., “Tell me your understanding?” or: trying to understand.

Yes, there can be a multiplicity of meaning and complexity “in” communication (the wording here is also misleading), but we are only aware of the need to explain or clarify before or after the expression. Sometimes there is no “understanding”; we don’t speak of it when I ask you to pass the salt, as you say, “trading on shared assumptions and attitudes.”

@Joshs

Sec 11 Our words’ connection to the world (p. 35-39)

The sentence itself can do the work of the shadow, and so no shadow is needed. We can explain what the sentence means, perhaps, by an ostensive definition. That’s how words and things can be connected. — Ludwig V

Nice work; my thoughts are along the same lines. He is showing us examples** of how we can correct the connection of word and world, as you say, by ostensive definition, or, alternatively, by explanation, demonstration, being an example, by force, etc., but words and the world don’t (usually) need to be (re-)connected because, by default, they just are connected (as you say, “no shadow is needed”). “…the interpolation of a shadow between the sentence and “reality” loses all point” (p.37) [my quote marks]. In the PI he will talk of this as there being no space “to get between pain and its expression”. (#245)

Philosophy imagines we make that connection every time (say, to “our understanding”). But there are events (in time, place) where “language” and the world actually do have a disconnect (along our criteria for judgment), but philosophy interprets the sheer possibility of disconnection, and the difficulty of reconnecting, as if the “problem” is in the activity of (always) connecting which is then just a puzzle to “know”, like a “a queer mechanism” (cue some neuroscience).

But in practice we fall back on the many separate ways we have for straightening things out. Philosophy needs to be shown any of these examples of means of reconnection—shown that language and the world “can be” reconnected—to realize the exception means that the word and world are not always mitigated by some object like “perception” or data, or other “shadow” But it then also follows that there is no “object” for there to be a “fact” of it to communicate. There are not certain, fixed, ever-present objects, as if part of “me”, like, “my understanding”, that I simply put into words.

The best juxtaposition is the difference between “…a thing I am thinking about, not 'that [thing] which I am thinking'.” (P.38) In the first, we are perhaps in a discussion (with ourselves even) considering, remarking on, analyzing, etc. a thing/object. Thinking in the second case is just the description of a thing/object which I have, “my thought”, which I take as a fact (as complete and without any need for context). But, like with the Napoleon example, there is no singular fact that is a certain, unique criteria (there, for identification).

Most importantly, understanding is not “present” during communication. Understanding happens after expression, in coming back to it, e.g., when you have demonstrated that you haven’t understood how to do something, or how to continue a series as expected, or that your expression makes it clear that you do not understand what I was trying to say (apart from disagreeing, etc.). We mostly say things that have already been said in situations similar enough to ours that it doesn’t need more elaboration (mostly). This public nature of language is because it is a record of our history, that “The connection between these words and [the world] was, perhaps, made at another time.” (P. 39)


**Sometimes I feel like his examples here are just terrible. I mean is it just me or waaaaay too unnecessarily esoteric for the point he is trying to make, except that he seems to feel he needs to chase the rabbit all the way down the hole to cover as many senses/analogies in which philosophy might frame our thinking as objects, etc.

I've got a bit confused about where we are — Ludwig V

I had already written something up on the section about intention and meaning (which I posted above). I had assumed you were going to pick up the question again on what I have as page 35 with “let us revert to our question” which looks like it goes to page 40.

But, feel free to offer a reading of page 32 to 35 of course as well.

It does rather raise questions about what it means to say that something exists, since the broken or toy watch does, nonetheless, exist - it's just that the description "watch" doesn't apply. — Ludwig V

Yes it doesn’t mean metaphysical “existence”, but I don’t think we should trivialize what it does mean, even in the sense of not being here. Before a watch is put together, it is just watch parts. But it is, decidedly, not a watch. Broken, it is not a watch, it is a broken watch. Now if, in this example, we are simply applying a description (which I don’t know how to take other than as pointing something out), as if labeling it broken is ancillary to it still being a watch, then perhaps we are referring to it as a watch for another reason, perhaps in differentiating it from a clock.

I take it as a re-figuring, but still about what is fundamental, essential, without being metaphysical—what we find essential—for example, about, say, a chair. If it doesn’t have a back, it is not a chair; it does not exist as a chair, which has the meaning, or affect that, if you call it a chair, I am right to correct you in pointing out it is a stool (however didactic that is; however lazy we allow ourselves to be). As well, if you don’t know to (know how to) differentiate sleet from snow, sleet does not exist for you in the world.

The reason I think the private language argument (as with the argument here) is hard to accept is when it is only seen as the negation of mental objects (which here we realize is the analogizing of the framework of “objects”) as it will seem to ignore (he says “deny”): me, thought, meaning, experience; instead of ending with something positive, about what it says about me thinking (through something), me meaning (having a point in saying something), me as someone who can experience something (of note, even unique). This is why he is seen as a negative philosopher. He went straight at tearing done the house of cards and is never seen as building it back up from the rubble that still remained, I would say because he turns to why we (he did) fight so hard against it.

Again, good work; I’ll wait for your continuation of the reading.

@Ludwig V

Sec 10 Intending and Meaning (pp. 32-34)

“To intend a picture to be the portrait of so-and-so (on the part of the painter, e.g.) is neither a particular state of mind nor a particular mental process.” (P.32)

This harkens back to looking at understanding or thinking as a “queer mechanism” (p.3) that happens in the brain. We decided this was an “answer” to what was turned into a “problem” in trying to head off misunderstanding, instead of seeing it as an ongoing situation to understand someone. To imagine intention as a mechanism of the brain seems to mean it is always present, as if it would serve a purpose, such as causality (for action perhaps). But if we use the method, as before, of making the process external, public, as in the case of copying, it turns out the judgment of whether we are copying is based on a number of possible criteria, and we may be judged to have copied something even when we set out [intended] not to, as in “It looks like you copied that.” “Oh, I wasn’t trying [intending] to.” So he concludes that a process, i.e., an action, “can never be the intention itself.” (P.33) Thus we can conclude there is no agent (needed) that intends, as there was not one for thinking.

“…consider what it is that really happens when we say a thing and mean what we say.” (P.34)

He says he wants to take apart the picture of a process accompanying or “run[ning] alongside these words”, as if there is a mechanism to “mean the arrow one way or another”; as if “We mean (our internal object)”. But he points out that to mean what we say is actually a matter of tone and feeling, “expression”. I would also offer that when we claim we mean what we say, we are committed to it, to the consequences; we are making a promise not to go back on having said it.

I take the purpose of the examples to be to show that we don’t “mean” or “intend” what we say “as a rule”, i.e., with everything we say, so it is not a mechanism or process, and so not a part of speaking or the way language works or the determination of what matters in something being said.

@Joshs

Sec 9 Non-existence and Statements without Facts (pp. 30-32)

I shall cover what might be seen as the first phase, — Ludwig V

Thanks for cracking this, well done; I was at a loss (and maybe still am) as to why we imagine a difficulty in picturing what is not. Obviously he points out that part of the difficulty is because of the forced analogy of thought as an object, but I take the confusion that follows to be that: if we are thinking of the absence of something, then how can there be an object that is (not) the thought.

I wanted to offer that Wittgenstein says that imagining it is "easy" perhaps because of the form of the question (not that the answering of it is). Asking "How can one...?" (p. 30, 1965 Harper's Ed.) “beautifully” plays right into his method of drawing out the means for doing a practice—its workings, how we can…. i.e., the “grammar” of thinking, facts, and "existing", etc. He looks at different cases to see that there is not only one way these each work (there are different usages/options/senses, with different possibilities, also qualified by the situation and interest).

If a watch is seen to "exist" because, say, it is completely put together, or functioning, then we might let go of identification by correspondence with an internal object, like an “idea” or visual “sense-data”, and realize it is just meeting the criteria of what is important to us (society) about a watch (tells time; is small, portable, operates by a vibrating mainspring compared to a clock, etc.)

The feeling of “difficulty” in first identifying red I would think comes from the desire to identify color by equating that color, as a “quality”, with an internal “object” of our vision, say, an “appearance” as part of “perception”, from which philosophy would ask: “how could we have that object of red before encountering it?” But I take it the way color works (it’s grammar) is like a pain (PI #235]; it is the “same” for us to the extent we align in a particular case, e.g., “What color would you say that is?” “Red”. “Well, isn’t it more of a rose color.” “Maybe, but all the client cares about is that it’s not blue.” “Yeah right, okay.”

In saying “it is not the fact we think”, I would offer that he is showing that, though something is a fact, like a house is on fire, its “fact-ness” is not an object (of thought, always there), because its expression may not be used as a fact; we are not (necessarily) making the point that, “it is a fact that the house is on fire” (unless of course there is the need for confirmation, some doubt, etc.). The statement might just be to raise alarm, as an expression of realization, shock, etc.

I am at a bit of a loss on the “shadow fact”, but I imagine it plays the same role as “appearance” or “impression”; inserted in between the ordinary process of vision and identification, etc. in order to mitigate all our statements in order to explain (and control) the possibility of error.

@Joshs @Ludwig V

Sec 8 Purpose of Possibilities and Grammar (pp. 28-30)

His hope in pointing out multiple variations of “know” or “longing” (p. 29) is that being aware of “[an]other possibility of expression” (p. 28) would break the hold of projecting the expectations from an analogy.

In their being different possibilities in an expression, we may pick a form of expression to “stress” one part, to bring attention to looking at it a certain way, but he also says we may not even care (don’t always decide, pick), and that mostly we express ourselves along “deeply-rooted tendencies” (p. 30). I wouldn’t say these are necessarily personal tendencies, so much as habitual, conforming to culture, our common phrasings (for a context). I do find it interesting that our form of expression “betrays” us, as if it reveals more than we might want, that others can see more of us in what we express (not meant as just non-verbally).

He spends a minute talking about the nature of a “grammatical” statement. In doing so he says questioning our certainty about what we wish makes “no sense”. I think it is important that this is not in the sense of foolish or absurd, but that there is no context in which we would ask about knowledge because of the way we judge wishing, i.e., what is important to us about wishing is not justification for it, say, against doubt (of course there are the senses of “Are you sure that it is this you wish?” where we are asking for clarity about “this” or whether they have considered the consequences).

I think the importance of the grammatical statement for Wittgenstein will need more work (and text) to draw out, nevertheless, I think saying he is just trying to find a substitute for rules (to enforce), or is simply justifying how our practices work, is to miss the point, which I would preliminarily take, here, as something like being “aware” of our desire to overlay a framework (like knowledge) where it does not belong. In this sense we should think of their claim to be grammatical (provisionally, for us to concur with of course) as just the fact of the matter, e.g. rooms have length (as he looks at “facts of nature” p. 230), and moving on to it being evidence for other purposes, such as highlighting what is important to us (and not) about a practice (PI #143).

I am tempted to skip the discussion “what is not the case” and shadows, etc., and move to the mention of “intention” on p. 32, but if anyone else wants to take up or comment on that section, please do (as anyone can lead the charge at any time).

I've always been a bit puzzled why he didn't take the obvious step from forms or life to historicism, relativism, or even perhaps naturalism. — Ludwig V

This seems to assume this is about justification, and not an investigation of other examples to see why we insist on certain prerequisites (and what we miss in requiring them), instead of just taking them as just different answers to the same issue.

In my book, culture and history come back to people, so, while I wouldn't disagree with you, I don't feel that there's a significant difference between us. — Ludwig V

I only wanted to head off the presumption that this was about individuals, and not a matter, as you say, of our (people’s) culture (our language) coming before us.

@Joshs

I think that there is another motive at work here - the desire to find something surprising and interesting to say, the need to emerge from one's library with a trophy from all those explorations. — Ludwig V

Fair point; after “problematizing” discrepancies (as described early on), we want to find the answer, and not just come to people and say, “Look, it’s more nuanced than we thought”, even if the “answer” is way more complicated, maybe even because it is, and then philosophers can know better than everyone else, be clever.

But we learn to speak a language that already exists, from people who did not invent it…. "A word has the meaning someone has given it." is a misleading way of putting this. — Ludwig V

Absolutely agree; it is very hard to slip out of the picture of “the meaning that I have” that I then (each time) “give” in language, that you then “interpret”, and then your “understanding” may (or may not) equate with “my meaning”—all pictured as “objects”. And, when I saw this part, I immediately thought the “someone” in this situation should be our culture, or the whole of human history, which would be the “us” or “we” like, humanity, from which meaning is not given independently. And an investigation I think can be rigorous like science, but just careful not to assume that, if a tidy definition does not fit, the process is to find what it “really” means—the “exact” use—as when we postulate “appearance” so we can look behind it for a solution, in “unheard-of ways” PI #113.

I did snag on the thought that, basically, we may not be “ready” to give an explanation, which I take to mean we can but we are not always prepared (without reflection, looking at cases), or it is not always necessary (as when we rely on habit when picking flowers), and not that there are things we can’t get into, draw out, intelligibly discuss, such as…

If ethical desire can transcend historical contingency, then perhaps this is why for Witt other kinds of desires as well (desire for certainty, generality, completeness) are not simply ‘what we do’ in the historical sense of contingent discursive practices, but confused expressions of a transcendent feeling. — Joshs

Yes I think he is claiming the confused (metaphysical, theoretical) expressions (driven by a forced analogy) come from a desire, but maybe the desire to transcend is the same as or comes from the desire for, let’s call it, exactness, so it would be to take an ethical situation and abstract from it (transcend it) in order to “solve” it as a (theoretical) “problem” to try to, for example, ensure (justify) agreement rather then accepting that rational disagreement is part of the way ethics works/can end up.

All that to say, we have a sense of what the desire is for, but maybe not yet why we have it, but I think leaving it as a “feeling” is to jump to a conclusion for which we are, as yet, not “ready” (as stated above), and not that we can’t dig into it (that we are only left with the irrational, unintelligible, but not as opposed to, or included in, the theoretical). Based on my story above of how we get to where we want an exact definition (in framing it as “what really is…?), perhaps it is a matter of control, and so anxiety (of being wrong, being judged).

I do believe we have as yet scratched the surface, but that he may not (does not) here explicitly ever get past how we do it and what it is for (its goal)—not that extrapolation is not possible—but I think that next step of why, and the conclusions from that, is leftover and the driving force of the second half of the Investigations, so I will try to keep my comments to the matter (text) at hand, as that is handful enough.

@Ludwig V @Joshs

Sec 7 Puzzling Rules (pp. 25-28)

“…the puzzles which [philosophers] try to remove always spring from this attitude towards language [compar[ing] our use of words with one following exact rules]”. (p. 26) — Witt.

If philosophy’s puzzles “spring” from this desire for exactness, that makes its own expectation the creator of the issues it thinks it sees in the world and wants to solve. I don’t think we yet have a good sense of why it has this desire, but perhaps it helps to listen when he says “We are unable to circumscribe… concepts….” (p. 25), as if we wanted to, but cannot, draw a limit around them that is complete enough, covering or predicting all possible outcomes (and here “concept” is a practice, like identifying or following a rule).

If we are starting from “unclarity” and “mental discomfort”, perhaps we thought (assumed) we knew a thing, and then there was something that happened which made us stop and say “Hmmmm, what is time?” And if we then want to define it in a way to have something definite that will circumscribe all cases, perhaps the “something that happened” was unexpected, unpredictable, surprising, e.g., turns out we were wrong when we thought we were right (where Descartes starts in the 1st Meditations). So then we will want the (form of) answer to be able to never be wrong again.

Now it is ironic that he wants to clear up the puzzle created by trying to define what is measuring time by first wanting to apparently define “measure”, but his method is to look closer at how measuring works, and in multiple different cases, because he realizes that our concepts have “different usages”, as in options and possibilities (that cannot be circumscribed, and may even be “contradictions”).

Previously we saw the framework for objects was forced onto trying to understand feelings because of the desire for a similar direct connection (like when we see/know objects). He called this an “analogy” and here says that “forms of expression” exert a force that “fascinates” us (“the analogy between two similar forms of expression in our language”). I take this as the germ of how people think the PI is just about “language” creating problems. But it is the instinctive need for “consisten[cy]” (p. 27], generality, that forces us to apply something analogously across multiple or all cases. We choose a framework of sense that fits our desire for strictness, but we analogize it because that leverages our craving for simplicity to fill in the blanks of the disparate parts between the two cases with the likes of “sense data”, “appearance”, “reality”, “mind”, “forms”, or telling time using a tape measure.

I thought… that Wittgenstein turns this conventional rock bottom into something real, almost foundational. — Ludwig V

But this doesn’t square with framing it as distinctly not foundational (“loose”, “conventional”, “only co-ordinates… with”, being “unable to answer” what is the defining criteria), despite the desire to know (for sure); and so the (philosophical) point is about the (inappropriate, out-of-context, ad hoc) desire, “particular purpose” (next, for strict rules).

You adopt a possible interpretation of "coincide", but I'm not convinced that it is valid in this context. — Ludwig V

I thought it was interesting (clever?) because philosophers see “always coinciding” and think either: here is a “form of life” that justifies the knowledge! or think: it is uncertain because the “always” could have until now been a coincidence! My point perhaps not being “validity” but just to shed light on the unrelenting nature of the desire for this to be a matter of knowledge (that mere accord wouldn’t stop anyway).

this as a rehearsal of the sceptical attack on, in this case, other minds. — Ludwig V

Yes, and clearly he is not where he gets to in the PI—that the issue is not a matter of knowledge (but treating the other as a person in pain, or not)—but he is honest enough at this point to leave it that: if we wanted a bottom of “rock”-like justification, we are only left with “this is how things are usually done” (a sense of convention).

And, seemingly in response to this, you say “The problem remains... [unresolved]” But, as he discussed previously, “Our problem [what is difficult to understand about thinking]… was… a muddle felt as a [scientific] problem.” P. 6, which I get into here. We formulate someone’s pain as a “problem” because we want it to be an object, so that it will have an “answer” we can know (here, so we don’t have to address the person). But, as you say, my main concern here is just to follow the process of his thought.

the specter of skepticism remains, — Joshs

Yes, though not that it is always about grounding, and here just not determined somehow. In this toothache example there is a desire for knowledge (certainty) in a situation where it has no place (I would say driven by our fear of the other, in our limitation to judge them). The comparison shows that our shared interests (criteria) are overlooked, rejected, and replaced because we want to define the relation (to deny our human fallibility).

@Banno @Sam26 @Paine @Ludwig V @Jamal @Manuel @Astrophel @Joshs @Kurt Keefner @Shawn @Luke

I’m tagging those who participated (or had any interest) in this thread previously, though I won’t going forward without further participation. I am going to try to finish going through the Blue Book (even if just for myself). I was daunted by the upcoming investigation of the example of the “owner” of a toothache (which I preliminarily take as examining the desire to identify the self metaphysically). Nevertheless…

Sec 6 Coinciding Criteria (pp. 24-25)

First, another note on his method. When he asks “what do we call ‘getting to know’” (p.24), by “call” he means what “counts as” or matters in determining, in this case, that we “know”. He uses the term “criteria” for what matters and counts in getting to it (for judging we have). Now these judgments are not like decisions, because we normally just employ them (unreflectively) as part of the practices we learn (when not examining them philosophically).

Also, all of this is just trying to draw the text out more, and so stated speculatively and provisionally (strongly held loose opinions)—open to clarification and correction of course.

But when he says our judgments (“A has a toothache”) have “always coincided” with our criteria for them (the “red patch”) it seems to open a can of (skeptical) worms, i.e., like it is a coincidence (that could disconnect at any moment). But I take it to be the sense of “coincide” that they “correspond in nature”; or, “are in accord” (Merriam-Webster) So when the skeptic keeps asking their foundational questions (past even the traditional argument for other minds), there is a point where we are “at a loss” (prescient of PI #217). But what exactly are we at a loss to answer? Even the other’s report that they have a toothache is considered “conventional” (just “saying certain words”), and that is only because it is under the scrutiny of “How do you know…?”, and there are no criteria for knowing (for certain) if the other actually has a toothache (and is not just saying the words). I specifically do not take the point to be that other criteria do justify our claims about toothaches, nor that the correspondence or accord between our criteria and our judgments is “natural” or unbreakable.

The seemingly “arbitrary” (p. 25) nature as to which of our criteria are “defining” is not because of a “deplorable lack of clarity”, but because it is not something that is decided ahead of time for a particular purpose (ad hoc), such as, in this case, with the predetermined desire to know without any doubt. In each case we may highlight one criteria over another depending on our interest (or just arbitrarily), and that gets sorted out after, as we noted previously how reasons do (compared to motives). He will go on to say the biggest ad hoc desire philosophy has, is for “strict rules”, which comes next.

derp

I would think a marine might handle a bad situation very well — Athena

I realize now my examples played on generalizations (and perhaps stereotypes) and not in a necessarily favorable light so that was a mistake. Obviously not every marine (or grandmother) is going to react poorly when they are disrespected, even about their sense of self. I was just thinking of examples where offense might be taken other than those usually thought to be concerned about such things (who are more likely to be dismissed as without cause).

Adam Smith, the father of economics, assumed well-bred men function with a high degree of virtues, and could understand the need to do business with good ethics and good moral judgment. — Athena

I always think of Cicero’s assertion that it is not that others are swayed by a person adept at the tricks of speaking (as Plato warned), but that speaking well is a reflection of one’s character; that thinking, as it were, is an ethical practice (where Heidegger ultimately landed).

@Athena

Offense can be given in many ways—through direct insults, indirect or implied slights, a condescending tone or delivery, hurtful humor, acts of disrespect, deliberate provocation, or insensitivity to someone’s circumstances. — praxis

This is a good list of examples. I noticed that the dictionary divides between objects that offend (smoke, or the smell of fish) and just offending a rule or principle (without an object). I would say yours fall into the first category, although what is disrespectful is perhaps what is commonly accepted (or set) as a “rule”, as are manners, and thus “being rude” (humor of course being a slippery fish here).

What interests me is that the “object” in your examples is the act, identified as what it is without the speaker (though there is the individual to hold to account). We are all able (though some more astutely than others) to judge a slight, an insult, a tone, and what is inconsiderate or provocative behavior. Of course there are tricky cases, and the variables of circumstance, and mistakes (in judgment), but some will take this to the absurd that we can’t decide in any case, and begin to talk about “what I meant” as if it were tied to something inside them. But that is a desire to avoid (as you noted) our ongoing responsibility for (and to) what we say, which also creates the philosophical fantasy that one puts their meaning into words, and the rest is only interpretation and what we “read into them”, say, “take” offense at.

@Athena

I just wanted to make clear that, in my post here, I was only trying to point out what I take as the real problem and the responsible party, which, yes, was also to say that those wrongs have their own separate criteria for identification, and individual redresses, but I did not want to imply that what some call “being offended” is trivial or inconsequential.**

People say “how you feel is your choice”, but that is just biologically impossible (thus the dismissiveness), that is if we take it as if we should, say, choose not to feel anger. I take the point to be that you have (some, sometimes) control to not express your anger, as in: let it get the best of you, dictate your reaction, not hold your tongue, lose your cool, etc. Part of my point above was that we wouldn’t want our being offended to dictate our reaction, or serve as our justification, because, as I pointed out, the punishment should fit the crime. This cold deliberateness is why we hand over dispensing justice to the State—and also so we don’t have the (emotional) blood on our hands.

Nevertheless, I think many other states of being have been lumped together with “being offended” to make them all seem like an overreaction to simply, as it were, being slighted. Obviously, in taking offense, there is the sense of being shocked, affronted, annoyed, or displeased. And this implies that we merely resent our pleasure, comfort, or decorum being upset; that our feathers have simply been ruffled. Thus the pejorative implication that the insult may be simply “perceived”, and such mild reactions imply that the party offended are those that usually “can’t be bothered”, the privileged, the “status quo”, those “easily offended”, and so where is the real harm?

**But sometimes responses are categorized as “being offended” to minimize the offense, say, keep it on the level of a possible insult rather than, say, a personal crime. Acknowledging that we are responsible for our reactions, we are, again, not judging the emotion, say, deciding whether it is true outrage or self-righteousness. The judgment is of the bad act; the first responsibility is the bad actor’s. Being disrespectful or scornful may just be rude (at a dinner party), but it may be a much more serious matter, say, when it comes to someone’s sense of self (try to disrespect a marine, or an abuelita).

Is there a history of philosophers trying to prove each other wrong? — Athena

The most pointed attempt I know to “prove someone wrong” would be Austin’s reading of Ayer in “Sense and Sensibilia” which we read through here. But even there, Ayer is just a straw man of the argument for “sense data” that Austin uses to actually figure it out, not just prove Ayer “wrong”—it is actually fair and (somewhat) understanding. The most generous and in-depth reading that I know of (while still a complete reversal) has to be Wittgenstein’s examination in “Philosophical Investigations” of his own earlier positions. Austin is waaay more readable though (plus it’s only like 70 pages).

Is there a history of philosophers trying to prove each other wrong? — Athena

I think the entire history of philosophy is self-referential and defined against itself. Even someone seemingly unique like Descartes or Wittgenstein are working within and against an established framework. But I would specifically think of Kant and Hume, Marx and Hegel, Hobbes and Locke, and Ayers and Austin (and Austin/Derrida) as examples of direct conflict.

And I think here even there is too much focus on finding something “wrong” and dismissing what someone says, instead of working harder to understand, treating it as if there might be more to it than immediately registered.

I do not understand your post. Isn't what against the forum rules? — Athena

Using AI is either explicitly against the rules, or is simply frowned upon, for the same reasons as using a summary of a topic, such as Wikipedia. Original thought or primary texts are preferred (though this includes one philosopher reading another, like Heidegger on Nietzsche).

I also think @bongo fury was making a joke, in bringing you up short and then apologizing.

Edit: from the Guidelines:

“AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part (unless there is some obvious reason to do so, e.g. an LLM discussion thread where use is explicitly declared). Those suspected of breaking this rule will receive a warning and potentially a ban.

AI LLMs may be used to proofread pre-written posts, but if this results in you being suspected of using them to write posts, that is a risk you run. We recommend that you do not use them at all”