This sounds consistent with the moral perspectives of Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein and Levinas (and Caputo, Critchley and Sheehan) , because it still makes the idea of god coherent. I read Nietzsche as deconstructing this thinking. — Joshs

I'm not sure this is such a black-n-white fight. I don't think my descriptions of Nietzsche's critiques of deontology "still makes the idea of god coherent"? Is this to say that Nietzche's aim was to make deontology incoherent? when his work is a description of how it functions? I think it's too simplistic to say Nietszche is doing away with it or replacing it; he finds there is no "human" history or recognition of our part in the creation or our misuse of morals to judge people. If he is taking it apart, it is to see our part in it.

And without Nietszche you don't have Wittgenstein; the idea of looking at a fictitious history as a case to learn the ins-and-outs of something; the idea of the ordinariness of our concepts, that they come from a place in our lives; that our concepts are not precise and fixed...

he doesn't think of morality in terms of fixed rules. — frank

But what I was saying is that he uncovered the desire for them, our weakness for an answer that doesn't involve us, our failings. But also, if you read early work like Human, all too Human, he is simply breaking down our moral framework to build it back with an eye on history and context, and acknowledging our part in our moral judgments, though later he will seemingly be simply railing on an
about the individual.

So you're saying that living out someone else's morality is easy, it provides an easy Good buzz. How would you explain the alternative? That embracing authenticity comes at a price? — frank

Nietszche talks of needing strength, courage, indifference, and, at least elsewhere, joy. If there is a desire in us for certainty and universality and the surety of a fixed morality knowledge, then we must resist a part of ourselves, turn away from our culture, towards our attraction. Our will is not us forcing something, but allowing our instinct and interests to guide us.

From the preface, he describes his reader:

"He must have an inclination, born of strength, for questions that no one has the courage for; the courage for the forbidden; predestination for the labyrinth. The experience of seven solitudes. New ears for new music. New eyes for what is most distant. A new conscience for truths that have hitherto remained unheard. And the will to economize in the grand manner-to hold together his strength, his enthusiasm. . . . Reverence for self; love of self; absolute freedom of self..." — frank

This sounds like Emerson and Thoreau. Whitman talked of having the right person to tell his secrets to. Could Nietszche be asking us to become something else? to change us, rather than simply tell us something? To have us stop giving our self away for nothing?

"...the rottenness I speak of is most apparent to me precisely in those quarters where there has been most aspiration, hitherto, toward "virtue" and "godliness." — frank

-quoting Nietszche

Some prefer to see Nietszche as a continental philosopher, commenting about the state of his world (and Christianity). I read him as an analytical philosopher, reacting to Kant and Plato. His example is religion but his target is deontological morality. If you 'aspire' to a specific idea of what it is to be virtuous, you are abdicating the opportunity and responsibility to be a better you. Also a moral moment may be lost on you if you feel you are a good person because you have done what has been decided beforehand by others long ago.

A history of the "higher feelings," the "ideals of humanity"-and it is possible that I'll have to write it-would almost explain why man is so degenerate. — frank

- again, quoting Nietszche.

But he has written the history of our desire for ideals. His work is an examination by strawman of the forces at work in us to replace our human failing with righteous reasoned imperatives and forms. He is trying to get us to see the historicity of moral philosophy.

However, some misconstrue the impassioned fever of his entreaties, even hatred, as that he is against rules at all and that it is every person for themselves. Emerson is thought of this way as well--withholding charity to others (giving ourselves over). But to follow my whim (will) may be to help others, be a good citizen, go along with everyone else; my duty need not be our downfall, nor different than yours or anyone's. But Nietszche doesn't see any desperation in the quietness of our voice, so he is desperate for us, controversial, shameless, hated--a god-killer--a hyperbolic example, for us. We are the weak and ill-constituted. We pity ourselves (being "moral") rather than being our self.

I think of it as a mythical analogy (prejudiced hopefully more by the trope than in belief) written in code, where "God" is Plato's form and our weakness is our desire to relinquish our responsibility over our self to a moral theory.

I'm not trying to look at this through a lens of preciseness only. I think, it also seems to me to be an issue about inherent vagueness in language — Shawn

This is the killer though. @Banno waves this off as a problem with a philosopher's psychology, but it is so tied to how we think I take the resolution as an analytical problem. The desire you are trying to see with is creating your picture of the concept. Emerson and Heidegger both have the image of closing our (human) hand and everything spilling out. We grasp with the criteria of certainty, specificity, universality, and we end up without the essence of what a heap is, its gist--this is not ontological or correlative or definitional--it is what matters to us about heaps and the judgments we make about them, etc., our lives with heaps. This need is crystallized with Logical Positivism, which excluded everything vague and uncertain. So Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is the obvious guide out of these woods. His term Concept, like, say, "game", is pulled and pushed to show how our lives are measured in more ways than a simple theory would like. He discusses "vague" at #71, starting "One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges." and to ask "Isn't the indistinct [picture] often exactly what we need?" and also "is it senseless to say: 'Stand roughly there?'" Or at #98 "Where there is sense there must be perfect order--so there must be perfect order even in the vaguest sentence." Now this isn't to say there aren't mistakes, misuses, laziness, etc. but the point is laid out in #101 "We want to say there can't be any vagueness in logic. The idea absorbs us, that the ideal must be found in reality." The cart is before the horse; the game is rigged before the thought problem, say, of criterion, is even set up. But this is a classic philosophical hand-wringer. There is confusion, miscommunication, and lack of agreement, and philosophy blames common language and sets out to correct it or clarify or qualify, but our ordinary criteria (for heaps, games, vagueness) is the most connected to our actual lives.

So are there 3 positions? — Gregory

I meant those as examples, not as alternative explanation. The specific type of answer is not the problem, it is the desire for a particular, certain, or universal answer of Being or the explanation of the structure of Being that is the same type of obsession which led to metaphysical solutions like Plato (and that Kant was trying to get around). The appearance and the real turned into the appearing doesn't get us out of the original desire, which Heidegger falls away from only in the later work.

↪Antony Nickles. "pointing to more practical (ethical) ways of being, such as: our letting being draw us in, listening before jumping to naming/judging, and other approaches which may make the dead word alive again in our voice, our self able to be uncompleted.
— Antony Nickles
— Joshs

But the knowledge of being is always an existing , a transit , We always already understand Being in that we always are projecting ourselves into a future. Understanding is this forehaving that is affected by what it projects itself into. — Joshs

"It is impossible to do because a totality of relevance is always already implied and intrinsic to any experience, regardless of our mode of comportment toward the world. So it’s not a question of experiencing the world pragmatically or not , but of whether or not we are aware of this always underlying mattering. — Joshs

It seems here it doesn't matter the way we conduct ourselves (or the ways there are to conduct ourselves) as long as we are aware (present). But I think we are in the weeds already when trying to pin down Being either as knowledge or source, etc.

Heidegger knows that there is something preconceptual (transcendent) which Dasein has a dialectic with in reasoning that is always mysterious but allows us to reason. — Gregory

Being means: presence. — Joshs

It's as if they felt someone else was behind the scenes in their private noumena with them, but knew not who it was. — Gregory

Once Being becomes the source, the answer, the object, than we are lost in a struggle on metaphysics' terms. That's not to say Heidegger doesn't have something important to say, as does Socrates, though they're better when they leave the question unanswered (universally).

@Xtrix"just as a hammer can be thought of as a wooden stick with a metal piece on the end of it, weighing a certain amount and of a certain dimension or having other properties, but isn't thought of such when we're absorbed in the activity of hammering, likewise the world isn't simply "material."

This is where Wittgenstein helps in showing that knowledge and practice are different for every different thing. There's the criteria by which we identify a hammer, and what counts as hammering (that it might be done with a rock). These concepts and their criteria are not material but are also not preconceptual--simply unexamined, unconscious, forgotten. In each case it does not take presence, but remembering, making explicit; in each case, in each context.

Although he doesn't get into specific "do's and dont's" he tries to make alive philosophical thinking such that thinking in those ways becomes normal for us — Gregory

I do think you would find some specifics in "What is Called Thinking?" and "Language, Poetry, and Thought", particularly as to what thought is and should be. Because Thinking is a lecture, it allows him to draw out a subject as he would want us to be drawn towards the world.

Then he introduces various modes of comportment , and how they modify Dasein’s way of being in the world. He introduces the distinction between authentic and inauthentic models of comportment, and within the inauthentic he explains how average everydayness , propositional statements and empirical science emerges as impoverished modes of experiencing. For instance , about average everyday discourse he says that in the mode of average everydayness Dasein disguises, covers over, conceals, obscures its genuine self, a genuine understanding, an originary and primordial way of appropriating the matter, “getting to the heart of the matter,” primordially genuine relations of being toward the world, toward Mit-dasein, toward being-in itself. — Joshs

I don't know enough about Being in Time to comment on the reading, but, if this accurate, I think in his later work he moves away from a focus on an (abstract) endpoint (@Gregory) and is pointing to more practical (ethical) ways of being, such as: our letting being draw us in, listening before jumping to naming/judging, and other approaches which may make the dead word alive again in our voice, our self able to be uncompleted. That is to say that maybe he misses the mark early on in taking Being as a replacement for a static self, as Marx does (or a reading of Marx does) in skipping over the revelation that we are produced (by means we may not control), to a belief that we can get to a point of being unproduced, rather than choosing or going against the means--that the nature of the proletariat is pure (as is Plato's hope for the forms). This is to say that maybe Heidegger's way to ethics is bringing historicity (temporality?) to our ontology to fight against dogmatism, much as Nietszche brought it to our morals to combat moralism, or as Wittgenstein's ethical argument is considering our part in epistemology. Thus the act, the fight, the considering--not "falling prey", getting "caught up", "cut off"--is of greater consequence than the knowledge of Being; that the explicit hides the implicit, as well as that intuition must become "tuition" (as Emerson puts it), but it is the looking and the becoming that are important.

Maybe you could elaborate what you mean by fundamental. Heidegger’s does make his brand of philosophy the ground of Being. — Joshs

When I said that for Hedeigger philosophy is not fundamental, what I was trying to say is that it is not trying to be support or make certain or remove doubt in the traditional sense of a philosophical ground or foundation; not fixing our nature, but leaving it as an open question. We begin, we are, yet we return to ourselves; it is not our dogmatism about human nature but our analysis of ourselves that is our grounding, our founding and building. He may be making an argument about our human situation, but not as a basis the way other philosophers had for something in particular or as an argument against skepticism. Thus the importance of what we do and say and align ourselves with (what do we call this if not ethical? as in, what matters to us, our interests, what we care about), as our being is both historical and "veiled" (in front, Emerson would say).

It would certainly be a mistake to think this is a theory about being in relation to time understood in any conventional sense. — Joshs

So... a theory (as opposed to a plea), just special?

It is a theory about Being understood as temporality. This notion of time presupposes Attunement, Care and Understanding. — Joshs

An explanation of our human experience that assumes our ethical posture? (takes it for granted?)

Temporality is in itself already an ethics — Joshs

I don't have enough here to understand--to follow from or know where it connects to or is making a distinction from my comment. I could guess that you feel it is necessary to point out that our experience in time (or our knowledge of that), I hazard to say: creates us, or is more fundamental than, maybe, the ontology others argue for; e.g., an explanation of our nature in stasis. And so he is not entreating for a particular better nature, but, as you say, presupposing "an ethics"; that our being, as ethical, perhaps at all, begins and journeys. Or leaving the question open: against what is Heidegger arguing? and for what purpose?

If any of that is close, I would think that, as an explanation of our experience, our understanding of him is more similar than not. Who we are, what we will be, is, and yet, becomes. I only wanted to ask (conjecture) if that is not an ethical argument in (or through) an ontological one.

For me the best part of his philosophy is the implicit concept that science describes a second order aspect of the world while philosophy describes the primary way it must be seen — Gregory

I agree with the sentiment, but I wouldn't want it thought of as an argument ("primary" "must"). One way to look at it, on the grounds of this OP, is to say that our cares matter. Say, with science, we value certainty and have an inate fear of our, call it, frailty. For example, in Thinking: letting our subject (the "object") come to us and not reaching with our desires and fears and predispositions, even our skeptical desire to ignore ourselves, to rid us of ourselves; have science be our guide and substitute for us. Heidegger's insight is that philosophy is not initial--though Emerson's and Wittgenstein's admonition is to start (facing) correctly--nor is philosophy fundamental, but he urgently calls us to wait for it, it's secrets and discoveries, nonetheless.

He does throw hard sentences at us like "being relevant constitutes itself in the unity of awaiting and retaining in such a way that the making present arising from this makes the characteristic absorption in taking care in the world of its useful things possible." — Gregory

I read "What is called thinking?", which is a 1951lecture of an example of how to investigate deeply into a subject and the pitfalls of our initial assumptions and desires, so I see Heidegger not just describing the state of us over time but our duty and responsibilities as well. So when he talks about "awaiting and retaining" or "the making present"or "taking care in the world", I don't think it is accurate to say this is a feeling or emotion, but, also, equally a mistake to think this is a theory about the structure, or explaination, of our being in relation to time. We have an obligation for our posture, our action, our reaction. He will say to let the world lie before us, to look for what calls us, to be grateful in remembering, to let ourselves be attracted to (fall in love with?) the world. If we are also asked to be "awaiting", "retaining", "making present", "taking care", are these not ethical admonishions?

I was wondering if Google utilizes meaning as use, given their enormous knowledge about how language is utilized by its users — Shawn

I think it's important to unpack the idea of "utiliz[ing] meaning as use"; which here I take comes from monitoring how language is used to understand what people mean, or at least want. First, it might help to see this is trading one thing for another: "meaning as[/is] use", is the same as meaning as... say, metaphysical yada yada (positivism). Wittgenstein is looking at the way we picture meaning; he wants us to look at why we picture it that way. So a 'use' is something we are asked to see, not a way to explain language. A word (or expression, or concept) can have different, say, categories, Wittgenstein calls them "senses"--e.g., "knowledge" as information, knowledge as skill, or knowing as recognizing something in another. These are not different "meanings", but the associated contexts of our lives. So 'use' is not our language being manipulated, nor the job to which it is put--as if we always do something, or that we control (i.e.,'use') language--as the article quotes the Standford Encyclopedia claiming that Wittgenstein wants us to see "the variety of uses to which the word is put." That language is put to use inverts its public meaningfulness with our wants and desires, trading history and the ways of the world for intention and personal causality.

Wittgenstein has a method to see what part of our life an expression touches on--which 'sense'; which 'use'. The various contexts in which words can (or can not) be: appropriate, fitting, recognized. This is not a fixed, singular, or limited connection which makes the "meaning" of words understood. It is a new kind of philosophical posture (Witt says "attitude"); to look at an expression and differentiate one 'sense' from another forces us to examine, and in the process become aware of, our ordinary criteria, judgments, expectations, implications, etc., imbedded in the life we participate in; thus, to know ourselves. To know what matters is to know how something can be meaningful.

Now is this what Google is doing? I think the article is justified in saying the perspective is Wittgenstenian in that it is turning away from: word = meaning (like a definition or corresponding object), but it appears to want to replace 'use' there as a way language has meaning. As if people using language in certain ways allows it to have meaning. This description fits Google's framework because it must work backwards from the way words are 'used' in sentences, i.e., what goes before and after what, in order to try to flesh out the different contexts of our expressions. But it is forced to do this, when we are born into the world already; we are trained in and absorb the ways and failures of it. Its vast variability and evolution make it impossible for Google (or math) to map, describe, or encompass. But what Google is doing is not a substitute definition; the important part for it is the prediction and association. It is guessing what you are going to say next, but just not in the same way we have an expectation of the appropriate next expression given the context.

Let's leave it that our expression associates us with its uses which come from the situation we are in. Again, these different uses are not the 'meanings' of the words--except in the way a veiled threat or insincere apology or insecure boasting have meaning. The world is meaningful to us. The attempt to construct context from leftover signs reduces reading to morbidly sifting through evidence for a world already dead. The outcome narrows because the computer is without vision; it is facing the wrong way. Its experiences (its historical attempts) are in isolation from the human experience. Predictive text is a time saver, amazingly apt at finding the appropriate thing to say, taking the words right out of our mouths, but we still wouldn't call this writing without minimizing the endeavor (which some are happy to do).

When I raise the issue of solidity, I am speaking about foundations and strengths and, of a capacity to stand firm and not be thrown asunder. — Jack Cummins

I'm with @Banno in bringing in Austin in this case. His epiphany of sense from pointing out our ordinary lives makes philosophy feel fresh and workable. However, the sentiment expressed here by I believe @Wayfarer that Austin is not replying to or connected with traditional philosophy (he also gets pegged with "just discussing language") is just something Austin doesn't dine to explain, skipping to showing how "real" is, say, opposed to fake. He doesn't show how we got here, nor parse out the motivations or implications.

We aren't led through the creation of the Gordian knot that has become "reality" in philosophy. I'm not the best historian; the story I remember starts with really getting yourself to feel the fear of skepticism: how can we be sure about what's right? how do I know what you're thinking? And then Plato makes a fatal error in the Theatetus and transfers moral doubt onto physical objects. The actual question is not "is it real?" but can we be certain, universally, ahead of time, and project that into the future.

The next step is philosophy imagined "real" as a quality to objects or existence, and a continuous quality. The "real" world; "reality" not as say compared to denial, but as something fundamental, epistimologically relevant which is solid and strong that stands firm against uncertainty. As if what is real had to be proven itself, rather than being a presumption to contrast against outlying cases. So now the question "what is reality"? can seem necessary to answer.

the advent of science has had an extraordinarily, overwhelmingly positive impact on how we live. — Banno

This is to say perhaps that science, with its method that uncovers (and creates) reproducibility, predictability, constancy, universality, has led to discoveries and innovation that improved our comfort and efficiency, impacted other practices, helped ease suffering etc. But the knowledge of science, has also, since the enlightenment, become a standard, created the concept of a fact, what is factual.

The advent of the kind of certain knowledge which science offers created a cultural blindness when the criteria of its judgment was transposed as the measure of every other rationale. We have bad science, but also the damage done in the name of science. Our culture has internalized the need for certainty and will only accept external justification; as if to remove ourselves as knowers. The inability to receive each thing for itself, in the ways it makes itself known, has withered our human judgment. The immediacy of empiricism and the solidity of science have led to the reification of fact which gives us a false confidence in a "soft" field like economics and a distrust of the methods of mastered experience like, say, psychotherapy. We are so taken with the power imbued to fact we are astonished when another refuses to agree or acknowledge the value we have unreflectively given them.

A TED talk I saw yesterday put [the progress of human culture] down to the types of explanations that we accept, arguing that it is down to the rejection of explanations that are too easily reinforced by ad hoc additions. I'd suggest it has to do with the introduction of self-checking conversations, the notion that we check what we say against the way things are. — Banno

So here maybe we could say the talk posits that progress has come from our rejection of the quality of the reinforcement of our explanations. Another way to say that might be that with a justification not created out of thin air but through a method, such as science's, our explanations have the continuity and validity that created the very concept of progress. Unfortunately, I don't believe our culture has benefitted from scientific progress. The expectation that we merely need to explain ourselves in the image of factual knowledge, underestimates the breadth of human culture. I do think there is something to what @Banno adds, if it is in a way not to value what we take facts to express or support, but to judge our selfs, our expressions, even our desire to express ourselves, and not against a standard, but in acceptance or aversion to the status quo, the context. Here there is the possibility not of progress, but of growth.

Your presentation is really clear and well thought out. — T Clark

As most times, pretty sure I stole most of those arguments, but thanks.

There is an interest here, I believe (@Banno), for analytical philosophy. I hope I make a fair assessment. This is a vision of a moral world; it takes into consideration concepts of justice and fairness and freedom and rights, etc. Though it is critical of "liberalism" there is a desire for it to meet the goal of a "a rights-based approach to addressing inequality", though it is seen as failing "in ascribing special value to the property of whiteness."

The basis of a right is my claim to it. The antithesis of this is an imposition, particularly without considering me--not an agreed contract, not a punishment for one's own acts--as, say, the act of "erroneous and harmful beliefs about people of color." As summed up, "we should generally see each person for who they are, not what category they fall into."

Here I take justice to be, that: if everyone has access to their rights, we can see "who they are", which I take to mean here: what they merit, their worth. Thus, working towards a more just society, we should focus on equal rights and opportunity, and responsibility for ourselves and our actions and speech. Thus our speech should be free to be judged on its own merit.

In order for us to have justice, we should have knowledge of the Other, ("who they are"), and judge them as individuals, as a human like me, living in and subject to the same goal of a just and moral world. But Cavell points out in the Claim of Reason that the real horror in slavery was not viewing the slave as inhuman, but "seeing" them as a human, treating them as human, while they were enslaved.

So what is it that blinds us to the Other? Wittgenstein investigated our desire for knowledge that the pain of the Other is the same as our pain, instead of our facing that an expression of pain is a moral claim on us. Emerson would say character is higher than intellect--that we define our self in that moral moment. Nietzsche saw our desire for predetermined moral knowledge as a power move that striped context away allowing morality to be manufactured rather than contingent and historical.

Now this will seem ironic, as here the worry is exactly that a quality is being imposed on us. But it is as if the individual were internalizing society. As perhaps, if I make myself the target of judgment, then the justice of our society is saved by my sacrifice, before it is "torn down". I can be responsible and defend myself, not having to acknowledge the fear of the unknown, the future, the overwhelming, the Other---the state of nature that makes us cling to the social contract which both saves us, and compromises us. In order that the world not break my heart, I cut off the thing-in-itself first, and project my good into the Other. Thus we see ourselves before society, as intending meaning, as individually special. Or maybe there is another cause of our refusal to see that our culture, our language, our institutions, pre-date our coming into the world, and that they are external of our intention and theory and morality. Marx's means of production are the means of the production of our self. Our speech is bound in language--expression only being human (not hearsay) with our ability to stand for it (not anonymously).

We should not "ascribe special value to the property of whiteness". This is a statement of principal, standing alone, much as the isolated traditional philosophical terms that Wittgenstein wanted to bring back to their ordinary context and mechanics. The context of justice is the state of our world, its history, its institutions, the mechanics of judgement, interest, and what is valued. The structure that we are too scared to face was there before us--the mechanics of that structure were imperceptibly (and overtly) affected over time so that now they value whiteness, inherently, internally, as it were, systematically. Getting by is just easier for white people; they are gifted more merit; entitled to their rights; entirely seen. Not this person, or, by that person--but, by the structure of our society. Is it really just a blindness to anything that does not have an impact on us? A fear of the unknown? A lack of imagination of the Other's pain? We can not know them as we know ourselves; their body makes them opaque. But in trying to solve the skeptical problem of the Other with knowledge and morality, we black out our eyes and turn our back on the world.

I think there may be two things going on. First, you are assuming a fixed version/goal of "truth" through substantiation (perhaps it is fair to say, proof). This is basically a deductive argument beginning with a theory of truth, about a standard for reasoning based on knowledge. There are other versions such as what is right, and what is appropriate (or felicitous, as Austin says--who would call the singular goal of substantiated truth, the "descriptive fallacy"). The arguments for these even have different criteria, possible outcomes, etc.; one would be a moral argument (we may not agree; I may have to put myself out there as "proof" of my act); and another being an argument about the workings of our lives/concepts. Austin and Wittgenstein use an induction form of argument for a generalized criteria (Wittgenstein calls it the "grammar" of, say, believing, or, Austin's example, excuses). It is based on descriptions of examples ( and contexts) of what the implications are when we say "...". The claim is universal but the "substantiation" is only that you can see the same thing for yourself.

Now that being said, secondly, maybe we can agree that, since the goal may be different, we can not judge inductive reasoning by the bar you presume. Can we simply say that there is better and worse reasoning? That generalizing without examples, taking everything to be like one thing, etc., is just doing a poor job of inductive reasoning?

So, does context "change" an object? — Don Wade

An object has certain ways in which it can be used, discussed, identified, etc. And each object has its own. There are different senses in which "tree" can be used. This also applies to concepts, such as that of "change". Now when I say traditionally philosophy isolates words/things from a context, your question is exactly that kind of non-specific, contextless use of the concept of change, so we have no idea in which sense you are using it. Wittgenstein refers to the ways we use tree as its grammar, and says that grammar tells us what kind of object anything is (PI #373, emphasis added), as in, the parameters of that class of object; what judgments, expressions, interactions, are possible for a thing to be in the category of a "tree". Say, the criteria of identity (from a bush), the different ways it has value in our society (timber, shelter for animals), the rationale ordinarily attributable to our actions involving trees, its status as an object (and not a principal), etc.

So to attempt to answer your question I can only assume in what sense you are using "change" and "context". The method of ordinary language philosophy (like Wittgenstein's) is to imagine a context in which what is said can be meant (or can not) within the possibilities of the grammar of the concept/thing, and whether we can at least agree on that.

When you (and others) are saying "context" it seems to imply it is a perspective or viewpoint (in me; how I "see"); that "you" (or your "visualization") have a part in the context; but in the sense that science or forestry have "contexts", they are not "yours" (say, internally). Would it do to simply say that we share the same interests and concerns about trees as science (with its context)? The part of the concept of context that I was pointing out earlier is the fact it is the circumstances of a specific situation, but it is, as well, the external limits and possibilities associated with an object--there is the context of our interests, judgments, expectations, and implications, which form our different ways of interacting with a tree.

And we can understand the question of change in the traditional metaphysical sense of how to find certainty due to the fear of skepticism and our desire for a fixed world--we thus remove the ordinary context (do not "acknowledge" it as you aptly say) in order to create a rationale, universal, predictable framework. Or, in an ordinary sense, say, compare the context of science to the context of forestry. In the first a tree is a physical object of study, and in the second it can be a resource. Does an object "change" in different contexts? It appears: no, and yes.

Maybe these examples will help us get clearer about how we are using "change" and "context"? (or stepping outside of their ordinary criteria/sense/grammar).

We can visualize a tree, but add the tree to other trees and it becomes a part of a forrest. In this example the change in context is adding other trees to the visualization. Is the tree a tree, or is it part of a forrest? The difference seems to be in what context the object (in this case, the tree) is thought about, or how we visualize an object. That is, in what "context" do we visualize (or see) the object. It also seems that sometimes we do not acknowledge a context. We may visualize an object (no context). — Don Wade

A context is, among other things, the circumstances of an event, a moment, so not "our visualization". How the object "is thought about" is part of what is happening in the sense that we are interested in different ways in the object. And the ways in which we judge, or value, or use an object is part of the ways the object works or we with it, and the ways it which it doesn't. The fact that we can focus on one tree, or refer to a grouping, that it can be a source of material, or an ecosystem, are the possibilities of a tree and our lives with it. The terminology of "seeing" the tree seems to give us the power to see it as we like, but the external context, including the way the object is meaningful to us, frames the ordinary use of "tree". Philosophy does a good job of isolating words from any context to make them more certain, rational;like know or intend or see or believe.

I have to infer, as you only imply a political principal(?) in the negative, by how people object, but I sense a fundamental struggle for the ability to create a self, a fight for the right to exist. People pounce on the substance of Marx's "means of production" without hearing the important revelation: we produce ourselves--through society, in relation to it--or are produced (by default, the contract is signed for us). For the self, it's maybe not so much changing or controlling the means, as seeing ourselves in their possibilities. Could we say the ordinary is the beginning of the journey towards the betterment of the self, based not on self interest, but the interests you have (that your self has)--what you notice, what you are drawn to do, what you align with (becoming by accepting (you), rather than fighting/acting/knowing, as Heidegger would say). Now, that some may not listen to their voice, never find themselves in the world, seems a greater danger than externalizing the inability to have a self onto the vague oppression/dissappontments of society. In fact that seems like a perfect excuse to get out of the responsibility for and to our self. Is there a problem? I'd say more a tragic misconception, a displacement or blindness by the desire for perfection or to be something special, but this is all conjecture as we have no examples, methodology, motivation, critique, text, etc.

I applaud the suggestion. I tried to make a version of it myself in my post Virtue in Philosophy. Many philosophers have advocated for seeing things from the other's shoes; call it: making the strongest argument possible for them; understanding them on (in) their own terms; not assuming we know what words mean at first sight @Ciceronianus the White. Wittgenstein would say we don't find seeing to be puzzling enough. Ordinary Language Philosophy has the method at its core that my description of the implications of what we say at a given time (it's rationality), is backed only by your ability to see for yourself as well. The context, consequences, presuppositions, implications, all have to be filled out to see what someone else says; all postulated by us in a light most favorable to the one who will silently suffer our judgment, without anyone to further speak for them, but us (or should be treated as such, despite their being able to respond in this case).

Well done with this reading. I agree with the dynamic (though my K is limited), I only find it hard to bear up under the weight of this as a constant state. Every movement is not an action, nor is every expression intended--are we to be skewered at every passing moment on our angst for the state of our self? Cavell talks of a philosophical or moral moment, which is not ever-present; but, say, when we don't know what to do and are at a loss. K seems to capture this with what you quoted:

Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? — Kierkegaard, Repetition, 1843

I can't help hear the echo of Emerson's Experience, which was written a year before Either/Or.

Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. But the Genius which according to the old belief stands at the door by which we enter, and gives us the lethe to drink, that we may tell no tales, mixed the cup too strongly, and we cannot shake off the lethargy now at noonday. — Emerson, Experience, 1844

We don't know our customs, our world, our self; whether to go backward or upward. We enter a world already made, with the past in place, our language already imbued with the interests and desires and judgments of our culture. We have not signed the contract; most of the time we act and speak without standing for ourselves; we quote others Emerson says. The past simply continuing into the future, the abstraction of our self from this moment "annihilates the concept" as K says. The word is dead, and we are quiet (our life is, desperately). But there is an instant which makes all things new; when time is full (of possibilities Wittgenstein might say). We may need to be adverse to expectation (Emerson), convert our interest in our concepts, atone for the unspoken, redeem our judgments--to give them new life and power over our present deliberation. It is we, at this moment, that are responsible, now, before we define our life with our culture, our expression, our action. When duty calls us, we must answer for our current state, beyond our (past) knowledge, or suffer the sin of that lost chance. If we are to say our original sin was the creation of the past--our desire for certain knowledge of it--then our Eden is the sight of the sun at the top of Nietzsche's ladder, at noonday as Emerson says.

And so is the "eternal present" ever-present? or, if it is, is it that we are only at times aware of it, or have the opportunity to rise to the occasion of it? Not that we may not be brought up at any time by society for our action or inaction, but are we to be held to the grindstone by ourselves at all times (as if every second was subject to sin, our grief endless)?

This leads me to also comment on your question: "Is there REALLY a past or future AT ALL?" We could say the past is outside of our self: knowledge, language, culture. And the future is the implications and consequences and judgments from that past. Our default aspect to the present is unrecognized consent, complicity, blindness, inattention, alienation. We fail to shake off our lethargy (or apathy) when our moment arrives. That is to say, the past and the future are ALL that exist; before we are thrust (drawn) into the present to face our eternal, if yet unconnected, unlived, self (Emerson speaks of a "next" self).

Well we’ve started talking about existence as a quality, without any concept of existence. What makes existence what it is? What is the essence of existence? Perhaps there are different senses (is the word used in different ways, Wittgenstein would ask). We can say a unicorn does not exist, but it is a fantasy (and an analogy). We could say the Bermuda Triangle doesn’t exist, but it is still an area on a map; here perhaps it’s the fantasy that we (want to?) say does or does not exist. And we could say it is something real, but then do fake watches not exist? We could say it is something tangible, but we can also say justice doesn’t exist in some places; that gravity exists. When we tell a child that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, what essentially changes? We haven’t just said he is not real, tangible, alive, certain, provable, etc. (“that man at the mall is not Santa”); the tragedy of it is that we destroy the ability for the myth to be meaningful, to be something that matters to us. So, then: does God exist? No, and yes (and so, absolutely not!). But is it always an open question? of everything? “Does that oasis exist?”, but, “Does that table exist?” Does Russell need to solve for the “object” which he can not see (@Wittgenstein), for others (and their minds) to matter to him (us)? Is existence dependent on (a certain) knowledge?

If we do take "empirical" to mean "publicly observable" then we are in effect saying that our experiences play no role in our consideration of empirical data. — Manuel

I think there is a confusion between “experience” as in our personal encounter, “How was your experience at Disneyland?” and the process of learning about something over time, “Let me decide, I have experience in these matters.” And my understanding is that when we are talking about empiricism, it is the later use of "experience". That it started with observation over time; knowledge was what could be directly seen, but that "empiricism" then changed to more than vision (other means of scientific observation), but it still wanted to be based on a certainess like being directly seen.

The interesting part of the quote from Locke is that he makes the jump from learning about the names of colors (something we see which we name) to equating that with learning about the cause of your feelings (something we teach you to fear).

"What you are trying to say is that complex terms like colours are not innate because we can teach children to misunderstand mixing them. I guess this is the same example of fearness. You can feel the fear because previously someone taught you what is darkness, witches, demons, etc."

He is saying that not only is color not innate but that fear is also not innate. Now some people will argue that the experience of color is innate, but that is unnecessary for the uses of the concept of color. Now we can call the fear of a bear "innate" (inherent in our humanness of being eatable) but I can also teach you to fear something not innate (witches, demons, etc.) because of your previous experience with fear. The concept of fear allows for transference because of the nature of feelings (its physical reaction, the ability to recall it viscerally, etc.)

The knowledge of color could be empirical; we can match colors scientifically. But the concept of color is not an empirical matter; the use of the language surrounding color has its own logic. When I say "Is that color yellow", and the other agrees, it may not be the exact same yellow as a sample (we are not matching a color we see to our knowledge of the color) or I may even see it in a different light (our agreement is not based on exact agreement in perception), but it is not red or orange enough for us to bring that up, i.e., discussion of color can be vague as to its identity. Also, color does not have the same numerical identity as physical objects (you have six blocks, same red, but you only have six "reds" if the shades are different), nor can you "point to" the color of an object.

Now possibly because of some of these anomalies of the concept of color compared to the concept of objects, we feel there could be arbitrariness in the naming of colors. This could be true but how is it relevant? We could switch the names of dog and cat too.

I had one tutor a long time ago who asked: Are you sure you are sharing his problem? Isn't your impatience to go beyond it a lack of interest — Valentinus

Wittgenstein will refer to "interest" roughly 40 times in the Philosophical Investigations (the joys of text search). He will say what interests "us" (and what does not), and what he is doing is making a claim, in the style of OLP, for himself on behalf of all philosophers (and sometimes everyone).

Concepts lead us to make investigations; are the expression of our interest, and direct our interest. — Wittgenstein, PI #570

That "our interest" is "expressed" is to say that: what we care about, what matters to us in our lives, shapes our concepts (which is Witt's term explained in my OLP post--like following a rule, pointing, understanding, apologizing, intending, imagining, etc.) And this "us" is everyone who uses these concepts. But "us" philosophers are led; we, follow; we should let ourselves be directed.

For Cavell and Heidegger and Emerson, our interest(s), what we are attracted to/by, is fundamental. This is the human missing from philosophy. That we should be pulled by our interest, passively drawn by the world, not actively desiring an outcome or a form of result, say, certainty, or universality, or independent of me (the Hindu concept of duty and detachment--I commented on this elsewhere).

Witt, however, is very specific and exclusive about the interests of "our" investigation, contrasting them with the Interlocutor, who is urged, compelled, inclined, forced, to say things (from the desires of positivism, referentialism, empiricism).

#109. "It was not of any possible interest to us to find out empirically that..."

#126 Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us.

(The question whether the muscles of the larynx are innervated in connexion with internal speech, and similar things, may be of great interest, but not in our investigation.) p. 220

But our interest does not fall back upon these possible causes of the formation of concepts; we are not doing natural science; nor yet natural history. p. XII — Wittgenstein

This can be off-putting, and causes many (say, those with emperical hopes) to reject Witt because he minimizes their hopes, denies their applicability (thus the retorts that "He is only talking about language", or "only showing how words confuse us"). And this is where I question the wisdom of conducting philosophy this way, along with Nietszche's enigmatic style in appearing to make statements.

But I think there is a reason Witt does not satisfy our desire to be pandered to. If you are not doggedly attempting to "share his problem", he won't tell you; he speaks in riddles; he hides his conclusions; and leaves more questions than answers. The point of making you crawl through the mud blind for it is that, when you consider those questions, put yourself in the Interlocutor's shoes, and fill in Witt's blanks, you come to the realizations for yourself, conclusions justified by you without the need for premises, a change in attitude/perspective. When we say philosophy changes how you think, it isn't to say now you know the answer.

Or maybe the hoped for connection [seeing or understanding] will not happen at all. — Valentinus

Here the "impatience to go beyond it" will latch onto something like: the justification for language is "forms of life". Do we "lack interest" as we lack the virtue of curiosity? Or is it that we already come to a text with other interests (to defend), or a vested desire?

You describe the life of potential virtue but it does not seem to me that this would necessarily result in enabling one to be a 'better philosopher'... surely, that requires analytical ability as well. — Jack Cummins

These are well taken questions that can help to clarify. We can ask ourselves, what does the "ability to analyze" something amount to (what are its criteria for identity, its process, the standard for the judgement of it)? is it a gift? is it intelligence? is it knowledge? a skill? Could it be, not a "life of potential virtue", but the "ability" to imagine (say, examples), the ability for patience (with your impulse to reject the other/absolve yourself), the ability to remember (the tradition of philosophical expression/our ordinary criteria), etc.? And is our "ability" to analyze: a capability? or a willingness, a conscious effort? something to work towards? for/on ourself? If we start, as I said, from our individual position, then our voice, how we act, read, write, will matter and is subject to assessment.

Let's take the example of reading philosophy. Because we can take words to have meaning individually, we can read something and believe we understand it at first glance, without allowing ourselves to be puzzled, without allowing the text to make us question ourselves, to widen our context, our perspective. We can read superficially, we can read searching for what we want to hear, searching for a weakness so we have a "justification" to stop listening. Science is done better or worse, can not philosophy be done poorly or well? We do not have a method that you can follow to necessarily reach the same conclusion as me, as in science. Then how do we judge?

As I originally posted, there is the temptation to skip over our part and reach for the "straight highway" and create an external standard or set a form of universal rationality. Yet can't we determine (don't we have a part in): rigor, depth, expansion, consideration; and, alternatively, when someone is simply embracing easy dichotomies, using unpacked jargon, generalizing before investigation, characterizing merely to dismiss, etc. We are tempted to put it out of our hands, to turn philosophy into independent knowledge, but is it not more of a search, a process; learning, changing, perfecting our selves by reaching for greater personal responsibility for our actions and expressions? The philosophy we read is an example for us to follow; Emerson will see a path in exemplars of our higher self.

I am not sure that to be a philosopher, character is necessarily more important than intellect... — Jack Cummins

We could say above we are judging the writer more than the outcome, but that is not to say Wiggenstein is mistaken because he is snide or Austin's point is trivial because he is curt (though it didn't help). But knowledge is not our only relation to the world Cavell says. At a certain point it is I talking to you beyond something I can directly tell you--some knowledge or theory you can hold to. I make a claim, beyond our knowing, on you, for you to see, to follow, to acknowledge and accept. And what is a modern philosophical justification or basis for my claim, or for you to accept that claim? If we are to set aside the old standard of certainty, a rationality that can't be denied, how do we proceed? Is Wittgenstein's goal of perspecuity--a clear and precise presentation--a form of reason?(reasonableness?) Are his examples of viewing the world as it fits together (a Weltanschauung)--with all its criss-crossing forms of expression--convincing? But this presentation is categorically not rhetorical persuasion because my claim is not an argument to sway or cause you to believe what I know, but a powerless observation; it is a claim on you, it is yours to take up, to follow through, to see for yourself, to aspire to. So it will matter (it will count, as a kind of criteria) if I am thorough, and have run down every objection, and patiently waited to find the details and distinctions, etc. And it will matter as well that when you read philosophy, you respect its secrets and its need sometimes for indirectness (thanking it, Heddeigger will say); that you grant it the benefit of your doubt, go towards it, resist the straight (and lazy) route--taking something up as if every word was chosen of necessity and put down with the seriousness only awarded through hard work, persistence, resolve. I call these virtues, in contrast to the quick, the didactic, condescending, unmoving, dogmatic. Is not the aim of philosophy for understanding, communication, agreement, learning, clarity, epiphany--the betterment of the self?

You ask if 'there is no concession that philosophy being done better (or worse) falls on us being better?' Of course, it is debatable about what us being better means really, but I am inclined to think that the more we explore ideas helps us gain self-knowledge, even if we don't manage to gain absolute knowledge of the big questions, the self knowledge we gain can enable us to live in a more conscious and reflective manner than if we have not thought about the philosophy questions in the first place, and who knows, it can involve stumbling upon new ways of seeing. — Jack Cummins

The implication here might be that we are better for having come closer to gaining absolute knowledge of the big questions (finding the best "answer" we can--"best" being, say, the most certain, universal, etc.); that our reflection might come up with "seeing" something "new", and thus possibly: solving skepticism, perfecting communication, understanding through more knowledge.

Partly I am claiming it is letting go of a certain kind of answer; that self knowledge is not tied to being sure (or more sure) in our uncertainty, but in seeing how we force the framing of the "big questions", and instead turning to see what matters to us about things, the way we value something, how we judge it on its terms--in learning about our shared lives, we learn about how we do or want to fit in (or not). Without that kind of reflection, we lead lives of quiet desperation; we consent unknowingly to what we say.

If there is a debate my contention is that to do better philosophy we need to be virtuous. Our method and our attitude being more than our reasoning and our knowledge; that character comes before intellect Emerson will say. That we need patience, imagination, empathy, an open mind, the ability to leave things unanswered without further investigation; to not be imposing, dismissive, condescending, dogmatic; to remember, to pay tribute to the past; to be responsive to the concerns of others, to allow our words to reflect our selves; to speak as if we are bound to our words, having put everything into them as if we might die afterwards and they could still speak for us. But why would any of this need to be contentious?

The word "concept" here is used as a "term" by Witt with a specific use, not anything like a conception or an idea.
— Antony Nickles

Which is the same as re-defining a term. As we all know.....one can make anything stick by simply changing extant definitions to fit what’s being said. If Witt has something new to say, he should use terms specific to the novelty. — Mww

Well it's not anything new (like, say, the "thing-in-itself"), it is just for referring to a grouping. And he didn't choose the word; it's translated from the German, Begriff, or "term" (ironically) as I understand it, instead of Idee or Konzept. The index includes things like the concept of: experience, a game, a material object, mathematical certainty, noticing an aspect, a number, order, pain, propositions, saying something inwardly, seeing, sensation, and understanding.

you still feel the need to hang on to the feeling that we "all know the same stuff differently".
— Antony Nickles

It isn’t a feeling, it’s an empirical reality. — Mww

And here is the "conviction" in the "picture" that Witt is talking about prior to his quote about understanding lions (PI p. 252 3rd Ed.). When we talk about "reality" there are things we contrast it with like fantasy, or delusion, avoidance, etc. And when we talk about what is "real" we are discussing whether it is a fake, or not a prop. etc. But these examples are skipped over by the fixation with the need for certainty, which projects the quality of "reality" onto the world (I'll take this up in another thread).

Now you might be conflating knowledge with experience; but even then, most times it won't matter to say yours and mine are not the same (we both ate horrible food, we would both say our experience was terrible), though we could make a point of being particular about our experience, to say there was something special about it--but, where not necessary or applicable, this would be self-aggrandizing; "entitled" to our own standard, above our judgement. And, as I said, with somethings our experience is always different (movies, sunsets, private moments). But Witt gives many examples to show that knowing, as well as meaning, intending, and understanding, are not experiences.

One may know an iceberg as a floating chunk of ice, another may know an iceberg as a broken piece of glacier. — Mww

Wittgenstein will see this not as either of you "knowing" an iceberg your own way, but just that you are focusing on different aspects (noticing a use of the word), both of which are options in our relation to icebergs (as with the prism and cube earlier). There is the "use" of the concept iceberg that points out that it is a floating chunk of ice, "Look out! There's an iceberg ahead of the boat!" And there is the use of it in its relation to a glacier, "Wow! That huge iceberg over there just calved off the glacier." And these are contexts in which these uses are meaningful (there may be others).

However, OLP is addressing the issues that are skipped over that only philosophy can still bring to light--self-knowledge through understanding our responsibilities and the implications we are subject to......
— Antony Nickles

Subject to implies empirical psychology or social/linguistic anthropology. Fancy words for “group-think”. — Mww

I'm not sure if this is just meant to be cheeky, but, when I said "subject to", I meant that we are answerable to the implications of our expressions. We are subject to (on the hook for) someone asking, "Was that supposed to be an apology? Because you didn't even say you're sorry!" We can avoid or ignore our responsibility for our expressions and their implications, but their may be consequences, one of which may be rejection from the polis; that we are dismissed as incompetent, ignorant, insane, which, of course, may not be justified. But uncovering our ordinary criteria is not an anthropology, nor a popularity contest, nor just about language (and not the lives we lead in so many ways). And, again, they are not our "ordinary" expressions and actions, they are the unspoken implications and criteria of those (and our philosophical ones too).

Part of what Witt is trying to show in unearthing our desire for certainty is to turn us around to see our real needs and desires.
— Antony Nickles

Our desire for certainty is contained in reason itself; no need to unearth it, for it is manifest as a predicate of an intrinsic human condition. — Mww

Well, very self-aware; some may not see the lengths it compels us to, say, even to set aside our humanity and define our condition as less than perfectly rational, mired in doubt and belief.

To turn us around to see our real needs and desires presupposes we don’t already see them. Being both presumptuous, insofar as that which belongs to me necessarily, cannot but be apprehended by me, and self-contradictory, insofar as my intrinsic “desire for certainty” must already contain them. — Mww

The idea of everything being "seen" and readily apparrent is a fantasy of philosophy. If you are human; you are, even in a philosophical way, blind to yourself (apart from psychology's insights). To avoid our fear; to have a sense of complete control over our expressions, we internalize the possession of meaning; so it is entirely "apprehended" by me. But when we speek, we are open to being called out by our words, held to their implications apart from our wishes, more than what we may have apprehended.

And to the extent we are not explicitly aware of the criteria and conditions and possibiities of the use of our concepts in the context we find ourselves in, we do not consent to them freely, but are determined by them unwittingly.

We know how to walk, but do we thus know ("apprehend") the conditions of walking, the criteria that differentiates it from hopping, running; what about for: requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying, ordering, obeying, guessing, etc., not to mention: thinking, intending, meaning, appearing, etc. We do not "already see them"--their grammar--though we can ask ourselves and others about how they work (or don't) and what constitutes their being what they are (and not something else).

And my "intrinsic desire for certainty" does not "contain them". It skips over their vague rationality and partiality because they do not meet the created and imposed criteria of certainty and universality demanded by knowledge capable of facing skepticism. And they contain our desires and needs because what makes an apology an apology (the criteria, conditions, possibiities, and process), is what we value about it, what counts for us in it--the forgiveness of ourselves and others, the qualification of moral action gone wrong--these are the place it holds in our lives, why it has come to be what it is over thousands of years; what is essential about it--why we need and desire it to be the way it is.

Furthermore, as “real” needs and desires, herein taken to indicate fundamental or characteristically personal as opposed to empirically determinable, they are not susceptible to experiential incursion, for they are derived from purely subjective causality. Which ultimately reduces to some form of moral philosophy anyway, which I wouldn’t think has anything whatsoever to do with OLP. — Mww

Well, this is not a knowledge of new facts or scientific "incursion" or reason to "determine" something with certainty (there are empiricism's problems, and there are philosophy's issues), but something that we seem to know already, but have to remind ourselves of to give an account, though it is open to plain view to everyone (and subject to claims by everyone). And to say it is uncertain, not "determinate", personal, caused by the "subjective", is to dismiss OLP's knowledge because it does not reach that standard, without investigating its own (varied) rationality and criteria, some of which do not lead to certainty or agreement or universality, but nevertheless fulfill what we need from them. Being condescended to with derogatory words thrown from an ivory tower of "reason's" own creation is simply dogmatism, prejudice, and judgement without any understanding (See a new thread I've posted). And to say it "reduces to some form of moral philosophy" is the same old division that what is not certain etc., is characterized as a morass of unresolvable relativism. And OLP is the direct showing against this dismissal of our vague, fallible lives as emotivism, etc.; that our everyday criteria do show us what is essential, how our world is determinable in different (partial) ways--and that we have a part in our actions and expressions beyond knowledge. This is not personal or "caused" by some idea that each person creates the world all on their own, but in the lives all of us have lived together (yet even including the personal, the adverse, and the new in that vision).

Are Witt’s ideas a special and unique enlightenment, to be pitted against the dark history of philosophy, which in its entirety represented nothing but ‘a desire to solve skepticism with knowledge’ motivated by the ‘fear of the human’? — Joshs

Touché; I guess in the zeal to get our point across, we can all be a bit narrow in our focus (thus, I will mention, proof of my point, however). I did not intend to make a sweeping judgement about "all" philosophy, and with the larger theme simply being our part in doing philosophy well. The tendency to want to solve our doubts by demanding certainty is only an example of one form of dogmatism, such as: the end bit of Plato, every grand finale of Hegel, the whole bit of Descartes, the starting move of Kant (and positivism)... Even where this temptation pops up, as I said, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater (as happened to Marx just because he thought the ending would take care of itself). Without Descartes, we would never be able to see the depth of our doubt (and Cavell will even argue there is a "truth" to radical skepticism). And Hegel's dialectic not only sees a way through his "dark path", but shows us the temptation of dichotomies and what they hide. Socrates' questions (along the same method as OLP) lead us to a better understanding of our selves and our lives (even if he is a jerk to everyone he talks to). And without the depth of Kant's work on conditions and possibilities (along with positivism), we would never get to Wittgenstein's later work. Witt doesn't have ideas to accept in contrast, only the insight into ourselves after tearing down some of philosophy's houses of cards.

In Heidegger’s’What is a Thing’ he recognized that a never-ending rethinking of the nature of a thing has taken and continues to take place in philosophy and science. Isn’t the same true of the motivations for failing to embrace his outlook that Wittgenstein is assuming as somehow transcending cultural eras? — Joshs

The idea is intriguing that the desire for certainty might somehow block people from even acknowledging that the way Witt is leading us to see for ourselves is legitimate philosophy. But I will grant that the fear of doubt is a cultural phenomenon. Without the Enlightenment, and all the success of science, no one before Descartes may have tried to apply its example to our moral lives and our ability to understand each other. Of course, Socrates also tumbled from his doubts about objects, to doubts about our political and moral lives, but it may wax and wane perennially--something to think about (pretty sure its waning now). Say, even if we don't take skepticism to be part of the human condition, we could say instead it is a constant threat. But isn't it better to know our impulse in the face of it so we can avoid another philosophical pitfall? is there no concession that philosophy being done better (or worse) falls on us being better?

There are actions and consequences and it really only boils down to whether you can live with the results of your actions. — Darkneos

And why isn't this an acceptable description of where we are in a moral moment? There are such things as actions: a slight, or betrayal, lies, recrimination; and also reactions: an excuse, qualification, etc. And if we look at what they tell us about moral action, we might see that there is the act, then there is the reckoning for it; that there is a responsibility after the consideration of ought and the founding of morals. Most times we know what to do and what to expect, but then there are times when we don't know exactly what to do; nonetheless we act (or fail to). The moral realm is where we stand for what we say (or not), act beyond what is good and right, or against it. But we are held to it, we are separated by it. Where our knowledge of morality ends, we begin; into our future, our self--can you live with the results?

the only thing that really matters is the cost for going against them. — Darkneos

And "what really matters" will be what counts for us (how we will account for ourselves), what we will take as our culture, our words, that we will be heard in, be bound to, answerable for (or flee from).

I don't believe in right and wrong. — Darkneos

But here, right and wrong does not need your belief. You may apologize correctly, or make a mess of it. You can say whatever you'd like, but only some things will be a threat, or an accusation (or both). An excuse has a certain form, or it simply becomes a plea. You can call these "objective", but you'd be using a 300-yr-old framework that wants to ensure something before it happens, enclose an act before we bring our partiality to it (Emerson will say). Must we agree universally or there can be nothing we call a rational discussion of a moral moment? that without agreement or the surety of that outcome, we can never begin?

Asking the question might be the final conscious effort to find specific information. — synthesis

Not to psychologize philosophy, but Cavell uses the term repression for the impact that the traditional search for certainty has on our ability to see and take seriously our ordinary criteria and the contexts they live in (as if everything is out in the open; seen all at once; I am understood immediately, or you do not). So finding our way back to a simple truth is a process that digs deeper (though not a hidden process) than rationally deciding the right framework to allow philosophy to stand over the world and know it, where others, say, simply believe it.

...contrary to the accepted order of things intellectual, the answer must be known before the question posited. After all, how could you possible know what to ask without this knowledge? — synthesis

Wittgenstein (and Socrates) view "knowing" as a kind of remembering (what you already know). Of course this is not an emperical investigation, it is based on the fact that we grow into society at the same time we pick up the langauge intertwined with our practices. So, you may not normally consider what differentiates running or hopping or skipping from walking, but if I made a claim about what counts for it, i.e., how we would judge it, what matters to one and not another, etc., you could agree with me. This is much as Socrates asked people on the street about justice, etc., and they had answers (or could agree with Socrates') seemingly before the question is asked.

And Cavell will draw out Witt's use of his example of a simplified language at the start of the Philosophical Investigations to show that we have a whole entire world of concepts (practices) mastered like pointing, and asking, and seeing, and calling, before we can tell someone to give us a slab. A "question" thus already stands in a world of conditions and categorical possibilities, with our only, say, not knowing how to proceed, possibly into a new context. But the "answer" lies around us (behind us to turn and see as Plato and Emerson and others will say).

The wonderful thing about thinking is that nobody knows anything about it.... — synthesis

And here we may want to reserve "thinking" as something like a secret or new or similar to imagination (and the sloppiness of language allows for this) and to hold "knowledge" to be: for certain or universally for all of us. But if we examine what we imply when we say "I think..." we are sometimes using it as a hypothesis, much in the way we use "I believe...." (it is raining). Or, if I ask you "What do you think?" it could be in its use to solicit an opinion (about prospects for peace in the Middle East?) or asking for agreement (about getting Thai food?). There is also the sense of solving a problem, mulling over options, e.g., "Let me think about it."

Now can we say these aren't things we know about thinking? even that we already knew about thinking? And yet we skip past them to create an idea of something personal, something special to me (or something impersonal, to erase my unpredictability, my human failings). And maybe in asking the question why, we are looking for an answer that has always been there.

The only way out is to introduce some normative idea of why an Austin is doing something different. I want to really focus on this - because even the fact of meta-cognitive illusion etc only matters from a normative perspective. It doesn't necessarily have to be a philosophically normative perspective, but it is going to be normative. The 'puzzle' in my earlier post is to explain why OLP is a better approach (than say german idealism) without using philosophical resources. — csalisbury

I have said this in another post about "ought", but any force of "normativity" does not come from OLP's claims to descriptions of our ordinary criteria for apologizing; it comes from apologizing itself.

I think the chief achievements of OLP are at a meta-level: it was the site of the invention of not only of metaphilosophy (including the journal of that name, which is still going to this day and quite good), but also of metasemantics, that is, the search for the conditions under which expressions become meaningful, and what it is for something to be meaningful. — Snakes Alive

I would say a part of all philosophy is about philosophy--in critique of its past aims or means or other philosophers. And "the search for the conditions under which expressions become meaningful, and what it is for something to be meaningful" seems a pretty good description of OLP's method of uncovering the conditions of our expressions which are how "it is for something to be meaningful" but it seems dismissive to say this is "meta" or "semantic" as if we don't learn anything about our world and ourselves in explicating the conditions and possibilities of what we say about them.

The OLPers had a view of the foundations of meaning, where the foundational conditions were not coherently deniable from within, as you made use of those very conditions ('ordinary language is correct language,') but which themselves were multiform and contingent (something like the the shifting riverbed). — Snakes Alive

The idea that we are talking about "ordinary language" is one of the misconceptions that I have tried to dispell about OLP. Moore's insistence on solving skepticism with "common sense" is basically the cliche that OLP is associated with from then on. But when Wittgenstein moved from the Tractatus to PI he was trying to investigate why people had this desire for "foundations of meaning".

And I have an insight into how it appears that a concept's "conditions [are] not coherently deniable". If I make a claim about the "conditions" (the criteria) for what entails an apology, and you agree that those are accurate, then it can be said we agree that if one doesn't meet those conditions, they have not performed an apology. Now, as I have said elsewhere, this is not a claim that ordinary "language" is correct, but that our ordinary criteria of apologizing are just what it is to apologize--our path to forgiveness from the other--made explicit (not usually considered). An apology is either done correctly or not (with felicity or aptly Austin will say), but this is not to secure a foundation for apologies, but we simply use our insight of these drawn-out ordinary criteria to learn about ourselves, our world, and our lives together (this is not "semantics", nor simply "pragmatics"). To deny the conditions of a concept is simply to rationally disagree with my claim to the terms of our ordinary criteria for it, through the imagined examples and contexts of OLP, about what constitutes an apology.

My view of philosophy is a bit more prosaic. It's just a bad method of inquiry, based on misconceptions that we have no reason to bind ourselves to anymore. It's like entrail-reading to try to see the future, say. We just don't really have a reason to do it anymore. — Snakes Alive

By "method of inquiry" are we not taking OLP as such a thing? that we investigate to learn knowledge of ourselves that we had not realized before that provides insight into what we inquire about? And this wouldn't be trying to see or ensure the future so much as remember our past, uncover what we are agreeing to when we say something so we may consent to our future rather than be determined by it. Should it lead to a different outcome? or be held to a different standard? or be concerned with things other then when we don't know what to do; how to live a better life; how we might come to agreement about art and politics? And isn't part of philosophy its internal criticism to root out misconceptions? And what would be better equipped to do that?

there's a lot to learn about how & what we value by looking at how we talk. & There's also something fun (even creatively joyful) in sussing out our implicit criteria. — csalisbury

Austin is entertaining in his ability to play with our concepts and yet in a way that resonates and satisfies the desire to actually get down to brass tacks and be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. I would add that looking and describing the grammar of a concept is only the first step; that creating examples to make claims about our ordinary criteria provides the discussion point for our philosophical issues (Cavell will call the examples "philosophical data").

Going back one generation, Walter Benjamin's Arcade Project is in the same spirit. In pop culture, I think there was a move in this direction with Carlin & his heirs. Or, to be fair, Lenny Bruce -->Carlin-->Next generation. Obviously it's a little looser, but there's something OLP-y about Seinfeld, for example, at least if you squint. — csalisbury

Cavell has a high opinion of Benjamin, but I have yet to try anything. Cavell uses culture as examples for philosophy, but I had not thought about the fact that actual stand-up comedy does unearth our unreflected shared lives, a very interesting point. And maybe the satisfaction of comedy is the feeling of community in realizing something we had not considered is common to others, and that the humor comes in part from the surprise of the unrealized. Cavell (and Nietszche) will examine the tragedy of missing, dismissing, or overlooking this insight into ourselves.

there's some lack of meta-cognitive awareness of what goes on when we use [language], in general. But sadly, I think philosophy itself is also not a great medium for giving people these meta-cognitive skills. Any understanding of the destructive portion of OLP has to start with the recognition that philosophy, objectively, doesn't work. That is, it is not what it claims to be – a form of effective inquiry. — Snakes Alive

Witt will talk a lot about philosophy not being able to work, get traction, be anything but a house of cards, a fly in a bottle. Heiddeger and Emerson say that the more we grasp (for certainty) the more slips through our fingers; our acceptance of only a narrow criteria for knowledge blinds us to our more varied lives.

So to the extent OLP is "destructive" (of the house of cards) it is to set aside the "picture" (the paradigm) of positivism in order to see our ordinary criteria (amongst the rubble Witt will say). My claim in this OP is that OLP is an effective method of inquiry that allows us to get some grist for the mill of our fundamental philosophical issues (morality, meaning, art, knowledge, truth, the betterment of ourselves, etc.). That "Essence is expressed by Grammar" PI #371 Not just a different form of "essence", but providing us a view of what is essential to us--what matters to us about something; what differentiates it from something else; how we judge, see, count in its regard, etc. Our ordinary criteria express our needs and desires and hopes and agreements--our lives. As well, @csalisbury, although there may be a need to say philosophy should not be a home for dogmatism or ideology or envy or fear, it need not erase the human, the fallible, the partial, the uncertain. That without any surety that we will agree, we nevertheless may have a productive discussion.