If I understand OLP correctly, the move to look at what's actually happening in philosophical discussion is right - people are talking about words and how they're used. — csalisbury

I appreciate taking a stab at understanding OLP and joining the conversation. I would only add that, yes, OLP is looking at what is said in philosophical discussion (expressions) but also the other uses there are for the activities like thinking, believing, knowing, intending, but also regular expressions and uses of apologizing, sitting in a chair, pointing, seeing, etc. And in talking about the uses of words we see the criteria that frame a use--the way it works (its Grammar Witt says), which, ultimately, provides insight into our philosophical issues, and ourselves.

A lot of the animus toward OLP seems to stem from a feeling that it's trivializing those values and emotions and modes of awareness. But values are borne out in action, not discussion; And emotions, or different ways of attuning to the world, are borne out in activities that do that kind of attuning. The 'click' can only happen if you're also willing to give up the (implicit) idea that living-well (in accordance with your values, say) means simply verbally laying claim to the right kind of thing, or discussing the world in a certain way. — csalisbury

I won't quibble here, as I think the gist of what you are trying to point out is relevant. It is hard to avoid the dismissive nature of OLP (Moore, Austin to an extent) when it does not take the effort to account for the legitimate concerns of traditional skeptical philosophy (Cavell does a better job of this). And I agree with looking past philosophical theories to connect them to a motivation. That it is doing more than making a claim; it is a person taking a stance, and it reflects on that person. Cavell will discuss this as "living your skepticism". I would also point out (as I did above regarding a kayak) that when we are making claims about the criteria of our expressions (and actions), we are at the same time making claims about the ways we live in the world--not just discussing language, nor just speculating without any of the value of truth.

Nietzsche singles out Christianity for attack which he claims is based on ressentiment. But what about Nazism and Fascism. Aren't they also based on resentment. — Ross Campbell

It is hard to see Nietzsche as an analytical philosopher (as with Emerson), say, responding to Kant, because he seems to be only commenting on everyday life, social institutions, our culture, people's attitudes, religion, etc. But, to understand his deeper contribution to the philosophical tradition, we must take him for more than what just seems to be his opinion, social critiques, and apparent psychological claims or judgments about people or groups.

Nietszche tells stories; make-believe histories (part of what becomes the method of modern Ordinary Language Philosophy) and one insight of this is it shows a historicity to morality, that it has a past. This highlights that deontological morals in contrast appear dead, static (viewed positively: timeless, universal), but also that his stories have characters, which also implies that philosophical moral theory is constructed, but, importantly, by people--and people have reasons.

The search for certainty and prediction and normativity is based on a human desire to avoid the fear of uncertainty, of doubt; fear that we might not have any way of telling what is right and what to do. So this goal of deontological morality has an intent. The use of the word "ressentiment" is simply a placeholder for this philosophical perspective, this attitude (as Wittgenstein will say) to our moral life.

Much as we have to translate Plato's Republic into an analogy for the creation of ourselves (as much as a polis), try to imagine Nietzsche is analogizing a traditional philosophical argument into the psychology of a person (or persons); the philosophical argument that has rationally considered the matter and come to a judgment with justification--much as we think of knowledge of the world--personified in one judging the good; what we would call, in a person, moralizing. Basically, Christianity is just the straw man in an analytical critique of our philosophical tradition.

Now a lot of people take Nietzsche as just throwing out deontological morals entirely (which leads to a lot of trouble with the impression that everything depends on me--my "will", or "power"). But this impression of Nietszche comes from the fact there is a moment when the regular ways run out and we do not know what to do; we become responsible beyond our expected common acts. There is a time after the setting or following of rules, where we are subject to what we have done, that we must make ourselves known; he will refer to this as the "human" because we in sense create ourselves in that moment, stand for ourselves, define ourselves beyond (above he will say) our impersonal (universal) ethics, averse to them, if need be, says Emerson, but not instead of (Nietszche is not against morals).

Now the fear of this responsibility is the wish to deny its part in our human condition, to desire to take "us" out of the picture entirely by trying to decide everything up front with rationality. If we have already decided, than we do not see the "world" (the context) that will matter at a moral moment; we kill it before we get there, so never reach it--everything is taken care of for us already without having to look at the situation at hand. This is the "person" characterized by Nietszche who believes that being right in their morals absolves them of further responsibility, allows them to skip straight to judgment. And so the "ressentiment" is to ignore our human position, to flee from ourselves, stuck within a moral picture drawn by others (a slave to it), walled off from the world of a moral moment.

As such, my naming is nothing but a relation between the image and my conception of it by which it is known by me. Witt has generalized concepts as having optional characterizations which are then used by anybody, when parsimony suggests concept generation is as private as the mind that contains them. — Mww

Well, we are past trying to understand the method of OLP and even Witt's example and on to just a statement of a theory of language justified by the fact that it is, the simplest conclusion? So we could go down a road where I try to give enough examples where you might see that we do not generate "concepts" or "conceptions" in the "mind' but simply express ourselves in our shared language that mirrors our similar lives in a public process of the uses of our common activities. I don't really want to try to recreate the entire attempt of the Philosophical Investigations to shift people's perspective and attitude, especially because what I seem to be met with appears to be just dogmatic refusal to even consider or understand the process. Not that this isn't a normal and understandable end in philosophical discussions, it's just that in this instance this type of change in perspective is not reached through argument but in you being able to see for yourself what I am (and Witt is) describing. I have tried above to attempt a straightforward argument at times (though that is not the method of OLP), and I would certainly consider discussing specific examples in the PI or any specific one imagined (I just addressed one in the post "How and Why").

“knowing” is not a concept, it is a mental activity, or part of a methodological procedure, as is “conceiving”, and understanding, judging, cognizing. — Mww

The word "concept" here is used as a "term" by Witt with a specific use, not anything like a conception or an idea. It is merely a general grouping of the kind of activities that he is investigating--like, conceiving, understanding, judging, etc., except he is trying to show that they are not like creating meaning with words or generating an individual idea, but, for example, that "thinking" is more like problem solving or trying something new or following a theme into a new context, listening to and seeing the world, etc., than reflecting, or considering, or mulling over, or imagining, or talking to oneself--which all have their own grammar and are their own things separate to "thinking".

This vision of a more public process of language does not mean that I am not an individual with my own interests, insights, perspective, or even experiences; but that all these personal matters can all be expressed (or kept secret) in a more "public" process (one not determined beforehand) that requires our responsibility instead of our "meaning".

it is clear that “how knowing is in our lives” is nothing more than......hey, big deal....we know stuff. I mean, it is quite absurd to suggest that we DO NOT know stuff, so how important can it be to wonder how knowing is in our lives? And if the argument is that knowing has a number of different options in how it can be used, again....big deal. No matter how many options there are for its use, the end result is exactly the same. We know stuff. Thing is....we all know different stuff, and, we all know the same stuff differently. So even if how knowing is in our lives is a valid expression, it doesn’t say anything we didn’t already know. — Mww

And here you see the examples, but are trivializing the impact, which is one of the attitudes taken towards OLP (it can also seem dogmatic, as in: you are not apologizing if you don't follow the criteria of an apology!). With all this agreement, you still feel the need to hang on to the feeling that we "all know the same stuff differently". There is the part where you grant it and the part you take it back Austin will say. The skeptic does have a point, Cavell says in Knowing and Acknolwedging, and OLP must record and take account of it (this is not what I am discussing now though--there are links above to a few Cavell essays that might be interesting on that front). And there are possibilities where we "know the same stuff differently", like "knowing" (in the sense of, experiencing) a movie or a sunset, but we can't be said to "know" our phone number in different ways (the criteria being, we can recall it--and with OLP's method you either agree or not with this claim to criteria--though of course we may remember it in different ways). And when you say "So even if how knowing is in our lives is a valid expression, it doesn’t say anything we didn’t already know" that is exactly how OLP works; Witt will say it leaves everything as it is. We are not finding something new, but rememebering what we may have forgotten--something anyone can see.

Witt went backwards, as did all analytic language philosophers. It used to be that the fact we know things is given, and the quest was in how is knowledge possible. That fundamentalism evolved....probably because of its intrinsically speculative nature....into the broadening of how knowing things interactively affects us, and that broadening determinable, made possible, because the language we use to express how each of us are affected by different options for knowing, is right there in your face, thus being very far from speculative. — Mww

This could be said to be the history of the Enilightenment and how science (or positivism's influence) has, justifiably, chipped away at what philosophy only handled with a speculative epistimology. And the determinism and certainty that this brings is explicit and "right there in your face". 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 in the world in our actions and expressions; our human conditions; what a moral moment is; art; political standing and consent; etc.

Hardly a satisfying philosophy, I must say. — Mww

Philosophy and OLP specifically will have its own endeavors and its own satisfactions. 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. If anything is individual, our interests are, and there is no argument to change that if someone just doesn't care, which is fine.

How and why are questions that bleed into one another.

Suppose I put a book back on a mantel. Then a large truck rumbles by, which vibrations are enough to cause the book to fall. If someone asks, "How did that happen?" a variety of answers are possible. That the vibrations from the passing truck caused it to fall is obviously true. But if the book is too large for the mantel, that is also an explanation. Or if I placed the book carelessly. But even with respect to the apparent-proximate physical cause, the passage of the truck, we could say, if the foundations of the house had been more substantial, then the vibrations would not have affected the book. Or if the driver had not detoured from his usual route today. — Pantagruel

J.L. Austin (among others with the same method) looks at what is ordinarily implied in our expressions. In this case a book has fallen off a mantel, and you have imagined a context in which someone asks "How did that happen?", which is a good start imagining an example with a context (part of the method). One implication is that the question is an accusation; obviously the questioner was not in the room . They are asking someone in the room (say, me), if I had anything to do with the book falling off the mantel--as if to a child, or because it is a prized book. This is not so much to ask about the cause as to lay blame and to demand a plausible explanation from me. This is a moral claim and not an epistimological one (about physical causality). As Austin uncovered, I will have an excuse, or a qualification, etc. "It wasn't me! It was my brother!" or "I knocked it off, but it was an accident when I spun around." or "I must have placed it carelessly." If this were something serious, we could imagine an investigation that involved finding if the truck was not following its normal route, or if the foundation had been unsoundly constructed.

Another implication of course is that the question is asked just out of curiosity, as a request from me for an impersonal explanation (as if the question could be asked of themself). And there will be certain kinds of things that can be said, such as the truck, or an earthquake, or gravity, poor foundation, etc. These are physical causes, determined by an empirical investigation.

Is it possible to dissociate the method or mechanism from the reason? Or from a reason?

Asking how is always implicitly asking why. Every causal explanation is contingent on some purposive stance within the question. — Pantagruel

And now it might be clearer to see how a method (the physical cause) can be separate from a reason (did you do it on purpose?), because causality and culpability are different questions (the "purposive stance" of them is different). Of course some excuses will push off onto physical causality ("I didn't do it, it just fell when a truck went by.")

Separately, I think it's Austin who says (or Cavell) we usually ask "How do you know that?" (which is answered with, say, justification: "Well I ran a study that found...") but not often "Why do you know that?" (answered personally, say, defensively: "I know it might sound trivial, but I've found 13th-century Irish poetry to be profound").

What he is trying to demonstrate is that we use the options (publicly) available in a concept.
— Antony Nickles

Yes, we do that. Isn’t it then a matter of what options are available in a concept? If the thought is that there is only one option available in a concept, that being its relation to something, what other options can there be? All that’s left is that to which a concept does not relate, or, a plethora of somethings to which a concept can relate. — Mww

We might be getting tripped up on Witt's term "concept", but, as I laid out above, the concept of, say, "knowing" has a number of different options in which it can be used (a skill, information, acknowledgement). And these don't "relate" to anything, they just are how we use the concept of knowing, how knowing is in our lives. Now the idea in this section of the PI is that you have a cube, a number of things of which can be pointed out with the word's options ("uses" or "senses" Witt calls them), one of which is the fact that it is a prism, similar in that way to a triangular prism. The point being it is not whatever you have in mind that provides the meaning, but the public concept (of prisms and cubes). You are expressing one of those "uses" (not "using words") rather than there being something like a mental picture that gives the word a "meaning".

What Witt is trying to do in this section is grant the interlocutor the framework that they want (meaning as picturing) and still show how it can't account for how language works.
— Antony Nickles

* * * So my framework can account for how language works, even if sometimes it doesn’t, but we cannot say it never does, so the claim we cannot, is false. Or....I’m not right in what Witt is saying. — Mww

By "framework" I was not referring to something personal to you, like your background or way of looking at things ("my framework"), but that Witt is trying to allow the interlocutor the "picture" of meaning that they want--the philosophical theory that when we see a cube or say cube, there is an image in our mind (our meaning).

I think what is happening is you are adamantly defending something you think I (or Witt) is trying to take away. And this is getting in the way of seeing the rationality of OLP's method even before we get to whatever you believe the repercussions are. Above I try to address what it is people believe Witt is trying to deny (e.g., the individuality of our expressions), and how that is satisfied in other ways.

Sounds like you're ready to take a few years off, design your sister's house, punch some grade school children in the face, and then come back and write an entire book trying to figure out why you got sucked into thinking language only worked one way with a single standard, where you'd have to field questions from your old self and imagine examples of what we would say under which circumstances to be able to see all the places langauge reaches in our lives, and why we would want to ignore all that.

You know we can imagine anything we like, any time we like? — Mww

As I've said, you can say anything you like but only certain things in certain circumstances will count as, say, an apology--insincerity, lack of acknowledgement of wrong, not saying "I'm sorry" without qualification, etc. are all ways it can go wrong. That's why we have a whole nexus of concepts like excuses, qualifications, mitigating circumstances, etc.

because we grew up with cubes as we practiced naming and picturing and focusing on aspects of objects and the language that goes with these activities.
— Antony Nickles

Isn’t naming the source of words? — Mww

I'm not sure about the "source" but Witt starts the PI with the picture of a child learning language as naming. The investigation starts from there looking into why we want all of language to work the same way. What Witt is trying to do in this section is grant the interlocutor the framework that they want (meaning as picturing) and still show how it can't account for how language works.

Language doesn't go with [activities]; it comes after it. — Mww

And this is the picture that there is an entire world of activities, and that learning our language is simply pointing and saying the word that goes with it. That there is a "before" and "after". But we learn language and the world together; we are corrected, we mimic, we observe, etc. Of course this is not a lesson in education, but the analytical observation is that all the different ways language works (and is learned) are as varied and deep as our lives with which they are wrapped up in.

No: the fact that one speaks of the appropriate word does not shew the existence of a something that etc.. One is inclined, rather, to speak of this picture-like something just because one can find a word appropriate
— Wittgenstein, PI

I’m guessing the part left off “Something that etc”, is “comes before the mind”, which transforms the quote into, “the fact that one speaks of the appropriate word does not show the existence of a something that comes before the mind”. Yet, it does exactly that, for otherwise it must be the case there is something named or nameable, that does not exist as coming before the mind, which is absurd. — Mww

The full thought is that deciding a word is "appropriate" does not "shew that the meaning of a word is a something that comes before our mind... [which is] the exact picture we want to use...." #139 (my emphasis in bold). What he is trying to demonstrate is that we use the options (publicly) available in a concept. Here, we can picture a cube in our mind (give the interlocutor what they want) but we still speak of the fact that it is a prism in connection with a triangular prism. So Witt's point is that the picturing of something is not "meaning" something exact, i.e., when we picture the cube are we "picturing" its squareness? its edges? that it's a prism?

[our] creative act is open, at every moment, to the possibility of complete cessation. — charles ferraro

The word itself is dead before it is brought alive into time and context--pedestrian, mundane, banal, or contrary, unexpected, mad. Our very expressions begin and end. But, even in sight of its death, some writing holds itself responsible as we are when we speak: to answer for our expression, stand by it, be seen in it, to make ourselves intelligible, known.

If we turn Descartes around (as Plato, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein suggest for ourselves) he is not as worried about "existence" as knowledge, worried about its certainty to ensure his world (a piece of wax) and even himself.

So we can hope to find a kind of knowledge (thought) that will take the responsibility for ourself away, or we can ensure that we are known by our thoughts. We can look for certainty, or we can be certain, specific, thorough, diligent, resolute.

this perpetual openness to and oppressive, arbitrary, unrelenting subjection to the possibility of complete cessation clearly indicates, to me, that the contingent Cartesian thinking and the indubitably certain contingent Cartesian existing don't really matter that much, even if they are man's own creation. — charles ferraro

Our desire for a certainty in knowledge kills what it seeks before it begins. Emerson suggests we live open in front. If we are to let ourselves matter, is it our being subject to doubt at every turn that stops our first step? or will we exist only so far as we know?

But, perhaps, the most fundamental question of all is whether the occurrence of my "thinking" and of my "existing" is vulnerable, or invulnerable, to the possibility of complete cessation? — charles ferraro

For it might indeed be that if I entirely ceased to think, I should thereupon altogether cease to exist. — Descartes

...a more adequate and more complete version of the truth would be expressed by the phrase: "Cogito contingenter, ergo Sum contingenter." The: When and while I am thinking contingently (in the first person, present tense mode), I must be existing contingently." — charles ferraro

I'm not well versed in Descartes, but Cavell read a phrase of Emerson's that I always thought interesting. Emerson quotes his reader saying what they are too timid to: " 'I think' 'I am' ", and the take is along the lines of the distinction that Wittgenstein sees between words and their expression (that they are said, by me, right now, in this place, etc.). With Emerson it is in the sense, as you say, of a performance. But J.L. Austin will identify a class of words that perform something in being said (expressed), as in: I do, I promise, ect. The saying of it is to marry--Saying I promise is to make the promise. In this sense, saying "I think!" "I am!" is to perform the creation of your own existence. To assert yourself; claim who you are; what you are made of (averse to conformity, Emerson will say).

Now this is a little different than our imagining of "ceasing to exist", but is it really? Put the way you say as "existing contingently", when we simply conform to everyone else, part of us, in a sense that really matters to us, ceases to be; to be distinct.

In conclusion, because of their contingent natures, the true significance of Descartes' Cogito and even of his indubitably certain Sum, is their inherent existential tenuousness and triviality — charles ferraro

So it is not the proof that is tenuous, but us--are we to be trivial?

Well, basically @Mww is responding to my first draft.

I edited my response quite a bit after initially putting it up; it looks like if you click on the link provided in a notification or whatever, it does not take you to the most updated version, unless you refresh the page. I don't know how to fix that.

In any event, I'll give Mww a chance to look at the current version and paste in what responses still fit. It is much the same except I got a better handle on the way Witt uses the word cube in his example.

Question: are images part and parcel of human mentality?

"What really comes before our mind when we understand a word? — Isn’t it something like a picture? Can’t it be a picture". (Emphasis in original)
--Wittgenstein, PI #139 — Mww

This is not Witt speaking, but his questioner; his Interlocutor (or, as it where, Witt's former (positivist) self asking the question). And the next paragraphs are Witt imagining cases of what an answer would look like, and to account for other applications.

We are missing what comes right after this, which is essential:

"Well, suppose that a picture does come before your mind when you hear the word "cube", say the drawing of a cube. In what sense can this picture fit or fail to fit a use of the word "cube"? — Wittgenstein PI

(my emphasis)

Here Witt is asking for a grammatical answer, the ways in which the uses of the word cube with this picture might fit (or fail to). And the interlocutor is proposing a version of language that connects picturing a thing when we understand a word. Before accepting it, Witt pauses ("Weeeeellllll"--see above) and asks us to imagine ("suppose", above) a use of the word cube like this and if there are other uses of the word that include this picture.

From the sensibility of the receiver, then, “the way this picture fits” cannot be otherwise than to immediately relate to the perception, for if it didn’t, there is no explanation for the drawing of THAT picture by my mind. This makes explicit I already knew what a cube is. — Mww

This is the first framework that comes to mind; Witt will say we are "inclined" to it, or it "forces" itself on us. We know what cubes are, we can picture one, even without it in front of me. But this does not dictate the use of the word cube; say, that it can only be used as the relation of what is pictured to what is perceived.

141. Now clearly we accept two different kinds of criteria for this: on the one hand the picture (of whatever kind) that at some time or other comes before his mind; on the other, the application which—in the course of time—he makes of what he imagines. (And can't it be clearly seen here that it is absolutely inessential for the picture to exist in his imagination rather than as a drawing or model in front of him; or again as something that he himself constructs as a model?) — Wittgenstein PI

Here the picture of the word; there the use or application of the word (even without the picture).

.....but Witt allows the something that comes before the mind to immediately relate to the perception....I hear “cube”, I immediately image “something can imagine like a picture of”, a “cube”....
(“...say, the drawing of a cube...”)
(ibid 139) — Mww

It is asked by the Interlocutor if we understand a word instantly, and by Witt, if we see the fit of a use immediately as well. #138-139. As we have seen one is separate from the other, so we can ask: what do we understand when we picture a cube? does the picturing/perceiving have meaning? or does the use?

Witt then asks, “In what way can this picture fit or fail to fit a use of the word “cube”?...”
(ibid 139)[/quote]

And here is the OLP methodology of imagining examples that would show us the place of picturing a cube to the use of the word "cube" to try to understand if the word cube allows for only one use--the representation or understanding ("meaning") of the picture. He does give an example, but it is like a riddle: he says (rephrased) it is easy to imagine a method of projection that allows for pointing to a triangle prism and saying the word "cube" that actually fits the picture of a cube. We have a picture of a cube (which is technically a type of prism) and we are projecting the use of the cube's "prismness" onto a different (triangular) prism. And this is a different use of the word cube (comparing aspects) than the framework that comes to mind when we imagine understanding an object when picturing/perceiving it, or imagine meaning a word as expressing the picture. The picture without the use has no meaning.

Though "the picture of the cube did indeed suggest a certain use [practice] to us [representation], but it was possible for me to use it differently [as an example of a prism]." #139. He will say this "called our attention to (reminded us of) the fact that there are other processes, besides the one we originally thought of, which we should be prepared to call 'applying the picture of a cube'." #140

some post hoc epistemologically invalid imaginings. — Mww

Yes, I don't think this is his easiest example (I would see my discussion of "I believe" above). But it is not epistemology as finding (facts or other) justifications for explanations of a general theory of meaning or language; this is an investigation (it is an epistimology) to see how our concepts (practices) work differently, or similarly, and that there are different ways each can be used. And part of OLP is imagining cases, (even fantastical ones--to make sense of a context for philosophy's fantasies) to compare, or draw connections, or show distinctions, etc.

The perception is hearing, so that “picture” which has come before the mind cannot be some external, objective illustration; it is, therefore, because it is before the mind, it must have been drawn by the mind, and is a representation of this kind of perceptual sensation. — Mww

Isn't that just to describe how we bring an image to our mind (as one thing of many we can do--bring up a memory, even of a smell)? And that there are criteria even for doing this. "I can see the schematic cube as a box;—but can I also see it now as a paper, now as a tin, box?"PI p. 208 3rd ed. And here there will be certain things we can imagine and those we can't within the criteria of a cube because we grew up with cubes as we practiced naming and picturing and focusing on aspects of objects and the language that goes with these activities. I investigate above what we imply when we say "I imagine" or "I see an image".

What is essential is to see that the same thing can come before our minds when we hear the word and the application still be different. Has it the same meaning both times? I think we shall say not. — Wittgenstein PI

He does also offer examples that choosing the appropriate word is not flipping through a book of mental images, but that there are different (ordinary) criteria for what is appropriate in each case and context:

I believe the right word in this case is ... .". Doesn't this shew that the meaning of a word is a something that comes before our mind, and which is, as it were, the exact picture we want to use here? Suppose I were choosing between the words "imposing", "dignified", "proud", "venerable"; isn't it as though I were choosing between drawings in a portfolio?—No: the fact that one speaks of the appropriate word does not shew the existence of a something that etc.. One is inclined, rather, to speak of this picture-like something just because one can find a word appropriate; because one often chooses between words as between similar but not identical pictures; because pictures are often used instead of words, or to illustrate words; and so on. — Wittgenstein, PI

(The interlocutor is in italics)

Here, the "appropriateness" of the word is its "aptness", as Austin says, for this context and the uses of this word, and criteria for applying one to the other. That a word is appropriate is not a connection between "something that comes before our mind" which is "the exact picture we want to use here", ( emphasis added) say the/my "meaning"?

And I underlined "inclined" because Witt likes to show why it is possible to imagine picturing (or other "mentality") as a singular explanation for language: because words can have meaning independent of context, because different words can have the same criteria for use (say, as objects), and because we can create representations of words.

There's a point where masculinity becomes toxic, but where is that point? — Edy

Well, Thoreau speaks of the father tongue (active/writing) and the mother tongue (speech/passive). For there to be form to the world, in order to have speech at all, there must be the active violence of making a difference between this and that, but the passive allows attention for the criteria of what is essential to come forward; that the will is something to be followed, powerless. But without the mother, the father imagines it creates what is essential out of itself; the ego narssasistically creating the criteria of the world for certainty, universality, predictability, with only one solution and without any view of what draws us--in trying to save the world, it kills it.

what is quality? Again, for me, quality is those characteristics of an object that allegedly can't be mathematized i.e. qualities can neither be geometrized nor can be hose things butranslated into numbers. — TheMadFool

You are grouping the entire world into math and not-math (let's throw in science and not-science; fact/value; true/false). If you imagine that language does not have just one way to end that sentence: Quality is those characteristics of _______" and then finish the end of that sentence with any practice we have in: pointing out a good horse, knowing a good joke when we hear one, understanding what is "good science", believing, measuring, thinking, seeing, understanding, etc. Each having its own characteristics of what makes a good example (or an example of that it all) or to say, all the judgments, distinctions, what matters, how it matters, etc. in the ways in which people learn their lives along with language (and so not convention, or agreement, or any type of singluar justification).

Take color for starters; for simplicity I'll stick to red, blue, and green, the primary colors. These three colors appear different from each other but the difference boils down to mathematics: red has a wavelength of 650 nm, green had a wavelength of 550 nm, and blue has a wavelength of 450 nm. Simply put, the unique colors we perceive as red, blue, green are nothing more than numerical variations in wavelength. — TheMadFool

The relation of these facts to the ability of sight is taken as a lesson to impose uniformity onto all our measures of difference. You've told us what color is, but nothing about how we count color? point to it? and why we can't do either of those, but we want to, and, why? And each of our practices have different ways of, say, being rational, having an example to attain, skill, criteria for identity, even "seeing" something, say beauty.

Next, consider beauty. Beauty, as per the received view, is also a quality. There's the symmetry theory of beauty that states that faces we find beautiful are those that have good reflection symmetry and that's another quality that ultimately is about geometry. — TheMadFool

There are differences between pretty, attractive, and cute; there is what gives us pleasure, what we value, and what has forms and means of judging (photography, modern art, literature); the last part are the things which matter to us when we describe something as beautiful. This is not opinion or personal taste (there are means of sculpting, and judging and discussing sculpture).

Can everything be reduced to mathematics? — TheMadFool

Yes, and, no; not and still matter to us in the ways they do/have in our lives.

Is quality an illusion? — TheMadFool

What an illusion is, is to strip a practice of its ordinary criteria and picture it based on only one; it creates the impression one has found a problem and solved it at the same time.

So stop making the author into a god.
* * *
Do you actually read things with that in mind? — frank

Well I believe this was part of the New Criticism from the '50s which focused on the forms of literature instead of the history of the author, etc. What comes to mind is Emerson's comment that people tend to dwell too much on the person of Jesus. I really liked the Anatomy of Criticism by Northrup Frye, which categorized the kinds of stories (tragedy, comedy, etc.) but with an emphasis on the criteria that makes a story part of that category of narratives. I find it similar to Wittgenstein and his ordinary criteria for the forms of activities like believing, thinking, pointing, intending, understanding, etc.

There are a lot of philosophers that speak through someone responding to them (Socrates) or as if not straight at you (Nietzsche, Wittgenstein) or as if they are channeling someone (later Heddeigger, Descartes). When I read philosophy I tend to focus on what my reactions to the text are and note those; also I try to leave off trying to assume I understand terms until I see the context and connections to the rest of the work; also, I think especially with philosophy, it is important to see it as a connection of texts critiquing each other and connected to the same endeavor.

I'm not sure what metacognitive means
— Antony Nickles

Thinking about thought, belief, and language use as topics and/or subject matters in their own right. — creativesoul

I discussed this above in looking up the definition of a kayak. That we learn our lives and our language at the same time, so learning about our ordinary criteria is to learn about the world.

There are multiple sensible uses of the term "belief". Not everyone knows and/or uses them all. Some of them are in direct conflict with others. — creativesoul

And here It would seem appropriate to provide some examples of expressions of different senses (uses) of belief that are in direct conflict.

Witt's failures(on my view) are what so many people hold with high regard(the claims about not being able to get beneath language, the limits of one's language is the limits of one's world, and that sort of thing). — creativesoul

If I'm not mistaken, this might be from the Tractatus, which basically walled off a part of the world as unspeakable. He spends the whole of the PI showing that our language operates in different ways as varied as our lives together.

I've no issue at all with rejecting the idea of private language. To reject private meaning however, shows an inherent inability to take adequate account of language creation and/or acquisition, successful communication, and/or the minds of any and all creatures prior to having done so. — creativesoul

I have elsewhere tried to show how "meaning " is part of a picture Witt is trying to unravel, and, in doing so he does account for language acquisition (we learn it as we learn our lives), communication (expression in a shared language), language creation (that our concepts carry into new contexts) and even what we would consider the "mind" (He does not deny it, as I mentioned.). I think it would be easier for me if you just read the thread for those arguments; I was hoping to only explain OLP here. And, spoiler alert; do not read Philosophical Investigations.

If you could, would you mind revisiting the post where I described Gettier's mistake? Imagine, before you do, that I'm employing a similar approach to OLP. I'm setting out what Smith(anyone and everyone in that same situation) must mean if he's(they are) talking about himself(themselves), which he purportedly is.

"Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona". — creativesoul

For OLP usually the example is something expressed with a context. When we have something like this, or something like "I only see the appearance of a chair" or "I know that I am in pain!" we try to imagine the context this would go in. With this, say, Jones has a house in Barcelona. We see someone in a Ford drive up to Jones' house and go in. We know Brown owns a Ford, but we didn't think Jones had one, so "Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona." It is a conjecture or hypothesis that one or the other is true. Sure I can have a feeling about it one way or the other, but it will take something else to know if it is true.

Then these claimed criteria of our concepts like thinking, knowing, intending have to account for the issues of the philosophical tradition.
— Antony Nickles

Those who hold that all belief content is propositional are using different senses of the term "belief" that cannot possibly take proper account of belief that exists in it's entirety prior to language use. Thus, such a notion leads - on pains of coherency alone - to a denial of language-less thought and belief.

Like that? — creativesoul

Witt will ask, what are we denying? #305-306. Haven't we accounted for language-less belief? "What we deny is that the picture of the inner process gives us the correct idea of the use of the word...."

"575. When I sat down on this chair, of course I believed [had the hyposthesis] it would bear me. I had no thought of its possibly collapsing...
— Antony Nickles

When one has never even had the thought of the chair collapsing, there could be no possible belief that it would not. Believing a chair will bear our weight is to consider whether or not it will collapse under our weight, and believing that it will not. — creativesoul

I think you're right this isn't an instance of believing as hypothesizing. From the paragraph before I think we can infer that Witt is using this as an example of believing as a feeling, like hoping.

"#574 A proposition, and hence in another sense a thought, can be the 'expression' of belief, hope, expectation, etc. But believing is not thinking. (A grammatical remark.) The concepts of believing, expecting, hoping are less distantly related to one another than they are to the concept of thinking."

The approach depends upon a metacognitive endeavor; to make that which remains implicit, explicit. Exposing and/or discovering the implicit content of some particular language use is the aim of the OLP endeavor. It is an aim that is satisfied solely by virtue of offering an adequate account thereof. — creativesoul

I'm not sure what metacognitive means but I don't know how figuring out our ordinary criteria can be considered "meta" if anyone can be the judge. Just because we normally don't think about walking doesn't mean we can't explain the difference between it and running if we think about it. And I wouldn't say "exposing and/or discovering" but remembering or seeing. And the "content" is the "criteria" of "concepts" (both terms of Witt's I have explained above) not "some particular language use". But you are correct that it "is satisfied solely by virtue of offering an adequate account thereof. "Adequate" being to speak for both of us (all of us), for you to see what I see.

All accounting practices require something to be taken account of, something to take account of it, a means in order to do so, and a creature capable of doing it.

Hopefully I've accounted for all of this.
— creativesoul

OLP is taking account of... how it takes account. — creativesoul

It has to account for itself because its method is also a critique of the philosophical tradition. But it is also seeing what counts in our concepts, what matters to us in them.

The aim is the implicit meaningful content accompanying specific instances of ordinary language use. — creativesoul

As I've said above, what is meaningful to us are our shared judgments. This is not an accompaniment or a justification; they are the criteria for our concepts.

I've asked a few different questions, and raised a few different concerns. Do you believe that you've answered and attended to those satisfactorily? — creativesoul

I've had what seemed like the same objections leveled at OLP a number of times so I may have lost some. There are a few responses after this so maybe those answer some things. I went back over your responses and I found these:

Upon what ground, by what standard are we further discriminating between different uses, aside from some are native, common, everyday uses and some are not? * * * By what measure to we intend to judge which of these terminological uses is worth saving and which deserves forgetting? * * * Which is more valuable to us, as an accounting practice, and how? — creativesoul

We aren't discriminating between "uses"; the examples we imagine are even how they are used in philosophy but they have to be put in a context--which traditional philosophy doesn't do--of when we express our concepts, like "believing", in order to see and claim a description of our ordinary criteria, based only on your agreement, your ability to see for yourself.

Then these claimed criteria of our concepts like thinking, knowing, intending have to account for the issues of the philosophical tradition.

Did [Nietzsche] think first we should achieve happiness which then will make us virtuous? — deusidex

It's been a while since I looked at the actual texts, but, like Emerson (on whom Nietzsche mirrored his work), Austin attempts to take the gas out of "profundity". The sense that if we are "serious" about our criteria for moral knowledge (as close to certainty), then we will do what is right. Emerson is constantly trying to "lift our spirits" as it is hard to be "averse" to conformity when necessary; what he calls self reliance. Nietzsche's way of deflating this "seriousness" is to call for a sense of joy or happiness (lightness--not the feeling, but an attitude (perspective) in the face of morality). (One thing to keep in mind is that Nietzsche is an analytical philosopher reacting to the tradition--Plato, Kant (why he mentions "imperative"), Schopenhauer, etc.--so he is making a point about their moral theories, but his style has to be obtuse and hinting because you have to take the step to see everything differently for yourself--so to take him as making statements that are true/false (accepted or rejected) rather than as riddles and examples to consider, is to miss the point, and take him too "seriously".)

What Nietzsche is talking about with "happiness" is a point we reach in a moral situation (a specific case) where we must go beyond our deontological morals (not that we stay in this state and aren't just reforming them) when we don't know how to go on, maybe even when to be immoral is to do what is right. That there is a point at which pre-determined, generalized guidelines come to an end. Then we are turned on ourselves and what we do defines us (our humanity as it were). We are responsible for how we act, beyond our knowledge of what to do (but extended from it). Wittgenstein will speak of treating someone as if they have a soul; Emerson will say that character is higher than intellect.

So the image that happiness leads to "virtue" is that acting (when necessary) from this place of being responsible to other's moral claims on us, intelligible for our actions, read by them, that that reflects on us, our character--"virtue" in Cicero's sense (an ethical moral epistemology). Not that we will do the right thing, but that (sometimes) what we do makes us who we are ("physiologically" is Nietzsche playing off the "body" (who we are, and are to be) in contrast to the "mind" (seeing moral skepticism as an intellectual problem); which Wittgenstein echoes when he says "The human body is the best picture of the human soul." PI p. 152).

What do you guys think about "human" robots going around being amongst us, doing things for us that are hard for us "real" humans to accomplish, such as learning about nature and reality and inventions? — elucid

This is a traditional analytic philosophy fantasy that captures the fear of not being able to know what is going on with the Other (another person--the problem of other minds it is usually called). It is the outcome of radical skepticism. Wittgenstein has a whole process of showing that knowledge in the traditional sense (certainty, predictive, determinative, universal) comes to an end in the case of the Other. We do not know that someone is in pain in this sense, we either acknowledge they are in pain ("I know, sweetie, you're in pain") or reject it--the claim that their pain makes on us and our reaction to it. We treat someone as a robot. On page 152 (PI 50th Aniv. ed.) Witt describes that we do not talk of believing that someone is not an automaton. "I am not of the opinion that he has a soul. * * * My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul." (emphasis in original) "Consciousness" I imagine is lumped into the same class, as would be zombie, monster, ghost...

We do not have the kind of knowledge about our own minds; about our own thought and belief; about our own imaginings, experience; worldview; about our own operative influences that I'm talking about simply by virtue of growing up and learning English at the same time. If such knowledge acquisition were that easy, none of us would be wrong. — creativesoul

Part of what Witt is trying to do is elevate the publicness of our communication. Not to deny that we imagine things or have individual experiences or that we can think to ourselves, but just, to put it roughly, those things are not as important as we think. Not that we don't have misunderstandings, but that it is not a confusion between your meaning and my understanding. The gap is that you and I are separate bodies. If I make an expression, it is through public means, so it is now apart from me, but I still have a future with it. I can answer for any misunderstanding or I can try to wiggle out of it by saying "That's not what I meant." But we can be understood (read) through what we say. As Witt says, sometimes I can know better than you what you are going to do. PI p. 225 Anscombe Ed.

This [that intent is only asked after something fishy] reminds me of a legal argument. Namely, when the defense argues that the charges presuppose intent, and thus the burden of proof rests upon the shoulders of prosecution to prove the defendant's intent of wrongdoing, or something similar... — creativesoul

And wouldn't it be appropriate to say we are asking about intent because something unexpected happened? And mens rea (intent) can be inferred by actions (without confession) based on circumstances. The point is that we made an assumption thinking that intent (or some other internal placeholder) came before action or expression. And that leads to the question: why do we want (need) there to be internal causality? (There is another occasion where I could say "I intend to go to the market" say to hedge my bets because I'll probably end up at the bar and need an excuse. There are perhaps other senses; do any help us here?)

If we take the words "I believe", when spoken by someone with unfettered confidence that something just happened, and what immediately follows that particular use of "I believe" is nothing other than a description thereof(a belief statement about what happened), it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever for us to make a universal claim that all English speakers' use of "I believe" implies a hypothesis about future events. — creativesoul

Well, Wittgenstein comes at it a number of different ways so maybe it is hard to see with just my one example/route, but "it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever"? If to say "I believe it's raining" is not, in a sense, to say "I believe it might be raining, let's check" or "I beliiiieeeve it's raining, I might be wrong" than what are we saying? Does it change it to say someone has "unfettered confidence"? Kinda? It sounds like it could be a bet, even if something happened in the past: "I believe [confidently] the Packers won; $5 says I'm right." But if the Packers did win, it is only that the person was right; and wouldn't we just say they guessed right? And if that is not a hypothesis (guess), what would we say? in what context? It might just be that we are talking about a claim like "I believe that the earth is flat". But, again, we can just say "The earth is flat". If someone questions us, we will have to provide some proof or justification. But this is the grammar of a claim to knowledge.

I'm not going to object to the idea that we can acquire knowledge regarding everyone's language use. — creativesoul

This would seem to be a kind of census; like linguistic anthropology. We are not "acquiring" knowledge; we already have it from growing up and learning English at the same time. We are just making what is implicit in saying something, explicit. Socrates and others will refer to this as "remembering".

Sitting around thinking about what other people's use of some word or phrase implies doesn't do anyone much good at all regarding any of the acceptable uses that are unknown to us. It looks like a recipe for some pretentiousness about another's language use.

Ought we not ask others? — creativesoul

It is not "other people's use" it is a claim on behalf of everyone. The "we" is all English speakers. I make that claim in the first-person plural (as discussed in the post on objective aesthetics, in Kant's "universal voice" regarding the Beautiful). What is implied when we say/do is justified by your being able to make the same claims, or see for yourself that I am correct. (I feel like there is a sense in which you can hear when it is wrong, but epistemologically this adds nothing.) There is no further justification. Cavell will refer to these insights as "philosophical data" but only when they fully account for everything at issue--they are not just arguments in themselves. I have been trying to focus on the method as I feel the examples are being dismissed or argued with independent of trying to understand the method.

What have we done here that is philosophically interesting or relevant aside from parsing out different acceptable uses, albeit in a bit more detail than usual? — creativesoul

Well the example of Austin's about accidentally and mistakenly (above) is part of seeing that intent (meaning, thought) is not a cause of action/speech. He will use this and a whole mess of other examples to say we only speak of intention when there is something unexpected, inappropriate, etc. to an action in that context: "Did you intend to... ?" There is also the claim (Cavell's) that when we say "I know" (above) it is in one sense an acknowledgment, as part of an argument that knowledge is not the only relation we have to the world and that at a certain point we are left with how we answer to the other's claim on us, that we are responsible to what we have said as it defines us.

By the way, I may have very well misunderstood your response to the bit I offered about "I believe" sometimes being accompanied by uncertainty and sometimes not. To be sure, are you denying that "I believe" can be accompanied by certainty and uncertainty both? Are you denying that "I believe" is sometimes used in a manner that is not a guess? — creativesoul

Yes, Witt's claim is that when we say "I believe" the implication is a hypothesis: "I believe it is going to rain" is, in other words, "My guess is that it is going to rain." Now you can say "I believe the earth is flat", but in this sense, belief is simply a claim to knowledge (as if you just said "The earth is flat"), and knowledge is a different matter. Witt does also talk about a sense of belief as a feeling of confidence or determination, which (grammatically) is expressed: "You're going to make it to the finish line!", i.e., I believe in you. And he does mention that certainty has a similar sense (of a feeling): "I shall [am certain I will] burn by hand if I put it in the fire." PI #474. I didn't think these senses of belief or certainty applied, though Witt also talks about feeling certain (about what time it is) but without any justification, and Cavell discusses whether being (feeling) certain is necessary for a claim to knowledge or not (can't remember how this comes down).

My understanding (though don't hold me to it as I did not prepare to get into a defense of this) is that this is part of Witt's argument that a certain difference between knowledge and opinion ("belief") is created to separate and dismiss certain types of justification in order to maintain certainty, universality and other skeptically-mandated criteria for knowledge. He says that Moore's formulation would be as if two people were speaking out of my mouth PI p. 164; Cavell is more conciliatory and says it would be as if you said "It is raining" to a person on the phone, and then covered it and said "but I don't believe it" to someone else.

Whoops. Its been all sides so I might have jumped to that reflexively.

I started reading Descartes and Hume. I read several dialogues of Plato and plan to read the Republic by him. I study psychology but I took an interest in philosophy, mainly in metaphysics and in existentialism. After a time, I want to read Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Hegel. I find it harder to remember for the things I read after a few months, especially if they are hard texts. How can I absorb these texts better, how can I improve my comprehension and my memory regarding philosophy? — deusidex

I have found that you have to take notes. And, when I say that, I've found what is most important is what you are thinking about when you read them. Questions, other topics, connections, just anything that floats into your head. Also, do not read summaries or general articles on philosophy--it is not about knowledge; it is about "the dark journey" (as Hegel says) and how it changes you. So go with the whole book, or the book with a book about the book (Heidegger on Nietzsche, for example, after reading the Nietzsche of course). Also, if you think of philosophy as a set of "problems" you will not get as much out of it personally--the issues are framed differently every time so don't get sucked into "the! solution".

Other than that, you must figure out when they are using a "term" and come at that from the context and relationally to the rest of the text (not from a definition)--in a sense, don't assume anything and go to them on their turf. Don't dismiss someone for what you think is an error or when you disagree. I would argue against having a axe to grind or some other perspective and start fresh with them (but of course their place in the history of the books).

Do not take what is said at the first impression, and do not take everything as a statement that you can either agree or disagree with. Especially with Nietzsche, what he says are not statements he is making that he is going to justify as true--they are examples to see how our relations (moral, etc.) are said to work or for us to see for ourselves his insights. It is good to start with Plato, and then Descartes (who introduces the modern problem of radical skepticism) and then Kant (who removes metaphysics). After that I might skip Hegel. Nietzsche is based on a response to Kant I would say more than Schopenhauer, but he is a tough one; as is seeing that Emerson is responding to the analytical tradition.

I'm still wrapping my head around the three kinds of statements made about ordinary language, and it seems that grasping that is a key part of rightly understanding the methodology. — creativesoul

Yes, this is the part people skip over. It is not making an argument in everyday language (or for it), it is making claims about the criteria (or Grammar) of our concepts. So we take a concept like "believing" and we come up with examples of when we would say "we believe" and then make claims about what the implications would be: the necessary threshold situation that would have to be in place, the consequences, the type of judgements that would follow, the kind of things that would not be said, etc.

Two problems immediately come to mind. First, there are multiple different accepted uses/senses/definitions of the same term, and not all of them are compatible. We know that much the same thing is true regarding phrases as well. — creativesoul

As I discussed above, Witt will call these the "senses" (as in options) for a concept (like "I know" discussed above), and thus why it is important to fill out a context which differentiates one sense from another. These senses are not endless.

Say we find that some native use of the term "believe" is accompanied by doubt. We can recognize some hesitation from the speaker to proclaim assuredness, certainty, or knowledge because we know what it's like to be uncertain. I'm sure most native speakers of an American English dialect would be perfectly capable of making the right sort of sense of someone else saying "I believe so" when the signs of uncertainty appear within their facial expressions and are supported by body language(shoulder shrugging, perhaps). So, we can agree that uncertainty can and does sometimes accompany the native speaker's use of "I believe". However, that's certainly not the only accepted use. There are common ordinary everyday situations where there is no difference of certainty at all in one's use of "I believe", no more certainty; no less certainty; equally on par with "I know", or "I am certain of it". Doubtlessness. — creativesoul

As Cavell will point out, the examples are not a survey of what people say (sociology as it were), they are examples in a context to make a claim about the criteria that is implied. The claim is to the criteria. Now I think your example is to say sometimes "I believe" is like a guess, "I believe the child is hiding behind the second shrub." (This is the sense that belief is like a hypothesis (from Witt, as I discussed above).) Now I would claim that the criteria of this is not that there is uncertainty in the person, as opposed to a feeling of certainty. What if I say "The child is behind the second shrub" and they are not? Was I not certain? (And I think this is what you mentioned with Gettier.)

Perhaps we can say there is no reason in this case to say "I know"? If I did have a reason--"I just saw them go back there"--but they were not, would we now say you only "believed"? or were just wrong? If I guess, and am right, is there a case where it would matter if I had no reason? At least now, we have some things to discuss and a means for being more specific in cases in order to settle them between us. There are not endless senses, just not "one" (There is also a believing as in hoping). And with these questions we can see maybe that there is more to consider before putting the cart before the horse with a picture of "knowledge" as just opposed to "belief".

Upon what ground, by what standard are we further discriminating between different uses, aside from some are native, common, everyday uses and some are not? — creativesoul

We, you and I, are agreeing on my (universal) claim about the implications when we say "I believe" in a certain context (in a certain sense). This is not judging that one is "common", and one is "not", but agreeing about the criteria for judging it is being used that way (in that "sense"). If you can not see for yourself than either the example is not correct, not detailed enough, etc., but you can make a competing example or bring out different details in a case, claiming different criteria are involved, and thus we have a rational discussion.

"There is, after all, something oppressive about a philosophy which seems to have uncanny information about our most personal philosophicalassumptions (those, for example, about whether we can ever know for certain of the existence of the external world, or of other minds; and those we make about favorite distinctions between "the descriptive and the normative", or between matters of fact and matters of language) and which inveterately nags us about them."
--Stanley Cavell

Whether or not we can know for certain of the existence of the external world is the kind of consideration that can only be arrived at via very complex self-referencing language use(metacognition). Ordinary people do not become paralyzed by such contemplations. Ask a non-philosophical thinker whether or not an external worlds exists, or if other people have minds(thoughts, beliefs, and human experiences), and they will surely look at you as if you're mad/crazy/insane, and rightly so * * * — creativesoul

I did say OLP was analytical philosophy that worked within the tradition. I've also said that it looks at what we might say at a time and place (in context) to make claims about what the ordinary criteria are (the implications, etc.). It does not speak in "ordinary language", nor is it trying to explain skepticism to lay people.

Such historical philosophical 'problems' have led to the demise of value and respect for philosophy and philosophers. — creativesoul

Traditional philosophy has become irrelevant because people are still applying methods from last century, especially when they think that they aren't or when they think they have moved on from the traditional philosophical issues.

Sorry, I should have went back and checked. It was Creative Soul; I fixed it.

Thank you sir. Always a pleasure.

Well you've got yourself into an interesting knot. I would suggest the third chapter (skip the first two if you are familiar with skepticism) of Stanley Cavell's Claim of Reason, but it is pretty Gordian itself. I'll just try to touch on what he sees when we say "you ought".

He starts with "the things we say" (a trademark of the Ordinary Language Philosophy method he uses) about moral arguments: if premises are accepted, we must accept our goal: a conclusion on "what" ought to be done. To say this is "normative" is to answer: what that one thing "ought" to be, with the threat of incompetence or irrationality in a picture of what counts, what is rational. To say "you ought" is to imply I am arguing against an alternative, I take a position for which I offer proof relevant to you.

Yet, as you know, people do not have to agree. After Cavell investigates what is said with "I promise", "enough", "commitment", "belief", etc., he digs out that a claim to knowledge is different than your moral claim to rightness, as we question the position you take, what you are taking responsibility for, with the threat to our relationship; arguing "you ought to ____" with moral reasons for what will benefit me. Then to know what you are doing (the various types of rationality of our individual practices) is to know why you are doing it, where you will stand, what you will be answerable for--to know yourself.

Isn’t that reducible to experience? If context stands for the the myriad distinguishable opportunities for using a concept, doesn’t that presupposes the time and place of them, which is the same thing as experience? It follows that a possible miscommunication using a common concept can be merely a matter of uncommon experiences. — Mww

It’s not so much communicating experience. It’s more like training someone (indirectly most times) in a practice (in one or a few contexts and then people are able to extend a concept (say, asking or pointing) into new contexts; as I said, this usually just happens from us being around people and picking up the way things work; this is based on our ability and the flexibility of concepts into new contexts (another reason their criteria (Grammar) is dissimilar to rules). I would also tweak "myriad distinguishable opportunities for using a concept" as a concept has its possibilities (like Kant's), thus it has some uses (like options), and, even though concepts can be taken into new contexts, they won't go into every/any situation. The time and place is the event of me saying something. The fact of our concepts being common (as English speakers)'makes any uncommonness of our experience less important (say, you may have seen something that no one else did).

[People are] always in fear of failing in their language use. So...even while we are aware OLP has exposed what it considers a problem, has it done anything to fix it? What does a philosophical picture of how all language works, actually do for human frailties, other than seeming to disregard them? — Mww

Well the fear (philosophically) is basically a reaction to radical skepticism (uncertainty), and the picture it creates is that we need a theory of how all language works. Austin and Witt start with showing that we already had tons of individual ways that language works (the Grammar for each concept), but Witt (further developed by Cavell) saw that knowledge has a limit (which I discuss in relation to the Other in that post on the lion quote), but, with our expression, it means that I say something (at a time and place) using the options of our concepts, along their Grammar (but not conscious of, or justified by, them), but after that, I am responsible for that expression, answerable to it. So knowledge and theory end at a certain point and (after saying something) I take over; this is the fact that skepticism records, that everything can fail between us, and Cavell will label this part of our human condition (the "truth of skepticism"), so there is no "cure" or dismissal of skepticism. So OLP, in bringing a rationality back to every concept, simply gives us a view of our condition and to see (philosophically), reflect on, the ordinary (only) ways we have to resolve each situation. As you say "procedures are in place to prevent failings in language use, so in that sense, there is a fix, albeit hardly philosophical." Responding to that last bit, I would say that is the new approach OLP brings to the situation, claiming that: looking at what we mean when we say something, IS Philosophically relevant.

the average smuck on the street doesn’t care...about how all language works. — Mww

Cavell will see this as not that philosophers are different from other people, but that there is a moment for philosophy--where we do not know what to do; where we do need to turn and look at the criteria for our concepts (each with their own) in order to examine how far our criteria take us to understand the position we are in and, in learning about the criteria of our concepts, to learn about ourselves.

The point being that a "concept" for Witt is not like an "idea" of something, or, say, conceptual--just language.
— Antony Nickles

A concept is just language? — Mww

Sorry I write by assuming the continuation of words so I remove them (probably from being a twin). I should have written
a "concept" for Witt is:
Not like an "idea" of something,
Not "conceptual"
Not "just language."

It is impossible to have language without concepts, so if I speak, I must already have the ground for speech. — Mww

Wouldn't we say poetry (at least some) is language without a concept? And here, again, Witt's term "concept" is not a "ground" for communication (as I said above, if there is any "justification" or "ground" for communcation, it is us--being responsible for what we have said).

So for Witt, the spontaneity is relinquished for the objective manifestations of concepts in language. But he’s just kicked the speculative can down the philosophical road, wouldn’t you say, in that we still need to know what makes language possible. — Mww

Again, this is not like an "idea", or some other thing, that gets "manifested" in language. Witt's terms "concepts" is just a shorthand grouping our, say, practices, together (like pointing, asking, sitting in a chair, intending, knowing, etc.). They are not (put?) IN language (we could say, maybe, they are expressed by language). "What makes language possible", or, as it were, communication, is the fact that, in each concept, our ways of judging, making distinctions, knowing what counts, how to continue, when to question, etc. are in line with each other (Cavell say "attuned"), as well as everything else in our lives that surround and come before, e.g., believing (as discussed with Creative Soul above).

Concepts, on the other hand, as I’ve hinted before, always originate privately, by the first instance of it, and which usually, but not necessarily, subsequently become public in the communication of it. For which we must fall back on spontaneity....but, so be it? Not many choices in the matter, actually. — Mww

So, again, this is not how Witt uses "concept". And the picture of an idea originating in me which is then "communicated" (as explained through some theory)--or something of that order--is the picture Witt is investigating in PI. That he is trying to get people to see that language is public, is to say we, in a sense, lock ourselves into a public way of expressing (a use of a concept); we give ourselves over to it. Expression is not (always) taking my ..."experience" and putting it into words. Apologizing, threatening, lying, are concepts that make my expressions meaningful, not me.

Rules in the sense I’ve been using, merely indicate a logical significance in accordance with a complementary system, the empirical knowledge of which we have no privilege. It’s the same as, we don’t know why that happened but there must have been a reason for it....this theory doesn’t tell us how this happens but if it wasn’t in conformity to a rule we can say it wouldn’t have happened. — Mww

Well this is a lot, and, as I said, the section on rules in PI is not my strong suit, so I would check that out, or the essay by Cavell. I may review that section and come back to this.

Well, the Mac I use is not that antiquated, but thank you very much for that providing link. — creativesoul

Well, I guess I am the winner then with a '96 iMac.

folks like Moore show... why so many people refuse to understand that simply knowing what "this is a hand" means proves beyond any reasonable doubt that there is an external world(Witt's private language argument aims at much the same thing, but he struggled with the infinite regress of justification as his remarks throughout OC show). — creativesoul

Well, OLP moved on from Moore's standard of the contradiction of what everyone knows to be true (granting that my Moore is hella rusty), through Austin to Witt focusing on the implications when a concept is expressed in a context and shared language. I'll be interested to hear what you think of the Cavell, as his reading of Witt is that he does not go so far as Moore (solving skepticism; or dismissing it, actually) and leaves the threat of skepticism open and as a lesson regarding the limitation of knowledge (that we are in a position to each other and to what we say that is beyond knowledge).

Another broader benefit leads us to consider specific situational circumstantial context aside from just the statements and/or words being used as a method or means to correctly translate and/or better understand another's meaningful language use. — creativesoul

I'm concerned by the sense we are categorizing contexts to "correctly translate" what someone else is saying. As if reducing Austin's contribution to merely cataloging what people (can? must?) mean in certain circumstances (rather than describing how expressing specific concepts, as in practices, are differently meaningful). And as if the way our concepts worked was baked into the world (the circumstances) and determines what is said--taking our responsibility for our expressions out of the equation. That being said, the essay by Cavell will skirt that line of the "must" of our shared criteria in a different way.

I'm puzzled by the lack of clear unambiguous distinction being drawn between statements and belief statements when discussing things like Moore's paradox or Gettier. — creativesoul

On pp. 190-191 (x) in the PI Witt uses examples of what we say to make the claim that "I believe" is a hypothesis, a conviction ("I think it's going to rain), a disposition, and not a measure of uncertainty compared to a statement that can be true or false (as Austin's examples are meant to show are not the only kind of statements, nor the only expressions with the value of truth).

Moore's paradox shows that self-contradiction is a natural occurring limit upon our belief, and that there is a difference between accounts of belief and belief. One cannot believe that both statements are true when talking about oneself, but we've no issue believing or saying that it's raining outside but another does not believe it is (both are true regarding another). — creativesoul

Witt will describe this as our inability to infer our conviction in our expressions--it can be said that "I do not see or hear myself [my conviction]". That the look of "I believe..." tempts us to look at believing differently in ourselves. Cavell will frame this that I do not accept my expressions, where I believe the other because they say it.

There is a clear distinction that needs to be drawn and maintained between the truth conditions of a statement (when spoken by an individual that believes the statement) and the statement itself - when taken in general - completely divorced from the individual believing speaker. Sometimes, they are remarkably different. — creativesoul

There are two things going on for me here. One I like is that we are measuring that there is a difference between a statement and the expression of a statement (at a place and time; that I own). Now, that being said, the abstraction ("divorcing") of statements from their expression removes a context for them, which allows for the creation of criteria for certainty, universality, etc. in general--as in the difference between a "true" (certain, universal) statement and a statement of belief (uncertain, contingent).

I understand that many reject the very notion of one single overarching theory of meaning, simply because there has yet to have been an acceptable one(one that is amenable to evolutionary progression, and is somehow relevant and/or explanatorily powerful enough to exhaust the acceptable parts of all the rest, while also being able to explain the unacceptable parts). — creativesoul

OLP's initial mission (with Austin and Witt) was specifically to show that there is not "one single overarching theory of meaning"; to bring our expressions back to the ordinary criteria of each of our concepts.

Meaning arises/emerges within belief formation. Getting meaning right requires getting belief right. — creativesoul

So once meaning is internalized, we can have certainty and feel like we have avoided metaphysics through a general theory about how meaning is said and then understood, if only we could get it right, or get science involved, or... anything but take away our control over "meaning" (as it is public) and put us in the position of being responsible for what we have said.

“Completely” wouldn’t be a bit too far, if there is a time frame earlier than, or in addition to, learning and joining society. It seems to me, that if the onus is on each of us to take responsibility in the saying, if we are “bound to our expressing”, we’d want something more authoritative than the meager accolades of society. That which merely assuages the ego, as in, “Hey, you expressed that correctly! Good for you!!”, comfortably disguised as “Ok, fine; you’re playing by the rules”....isn’t the taking of responsibility.

Yours is the beforehand as part of learning/joining, but with no true account of the extra part of being bound by the responsibility in expression because of agreement with the rules. — Mww

What I was trying to say is it is not responsibility "in" the expressing, it's "to" the expression, so it's not learning "completely" or expressing correctly (in "agreement" with a concept's Grammar) it is being answerable to it once you've done/said it. As, based on the examples above, we ask: "Did you intend to shoot the donkey?"--as if intent is not (always) first. We are bound to answer for what we've done (or shirk it), thus the need for excuses--"no, my finger accidentally slipped on the trigger." To continue to be intelligible and explaining along the different ways under each concept (or refusing to; or pushing it into another context).

Your form of OLP wants to turn what it looks at as learning/joining, into rote instruction. There should still be an account for how learning is done. — Mww

I agree with accounting for learning, though not as sociology so much as it shows how we grow with our concepts, as our practices. Witt spends a lot of time showing how learning a concept is being able to continue a series.. even into new contexts. I would call it training more than rote when done overtly but most of our learning society's alignment along the lines of our judgments, identity, what counts, what matters, what our shared interests are, in each concept: as in meaning, learning, understanding, apologizing, etc., is just by growing up and assimilating into our society/culture. These are not learning "rules", but, our sharing lives (though not as justification).

Your OLP wants to account for responsibility in expression by a subject, but doesn’t account for the authority within the same subject, by which the responsibility is obtained. It follows that the rules are contained in the subject, antecedent to, and hence authority for, any expression whatsoever. — Mww

Our criteria (Grammar) for what we do/say (our concepts as practices) are public, prior to us. The question of authority is interesting as, in expressing, at times, we assert our self, "I say this!" (Emerson roughly) to assert/create our self as separate (averse to conformity Emerson says). We are our own authority in this regard--our responsibility is to the consequences of and questions about our actions. We may break, stretch our Grammar as well because of their not being our justification, or we their cause.[/quote]

It shouldn’t be a contention that whenever language is in use, something necessary is occurring beforehand. — Mww

I'm not sure if you mean it shouldn't have to be said (it should be uncontested) or that no one should say that something is occurring beforehand, so I'll just take it as the first and say that Witt would say it is not (necessarily, every time) how "language is used", as in my intent or causality, but "looking" at a concept's "use" (afterwards), which is to say which option (his term is: in which "sense") of a concept (see "I know" in the OP above now) and how that fits with the context of the situation and context of the Grammar of the concept. So to say "something" is "occuring" beforehand, makes a lot of assumptions which I believe would come from the picture Witt and Austin are trying to shed light on. Many things have occurred beforehand; all of our lives lead up to the possibilities of our concepts (even Witt's builders need to be familiar with calling, pointing, counting, etc., to be able to ask for something).

Point being, no matter the word, somebody somewhere at some time, determined its relation, and that determination had nothing to do with learning or joining society, but rather, contributed to a society for its members to learn. — Mww

Language does have the ability to be set (terms, labels, etc.) yet even in this limited case there is a relation, even if it is determined, to our lives (e.g., the builders' "world" of concepts). The assumption that all of our concepts are created by naming, say, idea=word, word=world, is the picture that Witt is investigating in the PI.

Everybody uses the same words, but with uncommon intimations, which facilitates an examination of the expressive ambiguities of the many at the exclusion of the compositional certainty of the one. — Mww

What you call "fundamental conditions" I think OLP would consider part of the standards desired (for certainty, control, my specialness) which Witt shows creates the picture of referentialism or the interior. As if you control the use and (intimations) of our language; the words being the same but that "I" at least know, am certain, about what I "mean". That every expression has the possibility of ambiguity in it because of the picture that "I mean" something specific (their composition is certain) but the other has their own "I understand", thus ambiguity is inherent in every communication, instead of being situational, contextual--"meaning", as "intending", only coming up when something unexpected happens (as worked out in the examples above).

What I posed as just a simple question, you turned into a riddle. There is no reason to do that, there’s no hint in being a mere question that there is a disguised sublimity contained in it. You, of your own accord, before even considering a response, thought my expression as having qualities not justified by the words used in it. — Mww

Hmmm.."simply"? You failed and refused to explain or define the term "mentality" that you were using, saying it was "whatever I think it is". Thus, I had to guess what you meant or work out what I made of it backwards from the context of everything else--if that is not a riddle, it was mysterious or, at the very least, coy. To say "there's no hint", and that the "qualities" of expressions can not be seen by me, or that "I turned' it into something, is wrapped up in the picture that you control an expression's "qualities" (I, and Cavell, would say its implications), and that "the words" make your intention certain (or, the other way, that your intention is in those certain (fixed) words) because they can be understood independently (the picture that words stand on their own is the way philosophy strips the context out of our expressions). This picture is how we can avoid the responsibility to what we (and others) express; that, apart from what you want, you can be read by what you say, and that our expressions can be made more intelligible if necessary and we remain answerable to them (as possible obfuscations, tricks, etc.) Our word is our bond Austin will say.

People generally aren’t drawn to that picture, your “concepts" being thought (then?) turned into words”. They haven’t a clue that’s what happening, because it’s all theory. Could be no one does that. So why diagnose a reason for something that is no more than speculative theoretic? — Mww

This is complicated (it took the whole PI to draw it out), but the idea is that humans have a desire for certainty, and a fear of our human frailty (failings), and philosophers slide from there into radical skepticism, which, along with our ability to understand words without context, allows for a theoretical philosophical picture of how (all) language works, which skips over our human frailty and separateness.

By showing how public meaning and language are......what? — Mww

How much language and our concepts are public (rather than determined by me); that they are meaningful to (all of) us in the ways our lives are attuned "in judgments" Witt will say (not only in definitions of words). #242.

To show how understanding is relational to a point where knowledge reaches its limits.....I can’t unpack that. Knowledge has it limits, but such limits don’t have anything to do with understanding. — Mww

I give examples of "understanding" above, but the "limit" of knowledge is just to say knowledge is not our only way of relating to the world. This was the point in my post on the lion quote where "I know you are in pain" is not an expression of knowledge as information, but knowing as acknowledging (Cavell says)--I accept or reject (this is how it works, it's Grammar) the (moral) claim of your pain on me. Emerson will say "Character is higher than intellect". I've also realized Cicero was onto something when he insisted that a speaker had to be "virtuous".

I don’t have a problem with calling all those things “concepts”. I would only say the objects of those concepts are what’s part of our lives. Seeing is a concept; what is seen is the object of the concept of seeing; learning is a concept, a series is the object learned about, etc. — Mww

I don't think I need to disagree with this characterization of what "objects" are, and, if you are saying that Witt's "concepts" (practices as it were) are not an "object", I would also let that go. I guess this just means you think something needs to be an object to be part of our lives. Then I'm not sure what to say to get you to see that "seeing", "sitting in a chair", apologizing", "intending", "understanding", "continuing a series", are "part of our lives"; maybe to say that by: the "way we live" I mean our judgments, distinctions, ways to identify, etc. with each concept. There is a quote by Austin above that Banno put up from which I draw out this sense in a response.

What does the double asterisk and the (completely different) attached to “concepts” mean, from the point of view of Witt and OLP? — Mww

The ** was left in by mistake. I incorporated the list of what Witt would consider "concepts" into the sentence. I have differentiated them as "practices", but "thinking", "intending" etc. are also these type of concepts and calling them "practices" is a little off. The point being that a "concept" for Witt is not like an "idea" of something, or, say, conceptual--just language.

Have their own Grammar (roughly the way they work).....sounds an awful lot like rules to me. — Mww

Well this one is a toughy. I'd say read from #200-#300 in PI or Cavell's essay The Argument of the Ordinary (with Ryle), but off the top of my head: we don't "follow" Grammar, as we do rules; that Grammar is more open-ended; they can be extended into new contexts or broken but still be recognizable; they can be vague or highly specific, and rules are too fixed and determinative; rules gives the impression that we "set" Grammar; and there is some sense of arbitrariness of when a rule applies, but, frankly, I've forgotten more about this than I ever learned, so you can't take my word for it.

So....nothing on images? Familiar with the science of visual thinking? From mention by Einstein, 1942 to books by Pinker, 2007, and originating as a speculative condition for human cognition, in Kant, 1781, the idea has been around quite some time. Being around much longer than OLP isn’t sufficient reason for it being better, but it is sufficient reason for OLP to account for the possible validity of it. — Mww

Well, as I said, I wasn't sure where to start--and I do not have experience with any of that. All I can put out there is that I think OLP's early intent on accounting for the desire for the picture of language as something internal (meaning, thought, intention, "mental activity" Witt will say) attached to or corresponding to a word or object, lessens its interest in anything else "mental". That isn't to say that they don't account for it; Witt looks at what we mean when we say "I imagine" as a way of seeing our concept of imagination (imagining) and also the activity of bringing up an image for yourself. Also, part of OLP is "imagining" cases, though that's neither here nor there I think. As Witt says, none of this is to attempt statements of facts or theories, so the science of any of this would be moot upon what the implications are when we say "I imagine..". (Also not to say philosophy is not accountable to the discoveries of science, but that they are two separate methods in two separate fields--though it has not always been that way.)

Other than OLP's take on thinking, I was influenced by Heidegger's What is Called Thinking? and Emerson's framing of thinking as passive reception, rather than active; but Witt would say "thinking" is more like solving a problem (guessing, testing, imagining cases...). That is not to say that people do not "think" as philosophy is accustomed to picturing it, but that I would call that, all of the things above, except, (talking) to yourself.

Is OLP still alive and kicking? I have read that Searle is the last proponent of OLP. I admittedly don't know much about OLP or ILP — emancipate

Searle and Derrida talking past each other made it seem like the life was drained out of OLP. And so many of its early practitioners came to the conclusion (or were taken to, i.e., Witt) that OLP either solved or dissolved radical skepticism in showing how philosophy's singular focus on certainty and knowledge overlooks all the varied ways each of our concepts work and our part in that. I think Stanley Cavell has done the most to advance the lessons from early OLP (very effectively continuing its method at the beginning of his career).

I think we just don't know very much about how to think well, or how our languages work. — Snakes Alive

I think seeing how our language and philosophy can get moving is a major accomplishment of OLP. And I enjoyed Heidegger's What is Called Thinking? (thinking as "being called"). The idea that thinking is more like external problem solving and about our attitude and approach (an ethical epistemology).

A major part of that is our not understanding the way that the conditions under which we ask questions affects their intelligibility and the truth of their potential answers. In this respect, it's the radical pragmatists like Travis that carry on the OLP legacy, if anyone. — Snakes Alive

It's been a while with pragmatism for me but I found it settled onto practical matters, as if philosophy's problems could be side-stepped. But I do find more of a sense of truth, and that the conditions of intelligibility are specifically under consideration, with OLP by Witt, Austin, and Cavell. And I would consider the first two as only superficially understood and thus still relevant (necessary). And the sense of hope for our providing answers for ourselves is what Cavell is doing to breath life and usefulness into philosophy (both analytical and continental--literary, film, politics, etc.)--along the lines of Emerson's call for "self-reliance".