it takes the concepts that philosophy wrings its hands o know the other or over and reveals their mystery and seeming power as driven by our disappointment with misunderstandings and our desire to take ourselves out of the solution.
— Antony Nickles

It makes it sound as though desire is at the heart of the split between olp and approaches antagonistic to it. — Joshs

The desire is Cavell explicating what Witt saw that representationalism really wants. Seeing the representation of an object with a word (or any other similar picture) as the only picture out there of how meaning works, Witt turned to look at all the variety of ways different things are meaningful to us. So why this other picture? And his interlocutor keeps going on about having to know, and about rules, etc. So the idea is that the fear of doubt and the black hole of skepticism/relativism cause the philosopher to skip over our regular criteria to fix meaning and word together, to have certain knowledge, normative rules, universal criteria, predetermined, etc.

Does Wittgenstein’s work not represent a paradigm shift? — Joshs

There are no new facts and everything is left as it is. So not so much a little shift or extension or new picture as...

a gestalt shift requiring turning the world on its head ? — Joshs

Yes, Emerson or Cavell say, turned on the point of our real need. As if our real needs and desires are in our ordinary criteria which we need only reflect on (turn to), rather than the need driven by our fear of uncertainty and irrationality, etc.

Is it possible to understand what you mean by ‘ taking ourselves out of the solution’ without already having undergone the paradigm shift necessary to relate to Wittgenstein’s world? — Joshs

In reacting to skepticism, philosophy sees the problem as the human, its fallibility, its inconsistency, its emotion, its partiality, its diversity, and decides that none of that is going to give us the certainty and universality and rationality that we want to solve skepticism, so we take philosophy out of any context and fashion it to meet the standards that will solve it. But this doesn't see that not only are ordinary criteria more adequate, but they also see that we still have a place in their application or their extension, or going past them, or against them.

I'll repeat then, what I've said from the beginning, there is no such thing as the ordinary way of distinguishing an accident from a mistake. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well I think you are still stuck on something about these words; maybe thinking there is "no such thing as the ordinary way", as if the ordinary way were opposed to the philosophical way (which can make those distinctions). I can't sort it though. Let's just ask: can we distinguish between (the concept of) a mistake and an accident? Sure. Maybe we could ask what we say when: I shot the donkey accidentally and I shot the donkey by mistake. And here we can imagine the accident is something that I didn't intend to do, and the mistake was in hitting the donkey, though I was going to (intended to) shoot something else. So one distinguishing thing is that mistakes require an intention and accidents do not. Now let's see how traditional philosophy attempts to make a distinction:

Each particular incident, in each set of circumstances, must be judged according to the available evidence, and there is no such thing as the "ordinary criteria", to be applied in a particular situation. — Metaphysician Undercover

"Each"? "Particular"? "Must be judged"? And here we are imagining that each case is the worst case (skepticism without a net). Do we "apply" the criteria? Well, we didn't know them before and now we do, but do we always need them? Imagine that there is all this life we have that makes it so we don't usually need them ("Don't make a mistake!" "Don't worry; it's only an accident."); does this help dispell the sense of doom with every "circumstance"?

We say that the judge upholds the law, in many unique circumstances, but this is not really done through reference to criteria, it's done through the experience of many precedents. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think here it is important again to say that Witt is focusing on a special idea of criteria, as I mentioned to @Mww above. One difference is it is not the kind of criteria that we set, say, for identification of a show dog, or when someone has broken the law. Those criteria are in the wide open; one, standards of a perfect specimen; the other, the law. And yes, the law Is not a science and takes judgment to clearly align the facts of this case with the law, or, when necessary, rest on a precedent circumscribing a tricky set of facts or the interpretation of the law in a new context, but, even here, not every case is distinct in the eyes of the law either.

If this notion of "ordinary criteria" is your proposed solution, then it's quite clear to me that you do not have a solution at all. And if philosophy appears to be trying to take itself out of "the solution", you might take this as a hint, that the supposed solution is not acceptable to philosophers. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I believe I came to this same spot with @Mww above. OLP does not have a solution (to skepticism). Ordinary criteria are not acceptable for certainty, universality, predetermination, etc. I can perhaps some time in the future (or in my other posts) show its usefulness in morality, aesthetics, politics, etc. where traditional philosophy has failed to satisfy. Or I stand ready to try again to show /explain and hope to do better.

So it appears to me, like OLP is a lot of idle talk with no justification for what is said. — Metaphysician Undercover

The standard for OLP of a claim to our ordinary criteria is if you see it and agree; if you see what I see--that you can show yourself. If you can not, perhaps I have not done a good enough job with my example, or in filling out the imagined context, but we do have the grounds there for an intelligible discussion, which is the "rough ground" which Witt is trying to get philosophy back to.

If you allow that the same concept has different criteria according to different contexts, you are saying that the word refers to the same concept despite having a different meaning. Using the word with different meanings, and insisting that the different meanings constitute the same concept is equivocation. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, let's pull out "refer" just in case anyone gets confused that this is word=idea. For example, intending is a concept; to say it is (only) a word is to make it seem isolated, connected only to a "meaning', which is a picture Witt is trying to unravel. Meaning being more like, say, what is meaningful to us about a concept, along the ordinary criteria for it. And let's put it that: we are seeing how a concept is used. Witt says "sense" for the fact that a concept (knowing) can be used in various ways; here, again, I know as: I can give you evidence; I know as: I can show you how; I know as: I acknowledge you, your claim. He is imploring us to Look at the Use! (#340) to see that our concepts are various and meaningful in different ways.

A criterion is a principle or standard used for judgement. There is no ambiguity there. Either a person is following the criteria or not. — Metaphysician Undercover

And this is on me; I did not realize that Wittgenstein is limiting himself to a particular type of criteria, not the overt, set, delineated, followed criteria as we are most familiar with, say, ironically, that are the most ordinary. Sorry for the confusion.

The thing which you don't seem to be acknowledging is that in the vast majority of "ordinary" situations, the circumstances are unique and peculiar, such that a judgement cannot be made on the basis of criteria. There might be some criteria which would serve as some sort of guideline, but the real judgement is made by some process other than referencing the criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, I would say the vast majority of situations are mundane and uneventful and non-specific, such that our criteria (of this type) never really come up (Thoreau says we lead quiet lives of desperation). However, yes, there are problems and circumstances and issues (even philosophical ones) that do come up, exactly because we are at a point where we do not know what to do, we can not or do not want to use criteria as our base (excuse, justification, cover). As you say, "the real judgment is made by some other process". Now Wittgenstein talks about coming to an end, and about being "inclined" to draw a line, or convinced and shutting our eyes, but the other option he offers is to go on from our criteria into their open-endedness, their ability to point into new contexts, and act or speak so as to define ourselves beyond (further than) our criteria, to the other without certainty, and thus be intelligible and answerable for that extension or deviation, etc. as if there was a limit to knowledge (Cavell will refer to this as the truth of skepticism).

Reflect on this action, your example here: "You know you smirked when you apologized." I think you'll agree with me that what is referred to is a matter of interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure this was a great example (surprise). But you could say that identifying the smirk was an interpretation (of their facial movement), but what I was trying to point out is that everyone could agree that to correctly apologize, you can not scoff at the whole procedure--that it is not open to interpretation, that it is a categorical necessity.

Do you see how it may be the case that "criteria" is not the right word here? — Metaphysician Undercover

Absolutely. I am sorry I ever brought it up. I don't know if it helps to fall back on "Grammar" but maybe the absolute made-up-ness of it solves the confusion, though I doubt it. The whole first chapter of Cavell's The Claim of Reason is about working out Witt's sense of "criteria" though I can't force myself through it because Cavell rarely makes anything easier to explain to anyone else.

I thank you for your patience and persistence.

How do you know "what they mean to say" if there is no context in common?
— Janus

I don’t, any more that I would know what Einstein meant to say without a context in common. Context in common means I have already found myself thinking in terms that are close enough to that of the writer that I can relate to what they have to offer. — Joshs

In terms of OLP, this would be the alignment of the criteria of our concepts (our forms of life), their terms of judgment, what counts and how, what matters in making what distinctions, etc. Their history and possibilities. Our lives have agreed in all the little ways (all the pieces are in place Wii says) that allow for us to recognize the terms of a misunderstanding, the concept of miscommunication. If this is a context (setup?) we don't have to share it (exactly?) except only in that we agree in those paths of judgment Witt says. This is not the "context" that OLP points to, which is whatever is needed to clarify what sense of concept we are using and the criteria that we need to clear anything up, etc.

'preciate that. Worst name ever. Austin's is not much better. I don't have the patience to give better examples and come up with more text. And I didn't realize the terminology was so technical (concept, criteria, ordinary, even context!, although Cavell warns of this with Witt). And it's really hard to get people to see that it's not a different view within the same picture; that it's turned on itself, first looking at what we say to find our what matters to us, and then figure out why we ignore what we find to skip over ourselves and create a picture to ensure certainty; is it reassuring? Who is it convincing?

"think it would be more apt to focus "change and stability" in our world and our concepts" - Antony Nickles

What do you mean by world? Can world have any useful meaning outside of how the word is used by people relating via language? — Joshs

Nothing metaphysical or factual; just world in the sense of our lives in the world, how we live, which we learn about (the grammar of) through our investigation of our criteria of what counts for us, what matters, etc.

“schizophrenics may experience thought insertion, the sense that another person’s voice is speaking to one inside one’s head. The schizophrenic knows the voice is coming from their own head, and yet they don’t recognize it as their ‘I’.” In the West , this voice is typically belligerent, accusatory, judgmental, whereas in other cultures it can be positive and supportive.

I was wondering if you think the kinds of conversations that that place with this sort of ‘other’ voice in one’s head are amenable to an Austinian analysis. By that measure, what of the voices of characters a novelist creates? Often, writers say that the characters they create come to life and tell them what they want to do. — Joshs

This is actually right up Cavell's alley. I mean Wittgenstein was dealing with Logical Behavioralism and Verificationalism along with Positivism, so he was dealing with the psychologism of philosophy, but his main goal was just to get people out of their (everyone's) head. But Cavell has wild examples and loves to draw outside the lines into literary forms etc. Cavell talks about Thoreau's use of "ecstasy" (In the Sense of Walden) as the sense of being beside yourself at the same time as a way of talking about Emerson's closing and moving to a larger circle (of your always-partial self). Austin might just say pphhfftt.

@Mww

The point was that "applying criteria" is a conscious act. If the subconscious, or unconscious, is doing something which might be in some way similar to "applying criteria", then we ought to acknowledge the difference, rather than asserting that the unconscious is applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'll leave"applying criteria" alone for now (still not sure what to do with it), only to say that criteria could be described as "unexamined" (not unconscious exactly) which means we are maybe missing the fact that criteria are just all the ordinary ways we might judge someone as doing or saying this well, how we show in this case how it matters to us, what counts as an instance of it, etc. These things are not mental constructs, or created standards (though there are those too), these are our lives of doing these things like apologizing, thinking, knowing, threatening, identifying a dog, etc.

My position is that there is no reason to assume that what is going on behind the scenes is a matter of applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not sure the point of this, but I would agree. I might say, "what is going on behind the scenes" is our lives.

the conscious human being must suppress the natural inclination, which is other than applying criteria, with will power, in order to actually apply criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I would agree with this as well. Only one small step in between: to become "conscious" for OLP is to become aware of our ordinary criteria, so they may be applied intentionally, aversely, controversially, etc. Maybe that, in being unaware, we can not "apply" anything(?). In any event, to become aware of (in this sense, know) our ordinary criteria is the only epistemology OLP has, and it does that by... blah, blah, no one cares.

I think it is the case that the average person doesn’t know how it is he knows things. — Mww

And what we are looking for in OLP is knowledge of the ways we judge (what criteria we use to) what makes a thing important to us, what counts in its identity, its place in our world, etc. ("Grammar tells what kind of object anything is.") #373 (my emphasis). And the average person (I assume here not the "philosopher") can reflect and give examples of what counts as criteria for concepts (understood as Witt uses that term), including objects, though the need for such is rare.

To him, a dog is just some particular thing; the ways and means between the thing and knowing it as a particular thing are (regularly) undisclosed to him. — Mww

The example of corresponding a word to an object can appear philosophy simple (just factual) or complicated (skeptical problems unthought by the average person); but OLP is using examples of: when do we say it is no longer a wolf, but a dog? (When it is tame?) Isn't a dog in a sense always also (historically) a wolf? Are these criteria "undisclosed"? or merely just don't have to be brought up all the time?

I think it may help to say that Witt's "criteria", as "grammar", is a special term @Metaphysician Undercover. Some points may be: there are regular criteria (we decide on), this is not that; it is not to start with an object (a dog) and then pick criteria (like how to judge a dog at a dog show); start with "knowledge" and then pick the criteria for it, certainty. OLP is to first investigate criteria to learn about a thing (intention)--to know what a thing is in the end.

It is only when he wants to know its kind, its degree of danger, etc., must he then determine supplemental conceptions to add to the conception of dog in general — Mww

Yes, but to point out that here we are simply going from what the object is generally to particularly, not understanding all the ways (other than as an "idea" of a dog--universal? true?) we use the concept "dog"--say, even metaphorically to malign your character.

From here, it is easier to see that there are only two criterion for any conception....the principle of identity for those conceptions relating to conceptions in general, and the principle of non-contradiction for those conceptions supplementing given general conceptions.....both principles operating entirely behind the scenes. — Mww

And here is where the traditional philosopher has wiped away our ordinary criteria for a concept (and here I don't mean philosophical "conceptualization"), and replaced it with their own principles (like conceptualization, integrity, particular in relation to general, etc.), of which of course the average man has no idea. But, as an example, the concept of "identity" has its own criteria (Austin will talk a lot of identifying a Goldfinch), and anyone can reflect on "I have identified that bird as a Goldfinch" and make a claim about what criteria the speaker might be using, and learn more about the type of criteria we use for identification; only some do this better (and are more interested) than others--and those are philosophers.

regularly-learned folk don’t need to consciously examine the validity of a thing’s verbal description when the habitually communicated description has always sufficed. Nevertheless, theoretically-learned folk will maintain that the cognitive system as a whole must still be in play, otherwise, we are presented with the necessity for waking it up when needed, and then the determination of method for waking, and then the necessity of determination of need, ad infinitum......and nothing rationally conditioned is ever successesfully accomplished. — Mww

Again, it is as if everyone is sleep-walking here except the philosopher, who understands the "cognitive system as a whole" which is always "in play". Except we all have drank the "lethe" as Emerson says, that we may "tell no tales" (not explicate our criteria) until we "shake off our lethargy". Experience, p.1. So there is no "cognitive system" happening all the time, which just needs to be systematized. We don't reflect, until we do; until, as you say, there is a necessity to, say, distinguish between an accident and a mistake, or a thought and an intention, or a fetus and a life.

my thinking is that OLP as I understand it, is at least superfluous and at most utter nonsense — Mww

This isn't (maybe just) thinking, it's a (also a) judgement (categorically--identified by the criteria of what a judgement is). I stand ready to help in understanding if that is of any interest.

If we take a step beyond Descartes, for whom the 'I' finds itself being, to see the 'I' finding itself deciding, acting, and therefore changing, we cannot assign to this deciding, or acting, a method of applying criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is perhaps to say, without this picture of the "I" there is no deciding or acting along the ways in which we decide and act. And I understand that this puts into question "applying criteria", but the picture forces itself onto what it means to "apply criteria". But we have not asked ourselves what we mean when we talk about deciding and acting, and investigate if their criteria require this picture.

If we cannot agree on the principles which drive a decision or judgement, and justification is based in agreement, then we have no means for justification. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'll just say up front that it is a misconception that our criteria are based on "agreement," that is to say, we do "agree" on criteria (here, but there are times) but in forms of life Witt calls it (though not as grounds--for, say, certainty--and not the same way), but that the routes of our lives align--in judging, identifying, expecting, exluding, etc.--for each concept. (In many layers: Cavell will say even our sense of humor; Witt will add even in our being human). That is, again, not to say forms of life JUSTIFY our criteria; we have a concept of justification, and this has many different senses in many different contexts. Though our lives and concepts and expressions do split sometimes, say in a moral moment, (another opening for skepticism), but in ordinary ways, in specific instances (even in the investigation of criteria). That said, I think I need to review how Wittgenstein's "criteria" are not singular and separate from our ordinary use of criteria (set standards, rules, etc.).

I really don't know what you mean by "ordinary" then. It seems like your attempts to define "ordinary" "ordinarily", and in your usage I see nothing to indicate anything other than everyday language. I'm hoping you will enlighten me concerning this other type of "ordinary language" which you are concerned with. — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, it is not ordinary language. It is our ordinary ways of telling an accident from a mistake--the criteria of their identity and employment (grammar), and all I can say at this point is it is a term to hold a space opposite of how philosophy sets up the traditional criteria (certainty, universality, etc.) it wants for the concepts of meaning, knowledge, understanding, etc. Frankly, the term doesn't matter much compared to the method and the examples.

So if I understand correctly, you are saying that there is a way to make judgements as to whether or not our concepts are misunderstandings without referencing metaphysical principles. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but you're probably not going to be happy about it because it takes the concepts that philosophy wrings its hands over and reveals their mystery and seeming power as driven by our disappointment with misunderstandings and our desire to take ourselves out of the solution. OLP is investigating our concepts to show that desire in our philosophy by showing that our concepts have ordinary (various, individual) ways in which they work and ways in which they fail, and, at some point, they involve our involvement, accepting, denying, asking, walking away, etc. and in ways that reflect on us, or require us to change ourselves, our world, or extend these concepts into new contexts, a new culture, perhaps to make a word include a change in our lives, perhaps to re-awaken it to old contexts.

As far as I understand, epistemology is grounded in metaphysics, so if you can demonstrate an epistemology which is not, yet is well grounded anyway, I'm ready to consider it. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was speaking of epistemology as the investigation of knowledge. OLP gives us a knowledge of our concepts that we did not have, of their ordinary criteria. Now justification is a trickier subject as we can say our criteria align with the ways in which our lives are, but that is not to say our forms of life are the bedrock of our criteria or that we "agree" on our criteria. And also not to say that radical skepticism is the outcome either. The truth of skepticism is that knowledge only takes us so far and then we are left with ourselves, you and me to work out the failings and clarifications that our criteria/lives lack the necessity, conclusiveness, completeness, etc. to ensure. Our concepts are breakable, indefensible but also open-ended (justice) and extendable into new contexts (freedom of speech).

I view philosophy as an effort toward a higher understanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

And is it not a higher understanding to realize that knowledge also involves acknowledgement? What we are responsible for and our relationship to others (even in creating a picture of knowledge of the other that skips past them). Perhaps we are looking for a specific version of "higher", even before we start our investigation to look at the use of our concepts.

Since the same word has different meaning in different language games, then if we are going to say that the word refers to a concept, we need to say that it is a different concept in each different language game. — Metaphysician Undercover

And here it is the PICTURE of "word" and "reference": word--refers to--concept, that gets in the way. We (me) express a concept in a context (of time, place, language game, criteria). Nevertheless, I would say that the different "context" of a different language game, may or may not require "different" criteria (for the same concept). "I know the sun will rise tomorrow" is a sense of certainty (that concept), but not a factual one (knowledge connected to certainty, without doubt). It may be a sense of faith (certainty) in hope. Now this "different language game" is part of the possibility of this expression, but it simply falls on another concept (certainty) rather than reflecting on knowledge (other than to say knowledge is not always connected to certainty, or that, without the possibility of doubt, we are talking about a different "sense" of knowledge).

Since a concept would consist of rules or boundaries (criteria), and the rules would be different for different games, then we cannot say that it is the same concept. So these are not games we play with "a concept", they are games we play with a word. In other words, word games. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe it is better to say concepts have different criteria for the different ways (and different contexts in which) they are used (the sense in which they are used). So they have more possibilities than under the fixed standards (one picture) that philosophy wants. So in a sense they ARE different "games we play" with a concept, but a concept is not just about "words" or even expressions, because concepts are not "conceptual" or "ideas" as opposed to the world as philosophy's picture of certainty creates.

What Witt explicitly says in that section, is that there is no boundaries for the supposed concept of "game", but this does not prevent him from understanding what is meant by the word when it is used. Further one can draw boundaries for a particular purpose, if a person wants to. So he is saying that criteria (being boundaries) are not necessary, but can be imposed for particular purposes. — Metaphysician Undercover

He is making a point about the roles of rules and boundaries in a concept. This is an example of when they are not necessary; this does not mean that criteria do not exist, just that in this instance we can impose them. What seems like a categorical statement about criteria is not, it is a statement about games. Criteria of the concept of "a game" are that there are no rules or boundaries, and that one can draw those for a purpose (as one can elsewhere with other concepts--even as to their criteria). That those are part of the grammar of how a game works. Criteria are not like rules, they are not always fixed, or unbreachable, or determinative.

You are saying that people apply criteria without knowing that they apply criteria. But if this were the case, then we could not call this applying criteria, because applying criteria is to make a conscious judgement in relation to the criteria. Let's look at the reality of the situation. People act out of habit when they talk. And acting out of habit is not applying criteria. So let's just forget this unrealistic notion that people are applying criteria for the concepts involved with each of the words when they are talking. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wouldn't say that people apply criteria (I would have to think why we feel the need to say this), or that they always do--as I've said, everyone can reflect on our criteria, and some moments call for it, as it were philosophical moments, moments of reflection on who we are and how we do things, and that is to say everyone can be said to sometimes "do philosophy", a politician writing a speech about freedom, a new freedom, getting back to our old sense of freedom, what freedom means in our new America. But I agree that most of the time we speak and act out of "habit"; Emerson will cll it conformity (to which we must at times be averse). One thought on application is that, even unconsiously, we know the criteria of an action to ask "You know you smirked when you apologized." not because we explicitly are thinking of the criteria, but that we were raised in a world with others, and pain, and a need for forgiveness, etc. The explicit "criteria" are drawn out in a philosophical moment when we are at a loss as to how to respond, our criteria fail us in a way we do not know how to be responsible for, etc.

If you are distinguishing between "it rained this morning", and "I know it rained this morning", saying that the latter must be justified by conceptual criteria, then how are you going to justify standards for what "rain" means, or what "morning" means without ontology? — Metaphysician Undercover

These two statements don't bring into question what rain or morning are, but knowledge. When I say "It rained this morning" I am reporting a fact (that I know), but I could be saying it really rained hard, or that it rained this morning so I don't think it will (or do think it will) rain this afternoon, etc. When I say "I know it rained this morning" I could be acknowledging what you told me, as in "yeah, I agree with you Bob, it rained", perhaps to confirm the claim Bob has made (on authority or proof) that it rained "I read it in the paper", "I saw it" "The grass is wet" "My mom told me" (some of these are more credible than others, but nevertheless under that criteria for that sense of knowledge). Now to see that, it some cases, I don't have a way to do other than accept/confirm it, is to see the power ("normativiy") of that sense of knowledge and its criteria, and that philosophy tunnels in on that as the standard for everything. These are two senses (of the concept) of knowledge we are investigating in what we say when we say these expressions.

Let me paraphrase where I think we're at. You are claiming that there is a type of epistemology which is grounded in some type of criteria other than metaphysical criteria. You call this "ordinary criteria"? This is not criteria in the sense of some philosophical principles, but in the sense of some grammar. Can you demonstrate to me, how we might ground epistemology in grammar? For instance, if a proposition was composed according to proper grammatical form, would it be necessarily true? — Metaphysician Undercover

Well two small tweaks. I take epistemology not as the search for grounds for knowledge, but as the search for knowledge, and that looking at what we say to see our criteria, as in to make them explicit--known from the unknown--is a way of knowing ourselves since our lives (what is important to us, what should count as a thing, judging, making distinctions) are our criteria. And that sometimes, we are responsible for our claims to aversion, to our extension of a concept asserting a new context, (politically, culturally) creating a new context.

Now a proposition can be true, or false. I would say that it does have to be grammatically proper to categorically be this kind of proposition, one that is either true or false (There are other types of proposition Austin shows). But this is merely a threshold; it does not "ground" it's truth or falsity; and it has criteria, it's grounds, but it is not a quality of the criteria (of their formation or their internal logic), it is meeting them. A scientific fact is "necessary" based on the method of good science, its reproducibility, its universal application, etc.--but also refutable through its method, or the denial "of science".

an expression" has a lot of moving parts in each case,
— Antony Nickles

I think it is safe to say that the collection of terms that are interlinked as part of Austin’s approach to doing things with words points to many moving parts. I consider this a particular kind of structuralism. — Joshs

Not sure they are interlinked (but he does categorize them by more general criteria); the concepts he is talking about are a multitude of examples to show we may have different criteria for each concept, instead of just statements about the world that are either true or false. I might call it formalism but they are not necessarily rules, or closed, etc.

One could say that the terms of ordinariness are whatever allows for an alignment of moving parts that creates agreement, shared practice , normativiity. — Joshs

Well we do not agree on these type of criteria (they are unexamined, thus the need for philosophy), and it is not the critria of, say, apologizing, that are normative for our practice of apologizing, it is actual apologizng, whetther or not you do it correctly (whether you learn your lesson when you do it wrong). Our lives are aligned, "shared" sounds too much like we share one exact same thing or that the "sharing" was not everywhere surrounded by the criteria for a concept and what it is to change our lives.

The rabbit is there to be seen because it supposedly pre-exists my seeing it ‘as’ a rabbit. But it is not as if the person who relies on this picture view is not seeing what they believe is the ‘same’ meaning ( or just a different aspect of the ‘same’ meaning) via an endless series of language games. They just don’t notice this transformational process. It is invisible to them at an explicit level @even though they rely on it implicitly. — Joshs

The picture duck-rabbit is to show we don't have an "inner picture" as a perspective in us that changes. As he says, "seeing as... Is not part of perception." P. 168. It is complicated but part of this kind of seeing involves seeing "aspects" based on our (pre-existing) familiarity (of rabbits--like being able to recognize a human face in something else). An example is when Witt says "My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul." P. 152 I see that aspect of him, I see him as a human, rather than, say, as a means of production. Witt says this takes "imagination". Id.

For olp change and stability are functions of different kinds of relations between participants in language. — Joshs

I think it would be more apt to focus "change and stability" in our world and our concepts; people usually come into it afterwards to figure out a mess.

When would one use a word like self except in order to contrast it with a person who is not myself? What other use is there? — Joshs

Well the idea is to ask yourself when you say "self" what are you implying. Witt says one use would be "I myself", PI #413 as if to say I did it by myself or as if to emphasize that I am the body owning, or disowning, an expression (if necessary)--standing behind it, judged as lacking for having said it. In any event, this would be process of analysis in OLP, showing, looking at our ourselves by looking at our expressions, without "introspection" which Witt says is "the state of a philosopher's attention when he says the word "self" to himself and tries to analyze its meaning (and a good deal could be leaned from this). Id.

The problem though, is that as Wittgenstein pointed out, in what you're calling ordinary language, there is no such standards or criteria. There need be no boundaries for me to understand what "game" means. — Metaphysician Undercover

One thing I realized I need to clear up. The term "language-game" is to say the games we play with a "concept"--what criteria/grammar describe.

One place I imagine you referring to is #68. He is discussing rigid limits and rules

(I may) use the the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept, but I may also use it so that the extensions of the concept is not closed by a frontier. And this is how we use the word "game". For how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can I give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn. — Wittgenstein, PI

(original italics in underline)

Now it is not the point here, but he is not saying that the concept of "game" has no ordinary criteria. One is that it is, as he says, "not closed by a frontier" (he later says it is the kind of concept that has blurred edges (#71)--that is another one of the ways it works, its grammar). He directly says, "And this is how we use the word 'game'." Another criteria, or grammar, for games is that its boundaries and rules are drawn--not set ahead of time. Another is that "What still counts as a game and what no longer does?" is answered by us (that is part of the way the concept of a "game" works). "That's not a game! You're just playing with a tennis racket!" but then I could counter that we are balancing it (a skill) and seeing how long we can (a measure of winning)--are these not some of the criteria of (set for) a game? and do they not allow for a discussion of what counts (criteria) and what matters? Witt is calling out the fear that if rules and boundaries can sometimes be drawn by us, we can't count on anything,which leads to the fixation to have rules take our place.

If you want to investigate the standards (criteria) involved when we say "..." in ordinary language, you are imposing a philosophical perspective somewhere where it does not belong. In other words you proceed from a false premise, that there are criteria and standards invlolved when someone says "..." in ordinary language.
* * *
The point is, that we do not judge the meaning of a word, in ordinary language use, through reference to criteria — Metaphysician Undercover

Again, we can remove "in ordinary language" because we are not opposing that to any other language. I would point out again, also, that "there are criteria and standards involved when someone says '...' " implies that everyday people think about or discuss the criteria for what we say when. Which is not usually the case; though they might. The premise with OLP is that we regularly do not know what the criteria for a concept are (they work behind the scenes as it were), but regular people can come up with them (imagine Socrates questioning the regular people he comes across to provide criteria of the Good). Someone also might discuss them, as I have mentioned above about accusing someone of a half-hearted apology. However, this is a philosophical perspective--to reflect on what we mean (thus on our selves) seems pretty standard philosophical fair. Maybe it helps to say that OLP simply claims that no one necessarily has a better vantage point on our criteria--I can speak for everyone. To say it is "imposed" is perhaps to say we don't need it, language works fine. Which is true, until it is not, which is where traditional philosophy goes off the cliff anyway.

[Philosophy] is a specific type of activity with a specific goal, so standards and criteria are imposed toward that goal.
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If you change the goal, then you do not have the same activity. — Metaphysician Undercover

And OLP is trying to revolutionize the method of philosophy. It is not abandoning philosophy's concerns and issues, if this is what you mean by "goal". But Witt shows that the real desire (what I poorly worded as its "goal") of traditional philosophy (the kind he is pushing against) is to solve the problem of skepticism (close the gap it sees between us and the world and the Other) by imposing its own criteria and standards.

If you are investigating to understand what counts as an instance of a particular concept, then you are doing philosophy, and this is not what we do in ordinary language use. — Metaphysician Undercover

Right, not investigating "what we do in ordinary language use", but "investigating to understand what counts as an instance of a particular concept", which is to say, as you do, OLP is doing philosophy. Its method is to investigate an instance (example) of a concept by looking at: when we say "I know___" to understand what counts, what matters, where the distinctions are made, etc., i.e., the criteria for the concept.

What you don't seem to grasp, is that ordinary language usage is not exemplary of the structure of our concepts. In ordinary language use, we learn how language is used from observation and practise. This does not involve any standards or criteria. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think I've got another misconception. It is not that what we say is an example of the structure of our concepts. We take an example of what we say when to investigate the structure of our concepts--the criteria hidden in what we say when. And, it is exactly philosophy's "standards" for [the explanation of] criteria (universality, certainty, predetermined, "normative") which causes the loss of our ordinary criteria and any use of their context.

...my interests lie in the areas I mentioned to you ( deconstruction, Heidegger, hermeneutics, constructivism, social constructionism, phenomenology , autopoietic self-organizing systems theory, Rorty and pragmatism, enactive embodied cognition, Deleuziain bio-politics). — Joshs

I studied Husserl and Gadamer, as well as by Paul Ricoeur, in studying literary theory along with philosophy. I liked the idea of the "event" that Ricoeur discusses, as it brings notice to historicity, which Nietzsche/Hegel wanted to give to morals, and the understanding that an expression is a person saying something at a moment in the face of exigency and context, claiming (at times) their existence, even their non-conformity--but with a future of consequences, responsibility, answerability.

As you know it has been at least 70 years since Austin and Witt introduced their work, and in that time, a healthy, vibrant and complex scholarly dialogue has been unfolding in a diverse variety of disciplines, embracing and utilizing Austin, Witt and Cavell, expanding their thinking in many directions. — Joshs

Well, Cavell just died, but I find that most people are embracing what they see as OLP's (Witt's and Austin's) "theories" or "explanations" and "utilizing" those for their own projects, i.e., not seeing it as a method, but a solution, say, that Witt's "forms of life" suffice for the certainty that philosophy craves. I would say the OLP tradition is carried on, or critiqued constructively, more with Cora Diamond, Steven Mulhall, Crary, Strong, Hammer, Goodman, though my experience with all of those is limited.

Now let me ask about your comment that words do not have contexts, expressions and acts do. If we change any word in an expression, doesn’t it change the
sense of the expression? — Joshs

Maybe, it is case by case for OLP (we are not looking for a general theory). First, I believe you are using "sense" here as in "meaning", as if they were attached to the expression. Witt is trying to show that words (concepts more specifically) do not have an associated "meaning", in the sense of thought: then meaning: then word, or word-object/meaning. Words (concepts) are meaningful to us, which is reflected in their ordinary criteria, as Austin says above (quoted by @Banno): they have been sculpted over our entire existence along the lines of our cares, differences, etc.

Is there such a thing as two identical expressions with non-identical words composing them? — Joshs

So, in light of the above, let's just say: if we change any word in an expression, does it not change a concept from one to another of its senses? (see the various "senses" of knowledge above). Well there are many ways to word a threat (as an example of a concept), and those may or may not affect the various criteria which would change what sense of a threat this is (empty, backed by authority or violence, for compliance to do something, or not to do something, etc.). In addition, what parts of the context come into play for the sense of threat too, say, given to a child, inappropriately to a superior, when the person has no means to comply, etc. All of these examples and ordinary criteria help us to understand that "an expression" has a lot of moving parts in each case, one of which also is one of the most important parts of seeing something said as "an expression" is that it is an event, as I discussed above, and that it is I who is expressing it (I have to defend it, be judged by its being made, follow through with it, etc.)

So, whether we can word two identical expressions with different words may be less of a matter than: it is possible (particularly with a less controversial concept) that the sense of the concept could be "identical" (a particular type of threat) if nothing matters about the context to differentiate the expressions from each other, other than we are still left with the fact that my expression is mine and your expression is yours; that is only to say, if I need to be, I am the one responsible for it, answerable for it--which is no small thing but which nevertheless may not come up. Even with all that, we may be able to say there can be, for all intents and purposes, the "same expression", even in the sense that it might not matter that I said it--but this seems to take all the gas out of it. Sometimes none of this matters, sometimes it does.

What is an act and what exactly is the difference between an act and a word? — Joshs

Well I meant actions and expressions. But an expression is an "act" (or maybe only sometimes--sometimes we just pop off; it begs the interesting distinction though between an action and a movement--perhaps whether it is in or outside a concept), and sometimes expressions are "actions"; they "do" something--Austin will have a lot to say on this. The best intro to Austin would be to read A.J. Ayer and then read Austin's Sense and Sensibilia (though @Banno may have a better idea).

Are you saying that we know [criteria] outside of local, contingent contexts, that they transcend contexts?... Are you trying to say that shared custom, upbringing, background assure that when move over from context to context a thread of normative continuity allows us to a avoid ‘starting from scratch’ with every new context? — Joshs

To say someone "knows" how to use English (its concepts) is to say their judgments, cares, distinctions, (criteria) coincide with each other (though in that is the possibility of much variety, and dissension). This is no small thing, but it is also not the big thing (some idea of "normativity") which philosophy would like it to be--there is no assurance. Now the lack of assurance is one reason philosophy would throw it all out and start entirely from scratch. As well, OLP accounts for the extension of concepts into different contexts than the regular ones which uncontroversially allow it to work along the lines it usually does, however, this extension is a function of, within, the concept itself, and more specifically, the life of our criteria.

I'm not sure why I am reticent to allow it to go unmentioned that maybe we would say expression to expression rather than "context to context"; maybe it is a point you'd like to hold on to, but I would only say, the possibilities lie in the concept and its expression, and the context is brought up (or not) to clarify (afterwards) or in deliberation (ahead of time), not that the concept is changed by the context--we could have the same sense of a concept expressed (same type of threat) and the contexts would only need to align in the ways necessary to allow for the criteria to work as they do in the same way--so that "every context" is different is not as meaningful as: they have differences, but they may or may not matter: to the expression (you deciding to say it, say, at an inappropriate time), or may only matter in the aftermath of you saying something we have to make sense of, or which changes the consequences of the expression (what happens after a threat to your brother may be different than after a threat in an alleyway).

[Each of Witt's examples involving creiteria] involves a case of judgement as to whether or not one has correctly understood, and is therefore a specialized epistemological use of language. Criteria for judgement as to whether or not one is correct, knows such and such, or understands such and such, is epistemology, and therefore specialized language, not examples of "ordinary language". So the examples really do not justify your claim of "ordinary criteria". — Metaphysician Undercover

One, I think we got off on the wrong foot; I tried to make clear above that OLP does not mean "ordinary" as in everyday language, or just language generally, or that people actually discuss these criteria (though they may have to) in making judgements, though OLP is drawing out the ways in which we are making judgements about our concepts such as "whether or not one has correctly understood." I can only say, quickly, that it is better understood as opposed to metaphysical criteria, certainty, universality, predetermined, etc. And, second, yes, this is epistemology. It is a method to discover the unexamined ways in which our concepts work, their grammar. (And also an ethics of epistemology, a comment that the way in which we seek knowledge, and the type of knowledge we seek (the criteria for it), reflects on us.)

Do you see the difference I am pointing to? In ordinary language use we communicate with each other and carry on with our activities respectfully, without hesitation, questioning, or otherwise doubting what the other has said. Understanding is assumed, taken for granted, and we carry on without issue. However, if misunderstanding occurs, it creates a problem, and the problem might be greatly magnified because understanding was assumed, and the person carried on under the assumption of having understood, and therefore proceed into doing the wrong thing which might constitute a significant difference. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I agree we are "ordinarily" (in one of its regular senses) assuming and taking for granted our understanding, and in a misunderstanding we do not usually examine or discuss our criteria (we unconcsiously share the concerns and judgments and distinctions embodied in them (that is to say, we also share our lives, our senses of humor, our expectations, etc, all our forms of life, and desires and distinctions of those are in the criteria of our concepts)--though all of this can break down, they do in traceable ways.

We [philosophers] impose criteria to escape the pitfalls of ordinary language. — Metaphysician Undercover

Now this is where I am trying to point out the philosophy that differs from OLP. Instead of "imposing" criteria to "escape" the pitfalls, OLP is trying to show all the ways we have to carry on in the face of these pitfalls, and that we can not escape and shouldn't impose, but look and work within (or extending beyond). There is no philosophical solution for this failure (nor the implied radical skepticism)--it is our human condition. I tried to work through this with @Joshs above in relation to when words fail us.

Again, this is not philosophy using or justifying "ordinary" language or our games, in the sense of regular, unquestioned, etc., but to say that these games (Witt uses concepts to generalize here) have criteria for how they work, their grammar; these are our ordinary criteria for these concepts. Looking at our ordinary criteria gives us an idea of why philosophers react to solve "the gap" that skepticism takes as absolute and world-ending, by imposing particular (universal) criteria to ensure understanding. But OLP also sees that we are separate and that we do sometimes fail, but that who we are is responsible for our expressions and for our answerability to the Other, our misunderstandings along the regular ways we already have.

So yes, there is a difference between regular unexamined discussion (and the regular ways we repair those) and when philosophy steps in (when the "gap" appears to "open", Cavell says when we are at a loss of what to do). OLP looks at our ordinary criteria to see what they lend to the discussion of philosophical issues; to say, for example, that a question of intention only comes up when something unexpected happens (as I discuss above).

I hope this helps differentiate the sense of ordinary communcation and ordinary (unquestioned) language, from the philosophy that OLP is doing (just don't think about it being called "Ordinary Language" Philosophy) in the tradition of analytic epistemology but with a different version of criteria and different senses of knowledge. and its implications (which I address in my post on Witt's lion quote).

The problem though, is that as Wittgenstein pointed out, in what you're calling ordinary language, there is no such standards or criteria. There need be no boundaries for me to understand what "game" means. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well I guess I haven't done a good enough job with the examples I've tried to give above (re knowledge, apologies). I know that forms of life and family resemblances hold a big place in the investigations, and what I am saying does not detract or take the place of his point in bringing those up. But if you check the index there is 3/4 of a column of references to criteria of how to tell one thing from another or how a thing works: for raising your arm #625; learning a shape p. 158; of meaning #190, #692; of a mistake #51, etc. There is also the central role of the term Grammar for the concept of how and what ordinary criteria tell us about our concepts.

What fear is that? — Luke

Well Cavell tags it to scepticism, or the tipping point where all the failures of communication and moral confusion lead to the fear that we are never able to tell or say or judge and so we abandon our ordinary ways of understanding about telling, saying or judging and create one picture for all action and speech based on certainty, universality, prediction, etc. Along with the fear of never being heard, Cavell diagnoses that we remove our criteria in order to remove us (our fallibility) from the equation, our responsibility to what we say and our answerability to the Other.

I think family resemblances are more about a contrast to essentialism rather than representationalism — Luke

Well that is good to point out. Witt does say Essence is expressed by grammar, which is to say, what you want from the idea of an “essence” of a thing, you get from examining the ordinary criteria for it.

And by representationalism I thought was the thing Witt first addressed, which is the belief that all language operates like a word corresponds to an object. In any event, consider that essentialism, representationalism, mental processes, metaphysics, positivism, are all different reactions to the same fear; different attempts to do the same thing; all erasing our ordinary criteria in place of a picture made to fit manufactured standards.

Thank you for taking the time to read the Cavell (on Wittgenstein). I have read the article on Austin, Ryle, etc. and I do have some thoughts I will share later. I do wonder what you thought of the sense Cavell brings to Witt. I can't shake the impression that you looked through the essay to find justification (shared words) for your own theories, rather than addressing the main contentions (which is what we all do ultimately in beginning a reading). I can at this point, thus only address where you seem to go off track.

Context is novel and familiar (background history ) at the same time. * * * Word contexts can be more or less familiar, more or less felicitous , more or less successfully understood. — Joshs

Words do not have contexts, expressions do (actions do). I'm not sure you have OLP's sense that context is not a fixed or not-fixed thing; maybe it helps to think of it as the (undetermined) realm in which misunderstanding gets worked out. What needs to be brought in about the context (of its limitless possibilities) is based on what needs to be straightened out: in which sense of a concept (of "I know") something is said: which circumstances are we in that it does what, compared to what was happening when it was expressed, to the context of our expectations, whether certain consequences should flow, i.e., understanding along what other criteria for how that concept works. Also, felicitous (apt/not apt) is the truth value of an action or expression to its criteria (was the apology done correctly, aptly), not a judgment of context. However, in working out if something was apt it may be necessary to say that in the context of what was happening, it was not apt to apologize (based on the criteria that, say, timing is part of a correct apology).

So what does this tell us about scientific approaches that are currently in use? — Joshs

Well if you mean philosophy of science, Thomas Kuhn was, I believe, trying t change the same picture with his discussion of paradigms (not my forte). But I am with Ryle and Witt that philosophy's concerns are not about facts (not that they fly in the face of them)--philosophy does not look to facts. I also believe that positivism's mistakes have led to a sense that science can address the concerns of philosophy (though it has reduced the purview of philosophy over time to such things as morality, meaning, aesthetics, what is the best way to live, etc.

You seem to find problematic accounts of resistance to communicative understanding due to personally sedimented histories. But Witt seems to acknowledge the role of background in causing difficulties in understanding.

Witt says “ There are, for example, styles of painting which do not convey anything to me in this immediate way, but do to other people. I think custom and upbringing have a hand in this.” — Joshs

I do not object to the fact of this, only to the implication of it; where the skeptic is compelled to go with it. Yes, people have different customs and upbringing, but we have ordinary ways by which these differences are addressed. That is to say, the fact of misunderstanding is not cause for throwing out our regular criteria and trying to find some other lesson in it: a need for certainty, a desire to make each individual the holder of all the keys to meaning what they say and whether it is understood; that there is no context, or shared history, or to each his own.

Custom and upbringing are objects in a box, we only know them in contexts of use. — Joshs

Our customs are literally the criteria we see when we look at the use of what we say when (in whatever context to draw out the criteria). They are not in a box (though they may be unexamined), and we do not "only know them" in looking at their use in context, that is exactly what OLP is doing.

Nevertheless, there are... more and less felicitous relationalities, that can be spoke of usefully as ongoing patterns rather than as simply this momentary difficulty of understanding. — Joshs

Yes! Other than changing "relationalities" to "acts or expressions" (concepts), and not "rather than" but, say, "in order to" work out "this momentary difficult in understanding". Say "there are... more and less felicitous actions and expressions that can be spoken of usefully as ongoing patterns to resolve this momentary difficulty of understanding [say, philosophy being stuck when talking about an issue]."

Now, in regular life, we may not discuss a concept's criteria (the "ongoing patterns"), which is where philosophy comes in, but, nevertheless, a conversation may come to that: "You call that an apology! You don't even think you did anything wrong!" (Claiming that, when we say "I apologize", one criteria is that it be a recognition of a wrong done to you.)

Your analysis of Ratcliffe’s treatment of some heady psychological topics (ptsd, severe depression) implies an alternative ‘psychotherapy’. — Joshs

I did not mean to imply that. I think I was merely saying that the fact of psychotherapy is the possibility of actually getting at what we might (want to) think of as unspeakable, beyond words, and to passingly show some reasons why we might want to be unknowable (trauma, repression, the consolation of pity).

Yes, but Sacred Cows are allowed to wander where they will. — Ciceronianus the White

Touche'. Fresh meat?

The reason why OLP becomes self-contradictory, or hypocritical, is that the activity of philosophy, as a quest to dispel misunderstanding in favour of understanding, is itself a specialized activity with a particular goal.
— @Metaphysician Undercover
***
The business of language is to express or explain; if language cannot explain itself, nothing else can explain it. (R.G. Collingwood)
***
As I mentioned elsewhere, there is the typical, and there is the exemplary. — Pantagruel

OLP is literally letting language--what we say--explain itself. Taking the typical as exemplary; looking at what we typically mean with what we say as exemplary of the structure of our concepts. I do not agree that OLP does not have the same goals as philosophy in general, but, yes, I am asking that you rethink the "specialized activity with a particular goal" that is the method of a tradition of some analytic philosophy.

I think you need to distinguish between the intention involved with describing what philosophers are doing, and the intention involved with doing philosophy. If you do not allow for this distinction, then "doing philosophy" is an act of describing what philosophers are doing, which is describing what other philosophers are doing, onward ad infinitum, without ever taking into account what a true philosopher is actually doing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Point well taken. What I am explaining is a way of doing philosophy in order to understand our world, ourselves, and philosophy's issues. Philosophy is, however, often about revolutionizing, or re-envisioning, philosophy itself. Where do we get Nietszche from if not in response to Kant? and Kant from Hume, etc. And so OLP must first clear up the grounds. So when I say "philosophy" does this or that, I am referring to a specific "type of philosophy".

The premise is that criteria has failed, the description given, which may or may not have been based in criteria, is insufficient for understanding, so the philosopher is seeking a better description. — Metaphysician Undercover

And I am trying to get at this moment with @Joshs, but this is where two paths are taken. Some philosophers are seeking a better description, but in looking for "better", they get trapped into only accepting a particular answer, say, which will solve the failure of language, words, criteria. Some refuse to acknowledge any statement that could not be answered as true or false. Kant had his own standards for morality and rationality. Plato ended Socrates' questioning by setting a bar for what would meet the forms on knowledge. The refusal, the standard, the bar, are what I mean by criteria set by these philosophers (certainty, universality, pre-determined, infallible, or only fallible in predictable ways, etc.). Now OLP, instead of setting those standards (for the description of our "concepts"--knowledge, intention, ad infinitum), looks for the standards (criteria) to judge what it is to be those concepts and what is important to us about them, by investigating when we say those things, "When we say...", i.e, When I say "I know you are in pain" one example is that I acknowledge, accept that you are in pain. That claim that pain (the person who it is in) is something that is accepted, or denied, is a standard or measure of our description of pain (the "concept" of pain). Acceptance or denial is one way it works, a criteria for that type of working, what is important to us about it--as truth and falsity is one way to measure (one criteria of) what a statement is.

When we describe, we assume to know what is going on, as a fundamental attitude of certainty, allowing one to put words toward making a description. When we do philosophy, we assume not to know, we are seeking knowledge, therefore we request, or ask for descriptions from those who appear more certain, we inquire, in order to dispel one's own misunderstanding. — Metaphysician Undercover

OLP is both claiming to know, and not to know. The first premise is that we do not normally see the criteria for our concepts. Second is that no one knows any better than anyone else (Emerson calls this Genius) about the type of claims OLP is making (about the criteria of what we mean when we say something). But also, that the OLP philosopher is making a claim for everyone, that is its claim to a type of knowledge/understanding, but that claim is able to be clarified or changed based on developing better or more representative samples or contexts. It starts from simply seeing and describing.

At this point, you ought to see how you are making a clean break from Wittgensteinian principles, by seeking criteria for concepts, rather than seeking family resemblances. — Metaphysician Undercover

Family resemblances are part of a picture in contrast to the picture of representationalism. I do not understand how this is either/or with Witt's discussion of criteria?

The use of criteria to create concepts, which Wittgenstein called boundaries, is carried out for a particular purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

I will grant you that "criteria" for Witt is a term, not all the applications are used--I would say (his term) Grammar is interchangeable--and I admit I have not done a good-enough job differentiating it from all the other senses of "criteria" (I will edit this in at the bottom when I can). But criteria do not "create" (from the PI): having a toothache, sitting in a chair, playing a game of chess, following a rule, believing, seeing, thinking, hoping, etc., but the idea of them as boundaries is well taken, because criteria tell us what type of thing those are. PI # 373. We are investigating what we say when about a concept in order to understand what counts as an instance of it, how it works, what matters to us about it, how we judge under it, etc., which gives us a way of understanding them, ourselves, and philosophy's issues.

I was just telling @Athena about Heidegger's view of technology the other day. Although that is not the topic under discussion here.

Your method reminds me of the social constructionist Ken Gergen. — Joshs

I'm not sure I appreciate words being put in my mouth (and my options prescribed to me) when I have already spoken, as if they are not taken seriously, or that they are easily understood, or we can skip over questions and clarifications to characterizations, and on your terms (not as a call to a different vantage point entirely). I think it is clear that you want to come to a theory to hang on to something internal--"I think what this approach leaves out is the contribution of the subjective dimension"--and that you see me denying that; which I would call, the possibility of the individual. If that is the case, you have an argument with Wittgenstein's observations, not with OLP's methods, and I would re-read (read?) Philosophical Investigations, perhaps putting yourself in the place of the interlocutor. There are a lot of people that "use" what they believe Wittgenstein is saying, theoretically--"But they do this by adapting Wittgenstein’s contribution..."--but that book is a process (they are not statements, but claims for you to see for yourself our ordinary criteria compared to our philosophical desire).

[I--me Tony--require we] relinquish the subjective in favor of a discursive idealization which denies a role to point of view." — Joshs

I deny (Witt denies) the picture (entirely) of the subjective (the "picturing" of it, its being turned into a theory) without denying everything it does for us except the philosophical need for it (in the picture/theory); thus, I don't "favor" another placeholder in the picture, nor are we "denied" a point of view. However, if you think "having" a view (saying it? getting it accepted?) is not hard, subject to suppression, mischaracterization as an easier generality, flat out denied, without power, etc., then perhaps examining the things we say might in these cases reassure you that our criteria are broader and more subtle and open, perhaps enough to give up retreating to grasping onto something within us**.

Both Husserl and Merleau-Ponty add that localized experiences of possibility presuppose a more-enveloping orientation, a sense of belonging to the world. — Joshs

It is this sense of belonging that OLP is trying to restore in each case. “Things are experienced as significant to us, as mattering to us, in various different ways, something that involves a sense of the possibilities they offer.” (as you quote Ratcliffe) And this is an exact description of our concepts; the criteria being the "things": what matters, is significant, important, their possibilities, etc., for us in our lives.

Skepticism is created by this lose of our sense of the world, it being dead to us, unreachable, unresponsive to us; the Other being unknowable--us losing sight of what matters, is significant, important, the hope of the world's possibilities. This loss of the world is not just a philosophical feeling: "Even as [words] are uttered, there is a sense or feeling of their inadequacy." (One way to look at this is our lose of control, and our vulnerability, once we express something; that our words are out there, for us to be read by, held to.) However, the next sentence (as you quote) shows the radical, world-entire, world-ending doubt where philosophy takes it to: "With this, there is also a more pervasive experience of lack or absence. Something that once seemed integral to the world, like bedrock, is experienced as missing, perhaps altogether [enduringly] lost." This ends our trust in our ordinary criteria of our concepts, and philosophy's recourse is to have its own criteria and standards, and take away the context of criteria.

I would say here that we can not cement us and the world together forever, or, as it were, to solve skepticism--to never loose faith again--but OLP shows us the ways of our world, making it again seem possible to operate with that threat, let's say, in the face of the possibility of the world's (or our) loss of interest in us, of the chance of our loss of our ability to participate.

"language’s failure is taken to be unavoidable and insurmountable." *** "how was one to rehabilitate and transform words betrayed and perverted[?]" - Weisel — Joshs

Here is the decisive step to avoid the ordinary criteria of language--language's impossibility to ever reach the world (or our experience)--right next to the call OLP is making: to look for the ways how one can rehabilitate and transform our words having been betrayed and perverted.

“the struggle for words is essentially the struggle to communicate the destruction of much of what in ‘ordinary life’ we take for granted” -- Kusch — Joshs

So this "struggle for words" is a moment--not, importantly, systemic, an ever-present "gulf". This struggle may be a political moment, a moral moment, an existential moment. Cavell will say it is (also) a philosophical moment. Witt will talk of taking down the house of cards that is representationalism, and sorting amongst the rumble for the ordinary concepts to build again. We do most times take concepts and actions and expressions as if they are granted to us without our responsibility to them, as if the life they embody is a given, and we are not necessary (answerable) to sometimes make them intelligible in new contexts, or re-intelligble in a destroyed, perverted time. As you say, to make sure words do not fall "flat" or "short"--that see that we make them fall.

**One way we work to voice the personal is through psychology: "The trauma is experienced as something that happened to ‘me’ - something to be endured alone, which is not to be understood by or shared with others." Therapy "finds" the words to express this pain; as if they are there but we have a desire to suppress them, not be expressed by them--enough to be adversarial to others, as if when we say "our" pain that somehow takes it away from being "mine" (other than the fact of it being in my body, not yours), but isn't this also part of therapy? to see, as a comfort, that they are not alone, the only one to have felt this pain.

Are you familiar with the work in the area of the problem of other minds, or the issue of empathy?
— Joshs

Yes, started with, Descartes I wanna say. I think my post of my reading of Witt's lion quote is to show what he discovered about the problem of the other. I
— Antony Nickles

I’m going to take that as a ‘no’. — Joshs

So, we are going to ignore the entire history of the problem of other minds, and start fresh. To say, we do not need to account for the past in order to move forward. I'm sensing that here again we are underestimating the ability for concepts to have an openness and possibility to move into new contexts, etc. That the concepts are instead fixed, closed, an "idea" as if like an "object" to which a word points, like "tree". And even then, don't we have criteria for differentiating a tree from, say, a bush? and then we can address outliers: is a hibiscus that is pruned to have a trunk a "tree"? or a violet grafted to the top of an apple tree? If these things mattered, isn't it possible to discuss and resolve these "new contexts"? Are the criteria of concepts closed, or are people (closing them)?

It may be that if your interests gravitate toward political theory or literature , the approach you are using may be suffice for for those purposes. — Joshs

And this is the move to banish poetry from the republic. To cast out certain subjects (ethics, aesthetics, etc.) from "philosophy" as the Tractatus does, or positivism, or representationalism, etc. Austin will fume over they idea that everything that is not a true/false statement is either irrational or emotion, etc. And here we see one satisfaction of OLP: to bring back our whole world, rather than arbitrarily slicing it in two (as Kant had to).

I sense a gap between the Wittgensteinian approach you are using and the fertile research currently taking place on self-consciousness and empathy. You’ll have to trust me when I say that scholars like Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher have a thoroughgoing familiarity with Wittgenstein, and would claim to embrace his approach. I believe they would say there is more to say about the basis of intersubjectivty and its relation to subjectivity than what you are offering , but which is not at all incompatible with Wittgenstein. — Joshs

I'm getting the feeling here that we want to skip past (understanding) the method of OLP (the important bit), to get it to say a theory that we can then argue with/about (along philosophy's old methods). But we do not yet seem to understand or accept the method, which is, as it were: "the argument". There may be implications to OLP's observations, and even, after having looked at our concepts, (different) goals for philosophy's issues that Austin and Witt have (similarly though, getting philosophy to see that it is--and, with Witt, why it is--not seeing, accepting the variety of criteria and their validity in understanding philosophical issues. But this is not to say that there are not other areas where the method of OLP (investigating our criteria) is useful: science, film, literature, politics, etc.

And so I feel I am, reluctantly, having to recreate the entire Philosophical Investigations backwards, when the whole point is for you to see for yourself if the examples, of what we say when, lead you to the same understanding of the criteria for that concept. And, if not, what is wrong with the example, what is missing from the context, have we overlooked criteria, seen them too generally, etc.--to work out our disagreements along those lines, the conditions and possibilities of each, lets simply say, word.

That said, my guess is these guys [saying "there is more to say about the basis of intersubjectivty and its relation to subjectivity") are both ignoring Witt's constant examination of "subjectivity" (its picture) and his ability to otherwise account for it. Analyzing the picture of representationalism (of the "interior"), and seeing the ordinary ways the personal (the individual) matter and have effect, etc. The Grammar of "us" speaking--and our similarity to the Other (in our separateness)--for example, that an expression reveals who we are (our pain, our defiance, our cowardice). That what is at stake is our responsibility to our expressions as they reveal our character, our soul; that it is we who hide it, wish to remain unanswerable, or wish to be fully expressed, so we no longer have to have anything to do with our words. (Cavell)

“ In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are inter-woven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator.”
- Merleau-Ponty — Joshs

And why can't the "fabric" be our concepts and the lives they are sculpted with, which are there before us (not created by us) but which is adequate for our needs. Does it ensure understanding? No. Are their times when we do not share the same lives, that our language is dead to us, pushed outside its criteria? Yes. But we have ordinary ways to address those failings rather than create a theory which side-steps all the contexts in which misunderstanding comes up.

Is the self a social construct?

I argue that the self is so multifaceted a phenomenon that various complementary accounts must be integrated if we are to do justice to its complexity. — Joshs

- DAN ZAHAVI

Not having read this, I still imagine I will not be able to present anything in a way that will matter to you. Nevertheless, I would argue that the self is as multifaceted as all the ways we can express it in all the various contexts we come across. Most things we say will not express us of course--most of our life is conformity, quite desperation, Emerson and Thoreau will say--as if we do not exist, are not ourselves, until there are moments that define us--our character, over our intellect ("our thoughts")--contexts with criteria that may split us down the middle, require as to be answerable for ourself.

I am interested in the article on Austin and Ryle, as may @Banno, as I have studied both (though Ryle has issues, and Austin has limitations). Perhaps we can swap articles. Mine would be: Cavell on reading Wittgenstein but if you are feeling serious, the explanation/example of OLP in Cavell's finding of a MUST in concepts does a much better job than I have been able to.

we misunderstand each other [in myriad ways], we misunderstand each other, talk past one another, fail to ‘ put ourselves in the other’s shoe’ I would say. — Joshs

That is literally an example of doing Ordinary Language Philosophy . So let's look and see. The next step after this is that, because of the possibility of misunderstanding "we are in desperate need of a way to understand each other better than we do". Then the "in myriad ways" would be to say so much that we are "desperate" to lesson their number, or have understanding work in one way.

And you go on to list ways in which we misunderstand each other. But if we look at them as examples, we can perhaps see in them the ways in which we can avoid, and work out, misunderstandings. When we say: "Talk past one another." We imply that we are "talking at" but missed; wait, no, we were talking at something behind ("past") the other; or maybe it is just that I talk past you, that is to say: your cares, your interests, your curiosity, your terms--the things that I should be talking at, or to. So the evidence of our pain becomes examples of the ordinary ways in which we can make understanding work, or get back to work, or at least work better. (This is the same move Austin makes, backwards: understanding moral action by studying how excuses work. @Banno) Now you can work through the next example of what we say about misunderstanding for its criteria for understanding. One question might be: it does seem we have control over where we go, and it would be better to go to the Other (maybe rather than try to bring them to me) and go to their shoes, in which they travel the world--as if to see where they go, or perhaps how they go--what will get them to move, how to get them to go, their motivations.

Now their will be other ways conversation breaks down, and now it would seem to be helpful to examine each of those through what we say when we have a misunderstanding. And OLP would say: imagine examples of when we say something about misunderstanding, and we can investigate the context and criteria and learn what it says about understanding better. Instead, we take our "guilt, hostility, and stress" (our desperate skepticism) out on our ordinary criteria, and abandon them. The step is made because the ordinary ways are subject to failure, and we want something--"a way to understand each other better than we do". Not to make ourselves better, but to start the way langauge works over from scratch and build from the criteria we want. But then we understand everything in one way, built to address or solve all our misunderstandings, at once (dispell or solve our skepticism). And this instead of seeing and learning about the many ways we have come up with over the life of our trying to understand, through what we say when we talk of our misunderstandings (even in idioms).

Another ‘uncommon’ use is to convinceonself that one is using ordinary language to talk about olp, only to find the readers are all over the place in interpreting the sense of those ‘ordinary’ words. Why do you think that is? — Joshs

My crap job of anticipating how philosphers would need to be warned about the misconceptions of OLP. That everyone looks for a weak point to characterize a claim so it may simply be dismissed with nothing learned.

I should have been clearer that OLP is not "using ordinary language". And, yes, it has terms: "concept", "sense", "grammar", "use", "family resemblances", "aspect", "attitude". OLP's work is not hypocrisy; all philosophy has terms. What Witt is using those terms for is explainable. It is a lot harder explaining how philosophy has used: know, intend, mean, see, appearance, etc.--as if every word were a term, with no context.

What OLP is doing is investigating the ordinary ways something like "intention" works (it's criteria) in different contexts. OLP investigates the ordinary criteria for concepts by looking at what is going on when we say "intend", what distinctions are made, what we care about with the concept, when it is not considered the concept, what counts in its judgments, etc.

Other "Concepts" would include: seeing, knowing, an accident, a game, calling, naming, essence, etc; maybe it's easiest to say a Concept is like a field of expression or action, only that it is not enough to say "these words" because these words blanket how things work in the world too. One of OLP's contentions is that words and the world are tied together--to investigate one is to learn about the other--though the skeptic is correct that that connection can be lost.

Are you familiar with the work in the area of the problem of other minds, or the issue of empathy? — Joshs

Yes, started with, Descartes I wanna say. I think my post of my reading of Witt's lion quote is to show what he discovered about the problem of the other. I found that the best overview of the arguments is in Cavell's "Knowing and Acknowledging" and his finding that "I know he is in pain" is not intelligible as a claim to certainty, nor that I infer their pain, but it is in the context where the use of knowledge is that "I acknowledge" he is in pain (I accept its claim on me, rather than deny the Other--I believe this is in the sense of a moral claim, as in, above, though of course not necessarily apart from, empathy), and that this shows us a lot about our relationship to the Other (that we are separate but answerable to each other).

...there is no purely internal any more than there a a purely public. — Joshs

Witt's claim is that there is a personal (separate person) and that language is public, but the relationship between the two is not theoretical and universal (singular), but that I attach myself to language (an "expression" Witt will say), and then I am responsible to that expression, the ways it is rational (along each concept's criteria); responsible to answer to you for clarification, justification, excusing it, drawing a line in defense of it, for having defied its rationality, etc.

consciousness is self-consciousness ; there is a minimal pre-reflective self-awareness that accompanies all experiences. I’m wondering what you take is on this, since it speaks to the subjective side of language. — Joshs

To say "experience" is to mean (this is the method of OLP)... "I had a great experience at Disneyland." One criteria would seem to be: for you/me to have an experience, we must be aware of it. But does this criteria say anything? It also appears we talk about experience related to one thing, rather than all things, because what context would there be to ask "How is your experience?" (a waiter perhaps) or "What are you experiencing? (a clinical psychologist during an experiment of weightlessness?). Also, can we ask about your--talk about my--experience of everything/anything? And here, try to provide a context where you can, and where you can not.

I think of OLP as therapeutic... I was impressed by the way the method employed in that kind of philosophy dissolved the traditional "problems of philosophy" as did the pragmatism of John Dewey (or so I thought, and still think). — Ciceronianus the White

Although a lot of traditional OLP takes it as solving skepticism (or other philosophical problems), I admire Stanley Cavell's reading of the nuance that Witt is using to point out (with "seeing aspects" and "following a series", etc.) that in reviving our ordinary criteria, we learn about ourselves and our philosophical concerns. So I believe it doesn't solve those issues, or unravel them (eternally), or cure us (forever), or make philosophy obsolete, as Rorty, Dewey, Austin, Hegel, etc. in some sense believe.

how does one convey an innovation in thought WITHOUT either using the common stock uncommonly or inventing neologisms? — Joshs

I'd be interested in some examples of instances where an innovation in thought was communicated by using common stock words uncommonly — Ciceronianus the White

One "uncommon" use is when philosophy stripes concepts of the criteria that account for their ordinary uses (possible senses) and significance (why those senses matter to us)--"knowledge" 'appearance" "difference", intention" etc. And, yes, this "creates problems", like when "thought" is imagined to be an internal thing that, to be special, new, innovative, needs to be "outside" of the ordinary criteria of our concepts, that those must be circumvented.

But by investigating our ordinary criteria for each concept and how they allow for change is to see that it sometimes changes with our (cultural, practical) lives, but also to see that the ordinary criteria of senses of a concept can be extended into new contexts. With the example above, "thought" is externalized (see late Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?) not as limited to/by language, but that our desire for its "originality" and change is a possibility of (within) our concepts because of their criteria and the ordinary ways in which their "conformity" can be broken or pushed against or revitalized (in degenerate times). I guess this is to say I am, "my" "thought" is, not special, so much as, if I want what I say to be special, I am responsible to make that intelligible (which is a possibility of/from our ordinary criteria).

I appreciate the responses and thank you for helping me see the crossed-wires and misconceptions (and I wish I was better at addressing those). Before going back to responding (I will), I thought I would try to gather the misconceptions we have discovered.

1.That OLP's subject is only language, rather than us, the world, communication, culture, politics, philosophy's issues in general...

2. By ordinary, OLP is using regular words, for ordinary ideas, (or anyone's opinion) compared to philosophy's complex problems;

3. "Concept", "ordinary", "grammar", "criteria", "context, "use", etc., can be assumed (presumed) to be understood at first glance or in an ordinary way or as other philosophy might, instead of as specific terminology.

4. That a "concept" is similar to an "idea" or other mental metaphysical "object" that corresponds to words or the world, instead of a general category of words that have criteria imbedded in them for the way they are used: generalizing, knowing, seeing, understanding, meaning, intending, i.e., the words philosophy appropriates and stripes of their criteria to create a picture of one theory of language.

5. That OLP is saying or showing that language is simple, or works simply, dismissing or not interested in, or applicable to, philosophy's honest concerns (skepticism, the problem of other, identity, etc.),

6. That OLP is simply an empirical popularity contest of what most people say or that OLP is merely pointing out what makes people act in certain ways, or is conservatively limiting what can be said philosophically, or dismissing philosophy with “common sense”.

7. That Witt blames philosophy's problems on language, rather than on:
a) philosophy's desire/need for language to meet its standard;
b). the possibility in language to allow us to bewitch ourselves in that way, its ability to seem uprooted (isolated words) and so appearing to need roots; and
c) ordinary criteria's inability to defend itself.

8. That OLP has a theory of langauge, meaning, rationality etc., (and one overarching all) rather than being a method for insight (that the process is the "argument"), yet also a style and attitude, in that it is not telling us so much as asking us if we see too, requiring us to look differently (thus includes philosophers such as Socrates, Nietszche, Emerson, Thoreau, later Heidegger, and a new wave interested in OLP's involvement in and lessons from: literature, film, education, politics...

9. That representation, etc. is wrong (and OLP right, on the same terms), rather than us being confused, blind to ourselves (the entire picture ignoring our real needs/desires);

10. That OLP is making statements about how language works, rather than claims which only need to be fleshed out better, finding a context where the criteria might be something more apt, i.e., I have an equal right as the philosopher.

Of course , properly speaking.... — Joshs

"Properly" speaking....... Was I speaking... Improperly?

...nowhere do we have evidence that the background that I draw from and the background that you draw from are the ‘same’ background. — Joshs

This reminds me of Witt's (and Cavell's) examination of philosophy's obsession with knowing whether the pain I have is the same as yours. Unless there is a need to address a confusion, there is no need to talk of difference--what evidence would prove that? All OLP has is examples of "confusion" and what a "difference" is in "our" "background". Sometimes communication fails fundamentally--that's not a reason to restructure everything as if it always does or could whenever, unless maybe you have a reason to, say, attack logocentrism to allow for different voices--shift power to the individual.

"there is no situation of communicating with another, such as what you and I are doing now , where you wouldn’t be in a better position to understand me by assuming that every word I use is not just the mark of a history of sedimented cultural contexts , but my own integral interpretation of that history of contexts as I interpreted them, just as you own contextual background is unique to your history." — Joshs

That sounds exhausting; most of the time we don't need to be that special, nor intentional (if at all), but, yes, some times it is appropriate to be deliberate (a speech), or to "speak your (individual) truth" as it were. Emerson will talk of aversion to conformity (as Thourea civilly disobeys), and of breathing life into words--making a specific distinction, or even pointing out something new, or taking a concept into a new or broader context. All of the discrete, specific examples of, say, excuses, are evidence of the expansive ways language falls apart, rights itself, expands, and is used by us in the ways it allows (or against them).

"I mean every word that I use in relation to that larger personal system of understanding that is unique to me" — Joshs

You "meaning" every word is the same as you "intending" every action. Maybe the example about accidents helps. We are not that powerful--we don't set meaning, nor mitigate understanding; again, we abandon ourselves to our words.

Antony Nickles ...and what is it I am looking for in these? — Banno

Solid question. The one on Witt might allow you to see him in a larger context, and the other one I thought you might just enjoy as a good defense/example of OLP--I particuarly think the MUST of meaning something said is something Austin would enjoy. Also, as evidence that, with Cavell, Cora Diamond, others, OLP is still relevant and has more to say.

If ordinary dialogue does not reflect ordinary content then I don't know what else would. This sounds like a discontinuity between means and ends.

Anyway, clearly this is a "special technical" usage which doesn't carry the force of meaning of "ordinary dialogue" as it really exists, so I'll leave it at that. Perhaps it should be called "Strawson's method" or "Wittgenstein's way" or the "epoche". — Pantagruel

Well, clearly I suck at explaining things--to the examples!! (I forgot actually that's the whole gig.) So the "dialogue" we would have is coming up with (seeing and describing Wiit says), and agreeing on, circumstances (the contexts) when we say, as an example (from Malcolm): "I know" and what those instances imply about our various criteria for knowledge (what we ordinarily imply (mean) when we say, here: I know).

One option ("sense" Witt says) is that I am certain: "I know when the sun will rise today"; the criteria for this might be that I can give evidence of that certainty, etc. This appears to be philosophy's one and only use and preoccupation. Second, we can say "I know New York", as in: I know my way around; I can show you; Third, I know (knew) that, as in to confirm or agree with what you said; and Fourth, I know, as in to sympathize with you. Cavell uses this last sense to shed light on our knowledge of another's pain--we don't "know it" in the first sense, we acknowledge it, recognize and accept the claim their expression of pain makes on me.

Witt uses OLP to figure out the reason (spoiler: certainty in the face of skepticism) that metaphysics and positivism remove any context and replace our ordinary criteria. He does this by putting their claims/terms back into a context of when we say: "doubt" or "mean" or "mental picture". His other goal (and Austin's) is to show the variety of criteria for different concepts (the different ways concepts are meaningful, how differently they judge, what matters to us in their distinctions), and that each concept has their own ways they work (as opposed to word=world as Witt's nemesis, and that every statement is true/false for Austin).

So, to try this again, we are not using an ordinary dialogue or talking about ordinary (non-philosophical) content; that's fine it's just not analytical philosophy. We are examining what the ordinary criteria and context are when we say such-and-such philosophical claim. With "ordinary" maybe not as, conventional, so much as opposed to metaphysical abstract (absent) contexts and pre-determined criteria (the irony that Ordinary Language Philosophy has a weird version of ordinary is not lost on me--they didn't pick the name). Any "force of meaning" here is that if we can agree on the examples and the criteria, you might see what I see--see for yourself.

And from this is raised the question...how can the hidden, unexamined, unconscious criteria be called ordinary? If some embodiment is unavailable for examination, how can it be said to be ordinary? And if ordinary just stands for “not made up”, how is that not self-contradictory, if words are exactly that....made up in order to properly represent the objects to which they are meant to relate? — Mww

I hope the example above illustrates the criteria of different senses of a concept are not "hidden" nor "unavailable for examination". To examine them is exactly the point. Witt says something like: they are simply not usually examined--like, walking. And metaphysics makes up the criteria (for common words), though I would point out that the picture of meaning as: words represent objects (ideas, etc) is exactly the kind of thing that looking at examples (of representation) might help clarify why philosophers want to frame it this way (this is basically the main thrust of Witt's Philosophical Invetsigations). Maybe it helps to examine the disparities between your framing and Austin's above.

I accept there is a certain unconscious part of the system from which words arise, but I reject the words themselves can arise from unconscious criteria, or that they necessarily embody such unconscious criteria. Case in point....phenomena have no names, but subsequently cognized objects derived from them, do. — Mww

Edit: Witt gets into a lot of examples when the word and the world are not separate (see my mention of "accident" above)--say, that there is no space between my pain and its expression for knowledge. And "unconsious" is simply one way to put it. Another might be: most of the time we don't discuss criteria because they are wrapped up in everything we are already doing--we don't have to mean it, or intend it, or justify it, "think" about it, etc. The context is clear, the expression is uncontroversial--none of that comes up; though I could explain all that with the context: which sense based on what was pointed out, etc.--thus, the universality of the claim (you could make those claims, anyone could), and its powerlessness if I can't get you to see what I do.

Kant's... criteria is by no means hidden or unexamined, insofar as both concepts and the words which represent them in objective manifestation, arising from perceptions or from pure thought, are entirely present to conscious mental activity**. — Mww

This the philosopher's dream of power. As if they, or some rational process, created or perceives the (at its worst, singular) association of words with the world, and that they (and not "us") are privy to the whole landscape of our rationale so what they say actually matters (as judgment, etc.)--the difference may be clearer in that anyone can give examples of what we mean when we say "accident", but do we actually use the categorical imperative to decide what to do?

From here, it is nothing but the domain of general employment given by common experiences, which sustains the notion of “ordinary”, and somehow or another this became sufficient causality for language philosophers to simply assign a different connotation to “ordinary”, but with insufficient explanatory methodology for doing so. — Mww

And this is exactly philosophy's dismissal of our ordinary criteria, as "common experience" (not phislosophy's special insight) and "general employment" (compared to philosophy's rarified uses). OLP does not claim a "causality" or a special place or "connotation" (though, yes, the method needs explaining, badly it appears). What it is trying to do is put the human, say, voice, back into the philosophical discussion by bringing up the contexts in which our concepts live.

So we arrive at: to whom is OLP actually directed, and why does to whomever it is directed, need it? — Mww

OLP was (initially) directed at traditional analytical philosophy and the metaphysics, representationalism, positivism, and descriptive falacy, etc., of philosophical theories or statements that, among other things: communication/rationality works in one universal or specific way, or towards a particular standard, that it is dependent more on individuals, and that we have more control in how it works. It's necessity is to breath new life into a tradition which has removed us from its considerations. We fear skepticism and ambiguity, so we mechanize our world and language and relations. The place of philosophy is now bright and shiny and hollow and no one is allowed to live there.

From his first book of essays (rather short):
Cavell on Witt's Phil. Inv.

On the categorical Must of concepts

...our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marking, in the lifetimes of many generations: these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method.
— Austin [care of @Banno]

Sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. I wonder how much of that ‘common stock of words’ would remain if we removed the contributions of writers in innumerable fields of culture who thought them up in their armchairs(Plato, Freud, Shakespeare,etc). — Joshs

I believe Austin's point is the richness of what we ordinarily mean by what we say is the distinctions between one concept and another that are imbedded in their criteria for OLP to find that reflect what is worthy about that concept for us--what is meaningful about it to us: why it matters to draw that distinction, what counts for inclusion, why we would assume a connection to something else or between us, etc.

The important part here is not that they are common (ordinary) words (@Pantagruel); the point of OLP is that words "embody" the unconscious, unexamined ordinary criteria (not made-up, or philosophically-important criteria)--all of the richness that is buried in them of all the different ways we live.

He wants us to imagine the subtlety in how our ways of living are distinguished (not separate from the words, as Witt says too), and now compare this to Descartes. The armchair is a dead giveaway, but also he imagines his way into massive skeptical doubt and will only be satisfied with a standard of criteria he set by/for himself right then--neither subtle, nor connected to, nor worth anything but satisfying his fear.

I wouldn't say Austin understands skepticism (or cares about it) as Wittgenstein does (or Cavell), but he does qualify our entire reliance on "our common stock of words" to "all ordinary and reasonably practical matters" and so leaves it open that we might run out of words (what then?), or have to think more subtley, or because they are not always "sound"--though maybe just not as a start before looking at the richness of our existing concepts.

I'll just reserve "ordinary language philosophy" for those who were at Oxford in the twenty years from 1945, and place an emphasis on analysis of common word use. — Banno

I'll let the idea drop that the conflict, between what we ordinarily mean by what we say and what we'd like to mean philosophically, has not been happening since Socrates started asking random people questions on the street, if you'll check out Must We Mean What We Say by Cavell (a student of Austin) some time, and consider OLP didn't die in '65 and that it's reach might stretch a little further (and leave off that it came out in '58--the guy just died!).

Is a context a kind of frame within which events happen? Do things take place WITHIN a context? Do two people interact within a single context? Can i hold onto an intention over time within a single context? — Joshs

This is a lot, and, as Cavell says in the Abbrogation of Voice (the reading of Derrida reading Austin I mentioned), not much touches. I will only attempt to paraphrase his points. He says "context" does much more and "intention" does much less than Derrida wants. I also think the idea of time is getting in the way. As Witt's builders show: a lot of the context is already there ("written" Derrida might say)--our understanding of money, a transaction, private ownership, a question, on and on--for both of us to know, when I say to a grocer "Can I get that Apple?", that I want to buy it. The context also allows for concurrent misunderstanding (or inconclusive understanding), say, for the grocer to ask, "Just the one, or a pound?" Context can be shared, past and present (into the future), but we may find different parts significant (identity, capitalism) in running down any confusion.

Now how much of all the things that could be brought to bear, actually need to be, is determined by the possibilities in the concept and what questions if any remain. An "intention" can only be what it is in light of a concept, say an offense: "Did you intend to slight your mother-in-law by not serving her a drink? Or did you forget?" "I" have far less to do with this than Derrida, or positivism, would like. Intention is not the cause of action (or meaning); not every action is intended; nor does intention create or influence the context, nor affect the criteria of a concept (unless the concept allows for that). My "perspective" may only, if at all, come in (at the end, as it were) if there is a problem. Concepts already (before and outside of me) have significance, I only say them; and that "mark" doesn't secure or set the context (or the meaning). I give myself over to that expression (fate myself, Emerson says, to the concept). There are only certain ways to qualify it or excuse it--one of which might not be to say, "that's not what I intended!" (except as an expression of the desire to take back having said something). Derrida says I don't have to imagine my death to see the non-presence of context make my meaning already other then what I say (or intended), but I do not die. As Austin says, I am tethered to my words, which are my bond, to which I am shackled. Now I can understand Derrida politically wanting to get out from under the tyranny of our concepts, but he has sold out our responsibility to what we say in the process.

So I'm just, as always, not sure what to do with Derrida. The idea of a concept repeating through different contexts, or iterability, is in the same vain for me as a word tied to a meaning (stripped of any need for context), or a representation being true or false about the world (the bogeymen Austin takes on). I know they are meant to be different, but it's as if Derrida doesn't want his cake but still wants to eat it.

“Austin's procedure is rather remarkable and typical of that philosophical tradition with which he would like to have so few ties. It consists in recognizing that the possibility of the negative (in this case, of infelicities) is in fact a structural possibility, that failure is an essential risk of the operations under consideration; then, in a move which is almost immediately simultaneous, in the name of a kind of ideal regulation, it excludes that risk as accidental, exterior, one which teaches us nothing about the linguistic phenomenon being considered. This is all the more curious-and, strictly speaking, untenable-in view of Austin's ironic denunciation of the 'fet­ishized' opposition: valuelfact."
-Derrida (my emphasis)

In addition to the questions posed by a notion as historically sedimented as "convention," it should be noted at this point:

1) that Austin, at this juncture, appears to consider solely the conventionality constituting the circumstance of the utterance [monce], its contextual surround­ings, and not a certain conventionality intrinsic to what constitutes the speech act [locution] itself... — Joshs

My understanding is that Derrida confuses Austin as excluding the frailty of our concepts, but Austin was only setting it aside in the essay Derrida read because he had written a whole other essay about "Excuses" (to show how some speech acts fail)--so infelicity is not exterior or accidental. The Austin/Derrida/Searle interplay seems to fly by each other. As discussed above, Austin's whole point is to show that there is no "intrinsic" "constitution" of (every) speech act. To desire this is to fall prey to the same generality which created metaphysics, but to take it in a different direction.

Also, to call our criteria of concepts "conventions" is to give the false impression that they are the outcome of our agreement or that we somehow control them; we are not discussing "conventional" (nor "ordinary") language, but the anti-thesis of metaphysical criteria for our concepts to shed light on philosophical issues.

Moore skips over scepticism? No, he confronts it directly. — Banno

Yes, of course (poorly said). What I meant is that Moore ends up believing that he has solved skepticism, or shown it to be absurd, or incapable of being "thought" (my Moore is ancient). But only to contrast this with Wittgenstein and Cavell, who leave skepticism as an open threat, that there is a truth to it as Cavell says (our separateness, and responsibility for that). Austin will worry about identifying a Goldfinch, and show how it can be fake (thus what "real" is)--but he does not explicitly delve deeper into why we are tempted to worry whether the world is real, or whether you are (or I).

While Austin looks to set out the relations between concepts already found in our everyday language, Wittgenstein looks to set out the deeper logic found when that same discourse goes astray. * * *

These are not contrary methods, but complimentary. And certainly they are distinct. — Banno

I'll grant you that they work in different ways, on different material, for different goals, but I would say Wittgenstein (pushing against metaphysics and positivism) does not have a dissimilar "method" to Austin (pushing against the descriptive fallacy)--drawing out the ordinary criteria and grammar of a concept to show their variety in the face of a monopolizing singular theory of meaning (they have that much in common; I would say that's enough). Yes, Witt does go farther, though I would say it is still a contrast of ordinary criteria against philosophical ones, only that he asks why we want to do that (get ourselves into that pickle/picture).

Of course maybe it is less important to argue about who is practicing OLP, than to agree that OLP is relevant (to modern philosophy) and a sound (rigorous) methodology, and how it works (and what it is not--which still seems to be an issue in many of these other threads).

There must be both "poor" and "good" ordinary usages. You can't do such an analysis without some kind of normative dimension. — Pantagruel

Again, not about the "use" of language--especially whether it is used "well" or "poorly". The idea of "normative" is not the goal at all; OLP does not want to normalize language or what people are saying, or what problems philosophy should have. Now, this might be confusing because our criteria do have a sense of structure; or concepts a sense of exclusion/inclusion, and the idea of felicity does evoke the idea of the normative. But normative is a way of describing philosophy or language or rationality's constraint on our norms--but "we" do not have that power. To say the Grammar of an apology is normative for apologizing is not a function of the description of the criteria, it is the act (or failure) to apologize; i.e., there is no space for philosophy or language (ordinary or otherwise) to be "normative". Our concepts are our lives, which are our norms (among other criteria).

If you read Philosophical Investigations, it is full of open-ended questions
— Antony Nickles

You see, I don't think of those as rhetorical questions. — Ciceronianus the White

What I meant to say I guess was questions not answered (directly--"Imagine..." "Why do we wish to say..."; and open-ended claims (to the Grammar of something), for us to consider (rather than the statements people take them as).

And again, the claim of OLP is hyperbolic
— Antony Nickles

You mean it's exaggerated? Beyond reasonable? I think we're operating with different definitions. Also with "strident." I see nothing in OLP as being harsh, grating or unpleasantly forceful. The same with "extravagant." In what sense can OLP be described as lacking in restraint or absurd? — Ciceronianus the White

By "hyperbolic" I meant that it is claiming to speak for all of us, that it is submitting itself to acceptance (assent Kant says) for what it sees. If you don't see the moral urgency of Wittgenstein, or even Austin, I might try to look for some quotes, but I'm not sure it is important enough--perhaps you may see it now that you know to look for it? And "extravagant" was only meant to refer to the absurdity of the imaginary scenarios/contexts which they sometimes employ to flesh out what philosophy means in what it says (robots, Corsican brothers, etc.)--as if they needed to match philosophy's absurdities (appearances, impressions, etc.).

we are explicating and opening and expanding our ordinary criteria
— Antony Nickles

So, making them less ordinary? — Pantagruel

No, just brought out into the open, applied to various contexts (even new ones). Witt talks about how you know how to walk, but it's hard to explain. Criteria are not something people ordinarily get into, or see--the unconscious framework of our concepts.