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@Banno @Ludwig V - Austin readers

We all understand and accept that different creatures with visual organs perceive the world differently. Only certain wavelengths of light are perceptible to human eyes, etc. So of course there is no 'one' objectively correct way of seeing the world. — cherryorchard

The mitigation of “perception” of indirect-realism preserves the possibility of certainty, however limited. As Kant did, it kills off the world (the thing-in-itself) in order to keep our manufactured standards for “Knowledge”. The modern story is that science can know the brain (predictably, consistently), and we can rest unmistaken on that, rather than having the constant shadow of skepticism and doubt lurking on everything else we decide to do and say. We want to only accept fore-knowledge, universality, and the “crystalline purity” of (math-like) “Logic” so, if we can’t have that (certain knowledge), we take the world as unknowable at all. Wittgenstein is showing that we have numerous ways of understanding the world other than objective certainty. Austin is just burning down the (manufactured) house.

Also, what are matters of interest and focus and differentiation, are turned into the constant, unique, individualization of our brain, and so my brain makes me constantly different from yours. The picture is: I “perceive” the world differently (always) from how you perceive it, and we use language to try to overcome our ever-present division, fraught with skeptical failure from the beginning. What internalizing our separateness (our possible difference) does is save “me” (always, rather than by non-conformity). And, yes, we are separate, but by default we are intelligible, and, when that sometimes fails, the responsibility falls on us (does not destroy our ability to connect with the world).

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Austin spends quite a lot of time in 'Sense and Sensibilia' explaining that there is no point in claiming that we only ever see things indirectly, just precisely because, if that is the case, we no longer have any idea what seeing directly would even mean — cherryorchard

We read through Sense and Sensibilia here, and I believe what Austin is doing is showing how “indirectly” actually works (seeing someone in a mirror, speaking by phone, etc), to show that the opposite “directly” does not have the same power philosophy wants it to—objectivity, certainty—against which “indirectly” is then only imagined as illusion, mitigated, or something we overcome or see through, casting us out from the world. The other point is, as you say, that we don’t mention that we see “directly” unless there is a question of whether we are or could be doing so indirectly. “I saw the moon directly, not through this telescope.”

I think Gellner is taking the point Austin is making in this case, and trying to make it a position of OLP, and, even more, a position to all language, which is an ad naseum argument. Austin is merely being logical. The same is the case when Wittgenstein points out that we don’t “know” we (or you) are in pain (as a claim to knowledge), we just “are” in pain, we have it. The claim is that pain is expressed to request a response to the pain (to my having it—to me), for it to be accepted or rejected. “I’m in pain.” “I know.” “Then why aren’t you doing anything?”

Austin's argument is about what he sees as the misuse of particular words in philosophy. — cherryorchard

This is a common minimization of Austin, though understandable. He is looking at what we say in order to learn about what we do (it is a means, not “about” it). He is not defending correct usage; he is leveraging it because what is normative about words, is our lives, which are captured in them. Unfortunately, he doesn’t talk much about why someone would claim indirect realism, nor why it is important to tear it apart (and “realism”).

The larger question then, is why would anyone claim they can only see, perceive, or experience the world indirectly? Cavell points out the inference that we want to remain special in the face of our perhaps not being so, that we want to necessarily be a self (that mitigates the world). Also, as with Descartes, we want to account for being wrong by internalizing it so we can control it (and still possibly be infallible, certain) because the fear of always possibly being wrong is worse (that we may never come to moral agreement).

@cherryorchard

I believe most of this is a misunderstanding of the method of OLP, and also maybe assuming it has certain premises it needs and/or conclusions it wants.

But: there is one kind of shift of meaning which is both disastrous and characteristically philosophical, and that is to make the criteria for what falls under a concept either so severe, or so loose, that either nothing at all can, or everything must, fall under it.

If anything the above would be a fallacy that Wittgenstein is trying to point out. He refers to philosophy’s desire for “crystalline purity” which shows in its manufacturing and imposing rigid criteria for knowledge, truth, etc.—to be logical and certain—which constrains their ability to capture the world at all (not that they need an antithesis). Also, one of Austin’s moves—in order to show that philosophy gets too wrapped up in wanting something to be a particular way—is to point out that there are not the dichotomies that philosophy imagines, such as when it asks if an act is voluntarily or not, which it thinks creates a question of intention, when an opposite of voluntarily is not necessarily determined or unconscious, but forced.

@Richard B sets out further language of Gellner’s and the concern that OLP takes regular language as superior and not claiming any impact (“normativity”).

thought is not bound and enslaved by any of the language games it employs, but on the contrary that a most important kind of thinking consists of reassessing out terms, reassessing the norms built into them and reassessing the contrast associated with them.

This assumes that OLP wants philosophical thought to be done in regular language, which overlooks Wittgenstein’s extensive use of his own terms: “use”, “sense”, “grammar”, “criteria”, “ordinary”, and his pointing out how dichotomy and analogy (or forms of expression) in everyday language create expectations that allow our desire for certainty to even get a handhold at all. The confusion I think is that Wittgenstein is not using or exalting ordinary language (the moniker is disastrous for understanding the method), but looking at the expressions we say in certain situations because they reveal our ordinary criteria of judgment, which can be contrasted with manufactured “philosophical criteria”, like Plato’s for knowledge. This does not provide a better answer, but reveals why we want to abandon the world (because it fails us, is not predictive, not stable, etc).

What is conspicuous about Linguistic Philosophy is its abdication of any kind of normative role, both in its practice and in its programmatic announcements. — Richard B

When Wittgenstein claims that philosophy should only describe and not explain (#109), he is only contrasting it to science’s hypothesizing, or imagining something hidden #126. He is not trying to claim that philosophy can’t or shouldn’t say anything or argue for anything. The whole of PI is one claim after another about how our ordinary criteria work, for all of us, and he is absolutely trying to make (and “explain”) multiple points and in a way in which we might convince ourselves, changing how we act. What constrains philosophy is not the ordinary, but what always has: what turns out to be useless, what is made ridiculous, illogical, etc.

Well, if we are only discussing language/confusion generally then I apologize, but if it is specifically Wittgenstein’s famous quote in the Philosophical Investigations, then it might help to see the context:

[ Philosophical problems ] …are solved …by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: despite an urge to misunderstand them. …Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. — PI, #109

It is not language that “bewitches” us; we already have “an urge” (for purity, certainty) which is the cause of our being charmed out of thinking clearly. Language is the “means” by which we “battle against” focusing only on a response to doubt. It is a reference to his method of looking at examples of what we say in specific situations (in a sense, what @Shawn proposes as: “the study of logic”, though more, studying the logic of our ordinary language). The reason it works is because language and the world are tied together (except when that breaks down) in a way that examining what we say, shows us (it is a record of) our interest in each thing, the criteria we use to judge it (the “workings”).

Now of course he does also point out that our forms of expression get us into problems. One is that we use analogies that make things look simple. The relationship between a noun and an object (see @Joshs above) makes us imagine a framework where all words refer to (point to) objects, and then we force the framework onto everything else that isn’t an actual object, like imagining “ideas”, “sensations”, “meanings”, or “reality” as things. Also, the desire for simplicity and certainty is the motivation of @fdrake’s observation that we, for example, want “I know” to have only one generalized sense.

I would only pointedly argue that the answer the PI is fighting against is for philosophy to abandon our regular expressions (to be more certain)—go “outside the box” as @Pierre-Normand’s authors call it—but should, rather, root out the urge to do so itself in appreciating the ways language is rational, clear, and precise enough in a multitude of ways.

once you've learnt the skill, it's too late to ask questions — Ludwig V

Yes we are born into a history of ways of doing things, but Witt’s method is exactly to make explicit the criteria for a practice (through looking at the things we say when we do it). Also, because we have a practice is why and how it can be rational to question, push back, live differently, etc.

It's the idea that you can (should) present examples and observations and leave the reader to work out their significance — Ludwig V

As well, the part people skip over is that his examples (rule-following, pointing, “seeing”, etc.) are practices that everyone can weigh in on (we each have an equal right to claims/there is no privileged position), so the proposed criteria we use, and the “grammar” of how they work, have to be accepted (by you) for it to be philosophical worth drawing conclusions from (as evidence).

I am going to start a read-though of The Blue Book soon, but the Anscombe sounds interesting.

agreement is different from agreeing with someone else where we shall go for lunch — Ludwig V

Yes, a “form of life” is not a conclusion or argued, etc (though “acquiesce” implies choice; we are indoctrinated, assimilated—Rousseau’s “consent” unconsciously.) That is not to say we don’t have forms of argument or refutation, means of judging loyalty and fairness (“you picked last time”).

I'm not sure that all moral disagreements can be resolved — Ludwig V

Well, you are right that everything may lead to naught. But the point is that that frailty is only a possible occurrence, and so should not be interpreted into a systemic problem (concluding that there is no “rationality”, intelligibility). And Witt’s idea of a moral dilemma is not like a clash of interests about a certain type of topic (say about abortion), but when everyone is at a loss as to what to do, how to go on—which is an event (and could involve any of our practices).

I would add that the wish to step outside any particular practice, however, is incoherent. Any attempt to do simply generates a new context. — Ludwig V

But the metaphysical problem is generalized and abstracted out of time, place, actors, i.e. anything we would call “a context”.

2. Are you suggesting that we could work out the common ground with a lion, but that we choose not to? Which suggests that we could if we wanted to. — Ludwig V

This should probably be under that other post, however, the point of it here is that philosophy imagines a CANNOT situation with rationality, rather than recognizing the possibility yet simply not wanting to be responsible when everything can fall apart, or not wanting to jump in without knowing for sure beforehand that I would not be judged as wrong.

So, to answer: the ones we CAN figure out their practices (where there is a possibility), are the people with the “strange” customs (at the top paragraph of that page).

Are you saying that we can understand lions, but that if a lion could speak to us, we would not be able to understand what was said? Of course, communication would not be instant, but Wittgenstein seems to be suggesting that there is some insoluble problem. I can't see why he would think so. — Ludwig V

This is very simple, but hard for people to accept or let go of (especially philosophers, and scientists), mostly I think because it is read without the surrounding text (as if it were a claim). I am saying that Witt wanted to contrast the CAN possibility that we have with the strange people, with a CANNOT situation (where it is actually impossible—not a choice). That contrast is the extent of the purpose of that sentence. He wanted something that would be an uncontroversial “very general fact of nature” (PI #143 and p. 230) that he presumes would be accepted as a fact, such as: parrots don’t talk to themselves (#344). I would say he chose poorly (though perhaps, as worse with Nietzsche, he can’t help poking people in the eye). He is not making a claim or argument nor is it necessary for any greater reason nor within any framework or analogy—nothing matters about it (other than its contrasting impossibility). If you disagree with it as a claim, that is certainly your prerogative and understandable (it is provocative in that way); that is just not what is happening here, neither in purpose nor intent. This is Witt’s arrogant style on full display, as he will even state without argument the implications he posits for, say, “believing”, as if everyone would agree.

Your example of apology is a very interesting one, that I would love to discuss separately; it is very relevant to ethics. — Ludwig V

J.L. Austin’s A Plea for Excuses is a work about ethics in that way.

does [saying disagreements happen at a time and place] mean that such failures can eventually be overcome at other times and in other contexts? If so, then limitation doesn't seem to lie in reason itself, but in people's finite use of it, their patience, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That is exactly the point. If you do not have a preset expectation that the answer MUST ensure agreement, then a failure does not mean there is a problem with the whole system, just this instance (or just because we gave up too soon).

If the lion comment is taken head on it is just stupid. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sorry, it is not that we cannot understand lions, just not talking ones; it is meant to be the statement of a fact, not a scientific claim (which I try to explain here), because it is said in contrast to when we CAN work out other cultural practices, to show that we sometimes just choose not to.

If we say that rationality is a question of our agreement in ways of life, we seem to eliminate the distinction between those agreements that we call "correct" or "incorrect" by some standard that is not set by our agreement and those agreements that are simply a matter of making a deal, so that "correct" and "incorrect" do not apply. — Ludwig V

This has been historically framed as: if a proposition is not true/false, then it is irrational (also, if not “knowledge” than belief, or, if not “objective” than “subjective”). And Witt’s point is that “rationality” is not just meeting a standard philosophy requires (sets)—like universal, generalized, a hard rule, certain, predetermined, justified, etc. (Witt will call these “metaphysical” criteria)—but that each thing has its own kind. “Forms of life” is not just something different to simply meet the same imposed requirements.

“Agreement” is here not the same either. We come to an agreement on some criteria—like how long one foot will be—but we do not agree “to” our practices (it is “agree” in the sense more of aligning, over our entire history of doing things). Still, we do judge whether, say, an apology, is correct or incorrect, but the criteria for that are different than true and false, as I can accept an apology that you do poorly (“accepting” is part of how it works differently, its “rationality” or “grammar” as Witt calls it).

Thus it seems out of place to discuss whether apologizing, in itself, is correct or incorrect, though not strange to discuss what justice is, its ideal, and yet, differently, its commitments, and, even differently, its current state, all of which we can do intelligibly, though perhaps not conclusively. The force we want of philosophy’s “rational” (justified, certain, determinative, etc.) is what Wittgenstein is claiming is the desire which makes it seem like any other way is a failure and without recourse (leading to relativism). For example:

You will understand, I suppose, that I think that agreements that are correct or incorrect are, by and large, rational agreements and the other kind are, roughly, matters of taste or convenience or pragmatics. (The difficulty of agreements about values sits awkwardly between the two.) — Ludwig V

It is exactly this framework that interprets skepticism as a theoretical “problem”, rather than the discovery that there is no fact that will ensure resolution of our moral conflicts, thus we are responsible for solving our ongoing disagreements, because we do have the means. All criteria reflect our interests in our lives (what and how we value something), it’s only metaphysical criteria that wish to step outside of any particular practice or situation.

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One way to deal with [relativism/skepticism] would be to posit nested sets of "forms of life" that people belong to. — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is true in that life takes various forms. There is our species (in itself and compared to others), our history, our practices, our cultures, etc. But these are not justification, nor decisions, nor rules we “agree” to; they come out of the fact that we live and have lived in similar ways: judging in the same manner (what an apology consists of, what pointing does), interested to make the same distinctions, anticipating particular implications, etc.

We imagine chaos because we want to only accept undeniable certainty and agreement (as “knowledge”), and cast everything else as “belief” or emotion or persuasion. But Witt shows is that the world has endless ways of being “rational” (having ways to account, though different), and so we can disagree intelligibly in relation from those practices. Ultimately we may not come to resolution, but that does not lead to the categorical failure of rationality, because a dispute also only happens at a time, in a context (which also gives our differences traction).

Now we can NOT understand talking lions, as a physical impossibility, but it is not impossible for us to learn about the gestures of the Chinese, or the traditions of others (PI, p. 223), so to preclude the other is a choice, being blind to the other because of being unable to look past ourselves.

We say we want to know, but what we actually want is for knowledge to take the place we have to be responsible for ourselves, thus accountable for it, known by our words and acts. If we could know what is right, we would not have to make a claim of it in what we do. But what we want is to not been known, to not know ourselves, and thus the allure of drugs that allow me to forget all that.

There are plenty of good reasons, supported by science, to believe indirect realism over direct realism, as I discussed at length here. — Michael

And the science of the brain and its processes is important to understand, but philosophy constructed a particular framework we should be aware of, because it did so for its own purposes. As I mentioned before, philosophy does not like the fact that we are sometimes mistaken. Instead of rectifying our errors with the means and explanations in each case, philosophy problematizes our entire relation to the world as an abstracted case—creating a space between us and the world. As an example, instead of accepting that we just see, however corruptible in particular ways and cases (hallucinating, dreaming, physiological issues, etc), philosophy projects a “reality” that we only see “indirectly” (e.g., that we have to “perceive”, or that we each see differently, or that we only see the “appearance” of, or “sense datum” of, or that create “qualia” for us, etc.), which allows philosophy to control the form of error (as a problem we might solve) or that we see “directly” which is judged by a manufactured standard that philosophy desires, creates, and imposes: a kind of knowledge that is certain, universal, generalized, abstract, etc. Basically, the dichotomy is false and manufactured and the world in all its varied forms and criteria gets abstractly judged as a single form of “reality”.

But I don't understand how we got to this point. You were saying something about us wanting to help each other if we're in pain, and somehow conclude from this that indirect realism is false? Your reasoning is confusing. — Michael

Examining the ordinary criteria and mechanics of pain, of how we judge and respond to another’s pain (acknowledging or denying it), shows philosophy’s desire to instead “know”** another’s pain (partly that it wants to avoid the claim another’s pain makes on us). Philosophy would rather turn it into an intellectual problem that is either equated or not (**subject to knowledge and certainty). This, like the example of “reality”, shows philosophy’s inclination to skip over our human lives and split our relation to the world entirely as an abstract problem.

There are plenty of good reasons, supported by science, to believe indirect realism over direct realism, as I discussed at length here. — Michael

That’s pretty straightforward so maybe we discuss it in that thread.

Are you saying that they're a fiction? — Michael

Well, in the way philosophy pictures them yes. I moved the discussion here because the article above provides some history of the parallel picture that neuroscience labors under. Philosophy has never liked being wrong so the fact that we can be (and that we are responsible for that) leads it to create the conclusion that we must not have direct access to the world (or we are ensured it), that we only see the “appearance” of something, or that our individual perspective is somehow partial or lacking or individual (my “sensation” or “perception”). That way we can have a problem to solve or a kind of knowledge or rationality to find so we will know what’s right, how to settle disputes with others, and we won’t be deceived or mistaken or judged. This is more of a story than an argument, but if there is a particularly egregious dismissal we could take that as a case study.

So because we only care about aspirin when we have a headache then it follows that first person private sensations don't exist, or that if they do exist then they are the same for all people? — Michael

Yes, but it’s not an argument, it’s a shift in perspective. Philosophy wants something with certainty, universality, uniqueness, etc. apart from our fallible, limited human interactions, which the world doesn’t provide, so it creates objects and frameworks that only rely on knowledge and intellectual solutions. At times we do have personal experiences (like witnessing a train crash), which we can keep (private as hidden) to ourselves (until expressed), but our experience and feelings are not always unique. I’m stressed about money like you are. I don’t (always) have an individual experience in going to the store. The ideas of consciousness, sensation, appearance, reality, are all manufactured by philosophy, partly to feel like we are necessarily special, as I discussed above.

Kant had the categorical imperative indeed, but that was faulty from the outset, not because he wanted certainty, but because (in my opinion) it assumes various things and ignores others to get what it wants regarding ethical dilemmas. — schopenhauer1

I don’t mean to harp on about “certainty” as if that is the only desire philosophy has. It’s just Witt’s example, which Cavell characterizes as the removal of the human (voice). Philosophy also desires generalization, abstraction, universality, predetermination, etc. The means of imposing these criteria, is, as you say, that it “assumes various things and ignores others to get what it wants”.

When we're discussing something like the hard problem of consciousness and the ontology of sensations then it very much matters to us if our pains are the same or not. — Michael

Witt would be showing how this “problem” and ontology are manufactured by our human desires. I’m not sure this thread is the place to discuss that controversial a subject. I did address it in this Hard Problem post.

Descartes is taking a pretty common sense position that I cannot LITERALLY know what the other person is thinking inside, but I can judge them to be feeling similar to me. So I don't see the big deal about certainty you (Witt?) is making there. — schopenhauer1

As I mentioned to @Michael above yes, the other is ultimately hidden from us (despite our being able to guess at thoughts or anticipating, etc), but the framework Descartes is using treats them as inhuman, as it were, unless we can “judge” they are people, as if it is a matter of proof rather than taking them to be human, accepting them, acting towards them as if they were.

The way I see those, is they are all different and often self-referential and contained frameworks that don't all have to do with exactly "certainty" in the same way say, that a scientific experiment or a math problem is "certain". — schopenhauer1

They share the desire and thus create and impose a criteria or standard that is like the idea they have of science or math. Thus why Plato discusses math first in the Theatetus, and Descartes wants to be beyond doubt, and Kant requires the imperative.

What they have in common is a construction or positive idea about reality. — schopenhauer1

One point I think Witt is making is that taking our world as, say, mitigated by “appearance” or “belief” is to exactly take a negative view of our ordinary means of seeing and communicating and judging. As if we are never connected to the world, instead of only sometimes not knowing our way about. They in a sense kill the world to save it in the vision they want: the thing-in-itself (which we can’t know directly), or the forms (which we only remember), or God’s knowledge, or only true/false propositions.

I'm not sure what this is saying either. Indeed it is good to be skeptical and try to figure out the world or not I suppose. — schopenhauer1

I’m referring to the radical skepticism that is generalized and creates a gap between us and the world that philosophy turns into an intellectual problem. Not just questioning the status quo.

Or it's because the sensation I have when I stab myself in the arm is unlike the sensation you have when you stab yourself in the arm, and so our pains are not the same and we don't know one another's pain. — Michael

Maybe the way to put this is that equating our pains is not how pain is important to us. If this situation actually did happen, what would matter to us about comparing pains would be attending to one or other of us. Philosophy abstracts this discussion to a place of equating pains, and then creates “sensation” as a kind of object, rather than just me expressing how I feel (which is too vague), so that knowledge might stand in the place of our having to react to someone in pain. What it wants is to be sure of the other person (and what to do), and not have to make the leap of faith of treating them as a person in pain.

Right, but my contention is that this thing he is setting up of "perfect knowledge" and "making due" is a false narrative, and thus a strawman that doesn't need addressing really. — schopenhauer1

That it is a “false” narrative does not explain why Plato, Descartes, Kant, Positivism, etc. got sucked into it (belief or opinion vs knowledge; appearance vs reality; the thing-in-itself; only either true or false). That is what Witt is investigating.

So I am just focusing on this idea of not knowing what someone is really thinking internally, this doesn't seem like something that needs deconstruction because it never was constructed. It's a straw man. — schopenhauer1

However, now I am amazed at how my mind is [weak and] prone to error… I also say I see the people themselves, just as I do with the wax. But what am I really seeing other than hats and coats, which could be concealing automatons underneath? However, I judge that they are people. And thus what I thought I was seeing with my eyes I understand only with my faculty of judgment, which is in my mind. — Descartes, 2nd Meditation

This is a tough one, because it’s easy to dismiss Descartes as delusional or paranoid. The particular instance is not as important as the fabrications that create it, which is not the automaton, but turning our human limitations into a problem, here, only seeing “appearance” because we want to have the certainty of “reality”, when the desire is in reaction to the fear that, in fact, sometimes we don’t know whether someone is lying; that their judgments, their decisions, etc. can exist but be unexpressed; that we may be wrong about them, to trust them, to give our love to them.

why should I care… ? — schopenhauer1

Finding yourself in the grip of skepticism is also tricky (even accepting its truth) because we don’t see that: imagining we live without it (as part of the human condition) or have solved it, is to still be in its snare.

That we say it isn't that it's true. — Michael

Right, but this might be because one is feigning agreement because they are pitying the other, or being stoic, and maybe not some way for our pain to be “truly” the same, which philosophy perhaps simple creates in order to impose the requirement we wanted all along.

And this is part of the problem of Wittgenstein. It denies the reality of reference. Many words refer to things, and the word like pain refers to a sensation. — Michael

He is not denying that we talk about how our pain feels, and, when we do, that there is not a feeling which we are describing. It’s just the framework of a certain correspondence between words and the world (as always objects) needs to be taken apart to show it is made from our own philosophical desires.

point out things as if they are novel when they are pretty readily held by the majority. In this case, the idea that we can never have perfect "certainty" of what others are feeling, so must rely on outward observations and public displays, and then take action from there and believe them. None of this is an uncommon view. — schopenhauer1

But this is not a matter of competing “views”, or explanations, or that we want to know the same thing but we just have to get at it a different way. And he is not contrasting the philosopher to the “majority” as if we were just doing anthropology, a census of opinion. In fact, even our culture pictures some things exactly based on the framework of philosophy (think “objective/subjective”), and even some here imagine “ordinary” is just what they first think of.

He is drawing out (making explicit) the type of criteria in individual cases to contrast them with the philosophical fixation with knowledge as certainty, or that we have to settle for some lesser version in contrast… because we “never have perfect” knowledge.

The point is not the answer, nor to say philosophy is stupid or useless, but to allow for self-reflection, to see our projection into our thinking. The obviousness of our ordinary criteria, once we see them, is uncanny (Cavell’s term) for me exactly because I have been trained so long to think in the frameworks of philosophy.

We are getting rather far afield from Witt’s approachability, however,

Which philosopher(s)?… No one presumably thinks that we actually can feel the same exact thoughts… a much more interesting philosophical point is that of "p-zombies", a thought experiment proposed by David Chalmers. But that is more interesting because it imagines that people don't have any inner sensation. — schopenhauer1

The idea of the automaton (Descartes’ originally I believe) is the same thing (identity) except inverse and to the absurd: the panic that we can’t know (with certainty) what is in the other’s mind, which is the possibility there is nothing; the doubt of the other as created by the desire for certainty (not just, “I can’t read them”).

…the point of it is to prove the weirdness of subjectivity and why it exists at all — schopenhauer1

The desire for certainty also creates the fantasy that I—my “subjectivity” or “consciousness”—am unknowable to others. The need to be special, that I am always inexpressible and innately unique, creates the picture of “internal states”.

…you take it on habit and as a matter of course that people feel similarly when they are in pain or other sensations. — schopenhauer1

I see that before I was falling into the trap of saying “same” and “a matter of identity” which was confusing (thus why Witt says “In so far as it makes sense” (#253), because we would only equate our pain (even in similarity) for specific circumstances, like commiseration**.

We express our pain to call attention to it (the same as a cry of pain #244). I identify it so a doctor can treat it. I identify myself with it perhaps to gain sympathy. I differentiate it because it needs attention compared to yours. “I have a hangover, and mine is bigger and so I need the last four Ibuprofen.” And, even under the ordinary criteria of pain, I can deny that you, or anyone, feels my pain. And it is possible this is not just a desire to be unknown (say I’m the man at the start of Alien, “but it feels weird in my stomach. No, I don’t have an ‘upset tummy’ Ripley!”)

The fact that we use the same word "pain" to refer to your sensations and to my sensations isn't that your sensations are the same as my sensations. — Michael

Again, sorry for the confusion, but saying our pain is the “same” is not the business of equating (or comparing); this is not an agreement on the meaning of the word pain, nor is it really an “agreement” or as @schopenhauer1 puts it “tak[ing] it on habit and as a matter of course”—and thus the importance that we look at specific cases**. We may compare and equate certain occurrences and facets when we talk about the pain of a breakup. Here we say our pain is the same, that we know the other’s pain, as a matter of connection and to identify with the other person—as commiseration. A more philosophical way to say this is that what matters to us about pain, its criteria for identity and its importance to us, is that a person has it, not the sensation itself, though that may play a part, as in location, intensity, etc. This is the “criterion of identity” that we have to be reminded of in #253.

Again, Witt’s point is not to be right about our ordinary criteria and mechanics of pain, but to draw them out to see why we looked at it the way we did in doing “philosophy”, and how that refocuses our philosophical concerns, improves our thinking. The skeptic is not wrong or confused. It is true that we may be wrong about the other, and that I might have something all my own to express, but without the pictures created by the desire for certainty, we may see the need for our relation to others (across our doubt) and our obligation of continued intelligibility for ourselves.

Is there a difference between knowing someone's pain and knowing that someone is in pain? — Michael

Excellent observation. What Witt would do is create a situation and give examples of what we’d say. “I’m in pain” “Me too” “But I have a headache.” “Me too!” “Mine’s a shooting zing behind my ear” “Right! Boy, I know your pain.” Thus why he will conclude that, as a matter of identity, to the extent we agree, we have the same pain (PI # 235).

But when I say “I know that they are in pain” I am acknowledging that the other is in pain. One instance would be someone writhing in pain and I am doing nothing. You say “They’re in pain.” To which I might say “Yes, I know. I like to see my enemies suffer.” This is not the only sense of know than that of certainty, and it is a rare occurrence, but it is knowledge of another person (as @Luke correctly clarifies).

But, as I noted, this contradicts Wittgenstein’s comments. — Luke

P. 246 does not force this realization, but it is an occurrence of the two senses colliding. He is showing that the philosopher would like to “know” another’s pain, as in be certain (identical), and that in regular use, we “know” another’s pain, as in acknowledging (as better addressed on p. 223).

So what I am not a fan of, is when something that is pretty common understanding of things is presented as if it’s profoundly innovative wisdom. — schopenhauer1

Well, if this is meant to say that our regular use is not profound, I agree, as it is meant to be obvious. The wisdom we gain is in the contrast to the philosophical criteria that we now see that we are manufacturing and imposing in approaching the matter in abstraction. The philosopher imagines “knowing” another’s mind as being (requiring) an identical equation, thus the impression you could never know my pain, have the same pain, and why the philosopher comes up with a carrier, an object, for this imagined uniqueness, as a pain “sensation”, pain “perception”.

I don't understand what you mean by "our history of human lives" in the context of the distinction made by Wittgenstein. — Paine

When I said: “Looking at what we would say when doing… for example: (following) rules, meaning (what we say), understanding (a series), seeing (an aspect), knowing (as being certain), etc., reveals the criteria (standards) of a practice (its grammar), because what we say expresses us. Our expressions show how and why we are interested in our practices. And these criteria are not individual (psychological, or “self”) interests (our feelings, being persuaded), but all our history of human lives of distinguishing and identifying and judging, i.e., what is essential to us about a practice, the various reasons that count with/to it.” (Emphasis added)

What I meant by “the history of our human lives” is that the way we judge a practice is based on our interest as a society in our practices, such as excuses, or apologies, or vengeance. What is a mistake and what is an accident is judged by criteria that have been developed and distinguished (or forgotten by our culture) as part of why we care about blame and responsibility (what matters to us about them) over the history of human life. This gives our actions and the response to them a shared context of judgment so that they are not individual or personal (though of course we can fly in the face of tradition). Most will argue that human interests should not be taken into account and will talk of “subjective” or individual (whimsical, relative, “self-interested”) or feelings or “psychological”, which I take as something like not conscious or not ours, ourself. Part of what I see Witt doing is making explicit our unexamined shared criteria, which is the same thing Plato’s interlocutors do.

philosophers are very likely to bristle at […] the idea of speaking for the person you're having a discussion with; — Srap Tasmaner

I never liked how Socrates got people to accept premises but then forced a conclusion on them. Witt allowed me to finally realize that he had rigged the question to only accept one answer. But Wittgenstein follows the same method of speaking for all of us (including the interlocutor). He comes up with examples of what we say when we talk about, say: belief when it is raining, and then proposes (on behalf of everyone) that it is in the sense of a hypothesis (that this is how it works). Now it is up to us to see its mechanics and accept that, but he certainly doesn’t make it seem like an option is to deny it, to add varied mechanics based on the situation, etc. I would say this is not a case of lack of claiming greater authority (as everyone has the same) and lack of possibility (we can all explicate this grammar), and more a case of being impolite—a poor philosophical bedside manner.

I agree with @Shawn that it is better to start with the Blue and Brown books, as, I imagine because he is in person with those whom he must bring along to have the validity he desires (the uncontroversial acceptance of us all), he has more of a speculative openness then the flat statement-like seeming conclusions his proposals have come to be once they reach the PI. As if he can skip the “As we all would agree” nature of his conjectures, and he states them as if they have already been worked through and wouldn’t possibly be readily accepted; thus his “arrogance”.

Austin suffers from the same affliction, but he is even more ruthless as he directly addresses a real person and uses them as a punching bag in showing the unanticipated implications and missteps of imposing a requirement before first looking at a practice, but he is so good at completely and reasonably drawing out our ordinary criteria that there is almost a begrudging forgiveness in the respect of acceding to him.

But I think @Srap Tasmaner is correct in that it feels invasive to be told the motivation you have in saying something, as if our reasons were not our own. But a lot of the times here people say things as if the reasoning is self-evident, so I find myself putting words in their mouth to try to politely move the conversation along (rather than saying I simply don’t understand). I attempt to be generous, as Socrates admonishes us in the Theatetus, to imagine the strongest argument they could be making, and also to phrase it that “I take you to mean” to show that it is provisional, but I am not trying to tell someone the reasons they have for saying something, but trying to show them the implications and fallout of saying those words here and now. Part of what Witt is pointing out is that our expressions always have these connotations, except when they are abstracted from any context and forced to adhere to manufactured criteria.

If there is a sense of "know" that means "acknowledging, recognizing", then you are saying that we do know another's pain (at least, sometimes). I agree, but this is contrary to your earlier statements that we do not know another's pain. — Luke

Sorry, I didn’t make it clear in that post that “know” has more than one sense. The point I was getting at is that we do not “know” pain in the way the philosopher that Witt is critiquing wants, with certainty, identity, etc.

There are two different senses of “know” here at p. (246), one being: with certainty, the other being knowing as acknowledging, recognizing. The part of the sentence you are quoting is the second kind. “I’m in pain.” “I know” or “He’s in pain!” “I know, but he’s so dramatic, he’ll be fine.” There is an assumption in thinking we understand how “to know” works; that it is just the same for pain as it is for other things, indeed, that it works the same in all instances.

This seems obvious, unless someone wishes to claim that when Wittgenstein criticizes philosophy he is at the same time criticizing himself? — Leontiskos

Me, I do. In a sense he is recognizing that everyone (and not just philosophers) wishes to side-step our part in our lives and our lives together. All philosophers including him (and not just because of who he was in the Tract) are tempted to do things like simplify things, create dichotomies, not examine premises, and, in this case, want to have knowledge (truth) take the place of our ongoing responsibility to answer for our speech and actions.

When someone engages in the psychoanalysis of philosophy they are surely not in a self-consciously philosophical frame. — Leontiskos

Philosophy has always been about making explicit, or reflecting on, what is normally not considered or examined (the “unconscious” in a sense). Witt couldn’t be more of an analytical philosopher in that regard because he is looking at what we normally say and drawing out the criteria that are contained in those expressions. He only sees that logic and interest are tied together. But Cicero argued that a good speaker had to be a good man. Plato just didn’t trust individuals to be up to the task.

To examine why philosophy wants X," is to intentionally step outside of philosophy — Leontiskos

Philosophy is in the business of asking why we want something. What benefit is the good? Why is the categorical imperative superior to Humean naturalism? Perhaps this is just icky because it is imagined to involve “feelings” or some such, or does not remove us from what we say.

This would be the difference between the question, "What is it that we are doing as philosophers?" and the question, "What is it that those philosophers are doing?" — Leontiskos

But Witt was one of the “philosophers” he is examining. The history of philosophy is rife with one camp picking apart another and calling into question what philosophy actually is. What do you imagine is being lost here that can’t be without destroying philosophy? I am not claiming Witt is calling for the end of philosophy, nor an abandonment of its issues (in keeping open the threat of skepticism).

(And the reification of "philosophy" does not change this point, nor does asking about the motivation behind philosophy as opposed to asking about the activity of philosophy.) — Leontiskos

Yes, the history of philosophy is one attempt after another of trying to remove the human, though it is easy enough to restate the claim without motivation: that it is a logical error to create a standard before investigating a topic and impose it as a requirement because it will narrow and limit the form of answer you are going to get.

And drawing a limit around knowledge is exactly what Plato and Kant did, except Plato created the metaphorical perfection of the forms, and Kant simply denied that solution while retaining a similar standard. Witt just reaches a new conclusion (claiming knowledge is not our only relation to the world), while showing the reason philosophy wants to reject it (the need for certainty).

Witt is solving a problem for many philosophers, that simply wasn't there to begin with, EXCEPT for certain ones demanding various forms of rigorous world-to-word standards.. And those seem to be squarely aimed at the analytics, if anyone at all. — schopenhauer1

Yes, analytical philosophy is the ground, for sure. But “world-to-word” being only one form (one example) of rigorous, demanded standard, and those “certain ones” including not just correspondence theory, but Plato, Descartes, Kant, the positivists, Hegel, metaphysics, neuroscience, and any other philosophy/field that believes it can solve our human condition through knowledge and explanatory theory. I would argue a large swath of modern philosophy is still either thinking it has or can “solve” skepticism or is working on the premise that it doesn’t matter.

If the critique is only a critique of a particular epoch or school of philosophy, and not a critique of philosophy tout court, then my point is moot. — Leontiskos

I would argue Witt is saving the true nature of philosophy from itself. But yes, he is not denigrating all philosophy, nor even all of the philosopher’s efforts that fall prey to the error he did.

Were you not using the word “know” as it is normally used when you said that we do not know the pain causing another to writhe in front of us (because that’s not how knowledge works)? — Luke

The insight is based on the fact that certain philosophy has a special requirement for knowing (identity), while ordinarily we would just say we know in that we see they are in pain, recognize it (or ignore it). Another’s pain is not known, it is responded to, which might shift our thought on the position we are in with each other, and the role certainty plays in it.

"To examine why philosophy wants X," is to intentionally step outside of philosophy and into psychology (or else anthropology). It is to say, "I am no longer doing the thing that philosophy does." — Leontiskos

Well now the walls are truly up and the gate is closed, and without any explanation of what they are and why. As I pointed out here, this claim doesn’t even mean actual “psychology”, nor is looking at what we might say in a situation really “anthology”, and so it is unclear what the actual critique consists in other than name-calling at this point. What even is “the thing that philosophy does”?

But yes, Witt is revolutionizing philosophy by seeing the human within it—history, interest, our limits, and, ultimately, how and when we make a stand rather than hoping knowledge will solve everything. His first claim being that our desires and interests were already involved in the very act of trying to eradicate them. Plato wanted something specific in only accepting a certain criteria for knowledge, in his fear of the sophists, who he characterizes as only persuading people. After relegating away the world, Kant still sought a standard that would be complete without our involvement. Descartes no longer wanted to be surprised by (the possibility of) being wrong, and so imposed a criteria that sets the standard for what he will accept before he even begins (the same for the author of the Tract). We are falible, limited, but, instead of aiming to be reasonable, maybe reconciliable, we turn our human condition with the world into an intellectual problem.

Wittgenstein says otherwise [than (my claim -Antony): that another’s pain is not an object of knowledge]. At PI 246, he says that: “other people very often know if I’m in pain.” — Luke

I walked into that. But at the start of the sentence he says “If we are using the word ‘to know’ as it is normally used…” (emphasis added) which is to say “not with… certainty” (as the interlocutor wants for the standard for knowledge) but as: say, for example, in its role as recognition, like “I know they are in pain because I saw their pain on their face” or when we can confirm without signs, as “I know they are in pain because I learned their best friend died and they are hiding it to be strong for the kids”. These other versions (“uses”) have different standards and means of determining when they can be said than the (philosophical) sense of knowledge as identical or constant or unmistakable (certainty), which would make our inner lives indistinguishable.

That is a predominantly psychological observation. — Paine

The critique of “psychological”, as I understand it, is not to say: affected by the unconscious (neurosis or insecurity, etc.), but on par with “emotive” or “subjective” or otherwise irrational. Part of what Witt is doing is showing that we are not divorced from our rationality; that even “objectivity” is a product of our (“subjective”) desire.

Looking at what we would say when doing… for example: (following) rules, meaning (what we say), understanding (a series), seeing (an aspect), knowing (as being certain), etc., reveals the criteria (standards) of a practice (its grammar), because what we say expresses us. Our expressions show how and why we are interested in our practices. And these criteria are not individual (psychological, or “self”) interests (or feelings, being persuaded), but all our history of human lives of distinguishing and identifying and judging, i.e., what is essential to us about a practice, the various reasons that count with/to it.

Where does the philosophy start? — Paine

For one thing, Cavell follows Witt at the end to be drawing a different kind of limit for knowledge (than say Kant’s). As with others’ souls (p. 178) or the pain causing another to writhe in front of us (p. 235), we do not know it, because that is not how knowledge works. We respond to them (or ignore them). That is how humanity and pain are treated, the way in which they matter to us, their grammar. A philosophical implication of this is that we are responsible for our actions and words, rather than the only alternatives being knowledge and certainty or doubt and interpretation. The alternative to privacy is not publicness but personally answering for what we say. Where our knowledge (beforehand) ends, we carry (on) the weight of our acts.

Thank you Manuel. Now let me explain how you’ve framed that incorrectly.

@Leontiskos @schopenhauer1 @Count Timothy von Icarus @Sam26 @Janus @Srap Tasmaner @Paine

I also have a list of irks with how Witt is taken/used/interpreted.

I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. Traditionally, this is the issue of skepticism (moral relativism, doubt, justified knowledge, “belief”, etc.) which I would say is a—if not the—founding issue of philosophy (the generation of, or affecting, all others: knowledge, metaphysics, “mind”, the problem of other minds, morality, etc.) With the PI, we are at a deeply analytic, pre-constructive level, mostly tearing down and looking beneath what philosophers have said, but in order to learn why we end up saying it, and what we can learn from that (seemingly, but greater than, “a lesson in how to not do philosophy” as @Leontiskos has said)

The most popular ways to miss the import here (or take certain things too fervently—“totalizing” Id.) are to take Witt as either solving skepticism or dismissing it as an issue, such as: people who talk about “use” in language games or “forms of life” as if they were foundational; that philosophical issues are just confusions (say, of language); that this is just a therapy to cure us; that we are only discussing linguistics (“turning” from the actual world and our larger issues); that he is policing what can or cannot be said or what does or does not make sense.

A lot of this is caused by people not getting past looking at PI as simply a set of statements of facts/opinions/arguments about language, meaning, rules, etc. rather than these topics being just case studies (examples) in the service of a new method of looking at “language”, but in its sense of: our expressions, as in, the things people say in each case (and not a theory of meaning or explanation of how language works).

This distinction is clearest in the almost uniformly misinterpreted PI #109. “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” It is not that language is the “means” of our bewitchment, so we just need to get clear about language in order not to be bewitched. Language is the means of “battling”; looking at our expressions is the method by which we battle.

What this amounts to is either trivializing or reifying Witt, but in each case, simply grasping at the surface of the text rather than engaging with the process, to identify with the author’s, and interlocutor’s, confusions and desires, as he works through why we end up unsatisfied with philosophy as it stands (classically) and—what I take to be the ultimate point—what that says about the human condition.