Goofup

Is that consistent with me using a cup to trap a spider?

People surely have the ability to see ways of using things, in ways no one has before. So surely what we 'see' is more than just previously recognized linguistic and usage associations? — wonderer1

But “creative” problem solving and “imaginative” ways of using things are based on the fact that we have had practices like holding in cups, trapping things, pacifism, etc. and not a matter of “seeing” as if it were attached to vision. But, yes, our practices are not closed off from innovation.

@Banno @J @Ludvig @Corvus @javi2541997 @Ciceronianus @frank

I wanted to point out that part of the confusion here is that we (and most everyone in philosophy in general) do not take what Austin is doing as revolutionary and radical as it is. He is not offering another theory to explain “perceiving” or something to replace it. He is claiming that the problem that everyone is arguing about how to solve is made up; that the whole picture that we somehow interpret or experience remotely (through something else--sense perception, language, etc.) or individually (each of us) is a false premise and forced framework.

It might appear that Austin is just being snobby about words or is only making a claim that language is the right filter for the world, etc. But his method (as with Wittgenstein) is to set out what we say and do about a topic as evidence of how that thing actually works. That is to say, he is learning about the world. For example, in examining what we say and do about looking, he is making a claim about how "looking" works, the mechanics of it. “Seeing” something is not biological—which would simply be vision—and neither is judging, identifying, categorizing, etc. (“perception” is a made up thing, never defined nor explained p. 47). . Austin is showing us that “seeing” is a learned, public process (of focus and identification). “Do you see that? What, that dog? That’s not a dog, it’s a giant rabbit; see the ears.”

So, again, he is not saying we experience the world directly or indirectly--he is throwing out the entire picture of us (here) and the world (there) that leads to that distinction. This, for some, is very hard to wrap their heads around because it means letting go of a fixed, certain world, even, as is the case here (and with Kant), when we can’t or don’t know it.

As examples:

"It’s a shame Austin doesn’t wade into any of these problems …and is content to split-hairs on rather trivial matters, like an entire lecture on the word 'real'."

"there is not much significance in delving into the differentiation of direct and indirect perception because from my point of view, all perceptions are somehow indirect from the minimal perspective that for any human perception, it will happen via proper and relevant sense organs"

“sense organs are not the final perception location in the process, then they have to be the medium passing the sensed contents into the final location i.e. the brain”

“I think perspective - subject and object - is based on two main categories: the external, which essentially treats all things as objects and ignores the subject”

@Banno @J @Ludvig @Corvus @javi2541997 @Ciceronianus

Having gotten through Lecture IV: this is an example of where Austin takes a deep-dive into the differences between ordinary "uses" of words that philosophy takes as terms for a special purpose, but I think Austin somethings buries the point of all this. ("uses" here are the different "ways in which 'looks like' may be meant and may be taken p.40)

I'm going to take a stab at putting the dots together, but I do think the way he talks about it (below) needs to be accounted for. I take him to be showing how different uses (of like or seems) each have different things that matter to us about them, different ways we judge them, including: whether they are analogous or divergent 36 whether evidence is used 37 that there are different kinds of evidence 39 sometimes only needing a "general impression" 39 what "complications are attributable" 39 what they "well might be mistaken for" 42

I take these various standards and features to show that there are many different means of judging, rather than only whether we see it (directly) or do not see it; which is the point at which philosophy adds something in-between, like "sense-data", because then the standard can be unqualified across instances, locations, and everything sensed. But just because we can make a mistake does not mean we have to interpret sensations as always open to explanation by faulty sensors, as errors can be corrected because there is "nothing in principle final, conclusive, irrefutable about anyone's statement" and that I can "retract my statement or at least amend." 43

There is also, again, that judging these cases is different in different contexts, or that there needs to be a correct context, such as: "particular" and "special circumstances" and "suitable contexts" 39 that we need to look at the "full circumstances of particular cases" 39 or that how it is used will "depend on further facts about the occasion of utterance;"

I also want to note that these means of judgment are "our normal interests" 38 in these things, because it opens the question of what philosophy's interests are in its one standard (directness) without regard to instance or context which I take as the desire to "rule out uncertainty altogether, or every possibility of being challenged and perhaps proved wrong."

And to internalize our possibility of failure makes it a problem with me ("my" perception), or with humanity (some faculty or process), but Austin is claiming that our standards and circumstances that frame how these issue play out means that "I am not disclosing a fact about myself" because "the way things look is, in general, just as much a fact about the world, just as open to public confirmation or challenge, as the way things are. p 43 (emphasis added). How can it be only your perception when what you see incorrectly can be pointed out by me?

“Pure sensation” or “qualia” or whatever term you prefer is what we call the unabstracted perception, the unconceptualized sensation specific to one setting and one time. We then go on to “see X” based on what we’ve learned about how to see. I think Austin considers this issue of “seeing as . . .” later in the book. — J

The point about abstraction is a note on Austin's method. If we ignore all the uses of a term in all its various contexts (as Austin brings back), then we narrow our understanding of, say, "direct" and "material objects", etc. and our picture becomes unconnected from our lives.

But I may not be understanding you. How does any of this problematize sensing? — J

The fact that we make mistakes, mis-identify, are tricked, and all the other things Austin explores, should point (as Austin does) to the ordinary ways by which we resolve those issues. Philosophy turns these instances into a intellectualized "problem" which underlies all cases, thus unconnected from our procedures and familiarity, because it can then have one solution, here "direct perception", or "qualia".

I was just responding to the other members queries on the points. You got to give out your points as clearly as possible, if you had one, when asked, don't you? :) — Corvus

I was not intending to suppress discussion. It just helps me to respond to the text and how we are interpreting that, which is what I am trying to focus on discussing--not "my" points, but Austin's--which I see as different than just expressing our views on this issue. But, feel free.

He quibbles throughout, but then says that, according to the argument from illusion, sense-data is perceived directly. — NOS4A2

the argument from illusion is intended primarily to persuade us that, in certain exceptional, abnormal situations, what we perceive—directly anyway—is a sense-datum

This is confusing, but if we break it down: they are trying (but fail) to persuade us that we only can "directly" perceive sense datum, because of the problems brought up in certain circumstances which they want to say creates a problem with perception. This is not an admission by Austin that we perceive things directly, but simply stating the argument they are making in creating the indirect/direct distinction.

So I presume he means that there are both direct and indirect perceptions depending on what they are. I look forward to hearing what they are, and verify if it is a true claim, or not. — Corvus

It might be best to simply follow along, as the book is attached to my post here.

Austin intimates somewhere, all perception is direct. — NOS4A2

Austin is specifically tearing down philosophy's framing of the issue as both direct or indirect. As he says:

"It is essential, here as elsewhere, to abandon old habits of Gleichschaltung, the deeply ingrained worship of tidy-looking dichotomies. I am not, then-and this is a point to be clear about from the beginning-going to maintain that we ought to be 'realists', to embrace, that is, the doctrine that we do perceive material things (or objects)." p.3

My problem is that I can't imagine what direct perception would be. Isn't this part of what we need to recognize here? If nothing could count as direct perception, then the idea that perception is actually indirect doesn't make sense. The problem is the move from "some perception is indirect" to "all perception is indirect". — Ludwig V

But I agree that setting this issue aside enables us to understand what is going on here better, even though I'm not entirely sure that the last word has been said here. (I have in mind Cavell's idea that the idea of a last word on scepticism is a mistake.) — Ludwig V

He’s not done yet, for sure. But the argument is that discussions about indirect perception make sense, but not as thought of in contrast to direct perception. Which means we don’t need the idea of sense data at all. It would just be “perceiving” but I believe the next move is that we don’t even understand what “perception” is (if we talk about sense perception, what is direct touch? direct smell? etc.)

Does such a position [with qualia] involve believing in sense-data? — J

The argument for sense perceptions, or data, and qualia (and appearances, and particulars) have in common that we are problematizing sensing in a particular way—by abstraction from any setting—and creating one answer because we believe there is always a problem (and that we want to buffer ourselves from the possibility of any). However, Austin has just shown that the problems we have with sensing are ordinary and resolvable at the ground level, so both the abstraction from any case, and the generalization to all cases is unnecessary. There is more.

@Banno @“J” @Ludvig @Corvus @javi2541997

Having finished Lecture III, I noticed that Austin continues to bring up normal cases. This is part of his method, but he only hints at it. At p. 31 though, he says that “we must remember what sort of situation we are dealing with.” (Emphasis added) Wittgenstein will insist on the importance to philosophy of “command[ing] a clear view” PI #122 and of the need for a “particular” p.188, “wider” #539 “great variety of” p. 181, or even “imagined” context and will remind us to “Remember that…” #33, 88, 161, 167, 217, 269, p. 191, p. 207, or to “remember actual cases…”; #147 and #591, as “In what sort of context does it occur?” P. 188.

The situation we are to put these claims into, and what we are remembering about the context of those situations, are the “public” “standard procedures” p. 24 and “normal occurrences” or “normal find[ings]” with which we are “familiar” p. 26. I think he gets at why when he says we see “exactly what we expect” (emphasis added) because our common expectations are what we see, only to have them disappointed. It is philosophy that makes it a disappointment with (our) “perception”. (Do we bring the disappointment inside of us to have control? As then we might be able to make sure we don’t fail again?).

As he showed in the case of deception, we only recognize the odd case against normal ones. P. 11. You are only able to be surprised by an illusion because you were normally expecting something else. Thus why it is important to put these claims into a situation and context to see what the normal procedures, standards, expectations, implications, and findings are for that kind of thing (delusion, mis-identification, deception, etc.). Wittgenstein will call these ordinary criteria.

One question could be: what about this method is important? (other than having someone set out an example and I actual say.. “oh yeah, he’s right”), but the more interesting question is why philosophy wants to abstract from any context and our ordinary means of judgment? but that is not under discussion here.

But my biggest puzzle is what would count as direct perception. — Ludwig V

Austin’s point of showing how “indirect” perception actually works is to show that in no instance is it the opposite of what we imagine direct perception would be the perfect case of. So if we set aside the problem of direct or indirect, we can look and identify the actual mistakes we make in seeing something, identifying something, or whatever else is supposed to fall under the imagined process of “perceiving” something (more than just simply vision). “…it seems that what we are to be said to perceive indirectly is never—is not the kind of thing which ever could be—perceived directly. P. 19.

@Banno @“J” @Ludvig @Corvus @javi2541997
I forgot to tag people in my above post, but I also wanted to bring attention to Sec. 3 on page 9 where Austin comments that philosophers like to point out that they are noticing something that ordinary people do not; that philosophy is more aware, smarter, etc. And, yes, philosophy's job is to reflect and reveal what we don’t normally consider everyday. And Austin seems to breeze by this, at least for now. But I want to point out that, yes, there are problems, and mistakes, and falsehood, and ignorance, etc. and that philosophy is trying to record that fact. The only problem is that philosophy starts with simplifying the problem (to perception, appearance, etc.) and forcing a single answer (something "real", "objective"), rather than what Austin is doing here which is to examine how our failings are varied and thus have various ordinary ways in which we account for them.

@Banno

I think it needs to be reiterated that Austin is peeling away the logic of assuming mistakes about seeing things are evidence of a generalized problem with the faculty of our senses or something “after” that, as in “when something is amiss (that his 'senses are deceiving him' and he is not 'perceiving material things')” p 9

One of the problems he sees is that philosophy takes it that perceiving always works the same way as perceiving objects rather than all the ways we see, and thus the different ways we have trouble (other than just with our senses) seeing “people, people's voices, rivers, mountains, flames, rain-bows, shadows, pictures on the screen at the cinema, pictures in books or hung on walls, vapours, gases-all of which people say that they see or (in some cases) hear or smell, i.e. 'perceive'. Are these all 'material things'?” P. 8

Again, just because we have problems simply means in each case there is a separate logic of ordinary error. But the philosopher wants to group all the different errors into one problem (with perception) with one answer: flawed “Perception” compared to say “reality”. As Austin says, "...there is no neat and simple dichotomy between things going right and things going wrong; things may go wrong, as we really all know quite well, in lots of different ways-which don't have to be, and must not be assumed to be, classifiable in any general fashion." Such as something wrong with our ability to perceive anything at all (which we should also keep in mind is only one example of philosophies desire to create a problem as one kind of thing, as with: appearances, beliefs, subjective, morality, etc.)

Oh no need to apologize. It’s just I can’t do two things at once.

I don’t know what you are quoting; I was referring to Austin’s lecture, which is what we are reading. I thiink it would be getting ahead of ourselves to take into considerations other readings before we attempt our own or even have a clear view of what he is saying at way, as he is only collecting evidence and has not gotten to why the philosopher wants to have a generalized problem with everything we see all the time “already, from the very beginning” p. 8.

Yes, I was somewhat concerned not to present Wittgenstein's view. — Banno

I’ll leave him out of it; only complicate things. One book at a time. But, come on…

“It is a matter of unpicking… fallacies… which leaves us, in a sense, just where we began.” P. 5

“…we may learn … a technique… for dissolving philosophical worries…” Id.

Basically, I think that reality does exist objectively. — javi2541997

There is a part in this (very small) lecture where he addresses “real” and “reality”.

Perception is far more than just to say, what I see is "real", and that is it. The aftermath of perception is more complex, deep, rich and meaningful in human perception. — Corvus

If we read on, perception is used as a straw man for any problems in the “aftermath of perception”, but “seeing” a table is to identify something as a table, which is judging whether something is a table, or, say, a bench (that we somehow mis-identify as a table) and not a matter “after” perception, but I’m getting ahead of the text. “…our senses are dumb… [they] do not tell us anything, true or false.

Do you mean that it would be more accurate to say "roughly correct" or "very good approximation of the actual shape"? — J

I’m saying that “correct” is made up as a part of the “perception” of “actual” because the real issue is the identification of the table, judging whether it is a table or a bench, and thus “roughly” a table is a rock with a board on it. But I jump ahead I think; I’m going to read along.

[Arguments against Ayer] 4. …it is also implied, even taken for granted, that there is room for doubt and suspicion” - Austin — Austin

For how can I go so far as to try to use language to get between pain and its expression? — Witt, PI 245

Can't we imagine a rule determining the application of a rule, and a doubt which it removes—and so on? But that is not to say that we are in doubt because it is possible for us to imagine a doubt. — Wittgenstein, PI#84

@“J” @“Jamal”

I was thinking @“Banno” that I’ll just follow along in the book and ask when there’s something I never got about this, and then we can all make the most sense out of what he’s saying before we jump to judging the argument.

I really hate being misquoted — Jamal

OOHH.... that is entirely my bad. I was rushing and crammed your sentence in with Russell's, probably among other errors. Apologies. And if I ran roughshod over your point or concerns, I jumped the gun a bit on assessing them I'm sure. I'm just a little excited to have anyone talking about this book.

A quick look at Austin's book ngram shows continuous, perhaps even exponential, growth. — Banno

There goes my degree.

One of my favorite books @Banno, thanks for doing this (good luck).

There's the bit where you say it and the bit where you take it back. — Austin

"What we should figure out, is knowledge... well, we tried. Then virtue!... nope, not that either." Plato

"Let's start with the thing-in-itself; and then set it over here behind this wall." Kant

"I exist! Or, if that's okay with you God." Descartes

"I see it! No, wait, that's only its appearance." Hume

His target is the idea that we only ever see things indirectly. — Banno

I think Austin is wrong to quibble about the terms “direct” and “indirect”, because both succinctly describe the relationship between perceiver and perceived as it pertains to the arguments for and against realism…. But in terms of realism, “directly” and “indirectly” describe the perceptual relationship between the man and everything he perceives, which includes the periscope, the air, the clouds, etc. — NOS4A2

He’s investigating how we see something directly by looking at the actual cases when we do, and then how we see something indirectly through different examples, to show that philosophy made up the problem of realism. I think the book might be interesting to you.

This talk of “not directly perceiving objects” makes me wonder, not for the first time, who Austin believed he was arguing against. Did he think that Idealism in general, or versions of Kantianism in particular, entailed such a view? I don’t think that’s a very charitable interpretation of what I take Kant and others to be saying — J

Wittgenstein will look further into why philosophy created a problem with sense perception, belief, appearance, subjectivity, etc., but Austin is taking down everybody’s problematizing of the issues which led to metaphysics and justified true belief and Ayer’s Atomism and Positivism and qualia, etc. because they all have in common that they want everything to work one way that allows for absolute universal, generalized, proven, predictable, etc., knowledge. There’s a reason we get stuck on logical/emotive, true/false, knowledge/belief, etc. and that is because we are only looking at one version that is resolved one way, as, in the case of perception:

The reason is simple: "There is no one kind of thing that we perceive, but many different kinds" — Banno

Austin - Sense and Sensibilia 1962; Wittgenstein - Philosophical Investigations 1958. They never met, but they should have. Wittgenstein will look at how we think a bunch of things work, like language, and rules, seeing, identifying color, etc., and decide there is not one way we judge how things work, but many different ways.

[Looking at false dichotomies like direct/indirect] is a standard critical tool for Austin, used elsewhere to show philosophical abuse of "real". — Banno

In A Plea for Excuses, he will label this “The Importance of Negations and Opposites” in a discussion of freewill based on looking at action—using another tool of Austin’s, which is to look at how something works by looking at how it doesn’t work, how it goes wrong; in the case of action, by looking at how we excuse it, qualify it, renounce it, etc.—he actually looks at how voluntary and involuntary are so different it doesn’t make sense to manufacture the issues as: was that done freely (voluntarily)? or was it determined (involuntarily)?

And it is certainly true that we construct the correct shape from a multiplicity of individual "takes." …In Russell's sense of "real" -- a perception that corresponds fortuitously to an actual shape — J

(emphasis added by Nickles)

The real table, if there is one, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known. If there are any directly perceived objects at all for Russell, they are sense data, not tables — Jamal

(emphasis added by Nickles)

I can’t recommend reading this book more; Austin will have a lot to say about philosophy’s use of these words. Austin causes us to reconsider why philosophy creates a problem so it can solve it (@J why is the shape “correct” and “actual”, and not just roughly? - @jamal what does perception have to be immediate and direct in order to ensure? (spoiler!: it’s because we only want to answer one way, to one standard.)

talk of deception only makes sense against a background in which we understand what it is like not to be deceive. — Banno

Elsewhere he will say, basically, "intention" only makes sense (compared to imagining it as a cause) when someone does something "fishy" against a background in which we have ordinary, shared expectations. As in, "Did you intend to run that light?"

But notice that the contrast between philosophers and ordinary folk is borrowed from Ayer. — Banno

I just want to add that a common confusion is that Austin's method is pitting regular ol' common-sense people against esoteric philosophers, or as if “ordinary” was popularity—just taking a study, as if his philosophy was sociology. The common folk are all of us together who work within Wittgenstein's various criteria that are “ordinary” only compared to the single "prefabricated, metaphysical" criteria of certain, justified knowledge that philosophy uses.

I wasn't able to find a free PDF. If you have access to one, you might link it here. — Banno

Attached is a PDF of the book Sense and Sensibilia.
Come on and get me Oxford. I got a sandwich and a gun.

I do not know in advance how deep my agreement with myself is, how far responsibility for the language may run. — Minar's paper

What does "agreement with myself" mean? — Luke

This is a lot in one sentence, but I know what Minar is trying to get at. Our language reflects our interests and judgments (as Wittgenstein sees), and, so, in a sense, reflects who we are (by default—see my discussion about the self and conformity). If I am to use language responsibly, then, in saying something, I consent to be judged by it, for its criteria to be what matters to me. However, at a point (in time I argue elsewhere), my consent to be spoken for by language, as Minar says, “may run” out. This is to break with my culture, to stand against it, “adverse” (Emerson says in Self Reliance) to what language demands that we answer for; that I refuse to be determined by the shared judgments we make from it.

“If language really were a technique, then…. there would be no connexion between philosophy and scepticism. You should not understand what was meant by the notion of the distrust of understanding.”
— Rhees, as quoted in Minar's paper

I take the argument here to be that if language were a technique then there should be perfect understanding and no room for scepticism or doubt. — Luke

Yes, that is the implication. To say we “should not understand what was meant [by skepticism]” is a bit dramatic, fanciful. To make this more pedestrian, if traditional philosophy had its way, then what I say would be certain to you if I only mastered language. I would have control of the “meaning” of what I say, as if there were something in me, say, “my understanding” (or “intention”, or “thought”) which only fails because language is flawed, not able to capture my unique specialness, or I am just not good enough at it, when it is really the other way around. I am only as much as I capture in language (or action); but I don’t just either do that or not, because my expressions are mine to own (or not), as if they were my promise. Thus I can continue to make them intelligible, ask they be forgiven, take them back as poorly said, attempt to weasel out of the consequences of their inherent implications, etc.

How can Cavell reject the thesis of skepticism - that we do not know the world or other minds with certainty - while also claiming that skepticism is a natural possibility which results from having language? [that] the "truth of skepticism" is not a metaphysical dissatisfaction with knowledge, but is instead an expression of "the urge to transcend the human". — Luke

Minar is accurate and tells the story with all the parts, but it’s lacking in paraphrasing, unpacking Cavell’s terms of art. I am impressed and thankful you read the paper though and these are exactly the right questions to ask. I think how I put this to @Bano here might be a good start.

Summarizing that story, out of our fear of the other, philosophy created an intellectual problem of doubt about them that knowledge could then try to solve (with metaphysics, etc.), when the skeptic is right that there is no fact of the other (or ourselves) to know that will resolve our worries. But Wittgenstein sees that this truth is only because our relation to others (the mechanics of it, the grammar) is not through knowledge resolving our doubts about them, but that it is part of our situation as humans that we are separate, that our knowledge of the other is finite. But the implications of that are simply that the ordinary mechanics of our relation to others is not one of, here, knowing “their understanding”, but of accepting or rejecting them; that their otherness is at times a moral claim on us, to respond to them (or ignore them), to be someone for them. Thus “the urge to transcend the human”, in our ordinary lives, is to avoid exposing ourselves to the judgment of who we are in how we relate to others. In the case of understanding, by only wanting to treat what others say as information we simply need to get correct, rather than acknowledge their concerns and interests, and have ours be questioned. To put it that this is the “result of having language” is the picture of something like that what we say has a “meaning” that stands alone from who we will be judged to be in having said it, rather than it expressing us, allowing who we are to be read through it.

I am a little unclear what you mean by "Wittgenstein's strange people", but based on the cited paragraph, it could mean people who you may find difficult to understand. — Richard B

Sorry, the sentence before (which I have also referred to) and the passage from p 223 of the PI, 3rd, in its entirety (emphasis in the original) is:

“If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me.

We also say of some people that they are transparent to us. It is, however, important as regards this observation that one human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them.”

One area I believe we can agree on is Wittgenstein's pointing out the importance "of natural actions and reactions that come before language and are not the result of thought."…

'You say you take care of a man who groans, because experience has taught you that you yourself groan when you feel such-and-such. but since in fact you don't make any such inference, we can abandon the argument from analogy' (Zettel, 537) — Richard B

Yes, we do not know the other because we infer them from our experience. But we do not know the other because of our shared history of actions and reactions either—we do not know the other. As I have been saying, the “natural actions and reactions” to others are the particular mechanics of our relation. Thus, it is no longer a “problem” to be solved by knowledge, by analogy or otherwise. Part of the workings of our natural actions and reactions to the other is that sometimes we can’t predict them, we aren’t sure they will agree with us, follow us, remain consistent to our expectations of them, etc. We sometimes cannot find our feet with them, understand them. This is not a philosophical problem; it is part of the human condition. So, instead of intellectually trying to “solve” or minimize it, we are simply trying to make explicit the (unspoken) ordinary criteria we live with for what counts in terms of getting to know someone.

@Banno @Richard B

The above can be summarized by saying that "other minds" is an oxymoron. — sime

Well I hope I get more credit than that, but I understand the confusion. I put “other minds” in the OP (I have changed it now) only because traditional philosophy had named the issues surrounding our relations to others: “the problem of other minds”. That someone has a “mind” is not the picture of the other I am arguing for; what I am doing is continuing on from Wittgenstein’s investigation into why philosophy looked at it that way, and from Cavell’s reading of him that that desire (for knowledge to be the “answer”) actually shows something about our situation as humans and thus affects our ordinary relation to other people. To catch up on all that would, I would suggest, at least take reviewing all the posts here, if not also reading Minar’s paper.

But let’s just stick with how your post relates to and interprets this issue. I take “behavioral disposition” to mean the other’s (outward) expressions (let’s set aside our history with them, the situation we find ourselves in, and how different types of things are handled in different ways, e.g., pain, opinions, excuses). I take you to be claiming that it only makes sense (is meaningful to us) to doubt another’s expressions in so much as we are judging that they are lying, being fake, making stuff up, etc., and that we have nothing to go on to make that decision other than their expressions. I agree. However, the resolution of even just that doubt may not be possible, or we can just be wrong, which shows that, in an ordinary way, “knowledge” of the other cannot do what we want it to (ensure our judgment of the other; remove or answer our doubt). But Wittgenstein shows us that expressions are not just information about the other; that they reveal us, what is essential to us. What we say reflects our interests in what we are talking about. Our criteria for judgment show what matters to us, is meaningful to us. The idea is that we can “read into” a person, not to get at an object of knowledge, e.g., their “mind” or “their understanding”, but to understand where they are coming from.

You frame Rhees’ version of understanding as if he wants you “to feel or think on their behalf”. But to feel on their behalf is to sympathize with them, in the sense of coming to a common feeling (as if this kind of understanding were not a rational process). To think for them is like putting words in their mouth (rather than reasons behind their words); as if it were a matter of just the right articulation; or, as Socrates emulates, making the strongest argument we can for another’s claim to knowledge. Of course it is good practice not to judge what someone says too quickly, not to be dismissive, or think we know what someone is trying to say immediately, or from, say, the title of a discussion ;) . However, just understanding, in this version of making another’s words make sense, is to treat what we say to each other as removed from who we are, what it says about us, and our responsibility to our saying it. Wittgenstein makes this point in his use of the term “expression”, in that what we say expresses (reveals) who we are, why we are saying it, what we are committing to and standing for. As you say “the practice of empathy lends insight with respect to their behavioral disposition.”

…one's beliefs concerning a person's behavioural disposition effects the course and extent of one's empathy towards that person. — sime

Yes, this is the flip side of the coin. That we can understand a person through what they say and do (that this is the mechanics of it, logically, structurally) means that it also works inversely that we can take them for what we would have them be. Thus that we can have no willingness to see another’s expressions as intelligible of interests other than ours (or what we simply assume theirs are) because we already have a judgment about people who act a certain way or say certain things (or look a certain way). We refuse the conversation Rhees is suggesting; another way to put this is that we refuse our friendship, any possible community with the person.

Wittgenstein… focuses on the intellectual problem the philosophical minded get themselves into. — Richard B

We agree on that. I’m only trying to say that there was a purpose: the “investigation” is to find out why they get themselves into it (why he did), why they want it to be a problem they can have a solution for. It looks like insanity, but this is exactly my point: it is our duty to humanize the Other, even the Skeptic, to find and imagine intelligible interests they may have. This is Wittgenstein’s struggle with his interlocutor, his fight with himself (the author of the Tractatus).

"I know that a sick man is lying here? Nonsense! I am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face.- So, I don't know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question nor the assertion makes sense."

What he is doing is showing how the concept "to know" does not make sense in this circumstance. — Richard B

This is a perfect quote to bring up, and you are absolutely correct, but there is a point to it—other than just “hogwash!”. You say he does not say there is a truth to skepticism (he also does not “show it” as some hold over from the Tractatus is his only means). He is showing us examples of what we ordinarily might say and do as evidence of the structure of something (it’s “grammar”), here: our relation to the Other.

In order to see the point of a Wittgensteinian example, you must see it for yourself; your assent is the only proof. Most of the time he asks a question that you must stretch your way of thinking to see; to see it from a different position—take a different interest in it. (Nietzsche will do this too; they court misunderstanding so that you can’t get the point unless you change who you are, how you see the world). Wittgenstein here is enacting an Interlocutor, who is playing the part of someone who wants our relationship to the Other to be one of knowledge.

When Wittgenstein says “Nonsense!”, what he says next is not that this is a situation where we cannot doubt, or that we must know, or that we are certain (because none of those need be the case); what he says is that he is “attending” to the person. He does not have knowledge that they are sick, he is responding to the person being sick. The point is that knowledge is not how we relate to other people; it is not how it works. What is essential about others is that we acknowledge them. Right there is a person in a state that is making a claim on you to accept or deny, respond to or ignore.

The truth of skepticism is that knowledge cannot solve the fact of the other’s… otherness, their separateness, their opaque quality to us. As he says elsewhere, if we see someone in pain, we don’t ask whether we know it or not (PI 3rd, p.223), and that is because we help them (or not). We are not of the “opinion” people have a soul (p.178), not because we “believe” it, but because it’s not a matter of knowledge (or not) at all. The way it works is that we treat them as if they have a soul or not, as a human or not (we have an “attitude towards [them]”). The truth is, however, that it is not only philosophy that fears doubt and craves certainty, but all of us, thus why Rhees is trying to make us see that understanding is not a matter of epistemology, but of ethical behavior.

[ redo ]

If this agreement does not mostly occur, we do not have a language at all; thus, there is nothing to be skeptical about. — Richard B

I agree that most of the time doubt is not an issue. I also agree that philosophy has a certain (radical) version of skepticism. As Descartes says, “Some years ago I was struck by how many false things I had believed, and by how doubtful was the structure of beliefs that I had based on them.” Wittgenstein sees that the pictures that philosophy creates are based on a desire for knowledge (“purity”) that will solve what philosophy framed as the skeptical “problem”. However, Wittgenstein goes on to see that the workings of our relationship to others is not one of knowledge, but that the desire (for our relation to be based on something other than me) is a basic human response to (the fear of) the fact that we are separate from others, that this is part of the human condition (and not just an intellectual problem). My claim is that because we are always in this (limited, uncertain) condition to others, the fear of it, and the desire to remove ourselves from it, have affected our culture and lives and how we “understand” each other. This is set out better and more thoroughly in the paper, and, with hope, above.

You should be skeptical of imagining what I am imagining. What you are imagining that I am imagining is wrong. — Fooloso4

I didn’t realize you were that guy. I stand by my earlier offense and decision. Please don’t address me until you can treat other people with respect and apologize for what I hope you can at some point see is regrettable behavior.

@Banno @Richard B @Fooloso4

Understanding "strange" people

"[In a country that is strange to us because we do not understand the traditions of the people (even knowing the language)]...one human being can be a complete enigma to another. ...We do not understand the people. ...We cannot find our feet with them." — Investigations 3rd, p. 223

Here it might appear Wittgenstein is saying that, once we understand their traditions, we will understand the people. But it is not a matter of learning a practice, but of "find[ing] our feet with them". I am taking this as the process of understanding others that Minar is claiming Rhees is drawing out from Wittgenstein. My point is that this sense of putting ourselves in their shoes is not to learn, say, how to do a practice correctly, but in grasping what is important to the people by learning what matters to them about the practice, because their interest in it is based on how they judge it (as a note on method: the criteria they use as seen through what they say when doing it).

On page 181, Wittgenstein casts "strange" as not just outside the workings of a practice (as if it were just a matter of knowledge of those workings themselves (that our options are only a judgment of normal or not), but that we may judge that "This is a different type of [person]." (simply substituting "man"). Trying to make some sense of this: we see them as a person, but of a different "type" (then us), apart from just different (surprising) behavior or (unknown) practices. The structure of this judgment opens up the possibility that we can be, and thus become, the "same" type of person.

What "type" means here (and even "same") is in need of some unpacking, but I would first say that, as it relates to "understanding" others, "same" is not an equation of some "understanding" each of us have (thus not an agreement in that). If people are judged as a type, what separates classes of people is not their, say, different opinions or conclusions, but the grouping of people with similar interests, or, as Wittgenstein analogously says elsewhere: that we do not agree on definitions to communicate, we share judgments. Thus, here, to understand the other, we must find out their interest in--reflected in their criteria for--judging as they do.

What I feel remains to be explored further is the process of "finding our feet with them", say, as a matter of imagining ourselves as them, getting at why one might want to judge as they do. Maybe: in taking them seriously; allowing another's reasons to be or become intelligible; respecting their interests by taking their expressions as a commitment of their self, their character as it were (what "type" of person they are). I take this not as a matter of critique, but of letting them be "strange" to us without rejection (tolerating but not assuming/resigned to difference); with open curiosity, (cultural) humility (that my interests and context are not everyone's). In a sense: understanding as empathy; understanding in the sense of: being understanding (Websters: vicariously experiencing the [interests] of another; imagining the other's attitudes as legitimate; the imaginative projection of [myself] into [the other] so that [they] appear to be infused with [me, being a person]).

We can know that the sun rose today, but can we know that the sun will rise tomorrow? It seems clear that he did not think we could. — Fooloso4

Yes, the sun. One type of thing. To the point here, we not only do not have a relationship with others based on knowledge, but our relation to the world at times is also not one for which the criteria of judgment is certainty of the future. My guess is that you are imagining every example leads to a conclusion about our approach to everything (that there is only one form of skepticism: the problem of a foundation for a particular criteria for knowledge).

I think his picture of knowledge takes this into consideration. Perhaps his best expression of this is the river of knowledge from On Certainty. — Fooloso4

It is unclear what your "this" is referring to. Also, again, I take you to be framing it that he only has one "picture of knowledge", and, for that matter, that there is only one sense of "certainty". We are here specifically talking about "understanding" and the workings and criteria for that, and also the picture of that which comes from the fear of skepticism and the desire for knowledge to be the sole criteria in that case. That is to say that I don't find where this is relevant to the matter at hand.

Did Wittgenstein change his mind on this:

T 6.36311 That the sun will rise to-morrow, is an hypothesis; and that means that we do not know
whether it will rise. — Fooloso4

I would say his thinking deepened. When he says “hypothesis” he is referring to a sense of “believe”. And it is satisfied in the case of the sun (as with believing it is raining outside), because we can know whether we are right or not when the sun comes out (or checking on the rain). This is a sense of belief, and thus a picture of knowledge. Later he realizes that not everything is subject to this sense of knowledge, and, in fact, that part of our lives (with others) does not involve this kind of knowing at all.

T 6.37 A necessity for one thing to happen because another has happened does not exist. There is only logical necessity. — Fooloso4

This craving for “necessity” was the driving force in the Tractatus (the only standard that was allowed). He later finds that there are other criteria for different things, and that, in the case of our relation to others, the goal that necessity would want: your knowledge of “my” understanding, works despite necessity, in fact, despite it not being a matter of knowledge at all.

T 6.375 As there is only a logical necessity, so there is only a logical impossibility. — Fooloso4

But this is only the way some things work (the criteria for some things), such as whether a rule was “followed” or not (you either do it or don’t). What he found was that the criteria for a thing reflect our interests in that thing. Here, we want assurance. What Rhees’ observation is (following later Wittgenstein), is that “understanding” one another is to see how things matter to the other by examining how we are judging a thing (our interests in it).

y

If "us" refers to humanity, well I think this is a bit of an overstatement about what Wittgenstein is claiming. — Richard B

I would take issue with Malcolm’s characterization of skepticism by way of Kripke, but there is already a discussion of rules and Kripke (a reading by Cavell coincidently) and those quotes of Wittgenstein’s, here. Imagining Wittgenstein somehow “solves” skepticism or dismisses it, does not take into account that his investigation destroys everything that is built in response to it only to see that part of it is true. There is no fact that will stop things from going sideways, from us turning out wrong about what we thought was right, in following a rule yet still being guilty because whether a rule was followed doesn’t take into account who we are.

And the concerns of philosophy do shape our culture; think of all the times you hear “that’s subjective”, or “just your opinion”. The desire for quantification, DNA evidence, and the mistrust of anything that requires our judgment, comes from our fear of being responsible for our relation to the world that is outside of knowledge. You follow a rule or not (that’s how we judge that action), but our reasons for doing so, our interests in it, are not “ determined”, as Wittgenstein here is saying. In the same way, there is no “fixed meaning” to the self, because whether we are “ourselves” (or just some brainwashed political mouthpiece) is gauged by our relation to the conformity (say, rules) that we desire to take away our responsibility, by simply following them. We want to “know” the other without having to respond to their otherness; we want to imagine we know their pain, rather than having to acknowledge them as a person in pain that needs help.

…all is well with humanity. Because they keep talking, acting, and judging in similar, expected, and harmonious ways; we have meaning and understanding. — Richard B

“All is well with humanity”? Sure we act (judge) in accordance most of the times, but we don’t always, as we don’t always understand each other. We (commonly) believe in the myth that for you to see my “point of view” all I need to do is speak “my understanding” of a subject, and you will, if I have spoken well, understand in the same way I do, but that picture allows me to hold my cards behind my back. To call this “skeptical” is because I am imagining “my understanding” as something precise and knowable and equatable, and I do that out of fear that I may never be understood, or because, when I say something, I am judged by it, regardless of something I imagine is left over for me to claim control, as “I didn’t mean that”. We are separate; philosophy has classically turned that into an intellectual problem (which you believe is solved), and not seen it as a basic condition (working situation) of being human (or not).

it [ is ] not that this "when" lies outside discussions of epistemology — Astrophel

Yes, the idea is exactly that the self is not a matter of knowledge. Our relationship to others is that we accept or deny who they are, how they feel, etc. The same is true of our own feelings (we acknowledge or suppress them). This action happens as an event—so only a matter of time in that it is not a continuous state—just as we do not always have a self but differentiate from conformity as an occurrence.

Language produces generalities that fail to speak the complexities of one's subjective world. One can thus toss out casually words and their meanings into an arena of standardized thinking, and this pretty much belies the rich interior of one's true actual world. — Astrophel

Language is sufficient to share ourselves. The “rich interior of one’s actual world” is a fantasy of the self so I have the excuse of being unknowable and yet always special. We pawn our failures onto language, and make it incapable. (This is not to say we do not have personal experiences, even ineffable ones of, say, a sunset by ourselves after a hike (the awe of nature), where we cannot say it, nor paint it, nor have a picture capture it, nor even take you to see and point at it (though the difference here might be too close to matter between us). But this is the rare exception, not the general mechanics of the self.

The framework I am outlining is that the judgments and expectations and implications and all the different criteria of our society’s various ways of living may not match up with how I want to be in not being defined by those criteria, who I am willing to defy society to be.

My affective being, the caring, interest, doubt, dread, and so on, built into [the present], making the normativity of ethics a wholly temporal affair. — Astrophel

But isn’t this just to say that humans have interests, desires, fears, etc? And so does our culture, as evidenced in its criteria of judgment; and we either conform to the judgments of our culture or not, regarding ethics or art or city planning or making tea. That in general we do is because our lives together are what is “normative” in an ongoing way (from Cavell), but at times (at a particular moment and situation) we may have to cross the ethical dictates of our society as it stands, though we don’t do it in a vacuum but against (or with) our culture, e.g., the difference between society’s criteria of what a girl or boy is expected to do, and the interest of a boy or girl in either identifying with those criteria or not letting society define them, deter them.

doubt about the self is different because here we stand on the threshold of metaphysics: what is a self? Why am I (are we) born to suffer and die? And love and hope and dream? To me, this threshold is deeply profound, for it is not just an abstract issue, a premise in an argument (though it is certainly this). It is the palpable presence of the world, the "life" we are thrown into — Astrophel

Yes we all struggle with these issues. I am just suggesting the question is not who “we” “are” or “I” “am” so much as what am I willing to express interest in, and thus how this places me with or against the history, criteria, implications, etc. that I am brought up into. This would mean that neither the self (nor the world) is always “present”, nor is that particular goal necessary, but that the possibility of the self is always open, but only actualized as an event (now).