If it were true that my existence depends on my asserting it, then it seems to follow that, since I can assert it any time or even, in principle, constantly, that the dependence is really on the possibility of assertion and not on actual instances of assertion, that is that it follows that I always exist—until the possibility of my asserting my existence is gone, when I am dead and no longer exist. — Janus

First, that sounds exhausting. Now, you may express who you are by wearing clothes differently (or very well), but asking for the potatoes to be passed is not a moment for individuation. So the "possibility of assertion" is not constant, thus why Descartes says "whenever", as in: not always. Also, thinking is not our internal dialogue; I am judged as having thought about something when we have a problem (not "any time"), thus it is seen as timely, situational, deliberate, considering the expectations or implications, etc. Finally, the goal is not an argument for my "existence", as if that were a separate quality of things. It is in the sense of choosing how I will live my life, what I will get behind and what not.

One only exists, when one asserts he thinks, therefore he exists. And other times, he doesn't. That sounds not valid. — Corvus

It might be easier to read through my responses to other posts (say here) first for the sense of "assertion" here. I'll just say that this is not proposing an argument, it is asserting myself; as: claiming authority for me, against conformity (the social contract).

Shouldn't Cogito be understood as a wider meaning such as consciousness which includes all the mental activities such as general mental awareness, perception, thinking and feeling ... etc rather than just think? In that case, One is conscious (feels, thinks), therefore one exists.
As long as one is conscious (feels, perceives, thinks), one exists. Because consciousness requires, by necessity, the being who is conscious. — Corvus

And this picture, here of "consciousness", is what I am claiming these authors are trying to get you to see past. "Consciousness" is a manufactured framework of the self as something that is mine, caused by the misconception that your "perception" is (perhaps) fundamentally different than mine (It might help to read this first). Now you will say, "but I feel this, and think, and am aware" and all that is true, but it is not the cause of the curfuffle. We are humans who have feelings and self-awareness and mental dialogue (which is not "thinking"; again, read the first post), but those are personal, not individual (we are not different by nature). The actual problem is that we sometimes just don't see eye-to-eye, but not that we can't. So if our "mental activities" are just there, without the need of their being "mine", as if special, than the need for the self as a constant thing goes away, replaced by the self as differentiated from our cultural expectations; i.e., I make myself me in relation to the past, our shared judgments, the implications of our activities and expressions, etc., or I am: a sheep, asleep, brainwashed, etc. (again, "existing" being a different matter). Good luck.

I'm a mysterian, so, I have no issue with "being human is...beyond the judgment and criteria...of our cultural history. — Manuel

The relegation of our humanity to irrationality is driven by philosophy's desire to only consider what meets the prerequisites it sets of universality, abstraction, completeness, etc. as reasons. Wittgenstein shows us that our ordinary various criteria for judgment, under all the different things we do, allows everything to be discussed, explained, agreed on, specific, rigorous, "normative", etc. except at the point where they fail to cover all cases (extensions into new contexts), or where they reveal that we have another relation to the world, to others (their pain), our self, than knowing it (as if the self were a thing in me that I only need know, need explain); "beyond the limits of knowledge" for the self is not a mystery, because there is nothing more to know--I step into my future (yet out of or furthering our shared history**), for which I can provide reasons, make intelligible to you. **I said "sometimes beyond our criteria" as most of the time we just follow the ordinary way of things (conformity).

Kind of like Sartre? "I am the situation" — frank

This is interesting to consider; my Sartre is rusty but my recollection is that he (as with Foucault) is talking about a practical response to the state of our society as it stands, as in: protest, revolution, and what I take these authors to be getting at is the structural nature of being human, how that works. Not to negate Sartre from the conversation, as he also sees something necessary between the self and something social, but these authors address the (Kantian) conditions of our basic lives together; say--analogously, as I can't think of an example involving the self right now--not judging the injustice of our current institutions, but standing against (or for) our criteria for the judgment of justice at all (uberhapt). Worth further thought (and examples). Thank you.

You've brought this up before, the idea that there is no intention in language use. — frank

It isn't that there is no such thing as intention, just that it works differently than philosophy has sometimes pictured it (socially, rather than “mentally”). It is not a cause (which would thus require a “self” to enact). The picture of a constant “self” (who intends) leads to the picture that we "use" language, as if: operate it or control it (that is not to say we don't sometimes chose what we say with the intention, as in the hope, that it have a particular outcome). The desire for philosophy’s standard picture of intention is to maintain control of what “we” mean; to imagine our duty is merely to accurately describe our (inner) “self”, rather than remain accountable to the implications of our expressions and acts in light of the expectations and conditions (criteria for judgment) of a situation. Our situation is not our selves already always present, but that “I” am dormant within our cultural roles (limited to the means of production Marx would say); I am only myself in relation or opposition to this conformity, which I stand ready to answer to.

Sure, I can see [the self as created, not existing]. But aren't there empirical cases we could look into? As in a child being raised by wild animals in which they don't have other human beings as a reference frame, what would happen to them? — Manuel

You are asking for proof of what are the conditions we act under as humans (as if philosophy's issues could be answered with science). These authors are trying to get us to see that being human is sometimes beyond the judgment and criteria (and morality even Nietzsche will point out) of our cultural history, our shared ways of judging, identifying, proceeding, etc; not as an ideal but a part of our situation as humans, that our our lives are larger than the limitations of knowledge, that we are not always "circumscribed with rules"(Investigations #68).

"[creating the self] takes ownership ("possesses") ...what we want our interests to be in the world...". — Antony Nickles

Sure, he is aiming at that ownership status, as it were. — Manuel

Not sure what your understanding is here ("as it were"?), but the common picture is that there is something that is "mine" that I own (always, or in acting--a perception, an intention, a meaning) that you don't understand, or that I can't communicate (some kind of matching up with what is "me"--see Hume discussion below), rather than the sense of taking on, owning up to, whatever the judgment or consequences or need for response of a situation.

[Hume] recognized that his entire system essentially collapses, when he says "my hopes vanish", when discussing the problem of not being able to find a self and not being able to find a real (as opposed to imagined) continuity in objects. — Manuel

A little bit off topic but important in seeing his alternative "picturing" of the self, and why. Hume is important (as is Descartes), because he does take the threat of skepticism seriously: the possibility that we make mistakes, may be judged as wrong or bad, that we may not know or agree how to continue. Hume will take this fallibility as a "problem" (even with objects) and projects that onto a manufactured placeholder, "appearance", and then "internalizes" the "answer" (as Kant wants to externalize it, creating the "thing-in-itself" and then problematizing that), which makes "finding", as you say, matching up as it were, equating, my self, my perception, critical (to take the place of our role in answering for our self).

The reason for the machinations is to make our fallibility an intellectual problem (of knowledge) in the desire for the answer to meet a particular per-determined requirement, standard (predictable, concrete, "rational", universal, generalized, complete, controllable, etc.). As you say, he is "assuming the self is unified and that objects have a real connection...." (emphasis added because these assumptions are based on the desire for a knowable certainty). I am trying to show these authors take the creation of the self, thus the possibility of its not existing, not that we can't find an answer to the problem of skepticism,but that we are in the position were we "answer" for our actions and speech in ongoing various ways (not as a picture of matching up with what is "my self"--as above).

I mean if you have that in mind, say, sleepwalking through life or drowned in consumerism or some other metaphoric use of the term, I still think the whole "reasonable person" standard applies, you would be responsible for your actions because you know what you are doing is wrong. — Manuel

It is not "metaphoric" as in just language or a social commentary; there is actual import in it for the analytical workings of the conditions of being human.

See my response to @Frank above about morality (reason, standards, "right"). Although, again, that is a different discussion (though granted it is connected). You are "responsible" not in its sense that you are acting appropriately ("I'm a responsible person"); but in its emphasis on being liable for, answerable to, your actions. "Rationality" is (afterwards) giving reasons, or excuses, or contingencies. We have to justify ourselves, be intelligible, rather than rely on what has been determined as "right" (to avoid my being wrong in that I can blame: "moral ambiguity" rather than as a reflection on me).

cc: @Manuel

Assertion is a voluntary action, so it kind of requires a self of some kind, doesn't it? — frank

Well, Austin will have a lot to say about this in his 31-page "A Plea for Excuses, which I highly recommend, but it might be hard to see his purpose in pointing out that "intention" and "volition" are only brought up in special cases (not all the time) as when things go sideways ("Did you intend to do that?"); the purpose being that, no, an "act" does not require an actor in the sense of a cause or decision, etc. What occurs in a particular situation is judged (when necessary) to be an act under different though common (ordinary) criteria for each act taking into consideration the circumstances. The "self" that these authors are pointing out is an assertion in the sense of claiming authority (over this judging) where the thing gone sideways is our shared criteria (which I must stand against), or our lives together (which may not reflect our standards for the justice we profess).

If you mean the self is drawn out of events post hoc, I think I agree? Likewise, morality is always a post hoc construction (I think) where we judge an event according to some standard or rule. That event was screwed up, so it's bad, and anything in the future that's like that would also be bad. But we can't really judge events in the future because we don't have access to them. We only have access to hypotheticals and past events. — frank

Of course, who you are is “drawn out” from, or judged from, your actions. But I make a claim to (and for) my self; I put my self forth as an standard(bearer). This is also a different vision of morality (although that is a different discussion); not something worked out in advance or based on rules or history (although that can be taken into consideration). There is a moral moment, when we are lost and don't know how to proceed, at which point my action is based not on what is "right", but on what I will take as mine, be responsible for (Nietzsche will call this the birth of the human, as it were, over deontology or teleology).

But what if we're always sleepwalking in a manner of speaking? Always playing out the same habits and grinding the same axes, or maybe only doing what we think we're supposed to do. That's a kind of loss of selfhood. — frank

And this is the sense of self to which I am claiming these authors speak to. If we never allow our words to express our self (hide from that exposure, commitment), then we merely quote others' lives (as Emerson puts it).

...are you suggesting that the self exists only when we make propositions to others...? — Manuel

Well it's not a matter of the proposition being "true" in a true/false sense, or that there is a function of a proposition like this to others that would be different from one I make to myself. I am saying your being you (individually) works through a process of putting yourself in line or against our culture (the social contract as it were), and that this happens as an event (not all the time), either moral, political, relational, etc. That you are standing behind what you say and do in a way that defines you, makes you subject to judgment, responsible to be intelligible; that you are claiming something as yours--Descartes' "must" here is because you are in a sense making that promise to yourself (and others), that you will make it true.

...are you suggesting that... if we are alone, and we say we exist, we are not saying anything informative? — Manuel

Well, let's try to imagine a context in which we would say this (not to be too Wittgensteinian about it). Perhaps if we were getting ourselves psyched or trying to get our confidence up in the face of someone treating us as insignificant (less than a person)--"I exist! I exist!"--and this would be in the sense that I matter, that I am not nothing.

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception — Hume, Treatise on Human Nature

.

Now, as has been commented on by several figures, he appears to deny or minimize something, he cannot help use: namely the "I". What is this referring to? — Manuel

Well here Hume is actually bemoaning his situation that he only observes "perception" and never any constant "self". What he wants to find is who and how we "possess" (make specific and certain, as we might objects) our "personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination" setting aside "our passions or the concern we take in ourselves", which I am saying these other authors take up as what we must assert and express into the world--in a way that is not self interest, but takes ownership ("possesses") of what we want our interests to be in the world (Wittgenstein will call this our "real need"), that we own (up to) them (living our shared criteria for judgment, or averse to them; extending them, revolutionizing our lives).

I appreciate your response.

I think the domain where the idea of you--as a thinking, feeling actor on the world stage--is the most potent is the moral realm. — frank

I agree, and would add that this understanding of the self as "asserted" (as it were along or against the backdrop of our practices and culture) is what creates the possibility of the moral realm. That, past trying to set out what we "ought" to do and beyond deciding on a goal, the sense of a place where we are lost at the edge of our culture or that our society as it stands has lost our interests, is the limit of knowledge, where we must, as you say, "materialize" our future (self, culture).

…there is nothing contradictory about a self that is not (at the moment) available to conscious awareness. Paul Ricoeur pointed out (somewhere; I can't find the reference at the moment) that "knowing that I exist" doesn't tell me what I am. The cogito is uninformative about depth psychology. — J

The extent, then, that [the "cogito"] is just as metaphysical and hyperbolical as [Descartes' radical] doubt, this "I" possesses immediately the value of an example, but in a sense of "anyone" which is without any common measure with its grammatical sense: anyone who, after Descartes, retraces the trajectory of doubt, says, as he did, "I". But, in so doing, this "I" becomes a non-person, that is to say, unidentifiable, undesignatable... — Ricoeur, Crisis of the

Though this may not be the quote you are referring to above, I take it you would agree that "what I am" is done differently than that "I" am constant and always special. From my studies of Ricoeur, I took away that time was an important element to him. Specifically, that everything happens as "an event", which allowed him to see that something that I say is: to someone, at a place, under certain circumstances, knowing things, not knowing others, maybe blind to my (unconscious) reasons, knowing full well the consequences, etc. I can't but compare this to Descartes' "assertion" and Wittgenstein's "expression" of: "me". That I both stand for what I am here, now, but also that the judgment for which is: on me.

The cogito is uninformative about depth psychology. — J

As an aside, I wouldn't differentiate between a conscious and unconscious self; humans just have an "unconscious". But there is also more than psychology (e.g., repression of trauma and the resulting anxiety) to our criteria of a "self" (we are not defined or measured by our unconscious, however compelled we are to reenactment). Philosophy investigates what in our (collective) lives is unexamined, how life can be meaningful, our human condition and the resultant desires, how our practices involve our interests and our participation, and what matters to my being me.

Even if I am deceived, I am having an experience, and so I am. I might be wrong about my form, but I as long as there is experience, however false, there is an experiencer. It is inconceivable that a nonexistent entity might be fooled in any way whatsoever, and that includes being misled to believe that it exists. — petrichor

But this is “exist” simply in the literal sense of, just: here; as it were: not not here; or just: alive, rather than dead. But then why is Descartes skipping over this human self-consciousness to “thought”? And why does he qualify it with “whenever” (as if sometimes he is not, and thus does not)? He goes on to say that “thought” is when he understands the conditions of a thing clearly and distinctly, not that it is just anything I say to myself. So this sense of "existing" tells us nothing other than I am a human that is alive, which is an obvious empirical fact.

What these philosophers are getting at is that “existence” is, in a sense, a mythical term, to capture that life can be meaningful or not, to “me”, that it might matter for me to make that known to others. Sometimes you don’t have an experience, in the sense that “you” do not have an experience when you, say, go to the store and nothing notable happens. “What have you been doing?” “I went to the store.” “How was your experience?” “Fine.” In your terms perhaps, if there is not “content”, there is no point to differentiate a “subject”.

If you don't have that story, there is no You. — Kaiser Basileus

I agree; only are we just "telling a story"? (to ourselves, or from ourselves? I'm not sure why "internal") I would suggest our fitting in or pushing back obligates us to "tell a story", in the sense of being answerable for what we claim to be ours.

Here is a good explanation of the historical and philosophical place Wittgenstein holds. I hope it helps with reading the Investigations.

“By the middle 1960’s two separate but related intellectual forces were taking root in American social sciences and humanities. Both were a response to the positivism that had dominated the professions in the period immediately following the Second World War. The appeal of that positivism was wide-spread – in social science, in philosophy, in the New literary Criticism – and was itself in great part a reaction to what appeared to have been an extremely dangerous subjectivism and irrationalism in the 1930’s. Both of these reactions had the effect of breaking the intellectual hold -- or were at least taken to have broken the hold – of the positivist understandings of the social world and of how one should go about trying to understand that world.
Central to positivism had been three claims. The first was that there was a clear-cut conceptual separation between facts and values and that, in consequence, values were subjective, not of the world, and could be kept apart from ones analysis of social reality. This was not a denial that values were “important” but it was a denial that values were objects of knowledge.
The second claim was parent to the first. It was a claim that propositions about the world could and should be made to speak for themselves – thus that propositions about the world should have a validity independent of he or she who advanced them. One could and should clearly separate the speaker from the spoken, for if one did one’s work right not just empirical claims about the world but concepts themselves would stand independently of the speaker. In its simplest form, the claim was that a statement like “mass equals force times acceleration” was true independently of who said it and of when and where it was said.
The third claim derived from the first two. It held that certain forms of discourse (claims to knowledge) were responsible and responsive to the real world in ways that other forms (one might think of them as emotive, or expressive) were not. In the first form honesty towards the world required something of the thinker; in the second anything (apparently) went.
Into this vision of the world came a critique that came to carry the shorthand name of “Kuhn.” Thomas Kuhn’s book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, argued that claims about the world carried with them participation in a broader understanding – to some degree social and historical in nature -- without which those claims would not be possible. Kuhn called these broader understandings “paradigms.” Kuhn, in other words, appeared to question the distinction between the two forms of speech or knowledge, between the expressed and the un-or inexpressible.
Soon, everyone was citing Kuhn. Crudely, what most people took him to have done -- whether or not they approved of it – was to have brought “values” or cultural commitments back in scientific discourse. It is important to realize that in this reading of Kuhn, however, “values” were still understood precisely in the terms that positivism had cast them in. They were, in other words, the unexpressed, the non-cognitive and so forth. That facts, as one learned to say, were “theory [or value] laden,” and “embedded” in “webs of meaning” did not seem to join culture, value or meaning any more tightly to the world, nor make knowledge of these things any more shareable. The emphasis was rather in the other direction – loosening the grip of facts on the world, introducing a scrim of “values” before everywhere we might look for the former.
This terrain was fertile enough to foster a second development. Pretty soon those who read Kuhn in this manner – whether favorably or not – were reading Wittgenstein and allowing themselves free passage between paradigms, pictures, forms of life and language-games. Central here was the claim taken from Wittgenstein that language, or certain linguistic conventions, so shape our understanding of the world that we do not see around their corners. Wittgenstein’s apothegm that “a picture held us captive” came to stand for a peculiar kind of blindness forced on one through language itself. For those who were favorable to this so-called “linguistic turn,” however, Wittgenstein’s proposition about imprisonment became a slogan of liberation. For if what seemed to constrain our thought was merely a picture, then it would certainly seem one could get out of it, or at least change pictures, -- or so it appeared. The irony here is that Wittgenstein’s passage expresses a disappointment with knowledge. Wittgenstein continues: “And we could not get outside it, for it lay in our language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably.” The irony is compounded in that two disappointments are captured here simultaneously: the initial one, a disappointment with the failure of knowledge to satisfy its own inveterate demands (in the Investigations this appears as the demand for a crystalline pure ideal of language), and the succeeding one, a disappointment with this initial disappointment -- a finding of the latter to be in effect empty, a disappointment with success. It is this second disappointment that drives Wittgenstein to his famous turning around of the axis of his investigation (PI 108). We shall have more to say about such turnings below.
In the social sciences, however, it was not long before some were proclaiming that “what you see depends on where you sit.” Kuhn’s paradigms – already carried from scientific practice into society itself – were now radicalized by being located in the plurality of “language games” that were suddenly found to mark the differences among everything from academic disciplines to political projects. Ironically, since Wittgenstein’s earlier work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, had been a central document in the rise of positivism (whether properly understood or not), his later work, the Philosophical Investigations, acquired its prestige in part as a recantation of an earlier “positivism.”
We shall not be concerned here directly with the status and importance of Kuhn’s work for the social sciences. However, leaving aside the question of whether or not those who read Kuhn got him right – and the answer to that would have to be for the most part “no” – it is important to realize that Kuhn’s work drew heavily on certain developments in philosophy which have were associated with the designation “ordinary language philosophy,” a practice of philosophy variously associated with the work of J.L. Austin and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Its most prominent contemporary American practitioner is Stanley Cavell, who has extended Austin and Wittgenstein beyond any point that might have seemed obvious. We shall focus here on the importance and implications of this practice of philosophy for political theory and political science.

II. Sources and Resources

…Wittgenstein has been, for the philosophical community, a difficult person to place. Three broad approaches to domestication seem to have developed. First, to some he appears as a Humean (or “mitigated”) skeptic. In this reading, the central part of Wittgenstein’s achievement is to have shown that philosophically we can always raise questions, but that these questions will, however, have little to do with our ordinary life. This view places great weight on passages such as “Justification comes to an end” (PI 194) and “My life consists in being able to accept many things.” (PI 44). In this reading, the task of philosophy is to keep itself in its own, proper, corner and not to pretend to be part of life as we live it. This view is held in different ways by Richard Rorty and Saul Kripke.
A second reading holds that Wittgenstein is a kind of empiricist justificationist. The Investigations are taken to be a justification of cultural common sense. Hence: “Our mistake is to look for an explanation.. where we ought to have said ‘This language game is played’.” (PI 654). This view derives ultimately from G. E. Moore for whom philosophical problems can and should be eliminated by reinforcing what all people know unproblematically. A contemporary exponent of this understanding of Wittgenstein would be the late Peter Winch.
A third view is a kind of Kantian justificationism. Kant, as is commonly known, tried to determine those categories of the understanding which delineated the realm in which reason was possible. David Pears, for instance, refers to Wittgenstein as a “linguistic Kantian.” In readings such as this, Wittgenstein wants to show the limits of human reason by reestablishing the boundaries between the phenomenal and the noumenal realms. Thus: “Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is.” (PI 373). Grammar, in this reading, becomes the equivalent of the synthetic a priori; however, it is understood as conventionally based.
It is important to realize that all three of these readings see Wittgenstein as concerned centrally with the justification of knowledge. Thus to the degree that any one of these views would be correct, Wittgenstein’s thought will not be of much use in political theory. There is also a danger when addressing these questions – more present in Wittgenstein and Cavell than with Austin -- of falling into one of three interpretive modes. The first is that of the valorization of ineffability – these authors are taken to point at the power of what cannot be said, at a realm of mystery lying beyond language and to which language is inadequate. A second mode is to hold that these authors are not talking about philosophy at all but rather about that which is pre- or non-philosophical, a kind of anthropology. Here the expectation is that these readers desire to keep philosophy in its proper place. The last mode is to think that these men are attempting to turn philosophy into literature – a kind of edifying discourse that since it makes no real claims to the truth need not bother about being “right.” Here they are read into a particular version of continental thought, with its emphasis on reading as opposed to (in Anglo-American analytic thought) argument. Gerald Bruns may be thought to hold this position.” TELLING THE DANCER FROM THE DANCE: ON THE RELEVANCE OF THE ORDINARY FOR POLITICAL THOUGHT (has appeared in Andrew Norris, ed. The Claim to Community) Joseph Lima and Tracy B. Strong

Sorry about quoting the whole thing instead of attaching it but I didn’t want people to get confused by the rest of the article, which is beyond the OP here.

I also think Wittgenstein’s experience may have informed his focus, based on stuff like #426. Our “muddied” ordinary practices cause some to want to “fix the sense un- ambiguously. …[as if] designed for a god, who knows what we cannot know; …sees into human consciousness. In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side-roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed.” (Emphasis added)

And I always thought this was insightful but naive. It is not that we “cannot” force the easy answer, it is just unethical not to take the “detours” to examine the actual circumstances, draw out the criteria we ordinarily use. If we cannot tolerate our failings, and claim all authority—as if our first impression is correct, that everything can be generalized together, and that we need to assert a standard for what is judged to “fix the sense unambiguously”—this is a facist methodology, the arrogant belief that we are a god, that there is always a “me” intending things, dictating meaning, “fixing” it.

means of discrimination have consequences far beyond the subjects they entertain. [Wittgenstein] was proposing a measure of fragility not commonly observed. A way of thinking about what one could reasonably expect that was not all that it seemed. — Paine

I can only try to paraphrase speculatively: So discrimination—analogous to seeing people as robots, seeing them as not human, soulless—affects more than the discriminated?; so we should be careful, or humble?, with our expectations? (say, of what knowledge can tell us about others) but this will come off as, weak? As if giving in to skeptical doubt about others?

I don't understand this quest for "pure knowledge" angle. What I took from the passage is that means of discrimination have consequences far beyond the subjects they entertain. — Paine

I'll go with that. Is our imagining others as dead inside the same means as discrimination? And are the consequences for me, that I feel "uncanny"?

I equate trying to doubt that we are all human with the "uncanny" feeling of being lost as to what to do (a moral quandary without any morals), unable to resolve what you mean with what I mean, or learning I was wrong when I thought I was right, which creates the generalized doubt the skeptic has. If I can tie that in to your question about the "quest for pure knowledge"; Wittgenstein takes our response to this doubt to be a fear that we can't be sure about anything. Descartes actually thought himself a madman, or underwater with no bottom. And, because our ordinary means and methods of judging do have the possibility of failing us, we chuck those criteria and any particular situation, and we fixate on wanting something abstract, universal, predetermined, foundational, certain, as if mathematical, bulletproof. However, the more we want to be certain, the less stuff that actually meets that requirement (just math), which leads us back to our ordinary--if falliable--means of judgment. Thus we can't "keep hold of this idea"--we can't see the pure requirement and our ordinary criteria at the same time. Both Descartes and Hume found it was an effort to combat the skeptic for long. "But this task [trying to be certain, without a doubt about everything] is a laborious one, and insensibly a certain lassitude leads me into the course of my ordinary life." 1st Meditations

As long as we avoid private language and rule following I'm okay. — Antony Nickles

This is like saying when studying mathematics, I'm okay with the subject as long as we avoid multiplication and division. You can't be serious. — Sam26

I don't find those sections to be essential as they are only two examples among many others that attempt to find out why the response to skepticism has been presumed to be just better ("pure") knowledge. And I think those sections screw people up or are more divisive than helpful.

For now I'm just going to work on the other thread. — Sam26

This is a disappointment to me as I'm sure it is to @Banno. I might just fix my resolve to take another crack at On Certainty.

@Banno @Sam26 And we're off and running.

So, what about this paragraph? It does not fit into your 'reduction of skepticism' model:

420. ...Seeing a living human being as an automaton is analogous to seeing one figure as a limiting case or variant of another; the cross-pieces of a window as a swastika, for example. — Paine

Well there is a lot going on in this quote, and I don't know what you are referring to by my "reduction of skepticism" other than I might say that the skeptic records a fact about our life but does not take into account that knowledge is not our only response to the separation, the limitation of us.

He starts with the observation that seeing someone as an automaton is antithetical to our naturalness (#418); we just are humans ("consciousness" does not record anything--any fact--more than that). But the unnaturalness of the skeptic's doubt does not mean it is not valid (records a fear, a fact). Not seeing someone as a person is as little a thing as only treating their pain (as the skeptic only wants to "know" their pain). Our desire for knowledge is "a limiting case" for it obscures our ability to judge, to see, that they are a person. The skeptic imagines the other's body blocks us from knowing their pain, but it is our unwillingness (to accept anything but pure knowledge) that shields their humanity from us; he will also says that someone having a soul is a function of my being in a position (an "attitude"), a relation, to the other, e.g., treating them as if they have one p. 178. Witt will later talk about this as "seeing an aspect".

@Sam26 @Paine

As long as we avoid private language and rule following I'm okay. #319 thinking; #344 imagination; #416 consciousness; #437 expectation; #472 belief; #499 senseless; #425 understanding; #547 negation and identity; #572 states "of mind"; #611 willing; #641 intention; #661 meaning; and then Part 2

Agreed; but just "Inv. Part 2?" or... ?

What's sad is, this thread has spent so much time on the first hundred remarks, but there is so much of great interest in the last hundred that remains unaddressed. — Banno

@Banno @Paine If you start anything, tag me in; I'd rather play in that sandpit than have to keep saying things like this.

Most of PI is devoted to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and errors :lol:. It certainly matters to him to demonstrate this as a point, not as an aside. — schopenhauer1

I was saying it was not a "point" because it is already assumed (no need to make a point of it, we all agree). He is not "demonstrating" it; he is looking at when it happens to see the ordinary criteria are different for each thing, that they come into play as markers of our interests in that practice.

There you are again, sneaking in some externality. "Culture" is now used instead of "public" and "practice". Culture is an individual's perception of something. — schopenhauer1

Well I'm just trying to find a word that you don't get all twisted up about. Culture, public, practice, shared lives, are in the sense here the way we have been interested in and judged things as a community, as a people (human, English speakers, etc.). Anytime I (or Wittgenstein) have used "our" is not in the sense of the possessive of "mine"; "our criteria" is not each of our individual criteria (as if you have yours and I have mine). We share criteria as we share our lives together. This is not some "agreement" (in the past or in each instance), but just that we can all recognize what an apology looks like, what a joke is, etc. We share the same ways of checking off the list if necessary of what makes a mistake different from an accident because we have all been brought up into our... whatever you want to call it, society?

You can't get to a foundation by appealing to a public sphere of agreement. It is all individuals agreeing, there is no public. — schopenhauer1

Wittgenstein is not looking for a foundation; he finds none. The ordinary criteria for something don't ensure things won't go sideways, but when they get wonky they do so along (or against) the judgments we would all (usually) make about a practice (and are resolved mostly the same way); this does not ensure everything works out, but it doesn't "dissolve away".

Responsibility for what? What is it an appeal to? We can always be wrong... — schopenhauer1

Responsible to make yourself intelligible to me about the confusion; whether along the appropriate expectations and judgments (though this is not "common sense"), or to explain transgressing those, or explaining how and why you are stretching our criteria for an act into a new context, and all the other ways things do or might go array. The point is there are times when we can't go on together, where everything breaks down, but there is nothing stopping us from continuing to try to work it out.

You are right, there is no MUST here. But then the only thing getting in the way is you (or me), and not because the thing I get doesn't match the thing you have, but that we refuse, give up, resort to violence, etc. Wittgenstein finds that insisting on having something inside me is to remove "me" (what I do next) as the most important part; it is the desire to have knowledge take our place. This is why "I cannot know what is going on in him" (p. 225) is a choice when I see someone writhing in pain (a "conviction" he says). Their feelings are not "hidden" (as you say, "internal"), I am refusing to accept them, to see them as a person.

And also, as I said above, our criteria can in a particular case, not matter to me, become a burden, oppressive, exclude me, be dead to degenerate times, etc. I either continue to carry the interest in our criteria or not, but for that I can be judged (this is why I am culpable in the social contract I never agreed to).

...Witt can't get beyond his own dissolving acid. My premise is that WItt's PI has two points, one of which negates the other:

Point I: People's interpretation/understanding/sense of meaning can always be in trouble of being misinterpreted, of being in error. Of being mistaken. — schopenhauer1

Well, yes, communication can always end up frustrated. But this is not "a point" Wittgenstein is making; it's just the nature of communication, as well as a moral situation, etc. There is no fact or foundation ensuring these practices. But they go wrong in different ways. Apart from someone being "right" in a discussion, I might just give up because the other refuses to concede anything, not even acknowledge points of agreement. ;) That is to say, error is not the only measure, nor is mistake, but yes, things can go sideways, of course. I would think that the fact that things go badly is not a matter of contention.

Point II: If 1 is the case, then the best we can get is how the word is "used". — schopenhauer1

Saying the "best we can get" implies that our ordinary criteria are not sufficient, that they don't work in different but acceptable ways. The standard you are judging that we have not met ("this is as good as we can do compared to...") is a single standard (rather than varied) that Wittgenstein is pointing out is manufactured for a particular reason in the face of the fact of that our world fails, is not resolvable (as discussed above).

any... overriding theory of meaning ...is still not going to get beyond being one's mere solipsistic (private) interpretation of meaning. Use should not even have been offered as a solution. — schopenhauer1

Again, you misunderstand that "use" is not a solution to the problem of, let's call it, our human condition (its possibility of failure), it is not an answer to this truth the skeptic records (nor is it a dismissal, or a cure). It is just a term to point out that an expression can have different importance to our culture (thus different criteria) based on the situation.

1)There needs to be an internal aspect for meaning to obtain. If there is no mental aspect, meaning is not meaning. — schopenhauer1

Maybe we can see that the reason you are digging your heels in here about an "internal aspect" is to record that I have a personal relation to our shared criteria; I can defy our shared expectations, extend them into a new context, court madness, call for revolution, etc. That I matter (me personally, individually). The takeaway of the variety of our ordinary criteria, even that they have different implications (uses, versions) in different situations, is the realization that society’s shared judgments and interests (what has been meaningful in our culture, our lives) are captured and embodied in our ordinary criteria. Usually there is no reason for a conflict with ordinary criteria to come up (there is no need** for "me"), but, as one example, when communication falls apart, it turns on how much these shared criteria matter to me, whether I am willing to be responsible for them, to them--that they do or don't speak for me; whether they are meaningful to me.
**That your picture of "meaning" "needs to be" always present (even when "knee-jerk") is the interlocutor's need, their insistence, which Wittgenstein is investigating.

He basically behaved like a computer, he performed a function, he did not garner any "meaning". — schopenhauer1

The fact that I am responsible for what I say does not require that at every moment I "mean" what I do or say (or "intend" it), as if I always "cause" it, or even that there was anything about it that was personal or individual. Things usually go smoothly; most times no one has to clarify, or dispute, or ask "What?". However, when something strange happens, or we defy those expectations, then our culture’s criteria and the assumed uses of our shared activities (e.g., imploring, apologizing, threatening, etc.) are how we judge what you said, and judge you, at which point you can: clear up the "intention" (from their confused inference), or apologize, or make excuses, or clarify (from how they took it; or under which criteria it should be taken, thus how its meaningfulness should be considered, under which "use"). If we look at responsibility as the duty to respond (be judged) for what we say based on the ordinary criteria of a situation, then the event of my saying it (part of why "expression" is important) simply creates a context of public criteria and the circumstances in which clearing things up is possible (but not guaranteed, assured, certain).

There is no "public" though. There is no respite from the dissolving acid of personal meaning/perception of something." — schopenhauer1

Yes, but this is not a matter of a certain picture ("public", "private"), but of your personal responsibility to be intelligible to me, to put what you expressed within or against our culture’s ordinary criteria. The duty is not a lack of transmission of something within you, it is your responsiveness (you responding) to a confusion in a particular situation. "What did you mean?" is asked because you said something I didn't expect, which is resolved between the situational implications and expectations, not by you looking farther into yourself for a "personal meaning", but that expressions records the fact that you can defy or stretch those criteria.

...as I understand it, it was the next generation (like J.L. Austin) that really started [Ordinary Language Philosophy]. It represents a positive (systematized/construction) aspect of ordinary language. — schopenhauer1

Moore and Austin were doing their thing at roughly the same time as Wittgenstein (Moore published Defense of Common Sense in 1925; the Investigations were published in 1953; Austin published How To Do Things With Words in 1955). Austin and Wittgenstein did not know of each other's work. Wittgenstein clarified Moore's version of OLP by seeing that it is not a matter that "common sense" or the common person's understanding is a better explanation of philosophical issues. He also sees that skepticism (the temptation of it) is an ongoing part of the human condition, where Austin didn't take it seriously.

@Richard B @RussellA @Banno @Fooloso4 @Corvus @Luke

Forgot to tag you all on my Discussion of Witt’s term “Use” above, if anyone still thinks we are getting anywhere (or can).

If indeed everything is conflated to ordinary language and "Forms of Life", surely, to be a pedantic question-asker without providing any exposition would be abusive to the community of sympathetic listeners. You are always going to convince me this is the only way, and I am always going to say to you that you deem it more clever and necessary than it is. — schopenhauer1

Well I tire of your denigrating something just because you don’t understand it; frankly, it reflects more on you than Wittgenstein. Why are you here when you don’t care about it? It doesn’t seem like I can teach you anything.

How is it he is advocating for anything other than our inability to be accurate, or our ability to possibly be in error of what others are saying? It's more a "negative" (in the what is flawed) than positive (how to fix). — schopenhauer1

He calls what he is destroying a “house of cards” (#118), leaving behind what is important, which is that the ordinary criteria embodied in what we say in a situation make our language just as accurate, precise, capable of rigor, and able to communicate as “philosophy’s” abstract, universal, complete substitutions. The possibility of error does not make ordinary criteria inaccurate; our ordinary means of judgment show how errors between us can be reconciled (how to fix it). The pure logic Witt is worried about is built in an attempt to never err, to preempt misunderstanding entirely.

I've heard of Ordinary Language Philosophy, but I believe that came after... — schopenhauer1

Wittgenstein’s method is Ordinary Language Philosophy! He is looking at what we say in situations to learn what matters to us about something, as shown in the criteria we judge it by. This is his philosophical data to learn about the issues of knowledge, thinking, understanding, intention, appearance, essence, etc., and, predominantly in the PI, why we want to run away from the fact that our criteria are based on our interest in them, to an abstract, “pure” place where we are removed from the calculation of precision. If you really want to get into OLP’s method, this is the thread. Heaven help us though.

Sure, but this language game (the uses) learned from a community is not some Platonic "thing" but is rather the various instantiations of understanding in each individual (internally). ...Thus the beetle-box actually seems at odds with this, as if internal understanding doesn't count here. — schopenhauer1

I think this is a similar misunderstanding that @RussellA had (above) between "private" (as Witt uses it) and "personal". I take it you want to record the fact that it is me that is saying my take, my "understanding" (not determined, as it were, by something outside me); that I can say: "This is my understanding". But this is just one “use” of understanding.

“Use" is a made-up technical term for Wittgenstein; it is not any sense of the ordinary word. There couldn't be a more misunderstood term that Wittgenstein created than this one word (maybe “language games” or “forms of life”). This is not "use" as in: to operate, as if I "use" words; nor is it what I make come about, as if uses are up to me. Uses are an expression or activity’s "possibilities" (#90)—what it is capable of (and not). The purpose of Wittgenstein’s term “use” is not to explain anything, it is part of showing that even the same expressions and activities can have different implications, different criteria, different ways it works, which is to contrast with the skeptic’s desire to have things work one way, be judged to have met one criteria.

The use depends on the context. I can “know” New York, which is the sense (use) that I know my way about. I can “know” your phone number, the criteria for which is my getting it right. I can “know” that you are angry, which is the use that I acknowledge it, recognize and accept it, grant that it should be taken into consideration or not. These are the criteria for judging in these instances, the “uses” of knowledge—how knowledge works (not the word).

So, with “understanding” there are various senses (uses, or versions is another way to think about it), which just means there are different criteria and workings then just the sense of "my understanding"; that "understanding" stands for different aspects of our lives at times. Consider your "understanding” me. I say something (or just run you through a process), and then I ask: "Do you understand?" and you say “yes”. But here, with this use of (version of, sense of) understanding, what you say is to extrapolate the implications of what I said or just to paraphrase it back to me. Now my judgment can disagree with your extrapolation, or miss something about your paraphrase, or balk at your prejudicial characterization, etc., but then it is just a matter of my responsibility to continue to explain and yours to try again, which, as we know, can go to ___ or all come to naught. The point being that your "understanding what I have said" has different mechanics than "your understanding" (your assessment); understanding in this use is a measurement of which I am the judge.

If that notion [my understanding] itself is missing, then there is no meaning had, even though, technically "use" can be still had in terms of how the word is being thrown around in the community of language users and acted upon. — schopenhauer1

But with some uses of “understand”, there is no “my” understanding, there is no room for it. “If you leave this base you will be courtmartialed. Got it?” “I understand [Yes, Sir!]” and here the criteria (of judgment) is that there will be consequences, whether you understand or even accept them. In fact, most times, when I say something to you in a particular context, there is no question about “your understanding”. It just doesn’t come up because there is nothing to interpret (as intention only comes up when something is weird).

The past criteria of judgement upon whether a word is correctly used (even if it is the individually learned collective wisdom of a community), and the judging itself, is had within a person's internal mental space. — schopenhauer1

I would offer that “…within a person’s internal mental space” in this context, is the same as: “I judge”. Now, in what situation do I (Witt will ask: what do I say when) I judge “whether a word is used correctly”? Don’t we just say something like “I don’t think that means what you think it means.” Now, yes, I am the one that is doing the judging, sure. But the criteria, the standard used to judge (the routes along which we measure) depends not only on the word, but the situation, and thus the version (use) of that word in that situation (part of that situation may be what sentence it is in, who you say it to, etc.); the criteria may not even be correctness (e.g., appropriateness, cleverness). And yes, I apply those criteria in judging. But I can be wrong, out of line, pedantic, etc.; one implication that it is “me” judging means it reflects on me and my judgment as well as whether the expression is “correct”.

He admitted that he tried to make it a more expositional piece but failed — schopenhauer1

You are overlooking this: "After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into
such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. ...my thoughts were soon crippled if I tried to force them on in any single direction against their natural inclination.——And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation." PI, Preface (emphasis added)

It is the motivation to "force" philosophy into a "whole"; a generalized, abstract, single answer, which are the pictures that Wittgenstein is investigating, through which he realizes our fear of skepticism, the desire for a standard of perfect knowledge, which is the revelation/revolution the Investigations is trying to bring about.

...question after question after question with little to no punchline, this itself is unsympathetic to the reader, and lacks empathy. — schopenhauer1

Well I will grant you that it is frustrating, and that Wittgenstein is unsympathetic, however, just look at @RussellA's unwillingness to see any picture but the one he has that includes some fact in me that ensures that I am unique, that what I say and see is only mine. Despite considerable effort @Banno and @Luke have been unable to say anything to convince him of any other perspective. And I have been unable to convey to you the desire for a metaphysical answer to address the fear within a statement like "But surely another person can't have THIS pain!" (#253) So, yes, it is necessary. The method is hard to see, and his style requires a lot of work (for you to find for yourself an answer to his questions and cryptic statements that makes sense), but this intransigence is the problem he is addressing (along with thinking these are, or should be, easy things to see, simply explanations); you take his style as unnecessary or some weakness, but it is hard to understand because it is complicated (p. 212), and it takes the work that it does because the person for which it is written has to work through their defenses, their reluctance to change what they want, to accept that our knowledge is insufficient to live our lives. If you haven't, I would take a look at the Cavell I attached from p 56 about the necessity of Witt's style.

my point is that most philosophers never asked for certainty of things like "pain". This is a false assumption — schopenhauer1

Pain is just one example among many--as is the picture of reference, correspondence; (but they are not the only manifestation, as neither is positivism); all of Wittgenstein's discussions are examples: rule-following, the fantasy of "mental objects", the other as unknown, "seeing", "thinking", etc. Think of Descartes falling back on God as our standard of "perfection", or Plato creating the abstract universal as a measure of "knowledge", Kant's imperative, etc. This does not apply to all philosophers, nor does it preclude their contribution to philosophical issues; and Wittgenstein is not scolding them, or dismissing them, not saying they are wrong" (like he has an answer that is right, or is dismissing them). Perhaps you feel the pull of that fear and desire (of and in response to skepticism) is silly or unnecessary; or, if it is just a matter of interest, and Wittgenstein or Descartes of Hume can't help you feel that sense of being lost, then there is not any argument that will spur that curiosity, and thus be able to see the desire to alleviate it, "solve" it. (And, again, I believe you are thinking of the sense of "certainty" as confidence, or the like, and that is not what Wittgenstein is getting at when he is looking into the desire for "crystalline purity", so, again, let's let go of that.)

If someone like Hume or a Locke had a theory on sensations or whatnot, those are theories and theories are people's best attempt at answering questions, leading to perhaps more questions or useful for constructing various ideas and worldviews. More sharing of in-sights. — schopenhauer1

The thing Wittgenstein is trying to get us to realize is this need to "answer" what the skeptic records (that knowledge cannot solve everything); and to see we are making it a "question" (as if it is an intellectual problem), say, when we find out that we have been wrong when we thought we "knew" (as Descartes says in his intro, as if knowledge precludes error; thus, he (and Plato) start to panic: "What is knowledge then?"), that we sometimes do not know what we "ought" to do, how to come to an understanding, that sometimes we speak past each other. Not that these issues are not important, but that, in response, the skeptic (Witt's "philosopher") abstracts--as in: removes the issue from any context in which it arose--from our shared interests, judgments (which criteria embody), which ordinary criteria Wittgenstein is claiming are just as relevant for doing philosophy, investigating its issues.

You quoted me and then quoted Cavell. You are going to have to explain the connection (or disconnection) if you want me to understand.

@RussellA @Banno @Luke

[RussellA] poses a problem for "use" if it is just "use" without any internal mental states accompanying it. Hence I mentioned zombies and those who really don't understand internally a meaning, yet still "use" the word correctly (aping as Witt might say). I don't see "meaning" and "use" tied exclusively. It has to be use, but intersubjectively understood use. And the intersubjectivity part, requires the mental aspect, exactly which supposedly doesn't matter in the beetle-box. But it does, sir. — schopenhauer1

I’ve addressed this confusion over “use” here when I focused on the sense (another word Wittgenstein swaps for “use”) in showing how the Lion Quote p. 225, in the context, has the use as a fact and not an empirical statement or otherwise to make a point about a picture of language. From that discussion:

“Witt's focus on "use" has been a stumbling block in the responses, so I wanted to point out that it is not the idea that use (some internal force/decision) determines or is the basis for "meaning". There are multiple versions ("senses") of a concept; one determines the use from the context (afterwards). "Every word has a different character in a different context." PI, p. 181. Not to say we do not sometimes chose what we say, but senses (uses) exist outside and prior to us; the same confusion is that every word/action is 'intended' - caused by something internal. The idea of a sentence or a word in isolation is only a thing in some philosophy--stemming from the desire to tether it to something determinate, certain, universal."

I point this out only as you all are imagining "use" as if language were under my control (not what I say, but what it "means"), or that the "meaning" is "caused" by my "intention"--that "use" is in the sense that I operate language or that, every time (or generally), there is some "agreement" or decision (inter-subjective or not) about what the words "mean" (rather than just an ongoing process of clarification after an expression if there is something odd, unexpected "Did you intend to offend her?". Life is meaningful in certain ways, as evidenced by the ordinary criteria that are evidence about what matters to us, what counts as what. That this breaks down at times makes the skeptic feel we need to have some connection between something internal (my intention, meaning) and something external.

Davidson address this again in A nice derangement of epitaphs; our jokes undermine the idea of language as following rules. — Banno

I read some Davidson in school; I’ll have to check it out. And I also enjoyed J.L. Austin’s humor, though it was a little cruel, a little, how would we say… Banno-ish? Sorry, I meant, British.

Who said they are looking for exact certainty of someone’s pain? — schopenhauer1

Pain is used by philosophy as the “best case” of our knowledge of the other (because it’s hard for me to ignore, it’s constant, etc.). By “knowledge” here we are talking about a certain kind of “philosophical” knowledge, like an equating. Now, because there is error in the world, some philosophy (Hume for example) creates a thing between us and the world (appearances, your experience, your impressions, your sensations, etc.) which the philosopher then requires to have matched up exactly with the world, or for you and I to have an identical one or I can’t be said to “know” you (You might be an automaton! Or a zombie—which I also discussed with @RussellA here).

It’s an assumption we are not zombies and that pain is roughly negative in similar ways. — schopenhauer1

When has philosophy ever relied on common sense?—“assumed” anything? Plus, if we don’t investigate “knowledge” or “justice”, etc. we would never uncover all the things we have learned about the world (the assumptions, implications, criteria for judgment) but never drew out of ourselves (Wittgenstein and Socrates both say we all hold the knowledge of how our everyday world works in each one of us—Wittgenstein, because of our growing up together, by osmosis into our unconscious as it were. Hey, it’s a better metaphor than Socrates’.)

Schop's books are all about understanding the "inner" part of existence… — schopenhauer1

Well I should read some Schopenhauer then as I’m getting the feeling that I’d agree with his sensibility. I enjoy others who focus on our inner lives. Emerson looks at our relationship to “community” (@RussellA) in Self-Reliance and the later Heidegger considers how to think ethically in What is called thinking? But which book? Any toe-dip essays?

One can describe abstract ideas and felt sensations, intelligibly. …I don't think that [the possibility of error] disproves that communication about abstract ideas (non observational), are thus irretrievably hopeless — schopenhauer1

This is Wittgenstein’s starting point of the PI (he realizes from the beginning that we can discuss everything that was excluded in the Tractatus). His whole investigation is into why we thought we couldn’t (didn’t want to accept that we can) in the first place.

You (Witt perhaps) seems to be fitting all philosophers in this idea of trying to find a single standard, which creates a strawman that the Great Wittgenstein can then "show" is in error. — schopenhauer1

Not all philosophers attempt to solve (or accept or ignore) skepticism. There are ideas that are abstract, like justice (as I believe you mean by “non-observational”) and then there’s the desire to remove those ideas (abstract them) from the regular contexts in which they live, as some philosophy seems as if it were done in space, without history or a world around it at all.

So what Wittgenstein uncovers is not an “error” (and he is showing us what he claims is evidence, not conclusions). His insight is that the fear of the uncertainty of being wrong, being immoral (“evil” Nietszche calls it), of the future, of others, is actually a primal fear created by the human condition of our separation (thus our basic responsibility to bridge it), and that the desire to overcome that fear (and attempt to remove our responsibility) is the motivation for intellectualizing our situation as a “problem” that can be “solved”.

[The possibility of error] doesn't mean that we turn off our ability to think about the bigger questions of life. — schopenhauer1

I agree and I applaud the effort (and I don’t think Wittgenstein would object, other than thinking that effort is a straight highway” #426). Emerson says, “We live amid surfaces [the fear that the world is “appearance”, “impressions”], and the true art of life is to skate them well.” I don’t see this as foolish, nor that Wittgenstein is avoiding big picture stuff either (morality, the creation of the self, ethics, epistemology, etc.).

…we don’t: “know” their pain, we react to it, to the person; their pain is a plea, a claim on us—we help them (or not); that’s how pain works. P. 225.
— Antony Nickles
— schopenhauer1

That is just describing forms of empathy… — schopenhauer1

No, it’s describing how pain is handled by us (or ignored), it is setting out our ordinary criteria for judgments regarding it, compared to treating it as an object of knowledge (wanting to skip over (through) the person who has it). Empathy is just part of what pain involves (even with the absence of empathy). (Also it might help to see that I had to clarify my “don’t: ‘know’ their pain” comment to @Luke above.)

The experience within my mind caused by a wavelength in the world of 700nm is a private experience, inexpressible to others, in the same sense as Wittgenstein's use of the word. — RussellA

Well, take out “experience” (its just what you see, as in, are focusing your sight and attention on) and “within my mind” (this is the picture you’re tripping over compared to something “personal”) and “caused” (this makes it sound like the medical process of vision creates something other than just: red, like, in addition to it). You just see red.

So, try and say something (ordinary) about red in a context (situation without someone) where it would be important to point out the color. And then you have expressed something about the color; identification, differentiation, etc. along the lines of what we do with color (how it works). Your contextless abstract picture is getting you confused.

And the use of “private” is not Wittgenstein’s; it’s the skeptic’s, the interlocutor’s; it’s the “metaphysical use”; Wittgenstein contrasts that with its “ordinary use”, which has particular criteria and contexts in which it is used, which is, as I said, similar to personal, secret.

Within the communal language game we can talk about the colour red. — RussellA

We talk about color in particular ways; but our “talk” is not separate from something else (say, the world). Outside of the ways we talk about color is not “your” color, it’s just jibberish, madness. “That’s my color!” can only be met with “You mixed it? You have a copyright?”

To express what you see, you could paint a painting, take a picture, or have another there when you see the red sunset, and in that way, point out the amazing red you are focusing your attention on. Or you can keep it all to yourself, and then it is yours, but that is something personal; or secret, as in: you didn’t tell the cops it was a red car.

There is not some “color” in you that someone else cannot see. You’re not an alien, or a lion, you are a human being, just like me. You (and the skeptic) want to be different so that you can be singular, have something unique (but it may be the case that you are not, as I said). But the definition of a self does not work the way you picture it. We all know you: you are stubborn as hell, a creative thinker (to the point of slippery), etc.

It might help to look at my original post again after reading this; with fresh eyes, attempting to see it from a different angle. Everything you want from your position is still here.

I would think you'd say what you think I mean (paraphrase) and then ask questions about specific parts where it gets confusing, no?

@Banno @schopenhauer1 @RussellA

For example, we don’t know someone is in pain, not because it is “unknowable”, but because when someone seems to be in pain, we don’t: “know” their pain, we react to it, to the person; their pain is a plea, a claim on us—we help them (or not); that’s how pain works.
— Antony Nickles

I have to disagree with you here. At PI 246, Wittgenstein says:

If we are using the word “know” as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know if I’m in pain.
— PI 246 — Luke

We actually agree here; it’s just I didn't make it clear between the senses of “know”. Of course I can “know” you are in pain, but this sense is, as Witt says, "as it is normally used" (emphasis added)(there are actually a few ordinary senses of "know"); what you point out (and is Witt's sense of its use in this passage) is in its sense that: I recognize pain, become aware of it; see the signs, even if it is from repression, even from contextual information (not just "your behavior") say, that the mother that you loved died recently, even though you are exhibiting no signs of pain or are forcing yourself to appear happy.

Above, I meant "do not" as in: that is not how pain works (Witt will say "Grammatically), not that we cannot know. This sense of "know" is the version of "knowledge" that the skeptic would like to have (the interlocutor): knowledge of some inner process (intention, my meaning) or thing (impression, experience) that would ensure I am not wrong about you being in pain, which starts not just because we can be wrong about it (fooled, judge incorrectly), but, also, that we at times want (Cavell says, desire) there to be a space between their pain and our normal awareness of it--that we want to be buffered from their pain, from their being in pain (see below).

And this gets at the sense of ordinary "knowing" (in addition to awareness) that I am contrasting to the skeptic's use I just described (the "metaphysical use" as Witt says). This is the normal sense that I "acknowledge" pain--that the way it works** (its grammar) is that I accept or reject you because the pain is "yours" (in your body, owned by you). We also have this relation to our own pain, that we accept or deny it (suppress it; not that it is unique, un"knowable", only theirs). This is why the skeptic does not make sense (is abstracting from the grammar, and ordinary criteria and context) in saying "I know I'm in pain" (other than the normal use when we say that: as an acknowledgment to others; possibly to an accusation that I am suppressing a pain I should be "facing"--like, "yeah yeah, I know!").

And so within the desire (the prerequisite, the necessity) to have perfect (metaphysical, certain) knowledge (that your pain correspond exactly with mine or it is not valid), hides the wish (the decision, the "conviction" Witt says p. 225) to deny the other, to not be responsible for them. The way pain "works"** is that their pain is a moral claim on me to which my response reflects on my character.

(**"works" as to say: the workings of the grammar, which are the implications of (our interests in) the expression of their pain (or their words... ); not how the "language" of pain "works" in some theory of meaning, or, say, how the process of pain "works" in the body; thus why science can't do the job of philosophy (what it shows ourselves).

Thanks for catching that. It’s #308. “How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and states and about behaviourism arise?——The first step is the one that altogether escapes notice.”

…the value of philosophy is an insight beyond what can be told. - Antony Nickles

Indeed and this goes right to the heart of what I am trying to convey about why philosophies like Schop's allude the criticism of "certainty". That is because the very essence of his philosophy was about an intangible unknowable(s). — schopenhauer1

To say something is “unknowable” (that I am, or aesthetics are) is not to elude our desire for purity, it is to judge in contrast to it; to find an “answer” despite conceding that standard can’t be reached; to live, but only cynically, in the shadow of skepticism. Now of course I don’t know Schopenhauer is doing this because I have not read him, but Wittgenstein concluded in the Tractatus that parts of our world were unknowable. In the PI he finds that there is rationality despite not being purely logical; he finds our ordinary criteria which embody our interests in the different kinds of things we do, in different situations, filling in the areas set aside by him (and by Kant), and learning why we are compelled to see the world as either pure or unknowable.

…philosophy is about one's (hopefully well-thought out) way of conveying one's insights…. Wittgenstein himself was sharing his insights. — schopenhauer1

Now some take it that when Witt says: some things can’t be told, but only shown, that this is just a different way of conveying knowledge (he’s just being cagey). But Witt’s method is not to impart knowledge; it’s to get you to see the world (yourself) differently. So he’s not telling you “his insights”; he’s “showing you” examples of what we say (in a context), in a sense to ask: “can you see this for yourself?” in order to grasp why we desire a single standard (or give up); so you must change yourself, your “need” (#108), not what you think. He shares his style of autobiographical confessions with Montaigne, and I thought perhaps Schopenhauer, though maybe not.

So when I say there is more to our relation to the world than knowing it, I am not saying it is unknowable. For example, we don’t know someone is in pain, not because it is “unknowable”, but because when someone seems to be in pain, we don’t: “know” their pain, we react to it, to the person; their pain is a plea, a claim on us—we help them (or not); that’s how pain works. P. 225. This insight is a shift in our attitude (as a position in relation to others), a realization of our responsibilities.

I wondered why Wittgenstein admired him, if somewhat begrudgingly. — Banno

I saw a similar start of an approach in the quotes @schopenhauer1 posted, which I began to flesh out here.

My guess is that Schopenhauer gets mixed up somewhere along the way, as others do (Plato, Kant, Descartes, Hume, etc), not because their inquiry is totally misguided, or otherwise useless, but because of the prerequisite they have for an answer (before the “first step” that “escapes notice” Witt says #305]. This might strike Witt as an inability to notice subtlety (only focused on purity), and thus the critique: “crude”.

As Antony Nickles mentioned recently, what Wittgenstein means by "private" in relation to a private language is that the words of this language can, in principle, be understood by one person only and that nobody else can understand the language. — Luke

Just to clarify for @RussellA, my understanding of that section of the PI is an exploration of philosophy's fantasy that there is some fact about me, some thing about me, that I put into language (or try to), and the fact that it sometimes fails would only be that I didn't correctly or adequately paint the picture of my "meaning" or "intention" or "private" experience, and not that communication and understanding involves (at times, say, because of something unexpected in a situation) a continuing process of distinguishing, clarifying, expounding, etc. And the point is not about language, but to find out why we are compelled to (want to) look at ourselves this way.