TMF was only stating the obvious. — Olivier5

He said so... to a post pretending (absurdly)... and it made perfect sense. — Olivier5

.

TMF: "Obvious", "perfect sense".

Mine: "pretending", "absurd", "disingenuous"

Succinct. TMF's statement does not need a context--that's been the point (above). Every word has a meaning, so no context is needed and any usual criteria and conditions (as that pain is expressed, accepted) can be ignored and a requirement of certainty be imposed, which creates a thing to know, out of our fear and desire of our part in the risk of expression and yet the fear of being known. This is for you to either see for yourself--which you could/might if you try--or you need a legitimate alternate explanation of how this is not the case that takes into consideration the evidence I have presented and the claim I have made. And also what would be considered a "context" for his statement. The game is the game.

'Forgetting a headache' sounds an awful lot like not having a headache. How do you forget a headache?...The grammar of 'forgetting' is not quite right. — StreetlightX

I agree that the sense of forgetting associated with awareness is maybe not the first sense one would think of (that I should have thought of a better word), and that it is complicated with more possibilities to sort out than needed; a simpler way to put it would have been I got lost in doing something else and wasn't paying attention to my pain for a bit (I would say that is a sense of forgetting though). Also, the example of pain is used for the best-case scenario of sensation so that Witt could understand: "if we can't know our !pain!, than what sensation can we know [be certain about]?"; so we might more easily imagine my not being aware for a while of the sensation of the weight on my leg of someone resting against it on a couch while we watch TV, until it even falls asleep, at which point I can't feel it.

Bad example aside, the point is what is meaningful about pain, what is its important grammar (its essence @TheMadFool) is that the sensation is mine. Not in that only I can know it, but that it is me who owns it. That you do not "know" my pain (in the true/false/referent; of the empirical sense--though that is possible, it does not apply here), that the expression of my pain, my sensation, my experience, makes a claim on you--I am accepted in your acknowledgement of them; if my expressions are ignored, I am rejected, alone with the lack of expression to others. That my "knowledge" of my pain is just in knowledge's sense of my awareness of it, consciousness of it, in not repressing it, as a trauma.

"Questioning why it seems you're not aware you have a headache (your example basically)."
— Antony Nickles

That is not my example.[/quote]

It appears I edited after posting it. It did occur to me that there might be something different that you were pointing out, and I was going to say "similar" but then I got lazy as I would have to say how, and how dissimilar, and I passed it off that you'd get what way I meant, but let's see if there is a distinction that helps.

What I probably should have ended up with was this: "[My] confirming for someone else [who is] questioning [me as to] why it seems I [am] not aware have a headache".

Of course maybe this is not even an accurate summary of my original full example, which was:

In what context would we say "I know I have a headache."? Maybe when you've made it aware to me that you have a headache, then, when I see you a little while later and you have an ice pack on your knee, and I point to your head and shrug, saying "Don't you have a headache?", you might look at me (like I'm an idiot) and say "I know I have a headache." -- but this is in the sense of "Duh, I know", as in the use (grammatical category) of: I am aware — Antony Nickles

There is no one that would question 'why it seems you're not aware you have a headache' - as if they knew better than you. At best, they might say, 'Don't you have a headache? Why are you exerting yourself like that?", or something similar. — StreetlightX

Gotten to this point I think I would claim that the use of your: "Don't you have a headache? Why are you exerting yourself like that?" is actually the same as my: "Don't you have a headache?" [Why do you have the icepack on your knee?"] And by "same" I'm saying in the same parts that matter--essentially the identical use, as your pain and my pain identically (essentially--in their essence), if we accept they are.

And if not, then what is 'know' doing when you affirm that you do know it? — StreetlightX

And maybe this was before my post about that.

When does a fact establish itself as knowledge? More precisely, if knowledge is Justified-True-Belief, then how do facts fit into such a conceptual scheme for or of knowledge? — Shawn

Wittgenstein looks at belief in the Philosophical Investigations. He lands on the claim that belief operates like a hypothesis: "I believe it's going to rain". The other sense of belief is a strong feeling, like emphatic confidence: "I really believe in our chances for a win today." I think the way that belief is used in philosophy is like an opinion, which, structurally, appears to be individual: "In my opinion, ..." but also, restricted to certain topics: politics, moral moments, art. We do not have facts in these areas, nor is our opinion capable of being a fact, however justified. That does not mean that there aren't things like authority, expertise, norms, expectations, judgement, criticism, conceptual structure, etc. It's just that an opinion on these subjects will never become a fact.

Cavell says in The Claim of Reason that the thing that gives a fact its "factness", its certainty, its universality, its repeatability, its completeness of application, is not its justification nor its correspondence to the world, but the method of science. I'm not heavily-studied in philosophy of science, but there is science done well, and done poorly, as well as "soft" sciences (like economics) which, although they involve math, do not offer repeatable conclusions. This lack of reference is why we can be wrong about facts, why our world must only be a paradigm (Kuhn) though a fact is a fact nevertheless (until it is not).

The point was, you don't know you're in pain in an epistemological sense... Now if you want to say it has sense in other non-epistemological ways, that's fine, but that's not my point. — Sam26

Of course. All I was adding is that is only half the battle; Witt goes on to show a legitimate logic of pain in the alternative; in what sense I know my pain (in acknowledging it, or rejecting it--and yours). That the story does not end in the rubble but with remembering our ordinary criteria for judging pain (awareness, attention, isolation, etc.)--the essence of sensation.

can you not know you have a headache?

You can not know in knowing's sense of not being aware, forget about it while doing something else.
— StreetlightX

And if not, then what is 'know' doing when you affirm that you do know it? — StreetlightX

Confirming for someone else questioning why it seems you're not aware you have a headache (your example basically).

You can of course say, "I know I have a headache" - but are you saying something about knowing? — StreetlightX

That pain works differently than emperical knowledge; it is the sense of know as acknowledge--to myself, by others, etc.

Mostly, it's giving the concept know, no sense, as opposed to the wrong sense. What I mean is, it has no epistemological sense to say, "I know I have a headache." — Sam26

However the whole point of PI is to show how different things matter to us in different ways, leading to the various ways they work. What matters to us about pain is the fact of its being mine (having it) thus my announcement of it (and your acceptance or rejection of it) are its conditions, and not the conditions of knowledge.

Basically, epistimology is not the only way things make sense: are meaningful, have conditions, are judged by criteria, have identity, etc. The PI is showing that our relation to the world is not always epistemological (you're missing the third act where all the fun happens).

When I have a headache, I know I have a headache.
— TheMadFool

In what context would we say "I know I have a headache."?
— Antony Nickles

Err... TPF? (considering TheMadFool just said "I know I have a headache" right here — Olivier5

Well if that's not just facetious, it demonstrates Witt's point that we want to strip away any context and take a sentence in isolation to have met the standard we want for knowledge. Context is not simply the location where something is said; it is what is relevant to a sentence being one sense or another (or both). Basically, as flippantly, saying that, here--assuming it's trying to make a philosophical claim about knowledge and headaches--is wrong; it's applying the wrong sense of "know". Maybe it's better to ask what context would help us understand what sense of know this is?

No, what Witt is saying is that the way sensations/emotions/experience work, their grammar, is that they are not they are expressed, or not (suppressed, repressed, kept secret), as much to ourselves as anyone else.
— Antony Nickles

I don't think he was saying you don't know what you're feeling. — frank

Good catch; that was a test to see if anyone was actually still reading--I only meant that in the sense of the recognition of pain; although Witt does touch on the grammar of our emotions, like sadness (p. 209), and he has a lot to say about feeling as a kind of implicit interpretation or impression.

Is your critique based on a thoroughgoing knowledge of the work of the ‘New Wittgensteinian’ authors or is this a knee-jerk reaction to the blurb I quoted? — Joshs

I found that language; that's an intro Crary did for a book of essays I have that is just new authors saying different stuff--I'm not sure that wiki-author read more than the intro (what?!). I think what Crary, at least, is referring to is that Witt is pointing out how philosophy goes wrong, including his, and he is trying to show how philosophy can get back on track (in each of the different examples--as Austin did with Ayer) and what we learned from that. The people minimizing the impact just don't feel taken on directly, but that's because those philosophies were not so much "wrong" as entirely misguided (by themselves, it turns out), lacking awareness, failing to see that their want for a certain answer pushes them into errors in their thinking. We used to say: how can we win, they're not even playing hockey. They're so fundamentally wrong Witt (apart from Austin) goes back to: how and why do you think that? and there is something to learn in that; something substantive, corrective, but also game-changing, and so not just "therapeutic" as in dispelling an illusion or crazy thoughts or how ta talk good.

"I’m trying to figure out who to turn to (other than Cavell) for a reliable and faithful interpretation of the later Wittgenstein."

Well to me its more the method, so the people I like aren't necessarily writing on Witt as, from him into their own interests. But I liked some Malcolm, Wisdom, Mulhall is at least interesting; you might like Conant (Methods) from the little I've read, he seems concerned to address other readings of Witt. But I was trained in Ordinary Language Philosophy, and, apart from Witt and Austin, Cavell is the best at that and so at explaining Witt's methodology (The Availability of Later Witt). But I'm not sure it's a good idea to read commentators until you just find one you like. I'd slug it out on your own; this book, more than most, is important to work through than be told about.

What exactly do you consider worth preserving within the analytic tradition? — Joshs

Well I see the good even in the partly broken, plus I don't quite buy the term itself, because if we're looking at what we say, we're looking at the world (just maybe not like Arendt, Foucault, Machiavelli, a lot of Aristotle). I'd start the ark with Plato, Marx, Locke, Hegel (to a point), Kant, Hume, Descartes, Emerson, Nietzsche, later Heidegger[/quote]

When I have a headache, I know I have a headache. — TheMadFool

In what context would we say "I know I have a headache."? Maybe when you've made it aware to me that you have a headache, then, when I see you a little while later and you have an ice pack on your knee, and I point to your head and shrug, saying "Don't you have a headache?", you might look at me (like I'm an idiot) and say "I know I have a headache." -- but this is in the sense of "Duh, I know", as in the use (grammatical category) of: I am aware. The reason we have to twist ourselves in knots to even get that, as Witt would say, is that I do not "know" pain; I have it. This is the meaning of pain (it is meaningful because it is mine). I am the one that owns it, even when we do not know it--which is also in the sense of: are not aware of it, just, to myself---say when we have a headache but we forget (which is a refutation if the above was a claim to a proposed statement about the way pain works). But there is also the fact that sometimes I can not hide my pain; I am expressed outside the control of the conveying (or secreting) of knowledge. There is no place for knowledge in the occurrence to us of pain (say, different than the knowledge of watching an opportunity slip away). "How can I even attempt to interpose language between the expression of pain and the pain?" Witt PI, #245. Between the event of the expression of pain and the meaningfulness of my having it.

There are other uses of "I know" (I acknowledge your pain; I know my way around; I know something is a lie (for I know the truth!)). But there is a sense in which philosophers would like to know sensations, but the criteria of continuous, exacting, certain, and immediate, do not apply to how, say, pain works. Philosophy imposes those as the requirement for knowledge from its other uses in science and, to say it again, in the picture of an object, a referent; as if the physiology of pain is the structure of how we relate to pain.

But the kind of knowledge philosophy has typically wanted from sensation and experience is not how pain works. And the best way to try to show that is to give the example that our pain is expressed, not "known" (expression is the mechanics of it). I can talk about what I know about my pain: I can give a description (even poorly), I can isolate it (even x-ray it, sorta), but that, fundamentally, it is ours to express--to cry out about (or not) #244--to clarify or hide; to relive, or try to forget. This structure is the essence of our experience and sensations, the most important part about them, as opposed to what is essential to making excuses, or doing physical science.

Possible but not necessary. — TheMadFool

Of course I don't know to what you are referring that you think is not necessary, but the way I read Witt he is necessarily, grammatically, claiming that the way sensation works is that it is expressed, not known--that is its structure. Where concepts have certain possibilities (uses), and categorical conditions, that pain is expressed (or repressed) is a fundamental ingredient of our lives that differentiates sensations from knowing how gravity works or knowing the structural makeup of the brain's effect on our emotions.

I don't recall ever expressing a fear of being empty. I don't think I ever have. According to you, if I don't express this fear, I don't have this fear. — frank

No, what Witt is saying is that the way sensations/emotions/experience work, their grammar, is that they are not known, they are expressed, or not (suppressed, repressed, kept secret), as much to ourselves as anyone else.

Maybe it's just that I do have experiences that I tell no one about. I do, actually. Sometimes I do tell people about what I've experienced, so it's not private in the sense Witt uses in the PLA. — frank

Yes you do have experiences; sometimes you tell no one about them, sometimes you do; sometimes you can't even tell yourself.

There must be private experiences? — TheMadFool

The fear of being empty, not unique, creates the idea there must be some "thing" beyond language which is mine, that I can know. Now it's not that there is nothing there, it's just that experience isn't known, it is expressed or denied (by me)' it's accepted or rejected by you. So to say "It was amazing" is to express our ineffable experience (however poorly). So there are personal experiences but they don't work the way Witt tried to imagine (as the skeptic would like them to).

In fact, we could simply say, "words can not express", "it's just a sense of awe", "I don't know what to say except I feel alive". These are not to tell us (know) anything about our experience, but express that there is nothing to be told (even when singing, crying, or violence can't).
— Antony Nickles

Spot on!

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein — TheMadFool

I can't help but think we've lost the thread here, because the point of PI is that the conclusion of the Tractatus was wrong. We can talk about all kinds of things (just not when we first require that the outcome be certain). Just because there are times when we feel like we can't put an experience into words does not mean that we must be silent. We can try again, we can bring someone along with us as far as we can (we are not alone); and those examples above were things we can actually say--something that expresses our "ineffable" experience. The fact we do not want to accept that as enough is because we want there to be some thing that is unique and special about us, but there very well may not be. You may not exist if you are a ghost of yourself, one of the herd, if everything you say is propaganda, quotation---you can be empty inside. This is the desperation of the person who wants to "strike himself on the breast and say: 'But surely another person can’t have this pain!' " (Witt, PI, #253) It is this fear that compels the idea that there must be a private experience in the sense Witt explored.

I assumed you were comfortable with the therapy’ label because it seems to have been embraced by a community of Wittgenstein interpreters that I associate with your approach. — Joshs

Just because "a community of Wittgenstein interpreters" disagree with what it means for traditional answers to skepticism, doesn't mean they can say that Witt, or Cavell, are outside the analytical tradition and not using "philosophical argument" or that their work is merely "performative".

Would you agree that in their hands [calling this work "therapy"] is not meant as condescending and dismissive? — Joshs

It's bald-face condescension, attempting to pigeon-hole and minimize the impact of the PI (it's not "linguistic" either; it's revolutionary). I think the desire to misinterpret this work comes from a modern (and old) philosophical desire that it is better if philosophy doesn't involve humans at all; that it is supposed to work out like math or science, were it doesn't matter who is doing it. But philosophy from Plato on has been to change the way we think and to become a better more insightful version of ourselves. There is a reason we see language and the world the way we do in the Tractatus and the opening quote, and the PI is an examination of how and why we get there (over and over) and how we work our way out (in each case); it's not by "therapy", it's a method of thinking and is about knowledge and truth.

I appreciate all this effort.

Yes, I agree. We can't talk about so-called private experiences — TheMadFool

Well... maybe you just mean talking about Witt's attempt to imagine an experience that I would know but that no one else could (that being the made-up quality/criteria of "private"), but the takeaway is not: that we do have personal experiences but that language just can't reach them, or that we have no experience that is not public. The point is that being known is not how our experience works--we can not get between a sensation and its expression for there to be the opportunity for knowledge (#245). That is not to say we can't talk about it, but only that we express our experience/sensations (even to ourselves, or repress them).

I'm at a loss as to what exactly could be considered private experiences. — TheMadFool

Witt's scenario is an imagined one (like the builders), so we can release ourselves from the Gordian knot of picturing an experience that is private in the way Witt was attempting. Again the lesson is not that we do or do not have our own experiences. As I quoted Witt earlier (#243), our ordinary criteria for a private experience is just something personal, secret: a sunset, a trauma, what I focused on in seeing a movie. And we are able to draw out (express, "give voice to" Witt says) and discuss our inner experiences (or hide/repress them).

There's a certain character pain has that I can't put into words. — TheMadFool

Well expressions of pain of course can be more than words (thus, opera). In imagining a quality (a thing? a referent?) we are here, again, searching for knowledge of something certain, of ourselves, for the other's reaction to us. The feeling that pain is inexpressible is the fact that the other may reject my expression of pain, that I may be alone with my pain.

Wittgenstein hit the bullseye - language is social in the sense it's domain is restricted to the public. — TheMadFool

The other part of retaining something of pain within me is that I can remain unknown, untouchable, not responsible, special without having done anything, a unique person without differentiating myself.

"qualia" does mean something, it refers to the ineffable, the inexpressible. We can now have a intelligible conversation about our private experiences. — TheMadFool

Irony aside, the idea of "qualia" still imagines our experience as a thing (the MacGuffan of neuroscience); it is a noun (you even have a word to refer to it)--we can "know" a thing (or can not!). Ineffable is an adjective as a qualification of our experience--too much to be expressed; not as if words leave some "thing" left over, but that our experience overflows our words.

"qualia" doesn't tell us what these private experiences actually are. — TheMadFool

In fact, we could simply say, "words can not express", "it's just a sense of awe", "I don't know what to say except I feel alive". These are not to tell us (know) anything about our experience, but express that there is nothing to be told (even when singing, crying, or violence can't).

We've taken up the idea of beauty in an OP on whether there is an objective aspect of aesthetics.

In that thread I presented Kant's description of our judgement of what he terms the Beautiful--that it allows for rational discussion (apart from just personal feelings or value judgments, etc.) through the criteria internal to the art--its form.

One's personal experience or sensation is what Kant calls the Pleasant--an experience that it is nice (say when you look at it), or whatever personal "feelings" you have. Kant also allows that a piece of art can have good/bad "value" for us (popularity; taste). The Beautiful is focused on the form of the art, say, the way a story is told (think Northrup Frye's Modes and Genres); or the possibilities of the camera, the method, processes, framing, etc. in photography.

Part of the rationality is that the critic is making a claim (with evidence and rationale) in what Kant calls a universal voice--on behalf of everyone for others to accept or discuss. Even though the outcome is not predetermined to be an absolute, certain conclusion (or even resolved)--the goal, and the truth of the beauty of the work, is to get you to see for yourself what I see along the terms of the form of the art.

From Kant's 3rd Critique:

“As regards the Pleasant every one is content that his judgement, which he bases upon private feeling, and by which he says of an object that it pleases him, should be limited merely to his own person” Sec. 7.

“[The Beautiful] is not what gratifies in sensation but what pleases by means of its form... [that] is... the only [element] of these representations which admits with certainty of universal communicability” Sec. 10.

“[ B ]ut if he gives out anything as beautiful, he supposes in others the same satisfaction—he judges not merely for himself, but for every one... which can make a rightful claim upon every one’s assent. ...the beautiful undertakes or lays claim to [the universal].” Sec 6.

the goal of Philosophical Investigations was to understand our desire for seeing everything in one way (word-object).
— Antony Nickles

That sounds like the goal of a psychologist. 'If you want to know why the word-object thing was so cool back in the day, read PI.' Does that sound right? — hanaH

Witt only saw meaning as representational in the Tractatus; so he wrote the PI to figure out how and why he was locked into that way of thinking. It's an investigation into the human condition--the constant threat of skepticism and the effect on our thinking in reaction to it. This issue has affected philosophy from the start and is a continuing shortcoming of humans in everyday life. Labeling this as psychology is the same fear that causes philosophy to want to work outside the involvement of the human.

still don't understand the "therapy" label--I mean I barely get what it is actually supposed to mean
— Antony Nickles

Stuff like this:

Yes, there are mistakes, lies, empty words, descriptions that fall short, but that is why there are excuses, the endless depth of language; it is not that our words systematically fail us as much as we fail them, to continue to be responsible for them, answer to make ourselves intelligible.
— Antony Nickles

Not saying it's bad, just that you like me have a flavor, a vibe. — hanaH

I get that it is a tad poetic, but that is not just stylistic, those are grammatical claims, logical claims as it were--I'm saying that's the way our relationship to our expressions works. I make them in all seriousness, and to take them as merely therapeutic seems trivializing.

Perhaps you'll agree that anyone can emphasize the destructive or constructive mode in Wittgenstein and cherrypick quotes to that purpose. Folks will connect the dots he left behind differently. — hanaH

If that is to say people have different interests in the work, I agree, though Heidegger would suggest setting that aside and letting the object approach on its terms (What is Called Thinking?). I also agree there is destruction and construction, though I might call it diagnosis (of our desire for certainty) and uncovering (our ordinary criteria from behind that need).

Though I believe it is very possible (even tempting) to take quotes out of context and draw a conclusion along our own lines, I don't believe Witt left simply "dots", and I've worked very hard to see from each passage to an overall context. I would think that is the goal. That's not to say Witt only had one point, but that the themes are all related and more open-ended than people see who just want a novel solution or conclusion to a problem, instead of a philosophical revolution.

How does it come about that this arrow >>>––> points? Doesn’t it seem to carry in it something besides itself?—”No, not the dead line on paper, only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that." —That is both true and false. The arrow only points in the application that a living being makes of it. — Witt, PI #454 - hanaH

So it is false that only the meaning can make the arrow point, as it takes a person to apply the arrow as "pointing", but what is true? and about which sentence?

As in an animal, you or me, being trained to look to the right when we see this token. — hanaH

This may seem minor, but aren't we indoctrinated in pointing? and then learn that we can apply that in the case of this sign? (Couldn't we take it as the start of a drawing of weapon? be confused as to what 1992 DOS emoji this was supposed to be?); that there is something important about application/employment (given the number of index references). "The meaning of the brackets lies in the technique of applying them." (#557) I only say this rhetorically (not for an answer) as this is not under discussion here, but also I have not reviewed all the references.

I meant to say ‘I WOULDNT SAY’ — Joshs

Well thank you for that. I still don't understand the "therapy" label--I mean I barely get what it is actually supposed to mean, but I do see it as a condescending, dismissive term and also don't see how my reading has anything to do with that interpretation, as I sorta see it.

Do I know what 'pain' means because of some private experience? Or because my body has been trained by the bodies of those around me in the world we share to react to and employ the token in multifarious ways? — hanaH

We don't learn how to employ tokens, or use words (I don't teach you all the things to say). There is our whole human life with pain, part of the essence of which is that we do not "know" pain, we have it (or we suppress it). It may be meaningful because it is mine--I can keep it to myself (torture myself with it, pity myself because of it), or I can express it (to try to have it attended to, to atone for what pains me, simply for the catharsis of expressing it, as in releasing it). We "learn" all of these things as it were by osmosis, "trained" as you say, but this is not in "reacting" or "employing" tokens, but in taking in the "multifarious ways" themselves (the other way around in that sense).

"It seems we are borrowing the Wittgenstein avatar for different projects. [Antony's] reminds me of a therapist."
— hanaH

Indeed. I would say Antony is borrowing Witt for some side interest. He is putting forth an interpretation in which ‘therapy’ is absolutely central to ( although not the only thing) what Wittgenstein is doing. — Joshs

I am not describing the periphery of Witt's investigation--just deeper into it, farther along. If we stop at the first idea we hear that we feel we understand, isn't that just to take the text on our terms? for our interests? I am willing to respond to and back up my reading and explain its relationship to what I take as superficial grasping at the text to solve the project of everything at once.

As I responded to @hanaH, the goal of Philosophical Investigations was to understand our desire for seeing everything in one way (word-object). This is not the "therapy" of us (our "mental cramps"--or language's bewitchingness), it is the identification of how and thus why we insist on seeing everything the same way: our desire for the criteria of certainty, universality, pre-determined, strictly logical, etc. There is no "cure" for this temptation, and thus the repeated methodology applied across multiple examples--games, rule-following, sensations, pain, aspects, etc.--pointing out the variety of our overlooked ordinary criteria, the categorical logic of the conditions, possibilities, and structure (grammar) of our lives. This doesn't fit the desire for a generalized theory of meaning to end skepticism? the examples don't show that rules, or knowledge, are the nature and solution of all our problems? huh? wonder why?

That [each concept has different grammar is] a reasonable assertion, but perhaps you'll agree that there's nothing final about those categories. — hanaH

I'm not sure what I said that you took as "final" (what the implications are in saying that); as you point out in #23--Witt would say endless; that our lives change. I would also say, not complete; as there are further contexts for concepts to be extended into.

As I see it, the map will never do justice to the teeming territory. — hanaH

As part of dismantling the word--internal-referent picture, Witt can be seen as offering a picture of word-public "form of life" or "language game", but this is merely to substitute one "meaning" for another, when he is dismantling the entire picture/theorizing about meaning.

One problem is that because Witt is using an investigation of our history of expressions as data to formulate claims about the workings of each concept, that he is taken to be always (or only) discussing language/meaning. But the imagined gap between an expression and the world is in order to insert theoretical order (rationality, certainty) and/or account for our failings in communication, description, agreement. We abandon our ordinary criteria for our concepts (the limited, fallible nature of moral claims say) and picture a universalized split between our language and the world. But a concept is a living thing, embedded with the history of our interests, criteria for judging, identity, etc. To say "I apologize" is to apologize; our expressions are normative to the extent our lives are. Yes, there are mistakes, lies, empty words, descriptions that fall short, but that is why there are excuses, the endless depth of language; it is not that our words systematically fail us as much as we fail them, to continue to be responsible for them, answer to make ourselves intelligible.

[Witt's idea of expression allowing for the personal] seems we are borrowing the Wittgenstein avatar for different projects. Yours reminds me of a therapist. — hanaH

Not to maybe address your comment directly, but my point is that Witt is replacing the internal referent of the essence of a sensation with the ordinary workings of our sensations/experience (that they still are important to us individually, interpersonally, culturally). To say this is therapeutic is to imply he was solely focused on "curing" the desire of the skeptic to leapfrog our ordinary criteria in place of certainty (the temptation for which he leaves open in each of us).

The characterization as "therapy" also misses the goal of bringing back the essence of our ordinary criteria, here, of sensations and experience; that there is a categorical logic of the conditions, possibilities, and structure (grammar) of sensations--based on the idea of expression--which is specifically addressed in the PI (see below).

The reason it may appear imposed or external is that, rather than seeing the point as simply that sensation and experience have a different structure than word-referent, people jump to (stop at) taking the goal as eradicating sensations themselves, or that we cannot talk about my experience at all--with the fact that talking in general is based on public concepts; or that we are still stuck in the Tractatus so that of which one cannot speak, one must be silent (not seeing that, there, the reasoning is that "speech" is being limited only to logical certainty). But saying that language is public is not to say I can't try to express a solely personal experience:

But could we also imagine a language in which a person could write down or give vocal expression to his inner experiences—his feelings, moods, and the rest—for his private use?——Well, can't we do so in our ordinary language?—But that is not what I mean. — Witt, PI #243 (emphasis added)

My point is that the answer to the bolded question is, yes, I can "write down or give vocal expression to [my] inner experiences—my feelings, moods, and the rest", even "for [my] private use"--only here "private" is not the term that Witt makes of "private" (that no one else would understand), but with the ordinary criteria of personal, secret. I can even express my experience individualistically, say, poetically:

We speak of understanding a sentence in the sense in which it can be replaced by another which says the same; but also in the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other. (Any more than one musical theme can be replaced by another.) In the one case the thought in the sentence is something common to different sentences; in the other, something that is expressed only by these words in these positions. (Understanding a poem.) — Witt, PI # 531

The fact you may not accept it--care, be interested, be understanding, ask for clarification--as it were, to find it meaningful, is the fact that I may be isolated, alone in the world, not treated as "alive" (#284) or as having a "soul" (#179). The person could "understand the language"--it is public language--but they would not, I might feel, understand me.

"Cries" is an intentionally jarring metaphor. "Just" cries suggests meaninglessness, where I'm simply looking at relationships of stuff in the world (stuff that includes our sounds and scribbles) for meaning. — hanaH

And this is the depth of the concept of expression, which includes the non-verbal, the non-linguistic (cries), but also that our ordinary language is much more expressive than we give it credit for, as we only picture it as word=single referent. Thus the analogies to music (#527) in that there is much more going on than may be grasped instantly (taking meaning as simply the individual word's definitions); that we may go back and forth to draw out endless depth in the expression of our experience.

The claim that we cannot get between pain and its expression (#244-245) is to show us that the structure (the grammar) of our sensations is not that they are known, but that they are expressed or not. That they are meaningful to me is in releasing them into the world (or hiding them); that they are meaningful to you is the extent to which you accept them, that you accept me as a person in pain. "If I see someone writhing in pain with evident cause I do not think: all the same, his feelings are hidden from me." (p. 223 3rd.)(emphasis added) I do not know their pain (use a "criterion of identity" #288), I reject them, or I help them--as it were, beyond knowledge (Emerson's reliance, Nietzsche's human). This is the essence of experience/sensation. ( @TheMadFool ) The picture of a word-referent mistakes this limitation of knowledge as the vision that no one could know me (my "sensation"/"experience"); that I am essentially, always unique/special--that the only failure/solution is a matter of epistemology.

I agree that one can say there are many different frameworks. — hanaH

With acknowledging the possibility of multiple uses/senses in a concept (apart even from one context), Witt's claim is not one theory (as if, among others) of the framework of sensations/experience; it is a universal claim on all of us, for all of us to see and accept. The point is there are different frameworks (grammar) for each different concept: thinking, reading, rule-following, sensations, justification, etc.

"Toothaches" and "God" and "justice" and "truth" are, in my view, tokens, just like the cries of the vervet monkey, albeit caught up in a far more complicated system. — hanaH

I'm not sure what version of the term token you are referring to; I take Witt to be showing us that a toothache (a sensation) works differently than justice (a moral claim). Different things matter to us, they operate (or fail to) in different ways, we identify them differently. To say they are just cries is to equate every expression as the same type, when Witt's point is that toothaches and rocks and honesty have different frameworks of criteria for how they work.

It might be helpful here to think of individual social organisms as relatively closed systems that signal one another "materially" (as opposed to a telepathy of rarefied concept-stuff.) As I see it, the point is synchronized behavior. — hanaH

"Individual social organisms" seems to be, me, as part of a culture, or humanity. And, at least in terms of sensations, we are, in a sense, closed off from the other except that which we can't but express. And a "concept" is not like an "idea" (something... mental?), it is a term of Witt's just to refer collectively to all our human activity. Not everything is "material" (if that means physical) but justice and thinking and judging are still part of our lives, and affect are lives, are "normative" (if we must say), and synchronized, sure (the similarity maybe not as important as that we are inculcated into our culture).

So looking inside a single organism for meaning seems misguided, though one might naturally inquire how the sign system is "stored" as it is learned, etc. — hanaH

My point is not that "meaning" is inside me, but I do claim that: I, personally, am interested in some things and not others, that some parts of my experience are meaningful to me (essential even), more than they are for you. In exactly clearing up that there is not "meaning" (or a theory of it), Witt makes the space for the personal, by showing us the nature of human expression (and yes all the public yada yada).

Essentially, talking about exclusively private experiences is impossible IF (Antony Nickles) meaning is taken in the sign-referent sense. — TheMadFool

Bluntly, the desire to have something certain (the referent) blinds us to the actual workings of our personal, individual, secret, expressed/repressed, rejected/accepted experiences and sensations. If I am alone on the edge of the grand canyon watching the sun set, I am not being truthful if I say "it is impossible to talk about my exclusive private experience". I have things I can say, and can continue to, and to answer questions, and clarify distinctions, etc. for as long as we want to have a meaningful discussion about my purely private experience. Now if I claim there is something more to my experience that I can't tell you, I am keeping that secret (as if for myself), refusing to be known, and that desire to be unknowable is the flip-side of the desire that my experience is a certain object to which I specifically refer to when I say something (that I am thus fully expressed; that I do not have to play a part in saying something meaningful).

If language really worked differently in each case, language would be useless. — frank

Well, saying "language works differently in each case" is to say, poorly, that we have different concepts, like: thinking, promising, seeing, believing, etc. and each is meaningful in a different way; based on different criteria--what matters to us about seeing is not the same, and not accounted for in the same way, as promising; so it is an oversimplification to say we have (or can have) a single generalized theory of meaning (and thus language); say, of just word--referent/essence.

Here, we are generalizing the case that a word can be defined (fulfilling our desire for a fixed meaning).
— Antony Nickles

Misguided psychoanalysis. Living languages continuously evolve due to random, exuberant creativity. — frank

You do not explain how you think that is misguided but it appears you might take it that I am making this statement rather than this is Witt's estimation about why we (humans) want to have a certain picture of how language works. "For the crystalline purity of logic was, or course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement." (#107) (Also, attributing motivations is not about repressed or unconscious anxiety or insecurities, etc.) Additionally, since a "fixed meaning" comes from the desire for certainty (which, again, is not my claim), I agree that there is evolution, say of our lives and thus our language; and also that there are impromptu creative expressions--the criteria we use to judge adherence to a concept also allows for the extension of them into new contexts or expressions.

To be clear, him saying "The meaning of a word is its use in language" is to say that concepts have various possibilities (including being extended) depending on the context, as in options
— Antony Nickles

I don't think so. He just meant language users are embedded in a world. Pulling language out of that worldly setting won't help us understand ourselves, or our speech and thought. — frank

I don't know how to see what you object to in what I said, but to simplify Wittgenstein's framework as we are just "embedded in a world" seems unobjectionable (if pointless) except that you follow that with the assumption that I mean to be "pulling language out of that worldly setting". Are you claiming that it is meaningless (or impossible) to examine the possibilities of "knowing" or "promising" or "seeing" or "believing"? and that we learn nothing about ourselves in investigating our language, as part of our lives, e.g., the distinctions we find important, the interests we have in each thing, the methods by which we judge the conditions for identity, completion, evolution?

the grammar of sensations is public behavior though. Toothaches and stopsigns both get their "meaning" (if we insist on taking such a concept seriously) from what happens outside us, in between us. — hanaH

Well, yes, "public" as culturally, not something individual (special). But to understand how sensations are meaningful (the essence of them) is to understand the criteria for judging how they are what they are, do what they do--their place in our world (their grammar). And so stop signs and toothaches do not "get their 'meaning' " in the same way, much less necessarily "from what happens outside us". The point being that, in removing the imposition of the fixed criteria of certainty that we want for our/your experience (the internal referent), Witt makes room for our private life (the personal, the secret). So it does matter what happens inside us; just in the sense of whether we deny our experience (to ourselves), repress our expressions (to you), withhold our acceptance regarding our toothache or what is just.

To be clear, I'm emphasizing that we inherit our participation in the communication system, are trained into it. — hanaH

Yes, of course, and that is also to say that our (all our) interests and judgments and criteria are baked into our lives/concepts, and so each are different in how they are meaningful to us.

I enjoy the conversation. — hanaH

Yes, nice to be able to point out small differences than try to get someone to look behind them.

[Witt is saying] people use words correctly despite not being able to define them. — TheMadFool

[Meaning is use] just means there's no eternal dictionary somewhere. It's really not complicated or controversial.

"That [we can understand 15,000-year-old sentence is] because all of the nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in the four sentences are words that have descended largely unchanged from a language that died out as the glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. Those few words mean the same thing, and sound almost the same, as they did then." — frank

The picture of a word-referent clouds our ability to see that language works differently in each case (concept). Here, we are generalizing the case that a word can be defined (fulfilling our desire for a fixed meaning). This is the picture that makes us think that if we know/have defined each word, we understand the expression (as a fixed meaning), but sentences cannot be defined. As an example: the oversimplification-internalization of "meaning is use" is because we see "meaning" and we have the picture Word=Meaning (definition, referent) and we think "use" is simply a substitute (or language-game, form of life). In fact "use" would be considered a term, but it is not simply an issue of defining it, as it is only holding a place in relation to the entire story. ("To understand a sentence means to understand a language." PI #199)

To be clear, him saying "The meaning of a word is its use in language" is to say that concepts have various possibilities (including being extended) depending on the context, as in options. These are the uses or senses of a concept (as nouns). As @hanaH said, this is why "cat" and that thing there on the mat can be more complicated then even word-referent, as expressions involving cats have the uses of not only identification, but description, anthropamorphication, etc.

Another confusion is that Witt says that "we use" language or a concept, etc., but this is not the picture that we manipulate language or cause the use (also he says "our use", but this is to say, not mine, but the possibilities open to everyone in our language). You say something, and, to see how it is meaningful, we look at which criteria of a concept it meets (which use)--was what you said a promise? or a veiled threat (or both)? you say you know, but in the sense that you can remember? or that you are an authority? This expands the idea of a fixed essence (meaning), but still allows us to get at what is essential about an expression.

Or showing that [an internal referent of sensation] can't serve the explanatory purpose that folks think it does, showing that it's parasitic on the same synchronization of public behavior which it is supposed to explain. — hanaH

Only here I'm trying to show that the point is not to replace the internal referent with an external one, as if the problem was just the assumption of an internal thing, and not that the grammar of sensations is entirely different even than public behavior.

but isn't [the picture of a referent] also about an obsession with certainty? "I can't be wrong about seeing this patch of redness. That at least is something I can count on." — hanaH

I didn't want to open another door from this discussion, but, absolutely; the desire behind this word-"essence" picture (or appearance-reality or irrational-rational) is the need for something to be certain, determined ahead-of-time, complete in its applications, predictable, based on math-like rules. I was simply contrasting the personal desire to have or be something certain that no one else has or is (something ever-present as much as certain) with the fact that there is a (rational) grammar for our sensations apart from that (and from simply equating "behavior" with a sensation). (In the same way, the grammar of color is that, if we agree that the color is the same between two objects, than it is one color, not a quality of the objects or a correspondence of that to some impression in our mind.)

"Sensation" or "appearance" is the name of something one cannot be wrong about. Or so runs the grammar, which is mistaken for a deep, metaphysical principle, as if we don't just happen to usually use the words that way. — hanaH

Yes, but to say we "don't just happen to usually use the words that way" is to simply flip to the other side of the same (generalized) coin, instead of seeing that sensations have their own logic that is entirely different, rather than simply the negation of the internal referent.

But "clearing up the ground" implies readying it for another project:
— Antony Nickles

One project could be a better linguistics. Another project might be more personal, to talk less confused nonsense, to pay more attention to worthier issues. — hanaH

I wouldn't say Witt is dismissing our personal life in relation to our sensations/experience, and certainly does not simply believe it is a matter of words (rather than seeing our ordinary criteria for how those concepts work), but, as I said, that our relation to our experience and the expression of others is simply entirely different than how we wanted to picture it in philosophy (for certainty), yet that it (or ordinary criteria) is oddly familiar (Cavell will call this uncanny; Plato/Heidegger/Witt say we remember it).

The beetle in the box: The word is same - "beetle" - but what it refers to maybe different. Wittgenstein's aim is not to come up with a solution, it seems impossible, but to do an exposé of the problem. — TheMadFool

The picture of a word and its object (referent) as the only way anything is meaningful is the exact thing which makes a "solution" impossible. Imagine an example: "I have a pain in my throat" "Hey, me too!" "But mine is congested at the top and scratchy as it goes down." "Mine too! That's funny; we have the same pain." Now does the possibility that our pain might have turned out to be different seem less scary? Say: "Oh well, mine is more just dry and constricted, but sorry you're not feeling well!" which is, nonetheless, my knowledge of the other's pain, in knowledge's sense(use) of my acknowledgment of your pain, as: "I know you are in pain."

words are signs we use for referents, the actual thing that interests us. Words that we use to refer to private experiences (can't be shared with others) are like the word "beetle" e.g. the word "pain"... We're only left, therefore, with the word "beetle" ("pain") and nothing else. — TheMadFool

And so if language cannot "refer" (directly as it were) to our--let's call it "personal"--experience, than we feel we must, as Kant did, cordon off the referent (the thing-in-itself) to preserve the qualities of certainty and universality, etc. we associate with any "essence" of something. In his discussion of the beetle and in imagining a private language (and a boiling pot), we take Witt to be intent on destroying the referent/the object/the thing-in-itself/the essence/our experience.

Pure subjective experiences are exactly the kind that we can't show to other people - they're categorically private. — TheMadFool

This is the picture solipsism has of itself. It comes from the desire to remain unknowable, to have and keep something fundamentally special about me. And people take Witt as making a point of denying our individual experience (sensation).

if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant. — Witt (cited by HanaH)

And here people take this as only that the object is irrelevant; that the internal is no longer under consideration, or is turned inside out. As in:

It's far more reasonable [than picturing meaning as a referent] to examine how the token "headache" is entangled with other public behavior (including the use of other tokens.) — hanaH

So we have destroyed the referent and are merely discussing language.

To me Wittgenstein is more of a destructive than constructive thinker — hanaH

Which Witt specifically admits (and denies).

Where does this investigation get its importance from, given that it seems only to destroy everything interesting: that is, all that is great and important? (As it were, all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) But what we are destroying are only houses of cards, and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood. — Witt, PI #118

But "clearing up the ground" implies readying it for another project:

What gives the impression that we want to deny anything?... Why should I deny there is a mental process?... [The Interlocutor asks:] Aren't you at bottom really saying that everything except human behavior is a fiction? If I speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction. — Witt, PI #305-307

And so the point of all this is not to erase the individual experience, but to turn us from picturing our sensations, experience, etc., as working the same as anything else.

[The dilemma goes away] only if we make a radical break [with the grammar which tries to force itself on us that] ...language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose. — Witt, PI #304

So he is specifically not destroying what is "interesting" to us, what "is great and important" (see above). He is preserving essence, our individual experience--or, to say it so as not to lead to a confusing picture--what is essential about (to) each thing being what it is. Notice the "if" in his quote at the top. If the grammar of the expression of sensation is not construed on the model of 'object and designation', than we are not irrelevant. But then, what is the grammar of the expression of sensation in which we are not irrelevant?

[Knowing how to use a word properly] would be an inadequate conception inasmuch as it does not include the input derived from having experienced pain. Understanding pain cannot be wholly to do with what you can know about another, because in all cases their behavior could be wholly faked — Janus

And this is the fear of the uncertainty of the other. Yes, we can be fooled, mistaken (not only because it can be kept secret). And what we can find out is only "external" (though the expressiveness of the other is more than we see; our understanding is more than their behavior). But what it comes down to is that we want to know the other so we do not have to address them; but the "grammar of the expression of a sensation" is 1) that I don't know my pain--I have my pain and I express it (or repress it); and 2) you either accept (or reject) my expression of pain (it is also not a matter of knowledge). So, again:

Pure subjective experiences are exactly the kind that we can't show to other people - they're categorically private. — TheMadFool

But what is essential about our experience is not that we cannot entirely, completely express our experience or know the other's, but that we are separate. I can continue to express and respond to you regarding my experience (or hide it), and our experience is identical to the extent to which we accept that it is the same. This is the grammar of our experience by which the essence of it (what is essential to it) is expressed.

we should all be talking about why LW doesn't think his theory is a theory. — Srap Tasmaner

We could call what he is trying to have you see for yourself, an insight. He is not making statements (true/false or empirical) that would tell you something, give you knowledge (these are not his opinions). They are provisional claims about how each different thing does what it does. So they would be "theories" about every different thing (each grammatical claim), except that this is a method (for all of us) where one lays something out (to show the other), and then, if they see it (its aspect of difference from other things)--if it is something so ordinary that everyone would agree--why would we call it a theory? (#128) Without your seeing for yourself, the claim is rejected, isolated, impotent.

And so, like Austin, these (games, rules, mental processes, pain, etc.) are all examples, to show us a way to see the vast array of the world, to find our way back to understanding the essence of things we want to find out about--truth, justice, aesthetics, religion, etc. But he is not cataloguing knowledge like Aristotle; he is trying to make the gears of philosophy mesh back together and grind forward again.

What's meaningless in one language game is meaningful in another? — TheMadFool

How an apology is meaningful is different than how fairness is meaningful. They have different criteria, they matter to us in different ways, we judge them on standards that are of different structures. This is the "grammar" which is the expression of their "essence", what is essential to us about each thing.

Why would Wittgenstein then say some philosophical problems are psuedo-problems, not real but actually instances of "bewitchment by language"? — TheMadFool

Language allows for our bewitchment. A word (different than a sentence) has the possibility of having a direct visual referent, so we can say the "meaning" of "cat" is that thing right there. We are mesmerized by the idea of all of language working this way because of our desire for certainty, something fixed, universal, predictable, etc. We can define a single word without a context, so we picture all language without any, removed from their ordinary criteria, and then we are tempted to impose our criteria for certainty, etc.

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.

-Witt, Blue Book, from @hanaH

So Wittgenstein's philosophy is to fight our temptation to take the forms of language that express certainty and apply them universally as a theory of meaning.

Nobody talks much about the "incorrect" use of words.
— @bongo fury

Well, we should learn them to. — Wayfarer

J.L. Austin is a great example of first starting with how things don't work. His work A Plea for Excuses is really an investigation into how action works, but he starts with how it fails.

"it seems clear that no adding of inorganic signs can make the proposition live. And the conclusion which one draws from this is that what must be added to the dead signs in order to make a live proposition is something immaterial, with properties different from all mere signs."
— Wittgenstein (Blue Book)

There seems a suggestion of 'vitalism' - that 'meaning' might be thereby construed as being 'something immaterial', something which might, erroneously, be thought to exist separately from the sign. — Wayfarer

That is very interesting about Frege, thank you @hanaH (do you have a page # for the Blue Book cite?). I agree with your seeing Wittgenstein as reacting to that (why he spends such an inordinate amount of time battling against the idea of "meaning" as a thing/cause, or any mental process). Also, it reminds me that for Wittgenstein there is a sense of language being alive. And instead of giving us the power of life over words, he lands on the idea of an expression. Not that an expression (or something non-word) is connected to something in us that is made external (nor "used"), but that it, in a sense**, merely happens--only that it occurs--but at a point in time, in a place, to be considered perhaps against what just happened (or not), in this culture, in relation to a sense/use of a concept (or not), by me as a reflection on me and in creating my responsibility for it. That in all that it is thus alive, or can be given life in investigating the implications of all of the above (by me or someone else). (**This is not to say that we do not sometimes reflect on what to say, choose what words to say, or try to make a point, influence a certain reaction, etc., but these do not change the impersonal sense of an expression, how it is (and can not be) meaningful, or the determination of the use of a concept(s).) Also, it is interesting that a lot of the time there is the picture that thought is alive until it is put into language, and then, having been cemented in an expression, it is thus dead. But, even so, we can, in a sense, resurrect that expression each time we encounter it (read/listen to it).

In what ways other than reference is language meaningful? Even if there's an answer to that question, of what relevance do they have to philosophy? — TheMadFool

Thinking, believing, understanding, pointing, excusing, deducing, etc., etc. All the various concepts and activities of our lives have different conditions (criteria) and possibilities than reference or correspondence (and embody different interests and judgments of our culture in different ways). This is the main point of the PI (that everything is meaningful in its own way).

You are restricting what you call philosophy to something analogous to a statement being true or false (essence as something singular and certain), when, for example, Austin has shown that there are statements that have the value of being true without the same criteria and mechanism as true/false (that some statements accomplish something (or fail to) in the saying of them).

How would we go about living lives if, for instance, we don't know the essence of poisons and their antidotes? How do we recognize water if we ignore the essence of what water is? — TheMadFool

These are only examples of physical objects which are able to meet the criteria of certainty and predictable outcomes (which was the standard required by traditional philosophy for everything). But just because not everything submits to the scientific method, does not mean we are abandoning truth, necessity, and what is essential to something being what it is.

Surely, something's not quite right with Wittgenstein and his acolytes if they're, as you seem to be claiming, moving away from essences to merely, quite obviously, playing with words. — TheMadFool

The rigid requirement of certainty makes any other criteria seem irrational or arbitrary. Wittgenstein is talking about understanding things in the same spirit that Plato sought, just without the same metaphysical picture. Words and the world are not separate in the way you imagine and so in trivializing language you cut off the ability to look into what is essential about the world. (When philosophy could not maintain certainty and universality it separated appearance from the world in order to keep the world pure. It does the same kind of thing with language and the world.)

1. Meaning is use [words lack an essence]. — TheMadFool

Meaning is not a thing (and “use” is not a substitute), but our concepts still embody what is essential about a thing through its criteria, conditions, and possibilities.

2. Language games [Form of life determines meaning (use)]. — TheMadFool

A "form" of life is not a referent nor a basis for meaning but just a picture to introduce the idea of different categories (like: an apology, duty, responsibility) and the ordinary criteria of each.

3. Family resemblance [Illusion of essence]. — TheMadFool

Again, family resemblance is not a negation of what is essential, but only to say that a concept may have multiple senses (uses), possibilities, which we come at in the context from different interests. A table is essentially a flat surface with four legs, but, from a different angle, anywhere at which we eat dinner. What is essential will depend on the context and our attention to the criteria that reflect our interests, though, of course, not everything meets the criteria of what we would identify as a table.

4. Private language [Incoherent for many reasons]. — TheMadFool

This section is not an argument (for a conclusion) but to show the difference between what is personal and the mental process we picture that to be (a thought, intention).

Why then all the fuss about Wittgenstein and the so-called linguistic turn? I ask because it would mean that philosophers who subscribe to Wittgenstein's views have abandoned the idea of philosophy as about essences (referents) of things-in-themselves and are now under the impression that philosophy is linguistic, to do with words (signs). — TheMadFool

This was a dismissive, poor summary of Witt at one point, but not a real reading. You feel that the conditions and criteria of our expressions (their grammar) could not express what is essential about something, but it is you (following Kant) who assumes the separation of the world from our language. Wittgenstein found that our expressions show our cares, desires, our judgments, all our lives. That the two are bound together. So when he looked at what we imply when we say _____, he was making claims about how the world works as much as our expressions. The history of the things we've said about a thing are all the things that matter to us about that thing.

Thank you @Banno for finding that lost Discussion of "essence" as expressed by Wittgenstein's grammar. That got zero traction when I posted it.

I can see how you arrived at the conclusion that words don't have an essence, because Witt shows that "meaning" (as a thing) is not how language is meaningful, which could be taken as words have no necessity. And add to that the overall investigation to show that reference is only one of many ways that language is meaningful (so not just word to object, or to definition, unlike a sentence).

The connection between meaning and use is harder because he is using the same word (meaning), and so people imagine the same picture as meaning as a thing, only now, the referent is "use". But Witt is drawing our attention to how meaning cannot be one thing, explained one way. The "use" (or sense) is an option of possibilities, such as threats, apologies, paraphrases, lies, excuses, believing, thinking, knowing (concepts, Witt terms them). Our concepts are meaningful to us in various ways, and also depending on the context. "I know" can be: I have proof; or, I know my way around; or, I know you are in pain. We don't "use" words, or refer to some activity. It is a matter of seeing which sense of an expression (concept) is important to us here, now; which is not arbitrary, as neither are our judgments, criteria, what matters to us, etc., over thousands of years as the conditions of our expressions. These conditions (Witt will say grammar) show us what is essential about a concept, it's "essence", what differentiates an accident from a mistake? what part does an excuse play in our actions?

For the categorical, truth is true. For the not categorical, truth is contingent. But this division in our understanding is either itself deep, or just words. Let's try for common ground. — tim wood

Well I don't want to sidetrack into Kant but what I meant was that our responsibility to the truth is not a matter of our choice, it is the structure of it. You don't have to respond in that way, but that doesn't mean you are released from that relationship.

It seems you're willing to acknowledge truth-in-character, but that somehow you want that to be truth-in-true, and it is not the same thing — tim wood

I'm saying that the standard of true (or false) is not the only standard that matters--proof only provides certainty. Even without that criteria we still have rationality, specificity, history, and the possibility of agreement, which comes from our ongoing relationship to our moral claims. It is not (only) "contingent" on me but I am implicated. This is not the truth of me (my character) but the necessary condition of this sense of truth.

Because then it was not the right or wrong of it, not least because who knew what that was anyway. Instead it was the good man, or the best man, and what he did or had to say, and how he did it or said it. All this under rhetoric, and there unremarkable; and the failure to properly grasp the difference from logic - supposing it a red-headed child of logic - means a failure to understand argumentation itself, supposing that to be merely a matter of demonstration, when in fact it cannot be that. — tim wood

The denigration of anything but logic and right (or the good, or rules) is to make all other discussion or claim irrational, based on authority (force), individual, "contingent". This fear of relativism is a desire to have what is right, etc. replace our (the human) part in the truth; which I am saying is categorical--not that we must play our part, but that we are answerable whether we do or do not (similar to how what you say can’t mean what you want).

The picture that what passes as truth outside of right or wrong is merely something said "persuasively", is to cast human expression as unintelligible outside the realm of certainty. That what is meaningful is larger and more complicated than we want; we do not want our actions to allow us to be seen, read into, revealed, beyond what we "intended" or what we thought ahead of time. We want to do what is right and be done with it, without any further need of responsibility because we followed a rule, etc.

This is also to take understanding as easy; but to say something, to try to get you to see it, it may need to be expressed a certain way. Some see Wittgenstein or Nietszche as unnecessarily obtuse or mysterious, but some things can not be told directly to some people. If you are going to come to it yourself, you may have to answer Wittgenstein's questions on your own, see his statements about grammar as provisional claims; you may need to ask yourself why Nietszche is forced to alienate us. Not that it is just the right words, but that a speaker must do the good work of accepting the truth themselves in a serious way, making explicit the criteria that matter, the implications of what our words do, what their saying this, now, here to you may amount to. This is not the claim of a “good” person, but that being responsible for what is said is to speak well, that my character matters more than my intellect, that knowledge is limited, and beyond that it is we who must speak for the truth.