[ The conclusion about ethics in the Tract ] was not a matter of certainty, but of propositions having a sense, a meaning; they represent some state of affairs in the world. Ethics/aesthetics do not represent what is the case. Ethics/aesthetics are not a matter of certainty but of personal experience. — Fooloso4

The picture of "representation" of the world, or what is the case, is what is taken apart in the PI as the product off the requirement for a crystalline purity (to give us the certainty we desire). It is representationalism that creates the idea of objective/subjective (personal "experience"), of fact/value.

No. Just the opposite [Witt did not want ethics to be reducible to logic]. He said that ethics/aesthetics are transcendental. They stand outside the relations of things in the world, outside logical relations. — Fooloso4

You are not allowing a distinction between what he says and the reasons he says it. He says the things about ethics in the Tract because of the requirement he has for us (him) in that work in order to be said to say anything. In the PI he dissects why he wanted (we want) that requirement by first looking at the varied "logical relations" that each thing has, even ethics.

he is using [transcendental] in Kantian sense of the condition for the possibility of experience — Fooloso4

I too think that the " 'possibilities' of phenomena" (#90) is analogous to Kantian "conditions", but Kant's, as in the Tractatus, were a pre-requisite, a threshold (logical) necessity (as with his imperative)--set out by us (unknowingly even) beforehand. But in the PI, he comes with an open mind, investigating first for the varied conditions we use to judge a thing to be what it is (categorically Kant would say, e.g., to follow a rule, or not)--he calls these conditions: criteria.

The conditions for such possibilities are, however, no longer regarded as a priori. — Fooloso4

As he shows in the PI, these criteria (the logical form of a thing) are already there, in our language, which holds our culture, which is the history of all the ways we are in the world. "We remind ourselves, that is to say, of the kind of statement that we make about phenomena." (#90., emphasis added)

By the logic of our language he means a priori logical form. But logical form cannot be represented, there can be no propositions about logic form. — Fooloso4

The logical form of a thing (its grammar) is captured in the statements we make about a thing (not "represented"). We need not do a study to come to the criteria for an apology, understanding, thinking, pointing, following a rule; it is not a matter for science to find out. Our ordinary criteria are not "hidden", but open to plain view, if we but allow them to come to us rather than blinding ourselves with the criteria of purity.

one should not need to know or study the work of Wittgenstein or whoever else to find out what they mean about philosophy and whatever other terms or concepts are involved in these statements. — Alkis Piskas

Even with Witt--someone classed as an "ordinary language philosopher"--he has terms, like, criteria, grammar, aspect, etc. But his way of doing philosophy does not end up with something he "means"; it is a process of examples and answering questions and self-analysis, like Hegel's "dark path". This work is done with interacting--conversing--with the work. We can try to emulate that process in a discussion, but some philosophy is about the work and struggle rather than statements and summaries.

Only if one assumes there is an objective morality to be uncovered. — Fooloso4

I guess the analogy--of something "hidden"--here isn't straightforward. But, if we require certainty for moral deliberations, it "hides" the ordinary possibility for agreement, the steps we can actually take; that there are practical ways in which we actually can come to agreement. We are not relegated to the obscurity Witt originally put ethics and aesthetics into because of his requirement for statements to have certainty.

The Tractatus attempts to show that it is not reducible to a science. — Fooloso4

My point is that it was not something that he believed that he was trying to argue for or support. He was not "attempting to show" it. He wanted it to be reducible to logic, required it to be; everything and the only things in the Tractatus were what he could say with certainty. When you come out of the gate with that single criteria, you miss all the regular ways we can and do discuss and agree in morality and aesthetics. Later, in the PI, he showed that every different type of thing has its own criteria, and that philosophy should draw those out to show why we want to overlook them and grasp for the single purity he had required previously.

It is a fact that morality and aesthetics are not science; that does not mean we do not have means of discussion along with the opportunity, and more importantly the responsibility, to create agreement. The failing is not morality not being scientific; it is our decision to want it to be because of the fear that we must stand in its place.

The problem is, we do not possess the facts and logic to bring moral deliberation to a satisfactory conclusion. There is no moral science. Moral deliberation, although rational, is not reducible to facts and logic. — Fooloso4

So we could both agree that it is true that we can not ensure agreement in ethical and aesthetic dialogue; agree that that is part of the grammar of those subjects--their workings, in that they are capable of failure, coming to nothing. They are not science, which has facts because it doesn't matter who it is: if they do the science right, they will reach the same result. It is reproducible, predictable ahead of time, dependable, independent of us. Aesthetic and moral discussions rely on us, our possibilities for irrationality, fear, obsession, denial, cowardice, deception, etc.

But intellectualizing this as a "problem" makes the world seem hidden, which Witt is claiming need not happen. The desire (to have moral deliberation reducible, a science) is the same desire Wittgenstein had in the Tractatus; a requirement before anything could be accepted, but only one standard (Witt calls them criteria in the PI). The interlocutor is the embodiment of this historic desire of philosophy for certainty, apart from which philosophy exiles everything else as unknowable, inexpressible, "emotive" (say, as Kant's thing-in-itself or Plato's forms).

What happens in PI is that he shows examples of how the world is not so black and white. One example is that the Interlocutor wants to know (for certain) someone is in pain. But we do not know someone is in pain, but that is simply just not how it works--we react to them as a person in pain (acknowledge their pain, or not), much as we treat someone as if they have a soul (p. 178)--grammatically that is not a matter of knowledge. We are responsible for bridging the gap of our separateness, much as we are responsible for making our moral reasons known to each other, attempting to see what you see in art. We can shirk those duties, but then it is not a failing of those realms, but ours.

...statements like "Philosophy simply puts everything before us", I, etc. do not mean anything, because one must first define philosophy, i.e. tell us what kind of philosophy he is talking about. Isn't that so? — Alkis Piskas

He's within and responding to the tradition of western analytic philosophy (the problem of other minds, epistemology, ethics, education, skepticism, etc.). And philosophy is always partly self-criticism. Witt is making the claim that philosophy is a method, in the sense of more like a practice than a "philosophy", in the sense of a statement, or theory, or a position.

The point is that perception is not passive, it is active, constructive. — Fooloso4

Maybe it would have been clearer to say that picturing "perception" as something special happening in us (as if, all the time) is mystifying what is just the expression of what I am experiencing. There is nothing outside of the need to clarify (construct) for someone else what possibility of a thing I am focusing on--which aspect of it matters to me right now (along its grammar). "It's true I say 'Now I am having such-and-such an image', but the words 'I am having' are merely a sign to someone else; the description of the image is a complete account of the imagined world." PI, #402.

Relevant to this discussion, there is nothing "hidden" that I possess (see #398). We (and philosophy) want to be indeciferable sometimes so that the failings of our world can appear to have an intellectual quality that we can solve for (as guys want to believe they can fix everything). Witt discusses this as the desire to have knowledge of the pain of another.

And yet he says very little about morality and aesthetics in his later work. What exactly is he replacing the earlier picture with? — Fooloso4

The point of the PI is to show that there is not one logic, but that everything we do has its own criteria and rationality, which is a revocation of the fixed criteria of certainty enforced in the Tractates that created the picture of aesthetics and ethics as a mystical part of our world (though the world is not without wonder and mystery). He is replacing the earlier picture with, in this sense, one for each kind of thing (its criteria and grammar).

The demand for crystalline purity does not extend to the ethical/aesthetic. They are not matters of fact and logic. — Fooloso4

It is exactly the desire for purity that creates the idea that they are outside fact and logic. Just because we may not come to agreement does not mean there is no rationality, no discussion--that there is something hidden or mystic about which nothing can be said. As elsewhere in the PI, our desire for force and surety hides the ordinary means of moral and ethical discussion and agreement, all the means for which are at our disposal, so we remain responsible for what comes between us or what we fail to show each other.

how one sees things is a prominent and recurring theme for Wittgenstein — Fooloso4

I was trying to fill out Witt's story of how philosophy is led to imagine and search for something "hidden", rather than working with what is in plain view. The picture is that the world is only an appearance, with something real that is then hidden (behind that), which Witt realizes comes from our desire for something more perfect and certain than our everyday assessment of things (our ordinary "criteria" he calls it).

I was equating that with phenomenology's picture that we always possess a "conception" of the things we see, which we imagine as the product of some inherent ability ("perception") tied to our "consciousness" (say, my framework), which is either known only to us, or which needs to be understood generally to "really" see things. This is the flip side of imaging the world as an appearance, allowing us to keep ourselves hidden. The analogy of conceiving as building is that it exactly is an action, a place we get to, work towards in actual ways: like broadening the context, incorporating more evidence, keeping an open mind, seeing from another's shoes, "taking side roads" (#426), etc., rather than unethical acts of thought, like grasping in a flash, imposing our desire for certainty, generalizing, etc.

But Witt's examples show that we recognize different aspects of a thing because and only if those aspects are possibilities for that thing (a "phenomena")--which aspects (senses) come to us from our culture, through our regular, transparent ways of talking about those things.

The other way the world becomes hidden is if it is deemed inaccessible to us (as we imagine ourselves unknowable by others). Your quotations from Witt's earlier work amount to the limitations he projected onto our ability to (rationally) discuss or understand morality and aesthetics. But it is exactly this picture that he is questioning and replacing through the work of the Philosophical Investigations. Specifically, it was his requirement for crystalline purity in the Tractatus that stopped him from realizing the regular ways we talk about these subjects, causing him to feel this part of the world was "mystical".

Excuse my ignorance. Are you claiming that Witty was in favour of ordinary language philosophy? — emancipate

The term ordinary language philosophy was coined to refer to Wittgenstein's method, not a position that he is for or against (though Moore and others are lumped in, confusing things). He is using it, doing it--not arguing in favor of something. J.L. Austin has a similar method, as did Socrates (Witt and Austin ask his questions of themselves, and trust the answers more). The method is related to this topic because in investigating our normal ways of talking about a thing or topic--which Witt refers to as that thing's "grammar"--and, once we accept that: "yes, that is the kind of phrase we say in talking about, for example, following a rule"--he uses the implications of those phrases as evidence for philosophical insight.

Our forms of speaking are "in plain view" because the implications and workings of our ordinary ways of doing things can be claimed and agreed to by anyone. They are not hidden, mysterious, special, or requiring arcane or abstract explanations. That is not to say that his conclusions from that data (a thing's grammar) are not eye-opening; only that it is simply making explicit the things we all understand implicitly (why Socrates calls it "remembering", as if something we knew before birth). It seems this way because our language already holds the world (our ways of judging, differentiation, assessing whether something comes off right) into which we are trained by example and picking things up (rather than being "told" everything, as knowledge would be.)

Working in philosophy -- like work in architecture in many respects -- is really more a working on oneself. On one's interpretation. On one's way of seeing things. (And what one expects of them.) — Witt., Culture and Value, p. 16

In distinguishing what is viewable from what is hidden (the doable from the fantasy), I take "working on oneself" to be an ethical admonishment--work on changing your acts rather than somehow altering (or understanding) our perception (as phenomenology wishes); that philosophy for Witt is not about seeing in a new way, but, to use this re-framing, realizing what we can expect from interpreting and seeing, say, by finding the limit of what they (and we) can and can not do.

By the possibilities of phenomena he means the various ways in which we can see things. — Fooloso4

Yes, I know, he does use the word "phenomena", but he is not focusing on a thing or action or occurrence themselves (empirically, as it were), nor their "appearance", nor our experience of them, but their possibilities (and impossibilities). "One's" way of seeing things is not in the sense of yours or mine (as if an "interpretation" is like an opinion, and not a process), so any "various ways" are just the different criteria for judging each thing to be that thing (and not another). He will also call this: different "senses". For example, knowing can be in the sense of knowing a phone number, as opposed to a knowing look, or knowing as accepting, acknowledging. These different senses of knowing are not dependent on me; we do not "conceive things".

More to the point here, Witt is broadening our focus to stop us from fixating on our insistence that there is something special or hidden about things (say, their "essence"); stop us imagining we lack some kernel of knowledge (say, understanding perception) just because that would be easier for us than facing our ordinary relationship with the myriad ways of the world, and all their implications and responsibilities and fallibility and limitations.

This [ desire for a single complete resolution (PI, #91) ]--"as if our usual forms of expression were, essentially, unanalysed; as if there were something hidden in them that had to be brought to light... [ finds expression in questions about essence ] ...not something that already lies open to view and that becomes surveyable by a rearrangement, but [ we imagine ] something that lies beneath the surface... something that lies within, which we see [ only ] when we look into the thing, and which an analysis digs out." PI, #92 This is the human compulsion to "penetrate" (PI, #90) the world by way of knowledge that Wittgenstein is turning from in glancing sideways at what is essential about a thing by examining what Kant would call its "conditions"; that our ordinary expressions reveal what something can be (is possible of, and limited to).

126. Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.—Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. — Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations Ed. 3

I don't think [ that "everything lies open to view", above ] means we understand things simply by looking at them. I think he is alluding to what was called ordinary language philosophy. — Jackson

That "everything lies open" is not to say it is clearly evident, but that we do not need special access or are learning anything new or creating a special generality, and this "openness" is the basis of the validity of Wittgenstein's method (dubbed ordinary language philosophy--see, ad nauseam, here). His descriptions have truth ("truth-value") because you acknowledge them; when we do not or would not disagree (#128), but also that anyone can and may disagree, because there is no force but its clarity and comprehensiveness with the goal to bring you along; you are to look for yourself, "prove" it to yourself (each reader, not agreement generally as consensus or convention).

As @Banno points out, the work is to make explicit what is implicit (express our intuition Emerson says; Plato will call it "remembering"; Heidegger: letting the object come us), or, as Witt says: "putting everything before us". For example, we might advance the description that: when we say "by mistake", we imply that we wanted to take a specific action but mixed up somehow, as opposed to "by accident", where something happens unwittingly (J.L. Austin's example). This is what Witt refers to as a grammatical statement; it is a provisional claim but not an empirical observation (a discovery), nor a statement (or belief) that he is claiming is justified, nor the proposition of a (undeniable/logical) cause.

Many stop at this point (here, including @Banno and @Janus) and take Witt only as describing the unspoken "rules" of the world (say, for what counts as walking)--as if he is just giving us different knowledge rather than pushing for an ethical change in our conduct--or take his point to be that philosophy's problems are merely a trick of language (misreading #109), but Witt is drawing out examples of our ordinary practices as a means of personal revelation, as, for example, our bewitchment by our false, preconceived need (#108) for something universal, abstract, and predeterminable which will remove us from our fears and responsibilities (through simply more, better knowledge).

Instead of (pre-)imposing our desire for certainty (requiring/accepting only logic), Witt turns around (as in a cave) to draw out (investigate) each thing's own criteria for what matters for it to be what it is, so that, through these examples (rule-following, pain, seeing aspects, etc.), we might see our part (as in an epiphany), our obsessions, and change in the process (for example, adopting a new "attitude"--#310, #575, p. 179 "IV"). For instance, Austin's example of accidents and mistakes is to show that "intention" is only a question asked after the occurrence of something unexpected, and that to imagine it as a cause special to each person's acts is a means of sliding out of our moral responsibility to explain ourselves, answer to each other.

Aren't we--as you point out with global warming--strictly talking about the use of the scientific method and the limits upon that (or, as it were, the treatment of its objects)? Only to ask, is there anything that would change the method itself? As you say: with anyone (competent) running the same experiment, we get the same results (or is there something I'm missing about science, which could easily be true). And then what would be a specific example of a change in the method? I ask for clarification as my understanding (from Cavell) is that it is the consistency of science based on its method that gives a fact its stature, its certainty, its ability to be predetermined, its reliability, its foundational structure to build upon, in short, its "objectivity" (rather than the measuring of a thing-in-itself--as shown by, for example, Thomas Kuhn's exceptions undermining the traditional concept of an object). That it is the consistency of the fundamental process which is paramount.

This leaves us simply with limits on what we can experiment on and what acts we can conduct, which is interesting nevertheless, and still leaves us with the disappointment of being kept from knowledge, closed off from part of the world (imagined as existing beyond or outside morality). Science being constrained by moral considerations seems unfair, or, unscientific (its method being without the need for any particular human, or, it then seems, humanity entirely).

But, as in most moral considerations, we have concessions. We have waivers and volunteers in medicine, and, I only imagine, consent of authority to damage the natural world if it is returned to its previous state; as a war could be deemed just to allow someone to kill without being judged to have broken an oath not to. By analogy, the importance (necessity) of the knowledge would outweigh the cost. And perhaps the thing is that our modern moral judgment doesn't allow for this wider calculus (economics?); we now narrowly judge the act alone removed from any context, which modern moral philosophy (Nietschze, Wittgenstein, etc.) would say actually removes the (messy) "human"--in a sense, attempting to turn morality into a kind of science. And, I take it, another concern would be the (arbitrary or all-encompassing) framing of the subject, making it rarified without equal weight given to what might exempt the act (and actor) from judgment.

I'm not familiar with the particular brand of philosophy you seem to be championing. — Agent Smith

I would suggest not worrying so much about boxing things into a "philosophy" that we just defend or attack. It seems to get in the way of even starting. Good luck.

does your philosophy have psychological underpinnings? — Agent Smith

“Psychological underpinnings” sounds like you think it is not a rational (analytical) claim or argument. As to learning about our motives, philosophy began as a search for self-knowledge, to better ourselves by being aware of what is right and true. I’m not claiming our thought is shaped by our psychology (though what is Plato “remembering” but what we call unconscious). Our doubt, and fear, and desire for certainty are situational, part of being human.

I'm afraid I lack the background to grok your post. — Agent Smith

I do take those who need to put something a particular way (say, Emerson, the later Heidegger, Wittgenstein (and Austin), Nietszche) to be as analytical as, even in response to, Kant or Plato (who insisted on things being put a certain way), say, by mustering "arguments" to get around our integral defensiveness to abandoning certainty as the only acceptable criteria of reason. Philosophy is inherently in critique ("review") of itself--reading itself differently, obliquely, further. The dismissals of: emotivist, subjective, relativism, or other easy label ("strain"), are analogous to logic's exile of "poetry", equivalent to the brush-off of saying something is "rhetoric" (syntax), in the same way that anything not involving "reality" is illusion, because we can not face that life (our categorical condition) is subject to illusion, isolation, madness, judgment, consequences, injustice, frailty, temptation, so we cling to certainty and are left with only chaos as the alternative, blind that we approach perfection, however pedestrian our ways.

Doing serious philosophy here for me would involve first questions and discussion, but what we probably have is a lack of interest rather than capability.

are we baffled or not? — Agent Smith

We are beyond being merely stymied and reflecting on our history and practices to problem-solve; we are lost and don't know how to continue (having come to an end, Witt says); all our knowledge has not prepared us for this novelty or won't stand in our place, make the new decision for us, settle our accounts with each other. But from this moment (this "event" Ricoure points out) the skeptic has generalized to everything (and created reality as a solution), all the time, stuck trying to solve for the future.

Our doubt (Aporia, I gather) creates our fear (yet perhaps trembling), our wish to slip out from being held responsible for our choices and words. We court our confusion hoping for something "objective" "real") so it won't matter who stands on this precipice, whose character is forged by acting into the void. This is the time for philosophy to turn us on our community (for Witt, through language--what we say) for the possibilities of its extension, and the creation of our next self. Perhaps our perspecuity, our new attitude (as in perspective), our expansion, the ordinary made alive, is like Aratraxia as an epiphany, a deeping into the unnoticed already-there, a settling, at peace with our duty in response.

Well we should probably leave Witt out of this, but I was only in a way agreeing with your conclusion that there is ultimately nothing "essential", nothing we can know, that saves us from the skeptic’s claim. There is no ultimate predetermined, right, certain, "real", in a word: knowledge that solves the intellectual problem we concoct to control our separateness from the world and each other. Not that the problem is silly, or that the skeptic’s framework is correct, but we collude by fighting in the same arena because we want knowledge to allow us to avoid our being a part (individually) of the equation.

"Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language."
— Ludwig Wittgenstein — Agent Smith

The gist of this sentence is misread. The battle is not against language, language is the means by which the battle is conducted--he uses what we say in particular occasions as a method to shed light on an issue.

Part of the human condition? Yeah, all roads lead to Rome. I'm sensing a pattern here; quasi-postmodernism or postmodernism proper or a variation of it. — Agent Smith

I'm not sure what those things are, or whether you want to say there is no distinction between a problem and a condition, but, if these things are debatable, I need a little more argument. From these comments, I can't seem to tell if you even understand what I am saying.

We can't tell the difference between reality and illusion. — Agent Smith

If we call this a hypothesis, then it gives it the framework of a problem with thus an answer. But if we look at it as an analogy, it would be to illuminate something else (about knowledge), or if a fantasy (imagining) maybe we learn about our selves (our desires). I think @Banno is approaching it as, yes, we can tell (answer the question), and this shows that real and fake have more ordinary, practical incarnations. But sometimes we just can't know what is happening, or can't shake off that feeling of being unmoored, or want there to not be (or to be) unknowable.

From a Wittgensteinian standpoint there's no essence to either illusions/simulations or reality that could aid us in telling them apart. — Agent Smith

The realization from Witt is not that there is no essence (though something else...) to answer the problem, nor that they problem is nonsense, but that we don't solve the problem with knowledge, we live with it as part of our human condition. We act without knowing outcomes, we react to the other without knowing whether their pain is real. We have chances, and consequences, and carry hopes and are swindled.

The takeaway seems to be that languages are unable to penetrate the inner sanctum, pain taken as representative, of consciousness. Can a coder/programmer code for private experiences like the ones Wittgenstein talks about in his well-known private language argumen? Perhaps our inner private lives are linguistically inaccessible because the creator of the simulation, if we are in one, wanted to, well, hide something in there from us. — Agent Smith

And this is another part Witt realizes (drawn out further by Cavell): the other is unknown, yes, because they are their secret to tell, but also, my desire to only know them is a refusal by me to enter into a different relationship to them apart from knowledge. My desire for control, for simplicity, for certainty, to be without responsibility for/to them; and even more, to not be known in the process, to not reveal myself in making assumptions, pre-judgments, etc.

If Wittgenstein is right, no language game is right or wrong i.e. anything goes, oui? After all, essence, the key ingredient for judgments right/wrong is missing. — Agent Smith

Witt is not examining how we judge a whole language game (say, the practice of cannibalism) so much as an act or expression within such a practice (a "concept" is his term); he looks at playing chess, pointing, calling, thinking, seeing an aspect, and... following/obeying a rule. So I would say he is not judging whether, say apologizing, is right or wrong, but whether your apology is right/wrong. Additionally, as Nietzsche broke ground on, we don't judge an apology as right or wrong (or true or false Austin will also say), but whether it is done correctly or incorrectly, is appropriate or inappropriate, felicitous or infelicitous. And the way we make those judgments is based on whether an apology hits the marks necessary to consider it an apology at all, whether it comes off well enough to be judged (after the fact) to be successful, etc. And Witt labels those marks as criteria, not (predetermined) rules (though some criteria are rules we have set for judging--say, for figure skating). They are the measures of a concept, to which he will make claims that he calls the "grammar" of a concept. And those "logical" requirements are the expression of what is essential to an apology being an apology (and not an insult or a back-handed threat)--so, no, essence is not missing. It just doesn't do what it was supposed to before (say, with Plato) in being universal, abstract, certain, etc. (not arbitrary, concidental), and he is not saying rules satisfy that role either. We do not have the certainty that if we follow a rule we will always be right, or if we obey a rule, we will never be wrong.

What's the difference between share and agree? Could I share a word with someone without some agreement as to what it means with that someone? — Agent Smith

The concepts we have are part of our lives together--we never got together and "agreed" on what an apology would be. We have shared our lives, our customs, alongside each other. And wrapped up in those practices are what matters to each concept, what counts towards it, how we judge it, how we fail or it falls apart, and the excuses, responsibilities, implications involved, etc. In looking--as we are told to--we gain a wider view of the unspoken criteria for our shared lives which we usually never consider.

That went over my head I' afraid. — Agent Smith

Well that's disappointing, but I remain willing to elaborate. Bottom line my point is that rules are an example he uses, not an explanation of how everything works (except rules). We want rules to be the answer because it satisfies the uneasiness we feel that our world is arbitrary--as you say, we call it "illusory" or "coincidental". The 101st time things don't go well does not, however, mean that everything is quicksand; only that sometimes we have to step in and reflect and consider and carry ourselves forward into the future of our lives, shared up to that point (not agreed).

Despite my many attempts to grasp Wittgenstein's point, I have to confess nec caput nec pedes. — Agent Smith

Well, as with @Metaphysician Undercover requiring that following and obeying be subject to the same necessity--not seeing that we may follow, for instance, our heart instead, or cross a line (in disobedience, but, necessarily, against it specifically)--maybe heads (e.g., following rules) and tails (e.g., deciding ends) are not the point and it is your desire to make something (find some knowledge) which is under investigation, and so confusion is the starting point, not a reason to give up. Instead of projecting, put yourself in the position of asking the questions he does, feel the reason for the others' statements that he quotes, etc. I remain open to answer any questions about what I wrote, or clarify.

Imagine there's a rule on how to use a particular word. — Agent Smith

Not providing an example makes rules sound ubiquitous, but, again, I would argue that the passage is investigating how we follow rules (what we want from that and the disappointment of it), and not making a claim that rules fundamentally make up our use of language or our actions. Does using a particular word usually involve "rules"? I can say you aren't using the right word ("you're really eager, not anxious"), but that is general, as is not using any word appropriately (and correctness can be for no reason, or just a boundary, or subject to debate even apart from whether a rule needs interpretation), but if we want a rule about a single word, maybe: don't shout fire in a crowded theater, though this seems a rule on the border for a word and an act? As would be rules about apologies, excuses, etc., and so then maybe it is essential to have an example here.

I apply the rule (as I apprehend it). However, my rule is not the same as your rule and yet the first few instances the two of us have used that word are compatible with both our rules. That we're using two very different rules is hidden for this reason. — Agent Smith

If we choose to follow the rule, we do the same thing. If we interpret the rule a different way, we act differently. If we disobey the rule, we interpret it the same, but defy it. And we may also not be following the rule, yet still act coincidently. Witt points out that following a rule is not like focusing on a line to see what to do next (#223), so the idea that we act the same way but somehow apprehend the rule differently is an illusion (an imagining to insinuate skepticism in order to create the idea of a specialness to us). Again, the paradox is something only if rules are to be everything, else it is a paradox showing the powerlessness of rules to provide the certainty we want (or the skeptical quagmire we create to allow us to be the center of the universe).

The sequence 2, 4, 8,... can be made to fit with an arbitrary number of patterns i.e. a word's usage pattern can be made to match any rule whatsoever. — Agent Smith

This takes Witt's realization as the discovery of a paradox which importantly impacts our ability to have any certainty at all (Kripke will call this the skeptical paradox). However, that a "rule" may not be able to be pre-determined nor causal, only means that rules do not do what we want them to: to make the judgments of our actions, or others', certain beforehand--to already know the best thing to do. Rules just do not play the part in meaning and justification that we want (think we need) them to. Our judgments are made afterward (as @Banno points out), based on the criteria for doing such a thing; and so the discussion of obeying a rule is not an explanation (of how action or expression works--by rules) nor "resolved" as @Hermeticus characterizes it; it is an example (of what matters in being said to have "obeyed a rule"), as there were examples of calls and slabs, and chess: to show us the mechanism for them each individually, and the limitation of them to be a general analogy.

I suppose what I mean to inquire is whether there's any difference at all between essence (of a word) and rule (how a word is supposed to be used)? — Agent Smith

Wittgenstein puts it (#371) that the essence of a thing is shown in how we would judge it to be such a thing. That what is essential to us is what interests us, how we value it, what differentiates it, refines it, etc. Here, the essence of "obeying a rule" is brought out in what criteria make up our judgment of how rules are obeyed.

Therefore [ because two people can come to the conclusion in different ways ] there is a real issue of very distinct mental processes each leading to the same conclusion, and the observation of obeying the same rule, because each produces the correct answer, when the processes being followed are actually distinct. — Metaphysician Undercover

But isn't this an observation about following a rule? and not about obeying a rule? We need not have "followed" a rule to be said to have obeyed it. "Why did you drive under the speed limit?" "I followed the rule." or "What speed limit? I'm just driving here." But is it our lack of rationality that causes the fear here? or that there remains a lack of certainty, even if "rules" are involved?

Here, the analogous world of trees and plantations would be animals and cattle, wildlife and product. As I have said, for Wittgenstein, to swing from seeing the same thing as something entirely different while it remains absolutely the same, is to see another "aspect" of it by taking a different "attitude" to it--to approach it, take it for ourselves/to ourselves, differently.

Yes, we must "spend time" to "know deeply", which may be to say: be aware of the context of possibilities; for one example: the world that forces our feeling of inevitability that a home of shelter and comfort, built within the safety of tradition, must be out of lumber, which, by seeming destiny, means, or accounts for, a felled tree. Envisioning a tree as wood then comes to us immediately now, as if "already known". So how do we "witness" a difference? We are not testifying, nor speaking, but listening differently (not being argued by [out from our] logical necessity), accepting, receiving rather than acting, rather than making a certain thing of something.

Whereas the words written on pages, made from the pulp of the wood from the trees[...] make no sound that an innocent can hear over the din of the felling. Nor should they. — James Riley

Our ears must be new born, not filled with the loss of the world through so much noise of language and culture and history; our words and arguments and appetites and entitlements are carved with the blood of consequence, so we must find what is important in this position in order to know ourselves, what we have signed on for, whether we welcome it best.

Sometimes even the logger will set down his tool and listen for a better sound. But it takes time; more for some than others. It’s not merely how long the ringing continues in the ear, but how innocent the ear is. — James Riley

We may be in agreement; we may be in the same place. But if I must have company, I choose those who arrive by foot — James Riley

In Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein examines why we want the certainty of picturing language as words connected to objects (including a "meaning"). To unearth our desire he looks at example after example of the ordinary complicated ways the world is meaningful to us.

...In the actual use of expressions [compared to language imagined like math] 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. — Wittgenstein, PI, #426

Fair assessment. I couldn't respond myself. — Caldwell

Literally the point is that my being moved to morally call you out appropriately is a claim upon you that creates a responsibility to respond. You object, you're confused, etc; but, in not making yourself intelligible, you avoid the claim upon you. Though, in all fairness, you don't have to respond; say, being unmoved, uninterested, however, perhaps without any attempt to make yourself known (even to yourself) we can't call it a response (or to have assessed anything, fairly or not). Though having appropriately made the claim, if you do not work to see for yourself, I am unable to move you to, nor argue, nor explain.

This hour I tell things in confidence,
I might not tell everybody but I will tell you...
All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
else it were time lost listening to me. — Whitman, Song of Myself, 1855, p. 29

I did attach the texts to the original post, and they are very short so I wouldn't be deterred. As well, the antipathy of philosophy is a parred down summary or "thesis"--thinking I could just "tell" you--because plowing through it and noticing what comes to your mind, seeing for and to yourself, is necessary for philosophy to be fruitful at all, to change how you think (not just what, like an opinion), however, with the possibility of getting you further interested, Cavell (following Diamond) takes a moral issue of this magnitude not as a matter of an intellectual argument--that everyone knows the reasons (biological, factual, informational) for or against--but that it takes re-imagining the world in a different way for ourselves, so that the form of claim I make is emotional and revelatory and calls you out to answer in kind (or be the lesser for it); i.e., the comment is not about the subject so much as the form of discussion.

I made a mistake: the reference to "passionate utterances" in the essay on animals is just a mention of an essay called "Performative and Passionate Utterance" in Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow. I have edited the original post and attached the pages of the core argument of that essay to it.

I attached the Philosophical Investigations section XI on aspects and the Companionable Thinking essay by Cavell to my original comment, though the book starts with Diamond responding to a fictional speech (I believe made elsewhere) and, en masse, to four other responses, then Cavell responds to her with the essay provided, then McDowell responds to Cavell, then Ian Hacking tries to wrap it all up, so the context is not entire with just Cavell's essay, but he does directly quote all that may be necessary. Also, Cavell had a tendency in his later work to drop a lot of unpursued possibilities without fleshing them all the way out (and to simply refer back to previous works where he worked out an issue completely) and he is not taking a position on the welfare of animals so much as the philosophical analysis of this type of ethical discussion in the face of skepticism of its possibility. Finally, the reference to passionate utterance is actually to an essay "Performative and Passionate Utterance" the core of which I am also attaching to the original post

@Caldwell @James Riley @baker @Wayfarer

I have heard some arguments for animal rights....
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There really is no perspective to prefer in terms of point of view on the matter. — Shawn

Cavell has an essay in the book Philosophy and Animal Life, in response to a fictionalized speech making a plea for the moral treatment of animals. In response (piggy-backed on Cora Diamond's response to other essays setting out arguments for the proposition), Cavell starts from Wittgenstein's finale in the Philosophical Investigations where Witt looks at our capacity to see an aspect of something (PI, p. 193-208, 3d), to see something in one regard rather than another (the dawning of a re-cognizing of the same thing with no proper case as cause (yet, at other times, constrained, PI, p. 208-9)). " 'To me [some abstract lines] is an animal pierced by an arrow.' That is what I treat it as; this is my attitude to the figure." (PI, p. 205 3rd Ed) Our "attitude" is the vantage we take towards something, how we value it in our standing to it. "My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of the opinion that he has a soul." (PI, p. 178, iv) An attitude to animals is not intellectual (say, about our biological similarities or dissimilar rights); it is not a matter of learning something (the horror of farming practices), of knowledge of information (facts), thus not in the form of a traditional argument.

The observation is that issues like the treatment of animals are not on the level of a rational conclusion (particularly given it is not even a moral issue like abortion, but a sea-change in our everyday behavior, our vision). Such an expression Cavell calls a passionate utterance in his essay with that name from the book Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow (excerpt attached), drawn along the lines of Austin's performative act (the criteria of which is outlined in the excerpt)--which, like an apology, can be true in that it is done appropriately, though not in the way a statement is true/false. A passionate utterance is done to affect the feelings, thoughts, or actions of another (technically, an Austinian perlocutionary act--@Banno). Plato calls this persuasion (by rhetoric), and he is right in the sense that there is no accepted conventional procedure (as with Austin's examples of other performative acts) like with a promise, or a bet.

However, in this case, I am nevertheless moved by my passion to (appropriately) claim to have the standing to single you out and demand a response ("what I expect from you" PI, p. 205) that you may be moved to offer (or the exchange falls apart at any point--fails to be made "alive" for you, PI, p. 205). Appropriate because we are friends, or I am an institution with a history of involvement, or I accuse you of inhumanity, etc. Witt will say that the alternative concept forces itself on us (PI, p. 204), which I take as the pressure put on you to respond as a function of the appropriateness of my claim, which structurally amounts to, not my argument, but my, say, cry of pain (PI, p. 197)--to which a similar class of response may be only to be "repelled" (PI, p. 205)

I am moved to expose my interests and needs and desires (what is "important to us" PI, p. 205) as they are the means of the production of our self (Marx), that they comprise us (or fail to), and to that extent, that we are what compromises the social contract, thus our lives require an accounting--for our want and waste and false necessity--in the face of our real need and, to put it in place for philosophy, the good (roughly). In this case, what am I, in terms of: at what (whose) expense? That we may know the good but not behave or feel accordingly (be virtuous); we may be incapable of an ideal yet still yearn to attain our better self. I am not morally more competent than you to judge monstrousness, but also you cannot absolve yourself by generalizing guilt rather than providing the intelligibility of a specific response to being singled out by a call to imagine (PI, p. 207) animals, say: as present company; or as sacrifice; etc.

As with Kant's aesthetic judgement and the method of Ordinary Language Philosophy, seeing an aspect is for you to see for yourself " 'I see a likeness between these two faces'—let the man I tell this to be seeing the faces as clearly as I do myself." PI, p. 193.

Section of Philosophical Investigations, 3rd Ed. pp. 193-208, attached.

Cavell essays - Companionable Thinking, and excerpt from Performative and Passionate Utterance, attached

1. Humans have an innate "intuitive" faculty. 2. We can readily rely on this faculty to obtain knowledge. — Wheatley

Emerson will call it the genius that each of us have, but it is more in relation to an opportunity than something innate. Is it unobjectionable to say we all have different interests, are attracted to different things? We can be drawn into the world (Heidegger). Not that we are the cause of making our will known, our are grasping some knowledge special to us, but in the sense of our knowing our way, which one is ours (or ignoring it). We can make that intelligible not by intention or our meaning, but because of the interests and identities and distinctions and ordinary criteria embedded in our culture and lives--our conformity to it Emerson calls it, or our aversion from it.

To call it a "faculty" is a picture which would lead us to want to know the nature of it, it's source, it's constitution, it's authority, it's power, etc. This sets it up as part of human nature, rather than as part of the human condition, a place we at times find ourselves in.

An essence is that quality/property necessary for a thing to be that thing. If an essence is absent, then a thing stops being that thing, we're talking about something else entirely. A wolf forebear is an essence of a dog. — TheMadFool

This actually catches some of what is important that Witt is pointing out, particularly that the grammar of a thing (the way it works, or not) expresses what makes a thing that thing. But to term it as a quality/property is to put "essence" into the framework of an object. For one thing, since there are a number of criteria for judging whether a thing is a thing, that would mean there would be multiple "essences", which would defeat the unexamined reason that we need to create it: to be "necessary", in other words, to be determinate, to be decisive--to create certainty in our relation to the thing. As well, in saying "essence" there is a tendency to imagine one generalized picture for what an essence is, how it works; when the criteria for an apology and of a table are not only categorically differentiating, but the criteria for which can be structured completely differently, such as that moral responsibility does not work as a function of knowledge.

To take a fact about a thing as the essence of it is to miss that our criteria for determining a thing are made up of what matters to us about something, what interests us, what makes up why we judge it the way we do. The impersonalization of a scientific categorization is fixed and certain but is not what matters to us in most cases. We could argue that the essence of a dog is loyalty, unconditional love--that the essence of a dog is that it is our best friend. A definition is set by us (if not just a list of examples), as a criteria can be when it is a standard, such as measuring (these are not the criteria Witt find illuminating). A dog is defined as: ____, and pick whatever fact you'd like. It is necessarily a mammal, does that tell us why it is important to us?

Wittgenstein is right in saying words lack an essence but words and definitions are two entirely different things. — TheMadFool

The point is that words can be defined individually, independently; that is possible to define words. This ability to put together these definitions is what makes us feel we can understand a sentence without a context, without it having been first said. To say that our definitions capture what is essential, means that it is us who strips away the ordinary criteria for judging, identifying, a seeing how a thing works. And we do this in order to have control and presage our communications rather than be responsible for them.

You can refer to objects with words--say "Cat" when you see a cat; the use here could be naming, or identifying, or seeing. But this will not tell us anything about a cat's essence (what is essential to us about them) other than it is an object that can be seen, identified, and named (though even as: Fluffy).
— Antony Nickles

Why not? A cat is a domesticated small species of feline. These are the essences of a cat. — TheMadFool

This is a description of a cat; these are facts about a cat for identifying a cat, say, from a dog, or a tiger. These are not the essence of a thing that philosophy seeks. The criteria for a table could be that it is flat and has four legs; but someone might disagree that a table is anything on which we share a dinner. If we can let go of the fantasy that the essence of an object or concept is some fixed universal property that is certain and continuous, than we can begin to have a discussion about what is essential--what is important about the world, captured in how we live and judge and identify. What you find essential about justice and what I do has depth and weight and matters to us (all). Though sometimes that can't be reconciled does not mean the discussion should be cast aside in exchange for rules and meanings and an "essence" (without us).

That said, there is a certain interpretation of Wittgenstein I've warmed up to viz. philosophy, all discourse in fact, is simply symbolic manipulation... Nobody understands a word they're saying is my point à la Wittgenstein's ladder. — TheMadFool

If you want to dismiss philosophy, there is every opportunity. I would offer that you suspend the urge to simplify and judge; you will not be better for having put a label on something and trivialized it. The person who started writing the Tractatus is not the same person who wrote the end of it. It is an exploration of what could be said given a certain standard. The ladder are all the claims he can make in the Tractatus with such certainty because no one would object. (Later in the PI, he will say "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy, it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them." #128) They are not without sense, but there is no sense in having said them. Having gotten through saying them all, he finds himself without anything to say. Yet he is lucid, transcendent, aright. It is a catharsis and expiation of his desire to fix the world to a criteria of certainty that he began with. In Philosophical Investigations, he turns towards what in the Tractatus he calls philosophers' "nonsense", to take that seriously and understand the motivation for it.

Wouldn't we say it is more in the sense of "Hey, I thought you had a headache."--as in confused, requesting confirmation; rather than a question (despite the question mark). — Antony Nickles

Which goes to my point that we often distinguish — and need to distinguish, for conversations to make any sense — the literal, conventional meaning of what we say from the use we are making of it in the circumstances. "Don't you have a headache?" does not mean "Hey, I thought you had a headache" or "I am confused about your headache status," but we can use it that way. — Srap Tasmaner

(emphasis added)

In the PI, Witt is trying to get us to see why we want there to be such a thing as a "literal, conventional meaning" (a "meaning"). It is the logic of our concepts that make an expression possible, but it is the circumstances which make the expression interpretable. We do not know the use of an expression until it is said in a situation (sometimes even ourselves, as speaker); we may not know the concept even without some sorting out, as we did in this case. As I said earlier, a misleading fact about language is that every word can have a definition (PI, #1), so we can look at a sentence in isolation, without a context, and it appears to have "a meaning". But, of course, even with the simplest cases--like someone saying "Slab!" (#19)--we learn that how something is meaningful to us is tied up with the importance to us (all) of ordering, pointing, seeing, responding, acknowledging, etc. (To understand a sentence means to understand a language. PI #199) That we must have our whole lives to draw on in order to understand a sentence. The idea that a sentence has a meaning (like an object, even a similarly-structured "use") comes from the desire to have a direct, certain, complete, immediate, correlation between what we say and what it "means" (a word and its referent; an object and its essence). There is no simple picture anymore for philosophy after Wittgenstein.

The other part of this is harder for people to hear (accept), as it means our role in language is much less than we had hoped. In saying language is not structured as having meanings, Wittgenstein is not simply proposing a replacement for "meaning" in the same picture with his suggestion to look at the use of a concept. We distinguish between the possibilities of a concept (like knowing), but only when conversations don't go as expected; a sentence can pass unnoticed, without meaning anything at all (a type of non-sense). This means that intention is a question asked when there is something odd about an expression, not an accompaniment to everything we say. Although some expressions are said intentionally, what is meaningful about them is not how we use them . The use is seen in the expression (afterwards). Our wish for certainty is a desire to have control over "the use" of an expression, so that we can avoid our responsibility afterwards for what we have said.

The question I am focused on is whether, in denying that a sentence is useful in some circumstance, do we deny that it is meaningful? Do we deny that it could carry a truth-value?
* * *
that's what meaning is--- use in a language-game. If a sentence is not useful, then it's nonsense. — Srap Tasmaner

I don't want to run off topic here but the term "use" captures that language can not be meaningful beforehand (as if in a "meaning" or by anticipated rules), that concepts (knowing, pointing, threatening, believing) can have multiple possibilities and various conditions and criteria, so we have to wait until something is expressed at a time, in a place, to an audience, within the context of expectations and implications, etc. that are inherent in a real situation (a full context). The actual "context" does not even create something specific but just the variables of the moment to clarify or question the expression in relation to any number of unexplored contingencies. It may be that a concept is even extended to something new based on a new context (or in a moral moment).

So, "use" plays a part in what is meaningful because, once something is said, then we can look at the expression and the context, what the concept appears to be, its criteria, the possible judgments, etc. and see what sense of a concept we are talking about. And here sense is synonymous with use, and they are like options of the concept and expression, as we have talked about "I know" as in the sense of being aware (or I know in its use as: I can justify).

It is not a utilitarian judgement of what is useful, as in practical. It is not what I "use" my words for, as if I control how they will be meaningful (though I can control what I say).

So@Srap Tasmania, denying that an expression has a use (in the associated concept) does not mean it is meaningless, though its impact might just be to raise brows. And I wouldn't think we could consider every use of a concept as being normative like truth is, but we would need examples of both of these to even start a discussion.

Ludwig Wittgenstein: Meaning is use. Check.

Therefore, I can use words as signs to refer to things, their essences. — TheMadFool

You can refer to objects with words--say "Cat" when you see a cat; the use here could be naming, or identifying, or seeing. But this will not tell us anything about a cat's essence (what is essential to us about them) other than it is an object that can be seen, identified, and named (though even as: Fluffy).

if you can sensibly say you know you have a headache, you ought to be able sensibly to say that you don't know you have a headache. — Srap Tasmaner

Perhaps there might be occasions where it would make sense to say. But I can’t think of any and I’d imagine they would be exceptional circumstances. — Luke

In this case, as I said earlier, that "I know I have a headache" is "know" in the sense of being aware. To decide what we can "sensibly say" is to imagine that we can understand the context and impact of what we say before it happens, which is not how language works. For example, before judging what use "know" has in the sentence "I don't know that I have a headache", we need a context (as anything does). Here, imagine that you see me wincing and holding my head, and ask "Do you have a headache?", and I turn my head and squint and say, "I don't know that I have a headache, it's more like my neck is sore and I'm getting shooting pain up through my scalp." So here we could say that "know" is related to its sense of what we would make a claim about, what we would stand behind to justify--"I wouldn't say I have a headache, so much as...". As @Banno pointed out though, if you asked "What justifies your knowledge?" I would be at a loss as to how to reply, but if you asked "Are you sure?", I could say "No, it's weird; let's go to the doctor". Now there is a sense of certainty that we want from the first question about justification, which is reliable (verifiable) truth. But in this use of know, the certainty (we can't claim) here is confidence, thus the turn to authority.

Now even the imagining of the context for a concept is not to tell if we can "sensibly say" it or whether we can judge it as nonsense--philosophy is not the arbitor of expression. The method is to be able to bring a concept back to its ordinary criteria to learn why we want to picture it another way, here as reliable, justified truth. Again, the importance for philosophy is its tendency to simplify by abstracting from the event of an expression at a time in a context to a world without criteria other than those that lead to an outcome that is predictable and certain.

As well, the converse or negation of a statement is not necessarily its opposite; Austin's example is that the opposite of "voluntary" is more like "under constraint" than "involuntary", the opposite of which is "on purpose".

There are a couple things to note about this. One is that "Don't you have a headache?" is a yes-or-no question... — Srap Tasmaner

Wouldn't we say it is more in the sense of "Hey, I thought you had a headache."--as in confused, requesting confirmation; rather than a question (despite the question mark).

What an amazing attempt at building up a distinction where none exists... Pain is objective... And nobody in real pain ever gave a rat's ass for, say, Mars' atmosphere. — Olivier5

Oh good, you figured it out! Enjoy your Kant; we're done.

The method Witt uses in imagining a context for an expression is to show that the sentence is meaningful,
— Antony Nickles

Was it meaningless when originally said here a few pages back? — Srap Tasmaner

The emphasis is being able to show a context; in this way we can see the implications of the expression, the way in which it works (it's grammar) and thus which sense of the concept, what use it is here. TMF's original sentence is meaningful because all the words can be, but there is, as yet, no context (despite its being a retort here) in which we can see which use of know this is and what the sentence tells us of the implications to the concept of sensations. To say the sentence is more/different than I have outlined is to have a different context/example or to be able to say there is something objectionable in my description, reasonably, with evidence (what else we say when we say that).

In the case of a pain, were the only justification is the pain itself, it is simply not possible to provide the necessary evidence. — Banno

I knew there was a more definitive criteria of the sense of knowledge I was trying to contrast with that of being aware for @Olivier5, but I couldn't come up with this, so thank you. I would add that the flip-side is that our impotence to prove our sensations to the other outside of our expression of them makes the other's rejection of our pain all the more isolating, which adds to the desire for a picture that ensures our ability to communicate who we are to someone else as if it were just a matter of simply describing some thing that is certain and complete (all that is required) to be known/justified in a way that defies rejection, ensures acceptance.

Does [You can't correctly be said to know you have an itch. @Banno] mean it's incorrect to say I know I have a headache? "Incorrect" how? In the sense that it's false? Or does "I know I have a headache", despite appearances, have no truth-value? — Srap Tasmaner

Earlier, here, I said:

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

The method Witt uses in imagining a context for an expression is to show that the sentence is meaningful, that there are ordinary criteria for judging such a use of I know (as that I am aware), in order to show (by contrast) that the criteria are just not what we want--as an answer to the skeptic that there is in fact something in me that is "me" (rather than pain just being mine), which the example of pain seems to provide with its intensity (apparent inability not to be known) and seeming certainty (that our knowledge is unshakable, rather than not certain at all). The need to "know" our pain in this way removes any context (and our human part in someone's pain) and imposes criteria like correctness and truth-value of the pain. For pain, we judge the expression not the pain, though I may judge the pain by the expression ("That's not quite it")--not having the words (quite yet), not paying attention, not fully aware of my repressed pain, being mistaken out of shock. Others' judgement is also not by the criteria of correctness or truth in correspondence, but it works in the ways that I can lie or be mistaken, and all you have is to accept my expression as a person in pain, or reject the expression (question me or dismiss me).

What is the sense of "knowledge like that of an object"?... I believe that my pain can be known in the exact same sense that any other object can be known: perceived via the senses and explained rationally by the intellect. — Olivier5

We could say we "perceived via the senses"(empirically) and can explain pain "rationally" as neurons firing and tissue swelling and brain processes (this is me being sciency). But my pain is not explained or justified; we don't use reasons, but, at best, describe our pain, yet, in describing it, we are expressing it (even to ourselves, as in, becoming aware of it in that way) because it is ours, we have it. I don't even need to be (necessarily) aware of my pain nor say anything to me or you intellectually rational, because I can merely cry out; and now, substitute words. #244

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

With an object, we have the space (between us and it) to create the picture of a word and the thing it refers to. This kind of thing can be given qualities and must meet criteria like discrete, defined, perceivable, certain. And in this space I can have knowledge in the sense of what is true. This picture of an object is not how pain works; there is no pain that is true for me, there is no criteria to meet other than my awareness of it and my expression (description) of it to you. Now I can lie (to myself and you) and I can do a better or worse job of expressing my pain, but that will only matter to the extent of the context--doctor's appointment, request for sympathy, comparison to your pain, etc.--and not as knowledge, say, of Mars' atmosphere.

I don't think there is such a strong difference in kind between sentences and words. — Banno

Well I took this up above, but the idea that a sentence like "I know I am in pain" looks like it is meaningful in the abstract is because words can be defined (however partially, they can) and so we can imagine we understand what this sentence does. But a sentence is like an expression, which is meaningful by the criteria of a concept, as what I say can be judged to be a threat or an apology, or that only in an expression are we able to determine which use of a word applies.