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.

Democracy means nothing if it is not "concerned about ends". — Athena

I didn’t mean to disagree, just to differentiate what I was discussing. Truth in this sense is more like a founding principal than a decision about what to do, how we are to decide in a moral quandary. Of course I do agree with the need for a reasonable discussion about those issues, and, when we extend into the unknown, we are in a similar structural position of responsibility to an ethical decision as the acceptance of a principal. Though I would think the context is more concrete with a decision about what to do.

You are declaring your pledge of responsibility to a moral truth generally claimed by everyone, or, claimed universally. — Mww

A claim to the truth is made as if it were universal, as there is no reason it can't be (the other is in the same position with a rejection). I make it in a universal voice, as Wittgenstein makes his claims to a grammatical remark or difference, such as that believing is like hoping and not thinking (#574).

That I am categorically responsible for my reasons and by association my judgements given from them, does not immediately demand I am categorically responsible for accepting a general moral truth. — Mww

No, it's that a truth is accepted or rejected--that's how it works--it is not proved true and false (that's a different kind of true). Not that it is a demand by me, but that, like the pain of the other, it is a claim upon you, who you will be, in response.

Willingness to be responsible for rejection is negation of validity (of truth). — Mww

Well being willing to provide a reasoned rejection to a claim to truth is at least more courageous than refusing to answer at all (say, sliding out behind logic, science, that it's all irrational). I'm not sure just being responsible is a negation, but I will say the possibility of rejection is not an immediate fracturing of community. There is the opportunity for rational disagreement.

The onus is on those advocating that it isn’t [a small, vanishing chance for truth], to present, not a mere claiming of, but a justification for, why it isn’t. — Mww

I acknowledge that we shouldn't blindly accept things, but, as I have said, you should see for yourself. Otherwise, this seems very cynical. I would call for more of us to attempt to see the truth in something rather than demanding that the other provide justification first. Our job as philosophers is to seek the truth, stand in the other's shoes (on their terms), find something of worth even though there may be a weakness (make their argument the strongest case you can), acknowledge more and not dismiss out of hand, etc. I take this as Diamond's hope for the truth, for us to think well on its behalf. Prefunctory skepticism lacks intelligence and imagination just as much as blind obedience. @Banno@Marchesk@tim wood

How about Cicero and the notion of right reason? It is a democratic value to know the truth because right reason is essential to things going well, and wrongly reasoning can lead to trouble. Education for good moral judgment is about understanding cause and effect and the importance of right reasoning. This also goes with Socrates' concern about expanding our consciousness because if we don't know enough, we are more apt to make bad decisions. And the miracle of democracy is having many points of view, a broad consciousness — Athena

I agree that a broad education is important. It does bring up the issue again of avoiding a rote understanding of truth. I take this as the difference between "knowing" the truth and accepting it (telling myself rather than being told). As well as understanding its depth of meaningfulness, we come to its importance as a personal process, a journey of my life maybe as much as my acknowledgement of its implications. The reading of Cicero that stuck with me was that it mattered to the truth who I was as a person, which I read as that I am part of the state of a truth. That this can be done well or poorly, rather than right or wrong. That we are not here concerned about ends (things going well).

My issue is that if morality is entirely human-made, then there's no objective truth to it... Which means that anyone's morality, including our modern enlightened sense of fairness, is arbitrary. Nothing real makes it true. — Marchesk

This is the story relativism tells. But you will notice it begins with the desire (demand) that truth meet a standard that does not include us, as math does not, nor science. But this is not the nature of truth, and so its condemnation is our doing, not its failing. We deem ourselves "arbitrary" because we don't meet the very standard we impose in a desire to avoid ourselves being responsible, avoid ourselves being known if we are. Our interests, our judgments, are the long history of a moral truth, which we paint as partial, contingent, irrational, but it is ours, our culture, our duty, in which to make who we are, what our culture will be, our country, in relation.

To desire a third party (criteria) to arbitrate a truth between you and I--to wish for a rule to tell me what is the right thing to do--is to abdicate a moral conversation before we have even begun. The fact is that we may not come to agreement but we can have a disagreement for reasons we understand and will know at least what each stands for.

it might be worth considering further. Let's look at Anscombe's shopping list. If it is a list of all the things she bought, it will be true if it lists all and only the things she bought. If it is a list of the things she is intending to buy, is it still true if it lists all and only the things she intends to buy...? I'm wiling to consider alternatives. — Banno

If we consider that not every act is intentional (chosen), but nevertheless certain acts include being willing to answer for them (more than just "did you intend to...?), then we are not like the investigator, who may get the record of the world wrong, but we also would not be said to have made a mistake in what we intended (to do). The mistake we may be said to make in relation to a truth is that we wish to excuse ourselves of our obligation to it, our promise to stand for it (to welch, I think Austin says); we may have made an error in the sense of not realizing the terms and implications I was committing to, but this is not to denigrate its truth, but, reflect on me.

I'll go over the difference in direction of fit one more time. To decide if "the cat is on the mat" or "The cat is not on the mat", one looks at how the world is, and makes a choice as to which words fit. But making observations is of no help in deciding if "the cat ought be on the mat" or "the cat ought not be on the mat" is true. Rather these last are an expression of an intent to act upon the world. — Banno

The direction we take is thus not towards the world, to express it correctly, truthfully, but towards our desires and intentions. I would qualify this as the expression of those in this case, which is to say the history of the things that have been said about this truth. And, since our language contains our interests and judgments in the world, that they reflect on ourselves. Do I fit the life (the list) of what our truths are to be?

And I am taking a moral claim as a conclusion of what we ought to do, as different than a truth we are asked to accept absent a call to a specific action, not decided before taking, in light of taking, or what that act should be. The necessity for action is as yet undetermined, but I nevertheless am in position to choose whether I will stand ready (thereafter) in response (either way).

My concern would begin with whether justice was real or just a social construct. — Marchesk

Your acceptance of a claim of what justice is thus appears contingent on your knowledge of it. And one answer I take as a wish that there was a fact about it, and the other would be some sense that we made it up or agreed to it, as if there were no necessary fact about it. I would say there is no "fact" about a moral truth that will satisfy the criteria to obviate your place in the state of its truth, but that, nevertheless, it is not insupportable, only not without our part, our bringing them to life, carrying them forward in our culture, adapting them to new contexts, allowing them to constitute us and compromise us.

Wittgenstein declares that we are not of the opinion (that it is not a matter of knowledge) that the other has a soul (p. 179). An aspect, a possibility, dawns on me (or we are blind to it) and we accept an attitude about someone's soul, as in the position I take toward others; my acts treat them as if they have a soul. The relation we have to a moral truth is to put myself in such a position to it (as part of the grammar of how such a truth works).

the structure of a moral claim is not a statement (known to be true)
— Antony Nickles

.....does that mean not a known true statement, or, not a statement at all? I took it to mean not a statement at all, insofar as I hold the structure of moral claims to be grounded in the moral feeling alone. — Mww

Not a statement known or judged to be true or false, so, not a statement (is there any other); the idea of a declaration is more appropriate, announcing to everyone that it is me staking myself to this truth. This is not a feeling, say, Humean. A moral truth is part of our world (there are criteria and rationale) though not a claim about the state of the world.

The expression of my poverty or well-being is also derived from feelings, but the pledge respecting that expression is a statement, and because it expresses a subjective condition a priori, it must be known by me to be true. — Mww

Diamond.....or you.....should have said, a moral claim-ing can be general, which means anyone can do it, which is certainly a true moral statement.[/quote]

I meant general, as not specific (see discussion above re Wittgenstein), but also that I claim it to be a truth for all of us, which is a claim to community as much as it is to truth.

to say you are claiming responsibility for mine, or that I pledge anything about yours, is outside the realm of moral consideration. — Mww

Your responsibility is your own, but I hold this truth to be available to both of us, acceptable to both of us, but that you must come to it yourself or reject it, and, though, your reasons may be yours alone, that you are categorically answerable to them.

The claim of a moral principal and an aesthetic judgment are expressed in a similar structure
— Antony Nickles

.....is only superficially true, insofar as aesthetic judgements are grounded in a subjective condition with respect to empirical predicates, re: the beautiful — Mww

My point in drawing a connection is that an aesthetic claim is made as universal, in the sense that you can see it for yourself in what I show you that can be seen. This is not a claim of a subjective condition, or a justification from a subjective position (I don't want to go down a Kantian rabbit-hole, but it is along the lines of the form of the beautiful). To say it is "subjective" is to judge the personal by the desired, imposed criteria of certainty, the achievement of which is the erasure of our responsibility for truth entirely.

but the claim of a moral principle... here taken from your implication of staking a claim in a moral principle, claim-ing a moral principle, taking possession of it implicitly re: the sublime, in your case apparently, responsibility, are grounded in a subjective condition predicated on pure practical reason. — Mww

Your characterization of the acceptance of a moral truth implicitly, as in the sense of without question or reservation, is not the structure of the acceptance; I am accepting to be responsible for it, to it. My reasons are my own, as are my reservations. In addition, I am not accepting one thing, or asking you to do the same, for my or a set of reasons which we agree to, but within its depth and breadth, though perhaps not to all of it, but which is mine to be held to, by.

their respective expressions, the former being a judgement expresses as a cognition, the latter being necessary ground for the judgement, expressed as a feeling. — Mww

I am pointing out a categorical requirement, apart from the picture of only a dichotomy of reason or feeling (irrationality). I call it categorical because it is implicit of the structure of what a moral truth is, my part in it, to it, is part of its grammar as Wittgenstin will call it.

no principle can be itself a judgement... it's easy to lay claim to a principle without ever considering the source of it, and consequently, the truth of its necessity. — Mww

There is no necessity for it except that which you see in it, or are willing to be answerable for in its rejection, to endlessly attempt to reconcile ourselves within it, to it, of which we are the source (not my reason or feeling, independent of my responsiveness).

Moral claims can't be true i.e. when someone claims everyone is equal, a moral claim, he does not do so because it is true, incidentally it isn't. Ergo, moral claims must be about something else - bewitchment by language? What that something else is...??? — TheMadFool

This is again to want something's being "true" to be the reason why we claim it; truth here being a standard that moral claims can not meet because they do not work like how a proposition or statement are true. This is what the bewitchment of language allows for: that since one word can mean one thing (a certain way), we take all language to mean one thing in the same way. But claiming a moral truth works differently. The value it has is to the extent we are willing to relinquish the judgment of it and allow for the reasoning it has, prepared to see ourselves in its expression.

Morality is made up by humans like math — TheMadFool

Well, but not like math though. And we also "made up" carpentry, and international tariffs, and apologizing, and dancing, and vengeance, and fairness. The sense of truth which I am discussing is tied to the world as much as the life of etiquette. Justice can be corrupted, perverted, politicized, and simply die. Moral truth is kept alive through us, made up of us.

when it comes to morals and such we are likely better served to look as 'betterment' than 'truth' as dictating the best course of action. — I like sushi

Skipping over that we are not necessarily talking about a claim of how to act, my betterment (or dissolution) is part of my consideration in claiming the truth, as it involves what I become in the act.

Saying something is a moral truth just makes itself out to be a subtler way of claiming a moral absolute that even refuses to be held up to enquiry. — I like sushi

I am not claiming an authority or standard, nor that we must even agree on what is meaningful about it for us both to accept it in a sense that matters. But mostly to say that the exact point, the thing that makes this a moral truth, is that it is something I accept to answer for in having claimed it, open to investigation, deeper understanding.

What I'm hearing is a refusal to acknowledge rhetoric as a distinctly different kind of logic about things that dialectic cannot properly cover, although many people in ignorance think it does, or should. And that the distinctions were substantially understood and laid out more than 2300 years ago. — tim wood

Yes, I'm saying Plato was wrong. The distinction between truth and rhetoric that he made was to hold knowledge to a certain standard, which involved erasing our everyday criteria, which is to say us, people, as imbedded in our culture, institutions, language, etc., but also to remove our part in our moral acts, which I am saying here is the categorical necessity for this sense of a truth, we are required; though we certainly run from that obligation (perhaps even creating a hidden world to be/do what we do not want to). The sense of rhetoric as words that mean or do nothing is because of the fact that we can mean them, as in be willing to stand by them, to have such an expression fully and completely express me just then to you about whether we will accept that all people are created equal; to express me as a person, as one who judges, as a citizen in a country founded on the principal.

You know, but you apparently do not know that you know. — tim wood

It may be a matter of my knowledge of myself, my learning of my interests, what I will answer for in having said it, as if it were what I'd die for.

What is it, or why is it, that we cannot, or will not, accept that everyone is created equal?
— Antony Nickles

Because they are not... Whatever makes you think that everyone is created equal? — tim wood

And you might say, look: they are born into poverty, physically different, etc. which are empirical answers, but this is not an empirical claim. I don't think it, I proclaim it. This is not a claim of knowledge. Knowing what we do already, I am pronouncing that all people are created equal, say, that we each create ourselves in every moral utterance, what we say to something asked of us, in responding to which we are implicated, compromised by (comprised of), created in.

What evidence of that? — tim wood

You are as much the evidence as I, a source of finding reason in it, for it, an interest, a cause. Modern philosophy would say evidence would be how the things we say about it show us how it works to be meaningful. You may be looking for a different kind of evidence; looking for that is where Plato went wrong.

consider just what an ethical imperative is — tim wood

And now you want me to say Kant (or Hume, etc.) was wrong too. The desire for necessity, motivation, cause, power, control, force, normativity, is that then I will know how to predict you, I will be certain I am doing the right thing. But with the kind of truth I am looking at, the after is more important than the before. Not in terms of weighing consequences in making a decision, but what we set ourselves to, without being moved to, other than perhaps for who I am to be in relation.

I wouldn't worry so much about whether moral statements are truth-apt though. — SophistiCat

The idea of wanting something to be "truth-apt" is to have something to depend on, justify our acts, ensure agreement, etc. The sense of a statement that is true or false takes our place--which I say is the structure of a moral claim, in our having to be true to something.

Assenting to a statement is a pledge to proceed in accordance with that statement - anything else would be disingenuous or vacuous. — SophistiCat

J.L. Austin says that our word is our bond (Emerson would say we are bound to it, fated). Cavell puts it that we can be read in our expressions, that we can be asked to answer for them. Wittgenstein will say that I can see what you are going to do, even if you are not aware. I can understand what you've said, more even than you. This is part of my accepting a moral principal, though we may not necessarily have a direction (being told what to do).

I am interested in the performance of "accepting" a claim without doing anything; I've called this platitudes, slogans, quotations; but that is to put the responsibility on the speech, not the speaker. This is why Cicero claimed that who a speaker was, their character, was integral to a good speech, because we are involved. This is why Plato decried "rhetoric", because he did not want us in the picture; our partiality, limitation, lying, hypocrisy, vacuousness, propagandizing, etc.

It is, as Kant would say, expressed in a universal voice (the 3rd critique)
— Antony Nickles

At first glance, that’s a confusion of aesthetic judgements with strictly moral judgements. Are you saying the willingness to be responsible is an aesthetic quality? — Mww

The claim of a moral principal and an aesthetic judgment are expressed in a similar structure, subject to the same acceptance or rejection, with the same powerlessness to resolve other than you seeing what I have drawn your attention to, within the form of each thing.

Sounds suspiciously like fear of context rather than relativism. — I like sushi

Diamond proposes that a moral claim can be general, as universally claimed, but still with a context because it has a history, its possibilities of interpretation, a way that it works, which, most importantly, is that I am claiming it (as discussed above, along with an example of how it is seen as begging relativism).

'Slavery is unjust' is not a True statement as far as I can tell. — I like sushi

It is not claimed as a true statement (that's not how it works).

The question I would have is if the author is tending towards some form of moral absolutism or not? If they are I cannot see how they would convince me. — I like sushi

As I've discussed above, the claim is made upon us all, universally, but it is not a standard, nor does it claim any authority, as it is something you have to see for yourself. We could call it a principal, in that it is initially, fundamentally to be accepted. You need not be convinced, but you do take it as a conviction. As you must accept it, you can reject it, but, as well, then you are the person who has turned your back on it.

That sounds like consequentialism, a full-fledged although incomplete moral theory, unless you have something else in mind when you speak of "implications". — TheMadFool

I'm not discussing a moral theory. I mean implications here as like Wittgenstein's grammar. Not that we are considering the consequences in making a decision before taking action, but that there are categorical ways in which we must take action for it to be such a thing. When we make a claim such as this, we commit ourselves, etc. That is what it means, what is implied, in the doing of it, being said to have done it. This is the structure I am discussing.

My own thinking on the topic owes much to the Direction of Fit stuff from Anscombe, which I am finding quite useful. Moral claims differ from, say, physicist's claims in that the physicist seeks to match their words to the world, while the moralist seeks to match the world to their words. — Banno

I believe this was discussed at the meeting. Diamond's addition to this was I believe that this was not like an empirical assessment, nor that any disparity from what is the case detracts from the truth of a moral claim. This diverges from Anscombe I'm sure but I wouldn't know how.

I wonder if something like "Slavery is unjust" is a moral statement. After all, that slavey is unjust simply follows from what slavery is, in conjunction with what justice is. — Banno

I agree that we could say that here we are simply stating something about slavery, or even, grammatically (categorically), that part of justice is freedom. But those are not to claim this as a truth in instant sense, simply that these statement are true (or claimed to be). All people are created equal is a type of claim that is not in the same category (it has a different grammar), and there is more to it than what simply follows from it as a statement.

Further, moral statements imply an action. "Slavery is unjust" does not of itself imply an action. To get there we need another rule, something like, "reject injustice!" - and that is where morality enters the discussion. — Banno

I understand where you're coming from; standard moral issues amount to, what should we do? (particularly when we are in a new context or our criteria/justifications run out). I would differentiate these kind of claims because there we are discussing or judging the matter beforehand as to what is best or right (or good, at times).

[we should rid ourselves] of "truth" meaning anything substantive. If you think it does, please state that substantive meaning. — tim wood

The substance of a moral truth I do not believe will assuage the desire for a kind that fits the picture for
the criteria we wish to impose. Here, though, I think the best analogy is Wittgenstein's discussion of blurry concepts, vagary, generality, etc.--the insight that a general claim can be more meaningful than a specific one, more appropriate than limiting its senses (and here "sense" is meant in the way Wittgenstein sees that an expression, like "I know" has different options/opportunities (senses) to be meaningful--even that we might not realize until the expression, at a time and place in a context).

And so our example, that everyone is created equal, has multiple possibilities which need not be reconciled together for the claim to be meaningful (yet not whatever you'd like); in fact, it is more important to us because it, as I said, is a summary of all the depth of truth which it contains: that we are the same more than we are different; that despite our divergent paths, we started in the same place and so our differences are situational; that equality is inherent, essential to everyone, as if we were born with it in us; that everyone should be treated with equal dignity, etc. The depth and breadth here is not limited by the desire for certainty that creates the picture of the singularity of "meaning".

By what standards does the OP judge the truth of his pronouncements and why do they not apply to ethics? — TheMadFool

A moral claim is not gauged by generalized criteria. Our lives have specific histories of judgments and interests and what matters, but the difference in this question is not a matter of judging its adequacy, but accepting its implications for you, for the other.

I take dialectic to be a process of arriving at a sense of truth by logical argument.
— Antony Nickles

No, not a sense of, but a true conclusion from valid argument — tim wood

A conclusion from an argument deemed to be valid is one sense of truth, as a statement that is judgeed to be true or false. Some truth is not at the end of reasoning with a criteria imposed to ensure an outcome, mostly certainty, universality, determined application, etc. The dichotomy that anything else is rhetoric is forced by the abstraction from ordinary means of assessing value, determining identity, acting appropriately, etc., which criteria comes from the thing itself; here, the form of a moral claim, which I am saying is categorical.

The possibilities of a moral claim are only contingent on us, our willingness to stand for what is meaningful in it. But the history and criteria of the truth that all people are created equally are not irrational, various, insubstantial. But it is powerless as an argument to independently explain or logically force you, as if it were proposed to you as a hypothesis. It is not a proof of what was or is, to be solved; it is a demand, an insistence, brought alive, to be witnessed, accepted.

This is not to ask a small concession in the face of science or logic. As I said, this is a claim made on everyone. What is it, or why is it, that we cannot, or will not, accept that everyone is created equal? Maybe there is an example I could show you, an implication that needs description, the picture of an alternative drawn, etc., but anything would be something you could see for yourself (is self-evident, as it were). A moral claim is categorical because it, say another's equality, is a claim on you, and thus your rejection defines you; who you are/will be is contingent upon it.

And so a moral truth is not a noun or a thing--the opposite of it is not a falsity or a lie. The state of its being true is held by us. Its substance is what is meaningful to us, what expresses our interests, our judgments, our possibilities.

Rhetoric v. dialectic. — tim wood

I take dialectic to be a process of arriving at a sense of truth by logical argument. It implies that we have come to a conclusion that all people are created equal, rather than it being something I (we) declare as true, and then answer for that stance. The way this works is that one takes it as their own conviction, but that does not mean that you were persuaded to my statement nor to something that is just variable or temporary, etc. There are ordinary criteria, history, context, etc., that exist already, and thus there is a structure that allows for rationale, the individual logic of such a thing, precision, specificity, etc. What makes the sense of "Truth" as certainty is the imposition of our measure of a true statement (thanks Plato). The reason why the moral realm is subject to the charge of being merely "rhetorical", or just words that are empty, is because it is up to us to fill them.

The what-is v. the what-ought. Two logics that overlap in some of their methods, but are in themselves different things about different kinds of topics. — tim wood

The idea of moral as "ought" is not just the measurement of the current state of our world compared to what we would like it to be. If the question is: what should (ought) I do? there is no general answer to that as there is no determination of what to do without a situation, but also because to decide in advance is to think we can account for every application.

The fact that every person is not currently equal is a measure of our culpability. The extent to which we are created equal is open to debate. But, structurally, the kind of claim I am discussing is not an epistemological one, nor an ideal or aspiration. We create or latch on to these dichotomies to avoid our responsibility, our part in a moral world.

My claim is not a theory but my pledge to be responsible for its state (its life or death), ready to act in its defense, to explicate what is summarized.
— Antony Nickles

......if it is my claim, and expresses that pledge, why isn’t it only my poverty or wellness my claim expresses? ...if it is my (moral) claim, how can it not be from my (moral) thought? — Mww

It is not my claim, as in my thought or my statement (that is not the structure, the grammar). I accept its claim on me. It is my willingness to be responsible for it that is my claiming it. And the wellness and poverty is not about me, but how well it is responded for--its state in culture as truth.

...what right do I have to pledge to be responsible on behalf of everyone? — Mww

It is, as Kant would say, expressed in a universal voice (the 3rd critique). It is as if to speak for everyone; but not to impose or override their voice. Your acceptance of it is to see for yourself whether you would be willing to take ownership of it, be seen by it, as well.

The problem he worried on was the fear of relativism.
— Antony Nickles

It looks like spreading MY moral claims, or the personal claims of individuals represented as each “my”, over everybody, is fear of moral relativism. — Mww

When I say "my", I could as well say "our", or more technically, it is our culture's. As I said in the post, it is not the individual vs. anything--it is the individual's part in truth.

Do you think there is an intrinsic gap between moral claims and ethical claims? — Mww

The words have lost any true sense of individuation, but I take a moral or ethic in the sense of a rule, or standard (determined beforehand); whereas the moral realm, and its claim on us, is when we are lost as to what to do, or that we are necessarily a part of what is ongoing.

Neuroscience wants to be able to figure us out, insofar as we are composed of that which adheres to natural law, but if and when it does figure us out with the certainty of natural law.....will “I” disappear? — Mww

And my point is that science, as with the projection of reality, wants knowledge, but only "insofar as we are composed of that which adheres to natural law", and, taken in that sense, is only that which meets the standard of being certain, which simple just rules out most of who we are; our lives, our criteria for judgment, for action, for saying something; our possibilities, our freedom, etc.

Even if proved illusory, not needed in conformity to law, superfluous with respect to determinism writ large.....do we then relinquish relative truths? — Mww

No, to recognize the desire for a reality or science to ground our world with certainty, is not to condemn us to relativity. We have different specific precise criteria for each thing but not the predetermined irrefutable answer. We have to acknowledge our responsibility, which is not the same as reducing our whole society to my opinion, feelings, or thoughts.

@Banno @180 Proof @Cidat

Now the question becomes, to whom does the fear intrinsic to radical skepticism belong? — Mww

I probably can’t paint a picture with enough depth to instill the grip of skeptical doubt, but I do claim that it is not senseless nor should it be dismissed nor solved. We are not dealing with a simple case of attaching a word to an object; let's try: when two people disagree about not only what is important (what the essential criteria are) about an object, but, say, something like justice, e.g., is it restitution of prior wrongs? or just retribution for prior harms? If I say a table is flat with four legs and you say it’s something we study or eat on, we may struggle to see your world as the same as mine, and maybe then the question we imagine of what is real begins to worry us.

Skepticism is, at bottom, the consciousness of ignorance. — Mww

This seems to say that the take-away of the skeptic’s claim is that we realize we don't have enough (or the right kind of) knowledge, that our problem is an intellectual lack. You characterize this as a limit or that we do not have the capacity. My point is that this limitation is, in a sense, self-inflicted. I'm not saying that we could find the capacity or think our way around a limit, but that knowledge is limited (it's not our fault), which is where our responsibility begins (or we avoid it with the mirage of a perfectly-knowable reality). The truth of skepticism is that we are separate from each other so we can not know the other (their minds), we must respond to them, accept them (or reject them); that it is up to us to project an expression into a new context and then be answerable for the fallout (not that the meaning is in the saying); that we must act and be read by it without complete knowledge of the outcome. Cavell puts it that knowledge is not our only relation to the world. But instead of accepting the structure of the human condition we manufacture this picture of reality and blame ourselves for not knowing it, or it for being unknowable, rather than take on the burden that is the world and what we would be in it (or defined by it, as @180 Proof says). This does not quell our pursuit to learn about the world, only that we understand something in making explicit the various ways we measure each different thing (thus ourselves) rather than forcing one standard of judgment.

We don’t abstract from, we assign to. Finches don’t inform us as to what they are, but only provide the data from which we tell them how they are to be known. That feat is accomplished with such speculative metaphysical predicates as appearances, particulars, meanings and truths, along with that which unites them all under a logical system, which doesn’t strip away, but PROVIDES our criteria for each thing and the context under which they are applied. — Mww

I could not have put the train of thought any better myself that leads to us creating the world for ourselves. If we can agree that each thing has its own criteria in various contexts, the "logical system" (for each differently) is provided to us, not imposed by us as abstraction into generalized terms. The “data” of a thing are the preexisting criteria that are only "assigned" as they have developed as part of the history of all our lives (forever) with things and others. Rather than tell the world how it is to be known, we must listen for what rationale a thing has for itself, wait for what matters to us about a thing (hidden in the criteria to gauge it, see it done, etc.).

What I was tracking was that if we want to ensure that the world is "real" (certain), then the fallible part must be me, my perspective, my individuality, my irrationality
— Antony Nickles

That is.....er......absolutely.....most agreeable. — Mww

This was not meant as a statement or claim. I was telling the story we create about ourselves for the world to maintain a sense of stability. And we might not know the world with certainty, but instead of settling for the ordinary fallible limited understanding we can have, complete certainty remains the gold standard for what "knowledge" is (for reality), so then we assume the fallible part is us, that we only see appearances, etc.

What if the human cognitive system is itself a logical system? — Mww

Or this is the other fantasy we tell ourselves: that we operate a certain way, say, that we have a systematic perception (once it was a moral faculty), and if we (neuroscience!!) could figure us out, or how we can't see the real world, then we will understand how we are certain, or could compensate for our imperfection, or, as you say:

What ground do we have to prove certainty, when what we use to prove it, isn’t certain. — Mww

what does it mean to “fear” the conclusions of a radical skeptic? How would that conclusion manifest? — Mww

I appreciate your asking questions; skepticism is of course a long story (and I won't tell it right), but with Plato and Descartes, etc. radical skepticism differs from regular doubt in that it is not just: how to identify a goldfinch from a robin, but: how do we know that is (an instance of) a table, or a piece of wax? Once we get to that question the fear is that there needs to be an answer or we end up in a place where we are asking how do we know what is real at all. To add fuel to the fire, we want to know what is the right thing to do and know about other people (their minds), and then the wheels come off the bus because we can't find any solution that has any weight in those instances.

I grant the need to answer the radical skeptic with a solution (rebuttal? refutation?) of a particular kind. — Mww

And this is the bottle we get trapped into, picturing the issue as a problem that must be solved. What Wittgenstein and others found is that the skeptic's abstraction from tables and goldfinchs to generalized terms like appearance and particular and meaning and true, stripped away our criteria for each thing and a context in which to apply them. Without those, our answer to the skeptic's picture of our groundlessness is to re-impose criteria which solve for that conclusion outside any context.

If ordinary means of judgement result in truth, why wouldn’t that answer the radical skeptic, as a legitimate solution? — Mww

Even if we put the skeptic's claims within an understandably context, the skeptic is correct about our ultimate groundlessness, our separation from each other, the possibility we may not bridge that gap, and that we can not do it with knowledge alone (beforehand, as it were: sidestepping our responsibility). And the fact our ordinary means of judgement are specific for each thing means that truth (true/false) is not the only measure of importance (or truth-value), nor are we setting (imposing) the bar equally across the board with certainty, a certain logic or rationality, etc.

what is an ordinary means of judgement? Are there extraordinary means? — Mww

The criteria we would ordinarily use would be the measure of, or what counts in deciding, say, the difference between an accident and a mistake. They are the yardstick by which we judge whether the expression of an excuse absolves me of the consequences of an action; whether my expression meets the categorical requirements to call it an excuse, one successfully pulled off. Now if we are worried about leaving our actions in the hands of classification and judgment after the fact, we could remove the context of before and after, and the surrounding circumstances, and simply abstract a generalized theory of action or speech which would remove our part in it.

I grant the contingency of empirical knowledge is a human condition, but reject the groundlessness of it. Knowledge is an intellectual process giving a solution in itself, which suffices as necessary ground. There is irreducible certainty in human rationality, therefore knowledge is possible. That which is possible must have a ground. — Mww

Math and formal logic and science are grounded within themselves. For the rest, we "give a solution" to ourselves" which is modeled on those and only recognizes "irreducible certainty" suppressing our ordinary, fallible rationale and the regular logic of our lives. There is no assurance of us being understood, no guaranty for our acts, no knowledge to secure our relationship to another.

This is the desire for certainty to] relinquish us from responsibility for failure.
— Antony Nickles

Perhaps, insofar far as the failure is not mine, but the other’s. I try my best to be understood, and that I have tried relinquishes me from responsibility for you not understanding me. — Mww

The generalized ideas of intention and meaning are abstractly related to our expressions as reality is to our world. That "I try my best to be understood", to mean something specific, is the desire to have what we say have a meaning that is certain, complete, contained. That I simply control what I say, rather than be answerable for what I have said, as the judgment of what matters in our expressions is after my saying it, to you, here, now.

we take responsibility to avoid being responsible.
— Antony Nickles

I can see taking responsibility FOR avoiding being responsible, but if I do take responsibility, something I’m responsible for is presupposed. It would seem I cannot, then, take responsibility TO avoid being responsible. If I take responsibility I AM responsible for taking it, hence haven’t avoided being responsible at all. — Mww

What I said was maybe a bit too poetic to be useful. What I was tracking was that if we want to ensure that the world is "real" (certain), then the fallible part must be me, my perspective, my individuality, my irrationality; if we want our expressions to have a "meaning" (fixed), then the problem must be "you not understanding me". We (humans) take the blame so that the world and our language have the sheen of certainty, because we do not want the burden, the exposure, the instability, of carrying the world and our communications forward ourselves (continually responsible for our lives, our expressions), rather than hiding behind right, rules, rationality, and fact.

Descartes’ metaphysics at least, was merely the other of a pair of extremes, in accordance with the human system of rational complementary. As such, he didn’t fear it, or its potential, but rather accepted its formal necessity, for without it, his idea of god would be meaningless. — Mww

Yes, I am saying the fear of the conclusions of the radical skeptic creates the need to answer him with a particular kind of solution, ignoring the ordinary means of judgment we already live within, because they are not a solution.

....making the inherent potential for failure and uncertainty seem like (the) only state (left to us)
— Antony Nickles

.....IS to succumb. It just makes no sense to me, to argue the validity in fearing a mere potential, or in doubting the possibility of avoiding it. Why would anybody even get out of bed in the morning, if he was constantly wracked with fear for making potential failure the rule of the day?

Nahhhhh.....no profit whatsoever in allowing the exception to the rule to become the expectation. — Mww

I'm not claiming this reality that we postulate is in response to a "mere" potential or that in abandoning its picture we are giving up. The ultimate groundlessness of knowledge is not an exception but our human condition, without an intellectual solution. Nevertheless we function, and fail; sometimes it does not work out; and we bear that ongoing burden.

As regards reality, if we always receive, who or what is projecting? ...[we] always and only tell ourselves how reality appears to be. As soon as this is understood as the fundamental condition of the human state of affairs, there is no legitimate reason to fear — Mww

This is not to deny the world, just its separation into appearance and reality; which is the differentiation we use to salvage reality as a generalized certainty, making our experience or perception what is limited, tainted, or only individual. The history of our lives, culture, and expressions are the fabric of our criteria for each thing, which responds to our inquiries, provided we are not demanding the answers provide generalizable certainty, as we equate with "reality".

I make the case for wishing to be understood BUT NOT holding with any fear of failing in my own understanding, you make the case for the fear of not being understood BECAUSE of the potential for failure in one’s own understanding. — Mww

As I mentioned previously, the confidence with which Emerson implores us to act is to rely upon our everyday criteria, which is not the same as an arrogance that we are not afraid of failing because we act on a certainty based on reality (not that that is your position). I am not making the case that we should be afraid, but that our creation of this picture of reality is the result and evidence of the fact that we are afraid (like an overcompensation to an insecurity); that we want to ensure our being understood, that we want our knowledge to guaranty our acts beforehand, relinquish us from responsibility for failure. This is not fear of failure of "one's own understanding", but the scisim of us from the world, and so we save the world and internalize the failure as our own; we take responsibility to avoid being responsible.