"Philosophy simply puts everything before us,"
126. Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither
explains nor deduces anything.Since everything lies open to view
there is nothing to explain.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf
Philosophy does not explain anything according to Wittgenstein. Provocative. Anyone agree, disagree?
explains nor deduces anything.Since everything lies open to view
there is nothing to explain.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54889e73e4b0a2c1f9891289/t/564b61a4e4b04eca59c4d232/1447780772744/Ludwig.Wittgenstein.-.Philosophical.Investigations.pdf
Philosophy does not explain anything according to Wittgenstein. Provocative. Anyone agree, disagree?
Comments (160)
A bit paradoxical, but I think Wittgenstein is on to something. I don't think this means we understand things simply by looking at them. I think he is alluding to what was called ordinary language philosophy.
I was thinking more along the lines of, via philosophical (phenomenological) investigation of and reflection on experience, finding things which were previously not seen. I think this is quite a different kind of investigation than ordinary language philosophy, although the latter is arguably a kind of phenomenology, just much more limited in scope.
Yes, a small "p" phenomenology. No presumption about consciousness or subjectivity.
Since everything lies open to view
there is nothing to explain.
I encourage folk to read the surrounding pages.
Philosophy sets out explicitly the rules, logic, grammar of the issue before us - so that it "lies open to view". In doing so it untangles the knots in our expression of the issue, leaving nothing more to explain.
Rules, meanings and logic are practices and as therefore investigating them is a kind of phenomenology. The TLP would probably not be considered as such, but I know that many scholars regard the PI as a phenomenological investigation of human life. I haven't read much of it myself, though it's on the list.
Also, I haven't equated philosophy with phenomenology; there are obviously other branches.
Who are those scholars? I never heard of that.
To be sure, there are psychological discussions in the PI. But they are not in the vicinity of §126.
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=wittgenstein+and+phenomenology&source=hp&ei=z_O4YtOlFpzU4-EPtumBQA&iflsig=AJiK0e8AAAAAYrkB36gI7WnZ0076kibJBLm8HNIbolBC&gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0TKkoTLMoKc42YPSSK88sKUlPzSsuSc3MU0jMS1EoyEjNy88F4pz89EoAhIwRMQ&oq=wittgenstin+and+phenomenology&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAEYADIHCC4Q1AIQDTIHCC4Q1AIQDToLCAAQgAQQsQMQgwE6DgguEIAEELEDEIMBENQCOhEILhCABBCxAxCDARDHARCjAjoICAAQgAQQsQM6EQguEIAEELEDEIMBEMcBENEDOggILhCxAxCDAToFCAAQgAQ6CAgAELEDEIMBOgsILhCABBCxAxCDAToLCC4QsQMQgwEQ1AI6CwguEIAEEMcBEK8BOggILhCABBCxAzoOCC4QgAQQsQMQxwEQowI6DgguEIAEELEDEMcBENEDOggILhCABBDUAjoFCC4QgAQ6BggAEB4QFlAAWIsyYK6IAWgAcAB4AIABgAmIAclWkgEGNi0xMC4ymAEAoAEB&sclient=gws-wiz
The point was that investigating human practices, human phenomena, is by definition a kind of phenomenology.
Wittgenstein is talking about meaning and reference.
For example, an argument against private language.
Philosophy sets things out but doesn't explain them...?
(An interesting point to begin a discussion, by the way.)
Already said it.
My understanding of the PLA is that a private language is impossible because in order to determine the meaning of the words it would be composed of (except perhaps for purely ostensive words, i.e.. some nouns) one would need to translate them into a public language one was already conversant in, and this would mean it would not really be a private language. How do we arrive at this understanding? By reflecting on the way things are for us; i.e. phenomenologically.
ok
The first refers to what he calls the "subliming of logic", that is, to certain assumptions about language, the acceptance of which makes it seem as though an explanation for the connection between thought and reality is required.
The second, philosophy as what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions, is a matter of taking the glasses off, of dispelling the preconceived idea of the crystalline purity of logic.
Quoting Jackson
Ray Monk, Wittgensteins biographer, wrote:
The properties of space, time and matter that he was concerned with were not the subject of a physical investigation, but, as Wittgenstein was inclined to put it at this time, a phenomenological analysis. 'Physics', he said, 'does not yield a description of the structure of phenomenological states of affairs. In phenomenology it is always a matter of possibility, i. e. of sense, not of truth and falsity. '
Good to know somebody wrote something.
Especially if that someone is Wittgenstein, and they directly state that they are doing phenomenology.
Post what Wittgenstein said about phenomenology. You cited Monk.
Quoting Jackson
And Monk cited Wittgenstein. Thats a direct quote from
him.
'Physics', he said, 'does not yield a description of the structure of phenomenological states of affairs. In phenomenology it is always a matter of possibility, i. e. of sense, not of truth and falsity. '
Where? Just saying "Monk" is not telling me anything.
'Physics does not yield a description of the structure of phenomenological states of affairs. In phenomenology it is always a matter of possibility, i. e. of sense, not of truth and falsity. '(WVC, p.63)
what is wvc ?
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, from the notes of F. Waismann (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). Zettel (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967).
Quoting 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.
where we can see 'em!
Before us, as opposed to behind us or to our sides, above our heads or under our feet, obscured from view, outside our field of vision.
By the possibilities of phenomena he means the various ways in which we can see things. This is connected to what we say about things, that is, the way we conceive things. This includes our misunderstandings, which limit the ways in which we can see things. They must be cleared away.
Such clearing is preparation for what may grow:
He gives an interesting example of possibilities of phenomena:
What a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved was not the discovery of a new true theory but a fertile point of view. (CV 18)
His concern is not novelty for the sake of novelty but with what a new way of viewing things can allow us to see.
The clear lines of distinction in the Tractatus between seeing and saying no longer holds. They are not separate but interrelated:
It is not simply a matter of what is seen objectively, but of the person looking:
His concern, however, is not with phenomenology as a method or discipline:
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.
Quoting 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).
Excuse my ignorance. Are you claiming that Witty was in favour of ordinary language philosophy?
I agree that there is an ethical aspect to working on oneself, but how one sees things is a prominent and recurring theme for Wittgenstein. Beginning with his 1914-1916 he connects ethics and aesthetics:
And in the Tractatus:
(6.45)
If the ethical view, the view from outside, changes your acts, it is as a result of how one looks at the world rather than how one acts within it.
Quoting Antony Nickles
His analogy with architecture should not be ignored. Throughout his writings we also see the recurring use of terms related to building and construction. The German term 'Auffassung' translated in the quote as "interpretation" means conception. In the revised edition (Blackwell, 1998) it is translated 'conception'.
The connection between perception and conception is also discussed in seeing as. He has a great deal to say about the conceptual involvement with perception. The way we see things involves the framework we see them in as well as the context we put them in as part of a larger picture. This picture is to a large extent culturally inherited but not immutable.
Although not what is at issue in 126:
with regard to interpretation of Wittgenstein and something hidden:
This is true. A lot of people talking about art should pay attention.
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.)
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".
Yes, but not in this sense:
Quoting Antony Nickles
The point is that perception is not passive, it is active, constructive.
Quoting Antony Nickles
And yet he says very little about morality and aesthetics in his later work. What exactly is he replacing the earlier picture with?
Quoting Antony Nickles
The demand for crystalline purity does not extend to the ethical/aesthetic. They are not matters of fact and logic. That there is anything at all he regarded as mystical.
This was written in 1930, after he returned to philosophy.
Quoting Jackson
Oxford LEXICO defines philosophy as "The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline."
Stanford Encyclopedia, on the other hand, does not give any definition of philosophy --at least I have never found one-- but instead it lists a dozen of different philosophies (https://plato.stanford.edu/search/search?query=philosophy).
So, 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?
Then, they do not mean anything for another reason: Philosophy itself cannot explain anything, since it is a system of thought, framework of thinking, etc. Only people who use it can or cannot explain something. In other words, philosophy is a tool. It cannot work by itself.
Here is a concrete example: We cannot say that a screwdriver can or cannot drive a screw. Someone has to use a screwdriver to do that. And then, not all screwdrivers are suitable for all kinds of screws.
(BTW, I find most Wittgenstein's statements provocative, in the sense of causing a negative reaction, especially deliberately! :smile:)
If you need a dictionary, then you are not ready to do philosophy.
Excellent philosophical argument!
And great joke!
Indeed.
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.
Quoting 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).
Quoting 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.
Agree. The P.I. is not a refutation of the Tractatus so much as but an extension. Logic always has a context.
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.
He equates logic with grammar. And there is not one grammar.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Right. Logic is no longer seen as the transcendent and transcendental scaffolding of language.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I think he maintains a sense of the mystical, of experiences that we may wish to express, but which language cannot convey. He talks about this in his Lecture on Ethics (1929)
Quoting Antony Nickles
Although he rejects the idea of a logical underpinning it does not follow that he rejects the experience of the mystical.
Quoting Antony Nickles
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.
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.
All this is fine and thank you for the clarification.
However, my response was about the meaning, usefulness, etc. of such statements, independenty of who has stated or states them. They are quite general, and 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.
If one wants to refer specifically to philosopher X, he should form the title of his topic as follows: "What did X mean by saying this and this?" This would put the topic and discussion in the right perspective. Isn't that right? And in that case, I wouldn't have anything to say.
Only if one assumes there is an objective morality to be uncovered.
Quoting Antony Nickles
The Tractatus attempts to show that it is not reducible to a science.
Yes, certainly you have nothing to say.
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.
Quoting 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.
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.
I undestand your point.
BTW, in my experience, from the hundreds of texts and dozens of philosophers I have read in my life, starting with Socrates at school, most known philosophers are "ordinary language philosophers" ...
However, we must take into consideration another point: Most of us read and know about the works of philosophers from translations into English or our mother language. That is, we know nothing about how did these guys use their own (original) language.
It 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.
Quoting Antony Nickles
No. Just the opposite. He said that ethics/aesthetics are transcendental. They stand outside the relations of things in the world, outside logical relations. That is why the have no sense, why they do not represent some state of affairs. But this does not mean that they do not have meaning in the sense of significance or importance for our lives.
Quoting Antony Nickles
But in the Tractatus he was arguing against the decision to want it to be a science. He ties it to our lived experience of the world.
That is not Wittgenstein idea at all, false.
[Edited to indicate a quote from the Tractatus]
No. Transcendental means the condition for experience. A Kantian term. Clearly this is not W. meaning.
But by all means, explain what W. means by "transcendental." Then explain his use of that term in the Phil. Investigations. Thank you.
What he says, as quoted, is that ethics/aesthetics is transcendental. It is only once this is acknowledged that we can discuss what it means.
I agree with you that he is using it in Kantian sense of the condition for the possibility of experience. In this case, he is talking about ethical/aesthetic experience.
In addition, it is clear that he also regards them as transcendent:
But this does not mean he rejects ethics and aesthetics:
He also says that logic is transcendental:
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.
Quoting Jackson
That is one way in which the term is used. It is not the way it is used in the Tractatus.
The Tractatus uses "transcendental" twice. What most readers of W. know is that he rejects the concept in the Philosophical Investigations. You might benefit by taking a look at that book.
The Wittgenstein chops on this forum are way beyond my ken.
I'd count @Fooloso4 in that group of people who I'd listen to.
....
IDK if you'd listen to more than that. :D
Thanks for the personal attack. I mean, no, have some dignity.
I certainly didn't wish to attack you. I'm sorry to have done so.
but I accept responsibility for it. If there are amends I can make then please say them.
I only meant to suggest that Fooloso4 has certainly read the PI.
And, in the back of my mind, my motivation came from finally having an opinion on the relationships between the two, and I decided that they are different from one another.
Then tell me about Wittgenstein's discussion of the transcendental in the Philosophical Investigations.
I'm ok with being unworthy.
Thank you for being honest.
I was trying to build bridges... but I failed here. Maybe another time.
Amazing you think making a personal attack is building bridges.
Well, I wouldn't say it like that -- rather, I'd say I made a personal attack, but I was trying to build bridges.
But I take your word for it.
Do you believe me in saying I was not trying to attack you?
For me, I just know Fooloso4 has read the PI. Like... that's a pretty basic document around these forums. Most of us have.
But I see I don't have that relationship to say such things.
Sorry.
Yet you have no idea what Wittgenstein says about the transcendental in the Philosophical Investigations.
I have ideas about what people know on this forum, though.
That answers that.
Yes, as I just pointed out, with regard to ethics and again with regard to logic.
Quoting Jackson
I have done considerably more than that. I wrote my dissertation on Wittgenstein. I do not say that in order to claim authority, but rather as a response to the suggestion that I "take a look". I have also posted quite extensively on PI and OC on this forum. Take a look.
There is a great deal of interpretive disagreement, which is what attracted me to do work on him. Although, like most everyone else, I want to be right, I am always open to the possibility that I am mistaken, and consider the opportunity to be shown things I have missed or misunderstood to be a welcome benefit.
Quoting Jackson
You are right. There is no discussion of the transcendental in PI. It is, however, fundamental to the Tractatus. But there is still in the later works a concern with possibilities:
The conditions for such possibilities are, however, no longer regarded as a priori.
Where? Was it approved?
Good, we agree. No need to debate it.
Do you believe me in saying I was not trying to attack you?
And Trump believes he is a nice guy.
Temple University, 2000. Yes, it was unanimously approved.
Well... if that's where we're at, I'm sad. But then no amount of charity will matter.
Cool. My father went to Temple.
I was much older than the other grad students. Maybe your father's age.
He died long ago.
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.
Quoting 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.
Quoting 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.
Quoting 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)
Quoting 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.
To clarify, I am not saying Witt is denying personal experience in the PI; just that the only options are not so black-and-white as my experience or scientific certainty (to pit my individual values against abstract morality). Sure, there is the ineffable, the inexpressible, but that is the outer edges of all the ways in which we can express things. The idea that our experience is "hidden" within us is to avoid my responsibility to make myself known, your responsibility to respond to my moral claim on you (say, being in pain) without having certainty.
The ways in which we picture the world is a prominent feature of both the Tractatus and PI. In the later work, however, he rejects the notion that logic is the a priori transcendental condition that makes representation possible.
That there are facts but they do no determine how we see the world is something he did not reject.
Quoting Antony Nickles
It is not because of his concept of logic that he says what he does about ethics. It is the result of his relationship to the world, of his experience of what is important and meaningful. He distinguishes between this sense of meaningful and Sinn or meaning as referent.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Culture and history are not the whole of what he is getting at. Again, the importance of the "possibility of phenomena" and new ways of seeing things. "Logic as grammar" means that it is an activity. Language changes as a form of life changes.
It is a "picture" that held him captive in the Tract. He does not reject a condition, he rejects pictures; that there is a single framework we have, or could change, or get out of, such as that of "representation", the picture of a correspondence between word and world (and thus a separation between them), as if words were all names of things. As a single picture, our world can be seen either as fact or value, the world or our feelings, truth or opinion. My point is that the desire for this pingeon-holing hides the meaningful (different) ways everything is connected in all our realms.
And this is the difference between meaning as referrent and meaning as importance. But it is not what is important to me (until it is), but what matters in the history of our culture with each thing, its criteria (its grammar). With a fact, what is important to us is the scientific method: that if we separately do an experiment (competently), we will come to the same result (that it doesn't matter who I am). With ethics, what we do is important because it creates who we are, and the result hangs on the relationship between you and I.
Quoting Fooloso4
Seeing things in a "new way" is not changing to another set of glasses (#103), it is remembering our ordinary ways, apart from, say philosophy's desire for purity, which hides the ordinary from us. The conditions of a thing must be actively unearthed, but this is not a change to the form of that part of our lives, as, say, an apology or pointing (though that is not to say our human life never changes, nor those forms never come to an end).
He is talking about "a" picture, not picturing or representations in toto.
(PI 122)
A surveyable representation, an übersichtlichen Darstellung , (alternatively translated as perspicuous representation), a representative overview is said to be of fundamental importance. For it is from this vantage point that we see connections between things, how they relate to each other.
The fundamental importance of an übersichtlichen Darstellung is something that Wittgenstein will continue to develop. He is no longer concerned with the Tractarian question of the conditions for the possibility of representation, but rather with the ways in which representation, how we picture things, is how we look at them, and can both stand in the way of and lead to new ways of seeing connections.
Quoting Antony Nickles
He concludes this passage by saying:
A new way is not a matter of replacing one pair of glasses with another. The alternative is not limited to our "ordinary ways".
Quoting Fooloso4
Copernicus and Darwin rejected the ordinary ways.
Representation was the wrong word; what I was talking about was a picture, like meaning as correspondence (word to world). I agree that a broad view and seeing connections are part of Witt's ethic, but this is different than a picture, which I would equate with a theory. Also, when I said that we could not "get out of" a picture, what I meant is that that there is not some world or reality with which we would have some direct connection (or not).
Quoting Fooloso4
I think here I agree and would hope we are on the same terms now at least. I equate "the conditions for the possibility of representation" as the requirements we project--among other things, the desire for purity--which we are constantly drawn too, rather than something he is "no longer concerned with".
"107. The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement)."
In this way, we do not get outside of that temptation. To leave it open is to realize we cannot settle into some general, universal, justified answer or framework; we constantly have to work in each case we become lost, which I would agree is:
Quoting Fooloso4
That science has frameworks (paradigms, as Kuhn says) is part of its grammar, not part of how the rest of the world works (or a measure of it), but, as I said, what, say, doing justice is, may change over time, may die off, as a way of our lives with each other. We may come to the end of its criteria, and it is not ensured in the same way science is, but science is an "ordinary way"; it has its criteria just like ethics does. Part of the point of the PI is to put them on even ground, that science does not have a corner on truth ("truth-value, say "facts" corresponding to "reality"), but that they are just different. An excuse for my actions is a particular form of life that can come off or not, however uncertain the outcome compared to science.
You may equate a picture with a theory, but that is not how Wittgenstein used the term. In the Tractatus a picture represents a state of affairs. He has a theory of how this is possible, but a picture or representation and how is able to do that are two different things. In PI he rejects this theory but picturing remains important.
Well it appears the use of "picture" that I am focused on is not the only way in which Witt uses that word in the PI (there are more than 300 instances). A lot of the time he is talking about actual pictures (like paintings); at other points it is a mental image (picturing something to yourself); and, during his discussion of aspects, he creates the terms "duck-picture" and "rabbit-picture" to differentiate the two aspects of the "duck-rabbit" picture. However, there is a sense of "picture" which is what I am trying to make clear--what hides the ordinary from us (what is in plain view).
A summary of the relevant quotes below is that this kind of "picture" (I emphasize "Picture" in bold) is what we "want" (have a reason to desire) or are "tempted by"; at times he says which "suggests" or "forces" or "obtrudes" a particular use of a concept on us, blinding us to other uses, creating a "conflict" in us; or that we "exert" ourselves to "construct" or "conjure up" for, as examples: creating "reality" (#59); taking away our responsibility (#222); fixing a sense "unambiguously" making the ordinary seem "muddled" (#426); and, mostly, imagining that the world is hidden from us (#92)(including the other).
The reasons and process of this picture-creating, this intellectualizing of our everyday lives, is the subject of the Investigations (starting with Augustine's vision of language as only naming). "[A picture] must be explored if we want to understand the sense of what we are saying. But the picture seems to spare us this work: it already points to a particular use. This is how it takes us in." P. 184. We "convince" ourselves for reasons we do not yet understand (p. 223), that we must gain perspective on, learn to avoid, working to humble ourselves to the world (#426).
"'A name signifies only what is an element of reality. What cannot be destroyed; what remains the same in all changes.'But what is that?Why, it swam before our minds as we said the sentence! This was the very expression of a quite particular image: of a particular picture which we want to use." #59
"We see component parts of something composite (of a chair, for instance). We say that the back is part of the chair, but is in turn itself composed of several bits of wood; while a leg is a simple component part. We also see a whole which changes (is destroyed) while its component parts remain unchanged. These are the materials from which we construct that picture of reality" #59
"Other illusions come from various quarters to attach themselves to the special one spoken of here. Thought, language, now appear to us as the unique correlate, picture, of the world." #96
"The picture of the cube did indeed suggest a certain use to us [a box], but it was possible for me to use it differently [as a triangle prism, which is also a cube]" #139
"What was the effect of my argument? It called our attention to (reminded us of) the fact that there are other processes, besides the one we originally thought of, which we should sometimes be prepared to call "applying the picture of a cube". So our 'belief that the picture forced a particular application upon us' consisted in the fact that only the one case and no other occurred to us. " #140
"The line intimates to me the way I am to go." But that is of course only a picture. And if I judged that it intimated this or that as it were irresponsibly, I should not say that I was obeying it like a rule." #222
"The impression that we wanted to deny something arises from our setting our faces against the picture of the 'inner process'. What we deny is that the picture of the inner process gives us the correct idea of the use of the word "to remember". We say that this picture with its ramifications stands in the way of our seeing the use of the word as it is." #305
"One is tempted to use the following picture: what he really 'wanted to say', what he 'meant' was already present somewhere in his mind even before we gave it expression." #334
"But here we are constructing a misleading picture of 'intending', that is, of the use of this word. An intention is embedded in its situation, in human customs and institutions." #337
"Instead of "imaginability" one can also say here: representability by a particular method of representation. And such a representation may indeed safely point a way to further use of a sentence. On the other hand a picture may obtrude itself upon us and be of no use at all." #397
"When as in this case, we disapprove of the expressions of ordinary language (which are after all performing their office), we have got a picture in our heads which conflicts with the picture of our ordinary way of speaking." #402
"In numberless cases we exert ourselves to find a picture and once it is found the application as it were comes about of itself. In this case we already have a picture which forces itself on us at every turn, but does not help us out of the difficulty, which only begins here." #425
"A picture is conjured up which seems to fix the sense un-ambiguously. The actual use, compared with that suggested by the picture, seems like something muddied." #426
"While I was speaking to him I did not know what was going on in his head." In saying this, one is not thinking of brain-processes, but of thought-processes. The picture should be taken seriously. We should really like to see into his head. And yet we only mean what elsewhere we should mean by saying: we should like to know what he is thinking." #427
"The picture of the special atmosphere forced itself upon me; I can see it quite clear before meso long, that is, as I do not look at what my memory tells me really happened." #607
"If the picture of thought in the head can force itself upon us, then why not much more that of thought in the soul?" p. 178
""The mind seems able to give a word meaning"isn't this as if I were to say "The carbon atoms in benzene seem to lie at the corners of a hexagon"? But this is not something that seems to be so; it is a picture." p. 184
"What this language primarily describes is a picture. What is to be done with the picture, how it is to be used, is still obscure. Quite clearly, however, it must be explored if we want to understand the sense of what we are saying. But the picture seems to spare us this work: it already points to a particular use. This is how it takes us in." p. 184
""I cannot know what is going on in him" is above all a picture. It is the convincing expression of a conviction. It does not give the reasons for the conviction. They are not readily accessible." p. 223
As I understand it, what is at issue is the status of a mental picture. It is not as if he is arguing for the elimination of mental pictures, but that a picture does not settle the matter. A picture may lead us astray, but a picture may also represent a "fertile point of view". The mental pictures we construct must be investigated not eliminated. They too are part of our ordinary way of seeing things.
Added: It is not pictures but the picture of something hidden that he rejects.
I did not mean a "mental picture", which would just be us picturing something to ourselves, which, as he says, is analogous to a picture like a painting. All those quotes are about a picture in the sense of a theoretical framework; as if an assumption like a map that already determines all the relationships between the different paths. A "point of view" in the PI is not a cohesive theory; it is an attitude, in the sense of an inclination, a disposition. He is trying to get us to look beyond our own nose, as when we are inclined to give up on someone (#217), treat them as merely an object of knowledge rather than a person making a moral claim on us (P. 223), than someone with a soul (p. 178). This is not looking at them through a framework, it is being in a position towards them, in response to them.
Quoting Fooloso4
Leaving aside a seemingly fruitless argument about pictures (or not), I agree that the picture of something hidden concerns Witt. It comes up in many forms: a reality our words might correspond to, something inside me or something inside the other, and the ordinary criteria we use every day. But I would suggest we look further than treating this like an ontological argument--as if the point was: there cannot be a private language!--or some alternative to that serving the same purpose. This hidden world is the kind of picture that we are tempted or forced to. His question is, why? What compels the interlocutor to ask the questions he does? demanding satisfaction of what? It is not that something is hidden; it's not even: what hides it? The question is what is it about us that creates the picture of something hidden? And the answer is our desire for crystalline purity, of knowledge that is certain enough that we will know right from wrong (abdicating responsibility for choosing), that we will not be surprised or accused by others, that we will have justification sufficient to satisfy our disappointment with the world and ourselves.
I guess my point in saying that he abandons pictures was more to mean that he is not replacing the picture of something hidden with another picture (that we need only look at the outside of things) and the important part is that the desire remains, our need for certainty still threatens to overwhelm the ordinary criteria which do not provide the answers, justification, and solution to our skepticism. It will always be "difficult to remind oneself" of the ordinary "for some reason" (#89); and that reason is that we would rather take the straight road to certain knowledge. (#426)
In his later work he blurs the lines between seeing and saying, seeing and thinking. Seeing is active, conceptual, constructive. Language reflects this. A mental picture might be analogous to a painting, but it may, in other cases, be closer to a map or diagram or schematic or blueprint. It enables us to visualize something in a sense that is related to but is not the same as the painted image. It can make connections that are not apparent in the painting.
Consider the various senses of "I see". What does it mean to visualize something? There is here a variety of things that have a family resemblance that extends to a theoretical framework.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Quoting Antony Nickles
The presupposition is that the world is intelligible. But the world of our ordinary experience is messy and does yield to our understanding. One response to this is that the truth of things is hidden and must be uncovered. Another is a form of skepticism that I think Wittgenstein accepts. In On Certainty he quotes Goethe:
Added: There are different forms of skepticism, some of which he clearly rejects.
I'm not sure where you are finding that Wittgenstein assumes that the world is intelligible, or whether that is your prerequisite. I would agree in the sense that we have a responsibility to make ourselves and our claims about the world understandable to others; that people have a tendency to duck their role by claiming a poverty of language or to reserve a personal mysteriousness.
With that said, I would point out that if the claim is that the entire world is intelligible, that misses the fact that our world is not entirely subject to knowledge. Not that it is therefore unintelligible, but that there is more to the world than knowing it, i.e., information, being certain, catalogued ahead of an event of time, etc. The most glaring example would be the claim and necessity of action, including within the moral realm (what do we do?).
Thus the conclusion that the "the world... does [not, I assume you meant] yield to our understanding" is a misapprehension, perhaps caused by the desire and presumed requirement for knowledge (certainty) to be the only guide and standard. This forced picture leads us to condescend to our ordinary (other) ways of the world (criteria other than knowledge) as being "messy" or, historically, emotive, rhetorical, illogical, etc. The fear of our lives outside knowledge is that we do not have the same exactness, predetermination, foundation, consistency, etc. In the face of this fear, we project a world that is entirely knowable (Plato, Kant) but is only (as yet perhaps) hidden or not intelligible. Thus we save the world (as knowledge) by putting it beyond our reach (vision). Cavell calls this "living our skepticism".
It is in investigating this picture that Wittgenstein is claiming that our ordinary criteria are sufficient and that they are open to us, that the world is not removed or closed off. "...we are not striving after an ideal, as if our ordinary vague sentences had not yet got a quite unexceptionable sense, and a perfect language awaited construction by us." (#98)
The presupposition of intelligibility is neither Wittgenstein's nor mine. It is behind the notion of something hidden. If the world does not yield to our intellect then it must be because there is something hidden from us.
This is the very fixation that I have been discussing this whole time, which Wittgenstein investigates in the PI (though starting out we do not yet see how it occurs, see below). We want to say that there can't be any vagueness in logic. The idea now absorbs us, that the ideal 'must' be found in reality. Meanwhile we do not as yet see how it occurs there, nor do we understand the nature of this must. We think it must be in reality; for we think we already see it there. (#10) We try to force certainty onto the world, and when that is not met, we create a hidden world because we require everything must submit to our demand for crystalline pure logic. This is the driving force behind (the nature of) this must, and it occurs through our projection of a fixed singular means of judgment. The whole point of the PI is to understand this need for a hidden world, and to show that everything we really want is open to view already.
I have as well. See my first post:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/713032
Quoting Fooloso4
So if we are in agreement, I must have been confused in taking the following as a statement or claim that you are making, rather than a diagnosis of the skeptics manifestation.
Quoting Fooloso4
To reiterate my further point, this logical conclusion is forced upon us by our desire to have knowledge take care of everything for us, or be able to claim we are not responsible because something is hidden.
It's terminological by now. Descartes discovered things (Cartesian coordinate system) as did Kant with the nebular hypothesis.
Locke based important parts of his Essay in direct reaction to Newton, so did Hume.
Do you consider Hume's arguments concerning causality to be explanatory or descriptive? A bit of both?
Did Plato not anticipate certain aspects of cognitive science in his Meno? This can be argued endlessly.
Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy dealing, in part, with descriptions. Epistemology attempts to develop theories of knowledge, etc.
It is a statement about human history.
The belief that there are hidden things only disclosed to or by the few who are wise is as old as the desire for wisdom. It manifests in different ways.
Wittgenstein's own search led him to believe he had cracked the code.
Yes, I agree that philososphy believed in hidden things (still does). But Wittgenstein did not "crack the code" in the sense of solve the problem. He diagnosed it; he discovered that it is the desire for a particular kind of wisdom (knowledge) that creates the picture of something hidden, and that understanding (describing) the world is actually open to everyone without a special explanation (is not about "knowledge"). What about that, if anything, is a misinterpretation of #126 and the surrounding?
Our failure is that the familiar does not occur to us, and, he says, unless the not-occurring-to-us strikes us as strange, so that we come to understand why we overlook the criteria right before us. His investigation finds that it is because we have fixed our gaze past them to something certain, universal, logical, etc., even if we have to imagine it to be hidden.
He was still bewitched by "the ideal" (as he refers to it at PI 81-107) when writing the Tractatus. I think that the "picture" you have both been trying to articulate is more of a way of seeing things, or a Weltanschauung, which he mentions at 122 when discussing surveyable representations. That is the point of the duck/rabbit and, one might say, the point of philosophy.
Of course, I still disagree with your strong emphasis on morality/ethics. :smile:
In the trash can, science and allied fields that are essentially explanations; also in the trash can, rationality and associated subjects that are ultimately deduction-based. Wittegenstein then goes on to reason himself out of reasoning. Nifty moves Wittegenstein - explaining/inferring that explanations/inferences aren't required. Self-refuting or is he talking about the ladder - the one you throw away after you've done climbing to the, well, next level? God knows!
Of course he didn't! He thought he had but he eventually realized he hadn't. But see below.
The idea that something is hidden does not have a single etiology. I have been trying to steer you away from that assumption.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Both Plato and Aristotle say that philosophy begins in wonder. It is, however, the pursuit of philosophy that led to modern science:
I think it is with regard to this that he says in 126:
and in 129:
Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Compare what he says in the preface to the Tractatus:
with PI 133:
His desire for complete clarity is not something Wittgenstein rejected after the Tractatus.
He continues:
I don't believe that the later Wittgenstein would consider there to be a "final solution" to the problems of philosophy. That implies that such a solution was awaiting discovery. I believe that the later Wittgenstein considers philosophical problems as perpetually arising and in need of different treatments or therapies.
I agree. See my earlier post:
Surveyable representation - übersichtlichen Darstellung
Quoting Luke
I take this to be what is meant in 126:
I discussed this earlier in this thread
Here
and
Here
I agree.
I absolutely agree. Instead of wanting some specific criteria, we come to see our ordinary means of judgment and identity and felicity as good enough. We throw out the desire to explain things in order to be certain, to be able to see (describe) the varied rationality that were always there. And, yes, I would categorize seeing the ordinary as extraordinary as a course of action, an ethic @Luke.
After absolutely agreeing with me I'm a bit hesitant to raise a note of disagreement:
What does our ordinary means of judgment mean?
Are we ordinarily awake to wonder?
Is it our ordinary means of judgment and identity that leads to new inventions and discoveries?
Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary is not for most of us our ordinary way of seeing things
If "an ethic" can be used to apply to any course of action, then I would agree. However, I find that use of the phrase to be excessively general. I don't see the emphasis you put on morality or ethics to be helpful in understanding the later Wittgenstein. If all that emphasis implies is that he advocates the right philosophy or philosophical method, then every (other) philosopher can be viewed in the same way; as advocating the same. But that says nothing about their philosophy. I don't see ethics or morality as being the main (or even a minor) focus of W's work in the Investigations. He uses the word "ethics" only once and does not mention "moral" or "morality" at all. However, I acknowledge his focus is more socially oriented than that in the Tractatus, if that's what you mean.
Quoting Fooloso4
They are our ordinary criteria; how we judge that a thing (or act) is that thing, what matters for it, counts in our culture, etc., and for each thing or act individually (having an opinion, dreaming, reading, intending), rather than the singular standard of whether we can be certain, logical, in everything. The PI is a series of examples of ordinary vs, say, philosophical/metaphysical/math-like criteria.
Quoting Fooloso4
I agree (though the second "ordinary" is used differently, in the sense of usual rather than not special). Our everyday criteria do regularly go unnoticed; we are not aware of every implication--not everything matters all the time (there may be no reason for them to). But also, none of us see them all of the time (there is no lasting enlightened vantage or knowledge) this why we are amazed (stunned) at the unexamined implications (grammar) of, say, walking, or, another's pain. There has been no need for it to strike us (an event for philosophy).
Quoting Fooloso4
Witt is not talking about leading as if caused or guided by. In saying before there is the sense of not until, as if there is something obstructing us, perhaps a house of cards, and, once reduced to rubble, it prepares the ground for profitable labor. But also that philosophy is limited to a different work, done apart, before.
Quoting Fooloso4
If we are struck by the ordinary, we are in a state of awe, but the sense of wonder you are thinking of seems like a curiosity, for discovery.
But the Pi does not only morally implore us to take certain actions, but to do so in the name of our betterment, not only in thinking, understanding, teaching; in being rigorous, clear, deliberate, honest, fair; but in learning about our responses to our human condition (our separateness), our fears, our desires, our blindness. But the Pi also uncovers our ethical obligation in the groundlessness of our world and the limitations of knowledge. To treat someone as if they have a soul; that it is not our knowledge of anothers pain, but our response to it that matters.
This is not a traditional moral philosophical theory or just a set of ethical principles because it subsumes the is and ought, the in and out, etc. What I would think is relevant here is that the discussion of explanation vs description and hidden vs plain-view shows our part in ontology, or desires for epistemology, and thus our moral part in philosophy, to be better people, do better.
Witt is not taking the same problems and answering them with a different thing, hes not abandoning the problems, it is not just seeing the problems differently, it is a new way, a larger you, a changed world.
It is not by such ordinary criteria that "a Copernicus or a Darwin really achieved a fertile point of view". The ordinary criteria at the time of Copernicus had the earth at the center. The ordinary criteria at the time of Darwin was to regard species were "kinds", and that order of life was the top down design of the creator.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I think you do not know what the sense of wonder I am thinking of is.
But this is science and empiricism (repeatability by anyone allowing for stability and certainty). This is the explanation that Philosophy for Witt is not involved with. Thomas Kuhn does a grammar of scientific revolution, and this would be something Wittgenstein could have done as well.
Ordinary criteria are not like beliefs or agreements, like a prevailing opinion. Ordinary in this sense is like a technical term defined in contrast to the singular criteria of crystalline purity, logic, certainty, that Witt is widening after the Tractatus and which was the standard of Platos forms or Kants thing-in-itself. It is the multitude of grammar which are different for every thing. Our lives embody our judgments, these limits, identity, distinction, etc.
Quoting Fooloso4
Is this to remain mysterious? or just to end the discussion? I dont mind someone attempting a take on what I have said, but if that is unwanted I apologize.
It is Wittgenstein's example. The full quote:
Quoting Fooloso4
He is talking about ways of seeing things.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't think he is using the term "ordinary" in a way that is not ordinary.
Quoting Antony Nickles
To some extent it must. Wittgenstein connected wonder and awe with the mysterious and unknown. But if we ask what these things are I have no answer.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Not at all. I enjoy discussing Wittgenstein.
Quoting Antony Nickles
What I was trying to say is that you were making incorrect assumptions. It was said in jest.
Quoting Fooloso4
The point of view that Witt is claiming is that the method and tools of philosophy are in plain sight. My point was only that philosophy does not achieve this through empiricism but through understanding how and why we desire and create the picture that anything is hidden. This is not "ways" of seeing things, but a singular way that is different than traditional philosophy. I will grant that it is "fertile" as well, but because it is not hoping for the perfect conditions to be met before it begins. Other than that, I do not understand your interpretation of this quote nor how you believe it is relevant, and there is no effort to provide evidence of any view except the quote itself (as if it were self-explanatory). I could try to unpack it for you to argue or agree, but I leave that responsibility to you.
Quoting Fooloso4
In #108 he is contrasting the voice of "ordinary life" with the speech of "the philosophy of logic", the context of our world against the "non-spatial, non-temporal". In #402 he is contrasting the "expression of ordinary language" with the "disputes between Idealists, Solipsists and Realists". In saying that "ordinary" is used in a technical sense, I am saying it is different than its usual senses because it is always meant in comparison. Witt's ordinary is not naturally understood or easily grasped. The ordinary is special and distinct because it is seeing our everyday world as unusual and extraordinary, without escaping to another or claiming it is hidden from us. Another word he uses is "everyday", which, in #116, is a place philosophy returns to from the "metaphysical". Ordinary is a descriptor of our language and expressions and their senses (uses), which is only truly understood against the expressions of traditional philosophy and the senses of our words that it manufactures.
Quoting Fooloso4
But I am not asking what wonder is; asking that you answer its mystery--make explicit your experience of it. I was guessing at what use of wonder you were speaking of ("sense" in Witt's way of the options a concept has, which one of its possibilities).
Quoting Fooloso4
An example of the use of wonder as curiosity would be one wondering about how something came to be, the answer of its (hidden) cause. Wonder as awe is surprise and amazement, as if an answer is impossible or unnecessary. Science and philosophy may both start in wonder, but science seeks an answer, to explain that which is hidden (in mystery), and the philosophy that Witt is doing merely lays the ordinary before us, to be struck by it (#129 @Luke), as in awe.
If philosophy is what is possible only before science's curiosity (#126), then the "complete clarity" (#133) at the end of philosophy (each time) is not the answers of science, but making aware our lives right before us.
The point of view of Copernicus or Darwin is that the method and tools of philosophy are in plain sight?
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't think so. The rejection of something hidden should not be made into the whole of the problem of seeing.
Quoting Antony Nickles
That is not the way I read it. It is not as if the ordinary has to be "truly understood" with the aid of philosophy. From #402:
The expressions of ordinary language are performing their office. The problem arises when philosophy regards this as inadequate. It is not that ordinary language has to be understood against the expressions of traditional philosophy, but that traditional philosophy fails to understand ordinary language. Philosophy, when done right, simply puts everything before us.
Quoting Antony Nickles
It is not about how it is but that it is.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I agree with the first part of this, but complete clarity is freedom from the entanglement in language that philosophy can lead us into. As I quoted previously (PI 122) it is about having an übersichtliche Darstellung:
No, I was revisiting Witt's claim we are discussing in the PI. I would think science's shifts in paradigms (to reconcile new facts, etc.) offer it the means to continue more productively, but it is not doing philosophy in getting there nor benefitting from philosophy's clarity. Ultimately, I think that is off topic unless you can explain.
Quoting Fooloso4
We fail to understand what the ordinary is until we understand why philosophy wants more. Just because the ordinary normally works (although we still come to a loss) does not mean we understand how it works or see its part in connection with why philosophy normally wants to flee from it. That philosophy claims that everything is before us does not mean it is already understood. Our ordinary expressions are right there, but philosophy still has work to do.
I'm not sure I can respond further, as you have't explained enough about all of your other claims or shown their relevance to the matter at hand nor provided any context or evidence for me to get your interpretations of the quotes youve given. I've tried to piece it together myself but I'm at a loss--there is some belief about mystery and science and maybe philosophy's role, but I don't followed. And it's not clear to me your fundamental disagreement or misunderstanding with what I am saying.
Quoting Fooloso4
This seems to be Peter Hackers translation. Careful
you dont mistake Hackers reading of Wittgenstein for the correct reading.
Copernicus reoriented man's place in the world. It goes to the heart of how we see ourselves and our place in the world. Darwinian evolution did much the same. We are not the pinnacle or culmination of the fixed order of life. In both cases we are freed from a picture that held us captive. A point of view given to us and protected by Christianity. A point of view that was regarded as not only ordinary but true.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I think it is the other way around - part of the problem is because of what philosophy wants that we fail to see the ordinary. For example, as you keep pointing to, looking for something hidden. More generally, the return to the ordinary is a rejection of metaphysics. On the other hand, science gives us a false sense that nothing is extraordinary. It can all be explained by science.
Quoting Antony Nickles
But this is not what philosophy claims. It cannot maintain both that something is hidden and that everything is before us. What Wittgenstein says is that philosophy, as he thinks it should be practiced, puts everything before us.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Wittgenstein gives us, what he calls "reminders". His style is often aphoristic. More a constellation then a line of or progression of argument. He leaves it up to the reader to interpret, to piecing it together
I did not want to get into the problem of translating übersichtliche Darstellung.At this point I think it would just muddy the waters.
In any case, the quote is from Anscombe's translation.
Quoting Joshs
Thanks for the warning, but not necessary, I do not know or care how Hacker reads Wittgenstein.
As to the "correct reading", I don't mistake any reading for the correct reading.
We are freed from one picture only to get stuck in a new picture. That is the case if we look at paradigms as maps or representations of a world. If we look at the participants in a paradigmatic community not as scientists applying a normative framework but as engaging in partially shared interactive practices that constantly determine and redetermine what is at stake and at issue in their practices, then we can see how the terms of a paradigm can be subtly put into question even as it continues to guide the participants. By the same token, paradigm shifts and Copernican revolutions continue to be indebted to the paradigm they overthrow. Even what is revolutionary is embedded in the ordinary. As Heidegger said, the world is always already familiar to us at some level.
Quoting Fooloso4
Ok. Dont mean to nitpick , but this is Anscombes
quote:
A main source of our failure to understand is that we do not command a clear view of the use of our words. -- Our grammar is acking in this sort of perspicuity. A perspicuous representation produces just that understanding which consists in seeing connexions. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate cases.
The concept of a perspicuous representation is of fundamental significance for us. It earmarks the form of account we give, the way we look at things. (Is this a Weltanschauung?)
This is Hackers:
A main source of our failure to understand is that we dont have an overview of the use of our words. -- Our grammar is deficient in surveyability. A surveyable representation produces precisely that kind of understanding which consists in seeing connections. Hence the importance of finding and inventing intermediate links.
The concept of a surveyable representation is of fundamental significance for us. It characterizes the way we represent things, how we look at matters. (Is this a Weltanschauung?)
Where does the PI "morally implore us" to do anything at all; any of this? Do you want to say that any advocation/teaching of the right way to do something, such as change a car tyre, is a moral imploration? That seems like a tenuous association with morality. Even if there is a sense of morality in Wittgenstein's telling us the "right" way, or a better way, to do philosophy, morality is still not the subject of his philosophy in PI, nor his focus in the text.
The main focus of the Philosophical Investigations is language. Wittgenstein advances a picture theory of language in the Tractatus and advances a use theory of language in PI. He states in the preface to the PI:
There is no mention of ethics or morality here.
The Stanford Encyclopedia article on Wittgenstein tells us:
Quoting SEP article on Ludwig Wittgenstein
There is no mention of ethics or morality here.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I assume you are referring specificially here to Part II aka Philosophy of Psychology - A Fragment. SEP says about this second part:
Quoting SEP article on Ludwig Wittgenstein
Despite that, PPF is not about ethics or morality either, but about the philosophy of psychology. For Wittgenstein, philosophical problems are linguistic problems which are resolved by "an insight into the workings of our language":
Quoting Antony Nickles
That's a very circuitous way of finding Wittgenstein to be commenting on, or focussed on, ethics or morality in the text.
You are right. That was from the Hacker translation. I pulled the quote from an earlier discussion (3 years ago). https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/270361
For that discussion I was using a PDF of the 4th edition. I am currently using a PDF of the 2nd. I think others in that discussion might have been using the 4th.
From earlier in the present discussion:
Quoting Fooloso4
As I said to you before:
Quoting Fooloso4
What is it about Hacker's translation that led you to caution me?
Quoting Luke
I have tended to read Antonys interpretation of the later Wittgenstein as consonant with that of the new school.
Rupert Reads new book Wittgensteins Liberatory Philosophy:Thinking Through His Philosophical Investigations exemplifies this approach:
In this book, Rupert Read offers the first outline of a resolute reading, following the highly influential New Wittgenstein school, of the Philosophical Investigations. He argues that the key to understanding Wittgensteins later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport.
Read contends that a resolute reading coincides in its fundaments with what, building on ideas in the later Gordon Baker, he calls a liberatory reading. Liberatory philosophy is philosophy that can liberate the user from compulsive (and destructive) patterns of thought, freeing one for possibilities that were previously obscured. Such liberation is our prime goal in philosophy .Read claims that this liberatory conception is simultaneously an ethical conception. The PI should be considered a work of ethics in that its central concern becomes our relation with others.(Routledge blurb)
We can see a similar line of thinking in Wisnewskis
Wittgenstein and Ethical Inquiry: A Defense of Ethics as Clarification:
Wisnewski correctly understands ethical inquiry, from a Wittgensteinian point of view, as aiming at clarification, particularly, conceptual clarification, and not at constructing an ethical theory. Wittgenstein is not a quietist. In fact, he wants us to speak morally as long as we do not attach something else to our moral judgments, for example, what is constitutive of our empirical propositions, of our descriptive language-games.
To clarify what morality is really all about is a worthy task for philosophy. More importantly, it can show us how we can live better by, for example, showing how to reach peace of mind when all metaphysical pseudo-problems are explained away. Conceptual clarification has intrinsic value and may accomplish something (pace 'critical theorists'' such as Marcuse's misunderstandings of Wittgenstein's work): it must change the way we live and such changes are Wittgenstein's main philosophical goal.
Hackers reading of Witt( which influences his translations) has been strongly critiqued
by certain quarters.
With regard to the Übersichtliche Darstellung quote, for example , Beth Savickey argues that, contra Hackers implication,
Nowhere does Wittgenstein suggest that he is
mapping (or even attempting to map) the landscape, nor that a map (understood as an overview or surveyable representation) might address or resolve philosophical problems.
Heres the full essay:
https://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/download/2300/pdf/
I took a quick look. The question of map making does not appear in his translation of the passage. Nor do I see anything about "tabulating grammar". Reading on I find support for what I said above:
Quoting Fooloso4
In general, I am wary of taking secondary sources as being of primary concern. My interest in Wittgenstein was sparked in part by the fact that interpretations varied so widely. Rather than rely on secondary sources I set out to interpret his texts for myself.
I do not regard interpretation as merely a way of determining what someone else is thinking but as a way of thinking. As Wittgenstein says in the preface to PI:
And in Culture and Value:
I am not against secondary sources. They can be helpful, but also harmful. Above all else, they should not spare me the trouble of thinking.
.
So science can change our picture of the world, even our vision of ourselves. It finds the anomalous, the contradictory, and we are certain it is not a mistake because it is repeatable, so the theory must bend, expand to include it (it is not so much true as reconcilable). So, yes, the shift in our story of facts allows for the fertile growth of more knowledge, the discovery and verification of new information. But science's success is not philosophy's (much as we would like it to be)--we do not have its power, its certainty--but neither can science do the work that is philosophy's. The place of peace (the understanding of our desires) that philosophy provides, is not one of knowledge. It is not a story of mystery and discovery, but of awakening what is already there, expanding ourselves; learning about our real need, as our desires are embodied in the criteria found in our ordinary expressions, say, for example, the fear that makes us want to skip over our flawed criteria (for, say, knowing, thinking, intending, etc.). Behind the idea of theories that are true to a reality (that theory/picture, which is the subject of the investigation) is our obsession with science's certainty. Witt's "ordinary" is not popular opinion, established or imposed. We may be ignorant of how the world works (empirically, scientifically, factually) but everyone can provide the kinds of examples of expressions that Witt does.
P.S. -
Quoting Fooloso4
What I should have said was "Even though Witt claims that everything is before us..."
Quoting Fooloso4
What I was referring to was not Wittgenstein's work, but that I could not figure out what you are getting at.
You're assuming what ethics and moral philosophy looks like. Aren't the subjects of thoughtfulness, understanding, teaching, treating people as more than objects of knowledge, etc. what ethics is about? And what Witt would call "morality" is when we enter an unknown situation--not the everyday stuff like changing a tire, but when we come to the end of our justifications, we're at a loss as to what to say to each other (say, a student), our regular courses of action amount to contradiction (stunning us he and Plato say), etc.
Quoting Luke
Th subject is language because it is the means by which we struggle against the bewitchment of our understanding--it is the "resource", not the cause. The interlocutor is given to say things, but they are things which we could agree could be said in such a situation. They are our expressions. Examining those expressions ("our 'ordinary' language") shows us the grammar (criteria) of the practices like chess, rule-following, thinking to ourselves, being in pain, see a thing as a thing (or in another way), etc. And these examples of practices show that we have a multitude of criteria rather than just crystalline purity, but also that this is not an alternative or rejection, but the opportunity to ask: why do we do that? Is it right, good?
Quoting Luke
Maybe we've gotten so used to science telling us things that we read everything as a statement, every philosopher has a philosophy. But if I tell you something, do you learn better than if I ask a question and force you to come to it yourself? Witt comes in second after Nietschze for cryptic, half-finished thoughts and just flat-out question marks. If it were easy to change, he could just tell you how. Knowledge would equal wisdom. It is not explicit because it is imbedded in going through it (with him), but I would say it comes down to the simple lesson that our need for some tidy and certain knowledge makes us flee from ourselves and others. See, it's already wrong, dead, misstated, arguable...
I have not looked into the question of ethics in the PI, but suggest, in a tentative way, that although ethics is not explicitly discussed in the PI, this does not represent a break from his earlier concerns with ethics and aesthetics. It is, rather, consistent with it.
Quoting Luke
The "saying/showing" distinction is not limited to what can be shown as opposed to what can be said, but, rather, includes what can seen or experienced as opposed to being said. Ethics/aesthetics is experiential.
Consider how the cube is seen at T 5.5423 and such things as the duck-rabbit and seeing aspects.
Quoting Luke
From the Tractatus:
One does not see an aspect simply because the world is the way it is but because that is how we see it. Although he does not discuss the metaphysical self in PI, he maintains the distinction between how things are in the world and how they are or might be for us. The possibilities of phenomena.
It is no longer a question of the world as a whole but of aspects of the world that can be seen or experienced. Rather than what can be seen from outside the limit of the world, he turns to our experience in the world. The ways in which we see things
On the face of it, the passage from PI 77 seems to be a rejection of this. We cannot draw sharp boundaries for the ethical/aesthetic. But, consistent with the Tractatus, this is because the ethical/aesthetic is not something that philosophy deals with. It is, rather, the philosophical attempt to give clarity to them that entangles us.
There is in the PI no explicit statement such as this from the Tractatus:
But there is a connection here with what he says in PPF about aspect blindness:
Someone who lacks a musical ear will hear and regard music differently than someone who has a musical ear. There will be much more that is heard by the latter and it will be more meaningful and important. The aspect blind will have a different attitude toward life.
The connection with ethics in the Tractatus might more easily be seen here:
The happy person sees aspects of the world that those of bad will are blind to.
Understood, but much of what I have been doing is trying to draw some of the connections in his work.
:up:
In an early draft of the foreword to Philosophical Remarks:
I get that and its appreciated, but Im only left to speculate where youre going without a claim to a certain interpretation of the quotations and the reasoning to tie them to this discussion. None of what Witt is doing is self-evident.
:up:
I also don't see it, not in the text. I don't object to texts being wove in to new projects, but it's more agreeable when this is done boldly. Claim it.
It might be helpful to distinguish between the idea that a) something is hidden in language or the world and b) Wittgenstein hiding something in his writing.
As is always the case, there is the problem of finding something in a text only because you put it there. One way in which we might guard against this is to see what we find in the text that would be excluded by a questionable inclusion.
It does not follow from the denial of something hidden that we can thereby see what is there. Aspect blindness, like not having a musical ear, means that something is not seen or heard even though it is there and not hidden.
If Wittgenstein's work is understood only by a few it is not because he hides something from us. It is, rather, because the reader will not understand, that things are hidden. But, of course, the words are there for anyone to see. If something is hidden, and he has given us good reason to think something is, then our failure to see it is a kind of aspect blindness.
But blindness to an aspect need not be a permanent condition.
The parenthetical remark is explained in Zettel:
My suggestion is that there are things that Wittgenstein does not state but that can be seen if one looks at this or that:
Of course. So are you. We each have an understanding of the (linguistic) terms "ethics" and/or "moral philosophy".
Quoting Antony Nickles
Sure, maybe.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Do you have any textual support for this?
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't follow. Language is the means by which we struggle, but language is not the cause of our struggle?
Quoting Antony Nickles
Sure, it's our language, and Wittgenstein's focus is on language use.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Grammar is found in language use, and relates to our linguistic rules and practices. If you are saying that these practices themselves have grammar, then I disagree. It is not thinking to ourselves or being in pain that have grammar, but the uses of the words "thinking" and "pain". It is not seeing a thing as a thing (or in another way) that has grammar, but the use of the name of the "thing" (whatever the thing is).
Quoting Antony Nickles
I think you misunderstand the metaphor of crystalline purity.
Crystalline purity does not refer to there being only one criterion of language (as if there are many more besides this one); crystalline purity refers to the mistaken presupposition that there is a non-empirical "essence of language" that it is the philosopher's task to discover.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Do you have any textual support for this?
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't see that he is recommending that we should change, except for the way that we do philosophy and think about philosophical problems. Again, if this makes it about ethics, then every philosophical work is about ethics.
I said that his use of "ethics" at PI 77 was in a manner consistent with the views he presented in the Tractatus, which you quoted in your post just after you made this comment (see above).
Quoting Fooloso4
You appear to be making a distinction between "what can be shown" and "what can be seen or experienced". I consider these to be the same.
Quoting Fooloso4
Then I am unsure why you appear to be arguing against my position that ethics is not the subject of the Philosophical Investigations. Since they are philosophical investigations, it follows that the ethical/aesthetic is not something that Wittgenstein "deals with" in the text.
You may already be aware, but there is a new project into which these claims are "being wove", which is sometimes referred to as the "New Wittgenstein", or the "resolute reading" of the Tractatus. I just happen to disagree with it.
I think it will help to show the differentiation I'm trying to make about "the ordinary" to point out that we are not talking about the obvious, surface, or, i.e., "common sense" of our words, like there is a different, regular "point of view" or approach to them that is just not based on (is a rejection or refutation of) our desire for certainty, explanation--e.g., something hidden (metaphysically, personally)--and that this is self-evident, grasped fully and immediately, as if it does not need any "explanation" which, in this sense (not in Witt's use), turns out to be: further thought, investigation, going by "side roads" (#426).
This difference in the sense of "the ordinary" (its place as a term of Witt's) is evidenced by the fact that Witt creates his own fantasy worlds/situations in order to place an expression in a context that attempts to give the interlocutor/skeptic what they want (say, knowledge of the other). Thinking of our ordinary language as straightforward misses the point that making up these crazy situations is done to highlight that there are contexts in which these expressions normally live, and this varied, endless context is the ordinariness of our expressions, which Witt's method attempts to have you see for yourself, accept--in each situation, each time (when the need arises). Realizing this, we can move to simply describing the parameters (criteria) for our practices through our associated expressions in various contexts: for example, what breaks the practice of promising so that it is no longer even a promise? what makes it (say, "I promise to love you")? my knowing it? maybe only feeling it? "meaning" it? what does this tell us about identity, character, duty, moral responsibility?
The discussion of the availability of Witt's text is well-put by @Fooloso4 above in linking it to our being blind to an aspect of something. If you open any page of PI, it is clear that Witt is opening a question, posturing/hypothesizing, maybe something in contrast, and then leaving it at our feet to complete or see for ourselves. Yet those open-ended claims are taken as statements rather than seeing them as posed for our acceptance. Instead of proving them to ourselves, we cheat and take the followthrough to be given already, in those words, simply, without our participation, as if this investigation has nothing to do with the reader, our journey (the interlocutor in us--the skeptic), to change us, as the writer of the Tractatus is changing before us. I am only trying to point out that the work is to see why we blind ourselves to the sufficiency of the ordinary? Why we step over describing the contextual criteria of our expressions to look for something hidden that meets our necessity for it to be certain, universal, predetermined, etc., in other words, explainable by knowledge; how and why?
Yes. We are in agreement.
Quoting Luke
Again, we are in agreement. My comment was not directed against you but against how someone might read your question:
Quoting Luke
They might ask you to point to where he shows it.
Quoting Luke
Sorry, I am not arguing against you. I was trying to work through the claim, which we both stated, that they are consistent.
My apologies, @Fooloso4, I misread you as siding with the "ethical" reading of the text. I should have read you more closely.
I am not assuming it, I am making a claim that Witt is thinking of the moral realm as something particular, yet different. You just denied he is, without any explanation of what it's supposed to look like or include. This is not just words to me.
Quoting Joshs
Justifications coming to an end, rule-following and its limits, continuing a series (able to go on) or being inclined to give up on the other (student), aspect-blindness, whether we can know the other (pain, thoughts). He discusses how our ordinary criteria work, but also how they break. Instead of a moral theory or rules I can tell you, Witt is showing us that it is a moment, a crisis.
Quoting Joshs
Yes. We struggle against our bewitchment (by certainty) through the method (OLP) of looking at our expressions (language) surrounding an example (and context) to see the variety of other workable criteria there are and to recognize our desires (for projecting criteria of certainty) and our real need (what is essential to us as evidenced by our criteria for a thing).
Quoting Joshs
Most of the time there is no space between our words and our lives (as with knowledge and pain)--we have not come to a point of loss. Here, the desire for certainty forces the skeptic to remove words from their ordinary contexts and expressions, which creates the problem that they then project onto the world, as intellectual (there is something mysterious, hidden, unknowable). For example, they might say: "because agreement on ethics is not ensured, it is irrational".
The term use is for the options (senses he will also call them) that a practice has, its different possibilities; for example: knowing your way about, knowing your phone number, knowing as acceptance, being awarehe will also umbrella it under the term concept (which is not in the sense of idea or linguistic). "Use" is not a connection between, or manipulation of, us, words, and the world. You express yourself (even if you choose the words)--as in: I know they are in pain--and that can then be judged (by our ordinary criteria) as: I am aware of it, rather than I am certain about their sensation. We can look and see how it is here between the two senses of the expression, its uses.
Quoting Joshs
I was using the term that Witt does to cover the category of criteria, as if requirements, which we are susceptible to desire (not mistake): universality, certainty, repeatability, predetermination, prediction, grounds for judgment as to right and wrong, reasons outside of our character and responsibility, only knowledge, true/false, correspondence to reality, etc. This manifests in different ways, but is basically getting our (human) messy selves out of the picture, which puts us in limbo with no ordinary criteria or context.
Quoting Joshs
From the beginning of this post I have been arguing this. He is trying to figure out how he got into the mindset he did in the Tractatus, the motivation of the interlocutor's questions, his discussion of temptation, obsession, need, etc. Why do we want to have something private, hidden? The question is everywhere. There is not an answer "...if everything can be made out to accord with the rule, then it can also be made out to conflict with it." #201 All the examples are to get you to see yourself in him, his journey, his failings, his revelations--that philosophy has a way and its own satisfactions.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, I think Witt's work is an example that every work of philosophy is about us and the human condition--philosophy is the betterment of the self. Nietzsche and Emerson court controversy to implore us to perfect ourselves. This is the moral urgency of Socrates stopping people on the street or Marx calling for a revolution because he wanted the things that produce us to be our own. Witt is showing us that epistemology must include us (is ethical), even to see when knowledge is no longer the issue.
Categorizing each other, rather than responding to our claims and readings, diminishes our effort to personally respond to a text or discussion and learn something new or change. That said, the deepest layer of this reading (the fallout from the skeptic's desire for knowledge) comes from studying Stanley Cavell, who I would say, more than anyone, carries the flag for modern OLP and yet still marches to the beat of his own drum (his interests in philososphy).
I could provide a dictionary definition if you like, to show how people typically use these terms:
Quoting Wikipedia
I would say that Wittgenstein speaks of right and wrong behaviour, but only as it relates to language use, or that he discusses the philosophical misconceptions we have about language and meaning. However, you seem to be suggesting that Wittgenstein is talking about more than just language use and meaning, and that he is referring to right and wrong behaviour more generally. This is where I disagree with you.
Quoting Antony Nickles
1. Where is your textual support that this is "what Witt would call "morality""? Where does he call this
"morality" in the text? I think you are seeing something that isn't there.
b. I just wanted to note that you attributed this quote and the ones that follow to @Joshs instead of to me, for some reason.
Fourthly, I don't read it this way at all. These are not examples of "when we enter an unknown situation"; or, at least, that is not what Wittgenstein is talking about in those examples.
When he comes to the end of his justifications, then his "spade is turned" and he has stopped digging. There is nothing more he can do in terms of explaining or justifying why he follows the rule as he does; that is just how he does it. This is his response to the sceptic's unreasonable demands for further justification - at some point there is just how we act. It is not that W's justifications or what he does are unknown, and neither is it the beginning of some unknown situation (except only, perhaps, for the misguided sceptic).
"One might for example suppose that he has read sceptical philosophers, become convinced that one can know nothing, and that is why he has adopted this way of speaking. Once we are used to it, it does not infect practice." (OC 517)
Regarding "rule-following and its limits":
"there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call following the rule and going against it." (201)
Again, there is no unknown here. Of course, there may be borderline cases of rules, just as there can be "blurred concepts" (71), but this does not make them any less the rules that they are. A rule might have blurred edges, but it can be more clearly defined if necessary, just like the definition of the word "game" at 68-69: "Is it just that we cant tell others exactly what a game is? But this is not ignorance. We dont know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary for a special purpose. Does it take this to make the concept usable? Not at all!" The rules can still be followed or not followed despite being "not everywhere bounded". And I know that you want to focus (or believe that W's focus is) on those situations which might call for a change to the rules or the institution of new rules, but in those cases - until the new rules have been decided upon - we are no longer talking about rule-following.
Regarding "continuing a series (able to go on) or being inclined to give up on the other (student)", where does Wittgenstein talk about how we ethically treat the student that we give up on? Most of this section attempts to disrupt the picture of understanding as a mental process: "Just for once, dont think of understanding as a mental process at all! For that is the way of talking which confuses you. Instead, ask yourself: in what sort of case, in what kind of circumstances, do we say Now I know how to go on? I mean, if the formula has occurred to me." (154)
Regarding "whether we can know the other (pain, thoughts)", of course we can, because the words "pain" and "thoughts" do not have private meanings. "If we are using the word know as it is normally used (and how else are we to use it?), then other people very often know if Im in pain." (246) However, as elsewhere, this is not about ethics irrespective of language.
Quoting Antony Nickles
When he shows how they break, or how they have blurred edges and indeterminate borders, it is usually to demonstrate that those criteria are still usable and that the demand for perfection or determinacy is unreasonable, rather than to open the discussion of "what happens next?"
"100. Still, it isnt a game at all, if there is some vagueness in the rules. But is it really not a game, then? Well, perhaps youll call it a game, but at any rate it isnt a perfect game. This means: then it has been contaminated, and what I am interested in now is what it was that was contaminated. But I want to say: we misunderstand the role played by the ideal in our language. That is to say: we too would call it a game, only we are dazzled by the ideal, and therefore fail to see the actual application of the word game clearly."
Quoting Antony Nickles
Yes, I agree. I only disagree with you where you seem to claim that our practices have grammar independently or irrespective of our language use.
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't believe that Wittgenstein is simply asking himself why he has, or had, these philosophical tendencies. I believe he has figured out how he got into the mindset that he did in the Tractatus and he attempts to show those still in that mindset the way out. I don't believe that we want to have something private, hidden - that is simply the misconception of meaning and understanding that philosophers had inherited.
"All this, however, can appear in the right light only when one has attained greater clarity about the concepts of understanding, meaning something, and thinking. For it will then also become clear what may mislead us (and did mislead me) into thinking that if anyone utters a sentence and [i]means or understands it, he is thereby operating a calculus according to definite rules."[/i] (88)
Witt is looking at how our practices work and break down, including why we abandon our ordinary criteria. The approach above is caught in the trap Witt is diagnosing: thinking we can have a defendable system of how to pre-judge behavior.
Quoting Luke As opposed to matters of fact, or logic. Welcome to the Tractatus. Once again, Wikipedia fails.[/quote] I would think with your adamant denial you would have your own thoughts on this issue.
Quoting Luke
Again, Witt is not spelling it out for you. He is pointing in a direction and requires you to pick up the thread, the examples, the questions. Most times our actions don't require philosophy. When they do, our conceptual investigation shows us what our interests are in others pain, following rules, justification, etc. Just as Plato would think we knew what virtue was, but then tear it apart to learn more about it.
Quoting Luke
We are inclined to say this to the student. We do not have to; it does not show that our action is our explanation. What it demonstrates is that the relationship between the student and teacher is more important than justifying the explaination. We can simply judge the student as wrong and stop the conversation, or start again, ask more questions, move to other examples, etc. The skeptic assails us with questions and doubts; Witt is trying to give them reasons in order to understand how to continue with them, with that part of them in us.
Quoting Luke
You've called the skeptic (the interlocutor) unreasonable and say they have simply misconceived how language is used. But the book is an investigation of why we want to flee from our ordinary criteria, why regular humans would rather know the other rather than be bound to their claim on us. He takes skepticism seriously as an ongoing threat to our ability to remain responsible (morally) to what we have said and done.
You seem hell-bent on maintaining your position, with little interest in understanding what I am saying about the matter at hand (explanation vs description, the hidden). I don't believe I have anything I could say that would satisfy your vague objection that grammar is literally about how to use words, rather than showing us something about the world, and thus, ourselves.
Please point me to where he says anything about "why we abandon our ordinary criteria" or about "thinking we can have a defendable system of how to pre-judge behaviour".
Quoting Antony Nickles
I don't understand what you're saying here; I thought we were talking about PI. All I've done is to provide a definition to show how the terms "ethics" or "moral philosophy" are commonly used and understood. You are the one saying that Wittgenstein considers ethics and/or "the moral realm" as "something particular, yet different". I don't have many thoughts on this issue, because I don't consider the PI to be about ethics. You still need to demonstrate not only that the PI is focused on ethics, but also how Wittgenstein's ethics is "particular, yet different" to ethics as it is typically conceived.
Quoting Antony Nickles
We seem to have different conceptions of philosophy. I see the PI as a response to those philosophers who came before him, in the academic discipline of philosophy that dates back to before Plato. You seem to consider philosophy as something that is required only when we do not know how to go on?
Quoting Antony Nickles
Wittgenstein does not "tear apart" our concepts. Instead, he gets us to reconsider how words get their meanings, and instructs us to look at how words are actually used. His interest in the use of concepts helps to dispel the myth that the words "pain", "understanding", "meaning", etc., are used to refer only (or at all) to mental processes. That is what I consider the PI to be about.
Quoting Antony Nickles
Sure, we can do all those things, but where does Wittgenstein indicate that this is his main concern (or even one of his concerns) in the text?
Quoting Antony Nickles
And you have not addressed any of my objections or the alternative readings of the text that I have offered, which I supported with quotes.
Quoting Luke
You and I had a discussion about a year ago concerning the relation for Witt between a rule and the use of a rule.
I suggested that you stand on one side of a rift between Wittgenstein interpreters who support Hackers understanding of this issue and those , like the later Baker , Cavell, Conant, Hutchinson and Rouse, who reject it. I think this rift colors your debate with Antony concerning the ethical in Wittgensteins thinking.
What Rouse had to say concerning
Wittgenstein's well-known remark that requests for justification of a practice must eventually en-counter a stopping point at which one can only say, "This is what we do" (1953, par. 217), supports Antonys contention concerning the creative, enactive, and, yes, ethical reaponsivity of language use.
Quoting Luke
Quoting Antony Nickles
Wittgenstein is often read as appealing to a social regularity, but his remark can instead be heard with the inflection with which a parent tells a child, "We don't hit other children, do we?"
Such statements or rhetorical questions do not describe regularities in children's actual behavior. On the contrary, parents make such comments precisely because children do hit one another. Parents do so, however, in response to or anticipation of such "deviant" behavior in order to hold it accountable to correction. Children's behavior in turn is only partially accommodating to such correction: sometimes obeying, sometimes challenging or circumventing corrective responses, some-times disobeying and facing further consequences, and so forth.
Remember that we cannot appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, I have argued, but more important, if there were they would not thereby legitimately bind us. Any regularities in what practitioners have previously done does not thereby have any authority to bind subsequent performances to the same regularities. The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule, since no rule can specify its correct application to future instances (Wittgenstein 1953). Practices should instead be understood as comprising performances that are mutually interactive in partially shared circumstances.(Rouse)
Okay, then I guess it colours your position, too. That says little more than that we disagree.
Quoting Joshs
Ive already provided a response stating why I disagree.
Quoting Joshs
What work is legitimately doing here? That social norms do not force us to behave in certain ways? Of course not. Why do you or Rouse expect them to?
Quoting Joshs
Sure, there is nothing compelling people to follow social norms, but most people do anyway. Thats what makes them social norms.
Quoting Joshs
Nonsense. " there is a way of grasping a rule which is not an interpretation, but which, from case to case of application, is exhibited in what we call following the rule and going against it." (201)
The correct application to future instances is exhibited by following the rule. At the very least, this is what Wittgenstein says.
Quoting Joshs
Wittgenstein is not discussing practices, or how social norms develop or are maintained; he is discussing rule following.
I'm not arguing against this; the picture of mental processes is of the kind of "hidden" thing under discussion here (one example among others like rules, meaning, essence, knowledge, etc.) I am merely claiming that Wittgenstein goes further to find out why we project these myths and that that cause is not dispelled in a generalized way for all time.