The 'Contrast Theory of Meaning' - Ernest Gellner's critique of ordinary language philosophy
Hello all,
I wonder if anyone here can help me understand a passage from Ernest Gellner's 'Words and Things'. For context, I'm interested in the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the school of thought known as 'ordinary language philosophy'. In particular, I'm interested in understanding the critiques other philosophers levelled against that movement.
In Ernest Gellner's book 'Words and Things', he takes these philosophers (including Wittgenstein) to task for several 'fallacies'. One of these he calls the 'Contrast Theory of Meaning'. I confess I am struggling to understand his critique I wonder if anyone can help me.
Gellner begins by explaining what he takes to be the position of the ordinary language philosophers:
To me this seems like a fair description of some passages in Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty' and in, e.g., Austin's 'Sense and Sensibilia'. I also find the argument, as stated by Gellner, to be convincing in itself, so I don't think Gellner is misrepresenting his opponents' views. (But I may be wrong).
Gellner then goes on to find several faults with what he calls the 'Contrast Theory', none of which I find persuasive, and some of which I struggle to understand at all. For instance:
I don't understand this. It strikes me that the contrast theory relates to how words function. We might explain the function of some other thing in a similar way, e.g. 'the function of a car is to move its occupants from one place to another'. The contrast theory of meaning does not require us to believe that some cars don't have that function, or that there must be cars without that function in order for the word 'car' to have any meaning. It only requires that the word 'car' must have an antithesis (which of course it does everything that is not a car). Likewise, when the contrast theory explains that words function through antithesis, we needn't believe that there are some words that don't. We just need to understand that there are things that aren't words (e.g. pictures), and that there are things not described by the words 'contrast' or 'antithesis' (e.g. synonyms, or unrelated terms).
His other arguments against the theory strike me as even weaker. (He cites Santayana as having joked that since very poor Spanish peasants eat nothing but lentils, and since therefore their diet does not provide a contrast to lentils, that must mean they eat nothing at all. This is plainly nonsense and Gellner concedes as much, but then says cryptically: 'Other, more serious uses of the argument from contrast commit the same or similar mistake.' Which uses? By whom?)
At the conclusion of the section dealing with this theory, Gellner writes:
I fail to see a relationship between this claim and the contrast theory as Gellner himself described it. Unravelling presuppositions of particular contrasts, or discovering new ones, seems perfectly innocuous, and certainly not inconsistent with the idea that for a word to have any meaning, it has to mean something in particular (and therefore there must be things it doesn't mean).
But Gellner is a widely read and respected thinker. His book 'Words and Things' appears to have been influential, and Bertrand Russell liked it so much that he wrote the introduction. What am I not seeing? What is Gellner trying to say here about the 'contrast theory of meaning'?
Thanks in advance for your time and thought.
I wonder if anyone here can help me understand a passage from Ernest Gellner's 'Words and Things'. For context, I'm interested in the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the school of thought known as 'ordinary language philosophy'. In particular, I'm interested in understanding the critiques other philosophers levelled against that movement.
In Ernest Gellner's book 'Words and Things', he takes these philosophers (including Wittgenstein) to task for several 'fallacies'. One of these he calls the 'Contrast Theory of Meaning'. I confess I am struggling to understand his critique I wonder if anyone can help me.
Gellner begins by explaining what he takes to be the position of the ordinary language philosophers:
The argument runs as follows: a term and its denial between them exhaust the universe, or at least a universe of discourse. The demarcation lin between a term and its denial may perhaps shift as we change the meaning of the term, as we often do. But: there is one kind of shift of meaning which is both disastrous and characteristically philosophical, and that is to make the criteria for what falls under a concept either so severe, or so loose, that either nothing at all can, or everything must, fall under it.
The term then loses any contrast; it is then used "without antithesis". People who commit the fallacy of using a term "without antithesis" do it, it appears, from the essentially philosophical desire to say something wholly all-embracing, not realising that this ambition is incompatible with saying anything at all.
To me this seems like a fair description of some passages in Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty' and in, e.g., Austin's 'Sense and Sensibilia'. I also find the argument, as stated by Gellner, to be convincing in itself, so I don't think Gellner is misrepresenting his opponents' views. (But I may be wrong).
Gellner then goes on to find several faults with what he calls the 'Contrast Theory', none of which I find persuasive, and some of which I struggle to understand at all. For instance:
One might well object that this doctrine itself does not appear to have a contrast, that the Contrast Theory itself would require, presumably, that language should sometimes be used to unify and sometimes to separate. (The Contrast Theory when made explicit leads to a neat paradox; on its own grounds, a language should sometimes be usable without contrast, so that "contrast" may have a contrast.)
I don't understand this. It strikes me that the contrast theory relates to how words function. We might explain the function of some other thing in a similar way, e.g. 'the function of a car is to move its occupants from one place to another'. The contrast theory of meaning does not require us to believe that some cars don't have that function, or that there must be cars without that function in order for the word 'car' to have any meaning. It only requires that the word 'car' must have an antithesis (which of course it does everything that is not a car). Likewise, when the contrast theory explains that words function through antithesis, we needn't believe that there are some words that don't. We just need to understand that there are things that aren't words (e.g. pictures), and that there are things not described by the words 'contrast' or 'antithesis' (e.g. synonyms, or unrelated terms).
His other arguments against the theory strike me as even weaker. (He cites Santayana as having joked that since very poor Spanish peasants eat nothing but lentils, and since therefore their diet does not provide a contrast to lentils, that must mean they eat nothing at all. This is plainly nonsense and Gellner concedes as much, but then says cryptically: 'Other, more serious uses of the argument from contrast commit the same or similar mistake.' Which uses? By whom?)
At the conclusion of the section dealing with this theory, Gellner writes:
The job of philosophy is perhaps to unravel presuppositions of old contrasts, or discover contrasts where hitherto none had been perceived: and not to inhibit thought by insisting on well-established ones.
I fail to see a relationship between this claim and the contrast theory as Gellner himself described it. Unravelling presuppositions of particular contrasts, or discovering new ones, seems perfectly innocuous, and certainly not inconsistent with the idea that for a word to have any meaning, it has to mean something in particular (and therefore there must be things it doesn't mean).
But Gellner is a widely read and respected thinker. His book 'Words and Things' appears to have been influential, and Bertrand Russell liked it so much that he wrote the introduction. What am I not seeing? What is Gellner trying to say here about the 'contrast theory of meaning'?
Thanks in advance for your time and thought.
Comments (70)
I will start off with a quote from W.V. Quine from his seminal work "Word and Object." He says, "There are however, philosophers who overdo this line of thought, treating ordinary language as sacrosanct. They exalt ordinary language to the exclusion of one of its own traits: its disposition to keep on evolving." Of all of the criticisms of ordinary language philiosophy I have read, I find this one to be the most compelling. Another criticism often brought up of ordinary language philosophy is that of defining philosophy's role as merely description. For some, this is too narrow of a definition and ignores the fact that philosophy can, should, and/or does have a normative function as well.
I believe these two ideas are essentially what Gellner is ultimately worried about in this book, however, he does not do a great job in expressing it in a succinct manner. For example, pg 78 (section 6 The Contrast Theory of Meaning) he says "In fact, contrast often overlay presuppositions which are worth bringing out, and sometimes worth denying: the contrast between good and bad witches is worth ignoring for the sake of denying that either kind exists. Far from thought generally moving within a tacitly determinate system of contrasts, it often happens that by refining a concept which at the time is contrast-less, a new contrast, a new concept is brought into being." And, pg 78 "The error springs in each case from the failure to realise that thought is not bound and enslaved by any of the language games it employs, but on the contrary that a most important kind of thinking consists of reassessing out terms, reassessing the norms built into them and reassessing the contrast associated with them." Here I believe are a good examples of language evolving, new ideas being created. Additionally, pg 267 (section 4 Failue of Normativeness) he say, "What is conspicuous about Linguistic Philosophy is its abdication of any kind of normative role, both in its practice and in its programmatic announcements." Or pg 72, "Yet this is precisely what philosophy is and should be: The asking, not of specific questions within a category, but of questions about categories as whole, about the viability, possibility, desirability, of whole species of thinking." Here Gellner is speaking of the normative role pf philosophy.
But I am stuck on the 'contrast theory' section because I suspect there's something I don't understand about it. Per my reading, Austin spends quite a lot of time in 'Sense and Sensibilia' explaining that there is no point in claiming that we only ever see things indirectly, just precisely because, if that is the case, we no longer have any idea what seeing directly would even mean. There would no longer be any such thing as 'seeing directly'. And thus (Austin argues) the term 'seeing indirectly' when used in this way appears to mean something but actually doesn't. (Wittgenstein might call it 'disguised nonsense').
But maybe Gellner is right that this doesn't hold. If a child asks me what my coffee machine is for, I will explain that it makes coffee. And this explanation strikes me as perfectly valid, even though it is not possible to imagine any other kind of coffee machine. We simply have no concept of what such a machine would be like. That doesn't mean my explanation was wrong, does it? Or that I was using language incorrectly?
Are the sense-data theorists just using the word 'indirectly' to help us to define the way we perceive things? And if something is part of a definition, maybe the contrast rule doesn't apply? We expect definitions to exhaust the conceivable meaning of a term, don't we? So that it's hard to imagine the antithesis, etc.
I feel I am going wrong here somewhere both when I try to argue against Gellner and when I try to agree with him. But I don't see quite where I am going wrong.
No, I think you were right the first time when you pointed out that the contrast theory of meaning does not require that the opposite trait be exemplified for the exact same object under discussion. A meaningful word should pick out a particular instance or species (a "non-empty proper subset," as mathematicians would say) from the universe of discourse. In this case, the universe of discourse would include all kinds of machines (or all kinds of things), and we can readily come up with examples of machines or things that do not make coffee.
Quoting cherryorchard
Is it possible to imagine any other kind of machine?
For me this all goes back to Aristotle's idea that a definition or understanding requires a genus and a specific difference. "Coffee machine" is "A machine" (genus) "that makes coffee" (specific difference). In order to understand a term we must understand how it is alike other things (genus) and how it is unlike the things it is alike (specific difference).
This falsely assumes that the Contrast Theory is one-directional. Gellner himself denies this with, "either so severe, or so loose." Like Aristotle's theory, the Contrast Theory seems to nestle term meaning between two erroneous extremes.
One could go on to ask whether the Contrast Theory can be contrasted with other theories, and it obviously can, qua theory. If we think about the principle as an ontological law instead of a theory, then it becomes something like the principle of non-contradiction, elucidated in Aristotle's Metaphysics IV. One can also state the PNC linguistically, as applied to language. In that sense we would say, "If language is to have meaning, then the Contrast Theory must hold." The relevant contrast here is the scenario where language has no meaning, and authors like Aristotle do not deny this at least as a logical possibility. Indeed, Aristotle claims that those who do not apply the PNC to language and predication are not able to use language meaningfully.
Yep. That is all it is. Meaning is constrained in nested hierarchical fashion. The basic contrast of sameness and difference. Or the differences that make a difference versus the differences that dont.
The differences that matter are the ones that must get said.
Indeed, the challenge for the Contrast theory to meet its own criteria or meaningfulness would be to point out actual or potential instances where language fails to meet its prescriptions. The challenge would be met with examples like Austin's:
Quoting cherryorchard
(Some ordinary language philosophers leveled a similar criticism against the realism vs nominalism debate.)
Yes, it's a good point, and we've seen it manifest often enough on these forums. For example:
Quoting Leontiskos
---
- :up:
Some examples might be helpful here. Can it be shown that Gellner addressed Ordinary Language Philosophy, rather than his own caricature of it?
A coffee machine is not a toast machine.
Except when it is.
Thanks for this response it's extremely helpful.
Quoting Leontiskos
I suppose what I'm struggling to understand is how exactly we know which sort of term is a 'genus' and which isn't. 'Coffee machine' is quite obviously just a specific example of a 'machine' (so I apologise for the inanity of my example). But then, 'seeing' is perhaps just a specific example of 'perception' or even 'experience', or at least some people could plausibly think so. Sense-data theorists might say something like 'we can feel pain directly, but we can't see material objects directly' and thus hold that their claim 'we never see directly' still has meaning, because 'seeing' is contrasted with other kinds of 'experience' like feeling pain.
I think the issue is in the particular conjunction of terms. The word 'seeing' has meaningful contrasts, as does a word like 'directly' and a word like 'never'. But the combination of these terms together in the claim 'we never see anything directly' is meaningless because it eliminates the possibility of any contrast. That makes complete sense to me I'm just still struggling to pinpoint why. Is it because 'seeing' is sui generis, and nothing else is really 'like' it? But is that a subjective judgement?
Quoting SophistiCat
Thanks for this! I thought I was right the first time too... It intuitively makes sense to me that 'we can never see material things directly' is not a meaningful claim. And I found Austin's discussion of this sort of claim in 'Sense and Sensibilia' very persuasive. It was only afterwards that I started worrying I hadn't really understood what he was saying.
It's not that I think anyone on this thread is wrong and Gellner is right. I found Gellner's argument unconvincing. I'm just trying to understand why 'we never see material things directly' is qualitatively different from a claim like 'we only ever digest what we consume'. It is hard to imagine any other kind of digestion, but that doesn't make that particular statement meaningless. Whereas 'we never see material things directly' seems to be haunted by the ghost of 'direct seeing'.
Quoting Banno
I did raise that possibility myself in the very next section of the post you quote from.
Quoting cherryorchard
If you think I am indeed wrong, and that Gellner is misrepresenting his opponents, I would love to know how it would help very much to clarify the muddle I've got myself into.
For my own part, I think Gellner's account of the 'contrast theory' bears a fair resemblance to passages like the following, from Austin's 'Sense and Sensibilia':
Or even passages like this from Wittgenstein's 'On Certainty':
In this thread I've mostly been using the example of 'seeing directly' to consider Gellner's argument. But it would, I think, also be possible to consider how the argument applies to Wittgenstein's 'game of doubting' in 'On Certainty'.
Again, I should say that I do think Gellner is wrong. I'm just asking for help in getting my own thoughts straight on exactly why he's wrong. And I appreciate the contributions of everyone who has taken the time to reply!
Again, I think I am wrong here. I just want to be clear with myself on where I am going wrong.
Okay, good. :up:
Quoting cherryorchard
At minimum what we would say is that to convey an understanding to another, there must be a genus and a specific difference. Examples would be "A machine" (genus) "that makes coffee" (specific difference), or "the perceptual act" (genus) "which is visual" (specific difference). We could also put this in SophistiCat's terms:
Quoting SophistiCat
A coffee machine is that subset of coffee-making things within the superset of machines. "Seeing" is that subset of visual acts within the superset of perceptual acts. In order to point to some kind of thing we must delineate the genus or superset or universe of discourse, as well as the species or subset within that broader set. Whenever we are conveying an understanding we are doing this, and if we are not doing this then we are not going to be able to convey an understanding.
So suppose we are on the phone and I try to point you to the machine that makes coffee, but you can't find it. I might pivot and say, "It is the medium-sized black machine." This gives you at least one additional genus-specific difference identifier: "The medium-sized machine" (genus) "that is black" (specific difference). Or in SophistiCat's terms, that subset of black things within the superset of medium-sized machines. According to my information this subset should contain only one thing.
Quoting cherryorchard
These get a bit tricky:
1. We can feel pain directly, but we can't see material objects directly
2. We never see anything directly
The genus of (1) can be construed as actions, the set which includes things like feeling (pain) and seeing (objects). Within that broad genus one can distinguish feeling from seeing, and argue that to feel is more direct than to see. Whether they are right or wrong remains to be seen, but their distinction is not prima facie irrational. The coherence of the argument depends on the idea that the directness of feeling can be compared to the directness of seeing.
If (2) is not placed in a genus-context similar to the genus-context of (1), then it is a nonsensical statement. This will depend on the backdrop of (2) and the context of the locution.
Quoting cherryorchard
3. We only ever digest what we consume
The contrast obviously requires the possibility that we might digest something that we have not consumed. In a literal sense (3) is very self-evident. Is a tautology meaningful? In fact most things we call tautologies are not strictly tautological (e.g. p is p). The act of digestion is separate from the act of consumption, and to understand that digestion only ever results from consumption requires an understanding of the relation between the two (and it is debatable whether knowledge of one entails knowledge of the other).
But given that the literal sense of (3) is self-evident to almost all people, it would not generally count as a meaningful statement in dialogue. Usually it is used meaningfully in dialogue only in a metaphorical sense: something like the idea that, "He will never understand what he has not experienced." This has a real contrast given that it is not uncommon for people to impatiently expect others to understand what they have no experiential basis to understand.
Quoting cherryorchard
4. We only ever hear sounds
It is a meaningful statement to someone who is under the impression that we can hear non-sounds or we can perceive sounds in some other way than hearing. For example, are we feeling the bass at the concert or hearing it? But without that context it will not be a meaningful statement.
Quoting cherryorchard
Generally we would say that "things that aren't indirect" are direct. Things neither direct nor indirect are usually considered to be outside of the genus of discourse.* If one wants to open up that genus of discourse they should be more explicit and say something like, "There are things we see neither directly nor indirectly. There is an entirely different way of seeing." Or, "There are things that cannot be seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled, but yet can be perceived. There is another way of perceiving." But it is very hard for two people who are talking past one another regarding the genus of discourse to connect. In this case they each mean substantially different things by 'perception'.
As regards "hearing smells," the genus is supposed to also perform the role of specifying the type or domain of discourse. For instance, if I start telling you about a "bleg" you will instinctively probe for what type of thing a bleg is. Does it belong to the genus of material things? Immaterial things? Acts? Accidents? Colors? Shapes? Numbers? Times? Set-theoretical entities? Etc. Usually when we speak these very high kinds of genera are implicit and obvious, but to convey an understanding always requires them, and where they are not implicit they must be made explicit.
* For Aristotle this has something to do with the difference between contradictories and contraries. Usually 'indirect' means non-direct, not some third thing other than direct and non-direct. Usually 'indirect' is the contradictory of direct.
Well, can we explicated the "Contrast Theory of Meaning"?
As I understand it, he would have it that the meaning of a word is seen in contrasting it with other words. An Hegelian theory of meaning, of sorts. The problem with Hegel is the lack of fixity of the synthesis, which can be almost anything. Gellner both acknowledges and accomodates this lack of fixity with the hedge "The demarcation line between a term and its denial may perhaps shift as we change the meaning of the term".
The purported criticism is that in each case Austin and Wittgenstein use a term "without antithesis". So do they?
Austin, in the sentences quoted, is agreeing that, at least in this case, the meaning of "directly" is dependent on "indirectly". He immediately follows this with a few examples - "We might, for example, contrast the man who saw the procession directly with the man who saw it through a periscope". Austin is thereby showing that Ayer is using "indirect" infelicitously by not setting out what it would be to see directly; It is in this case Ayer, whom Austin is disparaging, who is committing the error Gellner refers to.
Gellner has it arse about. This is even clearer in the case from Wittgenstein. "If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty." Doubt only has a use in contrast to certainty. Wittgenstein is not using "doubt" without antithesis, but pointing out that doubt requires its antithesis, certainty.
If Gellner's criticism is that Austin and Wittgenstein are using a term without antithesis, then he has simply failed to read and understand what is going on in each case.
Which is, indeed, the usual response to his work.
I find Gellner is more complaining than arguing in this book. Ordinary language philosophers are like the parent telling the child you cant just do anything with language and make sense. Gellner, the child, throws a temper tantrum and thinks he should be able to do anything he wants.
:lol:
You are reading Gellner backwards. He is not saying that the Contrast Theory of Meaning defeats Wittgenstein and Austin. He is saying that something like the Contrast Theory of Meaning is held by Wittgenstein and Austin, and that it is incorrect. If you don't like the Contrast Theory of Meaning, then you are agreeing with Gellner, because he doesn't like it either.
I think it's true that meaning is dependent on negation, but I don't see why that would exclude speech that's about unification. For instance, we may first talk about males and females, and then let that distinction fall away and talk about humans. Human still has a negation, which is all the other animals, or all the other living things, or all the creatures that don't wear clothes. I guess the negation is context dependent.
At first glance, it looks like the concept of the universe has no negation, but it does: the void. Could you explain what he means by speaking so severely or loosely that there is no real negation?
That is a central question of the OP, and in the second half of the OP cherryorchard gestures towards a few of Gellner's objections to try to get the ball rolling. I don't have the book of Gellner's in question.
ALL of meaning?
If Gellner is suggesting that both Wittgenstein and Austin agree here with the most extreme version of Frank's suggestion, what are we to say?
Wittgenstein suggested we look at use instead of meaning, Austin suggested we examine with great care how we use words. Neither of these is prima facie some sort of dialectic.
I'm not sure what that means, so I'll just go with yes, all of it. :blush:
It doesn't concern me a great deal exactly what Wittgenstein or Austin held. The OP is an inquiry into the question of whether The Contrast Theory of Meaning (or some contrast theory of meaning) can stand. So cherryorchard is looking at Gellner's objections as well as other devil's advocate objections he thought of, and seeing if a contrast theory can stand. If you disagree with contrast theories then you could probably give cherryorchard some additional objections. Or if you want to argue that Wittgenstein or Austin did not hold to a contrast theory, I suppose you can do that.
My position is that at least the sort of meaning that is communicated to others must abide by some variety of contrast theory. This is because that which is not placed in relief against some backdrop cannot be picked out, and if someone cannot pick something out then it cannot be communicated to them. Therefore if someone is to understand what is meant, the communication must involve relief against some backdrop.
Perhaps meanings that are not communicated between linguistic agents do not need to abide by the contrast theory, but the sort of meaning that is communicated to others apparently does need to abide by some variety of contrast theory.
Nevertheless, if we are to remain within the spirit of the OP we would be asking whether there are any good objections to contrast theories.
Thanks for the input. This section in Gellner's book is very brief (only a few pages long) and it's not always quite clear what he means. The example I've been using is a claim made by proponents of the 'sense-data' theory like AJ Ayer. To be very succinct (and therefore maybe inaccurate!) Ayer claims that we never see any material objects directly; we only ever see our own 'sense-data'. For Austin (one of the ordinary language philosophers Gellner is writing about), this is an example of a claim 'so loose, that [...] everything must fall under it. The term then loses any contrast; it is then used "without antithesis".' There would no longer be any such thing as 'seeing directly' it wouldn't even be possible to imagine what that might be so to claim that we 'only see indirectly' would be meaningless.
Gellner is trying to argue against Austin (and implicitly for Ayer) in this section about the 'contrast theory'. I'm just trying to get to grips with what exactly his argument is, and why it's wrong.
Leontiskos, thank you for such an excellent summary of my question (and this thread generally). And I apologise for making such a summary necessary I suspect I haven't been as clear as I wanted to be.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is the crux of the matter for me. When I read 'Sense and Sensibilia', I feel that Austin has put the issue to bed altogether. But when I try to imagine myself defending his argument against a sceptic, I do run into this problem.
It seems to me pure nonsense to say 'we only ever see indirectly', because it draws on the image of 'direct seeing' only to deny that such a thing exists. It's a little like saying 'we only ever drive cars indirectly, because we use the pedals and the steering wheel' that is what driving a car consists of. 'Indirect' (or indeed 'direct') doesn't enter into it, unless there are two varieties of driving (real or imagined) that can actually be classified using those words.
But let's say I have a friend who is a sense-data proponent. He says that his terminology is perfectly meaningful. There are direct experiences (mental and physical sensations, feelings, thoughts) and indirect experiences of the outer world (sights, smells) that come to us through 'sense-data'. He says this contrast between direct and indirect makes those words perfectly valid and useful. I don't agree with him. But I still feel I'm losing the argument.
(Oh, and just for future reference, though I realise it's hardly relevant to our discussion I am a 'she' rather than a 'he'!)
Your friend, in claiming direct access to 'internal' events and only indirect access to 'external' events seems to me to fall into the abyss of solipsism. One cannot dispute with a solipsist, because one cannot access his world. The sense data of an argument are mere unpersuasive sensations. You cannot lose (or win) the argument because you cannot even have the argument. At best all, you can do is provoke sensations in the other. And these purely internal sensations are precisely those 'beetles in boxes' that drop out of the conversation, because they are irredeemably private; and language is shared.
I think indirect realists would say (or at least imply) that a person sees sense data directly, by which they mean that back when we thought we were seeing the world directly, that world is actually a model populated with bits of sense data.
@Manuel Manuel, would you agree that Austin is wrong about indirect realism becoming meaningless due to a lack of contrast? I think an example of that kind of breakdown in meaning is the kind of idealism where one says everything is ideas. That makes the concept of idea meaningless because the very stuff that once gave the word meaning, that is physical stuff, has been redefined as ideas. If everything is ideas, the concept of idea becomes meaningless.
I have not read Austin.
If the claim is that if everything is indirect, then nothing is because we would have no notion of what an alternative could be, or something along those lines, then I think that's right.
We have to experience some things directly to say that are something we don't experience directly, and the other way around.
I'm not sure it would apply to idealism, because we already know of alternatives to it. With the case of realism or indirect realism, it's a bit trickier.
I have no academic background in philosophy, so I defer to those who know better, but I don't think proponents of the sense-data theory are necessarily solipsists. Bertrand Russell and GE Moore were among the philosophers who advocated the sense-data theory, and they did not argue in favour of solipsism.
In fact, some version of the sense-data theory seems to be the majority position in contemporary philosophy. (Please correct me if I'm wrong!) But the argument in this thread is not about the existence of external reality as such. It is about whether the 'contrast theory of meaning' is, as Ernest Gellner suggests, a fallacy whether we can meaningfully make such statements as 'we only ever see things indirectly' or 'we can never be certain of anything'. I don't think my hypothetical friend is necessarily disappearing into solipsism when he takes Gellner's side against JL Austin (and me).
If that's Austin's claim, then he's misrepresenting indirect realism. Their view is that one directly apprehends sense data (or a model populated with sense data).
I sense that your discussion has taken a different line from the rest of the thread, but I feel I should chime in here to say that I don't think Austin made any specific claims about realism (direct or indirect) in 'Sense and Sensibilia'. In fact, here is a quote from the first section:
Austin's argument is about what he sees as the misuse of particular words in philosophy. He is not making (or does not see himself as making) arguments about 'realism' (naive, indirect, or otherwise) per se.
Right. Austin was saying that people who claim that all vision is indirect are undermining the meaning of the very words they're using. That's true.
Right, and when I tried to bridge your thread with the thread discussing whether we see colors or only our perceptions of colors I ran into this same problem (link).
Quoting cherryorchard
This is a great analogy. It is right to give the rejoinder that driving a car in itself is not direct or indirect, it is just what it is, namely driving a car. What the proponent of indirectness might say is that when we "drive" our body we are doing so directly, and in comparison to this driving a car is indirect. They would probably say that to drive is to mobilize, and that when we interact with the steering wheel and the pedals we are interacting with the things that interact with other things that mobilize the car. I would rather say that we use instruments (or instrumental causes) to drive a car, and that there is no such thing as driving a car without this instrumental causality.
But note that if a relevant contrast can be provided, such as "driving" a body, then the statement can be made sense of. The reason I think Austin is correct is because the people who speak in this manner can usually only provide a superficial contrast, which does not hold up under scrutiny.
Quoting cherryorchard
Usually when this topic comes up on these forums the proponent of indirectness ends up being pushed in the direction which says that we directly see our sensations and impressions, and then we infer from those sensations something about the external world. It would be a bit like if you received an encrypted message, and once you decrypted it you would possess information about the external world. As far as I can see, the correct response to this idea is that sight does not involve anything like this inferential process, and that to go further and talk about subconscious inference places us in very dubious waters.
Quoting cherryorchard
Well that's refreshing! I am in the habit of making the assumption on this forum and this is the first time I was wrong. Sorry about that.
I don't know Austin's claim. I was replying to your comment.
Quoting cherryorchard
Sure - words can be problematic in philosophy. People get stuck discussing words rather than ideas all the time, so there is room for "ordinary language philosophy".
But there's also the temptation to treat all philosophy or almost all of it, through this lens which is a way to sidestep issues rather than deal with them.
It's up to each one to see if the topic under discussion is or is not an issue concerning the misuse of language.
That's a very good post. Gellner made a great splash with "Words and Things". I think it was rather a marmite book. You either loved it or hated it. Personally, I hated it.
That's a kind of argument that's very popular with philosophers, because it is a slam-dunk. Unfortunately, such arguments are usually mistake, because they have over-simplified the issue.
In this case, there is a slam-dunk reply. You can obtain a contrast to any assertion by inserting "not". So the contrast to the contrast theory:-
Here, I'm following Gellner's argumentative tactic. It doesn't help much, does it?
Actually, I'm more than a bit puzzled about his claim that ordinary language philosophers, who rejected the idea that philosophy was about theories or doctrines, had any theory of meaning, as such. I don't recall this theory from my (admittedly not exhaustive) reading of them. If this is Gellner's summary, the possibility that there is distortion here cannot be ruled out. Where is the quotation that would back his claim up?
So where did he get the idea that ordinary language philosophers did have this theory of meaning?
One possibility is that he is distorting something that they do say - that a given concept will always be part of a structure, or family and so not comprehensible outside that structure. So you cannot understand what "north" means unless you understand what "south" means (what often gets left out is the you also need to understand what "east" and "west" and how the other main points like "south-west" are constructed from the basic framework). Understanding the use of the word means understanding the use of it in the context of its family.
Another possibility is that he is picking up on an argument of, I think, Ryle, that it is not possible for all coins to be fake. If there is no such thing as a real coin, there is nothing to fake and so "fake" has no meaning. As I remember it, this was intended to apply to sense-datum theory, because that theory essentially claims that my belief that everything that I see is a three-dimensional object located in space-time is an illusion. In this case, at least, "fake" or "unreal" are defined in relation to "genuine" or "real", so there is a contrast here.
A third possibility is that he is picking up on an argument that was popular with analytic philosophers, but not necessarily with ordinary language philosophers. This is about logic. In truth-functional calculus, an analytic statement turns out to be true in all possible circumstances. This was described as not asserting anything and hence not denying anything. (Empirical, contingent statements do, of course, deny something in asserting something.) So analytic (logically true) statements were labelled "trivial". That was the basis for Logical Positivism. Traditional philosophy expected philosophically true statements to be logically true (or necessarily) true, so all traditional philosophy could be labelled trivial - unless they were false in which case they were meaningless or nonsense.
BTW Any ordinary language philosopher worth his salt would ask "Does Gellner ever give an example of a term that does not have a contrast?". That's the basis of a good counter-argument, because just one example would refute the theory. So, does he?
Actually, Austin is quite modest about ordinary language philosophy, only claiming that it is an important preparation. He does not explicitly rule out the possibility that some philosophy may survive the fire and need further consideration. But he does not explore what that further consideration might consist of, so perhaps he thought it was a purely theoretical possibility.
Thanks for this reply again, very helpful.
Quoting Leontiskos
I think this would be toying with language a little too freely. In English at least, we don't 'drive' our bodies, we 'move' them. And in fact, we usually don't even 'move our bodies' we just 'move'. The body is the subject, not the object. 'Driving' always applies to our movement of things other than ourselves ('driving cattle', 'driving him away', etc.).
Now I sound like I'm doing an impression of JL Austin. But whatever about 'driving', I do think words like 'see', 'sense', and 'perceive' require a lot of specificity and care to avoid descending into nonsense.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, this is the argument I've encountered and I've also seen its proponents claim that this is the model of perception best supported by scientific research. I have to say, I find this theory more perplexing than wrong. I don't think I really understand what it means. But I can't tell whether that's because there is something not-quite-meaningful lurking inside it, or I'm just failing to understand what it says.
We all understand and accept that different creatures with visual organs perceive the world differently. Only certain wavelengths of light are perceptible to human eyes, etc. So of course there is no 'one' objectively correct way of seeing the world. And sometimes we are subject to illusions, delusions, hallucinations, and so on. But I don't understand the leap from these clearly acceptable claims to the claim that we don't see material things at all. Where does the 'sense-data' come from, if not from the world outside? And if it does come from the world outside, what are we arguing about? The work we have to do to interpret it once it arrives? But that seems to me like a completely different question.
From your posts, I'm starting to think that what I really need to do is read Aristotle's Metaphysics...
Thanks for this reply.
Quoting Ludwig V
I'm interested that you call Gellner's 'paradox' argument a 'slam-dunk'. I confess I can't make sense of what he means at all. 'Words function through contrast with an antithesis' seems like a perfectly valid and meaningful theory of how words function. There are no words in the theory that lack an antithesis. But Gellner seems to suggest here that the theory requires not only that words have antitheses, but also that all theories have meaningful exceptions. Why should it require that? I can't see how it follows logically.
Quoting Ludwig V
This is interesting, thank you. I haven't read Ryle do you remember where this idea comes up in his work? It strikes me as reminiscent of passage 345 in Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations':
I think this is the sort of thing Gellner is objecting to in 'Words and Things' (as opposed to, for instance, logical positivism). But I think Wittgenstein's point here is coherent and convincing, whereas I can't understand what Gellner means at all.
There's a quick put-down available, I think. Our perception of colours is our seeing of the colours. Your "opponent" is being misled by the common philosophical tendency to assume that every noun denotes an object.
Quoting cherryorchardSee
One possibility is to challenge your opponent to explain what "direct" means, if not using the steering wheel and pedals. Remote control of the car would be indirect, I think.
Quoting cherryorchard
This is one of those very difficult muddles that are very hard to articulate. "Indirect experiences" is a rather peculiar phrase. In the cases of sight and smell (and hearing), what is seen etc. is at a distance, but the sense-datum is experienced directly; what is experienced indirectly is the object of the experience, not the experience itself (the sense-datum). Mind you, if that is what he meant, I would say that this is another example of assuming that a noun always denotes an object. But "sense-datum" or "experience" is not an object, it is an event. A common mistake in philosophy.
Quoting cherryorchard
i call it a slam-dunk, because some people try to apply the format to all sorts of statements. It's formulaic and refutes without attempting to understand, which, for me, is debating, not philosophy. "We can never be certain of anything" is an example, but the reply "Are you certain of that?" suppresses the argument rather than exposing where it has gone wrong. (Mind you, in that case, the argument is sound.)
Quoting cherryorchard
You have to consider that Gellner might believe one or both of those propositions. You don't. So Gellner would think that these are examples of contrast-free statements. If he did so, he would, of course, be begging the question, which is whether those claims are meaningful.
My point about logic was not clear enough. Take any analytic statement, "All bachelors are unmarried" is a nice stock example. It is not possible for any bachelor to be married. It is contrast free. Ryle's examples below don't apply and Gellner has a case for saying that this is an example of a contrast-free statement, and, in a sense, it is. But that isn't paying attention to the kind of statement it is, and to the point that of course there are some people who are not bachelors. It's just that there are no married bachelors.
Quoting cherryorchard
I agree with you about that passage.
This would be something that Gellner might elevate to a theory. But Ryle does not present the claim that all concepts must be like this.
This touches on what I tried to articulate earlier in the thread (with my very silly analogy about the coffee machine). Sometimes, universal statements about a particular term are meaningful. But why is that so?
Maybe it's because the sentence 'all bachelors are unmarried' is a way of defining the term 'bachelor'. We can think of people who aren't bachelors, and people who aren't unmarried, so these terms make sense. And by conjoining them, we learn something about what the word 'bachelor' means. (In fact, 'bachelors are unmarried' does sound like something you might really say to someone who wasn't sure what the word 'bachelor' meant a child or a language learner, e.g.).
'We only ever see things indirectly' doesn't offer a definition of the term 'seeing'. And while the word 'indirectly' does have a hypothetical antithesis ('directly'), it's very hard to see how that might apply to anything in this specific case. Someone who wasn't sure what the word 'see' meant would not be helped along if we told them 'we only ever see things indirectly'.
Only in the second instance do we run up against the lack of a meaningful contrast. 'Seeing directly' rears its head whether we like it or not. The spectre of a married bachelor doesn't really haunt us in the same way, does it? Bachelors can get married, and then they stop being bachelors and become married men. But seeing can't stop being indirect and then become something else.
I'm not sure this deals conclusively with the problem, though...
In any case, thank you for the quotation from Ryle! I will look up that book.
I'm sorry. I can't work out exactly what you mean. Can you give an example - or two?
Quoting cherryorchard
Austin gives an example I think is helpful. But I can't remember the details, so I'll adapt it. Air traffic control radar shows a blip on the screen, with the flight number attached on a little label. The controller says "I can see flight 417", and so he does, but the visitor who peers anxiously out of the window is puzzled. The controller can see flight 417 indirectly. The visitor thinks the controller meant directly. Clearly, seeing flight 417 through the window is seeing it directly (despite the fact that it is through the window). Suppose the visitor gets out a pair of binoculars, sweeps them round a bit and says "Aha! There it is!". Does the visitor see flight 417 directly?
The last point - the unanswerable, doubtful case is quite important to me. There's no point in pretending that this stuff is cut and dried.
Now think about why you gave the answer you did give to each case. I think you'll find you understand how directly and indirectly could be applied in this case. I agree I don't think it would help anyone who doesn't already know what "see" means, but it does help us, in our situation, so that's all right.
Austin does raise the question why anyone would worry about the difference in normal life - did you feel the same when you read the example? He's sort of saying that, despite the example, he's not at all sure that "direct" and "indirect" to "see".
Quoting cherryorchard
Neither am I. Philosophers always pretend they are sure of their answers. I don't see any harm in tagging something "not sure". Something may happen later that will help.
Quoting cherryorchard
Yes, that's what I meant about paying attention to the kind of statement it is - its purpose and context. That's always part of the meaning, isn't it?
Quoting cherryorchard
It's good philosophy and a good read. You're welcome.
If so, then it is a sensible approach. It would be hard to believe that ethical or aesthetic considerations could be eliminated.
I/m sorry. What's a sensible approach? What cannot ethical or aesthetic considerations be eliminated from?
Yes, I agree.
Quoting cherryorchard
These strike me as good points and good philosophizing.
Quoting cherryorchard
Perhaps, but there are probably more contemporary and focused treatments of the subjects that interest you. With that said, Aristotle is great once you get the hang of him.
Quoting cherryorchard
Right: there is a difference between a word and a theory, or a word and a predication.
---
Quoting Ludwig V
That seems reasonable.
Quoting cherryorchard
Right, and the connotations of 'bachelor' and 'unmarried man' also differ. If the two terms were identical in meaning then the tautology would be informationless, and this could be chalked up to a lack of contrast. For example, "All bachelors are bachelors."
What you suggest seems to be that any theory of meaning must in the end be a Contrast Theory of Meaning, and hence Austin and Wittgenstein must have held a Contrast Theory of Meaning... I'm nto overly content with that.
So I'll maintain that it is up to Gellner to show that they held such a view, rather than up to us to show that they didn't.
To clarify and or get rid of certain words or tendencies that prevent discussion from advancing.
This applies to a lot of metaphysics and a part of epistemology.
But as for ethics or aesthetics, I don't think ordinary language helps much, because we are dealing with facets of life which we have less depth of insight. And when there is lack of depth of insight, what we can say about it amounts to very little:
Why should we be just?
Why should we not do evil?
Why is this beautiful?
These questions have answers which don't give much depth of insight. They tend to be rather trivial but are nonetheless crucial issues for life.
Thanks for the response!
Quoting Ludwig V
Again, I'm sorry for being unclear. I'm talking about statements like 'all x are y' or 'x is always y' claims about x that admit of no exception. My first example was 'we only ever see indirectly' a claim that 'seeing' is always, with no exception, indirect. And my second example was the one you raised: 'all bachelors are unmarried'. These are both claims that admit of no exception. But to me, one of them seems like nonsense and the other one seems meaningful (in a limited way). I'm trying to work out why that is.
Quoting Ludwig V
I'm not sure I understand this. Seeing something represented on a monitor may be a way of seeing it 'indirectly'. Seeing something in a mirror is another example e.g., 'From where I was sitting, I couldn't see the door directly, but I could see it in the mirror.' That sounds like ordinary language to me.
'I couldn't see the airplane directly but I could see it with my binoculars' does not strike me as a familiar use of the word 'directly'. If you wanted to explain that you could only see the plane with binoculars, you might say something like: 'it wasn't visible with the naked eye'. The word 'directly' wouldn't ordinarily be used like that. But I suppose if someone was just chatting and not being mindful of how they expressed themselves, they might say 'I couldn't see it directly'.
All that said, I'm not sure where this gets us. The fact that we can think of uses for the words 'directly' and 'indirectly' as applicable to 'seeing' doesn't seem to clarify whether it's meaningful to say something like 'we only ever see indirectly'. I suppose elucidating the specific usage suggests that 'directly' and 'indirectly' only work in contrast to one another. But it doesn't prove as much. Or does it?
Thank you for the response.
Quoting Leontiskos
That's very kind. At the start of the thread, I felt I was making a bit of a fool of myself. So I'm glad to know I'm not talking total nonsense!
Quoting Leontiskos
If you can think of any particularly interesting contemporary accounts of these questions, I'd be very happy to look them up.
Quoting Banno
I have provided a few specific examples where Austin and Wittgenstein argued that an absence of contrast (or antithesis) rendered a word meaningless. Ludwig V also cited Ryle's example of the counterfeit coins.
Of course, these examples are specific to particular words, and not expressed in terms of a general theory. Still, it's hard to imagine what sort of word this logic would not apply to a word that would be meaningful even while lacking any contrast. Can you think of one?
I sense you may reply that the onus is not on you to think of an example that violates the 'contrast theory', but on Gellner to prove that the theory was ever actually proposed by the philosophers he is criticising. Fair enough, but the initial aim of my post was to consider his critique of the theory as he expressed it.
Seems to me that there is a difference between holding that every use of a word is dependent on a contrast and holding that this use of a word is dependent on a contrast.
Without looking up the source (pretty sure it's "plea for excuses"), I'm pretty confident that Austin at most holds that some words, not all, suffer this complain.
See also
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14753/austin-sense-and-sensibilia/p1
Quoting Banno
I understand that's your position. I suppose I could reply that Wittgenstein and Austin selected specific words for discussion because they felt that those specific words were being misused for philosophical purposes without a meaningful antithesis. Again, from 'On Certainty': 'If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything.'
But the same argument could apply to words generally. The word 'shoe', for instance, obviously gets its meaning from the fact that it refers only to things that are shoes, and not to things that aren't. 'If you tried to call everything a shoe, you would not get as far as calling anything a shoe'. But there was no need for Wittgenstein to say so, because nobody was going around calling everything a shoe for philosophical reasons.
I am not attributing this theory to any one philosopher in particular, but I am interested in whether or not it holds. Gellner's critiques of the theory don't make sense to me, and I'm trying to work out whether that's my problem or his. You are concerned with defending the ordinary language philosophers from the allegation that they ever propounded this theory, and I accept and understand that. But I think there is some value in taking the theory on its own merits and trying to assess whether it stands.
Can anyone think of any word that is meaningful without a contrast? I haven't seen an example yet.
Sorry, I didn't see this second reply.
By my reading, what Austin is saying here is that a word need not have an antithesis that is summed up neatly in an opposite word. And 'shoe' is a good example we don't have or need a single word that means 'non-shoe'. The word 'shoe' does all the work itself. But it still depends on the category of 'things that aren't shoes' in order to be a meaningful word. If it did not exclude non-shoes, it would not be doing the work of the word 'shoe'.
At first, I thought that I would say that your second example is grammatical - a la Wittgenstein - and the second is not. But a second thought gives me pause. Remember, we have that argument that there is a contrast - seeing a sense-datum/experience/impression is seeing directly. So your first example becomes "Seeing an object is always, with no exception, indirect". But then experiences (etc.) are objects ("I see a red patch"), so it becomes "Seeing a physical object is always, without exception, indirect." So it looks empirical, until we realize that there is nothing that would count as seeing a physical object directly, and then it becomes grammatical. There are complications with the first that we do not find with the second. (Though I could invent some, if you want to explore an entirely trivial rabbit-hole.) The reason the first is nonsense to you is that you have a philosophical position (a grammar) and so interpret the first in a certain way. This reflects back on the contrast theory and explains why the philosophers who are accused of holding it by Gellner never articulated it.
Quoting cherryorchard
I'll buy that.
Quoting cherryorchard
Good point.
Quoting cherryorchard
What it suggests is that when we look at examples carefully, we find that a yes/no answer is difficult to impossible to sustain. That is a position that Gellner does not seem to recognize.
My point in offering the example is not to prove a point, but to help articulate what we are talking about. You suggest seeing with the naked eye - i.e. without equipment. Which makes perfect sense. Except that it hands an opening to the sense-datum theories to ask whether my eye is not the equipment by means of which I see. So it needs to be formulated more carefully. I think that dualism is the philosophical doctrine (actually assumption) behind the entire argument.
Oops!. Perhaps the example we are looking for is the philosophical doctrine of monism. Not necessarily, provided we don't deny dualism. That's why these philosophers tend not to actually deny dualism.
Quoting cherryorchard
No-one seems to have come up with one yet. And yet I don't think anyone has decisively endorsed or rejected Gellner's theory.
I think that Austin has it exactly right. Notice that he does give examples - and there are plenty more - "grumpy", "uncouth". It's a question of what you do next. He doesn't jump to a theory but considers what questions to explore. Very different from Gellner.
Quoting Banno
Absolutely.
That is, it appears that in thinking of Wittgenstein or Austin as advocating any theory of meaning, Gelner shows he has not understood what they are up to.
I feel we're talking past each other now. As I have said many times, I am not attributing the theory to any particular philosopher. I'm interested in whether or not the theory holds, in itself. From my post above:
Quoting cherryorchard
If you are only interested in arguing that Austin (or Wittgenstein, or anyone else) never advanced this theory, I have already accepted as much. I just want to discuss the theory as it has been described.
I'm inclined to agree with you.
Quoting Manuel
Yes. I'm inclined to think that the problem is that they are too general. People do manage to have better discussions about specific issues within (and sometimes between) those categories.
I agree. He is not easy, however. It is a mistake to think that you can read him once and get your head around. Everything is interconnected. Very little is easy to grasp from a contemporary view-point. The contrast is very instructive.
Quoting cherryorchard
I think the difference here is in how the sentences are structured. In "see... directly" the word 'directly' does not mean anything on its own. Instead, it is supposed to function as a modifier for the word 'see'. So, there is one thing here, not two: see-directly. That prompts the question: what does 'see-directly' mean? How is it different from just 'see' or 'see-indirectly'? Failing to find any plausible contrast, we realize that the modifier 'directly' doesn't do any work here: it is meaningless.
In the other two examples (digest what we consume, hear sounds) we are not introducing any new words or constructs. We are making statements that relate already well-understood words in conventional ways. The fact that the statements are self-evident does not make them meaningless. To make the latter statements more like the former, we would need to construct something like 'digest-via-conumption' or 'sound-hearing'. That would indeed raise the same issues that we had with 'see-directly'.
The problem with Ayer's direct/indirect seeing is not that he is stating something self-evident, but that he is saying something obscure.
What you say here is very clear and succinctly put. It makes sense to me that an adverb functions differently from a noun phrase and raises different questions.
Quoting SophistiCat
Thank you you've really helped to clarify this problem for me. And as I suspect there was nothing in here that needed clarifying from your point of view, I'm grateful to you for taking the time to explain!
This sounds right to me, and reduces contrast theory to the principle of a Venn diagram. a word has meaning by making a distinction between what it refers to and everything else, with the distinction drawn as a line between them.
We can know what a unicorn is - a magical horse like creature with a single horn on its head - even though we know there are no unicorns. but when we want t make useful functional distinctions, between forms of seeing and such, there has to be something on each side of the line for the classification to function. To say all seeing is direct, or all seeing is indirect does not draw a line in the world of seeing at all. The distinction does not function in the world of seeing unless it divides seeing into contrasting segments:- I see directly what is in front of me, and indirectly via the rear view mirror or via a camera or other apparatus . and then we can argue whether spectacles, rose tinted or not, are to count as an apparatus or not.
I believe most of this is a misunderstanding of the method of OLP, and also maybe assuming it has certain premises it needs and/or conclusions it wants.
If anything the above would be a fallacy that Wittgenstein is trying to point out. He refers to philosophys desire for crystalline purity which shows in its manufacturing and imposing rigid criteria for knowledge, truth, etc.to be logical and certainwhich constrains their ability to capture the world at all (not that they need an antithesis). Also, one of Austins movesin order to show that philosophy gets too wrapped up in wanting something to be a particular wayis to point out that there are not the dichotomies that philosophy imagines, such as when it asks if an act is voluntarily or not, which it thinks creates a question of intention, when an opposite of voluntarily is not necessarily determined or unconscious, but forced.
@Richard B sets out further language of Gellners and the concern that OLP takes regular language as superior and not claiming any impact (normativity).
This assumes that OLP wants philosophical thought to be done in regular language, which overlooks Wittgensteins extensive use of his own terms: use, sense, grammar, criteria, ordinary, and his pointing out how dichotomy and analogy (or forms of expression) in everyday language create expectations that allow our desire for certainty to even get a handhold at all. The confusion I think is that Wittgenstein is not using or exalting ordinary language (the moniker is disastrous for understanding the method), but looking at the expressions we say in certain situations because they reveal our ordinary criteria of judgment, which can be contrasted with manufactured philosophical criteria, like Platos for knowledge. This does not provide a better answer, but reveals why we want to abandon the world (because it fails us, is not predictive, not stable, etc).
Quoting Richard B
When Wittgenstein claims that philosophy should only describe and not explain (#109), he is only contrasting it to sciences hypothesizing, or imagining something hidden #126. He is not trying to claim that philosophy cant or shouldnt say anything or argue for anything. The whole of PI is one claim after another about how our ordinary criteria work, for all of us, and he is absolutely trying to make (and explain) multiple points and in a way in which we might convince ourselves, changing how we act. What constrains philosophy is not the ordinary, but what always has: what turns out to be useless, what is made ridiculous, illogical, etc.
We read through Sense and Sensibilia here, and I believe what Austin is doing is showing how indirectly actually works (seeing someone in a mirror, speaking by phone, etc), to show that the opposite directly does not have the same power philosophy wants it toobjectivity, certaintyagainst which indirectly is then only imagined as illusion, mitigated, or something we overcome or see through, casting us out from the world. The other point is, as you say, that we dont mention that we see directly unless there is a question of whether we are or could be doing so indirectly. I saw the moon directly, not through this telescope.
I think Gellner is taking the point Austin is making in this case, and trying to make it a position of OLP, and, even more, a position to all language, which is an ad naseum argument. Austin is merely being logical. The same is the case when Wittgenstein points out that we dont know we (or you) are in pain (as a claim to knowledge), we just are in pain, we have it. The claim is that pain is expressed to request a response to the pain (to my having itto me), for it to be accepted or rejected. Im in pain. I know. Then why arent you doing anything?
Quoting cherryorchard
This is a common minimization of Austin, though understandable. He is looking at what we say in order to learn about what we do (it is a means, not about it). He is not defending correct usage; he is leveraging it because what is normative about words, is our lives, which are captured in them. Unfortunately, he doesnt talk much about why someone would claim indirect realism, nor why it is important to tear it apart (and realism).
The larger question then, is why would anyone claim they can only see, perceive, or experience the world indirectly? Cavell points out the inference that we want to remain special in the face of our perhaps not being so, that we want to necessarily be a self (that mitigates the world). Also, as with Descartes, we want to account for being wrong by internalizing it so we can control it (and still possibly be infallible, certain) because the fear of always possibly being wrong is worse (that we may never come to moral agreement).
Quoting cherryorchard
The mitigation of perception of indirect-realism preserves the possibility of certainty, however limited. As Kant did, it kills off the world (the thing-in-itself) in order to keep our manufactured standards for Knowledge. The modern story is that science can know the brain (predictably, consistently), and we can rest unmistaken on that, rather than having the constant shadow of skepticism and doubt lurking on everything else we decide to do and say. We want to only accept fore-knowledge, universality, and the crystalline purity of (math-like) Logic so, if we cant have that (certain knowledge), we take the world as unknowable at all. Wittgenstein is showing that we have numerous ways of understanding the world other than objective certainty. Austin is just burning down the (manufactured) house.
Also, what are matters of interest and focus and differentiation, are turned into the constant, unique, individualization of our brain, and so my brain makes me constantly different from yours. The picture is: I perceive the world differently (always) from how you perceive it, and we use language to try to overcome our ever-present division, fraught with skeptical failure from the beginning. What internalizing our separateness (our possible difference) does is save me (always, rather than by non-conformity). And, yes, we are separate, but by default we are intelligible, and, when that sometimes fails, the responsibility falls on us (does not destroy our ability to connect with the world).
Quoting Antony Nickles
Other than myself, you may be the only person Ive encountered on this site over the past 6 years who is not a realist. It gets lonely here when youre not contributing.
Quoting cherryorchard
This might be the place to unravel a common mischaracterization of Austin and Wittgenstein. What they are doing is using the method of looking at the expressions and situations surrounding indirect and making claims about the criteria that make it work (because our interest in it and the ways we make judgments about it are reflected in our expressions). They imagine a context for philosophys (contrasting metaphysical) criteria as well. These are not claimed as theories as Gellner takes it, they are proposed as agreed upon (PI #128), as premises. If we do not agree with (see) I believe as a hypothesis (PI, p. 190), there is no force to the argument (though we can specify more context, alternate examples), but then we wont follow Wittgenstein in contrasting its metaphysical use in relation to knowledge.
Thus, pointing out how indirect works (in agreed-upon ways) is an example to contrast with how philosophy is trying to remove it from any context and impose criteria and judgments. Again, it is a logical argument from premises that we must all take as how the world works. It is not an argument for how the world works (that is the starting point), nor how all language must work.
Quoting cherryorchard
Maybe its important to separate a logical contrast, as in an opposite, from simply making a distinction at all, like a bush from a tree (and that these criteria blur). As I said above, Austin takes the example of the philosophical framing of voluntary or not? and shows that it is manufactured as the opposite of voluntary is not lacking intention, but compelled (Shanghai-highed).
So meaning is based on the distinctions it has been important for humanity to make in each instance, some of which are contrasts (opposites). Some contrasts are important to us (how indirect is opposed to direct), but some philosophical contrasts are created, e.g., belief always contrasted with (defined by) knowledge, or doubt as always opposed to certainty (even in instances where we want certainty even where doubt is not a consideration).
Quoting cherryorchard
The need to take a static snapshot and exclude other things is why we can picture language as violence. That our expressing something, in response to a situation, to someone, making distinctions, etc., is to cut off other possible things to express (not precluding ongoing clarification, correcting mistakes, etc). And the criteria for identification, categorization, creative application can be fuzzy and general without being flawed.
One thing Gellner is claiming OLP does not allow is that our forms of expression change, but it is because they contain the rationale of the world, the form and workings of each being different, say, as an apology is different from justice, that they have the possibility to be extended, to die off, become superficial, or are given new life. Wittgenstein specifically addresses and allows for this in discussing continuing a series. The claim to what criteria there are for a practice does not preclude that practice from changing, or the criteria we use to judge it. What they take philosophy to do is draw out those ordinary criteria (explicitly), which actually allows for the discussion of their applicability, our failure to apply them, the need for change, etc.
If I would claim that there are terms or concepts that have no antithesis, it would be the manufactured criteria that Descartes, Plato, and Kant create and project. Plato can come to no conclusion in the Meno about virtue through knowledge, Descartes cant prop up anything that avoids doubt, and Kant can only come up with self-referential axioms that meet the desire to be imperative. I believe Gellner is recording this as OLPs claim that this move (requiring certainty) loses any contrast or is not saying anything at all despite recognizing they come from philosophys desire to have something wholly all-embracing, which is what Wittgenstein is trying to pinpoint why we do that and unravel it in the PI, termed purity.
Perhaps this puts us in the position where we can now say Gellner misconstrues Austin and Wittgenstein, thinking they are saying we MUST have an antithesis, but what they are actually doing is redirecting our attention from the all-consuming desire for certainty (direct perception) to examples that contrast against that metaphysical criteria with ordinary ways we judge a situation, in this case, only coincidentally, pointing to the opposite, where we say indirect.