All of these things are said as if there is a Platonic "public" judging this.. It is just people's internal "beetles" judging this. — schopenhauer1

202. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it. — Wittgenstein, PI 202

202. That’s why ‘following a rule’ is a practice. And to think one is following a rule is not to follow a rule. And that’s why it’s not possible to follow a rule ‘privately’; otherwise, thinking one was following a rule would be the same thing as following it. — Wittgenstein, PI 202

That logic makes no sense. Someone else’s beetle may think they understand what I’m doing, find it “normal” or not, but it’s just their beetle reacting to something. That doesn’t confer anything outside of solipsism. How is there a public to Witt if there’s no certainty to ontology? It’s all anti foundational. You can’t start positing an external confirming entity.

That logic makes no sense. Someone else’s beetle may think they understand what I’m doing, find it “normal” or not, but it’s just their beetle reacting to something. That doesn’t confer anything outside of solipsism. How is there a public to Witt if there’s no certainty to ontology? It’s all anti foundational. You can’t start positing an external confirming entity. — schopenhauer1

So there are no rules? No rules of chess or any other game/sport? No road rules?

So there are no rules? No rules of chess or any other game/sport? No road rules? — Luke

Im saying you can’t have both uncertainty, anti foundationalism but then claim that there’s X (rules, games, use)

Im saying you can’t have both uncertainty, anti foundationalism but then claim that there’s X (rules, games, use) — schopenhauer1

I don’t follow why there needs to be either foundationalism or certainty in order for there to be rules.

Most of PI is devoted to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and errors :lol:. It certainly matters to him to demonstrate this as a point, not as an aside. — schopenhauer1

I was saying it was not a "point" because it is already assumed (no need to make a point of it, we all agree). He is not "demonstrating" it; he is looking at when it happens to see the ordinary criteria are different for each thing, that they come into play as markers of our interests in that practice.

There you are again, sneaking in some externality. "Culture" is now used instead of "public" and "practice". Culture is an individual's perception of something. — schopenhauer1

Well I'm just trying to find a word that you don't get all twisted up about. Culture, public, practice, shared lives, are in the sense here the way we have been interested in and judged things as a community, as a people (human, English speakers, etc.). Anytime I (or Wittgenstein) have used "our" is not in the sense of the possessive of "mine"; "our criteria" is not each of our individual criteria (as if you have yours and I have mine). We share criteria as we share our lives together. This is not some "agreement" (in the past or in each instance), but just that we can all recognize what an apology looks like, what a joke is, etc. We share the same ways of checking off the list if necessary of what makes a mistake different from an accident because we have all been brought up into our... whatever you want to call it, society?

You can't get to a foundation by appealing to a public sphere of agreement. It is all individuals agreeing, there is no public. — schopenhauer1

Wittgenstein is not looking for a foundation; he finds none. The ordinary criteria for something don't ensure things won't go sideways, but when they get wonky they do so along (or against) the judgments we would all (usually) make about a practice (and are resolved mostly the same way); this does not ensure everything works out, but it doesn't "dissolve away".

Responsibility for what? What is it an appeal to? We can always be wrong... — schopenhauer1

Responsible to make yourself intelligible to me about the confusion; whether along the appropriate expectations and judgments (though this is not "common sense"), or to explain transgressing those, or explaining how and why you are stretching our criteria for an act into a new context, and all the other ways things do or might go array. The point is there are times when we can't go on together, where everything breaks down, but there is nothing stopping us from continuing to try to work it out.

You are right, there is no MUST here. But then the only thing getting in the way is you (or me), and not because the thing I get doesn't match the thing you have, but that we refuse, give up, resort to violence, etc. Wittgenstein finds that insisting on having something inside me is to remove "me" (what I do next) as the most important part; it is the desire to have knowledge take our place. This is why "I cannot know what is going on in him" (p. 225) is a choice when I see someone writhing in pain (a "conviction" he says). Their feelings are not "hidden" (as you say, "internal"), I am refusing to accept them, to see them as a person.

And also, as I said above, our criteria can in a particular case, not matter to me, become a burden, oppressive, exclude me, be dead to degenerate times, etc. I either continue to carry the interest in our criteria or not, but for that I can be judged (this is why I am culpable in the social contract I never agreed to).

I don’t follow why there needs to be either foundationalism or certainty in order for there to be rules. — Luke

Because it posits a public entity

What's sad is, this thread has spent so much time on the first hundred remarks, but there is so much of great interest in the last hundred that remains unaddressed. — Banno

@Banno @Paine If you start anything, tag me in; I'd rather play in that sandpit than have to keep saying things like this.

Someone else’s beetle may think they understand what I’m doing, find it “normal” or not, but it’s just their beetle reacting to something. — schopenhauer1

It has nothing to do with beetles. As long as you insist of inserting this analogy where it does not belong you will continue to be confused.

(201) For what we thereby show is that 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”.

We follow the rules of arithmetic when our calculations yield the correct answer. We follow the rules of chess when we do not make illegal moves. Whatever might be going on in one's mind makes no difference as long as one does not go against the rules.

There is no uncertainty here. If you add 1+1 and get 7 you went against the rules. If you make a prohibited move in chess, we don't check to see if there is a beetle in the box, we consult the rule book. There is a reason why disputes do not arise as to whether a bishop moves diagonally.

That doesn’t confer anything outside of solipsism. — schopenhauer1

You can play solitaire but the game has rules that are not solipsistic. You can make up your own rules but then you are playing a different game. If only you know the rules of the game then how can you be sure you are following them?

How is there a public to Witt if there’s no certainty to ontology? — schopenhauer1

There is no certainty to ontology and it is not done according to rules.

So do we start a seperate thread for the latter half of the PI? I suppose if we make the OP specific enough we might engage mod support in not simply transferring this dog's breakfast over to it.

So, what about this paragraph? It does not fit into your 'reduction of skepticism' model:

420. But can't I imagine that the people around me are automata, lack consciousness, even though they behave in the same way as usual?—If I imagine it now—alone in my room—I see people with fixed looks (as in a trance) going about their business—the idea is perhaps a little uncanny. But just try to keep hold of this idea in the midst of your ordinary intercourse with others, in the street, say! Say to yourself, for example: "The children over there are mere automata; all their liveliness is mere automatism." And you will either find these words becoming quite meaningless; or you will produce in yourself some kind of uncanny feeling, or something of the sort. Seeing a living human being as an automaton is analogous to seeing one figure as a limiting case or variant of another; the cross-pieces of a window as a swastika, for example.

Agreed; but just "Inv. Part 2?" or... ?

Could do, but there is much of interest in part one, after the private language argument - and yet in this thread we can't even get that far without interjection.

@Sam26?

There's so much disagreement it's difficult to make headway. I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with the thread on On Certainty. The problem is that I'm not going to sit at the computer all damn day answering rebuttals. I'll answer some, but I'm not going to sit around for hours typing.

@Sam26 @Paine

As long as we avoid private language and rule following I'm okay. #319 thinking; #344 imagination; #416 consciousness; #437 expectation; #472 belief; #499 senseless; #425 understanding; #547 negation and identity; #572 states "of mind"; #611 willing; #641 intention; #661 meaning; and then Part 2

As long as we avoid private language and rule following I'm okay. — Antony Nickles

This is like saying when studying mathematics, I'm okay with the subject as long as we avoid multiplication and division. You can't be serious.

For now I'm just going to work on the other thread.

but I'm not going to sit around for hours typing. — Sam26

Yeah, you will. :wink:

@Banno @Sam26 And we're off and running.

So, what about this paragraph? It does not fit into your 'reduction of skepticism' model:

420. ...Seeing a living human being as an automaton is analogous to seeing one figure as a limiting case or variant of another; the cross-pieces of a window as a swastika, for example. — Paine

Well there is a lot going on in this quote, and I don't know what you are referring to by my "reduction of skepticism" other than I might say that the skeptic records a fact about our life but does not take into account that knowledge is not our only response to the separation, the limitation of us.

He starts with the observation that seeing someone as an automaton is antithetical to our naturalness (#418); we just are humans ("consciousness" does not record anything--any fact--more than that). But the unnaturalness of the skeptic's doubt does not mean it is not valid (records a fear, a fact). Not seeing someone as a person is as little a thing as only treating their pain (as the skeptic only wants to "know" their pain). Our desire for knowledge is "a limiting case" for it obscures our ability to judge, to see, that they are a person. The skeptic imagines the other's body blocks us from knowing their pain, but it is our unwillingness (to accept anything but pure knowledge) that shields their humanity from us; he will also says that someone having a soul is a function of my being in a position (an "attitude"), a relation, to the other, e.g., treating them as if they have one p. 178. Witt will later talk about this as "seeing an aspect".

As long as we avoid private language and rule following I'm okay. — Antony Nickles

This is like saying when studying mathematics, I'm okay with the subject as long as we avoid multiplication and division. You can't be serious. — Sam26

I don't find those sections to be essential as they are only two examples among many others that attempt to find out why the response to skepticism has been presumed to be just better ("pure") knowledge. And I think those sections screw people up or are more divisive than helpful.

For now I'm just going to work on the other thread. — Sam26

This is a disappointment to me as I'm sure it is to @Banno. I might just fix my resolve to take another crack at On Certainty.

The skeptic imagines the other's body blocks us from knowing their pain, but it is our unwillingness (to accept anything but pure knowledge) that shields their humanity from us; — Antony Nickles

I don't understand this quest for "pure knowledge" angle. What I took from the passage is that means of discrimination have consequences far beyond the subjects they entertain.

I don't understand this quest for "pure knowledge" angle. What I took from the passage is that means of discrimination have consequences far beyond the subjects they entertain. — Paine

I'll go with that. Is our imagining others as dead inside the same means as discrimination? And are the consequences for me, that I feel "uncanny"?

I equate trying to doubt that we are all human with the "uncanny" feeling of being lost as to what to do (a moral quandary without any morals), unable to resolve what you mean with what I mean, or learning I was wrong when I thought I was right, which creates the generalized doubt the skeptic has. If I can tie that in to your question about the "quest for pure knowledge"; Wittgenstein takes our response to this doubt to be a fear that we can't be sure about anything. Descartes actually thought himself a madman, or underwater with no bottom. And, because our ordinary means and methods of judging do have the possibility of failing us, we chuck those criteria and any particular situation, and we fixate on wanting something abstract, universal, predetermined, foundational, certain, as if mathematical, bulletproof. However, the more we want to be certain, the less stuff that actually meets that requirement (just math), which leads us back to our ordinary--if falliable--means of judgment. Thus we can't "keep hold of this idea"--we can't see the pure requirement and our ordinary criteria at the same time. Both Descartes and Hume found it was an effort to combat the skeptic for long. "But this task [trying to be certain, without a doubt about everything] is a laborious one, and insensibly a certain lassitude leads me into the course of my ordinary life." 1st Meditations

I was thinking that Wittgenstein, as a survivor of the calamity of Nazi Germany, was proposing a measure of fragility not commonly observed. A way of thinking about what one could reasonably expect that was not all that it seemed.

So do we start a seperate thread for the latter half of the PI? I suppose if we make the OP specific enough we might engage mod support in not simply transferring this dog's breakfast over to it. — Banno

You can call it Wittgenstein Circle Jerks - The Continuation.

Interesting that he took the swastika as his example. Yes, I think it's about how seeing someone as a zombie is unnatural - I am taken by §419...

419. In what circumstances shall I say that a tribe has a chief? And the chief must surely have consciousness. Surely he mustn’t be without consciousness!

This strikes me as a precursor to the notion of "hinge" propositions; here, being a chief hinges on being conscious...

And again in §421, '...does it worry you if I say: “These three struts give the building stability?”'; but then continuing on towards §426, the picture becomes problematic, preventing our seeing what is actually happening.

I was saying it was not a "point" because it is already assumed (no need to make a point of it, we all agree). He is not "demonstrating" it; he is looking at when it happens to see the ordinary criteria are different for each thing, that they come into play as markers of our interests in that practice. — Antony Nickles

Another way of saying it...language ambiguity/many meanings/can't be sure........

We share criteria as we share our lives together. This is not some "agreement" (in the past or in each instance), but just that we can all recognize what an apology looks like, what a joke is, etc. We share the same ways of checking off the list if necessary of what makes a mistake different from an accident because we have all been brought up into our... whatever you want to call it, society? — Antony Nickles

But he is against trying to figure out a foundation... Yet here we are at society.. which btw, how can that be discussed as an entity unto itself? Society is each person's experience of said "society" (whatever "entity" that is outside of ideas in individual minds). Meaning breaks down, certainty is not had, but somehow society and use remain.. Almost as if a "foundation" for meaning.. Uh oh....

You are right, there is no MUST here. But then the only thing getting in the way is you (or me), and not because the thing I get doesn't match the thing you have, but that we refuse, give up, resort to violence, etc. Wittgenstein finds that insisting on having something inside me is to remove "me" (what I do next) as the most important part; it is the desire to have knowledge take our place. This is why "I cannot know what is going on in him" (p. 225) is a choice when I see someone writhing in pain (a "conviction" he says). Their feelings are not "hidden" (as you say, "internal"), I am refusing to accept them, to see them as a person.

And also, as I said above, our criteria can in a particular case, not matter to me, become a burden, oppressive, exclude me, be dead to degenerate times, etc. I either continue to carry the interest in our criteria or not, but for that I can be judged (this is why I am culpable in the social contract I never agreed to). — Antony Nickles

I've addressed all this about responsibility etc. I'm not sure you are getting at what I am saying, perhaps, which is fine as a breakdown on communication is appropriate on a PI thread.

I also think Wittgenstein’s experience may have informed his focus, based on stuff like #426. Our “muddied” ordinary practices cause some to want to “fix the sense un- ambiguously. …[as if] designed for a god, who knows what we cannot know; …sees into human consciousness. In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side-roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed.” (Emphasis added)

And I always thought this was insightful but naive. It is not that we “cannot” force the easy answer, it is just unethical not to take the “detours” to examine the actual circumstances, draw out the criteria we ordinarily use. If we cannot tolerate our failings, and claim all authority—as if our first impression is correct, that everything can be generalized together, and that we need to assert a standard for what is judged to “fix the sense unambiguously”—this is a facist methodology, the arrogant belief that we are a god, that there is always a “me” intending things, dictating meaning, “fixing” it.

means of discrimination have consequences far beyond the subjects they entertain. [Wittgenstein] was proposing a measure of fragility not commonly observed. A way of thinking about what one could reasonably expect that was not all that it seemed. — Paine

I can only try to paraphrase speculatively: So discrimination—analogous to seeing people as robots, seeing them as not human, soulless—affects more than the discriminated?; so we should be careful, or humble?, with our expectations? (say, of what knowledge can tell us about others) but this will come off as, weak? As if giving in to skeptical doubt about others?

I don’t follow why there needs to be either foundationalism or certainty in order for there to be rules.
— Luke

Because it posits a public entity — schopenhauer1

Because what posits a public entity? What "public entity"? I don't see the problem.

Because what posits a public entity? What "public entity"? I don't see the problem. — Luke

Witt's theory. The beetle box deigns that you can ignore individual representations of meaning as "functionally" it's all "use". Well, that poses problems due tot he "public" nature of the "functionality of use". That requires a metaphysics of entities such as "public" that goes beyond the individual. It requires a foundation of metaphysics. One cannot deny the need or "use" of metaphysics and then posit an implicit metaphysics. Something has to obtain in the world called "public". Either that, or Witt is thoroughly a solipsist, which fine, in that case, you cannot ignore each individual's representation, as those are all that matters. The beetle counts in that case.

The beetle box deigns that you can ignore individual representations of meaning as "functionally" it's all "use". Well, that poses problems due tot he "public" nature of the "functionality of use". That requires a metaphysics of entities such as "public" that goes beyond the individual. — schopenhauer1

It's not a metaphysics of entities. What is public does go beyond the individual. That's what "public" means (as an adjective), or is at least its one of its meanings; one of the ways it can be used..

Something has to obtain in the world called "public". — schopenhauer1

When you said there was a "public nature of the functionality of use", you used "public" as an adjective to describe the nature of the functionality of use. But in your next sentence you reify this adjective into an entity where this public nature requires a "metaphysics of entities such as "public"". You haven't really explained why such an entity is required.

I think that, because you assume there can be nothing but private representations, your complaint is that there must be for Wittgenstein some public representation (or public mind) that is the arbiter of all rules and games and language. And who does that public representation belong to? The short answer to your conundrum is: it belongs to the public. That is, to other people, to accepted authorities, to rule books and other references, to convention, to general agreement; to things that are necessarily outside of one person but not necessarily outside of all people.

I think that, because you assume there can be nothing but private representations, your complaint is that there must be for Wittgenstein some public representation (or public mind) that is the arbiter of all rules and games and language. And who does that public representation belong to? The short answer to your conundrum is: it belongs to the public. That is, to other people, to accepted authorities, to rule books and other references, to convention, to general agreement; to things that are necessarily outside of one person but not necessarily outside of all people. — Luke

You haven't sufficiently provided what this public is. Those things you described can simply be representations in individual minds. Where does the beetle box drop out to the "public representation"? It is someone's reaction, and your reaction to their reaction, etc. There is an epiphenomenal or transcendent aspect to this "public" that is implied, that would be perplexing in this non-foundational philosophy. There has to be a theory of what this public is, or it drops back to solipsistic (people's individual representations of meaning).