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A class by Dr. Duncan Pritchard on Wittgenstein's On Certainty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndS5MPoH4Zc

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We see others in pain and we learn to use the word in connection with the rules of the language-game. — Sam26

This leaves out the part where we also feel the pain and learn to associate our sensation with how other people are talking and behaving. Our ability to do this probably has something to do with being able to empathize with others and infer their mental states. Thus psychopaths exhibit a kind of deficit in not being able to understand why people feel certain ways, only that they can be fooled by faking the emotion.

There are some rare cases where individuals do lack an ability to feel pain. If you snuck up and pricked one of them with a pin, they wouldn't yell "Ouch, that hurt!". Nor would they go to a doctor to complain about some bodily pain.

Now imagine a world where we evolved without pain sensation. Harm would still exist as a word, but not pain. Similarly, if we were intelligent cave bats, visual concepts would not form part of our language.

How do I know when I'm in pain? Because I feel it. Not because I can speak it, but because it hurts.

Ordinary use I believe refers to the ordinary way in which a word was developed. — Sam26

That makes sense. So going back to your previous posts on Moore's demonstration that he has hands as proof of a physical world, ordinary language supports naive realism. This was fine until people starting reflecting on all the ways our perception can either fool us or is relative. And also how perception is based on the kind of creatures we are.

That leads itself to the possibility of skepticism. So if I can have a hallucination of a tree, then questions rise about the nature of perception. On a totally naive view of vision, we're just looking out at the world as it is. The tree I see is the external world tree. But humans came to realize perception is a lot more complicated than just looking out at the world.

So then we see a potential problem with ordinary language. It can be based on naive intuitions. The sun rises and sets. The earth is stationary with four corners. I feel in my heart and courage arises in the intestines. Living things have an animating life force, which could be the blood or the breath. And so on.

Claiming that philosophy goes wrong by abusing the ordinary use of words is ignoring how the ordinary usage of words often enough starts out wrong.

For example, getting back to religious examples, if I say in ordinary speech, "I know that God speaks to me," is this a correct use of what it means to know? — Sam26

The thing here is that people have often used subjective criteria for knowledge. The Christian will probably say they know because their experience of God gives them evidence just like perceiving seeing the sun lets us know the sun exists.

They will probably reject the idea that knowledge is limited to the empirical or the deductive. The gnostics explicitly advocated for a kind of subjective relavatory knowledge.

This leaves out the part where we also feel the pain and learn to associate our sensation with how other people are talking and behaving. — Marchesk

You're conflating learning to use the word pain with feeling the sensation of pain. We don't learn to use the word pain based on our private sensations, but we learn to use the word in association with others. This is closely related to the idea of rule-following which is not done in private. Learning a language is necessarily social, so in that sense it's not dependent on what you feel. I'm not saying it has no connection with your sensation, I'm saying that how we talk about pain is necessarily social and not private.

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We don't learn to use the word pain based on our private sensations, but we learn to use the word in association with others — Sam26

I'm saying it's necessarily both. Consider that humans wouldn't have developed pain talk if we didn't feel pain, just like we wouldn't have a color vocabulary without eyes.

I'm saying that how we talk about pain is necessarily social and not private. — Sam26

When I say I feel pain, I'm referring to my private sensation of pain. You might infer that I'm in pain because I'm jumping up and down and screaming. Or not, because I've mastered stoicism.

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I'm saying it's necessarily both. Consider that humans wouldn't have developed pain talk if we didn't feel pain, just like we wouldn't have a color vocabulary without eyes. — Marchesk

I agree there is a connection between the pain we feel and how we learn to use the word pain. However, note that in order to learn to use the word correctly, both the sensation of pain, and the use of the word are done in social contexts, not privately. So although it's true that without the sensation of pain there would be no talk of pain, that's besides the point. The point is that learning to use the word that is connected with the sensation, again takes place in language-games. This is seen most clearly in Wittgenstein's discussion of having a private language.

The thing here is that people have often used subjective criteria for knowledge. The Christian will probably say they know because their experience of God gives them evidence just like perceiving seeing the sun lets us know the sun exists.

They will probably reject the idea that knowledge is limited to the empirical or the deductive. The gnostics explicitly advocated for a kind of subjective relavatory knowledge. — Marchesk

It's true that many people make claims to knowledge based on subjective criteria, but that doesn't make it knowledge. If someone claims to know X, you have the right to ask how it is that they know. Surely knowledge isn't simply a claim to know, otherwise any claim to know would be knowing. That would be weird to say the least. If you make a claim that something is true, I may express my doubts by asking how it is that you know, and my doubts will not be satisfied simply because you repeat your subjective claim, that would tell me nothing. This is why it's important to appeal to objective evidence that supports the claim. My doubts about your claim would then be satisfied. Of course sometimes people aren't satisfied even after seeing the objective evidence.

I would claim that their subjective experience of God is not the same as our sensory experience of seeing the sun. The latter is objectively observed, the former not.

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One does not play the language-game of resolution (that is, resolving knowledge claims and doubts) with oneself. — Sam26

Does this mean that a human being raised by wolves couldn't come up with the game, or does it mean that the last survivor of an apocalypse couldn't play the game?

Because it seems like I can certainly play the game when I'm alone. I hear footsteps late at night in an old house by myself. I go investigate and realize it's just the house creaking along with my imagination.

Does this mean that a human being raised by wolves couldn't come up with the game, or does it mean that the last survivor of an apocalypse couldn't play the game? — Marchesk

Yes, any language by definition is social due to the nature of rule-following, which is part of the point of Wittgenstein's private language argument. So the correct and incorrect use of a word is something we do together, and this is an important logical point about the nature of language. However, don't confuse this with the idea of the private use of language, i.e., once I've learned a language, then I can use it privately, but that is always subject to the rule-following nature of language, not the other way around. The point is that you cannot develop and language which is completely private. This is difficult for some people to swallow, but I think that's because some people confuse having a private language with using a language privately.

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Do not confuse the idea of whether it is possible to doubt in some context, with what is sensible or rational to doubt, that is, because something is possible, this gives us no reason to believe it, or, it gives us no reason to doubt it. — Sam26

However, I just listened to a podcast on Parmenides, who provided a rational argument for disbelieving the empirical world in favor of the real world of the unchanging sphere.

It sounds silly, but what Parmenides did was build an argument based on the idea that all differentiation implies not-being, which doesn't exist. Red is not blue, cold is not hot, and so on. And since only being exists, there can be no actual differences, and as such, the world we experience is an illusion.

This in turn had a big influence on various ancient philosophers, including the Atomists, who said that it was atoms and not-being (the void) which are what really existed, and Plato, who said it was the eternal forms. And in Indian philosophy, you had the notion that only consciousness exists. So again, the idea that the empirical world is somehow an illusion.

Now we might very well take issue with those positions, but it does show how you can go about disputing the empirical, and thus the hinge propositions.

The reason for mentioning the above is that although Wittgenstein is pragmatically right in that the hinge propositions form the background for our understanding, they don't necessarily refute skeptical arguments, to the extent one is inclined to listen to skeptical reasoning.

In everyday life, they dissolve our skeptical worries, but that wouldn't sway someone like Parmenides. You would have to attack his argument directly, instead of pointing out that he's writing his poem with one of his hands.

Now we might very well take issue with those positions, but it does show how you can go about disputing the empirical, and thus the hinge propositions. — Marchesk

There are many different skeptical arguments that find their way into the thinking of people, some are justified, some are not. I don't think many of these arguments have much force.

In everyday life, they dissolve our skeptical worries, but that wouldn't sway someone like Parmenides. You would have to attack his argument directly, instead of pointing out that he's writing his poem with one of his hands. — Marchesk

Ya, it wouldn't do much good to tell him he can't doubt the proposition because it's an undoubtable empirical proposition that he has hands. His argument can be attacked very easily, but I'm not going to deal with his argument directly. I've already dealt with it indirectly.

The one question that is important to ask, is if it makes sense to doubt propositions like "I have hands," or other propositions that have already been mentioned. Doubting these kinds of propositions makes no sense, i.e., there aren't good reasons to doubt. I'm not saying that there aren't good reasons to express doubts in some contexts, obviously there are, but in Moore's contexts there aren't.

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it seems as though we are saying something that makes sense, but upon closer examination, there is nothing there, viz., no something for the word to latch onto. — Sam26

But despite there not being a something, the game takes place; and has a role. We do things with our talk of pain.