Consider though that, if you could teach a fly that it is a fly, that it is in a fly bottle, and what a fly bottle is, you might be able to help the fly stop flying back into the same fly bottle over and over. — Count Timothy von Icarus

So you would build another, somewhat larger bottle. As said, before unfortunately getting lost in the infinite and supposing "the fundamental truth of the ‘real’ for Wittgenstein".

But the feet aren't, right? — Ciceronianus

More perplexing is whether the sock puppets are real sock puppets.

"fundamental particles don't really exist, they are just mathematical descriptions of standing waves — Count Timothy von Icarus

If so, then there are standing waves.

I was looking for feed back on my logic — vanzhandz

Then I'd suggest that you reconsider your "I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality". You are a member of a community, and you learned to divide the world up thus-and-so as a member of that community, and overwhelmingly, you are in agreement with that community. The very fact that you are reading this shows that there is more going on than just your "perceptions".

And if you think not, then solipsism has you and there's no point in your conversing here.

I didn't mean to suggest it is majority opinion. I meant to suggest it is a not unpopular opinion in the scientific community and in philosophy, and that such claims are the type of metaphysics the Investigations seems to advocate against.



Right, but I think Wittgenstein (both versions) has a fundamentally flawed conception of language. Ordinary language is clearly flawed, whereas the later Wittgenstein makes too much of the distinction between language and other elements of experience. We understand language through experience, and have the innate ability to develop linguistic skills due to the same selection effects that shape the rest of our biology. Language isn't unique, nor is there a discrete "language system," as such in the brain. Even specialized areas like Borca and Wernicke's areas work through anatomy that is common to non-hominids.

So, IDK, I'm no Wittenstein specialist, and his style leads to multiple readings anyhow, but it seems to me like he, and those who followed him in the "linguistic turn," make the mistake of making language too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience. This is roughly analogous to the way in which Kant cuts experience off from reality. Both views hazard against metaphysics because we either aren't in a place to use language to describe it, or we lack experience of what metaphysics takes to be the object of its study.

To my mind, these critiques have two problems:
1. It's actually impossible to avoid doing metaphysics in many areas of inquiry, so such a move is simply impractical.
2. Both moves, which are themselves critical, seem based on assertions that are not taken up critically. For Kant, the offending presupposition is that thought must necessarily be a relation between the mind and external objects, but this can't be assumed. For Wittgenstein's successors*, it is that, because meaning can be understood in terms of use, language is use. But this appears to be an artificial truncation of what language does. Language serves uses, but sometimes our meaning is obviously a reference to the external world we share (whatever the nature of this world).

My take would be, why posit the existence of things we are separated from in the first place? We are in the world and of the world. We don't need a bridge to get to the "things in themselves," or a proper language to speak of them, we need to give up the idea entirely. Likewise, for language, there can be things that are "indescribable," but this in no way entails that all phenomena are as such.

*Wittgenstein doesn't go as far with this idea as many who have followed him. He is equivocal in PI when he introduces "meaning as use (43).

But I'm largely split on the later Wittenstein. I think his warning against undue theorizing is a good one. Philosophy of language is a great example of an area where inquiry has been muddled by attempts to reduce language to "just this one thing," for the sake of theorizing. But I also see the value in theorizing in, and in systematicity, if one avoids missing the forest for the trees.

I think Wittgenstein is right that "philosophy can be therapy," but I don't agree that "good philosophy must only try to be therapy." Plus, metaphysics can be its own sort of therapy in that, at the very least, it shows the myriad ways in which thought can comprehend the world, which itself is therapeutic treatment against dogmatism. Moreover, good metaphysics gets at that sense of "wonder" at being that Aristotle describes so well. This is itself, good therapy.

If so, then there are standing waves.

Or there is just the mathematical description of them. There is this amusing passage in "Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized," for example:

What makes the structure physical and not mathematical? That is a question that we refuse to answer. In our view, there is nothing more to be said about this that doesn’t amount to empty words and venture beyond what the PNC allows. The ‘world-structure’ just is and exists independently of us and we represent it mathematico-physically via our theories. (158)

The book is interesting to me in that it seems to be an extreme case of trying to exorcise thought and any knower from knowledge, a project I don't think can ever be successful, not least because no one can actually think of natural phenomena in purely mathematical terms.

So you would build another, somewhat larger bottle

Sure, why not? And when that gets too small, you build another, larger bottle, or break down the walls between two other bottles. What else are we to do if we don't agree with the conclusion that calling the walls of the bottle a "pseudo problem," will somehow teleport us outside the bottle? If it seems more like refusing to fly and then claiming the problem is solved because we've stopped hitting walls? And if it's bottles all the way down, why posit anything outside of the bottles to begin with?

Wittgenstein's critique of how philosophy errs by trying to mimic the sciences does have merit. However, what is a scientific paradigm if not another metaphysical bottle? They certainly result in pseudo problems that can only be seen as such when another paradigm comes along. And yet, it seems we need paradigms to do science. And yet, we still make progress towards understanding the world, which suggests that the pseudo-problem problem may itself be another pseudo problem (the "pseudo-problem pseudo problem" if you will)

In the same way, my biggest problem with Wittgenstein's critique is that it seems to over generalize about the ways in which philosophy itself over generalizes.

This brings me to the second way that I think HW’s metaphilosophy overgeneralizes. According to HW, philosophy is purely descriptive; it should “leave the world as it is” — only describe how we think and talk, and stop at that.

I think philosophy can play a more radical role. Return to our fly. Wittgenstein was not the first to compare the philosopher to one, nor the most famous. That award goes to Socrates, who claimed that the role of the philosopher was to act as a gadfly to the state. This is a very different metaphor. Leaving the world as it is isn’t what gadflies do. They bite. As I see it, so can philosophers: they not only describe how we think, they get us to change our way of thinking — and sometimes our ways of acting. Philosophy is not just descriptive: it is normative.

I agree with Lynch. Indeed, philosophy plays a normative role in science itself, e.g. the problem of defining science itself.

As he points out, philosophers traditionally assumed that truth has a single nature — something all true statements share. Some said that all truths correspond to reality, others that all truths are useful, or are rationally coherent, and so on. Each one of these views falls short. Not every truth is useful, nor does every truth — think of the fundamental truths of morality or mathematics — clearly correspond to an objective reality. In HW’s eyes, we got ourselves into this mess by ignoring the real function of the concept, which isn’t to pick out some deep property all and only true statements share, but to allow linguistic shortcuts. And that is all there is to it: seeing that there is no “nature” to truth is the way out of the fly bottle...

First, just because we can’t reductively (“scientifically”) define something doesn’t mean we can’t say something illuminating about it. Go back to HW’s account of truth. He assumes that there is either a single nature of truth (and we can reductively define it) or that truth has no nature at all. But why think these are the only two choices?

https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/of-flies-and-philosophers-wittgenstein-and-philosophy/

Well, within the context of a philosophical discussion, the meaning of "know" has nothing to do with truth — LuckyR

That's one opinion of many, and the differing opinions are the point of the example and question posed from it.

The example I described is the Gettier Problem which attempts to point out truths dicey relationship with the definition of knowledge.

The more traditional view (Called the Tripartite theory I believe), is actually that truth is one of the three things necessary for knowledge.

The view you've described (after a quick google), seems to be something closer to Reliabilism, which doesn't tie truth to knowledge, and is more about the processes by which one comes to their belief. But there are others too, or it might be something different.

But all are debatable, which is the point of the Gettier Problem example.

That being said, my comment and example was only in reference to something @RogueAI said, which was a bit of a digression from @vanzhandz initial post regarding utilising inference to consider high level realities.

It's always easier to critique someone if you start by misunderstanding them.

In particular, Wittgenstein went to some length to point out that language is embedded in our activities, and certainly not "too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience". And he might well have agreed with you that it is impossible to avoid metaphysics, being what is shown rather than just said. The sense of wonder is at the core of Wittgenstein's thinking.

You might consider that there is more to his ideas.

I think this is an important point and another reason why it is important to understand some philosophy rather than - and I could so easily do this - make up my own nonsense.

What is most generally called 'reality' is empirical reality, the reality of phenomena. This reality is relational, it is relative to our experience. There can be no determinable reality apart from that for human beings because anything we can determine would obviously be relative to us. Does it follow that there is nothing real other than what is or can be determined by, or relative to, humans?

It doesn't seem to follow logically, deductively. So, what could an argument purporting to show that there can be nothing real that cannot, even in principle, be determined by humans, look like?

...the meaning of "know" has nothing to do with truth — LuckyR

You know things that are not true? I don't think so.

What you can be said to know is true. Otherwise, you don't know it. Been that way since at least Theaetetus.

In particular, Wittgenstein went to some length to point out that language is embedded in out activities, and certainly not "too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience"

Sure, and that's the part of PI I like best, but this is decidedly not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the way this interpretation of language is then used to criticize metaphysics as an endevour and make large scale metaphilosophical claims.

Example:

(Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 4.5): "The general form of propositions is: This is how things are."——That is the kind of proposition that one repeats to oneself countless times. One thinks that one is tracing the outline of the thing's nature over and over again, and one is merely tracing round the frame through which we look at it.

PI 114

One might also give the name "philosophy" to what is possible before all new discoveries and inventions.

PI 126

The results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has got by running its head up against the limits of language. These
bumps make us see the value of the discovery.

PI 116


Or, to answer Wittgenstein's rhetorical question: "When philosophers use a word—"knowledge", "being","object", "I", "proposition", "name"—and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home? - Yes, all the time. People talk metaphysics and philosophy all the time, even if they never read any philosophy. Esoterica and ontological musings are about as old as the oldest bits of writing we have, they're in no way extra-ordinary.

The question "What is a word really?" is analogous to "What is a piece in chess?"

It was true to say that our considerations could not be scientific ones. It was not of any possible interest to us to find out empirically 'that, contrary to our preconceived ideas, it is possible to think suchand-such'—whatever that may mean. (The conception of thought as a gaseous medium.) And we may not advance any kind of theory. There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take its place. And this description gets its light, that is to say its purpose, from the philosophical problems. These are, of course, not empirical problems; they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in despite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.

And he might well have agreed with you that it is impossible to avoid metaphysics, being what is shown rather than just said.

I'm not sure I get your meaning here. I have always taken lines like "what we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use," as describing what the enlightened philosopher in agreement with Wittgenstein does to undo the harm wrought by the metaphysicians, doing bad philosophy.

In particular, Wittgenstein went to some length to point out that language is embedded in our activities, and certainly not "too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience". And he might well have agreed with you that it is impossible to avoid metaphysics, being what is shown rather than just said. The sense of wonder is at the core of Wittgenstein's thinking. — Banno

As highly as I think of Wittgenstein, he was just wrong about what can be said about the metaphysical. Language is embedded in reality, and reality is much more expansive, in terms of what we can say, than Wittgenstein realized. Although, as you say, Wittgenstein believed that the mystical was important.

he was just wrong about what can be said about the metaphysical. — Sam26

Which bit?

Well, I think you've misunderstood what was going on here, but I'll leave it as moot. Too far of the OP, anyway.

He definitely thought that religious arguments were not about facts, because facts are part of the world in which we act, whether linguistic or not. "The world is all that is the case" is not a metaphysical statement, and although he was sympathetic to the mystical, he didn't think there were any facts of the matter. No facts that language could latch onto.

No facts that language could latch onto. — Sam26

Yep. The things shown, not said.

So you are saying he was wrong here? That there are facts that language cannot latch on to?

But then what grounds could we have for calling such things "facts"?

And here we would be putting a limit on what might be said, but not on what might be shown, or understood.

So I'm not following you here, either.

What you said looks like a complex, hidden, tricky way, of just reviving Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am”. If not, what is the difference between what you said and Descartes? — Angelo Cannata

I would say that the usefulness of a particular statement is not limited by someone else having already made one similar to it. Ultimately I believe there is more value to be found in one's own reasoning towards truth than simply reading the works of someone else and taking their thoughts for granted.

We know that this point of Descartes, like any philosophical point aimed at gaining power, grasping existence, is exposed to criticism. Still, it seems that after centuries this human desire is irresistible to our psichology and our mind carries on devising stratagems to comfort ourselves and think that there is still hope to get some kind of ultimate power, ultimate control, able to finally withstand every possible present and future criticism. — Angelo Cannata

This is also a very bold assumption. In no way is the idea behind "I think, therefore I am," limited to representing the human pursuit of what you call "power" or some form of excuse to rise above criticism. I would view it more as a stepping stone, a truth that stands alone, that can then be built upon in any which way you desire. Even so, it still would not justify any sort of belief in invalid truths.

I think the main issue with only referencing previous thinkers when responding to an argument is you ultimately limit your understanding of the argument before you. There is an inherent assumption in saying that Descartes' and my argument are the same, an assumption that applies your interpretation of Descartes' words to my words when Descartes's reasoning has absolutely nothing to do with my reasoning. If you truly sought to understand my argument then you wouldn't simply compare it to someone elses. I understand the value of studying past thinkers but when it comes to understanding any one particular argument we should first judge the merit of the argument ourselves before comparing it to the work of others.

Then I'd suggest that you reconsider your "I may only work within the confines of my own subjective reality". — Banno

You're taking my words out of context to make an assumption about how I interact with the truth of other people. I've literally been trying to find an argument that discounts the relevance of that statement this entire time and I'm pretty sure I didn't even say anything near what you claimed I said.

You are a member of a community, and you learned to divide the world up thus-and-so as a member of that community, and overwhelmingly, you are in agreement with that community. The very fact that you are reading this shows that there is more going on than just your "perceptions".

And if you think not, then solipsism has you and there's no point in your conversing here. — Banno

Also, these are some pretty big assumptions you're making about what I believe. You know nothing other than I've made arguments in one specific area of thought and now apparently I'm on the brink of being "trapped" in solipsism.

Whatever. There's no pleasing some folk.

You know things that are not true? I don't think so.

What you can be said to know is true. Otherwise, you don't know it. Been that way since at least Theaetetus

Your comments are accurate if (and only if) you define truth as one's own personal truth, not a generally accepted truth (which most define it as).

Anyone who has ever made a mistake "knows" they put their car keys in the drawer, only to (in truth) find them in their pants pocket. According to you, the "knowledge" that my keys are in the drawer is true only because it is my personal "truth" (meaning closer to belief or opinion). Most folks feel that knowing the location of my keys is closer to belief and the true location of them is unrelated to what I believe or "know".

The think about "knowing" the keys are in the draw when they are in your pants pocket is that you did not know the keys were in the draw, because they were not.

You thought you knew, but you were wrong.

This is basic stuff.

Might leave this conversation there. I'm not seeing much benefit in chatting with someone who "knows" things that are not true.

We can't assume that the world exists, because we have no idea of what "exist" means.

What I said is not about any problem because of repeating Descartes. The problem is in being exposed to the same criticism which Descartes was exposed to.

I would say that there must be a base reality for my consciousness to exist within, due to me having not been conscious at one point (unborn) and therefore incapable of creating any reality for myself, (...) — vanzhandz

You seem to have forgotten about forgetting. What if your consciousness has existed forever as base reality, yet simply forgotten most of its existence?

I'm confused, how is:

After Wittgenstein, the standard response is that there is nothing you can say about this "base reality". The corollary, that it therefore drops out of any discussion; it is irrelevant.

So back to plain ordinary reality, socks and hands and cups and kettles.

Not related to the idea of an inaccessible base reality? My points were:

A. This response isn't really "standard." Plenty of people though Wittgenstein was simply wrong about his critique of metaphysics and it has continued trucking along since.

B. I am sympathetic to part of what is going on in PI, but not Wittgenstein's arguments against metaphysics, the area of philosophy that deals with critiques of a "inaccessible base reality."

In any event, if you have some radically different view on what Wittgenstein is saying about metaphysics it wouldn't shock me because views of PI have differed quite a bit. It is not a work that is exactly clearly written.

But to give a concrete example of what I'm talking about:

For an example of such ill effects, consider someone interested in the privacy of sensations who asks the following question, and who struggles to find any satisfactory answer: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether I feel pain?’ On Wittgenstein’s view, if we attend to the way in which sentences like ‘I feel pain’ are actually used, then this will appear akin to someone grappling with the gibberish: ‘Why can nobody else know with the certainty I do whether ouch!?’ Philosophy can be used to show that there is no real problem here.

IMO, this PI has a bad habit of throwing out gibberish that it hurts to read and then deciding that, because the gibberish is gibberish, the topic at hand must be. IMO, why sensation is private has a perfectly good if incomplete answer that is fairly mainstream. If we accept that the nervous system is deeply involved in the production of sensation, then the fact that our nervous systems are causally separated from each other in a way that makes them fairly discrete, i.e. human individuals as a sort of "natural kind," explains this fine. No need to claim an area of inquiry stretching back thousands of years has all been gibberish.

And, we can talk about the twins born merged at the head, how the one able to speak claimed he could "feel the thoughts of his brother," disorders such as multiple personality disorder, or the ways in which more social, hive animals interact, suggest that observer's ability to simulate or sense another's sensations exists on a gradient as well. In any event, new information from the empirical sciences offers clarification.

Language is natural; it's like socks and hands and kettles and cups in this respect. It has a causal history like all other natural entities, and it can be empirically studied.In this respect, the "paradox" laid out in PI 201 doesn't seem like a paradox. It seems like looking for underlying general principal of meaning in the wrong place, while also making language out to be suis generis. But you could just as well widen PIs argument to all communications and to animals, and I think doing so shows the cracks in the formalist-type approach to understanding meaning.

I think Wittgenstein (both versions) has a fundamentally flawed conception of language. Ordinary language is clearly flawed, whereas the later Wittgenstein makes too much of the distinction between language and other elements of experience. We understand language through experience, and have the innate ability to develop linguistic skills due to the same selection effects that shape the rest of our biology… — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you have it backwards. We don’t understand language through experience de, we understand experience through language.

it seems to me like he, and those who followed him in the "linguistic turn," make the mistake of making language too distinct, too cut off from the rest of experience. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think you’re right that some who claim to follow Wittgenstein are carrying forward Kant’s split between conceptualization and the non-human world. Rorty made this point about the linguistic turn. But Rorty and others would argue that this is not what Witt was doing. Thinkers in physics (Karen Barad), biology(Stuart Kauffman, Lynn Margolis), the social sciences and philosophy extend Witt’s work on human discourse to the non-human world in order to show that reciprocal interaction within a field or configuration applies not just to human discourse but to the biological and physical worlds in themselves.

I think you have it backwards. We don’t understand language through experience de, we understand experience through language.

Fair enough; I won't deny it seems to go both ways. But it seems like experience is historically prior. Animals had experiences before hominids were around to produce language as such. Babies presumably experience things before they grasp language. A stroke can wipe out our ability to fathom language, but we don't think that by doing so it has caused experience to cease to exist. And so, there should be a logic as to why the things that come before have resulted in what comes after, even if only contingently.

This is perhaps contra Wittgenstein's one mention of animal communications in PI 25.

It is sometimes said that animals do not talk because they lack the mental capacity. And this means: "they do not think, and that is why they do not talk." But—they simply do not talk. Or to put it better: they do not use language—if we except the most primitive forms of language.—Commanding, questioning, recounting, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing.

There is a sense in which this is quite right, language is central to the human experience, and also a way in which it seems off, in that language doesn't seem like it should have sprung fully formed like Athena from Zeus's head. In that way, it is not "as much a part of our natural history as eating or drinking," for in both the lifespan of the individual and the genus eating and drinking come first. They are prerequisites in both the long and short term. A man who stops drinking will soon cease to speak, "dead men tell no tales."

Thinkers in physics (Karen Barad), biology(Stuart Kauffman, Lynn Margolis), the social sciences and philosophy extend Witt’s work on human discourse to the non-human world in order to show that reciprocal interaction within a field or configuration applies not just to human discourse but to the biological and physical worlds in themselves.

Right, and I think this extension makes sense, regardless of the original intent. Forget the linguistic turn, go all in on a "interactive," "informational," or "relational" turn! It's actually the lack of extension where I think things get dicey. To quote Tim Williamson re whether we should focus on thought like Kant wanted, or focus on language as Wittgenstein seemed to think: "perhaps one cannot reflect on thought or talk about reality without reflecting on reality itself...What there is determines what there is for us to mean." That is, "use" doesn't develop ex nihilo, so there is a wider net to cast. Language and thought can't be absolute barriers to meaningfully discussing being if their form is dependent on the logic of being itself.

Or, to sum up: I find Wittgenstein spot on in arguing against trying to find "an external perspective," through which to view language. I find the "therapeutic Wittgensteinians," go to far is asserting something like "any view about the relation between language and non-language is bound to be nonsense." I can't really decide what the man himself actually thought.

I appreciate where you're coming from. Although, I think there's more value in actually expressing that criticism than just making references to it.

Didn't really sound like you were trying to please me. It was more like you wanted to get a witty little burn to make yourself feel good.

↪chiknsld
We can't assume that the world exists, because we have no idea of what "exist" means. — Angelo Cannata

Angelo but isn't our conversation right now proof that the world exists?

You seem to have forgotten about forgetting. — Ø implies everything

Although I'm sure I have forgotten many things when it comes to this argument, I think I've covered that one. I'll quote myself here because I believe it applies to what you're talking about.

Even if my consciousness did exist before it was aware of its consciousness, then in what reality did that unconscious mind exist? — vanzhandz

I think there's more value in actually expressing that criticism than just making references to it. — vanzhandz

Angelo but isn't our conversation right now proof that the world exists? — chiknsld

One essential criticism about Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is that we have no idea about what “to be” or “to exist” means. The same applies to our conversation as a proof that the world exists, which is almost the same argumentation adopted by Descartes: it cannot be a proof of the existence on the world, because we have no idea of what “existence” means.

One essential criticism about Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” is that we have no idea about what “to be” or “to exist” means. The same applies to our conversation as a proof that the world exists, which is almost the same argumentation adopted by Descartes: it cannot be proof of the existence on the world, because we have no idea of what “existence” means.

Right, this is where Hegel starts in the Logic. We are to drop all presuppositions and start with what thought minimally is, sheer immediacy, indeterminate being, and see what pops up, if anything, from there.

It's a fascinating project. But holy shit is it hard to get through it.It manages to be denser than the Phenomenology while also being like 1,000 pages long.