Quite.Philosophy has never shown any inclination to roll over and die. — Srap Tasmaner
Yes. That would be a good description of the agenda of any Philosophy 101 course. It seems to me that it is now an essential step in learning about philosophy or, better, how to philosophize. Perhaps we should assess our students' success in such courses by their level of bewilderment. Look at how carefully Descartes instils his doubt at the beginning of the Meditations.But there may be a third sort of philosophy, which is the more or less deliberate cultivation of perplexity — Srap Tasmaner
That's true, so far as it goes.If I give someone the order "fetch me a red flower from that meadow", how is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word?
— p. 3
Where does this question come from? It's not an ordinary question, not the sort of problem people raise in everyday life. ..... Frege says that we have to get behind the signs to the meaning, precisely what Wittgenstein notes it never occurs to anyone to say about the signs we exchange in everyday life. — Srap Tasmaner
I would put it as a particular perspective, but imagination seems to work as well. Perhaps philosophy arises from a disruption of ordinary life.It requires a particular sort of imagination to notice what people do not do and what they do not worry about, and a particular sort of imagination to make it plausible that they would. ...... Now we have something a bit like a problem to work on, philosophically. A deliberately induced perplexity. — Srap Tasmaner
Yes. Oddball questions are sometimes just muddles or fantasies (nightmares). But sometimes they are more than that.there are the oddball questions which lead either to science (why does the second ball move? is also a very good question) or to philosophy. — Srap Tasmaner
Recognizing the difference between the word as a noise and the word as an order is the critical step. — Ludwig V
I meant a critical step in getting perplexed about understanding carrying out an order.A critical step of what? Of understanding an order? Does it go "Step 1: recognize the other person is not just making a noise; Step 2: ... "? — Srap Tasmaner
If you casually said that in the middle of a battle, I think you would be met by astonishment and bewilderment. W's question needs to be prepared for; it involves abandonment of our ordinary understanding and a peculiar way of thinking about the whole process.If I give someone the order "fetch me a red flower from that meadow", how is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word? — Srap Tasmaner
My default position is that the other person will understand me. If things go wrong, I cope in one way or another. I don't worry, because I am confident that I can cope. Normally, if I did worry about those possibilities, I would be already doing philosophy.When you give an order, do you worry that the other person might forget, and think you were just making a noise? -- Or maybe it will just happen at random: "I understood some of what you said, but there were a couple times you were just making noises." — Srap Tasmaner
If I give someone the order "fetch me a red flower from that meadow", how is he to know what sort of flower to bring, as I have only given him a word? — p. 3
W's question needs to be prepared for; it involves abandonment of our ordinary understanding and a peculiar way of thinking about the whole process. — Ludwig V
Normally, if I did worry about those possibilities, I would be already doing philosophy. — Ludwig V
One might say that the subject we are dealing with is one of the heirs of the subject that used to be called "philosophy." — p. 28
Now that is a very good question and distinctively philosophical. I shall look forward to that discussion.the question "How can one think what is not the case?" — Srap Tasmaner
I think there are problems with this.That is, the problems philosophy worries over arise not because we don't know enough ― about the psychology of language, the nature of reality, whatever ― but because we misunderstand the nature of language or the grammar of particular words. — Srap Tasmaner
I see his use of this term as the remnant of the idea that language has a complete logical structure, which is quite clearly distinct from the world that we talk about. There's room for a lot of clarification, though most people (including me) seem to think that it is not difficult to graps his point. We silently ignore the traditional sense of grammar, though it plays its part in creating philosophical perplexity.'Grammar' is an important word for him, but it's descriptive, not explanatory. — Srap Tasmaner
It occurred to me that anyone who thinks that a philosophical problem has, or should have, an answer or solution is implicitly committed to the death of philosophy. It may be that this illusion is the same illusion as the idea that a complete and final physics is a desirable aim - i.e. that the point of physics is the death of physics.So to come back to the death of philosophy, on the one hand there will be criticism of philosophical positions that derive from misunderstandings of grammar, but there is also room to do this on purpose as a first step in exploring the grammar of our expressions, and you could maybe still call this "philosophy". — Srap Tasmaner
I don't think you are wrong. But I do think that there are some puzzles and confusions in his explanations.One might say that the subject we are dealing with is one of the heirs of the subject that used to be called "philosophy."
— p. 28
At least that's what I think he's up to. — Srap Tasmaner
W thinks they are wrong about that, but that is a philosophical position, which needs to be demonstrated. — Ludwig V
…W seems to start from our perplexity… everybody needs to start from somewhere - but it seems to rely on a wholesale dismissal of the philosophical tradition(s) — Ludwig V
there may be a different desire underlying scepticism, the desire to undermine baseless certainties. — Ludwig V
People using signs are alive. They give life to the signs through their use. Wittgenstein recognizes that a process must be happening organically that makes thinking, speaking, and listening possible but sees his work as something entirely different from investigating that — Paine
But if we had to name anything that is the life of the sign, we should have to say it was its use. — p. 4
The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language. — p. 5
As part of the system of language, one may say, the sentence has life. But one is tempted to imagine that which gives the sentence life as something in an occult sphere, accompanying the sentence. But whatever accompanied it would for us just be another sign. — p. 5, the very next sentence
Suppose that the question is "what do you mean by that gesture?" and the answer is "I mean that you must leave". The answer would not have been more correctly phrased: "I mean what I mean by the sentence 'you must leave'." — Philosophical Grammar, p. 40
"What did you mean by those words?" "Did you mean those words?" The first question is not a more precise specification of the second. The first is answered by a proposition replacing the proposition which wasn't understood. The second question is like: "Did you mean that seriously or as a joke?" — Philosophical Grammar, p. 41
We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for applying the general term "game" to the various games; whereas games form a family the members of which have family likenesses. — p. 17
Now does this mean that it is nonsensical to talk of a locality where thought takes place? Certainly not. This phrase has sense if we give it sense. — p. 7
If on the other hand you realize that the chain of actual reasons has a beginning, you will no longer be revolted by the idea of a case in which there is no reason for the way you obey the order. .....
The difference between the grammars of "reason" and "cause" is quite similar to that between the grammars of "motive" and "cause". Of the cause one can say that one can't know it but can only conjecture it. On the other hand one often says: "Surely I must know why I did it" talking of the motive. When I say: "we can only conjecture the cause but we know the motive" this statement will be seen later on to be a grammatical one. The "can" refers to a logical possibility.
The double use of the word "why", asking for the cause and asking for the motive, together with the idea that we can know, and not only conjecture, our motives, gives rise to the confusion that a motive is a cause of which we are immediately aware, a cause 'seen from the inside', or a cause experienced.- Giving a reason is like giving a calculation by which you have arrived at a certain result. — p. 15
if you're talking about a sign (or doodling mathematical symbols, whatever), you're not using it but mentioning it. — Srap Tasmaner
But one natural test of whether an utterance is a use is whether the speaker means it, or is just quoting — Srap Tasmaner
That doesn't mean every utterance is some kind of use, but it means that the uses of a sign are open-ended. Whatever 'grammar' describes, it is not a fixed set of rules that must be followed when using a sign; 'language games' illustrate use, but do not exhaust the possibilities of use. — Srap Tasmaner
The sign (the sentence) gets its significance from the system of signs, from the language to which it belongs. Roughly: understanding a sentence means understanding a language. — p. 5
I think of that as asking why we are so good at doing it. — Paine
but it’s not a matter that words are tools we manipulate then of which “well established usage”(p.3) something is like — Antony Nickles
I will give a few such interpretations and use English words with well-established usage. — p. 2
An utterance is not judged as, or as not, a ‘use’ of words; an utterance has a use—it is a plea, or a threat, or points out a difference; as are the examples regarding the pencil—depending on the context. — Antony Nickles
"This is a pencil",
"This is round",
"This is wood",
"This is one",
"This is hard", etc. etc. — ibid
To the statement "I feel in my hand that the water is three feet under the ground" we should like to answer "I don't know what this means". But the diviner would say: "Surely you know what it means. You know what 'three feet under the ground' means and you know what 'I feel' means!" But I should answer him: I know what a word means in certain contexts. ... But the use of the expression "a feeling of water being three feet under the ground" has yet to be explained to me. — p. 9f.
The grammar of this phrase has yet to be explained to me. — p. 10
These are ways of using signs simpler than those in which we use the signs of our highly complicated everyday language. — p. 17
The importance of investigating the diviner's answer lies in the fact that we often think that we have given a meaning to a statement P if only we assert "I feel (or I believe) that P is the case. — p. 10
However, my problem is with his comparison of reasons with motives. I have to say, I think of a motive as a desire or wish or value - reasons map the path from there to the action. as in the third bolded passage. But set that aside. My question is how does this fit with the justification post hoc? It looks as if I may act for no reason, but then offer a justification post hoc, which suggests that I did act for a reason. But that doesn't fit with our immediate awareness of the motive. — Ludwig V
Do you take Wittgenstein to have been saying that "this is tove" might mean any one of… depending on context? — Srap Tasmaner
But he doesn't exclusively use "use" as a noun — Srap Tasmaner
Same statement (“This is pencil”), different “uses” (usages, made explicit), or as he also calls them: interpretations. Not that the use is given by me. — Antony Nickles
If he picks what we call a "banjo" we might say "he has given the word 'banjo' the correct interpretation"; if he picks some other instrument ― "he has interpreted 'banjo' to mean 'string instrument'".
We say "he has given the word 'banjo' this or that interpretation", and are inclined to assume a definite act of interpretation besides the act of choosing. — p. 2
a usage/interpretation is more than something I do, what with history, context, others’ judgment, multiple uses, etc. (even though I can consider, choose words, plan, hope). — Antony Nickles
I want you to remember that words have those meanings which we have given them; and we give them meanings by explanations. — p. 27
Whenever we interpret a symbol in one way or another, the interpretation is a new symbol added to the old one. — p. 33
So do you read Wittgenstein here as rhetorically casting doubt not only on the assumption noted ― about the separate, mental act of interpretation ― but also on the idea of giving a word an interpretation, or interpreting a word to mean something? — Srap Tasmaner
I don't deny that. But I think W leaves a gaping hole in the demonstration that mental objects - in the "occult" sense, drop out of consideration as irrelevant. But what makes the reasons mine, as opposed to justifications after the event? Perhaps the fact that I give them as reasons after the event is what makes them mine. In giving them, I claim them, or perhaps acknowledge them. Either way, they are to be compared to "I am in pain" or "That tastes sweet". There is a complicated hinterland here, which is usually acknowledged only in passing, that one's authority in such cases is defeasible. We may be joking or pretending. But it's time to move on.I’m not sure we would act for a reason (seems like a motive, or a principle), but after the fact (post hoc) we could give reasons for acting as I did (which could include causes and motives, as it could include excuses and justifications). — Antony Nickles
That's right. It seems to me that this is why W ends up (in the PI) with the faintly despairing "But this is what I do!" or "When I have reached bedrock, my spade is turned.This is the point where people say that understanding or meaning or interpretation "drop out", because Wittgenstein is insistent that anything you try to grasp as standing behind the words will be just another sign. There is something genuinely radical, or at least strange, going on here. — Srap Tasmaner
W doesn't give an analysis of his use of "use" in this context, but there is more than one use of words at stake here. Austin identifies some of them when he develops his concept of speech acts - which are, after all, uses of words. (I'm thinking of locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary acts) But he doesn't pay attention to two different ways of thinking about language. One is the approach through the idea that language is a structure and can be thought of as existing independently of speakers - much as a game can be thought of as a structured set of rules as well as in the playing of them. Here, we can say that speakers must conform to the rules, on pain of failing to communicate or saying something we did not mean to say. In this mode, we can speak of the "grammar" of language. But this approach doesn't pay attention to the various events of speakers speaking; here, breaking (or stretching) the rules is possible, because it turns on the intentions of the speaker and the reactions of the audience.An utterance is not judged as, or as not, a ‘use’ of words; an utterance has a use—it is a plea, or a threat, or points out a difference; as are the examples regarding the pencil—depending on the context. Thus why words are not ‘meant’ by us, other than in contrast to when we jest. — Antony Nickles
This is the point where people say that understanding or meaning or interpretation "drop out", because Wittgenstein is insistent that anything you try to grasp as standing behind the words will be just another sign. There is something genuinely radical, or at least strange, going on here.
— Srap Tasmaner
That's right. It seems to me that this is why W ends up (in the PI) with the faintly despairing "But this is what I do!" or "When I have reached bedrock, my spade is turned — Ludwig V
what makes the reasons mine, as opposed to justifications after the event? — Ludwig V
there is more than one use of words at stake here — Ludwig V
In the context of philosophical scepticism or nihilism, that's so. The remark was, in a sense, only a flourish. But I was thinking of the parent trying to deal rationally with a child who has discovered the possibility of an infinite regress of "why". In the end, the authoritative. dogmatic, answer is the only possible one.But this having reached bedrock is precisely the way out of despair, or precisely, the way to free ourselves of the meaningless that confusing empirical with grammatical certainty leads to. — Joshs
I agree with that, of course. That's the explanation that makes the authoritative answer not merely dogmatic.The language game makes intelligibility possible by taking for granted a founding system of interconnected meanings that it would make no sense to doubt as long as one continued to move within that language game. This built-in normativity of our languaged practices is not a failure to properly ground meaning, but the condition for keeping meaning alive. — Joshs
I was thinking of the parent trying to deal rationally with a child who has discovered the possibility of an infinite regress of "why". In the end, the authoritative. dogmatic, answer is the only possible one.
The language game makes intelligibility possible by taking for granted a founding system of interconnected meanings that it would make no sense to doubt as long as one continued to move within that language game. This built-in normativity of our languaged practices is not a failure to properly ground meaning, but the condition for keeping meaning alive.
— Joshs
I agree with that, of course. That's the explanation that makes the authoritative answer not merely dogmatic. — Ludwig V
Wittgenstein's well-known remark that requests for justification of a practice must eventually encounter a stopping point at which one can only say, “This is what we do" is often read as appealing to a social regularity, but his remark can instead be heard with the inflection with which a parent tells a child, "We don't hit other children, do we?"
Such statements or rhetorical questions do not describe regularities in children's actual behavior. On the contrary, parents make such comments precisely because children do hit one another. Parents do so, however, in response to or anticipation of such "deviant" behavior in order to hold it accountable to correction. Children's behavior in turn is only partially accommodating to such correction: sometimes obeying, sometimes challenging or circumventing corrective responses, some-times disobeying and facing further consequences, and so forth. Remember that we cannot appeal to social regularities or collectively presupposed norms within a practice: there are no such things, I have argued, but more important, if there were they would not thereby legitimately bind us. Any regularities in what practitioners have previously done does not thereby have any authority to bind subsequent performances to the same regularities. The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule, since no rule can specify its correct application to future instances (Wittgenstein 1953). Practices should instead be understood as comprising performances that are mutually interactive in partially shared circumstances.
It all goes back to this. But doesn't it follow that the authority of a pronouncement within the language is actually conferred on it by the (brute) fact that we accept it as authoritative - and our children accept their version of the practice after they have learnt ours?The familiar Wittgensteinian paradoxes about rule following similarly block any institution of norms merely by invocation of a rule,
In the end, the authoritative. dogmatic, answer is the only possible one. — Ludwig V
I don't know the texts well enough to comment on Cavell's comment. There is sense in what he says, but I'm not sure that it is what W wants to say.Cavell will point out that the teacher is only “inclined to say: ‘This is simply what I do.’” (PI #217] so of course we can shut the door to further teaching with dogmatism and authority, but we can always continue the conversation in order to reach agreement and compliance, because it’s the relationship—to each other, to society—that’s more important in this case than anything we might take (or force) as foundational. — Antony Nickles
[Witt] is oddly just like Socrates in accepting he has to live with the arguments he makes. — Paine
I don't read the issue he has with Plato as equivalent to his complaints about the temptations of modern science. The latter are the people he lives amongst. — Paine
I do think W urgently wants to get past the 'problem of skepticism' in regard to phenomena versus reality frames of discussion. He may eschew other explanations but he keeps taking aim at that one throughout his life. — Paine
It's not a question of argument, but of learning. — Ludwig V
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