:rofl:

Ok.

It's again a methodological point. One of the departures for Ordinary Language Philosophy from other forms of analytic philosophy is that it does not start with an attempt to achieve certainty. Ayer shares an analytic background with Austin, coming from a (mis)reading of works such as Wittgenstein's Tractatus. He thinks he can fill out a theory of perceptions in such a way as to provide a firm basis for scientific knowledge, while at the same time showing the poverty of other supposed ways of knowing. In the process of firming up such a theory he leads himself, and a great many others, astray. As Austin points out, pp 59-61, there is historical precedent. Perception will not bear the epistemological weight philosophers put on its shoulders. it needs help.

I like the way you put that. I’m sold. — NOS4A2

Why, thanks. It is odd that the point needs to be made, really. How many threads start by defining the terms to be used instead of examining them?

But it's so much easier to start with a definition. You don't have to think, or read.

I choose "walking across the room" as my example. — Ludwig V

OK, now do you agree that a person must have the capacity to walk across the room prior to actually walking across the room? And, this is not the capacity to learn how to walk, because the person has already learned that. Despite the fact that we might not be able to judge that this person had the capacity to walk across the room, until after the person actually demonstrates this ability by walking across the room, it is also a simple fact that the person must have had the capacity to do it, before carrying out the act.

I asked myself whether you intend what you say to non-actions, to what are called dispositions. — Ludwig V

No, I consider "dispositions" to be something completely different. A disposition is an arrangement of parts. And, if a specific arrangement of parts inclines a person to act in a specific way, then the disposition plays the role of a restriction on a capacity. A capacity, and the restrictions on a capacity are very distinct. So for example, a habit may be a sort of disposition. The habit inclines the person with the potential, or capacity, to actualize it in a specific way, the habit of walking across the room for example. This disposition restricts the capacity, which could act in many different ways, walk to many different places for example, inclining the person to act in the one specific way, out of the many possible ways. So a disposition is somewhat opposite to a capacity, the latter being a freedom, the former being a restriction.

This is a fake puzzle, based on the fact that we tend to use "capacity" in an ambiguous way. We say of an infant that cannot yet walk, or of someone that has not yet learnt to drive that they cannot walk or drive, but that they have to capacity to learn to walk, or drive and in that sense, can walk or drive. — Ludwig V

Here you demonstrate misunderstanding. The ability to walk across the room, which necessarily preexists the physical act of walking across the room, (as the skill to do it), is very specific, by those terms. The more general "capacity to learn to walk" is completely different. Being more general, as a capacity to learn something, the same capacity is also the capacity to learn all sorts of different things. So it is not properly called the capacity to learn to walk, because that unnecessarily restricts it to learning to walk, when it actually could manifest in the learning of many different things. When a person learns to walk, that capacity to learn many different things, is restricted in a specific way, as a sort of dispositioning, so that a more specific capacity results, the capacity to walk. And, the even more specific, the capacity to walk across the room.

The capacity to learn or otherwise acquire, as skill is distinct from the exercise of that skill. Your infinite regress, I'm afraid, is little more than a pun. — Ludwig V

Now you are simply avoiding the issue by leaving out the logically necessary intermediary between the capacity to learn a skill, and the exercising of that skill once it is learned. The intermediary which you neglect, is having the skill without actually exercising it. I have learned how to walk, I have the capacity to walk across the room, but I am not currently exercising this capacity. This capacity, which we might call the skill itself, comes after learning the skill, but it must always exist prior to exercising the skill.

I do not know how you can describe an infinite regress as a pun. That makes no sense, but I think you must see it that way due to the misunderstanding which you demonstrate.

Except that we acquire many skills by practice. The infant learns to walk by trying and failing and gradually getting better at it. We learn to drive by sitting in the driving seat and trying to drive and gradually getting better at it. This learning process is built on what we already can do, but which we have not learnt to do. Infants can do various things from birth and even before birth. These are the result of the physical development of the body, and can be compared to the tendency of the stone to resist pressure - that is, they are dispositions, not capacities. — Ludwig V

This attempt to reduce capacities to dispositions does not address the issue at all. It just demonstrates a basic misunderstanding, or possibly an intentional effort to avoid the issue. The issue is that the capacity to walk, drive, or whatever specific skill you will name, which. as actually having the skill, is necessarily posterior in time to learning the skill, is also necessarily prior in time to carrying out the specified activity. It cannot be reduced to learning the activity, as you seem to propose, because it only exists after the skill is learned. And, it cannot be described in terms of carrying out the specified activity because it is necessarily prior in time to carrying out the activity.

As I explained above, the capacity to learn to see is indeed "prior to" the capacity to see, but is not the same capacity as the capacity to see. — Ludwig V

The issue is that the capacity to see, which is temporally posterior to learning how to see, is necessarily prior in time, to the physical act of seeing. Therefore the capacity to see cannot be reduced to the capacity to learn how to see, nor can it be reduced to the physical activity of seeing.

So for me it speaks little of the directness or indirectness of perception and doing so leads me into wild territory. — NOS4A2

That's the point I was making. When we properly look at the issue, the question of "directness or indirectness" becomes incidental and insignificant. That question is misguided, most likely as an ill-advised attempt to avoid the "wild territory", which is reality.

had the same feeling about this. Malcolm's take on dreaming has not been popular. Indeed, it has largely met the ultimate rejection - being ignored.

I would be delighted to indulge in a conversation about this, but I'm not inclined to think that he's not quite right about these cases shows that his overall argument is wrong. — Ludwig V

I think you could say the same thing about Austin. His arguments have been largely ignored because the philosophical community continues to talk about qualia, what-it's-like-ness experiences, or the ontological subjective.

My main point in this post is to show how two linguistic philosophers supposedly analyzing the same ordinary language we all use, seemingly coming up with some fundamentally different conclusions.

The fact that ways to distinguish are possible is proof of Austin’s claim. Descartes was trying to pull the same stunt in setting the goal before investigating the field. — Antony Nickles

Austin seems to be saying that we somehow know the dream experience is "qualitatively" different than the waking experience, because as he says "How otherwise should we know how to use and contrast the words. He further inserted a footnote saying "This is part, no doubt only part, of the absurdity in Descartes' toying with the notion that the whole of our experiences might be a dream." But Malcolm is saying that this idea that dreaming is an experience where we question, reason, perceive, imagine is an incoherent one, so there is no sense to say we are comparing experiences to determine they are qualitatively similar or not.

n conversations, I found a reluctance to take scientific research on board. The problem here is partly that being a scientist does not make one immune from philosophical mistakes. What makes it even more difficult is that the distinction between ordinary language and science is distinctly permeable. REM is in some ways a technical, theoretical concept, but in others is a common sense observation. — Ludwig V

In "Dreaming" Malcolm does not ignore scientific considerations regarding dreams. He says the following:

"The interest in a physiological criterion of dreaming is due, I believe, to an error that philosophers, psychologists, physiologists, and everyone who reflects on the nature of dreaming tends to commit, namely, of supposing that a dream must have a definite location and duration in physical time. (this is an excellent example of what Wittgenstein calls a 'prejudice' produced by 'grammatical illusions') It might be replied that a dream is surely an event and that event must have a definite date and duration in physical time. But this gets one nowhere, for what justifies the claim that a dream is an event in that sense?"

But Malcolm takes this one step further, and suggests that maybe scientists are just proposing a new concept of "dreaming". What would be the consequences of this stipulation, that REM means that a human was dreaming. One, "...if someone were to tell a dream it could turn out that his impression that he dreamt was mistaken-and not in the sense that the incidents he related had really occurred and so his impression was not of a dream but of reality. The new concept would allow him to be mistaken in saying he had a dream even if his impression that he had seen and done various things were false. Another consequence is that it would be possible to discover that a man's assertion that he had slept a dreamless sleep was in error; and here one would have to choose between saying either that he forgot his dreams or that he had not been aware of them when he dreamt them. People would have to be informed on waking up that they had dreamt or not-instead of their informing us, as it now is."

He ends his chapter in a rather un-antithetical view of science when he says, "Physiological phenomena, such as rapid eye movements or muscular action currents, may be found to stand in interesting empirical correlations with dreaming, but the possibility of these discoveries presupposes that these phenomena are not used as the criterion of dreaming."

I understand folk like to say Malcolm is denying that we have experiences such as dreams, but I think we one needs to understand he is studying how we understand the concept of "dreaming" and what we can and cannot say about such a concept.

@Banno @J @Ludvig @Corvus @javi2541997 @Ciceronianus @frank @wonderer1@Janus

Lecture VII is not a theory about what the word “real” means. It’s showing how the actual world works compared to the imagined idea of Reality itself, the theory of an “objective” world. In this case, compared to the picture that we do or do not “perceive” “Reality”, something immutable, infallible, and generalized to every object and abstracted from any circumstance and any responsibility we might have.

However, despite this need for—let’s call it a pure knowledge (as Wittgenstein does) or perfect knowledge (as Descartes does)—everything but math is not “objective” in the way philosophy imposes on “Reality”. But instead of looking, as Austin does, at how we actually manage our uncertain world, Ayer internalizes the world’s failings by making it our failing: that we can only “perceive” a world that is “real”, which forces us to only be able to ask confused questions like: do we perceive “reality” directly? Or is our perception of “reality” indirect/mediated? Maybe through some “real” process of the (perfect) brain? or because it is “my” “perception” of “Reality”? (and you have yours—instead of just our varying personal interests).

The dismissal of Austin is done for many reasons, but it boils down to an inability to accept anything but an “answer” to the world’s uncertainty (like a perfect knowledge) or nothing at all (falling back only on a mediated “perception”), and not taking seriously that the ordinary ways we handle problems in each case are sufficient and our only recourse. Austin is (as is Wittgenstein) only seen either as setting out just a different answer to these cobwebs of misunderstandings—that he is some version of a “realist”—or that the mechanics he uncovers about the world are trivial in response to these issues (he’s just relying on words or “common sense”).

Lecture VII: Once again, Austin is not talking about words (explaining words), he is looking at the words we say when we do something to illuminate our practices. That words are “used in a particular way” is a “fact” (p.62) because our lives have been “firmly established” (Id.) There is a correct way (as in, appropriate) to address a subject, its mechanics, which is how you can be “wrong” p. 63. This is not being nit-picky and pedantic about word usage—because it is our lives that are normative (influence the conformity of our acts). Note here when Austin says: “‘Real or not?’… can’t always be raised. We… raise this question only when… suspicion assails us…” (p.69) (emphasis added)

In saying that the “distinctions [are] embodied” (Id.), Austin is saying we live them, in them, by them. Distinctions are how we judge, and, in judging along those lines, we reinvest ourselves in the criteria for that practice. There is nothing “arbitrary” (p.63) about the way our practices work. They have import because they reflect our interests in our lives.

So “Reality” is a prefabricated (a priori) standard of judgment measuring everything against perfection. (P.64) What philosophy did is take the ordinary question: is that a real duck? (or a decoy?) and turn “real” into a quality of everything. However, there are many different ways (criteria for how) things count as real, and one of the most important being because there is an antecedent (expected) alternative, like: fake, a variant context, deception, artifice, etc. So, it is untenable for everything to be real (or not), unless… you remove the question and abstract the (unnatural) quality onto the whole world—ta da: Reality!

But Malcolm is saying that this idea that dreaming is an experience where we question, reason, perceive, imagine is an incoherent one, so there is no sense to say we are comparing experiences to determine they are qualitatively similar or not. — Richard B

I’m not sure were Austin put forward “this idea” of what we do in dreams. I was trying to show that there actually are, as he says, “recognized ways of distinguishing between dreaming and waking”. Why does this have to mean: while we are dreaming? It seems perhaps Malcolm is creating his own opponent, but I don’t think it is Austin.

Lecture VII: Once again, Austin is not talking about words (explaining words), he is looking at the words we say when we do something to illuminate our practices. That words are “used in a particular way” is a “fact” (p.62) because our lives have been “firmly established” (Id.) — Antony Nickles

Yes, Austin explains pretty well the ordinary vocabulary of our language, and that's why he states that the use of some words depends on the 'adaptation' of our daily life.

But he goes beyond all of that. I disagree when you say that words are dependent upon how we do something, because there are some words which their functionality is more than just a 'tool'. This is why he uses 'real' - the word 'good', too - as an example. He establishes some theories on the nature of this word, expressing that it is a 'substantive-hungry', trouser-word, dimension-word, and dimension-word. These characteristics help us in our demanding, and it is obvious that 'real' tends to be more used amongst people than 'proper' - as he states - I think this about Philosophy of Language, and I don't think he attempts to say that it depends on the way we do things. It is the opposite. Thanks to these complex words, we are able to have a better understanding.

Perception will not bear the epistemological weight philosophers put on its shoulders. it needs help. — Banno

Yes. The search for certainty. Nothing can bear the weight of that.

It's in line with Wittgenstein, of course:
To repeat: don’t think, but look!
— PI, §66 — Banno

Just occasionally, I find I have to take issue with something that W says. The idea that it is just a matter of just looking, or collecting data, is far too simple. Wittgenstein gets us to look at things differently, to break out of the tyranny of philosophical knots. Austin gets us to see distinctions and differences that we overlook unless we are very careful. Both provide cases (examples) that are effective. They are not random. They are selected and constructed.

What is also true, though, is that their work is only to persuade us to do our work.

I was saying that if delusions, illusions are regarded as a type of perception, then why shouldn't seeing mental images in memories, imaginations, thinking and intuitions be thought of as a type of perception too. It was a suggestion, not a claim. — Corvus

Fair enough, and I can see why it might make sense. My reason for not accepting it is that perception (seeing, hearing, etc.) is always perception of something - hence the tendency to think about subject and object. That's how we get led astray. In the case of imagining something, there is no object - I mean that unicorns don't exist and that it is misleading to suppose that when we imagine unicorns we necessarily see something unicorn-like. (When we imagine or remember visiting the Parthenon, we are not visiting the Parthenon).

The issue is that the capacity to see, which is temporally posterior to learning how to see, is necessarily prior in time, to the physical act of seeing. Therefore the capacity to see cannot be reduced to the capacity to learn how to see, nor can it be reduced to the physical activity of seeing. — Metaphysician Undercover

But it seems to me that, just as one swallow doesn't make a summer, one action doesn't make a disposition, habit, tendency or addiction, and that I acquire the capacity or skill required to do many things by doing them or trying to do them. Your infinite regress suggests that I cannot acquire any capacity, and I don't believe that.

I understand folk like to say Malcolm is denying that we have experiences such as dreams, but I think we one needs to understand he is studying how we understand the concept of "dreaming" and what we can and cannot say about such a concept. — Richard B

Thank you for your posts about this. But I had the impression that he does deploy an argument about this, that experiencing something is incompatible with being unconscious and that being asleep is being unconscious.

I think you could say the same thing about Austin. His arguments have been largely ignored because the philosophical community continues to talk about qualia, what-it's-like-ness experiences, or the ontological subjective. — Richard B

Yes. I put it down partly to the conventional approach to philosophical education as initiation into traditional ways of thinking with the intention of inoculating students against infection. It doesn't seem to work very well, partly because breaking through, or out, of them is not a once-for-all job. But that pushes us back to Cavell's idea that the roots of philosophy lie deeper than was recognized at the time.

Austin seems to be saying that we somehow know the dream experience is "qualitatively" different than the waking experience, because as he says "How otherwise should we know how to use and contrast the words. — Richard B

Yes, and I think he is wrong about that. At least, he is wrong if he thinks that by inspecting the dream experience, we can reliably sort out whether we are awake or not. There's no reliable clue inherent in the experience that allows us to identify it as a dream - if there were, we would be dreaming it, so it wouldn't be reliable. That's why we insist, in the morning that these things did actually (seem to) happen. We tell the difference because the dream story doesn't fit with our waking life in the ways that our memories of yesterday fit with what happens in the morning.

Austin doesn't pay attention to the fact that children have to be taught to recognize that the wolves they dreamt of are dreams - that there are no wolves around one's house and one cannot really jump over tall buildings. Nor does he take into account that many societies do not believe that dreams are just false; they develop ideas that posit them as realities (gods, other worlds, altered states of consciousness) or develop interpretations that posit a kind of truth to them.

In "Dreaming" Malcolm does not ignore scientific considerations regarding dreams. He says the following: — Richard B

Yes. That's why I didn't attribute the resistance to him. It was an informal conversation, no more. But the question what we are to make of them stands, and the issue that the scientists, for the most part, as far as I have seen, seem to accept that we have experiences while we are asleep. But the issue remains that we are dependent on the dreamer's reports about what they are; dream stories are not independently verifiable. The scientific data here ought to be the reports, not the experiences reported.

Perception will not bear the epistemological weight philosophers put on its shoulders. it needs help. — Banno

OK, that's fair enough. :)   But Austin shouldn't be afraid, or shy away from facing the contemporary criticisms and analyses on the points laid out in his works, if they are to be confirmed as having good grounds to stand on as a legitimate constructive philosophical methodology which must be a non-dogmatic and non nitpicking linguistic-quibble.

In the case of imagining something, there is no object - I mean that unicorns don't exist and that it is misleading to suppose that when we imagine unicorns we necessarily see something unicorn-like. (When we imagine or remember visiting the Parthenon, we are not visiting the Parthenon). — Ludwig V

But doesn't it exist in your mind as a mental image? Oh you said you don't get mental images. I find it hard to accept. I mean how do you dream? Do you deny the existence of mental objects?

Surely you must see the mental images in your dream? OK, you say you only have linguistic and reasoning objects only, in your mind. But how do you dream linguistically?

However, despite this need for—let’s call it a pure knowledge (as Wittgenstein does) or perfect knowledge (as Descartes does)—everything but math is not “objective” in the way philosophy imposes on “Reality”. — Antony Nickles

What justifies putting math in a different category? If math is just a different way of using language, how does it possibly obtain this status of "objective"? All instances of language use provide for different degrees of certitude, but what provides the principles for putting math in a completely different category from other ways of using language, in respect to certitude?

...one action doesn't make a disposition.. — Ludwig V

This is representative of the faulty way of looking at things, which I am trying to get you to recognize. No matter how you look at any specific action itself, or how many times you look at the recurrence of a similar action, this will never provide for you an understanding of the capacity for that specified action, nor will it provide an understanding of that disposition which produces the similarity of repetition. This is because the nature of "a capacity", as a potential, involving a multitude of possibilities, is such that there is no necessary relation between the potential, capacity, and what actually occurs.

So, we cannot proceed from an observation of what actually occurs, to produce an adequate understanding of the capacity which provided the potential for that actual occurrence, because we are missing an essential ingredient, required for that understanding. This required element is the agent which chooses from the multitude of possibilities, to produce the specific activity. In the case of intention actions we know this agent as the "free will". The agent which makes the choice, apprehends the possibilities in its own unique and peculiar way, therefore understanding the reason why one specific sort of action is caused, rather than one of the multitude of other possibilities, requires knowing the agent's perspective.

Your infinite regress suggests that I cannot acquire any capacity, and I don't believe that. — Ludwig V

You misunderstood the infinite regress. The infinite regress demonstrates the failure of your way of looking at things, that the existence of a capacity can be understood through learning, doing, trying. It arises from trying to explain the capacity for a living activity through reference only to the activity produced from the capacity. This is what you do when you refer to learning, you refer to various forms of a similar activity, as a being develops its disposition toward the capacity it holds. Your suggestion that a stone's disposition is similar, is not supported by common knowledge because we do not understand the stone to choose from possibilities, like we understand living beings to.

So, take your example of the capacity to walk across the room for example. We can only say that this capacity exists after we observe the being walking across the room. However, we know that the capacity must preexist the action, to enable it. Then, we might say that the being demonstrated this capacity when it walked halfway across the room. But still, the capacity to walk halfway is the same sort of capacity as the capacity to walk all the way, and this must have preexisted the walking of halfway. Therefore we must look at the capacity to walk a quarter of the way. Prior to this, we have an eighth of the way, etc., and this would produce an infinite regress, like a Zeno paradox.

You might think that such an infinite regress is silly, but it's really just a short cut to getting to the real problem. If you say that prior to the capacity to walk, came the capacity to stand up, replacing one specified capacity (to walk), with another prior capacity (to stand up), we face the same type of infinite regress, only replacing the development of one specified capacity (to walk) with an infinite series of similar capacities (to walk, to stand up, to crawl, etc.). The infinite regress is only avoided by stopping, which renders the capacity as still not understood, because we do not get to the bottom of it

The fact is that if we try to understand the reality of the type of capacity which living beings possess, solely through reference to the activities produced by the capacities, we face an infinite regress which renders the capacity as unintelligible. This is due to the nature of the relationship between the capacity and the activity produced from it; the fact that there is no logical necessity to this relationship. The lack of a logical relation produces the need to impose boundary conditions on the activity, which results in an infinite regress when the boundary is approached.

Oh you said you don't get mental images. — Corvus

I'm afraid I have a mild form of aphantasia. You can speak for yourself, but not for me. — Ludwig V

What I said was that I don't always get mental images. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I call them up (especially when remembering) and sometimes I don't. I sometimes seem to recall images when I wake up in the morning; I have no way of knowing whether my report is accurate. BTW, there's no problem about dreaming "in language"; it's just telling a story (improvised); for me that usually happens when I'm awake, so it is called day-dreaming.

What I'm protesting against is the idea that necessarily one "sees" an image when imagining things, remembering things, etc and that "seeing" an image is always the same thing. The images I "see" when I remember something are not like the images I see on a screen or in a mirror and even less like the images I see in pictures, and when someone remarked, on seeing me and my brother together for the first time "Oh, there are two of you. You are the image of each other." (We are not twins and neither of us was impressed by this remark.) All these examples are different from the image of the monarch that appears on stamps, coins and notes in the UK.

I don't deny that we think, remember, judge, imagine, etc. etc. How could I? I'm not sure that I know what mental objects are supposed to be.

I don't deny that we think, remember, judge, imagine, etc. etc. How could I? I'm not sure that I know what mental objects are supposed to be. — Ludwig V

Here is the link for mental objects from Wiki.
Account of Mental Objects / Representation from SEP.

Mental images are the mental objects which happen to be images in your mind, be it imagined, intuited, perceived or remembered.

Account for mental imagery in SEP.
Account for mental image in Wiki

I think you could say the same thing about Austin. His arguments have been largely ignored because the philosophical community continues to talk about qualia, what-it's-like-ness experiences, or the ontological subjective. — Richard B

The life of philosophy is debate, which requires a puzzle or a question. Solutions and answers end debate. Paradoxically, being right leaves nothing to say. So it becomes necessary to renew the puzzle.
Wittgenstein did not appreciate this, which is why he had to give up philosophy when he had written the Tractatus.

My main point in this post is to show how two linguistic philosophers supposedly analyzing the same ordinary language we all use, seemingly coming up with some fundamentally different conclusions. — Richard B

As usual, what was supposed to be a final authority becomes a subject of debate. No-one really likes a final authority. In some people, the prospect of a final authority triggers a desire to overthrow it.

I don't think this is cynicism. I think it represents some understanding of philosophy as a way of life.

Thanks for these links. I'll have a look at them.

If math is just a different way of using language, how does it possibly obtain this status of "objective"? — Metaphysician Undercover

If you do math, and I do math (competently), we come up with the same answer. It doesn’t matter who does it. It is universal, rule-driven, predictable, repeatable, logical, a fact, etc. (that’s all I mean be “certain”). Imagine everything Socrates wanted for knowledge; that’s why he used math as the ultimate example in the Theatetus.

The life of philosophy is debate, which requires a puzzle or a question. — Ludwig V

I think linguistic philosophy tends to be less about debate and more of this:

Show this use, and this use, and this use, and this use, etc… now give up all your talk of sense datum. No? look at how we learned these words…now give up all your talk of sense datum…No? see these words have no contrast…now give up all your talk of sense datum…No, don’t you find your philosophical worries dissolve away?

If the linguistic philosopher gets lucky, their analysis goes places where they make “final” proclamations such as “this is nonsense” or “this is incoherent”.

I find the ideas intriguing, although as I said I am only familiar with them by proxy. However it seems to me that there is a difficulty in Malcolm's notion of consciousness, or rather unconsciousness. As I understand, he envisions consciousness as either on or off. That's not my experience, nor what I understand from others.

also, i think Austin's point stands, in the face of what Malcolm has to say. That is, that we do differentiate between the various forms of dreaming and waking indicates that we have a fairly clear understanding that there is a difference. That's not the whole of an argument against Descartes, but it is a good start.

Thanks for your posts.

If you do math, and I do math (competently), we come up with the same answer. It doesn’t matter who does it. It is universal, rule-driven, predictable, repeatable, logical, a fact, etc. (that’s all I mean be “certain”). Imagine everything Socrates wanted for knowledge; that’s why he used math as the ultimate example in the Theatetus. — Antony Nickles

But the question is, how does this relate to "Reality". How does the fact that you and I agree that the answer to 2+2 is 4 say anything about reality. It's clearly not everything Socrates wanted for knowledge because it doesn't tell us anything about the world we live in. That we agree on rules for using symbols doesn't constitute knowledge. And when we get down to actually applying those rules in the real world, people round things off, and cut corners in their own idiosyncratic ways.

So yes, we agree that 2+2 equals 4, and this is "universal, rule-driven, predictable, repeatable, logical, a fact, etc.", but it's not knowledge because it's not applied to anything real. And when we go to apply it, we need to decide, does a husband and wife qualify as 2, or would it be better off to count then as 1 family. And this depends on the purpose, what are you counting, individual people, or families. Then we must define terms and apply the math accordingly. So the math does not provide us with any higher degree of certainty about the world than other language forms, because it is applied according to principles stated in other forms of language anyway.

His arguments have been largely ignored — Richard B

Check out these Ngrams, just out of interest.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=J.+L.+Austin%2C+Norman+Malcolm&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

Check out these Ngrams, just out of interest. — Banno

Neat stats, if it was just reverse maybe we would have had less talk of Qualia.

Lecture VII is not a theory about what the word “real” means. — Antony Nickles

Oh, yes. Those who suggest these are just linguistic quibbles haven't understood that how we talk about the world is how we understand the world.

My reason for not accepting it is that perception (seeing, hearing, etc.) is always perception of something - hence the tendency to think about subject and object. That's how we get led astray. In the case of imagining something, there is no object - I mean that unicorns don't exist and that it is misleading to suppose that when we imagine unicorns we necessarily see something unicorn-like. — Ludwig V

I think that's about right.

Your infinite regress suggests that I cannot acquire any capacity, and I don't believe that. — Ludwig V

Yep. Another case of making the box then trying to squeeze stuff in.

I'm sorry, , but what are you referring to with "contemporary criticisms and analyses on the points laid out in his works"? There's lots of critique out there. What do you have in mind?

However it seems to me that there is a difficulty in Malcolm's notion of consciousness, or rather unconsciousness. As I understand, he envisions consciousness as either on or off. That's not my experience, nor what I understand from others. — Banno

Just to clarify what Malcolm actually examines and says in his book, "Dreaming". One, he is mostly examining the use of "I am asleep" or "I am dreaming". He spends less time considering "I am unconscious", and views this sentence as different than the aforementioned sentences. He says, "Here there is a similarity between 'I am asleep' and 'I am unconscious': neither sentence has a use that is homogeneous with the normal use of the corresponding third person sentence. It would not occur to anyone to conclude that a man is asleep from his saying "I am asleep' any more than to conclude that he is unconscious from his saying 'I am unconscious', or to conclude that he is dead from his saying 'I am dead'." Two, he does provide some further clarification of the relationship between dreaming and a conscious experience. He says, "I was inclined at one time to think of this result as amounting to a proof that dreaming is not a mental activity or mental phenomenon or a conscious experience. But now I reject that inclination. For one thing, the phases 'mental activity', 'mental phenomenon', 'conscious experience', are so vague that I should not have known what I was asserting." He goes on further to explain, "If a philosopher uses the phrase 'mental phenomenon', say, in such a way that dreams are mental phenomena by definition, then obviously no argument is going to prove to him that they are not. I avoid this way of stating the matter. What I say instead is that if anyone holds that dreams are identical with, or composed of, thoughts, impressions, feelings, images, and so on (here one may supply whatever other mental nouns one likes, except 'dreams'), occurring in sleep, then his view is false." And lastly, "And someone may have as his grounds for classifying dreams as 'conscious experiences' the fact that we speak of 'remembering' dreams, or the fact that in telling dreams we say that we 'saw' and 'heard' various things. There is nothing wrong with these decisions, if they do not cause one to be mislead in other respects."

While Malcolm gives a little here, there is not much left over to compare whether a conscious experience of a dream is "qualitatively" similar or different to a conscious experience of being awake.

How does the fact that you and I agree that the answer to 2+2 is 4 say anything about reality. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, math doesn’t tell us about the world. But it has qualities similar to the standard by which philosophy wishes it could judge the world, and, when it finds that doesn’t work, instead of seeing the ordinary criteria that already exist, it projects its standard onto the qualities of an imagined Reality.

I think maybe I worded something about math that triggered your response; I don’t claim anything in particular about it other than as an example of the standard, which Plato in the Theatetus and Descartes set out better than me.

The idea that it is just a matter of just looking, or collecting data, is far too simple. — Ludwig V

As this is important to Austin as well—though I don’t know exactly what you are referring to when you say “that it is just a matter”—Wittgenstein keeps insisting we “look” not because he can’t speak about something (as some carry over from the Tractatus). It’s that ordinary criteria have no power of argument (logical, necessity). So what they are doing is drawing out examples of when you would say such-and-such about something. All they can do is create those examples (“show” you them); you have to accept for yourself the validity of the implications on what matters to a thing being that thing, how distinctions are made, what judgments, etc. They make claims about the mechanics of that thing (the grammar Wittgenstein says; Austin will point out “salient features” on p.68) but you must come to it on your own—prove it to yourself (or provide another description, expand the context to incorporate other considerations, etc.) And then we can debate the impact those have on philosophical issues.

P.s. - this is why Wittgenstein is so enigmatic, why he leaves us with so many questions; because, as you say, we have to do the work for ourselves. I believe this to be in part because they are asking you to take a totally different perspective on an old philosophical issue. That it’s not a new opinion, but a new way of seeing, a changed self.