Sure, and I can use the term a different way.. — schopenhauer1

I don't know if you miss the point or are just being argumentative. If a term is used in more than one way then if we are to understand an author we must understand how they are using particular terms. This is not something unique to Wittgenstein. That is why some editions and discussions of a philosopher's work includes a glossary.

Why would it do "much harm"? — schopenhauer1

It can lead to confusion or nihilism.

But the bigger question, and the one that's more important is why non-scientific/empirical kinds of questions cannot be true or false. — schopenhauer1

You might argue that it is either true or false that God or the Good exists. Are you able to determine and demonstrate to the satisfaction of others whether it is true or false?

I don't know if you miss the point or are just being argumentative. If a term is used in more than one way then if we are to understand an author we must understand how they are using particular terms. This is not something unique to Wittgenstein. That is why some editions and discussions of a philosopher's work includes a glossary. — Fooloso4

No I am not being argumentative, but I am saying it is precisely justification for "why science/empirical" as the definition that is not explained. Thus why should I take the conclusions as relevant, if I don't have a clear understanding of why he chose those premises that lead to those conclusions?

It can lead to confusion or nihilism. — Fooloso4

I don't think people who discuss, defend, or engage in those theories think that. Seems like a strawman, or a solution to a problem that does not exist except for certain people who deem it so (Russell, Mach, Vienna Circle, etc.).

You might argue that it is either true or false that God or the Good exists. Are you able to determine and demonstrate to the satisfaction of others whether it is true or false? — Fooloso4

That is really subjective. Someone might find it convincing, another person may not. The key here is "the satisfaction of others".. What "others" are we to say must count as having to be satisfied?

The bigger point from this is, much of philosophy relies on the basis of thought, which goes beyond what can be proven empirical.. There is no reason or sense in limiting philosophy to only one aspect of the outcome of how our senses evaluate the world. Rather, we can also examine the conditions behind the outcomes (experiments/observations), the conditions for truth itself (mathematical, empirical, logical, or otherwise), what "free will" is, what "subjectivity" is, etc. etc.

There is nothing in the definition of "philosophy" or "language" that demands that they preclude non-scientific topics that are to be analyzed and evaluated in various stringent, and rigorous ways...

except for certain people who deem it so (Russell, Mach, Vienna Circle, etc.). — schopenhauer1

Those are the people he is addressing, the people he is engaged with.

That is really subjective. — schopenhauer1

Right. Unlike the facts of natural science.

The bigger point from this is, much of philosophy relies on the basis of thought, which goes beyond what can be proven empirical. — schopenhauer1

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein distinguishes between philosophy and natural science. Philosophy is not about the facts of the world.

Lots of philosophy involves this "looking where the light is best" (or "hammer entails nail") sort of behavior, or solutions in search of problems.

The sciences too. The whole hot debate in evolutionary theory today, the focus on genes to the exclusion of all else, seems to be somewhat a case where people would like to focus "just on genes," precisely because they are easy to measure. On the face of it though, obviously developmental biology and behavior affect selection.

Likewise, regardless of the merits of the computational theory of mind, it seems less and less plausible that brains' functioning can be explained just in terms of neurons firing or not firing. There is a whole lot more complexity there, yet you see the same focus on "what is easy to model and frame."

But, as good as this sort of insight can be:

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

I think complaints about Wittgenstein's descendents often tend to center on this sort of thinking itself becoming totalizing. That is, everything becomes a pseudo problem, or in need of some sort of dissolution. But, taken far enough, this just falls back into the same sort of mistake. Something akin to "always focusing on how the door might already be unlocked instead of looking for keys, because it is assumed keys are unnecessary."

I don't really see this in Wittgenstein, although I can see an argument that he distances philosophy too much from human life as a whole. I think it is actually something he warns against, which makes the evolution of his thought in other hands pretty ironic.

Maybe here is where the lack of attention to history comes back to bite him. The article I posted early goes into how similar St. Augustine's ideas on language are to Wittgenstein's in many respects. But Wittgenstein himself only uses Augustine to put forth a very simplistic image of language (and I don't think he is being unfair to Augustine here, he is just not using very much of him). So, his ideas then aren't connected to past thought in a way they might have been.

Why does this matter? Well, in terms of dissolution and the hunt for "pseudo problems" becoming totalizing itself, I think it would have been helpful for Wittgenstein's descendents to see where some predecessors had quite similar thoughts, and how they had already tied into the history of philosophy and various problems. That way, you don't get a totalizing vision of "wiping the slate," entirely clean of the sort that makes the world look entirely like nails for the hammer of dissolution. Maybe. I'm not sure about that lol. I tend to find the historical comparisons useful though.

Those are the people he is addressing, the people he is engaged with. — Fooloso4

I would think a philosophical position would be more than simply having the acceptance of one's social circle..

Right. Unlike the facts of natural science. — Fooloso4

What makes them then have "sense" in language? That is my contention.. That he thinks if it doesn't have empirically valid outcomes it is "nonsense".. He is arbitrarily delineating language that way, and for his friends apparently...

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein distinguishes between philosophy and natural science. Philosophy is not about the facts of the world. — Fooloso4

He clearly thinks that philosophy entails a lot of "nonsense"..

Does he think a philosopher like Kant is a valid form of thinking about reality or not, is the question.. We can go around in circles..that it's useful nonsense or protected nonsense.. but there is something he is trying to say about philosophy that is not centered around the empirical.. I wonder what that is.. can't be disparaging at all...

I would think a philosophical position would be more than simply having the acceptance of one's social circle.. — schopenhauer1

The philosophers write for those who already have faith in philosophy. Peer reviews, , publications in books, journals and pamphlets (the old-fashioned ways). The one that could be in a position to critique another's theory or hypothesis is no other than the philosopher himself.

Remember the BROADSHEET? It was purported that Descartes plastered one on the door of the apartment of one of his academic colleagues. (I'm not sure if I'm remembering it correctly that it was Descartes).

So yeah, I mean, thankfully for sites like this, we can participate in this philosophy circle if we have the interest strong enough to do justice to the writings of the masters.

The philosophers write for those who already have faith in philosophy. Peer reviews, , publications in books, journals and pamphlets (the old-fashioned ways). The one that could be in a position to critique another's theory or hypothesis is no other than the philosopher himself. — L'éléphant

No, what I meant was he was writing for a very specific set of philosophers, who more-or-less held views regarding "nonsense" and things outside the scientific purview in regards to language use.

Though later on, when they tried to make his work as a great work advocating for the abolishment of various philosophical schools of thought... Wittgenstein, whilst agreeing in one sense, did not want to diminish poetry, religion, etc..

The fact still remains that as far as WRITING about PHILOSOPHICAL topics, he thought that various things that were not talking about empirical statements, were not to be taken seriously as philosophy proper.. I see it as evaluative of other philosophical types of thinking that weren't empirical-based.. discussing scientific observations, etc.

.

I would think a philosophical position would be more than simply having the acceptance of one's social circle.. — schopenhauer1

A part is not the whole. I think you know this. In any case, this put him at odds with his "social circle".

What makes them then have "sense" in language? — schopenhauer1

The contention is that they don't. When people talk about God there is no one thing that they are all referring to. No one thing they all mean.

Does he think a philosopher like Kant is a valid form of thinking about reality or not — schopenhauer1

I think he might be following Kant with regard to making room for metaphysics as a matter of practice, of how you live.

The contention is that they don't. When people talk about God there is no one thing that they are all referring to. No one thing they all mean. — Fooloso4

That's fine.. It's up to the writer to then explain the historical context and use of the concept...

I think he might be following Kant with regard to making room for metaphysics as a matter of practice, of how you live. — Fooloso4

But Kant TALKED about (at the least) epistemology, and Noumena as metaphysics.. and things that cannot be empirically proved or disproved.. Don't play coy here.. Kant is WROUGHT throughout with non-empirical ideas that can't be "proven" scientifically but are the FOUNDATIONS for thought itself!

Don't play coy here. — schopenhauer1

Does the irony of all this escape you? Wittgenstein is not to blame for your asshole tendencies. Across multiple threads I have attempted to discuss Wittgenstein with you as I understand him. In response you have called me a "fanboy" and other things including now accusing me of playing coy.

In regards to the problem of 'totalizing' propositions, there is an interesting historical comment made in the Tractatus:

6.371 The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena.

6.372 Thus people today stop at the laws of nature, treating them as something inviolable, just as God and Fate were treated in past ages.

And in fact both are right and both wrong: though the view of the ancients is clearer in so far as they have a clear and acknowledged terminus, while the modern system tries to make it look as if everything were explained. — ibid.

This supports my previous contention that choosing not to couch his arguments in the context of other writings does not mean he was unaware of them. The discussion of solipsism, for example, surely sounds like a debate with Kant, even though it is not presented that way.

The sciences too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure. I've said as much myself.

There's a couple things going on here.

On the one hand, all models are wrong, but the process of modeling is iterative. You account for some factors, see what's left over, and then you can start looking where there's less light.

On the other hand, we want to be open to switching from Ptolemy to Copernicus.

The choice between complicating an existing model and replacing it with another isn't always simple. The new model will also be wrong, maybe at first more than the one you've got. Even figuring out whether you should refine an existing model is tricky: as you get closer, the signal to noise ratio is falling, by definition, so you have to beware of over-fitting.

I think all of this applies not just to institutional knowledge production but to us in general and to each of us as individuals.

Two points now about Wittgenstein.

First, since all models are wrong, often what's at stake when he says something like "A picture holds us captive" is not whether the model is right or wrong, but whether it applies to all cases or only some, whether it's mostly right about those cases, or only a little. It might not be a matter of abandoning a model, so much as there being other models that are more useful for some of the cases your existing model doesn't handle very well.

And in general, I think he's very interested in the sorts of things we do willy-nilly, oversimplifying, overgeneralizing, and not just to say "don't do that". It's here I think there is something deep about Wittgenstein, this feeling that there are things we might legitimately call "mistakes" we cannot really avoid. You could say we'll dialectic or iterate our way out of that, but I'm not so sure, and I'm not sure he was.

Does the irony of all this escape you? Wittgenstein is not to blame for your asshole tendencies. Across multiple threads I have attempted to discuss Wittgenstein with you as I understand him. In response you have called me a "fanboy" and other things including now accusing me of playing coy. — Fooloso4

I'm not sure if it's the philosopher or the adherents but Wittgenstein's whole Tractatus is to prove that some philosophical writing is nonsense.. so you can say that I'm an asshole or whatever, but relegating whole swaths of philosophy as "nonsense" is a pretty damn asshole move.. And then you deny that it applies to pretty famous "nonsense" philosophies (ACCORDING TO HIS IDEA OF NONSENSE)>...

And yeah, denying that his NONSENSE idea applies to various philosophers of metaphysics (like Kant), is playing coy.. so yeah.......

Do you realize why both the Tractatus and the PI come off as infinitely arrogant? — schopenhauer1

Well you hit the nail on the head with this. Unapologetically arrogant. And, on the face of it, inexplicably so. It comes off as personality, but there is something to be said. In the Tract he had a desire and an imposed standard for every statement. He would only say what he could be sure of, certain about (a la Descartes)—so it has a dictatorial ring. What he learns through the PI is that this singular requirement (before starting; an imposed pre-requisite) of what he would allow himself to state, narrowed his topics and what he would see/could say. In the PI, instead of imposing a requirement, he is looking first (investigating) for the requirements (criteria) that already exist, each different, for each individual example (their grammar/transcendental conditions, e.g., of: following a rule, seeing, playing a game, guessing at thoughts, continuing a series…).

As I’ve said, in first starting with the workings of a practice, he is making claims about them (premises of a sort) that everyone is in a position to judge, and so he, in a sense, speaks for all of us (in Kant’s universal aesthetic voice from the 3rd critique of judgment), as if to say, before each, ‘We would all accept that…’, e.g., “When someone whom I am afraid of orders me to continue the series, I act quickly, with perfect certainty, and the lack of reasons does not trouble me.” (PI # 212) If they are controversial, they are not taken as evidence (PI #128). If you look past the pompous, didactic tone, you can see that you would be able to disagree in each case if you wanted, provide your own scenarios, etc.

They don't show evidence of philosophical insight — Leontiskos

And here Leontiskos is absolutely right. The goal at this point is acknowledgement. Thus why these claims are sometimes called obvious. The insight is the comparison between these claims and the traditional claims made by philosophy. Not that the ordinary grammar is “right”, or solves (or dismisses)
the philosopher’s problems, but the contrast brings to light traditional philosophy’s hidden desires (for “purity”).

Wittgenstein possesses no authority to try to change us — Leontiskos

Again, yes. Despite the look of it, his grammatical claims (premises) do not have any authority except that which you would grant them (accept in them). And these claims in and of themselves change nothing (PI #124).

Wittgenstein is nothing like Socrates. — Leontiskos

Yes, Socrates’ requirements put him in the category of the author of the Tractatus, but the method of the PI is basically the same; thus all the questions by Wittgenstein, the interlocutor, the examination of what anyone might say that we bump into on the street, etc. And Socrates does also ultimately want us to better ourselves through the process of philosophy (it’s not all about true knowledge).

Wittgenstein is deeply time-bound in a way that Plato is not. In my estimation no one will read Wittgenstein 50 years hence. Part of it is that Plato's method is better at pulling people in and appealing to a broad audience, but that is part of his magic. — Leontiskos

I agree that Plato’s writing is better and more engaging. Witt is abrasive and speaking only really to hardcore analytic philosophers. My hope is that philosophy learns what it should from Witt and can move forward, though I don’t see that happening for the most part currently, probably because the desire he finds, for certain generalized answers, has always (timelessly) been unavoidably seductive to philosophy (e.g., Plato’s abstraction).

But Wittgenstein himself only uses Augustine to put forth a very simplistic image of language (and I don't think he is being unfair to Augustine here, he is just not using very much of him). So, his ideas then aren't connected to past thought in a way they might have been. — Count Timothy von Icarus

"Had there been more [engagement with the tradition] he wouldn't have spent as much time in perplexity and reinventing wheels" (Gregory Sadler).

The way Wittgenstein leads with Augustine in PI rubs me the wrong way. It feels like he is setting up a caricature, both with respect to Augustine's thought and with respect to the tradition which went on to develop Augustine's thought. It looks like Wittgenstein read a few sentences of Augustine's most popular work (The Confessions) and then used this (caricature) as a point of departure or foil for his own approach. There is no attempt to wrestle with or understand either Augustine or that broader tradition, and for this reason the start of the PI seems to be a lesson in how to not do philosophy. This is also a good example of the self-referential posture that is so common with him.

---

- Fair points. :up:

Why would it do "much harm"? — schopenhauer1

The idea that there could be an objective moral truth or authority might serve to blunt peoples' moral senses, undermine their trust in their own moral intuitions. There are many examples of this in history, where the moral injunctions in the Bible have led to horrible abuses. Consider, for example, the biblical injunction to kill men found to be having sexual relations together; such proscriptions are introjected and even as they may eventually be historically softened still come to fuel bigotry.

But the bigger question, and the one that's more important is why non-scientific/empirical kinds of questions cannot be true or false.. Different criteria can be used, for example, as to what counts as "evidence". — schopenhauer1

It's not so much a matter of the answers to such questions not being able to be true or false, but about our ability to establish definitely the truth or falsity of them, as we can when it comes to (at least some) empirical, logical and mathematical questions.

The point is that we know what evidence looks like in those last-mentioned domains but have no idea what could constitute definitive evidence for the truth of aesthetic, ethical, moral or religious assertions.

It's not so much a matter of the answers to such questions not being able to be true or false, but about our ability to establish definitely the truth or falsity of them, as we can when it comes to (at least some) empirical, logical and mathematical questions.

The point is that we know what evidence looks like in those last-mentioned domains but have no idea what could constitute definitive evidence for the truth of aesthetic, ethical, moral or religious assertions. — Janus

That doesn't make it "nonsense" though. It doesn't make it any less legitimate to "philosophize" about. It is arbitrarily marking out what philosophy is allowed to be called "sense" and "nonsense". As I said earlier, you stack the premise a certain way and of course your conclusion comes out that way, but not justifying why that premise makes something "legitimate" or more specifically, "sense", and another not, is simply asserting your own preference for the premise.. and wouldn't you know it, there was a whole movement starting with Frege that was a ripe audience for such views.. gee whiz.

Well you hit the nail on the head with this. Unapologetically arrogant. And, on the face of it, inexplicably so. It comes off as personality, but there is something to be said. In the Tract he had a desire and an imposed standard for every statement. He would only say what he could be sure of, certain about (a la Descartes)—so it has a dictatorial ring. What he learns through the PI is that this singular requirement (before starting; an imposed pre-requisite) of what he would allow himself to state, narrowed his topics and what he would see/could say. In the PI, instead of imposing a requirement, he is looking first (investigating) for the requirements (criteria) that already exist, each different, for each individual example (their grammar/transcendental conditions, e.g., of: following a rule, seeing, playing a game, guessing at thoughts, continuing a series…). — Antony Nickles

Yes I understand, but nice summary of thinking of Tractatus and the move to PI...

There's a valid distinction between propositions which can be confirmed or disconfirmed by the senses, and in accordance with the ways in which we make sense of experience; namely, causality, logic and mathematics, and aesthetic, ethical and metaphysical judgements or beliefs, which cannot be decided in those sense or rule-based ways.

The former understandings which are consistent and coherent with those sense-based modalities and the massively complex and mostly coherent web of understanding that has evolved by virtue of those ways of making sense, are readily distinguishable from the other kinds of undetermined speculations based on aesthetic, moral or religious intuitions or desires or fears or anxieties, with the former appropriately being named 'sensical' and the latter non-sensical.

The implication there is that the latter are not clearly related to the world of the senses, or the causal, logical and mathematical understandings which have evolved from the experience of that world. And I take 'non-sensical' in this context to indicate that difference in distinction to 'sensical', and not to be a declaration that such speculations are utter nonsense, or worthless, which they clearly are not, any more than poetry is or moral attitudes or aesthetic judgments are.

There's a valid distinction between propositions which can be confirmed or disconfirmed by the senses, and in accordance with the ways in which we make sense of experience; namely, causality, logic and mathematics, and aesthetic, ethical and metaphysical judgements or beliefs, which cannot be decided in those sense or rule-based ways.

The former understandings which are consistent and coherent with those sense-based modalities and the massively complex and mostly coherent web of understanding that has evolved by virtue of those ways of making sense, are readily distinguishable from the other kinds of undetermined speculations based on aesthetic, moral or religious intuitions or desires or fears or anxieties, with the former appropriately being named 'sensical' and the latter non-sensical.

The implication there is that the latter are not clearly related to the world of the senses, or the causal, logical and mathematical understandings which have evolved from the experience of that world. And I take 'non-sensical' in this context to indicate that difference in distinction to 'sensical', and not to be a declaration that such speculations are utter nonsense, or worthless, which they clearly are not, any more than poetry is or moral attitudes or aesthetic judgments are. — Janus

But we all know this distinction. We didn't need Tractatus to tell us this.. in fact, Kant did an excellent job spelling out the differences in possible justifications for "truth" conditions.... To focus on synthetic a posteriori truth as somehow the only one that one "meaningfully" discuss, is the very point that needs to be contested..

It's a sleight of hand to say that "there is a distinction between synthetic a posteriori truths and other types of truths (which everyone can probably agree to some extent)", and somehow use this obvious point to posit, "ONLY synthetic a posteriori truth is meaningful in linguistic terms".. That there is a distinction doesn't mean THUS it is meaningful.

Also, your use of "sense" here I believe, is playing around with the term "nonsense".. Nonsense does not necessarily mean "non-sensed by the five senses", but more in the Frege "sense" of "sense" and "reference". That there is a cat on the mat has a reference, because it can have some empirical element of verification (not simply that you can sense with your five senses.. that is something more along the lines of Mach perhaps, which @013zen can elucidate more on.. that you literally need some direct empirical verification from observational evidence and not just a model from that evidence)..

But anyways, there is nothing he is proving such that language cannot be meaningful if it is discussing something that has no direct reference by way of empirical a posteriori means.. That is to say, there can be truth to "reality" that is beyond this, and it can be discussed, and discussed without leading to confusion.. Rather, terms have to be more clearly defined, etc.

Now, Wittgenstein does come around to this conclusion in the PI, that it depends on the use of the word in a language community, but that beyond public use, the word can get misunderstood, and it would be hard to discern if anyone is really "getting it" other than the public use of it.. This seems like an obvious reality to me, though I guess his exhausting examples of language breakdown just hammer the point home.. But that being said, no one is contesting that human communication is almost impossible to be 100% clear or meaningful, because it is impossible to get in someone's head and go, "OH YOU REALLY GET IT!". .Rather, you can never truly know beyond public displays that someone's inner understanding corresponds with their public use.

I'll add

The way Wittgenstein leads with Augustine in PI rubs me the wrong way. It feels like he is setting up a caricature, both with respect to Augustine's thought and with respect to the tradition which went on to develop Augustine's thought. It looks like Wittgenstein read a few sentences of Augustine's most popular work (The Confessions) and then used this (caricature) as a point of departure or foil for his own approach. — Leontiskos

This is not however how Wittgenstein regarded Augustine at all. One witness reports that Witt thought the Confessions 'the most serious book ever written'.

It's also an unusual starting point in a work of 20th century philosophy.

@Leontiskos @schopenhauer1 @Count Timothy von Icarus @Sam26 @Janus @Srap Tasmaner @Paine

I also have a list of irks with how Witt is taken/used/interpreted.

I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. Traditionally, this is the issue of skepticism (moral relativism, doubt, justified knowledge, “belief”, etc.) which I would say is a—if not the—founding issue of philosophy (the generation of, or affecting, all others: knowledge, metaphysics, “mind”, the problem of other minds, morality, etc.) With the PI, we are at a deeply analytic, pre-constructive level, mostly tearing down and looking beneath what philosophers have said, but in order to learn why we end up saying it, and what we can learn from that (seemingly, but greater than, “a lesson in how to not do philosophy” as @Leontiskos has said)

The most popular ways to miss the import here (or take certain things too fervently—“totalizing” Id.) are to take Witt as either solving skepticism or dismissing it as an issue, such as: people who talk about “use” in language games or “forms of life” as if they were foundational; that philosophical issues are just confusions (say, of language); that this is just a therapy to cure us; that we are only discussing linguistics (“turning” from the actual world and our larger issues); that he is policing what can or cannot be said or what does or does not make sense.

A lot of this is caused by people not getting past looking at PI as simply a set of statements of facts/opinions/arguments about language, meaning, rules, etc. rather than these topics being just case studies (examples) in the service of a new method of looking at “language”, but in its sense of: our expressions, as in, the things people say in each case (and not a theory of meaning or explanation of how language works).

This distinction is clearest in the almost uniformly misinterpreted PI #109. “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” It is not that language is the “means” of our bewitchment, so we just need to get clear about language in order not to be bewitched. Language is the means of “battling”; looking at our expressions is the method by which we battle.

What this amounts to is either trivializing or reifying Witt, but in each case, simply grasping at the surface of the text rather than engaging with the process, to identify with the author’s, and interlocutor’s, confusions and desires, as he works through why we end up unsatisfied with philosophy as it stands (classically) and—what I take to be the ultimate point—what that says about the human condition.

But we all know this distinction. We didn't need Tractatus to tell us this.. in fact, Kant did an excellent job spelling out the differences in possible justifications for "truth" conditions.... To focus on synthetic a posteriori truth as somehow the only one that one "meaningfully" discuss, is the very point that needs to be contested.. — schopenhauer1

True, Kant doesn't tell us that the only truth is synthetic a posteriori, but then neither does Wittgenstein. I mean he doesn't talk in those terms, and neither is it implicit in his philosophy as far as am aware. So, it's not clear what you think you are taking aim at here. The distinction I referred to was not confined to synthetic a posteriori propositions.

I agree that there are parallels between what Kant's and Wittgenstein's philosophies, but the foci are quite different, the former being epistemological and the latter semantic, and even in the latter's later philosophy, phenomenological. Both do treat traditional metaphysics as being impossible as sciences of the determinable because both reject the idea of intellectual intution being able to provide knowledge or testable porpositions.

Also, your use of "sense" here I believe, is playing around with the term "nonsense".. Nonsense does not necessarily mean "non-sensed by the five senses", but more in the Frege "sense" of "sense" and "reference". — schopenhauer1

The idea of sense and reference incompletely in line with how I was treating the ideas of sensicality and non-sensicality. When we refer to logical or mathematical terms or empirical objects, then we have determinable referents. when we refer to God or Will or Karma or the Absolute, we do not have determinable referents.

So those terms are without sense in that they are speaking about "something" completely removed from determinably shareable human experience. They are "poetic" terms that signify certain kinds of feelings, certain kinds of affective experiences that are mutually comparable only in the sense that people within particular cultures use traditionally embedded terms to attempt to communicate those "ineffable" experiences.

It doesn't follow however that such non-sensical terms are nonsensical in the sense of being utterly meaningless, to repeat, they are non-sensical only in the sense that they lack determinable referents. Wittgenstein did not reject the ineffable, in fact he accorded it the greatest importance in human life, and that was precisely where he diverged from the Logical Positivists.

But anyways, there is nothing he is proving such that language cannot be meaningful if it is discussing something that has no direct reference by way of empirical a posteriori means.. — schopenhauer1

Again, this seems to be a strawman.

But that being said, no one is contesting that human communication is almost impossible to be 100% clear or meaningful, because it is impossible to get in someone's head and go, "OH YOU REALLY GET IT!". .Rather, you can never truly know beyond public displays that someone's inner understanding corresponds with their public use. — schopenhauer1

This doesn't seem to me to be the point at all. We clearly can know well enough what we are talking about when it comes to empirical, logical and mathematical matters; with religion, aesthetics and ethics, not so much, because the latter are groundless. We can get each other in aesthetic, ethical and religious discourse, but we do so in terms of canonicity, tradition and feeling, and the subjects we discuss are really ineffable when it all boils down. That's my general take on the human situation, and I think it accords fairly well with both Kant and Wittgenstein, insofar as I am familiar with their philosophies.

Thanks Anthony, your nicely articulated explanation seems apropos to me insofar as my familiarity with Wittgenstein's work goes, which is obviously not nearly as far as yours.

Extremely interesting discussion and I agree with many points on different sides. It is true that Wittgenstein does have a kind of school, in which people take the Investigations as if they were written by God. And I do think it quite annoying to have almost every issue in philosophy be "solved' (interpreted as: not addressed at all) by using our language careful within the context of what we are trying to say.

However, as others have said, this is not Wittgenstein's problem, but merely some who follow him in this manner. Many treat him respectfully without worship.

Lastly, there are others who have what I think are significantly worse "schools": Derrida, Lacan, Deleuze. But these are aberrations.

Anthony Nickels as many point out here, is fun to interact with and is quite interesting.

Thank you Manuel. Now let me explain how you’ve framed that incorrectly.

I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. — Antony Nickles

That is a predominantly psychological observation. Where does the philosophy start? Or not?

Please "do" so. But "show", don't "tell". Using words, not "words". :wink:

I have claimed the primary focus in the PI is to examine why philosophy wants certainty (“purity”), and, even more, to learn something about ourselves in the process. — Antony Nickles


That is a predominantly psychological observation. — Paine

Is it?

All men by nature desire to know

Is that also predominantly psychological? No philosophy?

Is it? — Srap Tasmaner

Yep.

Is that also predominantly psychological? No philosophy? — Srap Tasmaner

That's a claim about human nature. This is not only different but, arguably, diametrically opposed to a predominantly psychological claim.