In his discussion of the beetle and in imagining a private language (and a boiling pot), we take Witt to be intent on destroying the referent/the object/the thing-in-itself/the essence/our experience. — Antony Nickles

Or showing that it can't serve the explanatory purpose that folks think it does, showing that it's parasitic on the same synchronization of public behavior which it is supposed to explain.

This is the picture solipsism has of itself. It comes from the desire to remain unknowable, to have and keep something fundamentally special about me. — Antony Nickles

That's part of it, but isn't it also about an obsession with certainty? "I can't be wrong about seeing this patch of redness. That at least is something I can count on." "Sensation" or "appearance" is the name of something one cannot be wrong about. Or so runs the grammar, which is mistaken for a deep, metaphysical principle, as if we don't just happen to usually use the words that way.

But "clearing up the ground" implies readying it for another project: — Antony Nickles

One project could be a better linguistics. Another project might be more personal, to talk less confused nonsense, to pay more attention to worthier issues.

Notice the "if" in his quote at the top. If the grammar of the expression of sensation is not construed on the model of 'object and designation', than we are not irrelevant. — Antony Nickles

:up:

I agree that the "if" is important. It's something like a reductio ad absurdum. It's a logical-grammatical slap in the face to wake us up from this incautiously inherited nonsense.

And what is done with language is un-theorizable in advance. — StreetlightX

:up:

Just because one can illustrate a concept via a picture or a painting doesn't imply that the nature of concepts is to be found in images. Vice versa, just because the meaning of words is elusive and cannot be fully captured by a definition doesn't imply that it's inexistant. In the silence of the mind, we know what words mean to us. — Olivier5

I hear you, but this is a retreat to the beetle-box. A theist could use the same logic for God.
Witt used the picture metaphor because "seeing" meaning in the privacy of the mind suggests something static and luminescent. In simple cases the referent theory makes sense enough. We can point at the cat on the mat (even this is not so simple, really, but nevermind.) We extend the analogy to talk as if we all gaze on the same form of Justice or 23 (or suffer the same ineffable pain-stuff.) We (talk as if we) can reason in the privacy of our mind as if we were "handling" such forms with an inner organ, examining how they fit together, as if they were immaterial legos. Platonism is like the miasma theory that preceded germ theory. It's easy to see its appeal. It takes time to sniff out its failings ---to see that it is parasitic upon the synchronization of public behavior that it is supposed to explain.

Note that the immaterial private soul gazing on immaterial essences is something like the official theological background of philosophy. Even skeptics and solipsists are happy to start there and forget to doubt this captivating picture (flies in the bottle of the "obvious" (contingent, inherited, habitual but optional.))

:up:

Gnostics believe that the world that the ordinary person inhabits is illusory - that provides illusory comforts, one that ultimately will bring no real happiness. — Wayfarer

I like Pinker but I love his favorite philosopher Hobbes. First, back to the madness.

If some man in Bedlam should entertaine you with sober discourse; and you desire in taking leave, to know what he were, that you might another time requite his civility; and he should tell you, he were God the Father; I think you need expect no extravagant action for argument of his Madnesse.

This opinion of Inspiration, called commonly, Private Spirit, begins very often, from some lucky finding of an Errour generally held by others; and not knowing, or not remembring, by what conduct of reason, they came to so singular a truth, (as they think it, though it be many times an untruth they light on,) they presently admire themselves; as being in the speciall grace of God Almighty, who hath revealed the same to them supernaturally, by his Spirit.

Again, that Madnesse is nothing else, but too much appearing Passion, may be gathered out of the effects of Wine, which are the same with those of the evill disposition of the organs. For the variety of behaviour in men that have drunk too much, is the same with that of Mad-men: some of them Raging, others Loving, others laughing, all extravagantly, but according to their severall domineering Passions: For the effect of the wine, does but remove Dissimulation; and take from them the sight of the deformity of their Passions. For, (I believe) the most sober men, when they walk alone without care and employment of the mind, would be unwilling the vanity and Extravagance of their thoughts at that time should be publiquely seen: which is a confession, that Passions unguided, are for the most part meere Madnesse.

Now for "real happiness."

Continual Successe in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call FELICITY; I mean the Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense. What kind of Felicity God hath ordained to them that devoutly honour him, a man shall no sooner know, than enjoy; being joys, that now are as incomprehensible, as the word of School-men, Beatifical Vision, is unintelligible.

The point being that "real happiness" strikes me as a pot of gold at the hypothesized end of the rainbow. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here. Just think of ordinary, healthy people eating good food, making love, sleeping in and taking strong coffee in bed, morning sun streaming through the windows. I pity anyone who doesn't regularly find themselves in a state of pleasure. I also distrust anyone who claims that they never suffer or think so little of ordinary pleasures that they would call them unreal. (Do they suffer from anhedonia? Can they not taste apple pie?)

Do you recognise that sense of 'existential unease'? That, no matter our material circumstances, there can be a sense of un-ease, which can't be eradicated by simply adjusting to it. — Wayfarer

Sure, though I wouldn't say there's just one. Angst, ennui, melancholy. Each name a general flavor of the inability to enjoy physical health and security. I'm guessing most people are hit with one these occasionally, but in general I think the average person is caught up in life, worrying about rent, potential boyfriends, taxes, a growth on the skin, fear of violent crime, luminous and bouncy hair, the pesticides on whole wheat bread, and so on and so on. Life is care. Life is a hustle, a hassle. We complain about it, but then we cling to it when somebody tries to take it away.

From one of the theosophical philosophers I've encountered on this forums: — Wayfarer

And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure.” — Vladimir Solovyov

Read this in another way and it's just madness.

A otherwise healthy man decides that not only he but everyone around him suffers from an undefinable malady. He tries to spread the news but has trouble getting himself taken seriously, since the "disease" seems to be no more than a vague restlessness, a suspicious nostalgia, and an allergy to freedom (other people's, that is.)

The wisecracks the man should have expected after all did not shake the man's faith in the invisible sickness. Instead he realized that the delusion that one was not sick was in fact its most worrisome symptom.

It's more that middle-class, technocratic culture has certain norms, what it thinks is acceptable, mediated by science, but devoid of the sense of over-arching purpose that animates traditional cultures. — Wayfarer

Devoid of a share, single sense perhaps, but rife with many different senses of over-arching purposes. We have the leisure and freedom to explore and discuss such things. Frankly I don't trust what I see as a kind of nostalgia. Sure, we have hot water, air conditioning, Novocain and plenty of food, but we are "condemned to be free" when there "ought" to be a kindler, gentler theocratic hand at the helm.

My general view is that modern liberal culture normalises a kind of aberrant state. — Wayfarer

I think you are right, and that that aberrant state is (relative) wealth, health, and freedom. (Of course there are still and always will be things to complain about.)

Whereas traditional cultures make moral demands on the individual, that has been reversed in the ascent of liberalism, whereby the individual, buttressed by science and economics, is the sole arbiter of value, and individual desire is placed above everything else. Nihil ultra ego, nothing beyond self. — Wayfarer

The freed slave misses a simpler world? Or does the master miss his slaves? I think it's both, in all of us perhaps. Sartre, if you can peer through his lingo, is good on this stuff.

Were people in less scientific and more impoverished times less selfish? And are we really such immoralists today ? Because it's acceptable to buy nice things that we don't strictly need? Because, inheriting religious liberty, we use it?

But that doesn't obviate the critique, although I don't know if I want to try and spell it out in detail right at the moment. — Wayfarer

You and @baker both seem to be echoing Nietzsche's disgust with the last man.

The Last Man is the individual who specializes not in creation, but in consumption. In the midst of satiating base pleasures, he claims to have “discovered happiness” by virtue of the fact that he lives in the most technologically advanced and materially luxurious era in human history.

But this self-infatuation of the Last Man conceals an underlying resentment, and desire for revenge. On some level, the Last Man knows that despite his pleasures and comforts, he is empty and miserable. With no aspiration and no meaningful goals to pursue, he has nothing he can use to justify the pain and struggle needed to overcome himself and transform himself into something better. He is stagnant in his nest of comfort, and miserable because of it. This misery does not render him inactive, but on the contrary, it compels him to seek victims in the world. He cannot bear to see those who are flourishing and embodying higher values, and so he innocuously supports the complete de-individualization of every person in the name of equality.

https://academyofideas.com/2017/10/nietzsche-and-zarathustra-last-man-superman/

What I tended to find was insecure people obsessed with status and hierarchy who had simply channeled their materialism into spirituality. There were the same fractured inter-personal relationships, jealousies, substance abuse and chasing after real estate and status symbols that characterise any secular person. I have since taken the view that the nature of human beings doesn't change, no matter what their professed metaphysics. — Tom Storm

I like that you stress professed metaphysics and looked at how these "spiritual" types actually lived. There's a place reserved in my heart for something like the true mystic or the true saint...but I've only ever met flawed human beings in pursuit of the Cure rather than in possession of it. To be fair, the sense that one is on the way to the treasure is itself a form of treasure. Beginnings are sexy, but they don't last, hence the next big thing, the mutation or guide that/who finally gets it right. I mention "Cure" but I don't even accept that there's a disease. We did get smart enough, after centuries of work, to suspect that we didn't come with instructions from some perfect father-creator writ large.

We live in a culture of the 'tyranny of the ordinary'. Not for nothing did Alan Watts call his last book 'The Taboo against Knowing who you Are'. — Wayfarer

That sounds absurd to me. Look around and see the profusion of healers and gurus and visionaries now available without leaving your home. I doubt that the world has ever offered such a spiritual buffet to the average person, along with the lifespan and leisure to enjoy such things.

The "tyranny" that troubles some may be the absence of tyranny, namely the freedom of others to be unimpressed by their claims of spiritual status or insight.

Consider also that irreligious humanism is likely at least as rare as "spiritual but not religious."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-04/spiritual-supernatural-realities-australians-weig-in-this-easter/100046122

Also:

Across the 34 countries, which span six continents, a median of 45% say it is necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values. But there are large regional variations in answers to this question.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/07/20/the-global-god-divide/

It's not like it takes a lot of time or money to go off the reservation and up the river for a year or less. — James Riley

What you are missing here, it seems to me, is the wild plurality of ways of going off reservation, and the wild plurality of error. There are far more wrong ways to do something than right ways.

How did you find The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? How was your experiment with Scientology? Did Jainism live up to your expectations? Have you done your "research" on the claims of Q?

Do you see my point?

There is no way I could divine what the word "beetle" or "pain" means to you and vice versa.

We're only left, therefore, with the word "beetle" ("pain") and nothing else. You and I could very well be talking about entirely different things (referents). Thus, the conclusion that philosophies that depend on experiences that can't be made public, shared, are private would be pointless. It's like using a word without knowing what it means. — TheMadFool

Progress!

But we can synchronize our behavior with words (marks and noises that get categorized), which shows that the meaning of a word is not grounded or hidden in some private mental space which, as you describe above, would be no use. The life of signs is in the world. The "meaning" of a stop sign is out there in the way we treat it.

Suppose everyone had a box with something in it: we call it a "beetle". No one can look into anyone else's box, and everyone says he knows what a beetle is only by looking at his beetle. --Here it would be quite possible for everyone to have something different in his box. One might even imagine such a thing constantly changing. --But suppose the word "beetle" had a use in these people's language? --If so it would not be used as the name of a thing. The thing in the box has no place in the language-game at all; not even as a something: for the box might even be empty. --No, one can 'divide through' by the thing in the box; it cancels out, whatever it is.

That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant.

I think that the posters on this forum who propose theist arguments are more inclined to swing my thoughts against belief in God than the atheist ones. I wonder if I am the only person who finds this. — Jack Cummins

I feel you. You're not.

Anyway, I tried to create a parable about scientists who pretended to intellectual curiosity, and not a desperate person. — James Riley

But why assume that those with scientific attitude aren't curious about religion, for instance?

Imagine a person who tried various spiritual fads and classics in their 20s and found them all wanting. Or we can think of a mundane spirituality that doesn't even need a fancy word for itself. She loves her mate, her pets, quality in all the little objects and tools in her life, mountain paths, good stories on TV, etc.

For me a scientific attitude is something like doing more with less, staying with the undeniable basics, working and thinking from there. Perhaps it's elitist in its way, like riding a bike with no hands. It annoys people who can't do it or just don't want to.

I can agree with that. His virtue is in pointing out that certain issues are more complicated than they seem, or ambiguous. — Olivier5

:up:

Or pseudo-explanations.

In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

It's such a simple rhetorical move, but it breaks a chain. Postulated images don't give life to the system. Why should they?

He came down from the hill stop and said “I have created cold fusion!” Everyone raised an eyebrow, and rightly so. Some of the stupid people said “Prove it, X!” to which X replied “There is no way in hell I can prove anything to you, my child... — James Riley

Cold fusion matters because we want a better deal on energy than we have now. So the proof for the masses is that the lights stay on without anyone having to burn coal. Similarly, a correct(-enough) theory of aerodynamics is there in the plane that safely and reliably transports passengers over mountains and lakes.

1. Both sides of this equation can be smug.
2. Science is not always willing to put in the work, replicate, and run the test. — James Riley

Sure, humans are vain, smug, etc. And science doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's part of an economy. The incentive structure in academia could use some adjustment perhaps. Figuring out how to do so is probably something a scientist would be good at. But nobody was promised a utopia. If things are still flawed, they were even worse before (generally speaking.)

1. What is science afraid of? — James Riley

I think science boils down to the practical. A fake "cure" for cancer might lead to the death of person who should have trusted an actual treatment. More on your theme, though, a desperate person might spend the dregs of their bank account on spiritual seminars when their problem could be solved by diet, exercise, and a puppy. In my view, economy is central. Resources, including time, are finite. So it's not only about avoiding disaster. It's also about avoiding wasted motion.

But then, if meaning is indeed literally use, how come "meaning" is not being used as "use" in English? Isn't it self contradictory? — Olivier5

It's a metaphor, like "God is love." Mentalistic language is common and useful. The word "meaning" has earned its supper in ordinary life. But, as Saussure also noted, the nomenclature theory of meaning is basically pre-scientific.

That said, it's not prudent to read some aphorism as a mathematical theorem functioning as a condensed result. To me Wittgenstein is more of a destructive than constructive thinker. He sweeps out cobwebs, lets in light and air, shows us through many examples how superstitious we tend to be about our own communication.

They wanna rob other people, with non-scientific ideas, from the very ideas that give meaning to their life. — GraveItty

Xenophanes still rules suppreme, so it looks. — GraveItty

Personally I don't evangelize, nor do I expect religion or conspiracy theory to go away. FWIW, I've also read The Conquest of Abundance. Good stuff but not the last word.

Damned! Sounds like the inquisition! Inferior ideas? What are these? — GraveItty

"Hey guys, I can cure cancer. Just drink this goo!"

Harry M. Hoxsey had no medical training yet made millions hawking quack cancer “cures” to desperate patients for more than three decades, until FDA was able to help remove the products from the market in the 1950s. Hoxsey’s herb extract cancer treatment had no scientific basis, and while the legal case against Hoxsey unfolded, to help warn consumers, in 1957 FDA issued this poster and placed it in post offices around the country.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/products-claiming-cure-cancer-are-cruel-deception

In early Egyptian[8] and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in the Homeric account from the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth

There are some strange, dangerous and disturbing myths about HIV. Having sex with a virgin will not cure HIV, it will just put them at risk of the virus. There is no 'cure' for HIV, but taking your ART medicine every day will allow you to manage the virus and live a long and healthy life.

https://www.avert.org/infographics/sex-virgin-will-not-cure-hiv

There is always the possibility that self-anointed spiritual masters don't compete. That self-anointed spiritual masters aren't known. — James Riley

I grant that possibility, and personally I'd find something like a transcendence of rationality more plausible in those who had transcended the need for their "arguments" to be recognized by irreligious humanists.

To me scientific knowledge is finally or potentially practical ability, demonstrable and reliable power in the world.

Critical thinking takes more than being a critic. It takes analysis. Too many critics jump the gun. — James Riley

If this just means that critical types are slow to believe religious claims, I don't see how that's jumping the gun (in fact it looks like the opposite.)

I'm all for analysis. Let's count. Let's compare. Set up controlled experiment. Sift for correlations in data. Let's circumvent our cognitive biases, use our network nervous systems to learn about and improve those nervous systems with traditions of mutual criticism and education, etc.

Like you said: — baker

What, by the way, do the self-anointed compete for?

I think there's a kind of performative contradiction at the intersection of critical philosophy and elitist spirituality. The trans-rational elitists often can't help offering reasons that they deserve more recognition by plebeian rational humanists. "Can't you see that my spiritual genius is invisible?"

if one interprets it literally, then we have a problem which is that people don't use the word "meaning" as they use the word "using". — Olivier5

Sure. If Wittgenstein wasn't trying to get people to think of meaning differently, why bother to write? Once the world was thought to be flat. Once philosophers thought they were scientists who studied an invisible realm of forms or meanings-as-immaterial-referents. Some still do, in both cases.

Nah, assumption of equality of people. — baker

There's a difference between equality before the law (in this case, rules) and intellectual/spiritual equality, for instance.

Peer-review and exposure to criticism lets inferior ideas die by exposure.

What's the alternative? Self-anointed spiritual masters competing for simps? "Jingle saves."

No, a plebeian person is like that. — baker

You are echoing Nietzsche. You may already know that. The point is that...yeah, I've been down this road. It offers some fascinating scenery.

Sure. But were you in particular ever promised anything by a religious/spiritual person? — baker

Are you serious? Of course. Promised and threatened. Not only as child but quite recently by a stranger with a megaphone.

Kierkegaard-style jive, which presents itself as post-scientific or trans-rational, is rare in my experience. Though the man with the megaphone did strangely blend a 'virtuous' Socratic ignorance into his pitch. How does an atheist know that there is not a God, after all? This kind of argument from him was disappointing. He was a sweaty salesman, debasing his faith, revealing it as bad philosophy. He was, accidentally, an anti-advertisement for his sad myth.

But why always constructing new reproducible structures? What's the big deal? — GraveItty

Life is, among other things, a competition, an arms race. To say so isn't to celebrate or denigrate.

Agreed, let's play along with Wittgenstein, and one, agree words are minus essences (family resemblance) but what exactly does "use" mean in meaning is use? A word is, all said and done, a symbol/sign - it stands for something, the referent. A word's use is predicated on that purpose/function. Take that away and how exactly am I supposed to use a word? — TheMadFool

But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we have to say that it is its use.
If the meaning of the sign (roughly, that which is of importance about the sign) is an image built up in our minds when we see or hear the sign, then first let us adopt the method we just described of replacing this mental image by some outward object seen, e.g. a painted or modelled image. Then why should the written sign plus this painted image be alive if the written sign alone was dead? -- In fact, as soon as you think of replacing the mental image by, say, a painted one, and as soon as the image thereby loses its occult character, it ceased to seem to impart any life to the sentence at all. (It was in fact just the occult character of the mental process which you needed for your purposes.)

Consider the vervet monkey:

Very short : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8ZG8Dpc8mM
Slightly longer, more serious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lsF83rHKFc

The use of various warning cries is to trigger the group to flee to a place of safety that depends on which predator is threatening. While one can speculate about what-it's-like-for-a-vervet-monkey-to-see-a-snake, all that matters is that a snake triggers a cry triggers a group flight to safely. The snake and the monkeys are in an environment together. The warning cries are calorie-efficient movements of the "networked" bodies/monkeys that allow them to coordinate their behavior so that they are more likely to thrive in the world.

Obviously our human world is staggeringly complex, but we too are primates trying to make it. Our mentalistic language is useful in ordinary life, but dragging it wholesale into serious philosophical discussion (treating it like an axiom) is comparable to assuming the world is flat as one sits down for some serious cartography. Sometimes the "obvious" stuff is completely wrong.

The problem with reproducibility though is that it excludes many forms of science. It's a constraining methodological feature imposed on scientific knowledge. Like all methodologies are. No progress can be made if one sticks to the method. Feyerabend has seen this very well. — GraveItty

One way to understand the value is reproducibility is to think of the technology that results, which we prefer to be reliable. In general, science can be understood as a search for the "buttons & levers" of nature (so that we can invent vaccines and airplanes and internets.) (Yes, it's also perhaps a search for relatively useless truth.)

And the list goes on and on. You might say that science offers a solution for the problems it created. In the form of technology, "social engineering", or whatever, but isn't it better to stop the whole enterprise altogether? — GraveItty

You mention various ways that technology fails us or creates new problems. I don't deny that. So how might we figure out if it's a net good? Well we can count things, like chance of a child surviving, like the number of years as person can be expected to live. As long as people are content to wallow in heated rhetoric and refuse to count, it's just theatrics.

If we want to get a little beyond sentimentality, we have to be definite. Our claims should also be relatively verifiable or falsifiable (I don't have a fixed philosophy of science, but that's a philosophy-of-language digression.) For me it's ultimately about technology, as opposed to metaphysical statements about what is real or foundational.

Anyway, stopping the whole thing seems impossible to me for 'game theory reasons,' and it doesn't seem desirable in the first place.

.

Found this, and I think it adds to the thread:

Irreferentialism

It has been noted how, in relation to introspection, Wittgenstein resisted the tendency of philosophers to view people’s inner mental lives on the familiar model of material objects. This is of a piece with his more general criticism of philosophical theories, which he believed tended to impose an overly referential conception of meaning on the complexities of ordinary language. He proposed instead that the meaning of a word be thought of as its use, or its role in the various “language games” of which ordinary talk consists. Once this is done, one will see that there is no reason to suppose, for example, that talk of mental images must refer to peculiar objects in a mysterious mental realm. Rather, terms like thought, sensation, and understanding should be understood on the model of an expression like the average American family, which of course does not refer to any actual family but to a ratio. This general approach to mental terms might be called irreferentialism. It does not deny that many ordinary mental claims are true; it simply denies that the terms in them refer to any real objects, states, or processes. As Wittgenstein put the point in his Philosophische Untersuchungen (1953; Philosophical Investigations), “If I speak of a fiction, it is of a grammatical fiction.”

Of course, in the case of the average American family, it is quite easy to paraphrase away the appearance of reference to some actual family. But how are the apparent references to mental phenomena to be paraphrased away? What is the literal truth underlying the richly reified façon de parler of mental talk?

Although Wittgenstein resisted general accounts of the meanings of words, insisting that the task of the philosopher was simply to describe the ordinary ways in which words are used, he did think that “an inner process stands in need of an outward criterion”—by which he seemed to mean a behavioral criterion.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-mind/Radical-behaviourism

To me this is not about something like "only particles and waves are real" but rather about the stuff that makes science and rationality possible: public stuff. FWIW, I think it's mostly a dead end to try to give some strict definition of "real" (and the other common master words.)

In the spirit of not wanting to indulge in back and white thinking, I am not seeking to deny that the concept is at all dependent on behavior, I just want to say it is not (in its fullness) wholly dependent on behavior, as I think I've already acknowledged and explained. — Janus

Fair enough. We can drop it for now. Good chat!

The usual propaganda babble in favor of the scientists claiming a way of thinking and acting to which all must comply. — GraveItty

You address whether the claim was true (but why should that matter, right? we're on a spiritual quest here.)

Besides your list of advantages I could make a big list of disadvantages, like in all cultures. — GraveItty

Sure, but half of the children dying is maybe a high cost to pay for your closer walk with nature ? (And chances are, if you survived childhood, you'd be illiterate and laboring in the dirt with gum disease?)

Like you are so sure there are no gods (if not, then where does our universe come from, even if eternal?). — GraveItty

I don't know that certain ultimate questions even make sense, let alone the answers to them. But certain "divine" answers to those questionable questions either also fail to make sense or look like childish wishful thinking. As in ordinary life, one need not know the final answer or solution of a problem to reject various candidate solutions from consideration. I understand that for others it's troubling to consider the possibility that the universe doesn't care about us, that we didn't come with instructions in the box, etc.

Why would Wittgenstein then say some philosophical problems are psuedo-problems, not real but actually instances of "bewitchment by language"? By the way, none of the articles I read on Wittgenstein provide concrete examples of this happening in actuality. — TheMadFool

This may help (from the Blue Book).

The man who is philosophically puzzled sees a law in the way a word is used, and, trying to apply this law consistently, comes up against cases where it leads to paradoxical results. Very often the way the discussion of such a puzzle runs is this: First the question is asked "What is time?" This question makes it appear that what we want is a definition. We mistakenly think that a definition is what will remove the trouble (as in certain states of indigestion we feel a kind of hunger which cannot be removed by eating); The question is then answered by a wrong definition; say: "Time is the motion of the celestial bodies". The next step is to see that this definition is unsatisfactory. But this only means that we don't use the word "time" synonymously with "motion of the celestial bodies". However in saying that the first definition is wrong, we are now tempted to think that we must replace it by a different one, the correct one.

Compare with this the case of the definition of number. Here the explanation that a number is the same thing as a numeral satisfies that first craving for a definition. And it is very difficult not to ask: "Well, if it isn't the numeral, what is it?"

Philosophy, as we use the word, is a fight against the fascination which forms of expression exert upon us.

I think knowing what a word means is knowing how to use it appropriately; but I cannot see how that could be the whole story. — Janus

I hear you, but if the proposed referent of "pain" is uncheckable, then there's no reason to even assume that it's singular (or that you and I have the same referent in mind in this very conversation.)

The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red pain and another section another. — W

None of this has anything to do with what you can know about another because in all cases their behavior could be wholly faked, and the concept of pain is not the concept of any kind of behavior, simply because someone could be in pain and manifest no outward sign of it at all. — Janus

I agree that someone might sit quietly in pain and even hide their pain (out of pride, perhaps, or fear.) I don't think this exceptional situation cancels the concept's dependence on behavior in general though. An angry person can conceal their anger, but surely the concept anger is learned with the help of the punching and yelling of self and others and correlated tokens.("He got real mad and hit her in the face.")

I don't agree that the ""meaning" of "headache"" is learned entirely on account of public behavior, though. One could not learn the meaning of headache if one had never felt pain. — Janus

To me this is not so obvious, however initially plausible. If you assume that meaning is referent, then it's a tautology. But in the Wittgensteinian spirit, I'd say that knowing what a word means is just knowing how to use it appropriately.

If I go by what you say, then I can't ever know if you know what "headache" means. The only way I can get a sense of whether you have experienced pain is by noting whether you use the token "pain" appropriately.

But I'm repeating myself now. Probably a good time to thank you for the discussion and wish you well.

Adios
:up: — frank

Till next time.
:flower:

Scientists call it first-person data. It's certainly not invisible and not private as that word is used in the PLA. — frank

Ask yourself what that can really mean. Public speech may report experiences using mentalistic language, but these reports themselves are strings of public tokens (or perhaps digital sound files.)
I can do science about how mentalistic language is used.

But Spock doing a mindmeld does not currently compute.

EDIT:
First I looked into first-person data, confirming what I expected it to be. Then I discovered someone who seems to make the same point as above.

First-person data have been both condemned and hailed because of their alleged privacy. Critics argue that science must be based on public evidence: since first-person data are private, they should be banned from science. Apologists reply that first-person data are necessary for understanding the mind: since first-person data are private, scientists must be allowed to use private evidence. I argue that both views rest on a false premise. In psychology and neuroscience, the subjects issuing first-person reports and other sources of first-person data play the epistemic role of a (self-) measuring instrument. Data from measuring instruments are public and can be validated by public methods. Therefore, first-person data are as public as other scientific data: their use in science is legitimate, in accordance with standard scientific methodology.

https://philpapers.org/rec/PICFD

This point is so obvious that it's strange to see it made. The thirst for hidden entities is so great that it's hard work to look at (public) surfaces?

The fact that we all know headaches occur should be enough to establish the coherence of the idea that we can refer to them. — Janus

I hear you, and this is something like the point of the beetle in the box. The "headache in itself" plays no role. It's impossible in principle to compare headaches, and it's therefore absurd to think that the "meaning" of headache is some quale-as-referent. It's far more reasonable to examine how the token "headache" is entangled with other public behavior (including the use of other tokens.) This is how we learn the "meaning" of "headache" to begin with.

Here's Wittgenstein on this strange issue:

The essential thing about private experience is really not that each person possesses his own exemplar, but that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else. The assumption would thus be possible—though unverifiable—that one section of mankind had one sensation of red and another section another. What am I to say about the word "red"?—that it means something 'confronting us all' and that everyone should really have another word, besides this one, to mean his own sensation of red? Or is it like this: the word "red" means something known to everyone; and in addition, for each person, it means something known only to him?

These silly questions bring the house down, IMO.

But that is what you said: — Wayfarer

All I can say is read more carefully. It wasn't a good paraphrase.

It's not 'human vanity'. It's a fact that humans make artefacts and create languages, and that animals don't. So trying to explain that as a fuction of evolution casts no light. But I do agree that this is tangential to this thread so will leave off. — Wayfarer

Note that you brought the evolution of species up. At some point I mentioned the evolution of communication systems, but that's different.

I said: perhaps it's human vanity that prevents us from simply looking at social animals and seeing how their signals allow them to coordinate their behavior and therefore get fed or avoid becoming food, which is to say survive. [and applying those lessons to our own communcation ---which I was hinting toward.]

The point is that they signal one another, body to body, in order to survive and thrive as a "team" of bodies in a world of objects, including food and predators. The theme here is that meaning is "in the world," in the (or as the) relationship between their cries and their food and their predators.

But yes. It's uncontroversial that people have mental states. The cost of your doubt is morality. — frank

I think you are still misreading me. It's not about denying or affirming mental states. It's about cutting out an explanatory middle man, an appendix that serves no purpose, at least in a stricter, philosophical context. We can all still talk about our feelings and sensations when we are off the clock, but there's a reason that a psychologist or philosopher might want to minimize their dependence on entities that are private by definition (invisible to science and rationality by definition.)