I don't believe so. — Sam26

It sounds to me like some people's interpretation, even in this very thread, of the later Wittgenstein is that he was trying to cure the philosopher in us from the need to do philosophy.

I understand that you don't. Do you know whether Wittgenstein thought so?

Sounds poetic. I like it.

I'm wondering what philosophers have thought this? — Sam26

The logical positivists*? Carnap, Quine, Stove?

But I had fans of Wittgenstein in mind, not necessarily professional philosophers.

edit: *positivists not empiricists

But how are they being used now? — Banno

How the words were used then or now doesn't help us when we want to know whether it's the sun moving or the Earth turning, or something else that accounts for the appearance.

With time, we want to know what accounts for the appearance of regular change, such that we can have yesterdays and tomorrows.

Shitty Russians posing as philosophers of depth. — StreetlightX

Obligatory: In Soviet Russia, dog explains you!

philosophical problems are real - are only real - when they have a well-formulated grammar that makes sense of them. — StreetlightX

Sure, but that's a lot different than the claim that linguistic analysis can potentially dissolve philosophy problems across the board. That philosophical inquiry is itself an abuse of language. That philosophers for two and half thousand years have been misunderstanding language.

Regarding time, the question was whether a well-formulated grammar would show us that no such philosophical issues actually exist.

I don't know whether Wittgenstein though this was the case for all of philosophy, but some of his proponents have talked as if it were.

This does not mean that when someone says that the sun has set means that the sun has moved downwards, even if they believe that this is how it actually moves. — Πετροκότσυφας

The point here being that showing how the words sunset or time is used in an ordinary setting doesn't help with ontological or epistemological questions regarding the movement of the sun or the nature of time.

Or maybe you don't understand what is being said when someone says that the sun has risen or that it has set and you think that they are professing a scientific theory; — Πετροκότσυφας

Come on, we all know the origin of those words were based on how people thought the sun moved.

when in reality they are saying something akin to "it's morning, get your ass out of bed and go to school" or "it's late, go to bed or you'll be late for school when morning comes". — Πετροκότσυφας

Sure it can mean that also, but that isn't the concern when asking questions about the nature of time or sunrises.

In certain ways the one might not be reducible to the other so that one can trump the other as to what time really is. — Πετροκότσυφας

Nah, I'm a scientific realist. Thus even though the sun is said to rise and set, the reality is that the Earth turns, and ordinary language is wrong, being based on a misleading appearance.

Science has the trump card over ordinary use. If science were to definitely say that time doesn't flow, then our experience and talk of it "flowing" is wrong. It would still be useful in everyday life, though.

What is the question though? — Πετροκότσυφας

Whether a linguistic analysis of the philosophy of time can dissolve it, or leave it with the physicists.

Which would mean it's a mistake to ask philosophical questions about time. Either it's a scientific matter, or it's an everyday, practical matter.

Ok, but the fact that it's useful to use it this way and that way, might has something to do with the fact that the "nature of time" is to be used this way and that way, in order to achieve this thing and that thing, — Πετροκότσυφας

Yeah, but what is the argument here? At the very least, we want a scientific explanation of time. That still seems to leave some questions.

A horse was useful for travel. That didn't stop people from wondering how horses came to be. A linguistic analysis of how we used horses didn't help with that question.

You might as well ask those questions, but within a specific frame and for a specific purpose in mind. Do we have any difficulty to be on time for work, or use the word in different ways, because philosophers can't agree on what time is? — Πετροκότσυφας

No, but my wondering about the nature of time has little to do with whether it's useful for getting to work. Not everything is of pragmatic concern. Sometimes we're just curious, or are feeling existential, mystical, high, whatever.

There is plenty for philosophers to do, in the details. — Banno

The biggest challenge I see to your position is the ethics and how to live branches of philosophy. To borrow from Simon Blackburn, if I think fox hunting is wrong, and you think it's okay, how is analyzing language going to settle the dispute?

There's a more important problem. It doesn't sound promising for language and life in general. But this is what it seems to end up to when we're trying to find an essential meaning for such terms irrespective of how they're being used in our language (in order to meet our practical considerations). — Πετροκότσυφας

Well, if we're just focusing on the philosophy of time, it seems natural to me that humans would eventually start asking these sorts of questions.

Speaking of physics, QM does present an area of philosophical debate which isn't born of ordinary language. Maybe it will be resolved at a future time by physics.

It's interesting to note though that science does provide new material for philosophy from time to time.

The point here is that what it means, even for us, to feel wet depends on the context. — Πετροκότσυφας

I've forgotten the context of this side debate.

But that would render other instances of us saying that we feel or not feel wet, meaningless, despite the fact that we seem to perfectly understand what is being said when they are uttered. Besides, the same would apply to terms like "you" (i.e. does your clothes qualify as you?), "drop", "aware", "liquid" etc... — Πετροκότσυφας

That doesn't sound promising for resolving philosophical debates. Reminds me of mereology and sorites. Which along with identity I'm somewhat amenable to dissolving with language. Those seem more like what sort of concepts we want to use in various situations where the world doesn't care whether objects can have parts or how much they vary over time.

Like claiming that mountains do not have a height until they are measured. — Banno

I recall that 100+ page long thread.

But not having found the solution does not mean that there is none. — Banno

Right, well we would need some metric for deciding which issues have been dissolved, which ones look dissolvable, which ones we're not sure about, and which ones remain resistant.

And also whether it can be shown that some problems can't be resolved this way.

Some issues have been, to my satisfaction. — Banno

I'm sure some issues are amenable to this. Truth might be one of them. But all of philosophy? It only takes one exception.

The one that works. — Banno

Sure, and yesterday/tomorrow works well in language, but if I'm asking you as a philosopher as to whether to finish building the time machine in my garage, what would be your advice?

Arguing in this way is setting up a grammar about "existence" that distinguishes it from "real" in order to sort out the conceptual issues. — Banno

Sure, but are you only attempting to show how a linguistic analysis would proceed? I'm not doubting that you can analyze language for any philosophical position. They are stated using language.

What I'm skeptical of is that linguistic analysis will dissolve all the philosophical problems. Has the philosophy of time been successfully dissolved to your knowledge?

Once we've removed all the linguistic construction of the concept of 'time' nothing is left behind. — Pseudonym

That remains to be seen. But surely change is still left behind? Or are you in agreement with Parmenides that change doesn't exist?

Is measurement special in some way? — Banno

*Must. Resist. Mentioning. QM.*

Measurement probably means something exists to be measured.

So mapping out the topology of the word "exists" would be one way to sort through the conceptual issues around time. That's linguistic philosophy. — Banno

Okay, so I think there is no disagreement that we do perceive change, events taking place, that sort of thing. And form this we have a notion of time which we can measure.

So it appears to us that things change, and we can talk of the before, during and after.

The concept is of a thing in spacetime such that we can look and see it isn't there. — Pseudonym

Right, but change is in the horse category of being there, not the unicorn one of not being. Notice that you even use spacetime as the backdrop for seeing what's there.

But this is already a grammatical error because horses and (the proposed) unicorns are both things, objects in spacetime which can either be there or not. — Pseudonym

Unicorns are not things in spacetime. They're fictional.

And what does it mean to feel air around your skin? — Πετροκότσυφας

I assume you know? Maybe we only notice it with a temperature change or air movement. But sure, a fish doesn't feel wet in the way we feel wet, I would assume. I'm not a fish, though.

What does it mean to feel wet? — Πετροκότσυφας

Something like what it means to feel air around your skin, I suppose.

What is someone asking when he asks if the fish is wet in water? — Πετροκότσυφας

Well, a fish can dry out on land, so I guess you mean does a fish feel wet? Because certainly fish are wet in water.

As for what fish feel, notice that we do feel the air around us. I don't know that we have a word for it. Do we feel "aired"? We would certainly feel the lack of it in a vacuum. So I'm sure fish feel the water around them. Would not be very adaptable if they didn't. It's just that being wet is normal for them, like having air around us is normal for land animals.

To say that something exists is no more than to give it a role in our language. — Banno

I'm going to disagree strongly with that. For starters, we say unicorns don't exist, but they do have a role in our language. But we do say horses exist, and they aren't simply a role in language, but are animals who don't need us to talk about them to be.

So although "does time exist?" looks like a profound bit of metaphysics, it is also (only?) a question of language use. — Banno

We do have a perception of change. That's not linguistic. It's why time plays a role in our language. We could invoke Kant here, or a physicist.

The philosopher in us, this tendency to overgeneralise and search for ultimates behind what is given to us, will hopefully die (or at least weaken). And we'll might "see the world aright". — Πετροκότσυφας

But what would this mean? Presumably it doesn't mean seeing the world the way pre-philosophical people saw it, or the average person ignorant of philosophy who takes things as they appear. Although that's a bit harder today with the prevalence of science and various fictional concepts. Everyone knows about the Matrix and time travel, for example, and anyone a little drunk or high can tell you how time doesn't exist or the cells in our bodies could be entire universes, or whatever passes for profundity.

Let's start with the first item:

1. Philosophy of time: presentism, block universes etc.

So, our concept of time developed out of noticing that things change, and some of those changes are periodic, such that we can measure the change by days, seasons, etc. And then we can say that yesterday I went to the market, today I'm plowing the field, and tomorrow I will be marrying my cousin.

Now at some point (in time), somebody must have first wondered about yesterday and tomorrow. Do they exist? What is meant by that? It's easiest to understand by borrowing from science fiction, where a time machine enables travel to the past or future. In earlier times, magic or the gods may have been invoked to explicate the notion.

At some point (again in time), a debate would have developed where one side said yesterday and tomorrow exist in that you could visit them if you had some means to do so. But then the other side said that no, they don't exist. All that exists is the ever changing now. And from this you also get a debate as to whether the "flow of time" we experience is real or an illusion.

Fast forward to modern physics, and we have the implications of General Relativity with time dilation. Which leads some to suggest the 4D block notion of the universe, in which all points in time exist eternally, and the flow of time we experience is an illusion constructed by the mind.

Thats my attempt at explaining the issue. Someone else can give a more precise explanation with the actual philosophers who put the issue on the table. We know that as far back as Heraclitus and Parmenides, there were related disputes as to whether time was an illusion or everything was change.

For this discussion, can we dissolve the issue, or leave it up to physics by engaging in linguistic analysis?

That's well put. Let's go with it.

So if we us fdrake's list, the question is whether all of those topics will cease to be philosophical once the right conceptual topology has been grammatically sorted out.

eah, strong and slightly ironic. After all, I'm here, doing philosophy by saying we shouldn't bother with philosophy.

I can't help myself... — Banno

It seems like you haven't quite cured the itch yet. Maybe rub some more analysis on it.

But I suppose on your view philosophy could be seen as a necessary endeavor to clarify and dissolve or handoff certain kinds of questions humans have been tempted to ask the past 2500 years, at least.

Yes, it might well be. — Banno

You realize that's a really, really strong claim, right? It's certainly worth discussing.

Language seems foundational in some sense to philosophy — Sam26

My knee jerk reaction against Banno's claim is that it sounds like getting clear on how language is misused to create philosophical problems will either dissolve all those problems, or clear them up in preparation for some other domain like science to take over.

Which would mean that philosophy is a mistake.

Could there be teams of several people that take turns replying? Like three people strongly for and three strongly against or something?

Im wondering how much we can agree on within the scope of philosophy of language. — Sam26

Preliminary: what is meant by "philosophy of language" and how would it be understood to cover all of philosophy?

I'm not prepared for a formal debate. It's just that those debates seemed to be well structured, and this sort of topic has the chance of being all over the place, since it attempts to cover the entire reach of philosophy.