It is claimed as a description of the workings (Wittgenstein will label this “grammar”) of those practices that are subject to error, and thus excuses; not having/needing foundational justification, but internally rational; not using universal criteria, but each with its own; and not sorted out ahead of time, but continuing. And it is claimed as a ‘fact’ to the extent it is made on behalf of all of us (our shared culture), but for each of us to accept for themselves or intelligibly respond to; even a fact that is “metaphysical” if that is meant to say that it applies apart from the individual. I’m not sure whether you are warning against the possibility of it being appropriated, or accusing this of being an appropriation.
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I was agreeing with you, and cautioning against a misreading by others (not you). I’m lately interested in the tendency of philosophers to react to chains of signs as attempts to represent a “true reality.” Wittgenstein will tempt some as a metaphysician in a folksy style. This kind of appropriation isn’t “wrong in the eyes of God.” It’s just not the reading that I find most liberating.
Following Bakhtin, I look for the “meaning” in the situation itself and between the communicants. “Grammar” is far more flexible than “logic,” but for some (not saying you, to be clear) it takes over the same “theological” role in a fuzzier fashion. The concrete communication situation can be overlooked in an eagerness for yet another version of “I own the language.” My point is that each of us has a situated position in this “game,” but there’s a tendency to perform a trans-situational attitude, as if one sits above all possible meaning, testing it for validity in terms of postulated ( rationalized) trans-situational standards.
I agree that some can take him to be making a (just different) claim to justification (for the same certainty)—which would be to mistake a soldier for the pirate he’s fighting—which certainty I take as the same as your term, theological (I imagine this as: wanting that same authority).
I think of Wittgenstein as examining what is meaningful (in society), in a series of examples (and situations), as: in what particular way does each different practice value itself, or make distinctions, in order to be that kind (category) of thing (what criteria or workings are essential in judging something to be a particular practice or thing).
And it is the idea of chaos, should we each become the measure, that is the fear that drives the metaphysician to want only to find something certain, foundational, like science, or god. I don’t “own” the criteria to judge the difference between a mistake and an accident. Authority lies with each of us, even if power does not (barring rebellion).
The point absolutely being to not have one requirement or “postulated… standards” (like certainty, universality, predictability, etc.) for every kind of thing. And we are not testing these various ways; we are examining them, learning how each work, and, even more meta, how they fail, and, in this (philosophical) case, why we abstract ourselves into a corner (in wanting something general). But his method is to look—not “from above”, but, in a sense, next to us—at the things we say about a certain practice, in particular situations, or say in doing a practice, for example: coming to an understanding (between two communicants).
Yes. And I might stress authority here over certainty. I don’t believe that philosophers experience much doubt. A philosopher is “quite sure” ( as I am, with a sense of humor about it ) that their way is better.
I agree, so perhaps I am adding some Bakhtin to the brew. Put aphoristically, understanding Wittgenstein is exactly going beyond him as any kind of authority whatsoever. In theory, the scientific spirit is fundamentally impious, but in practice certain famous names take on a mystique.
Led back to the “rough ground” and “punched in the nose” to summon one’s attention, the field is open before one. I emphasize that I’m grateful to the work of Wittgenstein…but also for contributing to a liberation of the work of Wittgenstein. Gellner’s Words and Things is a great critique of the tendency of OLP-ish appropriations to become another sacred doctrine. Those eager to go back to bed are grateful for phrases like “language on holiday,” forgetting that Wittgenstein’s own work is “language on holiday.” But what’s wrong with holidays ? And who said we only talk in pursuit of our daily bread ?
I think some metaphysicians feel that fear. They feel the need to prove themselves out of some hole. But I’m tempted to again prioritize the quest for authority in terms of a Logic that binds others. The metaphysician is a meta-politician trying to get a law passed.
I whole-heartedly concur. His claims, though made on behalf of us too, are nothing if not accepted by us, seen for ourselves. And, also, that the point is not to get, say, the mechanism of and criteria of rule-following “right” (and then brow-beat everyone self-righteously, as if “sacred doctrine”), but to provide a contrast to how metaphysics wants to approach any subject with the same (better) standard, making it a matter of authority/power, and not seeing a broader picture and being able to answer not: how, but why.
The desire to circumvent the fallible nature of our practices (moral action, communication, etc.)—i.e., “binding” others through knowledge or an answer (apart from our ordinary means)—is the fantasy that Wittgenstein is investigating in its various forms (his version being the pure logic of the Tractatus). Austin and Wittgenstein’s examples are meant to show that, apart from a proposition being true/false, there are other ways our practices have, let’s say, weight. One that Cavell points out is that the criteria for, say, an apology, is not true/false, but that the criteria of the practice do bind what is judged to be one or not. You can say whatever you want, but if you don’t meet, or otherwise account within, the criteria for what an apology is, you just aren’t apologizing. Cavell will note that this is not some type of logic that is “normative”, but the practice itself that is. But fitting a category is not just done ahead of time, because we have contingencies, mistakes, good-enough, etc., here, between offense and forgiveness, which is not determined by an apology being correct, but in mending the relationship.
I was going to say that it is a fact of human life―a phenomenological fact. I don’t equate phenomenology with metaphysics as some do, though.
Logic guarantors only validity, not soundness or truth. A valid logical argument is only as good as the premises―premises which stand or fall indepedndently of the validity of the argument. So logic per se, as I see it, has no constraining power on belief, only on the internal consistency of beliefs.
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We might even call him a phenomenologist in a folksy style.
Yes, and I would stress the unrepeatable particularity of any actual relationship. We can sketch “average” normativity, but we live in the trenches with the strange and dirty details.
Only logic at its most mechanical/formal “lives up” to the hype, in my view. Of course I am sensitive to rational norms, hence my love for this strange genre of poetry. So I merely “demystify” a certain image of logic as superstitious. If signs are recognized as objects in the world again — brought down from out of the mind of god — then it becomes easier to notice their subject-relative significance and historicity or temporal depth.
In other words, the same sound-image doesn’t “mean” the same to everyone in the room. But many philosophers project themselves as if they control and engulf all possible signification personally. The logical positivists were not empirical enough in their tacit belief in a God’s Ear. “I can’t make sense of that” becomes “there is no sense in that.”
The irony or whatever here is that a deafness is celebrated as a virtue. Experience of otherness, of the pain of sense-making, is rejected as inconvenient or threatening, in the name of a “logic” that is curiously owned and decided by this or that little in-group.
I’m not at all trying to come off as an irrationalist here. I’m just skeptical about the complacent use of certain master words.
Yep. And since logic is ideal, it is actually directly experienced by no one.
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Since language for the later Wittgenstein is culturally relative then logic is culturally relative. Logic is the grammar of language.
I didn’t have in mind any “superstitious” understanding of logic, i.e. as for example that it is “God-given” . Formal logic is just based on analysis of the ordinary logic of everyday language. Anyway my point was only that consistency is paramount―any philosophy which is internally contradictory is no use except for maybe some nice poetic language and perhaps a few sparks of insight. The need for consistency (logical validity) seems to be essential for coherent discourse. Poetry and literature (e.g.Finnegan’s Wake) need not be coherent discourse but I think philosophy should be.
Just to be clear, I didn’t mean to imply at all that you were being superstitious. My point is just that anyone can claim that the other is incoherent.
As I understand it, signs are things in the world, marks and noises. We can of course describe a kind of average use or average normativity. But even here it’s your version of the average or mine or whoever’s. Which of us apes has a god’s eye view on sign trading ?
Plenty of philosopher apes have implied that they do, but I don’t believe them. At the same time, I try to be coherent in my beliefs according to my own sense of coherence.
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Yes I agree. I don’t find your ideas incoherent at all. I was just responding to a comment about logic. Others seem to think that logic on its own gives us knowledge, or even just gives us beliefs, and I was simply pointing out that to practice good logic is just to be consistent in one’s thinking with whatever starting assumptions (premises) one might hold. I don’t think premises are determined by logic, but rather by intuition or a sense of what is plausible. problem is there is not a strict (strictly logical) way to measure plausibility.
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Right. I’m with you on that. I might call it sensitivity to inferential norms, as one has no choice but to personally appropriate them.
This is something that I liked in Brandom. My own coherence as a person among others is roughly the coherence of my actions and assertions. I lose coherence as a self when I become irrational or incoherent.
This helps me make sense of why philosophy feels so empowering to me. You sculpt yourself towards harmony and coherence.
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To give a bit more depth, while I was reading the book Winch cited a text by Lewis Carroll. In which he talks about a tortoise and Achilles. The way my class interpreted this text shown below is that ultimately logic and logical inference are just based upon rules we agree on and they are not fundamental to nature or subject independent.
Blockquote
Achilles had overtaken the Tortoise, and had seated himself comfortably on its
back.
“So you’ve got to the end of our race-course?” said the Tortoise. “Even though it
does consist of an infinite series of distances? I thought some wiseacre or other had
proved that the thing couldn’t be done?”
“It can be done,” said Achilles. “It has been done! Solvitur ambulando. You see the
distances were constantly diminishing; and so --”
“But if they had been constantly increasing?” the Tortoise interrupted “How
then?”
“Then I shouldn’t be here,” Achilles modestly replied; “and you would have got
several times round the world, by this time!”
“You flatter me – flatten, I mean” said the Tortoise; “for you are a heavy weight,
and no mistake! Well now, would you like to hear of a race-course, that most people
fancy they can get to the end of in two or three steps, while it really consists of an
infinite number of distances, each one longer than the previous one?”
“Very much indeed!” said the Grecian warrior, as he drew from his helmet (few
Grecian warriors possessed pockets in those days) an enormous note-book and a
pencil. “Proceed! And speak slowly, please! Shorthand isn’t invented yet!”
“That beautiful First Proposition of Euclid!” the Tortoise murmured dreamily.
“You admire Euclid?”
“Passionately! So far, at least, as one can admire a treatise that won’t he published
for some centuries to come!”
“Well, now, let’s take a little bit of the argument in that First Proposition – just two
steps, and the conclusion drawn from them. Kindly enter them in your notebook.
And in order to refer to them conveniently, let’s call them A, B, and Z: –
(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other.
(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.
(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.
Readers of Euclid will grant, I suppose, that Z follows logically from A and B, so
that any one who accepts A and B as true, must accept Z as true?”
“Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School – as soon as High Schools are
invented, which will not be till some two thousand years later – will grant that.”
“And if some reader had not yet accepted A and B as true, he might still accept the
sequence as a valid one, I suppose?”
“No doubt such a reader might exist. He might say ‘I accept as true the
Hypothetical Proposition that, if A and B be true, Z must be true; but, I don’t accept
A and B as true.’ Such a reader would do wisely in abandoning Euclid, and taking
to football.”
“And might there not also he some reader who would say 'I accept A and B as true,
but I don’t accept the Hypothetical '?”
“Certainly there might. He, also, had better take to football.”
“And neither of these readers,” the Tortoise continued, “is as yet under any logical
necessity to accept Z as true?”
“Quite so,” Achilles assented.
“Well, now, I want you to consider me as a reader of the second kind, and to force
me, logically, to accept Z as true.”
"A tortoise playing football would be – " Achilles was beginning
“-- an anomaly, of course,” the Tortoise hastily interrupted. “Don’t wander from
the point. Let’s have Z first, and football afterwards!”
“I’m to force you to accept Z, am I?” Achilles said musingly. “And your present
position is that you accept A and B, but you don’t accept the Hypothetical --”
“Let’s call it C,” said the Tortoise.
"-- but you don’t accept
(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true. "
“That is my present position,” said the Tortoise.
“Then I must ask you to accept C.”
“I’ll do so,” said the Tortoise, “as soon as you’ve entered it in that note-book of
yours. What else have you got in it?”
“Only a few memoranda,” said Achilles, nervously fluttering the leaves: “a few
memoranda of – of the battles in which I have distinguished myself!”
“Plenty of blank leaves, I see!” the Tortoise cheerily remarked. “We shall need
them all!” (Achilles shuddered.) “Now write as I dictate: –
(A) Things that arc equal to the same are equal to each other.
(B) The two sides of this Triangle are things that are equal to the same.
(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true.
(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other.”
“You should call it D, not Z,” said Achilles. “It comes next to the other three. If you
accept A and B and C, you must accept Z.”
“And why must I?”
“Because it follows logically from them. If A and B and C are true, Z must be true.
You don’t dispute that, I imagine?”
“If A and B and C are true, Z must he true,” the Tortoise thoughtfully repeated.
“That’s another Hypothetical, isn’t it? And, if I failed to see its truth, I might accept
A and B and C’, and still not accept Z. mightn’t I?”
“You might,” the candid hero admitted; “though such obtuseness would certainly
be phenomenal. Still, the event is possible. So I must ask you to grant one more
Hypothetical.”
"Very good. I’m quite willing to grant it, as soon as you’ve written it down. We will
call it
(D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true.
“Have you entered that in your notebook?”
“I have!” Achilles joyfully exclaimed, as he ran the pencil into its sheath. “And at
last we’ve got to the end of this ideal race-course! Now that you accept A and B and
C and D, of course you accept Z.”
“Do I?” said the Tortoise innocently. “Let’s make that quite clear. I accept A and B
and C and D. Suppose I still refused to accept Z?”
“Then Logic would force you to do it!” Achilles triumphantly replied. “Logic would
tell you ‘You can’t help yourself. Now that you’ve accepted A and B and C and D,
you must accept Z!’ So you’ve no choice, you see.”
“Whatever Logic is good enough to tell me is worth writing down,” said the
Tortoise. “So enter it in your book, please. We will call it
(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. Until I’ve granted that, of
course I needn’t grant Z. So it’s quite a necessary step, you see?”
“I see,” said Achilles; and there was a touch of sadness in his tone.
Here narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy
pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so,
Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing
in his note-book, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was saying, “Have
you got that last step written down? Unless I’ve lost count, that makes a thousand
and one. There are several millions more to come. And would you mind, as a
personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will
provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century – would you mind adopting a
pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be re-
named Taught-Us?”
“As you please!” replied the weary warrior, in the hollow tones of despair, as he
buried his face in his hands. "Provided that you, for your part, will adopt a pun the
Mock-Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A Kill-Ease!