Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

What did you say? And what did you mean by it?

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Wyman
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Wyman »

HexHammer wrote:
Wyman wrote:How do you describe the difference between human language and the language of, say, bees doing their waggle dance? If you call what bees do 'language' then I'll give that word to you and I'll think of another one.
Humans has greater brains, and therefore can communicate in a more complex way, because not only do we have greater memory, but also greater intellect.

Not only can bees tell other bees where a located flower is, but also it's geometical shape it's surrounded by. Bees can vote and therefore actually has a very complex form of communication.

Our everyday understanding of dogs is very limited, only if we observe the complex behaviour of the Russian subway dogs, they will display an amazingly intellect and behaviour. The big mussle dogs doesn't always get to be the leader of the gang, but the smartest, they understand how to cooperate and how to embark on a journey to a certain destination via subway trains.
Thanks for the reference to the Russian dogs, I hadn't seen that before. It reminded me of a recent trip to Costa Rica. We stayed at the top of a mountain and one day a dog showed up, hung out with us for a day and left. Later, I saw the dog at a busy supermarket parking lot about five miles from the mountain in the nearby town. I thought it was amazing how many busy streets he had to travel without getting hit by a car. I think natural selection works very quickly in such situations and only the very intelligent animals survive.
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HexHammer
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by HexHammer »

Wyman wrote:Thanks for the reference to the Russian dogs, I hadn't seen that before. It reminded me of a recent trip to Costa Rica. We stayed at the top of a mountain and one day a dog showed up, hung out with us for a day and left. Later, I saw the dog at a busy supermarket parking lot about five miles from the mountain in the nearby town. I thought it was amazing how many busy streets he had to travel without getting hit by a car. I think natural selection works very quickly in such situations and only the very intelligent animals survive.
No, very stupid animals can indeed survive if they are in a flok with other animals with "flokinstinct" that will care for their fellow members, even if they'r wastly weaker and inferior minded.
Wyman
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Wyman »

iii

What makes my image of him into an image of him?
Not its looking like him.

The same question applies to the expression "I see him now vividly
before me" as to the image. What makes this utterance into an utterance
about him?—Nothing in it or simultaneous with it ('behind it').
If you want to know whom he meant, ask him.

(But it is also possible for a face to come before my mind, and even
for me to be able to draw it, without my knowing whose it is or
where I have seen it.)

Suppose, however, that someone were to draw while he had an
image or instead of having it, though it were only with his finger in
the air. (This might be called "motor imagery.") He could be asked:
"Whom does that represent?" And his answer would be decisive.—
It is quite as if he had given a verbal description: and such a description
can also simply take the place of the image.
If an image, string of words, air picture refers to a specific thing/person - what makes it mean that person rather than another? Answer - it looks like him, or describes him, more or less accurately.

If a good artist draws a likeness of the person, then everyone knows whom he drew by comparing the drawing to the real thing. If I draw a picture of the person, it won't look any more like him than like a thousand other people, because I a an atrocious artist. But if we both 'mean' the drawing to refer to the same person, then there is a sense in which both drawings are unambiguous - the intent of the artist is decisive.

QED: meaning is different from accurate representation - separate from the quality of communication involved.

At any rate, this is all I get out of this entry. I found it a bit too cryptic.
uwot
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by uwot »

Wyman wrote:If language is an exchange of meaning, is it an exchange of paper money or gold? Do we exchange a proxy for the real thing? Something to think about.
Are you familiar with Popper's three world ontology? Off the top of my head, the gist is that things are 'real' if they have the power to affect the material world. Ideas can do this. Therefore ideas are real. If that's a fair, albeit crude analysis, I imagine Popper would plump for gold. I still think it's paper, and then with a fair bit written on it.
Wyman
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Wyman »

uwot wrote:
Wyman wrote:If language is an exchange of meaning, is it an exchange of paper money or gold? Do we exchange a proxy for the real thing? Something to think about.
Are you familiar with Popper's three world ontology? Off the top of my head, the gist is that things are 'real' if they have the power to affect the material world. Ideas can do this. Therefore ideas are real. If that's a fair, albeit crude analysis, I imagine Popper would plump for gold. I still think it's paper, and then with a fair bit written on it.
I do have vague recollections of that - e.g. the Pythagorean Theorem exists 'out there' whether anyone thinks of it or not. Very cause oriented. Though, what about all the 'dumb' thoughts that people have that do not affect the world at all - are they nonexistent?- is causal effectiveness a necessary condition or sufficient or both? I think you are right. Not to get too poetic, but ideas and talk are prone to hyper-inflation; the real thing is precious and rare.
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A_Seagull
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by A_Seagull »

Wyman wrote:
If language is an exchange of meaning, .
Language is not an exchange of meaning.

Language is a tool for communication. And that includes all propositions and conclusions and proclamations of truth.

Words, as strings of symbols or sounds, have no meaning outside of a brain.

William Golding put it rather well: "“My darkness reaches out and fumbles at a typewriter with its tongs. Your darkness reaches out with your tongs and grasps a book. There are twenty modes of change, filter and translation between us. What an extravagant coincidence it would be if the exact quality, the translucent sweetness of her cheek, the very living curve of bone between the eyebrow and hair should survive the passage!"
Wyman
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Wyman »

A_Seagull wrote:
Wyman wrote:
If language is an exchange of meaning, .
Language is not an exchange of meaning.

Language is a tool for communication. And that includes all propositions and conclusions and proclamations of truth.

Words, as strings of symbols or sounds, have no meaning outside of a brain.

William Golding put it rather well: "“My darkness reaches out and fumbles at a typewriter with its tongs. Your darkness reaches out with your tongs and grasps a book. There are twenty modes of change, filter and translation between us. What an extravagant coincidence it would be if the exact quality, the translucent sweetness of her cheek, the very living curve of bone between the eyebrow and hair should survive the passage!"
Well here's a good illustration of the kind of problem being dealt with in part iii. When I read this post, I thought: but when uwot said 'language is an exchange of meaning,' what he meant was 'language is a tool for communication.' Further, when I said that gold - real exchange of ideas, not just paper money - is precious and rare, I meant what Golding meant when he said what 'an extravagant coincidence it would be if the exact quality, the translucent sweetness of her cheek, the very living curve of bone between the eyebrow and hair should survive the passage!'

Suppose that I say that uwot meant 'A' with his words. You say that you meant 'B.' And so I claim that A = B. I could be completely wrong about what either of you meant and no analysis of words and their meanings could be conclusive. Just like my example of the the bad artist drawing a picture of 'C' - you can criticize my artistic abilities, but you cannot tell me that the picture is a representation of something other than 'C.' My intent is completely determinative. As Wittgenstein says, if you want to know what I am referring to, ask me - but don't think that an analysis of the picture is capable of providing the answer.

And so the question remains - if only uwot can say if he meant 'A' and only you can say if you meant 'B,' how can we know whether 'A' is the same as 'B'? Quine and Wittgenstein both, I think, say here that translation - synonymy - is fundamentally indeterminate.

Then an even more difficult problem arises in the question - what are 'A' and 'B'? They are not words and sentences. They are the supposedly what words and sentences refer to. We call them meanings or ideas or concepts. Quine said that a suitable replacement for the imprecise and misleading talk of 'meanings' had not been found while he was alive and was one of the important future projects of philosophy.
Graeme M
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Graeme M »

A few rambling thoughts to contribute my meanderings on the subject of language.

I would see language arising evolutionarily to facilitate communication. Communication implies sharing information for whatever purpose. A group with effective communication becomes selectively advantaged and the pressure will be on communication to improve. The communications process that evolves would I suspect facilitate both language as well as other forms of external representation (eg art). But language is the biggie.

Language enables the sharing of the internal state of the brain with other brains. For humans, this means we can generate a public perception space - knowledge - that is accessible by all members of the group. Groups can use language to share knowledge, to learn. As a communicating group, we are more fit than we would be without language. The critical element though will be written language. With that, knowledge can be stored and shared over time, built upon, dispersed more broadly to more members.

In terms of meaning, language arises on top of the underlying neural arrangements. It represents these in a form suitable for communication, but communicating quite complex arrangements (ideas, concepts) is not easy. Words, sentences have meanings, but the meanings are not expressed intrinsically by the words. Rather the meaning must be selectively evolved as well.

If we wish to share ideas with words, we need to have a commonly understood sense of the meaning. Over time, the more individuals (or the more that the group) agrees on meaning the more likely that this meaning will hold. It's unlikely that Joe, meaning an automobile when he says crow, will be taken too seriously. He may even find himself a social outcast if he insists on using words that are not intelligible by others as he means them to mean.

Language then not only enables communication, it is the very basis for knowledge to accumulate, and I propose, for the development of mind. In fact, although I've not yet read his book through, I believe that the modern sense of self, of "I", arises from language in some form similar to that proposed by Jaynes.

I suggest that without language a creature is aware or conscious in the Nagelian sense, however is consequently substantially limited in terms of action. Here I mean action to mean something more akin to goal oriented behaviour, whether that be as simple as movements with a purpose or something like planning or conceptualising.

An individual human, born without significant cognitive defects, raised to speak his language and with access to at least the rudiments of societal knowledge, does not have to reinvent the wheel. He is automatically ahead of the game in comparison to his ancestors (presuming of course some linearity of learning – knowledge accumulation – over time).

Current knowledge is not necessarily greater than or better than prior knowledge, but assuming no major interruptions to the process over time then it should become more complex. In terms of rational inquiry the shared models of the external world (hopefully) become more useful for more complex behaviours (imagine building skyscrapers, aeroplanes, exploring the stars).

Language is the very basis for consciousness of the "I" kind, but more than that, it is the critical step to facilitate a highly flexible, adaptive, social group of (in effect) unlimited size.
Dalek Prime
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Dalek Prime »

Graeme M wrote:A few rambling thoughts to contribute my meanderings on the subject of language.

I would see language arising evolutionarily to facilitate communication. Communication implies sharing information for whatever purpose. A group with effective communication becomes selectively advantaged and the pressure will be on communication to improve. The communications process that evolves would I suspect facilitate both language as well as other forms of external representation (eg art). But language is the biggie.

Language enables the sharing of the internal state of the brain with other brains. For humans, this means we can generate a public perception space - knowledge - that is accessible by all members of the group. Groups can use language to share knowledge, to learn. As a communicating group, we are more fit than we would be without language. The critical element though will be written language. With that, knowledge can be stored and shared over time, built upon, dispersed more broadly to more members.

In terms of meaning, language arises on top of the underlying neural arrangements. It represents these in a form suitable for communication, but communicating quite complex arrangements (ideas, concepts) is not easy. Words, sentences have meanings, but the meanings are not expressed intrinsically by the words. Rather the meaning must be selectively evolved as well.

If we wish to share ideas with words, we need to have a commonly understood sense of the meaning. Over time, the more individuals (or the more that the group) agrees on meaning the more likely that this meaning will hold. It's unlikely that Joe, meaning an automobile when he says crow, will be taken too seriously. He may even find himself a social outcast if he insists on using words that are not intelligible by others as he means them to mean.

Language then not only enables communication, it is the very basis for knowledge to accumulate, and I propose, for the development of mind. In fact, although I've not yet read his book through, I believe that the modern sense of self, of "I", arises from language in some form similar to that proposed by Jaynes.

I suggest that without language a creature is aware or conscious in the Nagelian sense, however is consequently substantially limited in terms of action. Here I mean action to mean something more akin to goal oriented behaviour, whether that be as simple as movements with a purpose or something like planning or conceptualising.

An individual human, born without significant cognitive defects, raised to speak his language and with access to at least the rudiments of societal knowledge, does not have to reinvent the wheel. He is automatically ahead of the game in comparison to his ancestors (presuming of course some linearity of learning – knowledge accumulation – over time).

Current knowledge is not necessarily greater than or better than prior knowledge, but assuming no major interruptions to the process over time then it should become more complex. In terms of rational inquiry the shared models of the external world (hopefully) become more useful for more complex behaviours (imagine building skyscrapers, aeroplanes, exploring the stars).

Language is the very basis for consciousness of the "I" kind, but more than that, it is the critical step to facilitate a highly flexible, adaptive, social group of (in effect) unlimited size.
A higher level of conciousness perhaps, but language is not a condition of conciousness, certainly not the basis of. Language also allows us to gain more knowledge than without, but knowledge can be gained through experience, without communication. You have to keep these things in mind when generalizing.
Graeme M
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Graeme M »

Indeed but I did not suggest that language constitutes consciousness. There seem to be many flavours of 'consciousness', but here I mean language to form the basis for the introspective "I" form of consciousness in which we conduct internal conversations. I do not see how one can deliberate in detail on matters without language to provide both the additional knowledge required and the form of discourse to facilitate it.

That is not to say that one cannot be aware of experiences and to learn from those experiences, but I would suggest there is a limit to that if you cannot also learn from others what their own internal experiential learnings are. It's a sort of symbiotic relationship, or if you like, an extended nervous system.

And it's a virtual one at that, dependent as it is on the cooperation of the members of the group allied with the transmission between members and generations.

While our brains are probably little different to those of our ancestors of say 50,000 years ago, our accumulated knowledge IS different. If through some disaster mankind were reduced to just a few breeding populations in the Amazonian jungle, that knowledge is lost. Those survivors WILL have to reinvent the wheel, and in fact may choose through environmental pressure to invent a quite different wheel. There is no directive that we have to travel the skies or visit new planets.
Wyman
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Wyman »

I'll respond to the above posts later, as I just wanted to continue a thought from yesterday. Rorty in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature purports to bring the philosophies of Quine, Sellars and Wittgenstein to their logical conclusions, which he sees as a type of pragmatism similar to Dewey and James. The epistemic outlook of this pragmatism adopts Quine's holism at the end of Two Dogmas of Empiricism. Two Dogmas is an attack on the idea (meaning) of 'meaning' in the context of its central role in empiricism vis a vis the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements. Similarly to Quine's attack on traditional notions of meaning, Wittgenstein, in his 'Investigations', challenges the model of language as reducible to a small set of rules relating words or sentences to something called 'meanings.' In my last post, I saw a convergence between the two philosophers at the point where Wittgenstein, in my view, threw some doubt on the idea of sameness of meaning in any objective sense - i.e. that synonymy can be objectively determined by analysis of language.
Synonymy of meaning (lack thereof) is central to Quine's Two Dogmas as well as Word and Object, where he famously creates a thought experiment (arguably before thought experiments were in vogue) whereby he imagined a linguist tasked with learning and translating the language of a newly discovered tribe of humans - calling it 'radical translation'. His thesis was that there would be large areas where two such linguists would translate such a language in critically different ways where both translations would be 'correct' in so far as communication with the tribe goes, but different with one another (matching large areas of languages meaningfully, but very different in so far as the separate sentences and words are concerned). (That last paraphrase of Word and Object needs some work!). He is left, consistently with the holism of Two Dogmas, with large patches of language (theory) matching large areas of language in sum, but differing as to parts and details. We're getting dangerously close here to simple common sense dressed up in philosophical jargon.
Wittgenstein's philosophy could be said to similarly end with a holistic view, where meaning is something like contextual definition - differing from context to context depending to the set of rules or 'game' we are playing. Again, awfully close to common sense. What I find interesting and problematic is the original attack on meaning and the step by which they get from it to the subsequent 'holism.' I think they are both outstanding 'negative' philosophers who successfully tear down and expose unnoticed presuppositions, but are a bit rough in their positive replacements. I also think Quine recognized this when, as I said above, he thought that a future project of philosophy would be to adequately replace this flawed model of 'meaning talk' with something else. (btw I think Rorty did a worse job at the latter than either Quine or Wittgenstein).
Sorry for the hurried post (if anyone is actually reading), but I wanted to get that historical context on paper.
Wyman
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Wyman »

iv
"I believe that he is suffering."——Do I also believe that he isn't
an automaton?

It would go against the grain to use the word in both connexions.
(Or is it like this: I believe that he is suffering, but am certain that
he is not an automaton? Nonsense I)

Suppose I say of a friend: "He isn't an automaton".—What information
is conveyed by this, and to whom would it be information? To
a human being who meets him in ordinary circumstances? What
information could it give him? (At the very most that this man always
behaves like a human being, and not occasionally like a machine.)

"I believe that he is not an automaton", just like that, so far makes
no sense.

My attitude towards him is an attitude towards a soul. I am not of
the opinion that he has a soul.

Religion teaches that the soul can exist when the body has disintegrated.
Now do I understand this teaching?—Of course I understand
it——I can imagine plenty of things in connexion with it. And
haven't pictures of these things been painted? And why should such
a picture be only an imperfect rendering of the spoken doctrine? Why
should it not do the same service as the words? And it is the service
which is the point.

If the picture of thought in the head can force itself upon us, then
why not much more that of thought in the soul?

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

And how about such an expression as: "In my heart I understood
when you said that", pointing to one's heart? Does one, perhaps, not
mean this gesture? Of course one means it. Or is one conscious of
using a mere figure? Indeed not.—It is not a figure that we choose,
not a simile, yet it is a figurative expression.
When you learn to ride a bike, 'bicycle riding' is not a thing. When you learn to ride the bike, your teacher may talk about using your legs, balancing your body and the bike, etc.. But you and the teacher do not normally speak of 'bicycle riding' as a thing. This becomes clearer when we note that talk of 'activities' in general may give cause to speak of 'bicycle riding' as a thing - e.g. 'Bicycle riding and foot racing are two strenuous activities.' Quine calls this ascension - ascending from one level of discourse 'up' to a higher level. Ryle characterized the jumbling of concepts between two levels of ascension 'category mistakes.'
At one level, bicycle riding is an activity, at the other level, it is a 'thing.' Just as at one level it makes sense to speak of a 'university' - e.g. I think Harvard is better than Yale.' But when we go to visit Harvard, we make a category mistake if we ask our guide - 'Well the library and dorms are very nice, but where is the university?' It is very easy to grasp such distinctions, but harder to consistently keep them straight.

The ascension from one level of generality to another is a shift from one set of assumptions and objects to another. Having an 'attitude' towards some set of objects, like people with souls, is like having an attitude towards everyday experience as consisting mostly of physical objects. There is a base level of presupposition. It is not that we 'believe' there are physical objects (only when we shift to a particular 'philosophical' attitude does talk of 'belief' here even make any sense), we rather proceed to perceive experience with the attitude that it consists of physical objects.

Again Quine is quite similar here. He talks in terms of 'conceptual schemes' instead of 'attitudes.' But conceptual schemes are delineated by the group of 'posits' or presupposed objects and their relations to one another. Presupposing and positing are different than 'believing.' And when we 'ascend' from one level of discourse to another, our conceptual scheme is modified - the posited objects are changed.

I think the point to get here is that one conceptual scheme does not differ from another in the objects of one being more real than another. The objects of discourse and 'attitudes' are merely parts of different pictures being painted - one picture with a broader brush perhaps, than another. But physical objects are no more real than 'souls' or feelings in the heart. It is all metaphor.
Impenitent
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Impenitent »

physical body parts holding immaterial emotional states and thoughts...

but the machines show the electrical impulses between synapses as thoughts occur...

-Imp
Wyman
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Wyman »

Impenitent wrote:physical body parts holding immaterial emotional states and thoughts...

but the machines show the electrical impulses between synapses as thoughts occur...

-Imp
I can't answer that until you say what you mean by a 'thought' or an 'emotional state.'
Impenitent
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Re: Philosophical Investigations Part II - Wittgenstein

Post by Impenitent »

Wyman wrote:
Impenitent wrote:physical body parts holding immaterial emotional states and thoughts...

but the machines show the electrical impulses between synapses as thoughts occur...

-Imp
I can't answer that until you say what you mean by a 'thought' or an 'emotional state.'
perceptions, currently perceived or unperceived, translated or otherwise experienced even previously, inexact perceptions and how one feels about them or otherwise, then again...

what did you think I thought? I think you didn't think the same thought either and even if we could find the precise terminology, the termination of said thought in the vacuum of empty terms only prevents complete understanding not communication of vagaries...

"Your truth is not my truth; my truth is not yours" - B. Lee

-Imp
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