Wittgenstein's Framework & FSRC

[Veritas Aequitas]

I have made the following claims:
W's "On Certainty" is a Subset of the FSRC
viewtopic.php?t=41998

Here is a detailed exposition of Wittgenstein's concept of 'Framework' that aligns with my Framework and System of Realization of Reality and Cognition [knowledge] FSRC;

From Wittgenstein Dictionary by Glock:

......................................
Framework
One of the principles of Wittgenstein's early philosophy was the autonomy of sense: whether a proposition makes sense must not depend on another proposition's truth (NM 117; TLP 2.0211).
Language is a self-contained abstract system governed by rules of LOGICAL SYNTAX.
Recognizing the importance of the surroundings of Language is a major achievement of Wittgenstein's later reflections.
His first step is to radicalize the Tractatus's CONTEXTUALISM: a word has meaning only as part of a LANGUAGE-game, which itself is part of a communal FORM OF LIFE.

The second is a kind of naturalism.
Our linguistic and non-linguistic activities are conditioned by certain 'facts of nature'.
Our concepts rest on a 'scaffolding of facts' in that different facts of nature would make intelligible different 'concept-formations' (PI 11 230; RPP 1 {48; Z #350, 387-8).

In context Wittgenstein distinguishes three elements:

• 1. the GRAMMATICAL rules which constitute a Language-game like that of measurement;
  2. the application of these rules in empirical propositions (specific measurements);
  3. the framework or 'scaffolding' which allows us to operate the Language-game.

Disputes do not break out . . . over the question whether a rule has been obeyed or not . . . That is part of the scaffolding from which our Language operates. [Human beings] agree in the Language they use.
That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.
If Language is to be a means of communication there must be agreement not only in definitions but also in judgements.
135

This seems to abolish logic, but does not do so.
It is one thing to describe methods of measurement, and another to obtain and state results of measurement.
But what we call 'measuring' is partly determined by a certain constancy in results of measurement. (PI "240— 2; see OC 5156)

This passage can be rendered consistent if 'agreement . . . in form of life' is not exhausted by agreement in definitions/judgements (i.e., opinions), but includes 'a consensus of action', of applying the same technique (LFM 183 4).

The idea that Language requires agreement in judgements as well as definitions would abolish logic, if communal consensus determined whether or not a particular measurement is correct.
This is why Wittgenstein insists that what counts as the correct application of rules (an accurate measurement) is determined by the rules themselves, which are our standards of correctness; the definition of 'correct measurement' is not 'what people agree on'.
These rules specify neither the results of particular measurements (b) — nor that there is general agreement in applying them (c) (RFM 322—5, 359—66, 379—89, 406—14; Z #319, 428—31; see RULE-FOLLOWING; TRUTH).
Nevertheless, without such agreement, the rules would 'lose their point' (PI 5142; RFM 200); a technique which did not produce such consensus would not be called 'measuring' (according to Wittgenstein, therefore, in this exceptional case the rules themselves do include a reference to consensus).

The required consensus in application is less stringent for emotion-terms, for example (LW Il 23—4; PI Il 224—8), and minimal for essentially contested terms like 'corrupt'.
Moreover, communal agreement is not the only framework or background condition for playing certain Language-games.
Thus, our concepts of measures work only in a world with relatively stable rigid objects; but this is not laid down in the rules of, for example, metric measurement.
What Wittgenstein calls 'facts of nature' play the same role (although sometimes by allowing consensus).

These facts fall into three groups:

General regularities concerning the world around us.
Objects do not vanish or come into existence, grow or shrink, etc., in a rapid or chaotic manner (PI 42).

Biological and anthropological facts concerning us. Our perceptual capacities allow us to discern such-and-such colours (Z #345, 368; PLP 250—4), our memory permits calculations of a certain complexity (MSI 18 131), our shared patterns of reaction allow us to teach (AWL 102; LFM 182)
— OSTENSIVE DEFINITION, for example, presupposes that human beings look not at the pointing finger (as cats do), but in the direction in which it points.

Socio-historical facts concerning particular groups or periods.
Our ways of speaking express practical needs and interests (REM 41, 80—1) shaped by history.

Given these facts, certain forms of representation will be 'practical' or 'impractical' (AWL 70).
Provided that the world is as it is, people who employed alternative ways of calculating or measuring for purposes similar to ours would have to make tedious adjustments.
By the same token, drastic changes in these facts could render our rules inadequate in this pragmatic sense.
They might not' only become impractical but even be inapplicable (PI {569; RFM 51—2, 200).
If objects constantly and unpredictably vanished or sprang into existence, our Language-game of counting would loose its 'point' or become 'unusable'.
So too would our colour-concepts if objects constantly changed their colours at random.
The rules of tennis do not include that it is to be played at Earth-gravity.
But tennis would be pointless on the moon (every serve would be an ace) and could not be played on Jupiter.
Although the framework conditions do not determine what the rules of the Language-game are, they partly determine what Language-games are played.
Hence they impose limits on the possibility of adopting different grammatical rules (see AUTONOMY OF LANGUAGE).

'Yes, but has nature nothing to say here?
Indeed she has — but she [Nature] makes her voice audible in another way.
"You'll surely run up against existence and non-existence somewhere!"
But that means against facts, not concepts' (Z {364).
The way we speak is part of human practice, and hence subject to the same kinds of factors that determine human behaviour in general.
However, these facts of nature do not provide a naturalistic justification of our grammar.
A change in the framework conditions would render our rules not incorrect (false to the facts) but pointless or obsolete (PG 109—10; Z "366-7; RPP 11 *347-53).

Wittgenstein would not even concede that given such-and-such framework conditions we are causally forced to adopt specific Language-games (Z \351).
The relative stability of the material world is a condition for measurement, but does not force us to adopt the metric system (that is a prerogative of the EC Commission).
Similarly, common colour discriminatory abilities and the relative constancy of the colours of things are framework conditions of any colour grammar, but these are compatible with widely differing colour grammars among the various Languages of mankind.
This is at odds with the idea that the right, or perhaps just inevitable, rules are those which we find natural.
Wittgenstein acknowledges that we find certain rules 'natural' (AWL 67; LFM e.g. 183, 243), but adds that this is relative to people and circumstances; it is not biologically fixed, but malleable, for example through education (Z Y87; PI *595—6).

contd..

Discuss??
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[Veritas Aequitas]

Cont....

Framework conditions impose causal constraints: they partly explain why we do not go down one road, but not why we go down another.
137
One may feel nevertheless that acknowledging them pollutes philosophical descriptions of grammar with causal EXPLANATIONS.
Wittgenstein himself claims to supply 'remarks on the natural history of human beings' (PI 5415); while elsewhere he disavows such ambitions:

Our interest certainly includes the correspondence between concepts and very general facts of nature.
(Such facts as mostly do not strike us because of their generality.)
But our interest does not fall back upon these possible causes of concept-formation.
We are not doing natural science; nor even natural history — since we can also invent fictitious natural history for our purposes.
(PI 11 230; see RPP 1 548)

The last remark does not, however, keep philosophy free of causal hypotheses, since the latter can connect fictitious background conditions with fictitious concept-formations.
More promising are Wittgenstein's attempts to distinguish his kind of natural history from natural science.
Sometimes they leave unclear how it differs from straightforward grammatical remarks, for example when he suggests that it includes such propositions as 'Grasshoppers cannot read or write', although not 'Human beings think, grasshoppers don't' (RPP Il *14—25).
Equally, for Wittgenstein it is a conceptual point that people with different discriminatory capacities could not have our col0ur-concepts.
In other passages, however, his kind of natural history clearly concerns 'empirical', that is, contingent facts, for example that human beings modify their concepts in response to experience (Z 5352).
Unlike grammatical reminders they do not remind us of the linguistic rules we follow; instead, they remind us of facts about ourselves.
But these empirical facts are not arcane, a topic of scientific hypotheses.
The natural history of measurement is not a branch of applied physics about how best to measure something under certain conditions.
Rather, it assembles empirical facts in a way that makes intelligible or unsurprising the one point which matters to philosophy: that if certain contingent framework conditions changed, we would find alternative procedures plausible or useful, and our actual procedures impracticable or pointless (RPP I #95()—1109; LW I "207—9; see OVERVIEW).
Physics might tell us that a change in certain laws of nature would lead objects to grow or shrink constantly and chaotically.
But it does not take physics to appreciate that under such circumstances measuring sizes would become pointless.
The relevant facts go unnoticed precisely because they are so familiar and general — a 'miss the wood for the trees' effect (PI Y29, 11 230; RPP 1 #46, 78).
This theme recurs in On Certainty.
Wittgenstein there discusses the empirical common-sense truisms which Moore had claimed to know for CERTAIN.
He treats them as world-picture or hinge propositions: although they are empirical, that is, state contingent facts, they could not simply turn out to be false, since this would remove the background against which we distinguish true and false.

138
On Certainty occasionally speaks of these propositions as a 'scaffolding' or 'framework' of our thought, and, like Philosophical Investigations, states that 'the possibility of a Language-game is conditioned by certain facts' (OC #211, 617).
Nevertheless, the points behind the notions of facts of nature and hinge propositions differ in principle: if facts of nature were different, our Language-games would change; if we could not be certain of hinge propositions, our web of beliefs would collapse.
There is an overlap between the two categories: if certain 'unheard-of events' (OC \513) were to occur, for example, objects grow or shrink constancy for no apparent reason, this would not only shake our system of beliefs but, as we have seen, render pointless or impracticable specific Language-games.
But uncertainty about some hinge propositions (e.g., the spherical nature of the earth) would affect not so much specific Language-games as forms of representation within a specialized scientific discourse.

Wittgenstein claims that hinge propositions, like facts of nature, go unnoticed because they form part of the background of our Language-games.
They are 'withdrawn from circulation' and 'shunted onto an unused siding' and 'lie apart from the road travelled by enquiry' (OC #88, 210), Some commentators have concluded that hinge propositions are ghostly phenomena because they are abstract, ineffable and transcend our linguistic practice, violating the idea that meaning is use.
However, the very point of speaking about hinge propositions is that they [hinge] play a special role in our Linguistic practice (OC "94—8, 152, 248).
Moreover, On Certainty holds only that hinge propositions are, by and large, not stated, not that they cannot be stated.
Wittgenstein's point is that 'if they are ever formulated', they are exempt from doubt (OC }88).
It has also been claimed that On Certainty revives the Tractatus's SAYING/SHOWING distinction and that hinge propositions can only show themselves in our practice.
But one passage invoked in this context merely raises the possibility, and the other ends by stating that 'that's not how it is' (OC #501, 618).
What is correct is this.
Wittgenstein tentatively suggested that to say, with Moore, that we know hinge propositions creates confusion because it invites sceptical doubts, and is hence at odds with our treating them as certain, which shows itself in the way we act (e.g. OC #7, 466).
But this is not to say that it creates confusion or fuels scepticism to draw attention to these propositions, as long as one does not mistake them for ordinary empirical claims.
Like the structure of Husserl's 'life-world', facts of nature and hinge propositions are not ineffable, but special: their role is too basic to be easily noted.

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes: KIV

[Veritas Aequitas]

Notes: KIV

[Iwannaplato]

I have made the following claims:
W's "On Certainty" is a Subset of the FSRC
viewtopic.php?t=41998

IOW there is a thread already on this topic, and instead of posting this post that continues that precise discussion, VA made a new thread. This makes yet another thread of his appear, increases the noise to signals ration, and allows him to refer to past threads as he "showed/demonstrated/proved" somethere, but in fact left discussions where he hasn't adequately responded to criticisms.

Essentially PN is a home for his blog posts or files for a future book. This saves memory use on his computer.

Love,
Grandma

Remember: Spare the 'rod' of correction, spoil the child.

[FlashDangerpants]

I have made the following claims:
W's "On Certainty" is a Subset of the FSRC
viewtopic.php?t=41998

IOW there is a thread already on this topic, and instead of posting this post that continues that precise discussion, VA made a new thread. This makes yet another thread of his appear, increases the noise in relation to signals, and allows him to refer to past threads were the "showed/demonstrated/proved" by leaving discussions where he hasn't adequately responded to criticisms.

Essentially PN is a home for his blog posts or files for a future book. This saves memory use on his computer.

Love,
Grandma

Remember: Spare the 'rod' of correction, spoil the child.

The purpose appears to be full control of all discussion here by simply pushing conversations that he didn't start or doesn't want to continue down the page where they won't get noticed. If you start some thread about an actual interesting topic, it will fuck of and die before long because VA will make sure it sinks under 10 more of these nonsense topics just insisting that Wittgenstein is a huge fan of VA.

An admin should force him to open up one thread for his KFC stuff and then no other threads that are about KFC in any way. If the OP references KFCs in any way, ban him for a week. Then we can have conversations that aren't dominated by the one autistic spam cannon (or that one thread that is kept afloat by Harbal's tolerance of IC's religious zealotry but isn't in any way an actual discussion on ethical philosophy.)

I would like to be able to discuss worthwhile things in here one day. But worthwhile discussions on such subject matters are quite slow, and they cannot thrive in this environment.