Sean, Apparently, I misunderstood you on several points. I appreciate the clarifications. > Theory-of-knowledge courses generally proceed from the > misguided question of "what is knowledge?" This leads > students into thinking that this question is a puzzle in > need of a conjured answer. Is the question misguided? It is potentially misleading, but are those who ask or attempt to answer it necessarily misled? Consider whether a paraphrase such as "What do we count as 'knowledge'?" or "How is the word 'knowledge' used?" would be acknowledged as such or whether they would object with, e.g. "No, I'm not concerned with playing games with words. I want to get to the essence of what knowledge truly is"? And how will they respond to examples of knowledge? Are they dismissed as not even a suitable starting point, as with Socrates? (Note: dismissing the value of examples as a starting point and dismissing partial definitions like "justified true belief" are both problematic: BBB pp. 18-19 Instead of "craving for generality" I could also have said "the contemptuous attitude towards the particular case". If, e.g., someone tries to explain the concept of number and tells us that such and such a definition will not do or is clumsy because it only applies to, say, finite cardinals I should answer that the mere fact that he could have given such a limited definition makes this definition extremely important to us. (Elegance is not what we are trying for.) For why should what finite and transfinite numbers have in common be more interesting to us than what distinguishes them? Or rather, I should not have said "why should it be more interesting to us?"--it isn't; and this characterizes our way of thinking. The standard > answer is TJB. And the way TJB is vetted is by example > and counter-example. And by the time Gettier is pulled > out, students are led to believe there is some crisis that > philosophers need to solve. Whether it is a crisis is a matter of the seriousness with which we view our confusion. That is a distinct matter from how we would characterize the nature of the problem and the possibilities for its solution. Taking our puzzlement seriously, experiencing "deep disquietudes", and supposing that the answer is a theory are different matters. PI 111. The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes; their roots are as deep in us as the forms of our language and their significance is as great as the importance of our language.--Let us ask ourselves: why do we feel a grammatical joke to be deep? (And that is what the depth of philosophy is.) Consider some biographical data you've recently shared. Knowing that people dying from bombs dropping all around called continuing with philosophical work into question. Knowing that he was dying from cancer did not. This places the value for Wittgenstein of grappling with philosophical puzzlement into some perspective. And note: unlike the period after the _Tractatus_, Wittgenstein did not stop doing philosophy once he had had the insights of PI 1-188. > > The answer to the puzzle is never to propound the initial > question. NO! Or rather: that is only an answer for some people and for some problems. I'm reminded of the old Vaudeville joke: "Doctor, it hurts when I do this." "Well, then don't do that." Sometimes, that answer is perfectly sound medical advice. Not always. And consider Anna Boncampagni's metaphor of philosophy as vaccine. Z 460 In a certain sense one cannot take too much care in handling philosophical mistakes, they contain so much truth. Rather, it is to show students that the > question causes the problems. And that "knowledge" merely > is what it does in anthropology (the language culture), Obviously, you don't mean that the legitimate uses of "knowledge" are limited to the use of that word in the practice of anthropology. Should I suppose that you mean that the question of "knowledge" is an anthropological question and the answer anthropological? This is wrong, though it is a common mistake, because Wittgenstein does make comparisons between his methods and anthropology. But philosophy is not anthropology. To equate them is to make the same mistakes Frege criticizes in his attacks on psychologism. (And Wittgenstein recognized the importance of these points.) The anthropological perspective is one perspective from which to consider a philosophical problem. RPM III.65 Are the propositions of mathematics anthropological propositions saying how we men infer and calculate?--Is a statute book a work of anthropology telling how the people of this nation deal with a thief etc.?--Could it be said: "The judge looks up a book about anthropology and thereupon sentences the thief to a term of imprisonment"? Well, the judge does not USE the statute book as a manual of anthropology. RPM III.72 (partial) It is clear that we can make use of a mathematical work for a study in anthropology. But then one thing is not clear:--whether we ought to say: "This writing shews us how operating with signs was done among these people", or: "This writing shews us what parts of mathematics these people had mastered". and > that the only thing one can ever do here is become > especially keen with regard to its conditions of > assertability across its various senses. And why couldn't sating that knowledge is justified true belief be simply a misfiring - or merely incomplete - attempt at stating "conditions of assertibility"? Why must it be stigmatized as a "theory". (Someone may offer it as such, but that has more to do with the context than with the form of the statement itself.) And if students are > trained like this, they would be more concerned with Moore > claiming to know he has a hand than with Gettier. Would he? Gettier-style problems are interesting in their own right. Why? > Because, then, they could see that doubt-removing grammar > is being taken out of its ordinary and useful context under > warrant of language confusion. Gettier does not need an > answer; it needs "therapy." Both need 'therapy". I am not seeing the contrast here. (snipping where we are largely in agreement.) If asked > whether knowledge was "TJB" by a student... He would NEVER have said, "no, > because Gettier refuted it. We're still trying to solve > that one." No. But he might well have said something along the lines of (PI 68): It need not be so. For I can give the concept 'number' rigid limits in this way, that is, use the word "number" for a rigidly limited concept, but I can also use it so that the extension of the concept is not closed by a frontier Or something not unlike the remark in BB p. 57 It is as if someone were to say "a game consists in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules..." and we replied: You must be thinking of board games, and your description is indeed applicable to them. But they are not the only games. So you can make your definitions correct by expressly restricting it to those games. And he might well have used Gettier-style examples as showing cases for which such a definition is inadequate. (You do know, by the way, that Edmund Gettier was a student of Max Black and Norman Malcolm and was strongly influenced by Wittgenstein? Not that that proves Wittgenstein would have condoned his work, but it is at least interesting in light of this discussion.) Examining the failures or inadequacies of definitions in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions is part of the process of coming to appreciate insights such as thinking in terms of symptoms and criteria, family resemblances, and the flexibility and openness of boundaries. Just saying not to define terms in that way or not to ask questions that would seek such definitions is an evasion of the problems that give value to these hard won insights. JPDeMouy ========================================= Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/