[Wittrs] Language games, html, and the Varieties of Nonsense

  • From: "SWM" <swmirsky@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:03:25 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@...> wrote:

<snip>

> One could see, e,g., an entry in his notebook inquiring what it means 
> to say <sigh> after one had learnt certain computer markup, as opposed to 
> those 
> not familiar with the markup (how do they take it). Indeed, doesn't the 
> vehicle 
> of the the "html tag marks" provide a better symbolism for the sense of 
> "sigh" 
> we so often mean?  
>


Yes, I see the point in that. What I am missing is why, once we have seen the 
point, it matters for philosophy. I agree it's useful to know that language is 
this rather than that and especially so for philosophy. But then what? We must 
take this insight and apply it again and again to various philosophical issues 
as they arise. If it's a sound insight, it should help defuse the 
troublesomeness of such problems. But why focus on it itself?

<snip>
 
> Philosophy is about insight, Stuart. The ones who debate "free will" and all 
> the 
> other false problems tend not to be able to see the lights that make these 
> disputes "false."


Are they in fact "false problems" or just misunderstood problems? Puzzles are 
problems, too, after all. They're just a different order of problem, wanting a 
different strategy for their solution. 


>  What I want to say is this: if there is no artistic skills 
> used by the person in the forming of ideas -- if all he or she has is summing 
> ducks or scoring premises -- the matter is not given over to "philosophy" 
>  properly conceived. 
> 

Although I think you rightly note a difference in approach between 
Wittgensteinian influenced and non-influenced philosophers, isn't it still the 
case that "getting it" (whatever that entails) is necessary in the case of 
both? To get a sum or the truth or falsity of a logical argument one still has 
to have a moment of grasping what is being conveyed (the semantics over and 
above the syntax, to reach back to our old Searlean debate). It's just that 
Wittgenstein style thinkers pay particular attention to the role of the 
insightful moment in understanding while those of the other school(s) tend to 
be focused on the syntax part, following the rules as they apply to the steps 
of the argument (or calculation). 


> There really is no difference between the VEHICLE philosophy uses when it is 
> properly conceived, and, e.g., the vehicle used by Psalms. Only the ones of 
> certain lights see the wisdom more clearly (quickly). And what the mission of 
> club is, is for those to explain to others that which they cannot see.

I think there is no explaining for that purpose at all. One either sees or one 
doesn't. Where explaining comes in is as a mechanism for getting one to a point 
where they see. But the explaining doesn't produce the seeing. Perhaps the best 
we can say is that it may, if directed at a receptive subject, prompt it.   

> To try to 
> raise them, as it were, to abnormal heights.

Not abnormal, just to see what is there. No need, I think, to invoke a 
hierarchical metaphor. 

> The hope is, of course, that some 
> benefit comes of this, and not that the water simply retrenches into the same 
> level of reservoir as before.     
> 
> Those who cannot see the lights, Stuart, occupy their days with disputes over 
> "free will."
>   
> Regards and thanks.
> 
> Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
> Assistant Professor
> Wright State University
> Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
> SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
> Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wiki/doku.php?id=wittrs

I'm not as down on that as you, I think. I understand why the question of 
whether there is "free-will" seems important and I think a useful answer is to 
show why it really isn't. Solving THAT puzzle in this way is as helpful in 
answering the question as proving or disproving it via the traditional 
philosophical strategy would be if either could be done. But, since proving and 
disproving both fail (because neither can be definitively established through 
logical debate alone), demonstrating its puzzle quality also serves to explain 
this failure.

So it works both on the level of dissolving the confusion which causes us to 
struggle over an answer AND by removing the problem from the array of those 
with which we engage.

Nearby I note that Walter calls your point about the notion of "free will" 
being nonsense (or perhaps the question of whether we have it or don't is what 
you actually meant) "Carnapian". In a sense he's right because the logical 
positivists (among whom we must count Carnap) did take the view that whatever 
could not be demonstrated to be the case, either by logic or empirically, was 
nonsense AND Wittgenstein did have a period in which many took him to be saying 
the same thing (though we both know he never fully embraced that view as seen 
in his telling the logical positivists that they had missed his point). 
Walter's point was that logical positivism collapsed when they realized that 
even their "verification principle" which was the underpinning of logical 
positivism had the status of being neither analytically or empirically 
demonstratibly true. So they had a fundamental error at the very center of 
their system.

Perhaps it was this sort of thing which troubled Wittgenstein in his interim 
period, when he was spending time with members of the Vienna Circle but not 
fully subscribing to or endorsing their views? Certainly, in his later period, 
he took a very different tack than earlier. In both his Tractarian phase and 
later he was concerned with distinguishing sense from nonsense but his earlier 
work seems to see nonsense in a more black and white way or, at least, in a 
less thoroughly explicated black and white way.

I would suggest that his move to issues of grammar and language as behavior, as 
practices, changed the conception of nonsense for him, or at least sharpened 
that conception. Thus, if I'm right and you are following the later 
Wittgensteinian approach, then Walter is mistaken in taking your claim that 
questions of "free will" are fundamentally nonsensical as "Carnapian". In fact, 
the later Wittgenstein seems to me to have moved away from a simple logical 
positivist like breakdown of meaningful (being either true or false) and not 
meaningful (nonsense).

As we see, he spoke of language games and explained how our words find their 
meanings in the context of those games or operations in which they are 
deployed. What is nonsense in one game may not be in another. Thus meaning (and 
meaningfulness) is found in use rather than in a word's potential to be 
measured against a single standard like the verifiability principle (which may 
play a role in some language games but not others). On this view, nonsense is 
not one pole in a two pole analysis but, rather, the failure of a term to fit 
the use expected of it.

So here we might say that your point about what is gained or lost if one 
concludes one has "free will" or not in the real world is relevant. From a 
philosophical perspective nothing is really gained because everything remains 
the same. But from a psychological perspective, as someone else wrote here not 
too long ago, maybe quite a bit is gained or lost if the person comes to think 
he or she cannot legitimately held to account for his or her actions. But then 
the philosophical conclusion (where nothing is gained) can have little or no 
bearing on the psychological belief of the individual except as a 
rationalization which he or she may cite in order to justify his or her 
behavior. But since the philosophical conclusion is inconclusive and doesn't 
change anything about how any of us behave, its role as rationalization is 
likely to be ancillary at best to the individual's actual behavior.

I guess my point is that Walter is wrong to call a claim like the one you made 
Carnapian, even if there are superficial similarities. But that IS a problem 
which some non-Wittgensteinians have with this: they often see Wittgenstein's 
later views through an anti-logical positivist lense (much as Popper attacked 
Wittgenstein as a logical positivist, based on his Tractatus, long after 
Wittgenstein, himself, had left the Tractatus behind).

SWM

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