[lit-ideas] Re: Sounds right to me
- From: wokshevs@xxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, wokshevs@xxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:52:51 -0330
I just had a thought. (I know, beginner's luck.)
Consider the claim:
"I can refer to a sensation by the use of 'S' only if I can check my use of
'S'."
Is there a claim here as to a necessary condition for the possibility of
something? Or is this simply an empirical, and hence, contingent, matter?
Consider now the following claim:
"Philosophical problems cannot be solved via appeal to experience."
Compare with:
"Odd coincidence: every time we've tried to solve a philosophical problem via
appeal to experience, we've failed. We must re-double our efforts here."
One last one:
"If one tried to advance *theses* in philosophy, it would never be possible to
debate them, because everyone would agree to them."
What kind of a claim is one that denies the very possibility of debate regarding
a philosophical thesis? Could it be one that W is presupposing a necessary
condition of debate that is not met by philosophical "theses."?
Walter O.
MUN
Quoting wokshevs@xxxxxx:
> There seem to be two different questions here:
>
> 1. What did W himself actually believe regarding the status of language
> games
> for the possibility of meaning and knowledge?
>
> 2. What does his account of language games itself presuppose regarding the
> possibility of meaning and knowledge?
>
> We distinguish between the 2 questions because it is possible that W did not
> himnself understand what his account of language games actually entails.
>
> Perhaps a question to begin with here is: "What possibilities for meaning
> and
> knowledge are there independent of the construct of language games?" Assume
> that human beings did not/ could not engage in language games, what would
> the
> "meaning" of a word or a statement itself mean? I believe W recognized the
> force of this question.
>
> The remarks garnered together by Malcom and Von Wright as "On certainty" are
> surely a testament to transcendental philosophy. The fundamental and
> pervasive
> claim running throughout those remarks is that if you doubted the validity
> of
> "hinge propositions," you would not be able to coherently doubt at all, nor
> would you be able to make any knowledge-claims. W claimed Moore "knew
> nothing,"
> despite his hand waving, precisely because Moore occluded the necessity and
> universality of such certainties for genuine knowledge-claims.
>
> We have here an interesting tug of war: was Witters a transcendental
> philosopher
> who claimed that our language games constituted the possibility for meaning
> and
> knowledge or was he a cultural anthropologist in the tradition of Geertz et
> al?
>
>
> Walter O.
> MUN
>
>
>
> Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
>
> > Walter asks
> >
> > > Would anyone know of a source on Wittgenstein who examines why W
> believed
> > that
> > > meaning and knowledge are not possible independent of language games,
> and
> > what
> > > W specifically meant by that claim?
> >
> > This may be a futile search, for that is something he did not believe;
> > that is, there are no grounds for attributing such a belief to him.
> >
> > There's very little epistemology in Wittgenstein, unless one counts what
> > he says about certainty, and claims to know such-and-such, in Über
> > Gewissheit.
> >
> > Robert Paul
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>
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