Friday, September 13, 2013

Say what you choose

79. Consider this example. If one says "Moses did not exist", this may mean various things. It may mean: the Israelites did not have a single leader when they withdrew from Egypt——or: their leader was not called Moses——-or there cannot have been anyone who accomplished all that the Bible relates of Moses——or: etc. etc.— We may say, following Russell: the name "Moses" can be defined by means of various descriptions. For example, as "the man who led the Israelites through the wilderness", "the man who lived at that time and place and was then called 'Moses' ", "the man who as a child was taken out of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter" and so on. And according as we assume one definition or another the proposition "Moses did not exist" acquires a different sense, and so does every other proposition about Moses.—And if we are told "N did not exist", we do ask: "What do you mean? Do you want to say ...... or ...... etc.?"
But when I make a statement about Moses,—am I always ready to substitute some one of these descriptions for "Moses"? I shall perhaps say: By "Moses" I understand the man who did what the Bible relates of Moses, or at any rate a good deal of it. But how much? Have I decided how much must be proved false for me to give up my proposition as false? Has the name "Moses" got a fixed and unequivocal use for me in all possible cases?—Is it not the case that I have, so to speak, a whole series of props in readiness, and am ready to lean on one if another should be taken from under me and vice versa?——Consider another case. When I say "N is dead", then something like the following may hold for the meaning of the name "N": I believe that a human being has lived, whom I (1) have seen in such-and-such places, who (2) looked like this (pictures), (3) has done such-and-such things, and (4) bore the name "N" in social life.—Asked what I understand by "N", I should enumerate all or some of these points, and different ones on different occasions. So my definition of "N" would perhaps be "the man of whom all this is true".—But if some point now proves false?—Shall I be prepared to declare the proposition "N is dead" false—even if it is only something which strikes me as incidental that has turned out false? But where are the bounds of the incidental?—If I had given a definition of the name in such a case, I should now be ready to alter it.
And this can be expressed like this: I use the name "N" without a fixed meaning. (But that detracts as little from its usefulness, as it detracts from that of a table that it stands on four legs instead of three and so sometimes wobbles.)
Should it be said that I am using a word whose meaning I don't know, and so am talking nonsense?—Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)
(The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what today counts as an observed concomitant of a phenomenon will tomorrow be used to define it.)
What goes for "Moses" here seems also to go for "ethics" in the Lecture on Ethics. The meaning of the term is 'defined' by giving a series of similar expressions, and the bounds of the incidental are unclear. There are differences though: the expressions given in the Lecture on Ethics are all meant to lie atop one another to produce a composite picture, whereas the facts about Moses might produce a composite picture, but they do not necessarily overlap. We have a cluster rather than a stack in this case. And perhaps the bounds of the cluster are even less precise in Moses' case than they are in the case of ethics. But in each case we seem to be dealing with a kind of family resemblance. In each case the words "Moses" and "ethics" are used without a fixed meaning. The same goes for "good," as far as I can see, in Wittgenstein's view.

Should it be said that when we use one of these words we are using a word whose meaning we don't know, and so are talking nonsense? Surely the Lecture on Ethics and the Tractatus are being echoed here. On the one hand, Wittgenstein explicitly invites us to say what we choose (language is, after all, not a cage), whereas before he had called such uses nonsense. But on the other hand, he insists that what we say should not prevent us from seeing the facts. And he adds that if we do see them then we will not say a good deal that we might otherwise have wanted to say:
Sage, was du willst, solange dich das nicht verhindert, zu sehen, wie es sich verhält. (Und wenn du das siehst, wirst du Manches nicht sagen.) 
Should this be translated: "Say what you want, so long as this does not get in the way of your seeing how things are. And when you see this you will not want to say much"? Google translate has: "And if you see that, you will not say much." It seems wrong to take it as saying that there is a lot one could say but that one will choose not to say it. How does Wittgenstein know what others might choose to do? Surely the idea is rather that there is not much to be said, and that if one sees how things are then one will realize this. So Anscombe's "There is a good deal that you will not say" sounds wrong. Hacker and Schulte have "there will be some things that you won't say," and they present this as simply correct (see p. xvi of the fourth edition of the Investigations), but their point is that Anscombe's "good deal" is wrong. I assume they are right about this, but it still makes it sound as though there are things one could say that one will choose not to say. I think these things can only be combinations of words that in fact are meaningless, unhelpful, useless. That is why Wittgenstein is so confident that one who sees things as they are will not want to say them.

If we can say what we choose, what are the options to choose from? There appear to be two kinds of things we might want to say:
a) The concepts we use in ethics, such as 'good', have a family of meanings and so cannot be defined. We use them without being able to say what they mean. So our use of them is nonsense. (Recognizing this is likely to reduce our use of them.)   
b) The concepts we use in ethics, such as 'good', have a family of meanings and so cannot be defined. We use them without being able to say what they mean. But words no more need to have fixed meanings than tables need to stand firmly on the ground. We should note this feature of ethical concepts but not necessarily call them nonsensical. (Recognizing this is likely to make us more self-conscious, or just conscious, when we use them, which in turn is likely to reduce our use of them.)
Wittgenstein talks also about aesthetics here, and in his lectures on that subject he pointed out that words like 'beauty' are very little used, presumably because they aren't useful, when people talk about aesthetic matters. Mostly we use words like 'beautiful' when we don't know what we are talking about, either because we are not experts in the relevant field or because we want to say something generic (or both). If you show off your new house or room or sofa I might say "It's beautiful!" because we aren't engaged in any real critical appraisal. The occasion calls for bullshit, pleasantries, not anything thoughtful (not even thoughtful and perceptive praise--that would be weird in the kind of social situation I'm imagining, a quick house tour before a dinner party, say). 'Good' is like this too.

But Wittgenstein says it doesn't matter if a word lacks a fixed meaning, doesn't he? He certainly seems to say this of the word 'Moses.' So he isn't saying we shouldn't use words like 'good' and 'beautiful'. Right?

Maybe. But here we should consider whether the differences between 'good' and 'Moses' are relevant. The name 'Moses' refers to someone of whom some or all of a set of propositions is true in a straightforward, objective, factual sense. The word 'good' is not like this. What Wittgenstein talks about in the Lecture on Ethics is what we might call the intrinsically good, important, or valuable. Nothing is true of it in a straightforward, factual sense. It is all evaluative. You might think that this fact/value distinction that he uses in the Lecture on Ethics is absent from, and does not belong in, the Investigations, but it is right there, it seems to me, in the contrast between what we might (want to) say and the facts, the way things are, that our words might obscure. Couldn't "how things are" include the evaluative? For instance, couldn't it be a fact that some act was unjust or rude? Yes, I think so. But I don't see how it can be a fact in the same way that something is good or bad. In fact I think "That's good" is precisely the kind of thing one will not say when one sees the facts.

Partly this is obvious: people don't speak like this. We use the word 'good,' of course, but not much when thinking about ethical questions. Typically in ethics the question is "What should I do?" in the context of some dilemma, some situation where several goods or bads are at stake and one cannot (see a way to) avoid all the bads or have all the goods. Perhaps I am thinking about blowing the whistle on my company, which I know to be poisoning rivers or spying on people or lying. If I do I will expose and perhaps help to stop something bad. If I don't, I will get to keep my job and continue to be able to support my family. It is like Sartre's famous dilemma in which a young man must choose between caring for his mother and fighting for his country. Either choice would be good but he can't do both, so either choice is in effect a rejection of a good option, and therefore bad. The question is which is the less bad option. The word 'good' obviously comes in here, it has a place, but the problem is not one of identifying where the good lies. The problem is one of estimating likely outcomes and weighing values. Will my whistle-blowing do any good? Might I get away with it? What matters more: my family or the people harmed by my company? And so on. Facts are relevant, but they only get you so far. In the end you still have a decision to make. A philosophical analysis of 'good' will not make the decision for you. (Solving all the major problems of philosophy really helps us very little, cf. the foreword to the Tractatus).

Why not? Because 'the best thing to do' is not something that we can discover or calculate, but something we must decide or (perhaps better) judge. A philosophical analysis of 'good' might reveal this to us if it helps us to see that 'good' has a family of meanings. Does moral philosophy have any other use? For instance, might it not be helpful to think about an issue from various points of view (the Kantian, the utilitarian, etc.) in order to think it through and gain a fuller understanding of the ethics involved in it? This is the kind of thing people typically do in a course on contemporary moral issues, after all. Are such courses a waste of time? I hope not. But when such courses are taught in the way that I have in mind the philosophical theories are used in an exercise. They are tools, and other tools might be substituted instead. That is, we use theories like utilitarianism to help us think something through. We don't use them to tell us what is right or what to do. And we could think carefully about moral issues without such theories, perhaps with the help of good fiction or actual experience. Not that experience always brings things home or teaches wisdom, but it can. Philosophical theories are only helpful if they direct our attention to real issues, or aspects of real issues, that we might otherwise overlook. To the extent that they abstract from reality, from the facts, from seeing how things are, they will be no use. And the more purely evaluative the concepts involved, the less factual they are, the thinner they are, the less they are likely to help us.        

What about the parenthetical remark at the end? I almost ignored it, but it wouldn't be there if Wittgenstein thought it didn't matter. And in fact it seems to point back to the book's motto: The trouble about progress is that it always looks much greater than it really is. I might put it this way: Progress generally looks much greater than it actually is. In relation to the end of 79, perhaps we could say that when we think we have made progress in discovering the essence of something sometimes all we have done is to change the definition. It is wise not to deceive ourselves about ethics, and one way to avoid such deception is to avoid trying to define terms like 'good'. We don't need to stabilize the wobbly or replace the blurry with the sharp.

31 comments:

  1. Do you take the words “defined” and “fixed” to be interchangeable? – That would be my inclination. But, on the other hand it would at least seem to go against the idea—which you seem to endorse—of a term being used without a fixed meaning. You anyway seem to allow at one point that a term is ‘defined’ even if its meaning is not fixed. If so, can you clarify the difference? If I understand, you want (or take Wittgenstein to want) as part of that to break the tie between an expression not having a fixed meaning, and it being nonsense. You think that a term might not have a fixed meaning, and nevertheless not be nonsense. – Do I understand correctly?

    Wittgenstein seems in the section you quoted to say that a word can be used with no fixed meaning, but there is another, I think more plausible and interesting, way of reading him: as criticizing a notion of fixing meaning—or really a fantastic notion of fixing meaning. That is, it sounds more plausible to me that he wants us to look at what fixing or defining meaning comes to in each case, and not assume what it has to be like. The notion of family resemblance you mention could be taken also as about, or as a characterization of, how meanings are sometimes fixed. And it seems to me that Wittgenstein also wants us to see that the idea of fixing the meaning of a term, or the rules of a game, once and for all is not an idea we can do much with; even as we have a philosophical expectation or fantasy, that this is what fixing meaning should come to.

    If this is true, then that means that Wittgenstein is not, after all, breaking the connection between having a fixed meaning and having a sense, and is not saying that a word can be used without fixed meaning—at least in any realistic understanding of what it is to fix meaning. There is still for Wittgenstein a connection between what a word means, and how its meaning is fixed. I admit that even without Wittgenstein, the idea of meaning without fixing meaning seems fishy. It brings Humpty Dumpty to mind, and the idea of meaning without normativity. My inclination is to say that if there is a right and a wrong way of using ‘Moses’ (and I don’t think that you or Wittgenstein are denying that) then to this extent the meaning is fixed. Can Wittgenstein say both that there is a right and a wrong and that the meaning is not to this extent fixed? Why would anyone want to say that?

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    1. Do you take the words “defined” and “fixed” to be interchangeable?

      No, but perhaps I should. I think of the definition of a word as the kind of thing one finds in a dictionary--it might be quite vague. A fixed meaning would be something like a rigid designation, something with no ambiguity or vagueness about it. (If that's possible--I haven't really thought about whether it is or not.) At any rate, I take every meaningful word to have a definition but not every word to have a fixed meaning. I say this not as a statement of a position I want to defend but as clarification of what I've already written.

      there is another, I think more plausible and interesting, way of reading him

      I agree that this is a more interesting idea. It hadn't occurred to me.

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  2. Now, if I understand, you are using Wittgenstein’s discussion in §79 because of an interest in ethics. But if what I said is right, then it is not clear at all that these considerations can help in ethics. This is because the story about moral concepts—or about expressions used in absolute sense—has to be completely different from the story about ‘Moses’ in §79. As opposed to that story, when words are used in an absolute sense, there is a real suspicion that the meaning of the expressions was not fixed. I don’t mean that the story about the word ‘good’ is different in kind from the story about the word ‘Moses.’ ‘Good’ has many non-absolute uses, so there are different kinds of stories about it, not one. And the story about the word ‘good’ in one of its non-absolute uses will presumably not be so different in kind from Wittgenstein’s story about ‘Moses.’ I am noting this, because you sometimes seem to take it for granted here that “good” is a moral concept. (E.g. you say “'Good' is like this too” without qualifying what use of ‘Good’ you have in mind.) In the past, however, you denied that the word ‘Good’ and mere considerations of vocabulary in general indicate that morality is under discussion. And I feel I don’t know how to piece together what you say now with what you said then. I need your help here.

    Beside asking if Wittgenstein’s considerations can help with ethics, I also want to ask how you think your discussion is about ethics in the first place. I’m not sure if in what you said you meant to draw a distinction between what you call “concepts we use in ethics” and other concepts. I may misunderstand, but it seems that you do not want here to draw a distinction, but are rather more interested in the similarities. Your argument seems to run like this: since there is no necessity of fixing meaning for meaningfulness in other places, there is the same possibility in ethics too. What goes for "Moses" here seems also to go for "ethics" Is that right? – If so, however, then how is this a point about ethics? Why is this not a point about language in general? And if it is a point about language in general, then isn’t framing it as a point about ethics like saying that the water in Lake Michigan boils at 100 degrees centigrade? (Namely, saying something general after creating the expectation that you are going to say something specific). I feel I’m missing something about what you are saying—something about how you think those insights apply to ethics.

    I have to say this: I’ll take Anscombe over Hacker-Schulte any day.

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    1. I am noting this, because you sometimes seem to take it for granted here that “good” is a moral concept.

      What I'm primarily trying to do here is to understand what Wittgenstein is saying. I want to explore the possibility that 79 is related closely to 77 and 78, which seems plausible to me, and in 77 he treats 'good' as an example of a concept in ethics. I assume he realizes that 'good' has other uses too, but he is interested, among other things, in the use of 'good' in ethics. That's the kind of use of 'good' that I'm talking about here. I don't mean to deny that it has other uses. (I sat on a draft of this post for a few days, tinkering with it now and again, before deciding that it was only a blog post and I should go ahead and post it. I think I pulled the trigger too early.) Sorry I haven't been clearer.

      What goes for "Moses" here seems also to go for "ethics" Is that right?

      Not quite. I was trying to point out similarities and differences between what Wittgenstein says about the word 'Moses' in the Investigations and what he says about the word 'ethics' in the Lecture on Ethics. Not all the similarities and differences, necessarily, but some of them. I'm trying to follow the path of thought that he leads us on. This might involve going through some ideas that are rejected later.

      Why is this not a point about language in general?

      Well, it might be. But if I agree with Wittgenstein about the word 'Moses' it seems unlikely that I will instantly generalize this to the whole of language. Even if in fact such a generalization would be correct. That is, I don't take Wittgenstein to expect the reader to draw such a conclusion at this point. (But this is another thing I haven't thought about much. To be at all sure I would have to re-read the Investigations up to this point.)

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    2. I assume he realizes that 'good' has other uses too, but he is interested, among other things, in the use of 'good' in ethics.

      There is here something about Wittgenstein’s discussion that I’m genuinely baffled by. I’m not sure if this is a question for you or not, and so I’m not sure that I’m not imposing on you a question you are no interested here in. But my sense is that what you say has this question in its background, and if so, I’m trying to bring it to the foreground.

      My confusion concerns the difference in the problematics of fixing meaning for expressions used in relative, and expressions used in an absolute sense. My own inclination is to say that there is a world of difference between the two problematics. I want to say (very roughly):

      (1) When it comes to relative uses, one problem is that we have a fantasy about how meanings are fixed, or determined, and what a definition can achieve. We sort of have an expectation that the definition, or the fixing, will have absolute power to prevent any unclarity and misunderstanding in any possible future case. I take the discussion in the sections from the Investigations that you are focusing on to be part of the discussion about that.

      (2) When it comes to absolute uses, a serious problem is that the meanings are not really fixed in any way. Not that they are not fixed in a particular way, but that there is no way in which we want to fix them. I take it that that’s part of why Wittgenstein says in the “Lecture”: “For all I wanted to do with them was just to go beyond the world and that is to say beyond significant language. My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language.”

      Now, the reason I’m baffled is because In §77 Wittgenstein does seem to be suggesting that his discussion there, which seems primarily about relative uses of expressions, has also bearing on uses of words in ethics and aesthetics, i.e. on absolute uses of words. And this seems to go against the idea that there is a distinction between the two problematics I mentioned. Whereas I want to draw a sharp distinction between the problematics, Wittgenstein’s discussion seems to suggest that the problematics in both cases are quite continuous.

      It seemed to me that part of what you say implies exactly that: that the problematics in both cases are ocntinuous. It seemed to me that much of what you said depends on seeing the same sort of problematic in both cases—the relative and the absolute cases.

      As I know you, you will probably say that the problematics are partly the same and partly different. And as I know myself, I will probably find this unsatisfying. I will want an account for how they are the same, and how they are different. And I will want an account of the similarities (of the way in which the discussion in §77 bears on ethics and aesthetics) that would still allow me to see a deep enough difference between the cases.

      Is there a way of thinking about the two problematics both as continuous and as deeply different at the same time?

      Am I confused?

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    3. I doubt you are confused, but I also doubt that I can give you a satisfying answer. Two things come to mind:

      1. One odd thing about 77 is this last part: But if the colours in the original merge without a hint of any outline won't it become a hopeless task to draw a sharp picture corresponding to the blurred one? Won't you then have to say: "Here I might just as well draw a circle or heart as a rectangle, for all the colours merge. Anything—and nothing—is right."——And this is the position you are in if you look for definitions corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics.
      In such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good" for instance)? From what sort of examples? In what language-games? Then it will be easier for you to see that the word must have a family of meanings.


      What is the difficulty that these last sentences are meant to help with? It's as if a truth has been pointed out about the impossibility of defining certain terms as used in ethics and aesthetics, and then instead of accepting this impossibility the recognition of the truth is itself treated as a problem. But perhaps what Wittgenstein means is that we need to understand 'definition' (or 'meaning' or 'understanding') differently.

      2. What we might need to understand is the kind of thing you say here. But I assume you aren't confused about what you have said, so I'm not sure what is baffling you. Although at the end you say that "Meaning here is not connected to use," couldn't it equally be said that you have shown in what ways it is connected to use, as well as in what ways it is not? And couldn't this kind of connection, the kind of piggybacking you describe, be regarded as a way to fix meaning? If we think of fixing meaning as a kind of pinning of the word to the meaning, then showing a connection between a word and a meaning might be thought of as showing that there is a kind of pinning there. Although the nature of the connection, when clearly seen, might lead one to say that it is really no pinning at all. I doubt this helps.

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    4. (1)
      It's as if a truth has been pointed out about the impossibility of defining certain terms as used in ethics and aesthetics, and then instead of accepting this impossibility the recognition of the truth is itself treated as a problem.

      Exactly. There is a kind of internal dialogue here: First, there is presumably an unclarity about the meaning of some expression. Then there is an expectation that clarity could come from definition. But then there is recognition of an impossibility of definition. Then there is a little silence, and then there is a realization that the impossibility of definition is conceptual impossibility. But that gives rise to the realization that our thoughts, expectations, were not clear; we are under the impression that there is something we cannot do: five a definition, but it is not really that there is something that is impossible. “The great difficulty here is not to represent the matter as if there were something one couldn't do”. (PI §374) So now, Wittgenstein is taking a step back again and asking himself: ‘What was it that I really wanted, needed, in the first place when I was asking for a definition, when I wanted clarity?’ And he suggests that the clarity he needed was not something that can be got from a definition but it can come from putting different uses alongside one another. (I say a little bit about the kind of clarity attention to family resemblances can generate here.)

      It seems to me this is all contained in what you say. But I’m not entirely sure, because your use of the word ‘BUT’ seems to indicate that you see some contrast between the idea that the recognition of the truth regarding the impossibility of a definition is itself treated as a problem, and the idea that we need to understand 'definition' differently. So I may be misunderstanding you.

      (2)
      And couldn't this kind of connection, the kind of piggybacking you describe, be regarded as a way to fix meaning?

      I want to resist this. I think Wittgenstein was onto something very important when he insisted in the “Lecture” that his intention in using expressions in absolute sense was to say something nonsensical. That is, I take him to mean that he was in fact not really fixing meaning at all, and that this was part of what he was trying to do.

      Certainly, the piggybacking I described gives the impression of meaning-fixing. And if we want, we may call it a “kind” of meaning-fixing. But that would be misleading. Because it is part of the intention here that the meaning here will not be fixed. When we use words like this, we kind of pretend that the meaning is fixed—at least to an extent. We sort of gesture at other (primary) uses where the meaning of those expressions is fixed. But at the same time, we want to indicate that something out of the ordinary is going on, and that meaning was not fixed in the same way. If it is a kind of meaning fixing, it is a fixing of the meaning of an expression in one use, by making sure it has an altogether different use. This is somewhat like saying that you know how to fix cars because you know how to fix cats.

      In any case, I take it as all important that there is an intention (even if one does not realize this) not to fix the meaning of expressions when put to absolute and secondary uses. I take it to be internal to what making such uses is. And if this is the case, putting a bunch of different uses alongside each other here and looking for family resemblance is not here helpful as a way of revealing how meaning was fixed. Perhaps it is useful in an analogous way: perhaps it could show resemblances between ways in which we fail to fix meaning.

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    5. I may be misunderstanding you.

      Not really. You just have a clearer view of what I saw dimly. Thanks for the reminder about your post on family resemblance, by the way. I had that in mind when I wrote the post, although I didn't go back to check that I had understood it properly.

      Certainly, the piggybacking I described gives the impression of meaning-fixing. And if we want, we may call it a “kind” of meaning-fixing. But that would be misleading.

      Yes. This is what I was trying to get at.

      Perhaps it is useful in an analogous way: perhaps it could show resemblances between ways in which we fail to fix meaning.

      That could be it.

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  3. Should this be translated: "Say what you want, so long as this does not get in the way of your seeing how things are. And when you see this you will not want to say much"? [...] Surely the idea is rather that there is not much to be said, and that if one sees how things are then one will realize this.

    No, no, no, no. Definitely not. If Wittgenstein would have wanted to say "you will not want to say much", he would not have written "wirst du Manches nicht sagen" but "willst du nicht viel sagen". Nicht viel is the exact equivalent of the English not much, and is as common.

    Anscombe was misled throughout her translation by the similarity between manche and the English many. They are cognates, but manche does not, nevertheless, mean 'many' but 'some'. In keeping with this, manchmal does not mean 'many times' but 'sometimes'.

    Besides, there is no need to speculate, as we have Wittgenstein's own authority on the matter. In Rush Rhees's unpublished 1939 translation of the early 1938 version of the PI (TS 226, pp. 56–57), he translated: "And if you see that, then there are a good many things you won't say." Wittgenstein himself corrected Rhees's translation to: "And if you see this, there are some things you won't say." He did not correct to anything that resembles your reading in the slightest – and could not have done so, because the German simply doesn't allow such a reading.

    Google translate has: "And if you see that, you will not say much."

    This itself is something that counts against using it for any purpose such as this. Pardon the pun, but if you knew what I know about Google Translate, in my capacity as a professional translator, "there is a good deal that you would not say". You should swear off using it in any similar cases in the future, before you come to grief more spectacularly (as several of my clients have).

    That is why Wittgenstein is so confident that one who sees things as they are will not want to say them.

    But what he's not confident about is the possibility that things will be seen as they are. There is another issue of translation here. The German wenn is nicely ambivalent between 'when' and 'if'. As we have seen, Rhees decided on if, and Wittgenstein left this translation uncorrected. It was Anscombe who made Wittgenstein say when, introducing an extra note of confidence that the original does not have.

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    1. Yes, Google Translate can be terrible, and so is not reliable, but I don't trust my own German to be better. I thought that manche could mean many as well as some, but as I say, I assume Hacker and Schulte are right here. Your information about Wittgenstein's correction of Rhees's translation confirms this. What I don't like about Wittgenstein's translation--even though it must be the best available--is that it suggests that there are things one will not say in certain circumstances, which makes me want to ask, Why not? or, How does he know? And I think that the answer must be that these things would make no sense (or have no use). In which case they aren't really things that one might say after all. Which leads me to like a translation along the lines I proposed, even though it is less literal. But I think I need to abandon this idea. The interpretation might be right, but I can't seriously argue with Wittgenstein on how his own words should be translated.

      I know about the ambiguity of wenn, but this is a nice reminder about the point Wittgenstein is making. Thanks.

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    2. I thought that manche could mean many as well as some, [...]

      It can, but only in a rather high and archaic register that is completely alien to Wittgenstein. In English, a rough equivalent would probably be something like "a multitude" (e.g. of sins) or "a host" (e.g. of golden daffodils).

      What I don't like about Wittgenstein's translation--even though it must be the best available--is that it suggests that there are things one will not say in certain circumstances, which makes me want to ask, Why not?

      Because the surface grammar of these "things" is misleading, or gives rise to misleading psychological associations.

      Compare: "As long as there is still a verb 'to be' that looks as though it functions in the same way as 'to eat' and 'to drink', as long as we still have the adjectives 'identical', 'true', 'false', 'possible', as long as we continue to talk of a river of time & an expanse of space, etc., etc., people will keep stumbling over the same cryptic difficulties & staring at something that no explanation seems capable of clearing up" (CV, 1931).

      He could have added: "As long as there are proper names such as 'Moses' which give rise to queer misgivings about their meaning, of the kind discussed in PI §79 ..." But the point is the following. Just like anyone will not give up the everyday use of the expressions on Wittgenstein's list because of the philosophical problems they conjure up for some, nobody will ever give up the everyday use of names such as "Moses" because of the interlocutor's misgivings in PI §79. The world will not bow to the interlocutor's whims, because his misgivings are not the world's. And (I suggest that) this is itself one of those "facts" which Wittgenstein wants the interlocutor to see.

      I was also reminded of what Wittgenstein writes later in the PI (§500): "When a sentence is called senseless, it is not, as it were, its sense that is senseless. Rather, a combination of words is being excluded from the language, withdrawn from circulation." (You have discussed this yourself in the past, but I don't recall any expressions of discomfort analogous to those in the present case.) Elsewhere, Wittgenstein writes: "Sometimes you have to take an expression out of the language, to send it for cleaning,--& then you can put it back into circulation" (CV, 1940). Maybe the things unsaid in PI §79 are things that are only unsaid temporarily, until they have been out to be cleaned.

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    3. This is very interesting. You wouldn't stop using the verb 'to be' just because it can mislead, though, would you? Or perhaps you would, but only temporarily. I like the quote from CV very much--I don't remember it. It seems different from the idea that if you see the facts there are things you won't say, but you're suggestion of what may be true is worth thinking about.

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    4. Can Wittgenstein’s “you won’t say” be just a kind of prediction? That is: “assuming you are the same kind of creature that I am, and that we share similar sensitivities, there is a good chance that you will be inclined like me not to say certain things. This, in the same way that we are inclined to categorize roughly the same colors as blue.”

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    5. Sorry, I somehow missed this comment until now. Yes, I think he could mean that.

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  4. http://newbooksinlanguage.com/2013/09/14/mikhail-kissine-from-utterances-to-speech-acts-cambridge-up-2013/

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  5. I just noticed this so I hope you won't mind my adding to it now (and that it's not too late).

    You write: " . . . 'That's good' is precisely the kind of thing one will not say when one sees the facts . . . people don't speak like this. We use the word 'good,' of course, but not much when thinking about ethical questions. Typically in ethics the question is 'What should I do?' in the context of some dilemma, some situation where several goods or bads are at stake and one cannot (see a way to) avoid all the bads or have all the goods."

    But here you do use "good" and "bad" -- probably because these are the most convenient terms for doing ethics as philosophy. I think you'd argue, in defense of doing, so that making a philosophical point is a special case and that you use "good" in this way says nothing about your point that people don't use "good" in most actual decision-making cases, or only do so when they can't quite grasp the facts that actually matter to them -- just as it's mostly the inarticulate or untutored (as Wittgenstein notes/Lecture on Aesthetics) who exclaim "how beautiful" upon seeing something when they lack sufficient familiarity with the technical elements to specify what about it appeals to them and why.

    As you know by now, my view of "good" is that it, like other value words, doesn't serve to pick out a fixed group or range of things we encounter in the world (naturalistism) but rather that we use it to specify a relation in which some things stand to us, to tell others or ourselves that X has, about it, some feature, element or characteristic which, in appropriate circumstances, gives us (or them) a reason to choose it.

    We surely do use "good" (and no doubt other value words) in non-evaluative ways, blurting out "good" expressively in a moment of keen satisfaction or as a praise word, to reinforce behaviors, as when we say 'good dog' to a canine that's just acted as we wish. Also, we may use it to mean "a lot" as in "a good deal of the time. But I think the case can be made that words like "good" also play an important role in the valuing activity we're obliged to engage in as rational creatures (making use of reasons to produce judgments).

    In the matter of ethics, "good" is just a general term we have in English for specifying and expressing the value relation. On the other hand to speak of "a good" in the ethical sense does sound strange outside philosophy. More commonly we mean by "a good" some item or commodity in a commercial transaction. But your use above suggests that it's meaningful to speak of ethical or moral goods when doing philosophy. We don't usually speak that way in actual cases of moral decision-making but does that really matter? If the point is to understand what valuing is, and especially to place "moral valuing" in the larger valuing context, then there's no obvious bar to speaking of "goods" as presumptive moral ends much as we speak of commodities as transactional objectives of commerce. To the extent that the moral issue is not about particular judgments but about whether there's a moral right or wrong at all in an objective sense, and we want to do a little philosophy to clarify this, even your own approach suggests that it makes sense to speak of "good" and "goods" in the moral way.

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    1. Yes, the word 'good' certainly has its uses. In morally evaluative and other contexts.

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  6. I guess my issue boils down to opposition to the idea that somehow what we think of as good (as in the right thing to do) is built into the concepts we have about the things we do (like murder, for instance). I'm still trying to get a handle on your notion of "intrinsic goodness" which, if I read the above right and based on other things you've said, boils down to the idea that the rightness or wrongness is intrinsic to such notions. I agree that there are certain built-in affinities or disaffinities we have for things like murder (it's wrong by definition -- except, of course, when it turns out not to be). As Beardsmore argues, we learn the feelings about these things when we learn the words themselves. But that still, it seems to me, doesn't answer the question of distinguishing between what's fundamentally right or wrong. And that's sort of where a general term like "good" comes in, i.e., it applies in a broader sense that enables us to group the particular affinities/disaffinities we have. This doesn't solve the moral question, of course, but it does suggest that "good" is more than just a word we use when we can't come up with anything better.

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    1. I think the idea of being good or bad is built into some concepts, but not others. Murder is bad by definition, even if it's the least bad option in some horrible situation. A thing can be intrinsically good without being good in this way. I've said before, I think, that by "intrinsically good" I mean something like good other things being equal. But that's not really what I mean. I mean simply good, or good when considered just in itself. It's something like the idea that you like the thing in question and consider your liking it to be right, not to be some peculiar quirk. Moore, as I remember, imagines a universe containing nothing but this or that, and then passes judgment on this universe. Perhaps it's a bad idea to engage in this kind of thought experiment for some reason, but it is something that people do. If a universe with nothing in it but chocolate is good, then this is another way of saying that chocolate is intrinsically good. Which is another way of saying that chocolate is good. This is not to say that adding chocolate always makes things better, of course. Chocolate is good. Adding chocolate might not be. Love is good. Loving someone else's spouse might not be. And so on.

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    2. Murder is certainly definitionally wrong within a context that rejects it. The Ten Commandments proscribe murder not killing in the original Hebrew, contrary to most English translations. By "murder" what's meant in that case is illicit or unsanctioned or unsanctionable killing. But what's deemed illicit is subject to a further judgment.

      Typically we think of murder as wrongful killing (hence the tendency to see this in definitional terms) but what makes it wrongful? In old Icelandic society, and old Norse cultures generally, murder is killing done in secret and without fessing up immediately afterwards (to face a demand to pay a socially established weregild or the justified demand for vengeance from the victim's kin). Here what's deemed illicit is quite different from what we would call "murder" in modern Western societies. Presumably the ISIL killers would not consider their recent beheadings murder either, while some Westerners clearly think that using drones to strike at those engaged in what we take to be terrorism against us, without benefit of trial and lawful conviction provided to the target, is tantamount to murder, too.

      In an important sense murder, then, is what we define it to be. If the word "murder" is generally used to denote unjustifiable homicide, saying it's intrinsically bad or wrong isn't saying a lot -- or at least enough. We also have to say what counts as that,and why. The why part, I think, is the moral question. And there, I don't see how resort to a definitional claim helps.

      If intrinsicness is only about definitions, then it's in the same boat as Searle's claim that the "is" of making a promise implies a moral conclusion that we "ought" to keep it. But aren't these ultimately very different order questions? Hare thought so and in that, at least, I think he was right.

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  7. Another thought:

    I don't know what to say about a notion of "intrinsic goodness" which stands on the idea that something has that quality if, when we think of it as the only existent in the universe, we would like it, approve it, want it, etc. How can it be the only existent in the universe if we like, approve, want it, etc.? Doesn't that mean we are also in that universe? And the condition of our liking it is? A chocolate universe (one in which there is nothing but chocolate, say) simply makes no sense to me -- not, that is, if we also want to say that chocolate is good because we like it.

    So if the alternative to being intrinsically good because it is definitionally established is to be intrinsically good because, taken as itself (without anything else mediating its occurrence) it can only be something we like and never dislike, this seems to me an even less convincing way of thinking about intrinsic goodness. Aside from the unrealistic idea that such a universe is even conceivable in any scientific sense, the notion of liking, itself, undermines the possibility of that universe.

    So if a universe of chocolate turns out to be unintelligible how much more a universe of composed entirely of compassion or empathy or the Golden Rule or the impossibility of illicitly killing of other agents? What's needed for any of these concepts (or events instantiating such concepts) in a universe are agents and acts and the possibility of variation in those acts in order to differentiate the features we want to describe. And that means a universe like ours.

    So it really seems to me that there can be no such thing as "intrinsic goodness" (or badness) in this sense. The idea of "extrinsic goodness" is misapplied when it's taken to suggest that there are some "goods" that have intrinsicness as a special quality which we can find in some moral claims. Without dismissing the idea of "extrinsic goodness" as something we ascribe to certain kinds of things under certain circumstances (when we seek, or do, something only because it can bring about something else which is what we're really after), I don't think we have to conclude, from that, that wanting something in itself is tantamount to supposing there is intrinsic goodness to it (implying we must want it in all cases at all times and in all places).

    What's intrinsically good in one case may be extrinsically good in another. That is, we may want chocolate just because we like (and think we do so in all cases) and yet we may reason that always wanting chocolate because we like it is not always good. It may contribute to bad results (long term health problems, say, or the denial of something more valuable to us, to another, etc.) THIS ISN'T AS BRIEF AS I'D HOPED SO I'LL CONTINUE BELOW IF YOU DON'T MIND.

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    1. The notions of intrinsicness and extrinsicness strike me as meaningful ways to explain the status of some judgments in particular circumstances but never as characterizing the thing being judged itself. And this, I believe, implies a need for a different kind of account of valuing, one along the lines I've proposed, i.e., that "good" (and its valuational equivalents) serves to specify a position which something referred to has in relation to the referrer and this position is determined by particular "natural" features belonging to the referent and to the state of the referrer upon encountering those features. "Good" neither refers to the referrer's state nor the natural feature(s) that prompt(s) it in the referrer itself (themselves) but to the condition of occurrence -- which can only be determined by the state's occurrence itself (i.e., its being brought about in the agent by the agent's becoming aware of the feature which prompts it). Seen thus, "good" has a referent, too, but not a simple feature-like referent but an abstract one: the condition of being desirable (etc.) by the agent and, thus, chooseable. Not of being chosen though. That is, "good" designates the relational fact that X contains Y which, being Y, is a reason for the agent, or his/her interlocutor, to choose it.

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    2. Doesn't that mean we are also in that universe?

      No. We imagine,and then pass judgment on, a universe that does not include us, only chocolate (or whatever).

      A chocolate universe (one in which there is nothing but chocolate, say) simply makes no sense to me -- not, that is, if we also want to say that chocolate is good because we like it.

      Perhaps this just means that you cannot (or will not?) play a game that other people play. And no, the idea is not that chocolate is good because we like it. The idea is that chocolate is good, period. But if you ask what that means then the answer is something like: we like it and are right to do so.

      if the alternative to being intrinsically good because it is definitionally established is to be intrinsically good because, taken as itself (without anything else mediating its occurrence) it can only be something we like and never dislike

      No, you're introducing the ideas of only and never. They don't belong. The game in question is to think of the thing in question and nothing else, then judge that thing as good, bad, or neither.

      Aside from the unrealistic idea that such a universe is even conceivable in any scientific sense

      I'm not sure what this means. No one is suggesting that such a universe could exist.

      I can imagine someone saying that they simply are unable to play this game. This would be interesting, but wouldn't prove much. It would not prove, for instance, that no one could play the game.

      I can also imagine someone arguing that the game cannot be played by anyone because it is logically flawed in some major way. Then I would want more of an argument to that effect.

      I can also imagine someone saying the game can be played but ought not to be for some reason. Then I would want to know what this reason is.

      I'm not married to this game, by the way. I bring it up only as a way to try to explain what I mean by 'intrinsic goodness.' Some people think that happiness is intrinsically good. Others that friendship is, or beauty, or truth, or life, etc. etc. etc. I think I understand the utilitarian idea that only happiness is intrinsically good. I think I understand the Kantian idea that the will to do one's moral duty is intrinsically good. The idea that nothing is intrinsically good makes little sense to me. And so the need for a different kind of account of valuing is not a need that I can see.

      At least part of the motivation for your view seems to be that you take "intrinsically good" to mean good in all cases at all times and in all places. I think in a sense it does mean that, but also that it is extremely misleading to put it this way. As I've said, there is nothing in the idea that x is intrinsically good to imply that it is always good to have x in any time or place. No matter how intrinsically good a thing may be, I don't want it lodged in my throat. It is not good to be killed by an intrinsically good thing. This in no way detracts from its being intrinsically good. Its killing you is extrinsic, after all.

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  8. Perhaps, as you say, it's a game I am simply unable to play. Its assumptions just seem wrong to me: "We imagine,and then pass judgment on, a universe that does not include us, only chocolate (or whatever)." How can we imagine that? Passing judgment on it means we are there with the chocolate or at least our judgment is (which means we must be, too). Otherwise there is no imagining going on, a precondition of such a world's occurrence. It's like saying there's a noumenon beyond our grasp, consisting of something that's just good. I think of it as an unknown universe but, since I can't know it, I can't really think of it either. But if I say, well X is just chocolate, then I do know it. It's no longer unknown. But it can't just be chocolate in that universe anymore either because, to be that, someone has to taste it, experience it, appreciate it. Chocolate is defined as a taste isn't it?

    You write: ". . . the idea is not that chocolate is good because we like it. The idea is that chocolate is good, period. But earlier you explained it this way: : It's something like the idea that you like the thing in question and consider your liking it to be right, not to be some peculiar quirk. I just don't follow that, I guess. If a thing is good, that must mean there's something about it that makes it so but if our liking it is irrelevant, and you seem to agree that there is no objective (naturalistic) feature that counts as its goodness, then what's left to make it "good" but our preferences? (I agree, by the way, that preference doesn't fully explain valuation in general, let alone the moral sort, but surely we can't just dismiss its relevance entirely. It must play a part in any such judgment.)

    "The game in question is to think of the thing in question and nothing else, then judge that thing as good, bad, or neither."

    I don't see how that's possible. Perhaps we just have very different underlying intuitions here? What can exist in the sort of way you describe? Neither chocolate nor murder ever seem to me to do that. Or anything else either.

    Valuation, itself, is always about an agent and a referent, no matter the type of referent involved. It's as if you want to say imagine a world in which there is just value and nothing else. What kind of world could that be? Value implies valuing, which is an activity which requires an agent which requires an object of reference and so forth. Such an imagined world (one with one and only one thing) just doesn't seem possible to me. But perhaps, as you say, this is just some sort of blind spot I have.

    [I'll add the rest separately because of the limitations here.]

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  9. "No one is suggesting that such a universe could exist." Then doesn't that say something important about the feasibility of such a thought experiment? A thought experiment like Searle's Chinese Room seems possible (though it doesn't demonstrate what Searle thinks it does) because it's possible in principle. Theoretically we COULD build a machine that answered to Searle's description of it: an extremely capable and sophisticated computer. But a world in which nothing but chocolate or murder exists? That not only seems theoretically impossible in principle (which I think is the case with the Chinese Room fulfilling Searle's expectations for it). It seems unintelligible.

    " I can also imagine someone arguing that the game cannot be played by anyone because it is logically flawed in some major way. Then I would want more of an argument to that effect." I guess that's what I've been trying to give, albeit without doing a very good job of it. My argument is that to have chocolate or murder or anything at all you need a context in which case a world with nothing but any of these things logically precludes context in which case you cannot have any of them as the sole existent in any possible world.

    "The idea that nothing is intrinsically good makes little sense to me. And so the need for a different kind of account of valuing is not a need that I can see. " Yes, I guess we differ here then in an important way. Since I cannot see how the notion of "intrinsic goodness" can even be intelligible in this sense (as opposed to being understood as a contingent condition of some things we happen to believe good) it seems to me that only a different account of valuing, one that isn't dependent on the intrinsic/extrinsic distinction, can work.

    "there is nothing in the idea that x is intrinsically good to imply that it is always good to have x in any time or place. No matter how intrinsically good a thing may be, I don't want it lodged in my throat. It is not good to be killed by an intrinsically good thing. This in no way detracts from its being intrinsically good. Its killing you is extrinsic, after all." I think you make a good point here but I don't think it undermines the idea that "intrinsicness" is misapplied when we seek to establish it as one sort of characteristic the goodness of a thing may have. To the extent that all we mean is that in some situations a thing is wanted for itself and in others as a means to something else it makes sense. But when we start to say that these characteristics of goodness attach to what we mean by "good" we get into trouble because then the only way to explain such "intrinsicness" is by a move that, at least to me, seems to make no sense: the idea that a thing can be thought to be good in itself outside of any context at all. Then you get a universe entirely of chocolate which, while I grant your point is not meant to be taken as an empirical possibility, is still inconceivable because chocolate and all other imagined sole existents cannot exist in a world without appraisers (in the case of chocolate, without tasters).

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    1. Passing judgment on it means we are there

      You might be right, but I don't see why.

      Chocolate is defined as a taste isn't it?

      No, I meant the stuff.

      If a thing is good, that must mean there's something about it that makes it so

      Why? If x is good because y makes it so, then what makes y good? Surely something has simply to be good. And that is how it seems to me regardless of this argument.

      I don't see how that's possible. Perhaps we just have very different underlying intuitions here?

      Very possibly. I'm not sure I understand your incomprehension. If I ask you to imagine a man with a balloon is this something you cannot do, because you have to also imagine the atmosphere, ground, etc.? Fantasy would be in trouble if we could only imagine the scientifically possible.

      It's as if you want to say imagine a world in which there is just value and nothing else.

      Well, if that's how it is then I'm confused. But it doesn't seem that way to me.

      a world in which nothing but chocolate or murder exists? That not only seems theoretically impossible in principle (which I think is the case with the Chinese Room fulfilling Searle's expectations for it). It seems unintelligible.

      Well, you can't have murder without people to do it. But couldn't God make a universe with nothing but chocolate in it? I think we have very different intuitions about this, and that this is at the root of our disagreement.

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    2. Yes, very different intuitions, but why? What's different about our respective pictures? Perhaps your comment about the chocolate goes to the heart of this? You ask: "couldn't God make a universe with nothing but chocolate" to which I'd say sure, that's part of his job description. But that suggests to me that your picture of chocolate is the "stuff," as you put it, not the taste. I'd then want to know which stuff? Chocolate syrup? Chocolate milk? Chocolate candy? Chocolate ice cream? It's all chocolate, but not just, that so even an omnipotent God would have a problem with this I think, because there is more than just chocolate in the mix in each case.

      My picture, on the other hand, is of the flavor we name "chocolate," in which case we definitely need a taster because tastes don't happen without them and then, once again, there's more in the mix. If the picture is of God crafting a chocolate universe then a world of chocolate things and organisms could make sense, even if not empirically because it's out of whack with the laws of physics. But a world of nothing but chocolate, whether in various finite forms or just the pure sensation of tasting chocolate, seems to me to be asking too much, even of an omnipotent god.

      If your picture is of the concrete sort (everything conceivable made of chocolate) while mine is of chocolate in the abstract, neither strikes me as intelligible because yours implies other things which the chocolate forms while mine implies taste and taster. In neither case is there a purely chocolate universe, whatever our respective divinities want us to name it. And if you can't have something like chocolate in the presumptively exclusive way your thought experiment assumes, then that experiment can't support an intuition that chocolate can have intrinsic goodness outside of any possible context. Besides "chocolate" isn't just brown stuff of a certain hue and consistency. It isn't enough that it looks like chocolate. It would also have to be edible, taste chocolatey, react to things as chocolate does, etc. What we call "chocolate" must also be chocolate by fitting the right description. It's not the look or the feel chocolate lovers want in the end but the right sort of taste. Ask any food chemist!

      My view on this is that it's the context and only that which makes goodness or badness, and a key part of that context is a rational agent with certain capacities, which establish the grounds for such judgments. But this is not to deny the meaningfulness of terms like "intrinsic" or "extrinsic" entirely. We can and do make distinctions like this in assessing and deciding on actual cases. But here "intrinsic" only means it has its worth as an objective in a particular case. In some other case what we have called "intrinsic" may warrant the term "extrinsic" (as in "instrumental" or "useful").

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    3. I just mean the stuff, what you're calling chocolate candy.

      It isn't enough that it looks like chocolate. It would also have to be edible, taste chocolatey, react to things as chocolate does, etc.

      Yes, of course. But to edible it does not have to be eaten.

      I think you're expressing your different intuition, or set of intuitions, rather than somehow justifying it. (If an intuition can ever be justified.)

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    4. Yes, probably true about our different intuitions! Anyway, chocolate candy isn't just chocolate either which was my point, i.e., it's part of what I intuit about this, namely that a universe consisting only of chocolate candy already contains more than chocolate (i.e., the substance which makes up the candy and which carries the flavor we call "chocolate"). It's not as if chocolate candy is a pure thing. It's a composite of other stuff which react in certain ways. Such a universe of chocolate candy also includes things like texture, viscosity or solidity (at certain temperatures), etc., which are the manifestations of the various reactions of the underlying material(s). But you get the drift of where my intuition has taken me on this.

      If we can't agree on our bottom line reactions to this picture I suppose there's really no way of demonstrating that there is or is not "intrinsic goodness" of the type you see in some things. If Anscombe's view is that there is such intrinsic goodness (and not merely "intrinsic" in the contingent sense) then I guess I would find no common ground with here, either. So I guess we'll leave it at that then. Thanks for hearing me out on this.

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    5. Yes, we seem to have reached an impasse. It's been interesting though. Thanks.

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