tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post2445224733647213529..comments2024-02-20T12:26:24.682-05:00Comments on language goes on holiday: Could Christian ethics be right?Duncan Richterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-72503961040842288482016-10-11T21:30:27.868-04:002016-10-11T21:30:27.868-04:00Follow your heart, do what God asks of you is what...Follow your heart, do what God asks of you is what the Christian would say to the man and he might tell him the story of Abraham to plead his case for what a believer should do. Jooge McCatnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-59055816880514978572015-06-09T12:06:14.297-04:002015-06-09T12:06:14.297-04:00Sorry, this: If they tell me, on the other hand, t...Sorry, this: <i>If they tell me, on the other hand, that they believe that people who believe their opponents on any given issue are just as right as they are then I don't know what they mean.</i><br /><br />should be this:<br /><br />If they tell me, on the other hand, that they believe their opponents on any given issue are just as right as they themselves are then I don't know what they mean.Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-72160179452403196542015-06-08T11:46:41.516-04:002015-06-08T11:46:41.516-04:00What does "all ethical systems are equally ri...<i>What does "all ethical systems are equally right" mean?</i><br /><br />Wittgenstein says it means nothing. So any (intelligible) explanation of what it might mean is presumably not what he had in mind. We could try to work out why someone might say such a thing, or why people <i>do</i> say such things, but I don't know how much we will be able to generalize. Normal people who say things like this are often trying clumsily to express their belief in tolerance. But philosophers and, especially, people who have been exposed to a little philosophy often have more complicated stories. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-63593797357642473772015-06-08T11:37:02.200-04:002015-06-08T11:37:02.200-04:00The idea of a kind of thinking that produces nonse...<i>The idea of a kind of thinking that produces nonsense baffles me. Is this different from saying that it involves carelessness?</i><br /><br />Yes. You said above that; "People who support gay marriage and those who don’t, people who believe in climate change and those who believe that capitalism is better than communism and vice versa—they all usually don’t think their views through." This is true, but when someone tells me that they support (or oppose) gay marriage I know what they mean. If they tell me, on the other hand, that they believe that people who believe their opponents on any given issue are just as right as they are then I don't know what they mean. Perhaps after some questioning it will become clear, but on the face of it there is a paradox here. <br /><br />You might say that I am now talking about nonsense rather than "a kind of thinking that <i>produces</i> nonsense" but by "a kind of thinking" I just mean whatever is going on in their heads that leads them to say this kind of thing. It isn't <i>just</i> carelessness.<br /><br /><i>Is the failure here to produce something sensical a consequence of (a) the relativism, or is it a consequence of (b) the lack of care on the part of those who call themselves relativists?</i><br /><br />"The relativism" just is whatever mix of tolerance, awareness of different moral beliefs, belief that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, etc. plus lack of clarity in thinking (or word use) that leads them to say paradoxical things. So a is true by definition, but b is also true. <br /><br /><i>Suppose someone said: “[...] They are all equally right, in the sense that they are all viable ways of doing so.” – Would you say that this makes sense? </i><br /><br />I would want to know what they meant by 'viable'. If someone says that people care about different things and that it is possible for them to live this way then I might (depending on the context) wonder what they were getting at. But if they say these different ways of life are all <i>right</i> then I would want to know what they meant. Whether it contradicted what Wittgenstein said in the quotation from Rhees would depend on what it meant, of course, but also on what Wittgenstein meant. And I don't know what he meant. I have been trying to figure that out but have hit a wall. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-20444930272007706362015-06-04T20:07:15.343-04:002015-06-04T20:07:15.343-04:00Sorry, a little clumsy in the foregoing. I should ...Sorry, a little clumsy in the foregoing. I should have been clearer that in #1 I meant "all ethical systems are equally right" because, being inherently unintelligible, none can be wrong or right while in #3a I meant that "all ethical systems are equally right" because they are intelligible but in a non-assertoric/descriptive way.<br /><br />#3b treats of "nonsense" as a pejorative as in if something is obviously wrong then it is nonsensical to argue that it isn't.<br /><br />Don't mean to horn in here but that remark about "all ethical systems" above caught my eye.Stuart W. Mirskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247784373895331173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-7918989398587962602015-06-04T20:00:30.114-04:002015-06-04T20:00:30.114-04:00What does "all ethical systems are equally ri...<em>What does "all ethical systems are equally right" mean?</em><br /><br />Either:<br /><br />1) "No ethical system is right because none <em>can be wrong</em>, therefore the category of being 'right' is nonsense."<br /><br />or<br /><br />2) "All ethical systems are equally right <em>to those who enroll in them</em>," meaning enrolling renders "rightness" thus changing what's meant by "right" from something that has some kind of independent, externally generated justification (the rules, the deity, reason) to a situation where acceptance makes it so. This kind of "rightness" is declarative (a so-called speech act?).<br /><br />Or there's the further possibility:<br /><br />3) "No ethical systems are right because they<br /><br />a) represent a category error (ethical talk isn't assertoric but expressive and so isn't amenable to claims of rightness or wrongness); or<br /><br />b) "All ethical systems <em>appear</em> to make factual claims but all such factual claims are demonstrably false (lack evidence to support)" as moral error theorists like J. L. Mackie and Richard Garner would have it.<br /><br />In all such cases one might be able to say of some ethical claim made in connection with one of these approaches is "nonsense" but the nonsense tag means different things, no?<br /><br />Would it make sense to ascribe any of these possibilities to Wittgenstein in that text or is there another possibility I've left out? Stuart W. Mirskyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12247784373895331173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-51550343911455058732015-06-04T15:28:44.912-04:002015-06-04T15:28:44.912-04:00“Ex hypothesi this kind of relativism is a kind of...“Ex hypothesi this kind of relativism is a kind of thinking that produces nonsense, i.e. words that mean nothing”<br /><br />The idea of a kind of thinking that produces nonsense baffles me. Is this different from saying that it involves carelessness? Let me ask it in a different way: Is the failure here to produce something sensical a consequence of (a) the relativism, or is it a consequence of (b) the lack of care on the part of those who call themselves relativists?<br /><br /><br /><br />Part of what baffles me is that it is not part of your reading of Wittgenstein that he was engaged in asking what the relativist might mean before he issues his nonsense-verdict. <br /><br />Suppose someone said: “I really don’t care. What is important is that people will find some way to make sense of the world around them: that they care about things in some way--but it doesn't matter in which way. Each of the various ethical systems tells its story, and these are all important stories: they give us different ways of making sense of the world around us—of finding it important. They are all equally right, in the sense that they are all viable ways of doing so.” – Would you say that this makes sense? Would it contradict what Wittgenstein said in the quotation from Rhees?Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-17113885782612515942015-06-04T13:21:33.805-04:002015-06-04T13:21:33.805-04:00I thought your suggestion was that Wittgenstein ha...<i>I thought your suggestion was that Wittgenstein had a particular argument against relativism (rather than against careless relativists), or at least a particular claim about what type of confusions are involved in relativism. Was I wrong about that?</i><br /><br />I don't think I claimed that. I don't know what relativism is. I've said several times that this name might be given to various positions, and perhaps some of these are good ideas. The only relativism I have been talking about is the kind suggested by Wittgenstein's reported remark that if you say there are various ethical systems and they are all equally right then "That means nothing." <i>Ex hypothesi</i> this kind of relativism is a kind of thinking that produces nonsense, i.e. words that mean nothing. The relativism in question could be mere confusion or it could be something coherent that has not yet been well expressed. In which case it could be just about anything. So far as there is a coherent position that might be called relativism I have said nothing about it except that it might exist.<br /><br />My answer to most of your other questions is the same in each case: I don't know what the relativist and the absolutist want to say except that the relativist says "all ethical systems are equally right" and the absolutist contradicts this. I don't know who these people are except fictions in an example. What does "all ethical systems are equally right" mean? I don't know. But I have been trying to understand it as it appears in an example from Wittgenstein, and he says that it means nothing. So the prospects for understanding it don't look good. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-82790411666053185802015-06-04T11:01:39.352-04:002015-06-04T11:01:39.352-04:00“a common kind of confusion that is often called, ...“a common kind of confusion that is often called, or associated with, relativism.” <br /><br />I’m kind of disappointed by this, because I thought we were talking about something more serious. That is, I was hoping to hear something more than the claim that usually people who say things that sound relativistic are confused, and that they don’t bother to think their view through. The same is true about almost every other view people hold. People who support gay marriage and those who don’t, people who believe in climate change and those who believe that capitalism is better than communism and vice versa—they all usually don’t think their views through. I thought your suggestion was that Wittgenstein had a particular argument against relativism (rather than against careless relativists), or at least a particular claim about what type of confusions are involved in relativism. Was I wrong about that?<br /><br /><br /><br />“Joking is actually one of the cases I had in mind when I said it is sometimes obvious that someone is talking nonsense.”<br /><br />Perhaps this is connected to the comment above. I feel that here, and perhaps above, you are changing the topic instead of dealing with the problem. I am probably missing something. In the conversation we had, the question was about the alleged nonsense involved in relativism and absolutism. I took it that this was the focus of the discussion. Now, if the question about whether we can be reasonably certain that someone is speaking nonsense is relevant for the discussion we’ve been having, it should apply somehow to the cases of absolutism and relativism. Instead, I feel as if we are moving away from that, and asking the question in the abstract—thinking about people who joke around and make bullshit claims. If this was not what you were doing, and your question has for you some connection to the discussion about absolutism and relativism, then I admit that I can’t see what the connection is, and I need some help. If you did just ask the question in the abstract, then I’m not sure I understand why you are asking it—that is why you are asking it in the context of our discussion. <br /><br /><br /><br />You say you changed your mind about things, but that you are not certain. I’m not clear about your unclarities. <br /><br />- Do you still think that the relativist cannot say what they want to say? The absolutist? <br /><br />- Have you also changed you mind about what the relativist and the absolutist say, or want to?<br /><br />- What do you think now that the relativist wants to say?<br /><br />- What do you think now the absolutist wants to say? <br /><br />- What would be the best, or at least a decent, formulation of these views?<br /><br />- Do you think that even if thus formulated those views are nonsense? Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-63837373692907485452015-06-03T12:56:59.318-04:002015-06-03T12:56:59.318-04:00I don’t see how or why you focus your criticism on...<i>I don’t see how or why you focus your criticism on relativism.</i><br /><br />I was responding to a question you asked about relativism. The history of this dialogue is getting complicated, but here is roughly how I think we got here. Wittgenstein is reported to say things that have been interpreted as a rejection of a certain kind of relativism and its antithesis, absolutism. If he is rejecting a position (and you have pointed out reason to doubt this) then it seems to be one that is easily dismissed (since if he is dismissing a position he does not bother to give much argument against it). So I hypothesized that he might have in mind a common kind of confusion that is often called, or associated with, relativism. Then you asked whether relativism always or typically involved confusion. <br /><br /><i>I take it that telling people that they had no intention when they say they do (assuming there is no intention on their part to deceive or joke or anything like that), is like telling people that they are not in pain when they say they are.</i><br /><br />Joking is actually one of the cases I had in mind when I said it is sometimes obvious that someone is talking nonsense. If they are using a lot of long words whose meaning they seem not to know and are laughing as they speak, for example, then it is obvious that they are (deliberately) speaking nonsense. I think we get a non-joking version of this when people bullshit. And I think that happens a lot. <br /><br /><i>I think—correct me if I’m wrong—you might have an idea of ‘judging what someone said,’ which implies that we can take what they said and judge it in abstraction of their saying it: we can just consider their words, as if the meaning or lack thereof of what they said is something that belong to their words and ideas, and is detachable from them and their act of uttering it. – Does that sound right?</i><br /><br />Yes and no. I don't think we can understand the meaning of an utterance without taking into account such things as whether it was uttered in a sarcastic tone. But if someone misuses a word then I think we can distinguish between what they said, i.e., what the words they uttered mean, and what the person meant. I don't think, though, that we can read the speech act off the words. <br /><br /><i>you then say: “how interesting that Wittgenstein would say something so weird!”</i><br /><br />No, that's not what I mean. I mean rather something like this: To someone not convinced of the correctness of the resolute reading of Wittgenstein, the passage from Rhees would be likely to look like evidence that the resolute reading is wrong. This is one reason for paying attention to the passage and trying to work out how best to read it. I made an initial tentative attempt to interpret it and came up with something that sounded plausible to me. I now think that interpretation was wrong in various ways. I'm not sure whether it was really wrong in substance or whether it was more just badly expressed. For instance, I talked about ideas when I meant what you call "some of those confused things people say [that] have the face of ideas." I said that there cannot be absolute judgment when it would have been better to say, as you pointed out, that there isn't such a thing. What I said was certainly not very well expressed, partly because it was not very well thought out. It was a kind of rough draft written in response to something that I found puzzling. As I said above (May 16), in these remarks I am trying to work out what Wittgenstein thought. <br /><br />When I say that it looks as though Wittgenstein is saying x I mean only that it looks superficially as though he is saying x. For instance, you said that: <i>He would never say: “One cannot possibly make sense of these ideas.”</i> Rhees reports that Wittgenstein said: "I want to say that this question does not make sense." This <i>looks</i> (i.e. on the surface) like a contradiction of your claim. I don't mean that after careful thought you seem to be wrong. I mean that careful thought is needed to see that you are not wrong. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-50170975965962698732015-06-03T09:40:43.064-04:002015-06-03T09:40:43.064-04:00You raise the question: How much effort does it ta...You raise the question: How much effort does it take to expose nonsense. – I would say that it would only be easy with a philosophical saint; and the overwhelming majority of philosophers and people who make philosophical claims (including myself) are not philosophical saints. If what I said above is true, then convincing someone to recognize that they are under the illusion that they have some intention would typically not be an easy task.<br /><br />I think—correct me if I’m wrong—you might have an idea of ‘judging what someone said,’ which implies that we can take what they said and judge it in abstraction of their saying it: we can just consider their words, as if the meaning or lack thereof of what they said is something that belong to their words and ideas, and is detachable from them and their act of uttering it. – Does that sound right?<br /><br />The reason I think you have this idea is because you think it is relatively easy to judge that something is nonsense, and because it would indeed be easy if we didn’t need to take the speaker and their speech-act into consideration but merely their words, and judge these in abstraction: if we could read the speech act off of the words.<br /><br />If so, this is arguably a non-Fregean view of meaning. And I think it is very much non-Wittgensteinian as well. It is basically the notion of meaning without the context principle. <br /><br />On what I take to be the Wittgensteinian view of meaning, in order to judge that something someone said was nonsense, you have to take what they said in the context in which they said it, with their intentions in saying it, and so on. You have to take the whole speech-act. And you can’t read the speech act off the words. That is, you cannot bypass attending to the speech act by attending to the words. You have to attend to the act itself. So if we don’t understand what someone said, the most we can say, again, is: ‘I don’t see what you are trying to do with those words. I don’t see a speech act.’ But for reasons already mentioned, we can’t say in advance—that is, merely by considering the words—that there is no possible speech act to be had by means of these words, and therefore that what they said was nonsense. And if this is our conception of meaning, then clarification of meaning in general, and detection of nonsense in particular, will typically not be an easy thing.<br /><br /><br />“And yet that is what he looks like he's doing according to Rhees's account.”<br /><br />I’m not sure why you say that. We already talked about this, and I rejected this claim of yours, and tried to explain myself. Perhaps I did a bad job. I tried to explain at length why I think that what Wittgenstein does does NOT look like this, and why it would only look like this to someone who sees it through a non-Wittgensteinian conception of philosophy. So I don’t think you can just assume this, as you seem. <br /><br />In other words: from my point of view at least you seem to be doing something a bit fishy: You ascribe very implausible views to Wittgenstein, even though it is not at all necessary to read him like this, and you then say: “how interesting that Wittgenstein would say something so weird!” This is somewhat like taking JFK’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” as obviously saying that he is a kind of doughnut, and then proceeding to ask why he would say such a thing. – The answer is: He hasn’t! (It will look like he has only if you come with a joking, or a very uncharitable, frame of mind.)<br /><br />As far as I can see, you have a choice: either (1) you need to make a good strong case for the idea that Wittgenstein is indeed doing what you say he is doing, and saying “this is how it looks to me” is not good enough, because it can look different (I tried to explain in the May 28 response how to look at things differently). Or (2) you need to give up on your claim that it looks that Wittgenstein is doing what you say he is doing. Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-33517858095337647612015-06-03T09:40:16.712-04:002015-06-03T09:40:16.712-04:00“In fact, so far as 'relativism' is not th...“In fact, so far as 'relativism' is not the name of a sophisticated philosophical position but the 'position' of people like this [stereotypic students, etc.] I might say that contradictions are essential to the minds of the people I'm talking about.”<br /><br />Perhaps. But first, if this was the view you were attacking from the beginning, this wasn’t at all clear. And more importantly, aren’t you making it too easy on yourself? I mean, if this is the position you want to criticize, then why you need Wittgenstein and his heavy machinery in the story? College students don’t think much through—not only their relativism, if they subscribe to one. So I don’t see how or why you focus your criticism on relativism. And if your criticism is merely that most relativist don’t think their views through, then this is probably true, but the same is true of almost any other belief people hold. Again, I don’t see how or why you focus your criticism on relativism. I thought you were trying to say something more substantial about relativism, and to attack a more serious view. – Am I missing something?<br /><br /><br /><br />“Can't I be reasonably confident in some cases that a person probably really is talking nonsense? Isn't it even the case that sometimes it's obvious?”<br /><br />There is at least an important sense in which the answer to this has to be NO. This is also related to the other question you ask about the connection I’m making to pain avowals and first person authority. I’m basically putting side by side pain avowals and expressions of intention to say something.<br /><br />First consider what it would be, what it would entail, to be confident that someone spoke nonsense. If you follow through on the implication of something really being nonsense (and here, the ASSUMPTION is that something is nonsense; that is, it is not something to prove or conclude), then saying that someone is saying something nonsensical implies that they had no intention to say anything. That’s because you cannot intend to say something that you know is nonsense. I mean this: if “frukish blurt is banegh” is nonsense, then I cannot intend to say that frukish blurt is banegh. There is no such intention to be had. And that means (and that’s the hard part to accept, but as far as I can see it is inevitable) that you can’t intend to say IT even if you don’t realize it is nonsense: There is just no IT to intend to say. (Look at Cora’s “Ethics Imagination and the Method of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus”.) So perhaps you can say that the relativist wants to say something, or has the feeling that they want to say something. But if relativism is nonsense (again, we are now assuming this) then strictly speaking a person cannot intend to utter the thesis of relativism. There is no such thesis to intend to utter. <br /><br />Now, if this is what is implied by being confident that someone spoke nonsense, let’s see how that affects the possibility of being thus confident. To better appreciate that, I want to bring back my object of comparison, thinking that I’m in pain, and put it alongside our case: thinking that I have something to say, or that I have an intention to say something. I take it that telling people that they had no intention when they say they do (assuming there is no intention on their part to deceive or joke or anything like that), is like telling people that they are not in pain when they say they are. In both cases there is a claim to first person authority on the part of the speaker.<br /><br />But if that is so, then ask your question again, but this time about pain: “Can’t I be reasonably confident that someone is not in pain when they really and seriously think that they are?” I think the answer to this is no. It would be a very perplexing case at the very least. And if the case with ‘having-an-intention-to-say-something’ is similar to the case of ‘having-the-intention-to-express-a-pain,’ then the same should be said about the former.Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-67195707850348840872015-06-02T13:36:26.778-04:002015-06-02T13:36:26.778-04:00Now, IF (and that’s a big if) in discussing those ...<i>Now, IF (and that’s a big if) in discussing those ideas with the relativist or the absolutist, you reach a point in the discussion in which THEY say: “You know what, I now see that I didn’t want anything really. It only seemed to me that I had an idea, but really I had none.” That would mean that THEY pronounced something nonsense. – It HAS to be done by them. It cannot be done by you. (This, just in the sense that you can’t express someone else’s pain. It’s a matter of first person authority.)</i><br /><br />I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying that I cannot pronounce what someone else says to be nonsense? And that this is not about rights so much as it is simply a matter of what makes sense, so that "You are speaking nonsense" is like "Ouch, that headache of yours really hurts!"? I accept that we cannot know that someone is speaking nonsense just by looking at their words, and that in some cases it will not be clear unless they confirm it themselves. But you seem to be saying more than this.<br /><br /><i>It is possible to reach such a point in which people recognize that they have spoken nonsense, and in some cases it actually happens. But it takes effort; and a lot of it.</i><br /><br />This might be trivial, but do you mean that it always takes a lot of effort, or simply that it can do so? If the latter then I agree, but if it's the former then I don't think I do. I suppose I'm just repeating and agreeing with your saying that "The place where I think there is a tension between what we say is that you seem to take it to be relatively easy to reach the conclusion that someone spoke nonsense." I don't think that's always the case, but I think it can be easy. I would suspect a student of speaking nonsense much more easily than I would suspect or accuse, say, Plato of doing so. <br /><br /><i>It seems to me that Wittgenstein would never say the things you ascribe to him. He would never say: “One cannot possibly make sense of these ideas.” </i><br /><br />And yet that is what he looks like he's doing according to Rhees's account. Which is one reason why it's interesting. True, he does not say that any ideas do not make sense. He does say that a certain question does not make sense, without questioning the hypothetical poser of the question at all. Perhaps "does not make sense" here just means "is not something that I can understand (at least not without further clarification)." And that would fit with the rest of the passage where he talks about not knowing what the person is after. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-58457351357684513022015-06-02T13:36:03.523-04:002015-06-02T13:36:03.523-04:00(I think so far we are in agreement. I'm just ...<i>(I think so far we are in agreement. I'm just asking to be sure.) </i><br /><br />Yes, all this sounds right.<br /><br /><i>The question is whether it necessarily, or even typically, happens to relativists and absolutists—as I think you want to say.</i><br /><br />I think that it does typically happen to relativists if by 'relativists' we mean, as I do, a certain type of person (usually an undergraduate) who has not thought much about ethics and when pressed to do so says things like, "yeah, but it's all relative, isn't it?" I think there are typically contradictions in what these people want to say. In fact, so far as 'relativism' is not the name of a sophisticated philosophical position but the 'position' of people like this I might say that contradictions are essential to the minds of the people I'm talking about. In this case 'relativism' is the name of a kind of confusion. <br /><br /><i>My point is that until you show that the idea cannot be thought through you haven’t shown it is nonsense. All you can say at this point, when you are confronted by a relativist or absolutist claim, is that you don’t understand the idea, that is, that YOU don’t know NOW how to think the idea through. But that doesn’t give you the right yet to say it is nonsense.</i><br /><br />I agree, although I'm not sure about the point about rights. Can't I be reasonably confident in some cases that a person probably really is talking nonsense? Isn't it even the case that sometimes it's obvious? <br /><br />(continued below)Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-32811456772692808042015-06-02T11:54:14.592-04:002015-06-02T11:54:14.592-04:00If all this is right, then there is no room for sa...If all this is right, then there is no room for saying of an idea that it is nonsense in advance of that self-analysis by the person to whom the idea (or “idea”) belongs. There is just room for trying to clarify what they say. This attempt, once more, could lead to actual clarification of what they said, which would mean what they said was not nonsense. Or it could lead to a realization by them that they didn’t want anything, in which case they ought to recognize that what they said was nonsense. But even this would not have any straightforward implications regarding what others might want to say. That is, it would still not give you the right to say that the idea itself is nonsense. <br /><br />It seems to me that you are ascribing to Wittgenstein a position which is ultimately committed to the possibility of saying of certain ideas that they are nonsense in advance of any such investigation. – Does this misdescribe what you are doing? (I’m not saying that this is what you intend to do. I’m saying that this is a consequence of what you say.)<br /><br />But if I’m right this goes against Wittgenstein’s whole conception of philosophy—of philosophical activity. It seems to me that Wittgenstein would never say the things you ascribe to him. He would never say: “One cannot possibly make sense of these ideas.” He would rather ask questions like “What could someone possibly mean by this?” or he might say “So far, I can’t make sense of this. Let us see how we might be able to elaborate on this, and see if we could make sense of it.” Or perhaps he would say: “My hunch is what leads people to say such things is a certain picture that tempts them here. Let us see if a demonstration that the picture doesn’t fit the case would make people lose interest in saying those things.” <br /> <br />Sorry for laboring the point.Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-85883613115297211252015-06-02T11:53:56.377-04:002015-06-02T11:53:56.377-04:00Now, I said that some of the things you say are in...Now, I said that some of the things you say are in tension with the above. And I want to be more specific. The place where I think there is a tension between what we say is that you seem to take it to be relatively easy to reach the conclusion that someone spoke nonsense (relative to how hard I think it is). I’ve been talking above as if it is a relatively small matter to decide whether something that someone said is nonsense. But really, reaching such a conclusion is not a trivial matter. <br /><br />You seem to think that relativism involves contradictions. I’m not sure what you have in mind. But suppose you find a relativist that contradicts themselves. Does that show that relativism—the very idea—contains some contradiction? It is possible for people not to think things through; this doesn’t happen only to relativists or absolutists. Surely the fact that they haven’t doesn’t mean that they couldn’t. The question is whether it necessarily, or even typically, happens to relativists and absolutists—as I think you want to say.<br /><br />My point is that until you show that the idea cannot be thought through you haven’t shown it is nonsense. All you can say at this point, when you are confronted by a relativist or absolutist claim, is that you don’t understand the idea, that is, that YOU don’t know NOW how to think the idea through. But that doesn’t give you the right yet to say it is nonsense. And the same would go for claims like: “There is also no question of the absolute superiority of one ethic over another.” – If someone is asking this question, they might be confused. But this is not something that you can know or assume in advance. All you can say, if you don’t have the question yourself, is that you cannot ask it: you don’t know how to ask it. But that doesn’t give you the right to say there is no question.<br /><br />Now, IF (and that’s a big if) in discussing those ideas with the relativist or the absolutist, you reach a point in the discussion in which THEY say: “You know what, I now see that I didn’t want anything really. It only seemed to me that I had an idea, but really I had none.” That would mean that THEY pronounced something nonsense. – It HAS to be done by them. It cannot be done by you. (This, just in the sense that you can’t express someone else’s pain. It’s a matter of first person authority.) And it may not happen; they may want to continue. And again, you cannot know in advance that they won’t succeed.<br /><br />It is possible to reach such a point in which people recognize that they have spoken nonsense, and in some cases it actually happens. But it takes effort; and a lot of it. It typically involves a kind of self-analysis (possibly achieved with the help of another): That is, not only an appreciation of a logical point, but also a psychological appreciation about oneself why one wanted to come up with nonsense in the first place (e.g. what pictures held them captive, and so on).Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-376636749489474072015-06-02T11:52:52.325-04:002015-06-02T11:52:52.325-04:00Your willingness to talk of nonsense that is suffi...Your willingness to talk of nonsense that is sufficiently idea-like, I think, is problematic. It is like Crispin Wright’s claim that in philosophy we may have “a sufficient grasp of the essential spirit” of ideas that we think are nonsense (see Cora’s criticism of that in “Wright’s Wittgenstein”). I’m basically urging here an “austere” conception of nonsense (See Cora’s “What Nonsense Might Be”) against what you say. (I can’t stress enough how central this conception of nonsense is for her whole philosophy, and if she is right, for Wittgenstein’s—early and late.)<br /><br />On the austere conception, the important distinctions are logical, and nonsense is not a logical thing. Nonsense, by definition, has no logic (it’s not a category). Now, if something that you want to call “an idea” is full of contradictions and cannot be explained, that means it is not an idea. <br /><br />I think what deters many people about this conception (and possibly you here as well) is that we still very much would like to call some of those confused things people say “ideas.” They have the face of ideas. But this confuses two issues (confuses the logical with the psychological):<br /><br />1. Whether something someone said is nonsense or not<br />2. What led them psychologically to saying this, and whether there was some form of thinking—even if confused—behind it<br /><br />I think—perhaps I’m wrong—that since, as you say, there is some thought behind the relativist’s claim, even if you want to say that it is full of contradictions, you want to still call it “an idea.” Partly, if I understand, it is a matter of respecting people and the fact that they thought about something—even if they got confused along the way. On the austere conception of nonsense, however, since the important distinctions are logical, this “idea,” if indeed confused, is not really an idea at all. It is nonsense in disguise.<br /><br />Now, I said that on the austere conception the important distinctions are logical, but that’s not quite right, because for philosophers like Cora (and I think Wittgenstein), the psychology of nonsense is interesting. In fact, I think we can say that most of what they discuss is the psychology of nonsense, and how we (in the first person) come to say nonsensical things thinking that we make perfectly good sense. In other words, the business of moving form latent to patent nonsense (PI §464) is to a large extent a psychological exercise. That is, the second question about regarding what leads people to talk nonsense is philosophically interesting. So, on an austere conception of nonsense, both psychologically and from the point of view of philosophical interest not all nonsense is the same, even if from a logical point of view all nonsense is just that: nonsense. In Tractarian terms, it is mere signs without any actual symbolizing. That is, it is a mere string of words—or sounds, or ink marks—without any content.<br /><br />Does that make sense? Do you disagree with anything here? (I think so far we are in agreement. I'm just asking to be sure.) Surely, I’m repeating here stuff that you know very well. It nevertheless sometimes seems to me that stuff that you say is in tension with these ideas, so I’m saying all of this in order to make it easier for us to locate what part of all this, if any, we understand differently, or disagree about. Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-69122595063787839682015-06-01T13:21:59.873-04:002015-06-01T13:21:59.873-04:00Thanks, this helps.
I think you've answered t...Thanks, this helps.<br /><br />I think you've answered the question about the apparent contradiction, but here goes. You said both that "Wittgenstein says of certain things that they are nonsense" and that "he thought it was pointless (that is, it is meaningless) to police language—e.g. to issue nonsense verdicts." If saying of certain things that they are nonsense is issuing a nonsense verdict on those things then this suggests that Wittgenstein did things that he thought were pointless, i.e. meaningless. That would seem rather inconsistent of him. Alternatively "issuing nonsense verdicts" might mean something other than saying of certain things that they are nonsense. But then I wasn't sure what it would mean. You've answered that question now. <br /><br />By "saying of something that it is nonsense" I mean responding with a claim like "What you said is nonsense" to something that someone has said. The 'something' in question could be mere words. It couldn't really be an idea, I suppose, because then it would make sense. But it could be something like an idea. People don't usually spout nonsense randomly or for no reason. The kind of thinking (or failure of thinking) that tends to lead to (what I am inclined to call) a particular kind of nonsense is something that I might call an idea, even if there is really nothing that makes sense there. <br /><br />'Absolutism' and 'relativism' are ideas (or 'ideas') of this kind, as I see it. A lot of people say things involving the word 'relative' that I would call nonsense in your senses 2 and 3 above. I take it that something like thinking is behind these utterances. Something that the people who produce the nonsense in question take to be thinking and might well insist is thinking, but that seems to me not so much thinking as the half-digestion of someone else's thinking. (Although it depends what you mean by 'thinking', of course. Perhaps repeating words and phrases in socially accepted ways should be called thinking. It is very often what is called thinking. And if this is a disease I don't claim to be immune to it.) <br /><br />For example, a lot of students tend to say "it's all relative". Sometimes they might have a sophisticated and intelligible idea in mind, but that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Often what they say seems to make no sense at all: they cannot explain what they mean, it quickly leads to what look like contradictions, and so on. In a word they appear to be talking nonsense. But it isn't random nonsense. It is connected not only with the word 'relative' but with a familiar set of examples and invalid arguments. I'm inclined to call this an idea and to give it the name 'relativism' (or 'knee-jerk relativism' or 'student relativism' or something of the sort). It's not a well-formed idea, and I might concede that it isn't really an idea at all. But it is sufficiently idea-like that I want to call it an idea. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-28946932624117535492015-05-29T22:52:18.327-04:002015-05-29T22:52:18.327-04:00I’m not sure I see the contradiction you talk of b...I’m not sure I see the contradiction you talk of between the two sentences you quoted from what I said, or even something that looks like a contradiction. I may very well be confused, or blind, or contradicting myself. Can you help me see the contradiction you see?<br /><br />By “language-policing,” I mean what you say you mean; namely, ruling out certain combinations of words without regard to their use. – Does that create a problem for me? <br /><br />Perhaps the problem is with the other expression we’ve been using: “nonsense verdict.” When you explain what you mean by it, I find myself puzzled, because, to me, the clarification you give (“saying of something that it is nonsense”) is as ambiguous as the original expression. To clarify: I take the sentence “What you said is nonsense” to be ambiguous between:<br /><br />(1) The ideas you express are nonsense [where nonsense is taken to be a category alongside sense].<br />(2) What you uttered is just a form of words and not an idea.<br />(3) I don’t understand certain things you say, and I therefore cannot even decide whether what you uttered is just a form of words, or an actual idea.<br /><br />Both (1) and (2) would involve a “nonsense verdict”—of different kinds.<br /><br />(Part of what I want to say is that when it comes to morality, both (1) and (2) are problematic. There would be a contradiction if Wittgenstein meant (1). There would be a different problem if he meant (2)—a problem of unsubstantiated presumptuousness, or willful blindness. So I take Wittgenstein to mean something like (3).)<br /><br />Does that help in any way?<br /><br />What do you mean by “saying of something that it is nonsense” (e.g. of relativism or absolutism)? – is it more like (1), (2), or (3) above? Or is it something different? <br /><br />Thanks for being so patient with me. Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-19955006449745137732015-05-29T13:34:03.760-04:002015-05-29T13:34:03.760-04:00Anyway, even if you think I’m exaggerating, I thin...<i>Anyway, even if you think I’m exaggerating, I think you’ll agree that it would be uncharitable to Wittgenstein to say he slipped up. If you want to be more charitable, you’ll look for other ways of reading what he said here.</i><br /><br />I agree. I would be interested in seeing or finding other ways of reading what he said.<br /><br /><i>If you want to ask the questions of the orthodox, that will inevitably come at the cost of minimizing and distorting the insights of the resolute.</i><br /><br />This may well be so. But it isn't that I consciously want to ask the questions of the orthodox. I just ask the questions that occur to me. If these are orthodox then that's probably because my thinking is (at least somewhat) orthodox. <br /><br /><i>you seem to want to grant the insights of the resolute reading</i><br /><br />Probably because my thinking is somewhat resolute too. Or simply that I have not conclusively rejected either position yet. Can I have it both ways? No, I don't think so. But I can't choose what questions occur to me. And when a question does occur to me I would rather ask it and see what answer I can find than reject the question on the ground that it is, say, orthodox. I'm not claiming to have a stable or coherent position. I am trying to understand and have not reached a firm conclusion.<br /><br />One thing I don't understand in your comments here is this. You say "I do not deny that Wittgenstein says of certain things that they are nonsense. (Obviously!)" and that "he thought it was pointless (that is, it is meaningless) to police language—e.g. to issue nonsense verdicts." I don't think you are contradicting yourself, but this <i>looks</i> like a contradiction to me. That is, I believe you know what you are saying and that it makes sense, but the sense is not clear to me. I would understand your position better if you could explain why it isn't a contradiction. When I talk about issuing a nonsense verdict I mean saying of something that it is nonsense. When I talk of policing language I mean ruling out certain combinations of words just as such, regardless of what they are being used to do or what meaning might have been given to them. It's possible that you mean the same thing by 'policing language' (but I'm not sure what you mean by this), but you seem to mean something different from what I mean by 'issuing a nonsense verdict.' Have I got that right? Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-51887414869176774572015-05-28T14:50:15.450-04:002015-05-28T14:50:15.450-04:00What I keep being baffled by is that you seem to w...What I keep being baffled by is that you seem to want to grant the insights of the resolute reading, but to keep asking the questions of the orthodox. It is as if you want to grant everyone what they want. And I just don’t see how that’s possible.<br /><br />If you want to ask the questions of the orthodox, that will inevitably come at the cost of minimizing and distorting the insights of the resolute. And if you really accept the insights of the resolute reader, then there is no such thing for you as asking the questions of the orthodox. – Is that not how you see it?<br /><br />I don’t see any other compromise. But that might be my just my lack of imagination. Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-70866493261340562782015-05-28T14:30:39.411-04:002015-05-28T14:30:39.411-04:00To go back to the question of how Wittgenstein’s a...To go back to the question of how Wittgenstein’s assertions look. The way those assertions look to you, I think, reflects the conception of philosophy you have—the picture of philosophy you come with. And I’m calling for an aspect-shift. Instead of saying that he is issuing a verdict, it is possible to see him simply as saying that he doesn’t understand. After all, that’s what one normally does when someone else is uttering something puzzling with a straight face and a meaningful expression on their face and in their tone of voice: one says one doesn’t understand and asks for clarifications.<br /><br /> I think one thing that stands in the way of seeing that aspect of what Wittgenstein says is that it makes Wittgenstein’s assertions expressions of powerlessness instead of expressions of power. We want to think of Wittgenstein as an authority, someone from above, someone powerful. And I’m suggesting that it is not like that at all. (It connects to his claims that he is not putting forward theories and theses, and that he requires the agreement of his audience, and is not trying to convince them of some opinion he has.) What I’m suggesting therefore needs to be supplemented by an explanation how an expression of powerlessness and inability to understand can be deep and interesting and worthwhile. And I think something like that can be seen in the quotations from Rhees.<br /><br />I also want to add that this idea that people—e.g. philosophers like Descartes—might say something that doesn’t make sense is still important for Wittgenstein, even on the conception of philosophy that I say he has. Here is Cavell:<br /><br />““Not saying anything” is one way philosophers do not know what they mean. In this case it is not that they mean something other than they say, but that they do not see that they mean nothing (that they mean nothing, not that their statements mean nothing, are nonsense). The extent to which this is, or seems to be, true, is astonishing.” (Claim of Reason, 210) <br /><br />But the way to discovering that, and the impact of discovering that, and the interest of discovering that are all very different from the kinds you can have in a language-policing conception of philosophy. Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-87695324360637561012015-05-28T14:30:22.938-04:002015-05-28T14:30:22.938-04:00I think there really is a difference of conception...I think there really is a difference of conception of philosophy here. (I should say that I take it to be similar to a difference, perhaps the main difference, between resolute and orthodox readings of Wittgenstein—early and late.)<br /><br />You ask: “do you deny that the sentence, "I want to say that this question does not make sense" sounds like a verdict on the sensicality/nonsensicality of the question?”<br /><br />Yes. I deny that.<br /><br />Clarification: I do not deny that Wittgenstein says of certain things that they are nonsense. (Obviously!) Even in the quotation I gave last time he says he denies that people have said something meaningful. But now the question is what to make of these assertions. These assertions are the givens, and the question now is what do they look like, and what they are—verdicts or something else. (That is, the assertions themselves are not “evidence”, conclusive or inconclusive. They do not pull in one direction more than they do in the other, just as drawing the duck-rabbit is not evidence that one has drawn a duck more than it is that they drew a rabbit.)<br /><br />My claim is that they will look like verdicts only to someone who already is equipped with and assumes a conception of philosophy that is very different from Wittgenstein’s. It is not a matter of him ignoring of forgetting his best insights. It is a matter of him doing something completely different. (Saying that he forgot his best insight here, I think, is like saying of a chess player that they forget something important when they throw their queen at their opponent’s queen and shout “Goal!”) If I’m right, he thought it was pointless (that is, it is meaningless) to police language—e.g. to issue nonsense verdicts. No philosophy can be done in this way. Wittgenstein’s whole philosophy is organized around this insight. It is not just a very good insight that he had that can be split off from the rest of his philosophy. It would be extremely uncharitable to say that he slipped up here. It would be saying not merely that he was wrong, but that he was out of his mind!<br /><br />Anyway, even if you think I’m exaggerating, I think you’ll agree that it would be uncharitable to Wittgenstein to say he slipped up. If you want to be more charitable, you’ll look for other ways of reading what he said here. And my sense is that there should be ways of squaring what he said in the quotations from Rhees with his conception of philosophy. My hunch is that once you start doing that, those quotations will seem less important and interesting, but that’s only a hunch.Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-21944241167405120942015-05-28T10:32:31.318-04:002015-05-28T10:32:31.318-04:00If I’m right, it goes against the grain for Wittge...<i>If I’m right, it goes against the grain for Wittgenstein to treat a view as obvious nonsense. Not because it’s impolite, but because it is confused to do so (which is to say, there is nothing of the sort to be done)</i><br /><br />Yes. And yet in terms of understanding what the historical Wittgenstein actually thought it would seem that we need to examine all the evidence, and Rhees provides evidence (not conclusive proof at all, but evidence) that Wittgenstein did think of some views as obvious nonsense. I think Bouwsma quotes him as saying of the cogito that if X had said it then Wittgenstein would have said "Nonsense!" but when Descartes says it it's a different matter. Perhaps this is because we take Descartes, a very careful thinker, to have views whereas X, a mere student, might speak without having thought very carefully first. Perhaps Wittgenstein's view is that no <i>view</i> can be said to be nonsense but that certain combinations of words can be. Perhaps when I talk about 'relativism' and 'absolutism' I mean not views but families of combinations of words. That sounds like a cop-out, though, and I'm not sure what kind of line there might be between a confused view, on the one hand, and a family of nonsensical combinations of words, on the other. <br /><br /><i>Since you do think that it is at least possible to issue such a verdict</i><br /><br />I'm not sure that I do think that. I've said (I think) that Wittgenstein appears to be doing this. You might say that he can't very well appear to be doing something if there is no such thing as doing that. But then what I said needs to be taken as something like: he appears to be doing something <i>that looks like</i> issuing a verdict. Whether he really could be issuing a verdict would be a separate question. I agree that the idea is problematic. But do you deny that the sentence, "I want to say that this question does not make sense" <i>sounds</i> like a verdict on the sensicality/nonsensicality of the question? <br /><br />The conclusion we might have to draw is that Wittgenstein somehow forgot or ignored his own best insights during this conversation with Rhees (or that Rhees misunderstood or misrecorded what he said) and ended up talking nonsense. In that case the conversation is best ignored. But I wanted to <i>try</i> to make sense of it before drawing any such conclusion. And to do that I started with what he <i>appears</i> to be saying. Perhaps I should have started with what we know he thought instead. Duncan Richterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15708344766825805406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454161596094447448.post-17514187305365420832015-05-27T20:15:05.652-04:002015-05-27T20:15:05.652-04:00“… views that Wittgenstein seems to treat as obvio...“… views that Wittgenstein seems to treat as obvious nonsense.” <br /><br />Obviously, you take Wittgenstein to think that some views are nonsense. I think your whole interpretation depends on that. My reservations come from a sense that saying this is in tension with Wittgenstein’s whole conception of philosophy—in particular with his ideas about how to deal with what looks like nonsense. For example here:<br /><br />“People who make metaphysical assertions such as ‘Only the present is real’ pretend to make a picture, as opposed to some other picture. I deny that they have done this. But how can I prove it? I cannot say this is not a picture of anything, it is unthinkable, unless I assume that they and I have the same limitations on picturing. If I indicate a picture which the words suggest and they agree, then I can tell them they are misled, that the imagery in which they move does not lead them to such expressions. It cannot be denied that they have made a picture, but we can say they have been misled. We can say ‘It makes no sense in this system, and I believe this is the system you are using.’ If they reply by introducing a new system, then I have to acquiesce.” (‘Cambridge Lectures 32-35,’ p. 27)<br /><br />If I’m right, it goes against the grain for Wittgenstein to treat a view as obvious nonsense. Not because it’s impolite, but because it is confused to do so (which is to say, there is nothing of the sort to be done): In order to say that a view is nonsense, one has to understand what the view is. Otherwise, how would they be able to issue that verdict? But if one understands it, it is by definition not nonsense. Saying that some view is nonsense is therefore—ironically—being guilty of the same thing one accuses others of. It is a criticism of sort of that backfires. That’s why the only option Wittgenstein has (as in the quotation above) is to explain why he DOESN’T understand, and leave it to the supposed speaker of nonsense to explain; or perhaps, if he feels generous or in a therapeutic mood, he may try and suggest possible explanations and offer them to the nonsense-speaker, and see whether they’ll accept. In any case, issuing a verdict about what one doesn’t even understand is not an option. <br /><br />Do you reject this as a central part of Wittgenstein’s conception of how to deal with nonsense? <br /><br />If it is part of his conception, does that leave room for the view you are ascribing to him, and for saying that some forms of relativism and some forms of absolutism are nonsense? Or for Johnston’s “no independent justification [of a moral claim] is possible” (p. 145)?<br /> <br /><br /><br />A related question:<br /><br />Since you do think that it is at least possible to issue such a verdict, how is it done? How does Wittgenstein and how do you (suggest that we) reach the conclusion that some idea or claim is nonsense? Is it merely a matter of intuition? Is this a matter of examining whether the view violates the rules of some language game? Or what?Reshefhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01350527262158734622noreply@blogger.com