Wittgenstein's Later Conception of Grammar

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused to talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.

This book is an introduction in a double sense. It is intended to introduce beginners in philosophy to the idea of philosophical nonsense and the problems it raises. But it is also addressed to professional philosophers, most of whom seem virtually unaware of the issue.

Certain philosophers, here called ‘nonsensicalists’, believe that much philosophy (philosophical questions as well as assertions) is simply nonsense in the strict sense of being meaningless. They proceed as though it were an established fact that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and the notion were quite unproblematic. By contrast, many other philosophers proceed as though either they had never heard of it or it were quite obvious that there is no such thing.

There can be little doubt that what the nonsensicalists are saying is of great importance – if they are right. But there are at least eight questions that must be addressed before anyone is in a position to start hunting down philosophical nonsense and they have all been woefully neglected.

The idea of philosophical nonsense goes back to Thomas Hobbes at least and yet its history remains largely unresearched.

In view of the neglect of the problems raised by the notion of philosophical nonsense, even by professional philosophers, it is not unduly optimistic to suggest that it is a topic to which relative newcomers to the subject might make a contribution.

Ludwig Wittgenstein thought that good philosophy unties the knots in our thinking that bad philosophy has put there and must make movements as complicated as the knots it unties. Is the notion of philosophical nonsense an essential aid to this – as Wittgenstein himself thought – or just another knot?

There are passages in Wittgenstein where he compares his method to psychotherapy and one or two where he seems to suggest that the ‘patient’ has the last word on his ‘illness’ and ‘cure’.  This paper tries to take these seriously, especially in connexion with the idea that victims of philosophical confusion talk nonsense.

Philosophical accusations of talking nonsense made in a polemical spirit are bound to fail, since the only way one can effectively criticise another’s utterance is by attaching some meaning to it.  But if the other acknowledges the possibility that his puzzlement arises from his having been taken in by nonsense, then perhaps a co-operative investigation of this suggestion might be fruitful.  Indeed self-diagnosis ought in principle to be possible.  Ought it not to have happened at least once in the history of philosophy if philosophical nonsense has ever been exposed? 

But there are difficulties.  For example:
a) We must ask whether or not philosophical nonsense, when exposed as such, is supposed to lose all appearance of meaningfulness.  Either answer is problematic.
b) The acknowledged similarity of the methodology under investigation to that of psychoanalysis exposes it to many of the familiar objections to the methodology of psychoanalysis, especially those that draw attention to the misleading influence of suggestion by an authority-figure.
c) The proposal that relentless cross-questioning of a suspected nonsense-talker will eventually lead her to ‘dry up’ (if she really is talking nonsense) seems to involve a version of the so-called Socratic Fallacy.

This paper starts from Tractatus, 6.53, and ask how one could show someone ‘that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions’.  Once one has fully mastered the ‘austere’ conception of nonsense – that nonsense has neither meaning, form, content, nor logic – the difficulties of the enterprise become evident.  It is not clear how one could be in a position to conclude much about an utterance without first finding a meaning in it.  Suggestions made by Guy Robinson, Edward Witherspoon and Hans-Johann Glock are considered but it is concluded that the last, best hope for nonsensicalism lies in a therapeutic approach.  I end with a plea for someone who is sympathetic to this aspect of Wittgenstein’s philosophy to make a serious attempt to work out the details.

.Taking as my starting-point Cora Diamond’s paper ‘What nonsense might be’, I extend her ‘austere’ conception of nonsense to encompass the talking of nonsense.  We need to focus on the utterer as well as the utterance.  This brings out how difficult it is going to be to DIAGNOSE the talking of (philosophical) nonsense, without falling into the ‘sense that is senseless’ trap (PI, I, 500).  It is not clear to what extent Diamond sees the problem here.  I suggest that if there is a way round the difficulty, it will involve adopting a therapeutic approach.

I suggest that, although the nonsensicalist challenge (obviously) matters, it has, at least in its Wittgensteinian form, been widely ignored.  On the other hand, those who still adhere to nonsensicalism (mainly Wittgensteinians) have been equally remiss in their failure to examine its presuppositions.

Philosophers know a great deal about how reasoning can go wrong but very little about what can go wrong with the conclusions that philosophers try to establish by their reasonings.  It is Stove’s great merit that he tackles the latter problem directly, though a certain dogmatism in his approach and a contemptuous attitude towards the ‘great’ philosophers have almost certainly led to a neglect of his work.

This paper inquires into the appropriateness of the label ‘neo-positivist’ that he applies to his own position and considers his view that there are probably, but not certainly, innumerable ways in which a philosophical claim can be wrong, mistaken, untrue, absurd even.  An attempt is made to relate our lack of knowledge here to the Chomsky/McGinn thesis that there may be kinds of problem with which the human intellect is just not equipped to deal.

I am planning a history of the notion of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that the notion goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first 'nonsensicalist', whether Kant was a 'nonsensicalist' at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

Cook’s paper ‘Wittgenstein on privacy’, though published over fifty years ago, is still one of the most impressive attempts to take seriously what philosophical nonsense would have to be.  Cook argues that someone who says, ‘It is not even logically possible to feel another’s pain’ is experiencing ‘a queer sort of illusion, produced by seeing one pattern of grammar on analogy with another and quite different pattern of grammar’.  I argue that he has identified a genuine philosophical illusion, indeed a grammatical illusion, that is quite close to what nonsensicalists are postulating – but I am not sure that it is IDENTICAL with it.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused of talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

In a couple of Airbnb’s and Academia’ “mediatic” conversations PaleontoLogicaMindly ISOCIC, for Identity Subject Object (vs Gödel’s incompleteness) and Confusion Intelligence Consciousness), collective consciousness emerges, as with drops of 💦 water the complexity behavior of sea as waves produced by single particles …

The public debate of Western narrow minded selfish contradiction between helping Ukraine 🇺🇦 and in the meantime not wanting to give up Putin’s gas ⛽️ with a total embargo, logically produces consciousness as I predicted observing anthill and bee 🐝 nest collective self organization as for Professor Giafranco Miglio federalism, as in a Swiss like world natural and well armed.  This is what is happening now globally with the Ucraina model in real media time and world wide emerging consciousness. Just think of china 🇨🇳 with Taiwan 🇹🇼 as another crucial example … and “please” forget about solving all the contradictions of the past BUT JUST GRAB THIS ONE!!!

Wittgenstein’s life had many similarities with mine, including sickness, family tragedies, war and loneliness in a sober real estate daily monastic life,  aimed to unachievable greatness.

It is for me very simple to brand this as incompletenesses, especially when he was unable to explain his condition and where his thoughts, coming about unpredictability, suddenly vanished. Terrified of living for nothing. His sister’s Vienna house project with glass walls and foldable gates on rails,  pursued with maniacal precision for details, as comfort from the world 🌎 caos. The atomic meaning of words for posterity in his written diary, intended to be published than after death he thereby didn’t fear.

Nietzsche, in his background, Russell vanity, Maler music 🎵 made me hate music as romance notwithstanding Tolstoy.

It is easy for me to explain all of this just considering that words are a technology, the first evolutionary one, mirroring triangular monaliza's gaze through our consciousness through logic.

Now watch this conversation and you can generalize Neanderthal's unconsciousness trough Academia and Airbnb’s samples.

Airbnb

Good evening - we will arrive in 6 weeks time and I’m wondering if there is a possibility of an early check-in??? Our plane lands at 10:35am so I’m guessing we’d be at the apartment between 11:30-12:00…thank you for considering. Kind regards, Kerry

Is not possible to forecast something utili the very moment either for your arrival or for previous guest anticipated check out … Just in time means that you need to send approaching messages to fix the appointment when you arrived in Milan, not unexpectedly to avoid the usual unforeseen events that are actually almost certain and thus become manageable in real time ... Nobody knows the future and that's why  I devised the "just in time" system, through which - thanks to the wonderful technology - we can manage "directly" the quantum "superposition" of events, as per my numerous abstracts (see Academia edu Marco Brigliadori) based on experience  Airbnb of the widespread evolutionary gap of "unconscious unconsciousness" to be filled, as the pandemic is showing us most 😷

Most importantly you do not have to complain for the 30 minutes undivided attention check in briefing because you are tired from the trip … so I would be waiting…

As for baggage they have to follow guests in and out for Covid procedures but you can find radical storage bag bnb in internet

Are you an English speaker or using a translator app? I understand the gist of your message but will deal with the details closer to arriving. Kind regards, Kerry


?! I have a Mother language competency in English certified by TEA and it is probably your semiotics perspective that confuses you: I am alone and you are thousands and to manage thus unbearable unbalanced uncertainty I have to defer your recaps to the day before your first night …

You are also welcome to read my abstracts on my online experiments though Airbnb and QUORA on general human unconscious unconsciousness published on academia.edu under Marco Brigliadori

Academia

Please do not mention my name again without my permission.  His is a serious misconduct.  I do not share any of his ideas, much less that of a Quantum Hypersphere.  There is nothing "quantum" about general relativity and space is not a hypersphere.  You have completely misrepresented and artfully distorted my answer on Quora.  Unfortunately on Academia there is no way to protest.  I hope this never happens again.  In a serious magazine her behavior would have been censored.
18 hours

Marco Brigliadori
Look that yours is just unconscious unconsciousness from inCoScientists ... I have done nothing but take back what I found of yours without altering it or commenting on it and your interpretation is as valid as that of anyone else but it is "subjective" and it is I who ask you not to allow offensive inferences since as a lawyer I always move with extreme caution precisely in order not to arouse empty reactions and useless straw tails ...
18 hours

Marco Brigliadori
I also add that if you indicate the name of the article, I remove it immediately, which in the meantime does not add and takes nothing away from my experimental theses which now have infinite proofs of the evolutionary fact of the unconscious PaleontoLogical Mind ISOCIC 18 hours

Marco Brigliadori I've already done it myself:

https://www.academia.edu/works/76223669/edit

“Contemporary” footnote on evolutionary consciousness emerging collectively from inherent embargo contradiction by media unconsciously unconscious triangulation

Now rewind all this experimental evidence on the media debate on Putin’s incompleteness and emergence of Russian evolutionary unconsciousness notwithstanding Tolstoy.

“What can be sad”, paraphrasing proposition 7, is just that evolutionary consciousness emerges by logic tribulation with technology, arrows, spears, words or the internet qualitatively doesn't matter. This is why time is just an eternal standstill evolutionary illusion of condensed mass before consciously conscious inertial “totally” local/non local POV ALL on ALL.

Help yourself in connecting “consciously” your dots between Wittgenstein and Zelensky:

Wittgenstein’s “modernity” is conscious evolutionary consciousness

https://youtu.be/oIoHVjawlxo

https://youtu.be/8BoKjQfMihs

Putin and Zelensky

https://youtu.be/Y3kdI9Rn0Jc

https://youtu.be/bOvCdzIdS6Y

In un paio di conversazioni "mediatiche" di Airbnb e Academia PaleontoLogicaMindly ISOCIC, for Identity Subject Object (vs Gödel's incompleteness) e Confusion Intelligence Consciousness), emerge la coscienza collettiva, come con gocce d'acqua 💦 il comportamento complesso delle onde mare da singole particelle...

Il dibattito pubblico sulla contraddizione egoistica dalla mentalità ristretta occidentale tra aiutare l'Ucraina 🇺🇦 e nel frattempo non voler rinunciare al gas di Putin ⛽️ con un embargo totale, produce logicamente coscienza come avevo previsto osservando formicaio e ape 🐝 nido di auto organizzazione collettiva come per il professor Gianfranco  Miglio federalismo, come in un mondo svizzero come naturale e ben armato.  Questo è ciò che sta accadendo ora a livello globale con il modello Ucraina in tempo reale dei media e la coscienza emergente in tutto il mondo.  Pensa alla cina 🇨🇳 con Taiwan 🇹🇼 come un altro esempio cruciale… e “per favore” dimenticati di risolvere tutte le contraddizioni del passato MA PRENDI QUESTA!!!

La vita di Wittgenstein aveva molte somiglianze con la mia, tra cui malattie, tragedie familiari, guerra e solitudine in una vita monastica quotidiana sobria, immobiliare, mirata a una grandezza irraggiungibile.

Per me è molto semplice bollarlo come incompletezza, soprattutto quando non è stato in grado di spiegare la sua condizione e dove i suoi pensieri, derivati ​​dall'imprevedibilità, sono improvvisamente svaniti.  Terrorizzata di vivere per niente.  Il progetto della casa viennese della sorella con pareti di vetro e cancelli a libro su rotaie, perseguito con maniacale precisione per i dettagli, come comfort dal mondo 🌎 caos.  Il significato atomico delle parole per i posteri nel suo diario scritto, destinato ad essere pubblicato che dopo la morte non lo temeva quindi.

Nietzsche, nel suo background, la vanità di Russell, la musica di Maler 🎵 mi ha fatto odiare la musica come romanticismo nonostante Tolstoj.

È facile per me spiegare tutto questo solo considerando che le parole sono una tecnologia, la prima evolutiva, che rispecchia lo sguardo triangolare di monaliza attraverso la nostra coscienza attraverso la logica.

While metaphysics is traditionally seen as dealing with the essence of things, for Wittgenstein it is grammar. But what does he mean by "grammar"? And does he mean the same thing by this word throughout his philosophical career? In this investigation, I strive to contribute to answering to these questions. I argue that Wittgenstein's notion of grammar has evolved and changed over the years of his philosophising.

https://books.google.de/books/about/Vom_System_zum_Gebrauch.html?id=lI1uDwAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y

I am planning a history of the concept of philosophical nonsense and naturally difficult historical and exegetical questions have come up.  Charles Pigden has argued that it goes back at least as far as Hobbes and that Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant (on some interpretations) and pragmatists such as William James, as well as numerous Twentieth-Century philosophers make use of it.  In this ‘paper’ I put forward for general discussion such questions as whether Hobbes was the first nonsensicalist, whether Kant was a nonsensicalist at all, which philosophers if any have considered contradictions to be meaningless and whether Wittgenstein thought that his concept of criterion could legitimately be used verificationistically.  I shall continue to add further questions as they occur to me.

The four strands are (a) the ‘austere’ conception of nonsense; (b) the view that a perfectly acceptable sentence of the language can be nonsense if it is uttered in unsuitable circumstances; (c) the view that rules of grammar are nonsense if construed as universal truths about the world; (d) the view that one cannot ‘mean a nonsense’.  (I think that this last has to be ascribed to Wittgenstein, though it is surprisingly difficult to find knock-down textual evidence for it.)  I argue that (c) is the odd man out and is not easily reconciled with the others.

I discuss Charles Pigden’s paper ‘Coercive theories of meaning, or why language shouldn’t matter (so much) to philosophy’ and ask whether theories of meaning whose primary purpose is to discredit rival philosophies as meaningless necessarily employ artificially narrow conceptions of meaningfulness.  In the course of my argument I ask whether the colloquial-rhetorical use of words like ‘nonsense’ and ‘meaningless’ has made it difficulty for philosophers to see just how novel and radical their own accusations of talking nonsense are.

How do philosophical accusations of talking nonsense relate to the layperson’s notions of meaning and meaningfulness?  If one were to explain carefully what philosophical nonsense was supposed to be, would one be greeted with incredulity?  How do people react to being accused of talking nonsense themselves?  Is anything analogous to an illusion of meaning recognised in everyday life?  In dream-reports perhaps?  Or in the utterances of schizophrenics or those under the influence of drugs?  Or in certain jokes and hoaxes?  Are contradictions felt to be meaningless?  I argue that, though it is clear that experimental philosophy could shed some light on these questions, their subject matter creates special difficulties.  First, it is more difficult than usual to formulate questions and produce ‘vignettes’ that do not subtly encourage certain responses at the expense of others.  Second, the fact that philosophical nonsense is a metaphilosophical concept ensures that its investigation is going to be more indirect than would be that of knowledge or intention, for example.

(I am sorry if Part Three seems rather fragmentary - a handful of questions left over from previous sections.  It really needs some kind of conclusion to draw the threads together, but for the moment inspiration eludes me.)

This paper goes naturally with my earlier paper 'The importance of Russell's Theory of Types for the emergence of twentieth-century nonsensicalism'.  In it I discuss the method Prior proposes in his paper ‘Entities’ for dealing with Russell’s Paradox without appealing to the concept of nonsense.

I discuss Charles Pigden’s paper ‘Coercive theories of meaning, or why language shouldn’t matter (so much) to philosophy’ and ask whether theories of meaning whose primary purpose is to discredit rival philosophies as meaningless necessarily employ artificially narrow conceptions of meaningfulness.  In the course of my argument I ask whether the colloquial-rhetorical use of words like ‘nonsense’ and ‘meaningless’ has made it difficulty for philosophers to see just how novel and radical their own accusations of talking nonsense are.