Re Witt: Red roses, beetles, and chess
(Sorry to start a new thread, my attempts to reply to Tram directly weren't working, so I apologize for having to create a new post to make comments.)
First, thanks to Tram for a helpful summary and analaysis of LW. I agree with Tram's assessment on "methodology" that even the format of PI reflects an attempt to avoid the most obvious constraints of language games. However, as Tram notes, because even PI is obliged to used language to make points about language games, even he cannot fully escape them. However, I'm not sure if escapism is really his goal as much as it is to make us conscious and aware of language games. Thus, in response to Tram's second point, I would agree that IR, sub-fields of IR, and indeed, any defined (or even undefined) field of study have their own language games. Again though, I don't think we can be expected to transcend those lanaguage games, as much as we can be expected, after reading LW, to be aware of them and to recognize the development and influence of discourse. To be sure, as LW states in 415, "we are not contributing curiosities... but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes" (125). In other words, at some level, we must accept language games as given; however, we have agency in that we can choose to be conscious of language games.
I am most interested however in Tram's third comment regarding LW's "problem of other minds." I was intrigued by LW's note in 272 that "the essential thing about private experience is ... that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else" (95). According to LW then, even so-called brute facts such as physical properties (i.e., color) are not necessarily the same for different observers/participants. Thus, like Searle, LW pushes us to ask how we actually know what we "know." Specifically, as researchers constructing knowledge, how do we know that we create extends at all beyond ourselves? Particularly, LW challenges us to think about how language defines what we know, and how it defines how others perceive the same "knowledge."
For me, the most compelling theme in PI was the idea of consciousness: consciousness of language and language games, of multiple realities, and even of ourselves and our own brain processes. I was especially struck by Note 412, in which LW discusses the "unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain process" and asks, "how does it come about that this does not come into the considerations of ordinary life?" (124). Essentially, LW is discussing the process of becoming conscious of one's own consciousness, yet he is correct in noting that individuals rarely undergo this process of what he terms "gazing." Why don't we examine our own consciousness? And what types of insights to do we gain when we do?
Finally, I was also intrigued by LW's statement in Note 255 that "the philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness" (91). How is this approach different from, say, a positivist approach that seeks to "solve" or "answer" a question rather than "treat" it? Is this a valid approach to questions in the social sciences?
First, thanks to Tram for a helpful summary and analaysis of LW. I agree with Tram's assessment on "methodology" that even the format of PI reflects an attempt to avoid the most obvious constraints of language games. However, as Tram notes, because even PI is obliged to used language to make points about language games, even he cannot fully escape them. However, I'm not sure if escapism is really his goal as much as it is to make us conscious and aware of language games. Thus, in response to Tram's second point, I would agree that IR, sub-fields of IR, and indeed, any defined (or even undefined) field of study have their own language games. Again though, I don't think we can be expected to transcend those lanaguage games, as much as we can be expected, after reading LW, to be aware of them and to recognize the development and influence of discourse. To be sure, as LW states in 415, "we are not contributing curiosities... but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes" (125). In other words, at some level, we must accept language games as given; however, we have agency in that we can choose to be conscious of language games.
I am most interested however in Tram's third comment regarding LW's "problem of other minds." I was intrigued by LW's note in 272 that "the essential thing about private experience is ... that nobody knows whether other people also have this or something else" (95). According to LW then, even so-called brute facts such as physical properties (i.e., color) are not necessarily the same for different observers/participants. Thus, like Searle, LW pushes us to ask how we actually know what we "know." Specifically, as researchers constructing knowledge, how do we know that we create extends at all beyond ourselves? Particularly, LW challenges us to think about how language defines what we know, and how it defines how others perceive the same "knowledge."
For me, the most compelling theme in PI was the idea of consciousness: consciousness of language and language games, of multiple realities, and even of ourselves and our own brain processes. I was especially struck by Note 412, in which LW discusses the "unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain process" and asks, "how does it come about that this does not come into the considerations of ordinary life?" (124). Essentially, LW is discussing the process of becoming conscious of one's own consciousness, yet he is correct in noting that individuals rarely undergo this process of what he terms "gazing." Why don't we examine our own consciousness? And what types of insights to do we gain when we do?
Finally, I was also intrigued by LW's statement in Note 255 that "the philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness" (91). How is this approach different from, say, a positivist approach that seeks to "solve" or "answer" a question rather than "treat" it? Is this a valid approach to questions in the social sciences?
posted by Anonymous at 10:30 AM
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