Having tried to go back into the earliest history of
the charliehobbs discussion group
and having been frustrated by "not available"
messages from eGroups.com, I decided to try to keep an archive
of some charliehobbs discussion group threads here. Notes to users. 

Philosophy of Science Thread
Philosophy of Mind Thread
AI and robots

Wittgenstein Thread
Favorite Philosophers     Critical Philosophy    INTERSUBJECTIVITY
what one must remain silent about     Metaphor    Grand Canyon
 

#59 philosophical investigations quote : ".....there is a great variety of criteria for personal 'identity'.
       (from Charles Hobbs)                       Now which of them determines my saying that 'I' am in pain? None."

#60 Re: philosophical investigations (Bill Doxey)   "?wen si esle tahW"
#61 Re: philosophical investigations (Charles Hobbs) "would you speak about the existence of other people in the same way, as the actions of your optic nerves?"
#62 Re: philosophical investigations (Bill Doxey) "Maybe solipsism (#111) isn't such a bad thing."
Favorite Philosophers
#99 Wittgenstein/Santayana  (dionysus) "My favorite philosopher .....Santayana.....Wittgenstein is a close second. Brian Magee's book about Schopenhauer.
#104 re: Wittgenstein/Santayana  (Saicho) "Perhaps dionysus is referring to simply the strength of their intellect?"

Critical Philosophy
#111 Parr on Wittgenstein  (Robert Parr) "Wittgenstein is also my favorite philosopher" David Pears, The False Prison;              William H. Calvin          "treatment of solipsism in the Tractatus"      George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh

#112 Re: wittgenstein (Paul Trejo) "if you can draw a Limit to the functions of knowledge and language, surely you yourself can see what is on both sides of the line you have drawn."
#113 Re: wittgenstein (Bill Doxey) "Since nothing means anything EXCEPT what 'the favorite philosopher' says that it means, what's the use?"
#115 Re: wittgenstein  (Paul Trejo) I blame Hume, Kant, Russell (qua Agnostic, not nec. as Analyst) and Wittgenstein (among others) for the modern alienation resulting from the  notion that 'the human mind is incapable of knowing the Truth,'
#177 wittgenstein, Philosophy in the Flesh (Schmidt)  Gerald Edelman "embodiment of mind in physical systems"  (see #134, below)
#178 RE: wittgenstein, Philosophy in the Flesh (Charles Hobbs) "I too would like to read  PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH"
#189 Re: wittgenstein (Robert Parr) "Is Wittgenstein a skeptic or relativist? In some unimportant ways yes, but mainly no."
#194 Re: wittgenstein  (David Makinster) "invoking Wittgenstein about limitation, without equal  elaboration of what is possible, may lead not only to misunderstanding, but to trivialization."
INTERSUBJECTIVITY
#128 Wittgenstein/Parr? (M.S. Russell) "there is an objectivity people share"
#131 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr? (Saicho) "our ability to invent/evolve a word --  which represents a concept"
#133 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr? (Robert Parr) "There is 'intersubjectivity' of  speakers, there is also 'intersubjectivity' of subject and object."
#134 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr? (Robert Parr) "Meaning is not a mysterious gift from" outside nature." John McDowell       Gerald Edelman quoting Ruth Millikan
#135 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr? (Saicho) "Language was not designed to solve the problems language creates"
#157 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr?  (Robert Parr) Charles Arthur Willard's "black hole" and "big bang" problems of language
#158 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr? (Robert Parr) "The later Wittgenstien is difficullt and  confusing.....bravely move on, he's worth it.    "The Later Wittgenstein  by S. Stephen Hilmy     Wittgenstein on Mind and Language by David Stern
#159 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr? (Robert Parr) "He is anti-Cartesion in his pursuit of the ramifications of solipsism and idealism.  He is anti-behaviorist and anti-introspectionist."
#168 Re: Language: Wittgenstein/Parr?  (Saicho) on the distinction between futile and fruitful language games
what one must remain silent about
#136 Wittgenstein (Charles Hobbs) "For Wittgenstein......nothing may be said about such important matters as religion, ethics, or aesthetics, for they do not deal with facts about the world"
#138 wittgenstein, religion, science (Schmidt) "science without philosophy is inhuman. Maybe philosophy detatched from science is equally warped?"
#139 Re: wittgenstein (Paul Trejo) "I maintain,  along with Hegel and other dialectical metaphysicians that the Truth can be known and can be articulated."
#140 Re: wittgenstein (Robert Parr) "Wittgenstein was influenced by Schopenhauer and dealt with the 'world as idea' as the next phase in examining solipsism."
#141 again with this wittgenstein (dionysus) "Aesthetics,Ethics and Religion are ancient, and any one who uses Wittgenstein as an excuse not to study them really is lazy."
#143 Re: wittgenstein (Mark Lewis) "Have you ever had thai green curry? I haven't. Describe it to me."
#145 Re: wittgenstein (Thomas Tynan) "to know the truth we run into the epistomological and hermeneutical problem of our cultural biases"
#150 Re: wittgenstein (Paul Trejo) "the burden of proof is on the skeptics - and they can't perform without stepping on themselves"
#153 Hmm....limits of knowledge (James Traxler) "Is it not impossible to make the statement 'There are limits to what I can know' with any philosophical certainty at all?"
#156 Re: wittgenstein  (Paul Trejo) "If we try to be Objective, and are sensitive to ethnocentrism, then there is no reason we can't continually improve our Science of Philosophy."
Replies provoked by #138 and #153 in the above
#149 Re: wittgenstein, religion, science (Saicho) "the critical  thing here is the ideas involved that are behind the language -- not the language per se." Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct
#182 Wittgenstein, talking, understanding (Schmidt) "a paradox of philosophy: arguments are loudest when evidence is most scarce."        Gary Cziko  'Universal Selection Theory'      Thomas West's book In the Mind's Eye
#183 ..proof, chaos, limits of knowledge (Schmidt) "limiting results are 'gems of human knowledge'."
#185 Re: Wittgenstein, talking, understanding (Bill Doxey) "something INTERESTING about the mind"
#200 Re: Wittgenstein, talking, understanding (Saicho) "in philosophy, particularly ontology, nothing is built and validated, systems and cosmologies are merely talked about."
#203 Re: Wittgenstein, talking, understanding (Bill Doxey) "Science is metaphor. The world is metaphor?"
#233 Re: Wittgenstein, talking, understanding (Saicho) 'science can be seen as metaphor for what is considered to be "real" and  "knowable".'

Metaphor (see Tree of Knowledge [#182] and Dog [#185], #203, #233)
#309 All is Metaphor  (Mark Brown) "it seems hard to say that  ALL is metaphor . . . though, I agree that a whole lot is metaphor."
#321 Re: All is Metaphor (Saicho) "metaphor is a specialized form of language having to do with generating through imagery a feeling for what the author is intending"
#330 Re: All is Metaphor (Bill Doxey) "A good metaphor requires a creative slant which USES ambiguity to clarify."
#332 Re: All is Metaphor (Saicho) "[I] believe that his [Bill Doxey] thoughts on metaphor are similar to my own"
#328 Metaphor, mind, Arbib (Schmidt) the "cybernetic metaphor" which deals with humans as being machines
#334 Re: Metaphor, mind, Arbib  (Saicho) "Does it really  matter if the mind IS a machine?"
#335 Re: Metaphor, mind, Arbib It does not really matter if the mind is a "machine"
#338 Re: All is Metaphor (Mark Brown) "If a metaphor isn't an abstraction, what is it then?"
#339 Re: All is Metaphor (Mark Brown) Metaphors tell us something about the essence of
                                          things through comparison."
#465 Re: All is Metaphor (Robert Parr) For a sample of opinions try Metaphor and Thought, Andre Ortony, editor
The discussion of metaphor led into some discussion of Mind as Machine, go to the: Philosophy of Mind Thread.
 

Ryle
#353 mind/ryle (Charles Hobbs) "I am wondering of any of the group members have considered the position of Gilbert Ryle (as found in his THE CONCEPT OF MIND, 1949)."

#366 ..Ryle, introspection, objectivity (Schmidt) "reduced reliance on the fruits of introspection (subjective) and increased reliance on behavioral psychology (objective)" 
Return to Wittgenstein from the: Philosophy of Mind Thread.
#431 Re: On Freud (Robert Parr) "I've found a world of clarity and humanity in Wittgenstein and I won't be going back to Freud, except perhaps to note to Platonic dualisms that I suspect are there."
#433 2 computers in the Grand Canyon or vice versa (Robert Parr) Wittgenstein's side, the North Rim, is called 'naturalism' #500 books about Wittgenstein (Schmidt)  5 books on my desk that contain interpretations of Wittgenstein
#503 Re: books about Wittgenstein (Tony Nickles) Anybody read Hanna Fenichel on Wittenstein?
#508 2 books about Wittgenstein (Schmidt) Wittgenstein, Mind, and Meaning by Meredith Williams
Companion to Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' by Garth Hallett
#516 Connecting/maintaining word and meaning (Tony Nickles) Pears is excellent in explaining what he does, but that is only part of the game
#517 thinking--'private' or personal (Tony Nickles) on overlooking something about 'the private language argument'
#520 science and art, morality, and theology (Tony Nickles) a scientific understanding of conceptualizing?
#521 2 books and reading Wittgenstein (Tony Nickles) warning: beware of anything that is 'very
readable' in terms of Wittgenstein's texts
#537 Re: 2 books about Wittgenstein (Robert Parr) Wittgenstein was definitely against half-baked mixtures of science and philosophy such as that proposed By Russell.
#534  reading Wittgenstein (Schmidt) would Wittgenstein have been able to imagine a machine thinking if he had lived to 1999?
#575 Re: reading Wittgenstein (Tony Nickles) if isn't doing science, is he still worth reading for a scientist?
#580 Re: re-reading Wittgenstein (Saicho) Justus Hartnack's 'Wittgenstein and Modern Philosophy'
#585 The 'essence' of language (Tony Nickles) the investigation does remain open for philosophy (and science, and pyschology, and linguistics, and...)
#586 Re: re-reading Wittgenstein (Robert Parr) Wittgenstein on Mind and Language by David Stern
Ludwig Wittgenstein and The False Prison by David Pears.....and others on Wittgenstein
#589 rough edges of maintaining meaning (Tony Nickles) a few sentences could be troublesome
#594 Re: rough edges of maintaining meaning (Robert Parr) Wittgenstein's use of 'grammar' was notoriously hard to pin down
#607 Witt's 'grammar'--'limits' of language (Tony Nickles) In the Tractatus Wittgenstein was looking for the limits by looking at structure. In Phlosophical Investigations he sees just that a word's grammar isn't logical or fixed by form.


There was some discussion of other philosophers that I have not assembled into a Thread. Eventually it came back to Wittgenstein and may fit with the Parr/Nickles material above:
#590 'Old' fresh thoughts--the style of Witt/Hegel. (Tony Nickles) the style of a dialogued confession.
#593 Re: 'Old' fresh thoughts--the style of Witt/Hegel (Robert Parr) I want to undertand what Wittgensteins has to say Here is another return to Wittgenstein from
#437  Re: On Freud (Schmidt) Freud, metaphor, Wittgenstein, PHILOSOPHY IN THE FLESH
#438 magic decoder ring (Christopher Furlong) to understand Wittgenstein, read Frege and Bertrand Russell
#469 Re: magic decoder ring (Robert Parr) comments on the garden variety Platonic/Cartesian idea of language
#471 Edelman, Wittgenstein, language (Schmidt) "If formal systems are unable to reproduce the power of human language, then what is the trick that biological brains use to produce language?"

#440 Russell, Wittgenstein, Penrose (Schmidt) on the "common errors" that Wittgenstein avoided

Another point of return from the: Philosophy of Mind Thread.
#464 Re: On Faith - was: looking for answers:To Saicho (Saicho) did Wittgenstein discuss something one might call a 'meta-language game'? would not 'belief' have an all encompassing meaning in that system?

Go to a thread that starts with Richard Rorty praising Wittgensten [#474] and then drifts into AI and robots.
#474 Re: Rorty (Saicho) Rorty states that the three most important philosophers of this century are Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey.


Comments on Wittgenstein/science/philosophy/language that started from the Philosophy of Science Thread
#569 Re: information and meaning (Robert Parr) Descartes didn't start the process of division of reality; he just
exaggerated it.  Wittgenstein eliminated the division of reality.
#574 language theory in philosophy (Schmidt) Maybe Wittgenstein's fundamental insight about language was that philosophers would be unable to guess a theory of language. Wittgenstein as a frustrated Functionalist.
#587 Re: language theory in philosophy (Robert Parr) Wittgenstein used the heuristic device of solipsism to explore the limits of language
#588 the heuristic device of solipsism (Schmidt) From the broadest perspective of life, solipsism is inferior to realism, but when we are engaged in day-to-day matters, including much of our use of language, then a "solipsism of the present moment" is in control and all language becomes MY language.
#591 Re: the heuristic device of solipsism (Robert Parr) disputes between Idealists, Soliposists and Realists
#592 Free Will, Wittgenstein, intentionality (Schmidt) Dennett in his book "Elbow Room" centers on the idea of control.
#595 Re: Free Will, Wittgenstein, intentionality (Robert Parr) Kai Nelson, Naturalism Without Foundations
#596 brain, mind, naturalism (Schmidt) The game of matching up those unfamiliar microscale "deterministic molecules" to our subjectively familiar macro minds is where all the challenge and excitement resides.


#623 PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS (Charles Hobbs) I have started investigating the PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS
#625 PI (Charles Hobbs) a reference to TRACTATUS LOGICO-PHILOSOPHICUS in PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS?
#626 PI (Charles Hobbs) mention of the TRACTATUS by name in PI (in context of how a simple formal system cannot capture the complexity of human language "games")
#627 Re: PI (Tony Nickles) it is an attack on the idea that significance is some 'thing', instead of a consequence
#632 Re:PI (Robert Parr) "Logic thus seemed to be irrelevant to the study of substantive problems." from Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge, Charles Arthur Willard
#633 PI (Charles Hobbs) should I be looking at his "blue and brown books"?
#634 correction (Charles Hobbs) appears to be the FIRST time Wittgenstein uses the phrase "language-game"
#635 wittgenstein (Charles Hobbs) What is your opinion of the Hackett (sp?) commentary?
#639 Philosophical Investigations (Charles Hobbs)  "A philosophical problem has the form: 'I don't know my way about'."
#642 Re: wittgenstein (Tony Nickles) I would only warn strongly to stick to your own ideas first, and only turn to commentaries after that
#643 Re: PI (Tony Nickles) I'm kicking around Marx and Wittgenstein currently
#644 Re: wittgenstein (Dawn Williams) books by PMS Hacker
#645 Re: Philosophical Investigations (Tony Nickles) look for other times Witt examines other formulations of being lost,
confused, not knowing how to continue
#646 Re: Philosophical Investigations (Robert Parr)  It is like we are in on old town with many lanes and byways and "I don't know my way about."
#650 more Philosophical Investigations (Schmidt) When we play a meta-language game in which we try to understand how we use language, our great felicity in everyday language use becomes useless.

#629 The Jew of Linz (Tony Nickles) the attitudes and desires, and the actions, have some interplay and deserve some analysis
#630 Re: The Jew of Linz (Schmidt) links to some reviews of the book
#631 Re: The Jew of Linz (Robert Parr) Cavell wrote a book, Must We Mean What We Say
#636 Re: The Jew of Linz (Bill Doxey) Herman Goering is alleged to have said: "Whenever anyone mentions culture, I reach for my pistol."
#637 Re: The Jew of Linz (Tony Roberts) it would be a mistake to assume that Wittgenstein was more than a minor influence on George Lakoff
#638 Re: The Jew of Linz (Robert Parr) a 'cognitive linguist' at Berkley suggested that perhaps Wittgenstein was too complicated for the audience the book (Philosophy in the Flesh) was aimed at.
        email To George Lakoff From Robert Parr
#648 Re: The Jew of Linz (Tony Roberts) These are laudable applications of cognitive semantics, though strictly speaking I wouldn't call them scientific in nature.

#641 Essence as 'family resemblances' (Tony Nickles) I think 'family resemblances' does replace 'essence' in a number of ways
#647 Re: Essence as 'family resemblances' (Robert Parr) Cavell is a traditional  epistemologist in one chapter, and an excellent example of one.
#649  Traditional Epistemology (Tony Nickles) I wonder what you mean by 'is a traditional epistemologist'?