Derek McDougall has posted a review of Kelly’s Wittgenstein anthology whereof I’ve previously blogged.
McDougall seems to like my own contribution to the anthology: he calls it “arguably the finest paper in the book … revealing full command of its material and exhibiting a sureness of approach that captures a distinctly Wittgensteinian point of view,” and says that it “manages to say more on this subject in 11 pages than some writers have achieved by allowing themselves the length of a short monograph.” So I self-indulgently link to his review. 
And now it’s available for purchase!
BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY! Seriously, this book is fucking golden! If Glenn Beck had at least 1% understanding of what he was talking about, he would push this instead of gold!
I haven’t looked forward to something so much since the release of the Super NES in 1990! BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!
I’m eager to know what McDougall is referring to when he says you end the paper with a discussion about metaphysics.
But I wonder how someone from Brazil will manage to get a hold of this book.
Amazon delivers.
Short version: I distinguish the bad sense of “metaphysics” in which logical grammar replaces metaphysics, from the good sense of “metaphysics” in which logical grammar is the right way to do metaphysics.
Will you give an example of metaphysics through logical grammar?
See this old post of mine (which I drew on for my 2nd piece in the book), noting especially where I say “Of course if you want to call this ungroundedness ‘the metaphysical nature of goodness,’ feel free, but be careful not to confuse this sort of metaphysics with the other.”
So reality just is the process of making sense?
I’m not sure what weight to lay on”process.”
How about: reality is sense-making? Or reality is the making of sense?
By “process” I meant something like the alteration between sympathy and pride (in Whitman’s sense). Maybe in McDowellian language it would go something like: reality is the exchange between idle concepts their active use.
That might be right.
I’m not sure what that means.
["Reality is sense-making"] might be right. I’m not sure what [the process version] means.
Then I’ll stick with “reality is sense-making.” How might it not be right?
How about: reality is the act of making sense?
Well, someone might say: the Battle of Helm’s Deep makes sense, but (polls to the contrary notwithstanding) it’s not real.
They would count as mistakenly believing it makes sense, just as a majority of people mistakenly believe they can think an illogical proposition.
Do you wish to claim that no false statement makes sense? Wouldn’t that be equivalent to claiming that all truths are a priori?
Do you wish to claim that no false statement makes sense?
I want to claim that a subject can believe false statements make sense without them actually making sense. But yeah, strictly speaking, no false statement makes sense. If reality is sense-making, and what is false is not reality, then false statements cannot make sense.
Wouldn’t that be equivalent to claiming that all truths are a priori?
I don’t think so. Temporally, the act of making sense would land in between the a priori judgment and the a posteriori judgment. Making sense doesn’t happen prior to experience or after experience. It just is the experience — it is the reality itself.
And so we might call believing-a-false-statement-makes-sense a ‘false experience’. No?
Maybe I missed the last question. Does the temporal nature of sense-making imply that all truths are prior to that experience? I just don’t see why that would necessarily be the case. Why couldn’t all truths be housed in the sense-making experience itself? Why would they have to be there beforehand?
Well, yes, if you grant those premises, the odd conclusion follows. But I was offering the oddness of the conclusion as a reason to doubt the first premise.
Okay, let me put it this way: Wouldn’t that be equivalent to claiming that all truths are analytic?
[...]I was offering the oddness of the conclusion as a reason to doubt the first premise.
I mean, it’s definitely odd, but is that enough reason to rule it out? It’s not to say that we can’t imagine what sense false statements would make as if they were real. It’s only to say that imagining and sense-making are qualitatively different activities.
Wouldn’t that be equivalent to claiming that all truths are analytic?
If analytic judgments are meaning-oriented and synthetic judgments are fact-oriented, then it would seem like all truths — given the sense-making-talk — would be analytic. But if logical grammar reveals the highest-level (or most deeply ingrained) facts available, and sense-making takes place through that lens, then all truths would be simultaneously analytic and synthetic.
So maybe I need to upgrade the claim: reality is sense-making through logical grammar. Yes?
Maybe not, if we had some good reason to accept the first premise, but do we?
Well, if “given the sense-making talk” means “given the sufficiency of reality for sense-making,” then the conclusion doesn’t follow. If instead “given the sense-making talk” means “given the sufficiency of reality for sense-making and vice versa,” then the conclusion follows but what’s described as “given” is just the first premise again, and that’s precisely what’s in dispute.
Maybe not, if we had some good reason to accept the first premise, but do we?
Well, I’ve upgraded the first premise to “reality is sense-making through logical grammar.” And I do think we have good reason to accept that. You say that logical grammar does not become metaphysics but instead is the right way to do metaphysics. So the nature of reality is — following your criteria — what you would see through the lens of logical grammar. Any account of reality must be a totality and so must include the act of seeing itself. Everything shaped by logical grammar makes sense. Therefore, reality is sense-making through logical grammar.
But those are all reasons for thinking that reality –> sense-making. (And that’s what we’ve already agreed on.) What are the reasons for thinking that sense-making –> reality?
What are the reasons for thinking that sense-making –> reality?
Well, I have upgraded the claim to sense-making through logical grammar –> reality. From there it’s pretty simple.
(1) The Head-On View is true.
(2) Sense-making is the link between sense-experience and the world.
(3) Sense-making through logical grammar touches the world.
(4) Whatever touches the world participates in the world.
(5) Whatever participates in the world is reality.
(6) Sense-making through logical grammar participates in the world.
(7) Sense-making through logical grammar is reality.
I worry that you’re equivocating between two senses of “making sense” — what we do when we make sense of the world, and what the world does when it makes sense. The kind of sense-making that could have a claim to be reality would have to be the second, but when you talk about sense-making touching the world you seem to mean the first. (Unless the world is, um, touching itself.)
Unless the world is, um, touching itself.
I do imagine a cosmic masturbation. But seriously, I agree that ‘touching’ causes confusion. (Not ‘confusion’ in the whether-or-not-the-world-should-feel-guilty-for-touching-itself sense.)
Hows this:
(1) The Head-On View is true.
(2) Sense-making is the link between sense-experience and the world.
(3) Sense-making through logical grammar participates in the world.
(4) Whatever participates in the world is reality.
(5) Sense-making through logical grammar participates in the world.
(6) Sense-making through logical grammar is reality.
Yes?
In a way, every thing touches itself.
Do you think Aristotle did this “logical grammar” approach, or you think it’s the job of analytical philosophers to prove aristotelian metaphysics through this “logical grammar” approach?
I think to a large extent Aristotle did use it, albeit not always explicitly.
In any sense of “real” in which “real” = “making sense”, the Battle of Helm’s Deep is in fact real (because it does in fact make sense). It’s not an historical event in which actually existing people fought actually existing orcs in an actually existing place, but it is real; it’s an event in a tale told in an actually existing book by a real person.
Upshot: trying to define people one disagrees with (perhaps rightly) out of rationality is no more honest or productive than it has ever been.
BTW, am I the only person who finds the word “arguably” annoying?
-Neil Parille
The one that bugs me more is “I would argue.” If they would, why don’t they?
Just read your chapter on rule-following. I love this stuff!
PS: I want it on my Kindle!