Note 118

An analytic fact describes itself, but cannot stand outside of itself to do so; while a synthetic fact describes something else, but must stand within itself to do so. So a fact is a fly bottle? Are we then relegated to interpretations? An unknowable fact within (a language game within) an unknowable fact?

And so we stand outside that fact and must take ourselves within it.

Note 117

What is a nation? It is a set of institutions that support a way of life for a group of people, which enables cultures and practices to form which become identified with, and reproduce the nation.

What is an institution? It is a set of conventions - codified, habitual, or customary - that defines the social context within which our actions are defined.

What creates institutions? Ends - the combination of necessary and ideal ends at any point in time. Power just is resourcing to achieve these ends.

So the trinity of discourse, institution and process, can be parsed into ends, social meaning, and agency. Each governed by parameters with endogenous and exogenous elements. Together they constitute the form of social life.

The interaction of what is stable and unstable over time creates change. Combinations of leverage factors in context determine what will be stable and what is unstable. There are probably little general rules to follow.

Note 116

What is the language game for life? There is no language game- how strange!

Philosophy 1

Philosophy belongs to the class of problems in which an affirmative answer is possible by necessity, but in which verification is impossible by definition.

Note 115

Philosophy is the paradox of the necessity of coherence (because there can be no absolute truth) and it's impossibility (because all systems of truth must refer outside themselves). This gap results in the dualism of idea and becoming, which is bridged by pragmatism. The system of ideas empirically refer to becoming to verify its latent assumptions, while becoming is a standalone entity which eludes characterisation, as a condition of its intelligibility. This provide our ideations with their unique quality, and their irresolvable dependence on means of verification that cannot be fully justified.

In short, pragmatism allows us to apply what theory requires without sufficient justification. We are left with coherence and forms of life.

Philosophical Investigations Note 3

"I know how the colour green looks to me": it is one thing to say that our use of language is determined by the coincidence of coherent structures in use, rather than correspondence at the granular level; it is another to say that there is no corresponding truth of the matter, or that to speak of it would be nonsense - even though it may be unverifiable, we would have an idea of what verification could be.

Although this too is problematic, and presupposes that we know what a subjective view entails. Ie, if it is subjective - would it be possible for someone else to gain a representation of it? Presumably that was how language was possible at all.

***
"Private sensations are not objects that we refer to, because referring to them becomes irrelevant if only we experience them." This depends on whether these experiences are necessary for the coherence of what we say so that we understand what another means when they talk about their experiences. We certainly assume correspondence as the best explanation for shared coherence. This inter-subjective space forms the basis of our manner of speaking, both of subjective and 'objective' reality. Structural isomorphism in the way in which we relate the internal to the external is embodied in language. So again - what content is constituent to this structural equivalence?

***
This is not to say that language just is embodied isomorphism. "No private language" claims must be accompanied by the claim that language can only be used for communication, not interpretation or constructing meaning.

Reason

Reason cannot be the ultimate basis of ends- at some point it has to stop. However, reasons are a tool to weigh, cohere and trade-off ends which may be irreconcilable. In doing so, we act with procedural reason- it forms a framework within which our ends are assessed, while simultaneously forming the basis for principles which determine what our ends ought to be. Hence our preferences are transmuted into reasons, in the formation of this framework for action, which is not reducible to utility, although utility may form a basis for reasoned action.

The key is that reason is not definitionally self-interested, but is characterised by an apositional stance, while the application of reason may be motivated by causes outside the framework of reasoned action itself. If ethics is the discussion of reasoned action, then the task of the utilitarian is to justify cause as reason.

Philosophical Investigations Note 2

In what sense are sensations private? Is it an a priori statement? What is being said? In this manner of speaking, the I of the social identity is not the I of the intention. They occupy different language games, and is a way to bifurcate the external/internal world of experience.

This points to the fact that the self is constituted by different functions that are tied together by language and underpinned by observed consistencies.

Sensations are not intentions, as we can be unaware of intentions, and they are descriptions of internal motivational structures.

***
Is it meaningless to say that "every rod has a length"? This presupposes a kind of contextual nominalism, where there is no property of length to which a rod belongs - it just is given as part of what a rod is - hence is tautological. He asks, can one imagine a rod without length?

But this is to ask the wrong question. One should ask: can one imagine length without a rod? For properties contain substance in thought, while substance contains properties in the way we think about the world.

***
Can one play language games with oneself? Why not? Can rules be arbitrary, and in what sense? The functioning of a language game is independent of the correspondence of its rules to an independent truth; rather, its form is a matter of structural isomorphism with the form of life, which is fulfilled within the use of private language.