Last night was delightfully strange.  On Thursday evenings a few of us, using philosophy as an excuse, meet at Taste of Paris Cafe in Mundelein.  The purpose is to reflect upon a topical discussion of earlier in the week, while we drink wine or coffee.  I never know who will show up or if anyone will appear.  Usually there are three or four of us.

I showed up to find that a special dinner event was behind held at the Cafe, red table cloths, extra wait staff, a hubbub in the dining room.  I wondered if I should even be there under the circumstances.  Jennifer made me feel welcome, insisting that I take a seat while I waited for any others to show.

A waiter brought me a glass of riesling. While I waited I opened a slim book by Ludwig Wittgenstein entitled On Certainty.  This book changed my life, saved my life in my college days when I was struggling with the emotional straight jacket of evangelical fundamentalism.  The pages of the old book have underlined passages, notes in the margins.

The book is an extended meditation on what is meant by being certain, by the many ways of viewing what is going on when we make a statement-with-confidence.  When I say that I am certain, or when I feel a sense of certainty, what could that mean?  I sipped my wine and read.

Wittgenstein speaks of using language in terms of playing all kinds of games each with its own set of rules.  There are rules for baseball, and for checkers; also rules for conducting a trial in court, or when a broker buys shares of stock for a client.  You can see the usefulness of the game analogy.  There is a logic behind every game, every language game is seen in how the rules structure the manner of play.

Here are several passages that I read:

29. Practice in the use of the rule also shews what is a mistake in its employment.

30. When someone has made sure of something, he says; “Yes, the calculation is right”. but he did not infer that from his condition of certainty.  One does not infer how things are from one’s own certainty.

Certainty is as it were a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.

A discussion via email yesterday came to mind when reading the first statement.  Gary commented upon the usage of language that is extreme, such as s**t speculating on the insincere, deceptive use of the term especially with written communication.  I suspected that Gary had in mind much social media political discourse.  I replied that I very rarely use this and other words when writing because I know how traumatic, that the reader suffers a miniscule bit of psychic injury.  To use, while seeming not to use the term by abbreviating with asterisks is a bending/breaking of the rules of that language game.  Why would I or anyone else play a game with a partner who is really intent upon a language of assault?

The lines is section 30 are a reminder that a statement made with certainty is an assertion of truth about the exterior world.  The tone of voice, the sensation of confidence that transfuses the body, and even the emotive language with which the assertion is laced– has nothing at all to do with the truth of what is being said of the external world.  “–one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified.”

So when I read or receive via media any statement of a political nature, I’ll keep in mind that the tone of voice, the angry or panic’d expression of face, the gesticulations–has nothing at all to do with the facts.  (The facts may well be the exact opposite of what is asserted.)

One additional quotation without any comment from me.

73. But what is the difference between mistake and mental disturbance?  Or what is the difference between my treating it as a mistake and my treating it as a mental disturbance?

74. Can we say: a mistake doesn’t only have a cause, it also has a ground?  i.e., roughly: when someone makes a mistake,this can be fitted into what he knows aright.

After a few minutes Jeff showed up and we talked about music and about life for at least an hour.  The evening was well spent.