Excellent comment!

it rather looks like you have a hidden agenda there

I think one of ET's strengths is that if forces out (maybe unseen) agendas but without necessarily "becoming all puritanical", which would be religious, but rather using our enlightenment brains to always search for (and find!) synthesis.

Ted had the same idea as me: Wittgenstein.  Here's my quote.

A Synopsis of Wittgenstein's Logic of Language, Chapters 7-10

Games and Family Resemblances

Logic looks at the use of language from one point of view only: "what happens considered as a game".  (cf. PG p. 68, 66)

But think of just how varied games are: from chess with its strictly defined rules to the simple play of a child throwing a ball into the air and catching it.

Consider ... the proceedings that we call 'games'.  I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on.  What is common to them all? -- Don't say: "There must be something common, or they would not be called 'games'" -- but look and see whether there is anything common to all.  (PI § 66)

Tennis and jacks have a ball in common.  There is no ball in hopscotch, but there are "jacks".  There are no jacks in jump rope, but there is hopping.  Leapfrog is child's play (but there is no equipment, e.g. no ball, jacks or rope).  In volleyball there are no racquets, but there is a ball and a net.  Badminton has no ball, but there are racquets and a net.  There is no net in bridge and no playing cards in tennis, but bridge and doubles tennis are played by teams.  There are no teams in solitaire (or, patience), but there are playing cards.  There are no cards in chess, but an individual may play chess "against himself".  Jacks is not played with a dog, but fetch is sometimes played with a ball.  There is no winning or losing in fetch, but there is exercise in it for the dog.

There are countless similarities between particular games and between types of games.  But don't take Wittgenstein's word for this.  Look at some games for yourself.

For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that.  (ibid.)

All of us were taught that a common name must designate a common nature.  That is why our English teachers insisted that we give "essences" rather than examples when we defined words at school.  But Wittgenstein looked -- not at what philosophers have claimed -- but at the facts of our language.  And finding there, not something "in which they do not differ but are all alike" (Meno 72c), but only similarities among applications of words, he invented this simile:

I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than 'family resemblances' [or 'family likeness' (<acronym>BB p. 17)] ... And I shall say: games form a family.  (ibid. § 67)

So that, when we compare using language to playing games, we should remind ourselves that games (and the rules of games) are not alike in all respects -- any more than the members of any other "family" are alike in all respects.

*

But if anyone insists: "Still, games must have something in common", he can be told that there is indeed one thing that all games really do have in common: a word -- i.e. they are all called 'games'.  Take that word away, however --.

*

Resemblances between members of a family will overlap and intersect in a variety of places (ibid.), but in some instances they may not exist at all.... The principal criticism of this simile might be its lack of clear application -- what exactly is being compared to what?  But this metaphor is more a suggestive than an exact comparison (i.e. this is not a case of one-to-one correlation, although Wittgenstein did give one such example).

There are various criteria for inclusion in a human family (belief in common ancestry is the usual one, with adoption being another), but in the case of language there is only one criterion for inclusion in a family -- namely, bearing the same family name (e.g. the common name 'game') however it was that our natural history bequeathed this name to anything.  Wittgenstein is not here suggesting a theory of common ancestry: that is not the comparison he is making with this metaphor.

Note 6:  Some rules, we might want to say, have their foundation in what is practical: the corner grocer can only stock so many apples if he is to remain in business; or indeed in what is empirically possible: a game that required participants to leap 20 feet straight up into the air would be a game that no human being could play.  [If some very general facts of nature were different; cf. the game with the word 'to know' in Parable of The Born-Blind.]

But there are many different kinds of rules of the game, e.g. the rule in chess that if you touch a piece you must move that piece and not some other seems different in kind from the rule that the bishop is permitted only to move along diagonals.  The rule that the volleyball must be returned to the opposition server under the net not over it is similar to the touch rule in chess.  Some rules, we might want to say, are a matter of etiquette.  They appear to be somehow outside the game itself; nonetheless, they are binding.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.

Thanks for the considered comment, Metatone.  My hidden agenda, if I have one, is that I see the EU as having been an extraordinary success up until now, and one I would very much like to see grow and develop still further, but that it may be headed for the rocks for a number of reasons which I have already touched on in other responses here.

Chief of these reasons are as follows:

1.  It has been enlarged without a prior streamlining and consolidation of decision making processes which means it risks becoming increasingly stuck in a morass of indecision in a world which is becoming ever more fast moving and which requires agile and visionary leadership if the EU is to achieve a political and diplomatic influence commensurate with its economic importance

2. The remoteness, complexity, slowness and opacity of the decision making processes means there is an increasing disengagement by the public from the EU even in previously very enthusiastic members like Ireland.

3. It has been seen to be ineffective when crises have emerged over Iraq, Srebrenica, Darfur, Guantanamo, renditions etc. - where the "values" people claim are embedded in  the EU project have been violated.  People will rightly ask whether the ineffectiveness of the EU on such issues is actually a deliberate strategy to mask the fact that such "humanitarian" issues are really of no concern and that the real business is about looking after the interests of the EU elite.

The Reform treaty should be a crucial document aimed at addressing these issues and ensuring that the EU becomes a more effective actor on the world stage and more accountable to its people, who in turn become more engaged and identified with it.  Does anyone truly belief the Reform treaty, even if ratified will achieve this?

In my view, a few key things might help to address these problems.

i) Possibly a directly elected President who becomes a visible embodiment and figurehead for what Europe is all about.  People want to know who is in charge and are not inspired by Government by committee.

ii) A European Commission operating more like an elected  Government - where commissioners are grilled by the Parliament on a more regular basis and are dismissed on an individual basis if they lose the confidence of Parliament.

iii) Greater transparency on the budgeting process and cost benefit studies on new spending proposals

iv) Replacement of NATO with a common European defense force and greater harmonisation/cooperation between police forces particularly on common threats like terrorism

v) Political parties campaigning on a Pan European basis and laying out their stall as to what future direction of Europe should be - particularly for the election of the Directly Elected President.  In this context the Greens, Socialists, Christian Democrats, Liberals etc. can argue their respective cases as to what direction Europe should go in and therefore what "identity" it will have.

Vi)  Speaking sociologically (and without a personal agenda on this!) I think the religion issue will be a major if not always openly articulated factor in whether countries like Turkey will be allowed to join.

Unlike Jerome, I do not think this is a technical issue to be decided by technocratic elite, but rather a political issue which should be put to popular vote.  The very fact that Jerome can speak of this as a technical issue highlights (to me) how out of touch the technocrat elite can be with popular sentiment and why there is such a growing popular distrust of what the technocrats are up to!  Ultimately it is for the people to decide what the boundaries (geographic, political, ethnic, religious, cultural) of the EU should be -- and hence its identity.

Far from engaging in an exercise in self-aggrandizement here because I felt I had touched on a hidden taboo I think it is incredibly arrogant for a bureaucratic elite to think that they can slip Turkey into the EU based on some technical economic and legal criteria without consulting with how the electorate feel about it.  

Including  a major country like Turkey (or Russia) would make a major change to the social, cultural and religious balance of the EU - and hence its identity - and the very fact that it can be considered to be merely a matter for the elite to decide highlights just what is wrong with the EU as a democratic polity.

I hope this elitist "we know what's good for you" approach does not permeate though the general mindset in the ET because, if so, there is no place for me here.


Index of Frank's Diaries