"Knowledge of the third kind:"

- It is not theoretical knowledge (a "knowing-that" in Ryle's 1949, terminology), for it is knowledge that is only present to us in our everyday social practices.
- But it is not simply knowledge of a skill or craft either (a "knowing-how"), for it is a joint kind of knowledge, knowledge-held-in-common with others.
- It is its own kind of knowledge, sui generis, that cannot be reduced to either of the other two.
- It consists in forms, or ways, or 'tools' of communication, that we create and sustain all unawares amongst ourselves, either as a cultural group, or as a special conversational group within a culture (a special "form of life").
- Rather than to do with us relating ourselves to our physical surroundings, it is primarily to do with us - even when all alone - relating ourselves to each other as members of such a group and coordinating our actions together.
- Thus, it is a kind of knowledge one has from within a social situation, a group, an institution, or a society, and which exists only in that situation. We might call it a "knowing-from-within."
- It determines what at any one moment we anticipate will happen next within any situation we are in, not just what will surprise us and what we will merely find familiar, but also what we will find disgusting, frightening, as well as delightful and want to celebrate, what we will count as objective and what subjective, what real and what unreal, what ordinary and what extraordinary, and so on.

In LM:

Wittgenstein (1953) talks of a particular "form of life" with its associated "language-game."

In such a process as this, "we want to understand something that is already in plain view. For this is what we seem in some sense not to understand," says Wittgenstein (1953, no.89). We seek a way of talking which leads to "just that understanding which consists in 'seeing connections'" (no.122), which can draw a client's attention to some of the other possibilities open to them that their current forms of talk led them to overlook.

But, if we view people's words in their speaking as deeds, as actions, as doing something - rather than as already spoken forms or patterns - then we can see people's living, voicing of their words as serving "countless different kinds of use" (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.23).

Wittgenstein (1981) claims that "only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning" (1981, no.173)...

Wittgenstein's (1953) comment: "Let the use of words teach you their meaning" (p.220).

These are all concepts with "blurred edges" (as Wittgenstein (1953, no.71) put it in discussing our knowledge of games); they are 'things' or 'styles' that we know in practice, without the practice yielding up to us, any single, fixed and distinct picture upon which it is seemingly based.

As Wittgenstein (1953) remarked: "One gives examples and intends them to be taken in a particular way. - I do not, however, mean by this that he is supposed to see in those examples that common thing which I - for some reason - was unable to express; but that he is now to employ those examples in a particular way" (no.71).

In MSB:

"The philosopher is the man who has to cure himself of many sicknesses of the understanding before he can arrive at the notions of the sound human understanding" (Wittgenstein, 1967, no.302).

"The work of a philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose" (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.127).

"A new word is like a new seed sown on the ground of discussion" (Wittgenstein, 1980, p.2e).

Some one says to us: "I really mean every word I say, but please don't take me seriously." The anticipations raised by the first part of the utterance are dashed by the second; it is its logical grammar that is all wrong. This is what Wittgenstein (1953) means when he says: "Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is" (no.373); only here, the 'object' is not anything like a physical object as such at all, but some 'thing' momentarily 'within' both us and our circumstances, to do with anticipating what next might be a 'fitting' continuation. Thus, what kind of knowledge should we expect from such investigations?

What we require is a clarification of that third kind of knowledge of the "order of possibilities" (Wittgenstein, 1953, no.97) available to us at any one moment "from within" our circumstances.

Thus, instead of being concerned with explaining (in theory), say, 'How did we get here?' (with the aim of being able to control such an outcome, causally and deliberately, to repeat it or not as desired), our concern is merely with that of describing the kind of practical circumstances conducive to us saying: "'Now I know how to go on'..." (no.154).

A description that is important to us, then, says Wittgenstein (1980), "depends on whether what one calls a 'wrong description' is a description which does not accord with established usage - or one which does not accord with the practice of the person giving the description. Only in the second case does a philosophical conflict arise," (I, no.548).

But what Wittgenstein has done for us is, in his Philosophical Investigations, to show us how we might proceed: He "demonstrate[s] a method, by examples... Problems are solved (difficulties eliminated, not a single problem," he says. "There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies" (no.133), and a 'toolbox' full of an indefinite number of 'tools' will be required.

It is this kind of knowledge that only shows up in the boundary zones between people, that Wittgenstein wished to question, criticize, and somehow, 'put right'. But what is involved here? For we don't want to know any new facts about either the world or ourselves. Problems of this kind "are, of course, not empirical problems;" he says, "they are solved, rather, by looking into the workings of our language, and in such a way as to make us recognize those workings: in spite of an urge to misunderstand them. The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known" (no.109).

Wittgenstein (1953) views his aim in philosophy in the same way: "The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness" (no.255) - where the aim of the treatment is, not so much to solve problems, as to dissolve them, to make them "completely disappear... [to give] philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question... [Where in those discoveries] there is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies" (no.133).