(Are blog post titles taken from song lyrics as annoying to some people as Facebook status updates taken from song lyrics? Protests will be heeded.)
Anyway, I read very slowly, which has its disadvantages. So I've been looking into techniques for reading more quickly. Some of these involve not reading every word and counting on being able to, as it were, predict (or unconsciously guess) what the missing words are likely to be. This is not at all how Wittgenstein wanted to be read. He didn't aim to provide easily extractable content. And there's something questionable about the idea of identifying the alleged content, even though I think it's reasonable to point out when the content is not what some people say it is. So one qualification I would add to my first thoughts on PI 217 is that no gloss should ever be taken as a substitute for reading and thinking through the original. His aim, after all, was to work on the will, and no list of points made will do this work. (I don't mean that we must give him whatever he wanted because he is Saint Ludwig. I mean that his work cannot be judged (or used in any way, really) without being approached as it was intended to be approached. We wouldn't be using or judging his work if we took it some other way of our own.)
Secondly, the corbel that supports nothing is like a piece of machinery that does no work. Asking for a philosophical account of rule-following is idling, the question an occasion of language going on holiday. But there are reasons why we ask, as there are reasons why someone might want a purely decorative corbel. These reasons have to do with history, I think Wittgenstein believed. And I think TLP 6.371 and 6.372 can shed light on this. We want explanations because we think everything can be explained, so we ask even where no answer can be given, and we are inclined to accept whatever 'answer' is given, even if it really tells us nothing. (We might even mistakenly think of Wittgenstein as developing a kind of foundationalist theory.) We like to have the appearance of explanation as we might like the look of corbels (or spoilers on cars), even when no work is done by them.
Presumably we like the look of corbels because of some association they have with something like grandeur. Do we like explanations for the same kind of reason? Or is it metaphysics that has this appeal? If so, why? When a metaphysical-sounding question is not in fact a scientific one (in which case it's OK, I would think) then is it actually a kind of subconscious yearning (is that too strong a word?) for something like a creation myth? Or a certain kind of religion?
song titles are necessary.
ReplyDeletecan you reframe your final questions without using the word 'metaphysics'?
Thanks, j. Hmm. Speculative? Philosophical? In general I mean the kind of question that Wittgenstein took to be characteristic of philosophy, and in particular I mean such questions as "How am I able to follow a rule?" and maybe "Why does the sun rise every day?" (or whatever question might be 'answered' by "Because of the laws of nature").
ReplyDeletei know—i was just thinking about the term of criticism, 'metaphysical' / 'metaphysics'. it doesn't seem to travel very well from audience to audience.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Maybe it's better to avoid any general name and just to examine questions one at a time. If a pattern emerges we could then see it without having to label it.
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ReplyDeleteAnd the stock exchange is the only thing he's qualified to quote us
ReplyDelete(Just kidding.)
When a metaphysical-sounding question is not in fact a scientific one (in which case it's OK, I would think) then is it actually a kind of subconscious yearning (is that too strong a word?) for something like a creation myth? Or a certain kind of religion?
This cuts both ways, I think, and it's hard to tell which way is either quantitatively more common or philosophically more problematic than the other. I mean that it is equally possible to yearn mistakenly for a banal, scientific, unmetaphysical explanation for some experience or impression that just is aesthetic, metaphysical, or otherwise "nebulous" in some way or another.
Cioffi discusses this in Section IV of his "Wittgenstein and the Fire-Festivals". One of his examples is someone's being impressed (we might say "metaphysically" impressed) by the awesome look of the night sky and going on to train as an astronomer ("indoors monitoring bleeps", as Cioffi puts it). Another example is someone's being enamoured of the stereotypical romantic image of ancient China in Western popular culture and going on to study the largely banal political and economic history of ancient China. Cioffi wants to put in a good word for thinking that this kind of inquiry simply misdiagnoses the nature of what the inquiry is meant to give answers to, and he argues that this is analogous to Wittgenstein's criticisms of Frazer for misdiagnosing the deep and sinister impressions made by rituals such as the Beltane fire festival. It may be quite hard to give oneself psychical "permission" to just be satisfied with one's impression of the rituals, the night sky, or whatnot, and not go on to paint it to oneself as some kind of unscientific or escapist "wallowing" for which there is a cure - much less a cure that is not worse than the disease.
To your question whether the misdiagnosed object of yearning is "something like a creation myth, or a certain kind of religion", Cioffi says that it is "something like Spengler's prime symbol or Goethe's Urphänomen". The influence of both Spengler and Goethe on Wittgenstein has of course been well documented.
But what about the sham corbel - doesn't Wittgenstein mean to criticise it, to slash it away with Occam's razor like his architectural role model Loos? I think it's important to note that, in the passage under discussion, he remarks only that "we sometimes demand explanations for the sake not of their content, but of their form". Not that we unfortunately do so, that we regrettably do so, or anything of the sort. Noting that we do sometimes demand explanations for the sake of their form may itself be one of those situations where we reach bedrock and say that this "simply is what we do". (There is not, so to say, any "explanation that would be this explanation, only demanded by us for the sake of its content".)
Secondly, the corbel that supports nothing is like a piece of machinery that does no work. Asking for a philosophical account of rule-following is idling, the question an occasion of language going on holiday. But there are reasons why we ask, as there are reasons why someone might want a purely decorative corbel.
ReplyDeleteYes, exactly. When Wittgenstein discusses Heidegger's "The Nothing noths" in the "Dictation for Schlick", he uses his customary image of an idling wheel, but he asks the Heideggerian using such language: why precisely are you using it, what is involved in your using it? And not only will he stay around for an answer (unlike the average harrumphing positivist critic of Heidegger), but goes on to say: "I am ready to go along with anything, but at least I must know this much. I have nothing against your attaching an idle wheel to the mechanism of our language, but I do want to know whether it is idling or with what other wheels it is engaged."
I think there may be a danger here of importing our knowledge of Wittgenstein as a person - his being influenced by Loos, designing and building a modernist piece of architecture himself, etc. - to the interpretation of his philosophy. (A bit ironically, you yourself have traditionally been keen on warning against this danger, to the extent that I've felt you've overdone the warnings sometimes. The fact that even I see the danger may hint that it is real in this case!)
In the Lectures on Aesthetics, I, §§33-34, Rhees asks Wittgenstein about his "theory of deterioration" and Wittgenstein replies: "What I do is describe different things called deterioration. I might approve deterioration - 'All very well your fine musical culture; I'm very glad children don't learn harmony now.' [...] [T]he word may be used without any affective element; you use it to describe a particular kind of thing that happened. It was more like using a technical term - possibly, though not at all necessarily, with a derogatory element in it."
Similarly, he might approve of a sham corbel, I think.
Thanks, Tommi.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point about it cutting both ways, I think, although it's a point that deserves more consideration than I've had time to give it yet.
As for the distinction between Wittgenstein's personal views and his philosophical remarks, as you say, it's one I think is important. But if we want to understand why he makes these remarks it might help to understand him. If he has deliberately left his own judgment out of it then we will misunderstand the remark if we read such a judgment back in to it. But if we want to know why he made the remark in the first place then it might, I think, help to know his views on corbels and the like. (Of course it might not help, and might even be misleading.)