Let's say I call 'e' yellow. You say you know what I mean, and call 'f' green. But this makes no sense to me. Challenged, you claim to be doing the same thing I was doing. I smell a rat--are you making fun of me? Or just pretending to have understood what I meant? Or is it me that is missing some insight or imaginative discovery of yours? Or is something else going on? To what extent, or in what sense, can I accept that you are doing the same thing that I was doing if I don't at all share your view that 'f' is green?
It seems to me that we would have to have a conversation, and you would have to give me the kind of hints that people give when introducing someone to, say, a new kind of art. If I love Rothko or Pollock and you say that your five-year-old could have painted something as good, then I'll try to say and show you what I take to be so good about their work. You might get it, you might not. Much as if I were trying to teach my children to enjoy Shakespeare or philosophy. There isn't any fact we get to that shows it is good, like Wittgenstein's example of engineering in which there is a bridge that must not collapse. If the bridge supports traffic, it is a good bridge. There's nothing like that with philosophy (with, perhaps, rare exceptions when someone identifies an indisputable logical error) or literature or art. Or ethics. (Not that art is ethics. But the two are closer, at least in this regard, than either is to engineering considered in that kind of means-end, or meeting the objective/describable standard, way.)
Now what if you call suicide, as Chesterton does, "the ultimate and absolute evil" and I say that I know what you mean by "absolute evil" but disagree that the label is rightly applied to suicide? Perhaps I say that genocide is the ultimate and absolute evil. Are we talking past each other? It seems to me that we might be, but that only a conversation could make the answer clear. I don't mean that if we agree then by definition we are right in some sort of community-agreement-equals-truth kind of way. But if we agree that we did or did not mean the same thing by "absolute evil" then I don't see what grounds anyone else could have for saying we have got it wrong. Unless they join the conversation. Two uses are the same if they are like one another, and what is like what is a subjective (or inter-subjective) matter. Objectively, or as far as objectivity is concerned, everything is like everything else. So if saying that x is like y is going to have any point then there must be some relevant similarity. And relevance is (what I am calling) a subjective matter.
Which brings us to the question of (subjective) judgments of what things are like. What is the taste of pineapple? This. What is the taste of pineapple like? It's sweet. A bit like mango. A bit like apple.
"So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?" -- It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.Compare this remark about opinions with this one: "I am not of the opinion that he has a soul." That other people have souls belongs to our form of life. Compare that remark about forms of life with this one: ""What has to be accepted, the given, is -- one could say -- forms of life."
There is no arguing about this, or no arguing other than the kind that goes on in relation to matters of taste. I cannot prove that green beans and raisins are horrible in the way I can prove that a collapsing bridge was badly designed or badly constructed. (I can, of course, prove whether people like them or not.)
It seems to me that Wittgenstein answers an important question ("So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?") with a reference to "agreement in the language that human beings use" which could use some clarification. What is it to speak the same language? In a literal sense of "same language" two people might both speak, say, English. But not only is there another sense of "speaking the same language" that is less literal and less easy to identify, or impossible to identify objectively (I think I need to say more about what I mean by that), there is also a similar problem with regard to speaking English. That is, two people with little in common might be said not to speak the same language, even if both do in fact speak English. But even leaving aside that idiomatic use of "speak the same language" there are problem cases. Can a machine that passes the Turing Test speak English? At what point can a beginner be said to be able to speak English? When he can lie convincingly, as the Turing Test requires? When she can make a joke in English? When she dreams in English? Is American English the same language as British English? I don't think questions of relevance, and hence subjective judgments, can be completely avoided here.
And then there is another sense in which we can agree in the language we use. 'Language', like 'language-game', can refer to a part as well as the whole. It can mean wording. This might be a recent idiom, but it seems relevant to me. If "I feel absolutely safe" or "I wonder at the existence of the world" cannot be understood in a literal way, then how can we tell whether two people have the same feeling or wonder? How except by the words that they use to describe the feeling in question? And then it looks as though the two people's agreement in what they say decides whether it is true that they have the same feeling. Conclusion: I'm not sure that PI 241 is as straightforward as it seems.
It seems to me that we would have to have a conversation, and you would have to give me the kind of hints that people give when introducing someone to, say, a new kind of art. [...] If "I feel absolutely safe" or "I wonder at the existence of the world" cannot be understood in a literal way, then how can we tell whether two people have the same feeling or wonder? How except by the words that they use to describe the feeling in question?
ReplyDeleteThis brought to mind two passages elsewhere in Wittgenstein:
a) "Colour-words are explained like this: 'That's red' e.g. - Our language game only works, of course, when a certain agreement prevails, but the concept of agreement does not enter into the language-game. If agreement were universal, we should be quite unacquainted with the concept of it." (Zettel §430)
b) "What I actually want to say is that here too it is not a matter of the words one uses or of what one is thinking when using them, but rather of the difference they make at various points in life. How do I know that two people mean the same when both say they believe in God? And one can say just the same thing about the Trinity. Theology which insists on the use of certain words and phrases and bans others, makes nothing clearer (Karl Barth). It, so to speak, fumbles around with words, because it wants to say something and doesn't know how to express it. Practices give words their meaning." (Remarks on Colour, III, §317)
In a) Wittgenstein seems to be saying that it is a hallmark of the "agreement [not] in opinions but in form of life" (for which he takes agreement on the ostensive definition of colour words as a kind of paradigm case) that the concept of agreement itself does not enter into whatever discussions there might be about the object of potential agreement.
Thus, to make representations specifically with a view to establishing agreement with another would already be to step out of the language-game which Wittgenstein is speaking about. Once established, such agreement would of course be genuine agreement in one familiar ordinary-language sense of the word, but it would not be "agreement in form of life".
I connect this together with b) which in turn emphasises, in a familiar Swansea-Wittgensteinian way, the "stream of life" in which language has its meaning or fails to have it. If "[p]ractices give words their meaning", then what are the practices in question in the case of ethics - especially in the kinds of discussions of mutual moral disagreement which you're discussing?
What is also interesting, of course, is the relation of PI §241 to both §240 and §242, which both would appear to be congenial to this kind of emphasis. (There is a much longer sequence of remarks in Zettel, §§418-435, which is both very interesting in itself and very relevant to PI §241, but which rarely seems to be invoked in discussions of it. It mostly comes from manuscripts written in 1948, several years after PI §241.)
P.S. The "calling 'e' yellow" example is perhaps a bit unfortunate in that there is such a thing as synaesthesia: involuntary association of letters and words with various colours. This is not a case where "we would have to have a conversation, and you would have to give me the kind of hints that people give when introducing someone to, say, a new kind of art" - because the associations are purely personal (they vary from one synaesthete to another) and are not based on any psychological associations but on as yet unknown phenomena of brain physiology.
ReplyDeleteP.P.S. I've just had the most unsuited-to-blog-reading three or four months of my life. First I was busy with my bread and butter work for an extended length of time, and after that ended, I've had such good inspiration for my next book that I've been writing it instead of even daring to look at any distracting philosophical blogs. Thus I haven't even read yet what you've written here since December, but I plan to read it now, and possibly comment on some older posts of yours if I have anything to say. I'm glad to see that my harrying you with the Geuss business appears to have borne fruit even in my absence.
Thanks, Tommi. It's good to see you back! And I'm glad to hear that you've been working so much on the next book.
ReplyDeleteWhat you say here is very helpful, as was your harrying me with the Geuss business.
If "[p]ractices give words their meaning", then what are the practices in question in the case of ethics - especially in the kinds of discussions of mutual moral disagreement which you're discussing?
Good question. It seems to me that if we're talking about something like two people who both say they believe in God, then it's not practices in any very established or rigid sense that we need to look at but their behavior more generally: what do they do, what don't they do, what will they do, what won't they do, in connection with what they call their belief in God? Whether they both believe the same thing seems potentially debatable, not something that could be settled once and for all in some definitive and indisputable way. I mean, it might be settled, but it might not be.
The "calling 'e' yellow" example is perhaps a bit unfortunate in that there is such a thing as synaesthesia
Yes, I don't know what to say about synaesthesia. Perhaps I should have chosen a different example.
It's an interesting (and difficult) area. RE the question "Do these two people believe in the same God?" the answer, of course, will hinge on your definition of "the same". And THAT definition will hinge on why you're asking the question. What counts as "the same" for Torquemada might not be relevant to (eg) two new friends exploring each other's religious beliefs. That will influence which questions are asked, what counts as settling the issue and, indeed, how far the issue needs to be settled at all.
ReplyDeleteIn other words, it's important to keep in mind how such issues are approached in the stream of "civilian" life (as opposed to the lecture hall or the philosophy common room).
Thanks, Philip--I agree. Obviously we can't go and find each God and just see whether it's the same one or not that each person is talking about, so we have to identify gods by talking (and doing, or refusing to do, various things, etc.). But I don't think anyone would want to say that believing in (a particular) God just is talking, etc. in a certain way. So I suppose this is the problem of behaviorism, or something close to it. On the one hand it can't be just behavior, but on the other there isn't anything else for it to be. Or at least it's hard not to talk and think like that. The (civilian) reality--e.g. talking to someone to find out whether you agree with them on religion or not--is fairly straightforward. But describing this reality without distorting it quite badly is surprisingly hard.
ReplyDeleteSo I suppose this is the problem of behaviorism, or something close to it.
ReplyDeleteCf.
"But if you say: 'How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?' then I say: 'How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?'" (PI §504)
Yes, yes - that's the nub of the matter. On the one hand the religious person wants to say "God REALLY exists" (ie, He's not just a characteristic pattern of behaviour in the weave of my life). But what is meant by "exists" here? And so (it seems) this emphatic reply is really just an underlining of the importance the concept "God" plays in the believer's life. But this seems to fall short of the belief. And round and round it goes.
DeleteYes, there are things we want to understand, and hence to explain, and this explanation seems to require going deeper. But going deep enough without going, or trying to go, too far, is very tricky. At some level we do understand, we do get along, we do make sense, we do know what people believe, and so on, but explaining how we know this... Tricky. I don't feel vertigo here, but it is a bit like becoming aware that you are floating in or on some strange medium that seems to be made of almost nothing, and absolutely nothing that you can quite put your finger on. That is, the lack of foundations or ultimate explanation doesn't bother me, but it is weird. Almost wonderful. But mostly just weird. (I hope I haven't gone off into an abstraction that no one can follow here. I'm thinking of Cavell and McDowell on rule-following, and Wittgenstein on the wonder of language's existing (at least I think he says something about this somewhere).)
ReplyDeletebtw, regarding following moral rules, there's also the somewhat casual remark in section 77 of the PI:
ReplyDelete"Here I might just as well draw a circle as a rectangle or a heart, for all the colours merge. Anything - and nothing - is right." - And this is the position in which, for example, someone finds himself in ethics or aesthetics when he looks for definitions that correspond to our concepts.
I once read a book on how to write a mystery novel. One trick is to have key events or clues appear just before some dramatic action, so that, although the clue is right there, the reader overlooks it. Wittgenstein almost seems to be doing something like this at times, with seemingly throwaway lines containing very important ideas. (Not that a section so near the front of the book is really hidden.) 77 goes on to say that 'good' has a family of meanings, which is reminiscent of the Lecture on Ethics, but he also talks about how we learned the word 'good', which is not at all likely to be in connection with the experiences and feelings he talks about in the Lecture. Still, the definition can't be pinned down without arbitrarily leaving something out. I think he would say that in 1929 and 1949. And where there is no precise definition we have to use the words as human beings, not as machines.
ReplyDelete