Uncalm seas

Stephen Mulhall has a strong paper available online at the Nordic Wittgenstein Review. Calling it (merely) strong might make it sound weak, but I want to avoid calling it fine or wonderful, words I'm in danger of overusing. It's as strong as a large, bald man with an impressive moustache wearing a leopard skin. If I can work my questions about the paper into something coherent I might post that something as a comment on the journal's website. My questions all concern the last part of the paper, "The sea was dark green with shades of yellow, and not nearly as calm as before..." (Mulhall is quoting from a different translation of this story by the Grimm brothers).

To give some context, Mulhall means to defend Cora Diamond's reading of Wittgenstein. This involves such a commitment to the realistic spirit (roughly speaking, a commitment to seeing things as they really are, without imposing any kind of preconceived ideas or framework for thinking on reality) that it is prepared to eschew the usual Wittgensteinian talk of language-games, grammar, forms of life, and so on. The realistic spirit wants the world as we find it, not as it allegedly must be. Mulhall argues also that it involves something like the conception of ethics that we find in Wittgenstein's early work. With that minimal introduction, here is the part of the paper that I want to try to think through (I hope it's all right for me to quote these paragraphs here.):

But is it really credible to regard the realistic spirit with which Wittgenstein works in the Investigations as essentially a further expression of such a transcendental conception of ethical value, as one way in which the orientation of the happy man towards the world as such might find expression (just as that of the unhappy man might find expression in resisting it)? The suggestion might seem less outrageous if we imagine reaching it in two steps. The first is to recall that part of what the realistic spirit – with its absolute or unconditional refusal to impose conditions on reality – requires is a willingness to acknowledge such phenomena as great riddles and difficulties of reality, and so a willingness to suffer a kind of philosophical wound – to be shouldered out of our most familiar ways of making philosophical sense of our rich and varied ways of thinking and speaking. For doing so involves drawing on a capacity imaginatively to enter into these ways in which we might intelligibly refuse assignments of meaning or sense to our words, which means finding within ourselves the possibility of (as it were) becoming the person who finds these kinds of satisfaction in nonsense. But to find it possible to mean such refusals just is to discover that we are the kind of person who can find such satisfaction in nonsense; so realizing the realistic spirit in philosophy in these domains is only possible for those who can find in themselves the capacity to make sense of such phenomena as the transcendental conception of ethics that pervades the Tractatus.

Of course, even this initial, local connection between method and vision is contestable. For anyone incapable of making sense of such linguistic techniques will for that reason be incapable of seeing Diamond’s willingness to look with a clear eye even on the kinds of phenomena that manifest it as anything other than an incomprehensible attraction to mysticism and mystery-mongering. The very phrase “aspiring to an absolutely unconditional refusal to impose conditions on reality” is after all, itself nonsense, being constructed on the model of refusals that are context-specific, hence conditioned and relative; so if we can’t make any sense of these difficult realities of our life with words, then the philosophical practice of acknowledging them with a clear eye will inherit exactly the same riddling resistance to intelligibility that the phenomena themselves exemplify. Choosing to acknowledge rather than to deny such phenomena in philosophy is thus as capable of isolating us from one another, rendering us mutually incomprehensible, as are the phenomena themselves.

Let's start with the first of these paragraphs. I wonder whether it might help to go backwards through this, treating it as an exercise in formal logic, and mapping the argument out. It is a dense piece of reasoning. But I'll try to go through it forwards, starting with a simple summary and quotation of some key parts: One thing that the realistic spirit requires is a willingness to acknowledge phenomena of a certain kind. And this means or requires a willingness to suffer a kind of wound. The words "For doing so..." make me stop and think (doing what--recalling, requiring, acknowledging, being shouldered out, making philosophical sense, thinking, speaking?), but I take it that this refers to acknowledging the phenomena in question, and the "for" means to connect this acknowledgement with the willingness to suffer. The one involves the other, Mulhall is saying, because it "involves drawing on a capacity imaginatively to enter into [...] ways in which we might intelligibly refuse assignments of meaning or sense to our words." And this means "finding within ourselves the possibility of (as it were) becoming the person who finds these kinds of satisfaction in nonsense." Which in turn "just is to discover that we are the kind of person who can find such satisfaction in nonsense." And "so realizing the realistic spirit in philosophy in these domains is only possible for those who can find in themselves the capacity to make sense of such phenomena as the transcendental conception of ethics that pervades the Tractatus."

One thing I wonder about is whether a willingness to acknowledge certain kinds of phenomena should they arise involves drawing on an imaginative capacity. An absolute or unconditional refusal to impose conditions on reality sounds, in itself, easy enough. As if you could just check the 'No' box on the form when it asks you whether you want to impose such conditions. That sounds too passive, though, and too formal. The realistic spirit is surely more active, or requires something more active, than that. At least realizing the realistic spirit will surely be active.

So what does it require us to do? Willingness to acknowledge phenomena is surely not the same thing as the acknowledgement of those phenomena. But if we don't acknowledge these phenomena, what does it mean to say that we are willing to do so? The claim seems a bit hollow. Mulhall ends his essay with the recognition that where one person sees "a matter of fathomless significance, another sees only banality." Let's say I belong in the second camp, seeing only banality. It might be the easiest thing in the world for me to say, quite sincerely, that I am willing to acknowledge phenomena of fathomless significance. I still don't see any. And this does not mean that I am not sincere after all, or that I am sincere but deluded. The other side of this coin is that I might be too willing to see matters of fathomless significance. Charges of "an incomprehensible attraction to mysticism and mystery-mongering" are not always false. One of the difficulties of reality, or one kind of difficulty, is the difficulty of knowing whether you are sane, or the difficulty of dealing with uncertainty about this. Am I experiencing a matter of great significance which others are too blind to see? Or am I crazy? Or not crazy but exaggerating or otherwise distorting the truth? How do I know that my spirit is realistic? And how do I know what the realistic spirit requires here and now? I think that the answer to these questions is that you really cannot know. At least not in any circumstances where it would be reasonable to have doubts, where it is reasonable to imagine someone having doubts.

Finding satisfaction in nonsense is a difficult notion too. I (think I) understand wanting to say something and having this something turn out to be nonsense. But can I then understand realizing that it is nonsense and being satisfied? Without, that is, indulging in complacent mysticism or something of the sort. Say I want to describe a voice as dark brown, or a theme in Brahms as Shakespearean. I do so, and then realize that what I have said makes no sense. But I'm satisfied. It's OK with me. -- I don't think this makes sense. I cannot simultaneously want to say something and see that something as nonsense (in any resolute sense of nonsense, anyway). Of course I can see that I have flaws, one of which might be a tendency to be satisfied with or by nonsense. But the (part of) me that judges myself flawed in this way is not the same (part of) me that is satisfied. UPDATE: After a little more thought I'm pretty sure that Mulhall is just talking about this realization that one is susceptible to this kind of flaw, and nothing more paradoxical than that. The successful reader of the Tractatus does throw the ladder away, after all, after having imagined that its sentences make sense. I don't think this would have to involve a difficulty of reality in Diamond's sense, but I suppose it might. So I have no objection here, just some temporary confusion, which has now passed.

The other thing that bothers me here is this sentence: "The very phrase “aspiring to an absolutely unconditional refusal to impose conditions on reality” is after all, itself nonsense, being constructed on the model of refusals that are context-specific, hence conditioned and relative; so if we can’t make any sense of these difficult realities of our life with words, then the philosophical practice of acknowledging them with a clear eye will inherit exactly the same riddling resistance to intelligibility that the phenomena themselves exemplify." Is "aspiring to an absolutely unconditional refusal to impose conditions on reality" really nonsense? Perhaps it is, but don't we have to do something like look at its use in order to decide the matter? (Or is that backsliding into the kind of unrealistic Wittgensteinianism (Mulhall's) Diamond wants to get away from?) If it is nonsense, can we tell this just by noting that it is constructed on the model of refusals that are context-specific? And is it so modeled?

"Absolutely unconditional refusal" sounds like a normal bit of English to me. "I absolutely, unconditionally refuse to let you in without a warrant." What's wrong with that? Nothing, but this is not what Mulhall is talking about. It's absolute refusal in the sense of not being context-specific that he has in mind. And, it seems worth adding, we are talking about imposing conditions not on any person but on reality. What can that mean? Well, it has to be taken as something like a metaphor. Does that make it nonsense? I wouldn't say so. But I agree with Mulhall that this kind of language (be it metaphor or nonsense) is capable of isolating us from one another, rendering us mutually incomprehensible.  I also agree with him that "the realistic spirit with which Wittgenstein works in the Investigations" is "one way in which the orientation of the happy man towards the world as such might find expression." So I don't think I have any serious disagreement with him ultimately. Perhaps all I have any difficulty with is how he gets from the beginning of these two paragraphs to their end. And that might not be worth commenting on.