- Horwich refers to Wittgenstein's "extreme pessimism about the potential of philosophy." There is something to this, of course, but clearing away houses of cards is a bit like ridding oneself of fat or removing blur in one's visual field. It is misleading to characterize it as purely negative. Horwich doesn't make this mistake, but I'm not sure he avoids it by as wide a margin as he might.
- He goes on to say: "But what is that notorious doctrine, and can it be defended? We might boil it down to four related claims." There is something deeply unWittgensteinian about boiling things down. He is quoted in the lectures on aesthetics as saying: "If we boil Redpath at 200 degrees C all that is left when the water vapor is gone is some ash, etc. This is all Redpath really is." Saying this might have a certain charm, but would be misleading to say the least. Summaries of Wittgenstein are likely to be equally misleading. It's hard to avoid them when addressing a general audience about Wittgenstein, of course, but the boiling down metaphor might be better eschewed.
- At the end Horwich says that: "These radical ideas are not obviously correct, and may on close scrutiny turn out to be wrong. But they deserve to receive that scrutiny — to be taken much more seriously than they are." I sort of agree, but I'm not sure about the idea that Wittgenstein's ideas might turn out to be wrong on close scrutiny. It isn't clear, after all, what his ideas are. At least sometimes it seems as though what Wittgenstein offers is a method rather than a set of ideas. Of course this method, or set of methods, is not arbitrary and is based on certain ideas, but Wittgenstein doesn't really offer a theoretical defense of his methods. The proof can only be in the pudding. Or so I'm inclined to think. In which case we have to try the method(s) and see how it goes, rather than scrutinize the method(s) or the ideas on which it is (they are) based. And also look out for the puddings of other philosophers. Are the ideas rejected by Wittgenstein proving fruitful after all? Or are the same debates still going on, albeit perhaps in new forms?
Monday, March 4, 2013
Was Wittgenstein right?
Paul Horwich has an interesting essay at The Stone. It simplifies things, of course, but three weak points are perhaps worth noticing:
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My continuing fascination with Wittgenstein is probably in large part linked to the slow realisation that there is a positive side to his later philosophy. It lurks behind the destructive aspect and is never explicitly stated, but it is there.
ReplyDeleteSpecifically, it concerns the realisation that certain reductive accounts of humanity are not simply expressions of discovered facts about ourselves. They are (at best) pictures which the spirit of our age tempts us to adopt. For example, it is not a fact that we are "biological machines", a collection of neurons, brains in vats or, indeed, tubes inflated by a mind. Such notions - and they're by no means restricted to the arena of academic philosophy - vastly underestimate the richness of our language (and hence our concepts) and the behaviour into which they're woven. In other words, they vastly underestimate the richness of human life.
Such theories (which their advocates usually try to pass off as scientific truths) are only tempting if you restrict yourself to a one-sided linguistic diet and (therefore) misconstrue the narrow range upon which you have focussed. Yet this is exactly what many people (and not just philosophers) are inclined to do. The result is a distorted, impoverished picture of our form of life.
Ultimately, I believe, Wittgenstein's later philosophy intends to point us away from this impoverishment, to realise what he expressed as "the strangeness of what I see in myself and in others, what I have seen and have heard."
This is hauntingly exemplified by a remark from his Lectures on Aesthetics (quoted from Brian Clack's essay "Wittgenstein and Magic"):
"Something hidden, uncanny. Cf. Keller's two children putting a live fly in the head of a doll, burying the doll and then running away. (Why do we do this sort of thing? This is the sort of thing we do do.)"
Thanks! Yes, I think that's exactly right. And he's right about the children with the fly in the doll, too. It is uncanny. I'm not sure what the role of the uncanny is in the kind of liberation from limiting pictures you describe, but it's unsettling, which might often be what we need.
ReplyDeleteHeh - I kinda shoe-horned that quote in because I like it so much. But, as you suggest, there's perhaps a tangential link to my main point: recognising the strangeness of our lives can be a step towards breaking free from reductive accounts - or, at least, putting them in perspective.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. And good quotes are always worth getting in somehow.
DeleteI'm glad to see the neglected theme of "Wittgenstein and the uncanny" get some attention. Back in my undergraduate days (as Duncan will remember) I tried to beat that particular drum without getting much response, or at any rate not as much as I'd have liked. My own discussion is mostly in my paper "On Ladder Withdrawal Symptoms and One Way of Dealing with Them" (later published in print here), which was in essence a reworking in English of a central chapter in my 1999 master's thesis.
ReplyDeleteMy work was heavily inspired by Gordon Bearn's then recent Waking to Wonder: Wittgenstein's Existential Investigations (1997), which I still think is one of the most underrated books on Wittgenstein. There's also Bearn's 1993 paper "Wittgenstein and the Uncanny", which I hadn't seen then, but not much else has been written that focuses on the subject. Brian Clack is also quite good, although I deeply disagree about much in his treatment of Wittgenstein's philosophy of religion.
Thanks for the link to Bearn's paper--I wasn't aware of it. I like his book too.
ReplyDeleteI think of that general theme (Wittgenstein and the uncanny) as having been addressed, perhaps because you've talked about before and because I have a sense that Cavell has too. But I can't actually think of much that has been published about it. It does seem important.
I agree with you about Clack too.
Apart from the essay I mentioned (which I like very much) I've not read anything by Clack. Who's any good on Wittgenstein and religion?
ReplyDeleteClack is good, if I'm remembering right, on why Wittgenstein and religion is an interesting subject, but less good on what Wittgenstein actually thought about it. Although if you pit his Wittgenstein against DZ Phillips' and end up somewhere in between, you might be in a good position. The short answer is Mikel Burley's book and Cora Diamond's paper "Wittgenstein on Religious Belief" in this book.
DeletePhilip -
ReplyDeleteYou appear to be assuming that those who use expressions like "we are 'biological machines'" necessarily "vastly underestimate the richness of our language .... and of human life". But if you accept the tool metaphor of language - specifically of vocabularies - it seems clear that one needs various tools each tailored to specific objectives. Surely a cell biologist can also be a lover of opera, and when engaged in each of those activities can employ a vocabulary appropriate to relevant purposes.
Perhaps your concern is applying a reductive vocabulary to higher levels of integration (eg, the vocabulary of cell biology to psychology or the vocabulary of anatomy to communities). But even within a level of integration there may be multiple applicable vocabularies. Eg, my guess is that for some purposes, the vocabulary implied by "biological machines" applies to the individual, in particular to the "mental". The concept of "mind" is quite useful in some contexts - eg, casual conversation - but arguably is inappropriate in some specialized contexts for which the vocabulary of "biological machines" seems preferable. Yet it isn't at all obvious to me that taking such an extreme mechanical view for some purposes is necessarily detrimental to experiencing - and expressing, in an appropriate vocabulary, appreciation for - the "richness of human life".
Or is your concern that the absence of some version of "ghost in the machine" sounds a death knell for awe?
I think this is a good point. I took Philip to be thinking of people who insist that we are only biological machines, in a let's-cut-the-crap kind of spirit, though. It seems fine to say something like, "For the purposes of this lecture, I am going to be treating human beings as biological machines..." It's less fine to insist that science has shown this to be the one and only right way to conceive of human beings.
DeleteHi Charles,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point. As I mentioned above, my beef is with reductive accounts - ie, those that take a particular account as The Truth and maintain that anything else is either a disguised version of this Truth or can be eliminated. The notion of people as (eg) biological machines certainly has its uses (medicine, for a start), but the limitations of this picture need to be borne in mind.
Likewise with the ghost in the machine - as a metaphorical expression for a way we often regard ourselves and others it is fine. But if you take it literally the result is merely conceptual confusion.
I hope this is helpful!
As I suspected - just wanted to be sure.
ReplyDeleteI'm perhaps a bit touchy on the matter because my sense of the current ownership claims of various groups vis-a-vis "The Truth" is that the scientific community ranks at best a distant third behind religious communities and political ideologues. I'm inclined to point the finger not at commitment to reductionism but at ignorance of methodologies of justification.
Yes, justification is a central issue here. From a Wittgensteinian point of view the key is that justification takes place within the language-game. That is, the language-game defines what is to count as "justification". So you might prefer chess to draughts (checkers) but it would be nonsense to claim that the rules of chess prove that draughts is a defective game.
DeleteThat's a very interesting way of looking at the conflict between, say, religion and science. If one believes - as I do - that "truth" is determined by consensus within a community of people who are - according to some criteria - "competent" at offering opinions on issues relevant to the community, then consistency requires that a non-member of that community accept as "truth" for that community whatever consensus dictates. In which case I should have said that the problem is applying methodologies of justification applicable to one community/language game - to another community/language game.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, it remains my impression that many people are ignorant of methodologies of justification in general, not just inclined to misapply ones they know.
I don't want to hijack Duncan's post with what has become a slightly off-topic (though interesting) discussion, but a few quick remarks.
Delete1. "Consensus" is maybe a misleading word here as it suggests a shared opinion reached after due deliberation, etc. For me that makes the whole thing too ratiocinative. As Wittgenstein points out in (I think) Zettel, "Everyone calls this 'red'" does not mean the same as "This is red". And this, of course, is linked to PI #241-242: "What is true or false is what human beings say; and it is in their language that human beings agree. This is agreement not in opinions, but rather in form of life."
2. The concepts of "competence" and "consistency" are, like "justification", defined within the language-game. And in many practices - particularly related to ethics and aesthetics - there is huge room for disagreement. What I might see as perfectly consistent you might consider to be nothing of the kind. At this point neither of us can justify our stances by grounding them in reasons. The argument becomes a matter of persuasion rather than proof. Ultimately this is just as true of (eg) mathematics as it is of ethics - except that with mathematics it becomes more a matter of training than persuasion.
As you say, these thoughts have interesting implications for the science vrs religion debate. That's something I hope to discuss idc on my "Scribbled in the Margin" blog.
Please feel free to hi-jack away. I'm happy to see discussions like this spring up. It makes me think of the blog: "It's alive!"
DeleteBecause of the limited scope of my knowledge in this discipline, I occasionally hi-jack of necessity - if I waited for a topic on which I have a more-or-less knowledgeable opinion, I could seldom comment! ~(:>)
ReplyDeleteI meant "consensus" only in the dictionary sense of "general agreement". One would hope that consensus is reached based on "due deliberation, etc.", but of course it isn't always - nor unfortunately, even mostly. So, I think we're in accord on the principle.
I'm not sure how to relate this to the discussion: "Everyone calls this 'red'" does not mean the same as "This is red". I agree that they don't mean the same, but mainly because they're both ambiguous (what's the referent for "this"?), and because in the technical language game I don't think the latter means anything. What we call "seeing a color" is an experience and thus isn't 3rd person accessible directly, ie, can't be pointed at either physically or verbally.
In any event, I suspect we're again in accord on this (and on the spirit of PI 241). My views on "truth" come from reading Rorty, who of course self-described as a "Wittgensteinian". So, any disagreements we might have most likely would be due to my failure to understand Rorty or to accurately convey my understanding.
Yes, I meant the criteria for competence to be community-specific. And I was actually addressing consistency not within each community but instead by people like me who claim that "truth" is determined within a community/language game. It inconsistent for us to make the kind of snide remark I made at the end of my comment of 3/7 9:55 AM. The point is that unless I choose to join their language game, I need have no opinion on the methodology of justification adopted within their community. Of course, if they choose to join one of my language games/communities, then I can - and will - expect them to abide by the methodology adopted within that community.
I'm not so sure we are in accord on the principle! It seems to me that a huge number of our rules neither are nor need to be arrived at after due consideration. We are taught the rule, we master the technique of following it and we do follow it. The rule thus mastered provides the standard of correct application. What other people think about it is neither here nor there.
DeleteThe following makes no sense: "After due consideration we have realised that we've been using the phrase 'this is red' wrongly. Really it should be used like this..." The most this could amount to is a decision to change the meaning of the word "red" (ie, the rules governing the use of the word).
Moreover, it is not clear to me that - in terms of logic - any of this needs to be a matter of group consensus at all. Of course it is an empirical fact about human beings that we are social animals who are taught a shared language. But the claim that language (or any other normative activity) must (logically) be part of a shared practice seems less obviously correct.
Sorry, Philip, but I'm not seeing on what principles you think we disagree. It is you who have raised "deliberation" and "due consideration". I merely suggested that on certain issues one would hope for those, not that they are a universal requirement.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't know how rules got into the discussion, which started out being about "Truth". I assume that there is general agreement that no set of rules that are clearly man-made out of thin air (eg, the rules of a game or of language) are examples of "Truth". The disconnect I see is between those who think that some normative rules of human behavior (eg, "moral" behavior) come from a higher source and therefore are examples of "Truth", and those who think that all normative rules of human behavior are man-made and therefore only more examples of "truth" in the sense of consensus (or, if you prefer, general agreement) within a community.
What am I missing?