78. Compare knowing and saying:how many feet high Mont Blanc is—
This refers back to 75-77, so we should have in mind knowing what goodness is, how it appears, but not being able to say what it is. "Good" is like "game," according to Wittgenstein. We know how the word "game" ("good") is used in the sense that we can use it, understand others who use it (usually), and can give examples. But we can't say how it is used in any precise, definite way. We cannot give a definition, an essence, because there isn't one.how the word "game" is used—how a clarinet sounds.If you are surprised that one can know something and not be able to say it, you are perhaps thinking of a case like the first. Certainly not of one like the third.
(I want to say here that anyone who offers a definition, a theory of goodness or an account in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions or a formula or anything like that, is doing something different, playing a different game, from what I do. In some ways it is alike, but in others different. Is the difference essential? I say it is. He might insist otherwise. He might even claim that he has captured the essence of what I do. But the answer depends not on some independent fact but on what I say/know/accept about what I am doing. Is that right?)
A question: Can you explain how you think (that Wittgenstein thinks) that all this is connected to ethics? – Does the word ‘good’ in itself indicate that ethics is the topic? Is offering theory about ethics—offering boundaries—problematic in the same way that offering a theory about games is?
ReplyDeleteAnd regarding that person claiming that he is capturing the essence of what you are doing: perhaps we are not yet at the stage where it all comes down to what you say. Perhaps you can at this stage in the conversation get them to clarify what they mean with ‘capturing essence’; for there are grammatically different kinds of ‘capturing essence’: capturing how someone looks in a caricature, taking all of the water out of a chemical solution, translating what someone says in fancy words and long sentences into a simple short proposition, and so on. And, more importantly, each of these has its usefulness. So maybe you’ll be able to show that person that although what he has to offer has some usefulness, it is not what you want or need to do.
The word 'good' does not in itself indicate that ethics is the topic, no. But it seems fairly clear that ethics is the topic from this (near the end of 77): this is the position you are in if you look for definitions corresponding to our concepts in aesthetics or ethics.
ReplyDeleteIn such a difficulty always ask yourself: How did we learn the meaning of this word ("good" for instance)?
If you mean how does that connect with ethics then I'm not sure what you mean. The thing to do would surely be to try to figure out what Wittgenstein means, and then perhaps its significance for ethics would be clear. That's what I'm in the process of doing, but I haven't got there yet (i.e. I haven't finished trying to figure it out).
Offering a theory about ethics is problematic in a different way from that in which offering a theory of games is problematic, I think. I'm working on a post on (or at least related to) this.
And I think I agree with you that there are questions you could ask the person who claims to be doing the same thing as you. Certainly there are questions you could ask. And you might end up agreeing that really you are doing the same thing. Or you might not, but might still see some value in what he is doing. Or you might not. But he is not in the same position as you when it comes to saying what it is that you are doing.
What I had in mind when I was asking how this connects to ethics is the complaint Wittgenstein is said to have made once about philosophy ethics books that don’t have any moral questions in them. So what I’m asking, I guess, is that you help me see the face of something ethical in this discussion. But I’m willing to wait for the future posts you are working on.
ReplyDeleteYou say:
he is not in the same position as you when it comes to saying what it is that you are doing
I’m somewhat worried about this. I don’t want to deny that people have first person authority—at least most of the time. But on the other hand, I feel the danger here of a Humpty-Dumpty saying that he has sole authority about what his words mean. So my question is where should we draw the line? When you said: “But the answer depends not on some independent fact but on what I say/know/accept about what I am doing” it seemed that you were drawing the line in a specific place. And I’m not sure I see what it is in this particular case that makes you want to draw the line there.
Thanks. I share your worry. I think I really just wanted to note that people do have first person authority. Not so much, or necessarily, about what our words mean but about what we are up to. But I don't mean that we just get to say what we mean or are doing without any limit. There can come a point where we cannot be mistaken though.
ReplyDeleteBut how do we know when this point has come? – I don’t mean that you should give me some general criterion. And I don’t mean that we can never be certain, for in most cases the question does not even open, and we may in this sense enjoy certainty. But this majority of cases cannot guarantee that we can enjoy such certainty always. So in those cases where the question opens, and this is the case with question you end this last post with, for the question is really ‘do I have first person authority here?’—I take it that these are the cases where we can’t rely on that certainty we mostly have—in those cases, how can we tell?
ReplyDeleteThe case I had in mind was one where someone tells you what you are (allegedly) really doing but gets it wrong. Think of someone like Sam Harris who thinks that we can discover truths about ethics by scanning people's brains to see what makes them happy (where happiness is defined in some scannable way). Or someone who thinks we can tell good music from bad by running some similar kind of test. When we pass moral or aesthetic judgment I think it's fair to say that this (making predictions or guesses about brains) just isn't what we are doing. Perhaps it is what some utilitarians mean when they recommend some course of action as good, but it isn't what I mean.
ReplyDeleteIt can get tricky though. In Coetzee's new novel there's a scene where a woman asks a man what finding someone beautiful has to do with wanting to have sex with them. He is stumped, and says something about mystery. At this point someone might step in with an explanation in terms of evolutionary psychology, and this explanation might be very persuasive. So someone might come to believe that all their judgments about human beauty had always unconsciously been about fitness for reproduction. Believing this does not make it true though. We don't have that kind of first person authority.
You seem to have some different kind of case in mind, so I'm afraid this answer is all irrelevant to your question. If there really is a question as to whether I have first person authority in some particular case then I don't know how we could tell whether I did or not.
I have some unclarity about whether you think or don’t think the case you mentioned in the original post was or wasn’t a case in which you have first person authority. On the one hand you seem to want to say you do (you seem to be pretty certain of that in the last response), but on the other, you seem to be worried that this might be wrong (this was my impression when reading the last question in the original post, but my impression may have been wrong). So I’m only not sure if you are worried, and if you are, why you are worried.
ReplyDeleteIf the question with which you end the original post is not an expression of such a worry, then I have badly misunderstood you. If it is, however, then I’m unclear where the worry is coming from. I think I agree with you that we normally have first person authority in those cases: That is, if a Sam Harris tells you that you mean by ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ the same that he means, then he is objectively wrong: he is and you are not talking about brains; and there is room for asking you: ‘Were you trying to say something about brains?’ It’s your responsibility and authority to answer this. Or put differently: (1) that there is a difference between the language games is typically not something you have first person authority over; but (2) which game you are playing is. We are probably in agreement here. I just don’t see where your worry that you might not have first person authority here is coming from.
When you wrote the post, were you asking whether you nevertheless might also have first person authority over (1): over whether there is a difference between the language games? Or did you have something like the Coetzee case you mentioned in mind? Or did you have one of those cases that Cora mentions in ‘The Face of Necessity’ and in ‘How Old are These Bones?’ where we say that two separate procedures determine the same thing?
Yes, I have been unclear. When I think about the Harris example it seems clear. He is objectively wrong, as you say. (Even if the real Sam Harris is not guilty of this mistake, the Sam Harris in my example is.) I'm tempted to write off all moral theories on these grounds, but that would surely be too quick. Even if a case could be built on this foundation, I have not built it. When I wrote "Is that right?" I don't think I was expressing a particular worry so much as a sense that I had not thought the matter through, and that I was coming close to trying to do too much too quickly.
ReplyDeleteJust out of curiosity, do you think you might have first person authority over whether there is a difference between the language games?
ReplyDeleteI mean, suppose a Sam Harris tells you: “There isn’t a difference between what you are doing and what I’m doing,” and suppose you clarify the two activities, and the differences between the two grammars. Might there still be an issue—even given the two clearly separate grammars—whether you are or are not doing the same thing?
I guess there are two questions here:
1. Can there be a question whether you are doing the same thing or not, when the grammars of what you are doing is clearly separated?
2. To the extent that there is such a question, is this the sort of question that is decided by asserting first person authority?
1. I think it depends what counts as clearly separated. I can imagine Harris claiming that the differences I have pointed out don't make a difference, are irrelevant. Whether they are relevant seems like a question that really could be asked. But if the separation were clear enough the question might make no sense, might not be intelligible.
ReplyDelete2. I don't know. On one hand it would seem crazy to insist that I was doing something different from everyone else if they all saw it as the same and could see no relevant difference between our activities. On the other, can't I always insist (sincerely) that any allegedly trivial difference matters to me? This objection might be crazy, of course. But does it have to be? I suppose that question cannot be decided by asserting first person authority. So the answer seems to be No.
Still worried about Humpty-Dumpty, I have this distinction in mind between:
ReplyDelete(a) Questions about what the grammar is of a particular language game, and whether it is like or unlike another language game.
(b) Questions about what language game one is playing in a particular case.
I’m inclined to say that we typically have first person authority regarding the second kind of questions, but not regarding the first.
One interesting point in what you are raising here—about your uncertainty—is that there might be a question of first person authority where there typically isn’t: regarding the first kind of questions. I sense that you want to say that in some way even questions of the first kind are for each of us to decide. Each of us has a say here. – Is this right?
But now it occurs to me, I am not sure at all about that, that maybe the issue here that interests you is not so much one about first person authority. Or perhaps that if there is a first person authority issue here, it is in a different way about first person authority. What I have in mind is that what I seem to be hearing in what you say is that there is an issue of judgment in the first kind of cases—a judgment whether the grammar of a language game is like or unlike that of another, a judgment that each of us needs to make if they are to become part of the community that plays these language games—a matter of personal commitment. So If I’m right about your worries, what they identify is that there is this moment where it is, in a way, left up to us to accept or reject the complex of the language game, to enter or not to enter the community of language. – Is that right? (If so, where does that leave you with Sam Harris?)
In any case, if there is an issue of first person authority here, it is very different from the issue in the second kind of case, where it is up to us to explain what we are doing. In this second kind of case, for example, there seem to be no room for agreement or disagreement, or for asking for evidence. If you tell me, for example: “When I pointed at the chair, I wasn’t trying to make you notice the ring on my finger; I was inviting you to sit,” there would typically not be room for me to say: “I disagree,” or “how do you know?” In opposition, in the first kind of case, if you say “My sense is that saying ‘Allahu akbar!’ is like saying ‘Yippee!’” there is room for agreement and disagreement, and there is room for asking you to justify that.
Does this in any way come close to what you have in mind?
I’m inclined to say that we typically have first person authority regarding the second kind of questions, but not regarding the first.
ReplyDeleteMe too.
I sense that you want to say that in some way even questions of the first kind are for each of us to decide. Each of us has a say here. – Is this right?
I don't think each of us has a say about the grammar of a language-game, unless perhaps we are the creators of the language-game in question. And I'm not sure what to say about that. But we do have different opinions about which games are like or unlike others, i.e. about which differences are significant and which are trivial. I don't think there are any facts that settle what matters and what doesn't. My say-so doesn't settle it either, though, so I'm not sure this is a question of first person authority.
If I’m right about your worries, what they identify is that there is this moment where it is, in a way, left up to us to accept or reject the complex of the language game, to enter or not to enter the community of language. – Is that right?
Yes, that sounds right.
If so, where does that leave you with Sam Harris?
I think he's just confused and wrong. But I'm not sure to what extent this is a statement of fact and to what extent it's a judgment. Calling it a statement of fact seems to be a kind of judgment. I want to keep a distinction between facts and judgments, but it's hard here. To some extent he is making a value judgment, a judgment about what matters. And so rejecting what he says seems also to involve making a different judgment about what matters. It's like the case of those Christians who say that heaven is a real place, one that could in principle be reached in a spaceship. I want to say that this is simply factually incorrect, but in doing so I am also rejecting their religion, which surely cannot be a simple factual matter. The problem, as I see it, is that they are confused. But can that be anything but a judgment? I don't know whether I'm explaining my position or exhibiting symptoms of confusion, so I'll stop. But I do find this whole area puzzling.
If you tell me, for example: “When I pointed at the chair, I wasn’t trying to make you notice the ring on my finger; I was inviting you to sit,” there would typically not be room for me to say: “I disagree,” or “how do you know?”
Yes, although you could raise questions about my subconscious motivation.
Does this in any way come close to what you have in mind?
What I have in mind is largely a cloud of confusion, but this is all relevant to it. Thanks.
Confusions, especially cloud-shaped, are occasions for philosophy.
ReplyDeleteI worry that by not understanding what exactly you are confused about I am missing an occasion to philosophize.
Confusions, especially cloud-shaped, are occasions for philosophy.
ReplyDeleteTrue. And there are plenty of them. You are helping me see through the fog.