Tuesday, September 13, 2016

A principle of non-contradiction

Wittgenstein once referred, perhaps jokingly, to the mistake of disagreeing with people. He doesn't seem to be kidding, though, when he talks about not wanting to deny anything when doing philosophy, of saying only what everyone admits. If we take this idea seriously then we won't want, when doing philosophy, to contradict our interlocutors. So there would be a (potential) problem with the following kind of dialogue:

I can't tell you how much this means to me/ how much I love you/ how great God is 
You just did
I suppose if the first speaker said, "Ha ha you're right" then there might not be a problem, but otherwise I think the response fails to take seriously what the first speaker is saying. It adopts, or pretends to, a kind of meta position outside that language game in order to pass judgment on, or analyse, it, while simultaneously pretending to be making a move in the same language game by contradicting the speaker with an implicit "Yes you can." The first speaker's words are taken as a unit meaning something like "This means a lot to me/ I love you a lot/ God is really great." But what if the speaker denies that that is what he/she means? It seems unWittgensteinian to me to tell them they are wrong about what they mean. Perhaps more seriously, I think it is usually false to tell them they are wrong. Usually when people say something like this there is something they cannot do. So far they have failed to find words that express their meaning to their satisfaction.

This taking of words as a unit seems like a kind of sealing to me, closing the individual words off from attention, treating them as irrelevant. Sometimes that is a good move. The other day someone asked me "What's new?" and I made the mistake of trying to tell him. All he meant was Hello. But sometimes the meanings of parts of the sentence matter.

There is what seems to me a similar kind of sealing off when a religious experience is treated as simply an experience, perhaps with an "as if of" quality about it but without any actual intentionality or content that points beyond itself. Bracketing, I suppose, is the word for this. And it's problematic, because if someone says "I saw God" they don't mean "I had an experience as if of seeing God," just as if I say "My dog is on the sofa" I (probably) don't mean "I am having a visual experience as of my dog on the sofa." I'm not saying that people who claim to have seen God must have really done so, or ought to be assumed to be saying something true. But if we take "seeing God," for example, as the name of a certain kind of experience that can be understood on its own, as if the experience itself were a kind of thing that could be studied in isolation, sealed off from everything else, then I think we go wrong. Or at least we run the risk of doing so. We are (potentially) no longer treating the words as spoken as they were meant. This is probably not a good idea if we actually want to understand them. It also suggests a bad, patronizing attitude toward the speaker, as if we know better than they do what they mean. We might in some cases, but surely shouldn't just assume that we do.

This all seemed quite simple and self-evident when I first thought about it, but writing it down has made it seem much less clear. I hope it make some sense. Just in case it doesn't, I'll try to retrace the steps that led me to these thoughts, although this risks repeating things I have already said. I have heard DZ Phillips criticized for suggesting that an apt response to a statement along the lines of "I can't say how much..." is "You just have." I don't have a reference to hand, but if he did say this then I agree that he was wrong (at least with regard to some cases). Sometimes "I can't tell you how much this means to me" means no more than "This really means a lot to me," and the word 'can't' should not be taken to refer to any inability. Instead it should be taken together with the rest of the words in I-can't-tell-you-how-much, which collectively mean something like: A lot is what (this means to me). Correct understanding depends on not breaking the 'can't' out of its implicitly hyphenated, blister-packed whole.

But not every case is like that. Words don't always come easily, if at all. Treating words as if they are always parts of  ready-made wholes misses this, leading to a superficial understanding of sentences and the people who utter them. If someone says "I can't tell you how much I love you" and you reply "I love you too" then you have failed (perhaps justly, but perhaps not) to take their words seriously.

And it seems to me that there is something similar going on when an experience that is most naturally described as an experience of God, an experience that implies that some kind of religion is true, is treated (perhaps by the very subject of the experience) as a pleasant hallucination, as something with no real implications at all. I don't mean that it is a mistake (or a crime) to treat religious experiences this way. All I'm saying is that writing off a (seemingly) religious experience as something not really religious after all is denying it the implications and the importance (the significance in two senses of the word) that it at first, when the experience happened, appeared to have. This means sealing it off from the rest of your life (instead of, say, making it the start of a new life) and treating it as a relatively superficial event. That might be the best thing to do, but it is a sealing off, a denial of significance. And that is what makes it like the "You just did" response.       

25 comments:

  1. when my patient told me that god just came out of the sun with a booming voice to criticize him for smoking cigarettes and drinking too much coffee I didn't make the mistake of telling him that he didn't have that experience but I also didn't take this as a proper bit of ontologizing on his part, so what if we had been instead in a philosophical debate on the reality of god?

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    1. It would be a very strange thing to say in a philosophical debate, wouldn't it? Or at any time, really. Which suggest it's the kind of remark that shouldn't be granted much significance.

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    2. i don't think the experience would be the point of contention as much as what one might make of it after the fact (see yer other blog where folks make all sorts of absurd claims about the implications of profound feeling hallucinations).
      i wonder (maybe more in general after reading Witt than any particular quote) if there isn't a warning about trying to argue people out of their faith/rock-bottom commitments?

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    3. Yes, what to make of the experience is a big question, perhaps even the question (although I'm not sure I'd go that far). If it's drug-induced or part of a pattern of mental illness then that's obvious reason to be skeptical about its significance. But you might not find it possible to treat it as insignificant if it's your experience. In the Lecture on Ethics Wittgenstein contrasts two ways of reacting to someone's suddenly growing a lion's head: the scientific and the religious. I think people might (and do) react in these two ways to a (seemingly) religious experience too. Which way is better depends not just on the event being responded to but on the overall value of the scientific and the religious ways of life. (By which I don't mean to imply that there is just one of each, nor that the scientific and the religious are the only possible kinds of reactions to things like this.) And if you are deeply entrenched in one of these ways of living then there might simply be no question of how you are going to respond: you will respond in that way as a matter of course. And, yes, trying to argue someone out of their way of life is going to be challenging. It might not be impossible, but if you wanted to argue someone out of treating some x the way they always treat xs, and if this way of treating xs is tied up with all sorts of other things they do, then you will probably have to do more than argue about this particular x.

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    4. good, so if we wish to read Witt in a therapeutic light of working us out of some bewitchments by grammar than does this become something akin to keirkegaard's mode of indirect communication?
      http://www.sorenkierkegaard.nl/artikelen/Engels/126.%20Kierkegaard%20and%20indirect%20communication.pdf

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    5. Yes, I think so. (Thanks for the link.)

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  2. ... are you reading my manuscript? Reading the above I cannot help but think you are.

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    1. I've only had time to open it, but a) thanks for it, and b) this makes me want to read it even more than I did before.

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    2. I don't believe the network will let me do this. And I speak not of legitimate things here. I've already had one person tell me that he doesn't like all this talk of Wittgenstein's psychology. I harbor grave fears that I can get a fair hearing on this. (I don't know why I am whining to you. It probably has something to do with enjoying a craft beer after a hard day and writing cheap opinions in front of my computer screen. God love our age)

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    3. Well, I hope you at least get a fair hearing. (It is the best of times and the worst of times.)

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  3. When I first read this short dialogue (-"I can't tell you..." - "You just did."), I imagined the first speaker reacting with a kind of relief, as if to say: "She understands me." - I think this is not how you mean the dialogue should be read, but does the fact (I take it to be a fact) that it can so be read go against your point?

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    1. Right, that's not how I meant it. I don't deny that it could go that way, but my point is that "You just did" is not always going to show understanding of what the first speaker means.

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    2. So what would be another way of formulating the "DZ Phillips" response? - Would this be a way: "'I can't tell you how much I love you' is a way of saying how much one loves someone"?

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    3. Yes, I think so. And I also think there is something to this, that it is right in some cases. But I don't think it's right in every case, or not straightforwardly the whole truth of the matter.

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    4. I'm trying to imagine the situation you have in mind. You seem to be taking the person who say "I can't..." to be also describing something--their shortcoming, perhaps--rather then merely avowing or expressing something in a figurative(?) way. Is this right?

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    5. Yes. The dialogue I presented is too short, and combines three different versions, making it effectively even shorter. So it doesn't work well as an example of what I'm talking about. What I had in mind is an example (from someone else) about God. So imagine someone talking about God and saying something like, "God's goodness is greater than anything we can express in words." Then imagine someone looking rather smug saying in a sort of "gotcha!" way, "You just have expressed it in words!"

      Cases will vary, of course, but sometimes I think the second speaker here could be missing the point of the first's remark. The particular case (or perhaps it's a family of cases really) I have in mind is, as you say, one where the speaker is describing an inability that they have, or expressing frustration, or perhaps awe. But they might not accept "God is awesome" or "I am inarticulate" as an equivalent sentence. And the smug, allegedly Phillipsian response I have in mind fails to take that into account, or does so only in a dismissive way.

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    6. So what should they do? - It can seem as if the person who's saying that God's goodness is greater than anything we can express in words wants to make it seem as if they know something when they actually don't, and have found a neat trick to avoid showing that they don't actually know anything. (I'm playing the devil's advocate. In my heart I want to be with you on this.)
      How can we decide whether they are saying something or not if they are refusing to say it, or say it is impossible to say it? - How can one give a charitable interpretation to what has been said?

      The DZ Phillips response seems charitable in at least this regard: it takes the speaker to be saying something, rather than to be talking nonsense. But this, if I understand you, is not charitable enough, and can actually be the opposite of charitable. So the question again: What would be the charitable thing to do?

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    7. I'm not sure what to say other than: it depends. Here are three things the person might mean (not that there couldn't be others):

      1. God is really, really great
      2. I want to say something about God but I don't know what. I want to say he is great, but that isn't really the right word. And I want to say he is really, really great, but that isn't right either. I cannot find words that satisfy me. (And then either a) perhaps one day I will, or b) and "I would reject every significant description that anybody could possibly suggest, ab initio, on the grounds of its significance").
      3. They might be talking in a way they have learned, or worked out for themselves, that is designed to, e.g., echo scripture while avoiding certain lines of philosophical attack. That is, they might be uttering a kind of formula that is best understood by theologians or philosophers.

      How can we decide whether they are saying something or not if they are refusing to say it, or say it is impossible to say it? - How can one give a charitable interpretation to what has been said?

      Well, you could ask them what they mean, perhaps offering some alternative restatements to accept or reject. You might also observe their behavior and attitude--do they seem to be struggling?, do they seem frustrated?

      The ADZP (alleged DZ Phillips) response seems objectionable mostly because of its reluctance to do this kind of thing, to take the speaker into account (except as something like the butt of a joke).

      Perhaps people who go around talking about God's greatness deserve some gentle mocking, and I imagine ADZP wants to undermine certain mystical tendencies, which might be worth undermining, but I'm not sure it is always charitable to take someone to be saying something. Especially if it involves attributing meanings to them that they disavow.

      Footnote: This post started out as a response to something said by someone whose identity I don't remember, and to several conversations about DZP, ineffability, religious language, etc. It is now moving into territory either covered by or adjacent to areas dealt with by Stephen Mulhall in his most recent book. I mention this in case anyone reading this thinks I'm plagiarizing, mangling, or rejecting something Mulhall says there. I haven't read his book yet and don't have a clear idea of what he says in it.

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    8. So tell me if you agree with this: when someone says something like that, we don't--perhaps can't--know in advance whether they are saying something or not. What we can do is ask them, and help them to clarify what they are saying, or to figure out whether they are saying anything in the first place. Some things we should not do: (a) decide what they are saying without consulting with them, (b) decide that they are not saying anything without consulting them. Basically, we should consult them. – Is this right?

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    9. Yes, although I don't mean to suggest that we necessarily need to consult them in every case. It might be quite clear without doing that. But basically, yes, that seems right to me.

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  4. ‏@katecrawford Sep 16
    Breaking news coverage now debating why it is breaking news. Next: Wittgenstein readings live from 12

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  5. I have heard DZ Phillips criticized for suggesting that an apt response to a statement along the lines of "I can't say how much..." is "You just have." I don't have a reference to hand, but if he did say this then I agree that he was wrong (at least with regard to some cases).

    Over the years, I've read just about everything Phillips ever published (in English!), to the extent of getting the last few missing papers as interlibrary copies. And it looks to me like this is a Chinese whispers version of the following:

    "Our language is not a poor alternative to other means of communication; it is what constitutes communication. To say 'We only have our language', in this context, is not like saying 'I only have English'. In the latter case one might say, 'If you could speak Welsh you'd see why hwyl is untranslatable.' But one cannot say, 'Because we only have our language we cannot say what the world beyond the grave is like.' There can be an inadequate use of language, but it makes no sense to say that language itself is inadequate. One might be misled into thinking this by the use of such expressions as 'Words can't tell you how grateful I am'. Such sayings are misconstrued as inadequate expressions, whereas their actual use is to express great gratitude. That they are appropriate rather than inadequate expressions is shown by the fact that there are criteria for determining when it would be inappropriate to respond in that way, for example, in response to a trivial act of courtesy." (Death and Immortality, 1970, p. 15)

    This at least is the passage that is chronologically the earliest. He repeats it with slightly different wordings in at least four other places in his later work (as was his wont – he's the second most repetitive philosopher I've ever read, after Slavoj Žižek), but always to make this same point and no other. There is no argument such as you say has been attributed to him, about the appropriateness of responses to "Words can't tell you how grateful I am". And his remark about there being criteria for its own appropriateness would seem to indicate that he would not have offered such an argument. After all, those same (let's say Gricean) criteria would clearly say that the response "You just did" would be inappropriate. And at least with respect to religious language, what you characterised as "the smug, allegedly Phillipsian response" is what he would have argued against.

    (Especially this one of your comments sounds quite Phillipsian to me.)

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    1. Thanks, that's very helpful. I'm still not sure about the suggestion (am I reading this in unfairly?) that there is such a thing as the actual use of such sayings. Or rather, if we are talking about sayings then I think Phillips is right. If we mean all uses of these words then I think he is wrong. But then he doesn't say he's talking about all possible uses of those words.

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  6. The other day someone asked me "What's new?" and I made the mistake of trying to tell him. All he meant was Hello. But sometimes the meanings of parts of the sentence matter.

    Or even the whole form of life. In Finland, if you say "How are you?" even to people who are fairly fluent in English, a lot of them will immediately start telling you, often in some detail. Even I, who am fluent to the extent of having my day job as a translator, have to stop myself doing so every single time.

    In Denmark, when visiting anyone (even your own parents or your own child) it's customary to say Tak fordi jeg m̴tte komme Р'Thanks for having me' (literally 'Thanks that I was allowed to come'). Which, too, means just "Hello"!

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    1. Very tricky. Here in Virginia "How are you?" and "How are you doing?" can mean Hello but can also require more of a response. I often get it wrong. But perhaps everyone else does too.

      I had never heard "What's new?" used like that before though.

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