Friday, September 22, 2017

Augustine and Wittgenstein on the Will

I have a draft of a paper on this subject at academia.edu. Comments (or constructive criticism, anyway) are welcome.

Here's the gist:

In Wittgenstein: Mind and Will (p. 593) P. M. S. Hacker writes that:
one cannot will voluntarily, cannot will to will. But that does not mean that willing is like the subsiding of the thudding of one’s heart – something that just happens to one. What it means is that willing is not the name of an action at all. And to say that one cannot will voluntarily, or will to will, is not to say that it is beyond one’s powers, as wiggling their ears is beyond most people’s powers, but rather that it is senseless to speak of willing.
The last part of this ("it is senseless to speak of willing") strikes me as clearly wrong. And the idea that willing is not the same of an action seems pretty dubious too. At least it sounds like a claim that might be debated. And I don't think of Wittgenstein as being in the business of putting forward such claims. So the questions that motivate the paper, although I don't present it this way (maybe I should), are really: How has Hacker arrived at this point? Does his thinking match Wittgenstein's? And what, if anything, does this have to do with Augustine, whom Wittgenstein mentions in connection with some of the thoughts that Hacker is attempting to explain.

The questions I have about my paper are mainly these (in order of concern, from most to least):

  1. Do I misrepresent Hacker, Wittgenstein, or Augustine?
  2. Is what I say comprehensible and easy enough to follow?
  3. Is this of any interest? 

15 comments:

  1. I hope to take a look over the next couple of days. But I'd say, right off the bat, that it seems to me that "will" is a somewhat outdated concept in our world. How often do we speak of willing something today, or trying to (which last goes to your point about Wittgenstein's usage)?

    In the first half of the twentieth century and especially in the German philosophical tradition, the notion of "the will" still seemed to command a lot of power in discourse but today it seems rather outdated. That doesn't mean there isn't a place for it in our modern conversations but it seems to me that place has contracted substantially from what it was 70 or so years ago.

    Maybe it reflects the negative connotations the term accrued when the Nazis latched onto it for their own political purposes, but when I try to see how the term relates to things I would say, I never find much place for referencing my "will." I don't so much will to do things as do them. And when I feel torn, experiencing what the Greeks called akrasia (weakness of will), I don't describe my experience in terms of my will at all. I just think I am undecided, even chronically so.

    Perhaps this all just reflects a shift in contemporary usages, vocabulary, and nothing more, i.e., I just use other words for the same concept. But that doesn't seem quite right because, try as I might, I can't see how speaking of my feeling of initiating action when I do so warrants a separate term like "my will." Where and what is this thing, "will"? Why does decision making even warrant such an extra term?

    Hopefully, I can offer something more substantive in a couple of days though, after reading your draft.

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    1. Thanks. Yes, we don't talk much about willing in English these days. But people do things willingly or against their will. And we talk about wanting a lot, which is a closely related concept (and the usual translation of the word wollen, which Wittgenstein uses).

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  2. I think you may have a faulty copy of the Hacker book or have copied the quote down wrongly. He says it's senseless to speak of willing to will. (Not that it's senseless to speak of willing!) A much weaker and more reasonable claim, although of course arguably wrong.

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    1. He certainly says that it's senseless to speak of willing to will, but I'm pretty sure (though I will double check) that in this passage he says it is senseless to speak of willing. I will check the errata too.

      In the paper I don't say much about this claim, because it does seem possible that it's a typo, but I do point out that it seems wrong.

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    2. For what it's worth the text in the book is as I've quoted it, and there is nothing in the errata about it. I agree, though, that this is probably a slip of some sort.

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    3. Thanks for following it up, and sorry for being dogmatic. What led me to assert that Hacker actually says what, clearly, he should have said, is that when I Googled the end of that quote I got a snippet of text where the missing words are added. But this was misleading, since the quote was from a review of the book by Michel ter Hark in Ratio in 1999, where the author of the review borrowed (and surreptitiously corrected) Hacker's words. Sorry about that. Here is the passage (p. 110):

      'Let me conclude with an example of Hacker’s great skill, his reading of §613. In that paragraph Wittgenstein discusses the idea that willing is merely an experience. According to Wittgenstein this is confused. Whereas one can act as one wills,one cannot will to will. Hacker makes clear that the latter‘cannot’ is logical and not physical, that is, it does not mean that it is beyond one’s powers, as wiggling their ears is beyond most people’s powers, but rather that it is senseless to speak of willing to will. There is no such thing as willing voluntarily or involuntarily.'

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  3. Duncan, I would be most happy to look at the paper. But having not yet done that, one thing that struck me in a knee-jerk sort of way is how Wittgenstein really affects us. Even if Hacker is wrong, I would never say that Wittgenstein didn't do it to him. So many scholars experience Wittgenstein and end up doing things in his name. And the maneuver that I see Hacker making here is one I see often by people influenced by Wittgenstein. I'm not so sure the best solution here is to say that these maneuvers are of a Wittgensteinian type or typology, in that a community of scholars through the ages continually take this as a kind of inheritance. But at the same time, other typologies (contrary inheritances) also exist.

    And while it is true that we, ourselves, might crusade and say "this is the real Wittgenstein," I fear that history is destined only to record our thoughts as being in support of this type or that. Because, I don't see this maneuver ever being wiped out of existence (among scholars who read Wittgenstein). I see it as only being relegated into something deprivileged (like Kripkenstein). And I think the ultimate reason why is that some philosophers take from Wittgenstein, rightly or wrongly, certain argumentative maneuvers, while others try to take a biographical or holistic view.

    I say this because I see it in my sub field a great deal. The maneuvers in thought that Dennis Patterson makes with Wittgenstein and jurisprudence is different from Phillip Bobbitt and even myself. I try to rationalize this in phases. Bobbitt seems more middle period to me, and Patterson seems more like the kind of thing you quoted from Hacker. Both I feel only have a piece of the puzzle. And so I am in sympathy with your urge to see the Hacker quote as problematic.
    But what I am trying to say -- very poorly! -- is that I don't think it does any good to say that it isn't "Wittgenstein." Much like Jesus, I think versions are going to be with us well beyond our lives.

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    1. True enough, versions will always be with us. And Hacker's work is by no means all wrong. It seems worth correcting him when he does go wrong, though.

      The main thing I try to do in the paper is to read Wittgenstein closely. That's part of what Hacker does (he also goes into a lot of background material), but since he ends up with a different reading -- at some points, at least -- he provides a useful foil.

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  4. 1. Maybe Hacker a little. But then again Hacker does tend to like his Wittgenstein to come to definite conclusions. This perhaps sometimes leads him to play down the degree to which Wittgenstein was more concerned with accurately mapping the terrain as an end in itself, rather than ending on a grand "therefore". That may be the case here, since, as you point out, Wittgenstein's attitude is nuanced to say the least.

    2. Yes.

    3. Yes.

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    1. Thanks. It crossed my mind that I had tried close reading of Augustine and Wittgenstein but not really of Hacker, which increases the danger of getting him wrong. I don't think I've got him too badly wrong though. Fingers crossed.

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  5. Actually, one slightly more substantial comment. At one point you write "Assuming that there really is no such thing as this unmoved mover, which would, after all, violate the known laws of physics, this possibly attractive image should be used lightly" (p7). I'm not sure that's completely in line with Wittgenstein's attitude towards causality and the place he allots it in relation to conceptual/grammatical investigations. To the question "does this conception somehow violate the laws of physics" he might well reply: "that is no concern of mine".

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    1. I agree. Originally I just assumed that no one would believe in the will as unmoved mover, but I decided to give any doubters a reason to reject the idea. It isn't a very Wittgensteinian move though. Maybe I should cut it out.

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  6. Having gone quickly through bits of your paper, I like it. And I think you paper is right to emphasize a concern with what seems right to say in DIFFERENT cases, since "failing to will" is indeed an expression that we might use for descrbing akrasia and since "willing to will" is an expression that we might, e.g., use to express (what Frankfurt calls) second-order preferences well known from cases of addiction. An alcoholic intent to stop his destructive habits might, for instance, say: "I will that I shall not will to drink (if, in the future, I am in a bar etc.)"... [I.e. the alcoholic has a second-order preference for changing his first-order preference for alcohol]

    PS: That said, however, I don't think that these are the kinds of cases that Wittgenstein is thinking of in PI§618, and to that extent there is bit of truth in Hacker's interpretation of PI§618.

    PSS: I agree with Tristan; it must be typo on Hacker's part, since it is not only wrong but also plainly inconsistent with preceding bit of Hacker's own paragraph.

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    1. Thanks.

      Re your PS, I agree that these aren't the cases Wittgenstein has in mind in PI618. On the other hand, I think he's always against relying too much on one case or set of cases and forgetting others. It seems to me that Hacker agrees with one of Wittgenstein's voices, but in doing so is less polyphonic, more dogmatic or narrow, than Wittgenstein means to be.

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