Discovering Rorty

Waiting for Rorty's "Pragmatism and Romanticism" to arrive via inter-library loan (it came right after I finished reading the paper, naturally) I searched online and found this. It appears to be a complete copy of Philosophy as Cultural Politics, and not a photocopy of someone's marked up copy either. So I was able to read the essay I wanted without waiting. (It surely isn't legal to put a book online like that, but I can't think of anything wrong with using the online version rather than a library copy, and being able to search using ctrl+f, and to cut and paste quotations, made my day.)

Two more discoveries I made:

1. I agree with Rorty far more than I realized, and on ideas that are quite specific to him, such as his thoughts on poetry. I must have absorbed a lot from him without realizing it. Which makes me wonder how much I have absorbed from other people without realizing it or giving them credit. (I think I've said this before, but I'm still shocked by it.)
2. He says things in this essay that could be very helpful to me in explaining what I mean when I talk about poetry. For instance, in comments here I used Dylan Thomas's description of the sky as "bible-black" as an example of poetry. It brings together two ideas that might otherwise have remained separate (that of  the Bible and that of blackness). Compare Rorty:

It took imaginative genius to suggest that everybody make the same noise at the sight of blood, of certain maple leaves in autumn, and of the western sky at sunset. It was only when such suggestions were taken seriously and put into practice that hominids began to have minds.
As for the concept “round,” it was not obvious that the full moon and the trunks of trees had anything in common before some genius began to use a noise that we would translate as “round.” Nothing at all was obvious, because obviousness is not a notion that can be applied to organisms that do not use language.

I pretty much agree with everything he says in this essay, except the following:

We shall never find descriptions so perfect that imaginative redescription will become pointless. (p. 109)

How can anyone know this? As an expression of confidence I have no objection to it, but it sounds like a prediction about what is bound to be the case because of the way things are (known to be). And that sounds like metaphysics to me.

On the anti-empiricist view, a view that I think Nietzsche would have welcomed had he encountered it, there is no difference between the thermostat, the dog, and the pre-linguistic infant except the differing degrees of complexity of their reactions to environmental stimuli. The brutes and the infants are capable of discriminative responses, but not of acquiring information. (p. 113)

If the point here is about who or what can acquire information, then fair enough. But it sounds as though Rorty is making a claim about what dogs, thermostats, and infants are. I don't mean that they are made of different stuff (they are, but Rorty would surely concede that point), but the idea that the only important difference between a baby and a thermostat is that one is more complicated in its reactions to stimuli than the other sounds like something Mr Gradgrind would say. I hope that isn't what Rorty means, but if he does then I disagree.

[T]o say that a dog knows its master, or a baby its mother, is like saying that a lock knows when the right key has been inserted, or that a computer knows when it has been given the right password. (p. 113)

No it isn't. For one thing, as Rorty might agree, the first two are quite ordinary things to say, the latter two are not. Anyone who insists that dogs don't really know their masters is kidding, or doesn't know dogs, or doesn't know the meaning of 'know'. Dogs and babies are not inanimate, and this is not irrelevant. We can adopt that kind of perspective if we want to, for instance if we're doing physics, but otherwise it isn't a good idea. And it isn't anything like a view from nowhere or way to the truth, as Rorty of all people might be expected to agree. So, again, perhaps I'm misreading him here.

With what, then, do I agree? I'll select a few key claims, although there is lots of good stuff here.

reason can only follow paths that the imagination has broken (p. 105)

To be imaginative, as opposed to being merely fantastical, one must both do something new and be lucky enough to have that novelty adopted by one’s fellows – incorporated into their ways of doing things. The distinction between fantasy and imagination is between novelties that do not get taken up and put to use by one’s fellows and those that do. People whose novelties we cannot appropriate and utilize we call foolish, or perhaps insane. Those whose ideas strike us as useful we hail as geniuses. (p. 107)

I think I knew that I got this idea from Rorty, and it seems slightly fishy to me, a little too simple perhaps, but I still hold to it.

Language is a social practice that began when it dawned on some genius that we could use noises, rather than physical compulsion – persuasion rather than force – to get other humans to cooperate with us. Language got off the ground not by people giving names to things they were already thinking about, but by proto-humans using noises in innovative ways, just as the proto-beavers got the practice of building dams off the ground by moving sticks and mud around in innovative ways. (pp. 107-108)

It couldn't really have dawned on some genius that anything before there was language, but I suppose this is meant as a metaphor (or even a kind of joke). The second sentence sounds right though.

[E]xpressions like “gravity” and “inalienable human rights” should not be thought of as names of entities whose nature remains mysterious, but as noises and marks, the use of which by various geniuses have given rise to bigger and better social practices. (p. 108)

This is pretty much my view of rights, so perhaps I don't need to develop that view any more.

Shelley, in his “Defence of Poetry,” deliberately and explicitly enlarged the meaning of the term “Poetry.” That word, he said, “may be defined as ‘the expression of the Imagination.’” (p. 109)

Rationality is a matter of making allowed moves within language games. Imagination creates the games that reason proceeds to play. Then, exemplified by people like Plato and Newton, it keeps modifying those games so that playing them is more interesting and profitable. Reason cannot get outside the latest circle that imagination has drawn. In this sense, imagination has priority over reason. (p. 115)

I'll have to think about this, but it appeals to me.

Finally, there's this:

Ontology remains popular because we are still reluctant to yield to the Romantic’s argument that the imagination sets the bounds of thought. At the heart of both philosophy’s ancient quarrel with poetry and the more recent quarrel between the scientific and the literary cultures is the fear of both philosophers and scientists that the imagination may indeed go all the way down. This fear is entirely justified, for the imagination is the source of language, and thought is impossible without language. Revulsion against this claim has caused philosophers to become obsessed by the need to achieve an access to reality unmediated by, and prior to, the use of language. (pp. 106-107)

Rorty has a footnote here referring to his paper "Wittgenstein and the Linguistic Turn," which I'll have to read. But this passage also reminded me of Avner Baz's new book. Lars Hertzberg quotes Baz as follows:

I did not know then, as I do now, how thoroughly reinforced by theoretical presuppositions the resistance to Wittgenstein's (later) work had become. As I wrote this book, I found myself again and again discovering, often with the help of colleagues and friends, yet another layer of theoretical bulwark set against the philosophical approach I was seeking to vindicate.

I think I'll have to read this too.

Out there in the ether I suppose

This essay by Ron Rosenbaum about Auden and Larkin on love is worth reading if only for the picture of the Arundel tomb that Larkin wrote about. Rosenbaum's penultimate paragraph is disappointingly metaphysical though:

And then there's the unanswered question that's been troubling me personally and is perhaps the reason I’ve been a bit obsessed with these lines. What happens to the love between two people when it’s over? Seriously, where does it go, all that feeling, all those memories—do they dissolve into the air or do they survive somewhere, in some way—perhaps in a parallel universe?

The best thing about this question is that it calls to mind Tracey Thorn's song "By Piccadilly Station I Sat Down and Wept," which contains these lines:

Do you ever wonderWhere love goes?Out there in the ether I supposeSometimes it burns enough to leave a trace in the airThe ghost of me and you in a parallel world somewhere

Thorn isn't being serious, though, or at least isn't speaking literally ("I suppose" shows that she isn't trying to answer the question seriously--it's like Morrissey's "I dunno" in response to "Does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body?"). Rosenbaum seems to be engaging in sentimental metaphysics while Thorn is expressing feelings. Or perhaps Rosenbaum is just an inferior poet doing the same thing as Thorn. (Of course Thorn might not strike you as being much good either, but song lyrics rarely seem good when written down.)   

But back to Larkin. His poem describes a stone tomb that shows a knight and his wife lying side-by-side and holding hands. Rosenbaum wants to think that Larkin's reaction is to believe that amor vincit omnia, but that is quite far from what he says. Here's the last stanza of the poem:

Time has transfigured them into

Untruth. The stone fidelity

They hardly meant has come to be

Their final blazon, and to prove

Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love.

Time has transfigured them into untruth, not revealed the truth about them. Although perhaps this untruth has more to do with how the times have changed so that contemporary visitors to the tomb miss a lot, such as the meaning of the Latin inscription on the tomb that people no longer even read. Instead of the full truth about the earl and countess, only an attitude remains. The stone fidelity they hardly meant was a) not meant, but only something thrown off, b) meant, but perhaps something of an afterthought (the sculptor was commissioned, after all, and couldn't just do whatever he liked), and c) meant in a way that is as hard as stone, very much meant. I think Larkin is suggesting all three meanings, though not necessarily at once--they come in waves, in the order I have given them (or that's how they come to me, but how else can I read?).

What does it all prove? Supposedly that "what will survive of us is love" is almost true. What has survived of them is love because that is what is timelessly understood and that is what they chose to show to the world. We don't make such tombs, though, and churches themselves are relics of the past, as Larkin sees them (in "Church Going" he implies, with regret, that belief is bound to die). Larkin's own relationships are somewhat notorious. What will survive of him is not love. But he's there in the poem all the same, assuming that the rhyme of 'eye' with 'I' is not just coincidental:

Such plainness of the pre-baroque    

Hardly involves the eye, until

It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still   

Clasped empty in the other; and   

One sees, with a sharp tender shock,   

His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They are linked, he says (calling to mind my least favourite part of  "Aubade": "nothing to love or link with"). This connection with another, he does seem to think, provides a sort of immunity to death or the worst of death. What, if anything, will survive of us is love. But Larkin seems to think that both God and love are more or less dead (see "Annus Mirabilis" and "High Windows" for his views on the state of love). Now (since the sexual revolution of 1963) "bonds and gestures" are "pushed to one side," and everyone goes down the long slide to happiness, endlessly, enjoying an unlosable game. Presumably Larkin thinks there must be some price to be paid. (I wonder whether he knew the Tom Lehrer song about "sliding down the razor blade of life"? I imagine he did.) So that, I think, is what Larkin is getting at here. Love conquers more or less all, but love is very far from being something we can take for granted. I suspect also that there is some play on the similarity between 'armour' and 'amour': the tomb shows "jointed armour," but we live in "an unarmorial age."

More Haidt

OK, I've finished the first part (roughly the first third) of Haidt's book, and it's more of the same. He writes very clearly and uses lots of neat examples from psychology and philosophy. It would be interesting to try to use it as a textbook, except I think you would have to work to get students to believe the good bits and doubt the bad bits. Mostly he's arguing that people are not all that rational, that we tend to rationalize non-rational feelings rather than think things through on the basis of pure reason, and we rarely change our minds as a result of reasoning, although we do as a result of peer pressure. We are social animals, believing overwhelmingly what we have evolved to believe or what our social groups tell us to believe. Reason is not the slave of the passions, but it mostly does what they ask and only rarely steers the elephant in a direction it does not want to go.

None of this really strikes me as being anything like as new as Haidt seems to think it is, although his confirming evidence is certainly up to date. That most people are not very rational is something Plato believed, after all. That no living person is completely rational is also a platonic belief. And that wise decisions are more likely to come from a group of people than from an individual is also something Plato would be likely to accept (although, of course, it depends on the people, as I assume Haidt would accept too). That moral philosophy will not make a bad person good was known to Aristotle. And Haidt's general view is very much a Humean one, with the twist that reason is not quite the slave of the passions, at least not all the time. And I imagine most philosophers would agree with that (otherwise why be a philosopher?).

[UPDATE: Perhaps I should qualify this. When Hume says that reason is the slave of the passions he means that reason sets no goals, it can at most tell us how to achieve those goals. When Haidt agrees with Hume, what he means is that people make moral judgments and decisions on the basis of things like feeling, instinct, and peer pressure, not reason. When Haidt suggests that people sometimes use reason to come to conclusions about morality and politics he may or may not be saying something that Hume would agree with, depending on exactly what he means. When I say that most philosophers would probably agree with Haidt I mean that they probably value reason and see it as something more than a way to rationalize non-rational feelings. They still might be subjectivists about ethics.]

Haidt's position is pretty orthodox philosophically, but he keeps bashing philosophy all the same, either out of ignorance or to keep up the appearance that his message is more explosive than it really is.

Thus:

Deontologists [apparently the only thing moral philosophers can be other than utilitarians] talk about high moral principles derived and justified by careful reasoning; they would never agree that these principles are merely post hoc rationalizations of gut feelings. [p. 65]

Taken literally this might be true, but I think Leon Kass and Elizabeth Anscombe might be exactly the kind of people he wants to deny exist. We aren't all caricatures of Kant. Maybe no one is.

On p. 67 Haidt quotes Joshua Greene's conclusion of a study of people's moral judging and reasoning, to the effect that we have strong feelings about what must be done or not done, and then try to rationalize these feelings. Haidt sees it as a "stunning example of consilience" (p. 67). The "action" in ethics is supposedly shown to be in emotion, not reasoning. Ethics has been "biologized."

The problem here, as I see it, is that Haidt treats everyone as if they are doing moral psychology, just (sometimes) really badly. The low point is perhaps on pp. 73-74, where Haidt writes:

As is often the case in moral philosophy, arguments about what we ought to do depend upon assumptions--often unstated--about human nature and human psychology.

Then there's a footnote:

At least Plato stated his assumptions at great length. Many other moral philosophers, such as Kant and Rawls, simply make assertions about how minds work, what people want, or what seems "reasonable." These assertions seem to be based on little more than introspection about their own rather unusual personalities or value systems.

He goes on to say that Rawls is wrong because it has been found that most people would not care more about raising the standard of living of the least well-off person than about raising that of the average person  if designing a society from behind a veil of ignorance.

Kant's value system is basically Christian. Rawls's is liberal. Neither is exactly unusual, and the idea that their moral views are based on unstated assumptions about psychology is odd. What assumptions does Haidt have in mind? He leaves this unstated. How, in what way, are they assumed? He doesn't say. Anyone who says that Kant simply makes assertions about how minds work has not read the first Critique. And anyone who thinks we can test empirically what people behind the veil of ignorance would think (bearing in mind that such people would be ignorant of their own race and sex, for instance, i.e. they would not be real people) has seemingly not read even the Wikipedia entry on Rawls. I don't blame Haidt for not having read Kant or Rawls. But why bash them in that case?

Kant and Rawls are not doing psychology. Their concern is not primarily with what or how people think about ethics or politics but with what and how people should think. The categorical imperative is a justification (or rationalization, if you prefer) of certain values, and a tool for solving moral dilemmas. If Kant thinks it is rational that's because he thinks it's good (in a particular kind of way), not because he thinks that is how people actually do reason. And the same kind of thing goes for Rawls. If people were rational, he claims, they would draw the conclusions he draws concerning the basic principles of justice. I haven't read the study that Haidt cites, but Rawls is not making the kind of claim that could be empirically confirmed or refuted. So either the study is misconceived or else Haidt has misrepresented it. The abstract of the paper says that:

Overwhelmingly, the chosen principle is maximizing the average income with a floor constraint: a principle which is a compromise between those proposed by Rawls and Harsanyi. It takes into account not only the position of the worst-off individual but also the potential expected gain for the rest of society.

But, of course, the people in this study were not in the original position. So Rawls is not proved wrong, however suggestive or curious the findings might be.

Simply put, moral philosophy cannot be biologized because of the fact/value distinction. (However much of a continuum there might be linking the factual with the evaluative, it is still important to be able to see the difference between the factual, positive end and the normative, evaluative end.)

Another curiosity:

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. (p. 89)

Over the page he expands:

I'm not saying we should all stop reasoning and go with our gut feelings. Gut feelings are sometimes better guides than reasoning for making consumer choices and interpersonal judgments, but they are often disastrous as a basis for public policy, science, and law. Rather, what I'm saying is that we must be wary of any individual's ability to reason.

[...]

We should not expect individuals to produce good, open-minded, truth-seeking reasoning, particularly when self-interest or reputational concerns are in play. But if you put individuals together in the right way, such that some individuals can use their reasoning powers to disconfirm the claims of others, and all individuals feel some common bond or shared fate that allows them to interact civilly, you can create a group that ends up producing good reasoning as an emergent property of the social system.

So reasoning should be carried out dialectically, with exchange of ideas and peer review. (Maybe we should even have government by a group of intelligent and ethical people who pool their wisdom for the good of the state. You wouldn't get Plato thinking of anything like that!) Thank goodness for modern science!

Haidt ends every chapter with an "In Sum" section. Here's mine:

• Haidt writes engagingly and lucidly about matters of great interest and importance, citing lots of recent empirical studies to support his conclusions
• These conclusions are largely in line with what most philosophers would tell you about people's moral thinking, and indeed are at least mostly in line with what I think of as common sense  
• Yet Haidt, who clearly does not understand philosophy, presents his findings as a mighty blow to philosophy, as if it were a powerful giant that needs to be defeated because it is nothing more than bad science. The plucky David who slays this evil Goliath is none other than that lovable underdog, modern science. Hurrah!  

It’s well to know exactly who you are, so you can conduct the rest of your life properly.

Paul Fussell has died. There are obituaries here and here. I know him as the author of a fine book on Kingsley Amis, but these obituaries show that there was more to him than that. At least three more of his books sound well worth reading. Some quotes (in addition to the one I've used as the title of this post):

Jewelry is another instant class-lowerer, like the enameled little Old Glory lapel pins worn by the insane and by cynical politicians working backward districts …

Dismal food is bad. Dismal food pretentiously served in a restaurant associated with the word ‘gourmet’ is BAD. Being alert to this distinction is a large part of the fun of being alive today, in a moment teeming with raucously overvalued emptiness and trash.

UPDATE: it has been pointed out to me that one of the quotes I originally gave is actually from Hemingway. It's still good, so I'll quote it again, but I'd rather do so with the correct attribution. Here it is:

Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the number of roads, the names of rivers, the number of regiments and dates.

Philosophy envy?

I've started reading Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind and I'm glad I have. It certainly seems to be the kind of book I should read, since it is popular, somewhat scientific (and therefore more academically significant than a merely popular book), and deals with ethics. But it's annoying too. Most of my annoyance comes from Haidt's treatment of philosophy, which seems very unfair. I can't tell whether this unfairness is deliberate or not, but Haidt does say that he started out wanting to be a philosopher (or student of philosophy at least) before switching to psychology. So I wonder whether some lingering resentment is showing through in his treatment of philosophy.

Here are some examples. On p. 28 Haidt says that:

Western philosophy has been worshipping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years. There's a direct line running from Plato through Immanuel Kant to Lawrence Kohlberg. I'll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion.

The connection between Kant and Kohlberg is fair enough, but is there really a direct line from Plato to Kant? The influence doesn't seem very direct to me. Perhaps more to the point, when Plato and Kant talk about reason, or something that gets translated into English as 'reason', they aren't necessarily talking about the same thing. And even more to the point that I want to make, Western philosophy should not be identified with Plato and Kant. Approximately no one agrees with Plato, and Kant is not short of critics.

On p. 32 Haidt brings in Rawls:

He [Edward O. Wilson] was a professor at Harvard, along with Lawrence Kohlberg and the philosopher John Rawls, so [!] he was well acquainted with their brand of rationalist theorizing about rights and justice. It seemed clear to Wilson that what the rationalists were really doing was  generating clever justifications for moral intuitions that were best explained by evolution. Do people believe in human rights because such rights actually exist, like mathematical truths, sitting on a cosmic shelf next to the Pythagorean theorem just waiting to be discovered by Platonic reasoners? Or do people feel revulsion and sympathy when they read accounts of torture, and then invent a story about universal rights to help justify their feelings?

I don't know that Rawls would deny that what he is really doing is generating clever justifications for moral intuitions. He said his project was political, not metaphysical, after all, didn't he? But to say that these intuitions are better explained by evolution is to fail to distinguish reasons from causes. Rawls is not trying to explain how we have come, historically, to have the intuitions we do. He is trying to offer the best way to make sense of the intuitions we have. It is also to be optimistic about the explanatory power of evolution. I don't mean that evolution is not true, only that its truth does not always help us understand why things are as they are. Often it provides little more than a basis for plausible just-so stories.

The bit about mathematical truths is amazing. Is there a cosmic shelf? No. So what would Haidt say about the Pythagorean theorem? That it is a clever justification for mathematical intuitions best explained by evolution? Maybe it is something like that. It is still true. To say otherwise, on the grounds that evolution provides a "better" explanation, would be to misunderstand the nature of mathematics. And there seems to be a similar misunderstanding of philosophy here.

Thankfully, scientists have now shown Western philosophy, i.e. Plato, to be wrong. Reason ought not to be in control, because of the "shocking revelation" that "reasoning requires the passions" (p. 34). Silly Plato. He should have listened to that guy who compared the mind to a chariot pulled by two horses with reason at the reins. Without passion the chariot won't go. To be fair to Haidt, he does provide reasons to reject this as a picture of how the mind works. As he sees it, the mind is more like an elephant over which the rational part, which rides it, has little control. Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions. That's right, in opposition to the naive and discredited theories of Western philosophy, Haidt supports the view of .... David Hume. Not just implicitly, but very explicitly, with quotations and name checks. Bizarre.

I suppose it makes for a popular story. Philosophy is hard and not just anyone can do it well, so let's reject it as irrelevant. If that means wildly distorting what philosophers actually believe then so be it. (In case anyone reading this doesn't know; Hume is extremely popular with contemporary philosophers, Plato is not.) Sad to see.

More later, no doubt, with plenty of puns on Haidt's name: sheer Haidt, Haidters gonna Haidt, etc.

Wittgenstein on clarity

In the Tractatus Wittgenstein says the following things about clarity and elucidation:

One could put the whole sense of the book perhaps in these words: What can be said at all, can be said clearly and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

3.251 A proposition expresses what it expresses in a definite, clearly specifiable way: a proposition is articulated.

3.263 The meanings of primitive signs can be explained through elucidations.  Elucidations [Erläuterungen] are propositions which contain primitive signs.  They can thus only be understood if one is already acquainted with the meanings of these signs.

4.112 The end of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.

Philosophy is not a subject but an activity.

A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

The result of philosophy is not "philosophical propositions" but the clarification of propositions.

Philosophy should make clear and distinct thoughts that, without it, are, as it were, unclear and indistinct.

 4.115 It [i.e. philosophy] will refer to the unsayable in that it presents clearly the sayable.

4.116 Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly

5.45 If there are primitive signs of logic then a correct logic must make clear their position with regard to one another and justify their being.  The construction of logic out of its primitive signs must be made clear.

5.452 The introduction of a new device in the symbolism of logic must always be an important event.  No new device may be introduced into logic – with, so to speak, a wholly innocent face – in brackets or in a footnote.

(Thus in the Principia Mathematica of Russell and Whitehead there appear definitions and basic laws in words. Why suddenly words here?  This would need a justification. This is missing and must be missing, since the procedure is actually forbidden.)

If, however, the introduction of a new device has proved necessary in one place, then one must ask oneself straightaway: Where must this device now always be used?  Its place in logic must now be made clear.

6.54 My propositions elucidate by whoever understands me perceiving them in the end as nonsensical, when through them – upon them – over them, he has climbed out.  (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed out upon it.)

He must overcome these propositions, then he sees the world rightly. 

The words "It is clear" and "it is clearly" occur often in the book, about 18 or 19 times in my translation (which aims to be very literal). At first these are references to what is clear in logic, as in 3.251 and 4.115 quoted above, having to do with the clear specification or presentation of what can be said. But later we get into ethics and some strange claims about what is clear, e.g. "6.421 It is clear, that ethics cannot be articulated." To whom is that clear? It isn't clear just on its own but, if at all, then to someone. And not just anyone, but an ethical being.

The inescapability of our humanity, both our physical being, which is affected by sounds when we hear others speak, and our subjective being (is that the word?), which can guess and pick up hints, is made clear enough by Frege (especially by Beaney's Frege Reader and its helpful index). It also comes up in Schopenhauer when he writes that, "The aim of realism is just the object without subject; but it is impossible even to conceive such an object clearly" (The World as Will and Representation, Volume II, p. 12). There is no escaping subjectivity, no as it were absolutely objective communication, no understanding a speaker's sentences without understanding the speaker (although presumably Wittgenstein thinks we can understand an author without understanding his sentences, as indeed does seem to be the case).

Frege and Russell 'cheat' (see, e.g. 5.452 above) because they have to. It is not possible to do what they are trying to do without 'cheating', as Frege, at least, recognizes. And that means there is something wrong with what they are trying to do. It involves a false view of clarity. There is not the clearly sayable and the having-to-be-guessed-at. Or rather, since, after all, some things are clearly sayable and others do have to be guessed at, the distinction between the sayable and the un-sayable can be overstated.

Does this really matter? Wittgenstein seems to think it makes a huge difference to philosophy, to how we conceive of and do philosophy. "Philosophy is not a subject but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations." I take this to mean that philosophy should consist of elucidations, and that these elucidations are acts, not clarificatory statements. The clarification of propositions is not the production of clear propositions. Every proposition that means something, i,.e. every proposition that actually is a proposition, has a clear meaning. It just might not be clear to this or that person. Philosophy, Wittgenstein appears to be saying, is the activity of helping people understand this meaning. Clarity and the lack thereof are psychological matters.

But what about 3.263? It says that: "The meanings of primitive signs can be explained through elucidations.  Elucidations are propositions which contain primitive signs.  They can thus only be understood if one is already acquainted with the meanings of these signs." So elucidations are propositions, after all, not acts of elucidation. But this proposition is sheer nonsense, isn't it? It reads like a joke. The meaning of primitive signs can be explained through elucidations, and these elucidations can only be understood if one already is acquainted with the meanings of these primitive signs. So the point of an elucidation is to explain something in a way that can only be understood by people already acquainted with what is to be explained.

Elsewhere I commented as follows on this passage:

What the…?! This sounds circular and pointless. Don’t know the meaning of a primitive sign? An “elucidation” will help. But you will only understand it if you already know the meaning of the relevant primitive sign! So either knowledge of meaning is not the same thing as understanding when it comes to signs, which seems unlikely (but who knows?). Or explanation of meaning is quite impossible (in the terms presented by the Tractatus up to now). See p. 44 and pp. 49-50 of Joan Weiner’s essay in Future Pasts.

Anscombe (p. 26) suggests that this passage, along with 3.261, provides the best evidence for thinking that the elementary propositions of the Tractatus are simple observation statements, such as “This is a red patch.” Names and only names are primitive signs. Logical signs, as he indicates elsewhere, are not primitive signs. But (see p. 27) what elucidates a name need not be an elementary proposition. And from 6.3751 it follows directly that “This is a red patch” cannot be an elementary proposition.Anscombe concludes that elementary propositions are not simple observation statements, and that this explains why Wittgenstein did not refer to observation in connection with them. What they are he cannot say, but they must exist. See, for instance, 5.5562, 3.23, 2.021, 2.0211, and 4.221.

See also 5.526.

(I had forgotten that I had read Joan Weiner's essay before.) N.N. commented:

Hacker argues (persuasively, it seems to me) that elucidations are ostensive definitions 'seen through a glass darkly.' That is, they are ostensive definitions misconstrued as bipolar propositions (see 'Frege and Wittgenstein on Elucidations,' Mind, Oct., 1975).

The 'smoking gun' in favor of his interpretation is a remark that Wittgenstein made to Waismann in 1932: 'In the Tractatus logical analysis and ostensive definition were unclear to me.' That is, according to Wittgenstein, ostensive definition is addressed in the Tractatus. And even Kenny, who denies that elucidations are ostensive definitions, concedes that the only passage Wittgenstein could be referring to is 3.263 (see Anthony Kenny, 'The Ghost of the Tractatus,' in Legacy of Wittgenstein).  

It isn't clear to me that Wittgenstein means in this remark that the Tractatus says something about ostensive definitions. Perhaps he meant that he had overlooked them. And we only have Waismann's report that Wittgenstein said this, so it's secondhand evidence. I wouldn't put too much weight on the smoking gun therefore.

Nevertheless, Hacker's interpretation has at least a certain plausibility. If we read 3.263 as saying that the meanings of primitive signs can be explained by means of sentences that use those signs to refer to objects with which one is familiar, then it sounds about right. But Anscombe's argument seems good. If a primitive sign is the name of an object and we cannot give any examples of objects then surely an elucidation containing primitive signs is not an ostensive definition. We can give lots of examples of them.

Whatever we make of 3.263, it seems clear to me that the elucidations mentioned in 6.54 and 4.112 are different in kind than those described in 3.263. The latter sound much more like the kind of thing Frege struggles with. The "elucidations" of 3.263 would be philosophical propositions, wouldn't they? But these are rejected in 4.112.

It's still a little hard to see how this is supposed to help anyone see the world rightly. To see Frege's work rightly perhaps, and to see philosophy rightly perhaps also. But the world? For that I think we would have to look more at the remarks on ethics towards the end of the Tractatus. 

People like us

There are interesting discussions going on at Brian Leiter's blog here and here. In the latter, John Protevi recommends that philosophy job candidates have a sober, simple, clean website, and adds: "The style of a website is like the style of clothes worn to an interview; it shows something about the style of the person in social interaction." I agree with his advice about having a website like that, but I was also struck by how explicit he is about the importance of coming across as, for want of a better word, normal. He's not wrong, but the sociology is interesting to me, especially in light of the other thread about advice for graduate students on publishing.

Ben Hale asks "doesn’t it only make sense to reward the strong publications but not to punish the weak publications?" I would say Yes, but he feels the need to ask the question because others on the thread, including Brian Leiter himself, have referred to publications in some journals as being minuses or stains on one's CV. I find this incredible (and unpleasant). Even Ben Hale seems to concede too much when he writes:

Assume the Gourmet Report and imagine the following:

1) NYU: A sparkling young NYU PhD comes out onto the market with top letters from all the important players. Her pedigree and recommendations are stunning but her CV is empty.

2) Oxford: A similarly sparkling young Oxford PhD comes out onto the market with top letters from all the important players. Her pedigree and recommendations are equally stunning, but she has one publication in the _Journal of Value Inquiry_. (Apologies to JVI. It was mentioned above, so I’m just using it to make the case.)

Arguably, there may be a reason to discount the one with the publication: The Oxford student is evidently not as good as she appears on paper. A middling publication is evidence enough that a candidate is middling, where no publication demonstrates nothing about a candidate, so the candidate’s quality is left up to the letters and the pedigree, which are stunning. The NYU student, on the other hand, hasn't yet proven her mettle. She is _only as good as_ she appears on paper. If publication history is a better proxy of someone's potential than letters and pedigree, then publications trump all and Oxford loses to NYU.

Weird, but fair enough. 

Really? Fair enough? If publications trump all then why does the candidate with one publication lose to the one with no publications? What if the paper she published in the Journal of Value Inquiry was not her best work? What if someone advised her to publish there, or invited her to submit it there? Does it really make sense to hold it against her that she took this advice, or that she chose to publish something (perhaps several years ago) that was not as good as the work she is now capable of producing? The only way I can see it making sense for NYU to beat Oxford in this example is if we are snobs and want nothing to do with people who publish in journals like that, or who get advice to publish in journals like that, advice that, apparently, is contrary to what is given out at the top-ranked departments. It looks like an unhealthy concern with pedigree. I'm genuinely curious as to whether I'm missing something here, but I don't want to post this over at Brian Leiter's blog because it might seem to be attacking him (and "escalating").

The usual argument seems to be that publishing in humble journals shows poor judgment or else is evidence of an inability to publish in top journals. But given the job market it does not show poor judgment. It might reflect a lack of confidence in one's ability to land a top job, but that lack of confidence might be a thing of the past and, besides, need not be a bad thing. As far as evidence of ability goes, I don't see that relatively moderate achievement (so far) is worse than no achievement (so far) at all. If there's something about probabilities that I'm missing, I'd like to know it. 

Reading between the lines a little bit, by which I mean taking people at their initial word and ignoring what they say when they seem to backtrack, my inference is that departments that regard themselves as "top" really will hold non-stellar publications against applicants whereas it might be precisely such publications that you need to get a job anywhere else (because you need some publications and because stellar publications (where what is or is not stellar depends solely on the reputation of the journal it's in, not the quality of the paper itself) might make you look unsuited to life in a lowly department). So we have something like the 1% versus the 99% divide, given how few jobs there are at top departments. Job candidates have to decide which they are and submit to journals accordingly. Or submit to the stellar journals and then see whether they can make it into the top 1%, although that's a risky strategy. I find this very depressing to think about (perhaps because I have published in the Journal of Value Inquiry, but I hope that isn't it).

It would surely be a good thing if no publications were ever held against candidates (with the only exceptions being based on the content of the paper itself, and here I have in mind things like defenses of racism, not merely weak arguments from which the author might have since moved on). Top departments should not be snobs and lesser departments should realize just how much of a buyer's market it is.