c.b. daly - new light on wittgenstein2

7/23/2019 C.B. Daly - New Light on Wittgenstein2

1/35

II

New

Li8ht

o

Witt8enstein

P RT Two

5. The Philosophical Investigations

IN the first part

of

this

article 221

three sections have already been

devoted to the Investigations: 1, Mr. Gellner: or the Wittgenstein

that Never Was ; 2

The

Critique of the Tractatus ;

3 The

Disorders

of

Philosophy'.

5 4 The Critique of Psychologism

A favourite area for critical exploration by Wittgenstein was the

area of our concepts about mental acts and states. He constantly

criticised the idea that there are hidden and elusive, interior mental

states, discernible only by the subject by dint of intensive intro

spection. In this domain, his target was always G.

E.

Moore.

Moore had written in

1903

(and the method remained a character

istic

with

him):

When we refer to introspection and try to discover what the sensation

of blue is, it is very easy to suppose that we have before us only a

single term. The term '

blue

is easy enough to distinguish, but the

other element which I have called ' consciousness' is extremely

difficult to

fix. .

Though philosophers have recognised that

something distinct is meant by consciousness, they have never yet

had a clear conception of what that something is. They have

not

been able to hold

it

and blue before their minds and to compare

them in the same way in which they can compare

blue

and

green .

[Because] . . . the moment we try to fix

our

attention upon

consciousness and to see what, distinctly it is, it seems to vanish

[It

is] as if it were diaphanous. Yet it can be distinguished if we

look attentively enough. . . . My main object in this paragraph

has been to try to make the reader see it; but I fear I shall have

succeeded very ll

222

I t is to this that Wittgenstein is alluding when he writes:

Here it

is

easy to get into that dead-end in philosophy, where one

believes that the difficulty

of

the task consists in our having to

describe phenomena that are hard to get hold of, the present

experience that slips quickly by, or something of the kind. Where

we find ordinary language too crude, and it looks as if we were

having to do, not with the phenomena of everyday, but with ones that

1

See Philosophical Studies, X, 1960, pp. 5-49

The Refutation of Idealism', in Philosophical Studies. Kegan Paul. London.

1922, pp. 20, 25.

28


2/35

NEW LIGHT ON WITTGENSTEIN-II

29

easily elude us and, in their coming to

be

and passing away,

produce those others as an average effect .

223

This idea

of

philosophy as mind-gazing is anathema to

Wittgenstein. t is the pursuit

of

a mirage. Always, on the point

of being got into focus, the mental state vanishes.

I t is

as if one

had altered the adjustment

of

a microscope . Instead of

the

inner

experience

of

intending, which one is trying to recall, something

else comes into

view

224

Always, we are finding

ourselves

as if

we

had to repair a torn spider s web with

our

fingers

.225

This

type

of

philosophy illustrates perfectly for Wittgenstein the complex

of errors which for him characterise classical philosophy.

I t

involves

the mistake of supposing that there is one single valid analysis of a

mental-process proposition, one single definition

of

each mental

concept; and that, when the definition has been found,

we

shall

have exact and final understanding

of

the

hidden

essence

of

thinking , knowing , willing

and the rest.

226

t is

not necessary to attempt to follow Wittgenstein s discussions

in any detail here. A rapid survey will show how his own new

way of philosophising emerges by reaction against the old. There

is

a long critique

of

the concept

of

a private language in which

a person might be supposed to write down or give vocal expression

to his inner experiences-his feelings, moods and the rest-for his

private use .

227 In

the course

of

these investigations, Wittgenstein

is able

to

kill several birds at once: the grammatical-logical

223

436 (the concluding quotation is from St. Augustine). Moore s two hands

argument, and his assertion of the evident truth of the statement, The Earth has

existed in the last five minutes (from A Defence

of

Common Sense .), are criticised

in II, xi (p. 221); the former, on the ground that if I don t believe in my hands I

needn t believe in my eyes either (which seems very common-sense ); the latter,

on the ground

that nobody

in a common-sense mood would ever say such a thing.

On

the personal relations, and philosophical disagreement between Moore and.

Wittgenstein, see Malcolm, Memoir, pp.

33-4,66-7,73,79-80,87-92;

and von Wright,

ibid.,

p. 15.

224

645.

225 106.

226 See 91-2: I t may come to look as if there were something like a final analysis

of

our forms

of

language, and so a single completely resolved

form of

every expression.

That is, as if our usual forms

of

expression were essentially unanalysed; as if there

were something hidden

in

them that had to be

brought

to light. When this is done,

the expression

is

completely clarified and our problem solved. t can also be put

like this:

we

eliminate misunderstandings by making our expressions more exact;

but now it may look as if we were moving towards a particular state, a state

of

complete exactness; and as if this were the real goal of our investigation . . .

This finds expression in questions as

to

the essence

of

language,

of

propositions,

of

thought. They see in the essence something that lies beneath the surface.

Something

that

lies within, which we see when we look into the thing, and which an

analysis digs out . . . . And the answer to these questions is to be given once for

all; and independently

of

any future experience Cfr. II, xi (p. 225).

I t

will be

noted

that the Moorean concept

of

analysis, criticised here, has affinity with the

Russell

and Tractatus

type of analysis which

we

have seen Wittgenstein also rejecting.

G. A.

Paul

says: Wittgenstein criticises the notion

of

analysis in a way that has

quite changed philosophy

The Revolution

n

Philosophy,

p. 88).

22,

243-323; also 380; 398 If


3/35

30

PHILOSOPHICAL

STUDIES

confusion whereby 'expressing a judgment' is assimilated to

'expressing a thought' and this to 'expressing a pain 228 the

Moorean idea

of

a secret inner thing in my mind which only I

can see; the Russellian idea

of

the logically propel' name, or the

private ostensive definition. Against Moore's notion, he argues

that a thing in a sealed mind-box, which nobody could ever

see

or know except he who has the box, could not even be seen or

known by the latter; because to recognise and identify it, he needs

words, and words are public:

'

sensation is a

wOld

of our

common language, not

of

one intelligible to

me

alone'.

229

Against

both Moore and Russell (and incidentally against any implicit

solipsism) he makes the important point that mental-process words,

being part of language, which is necessarily public, are situated

from the beginning in an inter-personal and public world.

230

All

this section

is

an excellent example of Wittgenstein's technique of

appealing to common-sense against 'philosophy'.

A related and continuously reiterated theme is that knowing,

sensing, speaking, intending, etc., are not

tw

distinguishable things

(as Moore's introspectionist technique suggested), namely a public

and a private thing, a

coarse

physical and a hidden mental

thing.

23oa

Since

we

can know only what

we

can identify by criteria,

describe and name, and since criteria, descriptions and names are

public, then, so far from its being true that ' private' mental states

alone are infallibly known, the truth

is

that ' private' mental states,

in the sense intended, are unknowable. To determine what knowing

is we must therefore look at the multitude

of

accomplishments

which we call knowing, the manifold circumstances in which we

say , I know', Now I know how to

go on

etc.

231

The same

is

true

of

thinking:

it

is ' not an incorporeal process which lends life

and sense to speaking and which

it

would be possible to detach

from speaking, rather as the Devil took the shadow of Schlemiehl

from the ground'.

232

'Understanding' too is quite distorted

if

we make

it

an esoteric, private, unsayable mystery. Understanding

means being able to say something, to do something, being able

, to

go

on

;

and we cannot get a right view

of

it until we survey

the situations in which

we

use this sort

of

language.

233

Reading

is not an overt performance shadowed by some interior monitoring

228

304-5, 308, 317, 501.

2 293;

261; cfr. 258.

230 258 insists that I cannot identify my own sensation without criteria, communi

cable to and accessible to others. Compare 343, 246, 260-3, 286, 290-1, 322. On

the impossibility of a private ostensive definition see 380, 398.

230

a

In the Brown Book, he

had

spoken of the curious superstition', the kind

of general disease

of

thinking which always looks for (and finds) what would

be

called a mental state from which

all our

acts spring as from a reservoir . See p. 143.

231

152-4, 179-182, 527-9. Compare Malcolm,

Memoir

pp. 87 tr.

232

339; cfr. 327-341. Compare the

Blue Book

pp. 37-65.

233

152_5

514, 520, 527-533; 536-9; cfr. the Brown Book po. 113-4.

A


4/35


31

activity.234

Negation

is

not a ' mental activity' and is not always

the same activity.235 There is no single occult essence of 'meaning';

we mean many things by meaning and they are all embodied things.

Occult processes, supposed to be known only to

me,

cannot be

known even to me and cannot have meaning even for me. Nothing

has meaning except what I can say, and words are not intimate

but inter-personal. Wittgenstein concludes Part I by the sharp

saying: N o ~ h i n g is more wrong-headed than calling meaning a

mental activity. Unless, that is, one is setting out to produce

confusion

.236

The same applies to the language of willing. Willing is not an

inner experience separable from its

object

'. Willing is doing

something (even if it

is

only

trying ')

willingly.237

To put 'willing'

in the mind and 'doing' in the world

is

to make willing inefficacious,

the will irresponsible and the world 'independent of my will'.

Wittgenstein had reason to know: he had done chis himself in the

Tractatus

and thus excluded the possibility

of

ethical propositions.

38

We must not sublime' willing or ethics, any more than logic;

that

is

to say, we must not separate them from experience.

The same is true of ' believing',

hoping ,

'expecting', 'wishing',

intending .239 t is true

of

every piece

of

mental language

where

we

are tempted to postulate an inward process

or

picture

or a ' mental image shadowing the act referred to. Such inward

pictures' cannot be described (for

if

they can, they are not

inward

in the sense intended); therefore they cannot be meaningful or

relevant or real. Furthermore, in a wider sense of ' mental image ,

where it means imagery accompanying meaning or language, this

varies from person to person, and in the same person, has no

permanent or intrinsic connection with the same word; therefore

it cannot be what we mean.240

Part

II

is mainly taken up with investigations of this sort.

Recourse to inner processes' or inner feelings' to explain

cognitive processes is repeatedly pronounced irrelevant and mistaken.

Doubt, supposition, are not feelings ( if-feelings Of other). I

can doubt or suppose without having these feelings. I can have

the feelings without doubting

or

supposing. Even if someone had

234

156-165, 167-8; efr. the Brown Book pp. 120-1.

235

547-557.

236

693; efr. 322, 358, 543-4, 558-561, 666

if.

Compare the

Brown Book pp.

78-9, 172-3; and Malcolm, Memoir pp. 87-8.

237

611-630.

Compare the Brown Book

pp. 100-4, 110-116, 150-2.

238

6.373, 6.42. Wittgenstein is formally rejecting this view in 620. Compare 337.

239

437_441, 574-592.

240

449 if. 518-520, 598; err. 213, 305-8, 314-6.

Compare the Blue Book

pp.

48 if. 78-9; the Brown Book pp. 167 fT In part, at least, of his critique of

psychologism, Wittgenstein had as precursor Bradley. See R. A. Wollheim's, F.

H. Bradley , in The Revolution in Philosophy pp. 12-25; and the same author s

F H. Bradley Penguin Books, 1959, pp. 17-43.

B


5/35

32

PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES

a particular capacity only when, and only

as

long

as

he had a

particular feeling, the feeling would

not

be the capacity

.241

Similarly mental images that accompany meaning are not meaning.

4

, Being certain

is

not a certain feeling .

43

A hesitant assertion

is not an assertion of my state

of

hesitancy.244

There

is

an important section devoted to Moore s paradox

about I believe

that

x is y . This proposition was a fatal

stumbling-block

to

Russell s truth-functional theory of propositions;

because the truth of x is y , is irrelevant to the truth of I believe

that x is y

:

it can be true that I believe, but what I believe may

be false. Russell had two ways of escape; either to make

, believing , as a mental fact, a peculiar and subsistent logical

species (and thus Platonic gbosts return);

or

to explain believing

behaviouristically.245 The latter is, in effect, what Ryle does with

belief. Wittgenstein rejects both expedients (and by anticipation

rejects Ryle s dispositional behaviourism). He does not solve

the ploblem; but he makes it impossible to maintain either that

I

believe that

. .

. is a statement about me; or that when I say

, I believe that

. .

. , I am declaring my disposition to behave in

certain ways246; or making sets of testable hypothetical and semi

hypothetical propositions

.247

The section

is

a good example

of

Wittgenstein s dictum:

Say what you choose, so long as it does

not

prevent you from

seeing the facts. (And when you see them, there is a good deal

that you will

not say.)248

Soi-disant Wittgensteinians had some pretext from the language

of Wittgenstein when they poured scorn on ghostly mind-stories,

inner-world myths , mystery-mongering , etc., and opted for a

tough, one-world-and-no-nonsense behaviourism or quasi

behaviourism.

49

There are many passages in which Wittgenstein

seems to pour equal scorn on all spirit- or soul-

or

mind-language.

He speaks derisively

of the

conception

of

thought as a gaseous

medium .250 He speaks scornfully of a hocus-pocus which can

be performed only by the soul .251 He seems to suggest that all

talk about spirit is due to failure to find the right

bodily

language,

2


6/35


33

or

failure to understand the bodily language we do use.

252

Talk

about' mind' or spirit' seems for him to be typical philosophical

illusion, such as arises when language goes on holiday . This

is

what happens when the philosopher tries to practice psychologist s

introspection and when, in order to discover what

'self '

means

'he

says the word

self

to himself and tries to analyse its

meaning

.253

t is in a similar' free-floating state, when I try to be conscious

of consciousness without being conscious of anything else, that I

get the ' feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and

brain process , a feeling of a difference in kind accompanied

by a slight giddiness .

254

t is then that I get the sense

of

the

queerness

of

thought.

255

t

is then that I have the emotion

of

awe

and mystery-at something

deep, hidden,

a sense lying far in the

background .256 But, Wittgenstein proclaims, this

is

illusion. Let

us put our words back into gear, back into use; let us, we may

say,

put our

minds back to their work of being conscious

of things,

and then the illusion and the giddiness vanish. There is nothing

'queet '

or

'deep' or

'hidden

.257

Everything lies open to

view .258

If

we try to lay bare the essence

of

thought by stripping

off the

'coverings' of actual thinking, then we simply find that

thought itself has disappeared.

' In

order to find the real artichoke,

we divested it

of

its leaves .258

a

We should be

talking'

about the

spatial and temporal phenomena of language, not about some non

spatial, non-temporal phantasm ' .259 Our proper concern is not

with curiosities, but with the' natural history

of

human beings' ;26

for mental-words' are as much part of our natural history as

252 36: 'Because we

cannot

specify nyone bodily action . . . we say that a

spiritual

[mental, intellectual] activity corresponds

to

these words. Where our

language suggests a body and there is none: there, we should like to say is a spirit.

Compare

196, 363; the

Blue Book,

p. 47:

'When

we perceive that a substantive

is not used as what we should call the name of an object we can't help saying

to

ourselves that it is the name

of an

aethereal object. A clearing-up

of

the grammar

will dissolve the problem, in the language of the Blue Book (which does not recur

in this form in the Investigations):

'This

is a hint as to how the problem

of

the

two materials,

mind and matter,

is going to dissolve.

2.3413 (referring to William James). Wittgenstein read James a good deal and

seems to take him as typical

of

psychology. See 342, 610, xi. These references

are

usually critical;

but

he admired James as a philosopher; see J.

A.

Passmore,

A Hundred Years of Philosophy,

428; Dr. Drury in

The Listener,

28th January,

1960. See also 404-412.

25

c.b. daly - new light on wittgenstein2

Documents