Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Wittgenstein and the Inner WorldAuthor(s): John McDowellReviewed work(s):Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 86, No. 11, Eighty-Sixth Annual Meeting AmericanPhilosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov., 1989), pp. 643-644Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2027041 .Accessed: 26/10/2012 11:20

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THOUGHT OF WIl1TGENSTEIN 643

WITTGENSTEIN AND THE INNER WORLD*

L udwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mind is often read as hostile to the inner; but that is quite wrong, as, e.g., Philo- sophical Investigations' ?423 makes clear. I shall suggest

that our symposiasts leave too much scope for this misreading, at least in respect of the intentional aspects of the mental: Warren Goldfarb in taking Wittgenstein to deny that understanding a word (say) is a "particular or definite state," and Crispin Wright in equip- ping Wittgenstein with a position according to which intentional states are-to put it crudely-less robustly there than nonintentional mental items.

On Wright's reading, Wittgenstein's purpose, in the case of un- derstanding (and this goes for intentional states generally), is to separate it from the occurrent phenomena of consciousness, on jointly phenomenological and a priori grounds. I shall argue that this reading fails to accommodate passages in which Wittgenstein raises difficulties parallel to the one that shapes his treatment of under- standing (notably ?386); and that, as Wright understands it, Witt- genstein's a priori argument would defeat its supposed purpose, by threatening the existence of any phenomena of consciousness. The distinction between what is in consciousness and what is not cannot have the thematic significance for Wittgenstein which Wright gives it.

The trouble is with the way Wright orchestrates Wittgenstein's moves. There are two obvious targets, Platonism about meaning and the misconception of sensations attacked in the "private language" dialectic. Wright has these as more or less independent temptations to which our thought is prone-although the first, in the shape of a Platonistic conception of intentions, naturally figures in defense of the second, when it is pressed to turn itself into a theory. But I do not believe we can understand Wittgenstein properly unless we see these two target misconceptions as issuing from a common source. I shall suggest that Wittgenstein's fundamental target is a conception of the inner as a lived refutation of "idealism"-a region where we come face to face with the given, that which is set over against conceptual schemes. This makes the grippingness of the misconception of sen- sations more intelligible than Wright can, and yields a satisfying

* Abstract of a paper to be presented in an APA symposium on the Thought of Wittgenstein, December 30, commenting on papers by Crispin Wright and Warren Goldfarb; see this JOURNAL, this issue, 622-634 and 635-642, respectively.

'G. E. M. Anscombe, trans. (New York: Macmillan, 1953).

0022-362X/89/861 1/643/4 ? 1989 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

644 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

understanding of Platonism and of Wittgenstein's moves against it. It also makes available a satisfying positive picture of the inner world, without Wright's asymmetry between the intentional and the nonin- tentional; indeed, Wright's conception of the nonintentional aspects of mental life seems to reflect a version of the very thought that, in my view, Wittgenstein is fundamentally concerned to oppose.

Goldfarb discusses material in which Wittgenstein shows that un- derstanding a word, say, cannot be a definite state, on a certain conception of what a definite state would be, namely, the kind of state with which science can deal. ('Cannot' fits here because science cannot do anything with the idea of internal relations.) One of the manifestations of Platonistic self-deception is missing the force of that 'cannot', and taking what is actually a hopeless conceptual bind for a merely empirical mystery ("the as yet uncomprehended process in the as yet unexplored medium": ?308). I have two main objections to Goldfarb's treatment of this material. First, he underrates the extent to which "central conceptual features of our notion of un- derstanding" are in place ahead of Wittgenstein's piecemeal investi- gations, fueling the misconceptions under attack and accounting for their philosophical resonance. Second, he does not consider some- thing that, given my description of the material, is an obvious next move, namely, "So much the worse for that conception of what a definite state would have to be." A lesson of Wittgenstein's philo- sophy of mind is that we can dislodge philosophical misconceptions, and reclaim the inner world, populated by definite states and pro- cesses, for unphilosophical common sense.

JOHN McDOWELL

University of Pittsburgh